Hey guys, I was actually wondering if I had any kind of reputation on this website?

Last I saw of you, you stabbed me in the back after I'd helped you vs. Homeontherange.

However, that was a long time ago.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Review.

Why what did I do?

I'll PM you.

Never heard of you. Maybe some of the more wiki addicted follow your career. Welcome I suppose.

Your rep here seems largely encapsulated here, if you haven't bothered to search for your name yet.

I think this exchange gives you in a pretty tidy snapshot: not entirely unreasonable, but thoroughly biased and willing to harp on tangential points to promote your bias.

The funny thing is I don't even really have very strong beliefs on anything. I started editing with every intention of being completely neutral in every respect but I found myself essentially forced to choose sides and then being forced to stick with it for the entire time I edited wikipedia. Wikipedia is only fun if you edit non-controversial articles in which you have special semi-esoteric knowledge in. Other than that it is pretty infuriating for everyone involved. I think the vast majority of people on every side are generally reasonable and intelligent people who just got really really worked up over things.

You have summed up about as succinctly as I've ever seen the symptoms of a person who has never reflected on the fact that he or she has a point of view, and so assumes by default that it must be neutral. Prime Wikipediot Materal.

Jon

Here you go. Something you need to read, maybe. It's just a little 18 point oath.

You misunderstand me I think. I'm not saying that when I was editing controversial stuff I wasn't biased as hell, since I was. I'm just saying that if those articles were not the shitstorm that they were I could've carried on editing in a reasonable and relatively impartial manner. Instead like just about everyone else I was pushed to one side. Whereas in a calm environment I could put aside the pov I did have without ever really having to acknowledge I even had one. Obviously this is nobodies fault but human nature's.

You're yet another tool of SlimVirgin and Jayjg. As an individual you're of little interest.

You seem to have largely ceased editing wikipedia though. Any reason?

I grew bored with it and didn't really feel as strongly towards the issues anymore. Anyways, both sides became pretty organized so I don;t think I'm more of a tool than anyone else.

You're still a tool though - particularly when it came to joining Jayjg, SV, Humus and the crew in ganging up on editors who opposed your POV and hounding them out of wikipedia. Do you think you might have acted like a little shit to some people?

Well I am kinda a hot-headed person so when I met up with other hot-headed people I'm sure I did lots of things. Who is this anyways?

If you want to be welcome here you're probably going to be confronted on some of the shit you pulled on people and asked to apologize.

Perhaps this is an effect of content being decided by reverts and "consensus"? You face a group of people on the other side. They revert and argue against your reasonable additions and changes. Someone else comes along and reverts to and argues for yours. After a few incidents like this, you now have friends, whom you're naturally obliged to assist when they are arguing their perhaps less-reasonable positions against the same set of opponents: factionalization.

I'm not really worried about becoming accepted or anything, its not like I'm planning on becoming a fixture of the community. I'm not going to apologize unless I know the incident[s] you are referring to could you PM me?.

How can he know what to apologize for if he doesn't know who he's talking to? Isn't that why it's generalized to, "for, you know, being that way?" I doubt he sees himself as a "tool of Jayjg and SlimVirgin", which seems to be code for pushing a pro-Israel point of view - most people who hold this point of view do not have to be convinced by Jay and/or Slim. Do you wish him to apologize for supporting Israel, or is there something more specific?

Good point, but even if "your friends" have reasonable points when you support them you are no longer arguing your own point. Factionalization is a good way of putting it.

He doesn't need to apologize to me but there are people on WR who he would need to apologize to. I'll let them speak for themselves.

I just don't understand what you are trying to accomplish here. You seem to want to publicly invite a series of e-mail/PM exchanges with people you've wronged, but don't want to publicly discuss the same or accept responsibility. Do you have anything to contribute here of general interest?

I guess I'm most interested in looking at past things from the other side so to speak. Like reading a revisionist history book about Christopher Columbus. I think this is a pretty positive goal.

Why should anyone but you care about this "project?"

Well if they are still angry about anything they have an opportunity to talk to me about it at a time I am receptive.

Lucky them.

The trouble is that anything can become controversial. Who'd have thought there could be a dispute about whether someone who wrote about his Jewish grandparents, who has an article in the Jewish Encyclopedia and the Encyclopaedia Judaica, was of Jewish ancestry?

And it only happens once a year, in the early Fall....

I see no reason why Silverburg should be trolled or pestered with demands to apologize for some vague way of being. I will not say myself that I trust him. He did apologize for having wronged me in the past, and I see no reason not to think him sincere. Were I Silverburg, I would ignore this and contribute to the Wikipedia Review. Many interesting things are discussed here.

You don't know Wikipedia if you don't read the Wikipedia Review.

And as others have said in the past, WR is better than any watchlist, period.

I think you misunderstand Jon Awbery as well as yourself. Most of what anyone believes seems to himself logically to follow from the facts he is aware of, which (he believes) he acquired without any bias: no "strong beliefs" about anything; just reasoned positions based on the evidence.

But of course, even if unwittingly, our evidence is always biased. Because I live in and grew up in America, I have been inundated with facts presented from a thoroughly America-centric position. Most of what happens in the world, based on the facts I have accumulated with no bias on my own part, has to do with American actions and American interests.

Of course, this is rubbish, but it requires connecting a few dots that you are rarely directed to connect in order to realize it: America, while big and powerful, is too small a part of the world to dominate it in the way the normal stream of facts presented to me would suggest. It simply makes no sense that as much of the world's doings are as based on American actions and interests as any level of reading of the New York Times or any other American publication would suggest.

And for you, it seems perfectly reasonable to mention that "some" people who use the term "apartheid" with reference to Israel are terrorists, and that anyone objecting to pointing this out is appropriately met with comments about killing babies. That's the world of facts that you live in. To others it may be a cesspool, but to you it's cool, refreshing spring water. And anything that upsets this serene vision you hold is obviously introduced in wickedness, and dealt with as your fellow dreamers/liars SlimVirgin and Jayjg have demonstrated.

And even now you excuse yourself, noting that "if those articles were not the shitstorm that they were I could've carried on editing in a reasonable and relatively impartial manner." But, Silverburg, or Julian Diamond or whatever you're calling yourself now, all of Wikipedia is a shitstorm, or has the potential to be one. I would suggest that a reasonable person of good will, having recognized the weaknesses in himself that you have recognized, would stay away from Wikipedia until he'd figured out how not to get carried away in a shitstorm.