User talk:Unneekway
I FIND IT INTERESTING THAT DGG DELETED VIRTUALLY ALL OF THE COMMENTARY FROM PEOPLE WHO APPARENTLY DISAGREE WITH HIM, EXCEPT MAYBE THE LEAST POLITE ONE. WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION FOR TRYING TO HIDE THE COMMENT HISTORY? TO ME THIS SUGGESTS A BIAS AND AN INABILITY ON DGG'S PART TO TOLERATE OPPOSING POINTS OF VIEW. THERE ARE TONS OF DIFFERENT CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ARTICLE, AS WELL AS MANY PEOPLE WHO EXPRESSED CONCERN, AND IT IS AN INSULT TO SUGGEST THAT ALL OF THEM HAD A "PROMOTIONAL" MOTIVE NOT PRESENT WITH OTHER ARTICLES. THERE ARE NUMEROUS CONTRIBUTORS TO NUMEROUS ARTICLES ABOUT NUMEROUS DIFFERENT SCHOLARS AND PUBLIC FIGURES, WHO MIGHT BE MOTIVATED TO CONTRIBUTE BECAUSE THEY IDENTIFY WITH THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PERSON DISCUSSED. THAT IS TRUE FOR A WHOLE RANGE OF PEOPLE, FROM THE VERY FAMOUS LIKE MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. OR BARACK OBAMA OR MILTON FRIEDMAN TO COLLEGE PROFESSORS, AUTHORS, ETC. WHY IS OUR "PROMOTIONAL" BIAS WORSE THAN YOUR "SUPPRESSION" BIAS? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.146.74.167 (talk) 02:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Unneekway, you haven’t stumbled into the Twilight Zone, you’ve stumbled into a hornet’s nest. You earlier complained that “the article is a platform piece in favor of homeschooling,” now you claim not to care about homeschooling “either way.” You slandered Witte by asserting he wrote everything himself, when even an amateur can tell from the Wiki history that assertion is transparently untrue. You then did practically no research before recommending an entire article for deletion, thereby demeaning the work of all the many contributors who actually did bother to do some research. Ever heard of Westlaw, Lexis, Google, the law library, electronic newspaper databases? Learn how to do some legal research and read legal articles, for crying out loud. You could have verified virtually everything straight away with just those sources, including many from many multiple sources that are peer-reviewed or edited, rather than trying to slip through an act of total vandalism fueled solely by your admitted ignorance and misrepresentations. It’s not just about “a @#$%@#$% Wikipedia article,” it’s about the freedom Wiki gives to all of us to obtain information that some people don’t want heard so viewers can reach their own conclusions.
By the way, one of the advantages of Wiki is that it can have longer articles and more articles than a hardcopy encyclopedia would have. That allows Wiki to include facts and details difficult to find anywhere else in one spot. Viewers are always free to scroll past sections not of interest to them. So worry about including interesting detail, not length itself. If there is one big weakness with Wiki, it is that some articles are too short for what I would like to know about the topic, not too long with information I can always disregard because it is only interesting to someone else.
You are not a bigot because you were “curious enough to look [Witte] up,” you are a bigot because you tried to keep other people from having that same opportunity to look him up. You want to keep people from finding out that home-educated people succeed. Witte helped stop California and other states from throwing home educators in jail or cover up the past; people like you would see home educators sent to prison again if you could. People like you would cleanse Wiki into just another generic information outlet. Go do something important with your own life, and we will all be happy to write an article about you someday as well. not signed, but added by 24.9.76.167 on December 14, 2009.
- Do not be concerned about the above unsigned anonymous attack on your work, none of you work is in any way vandalism, but rather good NPOV editing. I truly appreciate your constructive efforts on the article, but it may be simpler for you if I continue them, especially since it may be necessary to make a much more drastic cut that you were attempting that aroused such a reaction.
I am doing what I can as an experienced editor to make an acceptable Wikipedia article out of it; if others insist on turning it into a combination advertisement for his ideas and and promotional piece for his importance, I will have no alternative but to take it to AfD for a community opinion of whether it can remain in Wikipedia. I think his notability is borderline, and I cannot predict the result, except that it is extremely unlikely to support keeping the sort of expansive article others have been reverting to.
Had I instead chosen to act as an administrator, I think I would have been justified in deleting the article out of hand under WP:CSD G11, primarily promotional, but I have some reputation here in rescuing articles, and I instead tried to to see want I could make of this one. I admit I did not notice the attack on you above, or perhaps I would have accepted it as proof of a promotional motive.