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Target dates: Opened • Evidence phase 1 closes 09 April 2023 • Evidence phase 2: 17 April 2023 - 27 April 2023 • Analysis closes 27 April 2023 • Proposed decision to be posted by 11 May 2023
Scope: Conduct of named parties in the topic areas of World War II history of Poland and the history of the Jews in Poland, broadly construed
Case clerks: Dreamy Jazz ( Talk), Firefly ( Talk), MJL ( Talk), ToBeFree ( Talk); Drafting arbitrators: Barkeep49 ( Talk), Primefac ( Talk), Wugapodes ( Talk)
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Place here items of summarized evidence (with diff or paragraph number) and detailed analysis
The article Naliboki massacre was vastly improved by a recent series of edits by editors with different points of view. Version as of mid February [2]. Current version (March 13) [3]. The old version was borderline antisemitic. I don't see such issues with the current version, though others may differ. The old version left the question of the participation of Jewish partisans a bit mysterious, with a few hints of yes, and somewhat-stronger hints of no. The current version makes it clear that the allegation is unproven at best and probably false. The old version contained useless info about a commission not having completed its work as of years ago. The new version summarizes what they did. The collaboration was required. For example, I certainly could not have done it on my own as I don't speak Polish.
That said, the differing points of view of the various editors, much of which involves issues I don't understand, is severe enough that it resulted in an AE thread [4] with some mild sanctions. Certainly some people were less than happy with each other. I do wish everyone would calm down. Adoring nanny ( talk) 02:15, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
The above are just recent things that I noticed in passing (thus, I believe these are illustrative examples), but that this is how VM and GCB conduct themselves while an APL2 case is pending, I think is indicative of their unsuitability for continuing to edit the topic area/s. Therefore, I submit that their previous indef TBANS should be reinstated by ArbCom at the conclusion of this case. El_C 00:20, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
Topic Banned for not removing diffs [etc.], then you have failed to read closely. But a terse one liner reply to my in-depth explanation is about par for the course. Anyway, for some reason, you were treated with exceptional leniency. You got an edge over others in that thread by violating the rules and then ended up getting your diff-filibustering violation retained. That is not a plus. Again, I emphasize: something that I ran into in passing. I strongly believe that this example is illustrative of an overall approach. It being WP:BATTLEGROUND, even when in a roundabout way. El_C 04:15, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
I wasn’t aware that WP:BLPCRIME applies to anonymous former Wikipedia accounts that are engaged in harassment. It doesn’t. And El_C is mistaken.Yes, it does apply—to any living or recently-deceased person whatsoever, anywhere on the project—and no I am not mistaken. You speak with such confidence about things you obviously have a poor grasp of. To quote Barkeep's reply to myself at the evidence talk page earlier today:
I think your interpretation of our BLP policy is correct and the idea that it only applies to article topics is at odds with the policy( 17:12, 15 March 2023) El_C 07:01, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
The redacted part would have to be very, very bad for ArbCom to base a TBAN on it( 18:32, 16 March 2023). Earlier today I had said (in part):
This piece of evidence is not the sole basis for my calling for[VM's]
previous EE TBAN to be reinstated( 14:29, 16 March 2023). El_C 23:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Explain to me why I should bother past your first two and a half sentences, which was rather rude, as VM acknowledged.
that is why I am so happy to comment about you and Iceweitz here right nowThis sentence is incomprehensible to me; I don't understand why MVBW thinks I was happy to comment on VM and Icewhitz. What I said is that I was happy to have resisted the tentation to dismiss VM's wall of text as he had done with me in the past. Instead of dismissing VM, I replied to him. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 01:48, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
happy to see VM in trouble- which I avoid doing. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:34, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
Wikipediocracy is for discussing Wikipedia, including ongoing ArbCom cases. Volunteer Marek 05:06, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
insanely biased and obviously incorrect[...]
I didn't really expect anything different from them. And 2. Attempting to antagonize myself (despite protestations to the contrary) for bringing this up, with statements such as:
they're mad they don't get to play police over here as well. El_C 06:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
...editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests the person has committed, or is accused of having committed, a crime...(emphasis mine.) It is very deliberately and very clearly worded in a way that does not outright prohibit, in some cases, stating that a living person (including another editor) committed a crime despite the lack of a conviction. Depending on the context such accusations against another editor would sometimes fall under WP:ASPERSIONS or WP:LEGALTHREATS, but when they don't, WP:BLPCRIME isn't likely to be useful. It might be reasonable to ask for sanctions under it in situations where someone made accusations that were plainly flippant to the point where they were clearly not giving them due consideration, but if people are going to argue that it is never permissible to say something that would imply that a living person has committed a crime, then they're going beyond our policies. And in this particular case (per Barkeep49's statement above) I don't think the statement about Icewhiz is so far out of line as to justify sanctions under a policy that merely tells editors to
seriously considersuch accusations. I can understand the argument that such accusations are serious and not to be made lightly, but we also have to allow editors to raise concerns about serious harassment, including harassment that may rise to the level of breaking the laws, in situations where there is sufficient reason to believe it occurred, without worrying over immediate retaliation; "that sort of harassment would be illegal and therefore you can't talk about it unless they were actually convicted in court" is not workable. The implication would be that anonymous socks could harass someone (even to an extent that would actually be illegal) and their victim could then get sanctioned for being too blunt in summarizing the harassment they experienced. -- Aquillion ( talk) 12:42, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Nothing in either source supports the first phrase "Given the severity of the German measures designed to prevent this occurrence" [...] and the next part is also not clearly related to the previous thoughts - are these fugitives ... fugitives from the ghettos? Or fugitives who fled to the Soviet Union? The last part is again, not supported by either of the sources given - neither source talks about fugitives vs. non-fugitive survival rates... so ... what's this supposed to be sourced to or discussing?I haven't gotten around to actually looking at the sources, and a single sentence out of context isn't really enough for me to decide that your reading of the sentence is unambiguously correct. I've updated the summary to say "might not" to make clear the factual ambiguity that still needs resolved.(2) Buidhe's objection was that it was an opinion stated in our voice, but Ealdgyth's objection, present in the evidence I was summarizing, is whether the claims were adequately supported. I appreciate the talk page link; as I said I hadn't read through it, just looked to see where it could be found so that I can read it later. I've updated the summary to better distinguish between Buidhe's concerns then and Ealdgyth's concerns now.(3) If your edit summary refers to a previous edit summary, I'm going to look at that previous edit summary so I can understand the first one. To do that, I need to open the edit history, and the first thing that appears on the page is a second revert. If you don't want me poking around the edit history, don't use edit summaries that make me go poking around the edit history. As to the summary specifically, in order to understand what it is you were saying in that diff Ealdgyth links, I need to quote your previous edit summaries to figure out what "ditto" meant. So there's 3 of the 6 extra. Ealdgyth also cited that as being the what added the claim, and in order to summarize where the claim came from, I need to look at the back and forth reverts as part of why it stayed.(4) We have, from the beginning, indicated that we would be asking participants for evidence pertaining to specific questions so that we can get a more complete view of the situation. That was originally to be done after Phase 1 of evidence, but given what we've received we've decided to move that timeline up similar to how we opened this analysis page earlier than originally planned. As such, /Questions was created, and I have moved my request for further evidence there. — Wug· a·po·des 02:31, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
It was only those Jews who escaped whose fate was in the hands of the Polish population, and, as we have seen, the rate of survival among these Jews was relatively high, despite adverse conditions.(pg. 35)
I consider this comment by Volunteer Marek and this edit to be tendentious and uncivil. The sequence leading to them:
the undisputed bosses of life and death in Jedwabneand
the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews, followed by an WP:OVERKILL on German responsibility in the Jedwabne pogrom. Why would one need a citation clutter to support such easily verifiable quotes? The quotes are on pp. 77-78, but on p. 78 Gross also says:
As to the Germans’ direct participation in the mass murder of Jews in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, however, one must admit that it was limited, pretty much, to their taking pictures. This passage was not quoted in the lead.
to restore source integrity and article balanceby supplementing those two quotes with others on Polish responsibility, and argues that the
selective quotationfrom Gross is distorting
the main point of the book. In fact, Gross's book Neighbors (2000) had a huge impact on Polish society and historiography by highlighting the responsibility of the ethnic Polish residents of Jedwabne in the massacre of their Jewish neighbours. The book opened a harsh public debate on the Polish-Jewish relations, which is also at the basis of the current malaise of the topic area. "The Germans were the undisputed bosses, full stop" simply misses the point.
original researchand complains of my
creative and selective reading of the source. My reading of Gross is everybody's reading. VM knows well that the whole book (starting from the very title, "Neighbors") is about Polish perpetrators. Gross's point is clear: the Germans had total control of the area, but the Poles were not forced to do the killings. One can't omit the second part without distorting the book.
The "own initiative" are your words, not Gross'and
Of own free will" and "on own initiative" are two different thingsIn the t/p discussion I mistakenly used the words "own initiative" but these words were not used in my edits and were not presented as a quote from Gross. The distinction between "initiative" and "free will" is therefore completely irrelevant, and mentioning it in the edit summary is misleading. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 01:13, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
It is uncivil, however, if you cannot answer the following question- I don't think that's what "uncivil" means. I also don't understand this question which you, just now, posed and which afaik you haven't posed before. It's obviously the second one. I did not revert your first one or refer to it or discuss it and you did not include it in your evidence. Are you perchance confusing me with the other editor who was disagreeing with you? Since the answer should be obvious and you haven't asked it before I am left wondering how this question can serve as a criteria for whether my calling of your edit "original research" was "uncivil" or not. Volunteer Marek 03:05, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
I am concerned by the Jan T. Gross quotation at the end of paragraph 1. It is very misleading and misrepresentative of his book Neighbors, etc. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Collapsing unhelpful back and forth between Gitz and VM. I do not think this conversation needs to be continued at this time.
Barkeep49 (
talk)
18:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
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My primary interest is in historical books. Following
a request for input at WP Books, I went to
the talk page for The Forgotten Holocaust. I made a small number of comments offering what I think were fairly unobjectionable suggestions, based on my expertise with book articles:
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]. For these comments,
an anonymous threat was left on my talk page. You will see that I am accused of Slandering the reputation of Poland and lying about Jewish communist crimes
even though not one of my comments said anything about Poland or Jewish people. That escalation suggests a severe and deeply entrenched battleground mentality somewhere. This is the very first online threat of any kind I have received in my life, and I am not a young person. Something is very, very wrong here.
I was already growing exhausted by the talk page when this threat occurred. Although the anonymous threat is the most alarming part, I would also observe the following troubling phenomena:
The key obstructive move I encountered was a large number of small claims that are so strange that they are hard to respond to. I question Piotrus' willingness or WP:COMPETENCE to evaluate appropriate sources in this context. I see very alarming behaviour from Piotrus, Nihil Novi, and GizzyCatBella, which will drive away constructive editors. And I think it would be well worth investigating the IP address of the anonymous threat I received.— Preceding unsigned comment added by LEvalyn ( talk • contribs) 03:20, March 16, 2023 (UTC) Addition/clarification: In case I was not sufficiently explicit, I am the editor who has been driven away. (c.f. asilvering's line about being the historian who is alarmed) The talk page was very challenging to read. I often couldn't see how some editors' comments were meant to constitute replies to what had been said (e.g., [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]). I attribute much of the confusion to editors who interpret all comments as attacks. (For example, Piotrus has expressed that his reply about AfD was based on the misunderstanding that we proposed blanking the whole page. I am sure that it was an honest misunderstanding; however, I believe that this misunderstanding sprang to mind due to a battleground mentality.) In an environment that felt hostile, I struggled to keep my own temper even though I have essentially zero opinions about Poland. I concluded that it wasn't worth it, and decided not to edit in the topic area in future. ~ L 🌸 ( talk) 08:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
In general, Piotrus' contributions were long, unconstructive, misrepresented academic norms, and misunderstood his interlocutors, as here (see the reply), and in this very strange argument about a review published in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
The key obstructive move I encountered was a large number of small claims that are so strange that they are hard to respond to. I question Piotrus' willingness or WP:COMPETENCE to evaluate appropriate sources in this context. I see very alarming behaviour from Piotrus, Nihil Novi, and GizzyCatBella, which will drive away constructive editors. And I think it would be well worth investigating the IP address of the anonymous threat I received. [signing retroactively, sorry ~ L 🌸 ( talk) 08:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)Note: This analysis was moved here on 18:41, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
You are welcome to add more quotes, or remove ones you think are undue. I did not try to have a "last word", I just expressed my opinions, quoted or linked to some policies I thought relevant, and let others have their say. I did not edit war - in fact I did not make a single revert of any recent changes to that article, even through I disagreed with some, explicitly to avoid any battleground-like deterioration. With all due respect, I am unclear what policies or best practices I have violated by making a few polite and respectful comments in a discussion (I don't believe my comments violated NPA or any other policies). If anything in what I wrote was offensive to anyone, they could've asked me to WP:REFACTOR and I'd gladly have considered this. I'll end by saying that I appreciated LEvalyn's comments, I consider her input valuable, I am sorry to hear she found the discussion less then ideal. It was, certainly, not my intention to drive her away, and if anything I said can be refactored, I again express total willingness to do so, and I apologize for any impression that her contribution are anything less then very much welcomed and appreciated. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:00, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
@
LEvalyn: In responce to
[30] I believe that it was not your intent to create an unpleasant editing environment. We have interacted fine in other topic areas, and I hope we will do so again in future.
Thank you for your kind words. Nonetheless, if my intent and the outcome are distinct, I would like to ensure that I learn from this incident. I stand by my offer to
WP:REFACTOR any comment I made that you found problematic. Also, in reply to I attribute much of the confusion to editors who interpret all comments as attacks
, I would like to note that I never felt attacked in that discussion; IMHO, CIVIL/NPA/AGF were observed by all participants; polite disagreements happen on the way to
WP:CONSENSUS and the entire recent history of talk and associated article edititing seems to represent best practices per
WP:TALKDONTREVERT. Lastly, I hope you'll reconsider your decision to not to edit in the topic area in future
. I can only speak for myself, but I want to reiterate that your contribution to the discussion in question was welcome and appreciated. --
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here
09:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
In a discussion, honest difference of opinion and ineluctable mutual misunderstanding are common (indeed, if they did not occur, there would never be need of discussion). This is illustrated by some of the evidence that has been adduced in the present proceedings against some Wikipedia editors. In particular, a casual reader – one without the patience to delve into, and try to analyze, recondite and sometimes mis-characterized diffs – might come away without realizing that Piotrus is in fact a person of great tact and integrity, civil, polite, and welcoming. Nihil novi ( talk) 05:14, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE bookand Zero's rebuttal that
lots of mainstream history books get critical reviews and sometimes entire journal issues are devoted to debate about themare not contradictory: that is because many mainstream history books are controversial. Negative reviews and debates are the controversy. Both Zero and Nihil Novi appear to read quite a lot into my comment; my best guess is that this is a battleground-informed reaction to the fact that I wikilinked WP:FRINGE.
