[WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs

Sat Jun 5 06:52:11 UTC 2004

shebs at apple.com wrote:

"I've spent hour after frustrating hour on talk pages with 172 actually;
when one resolves not to get into edit wars with somebody who has a
habit of reverting (VV is just one of many who 172 has reverted), talk
pages are one's only option. You should review them for yourself before
you start talking about foibles and projection."

Since a lot of users buy into your distortions of the truth (users with whom 
I'd like to work cooperatively), I've enclosed in this e-mail excepts from 
our two longest running interactions of the year. Despite your claims, I'm 
sure that fair-minded users will see once and for all that I have struggled 
to be as fair and helpful to you as possible. I think that they'll find that 
in the end I should've really been the one guilty of all the things of which 
you accuse me.

Due to size constraints, I'll have to spit this message into two parts. The 
first is a discussion from [[Talk:History of the United States 
(1980-1988)]]. The other major discussion we've had this year is taken from 
[[Talk:Cold War/temp]]. I will add that to separate e-mail.

-172

-------

Taken from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:History_of_the_United_States_%281980-1988%29&action=edit

==18 Feb 2004 [2]==

As long as somebody is sufficiently unsatisfied to put the notice up, it is 
simply dishonest to remove it without their agreement; you have to get 
positive agreement, not just declare that you think the arguments are 
without merit.
:I simply stated that there were no arguments made against the current 
version of the article. Now that you have cited some in this posting, a 
justification for the neutrality dispute has been made. [[User:172|172]] 
09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have asked repeatedly for you to add references to the scholarly works 
upon which the various claims are based, still haven't seen anything.
:And I stated repeatedly that the endnotes would be inserted along with a 
new section outlining the historiography. However, I now finally have some 
concrete inquiries from you. I'll start you off with the following; ask if 
you want more. I also took the time to find you some free access articles 
online if you want quick (and free) overviews. [[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 
Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Sunbelt stuff is full of sweeping illogicalities; if the West is 
conservative, then how is it that California is not? I live in Nevada, and 
it's actually become '''more''' liberal in the past couple decades, because 
of people moving in from elsewhere - it's certainly not a solid base for the 
Repuglicans.
:''Reread'' the section on the Sunbelt and the New Right. These exceptions 
are addressed. In other words, the increasingly Democratic voting patterns 
in California in more recent years are briefly mentioned later in the 
section. For a discussion of changing voting patterns in the Sunbelt in more 
recent years, see Paul Starr, "An Emerging Democratic Majority" in Stanley 
Greenberg and Theda Skocpol, eds., ''The New Majority'' (Yale University 
Press, 1997) for . Starr's article was adapted and reprinted in 
[http://www.prospect.org/print/V8/35/starr-p.html ''The American Prospect'' 
no. 35 (November-December 1997)]. On gentrification, the Sunbelt, and 
cities, see Daphn Spain (1992) "A Gentrification Research Agenda for the 
1990s." ''Journal of Urban Affairs'' 14:125-134 for a good general overview. 
For the other side of the coin, see Douglas Glasgow's ''The Black 
Underclass'' (1980), which studies the plight of African Americans in the 
inner cities. For a more recent journal article see W.J. Wilson's "Studying 
Inner-City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research." 
''American Sociological Review'' 56:1-14. Going back a generation, the 
political implications of the rise of the Sunbelt were heralded by 
Kirkpatrick Sale ''Power Shift'' (1975). More recently, you have Lisa McGirr 
''Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right'' (2001) I found 
you a site with reviews and excepts from at the Princeton University Press 
website if you want to take a look: 
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7031.html. For more on the rise of 
conservative sentiments in the late '70s early '80s, see ''The Politics of 
Social Policy in the United States'', eds Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff 
and Theda Skocpol. For your convenience once again, here are 
[http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/4196.html more reviews]. Abramson, 
Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde. Change and Continuity in the 
1980 Elections. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1983 comes to mind for 
the elections of 1980 as a major political realignment. [[User:172|172]] 
09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Supply-side economics is still being described as if "everybody knows" it's 
bad, but I'll bet it has lots of respected defenders today who would take 
exception to the description here; so it needs to be described neutrally, 
not negatively.
:This shot seems to be coming from nowhere. Where is the article attacking 
supply-side economics? The debate is over whether to blame either tax cuts 
or runaway government spending for the deficit. However, this is merely a 
side note in an article that provides a very general overview. 
[[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC) Thomas Byrne Edsall's ''The 
Political Economy of Inequality'' and Sidney Weintraub and Marvin Goodstein, 
eds., ''Reaganomics in the Stagflation Economy'' (1983), discuss the Reagan 
administration's economic policies. George Gildner's ''Wealth and Poverty'' 
(1981), deals with the economic ideology of the Reagan revolution. See also 
Robert Heilbroner et al. ''The Debt and the Deficit'' (1989). On the 
presidency, Ronnie Dugger, ''On Reagan'' (1983), is a hostile account. 
Ackerman, Frank. Reaganomics: ''Rhetoric vs. Reality''. (1982) is another 
hostile account. Roland Evans and Robert Novak ''The Reagan Revolution'' 
(1981) is an admiring chronicle. Laurence I. Barrett, ''Gambling with 
History'' (1984) is another good source on Reagan in the White House. 
[[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And of course there's the extreme irony of casual references to "rightwing 
military dictatorships in Latin America" by the same person who steadfastly 
resists characterizing certain socialist leaders ([[Josef Stalin]]) as 
dictators. I'm not quoting everything that I think is slanted, just an 
assortment, because once again I've wasted my WP editing time trying to 
convey the scope of the problem.
:First, the next time I hear this bullshit about me being a Stalinist, I am 
taking it up to the mailing list. BTW, this paragraph was removed. To go on, 
LaFeber's ''Inevitable Revolutions'' (1983) is still the seminal work on the 
US in Central America. I found you a site citing reviews 
[http://www.usd.edu/~amorriso/lafeber.htm here]. The articles cited don't 
come with free access. Raymond Bonner's ''Weakness and Deceit: US Policy and 
El Salvador'' is also a leading work on this subject, though starting off 
with LaFeber would probably be best. [[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 Feb 2004 
(UTC)

