User talk:Mateo LeFou

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[edit] A welcome from Sango123

Hello, Mateo LeFou, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions; I hope you like the place and decide to stay. We're glad to have you in our community! Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Though we all make goofy mistakes, here is what Wikipedia is not. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. The Community Portal can also be very useful.

Happy Wiki-ing!

-- Sango123 14:20, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you need help with anything or simply wish to say hello. :)

Everyone is against me on this site...everything that I have tried or will tried to do is rejected. Some things aeons old are brought up against me, as far as I am concerned...vandals are treated better than I am.Molotov (talk)
19:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus

Thanks for helping out on Jesus. Also, please be sure to sign your posts on talk pages by hitting four ~ signs in a row. It'll automatically sign and date for you. Friday (talk) 21:26, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Jerry Taylor

Jesus, dude, you don't have to comment in 500 places all over the Jerry Taylor talk page. I tried to get the discussion on that straightened out for a reason. — WCityMike (T | C) 15:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

well, i was accused of starting up a personal attack page. i'm pretty much done with that whole issue Mateo LeFou 15:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't dispute your right to respond as you like. But it's a bit difficult for people to respond to your queries when you place your discussions in various spots all over the page. That's why new posts go on the bottom; it's a "chronological sort" kind of thing. — WCityMike (T | C) 16:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
i can dig. my contribs are usually little off-the-cuff bits. never been in on anything "controversial" before; didn't really know the protocol for those discussion pages.
No sweat. Sorry for blowing up at you. Well, not "blowing up," per se, but getting mildly grumpy. — WCityMike (T | C) 16:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Israel-Venezuela relations

The assertion by Flanker that I created the Israel-Venezuela relations page to attack Chávez is a ridiculous personal attack. The fact that there are so many accusations against Chávez keeps getting criticized, but it's not like there's a whole bunch of Israeli or Jewish leaders coming out and saying "hey, this guy loves the Jews." If there were such quotes they would be included. I have repeatedly stated that if users are unhappy with the article then they are welcome to go out and find sourced content that supports the opposing view. The problem is, the opposing view, namely that Chávez has either maintained or improved ties with Israel and/or Venezuelan Jews, is virtually nonexistent. Respectfully, Republitarian 01:25, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem is not that the article includes only one view of Chavez's anti-semitism. The problem is that the article focuses on anti-semitism (a highly inflammatory topic in any case) and has only a cursory interest in relations between Venezuela and Israel. The Israel section of Foreign_policy_of_Hugo_Chavez is far superior, despite having a couple of its own problems. Mateo LeFou 15:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PECT: An example

This diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez&diff=69809873&oldid=69757043 is a good example of how not to contribute to a controversial topic. "CIA documents show the Bush administration – at the very least - knew about the plot..." could have been a nice concise fact but for the part between the dashes. That part serves no purpose but to paint the administration negatively. The correction should have been to just remove that part, but instead we got "Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American attorney who runs a pro-Chávez website, says that CIA documents show ..." and the part between the commas serves only to cast aspersion on the reliability of Golinger's reporting. As it turns out, the referenced piece is by Amy Goodman; although it includes an interview with Golinger, the assertion about what the administration knew is in Goodman's lead.

This strikes me as a case where a primary source ought to be favored. Goodman's article quotes it for us: "dissident military factions...are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chavez, possibly as early as this month." I'd like to see the ellision but that's pretty clear-cut. The administration had knowledge of the developing coup. Implying more than that (w/"at the very lest") is anti-administration bias, but the appositive about Golinger attempts to instill uncertainty about what is obviously true and verified.

