User:172/Talk block 7

"Propaganda stunt" is a pretty heavily-loaded term; it says that the action being taken is insignificant and just for show. For instance, much of the space race of the 1960s could legitimately be considered a propaganda stunt, because the actual significance turns out to be minor. Rescuing hostages held at gunpoint is never a propaganda stunt; to say otherwise devalues the hostages, and implies that holding hostages is not a criminal act. By choosing the same words that the Soviets would have used to justify their actions, you're not critically examining anything, you're just presenting their point of view. I can see where you might think you're being helpful by presenting an unusual point of view, but it's still a single point of view. Best would be leave out the loaded words altogether, and put the he-said-she-said stuff in Berlin Airlift, which is a pretty thin article for an episode with so many implications for the Cold War. Also, since you apparently sincerely believe there's no socialist bias, try out some of your material on a mix of your leftie and rightie acquaintances. I'll bet that the lefties will think it's perfect, and the righties will fume and splutter. I can try the experiment with some of my acquaintances too; which finished article mostly written by you do you think best exemplifies neutrality? If my rightie friends grudgingly allow that it's correct, then I'll shut up. Stan 08:28 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Well, now you've gone and made my last comment mostly irrelevant! :-) Yes, I like the Berlin airlift bit much better now - captures the essence of what happened. Stan 08:42 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Things must have gotten mixed up somewhere, I've never seen you write anything that appeared to have a right-of-center lean. My Cold War comment had to do with the way you phrased the ending, talking about how the Russian people are worse off now than during the Soviet era, to wit: Reaganite hawks relished in post-Cold War "triumphalism," idea of the "end of history," and a "new world order" based on American-style liberal democracy, while the "liberated" population of the former Soviet Union is mired in misery. The viewpoint of the right is that the absence of liberty was the truly miserable part, and characterizing Russia as now "mired in misery" makes it clear that you are more favorable to the Soviet system, especially when combined with the SU history you've written. Stan 13:53 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I was mistaken in using the phrase "Soviet system" - I should have said "socialism". My net impression from your Soviet history was "it could have been the worker's paradise but they screwed it up by not sticking to the original principles". Oversimplified to be sure, but my rapidly vanishing brain cells won't store much more. That's why summaries are so important; even your best and most intricate analysis is useless if all that your readers remember is one randomly-chosen sentence out of the middle. If I'm having this much trouble, what must it be like for a college freshman seeing all this for the first time? If what's happening is that you're wanting to present multiple analyses and in practice only have enough energy to write the first one, I suggest that you do a first pass that sticks to bare facts, and then layer that with interpretations later, perhaps in separate sections or articles. Right now the facts are intertwined with some analysis, and it's hard for people to fix factual errors without scrambling the assessments in the process. Another way to put it is that Braudelesque narrative is not partitioned so as to make it amenable to the wiki-way of incremental addition; if you try, you end up with large lumps of text that few link to, and fewer read. Stan 21:40 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I love Braudel - one of these days I will add articles for him and his works - and I've pondered whether there is a good way to fit the broad narrative into the wikipedia article form. So far I don't have any good ideas; long articles are bad because most readers will give up after a couple paragraphs, but the traditional encyclopedia subject articles don't cross-link sufficiently closely to do a sort of surfing-type read. For instance, you mention Soviet historians inline, but I've only read about three books relating to Russia, and don't know anything about these particular historians or the basis for their arguments - maybe they're good, maybe not. A link to the historians describing them and their analyses in more depth is needed. Or to borrow from Braudel, perhaps links to articles that are tables of demographic data, etc. I cracked open a volume to a random page - wikified Braudel would be almost entirely "blue", it's so dense with references and connections. Stan 23:31 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I do agree that text shouldn't be removed from the article, but, forgive me, nobody is actually removing text. User:Pizza Puzzle has added a few links, shuffled some bits around, and done a little light rewriting here and there, but never removed text. Whether Pizza Puzzle is Vera Cruz is debatable, but personally I don't care - their edits are fine and that's all that matters to me. As I've said, if in the future Pizza Puzzle or anybody else starts repeatedly moving text against consensus, or creating a "jumbled, incoherent mess", then we can deal with that, but at the moment this simply isn't happening. --Camembert

