Encyclopedia > User talk:The Cunctator

Article Content

User talk:The Cunctator

Good work about subjects that interest me! How about adding a few words about yourself to this page? --Pinkunicorn

You're doing an absolutely amazing job on the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack pages. --Pinkunicorn

I totally agree with Pinkunicorn--wonderful job on these pages. --LMS

Twelve hours straight on the website? No wonder it's getting over 1,000 pageviews a day from various other websites that have linked to the 911 pages. Great job, C, thanks. --LMS

You do realise your nom-de-plume will be zapped when the Roman historians get round to writing about one Quintus Fabius Maximus[?], don't you? ;- ) sjc

Cunctator - I just wanted to say thanks for the guidance on the "nowiki" feature - it was appreciated. - chrz ManningBartlett

Hey Cunctator, we might disagree on other stuff, but I have to say your continuing work on the 9/11 pages and the aftermath (such as renaming the anthrax pages to something that made more sense, and working a lot on them) is really great. --LMS

The Cunctator/How to destroy Wikipedia: Weird stuff you have there, Cunctator-san. But thanks for the heads-up.

Cunctator, why don't you e-mail me at lsanger@nupedia.com ? I would like to try to understand where your head is at, and I'd like to do so without creating a public spectacle. --Larry Sanger

Cunctator, appealing to you as a sensible bystander here: BF and I are about ready to lose it with each other over New Age. What do you think?

Cunctator, I am appealing to you to please write to me in private email: jwales@bomis.com to discuss some of the allegations you have made against me. You're either misunderstanding something at a fundamental level, or you are trying to be mean to me for no reason. Either way, I want to get to the bottom of it. I'm leaving this message on Oct. 25, 2001. I hope that you'll write to me within the next 24 hours. We really need to talk this out, because I don't think you really want to be so unfair to me. --Jimbo Wales

Thanks for the support -- she has a lot of neat things to add, but can't seem to make the leap to scholarly presentation...JHK

WINAD undeletes. Stop it. Silly. If Ddroar wants to he/she/it can, you leave it. -- 62.253.64.xxx

Especially Quimby. Thats not even a word for fucks sake. -- GWO

I rather like the idea of a historical archive for Wikipedia, actually. I had created the GNE Project Files page some time ago, so it was just an extention of the same idea. Glad you like it. --Stephen Gilbert

Nice job on improving Wikipedia commentary/The Wikipedia Community[?]! --Seb

Most of the vandalism has links to off-server images which, as is being discussed elsewhere, is somewhat unethical. -- Paul Drye

setting aside the angry tone of the vandalism for a moment, I think that revision 802 is beautiful as poetry. especially with the images. The idea that we will all become ceramic figurines coupled with the two images of grimace, one soft and the next ceramic... well, if my creative writing students were so apt with such imagery I would be a happy teacher. Clearly the work is mean spirited, but let me speak up for its artistic merits (merits probably outweighed by the general meanness). Anyway, I am not weighing in on the whole delete or not delete issue. I'm just saying that these pieces are aesthetically pleasing to me (which may be totally idiosyncratic, and should not be taken as an endorsement of the message in anyway at all). Looking on the light side. --trimalchio

Revision 802 clearly stands out, since it is also a parody on the psychological warfare flyers that the US dropped over Afghanistan at about the same time. --AxelBoldt

Maybe it has merits to be in some "modern art" exposition (what doesn't?), but I don't think it belongs in an encyclopedia.--AN

Since I originally put the vandalism up on HomePage Vandalism[?] , I will explain here why I did it. (I was going to do so in talk:Main_Page, but my web browser is screwy and won't let me edit it.) As trimalchio said, I think it has some aesthetic qualities: especially revision 802, less so revision 804, least revision 799. I also think some of it is a bit funny (I suppose I have a crude sense of humour.) Most important of all, it's Wikipedia social history. The biggest thing I was worrying about was, not "does this sort of stuff belong in an encyclopedia?" or "is this stuff going to encourage vandalism?" but is this stuff going to offend LMS and TimShell, since it attacks them, however childishly. If people really wanted to delete it from HomePage Vandalism[?], I had no major objection. But on the other hand, if it's on the Cunctator's personal pages, I think that unless there is something very offensive or bad or whatever about it, he should be allowed to keep it there. -- SJK