This area is one of the "contentious topics". But the fact is that for the past year it actually has NOT been contentious. The pattern is that the topic area has been quieting down since the imposition of the 500/30 restriction by the Arbitration Committee in May 2020 and especially since that was changed to extended confirmed protection in September 2021. To be sure, there was a lag, mostly due to the fact that it took some time for Icewhiz to burn through some of his "established" socks: [35] [36] [37] [38] (and at least a dozen more). In fact, most of the disputes between mid-2020 and early 2022 involved at least one Icewhiz sock, who were showing up to pour gasoline on a diminishing fire.
Of course the relative quiet of 2021 was "punctured" by the December 2021 WCC case request. This too had heavy involvement from Icewhiz as he was emailing several individuals, including the filer. This was closed in February of 2022 and really ever since then there hasn't been much going on (this is both why all the stuff in the G&K paper is so old and also why most of the evidence being presented here is stuff that happened AFTER this paper was published and case opened).
One way to see this is to look at the number of Poland-related (especially Holocaust in Poland) WP:AE reports by year. This is probably as good of a metric of "contentiousness" as you're going to get.
Here is the number of AE reports by topic area in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 there were seven AE reports in this topic area, sixth highest out of all the topic areas subject of such reports. In 2021 there were only three, third lowest, ahead of only "Motorsports" and "pseudoscience".
I am not including a graph for 2022 for the simple reason that there were exactly zero AE reports in this topic area last year.
It also helps to look at the trends over time. Here is a graph of Poland related (not just Holocaust) AE cases by year, going back to 2011. There was good bit of controversy in 2011 but this was mostly unrelated to the Holocaust (it was mostly related to the also-indef-banned User:Russavia). Between 2012 and 2017 things quieted down. It was the arrival of Icewhiz which changed things, as can be clearly seen from the graph. Icewhiz filed a record number of AE reports in very short time [39] and indeed this was one of the Findings of Fact during the 2019 case [40]
Beginning in 2022 and right up to the publication of the G&K paper, this was simply NOT a contentious area. The interventions by the Committee, as well as the work of several dedicated admins (yes, User:El_C, that does include you too) in blocking Icewhiz socks (even if sometimes with a bit too much of a delay) had done what it was suppose to. It worked.
Of course this doesn't speak to the content and it may very well be the case that several articles need some serious fixin'. But as far as conduct goes - which is what this case was labeled as being about [41] - there just hasn't been much going on in recent past.
(detailed data behind the graphs above available upon request) Volunteer Marek 06:33, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
probably as good of a metric of "contentiousness" as you're going to get. This is strange to me because we both know that there are more boards than just AE, and not every AE action occurs at AE. Why did you choose that over, say, the AE logs which are more comprehensive? By choosing the AE board instead of the AE logs, your analysis systematically undercounts AE actions done by an individual admin. Even looking just at noticeboard posts, your analysis excludes AN and its subpages which are far more prominent than AE as a dispute resolution venue. For example, this 2021 ANI report related to the case scope is not included in your data. You also do not provide data or results for 2023, so this 2023 appeal of a Poland-related AE TBAN at AN is also not counted. If reports are being diverted to other venues like AN or ANI rather than AE (which we have just seen they are), then an analysis which looks at AE only would artificially deflate the number of conflicts presented.Lastly, I'm interested in why you made these methodological decisions. I disagree that your methodology uses "probably as good of a metric of contentiousness as you're going to get" because it leaves out two of the most recent sanctions in this area. Your interaction ban from last week which makes explicit reference to this case was not the result of an AE report and is listed in the logs under EE not AiP. You participated in this AE report a few weeks ago which related to conduct on an article about a massacre in German-occupied Poland, but because your analysis stops at 2022 it's not included (it's also listed under EE so it's not clear from your write-up how your coding scheme would handle it). Are these recent sanctions in the topic area evidence of contentiousness? If so, why were they not included in your analysis? If they were included in your analysis, would your claim that
for the past year it actually has NOT been contentiousstill be supported by your data?I think the analysis provided is an interesting look at a narrow part of the AE archive, but the claims are too strong and the analysis too underpowered to convince me. The alternative hypothesis---a combination of editor attrition and undercounting of data---does a better job of explaining the constellation of evidence such as preliminary statements, posts to boards-not-looked-at, and sanctions occurring after the time-span researched. If an analysis or additional data were able to explain or refute that evidence, I'd be more open to a hypothesis that the topic area is not contentious. — Wug· a·po·des 01:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
the constellation of evidence such as preliminary statements, posts to boards-not-looked-at, and sanctions occurring after the time-span researched.Your rebuttal has focused on preliminary statements but has avoided the latter two issues which make up the bulk of my review.(7) You can personalize my review if you like, but in this venue I serve as a finder of fact and I have laid out in precise detail why your analysis above does not move me to support the finding of fact you want. I could have sat on my hands and saved this for the internal discussion, but because I am interested in a thorough and complete review of the facts, yes, I am being specific and up front about my thinking. I am, of course, not the sole finder of fact, and if you think your analysis is strong you may leave it for the full committee to consider. If not revised though, I will make the same recommendation to my colleagues that I did here: the flaws in the analysis prevent it from supporting a finding of fact as to its conclusions.(8) If you are claiming that
the pattern is that the topic area has been quieting down, then ignoring two months of data which contradict that undermines your argument. Similarly, you can try to find flaws with the examples, but the wider issue they pose for your argument remains. How many editors have been driven away? What "side" were they on? How many AN(I) reports are there? How many of them didn't involve Icewhiz? We don't know, but we know there are certainly more than 0 and that poses a serious problem for your argument.(9) You should consider placing further comments in the comments by parties section, not comments by arbitrators section. ( edit conflict) — Wug· a·po·des 21:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
Resolved error by Barkeep
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Your rebuttal has focused on preliminary statements but has avoided the latter two issuesNo. I extended my analysis to include "posts to boards-not-looked-at". It shows the same thing. I didn't bother doing it initially because I knew it be pointless - WP:AE is by far the most utilized drama board for controversies for this (and other) areas, and whatever happened at ANI or AN or AN3 would be closely correlated with what is happening at WP:AE. So if WP:AE is quiet so will be those other boards.
I have laid out in precise detail why your analysis aboveNo, you have done more than that. Rather than responding to the evidence presented you started introducing your own evidence: claims by Mhorg and Francois Robere. Those users have not posted any evidence or made any claims. Indeed, one of them has said they do not wish to participate, if I'm not mistaken. So why are you presenting evidence on their behalf? As an Arb. Either stick to arbitrating or make yourself a party to this case.
If not revised...What is it you'd like me to revise?
then ignoring two months of data which contradict that undermines your argumentAgain, this is not true. What I said and what the data very clearly and unambiguously show is that prior to the initiation of this case the "topic area has been quieting down". I'm sorry, but you are strawmannin' here. One more time - of course the case itself resulted in controversy. That's what opening a case always does! I thought that part would be obvious to anyone looking at it but I guess not. That does not change the fact that the area HAS been getting quieter.
If reports are being diverted to other venues like AN or ANI rather than AE (which we have just seen they are)They are not. We did NOT "just seen that they are". In fact my evidence shows exactly the opposite is true. ALL drama boards were quiet. You keep making this completely unsupported and incorrect assertions, without expending any effort at backing them up, and then expect me to put in more hours of labor combing through the archives to disprove them.
How many editors have been driven away? What "side" were they on? How many AN(I) reports are there? How many of them didn't involve Icewhiz? We don't know, but we know there are certainly more than 0 and that poses a serious problem for your argument.We do know actually. For 2022, the answers are as follow:
Since I was explicitly asked about the possibility of the “contentiousness” of the topic area being diverted from WP:AE to WP:ANI and other boards I added the relevant info to my evidence [52]. I was wondering if that was going to be added to the summary or if I should just collapse it. Volunteer Marek 18:40, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
If you're an administrator then edit warring is like the Worst. Thing. Ever. A non-contentious topic-area, such as the post-Icewhiz "Jews in Poland", is the best administrators can hope for, since it means that they don't have
to get off [their] ass and do some of the things that administrators are supposed to do ... Which is "work". However, conflict can be good for article quality, since it prevents editors from getting
lazy, sloppy and stupid; without it,
You'd end up writing crappy articles and crappy content, simply because you could get away with it.
bureaucratic administrator, who is exclusively interested in avoiding conflict/drama/work. His evidence in no way impinges on the issues raised by "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust", which this case should address. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 01:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
My 2c. Or 5c, if I count my subpoints now.
I was thoroughly surprized to find me listed among the main Polish Holocaust revisionists on wikipedia :-(. In fact I have close to none contribution on the discussed subject. The only notable altercation I can remember is about the bio of Jan Żaryn. From this disproportionality I may guess who were the main "inside jobs" for the article of GK in question.
now readers opening Jan Żaryn’s page have access to his claims (for example, that Jews were to blame for the Kielce pogrom), without being told of their baselessness.-- In fact, the bio says:
Żaryn <...> has stated that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals... supported the communist authorities or... joined their ranks"; he blames those individuals for being part of Communist censorship and propaganda organs, who were "deceitfully ... silent about Soviet massacres." This, he believes, "intensified anti-Semitic attitudes" that resulted in the Kielce pogrom.-- I fail to see the logic in the transformation from: "some Jews were bad (provably true); this intensified [pre-existing] antiSemitism (provably true), hence pogrom (opinion)" - to: "Jews were to blame for Kielce Pogrom". In fact, Żaryn reasonably attributed pogrom to the rise of antiSemitism and he explained some reasons (in his opinion) of this rise, and GK made a sensationalist spin to make Zaryn look really bad. (He does deserve this, but what is "good" for a polemic newsblurb, not good for an article pretending to be scholarly).
As of 21 March 2023 02:43 (UTC)
Having been warned about their behaviour at Naliboki massacre towards other editors, (AE case, reaction to case, reaction to warning), TrangaBellam bulldozes articles, refusing to discuss ( Diff x, Diff y) But her rigid preconceptions and disdainful treatment of input raise the question of how well she knows the topics she rewrites. For example, she accused an editor many times more senior of "shenanigans" [Diff 1]
There is no policy that forbids me from removing unsourced or ill-sourced passages. As the t/p discussion shows, I demonstrated that the existing sources did not support the passages and repeatedly asserted that anybody, who is willing to source the content, can restore it. What else could I have done? That article has been in such a messy state for years.I do not oppose partial restoration AS LONG AS it is accompanied with citations to WP:RS, and you are willing to take responsibility for the content.
Senior editors can be wrong of course and most of them have the grace to admit it. But they often have the benefit of having made enough mistakes to recognize one when they see it, and this is why it is wrong to dismiss them out of hand. [Diff A], No, [Diff B], [Diff C], [ Diff D - edit summary],[Diff E],[Diff F]
TB's questionable expertise in the topics she unilaterally rewrites is concerning. She has for example opined on whether a pl.wikipedia was neutrally written. Was she correct? More correct than Piotrus, whom she was instructing? Maybe but maybe not. Is she competent to decide whether Holocaust denial belongs in the lede for a given historian? [Alpha][Beta], [Gamma][Kappa], [Phi], [Epsilon]
Since Grabowski, she has been editing in Poland. I noticed at the "Glaukopis" RSN post that this behaviour continues.
This is a factual assertion and I fail to see any misbehaviour of any kind.No - It appears from the reception section that there is an unanimous consensus among scholars that the journal disseminates far-right viewpoints.
A talk page I noticed cites this RSN.
I tried to report this thread. Allegations followed, which I hotly dispute but don't care to spend my words on. [Four Diffs]
personal attacks, civility, casting aspersions and battleground behaviour, and eleven months ago for
abusing conduct processes to thwart content opponents.
The following evidence supports the behaviour pattern. Deleting reference: Diff 2
Reliability of sources has some objective measures, but can this nuanced call be made for a publication you don't know in a language you don't speak about facts you're unfamiliar with? That's a *really* nuanced question for an amateur historian to opine upon in Wikivoice. Her userpage says she is an R programmer. (writing sample)
Accusations of trolling: Diff 3, Diff 3a
Large meaning change?: Diff 4
Sign of issue?: [..]
Dismissed BLP concern: Diff 6
Accusation of bad faith: Diff 7
Bias? Unsure: Diff 8
The latest number of periodical was presented in the press conference on January 21, 2021 in the Educational Center IPN of the Janusz Kurtyka's name in Warsaw.is useless trivia.
The bilingualism of the articles ensures a wide audience, the journal becomes a platform for scientific analysis of Polish-Jewish relations and discussions about it.is useless promotion, which belongs only at the about-us section of the website.
END. TrangaBellam ( talk) 09:18, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Before February 15, 2023 Gitz6666 had made ZERO edits to this topicand that
all of sudden, beginning with the opening of the request for this case (February 13), they began editing this area intensively. This is imprecise. I started editing the topic area on 9 February [57] and than from 10 February 2023 [58] [59] [60] [61] onward. I'm a bit disappointed that VM doesn't remember this because on 11 February he "thanked" me for this comment [62], which I invite you to read carefully because it falls within the scope of this case and comes from the alleged harasser.
Truth is, I did not follow VM from one topic area to another (nor did I wikihound him in the Russo-Ukrainian topic area, where I never followed his edits and indeed distinctly remember that on some occasions I avoided editing certain articles for the sole reason that he was active there). I did not follow VM to Holocaust in Poland (HiP) but I started editing there after the publication of G&K paper and because of that publication (for the purpose stated here
[63] – to correct errors). At first I did so very reluctantly precisely because of VM's involvement, as is evident from this these two diffs
[64]
[65]; I invite you to read the second one, and then, as it happens, I became passionate about the topic, as I explained here
[66]. There's been nothing provocative or disruptive in my edits at HiP, which indeed on a few occasions have been kindly appreciated by
GizzyCatBella
[67],
Horse Eye's Back
[68],
Piotrus (several "thanks"),
TrangaBellam
[69] and VM himself (I think most of your edits are fine
[70]). The opening of this case had no effect on my decision to edit here: it was neither a reason to do so nor a reason not to do so. The interactions with VM have been rare, have taken place mainly on my user talk page (
here and
here) and have not been hostile at all. Besides,
this thread on the t/p of "Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust", after VM had reverted some of my edits, shows that I have no difficulty in interacting with him cooperatively.
The only exception to this mutual collaborative attitude was the incident at
Jedwabne pogrom, which I reported here as
evidence. In this regard, I am sorry that VM refuses to understand my complaint. Commenting that someone is doing WP:OR is not tendentious and uncivil
in and of itself – I agree – but if you comment that someone is doing OR and are not able to point to their information/fact/allegation/thesis that is not supported by sources, either you don't know what "OR" means and are lacking competence, or you're trying to debase your interlocutor and mislead the others. I trust Volunteer Marek's WP:COMPETENCE. This edit summary mentioning OR and fairly inaccurate reading of the source
[71] IMHO is tendentious and uncivil because VM knew perfectly well that my reading of Gross was accurate and that our disagreement did not revolve around an OR.
