Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward points of view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation.

Fred

From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 05:26:06 -0800 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK)

Fred Bauder wrote:

...

I think it was Jimbo who declared that RK was a "valued contributor".

He should have been banned long ago. He just acts too ugly.

I think you should review that edit history more carefully. RK is primarily the victim here. Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting his editing.

--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Jimbo,

I am in the uncomfortable and for me highly unusual position of completely disagreeing with your assessment of the situation.

I was the one who listed the original article, [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], on VfD in mid-December. I had encountered the article last summer and was appalled by it, and made a mental note to try to salvage what little of value was in the article and merge it somewhere else. However, I never got around to it -- nor did anyone else -- and finally I thought the best thing would be to give the thing a quick and decent burial. The vote if I recall correctly was nearly unanimous; six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation, as you will see from the VfD vote. Sometimes it really is better to wipe the slate clean and begin anew.

(As an aside, I would like to add that I agree with the shortcomings of VfD; I also think it should be abolished and Cleanup as a process further enhanced, but this is a separate issue which should be discussed elsewhere.)

At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor the scholarly resources to offer a detailed explanation as to why the material in that article was so bad: suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context, obviously (to some of us at least) manipulated solely as a way of discrediting the Palestinian cause. It failed to take into consideration that there is a broad range of opinion among Palestinians; the radical/fundamentalist/militarist POV is but one.

The PLO -- representing the Palestinians but not necessarily reflecting ALL of Palestinian opinion -- did indeed at one time have as a goal the destruction of Israel. This goal was renounced at the PNC meeting in 1988 if I recall correctly. Perhaps our coverage of the evolving Palestine perspective could be expanded in the main article or one of its offspring -- the issue is not "omitting" any information or censoring any POV -- it is presenting balanced (and balancing) viewpoints with the proper historical context, something the above-mentioned text failed utterly to do.

I support Danny and Zero on this one 100%. I find it particularly ironical and completely hypocritical that RK now positions himself as the "defender" of Palestinians from "censorship". Have you no shame RK?

On 01/09/04 at 06:48 AM, Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com said:

But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem. There is no question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation requires understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process actually are. There is no question that one point of contention is whether Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process as "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to destroy Israel.

Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable. This is an important part of one of the major questions of our time.

V.

I believe RK's material could and should probably be presented in several paragraphs. What he has done is a piece of original historical research, which by citing particular statements made by Palestinians builds a strong case that at least some Palestinian leaders are insincere. However due to my experiences with him I would hesitate to rely on what he has done as he has often composed this sort of lengthy detailed article which by framing the debate in his terms and sytematically misrepresenting opposing positions distorts the situation. (My big edit war with him was in Chiroractic medicine which I do know something about. Your chiropratic medicine article remains unrecognisable to chiropractic practitioners or their patients). I would certainly never attempt to edit an article he was actively working on in an aggressive way. (Silly to get upset over a hobby like Wikipedia).

On Vfd, just recently someone tried to delete [[Communist government]], but had to give up. That article which is quite toned down after extensive editing remains deeply offensive to apoligists, however they have their [[Communist state]] article which presents a sanitized version of things.

Thing is, Wikipedia is to some extent an ideological battleground, a forum for struggle.

Fred

From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 06:48:08 -0800 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy. (RK)

Fred Bauder wrote:

...

Agreed, I was hasty. But you must admit a struggle to put forward points of view by partisan advocates is in progress. Deletion and thus silence is just as much its expression as RK's overdone presentation.

Can you be more specific about what is overdone about his presentation? I'm not sure what the word "overdone" means here.

Certainly, the material in question is too long and in detail for a broad overview article -- but this only shows why it was a mistake to delete the original article in the first place.

But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem. There is no question that a full understanding of the Palestinian situation requires understanding what Palestinian views of the peace process actually are. There is no question that one point of contention is whether Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process as "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they view it merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a longterm effort to destroy Israel.

Simply omitting information on that question is unacceptable. This is an important part of one of the major questions of our time.

I've read and re-read the passages in question -- they could use some work, no doubt. But the only arguments I've seen for deletion is that the material is biased (though just how it is biased, I'm not sure).

I've been trying to find the original VfD entry, but Wikipedia is painfully slow at the moment, so I've been unsuccessful.

--Jimbo

---

WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 01/09/04 at 05:26 AM, Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com said:

Danny has an agenda that he's pushing, openly, and it's affecting his editing.