I think it's pretty obvious that The Cunctator has no right to make his personal pages the repository of vandalism. I've decided to remove it. --LMS

Obvious to you maybe, but not obvious to me. I would respectfully submit that you are becoming increasingly controlling and dictatorial, that you have a grudge against The Cunctator and are doing this in part out of a personal vendetta. You shouldn't delete anything out of someone's personal page unless it is offensive or in violation of copyright or a waste of disk space/bandwith, or something similar. Maybe you could argue some of those criteria in this case, but instead you are arguing that archiving other people's vandalism is somehow wrong in itself. So I've put the pages up on http://www.geocities.com/sj_kissane/vandalised-homepages where you can't delete them. -- SJK

I understand that what I've done is controversial, but please don't assumptions about my motives, Simon. If you ask, I will report them honestly. No, I am not doing this as a grudge against The Cunctator. I am doing this in order (1) to take a stand against vandalism (it's not welcome on Wikipedia, period) and (2) to clarify the fact that, indeed, I am willing to enforce what I think is right for Wikipedia, and I am not willing to bow to pressure such as you are exerting right now. In other words, I'm not going to drop my principles simply because The Cunctator, you, or anyone else thinks that I am overstepping my authority; rather, I am going to define here and now what authority I feel comfortable in asserting. Those are my motives; I imagine one might have been able to guess them without too much trouble, if one were to have read my recent essay[?] carefully and to have given me the benefit of the doubt while doing so.

I just totally disagree with your account of the right you have over your personal Wikipedia space, and as far as I can tell, it's not proceeding beyond competing assertions. Here's how I see it: your personal pages are there for you to use more or less as you like, but if it looks to me like it's clearly contrary to Wikipedia's mission, as keeping an archive of vandalism very plainly strikes me as being, then I'm not going to hesitate to delete them or otherwise try to rectify the situation.

As far as keeping a record of old pages on Wikipedia, we are obligated to let you do this, but I hope you put up a link back of some sort. ;-)

Speaking simply from the point of view of good taste, I don't know why you would want to keep a record of it. They were in poor taste, displaying the usual idiocy and mediocrity of too-clever-by-half poorly-raised children. That's not something that deserves to be memorialized, you know. --LMS

At Wikipediholic/Confessed wikipediholics, you wrote: "... people seem to hate me." Let me go on record. I love you, man. <smile> I especially appreciate your passionate desire to improve the 'pedia. It's a pleasure working with you on this project. <>< tbc

"... people seem to hate me."

they disagree with some of your actions, C. That's different --November 3, 2001 3:17 pm by 65.94.176.xxx

I don't hate you. I agree with tbc, & appreciate your concern for wikipedia & what it could be. But at the same time I think some of your arguments suffer from gross oversimplifications that are (to me, at least) a bit frustrating. I take it that's a side effect of your deep & genuine concern, and try to leave it at that. :-) --Koyaanis Qatsi

Much gratitude for all your good work. You seem to be saving this project from the delete-happy bone-heads[?] out there.

Nice to know I'm a "delete happy bonehead." I had good reasons for posting those pages there, Cunc had even better reasons for removing them, an action with which I was completely OK. That's called "collaboration". Comments like this are childish and unnecessary. - MMGB

Could you give us a clue as to how your name is pronounced? How do you expect us to scream your name in the throes of heated passion without a pronunciation guide, eh ?

Thanks!

I'd assume it's something like KUNK-tay-ter. --Damian Yerrick

"kungk-TAY-tuhr," according to http://wordsmith.org

I've always pronounced it "Throat-wobbler mangrove" - MMGB

In the original Latin it's "kunk-tah-tor." That might count for something.

1-11-27: Cunctator, I'm happy to observe that you haven't dropped out. Neither did I --Mathijs

. :-) Ok, kids, once and for all: "Cunctator" was the nickname of Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus[?] (see the English word "cunctation" = "Procrastination; delay" in any good dictionary) because he defeated the Carthaginian general Hannibal by "delaying" tactics. (See britannica.com if you like).

See us! We didn't write the Second Punic War up for nothing...

December 6, 2001 10:28 pm comment by LMS deleted by LMS December 7, 2001 9:03 pm after removal of "back-handed compliment" to Bias Talk[?]

