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Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible. Secondary sources are documents or people that summarize, analyze and/or interpret other material, usually primary source material. These are academics, journalists, and other researchers, and the papers and books they produce. A journalist's description of a traffic accident he did not witness, or the analysis and commentary of a president's speech, are secondary sources. Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves.
[edit] Using questionable or self-published sources Policy shortcut: WP:SELFPUB WP:SPS Some sources pose special difficulties:
A questionable source is one with no editorial oversight or fact-checking process or with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications that express views that are widely acknowledged as fringe or extremist, are promotional in nature, or rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources may only be used in articles about themselves. A self-published source is material that has been published by the author, or whose publisher is a vanity press, a web-hosting service, or other organization that provides little or no editorial oversight. Personal websites and messages either on USENET or on Internet bulletin boards are considered self-published. With self-published sources, no one stands between the author and publication; the material may not be subject to any form of fact-checking, legal scrutiny, or peer review. Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published and then claim to be an expert in a certain field; visiting a stranger's personal website is often the online equivalent of reading an unattributed flyer on a lamp post. For that reason, self-published material is largely not acceptable.
While claiming that he is continuing the work of TENC, he routinely violates scholarly ethics. He now not only misrepresents his data, but outright falsifies it. For example, in one text he took 9 words out of context from a thousand word 1938 article by Rabbi Stephen Wise, an article calling on Britain to provide sanctuary for the German Jews, and used this fragment as evidence that - in Gil-White's words - Rabbi Wise "got his wish" when the Holocaust took place. I traced Gil-White's falsified quotation to the actual article by Wise; I have posted my detective work here and Rabbi Wise's actual article here. I have checked other Gil-White documentation, and found that he frequently falsifies evidence, for example: misrepresenting the dates of quoted material; using ellipses in order to alter or reverse the thrust of quoted material; withholding vital information provided by his sources - and withholding important information about his sources - which information would contradict or undermine his arguments; and more. Wikipedia
We CAN NOT use Gil White as a source -- I DREJTI 16:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) Try Milosevic, Serbia, etc. What background does Gil-White have which would qualify him as an expert on the situation as a whole, which render his opinions meaningful in this context? KillerChihuahua ?!? 14:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's try a novel aproach: what is not neutral in this article, and what is factually inaccurate in it? And why? Nikola 08:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Why is Gil-White ineligible? By "historians and scholars" do you mean Western journalists who've never even read a transcript of the speech? -- Methodius 10:23, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Spare me of those! I don't actually see what you oppose. Two places where Gil-White is used could easily be replaced if we had access told newspaper archives. The others are for "Later reports are ripe with miss-quotations, and fail to adequately convey the speech or its meaning" and "A sentence from the speech that is oftenly cited out of context (for example, by the International Crisis Group)". Hardly anything to dispute there. If you really want to grind your axe, you could attribute the points to Gil-White and Gil-White only (as is only reasonable to include under WP:UNDUE), and list a few examples he uses (say two or three), and any normal reader would come to the above conclusion anyway.-- Methodius 10:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Also, I see that Francisco Gil-White was a lecturer at the Solomon Asch Centre for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, which would make this very much within his field. And that his work is polemical isn't a very strong argument - 99% of humanities research is polemical, biased or promoting a certain world view. -- Methodius 10:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
I could almost see your point. However, the cites are used for statements so uncontroversial as to be almost self-evident to any sentient being.-- Methodius 13:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Chris, your points are all either irrelevant or wrong. In your first reply you say that:
In your attack on Gil-White you say that:
Finally, you say that:
I asked for the original articles Gil-White cited and, frankly, the Guardian article is even better for Sloba than Gil-White described it. Read this:
Clearly, Gil-White doesn't cite out of context, and his conclusion appears to be correct: initial Western reports of the speech highlighted its tolerance. Later, the article .. unrelated to the speech:
So, something could be said along these lines. But I believe that the Wikipedia article should still say that initially the speech was viewed positively and that only later it came to be viewed negatively; and it should of course clear all misconceptions about the speech. Nikola 19:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Could the people disputing the article dispute it, or I will remove the tag within a week.-- Methodius 21:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Why I think I will. When you finish your version, I think it would be sensible if you didn't just replace the current version with it. Please put it here for discussion (and almost certainly a lot of modification).-- Methodius 01:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Nonono, there is bold, and there is promoting your view. Let's make consensus on new version, work together on it. Please do not make tensions by writing just whatever in article (which I think you might, I saw what you write on this page). If it is long, make subpage of discussion page. Like Talk:Gazimestan speech/new. You click on that link and post it there, and we discuss here?-- Methodius 10:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
So, where do we not agree? You propose complete new version on subpage, we go back and forward, make consensus, then replace current version. What I say is, do not replace current version all yourself, when I do not agree for that, and I think some other users too.-- Methodius 10:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
As promised, I've finished the (initial) new version - comments below, please! -- ChrisO 22:19, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
My summary is basically the speech in short. It does not have any POV.