::You said "Stalinist", not me, and the sentence "The Reagan administration 
supplied funds and weapons to rightwing military dictatorships in Latin 
America." is still there as I write, so that's a pretty definite use of the 
D-word, plus the sentence after that says "Somoza family dictatorship". I 
have no problem with the D-word, but it's certainly biased to accept it for 
the rightwingers and not the leftwingers. Maybe just a word, but given your 
energy to remove it from certain articles, I assume that you agree it's an 
important word. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 14:12, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I know that this article is not representative of professionally-written US 
history, because it's not at all like the books I've read - in fact most of 
this I remember reading in nakedly-biased and poorly-researched articles in 
leftie newspapers of the period.
:Well, what do you expect for a general overview on the past twenty years of 
recent US history? And what books were those, BTW? For a general outline, 
however, it isn't at all unorthodox. Do a search for course syllabi on yahoo 
and google, for example, and you'll see similar outline sketches. If this is 
too much to ask from you, I'll send you some more links. [[User:172|172]] 
09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

::I'm going to have a pretty high expectation from someone who claims to be 
a professional, reverts changes by others for being "emotional", and has a 
habit of telling people not to give the "Fox News version". I haven't read 
any book purporting to be a "general history of the US since 1980", I was 
comparing to US history in general. I don't think course syllabi from the 
net are authoritative; there are a lot of, shall we say, "less-abled" 
professors. WP can only be as good as its sources, so we need to rely on the 
leading authorities, not the assistant prof from Podunk U. [[User:Stan 
Shebs|Stan]] 14:12, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's why it's important to know what books are to used as authorities - 
I'll buy/checkout copies and compare content. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 
06:25, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

