It strikes me as increasingly obvious that some concerted effort to be as NPOV as possible on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is necessary, as it's starting to be one of the more frequent edit wars, and distributed throughout the wiki, even in places you might not expect.
Two issues in particular that have come up lately, one from each side:
1. [[User:BL]] is mass-adding the contents of palestineremembered.com -- massive lists with hundreds of subpages comprising every village (defined as 10 or more people) destroyed in the 1948 war, every "massacre" (defined as 10 or more people) committed or purportedly committed during that war (little effort is made to distinguish), and a whole host of other information that's difficult if not impossible to verify.
Even if it weren't for the difficulty in verifying this information, it strikes me as somewhat odd that we'd have 300 pages dedicated to Arabs killed in 1948, and only a single page dedicated to the Armenian genocide, or the Pontian Genocide, or the Hutu-Tutsi genocide, and so on. I don't think it'd be a good idea to add 10,000 pages or so, one for each village ("village" defined as 10 people or more) destroyed in each of those conflicts. And if we're going to have a separate page for every instance of civilian deaths during a war, WW2 alone would be another 10,000 pages or so.
2. [[User:RK]] is, as is probably obvious, somewhat of a pro-Israeli activist, and is becoming difficult to clean up. The latest thing I've noticed is him adding 2-paragraph-long attacks on Arab anti-Semitism to articles such as [[George Washington]] and [[Benjamin Franklin]], in the guise of "defending" their "tarnished" reputations against charges of anti-Semitism stemming from little-known fabricated quotes.
Not to single out these two users in particular; they're the two that come to mind at first. And these two issues in particular are also being dealt with on talk pages. But it's becoming clear that it will be very difficult to catch all of these, so perhaps some more concerted effort is needed. I'm not sure exactly what to propose, but it seems as a minimum we need a group of several people who are not particularly partial to either side -- but who are knowledgeable about the issues -- to essentially police (hopefully in as unconfrontational a way as possible) this sort of stuff. The problem is that those most knowledgeable and interested in spending a great deal of time writing articles on these topics are often those who are most partisan to one side or the other.
Suggestions?
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
- [[User:BL]] is mass-adding the contents of palestineremembered.com --
massive lists with hundreds of subpages comprising every village (defined as 10 or more people) destroyed in the 1948 war, every "massacre" (defined as 10 or more people) committed or purportedly committed during that war (little effort is made to distinguish), and a whole host of other information that's difficult if not impossible to verify.
I invite comments on this, but I'm initially inclined to agree with Delirium that this isn't really appropriate.
There's nothing wrong with having articles on tiny little villages, of course, as long as there's enough verifiable information to justify an article. But we have to be careful about mass-adding things, more on editorial grounds than on purely NPOV grounds. (RamBot went through several revisions and a lot of discussion, and even mass-adding things by hand seems somewhat questionable, if the same content could be more effectively presented in a different way.
- [[User:RK]] is, as is probably obvious, somewhat of a pro-Israeli
activist, and is becoming difficult to clean up. The latest thing I've noticed is him adding 2-paragraph-long attacks on Arab anti-Semitism to articles such as [[George Washington]] and [[Benjamin Franklin]], in the guise of "defending" their "tarnished" reputations against charges of anti-Semitism stemming from little-known fabricated quotes.
I'm not so sure I can agree with you on this one. First, at least looking at the current version of [[George Washington]], there's no mention of _Arab_ anti-Semitism at all, and certainly no mention of Palestine or Israel.
These fabricated quotes are a staple of *U.S.* anti-semitic groups, 'Aryan Nation' types, as we might expect from the subject (American Presidents). This has very little to do with Israel or the Palestinians.
I will say, and I don't think that RK will say that I'm being unfair to him at all, that RK is deeply concerned about issues involving anti-Semitism, and that he is something of an activist on this issue, and that *therefore*, we should be vigilant about his edits, lest he might not always be as neutral as we would like.
But these particular edits don't strike me as problematic.
The problem is that those most knowledgeable and interested in spending a great deal of time writing articles on these topics are often those who are most partisan to one side or the other.
That's exactly right, and it's a general problem that we have to face on every controversial issue.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
The problem is that those most knowledgeable and interested in spending a great deal of time writing articles on these topics are often those who are most partisan to one side or the other.
That's exactly right, and it's a general problem that we have to face on every controversial issue.
Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing is often viewed by partisans as seriously biased in favour of the opponents.
Ec
Eclictology wrote:
Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing is often viewed by partisans as seriously biased in favour of the opponents.
That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake. On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/ simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed. If everything in an article says �X said Y about Z.�, then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that) partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased. (They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.) OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add �But X said Y instead.�, then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake. On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/ simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed. If everything in an article says ?X said Y about Z.?, then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that) partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased. (They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.) OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add ?But X said Y instead.?, then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.
In doing this though, we really can't afford to be wishy-washy on absolutely *everything* if we hope to still be useful at all as an encyclopedia. For example, we shouldn't have to preface every physics article with "is claimed by many/most physicists" to appease the fringe people, or to preface the Holocaust discussions with "is claimed by those who think the Holocaust happened" to appease the Holocaust deniers, and so on.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake. On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/ simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed. If everything in an article says ?X said Y about Z.?, then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that) partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased. (They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.) OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add ?But X said Y instead.?, then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.
In doing this though, we really can't afford to be wishy-washy on absolutely *everything* if we hope to still be useful at all as an encyclopedia. For example, we shouldn't have to preface every physics article with "is claimed by many/most physicists" to appease the fringe people, or to preface the Holocaust discussions with "is claimed by those who think the Holocaust happened" to appease the Holocaust deniers, and so on.
This has been discussed since the early days of Wikipedia, mostly in connection with creationism and pages on evolution. I mention this so that you can find those old discussions.
But now every physics page should begin "In [[physics]],", which sets the context in a social activity, the study called "physics". So /if/ the people involved (called "physicists") have a mainstream view, then that is what one would expect to see on the page -- and so one does. Opinions of the fringe groups can be identified as such (although not with insulting words like "fringe" ^_^), but it's still agreed, even by them, that they're not mainstream.
In the Israeli/Palestinian debate, even the mainstream is contested.
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
Eclictology wrote:
Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing is often viewed by partisans as seriously biased in favour of the opponents.
That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake.
Yes! Yes, yes!
I think this is the key innovation of NPOV. NPOV is writing that even partisans can agree to, as opposed to the middle ground that no one can agree to.
--Jimbo
It's like the authoritative voice of documentary broadcasting, its not NPOV, because it is not inclusive, NPOV includes the differing POVs, not silencing POVs that don't agree with majority rule. IMHO NPOV is giving a voice to all POVs, and stating what the controversies may be (sort of like legal writing where dissents and "minority" holdings are equally acknowledged). alex756 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 9:23 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Israeli-Palestinian neutrality
Toby Bartels wrote:
Eclictology wrote:
Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing is often viewed by partisans as seriously biased in favour of the opponents.
That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake.
Yes! Yes, yes!
I think this is the key innovation of NPOV. NPOV is writing that even partisans can agree to, as opposed to the middle ground that no one can agree to.
--Jimbo
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Mr Miyagi say : Left side of road, OK! Right side of road, OK! Middle of road, Squish like grape!
-S-
Toby:
Taking this one step further -- Neutral writing
is often viewed by
partisans as seriously biased in favour of the
opponents.
That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground
is a big mistake.
Yes! Yes, yes!
I think this is the key innovation of NPOV. NPOV is writing that even partisans can agree to, as opposed to the middle ground that no one can agree to.
--Jimbo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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I suppose a better way to end this thread would be to say "Is-Pal neutrality" is a complete oxymoron, just as most present controversial issues are.
-S-
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on 8/4/03 1:45 PM, Steve Vertigo at utilitymuffinresearch@yahoo.com wrote:
I suppose a better way to end this thread would be to say "Is-Pal neutrality" is a complete oxymoron, just as most present controversial issues are.
-S-
I think a few of us really are neutral or really sympathetic to both sides; but it's an obvious snakepit...
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
on 8/4/03 1:45 PM, Steve Vertigo at utilitymuffinresearch@yahoo.com wrote:
I suppose a better way to end this thread would be to say "Is-Pal neutrality" is a complete oxymoron, just as most present controversial issues are.
-S-
I think a few of us really are neutral or really sympathetic to both sides; but it's an obvious snakepit...
Yeah, like that minority of Israeli Jews who are sympathetic to the Palestinians. I wish now I'd kept all those back issues of the Sunday Times!