The section of misconceptions is not OR, it is based on Gil-White's analysis. Gil-White is not unreliable, we've been through this. To compare with some of the sources you used:
And so forth, I have no time to check all of them. Gil-White is more known than any of them and more within his field than most. His analysis should be in the article, especially given that you wrote that the speech was "enthusiastically received" which he denies. Additionally, I don't see why The Times' misconception about "No one will beat you!" wouldn't stay, it is relevant and undisputed.
Guardian's report does not use word "repression" at all. Perhaps you refer to the sentence "The suppression of the mutiny of the two million Kosovo Albanians four months ago has caused 24 deaths so far." Suppression of a mutiny is not repression.
I believe that at this point it would be good if you would merge two versions so that we could proceed. OK, you don't have to merge Gil-White, I'll do it, and I promise to be careful. Nikola 03:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, let's analyse this, shall we? emperors-clothes.com is a personal website providing self-published essays written mostly by a non-notable far-left political activist and 9/11 conspiracy theorist with an overt anti-US, anti-NATO agenda. WP:RS is very clear in stating that "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." WP:SOURCE is equally clear in stating that "self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources". Jared Israel, who runs Emperor's Clothes, is patently not "a well-known, professional researcher" as required for the exemption to that policy. As far as I've aware, none of his writings have been published by newspapers or print publishers.
The website is also a repository of blatant copyright violations, links to which I removed from Wikipedia some time ago - I'm displeased to see that you reverted those removals and restored the copyvio links. I'm going to remove them again and I won't look kindly on any fresh reversions. -- ChrisO 19:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I've protected the page for a short while. Between the article probation and the edit warring, I'd rather do this than start blocking people. -- jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 19:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad we seem to have managed to resolve the lead satisfactorily, but there is still a problem regarding this statement which Nikola keeps adding:
I replaced this with a more neutral statement and source for the following three reasons:
1) The question of whether Kosovo's Serbs and Montenegrins were oppressed by the Albanians is contentious - some say they were, some say they weren't. It's a violation of neutrality for us to state one side's POV as fact.
2) The attribution to "oppression" of Serbian emigration from Kosovo is also highly contentious. Most Western sources I've read give the reason as "above all ... the high unemployment and poor economic status of the southern province." Again, because this point is disputed it's a violation of neutrality to state one side's POV as fact.
3) The source is pretty awful - it's a highly partisan source, published by an agency of one side in a war, during that war, under an undemocratic government. It's like using a German academic source published in 1940 to source a statement that the Czechs were persecuting the inhabitants of the Sudetenland in the 1930s. We should stick with established independent post-war sources. -- ChrisO 00:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
Only now I see these comments, and they are complete nonsense. An extensive study performed by a reputed institution exists, and it comes to a conclusion. Reporting that conclusion in the article is perfectly encyclopedic. If another study of comparable weight would exist, NPOV would require to mention both, but there is nothing of the kind. What does exist are ramblings by a person whose expertise so far no one managed to point out. And, not only are these ramblings inserted in the article (which would give them undue weight, but still), but they are inserted so that they would completely replace the conclusion of the study. That most definitely is not encyclopedic. And Chris, you are in the business of stating one side's complaints as fact, and stating facts as complaints of one side. Threatening me with AE will lead you nowhere, since this content isn't POV at all. Nikola 10:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a translation of the Gazimestan speech here.
If it is genuine (Nikola, can you confirm?) then it appears to me to be highly inflammatory. Almost any reference to history and (especially) the use of "exclusive national labels" in this fashion is deliberate trouble-making.
......... Through the play of history and life, it seems as if Serbia has, precisely in this year, in 1989, regained its state and its dignity and thus has celebrated an event of the distant past which has a great historical and symbolic significance for its future.
Today, it is difficult to say what is the historical truth about the Battle of Kosovo and what is legend. Today this is no longer important. Oppressed by pain and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and glorified heroism. Therefore it is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or we survived in this slavery. The answers to those questions will be constantly sought by science and the people. What has been certain through all the centuries until our time today is that disharmony struck Kosovo 600 years ago. If we lost the battle, then this was not only the result of social superiority and the armed advantage of the Ottoman Empire but also of the tragic disunity in the leadership of the Serbian state at that time. In that distant 1389, the Ottoman Empire was not only stronger than that of the Serbs but it was also more fortunate than the Serbian kingdom.
