User:Aethralis

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Wikipedia is a mandala of sand. You write something, take pride in it, even start to enown and appropriate the result and then somebody comes and changes or even deletes it. This is a good exercise.

Mit der Dummheit kampfen Götter selbst vergebens.

—Friedrich Schiller , ''Jungfrau von Orleans, act 3, sec 6.

Bad exercise is that people who are not experts (or even are complete cranks) start to express and manifest their views with considerable vigor, against which there is no way of contending. Of course academic elitism can also be a problem, but given a choice of two evils, I tend to incline towards the latter. Hence my editing practices.

[3] Now the proofs furnished by the speech are of three kinds. The first depends upon the moral character of the speaker, the second upon putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind, the third upon the speech itself, in so far as it proves or seems to prove. [4] The orator persuades by moral character when his speech is delivered in such a manner as to render him worthy of confidence.

—Aristotle , ''Rhetoric 1.2

An important part of rhetoric is the listener. Without it, even the most beautiful and ornate speech is empty. It is wearisome to make yourself heard in a big crowd yelling their opinions and attitudes. Possible, but wearisome.