02-10-2017, 07:45 PM
Glad to help. It wasn't sarcastic at all. I am well aware of the issues with Wikipedia you cited, as well as the general concerns people have with an encyclopedia that people can just edit (which are mostly misplaced, because as you pointed out in practice the pages are pretty tightly controlled by the editors). So I was willing to find other sources to make the point, I just felt that as fairly well-research articles on a (now) politically neutral topic, they were more effective for summing up a wide range of information than to go through the links and the search pages and find the various accredited articles directly.
Growing up, my parents owned several encyclopedias, namely their Student Handbooks from when they were in college in the 70s. They always made a point of making me look things up for myself when I had questions. As a result of this, I know what a "real" encyclopedia article looks like, and I appreciate the job pages like Wikipedia have done, even while acknowledging some of the issues you addressed.
Look, I am not emotionally invested in anything that happens on this board, and when I start to become so, I leave for an extended period of time. I don't hold grudges, and I am here because I genuinely want to discuss certain issues that I can't in real life outside friends/family, not all of whom read as widely as I do. So, provided someone, say, refrains from repeatedly implying that I am a liar and/or a moron, I am happy to be (reasonably) civil. I got out of the Army almost seven years ago, and at that time I, barring possibly law enforcement officials, lost my legal obligations to respond politely to "Hey, Fuckface"-type comments from my elders.
That aside, I do wish sometimes that you take a little more time when selecting links in response to requests for further information. The article from the white supremacist website was an egregious example, which I took as nothing more than a sign of relative haste in responding. Like, I read Oswald Spengler. Some of his shorter works, I have read as PDFs, many of which are hosted and offered for free by sites like "Aryan_Nation" or what-have-you. It is simply one of the unfortunate drawbacks of getting free stuff, and I don't feel bad in reading it anyways, but I would be hesitant to link directly to the site as opposed to downloading it and attaching it instead (though amnot sure that is an option here). In general, I try to cognizant that the source says almost as much as the link itself, even if I know what is in there to be true from other, not web-accessible sources.
Not trying to tell you how to post, just throwing it out there.
Growing up, my parents owned several encyclopedias, namely their Student Handbooks from when they were in college in the 70s. They always made a point of making me look things up for myself when I had questions. As a result of this, I know what a "real" encyclopedia article looks like, and I appreciate the job pages like Wikipedia have done, even while acknowledging some of the issues you addressed.
Look, I am not emotionally invested in anything that happens on this board, and when I start to become so, I leave for an extended period of time. I don't hold grudges, and I am here because I genuinely want to discuss certain issues that I can't in real life outside friends/family, not all of whom read as widely as I do. So, provided someone, say, refrains from repeatedly implying that I am a liar and/or a moron, I am happy to be (reasonably) civil. I got out of the Army almost seven years ago, and at that time I, barring possibly law enforcement officials, lost my legal obligations to respond politely to "Hey, Fuckface"-type comments from my elders.
That aside, I do wish sometimes that you take a little more time when selecting links in response to requests for further information. The article from the white supremacist website was an egregious example, which I took as nothing more than a sign of relative haste in responding. Like, I read Oswald Spengler. Some of his shorter works, I have read as PDFs, many of which are hosted and offered for free by sites like "Aryan_Nation" or what-have-you. It is simply one of the unfortunate drawbacks of getting free stuff, and I don't feel bad in reading it anyways, but I would be hesitant to link directly to the site as opposed to downloading it and attaching it instead (though amnot sure that is an option here). In general, I try to cognizant that the source says almost as much as the link itself, even if I know what is in there to be true from other, not web-accessible sources.
Not trying to tell you how to post, just throwing it out there.