The lack of unity and betrayal in Kosovo will continue to follow the Serbian people like an evil fate through the whole of its history. Even in the last war, this lack of unity and betrayal led the Serbian people and Serbia into agony, the consequences of which in the historical and moral sense exceeded fascist aggression.
PalestineRemembered 09:31, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
Looks like there's a good summary of the situation here. Maybe incorporating some of the information in this paragraph would be helpful:
<<-armon->> 15:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
A dispute has arisen between User:Nikola Smolenski and three other editors concerning one paragraph of this article. Nikola wishes to replace this:
with the following:
Leaving aside the spelling/grammar issues, there are two major problems with the above. First, it is a statement of a partisan POV as hard fact. Most Western sources attribute Serbian migration from Kosovo to a complex combination of factors, including economic reasons and the improved representation of Albanians in state institutions and the economy following Kosovo's achievement of autonomy (e.g. "Due to continued economic migration, by 1991 Serbs and Montenegrins accounted for just 9 per cent of Kosovo's population" - Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History, p. 226; "Serbian out-migration from Kosovo increased after 1966 as a by-product of the abnormally high representation of Serbs and Montenegrins in the power apparatus [and] economic pressures ... compounded by the Albanian population's growing involvement in both state and economy." - Viktor Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise, p. 32.) The Serbian contention is that the Kosovo Albanians were responsible for "genocide" [sic] against the Serbs and drove them out by force. Most Western sources dispute this (Meier, for instance, says that "There were rarely real instances of violence") and present it as an exaggeration of a complex situation. Nikola's version of the paragraph states the Serbian POV as undisputed fact, even though it is very much in dispute. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Second, the source for Nikola's statement is very unsatisfactory. It comes from an exceptionally partisan source - the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which played a leading role in promoting the Serbian nationalist POV and the meme that "Serbs are victims of genocide" (see Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts for a notorious example). It represents the view of an organ of the Serbian state in 1992, at the height of the Yugoslav wars, when all sides were competing to pump out what one historian has aptly described as "victim-centred propaganda". It cannot remotely be described as neutral. At best, we can use it to describe the Serbian nationalist POV, but we cannot present it as an unbiased source. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
WP:NPOV is clear on this subject: "The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth" ... The neutral point of view is a point of view that is neutral, that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject. Debates within topics are described, represented and characterized, but not engaged in." -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The original version of the disputed paragraph states non-judgmentally that Serbs complained about being oppressed. It uses a neutral source to state an undisputed fact - that the Serbs complained - but it doesn't affirm or deny the justice of the Serbian complaint, and therefore is "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject." Nikola's version uses a partisan source and states the Serbian POV as fact. It therefore is "sympathetic... to its subject" - a clear violation of NPOV. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Comments from other editors would be welcomed. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, I see there is an authoritative source for the translation and I'm glad there is one, but I think it is nevertheless pretty obvious that the following sentence is mistranslated and something should be done about it.
Ali moram da kažem ovde, na ovom velikom, legendarnom polju Kosovu, da Srbi tu prednost što su veliki nisu nikada koristili ni za sebe.
This is rendered as "but I must say that here, in this big, legendary field of Kosovo, the Serbs have not used the advantage of being great for their own benefit either."
It actually says "but I must say here, in this big, legendary field of Kosovo, that the Serbs have never used the advantage of being great for their own benefit either".
In other words, "here, in the field of Kosovo" modifies the verb "say" and not the verb "used"; it expresses the place where he is making the statement, not the place where the Serbs haven't used their advantage.
Again, I think this is obvious to the point of being indisputable. I hope native speakers will confirm this.-- 91.148.159.4 ( talk) 19:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
removed - WP is not a Forum!
