[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 8, Issue 16

Fri Mar 5 21:35:20 UTC 2004

On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:39:21AM -0800, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> 
> For the problem to subside, Pakaran, RickK, Adam Carr, PMA, Very Verily, Tim 
> Startling, and Robert Merkel (the most virulent critics of our Red user) 
> need to treat him with respect (or at least a facade of respect for the sake 
> of cooperation), allowing Lance/Hector/Riohard to meet his critics at least 
> halfway.
> 

The only "red faction" user that I have personally criticised, as far as
I can recall, is you.

> BTW, I know that a few cynics would dismiss these comments, accusing me of a 
> leftist agenda. If these charges crop up, I refer to the October 2003 
> mailing list, where I was the most ardent critic of banning [[User:RK]]. 
> Recently, I also remarked to [[User:G-Man]] that we desperately lack elderly 
> contributors (giving us Gen-X and Baby Boom biases). I also noted the need 
> to promote more non-Western admins a while ago.
>

My problem with "red faction" users (and you are the only one I can
remember tangling with more than once), is very simple.  The group 
systematically mischaracterise facts and omit 
others to give uniformly favourable impressions of various left-wing 
despots like Stalin and Kim Jong-Il.  Secondly, trying to alter the article
to point out the atrocities committed on their watch, as well as
pointing out their achievements, if any, is like trying to pull out one's own 
teeth with tweezers, as they are rarely prepared to concede that anything is 
the subject's fault, and continually revert and challenge edits, and are 
impossible to engage in debate on talk pages.  They are essentially unable 
to see any other perspective.  If they do concede that some bad things
happened on this person's watch, It's always the system's fault, or the
West's fault, the Soviets' fault...
Trying to treat such users with respect ends up with the article
remaining unchanged, and terrible.  Hence, frustration builds up and
civility tends to go away after dealing with enough of this crap.

As far as my own clashes with "the red faction", I invite readers to
have a look around [[Kim Jong-Il]]'s edit history and talk page, for 
instance, and make up their own minds.  Contrast with, say, [[Deng
Xiaoping]], which cunningly buries the Tiananmen Square protests in such
a way that a reader not already familiar with the subject would miss it.

-- 
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                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

I always thought the most significant thing we ever found on the whole
goddamned Moon was that little bacteria that came back and lived and
nobody ever said s... about it.
   -- Pete Conrad.
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