Re: [WikiEN-l] Zero and NPOV: He is avoding the issue by trying to ban me

From: Robert <rkscience100(a)yahoo.com> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 09:19:18 -0700 (PDT) To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Zero and NPOV: He is avoding the issue by trying to ban me Again, Zero is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He said that he wanted to engage in moderation. Yet at the same time he pushs Shahak's anti-Jewish propaganda as facts, he deletes vast chunks of multiple articles when they include info he does not agree with, and has started a web page dedicated to banning me from Wikipedia. Does that sound like a sincere desire to engage in moderation? The issue is simple: Do we follow NPOV policy or not? Zero has a partisan agenda. Israel Shahak is not accepted by any mainstream historians; that is in indisputable fact. In every insitution I have studied or taught in, Shahak's views are considered false and racist. In contrast, Shahak's claims are only accepted by Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, radical Islamic groups, and the like. (Again, please do not take my word on this. Please do a Google search on this subject and see for yourself who his only supporters are.) Yet this statement of fact enrages Zero; he doesn't want anyone to know this. Yet this is no different than our articles on Richard Wagner or on Holocaust deniers. Last year, a number of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers tried to damage our articles on these subjects. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed by merely following NPOV policy. Why should this article be any different? Zero has filled the talk page on the Shahak article with personal comments (e..g in his view, Shahaks' claims about the Jews are true.) Well, even if all Jews were as racist as Shahak and Zero imagine, we would still have to follow NPOV policy. This means we say that according to Group A and author A, all Jews are racist, but according to group B and C, and authors D and E, they are not. Remember NPOV? A contributor may have a prejudice, but they can stay here if they follow the rules. We have to allow articles to present points of view, even if they are points of view that we disagree with. The long-standing problem with Zero isn't his belief that Jews are racist. That's irrevelant. He can believe anything he likes about Jews, blacks, gays, whomever. However, the long-standing problem is that he refuses to let any POV be mentioned except his own. Zero constantly refuses to follow POV. And *that* has always been a bannable offense. So we have a choice. (A) Ban Zero. (B) Privately talk to him, and explain that all points of view must be included, even those we happen to disagree with. And mention that discussion on Talk pages should be about how to phrase facts in the article, and not focused on one person's beliefs about the content. I hope that he can convinced to follow NPOV. Robert (RK) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l