I would appreciate if someone could add to the "Gazimestan" or "Gazimestan" article, a parenthesis stating how to pronounce it. Namely, where to put the accent. 192.38.5.154 ( talk) 07:24, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
It is interesting that (mis)representation of the speech occupies more space in the article than would the speech itself. 79.101.131.251 ( talk) 16:00, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
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Please stop arguing over the edit-summary in justification of edit-warring and understand that "irredentism" definition is irrelevant. It is only article content that matters, especially if it is properly referenced. Please note that this is WP:ARBEE scope and removal of proper category on the basis of editors own personal opinion is disruptive and could end up on ANI. ౪ Santa ౪ 99° 07:15, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you Oranges. Can I also add that the whole irredentism category for Serbian, Croatian and some other nations could do with reviewing. On quick glance before heading out for chores this morning I came across subjects which don't quite fit, but at the same time there are others that do. I stand by the position that irredentism is about border expansion and the ideologies associated with it. Based on the above intercept copied from the source, the connection between the Gazimestan speech and Serbian irredentism is
WP:SYNTH: joining the dots of unwarranted assumption. I am happy to see an AfD for consensus just as long as the material stays off per
WP:ONUS. --
Coldtrack (
talk) 19:04, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
(Moving back inward). I think, Santasa, that we've reached the point where we all need more views. The removal of the details were not based on the sources being questioned as such, but on whether their inclusion is apposite to the article. Similarly, does the category belong to this article. Much of the latter is down to
WP:CATEGORY guidelines, and I can tell you that if someone is a heterosexual but happens to be a gay rights activist, then you don't get to add LGBT persons as a category simply because of how closely he is linked to it. As it happens, I can link two categories to this page which are also inapposite, but are far closer to the content of the speech than Serbian irredentism, these being Albanian irredentism and Anti-Serbian sentiment. I'd personally place "Serbian irredentism" third in line here but per WP:CATEGORY, the speech was an example of none of thre three. It addressed the second item, has been used by opponents of Milosevic as a ruse to get the the latter item, and by others as an excuse for the former. Are you happy to go ahead with an AfD? It must be neutrally written and short, while the details of what you believe and I believe should be left for one another's iVote and comments. How do you feel about this solution? --
Coldtrack (
talk) 22:35, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
Santasa99, You appear to have taken issue with how I frame my sentences. So let me clarify something. It is up to every one of us here how we refer to things. If I wish to qualify WP:RS with qualifiers such as so-called and using italics and "scare quotes", I am not committing a violation of any of the site's rules. It would be dishonest and totally disingenuous if I were to pretend not to have known that many of the items of the "blacklist" have been cultivated as sound by perfectly constructive editors, and that items from the "whitelist" have likewise been queried and challenged. If I were to support a new comment to the article with something non-RS then indeed that would be a breach of rules, and you would be within your rights to remove the source and add a citation tag or even remove the piece altogether. However, if we were to explore it deeper at the reliable source noticeboard, you'll find that Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources is a slightly tougher task because the subject is open to debate. Hereinafter, I guarantee you that when it comes to news and politics (so not counting science, films etc), you couldn't thresh the whitelist from the blacklist and say, "all of List A has this in common while List B has that in common". It starts with a basic principle until the defenders of that principle hit a wall and find themselves losing A-list contenders and/or having to admit B-list contenters. So they look for secondary reasoning, then tertiary, and in the end, nothing sticks. You have state-owned media on both lists, and free media on both lists. You have non-profit organisations on both sides of the divide, some of which (such as the Clinton Foundation, not only pro-west but pro-Democrats) perched on the A-list. The you have to issue of circular reasoning. To give you an example, take the Syrian White Helmets. Good guys or bad guys? We have to say "good" because WP:RS says "good". But it doesn't end there. It seems that NON-RS is singled out for special treatment, being named and shamed as "disinformation" once again because RS says so. So even before you begin to analyse this, you see that RS does not have to prove itself because its extant status is being held up as sanctimonious. We merely operate on the basis that if RS claims something to be true, then it is. So how did source 1 get to be RS in the first place, and source 2 get to be non-RS? Every single response invokes a fallacy bar none. Be that begging the question, appeal to authority, faulty generalisations and others. One of the most glaring examples rather involves Syrian coverage and the White Helmets. The claim they are "bad guys" is "disinformation" because RS says so. RS incluces the BBC, and the BBC by its own admission reports from Syria citing the Helmets as one of their sources. Ergo, if the Helmets tell the BBC "we are good guys", then that is the all the proof you need that they are "good" according to RS principles. So even from the perspective of the reliable sources, it is an argument from repetition. I have debated at the Helmets page, and the RS page, and have been shut down every time not by having someone tell me something I didn't know, but by the conversation being forced to end. So I usually distance myself from matter too contentious and too reliant on the "whitelist" and overly opposed to the "blacklist". This one (Gazimestan) is very straightforward on that one matter we have discussed. I am not challenging the sources here so much I am saying, "this is not what they have claimed". Yet for all the community's attempts to create a whitelist and a blacklist, there is no consistency in purpose and they struggle to stay on target. This is why I may use qualifiers at times. But I am not violating the rules on the project. Read the reliable sources closely and from time to time they inadvertently say the quiet bit out loud, and this is where the community steps in - to gang up by the dozen and bully the questioning editor who is by himself and often bound by 1RR. -- Coldtrack ( talk) 20:05, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
The
contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to the Balkans or Eastern Europe, which has been
designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on June 28, 2012, June 28, 2015, and June 28, 2019. |
Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible. Secondary sources are documents or people that summarize, analyze and/or interpret other material, usually primary source material. These are academics, journalists, and other researchers, and the papers and books they produce. A journalist's description of a traffic accident he did not witness, or the analysis and commentary of a president's speech, are secondary sources. Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves.