It might be a bit soon. Yes he is beginning to act the prick, but it would be wiser to wait until he does something dramatic before calling the cops. By all means let Jimbo know that Adam is starting to slip back into the old ways, but before the community acts I suspect they will want to see a bit more than just adding in pointless links and moving stuff around. Maybe a quiet word from Jimbo might be all that is needed to nip Adam's slipping in the bud. After all, even alcoholics sometimes slip. Give him space and he may either prove our worries wrong or prove that he has to be acted against. As of now there is a worrying trend starting to re-occur on this and other pages, but it still isn't strong enough to get everyone to jump up and scream "that is it. We've had enough of this" and move to kick him off. If he is kicked off now it will be the end of the line for him, so people will want to be convinced he is completely back to his old ways. He is beginning to move in that direction but isn't there yet and (here's hoping) won't get there and will return his better behaviour as PP. :-) FearÉIREANN 00:58 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I understand. I was being a bit ironic there. :-) To be honest it be a bad idea. If someone who has made a fool of themelves before comes back, they may want to start again as someone about whom there are no past attitudes. I think that may be why PP worked so well, because OK most of us knew who he was, but the attitude was, if your work is up to scratch, we'll practice a wiki version of don't ask, don't tell, a case of we'll pretend we don't know who you really are, if you pretend by your behaviour that you aren't that person and act differently. It is only if someone shows no intention whatsoever'' of changing (DW, Michael) that we enforce the rules to the letter. Getting PP to put an "I am Adam" badge on his page would, I fear, be the equivalent of pouring petrol on a fire; it would inflame the situation and make him more, not less, likely to revert to past behaviour. I just don't see how that would stop him. But if you want to suggest it to Jimbo, by all means do.

BTW, it was unwise to protect the two pages. I know from personal experiences not to use the power when you see someone in your view deliberately screwing up the contents of a page when you know the actual facts. I've had to bite my lip a few times, but if we are involved in an edit war we really shouldn't do the protection but ask someone unconnected with the dispute. And we certainly should never protect a talk page except in the most extreme case. It was an understandable reaction; I'm sure many sysops have been on the brink of doing it, some probably have. The only time I've come close was where one user kept coming on every few weeks and reverting a page to their long out of date version, wiping out everyone's edits in between and breaking almost all the links (as they had changed all the links in their original version to ones that went nowhere. I thought initially that they were simply someone who didn't know what they were doing. After 7 attempts I concluded they were just trying to fuck up the article for the fun of it). I spent weeks everytime they came on, first nicely, then bluntly, saying "stop it". In the end when they spent an entire day trying to reverting I protected it; if it had only been my additions that were being lost I would have got another sysop to do it, but they were erasing the edits of nine contributors so I wasn't protecting my work but everyone's, some of which personally I disagreed with. But protecting a page where you are one of the main protagonists in an edit war is inadvisable.

Listen, don't let PP get to you. I can be stubborn as hell with some people, and some users make me see red the moment I see them so much as touch anything I have worked on. But in the end there is no point in letting them do that to you. Just wait until they are bored and go elsewhere and then go back. Don't make an issue of you versus them in the minds of people. Give them enough rope and see will they hang themselves. You don't have to push them. (Not that I'm great at following my own advice sometimes!:-) ) wikilove FearÉIREANN 02:13 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for coming to Catholicism 172. It badly needs professional help. I'm amused to find that I am 'defending' the RC church, given that I am a seriously lapsed catholic who is gay and have been accused of being anti-catholic for stuff I am writing in my newspaper column. What is happening on that page is wiki at its worst; some people who have a hazy understanding of some issue and a strong personal prejudice highjacking a page and filling it with unadultrated rubbish. Where would wiki be without professional historians like you and me, eh! Do feel free to protect that page. The page is not exactly of first class honour standard (I'd put it at just about third class honour if not pass) but with that rubbish it would plummet to no grade whatsoever. FearÉIREANN 05:19 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It almost makes me wish for Fred!!! Fred may have been to NPOV what Justin Timberlake is to Mozart but at least he wrote in friggin' english, not pidgin english. :-) FearÉIREANN 05:38 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

MB noted the following during the Catholicism row.

Also, the account Voiceofreason was only created during this edit war.

