Jimmy Wales wrote:
Everyone take a deep breath. It was pretty out of
character for Ed to
post a sharp remark like that, and I think he'll quickly make things
right with Sheldon.
He hasn't done anything yet to make it right. The guy clearly has an
axe to grind about me. He's gone out of his way on more than one
occasion to insult me, without any provocation on my part. On this
occasion, he called me a liar on completely spurious grounds. I don't
think I should be expected to tolerate that without responding.
I wrote:
> It's clearly POV and a violation of
Wikipedia policy to inject
> first-person commentary based on church gossip into the actual text
> of articles.
And Jimbo responded:
Maybe, unless this gossip is documented somewhere as
having actually
happened. I mean, asserting the content of the gossip as fact isn't
good, but reporting on the gossip is fine, if it was important and
widespread.
Take a look at it yourself. Here's the verbatim passage from Ed's
article on "Sun Myung Moon/tax case":
The government offered to drop all the charges if Rev.
Moon would
give up his green card (permanent resident visa) and agree never to
visit the US again. Rev. Moon preferred to go to trial, professing
his belief in the fairness of American justice but saying that he
would not have been prosecuted if "his skin had been white or his
religion Episcopalian."
Reference, please, for the government's offer and the quote (Sorry,
I could not find documentation; it's a story circulated among us UC
members -- Ed Poor .)
It's clear from this that Ed could *not* find any documentation to
support the assertions he made in the first paragraph. And since when
is it proper form for Wikipedians to insert themselves directly into
articles with first-person, signed asides? I thought that sort of
thing belonged on the Talk page.
If I were editing the above passage, I would write something along
the following lines:
According to a version of events popular with members
of Moon's
church, the government offered to drop the charges against him if he
would give up his permanent resident visa and leave the United
States permanently. Rev. Moon preferred to go to trial but said that
he would not have been prosecuted if his skin had been white or his
religion Episcopalian.
I'm not going to make these edits, because I'm not interested in
working on articles about Rev. Moon or the Unification Church. The
point I'm making is simply that I find it hypocritical for Ed to
accuse *me* of dishonesty and bias over an article on global warming
that I had barely touched, when Ed himself has made no effort to
apply NPOV in his articles about his own church.
Jimbo also wrote:
But I think this is a misreading. I think that his
idea is a very
good one. All of us, if we are writing in an area where we know we
have some strong feelings, should try *hard* to formulate the
arguments of the opponents as best we can.
I don't think I've misread Ed's intent. I think he went out of his
way to needle me and call me a liar. Ed stated that I was
"disingenuous" because I haven't written *his* beliefs into an
article on global warming -- an article that I didn't create and to
which I had only contributed a single minor edit. I agree with the
general principle that we should try to respect the arguments of
people whose viewpoints differ from our own. However, Ed's comments
about me did not arise from a discussion about those general
principles. They were gratuitous comments that had nothing to do with
anything I've contributed to Wikipedia or posted to this listserv. He
didn't make those comments in the spirit of educating us all about an
important general principle. He made them in the spirit of looking
for an excuse to attack me and call me a liar, based on any pretext
he could find, no matter how flimsy.
There are at least two views of how wikipedia articles
should be
written -- the competitive view and the co-operative view. Ed
is merely (and correctly, I think) advocating for the co-operative
view.
Actions speak louder than words. How is it "co-operative" for Ed to
look for pretexts with which to publicly impugn my character?
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (
www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------