Viajero viajero@quilombo.nl writes:
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,
Yes, but only because it made available verified Palestinian quotes that you wanted to hide. You could not point out any POV problems; rather, you claimed that the topic's mere *existence* was a POV violation. That, of course, is not tenable.
In theory, I could have written editorials containing my point of view about these Palestinian views; but as you can see for yourselves, I did no such thing. I merely allowed both groups of Palestinians to speak for themselves, in their own words. That includes both those that are working for a permanent peace with Israel, and those that view the peace process as a "Trojan horse" (their own words) for destroying Israel. People can see the array of views and draw their own conclusions. This is the very definition of NPOV, precisely what we have been aiming for in all our other articles.
six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation,
Six or eight people can write all the fiction they want. But their claims cannot be made true by repeating them. As you can see for yourself, that text contains zero points of view _about_ the Palestinians; rather, it only presents their own points of view, and allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Your problem is that you do not want readers to draw their own conclusions; you have your own conclusion you are forcing on us.
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:
So we should delete entire articles just on your say so? While Danny and Zero agree with you, I think most of us can agree that this is silly.
suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context,
Sorry, but now you are making things up in an effort to slander me. These quotes were presented in detail precisely because left-wing Wikipedia readers kept denying their existence. That is precisely why lenghty quotes were given; so that no one could possibly see them as being out of context.
Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are proud of them. The only problem is that some people are uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project.
Robert (RK)
===== "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous". The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
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Robert wrote:
Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are proud of them. The only problem is that some people are uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project.
My problem is that I do not believe selecting some quotes is the proper job of Wikipedia: going to the texts of speeches, interpreting them, and selecting a few quotes from millions of documents is original research. We should be summarizing existing research. If you want to suggest that Palestinians are insincere about the peace process, you should find a historian or respected commentator who has made that argument, and cite him, perhaps also citing the quotes he cited as "so-and-so cites an Arafat speech of 1988 to support his case, as follows: '...'", and so on.
And, while I generally lean towards the Israeli point of view, I do find this text rather biased. It's a primary-research selection of quotes attempting to build an editorial case that the Palestinians are insincere about the peace process. That has no place in an encyclopedia (and, indeed, does not appear in any other mainstream encyclopedia).
-Mark