Will Beback's passive-aggressive approach, and Cberlet, just plain aggressive Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Get a load of this. Note how deftly Will avoids addressing the actual issue at hand.

[Merzbow]

Honestly that whole argument about that single paragraph seemed kind of pointless to me. As I made clear on the page I thought that it was already clear enough the views were King's, because the surrounding text was already scattered with "according to King" and the like. The rewrite I proposed is basically a copyedit for precision and clarity; hopefully it will get approved.

Although I am on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Chip on most issues, his published writings on LaRouche appear mostly accurate to me, and I don't see a conflict in him adding his own published stuff. Note how I say "published", not "self-published". I've spoken against other editors who try to cite their own blog posts in Wikipedia, for example; unfortunately I was ignored. This probably stems from the fact that people who do police the orthodox viewpoint on controversial issues do get cut more slack. This is probably the way it should be, since otherwise stuff like the 9/11 article space would just get devastated by those who can't get their fringe views published elsewhere; but everybody has one "orthodox" viewpoint somewhere that they take issue with, and it is painful to see slack cut there to the "other side"...

This post has been edited by Merzbow: Sat 5th April 2008, 1:01am

[Herschelkrustofsky]

The rewrite I proposed is basically a copyedit for precision and clarity; hopefully it will get approved.

That seems likely, although Alison is going for simple deletion of the paragraph in question.

This debate marks a big change in the way Wikipedia has handled the LaRouche question. Until last summer, SlimVirgin personally OWNed every LaRouche article, and any editor that got in Chip's way was summarily banned without a fig leaf of due process. Will Beback was content to play Igor to her Dr. Frankenstein (with Chip being the monster.) However, for reasons that undoubtably have to do with her own changing fortunes at WP, Slim bowed out (although she made a brief reprise as Sunsplash until we at the Review blew her cover.) Now Will is forced to act alone as Chip's campaign manager.

Things might have gone their way, until Chip made a typically impetuous tactical error of calling an article RfC. Then things got interesting. Editors like Cla68 showed up and noticed, evidently for the first time, that the Chipster has a massive COI problem. I think this may lead to further action by the "community."

(Merzbow on the Wikipedia talk page)
Given that reliable sources universally take a negative view of LaRouche and his career, this does indeed appear to be the neutral formulation of such.

As some editors pointed out on that talk page some months ago, this is a good example of WP:BIAS. "Reliable sources," which I think is a highly dubious concept when applied uncritically to the press, condemn LaRouche "universally" only if you restrict your view (as Wikipedia typically does) to the publications of the WASP establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. LaRouche gets high marks from Russian, Chinese and Third World publications, which are typically ignored or treated scornfully by WP.

[Moulton]

... summarily banned without a fig leaf of due process.

This observation seems to be sufficiently repeated in so many cases that Lar is almost certainly telling it like it is when he summarily concedes that Wikipedia simply doesn't do Due Process, full stop.