User talk:Munchy

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Sincerely, Ryan 00:26, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

First Edits
Munchy, get a hold on yourself. I suspect one of the other people editing the Rick Santorum page will shortly revert your edits because you simply can't go into a page where there is text which have been present for a while and change it without talking about it on the talk page -- Talk:Rick Santorum. You can't pretend that the senator is not controversial.

Be careful what you edit:
 * You edited a wiki-link to Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee This link goes nowhere. Democrat Party (United States) goes nowhere as well.
 * The correct link (and the one I added last week) was Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. So leave the links alone.

Also, if you want to add some content which reflects your favorable opinion of Santorum, go ahead and you'll have my support provided it's accurate, relevant, and timely. patsw 02:27, 31 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Let me clarify that your personal favorable opinion of Santorum is immaterial. Opinions should generally be attributed, with citation, to a prominent spokesperson.  Also, your denunciation of your fellow editors as "bozos" violates the No personal attacks policy. JamesMLane 11:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)


 * An opinion favorable to Rick Santorum motivates one to edit the article in a way favorable to him. An opinion of one hostile to the right-wing (as you identify yourself) is motivation to edit the article in a hostile way.  As far as I can tell there's no team of "neutral on Rick Santorum" Wikipedia editors typing in material into the article, but perhaps there are. patsw 21:22, 31 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The point is that editors' opinions, whether pro- or anti- or neutral, don't matter. I thought Santorum's smear on the city of Boston was utterly ridiculous.  Nevertheless, I would never have edited the article according to my opinion.  ("Setting a new low even for him, the rabidly partisan Santorum said...."  I personally believe that something like that would be accurate but it's clearly unencylopedic.)  The article doesn't criticize Santorum over that comment.  Instead, it reports the criticism made by Kennedy.  The opinion is in the article because Kennedy's opinion is notable, the opinion is properly attributed to him (so that we're reporting it, not adopting it), and a citation is provided.  That's how we have to handle controversial subjects.  Unfortunately, there are people (on the left and on the right) whose opinions motivate them to edit articles without regard to such niceties.  We don't have a crying need for people who are neutral about Santorum.  We have a crying need for people who've read WP:NPOV and will abide by it. JamesMLane 23:50, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Policy
Please do not keep undoing other people's edits without discussing them first. This is considered impolite and unproductive. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia under the three-revert rule, which states that nobody may revert an article to a previous version more than three times in 24 hours. Thank you. [[smoddy ]] 15:10, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Munchy
Munchy, I like you, and I applaud your efforts on the Santorum page to get rid of its bias. But I think you're forgetting one thing: Wiki is too leftist to bother with. There will always be efforts to remove bias from the conservative pages and add truth to the liberal pages, and occasionally it will actually happen. But yet, our efforts would be made in vain, because someone will always revert it back, or "take a poll" of people who want to revert it back, and nothing will come of it. Sorry for my pessimism, I'm usually a much happier person :) Peace out brussel sprout.Stanselmdoc 16:22, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism
Wikipedia's leftist bias is often alleged -- as is its right-wing bias. Putting aside that dispute, we have a neutral principle, applicable to liberals, conservatives, and everyone else, that "the purpose of a talk page is to help to improve the contents of the main page, from an encyclopedic point of view." Talk page It's not there to be used as a soapbox for opinions about the article subject. Still less is it there to be used as a soapbox for opinions about other subjects.

I deplore the tendency of some Wikipedians to use the term "vandalism" for any edit with which they disagree. The term shouldn't be used so lightly. Nevertheless, this edit of yours is clearly vandalism. It's not a good-faith attempt to improve the encyclopedia. Such posts belong on Free Republic, not here. JamesMLane 11:25, 4 August 2005 (UTC)