I'm using the term you used. I'm not concerned with the connotation, I'm concerned with making an argument based in fact.
You said that some people make the distinction between "election meddling" and "exposing government actions". What I'm saying is that those two aren't mutually exclusive and you'd be incorrect to make that distinction as a rule.
Anytime you expose government actions on a democratic government you're naturally going to have some amount of influence on the next election, so frankly it seems rather unintelligent to attempt to draw a distinction there. Either unintelligent or dishonest.
My point is that it's an imprecise term, and one that carries baggage in the language. If you're going to make a case that it's not descriptive of what's going on because the negative connotation it carries may not be present in the situation, it's worth using a neutral re-wording to clarify the point.
> You said that some people make the distinction between "election meddling" and "exposing government actions".
What I said is people believe wikileaks meddled, and I meant that with all the negative connotations that implies because that's what I was trying to express. That's the point, because we're discussing how some people's opinions changed over time. Ignoring the negative connotation is ignoring the word choice I specifically chose on purpose.
As I noted in the prior comment, when discussing opinion and belief over time, facts are irrelevant. Can meddling (or, to clarify, being involved in disseminating information) in an election not be negative? Obviously. That's not what's being discussed here, and whether Wikileaks did or did not do it is irrelevant to whether people have a rational reason for their beliefs given the information they were exposed to.
You said that some people make the distinction between "election meddling" and "exposing government actions". What I'm saying is that those two aren't mutually exclusive and you'd be incorrect to make that distinction as a rule.
Anytime you expose government actions on a democratic government you're naturally going to have some amount of influence on the next election, so frankly it seems rather unintelligent to attempt to draw a distinction there. Either unintelligent or dishonest.