Cool logo... How did you find the Hobbes quote? --AxelBoldt

Nice entry on DrinkOrDie. I linked to it from infoAnarchy.org. -- Eloquence

Hey Cunc, someone once admonished me for re-formatting an article to eliminate the line breaks inside paragraphs in the source text, and I've come to agree. If that's something your editor does automatically it's not a big deal and we'll just have to live with it, but I'd like to ask that you not actually go out of your way to do that (I just noticed that your change to the Computer virus article did that). It makes the diffs essentially useless. Leaving them in doesn't affect the presentation of the article at all, but it does make the diffs clearer. The only time you have to do it is inside a DL (lines starting with : create a DL), and I've asked Magnus to fix the new software so that won't be necessary either (though I don't think he's actually done it). --LDC

Hi Cunc -- I think that there really isn't a comparison between bowling and pitching. Bowling in cricket requires that the ball bounce and no bending of the elbow by the bowler. Bowlers also utilze cracks in the pitch to get additional movement. The action is so unlike pitching (the goal is, too, come to think of it -- there's no penalty for keeping the batsman from batting and running -- in fact, it's an advantage) that it doesn't quite work. JHK, married to someone who grew up on cricket grounds and therefore indoctrinated...

JHK is right, as legspin is dependent on the ball bouncing there isn't really a direct comparison to baseball. About the only analogy that works is between curveballs and swing bowling, in which a bowler gets the ball to curve in the air before it bounces. --Robert Merkel

Hey C, are you hanging on to your old page at Wikipedians/The Cunctator? I'm moving user pages into the user: space, and I came across it. --Stephen Gilbert

Hey, from what I remember, you created the Wikipedia logo that is currently used on the English wikipedia. Could you please send the logo in a vector graphics format to Scott Redd at redd@interbug.com and CC: me on it so I know that he gets it. He's going to use it to make the Wikipedia T-shirt logo. Also, delete this message when you're done. Thanks! --Chuck Smith

I just saw a new tribute article being created by someone who knew a victim in the 9-11 attack. The text was in all caps so at first I went right ahead and hit the edit link to convert the caps to proper case -- but then it became apparrent that the article wasn't an enclyclopedia article. I know that these pages are something that is important and something that needs to be left to posterity, but shouldn't there be some type of link or disclaimer at the top of each one of these pages that tell a wikipedia visitor that the article they are looking at is a tribute page and not really an encyclopedia article? Doing so would automatically change the way they may edit the article or stop them from deleting the content saying that the person isn't "deserving" of being in an encylopedia -- which is technically true for most of the victims but this is a special case. This would have to be well-crafted to be respectful and probably something we would have to add to each one of these articles as they are created. What do you think? Any ideas? --maveric149, Friday, May 3, 2002

Just saw another one -- heartbreaking. How about this idea for a disclaimer.

This is a tribute page about one of the people lost on the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: Normal wikipedia rules on editing do not apply.
--maveric149

Hi C. I just added some ideas of mine over on the m:Project Sourceberg page. I thought you might be interested. --Stephen Gilbert

Important note for all sysops: There is a bug in the administrative move feature that truncates the moved history and changes the edit times. Please do not use this feature until this bug is fixed. More information can be found in the talk of Brion VIBBER and maveric149. Thank you. --maveric149

Hi, I've noticed that on your last edit of the Sainfoin page, the CSS formatting markup now appears literally on my browser (Mozilla 1.0rc1). This is the edit:

(cur) (last) . . 06:56 Aug 3, 2002 . . The Cunctator (CSSified...)

Thanks, --ramin

Can you clarify "went out with" on the Waksal page: did he date them romantically, go to a restaurant with them, or what? Vicki Rosenzweig 09:43 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

Sorry about the "get a grip" thing, I guess I was being overly combative WITHOUT being respectful. I hope we can sort out the invasion vs. attack issue despite my initial broadside. --Ed Poor

What is the value/goal/purpose of the Wail Alshehri[?] page? Vicki Rosenzweig

There needs to be a Wail Alshehri entry at some point. I was only asking it be restored because it had been deleted summarily (to my knowledge).