:Thanks for the refs - LaFeber was already on my list, am visiting the 
library this weekend.  I note that your Reagan-era books are from 
'''during''' his presidency, which isn't really adequate for perspective - 
has nobody written anything in the 15 years since? [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 
14:12, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---------
---------
==18 Feb 2004 [2]==

As long as somebody is sufficiently unsatisfied to put the notice up, it is 
simply dishonest to remove it without their agreement; you have to get 
positive agreement, not just declare that you think the arguments are 
without merit.
:I simply stated that there were no arguments made against the current 
version of the article. Now that you have cited some in this posting, a 
justification for the neutrality dispute has been made. [[User:172|172]] 
09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have asked repeatedly for you to add references to the scholarly works 
upon which the various claims are based, still haven't seen anything.
:And I stated repeatedly that the endnotes would be inserted along with a 
new section outlining the historiography. However, I now finally have some 
concrete inquiries from you. I'll start you off with the following; ask if 
you want more. I also took the time to find you some free access articles 
online if you want quick (and free) overviews. [[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 
Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Sunbelt stuff is full of sweeping illogicalities; if the West is 
conservative, then how is it that California is not? I live in Nevada, and 
it's actually become '''more''' liberal in the past couple decades, because 
of people moving in from elsewhere - it's certainly not a solid base for the 
Repuglicans.
:''Reread'' the section on the Sunbelt and the New Right. These exceptions 
are addressed. In other words, the increasingly Democratic voting patterns 
in California in more recent years are briefly mentioned later in the 
section. For a discussion of changing voting patterns in the Sunbelt in more 
recent years, see Paul Starr, "An Emerging Democratic Majority" in Stanley 
Greenberg and Theda Skocpol, eds., ''The New Majority'' (Yale University 
Press, 1997) for . Starr's article was adapted and reprinted in 
[http://www.prospect.org/print/V8/35/starr-p.html ''The American Prospect'' 
no. 35 (November-December 1997)]. On gentrification, the Sunbelt, and 
cities, see Daphn Spain (1992) "A Gentrification Research Agenda for the 
1990s." ''Journal of Urban Affairs'' 14:125-134 for a good general overview. 
For the other side of the coin, see Douglas Glasgow's ''The Black 
Underclass'' (1980), which studies the plight of African Americans in the 
inner cities. For a more recent journal article see W.J. Wilson's "Studying 
Inner-City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research." 
''American Sociological Review'' 56:1-14. Going back a generation, the 
political implications of the rise of the Sunbelt were heralded by 
Kirkpatrick Sale ''Power Shift'' (1975). More recently, you have Lisa McGirr 
''Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right'' (2001) I found 
you a site with reviews and excepts from at the Princeton University Press 
website if you want to take a look: 
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7031.html. For more on the rise of 
conservative sentiments in the late '70s early '80s, see ''The Politics of 
Social Policy in the United States'', eds Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff 
and Theda Skocpol. For your convenience once again, here are 
[http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/4196.html more reviews]. Abramson, 
Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde. Change and Continuity in the 
1980 Elections. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1983 comes to mind for 
the elections of 1980 as a major political realignment. [[User:172|172]] 
09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
::Heh, there's no lack of stupid stuff - but which of these are 
authoritative? As someone who was personally in the Democratic caucus last 
week that was so large that it had to move out onto the football field (got 
to shake Kerry's hand, my wife practically mauled him :-) ), I'll say that 
people who characterize Nevada as a conservative state don't know what 
they're talking about. Dem/Rep split in Nevada is very nearly 50/50, and if 
Bush hadn't come and told baldfaced lies about Yucca Mountain, Nevada would 
have gone Demo and Gore would be in the White House today. [[User:Stan 
Shebs|Stan]] 06:14, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
:::They're all "authoritative." They may be writing from one of competing 
schools of thought or approaches, but if you can recognize this, it's no 
problem. I can give you more, but this should be enough to give you steer 
you in the direction of finding other works on the subject matter. BTW, 
Who's describing Nevada as solidly conservative? No one's denying that there 
aren't exceptions in "the Sunbelt." Nevada has Las Vegas and the gaming 
industry. Often forgotten, Democrats can be competitive in Montana as well, 
given the legacy of a strong union activity in the Western mining region of 
the state. [[User:172|172]] 07:18, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Supply-side economics is still being described as if "everybody knows" it's 
bad, but I'll bet it has lots of respected defenders today who would take 
exception to the description here; so it needs to be described neutrally, 
not negatively.
:This shot seems to be coming from nowhere. Where is the article attacking 
supply-side economics? The debate is over whether to blame either tax cuts 
or runaway government spending for the deficit. However, this is merely a 
side note in an article that provides a very general overview. 
[[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC) Thomas Byrne Edsall's ''The 
Political Economy of Inequality'' and Sidney Weintraub and Marvin Goodstein, 
eds., ''Reaganomics in the Stagflation Economy'' (1983), discuss the Reagan 
administration's economic policies. George Gildner's ''Wealth and Poverty'' 
(1981), deals with the economic ideology of the Reagan revolution. See also 
Robert Heilbroner et al. ''The Debt and the Deficit'' (1989). On the 
presidency, Ronnie Dugger, ''On Reagan'' (1983), is a hostile account. 
Ackerman, Frank. Reaganomics: ''Rhetoric vs. Reality''. (1982) is another 
hostile account. Roland Evans and Robert Novak ''The Reagan Revolution'' 
(1981) is an admiring chronicle. Laurence I. Barrett, ''Gambling with 
History'' (1984) is another good source on Reagan in the White House. 
[[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And of course there's the extreme irony of casual references to "rightwing 
military dictatorships in Latin America" by the same person who steadfastly 
resists characterizing certain socialist leaders ([[Josef Stalin]]) as 
dictators. I'm not quoting everything that I think is slanted, just an 
assortment, because once again I've wasted my WP editing time trying to 
convey the scope of the problem.
:First, the next time I hear this bullshit about me being a Stalinist, I am 
taking it up to the mailing list. BTW, this paragraph was removed. To go on, 
LaFeber's ''Inevitable Revolutions'' (1983) is still the seminal work on the 
US in Central America. I found you a site citing reviews 
[http://www.usd.edu/~amorriso/lafeber.htm here]. The articles cited don't 
come with free access. Raymond Bonner's ''Weakness and Deceit: US Policy and 
El Salvador'' is also a leading work on this subject, though starting off 
with LaFeber would probably be best. [[User:172|172]] 09:01, 21 Feb 2004 
(UTC)