Anyway, these are trifles. I'm sure I have done nothing that deserves sanction, but there's much truth in what VM implies about our experiences in the Russo-Ukrainian topic area being related to my attitude and submissions in this case. In fact, my opinions about VM's editing were formed in the RU topic area, were very negative and were confirmed by what I read in the G&K paper and found in the HiP topic area. So I'm not looking for revenge, but I don't claim to be an unbiased and uninvolved editor either. I made that very clear from the beginning, when in my
preliminary statement I said that I was formally an uninvolved editor in this topic area
(emphasis added) because In the Holocaust in Poland topic area I see the same users (at least four of them) and the same practices that led to my recent topic ban from the Russo-Ukrainian war
. I also said that I feared that the pattern of problematic behaviour and the network of collaborations that led to systematic bias in Holocaust in Poland might be exported and applied elsewhere, leading to more tendentious editing and low-quality coverage of politically sensitive subjects
, which means that I agree with
Wugapodes when they say that "a strict division between conduct in the case's topic area and conduct in the Russo-Ukrainian topic area limits our understanding of conduct in this topic area".
Gitz (
talk) (
contribs)
03:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
digging out edits [of him] from 2009and that this qualifies as wikihounding. He finds evidence of this in a sandbox of mine, this one (as it was on 31 March) and shares this illustration of wikihounding.
My comment: I did not research VM's activities since 2009; it would take forever to chack VM's activities back to 2009. Even if I were the worst hate-filled wikihounder in history, I wouldn't see the point, since no one gets sanctioned for what they did ages ago. However, when I started editing the HiP area, I came across article contents based on selective and misleading quotations of sources, falsification of sources or subtle vandalism disguised as verifiable content. In view of the upcoming ArbCom case, it came natural to me to use "WikiBlame" and check who was responsible. In most cases it was Poeticbent, who is no longer active on this project; on one occasion it was Volunteer Marek. I took note of this and added a diff + comment in a sendbox of mine where I keep material related to the ArbCom case. Volunteer Marek sifted through my sandboxes, as he is used to do (see
here, this thing with you combing my sandbox is not healthy
) and found his old edit. Now, I don't understand why VM is so eager to let the ArbCom know that he was already pushing the Polish nationalist POV back in 2009, but note that it is he, and not I, who is submitting this as evidence. From my point of view, his 2009 edit demonstrates, at most, his consistency, coupled with an early misunderstanding of what this project is about (NPOV, V, NOR as core policies), but no actual policy violation worth mentioning. I therefore kept it in my sandbox and did not intend to present it here.
Gitz (
talk) (
contribs)
10:48, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
you are an anti-Russian POV-pusher in the RU topic area, which would be consistent with the fact that you are also a Polish nationalist.comes very close to being racist since it implies that Poles are by nature "anti-Russian". Newsflash: the actual "Polish nationalists" associated with the far right are by large extent, same as far-right ideologues in other parts of Europe and US, pro-Putin. For example Konfederacja [75]. Volunteer Marek 00:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
very close to being racist. Beware your civility restriction in the EE topic area. By the way, could you please tell which
direct personal attacks at me, addressing me directlydid you find in my sandboxes? Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:13, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Newsflash: the actual "Polish nationalists" associated with the far right are by large extent, same as far-right ideologues in other parts of Europe and US, pro-Putin.The actual Polish nationalists associated with the far right who are currently running Poland, PiS, have been arming Ukraine; they are not pro-Putin. Except maybe unintentionally, as " Poland’s Historical Revisionism Is Pushing It Into Moscow’s Arms". Levivich ( talk) 03:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
very close to being racist? In no way can one say that my statement - Polish nationalists are generally hostile to Russia - is "very close to racism" because it imples that Poles are by nature "anti-Russian".
could you please tell [what] did you find in my sandboxes?You should answer, since you claim that you found
direct personal attacks at me, addressing me directly. Your claim is false and is a blatant case of WP:ASPERSION, as you know very well (and therefore you did not answer).
I recently copied that sentence and pasted it into my sanbox because I needed the two diffs about your views on torture, which then I used in my recent comment at AN/I. In fact, I used that diff again at the January 2023 ANI discussion ( 11:23, 11 January 2023). You should remember this well, since I told you a second time at ANI (at 23:23, 11 January 2023). Nonetheless, here above you say
I ping @ Callanecc: so that they can check if the civility restriction is working well here. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 11:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)I looked at your sandbox are because you've used it in the past to direct personal attacks at me, addressing me directly, (I guess thinking that if you put them in the sandbox it doesn't count and you won't get sanctioned for it?)
combative nature(@ Primefac), etc., then please let me know now and I will stop immediately - there's no need to apply sanctions. If, however, you think that my contribution to the case could be helpful, then please don't sanction me for that contribution. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 00:34, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
I can assure you that my presence in the area will be marginal and practically non-existent.)- you began making a ton of edits across the topic area. These edits were generally ones to articles where I had disputes with Icewhiz in 2018-2019 and the new edits you made - as part of your marginal and practically non-existent involvement in the topic area - were often in line with Icewhiz's arguments or edits he made back then. The main reason why we have no serious current conflicts in this topic area is simply because *I* haven't responded to your provocations. Volunteer Marek 03:01, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
the new edits you made ... were often in line with Icewhiz's arguments or edits ... *I* haven't responded to your provocationsMy edits in the HiP topic area are "provocations" in line with Icewhiz's arguments, you say? This only shows your battleground mentality. No one but you, Marcelus and Chumchum7 objected to my "provocations", which were actually accepted quite easily because they were obvious improvements. I understand from your reply that, had there not been a case pending before ArbCom, you would have reverted my "provocations" and possibly those of other users who in recent times have worked to remedy the distortions reported by G&K (deliberate or not, they are distortions and, alas, Icewhiz was often right). What you said about my provocations concerns me because, once the ArbCom case is settled, you are likely to resume that editing style of yours that has been so disruptive in the recent past.
... after stating publicly that you weren't going to involve yourself much in the topic area. I said "publicly" (that is, on my user talk page, responding to a post of yours) that I intended to limit my presence in the area because that was what I thought at the time (on 12 February). I also wanted to avoid or limit interactions with you as much as possible. Then I got interested in the topic and on February 28 I deleted that sentence because
I've changed my mind about my commitment in the area and got involved. However, I can still assure you that this has nothing to do with you and that I have no bad feelings towards you. Note, however, that as early as 12 February, I made it clear that
With regard to noticeboard and other general discussions, I will always express my concerns and warn the community of the risk of severe disruption, deviations from our policies and removal of users, resulting from a deeply problematic pattern of behaviour. In fact, from my past experiences in the RU topic area, I believe that your editing is deeply problematic - and by the way, it constitutes a problem that a possible topic ban of yours from the HiP topic area IMHO would resoundingly fail to address.
My edits in the HiP topic area are "provocations" in line with Icewhiz's arguments, you say? This only shows your battleground mentality.No, it accurately describes your actions. Starting on Feb 10th you became active on Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust. On Feb 11 I posted to your talk. On Feb 12 you said you weren't going to involve yourself in this topic area. On the same day you were busy trying to use the G&K article to get your topic ban on Ukraine-Russia removed [81]. That didn't work (Callanecc: (this) "isn't helping your case") so by the 14th you jumped right back into the topic area you just had said you weren't going to involve yourself in [82]. I think THIS is probably where you "changed your mind" with regard to becoming involved, not "February 28th" (really?) - if you couldn't use this opportunity to get your topic ban lifted, might as well follow me to another topic area. On the 15th you became active on another article [83]. On the 16th another [84]. Also on the you were once again trying to use this situation to get around your topic ban [85]. You did get a partial exemption that time [86] which is why you're here. Feb 23 another controversial article in topic area [87]. 23rd is still not "February 28th". This is of course also when you started posting to the ArbCom case. the 25th another [88].
"I don't plan on posting evidence"? Diff, please.
"I am going to step away from this dispute"? Diff, please.
the main problem with your editing here Gitz. You say one thing, but then you do another...). Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 21:31, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
As for me, at most I will propose a few edits based on Grabowski and Klein, but I can assure you that my presence in the area will be marginal and practically non-existent.[91]. Does that sound like what you're doing here? Volunteer Marek 15:41, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
You made a generalisation ("that's the main problem") and you supported it by referring to specific cases. So my question is: when did I say "I don't plan on posting evidence"? I've always said that I feel it's my duty to expouse your disruptive and tendentious editing at the appropriate forums. When did I say "I am going to step away from this dispute"? On which "multiple articles" I never edited did I show up? It happened only at Vita Zaverukha and I already explained why here at 21:52, 19 April 2023. So please, provide the diffs or strike through your false statements. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 19:35, 21 April 2023 (UTC)And that's the main problem with your editing here Gitz. You say one thing, but then you do another. "I am not going to edit this topic area" --> proceeds to extensively edit the topic area. "I don't plan on posting evidence" --> proceeds to post evidence. "I am going to step away from this dispute" --> proceeds to take the dispute and restart it at another article. "I am not following your edits" --> proceeds to show up to multiple articles they never edited just because someone else did. Etc. etc. etc.
Here's a pic of a table which summarizes the !votes and comments in these RSN discussions. I'll send the spreadsheet to the committee (and anyone else, upon request). I've included only editors who are parties to this case. Orange/brown means the editors said the source was unreliable (with darker color meaning stronger opinion). Green means the editor said the source was reliable (darker color = stronger opinion). Yellow is "no consensus" or "on the fence" or similar. Grey means they didn't participate. Bolded and dashed borders means the editor was the initiator of the discussion. Volunteer Marek 01:19, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
A lack of knowledge and incentives, and a fear of ostracism prevent many academics from publicly collaborating with Wikipedia.This is the real problem, and this case is not going to solve it. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:13, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Elinruby's evidence consists in sharing
this interaction analysis between VM, MVBW and me, and commenting This is relevant
. I agree with him, but the analysis is easier if we distinguish 1) interaction between VM and me, 2) interaction between MVBW and me, and 3) interaction between VM and MVBW.
This off-wiki behaviour [G&K WP:OUTING VM's personal information] might be some kind of harassment and it should fall within the scope of administrative action, [106] so I was actually agreeing with VM on this point, as I repeated to him in a conversation on my talk page:
I also sympathise with the recent attack on your privacy and reputation, which I find, as you know, not OK to say the least.We had another conversation on my talk page, which was polite and sincere. There's no basis for an I-ban. I'm very critical of VM's editing, and in an open and transparent way, but I've always been polite and honest with him, and I've never targeted, followed, threatened, offended him or harassed him in any way.
following a contributor you would like to help with improvement of pages is actually great. There's evidence of MVBW joining VM's arguments/edit wars in the HiP topic area: e.g. [110] [111]. I think that the alliance between VM, MVBW (and also GizzyCatBella) has been a common element in the distortions of the HiP and RU topic areas. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 17:14, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
basically trying to hijack this case to relitigate his own topic ban in a different topic area(see also here [113] pinging @ Callanecc).
year-long pattern of disruptive editing in this topic area combined with a WP:BATTLEGROUND approach. He accused me of deliberately lying
(I never said or did anything like that and Gitz6666 knows that very well). Finally, he shared no less than 19 diffs (!) of Elinruby arguing with me in the RU area. So, what does he want me to do here? Obviously, as a party to the case, I will comment on the RU topic area: it's the only area that I have substantially edited in this project. VM wants me to be here as a party because of my activities in the RU topic area, but doesn't want me to speak about the RU topic area? This double bind could drive me crazy - it's me, not him, who should complain about being harassed!
Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 14:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)From my point of view, the EE controversy stems from the fact that there are 3 or 4 users who cause disruption by engaging in nationalist editing ... I may be right, I may be wrong, but from my point of view this is the "global" issue of the EE area, and it affects the war in Ukraine only indirectly.
I was never doing nationalist editing, I can point to this diff of yours, [114]
Unfortunately, I probably can not edit neutrally this subject [Russian war crimes], followed by a poem in Russian on the Russian world/peace (Русский мир) being a "latrine" (сортир), an "army of slaves, zombies, brainless vatniks" (армия рабов, Зомби, ватников безмозглых). After making this statement, you became full time involved in Russian war crimes and you never made one single non-trivial edit that could not be interpreted as anti-Russian POV-pushing. Or I can point to this diff [115] explaining Russian war crimes in terms of the
Russian culture/characterbeing informed by
slavish obedience and cruelty. These statements are more than nationalist, they are close to racism - because cultural racism is a kind of racism - and I find it objectionable that you use your user page to publish (in Russian!) insults aimed at the Russian people.
@ Gotz6666: also, I don't know if the above text got here before or after I took issue with it on the evidence talk page, but I am getting bad flashbacks. Again: What those diffs show is *you* arguing with French grammar as I try to disengage without validating your insistence that you are right and I am wrong about the conditional verb tense.
For the sake of everyone else's sanity, I told you at the evidence talk page to take it up with me on my talk page if you weren't able to stop claiming that I argue with you. Dude. I avoid *talking* to you, let alone arguing. I will have to turn you into a frog or something if you don't stop saying that. Please acknowledge that you have read and understood this. At my talk page.
And yes, Barkeep asked VM for those diffs and I have no problem with him finding them. I especially like the one that he calls a good description of your editing style. Elinruby ( talk) 11:08, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
On the scope of the case. Perhaps my squabble with MVBW was "out of scope", as Barkee49 commented (above at 14:52, 20 April 2023). However, I think it touches upon a fundamental issue of this case, which concerns precisely its scope, and thus the information that Arbs should be interested in gathering.
Because of the G&K paper, the scope of the case was defined as "WWII and the History of Jews in Poland" (or "HiP", Holocaust in Poland). But that was unfortunate: now that we know that GizzyCatBella was a SP of Jacurek, we see more clearly that the scope and name of the case should have been something like "The ex- EEMLs 14 years later". The presence of 5 or perhaps 6 ex-EEMLs among G&K's alleged "distortionists" (Volunteer Marek/Radeksz, My very best wishes/Biophys, GizzyCatBella/Jacurek, Piotrus, Poeticbent, and I guess also Molobo/ MyMoloboaccount, if they are the same user) cannot be taken as mere coincidence. And if it is not a coincidence, then the ArbCom should look at the bigger picture and not limit themselves to the HiP topic area, for at least two reasons.
First, it is possible that a small but cohesive collaborative network of experienced users has developed on this project, based on shared political values and committed to nationalist editing. Looking at the parties involved in the case, it can be seen that – with the sole exception of Piotrus – their interactions took place also, but not exclusively or primarily, in the HiP topic area. No doubt, the memory of Nazi occupation is an important element in Polish national identity, but it is not the only area of concern for the ex-EEMLs (and it is very marginal for MVBW). If some ex-EEMLs are still editing Wikipedia in pursuit of a political agenda, which I strongly believe to be the case, then it is likely that their activities and modus operandi (massive removals of sourced materials, edit warring, tag-teaming, casting aspersions) are also to be found in other areas. To address the roots of the HiP distortions, ArbCom should carefully examine this interaction analysis [117] and check the articles where there's been close collaboration – i.e., editors adding or removing the same text in a close sequence. A few examples are given below in the collapsible box. This is the best way to establish whether there is a pattern of disruptive and tendentious editing by a close-knit group of veteran editors: focusing on the HiP area alone may be too narrow and not conclusive.