[edit] Using questionable or self-published sources Policy shortcut: WP:SELFPUB WP:SPS Some sources pose special difficulties:
A questionable source is one with no editorial oversight or fact-checking process or with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications that express views that are widely acknowledged as fringe or extremist, are promotional in nature, or rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources may only be used in articles about themselves. A self-published source is material that has been published by the author, or whose publisher is a vanity press, a web-hosting service, or other organization that provides little or no editorial oversight. Personal websites and messages either on USENET or on Internet bulletin boards are considered self-published. With self-published sources, no one stands between the author and publication; the material may not be subject to any form of fact-checking, legal scrutiny, or peer review. Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published and then claim to be an expert in a certain field; visiting a stranger's personal website is often the online equivalent of reading an unattributed flyer on a lamp post. For that reason, self-published material is largely not acceptable.
While claiming that he is continuing the work of TENC, he routinely violates scholarly ethics. He now not only misrepresents his data, but outright falsifies it. For example, in one text he took 9 words out of context from a thousand word 1938 article by Rabbi Stephen Wise, an article calling on Britain to provide sanctuary for the German Jews, and used this fragment as evidence that - in Gil-White's words - Rabbi Wise "got his wish" when the Holocaust took place. I traced Gil-White's falsified quotation to the actual article by Wise; I have posted my detective work here and Rabbi Wise's actual article here. I have checked other Gil-White documentation, and found that he frequently falsifies evidence, for example: misrepresenting the dates of quoted material; using ellipses in order to alter or reverse the thrust of quoted material; withholding vital information provided by his sources - and withholding important information about his sources - which information would contradict or undermine his arguments; and more. Wikipedia
We CAN NOT use Gil White as a source -- I DREJTI 16:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) Try Milosevic, Serbia, etc. What background does Gil-White have which would qualify him as an expert on the situation as a whole, which render his opinions meaningful in this context? KillerChihuahua ?!? 14:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's try a novel aproach: what is not neutral in this article, and what is factually inaccurate in it? And why? Nikola 08:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Why is Gil-White ineligible? By "historians and scholars" do you mean Western journalists who've never even read a transcript of the speech? -- Methodius 10:23, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Spare me of those! I don't actually see what you oppose. Two places where Gil-White is used could easily be replaced if we had access told newspaper archives. The others are for "Later reports are ripe with miss-quotations, and fail to adequately convey the speech or its meaning" and "A sentence from the speech that is oftenly cited out of context (for example, by the International Crisis Group)". Hardly anything to dispute there. If you really want to grind your axe, you could attribute the points to Gil-White and Gil-White only (as is only reasonable to include under WP:UNDUE), and list a few examples he uses (say two or three), and any normal reader would come to the above conclusion anyway.-- Methodius 10:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Also, I see that Francisco Gil-White was a lecturer at the Solomon Asch Centre for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, which would make this very much within his field. And that his work is polemical isn't a very strong argument - 99% of humanities research is polemical, biased or promoting a certain world view. -- Methodius 10:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
I could almost see your point. However, the cites are used for statements so uncontroversial as to be almost self-evident to any sentient being.-- Methodius 13:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Chris, your points are all either irrelevant or wrong. In your first reply you say that:
In your attack on Gil-White you say that:
Finally, you say that:
I asked for the original articles Gil-White cited and, frankly, the Guardian article is even better for Sloba than Gil-White described it. Read this:
Clearly, Gil-White doesn't cite out of context, and his conclusion appears to be correct: initial Western reports of the speech highlighted its tolerance. Later, the article .. unrelated to the speech:
So, something could be said along these lines. But I believe that the Wikipedia article should still say that initially the speech was viewed positively and that only later it came to be viewed negatively; and it should of course clear all misconceptions about the speech. Nikola 19:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Could the people disputing the article dispute it, or I will remove the tag within a week.-- Methodius 21:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Why I think I will. When you finish your version, I think it would be sensible if you didn't just replace the current version with it. Please put it here for discussion (and almost certainly a lot of modification).-- Methodius 01:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Nonono, there is bold, and there is promoting your view. Let's make consensus on new version, work together on it. Please do not make tensions by writing just whatever in article (which I think you might, I saw what you write on this page). If it is long, make subpage of discussion page. Like Talk:Gazimestan speech/new. You click on that link and post it there, and we discuss here?-- Methodius 10:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
So, where do we not agree? You propose complete new version on subpage, we go back and forward, make consensus, then replace current version. What I say is, do not replace current version all yourself, when I do not agree for that, and I think some other users too.-- Methodius 10:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
As promised, I've finished the (initial) new version - comments below, please! -- ChrisO 22:19, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
My summary is basically the speech in short. It does not have any POV.