::You said "Stalinist", not me, and the sentence "The Reagan administration 
supplied funds and weapons to rightwing military dictatorships in Latin 
America." is still there as I write, so that's a pretty definite use of the 
D-word, plus the sentence after that says "Somoza family dictatorship". I 
have no problem with the D-word, but it's certainly biased to accept it for 
the rightwingers and not the leftwingers. Maybe just a word, but given your 
energy to remove it from certain articles, I assume that you agree it's an 
important word. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 14:12, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
::::Just luck-of-the-draw about Stalin - Mugabe and Jong-il also came to 
mind, I chose randomly. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 06:14, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
:::::I don't use the "D-word" ''arbitrarily''. But I am sorry about using 
the using it ''inconsistently''. However, the biases affecting my usage of 
"the D-word" go back to Max Weber, not Karl Marx. Let me elaborate. Going 
back to Weber's concept of "sultanism," comparativists point out regimes 
resting on patrimonial leadership, rather than rationalized modern 
bureaucracies with generalized norms and procedures. Consider the Somozas, 
the Trujillos, Saddam and his sons, Assad and his sons, Papa Doc and Baby 
Doc, Batista, Ceausescu, the Kims, Macros, Idi Amin, Iran under the Shah, 
and "Turkmenbashi." Since the defining feature of leadership here is low 
institutionalization, this concept is not applied to all authoritarian 
regimes. Among Communist regimes, I've only seen Romania and North Korea 
classified as personalistic. BTW, for the benchmark work on this concept, 
see Juan Linz and Alfred Stephan's ''Problems of Democratic Transition and 
Consolidation'' (1996). Similarly, Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle 
use the concept of "neopatrimonialism" in their account, which is the most 
comprehensive work on the subject for Afica. To illustrate my point with an 
example, I would avoid the "D-word" vis-à-vis China today, while using it 
more loosely vis-à-vis the Somoza dynasty. Although this isn't the 
ideological bias that you made it out to be, your post clearly highlighted 
the confusion generated by the term's usage. Thanks for alterting me to 
this. I'll try to avoid it all together on Wiki. And sorry for the "massive 
verbiage." [[User:172|172]] 07:13, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I know that this article is not representative of professionally-written US 
history, because it's not at all like the books I've read - in fact most of 
this I remember reading in nakedly-biased and poorly-researched articles in 
leftie newspapers of the period.
:Well, what do you expect for a general overview on the past twenty years of 
recent US history? And what books were those, BTW? For a general outline, 
however, it isn't at all unorthodox. Do a search for course syllabi on yahoo 
and google, for example, and you'll see similar outline sketches. If this is 
too much to ask from you, I'll send you some more links. [[User:172|172]] 
09:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

