[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and anti-Semitism

[Jonathan Walther]

Wagner was not defined by his anti-Semitism; he was defined by his
music, which was universally humanist.  To make his anti-Semitism out to
be as important as his music is really really unbalanced.  The version
Ed had was fine.  Noone today reads any of Wagners "anti-Semitic" works,
but millions listen to his music with pleasure.  It is appropriate that
it be mentioned Wagner was anti-Semitic, but to devote more than a
passing mention to it as if it was the man's raison d'etre for existing
does a gross injustice to a man who is dead and unable to defend himself.

You should be thankful Ed was protecting the page; where Ed left in a
whole paragraph on Wagners anti-Semitism, I wanted to reduce it to a
single sentence.  But I can live with Ed's version as an acceptable
compromise.

Jonathan

On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 05:33:31PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> I'm not really asking for a chorus of opinions from the list, but an
>> authoritative, once-and-for-all pronouncement from the Founders.
>
>That's all nice and good, but before you do so, you should present an
>accurate and complete summary of the facts that made you pose this question.
>
>1) Since Clutch started an Edit War by unilaterally removing large parts of
>the Richard Wagner article on the English Wikipedia (one of several edit wars
>he got involved in yesterday), that article has been edited back and forth.
>
>2) Specifically, it has been debated whether statements about Wagner's
>anti-Semitism should be part of the article, or moved into a separate article
>because they "distract" from Wagner's work as Clutch argued. Unfortunately, so
>far, Clutch has succeeded in separating this part from the main article, even
>though we include dubious and extensive claims about anti-Semitism in the Noam
>Chomsky article.
>
>3) That Wagner was an anti-Semite has not seriously been disputed by anyone,
>including Clutch. Wagner's publication "Das Judenthum in der Musik", where
>he accuses Jews of being hateful, greedy, powerful and heartless matches any
>reasonable definition of anti-Semitism perfectly.
>
>4) Ed has repeatedly used his administrative powers to protect the page in
>an attempt to prevent edit conflicts. At first, I had no problem with that,
>but now he is getting involved in the debate and locking the page from further
>edits to protect his version at the same time.
>
>5) Ed holds the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the fact that
>Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed, even if the attribution is
>something as fishy as "is universally regarded as".
>
>6) I have countered this position with the analogy of requiring similar
>attribution for statements like "Wagner attended university at ..". 
>
>The point here is, if there is no disagreement about facts among people
>whose opinions are verifiable and should be included in the article, I see no
>point in attributing any claims, regardless of the nature of the statement. As
>someone (Jimbo?) pointed out in the North Korea example, if North Korea
>actually disputes the numbers, that's a verifiable fact. If somebody, say, disputed
>the authenticity of Wagner's publication, that would be a verifiable fact.
>In these cases, we would clearly have to tone down the claims. But if there
>are no counter-opinions, why should we?
>
>Furthermore, I consider Ed's use of his administrative privileges to protect
>articles he is involved in an abuse of said privileges. He should only use
>them in the way he initially did, as a "time out" to direct discussions in
>case of conflicts to the talk page, but he should not even do that if he states
>a position in the matter. Otherwise he is no longer a sysop or a moderator
>but an editor, which is not the function assigned to him. If I recall
>correctly, this is not the first time this has come up, so I think some kind of
>reaction is in order.

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