from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Correstponding language logos for each wiki

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Andreas Kasenides wrote:
>
>>> Jay Bowks wrote:
>>>
>>>> the logo is back to English in the other lang wikis.
>>
>> el for example.
>
> el is fixed now, thanks for pointing it out.

Thanks; please could you also update the 12 waiting requests on
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_logos ?

Thanks,
Timwi


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Greek characters not rendering correctly

body:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:

> Does anyone know what I need to do (if anything) in order to correct the
> problem of Greek characters not showing correctly (not always)?

Font rendering is up to your browser.

However, you haven't described the problem in enough detail. "Greek
characters not showing correctly" doesn't exactly tell anyone what is
wrong. el.wikipedia.org looks fine to me.

Timwi


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

references:
<1BUfpk-17Gfpo0@fwd05.sul.t-online.com>	<c9gbkb$h6j$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<043f01c449e6$e66263d0$67c56bd8@impressario>

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:

> I'm not a user of Klingon but
> I do support the right of any
> community using a standardized
> form of communication to be
> recognized and considered
> worthy of inclusion as a
> wikipedia language project.

Thanks for your support. Many many people, in fact a clear majority,
support full rights for the Klingon Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it seems
that this has no significance here. Klingon is being treated like
cripple-crap simply because a very small, but very loud minority has
some sort of quabbles with it. And because one of them has been given
(and is apparently allowed to retain) the power to have everything their
way, and then intimidate everyone who tries to undo it.

Timwi


references:
<99vqxSCxpVB@erik_moeller>	<043101c449e2$58d531e0$67c56bd8@impressario>	<40C07A8E.1060400@cs.ucy.ac.cy>
	<c9pvhc$jb5$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> el.wikipedia.org looks fine to me.

On second inspection, it definitely does *not* look fine!

http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/3/38/Greek_problem_screenshot.png

This seems to be a problem with the software. The messages in the
MediaWiki namespace of [[el:]] are correct.

Someone seriously needs to fix that, quickly.

Timwi


list: wikien-l

from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
What would he be banned for exactly? Are there
specific edits or problems? If so it should be
possible either to fix it, or go through the normal
procedure.
Mark

> >3 non-AC member admins to do such a block
>
> This is a good idea, we've had five already in
> Trollkien's case, for example.
> As with all good ideas, though, it never seems to
> get implemented (didn't we
> first see this proposal months ago?).

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: Andreas Kasenides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Greek characters not rendering correctly

body:
Does anyone know what I need to do (if anything) in order to correct the
problem
of Greek characters not showing correctly (not always)?
This anomaly, of course, happened after 1,3 upgrades and shows only in the
monobook skin.

On a second note what happened (happening) with 1.3 upgrades should
not happen again for the simple reason that if we are attract people to use
and write for this project we need to keep it acceptably decent (not
everyone is a programmer or tech support and not everyone is interested
into the intricacies of programming). For example my 10-year old to whom
I cannot seem to find a reasonble explanation why his small contribution
looks (all greek to him) weird. And some wikis are not so popular as the
English wikipedia, we can really not afford loosing anyone.

Thanx
--

Andreas Kasenides
e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy
<mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy>
(replace the _at_ above with @)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040604/52447c02/attachment.html>


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I have been banned unfairly

references:
<BCE614F9.4002%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<40C0C4DD.3060800@livejournal.com> <40C0C5F6.8090103@presroi.de>

body:
On Jun 4, 2004, at 2:56 PM, Mathias Schindler wrote:
> Ralesk Ne'vennoyx schrieb:
>> I guess this is simply that you also don?t call George Bush ?George?
>> or Medgyessy P?ter just ?P?ter? in a document such as an
>> encyclopaedia.
> The equivalent would be more or less writing "George Bush" versus
> "George Walker Bush", nor?

"George" is also rarely mispronounced in such a way as to be confused
with a term sometimes related to anal sex, which seems to be part of
the problem mentioned in the edit wars (Sodom vs Saddam).

In a related note, many western speakers can't seem to pronounce Iraq
properly, coming up with something that sounds like 'Aye-rack' rather
than 'Uir-uk'.

I'm guessing that the (sometimes seliberate) mispronunciation,
derogatory tone, and lack of the usage of proper title are combining to
offend the particular user who is complaining.

-Bop


from_name: Vladimir V. Medeiko

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What is the Knowledge? - A parallel World Wide Web?

body:
From: "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net>
> Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

> > Knowledge is information that rests if everything unneeded *is sorted
out*.
>
> I'm sure you'll understand that this isn't really a definition, as you
> have left open the question of what is "unneeded". Again, I would be
> interested to hear an example of what you call "needed".

His definition is not that wrong.
Knowledge is just a structured and ranked information.

"Unneeded" is something that no one needs. Articles, that no one views
and/or edits, could be considered anneeded.
There are numerous proposals on article ranking system, and eventually the
system of some kind will be implemented.

I don't see a permanent problem there.

--
>/=\- Vladimir "Dr Bug" Medeiko


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
>in the last 6 months the AC has issued more user bans than Jimbo did two years
>before that

Indeed. Most of them for a symbolic 24 hours. This is fine for regular
contributors who occasionally go off the deep end, but that's not what most of
the cases have involved. Wik's ban is over now, the only reason he's still
gone is because he left on his own. Meanwhile Gohde and "Irismeister" are
still up to their old tricks, exactly as before arbitration.

>Are you volunteering to be a member of the AC?

No, I am saying that the concept of an AC has been tried, and does not work.
I don't consider this to be the fault of the AC or any of the members of it,
rather a problem with overall structure, confusion with regard to the amount
of authority it holds, etc.

>3 non-AC member admins to do such a block

This is a good idea, we've had five already in Trollkien's case, for example.
As with all good ideas, though, it never seems to get implemented (didn't we
first see this proposal months ago?).