I'm touched to be included in your "Hall of Shame". In any case you'll have to wait till they resurrect the old history (phase I) to know what happened with the article. AstroNomer

Check this out. --KQ 09:03 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

I wouldn't have minded if you had summarily deleted the article you found to be a copyright infringement Patrick Adams[?], nor I think that anyone would have. I'd trust you on that. AstroNomer

Cunc, a gift for you:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011218012318/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/September_11,_2001_Terrorist_Attack/World_economic_effects

According to the logs of that site, the article dissapeared somewhere between december 2001 and january 2002.AN

Thank you, may I ask you on my talk page September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack. --Mflagg

Thanks for moving the cunt stuff from fuck to profanity. --Ed Poor 20:46 Sep 23, 2002 (UTC)

I think I proposed this somewhere, but there was no response. The Sep 11 pages should have their own server, something like sep11.wikipedia.org. I'm sure Jimbo would agree to it. There could be copied all the information, and leave in the wikipedia only the encyclopedical content. I agree that simply sending it all to meta is not a nice solution. There it will simply be lost among all the things there are already. But here...there will continue to be voices saying why are we making an exception. What do you think of this? --AN

See my response to your request at User talk:Ram-Man -- Ram-Man

Cunctator, I don't mind you "fixing" pages listed at the votes for deletion (such as Vladimir Levin and Bob Diamond), but could you please put a reply-sentence at votes for deletion, indicating that you edited/moved/redirected that page? That way the one that put the page there (me, in these cases) can easily see that the problem has been taken care of - there are often a lot of edits to that page, and it's difficult to track them. Thanks, Jeronimo

(from User talk:Jheijmans) I try to list pages I've taken off of the Votes for deletion page in the summary. There's no really good mechanism, but I'm not going to leave them on the page if they don't belong there

Even if they don't belong there, is it such a big problem to put a line like "fixed it", or "rewrote copyrighted text". That's the common practice, and it's convenient for those who have posted or seen the entry before. Jeronimo

Cunctator, please stop messing with the 9/11 In Memoriam page. I have posted a notice on the list earlier this week that I would move everything to meta. There's been plenty of time to find another appropriate place. Now it is time for the page to leave Wikipedia. I have seen only approving reactions to the mail. Rather start working on a useful location for this stuff. Jeronimo

Hey d00d, don't leave. Larry abused me too. But don't leave cuz like we got a lot of work to do here. Lir 17:05 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)

You are talking of a thorn tc. A whole month of discussions, reverts and private 'strong' disagreement. Consensual decisions can only be made if people agree on such a way to make decisions; which is not the case. Some people just want decisions to be taken quickly, and easily, without thinking and without pain. Moving toward another one, and creative thinking seem too much trouble probably. We already moved away from a family dictatorship. I currently doubt very much we'll make any more progress w/o new "blood". I am feeling tired. Any clue will be welcome.

I'd have to actually do that for what you said to make sense. Lir 21:03 Nov 9, 2002 (UTC)

You can modify the above to...

? I didn't. I'd have to do that for that to make sense. That doesn't make sense. Huh? Um... Ok... What you said, didn't make much sense, cuz I didn't do anything wrong.

One could hardly argue that my actions in trying to change page names were any less valid than the actions of others in trying to change the page names. Lir 21:09 Nov 9, 2002 (UTC)

lol! thx for the hot tips page! Lir 21:27 Nov 9, 2002 (UTC)

meta? whats wrong with you. Lir 16:29 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)

u tell him! Lir 09:52 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Lir used various comments on his Talk page to piss people off. He was banned for not playing nicely. Leaving behind his words that were intended to piss people off is not friendly to the Wikipedia, and it negates part of the usefulness of the ban that he is under right now. Actions like restoring his trolls seem to encourage him in trying to find ways to evade the ban. Can you please explain how the Wikipedia benefits from restoring Lirs talk page exactly as he had it? --Clutch

There's a new article at Stephen Emanual Poulos that seems to belong with the In Memoriam pages. Just letting you know so you can rescue it before it's overzealously deleted. -- Someone else 02:19 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)

it's been overzealously moved to sep11:Stephen Poulos.

