[WikiEN-l] Let us not attack sources as unreliable without reason

[BJörn Lindqvist]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 03:09:40 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > or as Bjorn did ("Attempts to verify Bard's attribution to the UN
> > Mediator's report have so far failed: see Talk:Estimates of the Palestinian
> > Refugee flight of 1948."), simply because you are unwilling or unable to
> > expend the necessary energy to look up the primary sources.  Moreover,
> > telling people to refer to Talk: pages is bad form, particulary (but not
> > exclusively) because Talk: pages change all the time, and are often
> > archived.
> 
> However, you didn't have the primary reference either, which would have
> avoided a great many problems.
> 
> In general, questioning a reference shouldn't provoke this level of
> defensiveness. It did turn out to differ in small but important ways from
> the original citation.

The important differenence was how Mitchell Bard presented it in his
article and how Jayjg wanted it presented in Wikipedia against how I
and other editors wanted it represented in Wikipedia. We all guessed
that the figure came from Count Folke Bernadotte's report from
September 16, 1948 but we were mislead due to Mitchell Bard's sloppy
referencing. He dated the publishing of the report to 18 September,
1948 while the real date was 18 October, 1948. Me and other editors
found it of utmost importance to mention that the report was written
long before the war was over and that it therefore was incomplete -
anyone who does not have an excellent knowledge of the Palestine war
would be fooled by it. Jayjg found it unfitting to tell the reader
that. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Estimates_of_the_Palestinian_Refugee_flight_of_1948&diff=9512567&oldid=9511977
 
Oh, and there is more on the talk page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Estimates_of_the_Palestinian_Refugee_flight_of_1948)
that reveals what a dishonest, clueless propagandaist Mitchell Bard
is. I don't think Wikipedia should mirror his words. That'll be all
for me on this subject. Sincere thanks to all who offered their input,
and since apologises to all for wasting your time. And FYI, Björn
Lindqvist is my real life name. So much for anonymous internet
e-mailers.

-- 
mvh Björn