[Wikipedia-l] My goodness, people!!! Aka WTF? (was Wikipedia and anti-Semitism)

[Erik Moeller]

Julie wrote:

> 1) Yes, Erik is Eloquence, and has been involved in many edit wars on
> subjects which he has little expertise.  

Care to back this up with facts? Or should I counter this claim by pointing
out that you have written a significant number of articles that are not NPOV,
but written from a relativist (some would say apologist) perspective? That
you wanted to delete facts from the Galileo article because you didn't like
the source, as you regarded it as biased, without being able to prove it wrong?
You and Michael Tinkler have done a lot of work on Wikipedia, and I respect
that, but both of you have written articles on subjects of Christian history
which I consider far from NPOV, often entirely ignoring church-critical
positions (likely because you are not even aware of them, although Tinkler tends
towards sincere apologism, he's a devout Catholic after all).

I still find your following statements from the Inquisition talk page quite
remarkable: "What happened to NPOV? Yes, the Inquistions[sic] to us are
pretty scary, but could we please try to remember that, to the vast majority of
people living at the time of the first two Inquisitions discussed in this
article, heresy was a BAD thing. Heresy existed, and not because of some
conspiracy by Authority[sic]. Heretics not only went to hell, but their very presence
in society put others at risk. At least, that's how your average medieval
Christian would see it. CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT." That's cultural relativism at its
best -- let's turn cause and effect around until they no longer are
recognizable. I can live with this view being *represented*, but I can not accept it
being *presented* as if it was NPOV. If this is still your understanding of
NPOV, it is deeply flawed.

Because of this relativism from interested parties, it will be a lot of work
to add, for example, accurate information about the books of the Bible and
their individual history, the historical person of Jesus, persecution of
pagans and destruction of temples and libraries, Christian book burnings and
censorship, medieval fakery, Christian anti-Semitism, Christian anti-scientism,
church attempts to destroy knowledge about contraception, modern church support
for dictatorships and mass murder etc. etc. The long historical tradition
that correctly views the Dark Ages as dark is not accurately represented on
Wikipedia. Your alleged expertise is not an argument. It may be an argument in
Larry's world, but it is not here. Modern medievalism in particular is often
an attempt to "invent the Middle Ages", as Norman Cantor, a medievalist
himself, called it. I am happy that the NPOV policy will make this impossible in
the long term.

Furthermore, the claim that I have participated in "many" edit wars is
simply wrong. Often, however, editing back and forth, changing words here and
there, is the only way to reach an acceptable compromise. This happened with you
on the Galileo article, and with Clutch during his vandalism of Lir's page
(where several people, including myself, reverted his changes) and now during
his trolling of the Wagner article. If you read the list archive, you will
notice that I have argued for a better and more reliable decision making process
based on democratic voting by interested participants. Until we have that,
our process remains flawed. It is true that I like to work on articles about
controversial subjects, so I'm more likely to run into these process problems
than someone who, say, is only interested in getting the entire Tolkien
mythology online [note: not referring to Julie here].

If you want to take personal attacks to the list, I can do that, too -- it's
called "tit for tat". That being said, I still think it is possible to work
with you on writing NPOV articles. I consider your intentions to be good and
much of your information to be reasonably accurate. I also noticed your
statement on one Talk page that you "like your Middle Ages, warts and all"
(paraphrased) -- it's good to know that you are interested in reporting the truth.
It's much harder to work with someone like Clutch.

Regards,

Erik (Eloquence)

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