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki profiling tip

body:
Hello,

Yesterday I have been made aware of a built-in profiling tool in
MediaWiki. I played a bit with it and wondered if I could implement such
a tool for another project.

This afternoon I finally found a good way of profiling mediawiki cpu
usage, a picture of the result is at:
	http://www.twenkill.net/phpprofiler.png
(might be unavailable depending of my home connection status).

Using debian GNU/Linux, following is a little howto to get the same
window opening on your screen.

1/ PROFILER

Install the profiling tool: apt-get install php4-apd
To enable profiling in mediawiki edit your index.php file and insert at
top: apd_set_pprof_trace();

Now each time a web request is made on your website, a file
pprof.<apachepid> will be generated in /var/log/php4-apd/

This is a serious performance eater and should only be enable when you
need profiling outputs !

2/ GUI FRONTEND

The gui frontend I use is Kcachegrind: apt-get install kcachegrind .
As far as I understand, it uses Caltree profiling tool and Valgrind to
make a graphical representation of a C software.

KCacheGrind isn't able to read pprof file format so you will have to
convert it. A script is available at:
    http://cvs.php.net/co.php/pecl/apd/pprof2calltree?r=1.3
Eventually edit it so it looks like /usr/bin/pprof.

Then convert the pprof file:
$ pprof2calltree -f pprof.29539
Writing kcachegrind compatible output to cachegrind.out.pprof.29539
$ ls
cachegrind.out.pprof.29539  pprof.29539
$

If pprof2calltree start outputing lot of lines, you need to raise the
memory usage limit in your cgi php.ini file ( /etc/php4/cgi/php.ini ).

Now launch kcachegrind:
$ kcachegrind cachegrind.out.pprof.29539

Note:
You will need the graphwiz library to generate the call maps: apt-get
install graphwiz.

Enjoy ! :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz
[[fr:Utilisateur:Hashar]]


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Timwi-
> Thanks for your support. Many many people, in fact a clear majority,
> support full rights for the Klingon Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it seems
> that this has no significance here. Klingon is being treated like
> cripple-crap simply because a very small, but very loud minority has
> some sort of quabbles with it. And because one of them has been given
> (and is apparently allowed to retain) the power to have everything their
> way, and then intimidate everyone who tries to undo it.

Interesting. Is this the way you respect a compromise which you yourself
proposed?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs' lies have forced me to leave Wikipedia

body:
Re: "I have to apologize for reacting to the quoted bit out of context; in
the next section of [[Economy of the Soviet Union]] the poor
productivity is indeed attributed to forced collectivization.
Interestingly, that section is so delicately phrased that the average
reader won't actually find out what happened; it just says "the human
toll was catastrophic", which could mean any number of things. There
are details about the famines in WP, I didn't see any links that
would explain "human toll" via connections to any of those articles." - Stan
Shebs

**I will not contribute another word to Wikipedia (including two new
articles that I have finished on my MS Word browser) until I get something
better than this disingenuous apology (far, far worse than no apology) from
Stan Shebs.**

FIRST: ONCE AGAIN, THAT WAS AN ARTICLE ON THE ECONOMY OF THE SOVIET UNION,
NOT THE HISTORY OF STALINIST RUSSIA. The CIA Factbook and the U.S. Library
of Congress Country Study of the Soviet Union (hardly published by
institutions with "leftwing" agendas) aren't detailing (or even mentioning),
e.g., the purges, the Ukrainian famine, the deportations, the repression in
their overviews of the Soviet economy. Instead, they focus on the Soviet
economy of recent years-- the Soviet economy leading up to its collapse.

SECOND: Notice that that agriculture?where the Soviet record was by far the
most horrendous?was the only sector of the Soviet economy that got its own
individual section in my article on the economy of the Soviet Union. The
section on agriculture even included a subsection on agricultural labor.
Thus, it should be obvious that I actually went out of my to stay on topic
in an article on the Soviet economy while addressing the consequences of
collectivization.

THIRD: There are numerous links to collective farming-related topics as
well; thus, it is an OUTRIGHT LIE that there are no links that would explain
"human toll" via connections to any of those articles.

Re: "I found that it was indeed possible
to write US history without mentioning trivialities like Nancy Reagan's
astrologer (no personification of history? uh-huh), and that it was
possible to have accounts of the Cold War that didn't cast every
incident as ultimately due to US aggression against the Soviets."

FYI, I have contributed over 10,000 edits to WP over the period of 18
months, yet Stan brings out one or two out of context to perpetuate these
disgusting lies that I'm somehow pushing a Stalinist agenda.

I will not be able to function on Wikipedia as a writer and an editor unless
these cloud of suspicion that Stan is trying to cast over me goes away. It
will not go away, as I am certain that Stan will not apologize for his
penchant for unfairly impugning my integrity and competence as a historian.
Instead, he knows very well that his postings will be read by an audience
largely unaware of the fact that his his bogus, mean-spirited critiques
entirely draw on out-of-context, selective referencing of my comments and
edits.

BTW, I swear unconditionally that I will not return to Wikipedia until Stan
Shebs retracts these lies.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 9 Dial-up Internet Access fights spam and pop-ups ? now 3 months FREE!
http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/


from_name: Caroline Ford

body:
Maybe only in the United States....

This debate is really good example of why some of us are sick to death
of some sections/editors of Wikipedia.

Fred is not stupid - he is well aware that revisionism is a POV term. I
think he also knows he is partisan (although not in the same league as
the utterly brainwashed VV), and edits from what I would describe as a
national POV.

My conclusion is that people are fighting what they see as a moral
crusade - that Wikipedia exists to put the world to rights, to speak the
objective truth about X issue etc etc.

The problem with these latter day cold warriors is that they are utterly
impossible to work with. The world is not neatly divided into black and
white, good vs evil. Progandanda (whoevers) is not fact.

This really needs to be sorted out for the good of the project. People
are leaving, I edit for a fraction of the time I used to - I used to do
5+ hours a day - I now do 10 mins or so.