Secondly, Arbs should look at the bigger picture to determine the best remedies for possible misconduct. If the ex-EEMLs hypothesis is well-founded, then reacting to misconduct in the HiP topic area by applying topic bans would be a cure worse than the disease: banning from one area would only shift the burden to other areas. Topic bans should at least cover the whole EE area instead of being limited to the HiP area, but even these topic bans would still be too narrow (politically sensitive areas outside EE would remain unprotected) and also too harsh: less restrictive measure are at hand, and there is no need to completely renounce the contribution of experienced users. I'd suggest the adoption of 1RR or 0RR – if these users notice disruption, they should turn to the talk pages and noticeboards instead of edit warring –, strict bans on tag-teaming/following each other around, a comprehensive restriction on incivility and possibly other well-targeted measures of this kind.
a few examples of close collaboration between VM, MVBW and GCB
|
---|
|
Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:03, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
If you disagree with me about it, you are entitled to your opinionor
I realize that other people may have very different views, they are probably just trying to manipulate me into violating my T-ban. Please, Arbs, do not be fooled: I've never been a pro-Russian supporter, I consider Putin a dictator and the invasion of Ukraine a crime. My editing in the RU area were inspired by our core policies NPOV, V and NOR. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 13:16, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
these questions. The questions I asked them can be read here on my user talk. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 13:21, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Use of Jan T. Gross as a source
I agree with Icewhiz.leaps out at the top of the diff. It might perhaps be tempting to see that as some sort of smoking gun about the G&K paper, but it really isn't. Chapmansh goes on to agree with Piotrus, and with another editor (not a named party), who had been arguing that the source was unreliable. So she is really saying that in a peacekeeping posture, finding things to agree with, with editors on all "sides" of the content dispute (as opposed to siding with Icewhiz). The reason I'm going to some lengths to point this out is because it's natural for those of us who have been editing a long time to read the situation as if it were:
no specifics about the reliable sources who criticized were givenin a way that sounds to me like Piotrus might have failed to give such specifics, but my evidence actually shows Piotrus commenting in a discussion where other editors had already described the criticisms, so I think that wording in the summary might be a bit misleading. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:05, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
how about adopt Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus's ideaand [131]
I fully agree with everything Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus wrote.). In a email later she wrote to me:
Two years ago I had a student edit the article on History of the Jews in Poland, and you were kind enough to support them in his endeavor on the Talk Page. In particular, there was one user – Xx236 – who kept discrediting my student’s plans, and you were one of the editors who stood up to Xx236, so to speak. Later, in a newspaper piece, the authors summarized this incident... confusing me with Xx236 (they later corrected that error in that newspaper). Ironically, this incident (me helping/defending Champansh's student, not mentioned in the essay) was what sparked her interest in researching this topic area on Wikipedia. No good deed, eh? PS. Regardin the summary and "no specifics about the reliable sources who criticized were given" I believe I and others referred the student to multiple sources included in the article about the book in question, hence "no specifics were given". My recommendation to the studend who stated that they'll use Gross' book was "good, that's a reliable source, but read more". -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:43, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
As summarized here.
Matyjaszek (2017), Polonsky (2017) and Tokarska-Bakir (2004), it has been implemented in the article (see ex. here or here for me adding Tokarska-Bakir to the article).
According to Agnieszka Wałęga, Kot was "among the founders of the history of education as a scholarly discipline in Poland". Lucyna Hurło writes that "his works in the... history of education, culture, literature, and [the R]eformation and Antitrinitarianism exemplify [scholarly] reliability." Waclaw Soroka writes that "in Kot, the intellectual history of Poland and Eastern and Central Europe gained an outstanding researcher and exponent." Lech Szczucki has called him "likely the most influential and industrious Polish historian of the interwar period", and writes that his contribution to the study of the Polish Reformation is of extreme value. Wiktor Weintraub has termed him "one of the leading 20th-century Polish historians" and writes that "in the Polish scholarly community... Kot secured [a] position as a first-rank historian." Brock and Pietrzyk have assessed him to be a "historian of major stature". Wojciech Roszkowski and Jan Kofman [pl] summarized his life: "He left a vast scholarly legacy in the history of education and history of culture, including particularly the history of the Reformation.".
Kot writes that the pasquinades are some of the most pointed examples of self-criticism originating in Polish society and that the nobility's refusal to accept that such criticism could come from within that society reflects sadly on the deterioration of Polish discourse in the 18th and 19th centuries. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:15, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
zatrzymam się na chwilę przy znaczeniu tego przysłowia. Solidne statium źródłowe, publikowane w roku 1937, poświęcił mu Stanisław Kot, który przytacza następujący fragment...which translates as
"I will dwell on the meaning of this proverb for a moment. Stanisław Kot, who published in 1937, devoted a solid source to it, and quotes the following excerpt.... She later cites Kot thoughts on the authorship (
W przekonaniu Stanisława Kota, paszkwil ten dowodzi nieszlacheckiego (od siebie dodajmy na pewno też nieżydowskiego)...)->
In the opinion of Stanisław Kot, this lampoon proves a non-noble (let us also add a non-Jewish) [autorship]..., and then goes on to agree with Kot that the original poem was not about tolerance, but xenophobia (
Na podstawie wyjaśnień Kota i Klonowica, moralna intencja określenia "Polska rajem dla Źydów" rysuje się nieco inaczej niż się ją zazwyczaj prezentuje. W określeniu tym nie rozbrzmiewa głos tolerancyjnego gospodarza, ale sarkazm człowieka bezsilnego, przerażonego bezkarnością przybyszów...->
Based on the explanations of Kot and Klonowic, the moral intention of the term "Poland is a paradise for Jews" is somewhat different than it is usually presented. This term does not echo the voice of a tolerant host, but the sarcasm of a powerless man, terrified by the newcomers' impunity). The same point I make in my paper, which is in English and which you should be able to read. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:53, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
shoot the messenger), is whether this is what Kot thinks, or what the sources tell him Polish populace thinks, and he is simply summarizing them? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:28, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
refactor [my] misleading post, as you ask, but I will do the following:
Zimmerman, pp. 111-112
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---|
Meanwhile, the London government’s Council of Ministers received a report from the Polish ambassador to Soviet Russia, Stanisław Kot. Dated November 25, 1941, Kot’s report, “News from the Homeland,” took up the theme of Polish-Jewish relations. Based on accounts from German-occupied Poland, Kot offered a detailed discussion of the current state of Polish-Jewish relations. The four-page, typed, single-spaced report began with a pessimistic note, stating that in the period of the German-Soviet partition, one would have assumed that the persecution of both Jews and Poles “would have brought these two peoples, heretofore alien to one another, closer together – that the [shared experience] would have, at the very least, brought about a softening of the sharp influence of the Jewish question. The very opposite is nonetheless the case,” Kot wrote disappointingly.92 Kot, a professional historian from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, offered an extended analysis of why the gap between Poles and Jews had widened rather than narrowed. |
Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 08:59, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
My point is not that Kot was antisemitic or that he shouldn't be used as a source: I'm just saying that if one wants to prove that he was not antisemitic, one cannot rely either on Zimmerman or on what Kot wrote in November 1941. I'm happy that Zero acknowledges that his readingJust when Ambassador Kot filed his analysis with the London government’s Ministry of Information and Documentation, the ZWZ-Home Army’s BIP submitted an intelligence report on the situation in Eastern Poland. In southeastern Poland, the report cited several mass executions of Jews. In Równe and Łuck, the report stated, the number of massacres that had taken place was estimated at a total of 22,000 Jews
doesn't mean he [Kot] didn't share any of the opinions he reported on, but this text only provides evidence for that in a few limited cases. Inevitably encyclopaedists want to discuss these kinds of things: I propose that the conversation, if it is to continue, continue in Stanisław Kot's talk page. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 14:28, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Zimmerman (2015), The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, pp111–112, as evidence of Kot's antisemitism. However, Kot's report was about the attitudes of the Polish population, not for the most part a statement of Kot's own opinions. Zimmerman takes pains to make this clear. Kot's report was "a detailed discussion of the current state of Polish-Jewish relations". "The most disturbing aspect of Ambassador Kot’s analysis was his portrayal of general Polish views on the Jews." Even the sentence quoted by Sarah begins "Speaking of Polish perceptions". We don't need to guess what Kot's own opinions were because Zimmerman tells us: Kot "wrote disappointingly" that Polish-Jewish relations had widened rather than narrowed since the German–Soviet occupation. All of this is close to the opposite of the claims that were made about this source. The purpose of the report was also summarised in
Fleming (2014), Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust : "the British were advised of anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland by Stanisław Kot" (p86).
A couple of pertinent quotations from the Wikipedia biography on Stanisław Kot:
"At university he [...] clashed with right-wing National Democrats over his insistence on respecting the rights of the region's ethnic Ukrainian citizens. Kot also rejected the National Democrats' antisemitism." [1]
"Kot was popular with his students, particularly those from ethnic minorities, and has been described as 'a strong opponent of nationalism and antisemitism'". [2]
"[M]any outstanding Polish scholars of Jewish descent, when up for promotions, ran into difficulties for 'extra-scholastic' reasons... One of the most outstanding historians, Józef Feldman, had trouble getting through his habilitation because one of the [examining] professors had maliciously prepared questions that were impossible to answer (Prof. Stanisław Kot came to [Feldman's] rescue, declaring that if Feldman were not given his habilitation, he [Kot] would resign his own [professorial] chair, because he did not know the answers to the questions either)" [3]
His opposition to the antisemitism then common among Polish chauvinists has been attributed to the political activism that he had begun in his student days. [1]
References
Nihil novi ( talk) 06:04, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
@ Gitz6666: It would help if you didn't misquote the source.
Gitz6666 claims "Kot, as reported by Zimmerman, writes about Polish perceptions in a way that expresses his own evaluations and bias." Says who? Not Zimmerman, only Gitz6666. Now you double down and present the text with your cherry-picked sentence fragments underlined. Why didn't you underline the bits that cast a different light on it?
Zimmerman, pp. 111-112
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Meanwhile, the London government’s Council of Ministers received a report from the Polish ambassador to Soviet Russia, Stanisław Kot. Dated November 25, 1941, Kot’s report, “News from the Homeland,” |
The whole thing is exactly what Zimmerman explicitly says it was, namely a report on Polish-Jewish interrelations. I was wrong that Zimmerman said that 4 times; actually he said it 9 times. Kot was a professional historian analysing a society and his report was a report on that society, not an op-ed. That doesn't mean he didn't share any of the opinions he reported on, but this text only provides evidence for that in a few limited cases. Zero talk 09:28, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Incidentally, and I'll try to be brief as this feels off-topic for this case, at the time of Kot's report (Nov 1941) it is true that Poles and not Jews were being sent as slave laborers to Germany and sent in large numbers to the concentration camps. Jews had been mostly ghettoised but not sent to camps yet. From June 1940 to mid-1942, the inmates of Auschwitz were mostly thousands of Polish political prisoners, "members of the intelligentsia and anyone potentially involved in the Polish nationalist resistance, above all teachers, scientists, clerics and doctors" (Steinbacher, Auschwitz, A History, Ch. 2). Some Jews in those categories incidentally were included, but the mass murder of Jews as Jews started later. The Reinhard death camps started killing Jews in early 1942. What Kot wrote should be judged according to the facts at the time he wrote it. Zero talk 12:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I haven't read the source material on its own, but based upon what Zero has presented here, it appears to me that Gitz (with some encouragement from Levivich) may be seriously misrepresenting source material right here on a case page. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 19:39, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Note that there is no point arguing on the basis of what Kot didn't say, as we don't know what he didn't say. We only have a few sentences out of a long report. For example, we don't know whether or not Kot mentioned mass shootings. Zero talk 01:34, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Personal_information_in_Wikipedia's_Intentional_Distortion_of_the_History_of_the_Holocaust
The UCoC is also policy.The UCoC states, in relevant part (my emphases):
This Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) defines a minimum set of guidelines of expected and unacceptable behaviour. It applies to everyone who interacts and contributes to online and offline Wikimedia projects and spaces. This includes new and experienced contributors, functionaries within the projects, event organizers and participants, employees and board members of affiliates and employees and board members of the Wikimedia Foundation. It applies to all Wikimedia projects, technical spaces, in-person and virtual events, as well as the following instances:
- Private, public and semi-public interactions
- Discussions of disagreement and expression of solidarity across community members
- Issues of technical development
- Aspects of content contribution
- Cases of representing affiliates/communities with external partners
The Universal Code of Conduct provides a baseline of behaviour for collaboration on Wikimedia projects worldwide. Communities may add to this to develop policies that take account of local and cultural context, while maintaining the criteria listed here as a minimum standard.
voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.
on the Wikimedia projects or elsewhere). It applies
to all Wikimedia projects, technical spaces, in-person and virtual events, as well as Private, public and semi-public interactions, Discussions of disagreement and expression of solidarity across community members,etc.
explicit consentof the contributor (cf. [143]).
This policy is approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. It may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project.
violations involving the nonconsensual disclosure of personally identifiable information Generally handled by users with oversight or edit suppression permissions(formatting removed)
Cases shall be judged in an informed way, which makes use of context, in alignment with the principles of the UCoC
In line with the movement principle of decentralisation, the UCoC should be enforced at the most relevant local level possiblethe community will have the chance to elect arbs who would act differently in the future. Barkeep49 ( talk) 22:23, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
For example, claims of stalking, sexual harassment, or racism could harm an editor's job prospects or personal life, especially when usernames are closely linked to an individual's real name. These types of comments are absolutely never acceptable without indisputable evidence.
Psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming... research participants...or perhaps more relevant, Royal Historical Society's Statement on Good Practice:
taking particular care when research concerns those still living and when the anonymity of individuals is required. In my own field, sociology, ASA's ethical code states:
Sociologists take all reasonable steps to implement protections for the rights and welfare of research participants as well as other persons and groups that might be affected due to the research... In their research, sociologists do not behave in ways that increase risk, or are threatening to the health or life of research participants or others.
no harm to participantsand
wasting volunteer time(which is what, IMHO, we are mostly doing here) - although that page does not seem to consider issues related to off-wiki harassment through serious accusations, or outing issues. The Committee may suggest to the Community that that page needs an update. As to what to do with academics and similar individuals who violate our policies and have on-wikipedia accounts, while I generally agree with Tryptofish's view that nobody should get special treatment, I'd like to note that some academics also do uncontroversial "teaching with Wikipedia" activities, so any sanctions on academics may contain an exception to their activity as a course leader (assuming said activity was not found problematic in itself). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:19, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
@
User:Barkeep49 A review of the personal information in G&K by a few oversighters and then by the Committee as a whole determined the information had been disclosed on-wiki by those editors
. This is simply not true. I have never disclosed where I work/employer on-wiki. Grabowski and Klein got this info from "somewhere else" (take your guess). If I'm wrong I would like to see a diff.
This is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that one of the forms of harassment that Icewhiz engaged in was contacting my employer/encouraging others to do so. Why do I even have to explain this in public, potentially opening myself up to even more abuse???
