[WikiEN-l] Mostly in defence of 172

Thu Jan 16 09:11:56 UTC 2003

I'm going to confine these remarks to the areas where I have a reasonable amount of 
experience of interacting with 172, and some expertise of my own - in other words, I'll 
discuss 172s contribution to articles dealing with colonial history in the late 19th and early 
20th Centuries. (I have not followed developments in the articles on modern China and the 
USSR at all closely, nor am I especially well-versed in those subjects, so on those I'll say 
nothing.)

User 172 seems to have the ability to arouse great passion. I think it's fair to summarise 
the charges against him as:

1: Left-wing bias
2: Aggressive defence of his contributions, in particular instant reversion without comment 
to the "authorised version"
3: Failure to work co-operatively with others
4: Insisting on cross-posting more-or-less the same text to a number of related articles.

And I think it's also fair to add that a great deal of the venom 172 attracts is not simply 
because of the points above, but because:

1: He is all to often abrupt and dismissive of those who take a contrary view.
2: His prose is very difficult to edit. It is dense, convoluted, and far from easy reading. 
Short of wholesale slashing, editing 172's work is not for the faint-hearted.
3: His writing is littered with the jargon of Marxian political economy. Readers unfamiliar 
with sociology or political economy can all too easily confuse many of the common 
technical terms, which have specific, value-neutral  meanings, with the more familiar 
terms of nakedly value-laden Leninist tracts (which were quite well-used until recently). 
The untrained reader thus is prone to jump to the conclusion that 172 is a raving 
communist.

These factors are multiplied because they work in combination. One tends to find a 
statement that has a questionable POV but feel reluctant to edit it because it is embedded 
in dense, complex, and technical prose, and further reluctant because one fears an edit 
war.

On the other hand. 172 has a great deal of expertise in certain fields. On the development 
of European colonialism, for example, I think I'm safe in saying that I am not alone in 
having developed considerable respect for his knowledge. (See Talk:New Imperialism for 
evidence of my assertion here.) He writes in great detail, and on dauntingly difficult 
subjects. Although I firmly believe that 172's longer contributions need careful copy 
editing and peer review before they are set in concrete, they make an excellent foundation 
for readable, fact-filled articles of real scholarship. For an example of this, wade through 
the most recent two talk pages in New Imperialism. There you will see that Ortolan88, 
Slrubenstein and I made a good start on the task of making the article neutral in tone and 
accessible to the general reader without losing accuracy or too much detail. 172 was, on 
the whole, co-operative with us, and the article began to improve a great deal. It was only 
when the far more disruptive and unreasonable Vera Cruz stepped in with (as another 
contributor complained) the "death of a thousand cuts" that Ortolan88 gave up in disgust. I 
perservered for a little longer before doing likewise, and I think even SLR has become 
discouraged now.  

We can work with 172. We can't work with the mindless chaos of a Vera Cruz edit war.  
Get rid of that particular disruptive influence and SLR and I (or more likely both of us 
working together) will lick "New Imperialisim" into shape inside a week, and unless I miss 
my guess, we will do it with the help and co-operation of 172.  

(I should add, just in case the point isn't clear from my comments above, that without 
172's solid foundation of detailed content, the eventual article would be weaker.)

172 *can* be reasoned with. He and I engaged in a moderately protracted edit war in 
History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (It's worth reviewing the history of that 
page, and reading its talk page also.) Consider the following exchange from Talk:History 
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

TANNIN: (as a PS to an extended and detailed defence of my point of view about the edit 
war) The introduction of technical terms, especially terms from political economy which 
have become loaded with emotive associations in the minds of most non-specialists, is 
something to avoid except where absolutely essential. Just as writers on mathematics 
have learned the hard way that littering texts for the general reader with mathematical 
formulae is a sure-fire shortcut to eternal obscurity, so too must the historian be aware 
that many of his most useful terms are counter-productive in non-specialist contexts. In 
fact, it is worse for the historian than it is for the mathematician: readers see a formula 
and just skip over it because they don't understand it or don't want to stop and puzzle it 
out before continuing, but readers see text laced with terms like "multinational", 
"capitalism", "accumulation of surpluses", "inalienable", "commodities", and "bourgeois" 
and, unless the terms are used sparingly, and in a way that makes their technical meaning 
clear (as opposed to their emotion-laden common meanings) they recoil in horror. 
Readers don't understand mathemetician's technical expressions (their formulae). 
Readers misunderstand political economist's technical expressions (words like those 
listed above) - which is a good deal worse. 

172: I truly appreciate your suggestions. I will strive to improve my communication on the 
grounds you listed. 

Now 172 *did* then take the opportunity to quote my comment in his own defence on 
various user talk pages, and (in my view) made more of it than was actually there - I went 
so far as to complain to him that he had quoted me out of context at one point - but I 
genuinely believe that he has learned a little from that exchange (and from some other, 
broadly similar, ones, both with me and with other contributors). He remains a prickly 
character but his prose is improving, and while he is certainly not as easy to work with as 
some, he can be amenable to evidence and reason. (As the history and talk of History of 
the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows.)

In summary, yes, 172 creates difficulties. But he also makes a very useful contribution to 
Wikipedia, and is not impossible to work with. He has moderated his initial 
anti-cooperative behaviour, and (I suspect) will learn to moderate it further as time goes 
by (not least in consequence of this present controversy). 

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
list at redhill.net.au

twilson at netconnect.com.au