Nobody wants a war of attrition with partisans of any description.

Caroline

Fred Bauder wrote:

>You fail to mention that the mainstream you speak of is called the
>revisionist school.
>
>Fred
>
>
>
>>From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:52:58 +0000
>>To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Stan)
>>
>>As mentioned, my contributions on Soviet history on
>>Wikipedia are entirely in mainstream of Western academic Soviet and Russia
>>studies.
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred
	Bauder)

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Abe Sokolov wrote:
>
>> Re: "Hey - let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Now please be
>> nice to one
>> another!"
>>
>> -- mav
>>
>> I'm already calm, so I don't need to take a deep breath. I'm just
>> sitting here at my desk, kind of tired after not getting much sleep,
>> looking over some papers and research, checking e-mail in various
>> accounts, checking news sites, and the like.
>>
>> But I am fed up with Wikipedia, though, and especially people like
>> Stan and Fred. I doubt that I'll be able to be nice to either of them
>> until they stop spreading these lies about me being a Stalinist...
>
>
> I've never said you were a Stalinist. I do think you're heavily biased;
> you always have an excuse or apology for a leftwinger's action, and
> are always ready to blame a rightwinger for engaging in exactly the
> same kinds of actions. As it happens, there's a strain of academic
> history for which this degree of bias is considered normal, and another
> strain on the rightwing side too; an unfortunate state of affairs. It's
> gotten so bad these days that you can't usefully read anything on
> 20th-century history before finding out the left/right bias of the
> writer.
>
> Stan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
I disagree - you can always tell the POV of the writer by reading the
book. I can only think of one book on East Germany for example that
isn't propaganda for either side.

Caroline


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

body:
That's what the discussion was about. Systemic editing from a particular
point of view, however well written and subtle, combined with refusing to
allow information that contradicts that point of view from being included in
the article is not quality.

Fred

From: daniwo59 at aol.com
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 21:03:47 EDT
To: wikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

the time has come to start considering quality

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040604/c5b008c7/attachment.htm


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A parallel World Wide Web?

body:
>>>>> "J" == Jared  <redjar at redjar.org> writes:

    J> This thread seems to have gotten stuck on what is appropriate
    J> and what isn't appropriate for Wikipedia content.  There is _no
    J> way_ everyone will ever agree on that and it seems sort of a
    J> pointless argument.

It's not an equivalent question at all. "What are our goals?" "What
are we making?"  "What belongs?" and "What doesn't?" are pretty
logical and reasonable questions to ask for the creation of any body
of text.

If the answers were, "We have no goals, and anything goes," we'd have
a real shitty encyclopedia. We _do_ have goals, however, and some
pretty consistent standards of what belongs.

I know it may seem like we'll never agree, but we _have_, in a lot of
cases. These things have been decided over the course of this
project. We don't include original research, we don't do biographies
for non-famous people. We don't have dictionary definitions or copies
of public-domain text. We don't have opinion pieces or soapbox
rhetoric.

    J> We might as well try to determine "what is art?".

Not equivalent at all. It's not a semantic distinction about a single
word, but a question of the content of an encyclopedic work.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Ralesk Ne'vennoyx

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> Why is that insulting? What is the custom?
>

I guess this is simply that you also don?t call George Bush ?George? or
Medgyessy P?ter just ?P?ter? in a document such as an encyclopaedia.


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

body:
> statement.  When you first started on Wikipedia, did content that
> didn't interest you, or you found to be "superfluous trivia" discourage
> your participation.

This isn't a valid question - obviously the people on the list weren't
discouraged, otherwise they wouldn't be here. Unfortunately we have no way to
ask those who were...

Uli


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Ralesk Ne'vennoyx schrieb:

> I guess this is simply that you also don?t call George Bush ?George? or
> Medgyessy P?ter just ?P?ter? in a document such as an encyclopaedia.

The equivalent would be more or less writing "George Bush" versus
"George Walker Bush", nor?

Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

body:
It is very unfortunate when a talented contributor leaves the project in
disgust, and other people consider doing the same. In this case, 172 was bullied
off by people who have yet to respond to the content of his arguments beyond
some rhetorical ranting about things which are barely relevant to the content at
hand. It was done with personal attacks, using terms such as Stalinist,
revisionist, totalitarian, etc. It was also done (sorry, Ed, but I have to point
this out) by having the title "Can we ban 172 now" appear countless times as an
email header. He reads the list. He has feelings. That very title, to someone
who has contributed such high quality work to Wikipedia, is insulting and
crass.

If the problem with 172 was that he was rude, I can point to many more
examples of rudeness by the people who are most vociferous in condemning him. It is
unfortunate that there is no equal number of emails condemning their behavior.

If the problem was content, then answer his arguments on a point by point
basis. If it is his political positioning, then point to where rather than
engaging in the same political positioning. Very often, the attacks we make on the
foibles of others are a projection of our own foibles.

If the problems are reverts, then respond to VV's reverts with equal
vehemence, instead of implying that VV's reverts were justified because he is on the
same political bandwagon as you.

If the problem is none of these, then 172 deserves an apology.

To everyone, I suggest that maybe the time has come to start considering
quality over quantity and content over form. If we don't, it seems to me that we
will end up with neither.

Danny
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040604/3f18034b/attachment.htm


body:
Re: "No. So I guess it's goodbye then." (Stan Shebs)

I'd like a sysop to blank and delete my user pages. A developer can now
suspend my adminship, as I will not be contributing to Wikipedia any more.

_________________________________________________________________
Get fast, reliable Internet access with MSN 9 Dial-up ? now 3 months FREE!
http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>It is very unfortunate when a talented contributor leaves the project in
>disgust, and other people consider doing the same. In this case, 172 was bullied
>off by people who have yet to respond to the content of his arguments beyond
>some rhetorical ranting about things which are barely relevant to the content at
>hand. It was done with personal attacks, using terms such as Stalinist,
>revisionist, totalitarian, etc.
>
Just for the record, the sense in which Fred used "revisionist" is a
well-understood technical term (it's the first of the definitions in
[[revisionism]]), along with "traditionalist" and "post-revisionist".
Cold War specialists describe their own positions relative to these
groupings for instance. It can hardly be construed as a personal
attack by anybody who understands the meaning of the term.