So I'm trigger happy, huh? The only information in Baby Boy at the point where I suggested it be deleted was that it didn't star Tupac Shakur. If someone wants to add more info to an article, that's fine, but to say I'm trigger happy because I deleted information that wasn't particularly important, and added it back to Tupac Shakur's article, is, IMNSHO, not being trigger happy. -- Zoe

Please defend your reverts on the Talk:Jehovah's Witnesses page. --Clutch 23:59 Dec 15, 2002 (UTC)

Hi. I take your point that accurate redirects not generally be deleted. Does this still apply when there is near enough to zero chance that they will ever be used though? Tannin 17:13 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)

I thought your nick was a play on the word Dictator. (snickers) CrusadeOnTerrorists

Did you leave out 24 or do you consider that a separate case? best wishes, Koyaanis Qatsi

You've just edited a protected page. How is that a better solution? Anyway, I just unprotected it. Koyaanis Qatsi

When I visited the page after you edited it, it said it was still protected. Perhaps you missed the link. Koyaanis Qatsi

Please do not do "hit and run" moves without any explanation. Wikipedia:Complaints about other contributors is too long, and conflicts with Wikipedia:Annoying users. Either merge the two pages (preferably into one with a short title), or move the first one back to "Edit wars in progress". --Eloquence 13:02 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

since the sep11 wiki was apparently your brainchild, I wonder if you could review Talk:September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Memorial wiki pages and give your opinion? Thanks :)

Why are you restoring sep11 tribute pages? It was agreed a long time ago to move these to the sep11 wiki. --mav

For obvious reasons (hehe) I'm interested in the answer to this question too... :) Martin

I would just like to say that I support the retention of factually correct, verifiable, NPOV, encyclopaedia-style material in the Wikipedia, even if some people consider it unimportant. So - I wish you good luck! :) -- Oliver P. 02:11 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

But the tribute pages are not NPOV - nor can they ever be. Facts are near impossible to check. The people are not famous therefore articles on them are not encyclopedic. Therefore these entries have no place in Wikipedia. --mav 02:14 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

I concurr. Tannin

In the victims' articles, there are lots of external links to news articles, written by professional journalists who presumably checked their facts. We could restrict the material in the victims' articles to only cover facts reported in the news articles, and if even the news articles are suspect, we can always attribute the statements by saying, "According to Tri-Town News, ..." or whatever it may be. -- Oliver P. 02:41 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

So, Oliver, you'd support the moving of articles like John Kevin McAvoy, for example? How about Patrick Currivan? Maybe Jeffrey W. Coombs? I could find more examples, but most of the articles The Cunctator restored, which comprised about half of the articles I moved over, had no external links to news articles at all. Martin

I know nothing about the people you mention above, and I can see that their articles are rather weak. However, if The Cunctator moved them back, I presume he had good reason, and can provide references for at least some of the material. I would ask him to put these references into the articles, and I would have no problem with anyone removing information which cannot be backed up with references. I would suggest moving unverified information to the talk page, with a request for references. That way the article itself would be left with verified information only, and no information would be lost, since it would still be on the talk page. If this results in the article being left in a sub-stub state for more than, say, a week, it could be put on "Votes for deletion", where it would wait another week before being removed altogether. (This wouldn't affect the memorial wiki. You can copy all the material to it anyway, since that is not an encyclopaedia, and then we can deal with the Wikipedia content under the same rules as any other Wikipedia content, without worrying about people losing their tributes.) Those are my ideas, anyway. -- Oliver P. 19:28 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

We now have a new case study with which to sort out questions of verifiability and encyclopaedicity(?) without having to worry about memorial issues. A "newbie" added an article yesterday on Ben Hajioff[?], an artist of very little fame. It was clearly meant (at least in part) as a joke, but I have rewritten it to contain only information which I know (or at least believe) to be true. I am inviting discussion to the article's talk page, so we can hopefully get some consensus on what people think the standards of verifiability really should be around here. -- Oliver P. 16:42 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Cunctator. I'll let you do all the reverting you like - in the mean time I'll busy myself fixing the sep11:In Memoriam pages. Getting into edit conflicts won't helps us sort this out, so I'll take my turn later. There's no rush, after all. Martin

