[WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs' lies have forced me to leave Wikipedia

Fri Jun 4 18:21:04 UTC 2004

Re: "I have to apologize for reacting to the quoted bit out of context; in
the next section of [[Economy of the Soviet Union]] the poor
productivity is indeed attributed to forced collectivization.
Interestingly, that section is so delicately phrased that the average
reader won't actually find out what happened; it just says "the human
toll was catastrophic", which could mean any number of things. There
are details about the famines in WP, I didn't see any links that
would explain "human toll" via connections to any of those articles." - Stan 
Shebs

**I will not contribute another word to Wikipedia (including two new 
articles that I have finished on my MS Word browser) until I get something 
better than this disingenuous apology (far, far worse than no apology) from 
Stan Shebs.**

FIRST: ONCE AGAIN, THAT WAS AN ARTICLE ON THE ECONOMY OF THE SOVIET UNION, 
NOT THE HISTORY OF STALINIST RUSSIA. The CIA Factbook and the U.S. Library 
of Congress Country Study of the Soviet Union (hardly published by 
institutions with "leftwing" agendas) aren't detailing (or even mentioning), 
e.g., the purges, the Ukrainian famine, the deportations, the repression in 
their overviews of the Soviet economy. Instead, they focus on the Soviet 
economy of recent years-- the Soviet economy leading up to its collapse.

SECOND: Notice that that agriculture—where the Soviet record was by far the 
most horrendous—was the only sector of the Soviet economy that got its own 
individual section in my article on the economy of the Soviet Union. The 
section on agriculture even included a subsection on agricultural labor. 
Thus, it should be obvious that I actually went out of my to stay on topic 
in an article on the Soviet economy while addressing the consequences of 
collectivization.

THIRD: There are numerous links to collective farming-related topics as 
well; thus, it is an OUTRIGHT LIE that there are no links that would explain 
"human toll" via connections to any of those articles.

Re: "I found that it was indeed possible
to write US history without mentioning trivialities like Nancy Reagan's
astrologer (no personification of history? uh-huh), and that it was
possible to have accounts of the Cold War that didn't cast every
incident as ultimately due to US aggression against the Soviets."

FYI, I have contributed over 10,000 edits to WP over the period of 18 
months, yet Stan brings out one or two out of context to perpetuate these 
disgusting lies that I'm somehow pushing a Stalinist agenda.

I will not be able to function on Wikipedia as a writer and an editor unless 
these cloud of suspicion that Stan is trying to cast over me goes away. It 
will not go away, as I am certain that Stan will not apologize for his 
penchant for unfairly impugning my integrity and competence as a historian. 
Instead, he knows very well that his postings will be read by an audience 
largely unaware of the fact that his his bogus, mean-spirited critiques 
entirely draw on out-of-context, selective referencing of my comments and 
edits.

BTW, I swear unconditionally that I will not return to Wikipedia until Stan 
Shebs retracts these lies.

-172

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