>If the problem was content, then answer his arguments on a point by point
>basis. If it is his political positioning, then point to where rather than
>engaging in the same political positioning. Very often, the attacks we make on the
>foibles of others are a projection of our own foibles.
>
>
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.

>To everyone, I suggest that maybe the time has come to start considering
>quality over quantity and content over form. If we don't, it seems to me that we
>will end up with neither.
>
Well, I've spent a bunch of time in the library checking 172's content,
and found some serious problems. Unfortunately, my attempts to discuss
it were so frustrating that I turned away from those articles, and it
now falls to others to fix them.

Stan


list: foundation-l

from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] License dangers

body:
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:44:28AM -0700, Mark Horner wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am new to your list and browsed the archives briefly. I have a concern
> related to the FDL. A little background first - I started a project (
> http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst ) to do something similar to wikibooks but
> not quite as general. We think we'll just upload our books into
> wikibooks when we are done.

> I guess that wikipedia could just remove content that is queried by
> someone who claims to have the copyright. Is this what you plan to do
> if such a problem arises? I realise that it is clear what license you
> are using etc. but who takes the fall if some commits something they
> don't hold the copyright to?

You mean anonymous edits where you only see the IP?
It's hard to prove that you were the one who had this or that IP
at this or that time. AND you must have read the disclaimers on the
edit page because they are too obvious to be overread.
But, it's a very different thing if someone copied content from a
foreign work into wikipedia, we at de: use
http://www.affenkrieger.de/wiki/wikicc.php to search for copyright violations.
If we find a copyvio we often just delete it, sometimes it's worth the
time to write to the original author and ask for the content to
be released under GNU FDL.

> Our real concern is that we want to actually print books and raising
> money is hard enough. We don't want to risk printing the books again if
> something came up. (The quick answer is to write everything ourselves
> but thats also the slowest answer and we'd like to act as decisively as
> possible too.)

Before you print the book you should have a revision period where you check
for copyVios (on de: we've started WikiReaders[1] and normaly I don't do extra
checks because we're quite good and finding CopyVios) and controll the
content more than once.
Drop a mail if you're going to print the books, I've done my first one
this month and might help you a bit. Also we have a shop [2] that is
meant to evolve to the central market place.

After you seem to be from South Africa you also might to chat with Jimbo
Wales because he wants to distribute Wikipedia on CD bundled to any kind
of PC especially in Africa[3] and also contact Magnus who works on the
"Wikipedia on DVD" project[4].

ciao, tom

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader
[2] http://shop.wikipedia.org and http://meta.wikipedia.org/Webshop
[3] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-May/010068.html
[4] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-May/010066.html
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] License dangers


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

body:
Isn't this what I said?  That I was attacked for saying?

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-June/013124.html

RickK

Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:36:24 -0500, Nathaniel Krause
wrote:
> I have to take issue with this. The subject under discussion at Requests
> for Comment and Requests for Arbitration is 172 and VV's alleged incivility
> and edit-warring. The fact that 172 can write good articles is irrelevant
> to this.

Yes. Doing good things is *NOT* an excuse for doing bad things.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040604/396ae28e/attachment.htm


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ban policy

body:
John Robinson wrote:

>> Are you volunteering to be a member of the AC?
>
> No, I am saying that the concept of an AC has been tried, and does not
> work.
> I don't consider this to be the fault of the AC or any of the members
> of it,
> rather a problem with overall structure, confusion with regard to the
> amount
> of authority it holds, etc.

I don't see that much confusion about the amount of authority the
arbitration committee holds, unless you mean that it should start
engaging in content arbitration as well. Arbitration has resulted in
bans ranging anywhere from one day to one year, and while some users
have attempted to evade those bans, I think the authority to impose bans
is by now generally accepted (albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm).

I believe the arbitration process does work, or at least can work. I am
concerned that things move too slowly, however. If I thought the problem
was because of the time needed to discuss and deliberate on a case, I
wouldn't complain. I realize that arbitration cases are not going to
produce instantaneous results.

But at least on the surface, it certainly appears that some of the
arbitrators are not even really participating in the process. When it
takes four arbitrators to accept a case, and six to issue a decision,
this is a serious problem. The lack of participation may sometimes be
due to circumstances beyond their control, and I'm not saying an
arbitrator is not allowed to go on vacation. But at some point, if the
absence indicates inability to serve, I think a replacement may be
necessary. I'm not volunteering to be on the committee either, but all
of the arbitrators except one *did* volunteer for the job, and if anyone
is unwilling to continue, they should resign, not just stop participating.

>> 3 non-AC member admins to do such a block
>
> This is a good idea, we've had five already in Trollkien's case, for
> example.

Actually, as to the specific case of JRR Trollkien, I would suggest that
we simply require him to explicitly confirm or deny whether he is the
banned user 24/142.177.../EntmootsOfTrolls, as is widely suspected. So
far, he won't give a straight answer. Given the evidence suggesting this
is the same person, I think if he's told that he *must* answer the
question, and refuses to, that should be enough proof that this is a
reincarnation. (On the other hand, if he admits it, he could be allowed
to edit only for the purposes of his arbitration case, if he cares to
appeal that ban to the arbitration committee.)

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikipedia-l] noindex

body:
 Free Wikipedians,

I have checked Special:Allpages page, and discovered the followin tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />

And this may negatively impact rank of Wikipedia in different search
engines.
Could anyone explain me why this tag is put there?
Is it possible to remove it?