The section of misconceptions is not OR, it is based on Gil-White's analysis. Gil-White is not unreliable, we've been through this. To compare with some of the sources you used:
And so forth, I have no time to check all of them. Gil-White is more known than any of them and more within his field than most. His analysis should be in the article, especially given that you wrote that the speech was "enthusiastically received" which he denies. Additionally, I don't see why The Times' misconception about "No one will beat you!" wouldn't stay, it is relevant and undisputed.
Guardian's report does not use word "repression" at all. Perhaps you refer to the sentence "The suppression of the mutiny of the two million Kosovo Albanians four months ago has caused 24 deaths so far." Suppression of a mutiny is not repression.
I believe that at this point it would be good if you would merge two versions so that we could proceed. OK, you don't have to merge Gil-White, I'll do it, and I promise to be careful. Nikola 03:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, let's analyse this, shall we? emperors-clothes.com is a personal website providing self-published essays written mostly by a non-notable far-left political activist and 9/11 conspiracy theorist with an overt anti-US, anti-NATO agenda. WP:RS is very clear in stating that "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." WP:SOURCE is equally clear in stating that "self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources". Jared Israel, who runs Emperor's Clothes, is patently not "a well-known, professional researcher" as required for the exemption to that policy. As far as I've aware, none of his writings have been published by newspapers or print publishers.
The website is also a repository of blatant copyright violations, links to which I removed from Wikipedia some time ago - I'm displeased to see that you reverted those removals and restored the copyvio links. I'm going to remove them again and I won't look kindly on any fresh reversions. -- ChrisO 19:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I've protected the page for a short while. Between the article probation and the edit warring, I'd rather do this than start blocking people. -- jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 19:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad we seem to have managed to resolve the lead satisfactorily, but there is still a problem regarding this statement which Nikola keeps adding:
I replaced this with a more neutral statement and source for the following three reasons:
1) The question of whether Kosovo's Serbs and Montenegrins were oppressed by the Albanians is contentious - some say they were, some say they weren't. It's a violation of neutrality for us to state one side's POV as fact.
2) The attribution to "oppression" of Serbian emigration from Kosovo is also highly contentious. Most Western sources I've read give the reason as "above all ... the high unemployment and poor economic status of the southern province." Again, because this point is disputed it's a violation of neutrality to state one side's POV as fact.
3) The source is pretty awful - it's a highly partisan source, published by an agency of one side in a war, during that war, under an undemocratic government. It's like using a German academic source published in 1940 to source a statement that the Czechs were persecuting the inhabitants of the Sudetenland in the 1930s. We should stick with established independent post-war sources. -- ChrisO 00:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
Only now I see these comments, and they are complete nonsense. An extensive study performed by a reputed institution exists, and it comes to a conclusion. Reporting that conclusion in the article is perfectly encyclopedic. If another study of comparable weight would exist, NPOV would require to mention both, but there is nothing of the kind. What does exist are ramblings by a person whose expertise so far no one managed to point out. And, not only are these ramblings inserted in the article (which would give them undue weight, but still), but they are inserted so that they would completely replace the conclusion of the study. That most definitely is not encyclopedic. And Chris, you are in the business of stating one side's complaints as fact, and stating facts as complaints of one side. Threatening me with AE will lead you nowhere, since this content isn't POV at all. Nikola 10:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a translation of the Gazimestan speech here.
If it is genuine (Nikola, can you confirm?) then it appears to me to be highly inflammatory. Almost any reference to history and (especially) the use of "exclusive national labels" in this fashion is deliberate trouble-making.
......... Through the play of history and life, it seems as if Serbia has, precisely in this year, in 1989, regained its state and its dignity and thus has celebrated an event of the distant past which has a great historical and symbolic significance for its future.
Today, it is difficult to say what is the historical truth about the Battle of Kosovo and what is legend. Today this is no longer important. Oppressed by pain and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and glorified heroism. Therefore it is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or we survived in this slavery. The answers to those questions will be constantly sought by science and the people. What has been certain through all the centuries until our time today is that disharmony struck Kosovo 600 years ago. If we lost the battle, then this was not only the result of social superiority and the armed advantage of the Ottoman Empire but also of the tragic disunity in the leadership of the Serbian state at that time. In that distant 1389, the Ottoman Empire was not only stronger than that of the Serbs but it was also more fortunate than the Serbian kingdom.
