[WikiEN-l] Re: OneVoice

[Viajero]

On 02/13/04  at 12:16 PM, Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> said:

> I'm a bit undecided here, but I'd suggest assuming good faith.  It's 
> clear that OneVoice has a particular political ideology, but I'm not 
> convinced he's unwilling to work with others.

OneVoice may be sincere about wanting to work with others but as far as
actually discussing the issues goes I have found I get absolutely nowhere
with him on the Talk pages.  A sense of working together in a
collaborative fashion towards a collective goal -- describing the issues
in a neutral way without taking sides -- simply doesn't emerge.  For
example, see the discussion on [[Talk:Elon Peace Plan]].  The text as it
now stands seems pretty innocuous, but OneVoice kept insisting on removing
any specific details of the plan and only including platitudes. 
Assertions he made were even contradicted by information presented on the
plan's website, and he studiously avoided meaningful debate.  After
getting nowhere, I asked for the page to be protected and it remained so
for a couple of weeks. 

The situation repeated itself with [[The People's Plan]]. In his first
version,  OneVoice included specifics of the initiative, but then
immediately removed them.  I reintroduced them, as it seemed like vital
information.  He insisted otherwise and tried to impose a quid pro quo
with the Elon article which made absolutely no sense, as can be seen on
the Talk page.  Now, the amount of background information to be included
in each of these articles was debatable,  but in no way could we dispense
with a brief summary of the details (ie,  citizenship issues) --
fundamental information after all.

More recently, an article called [[Terrorism against Israel in 2004]] was
started in early January by an anon user and OneVoice (companion articles
for earlier years were also created).  As can be seen from the page
histories, initially it was a timeline of Israeli victims of atrocities. 
Danny was furious about this article and left an angry comment at the top
of the Talk page. I agreed:  I thought it was basically a propaganda
exercise.  User BL took it upon himself to salvage the thing by renaming
it [[Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004]] and adding
Israeli atrocities to give it more balance.  OneVoice insisted on removing
the Palestinian listings for a variety of convoluted reasons given on the
Talk page.  I agreed with BL's actions, and reverted OneVoice, and also
reverted his repeated efforts to undo the redirect from [[Terrorism
against Israel in 2004]].  As a reward for our efforts, OneVoice listed BL
and me on [[Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress]], accusing BL and me of being
the same person. 

The situation was similar with [[Terrorism against Israelis]] which
Eloquence renamed to something else last year, someone else named back,
and last week Eloquence again renamed again to [[Violence against
Israelis]]. OneVoice refused to accept the name change and kept trying to
undo the redirect leading to the situation where people were editing
''both'' versions (!).  Again, I had Ed protect the redirect.  Tim
Starling pointed out to me that there still many links pointing to the
article's old name, and so I started renaming the links to the article
under its current name, but OneVoice started reverting those as well. As
can been seen on the Talk page of [[Violence against Israelis]], OneVoice
and another like-minded recent arrival, StarOfDavid, insist not only that
every description of atrocities against Israeli's in Wikipedia include
language which implies passing moral judgement against those who
perpetrate the crimes but that Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression
are in no way comparable. In OneVoice's worldview, Israelis are always the
victims and the Palestians are all terrorists.

This afternoon, OneVoice kept trying to delete the following text from the
first paragraph of [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]

<quote>
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians revolves today around these
two issues:

    * The fate of the occupied Palestinian territories - the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip.
    * The fate of the Palestinian refugees. 

While the latter issue has always been a part of the conflict the
aforementioned issue was introduced into it in 1967 during the Six day
war. Other conflicts related to these two have also sprung up at a later
stage. It is those two issues that both parties agree must be solved
before a just and lasting peace can be established.  </quote>

His argument was: "The article starts with a statement that the conflict
is based upon occupation and refugees. This is disputed. [...] The
conflict began not later than 1929 and perhaps no later than 1920. At that
time there was neither occupation nor refugees. The bases of the conflict
can not be events that would not take place for another 20 years."

In vain I tried pointing out to him that the operative word was TODAY --
it wasn't an analysis of historical roots. He refused to acknowledge this,
and after several reversions I asked another sysop to protect the page.
Why he wanted the text deleted I still don't completely understand; it
wasn't like he was offering an alternative reading.

Perhaps Delirium is nonethless right in assuming good faith, but I think
it will take a herculean amount of coaching for OneVoice to ever genuinely
fully understand and embrace the NPOV philosophy. Personally, I don' t
think I have the patience and stamina for the task.


V.