QUOTE(Somey @ Thu 17th September 2009, 11:16pm)
So, has anyone attempted to make sense of the underlying dispute here? It looks like
RussaviaÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
is Russian and pro-Putin, and to some extent pro-Serbia (in line with the traditional Russian support of Serbia), whereas the people on the mailing list in question are... anti-Russia? Or just anti-Putin, or against pro-Russian attempts to whitewash Soviet history? Piotrus claims to be from Poland, and went to the University of Pittsburgh, so that would tend to reinforce that notion (i.e., he's likely to have a Western-influenced view of Soviet history).
Most of Russavia's edits are "wikignoming," adding categories and some rather unfortunate mass-stubbings of politician BLP's and the like, but I saw a few diffs in there like
this one, the likes of which apparently led some of these mailing-list folks to accuse him of being a "neo-Nazi."
Sooo.... putting their tactics aside for the moment, I can't say I blame these mailing-list folks all that much for their dislike of Mr. Russavia. Then again, it's probably also true that a lot of the Russia-bashing that occurs on WP in general is unfair and inaccurate. Hence the problem, eh?
This is one of the long running trends I have seen. Basically there is an unreasonable editor pushing a POV or some other wiki-crime. But the other side facing them wants so complete a POV victory and lacks the range of skills of debate required to show the POV pusher is wrong, that they resort to the heavy handed tactics documented in so many cases (Cold Fusion, WMC-Abd, JzG-Abd, Homeopathy, etc).
I would imagine 90% of the people in this forum are closer to "the house's" view of Scientology than the COFS' view of its own religion, but objected to the way in which "the house" handled the cases over the years.
So I would not be surprised at all to learn that Russavia has an extreme POV or that he is pushing a POV. Just that his opposition couldn't articulate it to the satisfaction of the community and turned to these alleged mailing list shenanigans to accomplish the same result.