User talk:Mark Richards12

Thank you for your comments. However, when I first reverted the edits by 69.108.13.67 to Vanguard News Network, I placed a Neutral Point of View notice on 69.108.13.67's page, not a vandalism warning. Please understand that this version of the article is inconsistent with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. It contains many statements that are not neutral because they take opinions promoted by Vanguard News Network, and phrase them as facts. When writing Wikipedia articles, one needs to be careful to attribute opinions to those that hold them. For example, instead of saying that "Vanguard News Network is trying to inform people of Y" -- which assumes the existence of Y and that convincing people of Y's existence is "informing" them --, it might be more appropriate to state that "Vanguard News Network claims that it is trying to inform people of its belief in the existence of Y" or perhaps "Vanguard News Network promotes its claims about the existence of Y". After I first reverted the edit by 69.108.13.67, instead of discussing this issue or rewriting the edit to conform to the Neutral Point of View policy, 69.108.13.67 simply reinserted the disputed edit into the article. I treated this as vandalism because, according to Counter-Vandalism Unit, in the case of Neutral Point of View policy violations, "If the user persists in reverting to his preferred version of the article, however, that may be considered vandalism." Furthermore, the subsequent use of various IP addresses to repeatedly reinsert the same edit tended to convey an impression of bad faith. Please see Sock puppetry. Making all of your contributions under the same named user account, and discussing issues such as my Neutral Point of View notice rather than simply reverting the disputed edits might tend to avoid conflicts with other Wikipedia editors. If you wish to re-write your edit in scrupulous accordance with the Wikipedia Neutral Point of View policy, using your named user account, you may do so. However, this this version of the article is clearly inconsistent with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy, and it cannot remain in its current form. John254 17:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Additionally, your version of the article gives excessive prominence to the views of Vanguard News Network, and does not treat the views of its opponents. It is essential to the Neutral Point of View policy that both sides of the issue should be presented. John254 17:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Clarification
I admit I jumped in and edited the article without being familiar with Wikipedia's procedures. I became aware through a link called "Wiki slashes VNN" checked it out and saw a totally inappropriate article. So I rather impulsively changed it from my computer at work. It quickly changed back so I changed it again. Then I went to a friend's house and used his computer to check it out. Sure enough, changed back. So I used his computer and changed it again. Went I went home it changed back again, so I used my home computer to change it yet again. I was not tryimg to be devious, and I didn't even consider that IP address business. Now, enough about my article. Let's talk about yours. This a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Your article is entirely your own point of view. That's what inspired me to edit it in the first place.

"Many followers of both white nationalism and white supremacy feel that Linder is juvenile." Never mind the fact that I find it highly unlikely you are qualified to judge what white nationalists feel, "juvenile" is a description that no one I am aware of would share. Clearly your POV. And there are no followers of "white supremacy". That's a term used only by people who try to discredit WNs. And whether or not Linder is juvenile, this article is about VNN. If you want to call him juvenile, create an article called Alex Linder and do it there.

"that VNN forums are excessively lowbrow" This is not a POV? Come on.

"Linder's past statements regarding Christianity unwisely alienate a large segment of the population" Assuming there's a group Y out there, and assuming to speak for it. Exactly what you accused me of doing.

"There have been allegations that Linder keeps alternate user-names on the forums to provide support to his main user-name". Allegations. Great. Maybe I'll edit the ADL's website to say there are allegations it's a domestic terrorist organization.

"One of VNN's most frequent contributors is Tomasz Winnicki of London, Ontario whose posts to the VNN forum have resulted in Richard Warman filing a complaint against him at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal convened in August, 2005 to hear the case and has adjourned until October 17, 2005" All of which is totally irrelevant to an article titled "VNN".

"According to archived correspondence at VNN, involving editorial responses to readers' letters, Linder seems to support the idea of a genocide against nonwhites - the idea that virtually all non-whites the world over ought to be exterminated, in order to eliminate even the possibility of racial intermixing, and their lands repopulated with white settlers." Once again, this an attack on Linder but the article is about the website.

That's why I changed the article. I more accurately described what's on the site.

--Mark Richards12 21:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)Mark Richards

Response
If you look through the edit history of the Vanguard News Network article, you can verify that I played no part in initially writing this article. My sole involvement in this article was to revert the edits that you made to it, which does not constitute an endorsement of the previous version. Wikipedia editors often participate in "RC Patrol", a process in which they scan recent edits to identify vandalism and other edits that need to be reverted. For this reason, I am not going to defend the version of the article that existed before you edited it -- it might be biased against Vanguard News Network (although I do not claim that it is). Therefore, to the extent that the article is biased, you are welcome to edit the article so that it conforms to the Neutral Point of View policy. My only objection to your previous edits was that they were decidedly pro-Vanguard News Network in that they stated opinions promoted by this website as fact, and entirely ignored opposing opinions. The existence of a potentially biased article in Wikipedia doesn't justify biasing it in the other direction -- the proper response is to bring the article into compliance with the Neutral Point of View policy. If you can edit the article to make it more neutral, you are welcome to do so. However, this version, in stating the opinions of Vanguard News Network as facts is far more blatantly inconsistent with the Neutral Point of View policy than the version it replaced -- which, even if somewhat off topic and factually questionable, does not make such a serious error. Thus, I would recommend that you not reinsert this version into the article verbatim. In any case, any further edits you make to Vanguard News Network should be with your named user account. John254 23:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

More questions
Fair enough. But what about my objections to the article? Shouldn't you have been calling it vandalism long before I came on the scene? Really, if you had never heard of VNN and encountered that article as your first contact, would it be of any use to you at all? --Mark Richards12 02:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)Mark Richards