` :: Yes, they can be very positive. The sign that they're not positive is when one person does a revert, or when personal remarks about motivation are made. There are some subjects where this is inevitable, and sensible people avoid them. But I have even in a few months seen quite a number of pages where a series of incompatible changes has reduced the page to a short bland entry, and others where it produces a page of jumbled parts, all put in by different people.   ::I did not feel it necessary to insert quotations praising Gutenberg, or commenting how his work was of the greates importance to modern Western civilization. I will, since you are skeptical, but any book on the general subject will have them. Edison was not the first to develop a practical electric lighting system. Darwin was not the first to speculate on evolution. In each case it was the individual genius in developing the system which makes for the historical importance. Almost every element in Gutenberg's invention had been used in Europe before, though probably not type-casting, however he may have done it. But it was he who printed the 42 line Bible, and that is the key cultural event.   ::Everyone's legacy needs readjustent in subsequent centuries, but usually the core remains, as it does here.  The earlier parallel development in East Asia was of great importance to those civilizations as well, and a great demonstration of successful human ingenuity in dealing with what one might have though intractible material (the Chinese characters). it is worth its own discussion, but not in an article about Gutenberg. (We can discuss separately its relevance to the article on the general history of typography.)  ``May have heard`` is not proof of influence, especially if that is the strongest statment a scholarly specialist can make, but on his authority warrants a reference and a paragraph.   I know how to word the above in a positive way, and I will, probably next week, if the article is not dismembered by then. Comments that Gutenberg does not deserve credit for the invention of printing in Europe can be inserted, if you can find them, which I doubt.  Check my wording in that sentence.  `