The lack of unity and betrayal in Kosovo will continue to follow the Serbian people like an evil fate through the whole of its history. Even in the last war, this lack of unity and betrayal led the Serbian people and Serbia into agony, the consequences of which in the historical and moral sense exceeded fascist aggression.
PalestineRemembered 09:31, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
Looks like there's a good summary of the situation here. Maybe incorporating some of the information in this paragraph would be helpful:
<<-armon->> 15:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
A dispute has arisen between User:Nikola Smolenski and three other editors concerning one paragraph of this article. Nikola wishes to replace this:
with the following:
Leaving aside the spelling/grammar issues, there are two major problems with the above. First, it is a statement of a partisan POV as hard fact. Most Western sources attribute Serbian migration from Kosovo to a complex combination of factors, including economic reasons and the improved representation of Albanians in state institutions and the economy following Kosovo's achievement of autonomy (e.g. "Due to continued economic migration, by 1991 Serbs and Montenegrins accounted for just 9 per cent of Kosovo's population" - Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History, p. 226; "Serbian out-migration from Kosovo increased after 1966 as a by-product of the abnormally high representation of Serbs and Montenegrins in the power apparatus [and] economic pressures ... compounded by the Albanian population's growing involvement in both state and economy." - Viktor Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise, p. 32.) The Serbian contention is that the Kosovo Albanians were responsible for "genocide" [sic] against the Serbs and drove them out by force. Most Western sources dispute this (Meier, for instance, says that "There were rarely real instances of violence") and present it as an exaggeration of a complex situation. Nikola's version of the paragraph states the Serbian POV as undisputed fact, even though it is very much in dispute. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Second, the source for Nikola's statement is very unsatisfactory. It comes from an exceptionally partisan source - the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which played a leading role in promoting the Serbian nationalist POV and the meme that "Serbs are victims of genocide" (see Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts for a notorious example). It represents the view of an organ of the Serbian state in 1992, at the height of the Yugoslav wars, when all sides were competing to pump out what one historian has aptly described as "victim-centred propaganda". It cannot remotely be described as neutral. At best, we can use it to describe the Serbian nationalist POV, but we cannot present it as an unbiased source. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
WP:NPOV is clear on this subject: "The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth" ... The neutral point of view is a point of view that is neutral, that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject. Debates within topics are described, represented and characterized, but not engaged in." -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The original version of the disputed paragraph states non-judgmentally that Serbs complained about being oppressed. It uses a neutral source to state an undisputed fact - that the Serbs complained - but it doesn't affirm or deny the justice of the Serbian complaint, and therefore is "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject." Nikola's version uses a partisan source and states the Serbian POV as fact. It therefore is "sympathetic... to its subject" - a clear violation of NPOV. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Comments from other editors would be welcomed. -- ChrisO 11:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, I see there is an authoritative source for the translation and I'm glad there is one, but I think it is nevertheless pretty obvious that the following sentence is mistranslated and something should be done about it.
Ali moram da kažem ovde, na ovom velikom, legendarnom polju Kosovu, da Srbi tu prednost što su veliki nisu nikada koristili ni za sebe.
This is rendered as "but I must say that here, in this big, legendary field of Kosovo, the Serbs have not used the advantage of being great for their own benefit either."
It actually says "but I must say here, in this big, legendary field of Kosovo, that the Serbs have never used the advantage of being great for their own benefit either".
In other words, "here, in the field of Kosovo" modifies the verb "say" and not the verb "used"; it expresses the place where he is making the statement, not the place where the Serbs haven't used their advantage.
Again, I think this is obvious to the point of being indisputable. I hope native speakers will confirm this.-- 91.148.159.4 ( talk) 19:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
removed - WP is not a Forum!