Voiceofreason and Nostrum's edits do overlap to a curious extent, so much so that I'm rather suspicious. Also Nostrum's english is too bad to be believable. Even at the time I thought there was something deeply fishy about it. A self proclaimed gay 21 year old person with a high IQ who cannot write english and equates homosexuality with paedophilia? Not very likely. He has no problem expressing himself on talk pages but not on the main page, where he doesn't just come out with pidgin english but with statements that someone with an IQ of 50 wouldn't make, such as talking about New Born Christians and Mormons as catholics. Something is very fishy about it. I can't help wondering if we checked whether Nostrum's and Voiceofreason's IPs would be in the 65.xxxx IP range. Or maybe there has been a full moon and another of our trolls has been hit by multiple personality syndrome again! Certainly I can think of two trolls whose specialities were triggering off edit wars by doing something exceedingly stupid, pretending sometimes how they could not speak english and introducing two or more characters into a debate, then leaving 'thank you for your support' messages on each other's talk pages to pretend they really were two people. Curiouser and curiouser. :-) FearÉIREANN 07:02 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hey, I thought someone else was voiceofreason. My english is pretty good by the way, you just don't understand my sentence structure. In addition, I don't check everything I put in for grammar or spelling errors. I suppose I should, I didn't understand you guys took it so seriously, but I'm beginning to understand. Oh, and if you're wondering, the reason my coments seem so outragous is because I'm an ignorant athiest. I really don't know much about the Bible, simply because I've only read about 2 pages. But I am entrigued by the comments you write. I am attempting to learn and assimilate the information you present to me in a non-biased manner and generously approve of comments that would both critique and approve of my additions. Please comment on the recent additions and items that I've fixed on my personal page. Thank you. Nostrum 08:47 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I am simply asking for a forum of discussion. If you feel there are certain things that should be left out, then please feel free to discuss them. Protecting a page is simply another form of censorship. Besides, it won't be protected in the morning. You and others alike are simply deleting the information and leaving no note as to why. If you wanted to convince me I would listen. I have listened. In fact I've changed my additions almost 100 times to be more acceptable. Please tell me what you think is wrong with what I wrote, be very thourough. In fact, tell me how I can fix it to add to the article. Responding in any other way would be puting you in a clearly biased position. Let us motivate each other to improve this article for the better. I don't want to have inaccurate information as much as you. Thank you for your time. I trust you'll handle this with maturity. Nostrum 08:58 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Protecting a page in a discussion where you have already expressed a strong opinion borders on violation of our protected page guidelines. If you want the page to be protected, ask another sysop who was no part of the discussion to do so. I have unprotected the page. --Eloquence 09:21 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the remarks of eloquence, however, it would seem that you were indeed operating within the moral guidlines of this system. However, I do believe that you should have consulted me first, since I was the appearant aggrevator for the article, and subsequently your protective barrier. Your lack of attempt at reasoning, instead of bullying, leads others to believe you indeed had a biased position to begin with. This threatens your position as an op and a moral leader. I'm not mad at you, in fact I'm happy you feel you did the right thing. Next time just make sure you exhaust every option before going to the extreme. I hope to see your comments here in the future. Thanks. Nostrum 09:51 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

what's wrong with the change I made, it's more accurate, that's what you want isn't it? OR do you just like restoring the page?

____

who are you to say your opinions of standards are higher than mine? You're gone boi. Nostrum 10:17 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying. The crap you're trying to post is saying it.

I've been really busy these past couple of weeks planning, running, and now summarizing a conference, but I will try add something to the 1865-1918 piece some time this weekend. Danny

For the record: I think your aims in protecting the Catholicism page were acceptable. It was the procedure which was followed collectively by experienced users (not just, or even primarily by you) that stunk. And I don't just mean the protection of the page, but the whole way of dealing with the admittedly immature user Nostrum. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 13:30 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm quite impressed by the New Deal article (a big improvement on what was there before) the great depression article could do with a bit more international content adding mind, perhaps a bit more about South America, but otherwise fine.

By-the-way have you looked at the Gold Standard article, I think it's in need of a bit of serious NPOVing G-Man 17:45 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hello, 172. According to the deletion log, you deleted King & Spalding when it had been on VfD for only three days. The current deletion policy is to wait at least seven days before deleting something, except in the case of pages with no useful content. That doesn't apply here. I've tried to undelete the page, but I'm getting a database error. Must be something to do with the ampersand. Hmm. I'm not sure what I can do about that. Anyway, please remember this policy in future. Thanks. -- Oliver P. 18:19 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, I've restored it for now. Evercat 18:31 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words on the Catholicism talk page. And I was glad to defend you on the w-list. I thought Erik's actions unacceptable and unfair. :-) FearÉIREANN 04:40 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)