[WikiEN-l] [iris.steineck at aon.at: donation to ferdinand porsche?article is not available under the terms of the GNU FreeDocumentation License.]

Tue Oct 28 23:26:03 UTC 2003

I have been one of several people who has removed some contributions on
Erwin Komenda.

My issues have been not that I disagree with the assertion that Erwin
Komenda was more responsible for the designs from Ferdinand Porsche's
engineering consultancy pre-1945, and the Porsche car company post-1945,
than he has generally been credited for.  There's certainly a reasonable
case to be made there.

My problems with this have been:

* There is no need for this information to be posted scattershot on every
page associated with Porsche
* There has been no attempt to fit the text in with the articles - instead
it's the same cut and paste text placed in each one
* The net effect has been to make Wikipedia's articles on the subjects read
as if we're pushing an agenda instead of documenting encyclopedically
* Attempts to engage this user in discussion have been utterly and
completely ignored.  Possibly out of simply not understanding Wikipedia all
that well.
* Some of the edits have had the effect of (in my opinion) overstating the
importance of Komenda and denying the input of others

One might note that I spent a fair amount of effort making Erwin Komenda's
article better, improving the wording and grammar.

I must confess a little bit of bias against a user who doesn't create a
username and doesn't engage in discussion.  In the spirit of Assume Good
Faith, I will presume that these have been due to lack of knowledge of the
way Wikipedia works.

I am certainly not anti her point; I am against some of the ways she is
presenting her case, and would like to work with her to make the articles as
fair and accurate as we can.

Should I email her directly, do you think?

-Matt (User:Morven)