Talk:1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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::Moving on to the specifics of this change. There are three components:

::*'''As the killings started, it infuriated''' → '''The initial killings infuriated'''. This change is objectively better, even separate from any POV disputes. The original was clumsy and grammatically incorrect. But the new version also makes it clear that it was a smaller number of ''initial'' killings by the PLA that led to infuriated protesters and escalating violence. It's not the PLA just deciding to start murdering everyone in a Mai Lai style slaughter, which is what the original version ("As the killings started") implies. This is a critical distinction. And the escalating-violence version comports with even the sources used by the article, so there should be no issue here.

::*'''as justification for the use of force''' → '''to justify the escalating use of force'''. I'm not really sure what one could object to here. The article itself makes it clearargues that the PLA shotfired into crowds, then were attacked/burned/hung by enraged protesters, and then finally used much more severe lethal force in return. That sounds like escalating force. Again there should be no issue here.

::*'''but lethal attacks on troops occurred after the military had opened fire at 10 pm on June 3 and''' → '''but'''. As I said in the edit summary, this information is already present in the surrounding text. Very pointedly restating it here following a "The Chinese government argues ... ''but''" serves no purpose than to explicitly take a stance. This is even clearer given the original version of the sentence which I linked above. But even worse, the phrase I removed doesn't even belong there because that counterpoint doesn't actually counter anything. The narrative was already one of escalating violence initiated by the PLA; throwing in basically a "but remember that the PLA started it" is a non-sequitur. This is the reason that I left the rest of the sentence regarding the death count. You could perhaps reasonably object that the PLA's response to being attacked was excessive, so the relative death counts are relevant (though redundant and potentially problematic for NPOV), but you could not reasonably say that the PLA previously shooting protesters is relevant, particularly with how I simultaneously strengthened the references to escalating violence elsewhere in the same revision.

::I guess it gets a little ridiculous trying to litigate every individual word here, but apparently that's necessary. I have to admit that I'm pretty miffed at being 3RR'd with no substantive justification over what I thought was an extremely reasonable good-faith edit. It's unfortunate that even an innocent constructive change like this requires paragraphs of effort to explain; perhaps that exhausting expectation is related to why the article resembles more of a moralizing screed than an objective encyclopedia article. I've used my third revert to put my change back up. If you still have an objection after reading my arguments then go ahead and make your case; maybe there's an acceptable compromise here. [[User:Froth|.froth.]] ([[User talk:Froth|talk]]) 17:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)