You just removed my entry TV Guide on the basis that the generic term would be TV guide[?]. I guess it serves me right for putting up a straw man, but my main point (which you did not address in your edit summary) was that the article is mere advertising for a web site, and thus under Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not #18, should be deleted. Do you disagree? -- Tim Starling 06:10 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for your refactoring. Please make your views known by "voting" at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(slogans). --Uncle Ed 23:51 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

feel free to participate in the timeline. i only have western sources, so the timeline is skewed. but i try to give it as much NPOV as possible. It has been quite an excersize of thought unpacking what the media says, and putting it into NPOV. I am currently going through news archives and filling in the past. It will take a few more months to have the past be comprehensive. But at least I am staying on top of what is current, too. I'm glad to hear someone is actually reading it! Kingturtle 11:32 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

re: :Image:Time; gulf war2.jpg - you need to hit the (del) link to actually delete it... not "delete this page" Martin 17:28 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry about reinserting the Dan Marino page on VFD, at the time it looked like it had been taken out by Rbrwr in the same edit that was only summarized as "Public Record Office - done", which made it look to me like an accidental removal. I've taken it back off of there now. -- John Owens

Hey Cunctator, do you think Timeline of U.S. economic indicators has any future? It seems like it'll be a LOT of work to bring it up to date, and if no one will update it, it seems like it should be deleted. -- Minesweeper 09:45 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

I see that you have discovered that tar-baby called "communist state." Had you followed the lengthy debates on the talk:China page (much now archived), you would have been forewarned. Apparently we are dealing with some platonic ideal that is resistant of historical specificity, empirical evidence, and accessible only to a few authorities. My sympathies, and good luck! Slrubenstein

That's right. All hail the ivroy tower.

Yes, Cunc. It's quite simple to seperate a formal and rather theoretical system of government from an in-the-flesh history of nations - exactly as you would seperate the mechanics and engineering and science of making a machine gun (history of weaponry[?] or science of ballistics[?] or whatever) from the historical impact that machine guns had on warfare (which is the sort of thing that is discussed in trench warfare and American Civil War. Obviously, the topics are related and need to be cross-linked. Communist state is about the organisation of communist states. In its best form (pre your revert) it was an excellent, very balanced and accurate entry. Communist government seems to be about the history of the major communist states, though it was rather incoherent last time I looked at it. It needs work. Tannin 09:30 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Please, quit your ill-informed slanders. I invited Tannin, Sluberstien, and Jtdirl to work on the Industrial Revolution because

1.) I've worked with them far more often than just about anyone else due to similar interests (Have you noticed that all these users just happen to work often with history articles?)

2.) I know that they all bring great quality to articles

3.) I've worked with them in articles pertaining to related topics (Tannin and Slub with New Imperialism comes to mind right away) so I had the feeling that they might have been interested and

4.) because they all have academics backgrounds. Of all the reasons, probably the first determined why those three just came to mind right away.

Would you be interested in working on this article? If you want, I'd be very happy to work with you since this article is my first priority once I'm not so busy aside from Wiki. If not, than this isn't your concern.

Although I did not directly invite Mav since he probably has hundreds of other priorities (have you seen the list of most active Wikipedians? He's up there as two or three, I believe, with something like 30,000 edits), I asked one of the three, I Tannin, if he'd like to invite Mav, figuring that he would know better than I if Mav were likely to be interested. Mav came to mind because his academic background is in the natural sciences and I wondered if he could help with technological innovation, especially considering that Mav is quite well-rounded and well-versed in history as well. So far, Tannin has agreed to come to the article eventually while Jtdirl hasn't replied (probably because he hasn't seen the request).

I know a thing or two about Communism, and I'm not a Communist and none of the people with whom I've often worked come nowhere close either. There is a Communist Party USA and I have never participated with in any way. I even fundamentally disagree with many Green Party platforms as well, especially on matters of trade, but others as well. So I've never contemplated joining a party further to the left on the far left, nonetheless the CP-USA. I'm merely a registered Democrat, who'd be considered farley moderate on most issues not pertaining to foreign policy. I'm certain that Jtdirl and Tannin have no damn partisan attachments whatsoever to presenting Communist history either (Jtdril is an Irish social democrat and I have no idea what Tannin's politics are) from a sympathetic point of view. In fact, if this site were an opinion piece I'm sure that they would be writing from a view firmly opposing the Communist state structure as a government-type. So please, quit your slanderous charges and finally realize that this was a fight over relevance and quality, not ideology (at least from our point of view).

I myself have written more articles that would be considered "anti-Communist" by lay readers than probably you and Fred Bauder and all the other contributors under the paranoid and asinine suspicions of "historical revisionism" put together. If you wanted to work with articles with me on the stagnation of the Soviet economy once it had exhausted its capacity for industrial growth, the social consequences of collectivization, or the distortions of the Soviet economy that have made the post-Communist so wrenching throughout Eastern Europe, we could work constructively together, on articles you'd like.

