On February 2 Frank v Waveren wrote:
On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 11:00:15AM -0500, steven l.
rubenstein wrote:
topic. When Jalnet2 insists on making uninformed
claims, he is not
insulting me -- he is insulting the hard work of scores of evolutionary
scientists, and dishonoring the integrity of Wikipedia, which depends on
editors doing some research.
I'd advise you not to see edits you disagree with
as insults, no
matter how stupid you find them; Whether you considerd them insults to
you or things you hold dear doesn't matter, in the end no good can
come of it. Think of them as mistakes or disagreements, it gives a
much more pleasant atmosphere.
Frank, you are absolutely right, and I thank you for making this point. To
be clear, though, my intention in the passage you quote is that I do not
take Jalnet2's reversions personally -- I do not think he is insulting me.
The issue in this particular case was that over the course of Jalnet2 was
making a variety of edits almost all of which were variations on the same
point, since November 11, and I am one of eight editors who has reverted
this point. His point being that most evolutionary scientists or most
social scientists accept an essentialist notion of race, and if he has any
evidence of this he has never presented it. In the countless reverts since
he first inserted this point on 11/11, various people have provided
explanations in the talk section; he has never given a substantive
response. (by way of contrast, I think he is the only one who has reverted
any of my work on this page -- at least since 11/11/04. There are, of
course, many who have edited my contributions; sometimes I see their point
immediately, other times we discuss it in the talk pages, all I can say for
myself is that I have always been satisfied that whatever the outcome of
these edits and discussions has been, it has led to the improvement of the
article).
So I do see in Jalnet2's edits a real disregard for our process and for the
principles of verification and quality of edits. On the other hand, his
edits have been limited to this one point, so he has not done any of the
kind of damage to an article that would lead me to RfC or mediation. I
have to add that I am not sure how that would help. My complaint about
Jalnet2 is not that he often reverts my edits, and I really do not care
about how he has treated me. My complaint is that he keeps asserting
something that is wrong, and one would have to know a fair amount about
population genetics and human evolution to see that. In short, his
behavior does irritate me, but not enough that I feel justified making a
formal complaint. It is the content that concerns me, and my sense is that
our process for resolving conflicts focusses on behavior rather than
content. I just do not see this as useful here. So what if Jalnet2 limits
himself to two reverts a day? As long as the content of his edits are
wrong, they just have to be deleted.
I want to be crystal clear about what I think is the main point here: in
the two-plus months that Jalnet2 has been making edits, there has been no
evolution or change in his view. His basic point remains the same. It is
one thing if you make 100 mistakes but they are all different mistakes. It
is another if you make the same mistake 100 times. There has been enough
discussion on the talk page over the past two and a half months to show
that Jalnet2 is the only editor currently making this mistake; none of the
others active on the article have agreed with him, and many have explained
why on the talk page. As long as Jalnet2 persists in putting misleading
information into the article, someone is going to have to revert it.
Someone claimed that I was moaning about the three-revert rule. I really
do stand by it -- it is clear that we need it, and even if I think Dante's
action yesterday was unnecessary, I am more than willing to live with it as
the consequence of a needed policy.
However, I think the real need for the 3-revert rule is to put a brake on
serious behavioral problems. The problem with the 3-revert rule is that it
is utterly neutral to content. I think when there are repeated problems
with content, we may need other mechanisms.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701