[WikiEN-l] Situation deadlocked, how to solve it?

Fri Jan 21 13:35:10 UTC 2005

Thank you for posting this. It nicely addresses the case of references being
used which when you check them out, turn out to not actually support the
information which they supposedly support. The advancement of references to
support information implies that when the supposed reference is consulted
you will find (and not by exhaustive search) information which backs up the
information inserted in Wikipedia; not a confused and ambiguous situation.

As we offer no alternatives to you other than giving up or breaking
Wikipedia rules yourself, the problem must be solved using our dispute
resolution procudure. Your request for comment is a good start, as is
continued discussion with Jayjg. If those actions do not result in
agreement, you may try mediation. If mediation fails after a good faith
effort (or if it is refused or not engaged in with good faith) you can then
request arbitration (hopefully the mediation committee itself will do that
in such cases).

Jayjg has been the "victor" in a recent arbitration since the other party
aggressively broke most Wikipedia policies. However it has long been
observed that there are problems with bias in the articles which concern the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I will not support anti-Semitism masquerading
as "balance" but I will welcome responsible insistance on our Neutral Point
of View policy. Hopefully the rest of the Arbitration Committee is of the
same mind.

Fred

> From: BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:10:41 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Situation deadlocked, how to solve it?
> 
> Hello, everybody! I like to draw your attention to the page "Estimates
> of the Palestinian Refugee flight of 1948"
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_the_Palestinian_Refugee_flight_of_1
> 948).
> The page lists estimates of how many Palestinian refugees where
> created in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. There are quite a few different
> estimates out there, all diverging from each other. Therefore, and
> because Jayjg insisted on inserting the number 472,000 in the article
> History of Israel
> (Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Israel&diff=6566071&old
> id=6554019),
> I felt that a separate page was necessary.
> 
> Recently, that page has suffered a violent revert war, in which me,
> Jayjg and Viriditas was the combatants. The issue is over the
> following text:
> 
> 472,000 According to the "Progress Report of the United Nations
> Mediator on Palestine", as cited by Mitchell Bard on the Jewish
> Virtual Library. [1]
> 
> [1] links to this page:
> http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf14.html#2
> 
> Jayjg insists on retaining that source, while I want it removed. Yes,
> it is true that Mitchell Bard claims he is getting the estimate
> 472,000 Palestinian refugees from the UN document "Progress Report of
> the United Nations Mediator on Palestine," but a large part of that
> document is availible online, from UN:s own site:
> 
> http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/ab14d4aafc4e1bb985256204004f55fa?OpenDocume
> nt
> That document does not mention any estimate of the total number of
> refugees. However, this page:
> 
> http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decad170.htm
> 
> Contains some more bits of "Progress Report of the United Nations
> Mediator on Palestine" which mention the number "360,000 Arab refugees
> and 7,000 Jewish refugees requiring aid in that country and adjacent
> States." Because of this information and the fact that the number
> 472,000 Palestinian refugees cannot be traced to any other source, I
> doubt that the UN Mediator ever wrote it. I've also had an e-mail
> conversation with Mitchell Bard and he has so far refused to quote the
> full line(s) from where his number 472,000 comes from. To me, that and
> the fact that he is an editor of a strongly pro-Israel site
> (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org), does make his claim less believable.
> 
> That is the reason I didn't want the page Estimates of the Palestinian
> Refugee flight of 1948, to tell the reader that the UN Mediator (Count
> Folke Bernadotte) wrote 472,000. Because currently there is no
> evidence for that, other than that Mitchell Bard has written it.
> Therefore, I wanted the text to read as follows:
> 
> 472,000 According to Mitchell Bard on the Jewish Virtual Library. [1]
> 
> But if someone can provide a more definite source than Mitchell Bard,
> the situation changes.
> 
> The other reason that the number 472,000 should not be attributed to
> the UN Mediator's report is that it was written before September 16,
> 1948, many months before the conflict ended. Israel's operations in
> the Galilee hadn't even begun! It is estimated that in that operation
> 1-200,000 Arabs were driven from their homes.
> 
> How can you make an estimate of something that hasn't occured yet?!
> ...
> 
> This I have told Jayjg many times
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Palestine-info/Ignoring_the_datum),
> and after many days of exhausting discussion, he has changed his
> paragraph a little:
> 
> 472,000 by September 16, 1948 according to the "Progress Report of
> the United Nations Mediator on Palestine", as cited by Mitchell Bard
> on the Jewish Virtual Library. [1]
> 
> But that is still far from factual. What Mitchell Bard really claimed
> can be seen when visiting his article:
> 
> "This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become
> refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even
> lower figure -- 472,000"
> 
> This claim is made in a paragraph in which he is discussing how many
> "Palestinians became refugees in 1947-1949." There is no mention of
> the fact that the report was published September 16. If you read the
> paragraph it becomes clear that what he is trying to do is to lure the
> reader to believe that the UN Mediator estimated that 472,000
> Palestinians became refugees due to the war. Therefore, the new
> version that Jayjg tried with is also bad - noone but people
> knowledgeable about Israeli-Palestinian history knows that a large
> number (hundreds of thousands) of Palestinian refugees was created
> after September 1948. They will be fooled.
> 
> And also, Mitchell Bard did definitely not claim that the UN Mediator
> counted 472,000 Palestinian refugees by September 16, 1948.
> 
> To solve this dispute, I tried with a footnote:
> 
> 1: Mitchell Bard alleges that the UN official record "Progress Report
> of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine" estimates that the number
> of refugees was 472,000. The progress report was published on
> September 16, 1948, ten months before the hostilities and the refugee
> flight ended. Large parts of the report is availible here
> (http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/ab14d4aafc4e1bb985256204004f55fa?OpenDocum
> ent).
> It is estaminated that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left in
> the months after September, 1948. The number 472,000 should therefore
> not be seen as an estimate of the total number of refugees, rather as
> an estimate on how many Palestinian refugees there were in September
> 1948.
> 
> This compromise was not acceptable to Jayjg who has continued to
> revert. So now I'm at loss of what to do. I've posted a Request for
> Comments but it hasn't helped very much. One editor said that my
> attention was an attempt to skew the article to a particular POV.
> Another said the number might be comparing apples to oranges.
> 
> This mail is long, probably too long for people to read. The issue
> isn't very important and there are many much worse instances of POV in
> Wikipedia than this one. But that is why it is so astonishing to me
> that it has taken so much time to try and correct one minor POV
> detail. I've tried to discuss for over three months now with Jayjg,
> but it just doesn't seem to work. His editing behaviour is very
> hostile - if something is even slightly POV according to his
> perception he will always revert instead of trying to fix it or
> working out a compromise. I've written for Wikipedia for over four
> years but I've never encountered an editor quite like him.
> 
> I don't know what to do. Do you?
> 
> -- 
> mvh Björn
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