--
  >/=\- Vladimir V. "Dr Bug" Medeiko


subject: [Wikipedia-l] noindex

body:
Free Wikipedians,

I have checked Special:Allpages page, and discovered the followin tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />

And this may negatively impact rank of Wikipedia in different search
engines.
Could anyone explain me why this tag is put there?
Is it possible to remove it?

--
  >/=\- Vladimir V. "Dr Bug" Medeiko


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I am a victim of the cabal and require assistance

body:
> I have been banned for trying to add the following two bits of information to the wikipedia:

No, you were first banned for violation (intentional or no) of the
three-revert rule. To quote #wikipedia:
Jun 04 12:11:45 <Snowspinner>	For the record:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Saddam_Hussein&diff=3853837&oldid=3853831
is edit 1, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Saddam_Hussein&diff=3879005&oldid=3877571
is edit 2, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Saddam_Hussein&diff=3897040&oldid=3896941
is edit 3, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Saddam_Hussein&diff=3899983&oldid=3897660
is edit 4, and by some methods of counting
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Saddam_Hussein&diff=3909076&oldid=3908674
is edit 5. 5 > 3

Your subsequent ban was probably because of your attempt to cause
trouble by getting Guanaco in trouble for this first ban. This is a
reasonable ban, though it may still be in violation of guidelines for
the topic.

IP address evidence has led some to suggest that you are Lir. General
conversational evidence *clearly* indicates that you know what you are
doing. Since you are so familiar with us as to describe the procedures
which you claim have been violated, you should also know about all the
guidelines and procedures which YOU have violated. You seem to
conveniently ignore these and focus instead on causing trouble
(attempting to get Guanaco desysopped), particularly since it seems
plausible (if not quite certain) that you were DELIBRATELY attempting
to get banned in an attempt to get Guanaco in trouble. This behavior
may be generally described by some as "trolling" and is widely
considered undesirable.


from_name: Jared

body:
On Jun 4, 2004, at 8:47 PM, Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>> "J" == Jared  <redjar at redjar.org> writes:
>
>     J> This thread seems to have gotten stuck on what is appropriate
>     J> and what isn't appropriate for Wikipedia content.  There is _no
>     J> way_ everyone will ever agree on that and it seems sort of a
>     J> pointless argument.
>
> It's not an equivalent question at all. "What are our goals?" "What
> are we making?"  "What belongs?" and "What doesn't?" are pretty
> logical and reasonable questions to ask for the creation of any body
> of text.

It seems that the question being discussed in this thread was not quite
what you've listed, but rather, "Where do we draw the line?"...
followed by a dozen, "well I think it should be drawn here." The
questions above are exactly what I was advocating.  Except, I suggest
before we determine, "What belongs?" we figure out _why_ something
should belong or not.  I haven't seen any evidence that an article
containing the biography of Joe Nobody either discourages or encourages
participation.

> If the answers were, "We have no goals, and anything goes," we'd have
> a real shitty encyclopedia. We _do_ have goals, however, and some
> pretty consistent standards of what belongs.

I've read lots of people's opinion that the town entries don't belong.
But their existence is what got me and many others involved with
Wikipedia.  So before something is determined to not belong, I think
there should be solid reasoning why it would be harmful to the project.
  This is not a print encyclopedia that has space constraints and
publishing deadlines.  The traditional definition of encyclopedia does
not work for Wikipedia.

> I know it may seem like we'll never agree, but we _have_, in a lot of
> cases. These things have been decided over the course of this
> project. We don't include original research, we don't do biographies
> for non-famous people. We don't have dictionary definitions or copies
> of public-domain text. We don't have opinion pieces or soapbox
> rhetoric.
>
>     J> We might as well try to determine "what is art?".
>
> Not equivalent at all. It's not a semantic distinction about a single
> word, but a question of the content of an encyclopedic work.

I'm pretty sure that in the previous paragraphs you are saying we
should come up with clearer definitions what should be included. You
are telling me that using _words_ to _define_ what belongs in Wikipedia
is not a semantic distinction?  :)

-jared


body:
On Jun 4, 2004, at 2:56 PM, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

>> statement.  When you first started on Wikipedia, did content that
>> didn't interest you, or you found to be "superfluous trivia"
>> discourage
>> your participation.
>
> This isn't a valid question - obviously the people on the list weren't
> discouraged, otherwise they wouldn't be here.

I was discouraged, but I'm still here.  The reason was not due to
superfluous trivia, but rather an overwhelming set of blurry rules and
standards that were required to get involved.

> Unfortunately we have no way to
> ask those who were...

Oh use your imagination. Show another human Wikipedia and ask them what
they think.  Ask them if they think they will contribute.  If the
answer is no, ask why.

-jared


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban policy

body:
>What would he be banned for exactly? Are there
>specific edits or problems?

Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JRR_Trollkien/Evidence

>If so it should be possible either to fix it, or go through the normal
>procedure.

Oh there's a normal procedure, that actually works?  I must have
missed that; what is it?

>What would he be banned for exactly? Are there
>specific edits or problems? If so it should be
>possible either to fix it, or go through the normal
>procedure.
>Mark
>
>
>>  >3 non-AC member admins to do such a block
>>
>>  This is a good idea, we've had five already in
>>  Trollkien's case, for example.
>>  As with all good ideas, though, it never seems to
>>  get implemented (didn't we
>>  first see this proposal months ago?).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
>http://messenger.yahoo.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040605/ef7584dc/attachment.htm


body:
Ronald Chmara wrote:

> In a related note, many western speakers can't seem to pronounce Iraq
> properly, coming up with something that sounds like 'Aye-rack' rather
> than 'Uir-uk'.
>
Interesting.

I have only heard it as /I'ra:k/ from Anglophone people (and here I
don't know what kind of r to be put there in SAMPA, so forgive me that).
  Hungarians write the country name as "Irak" and pronounce it /'irAk/.

