[Wikipedia-l] Re: Any suggestions for stopping Helga's latest onslaught...

Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com
Fri Aug 23 15:47:51 UTC 2002


People respond to tragedy in different ways. Somehow it has been rather easy for me to remain dispassionate about the atrocities in Central and East Europe; maybe I'm just numb to it, after a lifetime of reading about the Holocaust and the various Communist purges. The statistics are staggering: 100 million to 200 million civilians murdered by their own (totalitarian) governments. It mostly just makes me sad and tired.

Other people may become enraged, and anger can lessen one's reasoning capacity (hot-headed vs. cool-headed). Perhaps Helga fits into this category.

We of the Neutralist Cabal can either (A) ban the hotheads altogether or (B) clean up after them. I vote for Plan B, even though it's harder. 

Look at what I'm doing this month with Q, Jacob and Uri in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Uri is starting to move text to talk pages and explain why, rather than merely reverting with a nasty comment. I see this as progress towards ending the edit wars. We might even reach a point of stability in the Middle East, at least at Wikipedia :-)

Ed Poor



More information about the Wikipedia-l mailing list