Then there's
this diff :
QUOTE
===Thoughts from Moreschi===
Upon study of the logs from IRC, and upon review of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard/Archive_10#Romance_vs_Romantic_2], it seems that Ottava has a rather odd view of the humanities, and some bizarre views surrounding logic and opinions. Essentially, his position is that the fields of literature, history etc can be usefully described as sciences, with an established and orderly system of rules and minimal space for dissent from established norms. One might call this math envy, I suppose. It's a common problem in philosophy, the envy of the clarity and accuracy of pure mathematics: logical propositions true in any world.
But more accurately, Ottava seems to be suffering from "science envy". Now, while science contains enormous space for dissent, there are certain established norms which most people sign up to: the earth is however many billions of years old, Darwin was largely right about evolution, global warming is a problem, homeopathy is bunk, etc. These are backed by exhaustive research and evaulations of mathematical data. And Ottava thinks literature functions in a similar way. But it doesn't. There just isn't a literary set of norms, nor a historical set of norms, because the sources are ''personal'' and not ''statistical''. That Ottava can be so deeply educated and yet so completely mis-educated is somewhat depressing.
Regardless, this explains, I think, a great deal of Ottava's tendentiousness. In science, you see, someone has to be right! The scientists and the AIDS denialists can't both be right, nor can the homeopaths and the anti-homeopaths. But this doesn't apply to literature, or history, or indeed any other field of humanities. The problem we have is that the minute Ottava enters a dispute, he clams up to the possibility of compromise as if he were a scientist being confronted with a flat-earth theorist. Of course, his opponents rarely are flat-earth theorists, and sometimes ([[Persian Empire]], and what a screaming example of [[Wikipedia:Sword-skeleton theory]] that was) Ottava comes dangerously close to being the flat-earther himself.
These are clearly deeply ingrained views, and I don't think Ottava is likely to change them any more than he's going to abandon his radical Catholicism. That isn't helping either, by the way: the courage of conviction needed to hold such faith is deeply admirable, but when the courage of convictions is applied to other fields where compromise is needed, we then have a mindset unfit for collaborative editing. It is, of course, perfectly possible to separate religious faith from other parts of one's mindset, but Ottava doesn't.
Such, at any rate, is my analysis of the mindset that had led us to RFAR. [[User:Moreschi|Moreschi]] ([[User talk:Moreschi|talk]]) 16:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
....This looks to me as if it's crossed the line into personal attacks. It's on the Arbcom Workshop case, so the Arbs can't say that they didn't see it.
The question is : in a project which tries to pretend that it is the "sum of all human knowledge", is there room for conflicting viewpoints?
People are orthodox jews/muslems/catholics/protestants etc. There are enough of them that their viewpoint form part of "the sum of all human knowledge".
How is labeling these belief systems as "radical" helping the process of writing an encyclopedia? And isn't this the core issue here?