Do you really think that I called Jtdirl over to the Communist state article to protect it from a perspective with which I disagree? If that were the case, what the hell would explain all the material that I've contributed that would not be considered "anti-Communist"?

If you like we could put aside this bickering and get to work on some articles. However, I'd expect you to retract those ridiculous statements that you posted on the mailing list.

172

Hey, cool it down a little, Abe. We shouldn't mix up Cunc (who though we disagree from time to time, is a man of good will and good sense) with anyone else. OK, Cunc said something unwarranted that got my goat and yours. But it was relatively mild, spoken in goodwill, and he later posted again to say that he meant no harm by it, and apologised if he had offended. In my book, that is a fair offer and a gentlemanly act. Let's just leave it at that.

Cunc, what do you say? I'm away from my email right now and can't post to the list without a lot of tedious stuffing about, but I thank you for your softly spoken words, and accept them in the spirit of concilliation that they were offered in. I hope that you too will accept my regret that the disagreement happened, and I'll look forward to working with you on whatever entry our paths happen to cross on. Best -- Tannin 07:29 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Opps, I didn't see the latest letter. It's 3:30 in the morning here in the Eastern US, so my language might have been harsher than I would've liked ordinarily. It stemmed from reading his letter charging that I invited my Communist comrades to the Industrial Revolution page. I know that Cunc is a good contributor as well, but that letter was out of line and very ill-informed. It was an unbecoming application of the baseless charges of "historical revisionism" being promulgated by Fred Bauder. 172

Then why don't you delete the offending message? I'm sure tc will read it anyway but if you delete it he will read your retraction first. --mav

The letter is fine in content, but maybe could stand to be milder in tone. The charges still haven't gone away so my response still has its place on this page to address them. User:172|172]]

---

Cunc, I read your "I do honestly believe that factionalization is a dangerous thing" comment on 172's talk page. I am not convinced that there is any serious danger of that here (at least I can't think of any particular signs of it at this stage), but ... well ... if you want to talk more about it at some stage, I'll listen.

The suggestion that 172, JTD and I are a "faction" or might become one is just silly though. (Not having a go at you here: I seem to remember that you didn't dream that one up: it was just Fred's rampant paranoia, and I doubt that anyone takes that stuff too seriously.) Fair dinkum, you ought to take a look at some of our edit histories: 172 and I had a great big edit war in an African history entry early on, and JTD and I have clashed heavily too. Doubtless we will disagree again on things before too long. History is like that: it's contentious stuff. In fact the one thing that really has produced something of a sense of community between Fred's three Communist Revisionist Holocaust Deniers (or whatever we are in fantasyland this particular week) is the common experience of being abused and lumped together. In this particular case, the best (and quite possibly the only) way to create a cabal is to accuse people of belonging to a cabal.

But enough of that. You mentioned "atomization". I don't promise to be persuaded by you if you want to outline whaht you mean by that, but I will listen. -- Tannin 17:12 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

I don't care if you think that I'm a Communist or not. I'm not particularly concerned with the historical approach of memorizing a lot of facts and coming to ideals-based or values-based conclusions anyway. I'm concerned with your charges and Fred's charges of me seeking to omit content that doesn't fit my agenda. It doesn't matter what ideology you charged me with advancing; the charge that I was advancing something was what was offensive.

Now, I think that I've addressed this several times before, but you keep quoting me out of context.....

Thus, the trends that I noted were just there to show the problems with Fred's approach: sweeping generalizations. My problems with Fred's edits stemmed not from finding them unpleasant given any ideological persuasion that I might hold or even a disagreement of historical interpretation. My problem was simply his bad approach disrespecting the complexity of history.

172

Excellent work on hasty generalization (why didn't I think of that!). A minor nit though; the structure of the linkages may get a bit hairy by and by. Cimon avaro 03:21 18 May 2003 (UTC)

What is inherently funny about the word "sock", without context? Mintguy 21:17 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Ah, Mintguy, we meet again on our quest to rid the world of Inherently funny word. Cunctator, can you document your moving the page this way and that way on the talk page. Thanks. CGS 20:29 24 Jun 2003 (UTC).

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!