Even regarding the 14 year old diff where I disclose my name - I have tried to get that oversighted and was told by oversighters that it would be "too complicated" to remove it. In other words I have certainly tried to have it removed but was refused so that's kind of crappy too. Volunteer Marek 02:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
And just as a reminder, as User:Jayen466 quotes from the UCoC: "Disclosure of personal data (Doxing): sharing other contributors' private information, such as name, place of employment" <-- it's right there. Volunteer Marek 02:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
page on VM mentioning his name and profession is an attack on the serenity and independence of editing here, which is the purpose of WP:HERASS, WP:CIV and WP:NPA to proect. It's an ugly misstep, which should not go unnoticed[144]. In fact, that paragraph on VM
is completely gratuitous and non-academic. Why did they even think that VM's uncivility (which is truly astounding) is relevant to the reader? They are clearly speaking as Wikipedians to Wikipedians: they are not addressing Holocaust scholars[145]. Furthermore (and I think I said this somewhere, but now I can't find the diff) to claim that it was not WP:OUTING because VM had voluntarily released his private information seems to me a mere formalism contrary to common sense. It had been 14 years since this had happened and the information was no longer in the public domain. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 03:50, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Personal information includes real-life name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation. I did NOT "provide this information".
make the target feel threatened or intimidated, and the outcome may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine, frighten, or discourage them from editing. For the record, I do feel intimitated by the criticism (which is at the level of serious accusations, i.e. they
could harm an editor's job prospects or personal life, especially when usernames are closely linked to an individual's real name), and I think the authors wish for certain editors to be discouraged from editing the Holocaust in Poland topic area (since their paper explicitly invokes ArbCom and WMF and suggests those bodies should intervene). As I noted in my evidence, I have alraedy been subject to threats sent to my workplace back in 2020; G&K knew about them; I've explicitly asked them to avoid aiding Icewhiz in his campaign to damage my reputation - and yet the authors chose to repeat the same claims in their paper. I cited above some ethics codes from social sciences, and I have hard time seeing how this paper adheres to them. Which is why I suggested above that the most constructive outcome of this case would be for the Committee the "formulate a guidance to academics researching or writing about English Wikipedia" which would stress the importance of not harming (intimidating, etc.) Wikimedia volunteers, so that future volunteers are less, not more, likely to suffer from the severe levels of stress I have been exposed to since February. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
@ User:CaptainEek - again you appear to be purposefully ignoring the context in which the G&K paper was written. It really is the culmination of a four year (five if you count the posts he was making on Reddit in late 2018) campaign of harassment by Icewhiz. We know Icewhiz contacted Grabowski. He told us in various fora he contacted Grabowski. His sock puppets mentioned it. He said it on WPO. He told Jehochman that. He told probably told some others about it (see this comment from... 2019! by Winged Blades of Godric). Klein has said she interviewed Icewhiz (that interview, along with those by Francois Robere, Levivich and a couple of others was never released, unlike the "safe" interviews with Ealdgyth, Joe Roe, and Buidhe). Additionally we also know that at least half the text in the paper is exclusively based on Icewhiz and his disputes (the stuff from 2018-2019). We also know that Grabowski and Klein use the exact same non-Wiki sources as Icewhiz used in his disputes on Wiki (in some case they even misuse them the exact same way). You can't divorce the info in this paper - both the accusations against editors or the doxing - from this long term abuse by Icewhiz. That makes all the discussion about academic norms and comparisons to citing scholars in normal papers moot since most academic papers aren't written based on info provided by someone who has been WMF banned for very very vile harassment - and Wikipedia policy makes no exception when it comes to harassment and doxing for academics. Also, the other arbs here have asked specific questions and made specific inquiries here, which at least I personally found very useful, since honestly, it's very hard to know what parts of the evidence are being taken seriously and which aren't (since, to put it diplomatically, this evidence is of very varying quality). And I also think some of the resulting discussions based on these inquiries has been quite constructive (in particular Wugapodes comments/questions about COI). I would ask, since you believe that "evidence raised in this case shows they (G&K) were on to something", to articulate your own questions and inquiries regarding the parts of the evidence you think show this something.
at least in my social science, the goal is not usually action or activism but understanding, I think this is a nice illustration of differences between some fields (such as economy and sociology). In my field, sociology, calls for action are not uncommon (see also social criticism and critical theory), although there is an eternal debate about whether scholars should be neutral or not. IMHO activism is fine, as long as it doesn't end up hurting others through the "end justifies the means" logic. Hence the need for academic ethics (wait, this is a red link...? I see Category:Research ethics but no main at research ethics... well, go figure). -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
I argue that doxing may be justified in cases where it reveals wrongdoing (such as deception), but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing. Revealing additional information, such as that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation, is unjustified.Such an academic view is clearly quite congruent with the spirit of the UCoC, as well as of longstanding en-wiki policy. It seems to me that what is in G&K fails the criterion of being necessary to reveal POV on WP. Rather, it fits with being additional information, which ArbCom already knows has actually been used to target an editor for harassment and intimidation. ArbCom should understand that the use of personal information in G&K is not in accordance with academic views of the ethics of the matter. ArbCom would be on very thin ice if they were to take the position that, as a routine matter of academic expression in a peer-reviewed journal, the G&K paper should be off-limits for consideration of its implications for the WP editing privileges of one of the authors. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 16:57, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
normal research... [t]he sort that academics and journalists do every day. I was addressing that in terms, specifically, of academics. Douglas shows the academic view of the ethics of this. I'm not saying it was misconduct, and it would make no difference to the decision here if it were. I'm saying that it isn't just an everyday kind of scholarship, not according to me, but according to a reliable source. By the way, I've seen named parties say that they came, over time, to find it more difficult to control their tone in discussions, because of the persistent push-back that follows anything anyone says in the topic area. I'm beginning to get a first-hand sense of what that feels like. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 17:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
One more time.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that 1) G&K obtained this info from Icewhiz and the diff that is being used to excuse it, either from Icewhiz or some other Wikipedian, and 2) that the only reason they included it in the paper was to intimidate and harass.
I think some people have this really naive fairy tale idealized image of what academics are like and so would never harass anyone. Guess what? They’re just like regular people, with all the bad and good that comes along with it. Volunteer Marek 14:40, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
or links to such information. So the letter of the policy simply does not support any argument that the 2009 diff was a voluntary disclosure of personal information as defined in WP:OUTING and the information was therefore no longer protected by policy. That applies to both the 2009 version and the 2023 version of the policy, which has been remarkably stable in that respect.
using various techniques of disruption and manipulationGitz, there are no "techniques of disruption and manipulation". Once again you are using exaggerated and hyperbolic rhetoric to attack people with no evidence. It's a rhetorical trick you have been constantly employing here. Oh wait, I can see an instance of a "technique of manipulation". Right in your statement above where you try to associate me with GCB in the same sentence as if I was also guilty of sock puppetry or something. People keep talking about these "tactics" and "techniques" and god knows what other evil and underhanded stratagems have been supposedly employed... ok, what are they??? Maybe I'd like to learn some. But at this moment other than "making an argument for one's views on talk page" I don't see one. Oh wait, I can think of another. Constantly go running to WP:AE or WP:ANI to file reports! Like Icewhiz did, until it boomeranged on him in 2009. Or like you did last year until it boomeranged on you. Maybe that's my "super sekrit technique". Let people use the WP:ROPE they've been given and just wait for the boomerang.
Comment on content, not on the contributor). While, to repeat myself, I appreciate constructive criticism as a concept, which wiki policy do you think encourages it, given NPA's recommendation not to discuss other users? On the sidenote, it's hard to figure out what's best - consider the two contradictory interpreations of the three wise monkeys proverb. It seems to me that my view represents the first interpretation, and yours, the second. PS. Or The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing vs The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I used to believe in the first one, but as I get older, the appeal of the second one becomes more clear (up to and including summarizing my ~2 decades of editing Wikipedia as no good deed goes unpunished). Ok, enough proverbs for today, I promise. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:18, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Add: in an interview (can send link) Grabowski stated that I, supposedly, revealed my identity "in a chat room". This is of course nonsense. Chat room? Huh? This shows that 1) Grabowski seems not to know what is in his own paper (the paper relies on a Wikipedia diff, not any "chat room") or can't tell the difference between a Wikipedia talk page and a "chat room" and 2) he is not even aware that it is this 15 year old diff that supposedly "justifies" doxing me. Basically the excuse that some people are making for Grabowski and Klein's doxing and harassment is not even the excuse that Grabowski himself is making. This also shows that there's absolutely no way that Grabowski and Klein could have found this obscure 15 year old diff without help from someone actually knowledgeable about Wikipedia. Volunteer Marek 15:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
reveals wrongdoing (such as deception), but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing, or as
that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation. And ArbCom has to explain which of those it is, and why. It's not enough to say that it's an academic paper and we don't second-guess academic papers. As I've said numerous times already, ArbCom isn't being asked to evaluate what should or should not be in the G&K paper; ArbCom is being asked, given what is in the G&K paper, how should WP maintain community norms for a safe environment in which editors can collaborate. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Deanonymizing doxing releases personal information establishing the identity of a formerly anonymous or pseudonymous individual.For ArbCom's purposes, editors who edit under user names that are not their real names (including VM and myself) fit the definition of anonymous or pseudonymous. In the section about this subcategory, Douglas goes on to say:
It also covers instances where someone’s identity is revealed publically regardless of whether she has deliberately sought to conceal her identity or not.In my reading of the situation, VM did something like post that he was unhappy about harassment, but in the course of doing that he revealed his name, without explicitly revealing his workplace. (I'm basing that on what he says here, and I have deliberately never looked to see what the diff actually said, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong.) That sounds to me like, in Douglas' view, there are potential ethical issues, even if VM had been, well, inconsistent, in seeking to "conceal [his] identity". Now I come to where Douglas cites Bok. Douglas starts by saying:
My interpretation of the concept is based on two claims by Bok (1989). Note: two. The first is where he quotes Bok saying "all information about matters that might affect its welfare". But then Douglas refers to the second, saying:
information reported to the public that only satisfies their curiosity rather than affects their welfare must take into account the privacy of those affected– so, before we put too much weight on the isolated word "all", we had better recognize that Douglas draws a distinction apparently also drawn by Bok, that information that readers might be curious about, but which is not a matter of affecting public welfare, is not presumed to be fair game for revealing to the public, when the information is that "of a formerly anonymous or pseudonymous individual". As for Douglas commenting specifically about routine academic practice, I don't think that's in the source. So I think I've read the source correctly. If I'm missing something, I'm happy to discuss that further.
Re: As Elinruby put it: "polite distortions of the truth seem to prevail in wiki proceedings over attempts to defend it that also express irritation."
[150]
I stated this as a general rule and am correctly quoted; I just wanted to note that while I do still think that this is a true statement, the two editors who have so far publicly agreed with me were talking about quite different situations than I was.
I for one found that interesting and do not envy the arbitrators their task.
I also addressed a question to François on the evidence talk page that Barkeep asked me to move here, about an old edit summary from Collaboration with the Axis powers ca. 2018, where he called some text in the Jewish collaboration section "blood libel". I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the description, just neutrally asking if he would like to expand on that or anything else in the diffs provided for context: [151] [152] [153] [154] [155] [156] [157]
Just so that doesn't seem like a gotcha question, it may be worth pointing out that a page patroller tagged the Poland section of the article as long ( patroller tagging), whereupon another editor at the page accused François of vandalism. [158]. Noting that. Elinruby ( talk) 08:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
The 1944–1946 Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, which according to some estimates killed as many as 1000–2000 Jews (237 documented cases), involved, among other elements, accusations of blood libel, especially in the case of the 1946 Kielce pogrom.
An alleged 1370 Brussels miracle involves an allegation of host desecration; a Jew attempted to stab several Hosts, but they miraculously bled and were otherwise unharmed.On the subject of repating/endorsing antisemitic myths, perhaps someone should take a look at that article? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:33, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Despite spending 20+ hours on a deep dive as requested by Wugs, Im torn on if Ive presented my findings fairly, and as to what sort of remedy they indicate. Im leaning to the view that VM would benefit from an adomishment level directive to comply with WP:Cival , in its broadest sense, if he choses to futher edit in this TA, as an upgrade to the useful Callanecc restriction . But if Arbs chose to give VM an exoneration & commendation, I couldn't deny there's plenty of evidence for such a result.
One thing I am confident on, even if it may equate to platitude level of obviousness, is that full compliance with
WP:CIVAL in its broad sense by all involved editors, seem extra desirable for this sensitive topic class, especially the call for radical compassion for different perspectives, e.g. not just 'how would I feel if someone said that to me', but How would I feel if someone said that to someone I love who cannot just 'brush it off'?
Some may benefit from reading WP:ENEMY - just an essay, but if one is going to be forcefully bossing article content like VM sometimes seems to, it's a near essential practice for compliance with the non negotiable WP:NPOV policy. VM's editing as competition philosophy as laid out in his essay and exemplified by his conduct is admirable to a degree, and in other topic classes I've direct experience of it leading to article improvement just like he says. But competition generally means there has to be both winners & losers. Competition mode isn't that far from gladiator mode, and who does that serve?
Competitive editing seems at best orthogonal to the sort of win-win collaboration encouraged by WP:Cival. And especially not appropriate for hyper sensitive areas like holocaust adjacent topics. What Im less confident on, but which I guess was the guiding thought for how I presented my evidence, is that in this sensitive TA, the competitive approach, combined with VM's past aggressive editing , apparent aversion to sugar coating his words, etc, may have led others to see him as at best unsympathetic, even as a bad actor, and hence he triggers emotional effects that don't bring out the best from normally excellent editors.
Im self boxing the rest of my analyses, its not compareable to the quality sourced based analyses many of you guys are posting, maybe isn't worth anyones time, but some may find value in it as Im looking at matters a little differently than others.
Expansion on the above, sub boxes on Dov Levin, Icewhiz, Polish heroism
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In my investigation, I found VM invariably seemned correct in his various complaints on opponents making false claims about what sources and diffs actually say. But one of his assertions seems wrong – when he suggests folks are counting on admins to be too busy or lazy(!) to do the work to verify said claims. That implies they are dishonest. I don't think that's the case with most of the quality long term editors VM has tangled with. Rather, they get provoked into a 'passion rules reason' state that all of us are prone to under the right duress. When folk are emotional about something - but lack the time, energy or clarity to make an optimal rational decision – they'll sometimes fall back on heuristic shortcuts. In this case, possibly: 'VMs a baddie – the opposite of what suits him is for the best!'. VM's propensity to use belittling language etc may have helped create such an impression. Along with his apparent aversion to sugar coating his words – sometimes even if you have a great grip on the sources, you should take care to express extra empathy for different perspectives when discussing issues as sensitive as the holocaust. When in a 'passion rules reason' state, you're more likely to misread things in a way that suits your objective. I suspect some of the normally good editors who made mistakes opposing VM sincerely believed the evidence supported them. If VM was to return to the TA editing with a whole hearted WP:Civil mindset, showing sincere & sensitively expressed empathy for those with different perspectives, then after a while, social contagion effects would likely see others do the same. If my read is correct that VM may be the editor most responsible for amping up -ve feelings in this TA (despite his general high integrity & policy compliance) then this might be a fitting penance for him. Again, my read might be entirely wrong, the contentiousness may be entirely due to other actors, the inherent divisiveness of the subject & external factors. And VM might have been a huge net +ve, upholding policy, eliminating undue anti Polish sentiment & antisemitism (as he does do both, if not necessarily to an equal degree.)