I have never heard it as /ai'rak/, /ai'r{k/ or anything similar.


from_name: Jiong Sheng

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

body:
It has been confirmed, as of 8AM GMT, June 4, that Wikipedians in
Beijing were banned from accessing. But Wikipedia is still accessible
from other parts of China.

formulax

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 01:53:27 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- yuanml <yuanml at pku.org.cn> wrote:
> > Several users in China had repoerted that they can't visite the whole
> > Wikipedia today.
> >
> > China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia, because today is the 15th
> > commemoration day
> > for the Tiananmen Square Event.
> >
> > So far it is not sure whether Wikipedia is blocked, more infomation is needed
> > for confirmation.
> >
> > I'm an administrator for Chinese Wikipedia in P.R.China.
>
> You sure that isn't just due to really slow response times from our server? The
> English Wikipedia is crawling for me right now.
>
> Either way I hope we are all back online soon.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

body:
You are not banned. You have had plenty of criticism which I hope you will
take to heart, but you are welcome to participate responsibly in editing on
Wikipedia.

As to Ed Poor, he's not banned either.

The CIA's involvement in the Chile coup needs to be set forth plainly in the
appropriate articles, just as the KGB's involvement in the removal of the
ruler of Afganistan is set forth in the article [[Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan]], "December 27, 1979 - 700 KGB spetsnaz special forces troops,
Alpha Group, in Afghan uniforms storm the Presidential Place in Kabul,
taking heavy casualties, killing President Hafizullah Amin."

Fred

> From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2004 08:11:55 +0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] 172
>
> I think that Ed Poor got what he'd wanted all along. Right after I announced
> that I'd be leaving Wikipedia, Ed Poor unprotected [[Augusto Pinochet]]
> writing, "after recent discussions on the mailing list, I hope we can work
> together now." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_log
>
> Then, also without discussing his intentions, he unilaterally removed the
> reference to U.S. backing from the Pinochet article
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Augusto_Pinochet&diff=3940359&oldi
> d=3939010)
>
> And I'm the one who should be banned, right?


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] 172

body:
Danny wrote

> It was also done (sorry, Ed, but I have to point this out) by having the
title "Can we ban 172 now" appear countless times as an email header.

That was mischief-making.  __This list__ (which would be the 'we' in
question) is a discussion forum, and has no power to ban anyone.  I was away
through this episode, and find the way it was initiated very distasteful.
(Though everyone on WP should stay within the rules.)

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ban policy

body:
Definitely a problem. Even with my very low level of effort I seem to
participate as much or more that most other arbitrators. It seems like it
takes forever for some arbitrators to consider matters and enter some sort
of input. We (the arbitrators as a group) haven't really asked the different
individuals what is going on.

Fred

> From: Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 22:49:07 -0700
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ban policy
>
> But at least on the surface, it certainly appears that some of the
> arbitrators are not even really participating in the process. When it
> takes four arbitrators to accept a case, and six to issue a decision,
> this is a serious problem. The lack of participation may sometimes be
> due to circumstances beyond their control, and I'm not saying an
> arbitrator is not allowed to go on vacation. But at some point, if the
> absence indicates inability to serve, I think a replacement may be
> necessary. I'm not volunteering to be on the committee either, but all
> of the arbitrators except one *did* volunteer for the job, and if anyone
> is unwilling to continue, they should resign, not just stop participating.


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs

body:
Re: "Well, I've spent a bunch of time in the library checking 172's content,
and found some serious problems. Unfortunately, my attempts to discuss
it were so frustrating that I turned away from those articles, and it
now falls to others to fix them."

Bullshit. I gave you a detailed list of suggested readings on [[History of
the United States (1980-present), including some journal articles and books
reviews that were relatively quick reads. You never really got back to me
since then.

_________________________________________________________________
Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and enter to win
a trip to NY
http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> Re: "Well, I've spent a bunch of time in the library checking 172's
> content,
> and found some serious problems. Unfortunately, my attempts to discuss
> it were so frustrating that I turned away from those articles, and it
> now falls to others to fix them."
>
> Bullshit. I gave you a detailed list of suggested readings on
> [[History of the United States (1980-present), including some journal
> articles and books reviews that were relatively quick reads. You never
> really got back to me since then.

I didn't say you were totally unresponsive, and you did provide
sources for some of the claims, which was great - some of it, such
as the Sunbelt material, is still on my todo list actually (magpies
in the bottle-cap factory aren't especially efficient). On the flip
side, partisan works from the early 1980s aren't going to be the
academically sound post-Reagan assessments of supply-side economics
that we need to have as references.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs/172

body:
shebs at apple.com wrote:

Re: "Well, I've spent a bunch of time in the library checking 172's content,
and found some serious problems. Unfortunately, my attempts to discuss
it were so frustrating that I turned away from those articles, and it
now falls to others to fix them."

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 consistently. 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.

The first is from the talk page of History of the United States (1980-1988)
and the second is the discussion on the proposed reogranization of the Cold
War series.

-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-?-vis China today, while using it
more loosely vis-?-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)

[[Talk:Cold War/temp]]
Taken
from:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Cold_War/temp&action=edit

I added a couple example sentences that I think are plausible "lead
sentences" for their respective sections. Also, as a way of forestalling
partisan edits, I had the idea of addressing partisanship issues at the top,
right after the normal lead content, and linking to a historiography
article. I suspect a lot of people who have strong opinions on the Cold War
don't know that all of the issues have already been debated intensely, many
years ago in some cases, and so by putting historiography up close to the
top we let them know that there is a body of scholarship that they ought to
know about before scribbling on the article.

