User talk:64.7.161.51

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[edit] Young Americans for Freedom Edits

See WP:VAN where it notes "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism." Thus just because you think an edit was a bad one, it does not at all mean it was "vandalism"--you just have a difference of opinion with another editor. Your rationale for changing one of my edits to the Young Americans for Freedom article was that you were "deleting vandalism, removing grammar errors." I'm not sure what the grammar errors were, but clearly what I had written was not vandalism (one editor who has done a lot of work on that article has said on the talk page that my edit was useful, which is of course not to say that it should be a permanent, un-deletable part of the article, but rather simply that it is not vandalism). My passage (in the section on Lasting Influence) read:

"YAF had a great deal of influence in the early 1960's when conservative activism on college campuses was probably more prominent than liberal and leftist activism.[citation needed] YAF remained a powerful force on campuses throughout the late 1960's and early 1970's until the end of the Vietnam War."

You have edited this to say:

"YAF had a great deal of influence in the 1960s and remained a powerful force on campuses throughout until the end of the Vietnam War. With that said, the organization is gaining ground today with conservative students distancing themselves from the College Republicans."

First of all, if you are going to correct grammar errors you ought not add additional ones (i.e. "throughout until"). More importantly, you give no rationale for your edit or why what you removed constituted "vandalism." What I wrote is actually quite similar to what you wrote, although it adds more detail and calls for additional citations for the idea that conservative activism was greater than left activism in the early 1960s (I think this is probably true, I just think it should be cited).

So I'm not sure what you were thinking of in terms of "vandalism" (again the wrong term to use), though I'm guessing it relates to my deletion of the sentence about YAF and the College Republicans today. The article cited in footnote 32 provides no information whatsoever that suggests conservative students are ditching the College Republicans for YAF. Because it is not cited, and never has been, I removed this information and posted a note about this section on the Talk:Young Americans for Freedom page which called for a cited source (see the section Lasting Influence on the talk page). Since you have not provided a source for the growth of the YAF at the expense of the College Reps I don't see how we can possibly include this info. If you do we can.

I'm going to revert back to my old edit in this section, for now, though I have no problem with your first sentence quoted above if you prefer that formulation to mine (what I wrote emphasizes how strong YAF was in the early 1960s vis a vis liberal campus activism in contrast to the late 60s which I think is important). However I think your second sentence should not be in there unless it can be sourced. Feel free to reply on the article talk page (where I will post a quick note) or on my talk page. --Bigtimepeace 23:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)