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FeydHuxtable ( talk) 19:37, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
minor errors ... subtle manipulations and outright lies(G&K's quote) must have been unbearable. If G&K are right and there are serious distortions in the topic area that could not be addressed through the usual editing process – collaborative editing didn't work, articles remained unbalanced, improvements got stonewalled, talk page discussions were blocked and dysfunctional – then it was inevitable that sooner or later some arch-POV-pusher would show up, ready to do anything to publish their content: we can blame the POV-pusher, but we should also try to understand the underlying dynamics. This is particularly true if the distortions were originated by repeated violations of WP policies such as CIV, HARASS, WAR, DIS: these policies are meant to protect not only the integrity of the editorial process and the quality of its outcome, but also the well-being and mental health of us editors. If these policies were systematically disregarded in the HiP topic area, which then became "toxic", this would not only be detrimental to the reliability of the encyclopaedia, but would also raise a health and safety issue. The observation that Icewhiz's editing was impeccable before he entered the HiP topic area is quite instructive: while in no way excusing Icewhiz for his misbehaviour, it underlines the urgency of addressing the problem that this case is intended to solve. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 10:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Further reply to Barkeep, long reply to VM
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@Barkeep, I did try to avoid offense, & cut out over 1,000 words I'd originally typed out, to avoid possible adverse consequence, sorry I didn't quite cut enough. I'd guess the reason VM himself doesn't seem too offended is he senses I was sincerely tyring to help even if I didn't get everything right. I thought Id try to contribute in a similar way that Trypto did in the skeptic case, by being insightful and fair to both sides, but getting a proper grip on the core mainstream strands in the WP:RS proved too difficult. So I thought I'd turn from the big picture to look at personalities, and from there try to say something central about Conduct issues. @VM Sounds like you're a lot harder on yourself on incivility than I'd be. I was initially concerned by the G&K quotes, but not after investigating the context. Some of them needed a bit of work, but with a couple they made you look good even after 2 mins looking at why you made the heated remark. One of the sub boxes I cut from my earlier post was about how in certain circumstances cussing can be not just excusable but even a good thing. Had 2nd thoughts as best not to be too equivocal about some things, and Id not say even this except it doesn't look like you have a major problem with cussing. 17 instances over ~5 years, none of which were especially vulgar, isn't that bad for a highly productive editor working on difficult topics. As said to Piotrus Id already saw the PA thing as probaly already resolved. Ive a different view on competitive editing and think its very relevant to discuss here, especially as it relates to the Conduct concerns central to this case. In RW, I'd guess we'd agree on the benefits of competition & that well meaning attempts to shield folk from its harsh side are often ultimately harmful. I think its (mostly) different on wiki – we're in an artificial environment, in some senses better than RW due to our Policies and community. Maybe Im wrong in the general sense, but not in regards to how competitive & aggressive editing is especially harmful to this TA. I'd guess you can think of many examples outside the TA, where your competitive approach has caused an opposing editor to raise their game, leading to article improvements by the process your essay describes. (I know diffs that prove this are out there, there are a couple of cases where the editor whose game you raised was me. Normally Im not the sort to get into even mild content disputes, you made me work harder than anyone else has except a certain other buddy of Trypto's , and it led to very worthwhile article improvements.) But can you pick out even one diff where your approach has raised the game of an opposing editor in this particular TA? There does seem to be abundant evidence that the converse may be happening. As said, you seemed invariably correct in the many instances I investigated where you accused an opponent of gamesmanship or worse. Sorry if I am overly focussing on you – its important for all editors to be deep sense cival in this TA. This would be even more difficult to discuss at a more general level. It's true that hyper sensitive topics, disruptive editing always a possibility now matter how deeply cival and NPOV the main editors are. But there are many examples of articles on high impact topics that are controversal in RW, but which due to haveing been written with good NPOV, are easy to update, and have next to no trouble even from socks. My contention is that in this TA, competetive, sympathy-light editing unavoidably provokes conduct issues in other editors. Including with some of far more peaceful character than Mr disruptive. At best uncollegial editing, or allowing emotions to cloud reading of sources. At worst, intentional deception and major rule violations. The rest of this post is will be to elaborate on 'unavoidably' . Im going to get a bit real world. We'd not be here if not for a RW publication that itself reports of top level government officials discussing a large budget for interventions in the TA. Whether or not that particular report is correct, we all know governments and corporations do sometimes fund such editing, as its widely understood our article content can have significant RW impact. VM, apologies for spelling out a few things you'll understand better than me. I'm doing so in case others read this, as this is EN wiki, and there's aspects to this TA that may be less obvious to some in the Anglosphere. Im going to say something that may be shocking. There are certain circumstances, where playing by the rules is not merely difficult , its unthinkable. An example US editors might relate to is the Cuban missile crisis. That was seen by some as an existential threat. Very unlikely it even entered the heads of US officials at the time that they should be observing international law, respecting the sovereign right of Cuba to partner with Russia how they liked. Existential threat is also a thing for this TA. Different people have totally different attitudes on these things, but anyone with the energy to have read this far into the box likely doesn't need an explanation as to why antisemitism is a life and death thing for some. Why the TA might invoke existential fear for some Poles may need a few more words. I wish I had a good source for this, its something I know only from conversation with Poles – that there's a centuries old fear in Poland about the Great Bear, and for at least a few this fear is always at the back of their minds. One of the sub boxes I cut from my analyses was on the plight of the Poles, mentioning my experience of Brexit negotiation back in 2018. I had some colourful but I guess distracting anecdotes on the single minded focus some of the Polish diplomats had on ensuring post EU UK would have their backs if Putin started trouble, and the unconventional means they used to max the chances of that. To appreciate the link to this TA, one has to understand that big decisions, both in terms of billion dollar capital flows & geostrategic commitments, aren't always made on a rational P&L bases. 'Don't help the antsemtie' can be the decisive thought. This is not to argue that our coverage of antisemiticism in Poland ought to be minimised. It is to say that when the balance of WP:RS supports such content being added, there should be sympathy for those editing from a pro Polish perspective. And vice versa. Ive several examples where Ive seen first hand wiki pages seemingly have a major influence on RW events, this one is perhaps the most relevant, given your interest in global Macro. Back in 2011, DSK was the living economist I most admired due to how he'd transformed IMF for the benefit of the world's poor (At leas that's how I saw it at the time, as did some rank economists, per sources I added [ added some positives about him here. It was distressing to think about DSK being locked up in Rikers Island. There were dozens of sources about him likely having been stitched up in French, but less than 1% of the English ones mentioned that possibility. I doubt anti-semiticism had anything to do with it, but its impossible to make the sort of changes DSK brought about without upsetting some. I've enough experience working in Investment Banks & for central government to know [ Peter Pumkinghead reflects reality. Certain ultra rich people will come at you rather hard if they perceive you as a threat to their livelihood. So I thought it would be due weight to add a few lines on the possible setup to the article . The next day, there were hundreds of English sources covering the possible setup. As some here will know, when covering a hot topic, journalists & producers can only read a tiny fraction of what other sources are saying, but many can be relied on to check the wiki page. The coverage generated much sympathy for him, and seems very possible it contributed to his freedom. Later I learnt he has unsophisticated views on GENsex , to say the least, and regretted possibly helping him out, but the possible mistake doesn't detract from the point. Trying not to say too much on a certain issue as Arbs hate to see anyone doubling down. I'll just say you might well be right, but that Solzhenitsyn who Id guess you might have read, was good on how every one of us has the potential to more towards the light or dark, and sometimes it's the interaction between our environment and our virtues that leads us astry. |
FeydHuxtable ( talk) 16:58, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Icewhiz denies that they ever harassed anyone, and claims that Piotrus and friends colluded to make false complaints, which were accepted uncritically by WMF, without giving Icewhiz a chance to respond.[private email] My experience with WMF is that they are not infallible. ArbCom can't overrule WMF, but we should not necessarily accept as fact whatever WMF says without ArbCom seeing proof and hearing a response from Icewhiz.[168] <-- Jehochman posting on behalf of Icewhiz and basically suggesting that Icewhiz is correct. What word would you use to summarize you posting this stuff for him?
Oh, wow, we're actually pulling stuff from the "Russavia era", literally more than a decade old. Ok, I know some of you around here are kind of young in Wikipedia years, but everyone remembers who User:Russavia was, right? That's what most of these diffs are about. The block by WGFinely? Why not link the AE report itself? Here: [173]. Russavia. Sandstein's iban? Russavia. The incivility warning from 2013... well, not Russavia, but rather this account. Seriously, why is it that every time someone complains that "VM didn't assume good faith towards user XYZ" and then you click on User:XYZ's page you get something that looks like this:
Or like this:
Every. Single. Time.
(This applies to a good chunk of Francois Robere's evidence too).
This MAY indeed show something, but I don't think it shows what the people presenting the evidences think it shows. Volunteer Marek 07:36, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
According to the Committee statement, the Committee believed at the time that the matter was suitable for onsite discussion. I would infer from that, that there are some significant elements of the complaint that can be made public without violating personal information. It also sounds like the complaint is back in the Committee's lap, after Trust & Safety sent it back to them. Therefore, if ArbCom ends up basing anything in the Proposed Decision on their evaluation of that complaint, I want to encourage them to make clear, onsite, what that was. (I say that particularly in the context of the motion about there not having been any outing violations in the G&K paper, along with a named party taking issue with that motion, although I might be entirely incorrect in my inference that this is what the private complaint was about.) --
Tryptofish (
talk)
20:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
This is an important part of the overarching timeline and was one of the main factors in convincing me that a case was needed. Moneytrees🏝️ (Talk) 02:46, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
GCB's evidence [176] buti n regard to question asked by User:Primefac here: [177]
@
User:Primefac I’ll try to help in understanding --> Heavy socking wasn't the thing in that topic area before Icewhiz's ban but it started immediately after. Icewhiz didn't operate his sock puppets all at once. After one got blocked - 1 or 2 new ones showed up and so on. While those sock accounts were getting blocked, it was
clear who is behind them. François Robere knew about the
Icewhiz's investigation board because he commented
defending Icewhiz's sock puppets during examinations <--(scroll down). In some instances, François Robere restored sock puppet's edit after sock puppet was already blocked and identified as Icewhiz. For example:
That’s four days after KasiaNL was identified and blocked as Icewhiz. -
GizzyCatBella
🍁
18:49, 12 April 2023 (UTC) —
GizzyCatBella (
talk ·
contribs) is a suspected
sock puppet of
Jacurek (
talk ·
contribs).
@ Buffs: Thanks for the ping. I haven't had time to review much of GCB's evidence, and will likely not be able to do so for a few more days, so I can only comment on VM's claims.
Going through the first few examples of GCB:
There's also some current affairs ("LGBT Free Zones", "Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement"), articles linked from articles that I follow ("About the Civilization of Death"), and other such stuff. Most of it is either the "sock" following me, public boards, or articles I've been editing for a while. François Robere ( talk) 12:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
User:François Robere I believe you're suppose to answer here in "Comment by parties" rather than "Comment by others". Regardless:
Charts like that, which neglects to mention significant "real-world" events
Well, yes, the chart fails to mention "real world events" because it is, as titled, a chart of "Total number of Poland related WP:AE reports by year" rather than a chart of "Real World Events". If you want to do some chart titled "Correlation between AE reports in this topic area and real world events" then please, present it to us. This chart here, just shows purely factual info. There were X # of AE reports in a given year. Then it adds in a few arrows which show "this topic on Wikipedia events".
I guess you're bothered by the fact that it shows that when Icewhiz arrived the number of WP:AE reports exploded. This isn't controversial. And guess what? It wasn't just the number of Poland-related WP:AE reports that exploded. There was another topic area which saw an explosion in number of WP:AE reports. Guess what was it? Yup, Israel-Palestine topic area, and yup, also because of the record number of WP:AE report Icewhiz filed in that topic area. This excuse-making-for-Icewhiz would be minimally plausible if he hadn't been doing it in multiple topic areas.
Anyway, you have other data which shows something else? Ok, let's see it. Where is it? Right now all the objections are nothing but "I just don't like what this chart shows because it is not convenient for me or my prior beliefs".
And sure correlation is NOT ALWAYS causation but if someone sticks their hand in a fire and each time it gets burned and this happens over and over and over again, with different fires (at least 12 different ones it seems) then yeah, concluding causation seems justified. And maybe you didn't disagree with K.e.coffman and SarahV all that much - ok, but were you together with them in 100 different disputes?
Like seriously, if it was one or two... maybe three, ok fine, four socks, there'd be room for ambiguity and argument here. But 12+? Nah. Volunteer Marek 18:51, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@
User:Buffs In most of these cases, IW was responding quickly to everyone on these pages, (not just FR).
Yeah, no, that's not true either. In most of the cases that are analyzed (which are comprehensive for pre 2019 ArbCom case) it's the other way around - FR following Icewhiz around not vice versa. I said this originally in 2019: The best thing that you could say about this, if you're Icewhiz at least, is that FR tends to supports Icewhiz a lot more than vice versa. Icewhiz reciprocates... occasionally.
[182] Even a quick glance at the table
[183] shows that there are far more "FR supports Icewhiz" than "Icewhiz supports FR" entries in there. Icewhiz usually led the way and FR followed. That's also probably partially why they were not included in 2019 case.
Volunteer Marek
18:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@Buffs - The evidences I delivered of Francois Robere tag-teaming with Icewhiz sock puppets paint a clear picture and leave no room for doubt. I typed it in a logical and organized manner, I backed it by facts and examples making it easy to follow and understand. The evidence isn't based on my assumptions or opinion, but on verifiable data. -
GizzyCatBella
🍁
15:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC) —
GizzyCatBella (
talk ·
contribs) is a suspected
sock puppet of
Jacurek (
talk ·
contribs).
@ User:Buffs sure, FR also made edits which are completely irrelevant to the issue we're discussing. I'm not sure what your point is. And I'm not accusing FR of sock puppetry. I don't know why you think that. I'm accusing them - based on extensive evidence - of coordinating with Icewhiz sock puppets. Backed by evidence, it's not "casting aspersions". And *this right here* is the "appropriate fora" since it's exactly the purpose of this case to determine the causes of disruptions in this topic area and surely sock puppetry by Icewhiz is at the top of that list.