::I'm going to have a pretty high expectation from someone who claims to be 
a professional, reverts changes by others for being "emotional", and has a 
habit of telling people not to give the "Fox News version". I haven't read 
any book purporting to be a "general history of the US since 1980", I was 
comparing to US history in general.
:::I wasn't referring to solely covering 1980-present. Survey US history 
texts, however, will give you a brief overview in a single chapter. The more 
general the better. Keep in mind, e.g., that we're often trying to sum up in 
a single sentence what's being presented in any several of some of the 
sources that I provided. In effect, writing such a general overview is a 
process of summarizing and outlining. [[User:172|172]] 07:13, 22 Feb 2004 
(UTC)
I don't think course syllabi from the net are authoritative; there are a lot 
of, shall we say, "less-abled" professors. WP can only be as good as its 
sources, so we need to rely on the leading authorities, not the assistant 
prof from Podunk U. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 14:12, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
:::You're still confusing my point. The point is to compare course syllabi. 
Perhaps I should've been more clear. Downloading about a dozen would enable 
you to compare the syllabi, giving you a good idea of what's widely 
published. Moreover, I wasn't saying that my standards are low for this 
article. The Stalin crack left me a bit irritated, so perhaps I was getting 
a bit snappy at the expense of clarity. Anyway, let me clarify my point. 
Given such restrictive space constraints, the article can merely provide an 
outline sketch of the Reagan years. It cannot be on par with the academic 
literature; the historiography merely helps you sort out what belongs in 
such a brief outline sketch.

That's why it's important to know what books are to used as authorities - 
I'll buy/checkout copies and compare content. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 
06:25, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

:Thanks for the refs - LaFeber was already on my list, am visiting the 
library this weekend.  I note that your Reagan-era books are from 
'''during''' his presidency, which isn't really adequate for perspective - 
has nobody written anything in the 15 years since? [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 
14:12, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
::Not all of them are from the eighties. Maybe I forgot to note which texts 
had new editions. I'll add some more recent stuff, but I'm running short of 
time now. [[User:172|172]] 02:08, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

