[WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken

Sun Jun 6 09:36:12 UTC 2004

Bryan Derksen:

Speaking of rudeness, aside from berating me on the mailing list due to one 
single disagreement, you came out of nowhere on [[Talk:Origins of the 
American Civil War]] dismissing the article division as "ugly" and 
"fragile," proclaiming that you were going to "better organize" [the 
article] while offering no specifics. Yet, weeks earlier Mav, AlexS, Sj, and 
I had agreed on that very same division, which was arranged incidentally not 
by me but by Sj. I called it "excellent" and perhaps a cure to for all "long 
pages" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Longpages). AlexS called it a 
"brilliant job" (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War/Archive_1). 
Mav simply stated that he was "OK with this format." So, was it unreasonable 
for me to ask you to review the past discussion on the complex issue that 
you were attempting to bring up? I think not.

Furthermore, your desire to "create better page titles" made no sense at 
all. You failed to understand that these weren't four separate articles but 
rather a single article consisting of four pages.

Wanting you to be aware of the reasons for which a number of users had 
opposed the kind of division that you were proposing (a New 
Imperialism-style division/series) isn't rude. Instead, making sure that 
everyone's on the same page-- what I was attempting to do-- is usually 
considered helpful.

You later admitted, "Yeah, that New Imperialism thing looks like the general 
sort of idea I was proposing." However, you failed to respond to comments by 
both Sj and me explaining the complications of undergoing just a drastic 
restructuring of the article. In particular, you never responded to the 
following comments by Sj:

Secondly, I agree that for a "NI-style" summary to work, '''much more''' 
content is needed -- and I hope that someday that content appears.  (Once 
there are >200kb of content on the origins of the Civil War, something 
better than 10 long sequential pages will be necessary just to make sense of 
it all!)  For now, 3 or 4 sequential pages - for purely technical reasons - 
sounds like an acceptable idea (NB: it's possible to have a 30-page document 
with ''one title''; that is impossible on this wiki, alas).  I'm going to go 
ahead and take a stab at breaking it up, just as an exercise in being bold, 
and b/c I want to get this off the 'featured status disputed' list; I won't 
object if one of you reverts me and tries a different division.  
[[User:Sj|+sj]][[User Talk:Sj|+]] 05:29, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)

BTW, I'm not the only one who was happy with the article as it is. Note, 
e.g., this comment on the talk page:

"I am in my first year teaching American history at the high school level, 
and I thought this article was incredibly helpful, both to me and to my 
students. Too often, websites or online encyclopedias provide only a cursory 
overview of the Civil War, or present the lead-up to the conflict as an 
inevitable polarisation of 'Slavery v. Anti-Slavery' and 'States Rights v. 
Federalism'. Certainly these themes are central to the conflict, but they 
were neither inevitable nor straightforward - nor did they take on the moral 
overtones people tend to give them today. This article avoids those pitfalls 
- thanks."

See also "Wikipedia for Journalists" by Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Professor 
& Poynter Visiting Professor 
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=62126 . An excerpt reads, "So 
far, the effort has created numerous reference-quality articles as wide 
ranging as the Hutton Inquiry, algorithms, social history of the piano, 
origins of the American Civil War, and severe acute respiratory syndrome. As 
its quality has improved, news publications have increasingly cited 
Wikipedia on subjects..."

But considering the lynch mob atmosphere of this mailing list, I suppose 
that writing this article is more evidence in favor of a ban, right?

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