Hello,

"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com writes:

This week, Elian and Uriyan and I have been working harmoniously on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- the Wikipedia articles, that is. Apparently, Elian and Uriyan hit it off, and are e-mailing each other directly on some points.

;-) yes. And Ed did act as a good mediator. For further discussions I thought of just creating something like a mailinglist so all participants of the project can share in.

Now, if we can find a way to include one or two other non-pro-Israeli contributors in this virtual oasis of delirious felicity...

This would be really helpful. Uriyan and I thought also of reorganizing the articles a bit. To see, what is already there, have a look at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arab-Israeli_conflict_editing_projec...

For a lot of things people willing to help need no specific knowledge of Middle East politics but rather a good feeling when language or words are not neutral.

There's one other thing I thought about: while Uriyan, Ed and I discuss and try to make articles NPOV, it's desperating if constantly people not logged in come by and _add_ more bias to the articles. We need a possibility to deal with this problem. Any suggestions?

I have no intention to waste my time by discussing with fanatics (of both sides) who don't care about what we are trying to do about each single edit.

One (radical) solution would be to make articles on this conflict editable only by members who are ready to join in a general discussion.

Something which goes against general policy of wikipedia but would IMHO make sense, is to first achieve a consens by the editors about some fundamental questions. What do I mean by this? (dangerous) example holocaust: I think that someone who denies that the holocaust has happened is not able to add non-biased statements to the article on holocaust.

Same for the articles on the conflict: somebody who denies Israel's right of existence is *hmm* at least highly improbable to not bring bias in what he writes. Instead everything he writes would be, neutral formulated or not, be directed against this fact. Someone who denies that there _ are_ Palestinians is neither probable to write a non-biased article about them.

The strategy I propose would be to work out under all people who like to participate in the project a minimum set of general statements to which all participants can and do agree as a basis for editing.

Last thing: as long as these articles are not de-biased could someone please remove the link to the Arab-Israeli conflict on the main page?

greetings, elian