----
[[User:172|172]], six weeks ago you agreed that it was POV to call rightwing 
regimes "dictatorships" but not their leftwing counterparts, and yet after 
all that time your only effort on this article has been to '''remove''' the 
NPOV dispute notice. Since I'm not the sort to revert other people's changes 
without prior discussion, I'll wait one day to see some changes in content 
before re-adding the dispute notice. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 21:01, 6 Apr 
2004 (UTC)
:Don't misrepresent me. I said that I tend to use the term more freely when 
referring to personalistic regimes, irrespective of whether they're dubbed 
"rightwing" or "leftwing" by some. If you have a problem with some of the 
diction in the article, change it. That'll work out better than expecting me 
to read your mind. [[User:172|172]] 10:25, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::I'm not going to bother touching the text unless you promise to improve on 
my edit and not just revert the whole change without discussing it first. 
I'm simply '''not''' going to get into an edit war on content here, which 
means that if you revert me, my effort will have been completely wasted - 
there are 200K+ articles that I could have been working on instead. 
[[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 15:56, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
:::You're getting really jumpy. Please, just calm down. This isn't a big 
deal. Make your changes, and I will compare the versions line by line. 
[[User:172|172]] 23:09, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::::"Jumpy"? Not hardly - I'm leaning back in properly bad posture, full of 
Cherry Garcia and a little drowsy... So, does the "compare the versions line 
by line" amount to a promise that you will critique on the talk page first 
rather than mass-revert? You may not think reverting is a big deal, but let 
me clue you in - the people you revert really really hate it. [[User:Stan 
Shebs|Stan]] 05:04, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
:::::If you insert something like "MUHA PINHEADS YOU ALL R WIERD U WIERDING 
WIERD WIERDOS," a winner that I found off the deletion log, you'll get 
reverted. Not having any idea about what you want to do, I cannot say how 
I'll react to your changes. Really, I don't know what you want for me as of 
this point. [[User:172|172]] 05:26, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ya know, I've cleared out far more vandalism than you have, turned more junk 
stubs into useful articles, am #44 among the most active editors on WP as a 
whole, developed some of the standards by which other people write their 
articles, and despite all this activity, have been involved in maybe 2 or 3 
edit wars at most; it says a lot about you, that you think there's even the 
remotest chance that I would vandalize this article. What I want is simple; 
a promise not to revert my entire edit without discussing it here first. Is 
that really so hard an undertaking? [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 17:48, 8 Apr 
2004 (UTC)
:All a correlation implies causation fallacy! You seem to be suggesting that 
you're characteristically civil and reasonable, whereas I'm not, as 
evidenced by your observations that (a) you're a more active user than I am 
(b) but get into fewer edit wars. Ironically, such assertions ''really'' 
cause arguments to turn personal, accomplishing nothing while generating 
personal feuds on a daily basis on WP. While I try to brush off these lines 
of attack more often than not, this time I'll defend myself for the hell of 
it.

:Yes, I get into more edit wars. But the reason I'm more likely to get into 
edit wars has more to do with the particular articles on my watchlist, and 
my corresponding practices as a user, than personality, hasty reverts, a 
lack of civility, or wherever you're pointing fingers.  Given my background, 
I focus on the history and politics articles, which spark the lion's share 
of edit wars. Although you work in these fields as well, consider your role 
in, say, the [[Stamps and postal history of New South Wales]] article (great 
job, BTW), and then juxtapose it with, say, the role of Slrubenstein, John 
Kenney, and me on [[Fascism]] for the past couple of weeks. The article on 
Fascism (a controversial and widely familiar topic), attracts trolls and 
partisans, extreme POV rants, and scores of arbitrary, poorly written, 
asinine edits for, say, several weeks running. But the page history of 
Stamps and postal history of New South Wales is - how should I put it? - 
very stable. And BTW, notice that I avoid edit wars when working on a 
relatively obscure subject on WP, say, [[Li Ruihuan]], rather than, say, 
[[Karl Marx]].