Danny has an agenda? This is laughable. What is it? That he is pro-Palestinian? I have yet to see a shred of evidence of this. His major failing appears to be that he is not uncritical enough of Israel in the Manichean worldview of RK and his ilk. A pretty strange accusation when you think about it; Danny lived in Israel for many years, served in the IDF, and speaks both Hebrew and Arabic. In their own ways, both Danny and Zero are extremely well-informed and have a far subtler grasp of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than RK. And rightly so, they both strongly -- and at times inelegantly -- resist RK's efforts to insert blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda in Wiki articles.

V.

Jimbo,

Danny appealed to the list on Friday because of RK's belligerence ("bullying") over the "Peace Views" article.

Cleverly, RK immediately shifted the terms of the debate from the underlying issues (how Palestinian POVs should be represented in WP) to one of "censorship".

You fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Last fall, it was obvious to Danny, Zero, and me (and perhaps others) that the article in the original form (it has since been made less awful thanks to the good offices of Martin and others) was a ludicrous and transparent attempt to smuggle an anti-Palestinian editorial into Wikipedia. To those of us with any understanding of the issues (and I am by no means an expert) it wasn't a remotely meaningful representation of the Palestine position. In fact, the article was a canard. It implicitly cast Israel as the victim of apparent Palestinian duplicity with regard to the "peace process", which is of course inane; Israel is the occupying force in the Occupied Territories, it has a huge, well-equipped army, the backing of the USA, and between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. The Palestinians have zilch; the rest of the Arab world has basically abandoned them to their fate. The point is not whether those quotes of Arafat and others were "true" or "accurate" or whatever but they are essentially irreverent taken outside of the historical context and geopolitical reality of the current Palestinian situation.

Let me draw an analogy: imagine someone submits -- just for the sake of argument -- an article on "Cuban views of the conflict between Cuba and the USA". It frames the issue as a debate between hardliners and compromise-seekers, noting that Fidel calls for the destruction of the USA in Spanish speeches and calls for reaching a compromise in English. The Cubans destroy the USA? What a joke! Such a comment or collection of comments -- if it were possible to take seriously -- would only be meaningful if presented in the context of Caribbean history and Cuba's internal political discourse.

Now, back to the "Peace views" article. That you had a different reaction to the article I can only attribute to the fact that coverage of the Middle East in the American media is pretty bad these days, and it is nearly a fulltime occupation to keep well-informed. That's ok. But why couldn't you trust the opinion of a Danny, an Israeli citizen who could have explained to you that in Israel -- where the debate is more open and frank than in the US -- mainstream opinion would regard such an article as a bad joke, and that framing the debate in such as way is characteristic of the marginal fringe of the ultra-Zionist Right in Israel and their rather more numerous brethren in the USA, of whom RK is a prime example. How could you possible perceive Danny has having an agenda in his handling of this and fail to see RK's rabid Zionist zealotry reflected in practically every edit he makes on the Middle East, something patently obvious to anyone who has edited an article on the topic here. Correspondingly, how could you POSSIBLY accuse Danny of being bullying, when likewise those of us who have worked with him found him unceasingly well-informed, modest, and non-confrontational???

To repeat, the issue is not one of censoring the point of view of Arafat et al but presenting the issues in an intellectually honest manner, something that users like Danny, Zero, 172, Adam Carr, and others repeatedly demonstrate they are capable of doing, despite their own particular ideological leanings, and something that Robert is congenitally incapable of doing, whether it is Middle Eastern topics or alternative medicine, an area where he shows exactly the same kind of blind fanaticism and the bullying tactics that Danny denounced on Friday. You wrote:

RK has worked to present the varying views of the Palestinians, and people who don't like the result just delete it instead of work to improve it.

Not true. It was perceived as shoddy work; it has nothing to do with censorship. Why should the onus be on us to include "bad" material in our articles? RK didn't take the trouble to integrate the quotes in a responsible way in a description of the peace process; he offered them in isolation as a blatant editorial position. We followed the existing -- admittedly imperfect -- system to vote to delete the material rather than use it.

In closing, it is good that you involve yourself in these disputes, but unless you are intimately involved in the day-to-day editing process, interacting with other editors, and acquainting yourself with the issues, you run the risk -- as you have just done -- of making things worse.

V.