I would appreciate if someone could add to the "Gazimestan" or "Gazimestan" article, a parenthesis stating how to pronounce it. Namely, where to put the accent. 192.38.5.154 ( talk) 07:24, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
It is interesting that (mis)representation of the speech occupies more space in the article than would the speech itself. 79.101.131.251 ( talk) 16:00, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
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Please stop arguing over the edit-summary in justification of edit-warring and understand that "irredentism" definition is irrelevant. It is only article content that matters, especially if it is properly referenced. Please note that this is WP:ARBEE scope and removal of proper category on the basis of editors own personal opinion is disruptive and could end up on ANI. ౪ Santa ౪ 99° 07:15, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you Oranges. Can I also add that the whole irredentism category for Serbian, Croatian and some other nations could do with reviewing. On quick glance before heading out for chores this morning I came across subjects which don't quite fit, but at the same time there are others that do. I stand by the position that irredentism is about border expansion and the ideologies associated with it. Based on the above intercept copied from the source, the connection between the Gazimestan speech and Serbian irredentism is
WP:SYNTH: joining the dots of unwarranted assumption. I am happy to see an AfD for consensus just as long as the material stays off per
WP:ONUS. --
Coldtrack (
talk) 19:04, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
(Moving back inward). I think, Santasa, that we've reached the point where we all need more views. The removal of the details were not based on the sources being questioned as such, but on whether their inclusion is apposite to the article. Similarly, does the category belong to this article. Much of the latter is down to
WP:CATEGORY guidelines, and I can tell you that if someone is a heterosexual but happens to be a gay rights activist, then you don't get to add LGBT persons as a category simply because of how closely he is linked to it. As it happens, I can link two categories to this page which are also inapposite, but are far closer to the content of the speech than Serbian irredentism, these being Albanian irredentism and Anti-Serbian sentiment. I'd personally place "Serbian irredentism" third in line here but per WP:CATEGORY, the speech was an example of none of thre three. It addressed the second item, has been used by opponents of Milosevic as a ruse to get the the latter item, and by others as an excuse for the former. Are you happy to go ahead with an AfD? It must be neutrally written and short, while the details of what you believe and I believe should be left for one another's iVote and comments. How do you feel about this solution? --
Coldtrack (
talk) 22:35, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
Santasa99, You appear to have taken issue with how I frame my sentences. So let me clarify something. It is up to every one of us here how we refer to things. If I wish to qualify WP:RS with qualifiers such as so-called and using italics and "scare quotes", I am not committing a violation of any of the site's rules. It would be dishonest and totally disingenuous if I were to pretend not to have known that many of the items of the "blacklist" have been cultivated as sound by perfectly constructive editors, and that items from the "whitelist" have likewise been queried and challenged. If I were to support a new comment to the article with something non-RS then indeed that would be a breach of rules, and you would be within your rights to remove the source and add a citation tag or even remove the piece altogether. However, if we were to explore it deeper at the reliable source noticeboard, you'll find that Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources is a slightly tougher task because the subject is open to debate. Hereinafter, I guarantee you that when it comes to news and politics (so not counting science, films etc), you couldn't thresh the whitelist from the blacklist and say, "all of List A has this in common while List B has that in common". It starts with a basic principle until the defenders of that principle hit a wall and find themselves losing A-list contenders and/or having to admit B-list contenters. So they look for secondary reasoning, then tertiary, and in the end, nothing sticks. You have state-owned media on both lists, and free media on both lists. You have non-profit organisations on both sides of the divide, some of which (such as the Clinton Foundation, not only pro-west but pro-Democrats) perched on the A-list. The you have to issue of circular reasoning. To give you an example, take the Syrian White Helmets. Good guys or bad guys? We have to say "good" because WP:RS says "good". But it doesn't end there. It seems that NON-RS is singled out for special treatment, being named and shamed as "disinformation" once again because RS says so. So even before you begin to analyse this, you see that RS does not have to prove itself because its extant status is being held up as sanctimonious. We merely operate on the basis that if RS claims something to be true, then it is. So how did source 1 get to be RS in the first place, and source 2 get to be non-RS? Every single response invokes a fallacy bar none. Be that begging the question, appeal to authority, faulty generalisations and others. One of the most glaring examples rather involves Syrian coverage and the White Helmets. The claim they are "bad guys" is "disinformation" because RS says so. RS incluces the BBC, and the BBC by its own admission reports from Syria citing the Helmets as one of their sources. Ergo, if the Helmets tell the BBC "we are good guys", then that is the all the proof you need that they are "good" according to RS principles. So even from the perspective of the reliable sources, it is an argument from repetition. I have debated at the Helmets page, and the RS page, and have been shut down every time not by having someone tell me something I didn't know, but by the conversation being forced to end. So I usually distance myself from matter too contentious and too reliant on the "whitelist" and overly opposed to the "blacklist". This one (Gazimestan) is very straightforward on that one matter we have discussed. I am not challenging the sources here so much I am saying, "this is not what they have claimed". Yet for all the community's attempts to create a whitelist and a blacklist, there is no consistency in purpose and they struggle to stay on target. This is why I may use qualifiers at times. But I am not violating the rules on the project. Read the reliable sources closely and from time to time they inadvertently say the quiet bit out loud, and this is where the community steps in - to gang up by the dozen and bully the questioning editor who is by himself and often bound by 1RR. -- Coldtrack ( talk) 20:05, 1 December 2022 (UTC)