PECT principle #2 echoes my beliefs exactly; I especially agree with your assertion that an encyclopedist "will encapsulate the best arguments for and against." I'm sure you know that I've campaigned extensively for the removal of tit-for-tat assertions and overly-specific citations; in fact, I accomplished that in the introduction. I want to explain briefly the theses of critics, succintly state what has led to their theses, and move on. Here are a few examples of the superfluous negative details that Sandy would like to include (see her POV list), the type of details that lead to tit-for-tat claims and detract from the broader picture:
  • It hasn't been made clear to the unitiated that Chavez changed what was a single five-year Presidential term to two terms, in addition to wrangling another interim election, resulting in a possible 14-year term.
To bolster this point, she inserted this highly contentious assertion: "In spite of a presidential term limit of 12 years, according to The Economist, Chávez often suggests that he will remain in power for 25 years, a claim he denies as a misinterpretation of his intent." Assertions such as this are so biased that they do not belong in an encyclopedia. Thus, I removed it and inserted this neutral sentence: "Chávez has said that if the opposition boycotts the 2006 Venezuelan presidential election, he might hold a referendum to procure a mandate to run for re-election 'indefinitely'." By stating what Chavez actually said, instead of The Economist's exaggeration, there is no need for a rebutal: we can avoid tit-for-tat assertions. But Sandy re-inserted the original sentence, which has a purely polemical effect. Preferrably, this tid-bit of information should be removed entirely, for why is it relevant to state what Chavez might do, or what he says he will do but hasn't done yet? Unless it has materialized, it's just rhetoric.
  • No mention of violent take over of Coca-Cola plants to "feed the masses".
Does anybody really care about the nationalization of a Coca-Cola plant? Readers would much rather read an in-depth explantion of Chavez's overall strategy of nationalization, and what he aims to accomplish through it—that would be much more informative and thought-provoking.
  • Weapons buildup, drug trafficing center omitted
We should instead discuss the general role and purpose of the military in Chavez's Venezuela, not just the weapons buildup. Venezuela's military is unique in that Chavez has made it very civilian-oriented: that is, he has not only encouraged greater civilian participation, but has utilized the military to administer some of his social programs. The weapons build-up and its causes, are important to discuss; nonetheless, they comprise only one segment of Venezuela's military complex.
With regards to Venezuela being a drug-trafficking center, can we assume that it is the fault of Chavez, or that Chavez can unilaterally stop all drug-trafficking? Of course not. A multitude of long-standing, even permanent factors have resulted in this reality, e.g. Venezuela's proximity to both the epicentre of cocaine production and the largest market for cocaine, and the financial and logistical impracticality of fortifying Venezuela's entire border with Colombia. (If Mexico was the leading cocaine producer, there would be much more cocaine in the US, I'm sure. Similarly, if the US was a developing country, Canada would have much trouble controlling the flow of migrants. Venezuela's cocaine problem is thus partly geographic.) No government has yet to come up with a feasible solution to the cocaine problem, not even the superpower that is the United States, which has gone so far as to deploy soldiers in Colombia and bomb cocaine labs. And people forget that, despite its oil reserves, Venezuela is still a developing country with an underdeveloped police force and a generally poor population that is more inclined to resort to illicit activities for sustenance. This is not something that was caused by one man, nor will it be solved by one man.
That is all for now. -- WGee 06:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Heh. Those POV lists were hilarious. It was like the all-out thermonuclear war of selective data selection, he-said-she-said, rose/red/orange-colored glasses. Stuff like
No mention of the dozens of infrastructure projects slated to finish or open this year (Metros, rail, stadiums, bridges, highways etc) of course the viaduct1 collapse and the oposition claims of negligence are inevitable as well.
Counteracted by no mention of all the deterioration in the infrastructure, and his failure to even keep pace with older administrations on building housing, who did not have the oil windfall Chavez has to work with. Sandy 14:25, 25 June 2006

(UTC)

Go ahead and add the criticism, but there's no reason to gloss over his achievements. -- WGee 17:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
....for pages and pages...

Mateo LeFou 12:43, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] WP:TPG

Mateo, I thought it time to remind you of Wikipedia's talk page guidelines. Article talk pages are for discussing article content, not issues from other talk pages about which you might not be aware, and not original research or opinion. It will be helpful if you will stay on topic in article talk pages, and take questions about matters you aren't aware of to their source. Thanks, Sandy 05:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

A courtesy copy to you, of a note I left at User talk:WGee:

Copied from Talk:Israel-Venezuela relations:

You said: Also, please stop bringing up that incident in bad faith

Regarding the incident in question, I agree that it should not have been raised on the Israel-Venezuela page, and regret that it was. It was unnecessary and inappropriate for Mateo to bring entire quotes from another talk page (Talk:Hugo Chávez) to the I-V article talk page, and inappropriate to pursue it on Talk:Israel-Venezuela relations, which is why I ignored it the first time Mateo raised it on that page. I only answered when he persisted. I have left a message for Mateo reminding him of talk page guidelines: my sense is that he hasn't been involved in complex topics before, and might not be aware. I apologize that your name was drug through that unnecessarily on a separate talk page, and hope that Mateo will understand he is inappropriately using talk pages (his comments like, "Oh good let's form sides and have a soccer game. j/k." are also inappropriate to a serious discussion, IMO).

Regarding your unnecessarily aggressive edit summary; [1] first, you failed to assume good faith — in my view, putting "biased" in quotes was completely natural, since those sources are not biased by any Wiki definition. Second, I'm sure you're aware of Wiki guidelines about edit summaries, and I believe we've discussed this before. Again, I would appreciate it if you would be less aggressive in your edit summaries, and remember to assume good faith. Thanks, Sandy 15:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Montagion Rooster-Fen

What was Montagion Rooster-Fen all about? A joke page about a fake Governor of Massachusetts? —Wknight94 (talk) 01:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)