Another thing that I think we'll want to do is to address the distinction
between objective facts (which tend not to be in dispute) and their presumed
motives and causes, over which the historians call each other bad names. :-)
A size limit of 20K or so will mean that the main article will have to stick
mostly to facts and offer opinions on motivation less often, and the
connected subarticles would then get the more in-depth analysis about cause
and effect - they can also cite the more specialized books and literature
for the benefit of the truly fascinated. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 04:46, 15
Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like it and think it would be a great improvement. The one thing I do not
like are the many purely date headings with some though I think most of them
can be made into names like D?tente or the [[Vietnam War]], or descriptions
like "Interventions in the Third World" or "Renewed Tensions." A danger with
articles like this is that they become nothing more than timelines and leave
out the crucial links and interconnections between events. -
[[User:SimonP|SimonP]] 05:17, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

I also think we should eventually have a great number of topical spin-offs.
Both because they are important topics that would not be adequately covered
in 4000 words, and because we have much of the content already written. e.g:
*[[Historiography of the Cold War]] (your suggestion)
*[[Space Race]] (already exists)
*[[Cold War in the Third World]] (and perhaps [[Cold War in the Middle
East]], [[Cold War in Latin America]], [[Cold War in South Asia]])
*[[Nuclear arms race]] (currently a poor redirect)
*[[Intelligence services in the Cold War]]
*[[American Cold War foreign policy]]
-[[User:SimonP|SimonP]] 05:17, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

Right now, I lean in favor Stan's proposal. Organizing the article by region
is a bad idea. I'm not aware of any survey text that does this either. I
favor a roughly chronological organization, but with topics in the headings
instead of dates. Below is my ''very rough'' (and unfinished) draft.
[[User:172|172]] 10:42, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

* Origins
** Britain and the expansion of Tsarist Russia
** The U.S., Russia, and the development of Manchuria
** The Bolshevik Revolution and Allied intervention
** The First Red Scare in the U.S.
** Soviet-U.S. trade in the interwar years
** The Munich Conference and the Non-Aggression Pact
** Wartime mistrust
** Atlantic Charter
** Yalta
** The end of the Great Depression and international trade
** Potsdam
** Germany
** Atomic control
** United Nations
** Postwar reconstruction in Central and Eastern Europe
** The Iranian and Turkish crises of 1946

* Kennan and Containment
** George Kennan, Kennan's 'long telegram', and the "X" article in ''Foreign
Affairs''
** The crisis in Greece
** The Truman Doctrine
** The Marshall Plan and the Molotov Plan

* Truman and NSC-68
** Chinese Revolution
** The Soviet atomic bomb
** NSC-68
** Korea
** McCarthyism

* Eishenhower-Dulles Cold War
** Rise of Khrushchev
** Eisenhower-Dulles "new look"
** Francis Gary Power's U2 mission and the Paris Summit
** Sputnik
** H-Bomb
** De-colonization
** Defense pacts in the Third World
** Covert action in the Third World
** Mossadegh
** The CIA in Latin America
** The Suez Crisis and rifts within the Western alliance
** Indochina (The Eisenhower administration, Dienbienphu, and the Geneva
Conference)

*Cold War of Kennedy-Johnson
**Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis
**Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
**Vietnam and "flexible response"
**Vietnam War...

* Rise and fall of D?tente
** Threats within both blocs
** Oil shock of 1973
** Vietnam spending and "Vietnamization"
** Arms control
** Islamic Revolution
** Afghanistan

* End of the Cold War
** Reagan administration
** "Low intensity conflicts"
** Summits
** Perestrokia and Eastern Europe
** Collapse of the USSR
** Legacies

Cool, I'll merge all these in later today or tomorrow and we can see what it
looks like then. A great many of these subjects have their own articles
already, although they are, uh, "variable" :-) in their depth and quality...
[[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 17:26, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
:Great! Our goals seem to be one-in-the-same. But perhaps we need a little
more time before we start merging things. I sketched the above outline
pretty hastily, so we'll probably need to play around with the arrangements
a bit. Also, just to make sure, we're creating a NI-style series with
daughter articles, right? If that's the case, the existing content in the
series, for the most part, runs parallel to the above outline. So writing
the summary on the main page will require the most work. [[User:172|172]]
18:10, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
::BTW, I'm making some changes the outline draft above in this posting.
[[User:172|172]] 18:41, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've now merged the bits, tinkered with some section titles. Still need to
get in list of 3rd world involvements by name. Interesting that some of the
key terms apparently have no article... [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 06:09, 17
Apr 2004 (UTC)

Jonah speaking, I don't know where a McCarthyism link fits in to your
template, but I noticed it wasn't in the current Cold War section either. I
guess someone was bound to bring it up eventually, but I'm just giving my
two cents. 04 May 2004

==Kingturtle, Stan, 172 (moved here from Talk:Cold War (1947-1953) and its
origins)==

This article is called ''Cold War (1947-1953) and its origins''. But the
first 3/4s of the article deal with events before 1947. I think this article
should be split up into ''Cold War origins'' and ''Cold War (1947-1953)''. I
am going to take this bold step Friday night if no one objects.
[[User:Kingturtle|Kingturtle]] 03:15, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
:I agree. Stan and I are working on a possible reorganization. I'm still
drafting my proposals on MS Word at home. My idea is the following split:
Origins of the Cold War (to 1941), Origins of the Cold War (1941-1947), Cold
War (1947-1953), Cold War (1953-1957), Cold War (1957-1962), Cold War
(1962-1973), and Cold War (since 1973). Before this is done, we need to
expand on some aspects of the current content.

:And this article - [[Cold War (1947-1953) and its origins]] - is hardest to
split out of the three articles that exist right now. The three articles
that I'm proposing (Origins of the Cold War (to 1941), Origins of the Cold
War (1941-1947), Cold War (1947-1953)) will need to expand a great deal on
content already posted here.

:I'd favor different organization as opposed to the one in place right now.
For example, here's my idea for the organization of the to 1941 origins
article:
*Origins of the Cold War (to 1941)
**Tsarist Russia and the 'New' Imperialism (to the 1890s)
**Manchuria
**The Russo-Japanese War and the West
**Wartime alliance
**Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
**The First Red Scare
**"Socialism in One Country"
**U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union (1933)
**The Munich Pact and the Non-Aggression Pact

:For the next article in the series...