And speaking of "aspersions", you might want to refrain from accusing others of making "aspersions" if you're throwing around "aspersions" yourself. To wit, your claim that "You've made many specious assertions that others were acting upon IW's behalf because they disagreed with you" is - unlike the evidence on FR and Icewhiz sock puppets - completely unbacked by evidence. So I'd appreciate it if you struck it. Volunteer Marek 19:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
this is not a wholesale analysis of every edit they have made, only those where you found they agreed and disagreed. You have omitted all points that are neutral.- this is not true. It's every discussion (prior to 2019 case) they participated in together. So agreed, disagreed OR neutral. So no, I did not omit those... there just weren't ANY "neutrals" or "disagreed" (almost)
So no, not "all opposition". Just FRYou've made many specious assertions that others were acting upon IW's behalf because they disagreed with you. This level of vitriol and hostility are antithetical to WP editing. Buffs ( talk) 16:45, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
(Moved here from Evidence talk page per unopposed suggestion made there)
I want to commend any community members who have made sincere efforts to improve, and strongly recommend that ArbCom recognize such improvements. To err is human. The circumstances around this case and the topic area are complicated to the extreme. We shouldn't be too critical of editors, administrators, and arbitrators who may have been confused, but are willing to learn from mistakes. Jehochman Talk 13:03, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
VM and Naliboki massacre. Haeb says that G&K "back up their assertion with a diff link", but that is a partial description. G&K (footnote 92) give two diffs, one of which acts to exonerate Jews and doesn't refer directly to the massacre ("The routine attacks on Polish underground units by Soviet partisans could not have been circumvented by Jews in their ranks.", with source), and the other was revert of a Yaniv revert. The reason for VM's upset is that G&K introduces these diffs with "For Volunteer Marek’s edits on Naliboki see" as if they are presenting a comprehensive or at least representative sample of VM's contributions to the article, while not mentioning the fact that after consensus on the issue of Jewish involvement was reached VM assisted in removing it. [185] [186] [187]. In my opinion, VM's complaint against G&K is justified. Zero talk 06:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus and The Forgotten Holocaust. Piotrus is correct to note that the May 17, 2020 article on the book mentioned multiple criticisms. Haeb seems confused to mention G&K's footnote 106, as it links to a different article. At some point of time both articles said there was a single critical review, but since February neither does. It is generally a matter of judgement whether a review is positive or negative, so NOR was sufficient reason to remove it. G&K's implication of malicious intent has no basis. Zero talk 07:26, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus and Chart 3. In the few months between G&K's paper and recent discussion, G&K's Scholar citation counts for Richard Lukas jumped by a factor of 6, even though the cited works are quite old. There are several possible reasons, of which human error is one. For almost a month now, Piotrus' discussion has not said "acknowledged [an] error" but rather "acknowledged a problem", which is true, and Piotrus has never claimed that G&K made a mistake on purpose. So there is nothing here. However, there is plenty to be said about G&K's chart and what it says or doesn't say about citations on Wikipedia. G&K compared wiki-mentions of two authors they dislike (Lukas and Chodakiewicz) against five they like (Dwork, Kassow, Tex, Bergen, Gitelman), showing the former are mentioned much more often than the latter. However, they don't explain why they choose these five "controls" over, say, Polonsky, Gross or Browning, who are mentioned approvingly in their essay and have more wiki-mentions than Lukas or Chodakiewicz. In fact, the scholars they mention approvingly have between them more than twice the number of wiki-mentions as the scholars they mention disapprovingly. If other mainstream Holocaust scholars are included (Lipstadt, Hilber, Cesarani, Bauer, etc, all with many wiki-mentions) the story gets even more distant from what G&K want us to believe. Zero talk 06:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
reason for VM's upset, but about one specific "lie" accusation of his (
Regarding the Naliboki massacre article, the authors falsely claim that I added “Jewish partisans” to it. This too is just another lie Icewhiz tried to peddle on Wikipedia before he got banned. I *removed* the claim that Jewish partisans were involved, not added it!). However, VMs "not added" claim is plainly false [188]. (You appear to argue that it was not an addition but a
revert of a Yaniv revert, but that's the second problem with VM's accusation - Grabowski and Klein merely say that he
brought backthe "Jewish partisans" claim, not that he
added). Even if you think that this part of the paper can be criticized (which would be a different discussion), that does not justify false accustions against the authors. HaeB ( talk) 23:45, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus is correct to note that the May 17, 2020 article on the book mentioned multiple criticisms.- so what? That's not G&K's point here.
The authors write that: “By portraying Engel’s opinion as a lone dissenter in a sea of praise, Piotrus massaged the Wikipedia article to show Lukas in a positive light.”, but the book article entry I indeed wrote (May 2020 version linked) included other critical or mixed reviews as well), the former contained the same problematic characterization in the lede ("It has received a number of positive reviews and a single dissenting critical review which resulted in a series of letters published in the Slavic Review between 1987 and 1991 "). So what exactly is the
False claimthat Piotrus accuses the authors of? Regards, HaeB ( talk) 00:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
a neutral description of a topic- whereas it is obviously not a Wikipedia article beholden to NPOV). But I'm also not here to defend or criticize G&K: This part of the evidence is not about them, but about Volunteer Marek and Piotrus, and about specific false or misleading claims they made about G&K. And even if G&K have made other mistakes, I entirely disagree that that would justify making such false or misleading claims about them.
For almost a month now, Piotrus' discussion has not said "acknowledged [an] error" but rather "acknowledged a problem", which is true- the fact that Piotrus corrected his false claim about G&K after I pointed it out is appreciated. But that does not change the fact that it was made in the first place. And by the way, this is one of the very few parts of his and VM's rebuttals that I have fact-checked in some detail (mostly because that particular topic had come up in the Signpost discussion). And in that small portion already, several claims did not hold up. This makes me feel much less confident about taking the rest at face value than apparently a lot of other editors. Again, these are serious BLP and ASPERSIONS topics.
and Piotrus has never claimed that G&K made a mistake on purpose- that seems to be a strawman distraction; who said that Piotrus claimed that G&K made a mistake on purpose?
So there is nothing here- I entirely disagree, see above.
that Piotrus and VM are somehow responsible for not maintaining the topic area to what you consider a sufficiently scholarly standard. Regarding
you seem to be arguing that we should not expect it to meet that [scholarly] standard, it appears that you may have misinterpreted my (admittedly brief) summary of the full response that I have now posted here. (Among other things I point out there that making an argument with a few examples is standard scholarly practice in the humanities, even though it is of course not a fully-fledged statistical argument of the kind that would be accepted in a quantitative research paper in other fields.) And concerning "accepted [the paper] at face value", I would also like to mention that the whole reason I'm here is that since over a decade I've been organizing a newsletter/Signpost section where academic publications are regularly assessed critically - i.e. not accepted at face value. Even Groceryheist's review (which - especially - VM tried so hard to prevent from appearing in the Signpost, with all kinds of incivil attacks and distorting claims) points out various shortcomings of the paper and discusses VM's and Piotrus' rebuttals.
By portraying Engel’s opinion as a lone dissenter in a sea of praise, Piotrus massaged the Wikipedia article to show Lukas in a positive lightwas specifically referring to Piotrus' lede sentence(s)
It has received a number of positive reviews, and a single dissenting critical review. I don't buy your argument that the subsequent description of Piotrus revert of François Robere
makes it clear that at this point, at least, [...] they are talking about the article as a whole, and not just the lede.Either way, this evidence is not about how you would have fixed Piotrus' "False claim" argument to be valid - it is about the fact that Piotrus' rebuttal entirely omitted the fact that G&K were referring to his
single dissenting critical reviewsummary here.
single dissenting critical reviewclaim into both articles and that G&K could have clarified in the paper's main body when they are talking about which. But I don't think that weakens their argument.) Regards, HaeB ( talk) 19:12, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World_War_II_and_the_history_of_Jews_in_Poland/Evidence/Summary#Sanctions_history Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World_War_II_and_the_history_of_Jews_in_Poland/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_François_Robere
@ François Robere: you seem to have a misunderstanding of what an interaction ban means. An interaction ban means an editor should not interact with the person with whom they're banned anymore. This is about actions after the ban. So in the following timeline there is an interaction ban violation:
There is an exception to the ban for Engaging in legitimate and necessary dispute resolution
which includes an Arbitration Case for which both are parties.
Barkeep49 (
talk)
15:40, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus: how do you decide when to publicly discuss something with another editor/admin/arb and when to email that editor/admin/arb? Barkeep49 ( talk) 15:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
I guess the decision is based on consideration on whether privacy is needed, for example to reduce the chance of harassment, both to myself and to the other parties. Some emails could contain discussion of harassment, including how I am affected by it, and similar stuff I don't necessarily feel to make a part of public record (as they could empower or encourage the harassers or other disruptive editors - see WP:DENY). An email could also, for example, contain a friendly warning to behave better, without leaving that warning in one's public record, per my thoughts here. Over the years I have become increasingly concerned not only about how people may use what I say against me, but also, how they can use what I say against others. We are responsible not only for protecting ourselves, but protecting others, and the community in general. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:19, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
the damage CANVASS policy has done to Wikipedia and its community.? Absolutely because maybe it will convince me. Do I have some belief that such an editor might not follow CANVASS, whcih as it stands remains a behavioral epxectation? On its own maybe, maybe not - there are some pieces of polices and guidelines I don't agree with and I'd expect any other editor to be the same so that's not a problem on its own - but when combined with the off-wiki contact I've personally witnessed, I absolutely become concerned. Barkeep49 ( talk) 23:06, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
editors should attempt to follow... though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Editors can be and are sanctioned for failure to follow guidelines. Barkeep49 ( talk) 00:26, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I am somewhat concerned by the timeline in the Zygmunt Krasiński and The Undivine Comedy section presented by François Robere. The other sections around it can be reasonably explained by watchlists, but the timeline in this section is a bit more suspect. Volunteer Marek, how is it that you came to learn of Mellow Boris and their edits to Zygmunt Krasiński, which you reverted wholesale in Special:Permalink/958695415?regarding FR's evidence which says "The very minute MB finished his edits, VM accidentally reverts Piotrus, then self-reverts."
BTW, a good follow up question may be "how did Francois Robere come to edit this article". Prior to Feb 2021 [196] they hadn't edited it either. But when they do show up, first thing they do is restore Mellow Boris' (yes it was a sock) edits [197]. They did edit Undivine Comedy [198] earlier in June 2020 but that's also after my interaction with MB on Krasinski in May. Now, I'm Polish, I like poetry, Krasinski is a famous Polish poet - the article was on my watchlist, there's no mystery here. But AFAIK these don't apply to Francois Robere (I don't know, maybe they do like poetry too) so... how did they find it? Either they were following Mellow Boris' edits (which is not a good look) or they were following mine or Piotrus' edits around (better, but not by much). If there's another explanation I can't see it - was it posted at NPOVN or RSN or something? Which means that this piece of evidence presented by FR seems to fall squarely into the "accuse others of what you are doing yourself cateogry" (and that's not unique to this one piece of evidence). Volunteer Marek 16:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
One more thing that occured to me over lunch. Francois Robere hasn't thought this through - the edits are actually evidence AGAINST the idea of coordination, not for it. Why? Well, the whole the "the very minute" thing in the "The very minute MB finished his edits, VM accidentally reverts Piotrus" Presumably coordination would involve some kind of off-wiki communication. But off-wiki communication would take time. Like if the insinuation here is that Piotrus send me an email or something (to be 100% clear: he didn't), what are the chances that I would see that email instanenously and then be able to respond to it on wiki instanenously? The very fact that this was in "the very minute" means that I had to be watching the article independently, saw Mellow Boris' edits, and made the decision to undo them myself.
This I think applies generally - since someone else has commented somewhere that Polish editors "show up within minutes of each other". Supposing that's true (and it seemed more like a "feels" kind of statement) that would be evidence of people having similar watchlists and reacting to the same stimuli, NOT evidence of coordination. In fact it would be evidence AGAINST coordination.
Now, if there were brand new accounts involved in all of this? Then yeah it'd be different because then you have to anticipate what articles the new account (yes I mean socks) will edit and the only way you can do that is if you're communicating with them off-wiki. But pretty much the only new accounts running around in all of this have been Icewhiz (and related) socks. Volunteer Marek 18:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
It feels like several of the discussions since the release of the paper have been better at finding consensus and that some of the conduct issues I observe haven't spiraled out of control. One explanation for this is the absence of Icewhiz.
Piotrus provided examples of changes to his editing over time. I would be interested in similar evidence from/about other long time editors in this topic area, particularly from Volunteer Marek and François Robereone, and how my approach has changed in that respect. But I didn't want to drop a ton of text on ya'll at once so I'll wait a bit to give a fuller answer. Volunteer Marek 20:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
a public feud between Grabowski and specific editors has been ongoing for multiple years across multiple venues including on-wiki.
Volunteer Marek 06:40, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The general question doesn’t have a clear-cut answer.. I can think of *some* scenarios where a COI (maybe there's a better way to characterize it) would indeed be apparent - for example, if Person X criticizes Editor Y for work on article Z, and Editor Y begins to immediately make negative edits to BLP of Person X even though they'd never edited it before. I think such a case would be about as clear cut as you gonna get. Not sure if that's exactly COI or just plain ol' crappiness. Like "aggravated BLP violations" or something but regardless, I take BLP very seriously (probably more than most) and iif it was up to me in such cases I would definitely expect some sanction or at least warning against the Editor. But that's not what we have here, at least not in any cases that I'm aware of. Volunteer Marek 23:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
What does the conduct of named parties at noticeboard discussions show and tell usw/ link to this discussion. Again, this is one of those "happened two years ago so not going to be able to recall all the details" things, but looking at that one again, it starts out as a contentious, but rather standard discussion about sources. It was a bit confrontational from the get go seemingly because FR first said to me "Take your time" [204] (10:18 March 7) but then went ahead and took it to a noticeboard less than an hour later [205] (11:18 March 7) - basically, not giving me a chance to reply (I had started replying to their points but had not finished). There's some confusion about which sources are actually being discussed. One source said "but not in an Orwellian sense" but it looked like FR wanted to use it to say the opposite, that it was Orwellian. But then there was another source which also said something about Orwell, so... yeah, confusion. I think all of that up to this point though was really exactly the kind of discussion about sources people need to have and which will be unavoidable in a contentious topic.
@ User:Barkeep49, User:Primefac, User:Wugapodes and any other arbs - I plan on answering Barkeep's question about "changes in editing over time" soon (that one is actually quite complex) but since Phase II is going to close in a few days it would be good if any other questions or inquiries that ya'll have were stated giving me (or others) enough time to reply. As I mentioned above, these questions are particularly useful in figuring out which parts of the evidence(s) are important and which are, well, less important. They also help to keep the discussion more focused. Volunteer Marek 04:44, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
@
User:Barkeep49,
User:Primefac - Piotrus provided examples of changes to his editing over time. I would be interested in similar evidence from/about other long time editors in this topic area
I have attempted to answer this question several times, was never satisfied with what I wrote and repeatedly started over. Since time is running out I guess I'll have to go with what I get right here below.
One thing that has changed for me is that I think I've gotten better at walking away. Or disengaging. Or just not engaging in the first place. I know it may not necessarily seem like it from this case but please keep in mind that these are very specific and particular circumstances and if there's one kind of a situation where it's hard to disengage it's exactly something like this here.
But having said that, please also note that participating in this case is really me coming back to the topic I've left alone almost completely alone for the past year. And it's not that shenanigans and hijinks were completely absent in this topic area but if I did see them I mostly chose to ignore them. Not everything on Wikipedia or in this topic area is my responsibility and I can’t task myself in trying to fix it all, watch it all, adjudicate it all. Some disagreements you just need to let go and I think I’ve gotten much better at that.
Additionally, even after this paper came out a whole bunch of editors rushed in to change the articles mentioned in the paper - some of these changes were good, some bad, some really just lateral moves, but regardless I really tried to NOT get involved in all this, except in a few instances where I thought either there was some significant issue at hand. And honestly, I don't really plan on getting re-involved in this topic area in the future - it's just not worth it, and I think editors like Elinruby or Marcelus, who are new-ish to the topic area but not new editors - are both competent and operating in good faith. It's actually nice to see *real* new faces in the topic area (as opposed to constantly seeing new faces of the same you know who).
