[WikiEN-l] A couple of links

Thu Jul 3 21:40:08 UTC 2003

Someone posted these anonymously on my User_talk page.  I thought that
they were of sufficient interest to post to the mailing list.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Anti-Semitism&diff=1104682&oldid=1103906

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Jew&diff=1104783&oldid=1104717

RK, you're a longtime contributor, highly valued, but I'd like to ask
you to tone it down a notch.  Referring to the contributions of others
as "Neo-Nazi-like revisionism" is not kind, and it causes people to
get very upset, and with good reason I think.

On the second link you wrote "You don't understand Wikipedia's NPOV
policy at all. It does ''not'' mean that everyone must agree with the
text."  I'm not sure what you meant by that, but I would say that NPOV
does require us to write the text in such a way that all reasonable
people can agree to it.

So, yeah, it's basically impossible to appeace every lunatic on the
face of the earth, but we do strive to write in such a fashion that
the only remaining objections _are_ lunatic.

Which means something very close to 'everyone must agree with the
text'.  (Certainly, your interlocutors in these debates are not
lunatic, although they may very well be wrong on a number of things.)

I do understand that anti-Semitism and Judiasm are intensely emotional
issues for many, nearly as controversial as bird naming conventions.
(Ha, ha, a little levity in a serious post, sorry.)

This means that on these topics, more than any others, we need to be
ready to work with kindness and to minimize combativeness.

Since this post is critical of RK, let me say this: I am only
criticizing his _style_, and on all of the _content_ issues that I
have looked at (a very small number compared to all that has been
written), I tend to agree with him completely, and I do share his
concerns about anti-Semitism slipping quietly into our articles.

--Jimbo