*Origins of the Cold War (1941-1947)
**Lend-lease payments and the second front
**The Atlantic Conference
**Breton Woods
**Yalta
**Potsdam
**Hiroshima and Nagasaki
**The Iran Crisis
**Germany and the Oder-Neisse boundary
*Reparations payments and the Berlin blockade
**Greece
**Domestic pressures on Soviet foreign policy
**Domestic pressures on U.S. foreign policy
**The Truman Doctrine, the National Security Act, and the proposal of the
Marshall Plan

Just to reassure you, this is all very tentative. I appreciate advice while
I'm drafting my proposals. [[User:172|172]] 06:00, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
*Ok, glad to hear this is already in the works. I won't make any bold moves.
And I am happy to help figure things out. [[User:Kingturtle|Kingturtle]]
06:04, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

*Not to be too negative, but we '''really''' don't want to do series - a
series is just chapters in a book, and here we're supposed to be doing
articles, not book chapters. So for instance to pick on the 1941-1947
segment, there are thirteen topics. In a single-article design, each will
get 1-2 sentences saying what it was and how it connects to the others. All
in-depth stuff would go to the topics, for instance [[Yalta Conference]],
which at present seems OK in terms of basic facts, but is sorely lacking the
explanation of why anybody might think it was the beginning of the Cold War.
Yalta's significance ''could'' be put in the main Cold War article, but
that's how the main narrative becomes bloated. It also does the reader a
disservice when they link to [[Yalta Conference]] from somewhere else, then
can't learn about its significance without trudging through a long narrative
about other things. To make the single-article goal, we have to be very
disciplined. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 00:57, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

::We have to have place for weaving it all together in contexts that can be
more specified than in a single article/summary page. Everything that I'm
outlining could be a daughter article of an executive summary page, like on
[[New Imperialism]]. Just to reassure you, I'm certain that the vast
majority of the content in all the articles I'm proposing will come from the
three existing articles.

::BTW, perhaps you're misunderstanding what I'm proposing in those outlines.
I'm including, say "Yalta" and "Potsdam" in the headings, but the way
everything's organized makes it a more or less chronological arrangement;
really you can read the subheadings as milestones acting as stand-ins
signifying place and time. Thus, we wouldn't be ''just'' giving an overview
of Yalta under the "Yalta" heading - to use this as an example again - in
the text of the daughter article I'm proposing, but rather staying focused
on developments in the spring of '45 and how they relate to the course of
the emerging Cold War. [[User:172|172]] 02:11, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

:::I think we have a misunderstanding here. My goal is to have a single 20K
article that covers everything. An article entitled "Cold War (1947-1953)"
is completely wrong for an encyclopedia, whether as an "article in a series"
or as a "daughter article". The point is not to write more and more into a
single narrative, but to be succinct. The "weaving it all together" happens
in the single main article. Specific events have text that connects back to
the main article and to related events - that's how most of Wikipedia is
written, there's no reason for this to be different. I want to be clear on
this, because it seems  like you generally have the urge to write single
long narratives, to the point of duplicating material that is already
present in existing articles. My whole point here is '''not''' to do the
ever-expanding narrative; the single main article should be complete at 20K,
and further expansion will occur in topical articles like [[Yalta
Conference]], not in "Cold War (15 April 1950 - 23 May 1950)". [[User:Stan
Shebs|Stan]] 05:30, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
::::Well, these articles don't even exist yet, and we might as well agree to
disagree until then. I'll help you out with the 20K summary page, but
there's no harm having additional daughter articles, which will be able to
draw the vast majority of their content from the existing pages.
[[User:172|172]] 11:41, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

== End of participation ==

I'm no longer going to work on this, it's going to be way too frustrating.
Use, delete, whatever. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 16:47, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
:Okay, I'm not going to delete it - you had a number of good ideas that I'd
like to adopt at some point. I hope that this isn't an overreaction to one
disagreement on Vietnam War. I think that you are being a bit cranky about
that article, but that doesn't taint my opinion of your contributions to
other articles, the vast majority of which are supurb, IMHO.
[[User:172|172]] 16:54, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
::This is an overall reaction to all your reverting and arguing on various
articles; just looking at it makes me want to quit working on WP altogether,
so I'm cutting loose instead, will spend time in areas where I find the
people more enjoyable to work with. [[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 17:32, 21 May
2004 (UTC)
:::Do you have disagreements of substance with any of my recent changes to
other articles, aside from Vietnam War? Or are you just coming here to mouth
off and insult me? [[User:172|172]] 17:43, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
::::I have a whole host of disagreements with your edits, but it would give
me an ulcer to deal with all of them, and WP doesn't pay me enough for that.
Your reference to "insult" here is a perfect example; I just gave you the
straight facts about how I felt, anything else is in your own mind.
[[User:Stan Shebs|Stan]] 12:11, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
:::::I have a whole host of disagreements with your edits as well, but you
don't see me taking it personally and negative character judgments against
you. Lighten up. [[User:172|172]] 21:49, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
::::::Now that we have that [[Vietnam War]] disagreement behind us, do you
want to start work on this article again? [[User:172|172]] 04:46, 24 May
2004 (UTC)

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page ? FREE
download! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Stan Shebs

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> 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.
>
I especially recommend the parts where 172 says I'm calling him a
Stalinist because I thought that it was POV to use the term "dictator"
only for rightwingers but not leftwingers, and where he won't promise
not to revert my edits, because hey, I might vandalize the article.

The whole thing was simply exhausting - for this kind of discussion
I try to word things carefully, so as avoid misunderstanding, and it
takes me a lot of time and a lot of rephrasing. To be met with "I
don't know what you want" in response, that is a pretty clear
message that I'm not getting anywhere.

No doubt I could have been still more patient, but I do Wikipedia
for enjoyment, and the interaction with 172 was getting frustrating
to the point where I was losing interest in WP, so I cut my losses
and deliberately shifted to other areas.

Stan