:Maintaining encyclopedic standards is an uphill battle when partisans enter 
the fold in [[Fascism]], [[Catholicism]], [[East Germany]], [[Red Scare]], 
etc. Since I grapple with this more often, I get into more edit wars. 
Consequently, you're completing many articles in the time that I spend 
struggling to ''remove'' a paragraph or two, a sentence or two, and even a 
word or two from a single article. But this is worthwhile, as these are the 
articles in my fields that generate the largest volume of hits.

:Also, I tend to spend a far smaller share of my time on WP proofreading 
articles for grammar, clarity, and style. Unlike me, you've made thousands 
of minor edits fixing grammatical and spelling errors. However, I'm simply 
not the best when it comes to proofreading content ''online''. I need 
stronger glasses, skim text too fast for my own good, and lack experience 
using computers. So, we're both doing different things on WP, and hence 
picking up different habits as users. [[User:172|172]] 09:08, 9 Apr 2004 
(UTC)

:All true, although as someone versed in the ways of politics it seems like 
it  ought to be easy for you to negotiate with the people on the various 
sides, and to find out more about people before dissing them (for instance, 
in addition to insinuating vandalistic tendencies, you lumped Stan the big 
Democratic donor and convention delegate in with the Fox News crowd - 
oops!). Anyway, getting back to the point, I'm still waiting for a promise 
not to mass-revert without prior discussion. Without it, I won't edit, 
except to add the POV dispute notice back, which I'll do tomorrow if we've 
made no progress. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 15:10, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::If you're enticing me to sign a contract before reading it (i.e. promise 
to get your permission before I make another change), you must think that 
I'm a real dupe! You've worked in some pretty damn competitive fields, so 
I'm probably no match to you. But I'm not that bad! Anyway, if you're 
worried about an ''arbitrary'' "mass-revert" (whatever that is), don't 
worry. Unless it's an accident, I don't make changes arbitrarily.

::BTW, if you want to know why you've been having trouble dealing with me, 
it's the result of attacking my credibility for months. Often, you do this 
before I have a scant idea about how you specifically want to change an 
article. This is read as a bullying tactic, i.e. an attempt to seize a 
rhetorical high ground. One can either fight back or give into bullying. 
''Because'' I take you seriously, I'm often left having to respond to your 
attacks on my credibility rather than your concerns with content. I can 
dismiss the antics of trolls, vandals, and the "Fox News crowd," but it's 
harder to dismiss you. But I can work with you if I'm given specifics, 
facts, and sources instead, I can follow the rational give-and-take. 
[[User:172|172]] 10:56, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
:::I just asked for discussion, not permission - as you say, it would be 
foolish to agree to something unseen in advance. I'd be more trusting except 
that I have seen you mass-revert good faith changes by other people without 
discussion. But I think you generally understand me, and that's good enough. 
[[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 14:07, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::::Why do we keep going in circles with this? Just make your changes 
already. I have no idea what you're up to. [[User:172|172]] 23:27, 10 Apr 
2004 (UTC)

----
Bleah, first pass done, but what a pain - nothing like going through 
line-by-line to see the flaws. There is still a lot of redundant material - 
for instance 1980 election results are more accurately covered in [[U.S. 
presidential election, 1980]], and this article links to that one. The basic 
percentages and electoral numbers are more than enough. There is still some 
leftover junk from the subdivision process - 1991 is not between 1980 and 
1988, and this article needs just a sentence to presage 1991 and link to the 
appropriate article. It's also sort of funny to have a history of the 1980s 
that doesn't mention the introduction of the IBM PC... one of the reasons to 
prune ruthlessly is so we can hear about the doings of more US citizens than 
just the one with the initials RR. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 05:18, 11 Apr 
2004 (UTC)
:Nice job. And that wasn't a big deal. In fact, you could've used the minor 
change feature. You're changes gave the article a much needed round of 
copyediting.  [[User:172|172]] 23:07, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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