I think I also got better at controlling my temper and being diplomatic? I ended that with a question mark because, yeah, that's a work in progress. There are a couple things that will set me off and I've really done some introspectin' to identify what these are so that I can either avoid them or take a deep breath before dealing with them. I kind of hesitate to state what these are since unscrupulous observers might take it as a "manual on how to provoke VM". But obviously Icewhiz-related stuff is one of these things. I think this is understandable given the circumstances and it's also unfortunately that it's very hard for me NOT to get involved. Other than that I get irked with 1) BLPs, when someone tries to use them as attack pages. I think this may be because my view of BLP policy is stuck in like 2010 when ... was it User:Doc James? went and mass WP:PROD'ed all the unsourced BLPs on Wikipedia. I think over past few years how seriously BLP policy is taken on Wikipedia has dramatically declined. Same as rest of internet I guess. And 2) when someone else is getting bullied. This could be another editor or sometimes someone an article is about.
There are a few other things. I basically made a mental list of "situations to watch out for and take extra care to be diplomatic"... and then this whole paper/case happened! I say "diplomatic" rather than "uncivil" because I'm very rarely outright uncivil (it's happened in a few isolated case, which of course made it into the paper) but rather most of the time it's me just being a little too blunt and a little to forthright with what I think, which some people perceive as being combative.
I think I simply just view disagreement differently than other people. I think it's natural, to be expected and just something that happens. If someone's wrong I'll let them know and I expect them to do the same. But yeah some people - and maybe MVBW is right that this is a cultural thing - perceive disagreement as an insult: "if you think I'm wrong then it means you think lowly of me". Well, no. I don't see "you're wrong" as a incivil, or a personal attack or insulting. It's just disagreement. But yeah there are different and perhaps better ways of saying "you're wrong", which are more inline with the nature of this project.
I already mentioned this elsewhere but I find Callanecc's civility restriction useful in this regard. Sometimes it's good to have constraints. In fact, I think the Committee should impose this civility restriction on the topic area as a whole.
Finally, as much as you try to disengage, it may not always work. Sometimes you keep walking away, but someone else keeps walking up. The issues of people following others to different topic areas or popping into every discussion that the other person is involved in or watching every edit someone makes just to "harvest diffs" have come up in various places here and I'm not going to repeat the evidence already submitted. But it is those situations where the only way disengagement and walking away can successfully happen is if there's a barrier put in between parties - the IBAN.
So I think the Committee should make the 2 way IBAN imposed by ScottishFinnishRadish on Levivich and myself permanent. Likewise I think the Committee should implement the 2 way IBAN between Francois Robere and myself that I proposed on Callanecc's page and which they stated they were already considering. These two just seem like no-brainer actions. These kinds of decisions/sanctions would be particularly beneficial as they would help editors make the kind of positive changes to their editing and approach that they themselves want to – or should want to make. Volunteer Marek 01:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
(ping User:Primefac because I messed it up above)
@
User:Barkeep49 Want to hear more perspectives/evidence about why RfCs in the topic area would attract a small, but reasonable, number of participants but then fail to be closed. Examples include the Jan Żaryn RfCs, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_355#RfC:_Polish_sources, and Talk:Justice_for_Uncompensated_Survivors_Today_Act_of_2017#RfC:_Mentioning_the_protests_against_the_law.
Others have addressed this I believe but to add to that: short answer is that many of these RfCs were badly framed to begin with. The Jan Zaryn and "Justice for..." RfCs are good examples of that. They tend to look like they're about one thing but then if you look carefully they're really about another.
Look at the Justice for one. In the wording of the RfC FR asks "Should Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act of 2017 mention the protests against the law that took place in Poland and the US?". This is reasonable and looking at the comments there isn't anyone - including myself - that doesn't think the protests cannot be "mentioned". But at the end of the question FR sticks in a diff to one of his edits [209] so... it looks like the RfC is really FR asking "can I restore exactly my edit that other editors objected to". This results in confusion as many of the "Yes" !Votes basically say "it should be mentioned but don't do the COATRACK and OTT that was in there". This is what Pincrete says, what Tserton says (in the discussion), what SMcCandlish says and what Szmenderowiecki says. So if you're the potential closer you look at it and think "what exactly am I suppose to close here?" and give up.
The Jan Zaryn RfC suffered similar problem. I chose that to present as evidence for a reason. In that RfC Francois Robere asked us to vote on proposed text but "only the part that's bolded". Except... the actual dispute was about the OTHER text, the portions that weren't bolded but were also to be included. The bolded parts were, for the most part reasonable. But if you voted 'yes' on those you were implicitly giving approval to the non-bolded parts too which were much less reasonable. So... what is it exactly that is being voted upon? Again, the RfC is set up to LOOK like it's about one thing (the bolded parts) but it's really about another (basically FR asking for their previous edits to be legitimized wholesale). And similar to the "Justice for" RfC you have outside editors (Drmies) telling FR that the way they want to set up the RfC is a "terrible idea". But they plow through anyway.
Add the fact that both of these RfCs - indeed, probably ALL RfCs in 2021 in this topic area - saw very heavy involvement from Icewhiz socks. Which means that any potential closer would have to make judgement calls as to which accounts were legit and which weren't. So yeah I 100% understand why no one wanted to deal with it. Volunteer Marek 04:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I'll speculate that if *I* had written the exact same words as Marcelus, you'd probably be seeing it as "evidence" against me in this very case from someone or otherfor a moment? I'm guessing you've written the answer to the question I'm about to ask and even that I've read it, but I don't see it anywhere in my notes so I'm going to ask again: why do you think this is true for you? I don't see other longterm editors making those claims, so what about you, from your perspective, induces this behavior in others? Barkeep49 ( talk) 20:16, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
According to Joanna Michlic, "the image of the secularized and radically left-wing Jew who aims to take over [the country] and undermine the foundations of the Christian world" dates back to the first half of the 19th century, to the writings of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Zygmunt Krasinski; by the end of the 19th century it has become part of the political discourse in Poland.) It makes sense that both articles would be on VM's watchlist. I'd also tend to say that the tight timeline, and especially the immediate self-revert, supports the idea that it was on his watchlist already - even the most aggressively efficient WP:MEAT is unlikely to call an editor in within a minute of another edit, and it certainly wouldn't call someone in to revert someone, then immediately decide they'd made a mistake and self-revert. That's the kind of thing that does easily happen, however, when seeing something at the top of your watchlist. As an aside, regarding why VM immediately self-reverted - the edit on Żydokomuna led to a dispute with SlimVirgin over VM's then-topic-ban from the history of Poland during World War II, including the Holocaust in Poland; the conclusion was that it was borderline, but VM agreed to leave the article. While Żydokomuna (who died almost a hundred years earlier) would be another step removed, the edit in question stated that the Undivine Comedy was
similar to the work by by Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt in 1938; in light of the recent discussion, VM probably decided, a moment after hitting "edit", that this was too close to the line. -- Aquillion ( talk) 23:16, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I dont find any consensus that there is COI with Grabowski. Realistically, if someone were to ask Grabowski if he is ok with named parties editing his biogrpahy, he would likely say "no", and it's not like there aren't many neutral non-parties which can take care of this article in the future. For the record, I certainly have zero desire to make any edits to his article (which, ironically, I started, and which I believe was perfectly fine and neutral for a tiny stub).
Someone having a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgment about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith.I get the sense that people view COI as some kind of character flaw to be defended against instead of a situation to be managed. I have conflicts of interest with regard to many linguists, and I generally avoid editing articles of living linguists even if I don't know them. The issue isn't "wow Wugapodes has a COI, they must be up to something", the issue is that my external relationships with article subjects can lead editors and the public to question my or the encyclopedia's integrity regardless of merit. Even just looking at Tryptofish's example, the issue I'm concerned about is "some other editor goes to COIN to complain that Chapmansh used the student editor to advance G&K's 'agenda'". That's bad. We bite a student who probably was doing just fine, stir up tensions in the community, and waste time throwing around accusations because of a perceived conflict of interest. All of this can happen even if no one did anything wrong, and that's why I view this as an issue to be cognizant of even if we ultimately do nothing on our end. This isn't 2005 when what happens on-wiki might wind up in a quirky blog. People have personal, professional, and commercial relationships that interact with the interests of the encyclopedia in complicated ways. That's not a bad thing, but like any editorial organization we need to understand conflicts of interest as more than a simple "promoting your own interests" or self-dealing. It's being aware of situations that can cause strife and working to manage them before they blow up. That's my concern w.r.t. student editors. They may be put into a situation where their interests are questioned (without them even necessarily knowing why) and the outcomes are negative for everyone. I would like to avoid that, and the lens other organizations use to understand this problem (and even this one if WP:COI is read carefully) is conflict of interests. — Wug· a·po·des 05:48, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I know from experience over time that the excellent staffers at WikiEd make a strong effort to guide all class assignments away from Contentious Topics, but I also know that a significant number of classes slip through the cracks each year, and end up at WP:ENB.-- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The final third probes into the distortions of German, Italian, and French Holocaust memory.-- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:06, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
legitimate concerns about their behavior. And for me what separates legitimate concerns from concerns (which are real, if not something I feel the need to remedy) is the evidence that justifies them. Barkeep49 ( talk) 22:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
the distortions of German, Italian, and French Holocaust memory. I'll ping @ Ian (Wiki Ed):, who is the WikiEd person for that course, as an fyi, right now. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I hope that the emphasis is on "potential" here because much of the evidence is circumstantial and weak. I'll mention
this example:
"Later in August François Robere created
Property restitution in Poland; a few hours later Volunteer Marek started editing the page, followed
only a few hours later by Piotrus."
The summary makes it look like VM and Piotrus were tailing FR, but a much simpler picture appears on following the timeline on 15 Aug 2021.
It is obvious that VM and Piotrus learned of the new page because FR drew it to their attention by linking to it from a page that VM and Piotrus edit frequently. So the facts of the case are that FR advertised the page and now claims it is suspicious that anyone accepted his invitation. Zero talk 19:19, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus provided examples of changes to his editing over time. I would be interested in similar evidence from/about other long time editors in this topic area, particularly from Volunteer Marek and François Robere. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:15, 12 April 2023, Wednesday (13 days ago) (UTC+3)
Changes to positions:
Changes to editing practices:
Changes to conduct:
I also try to pass this on to less experienced editors who find themselves in similar situations, as you can see in my communications with Mhorg, Szmenderowiecki and Michael60634, among others. François Robere ( talk) 18:52, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
After undressing, newly arrived Jews were beaten with whips to drive them towards the gas chambers; hesitant men were treated particularly brutally. Rudolf Höss, the commandant at Auschwitz, contrasted the practice at Treblinka of deceiving the victims about the showers with his own camp's practice of telling them they had to go through a "delousing" process.and
The killing process at Treblinka differed significantly from the method used at Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the poison gas Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) was used. At Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec, the victims were murdered by suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning from engine exhaust in stationary gas chambers. At Chełmno, they were carried within two specially equipped and engineered trucks, driven at a scientifically calculated speed so as to murder the Jews inside it during the trip, rather than force the drivers and guards to murder them at the destination. After visiting Treblinka on a guided tour, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss concluded that using exhaust gas was inferior to the cyanide used at his extermination camp.
They (Buidhe) are further warned that AE must not be used to "win" content disputes. These are final warnings - any future examples of this or similar behaviour in the topic area will result in sanctions.
discretionary sanctions are not available as a gotcha to remove opponents. Perhaps Volunteer Marek was wrong on the issue (I don't know) but I don't see anything like the Daily Mail being used as a source so Buidhe's request at User talk:Volunteer Marek#Article sourcing requirements was entirely inadequate.
If you need to spell out the evidence to Arbitration Enforcement, it should be worth a try to spell out the same evidence to your fellow editor first.
It's quite simply inappropriate to try to win a content dispute in an admin report after repeatedly refusing to explain your position in the content space. In fact, it's a good way to get boomeranged. Communication is required. Refusing to explain your edits when necessary is disruptive. Buidhe claims they explained in edit summaries, but they really didn't, most of their edit summaries just said "article sourcing requirements", meaningless words, no better than leaving no edit summary.
No information about what the problem was with those sources was posted on the talk page either before or after that revert, nor before posting this AE report.
I may not be able to get back to Wikipedia before this phase closes, so there are a couple of comments I would like to make, even though they are likely to be unpopular and are almost certainly politically unwise.
It's been educational participating in an investigation of secret information about an undefined topic. The word "educational" is a euphemism in that sentence, although I have in fact learned a great deal. Such acrimony when deeply-ingrained beliefs clash.
So why are we here? Grabowski, in my opinion, found errors in the HiP topic area because that is where he was looking. He was looking in HiP because he is an HiP historian. Note: there is no policy that says that an editor cannot make an error of fact, see above. The bad news is that these problems are by no means confined to Poland, however.
If in fact the sources now say something that our articles did not, imho this is in my opinion a systemic failure of the preconceptions of the reliable sources policy, which should be reviewed.
That's a big enough bite to be going on with. I know the committee wants to hear about what might help, and I have some thoughts on that, which I think I can probably get in before I Have To Go, and I will try to do that next. Elinruby (talk) 08:53, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
There were multiple significant disruptions in this subject area by sockpuppet accounts and currently banned users. They should be treated per
WP:DENY. Their actions are not a proof of wrongdoing by any currently active contributors. There is no collective responsibility. Moreover, these sockpuppet accounts poisoned negatively affected a significant number of discussions (AfD, RSNB, etc.) which became a lot more heated than they suppose to be. But I do not think such discussions should be a reason for sanctions with regard to any other contributors.
The central claim by G&K was an alleged "group" of contributors placing intentional distortions and antisemitic tropes to WP pages. I do not see any evidence of this. Most of the Evidence (the Summary page) describes disputes about including or not including various well sourced claims to pages (i.e. typical "due weight" disputes). However, neither including nor excluding these claims would be an intentional distortion.
I think the purpose of arbitrations is to resolve serious and currently ongoing issues. However, most of the Evidence is very old. I would say nothing older than one year is relevant, unless that was placing an intentional misinformation by currently active contributors. But I do not see evidence of this. Importantly, this subject area was relatively quiet during last year. I found evidence about this [217] convincing.
Moreover, any grievances that come from other subject areas (such as that one) are hardly that much relevant to this case.
More recent disputes in Evidence are merely content disputes and reflect a commendable effort by several contributors to improve pages after the article by G&K.
What remains after applying the WP:DENY and excluding all very old and remotely related evidence? I am not sure, but there is no evidence of intentional distortion by active contributors, in my opinion. My very best wishes ( talk) 18:02, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
In increasing order of the difficulty and/or unlikelihood of implementation:
This will be my last bits of evidence. My spring has been .. wildly busy outside of Wikipedia and continues to keep me busy. I'd hoped to get further with
User:Ealdgyth/Holocaust article audits and have a better idea of how big the problem is, but I haven't, and that's on me. But there are some big problems with source/text integrity and source usage in the articles in the area, leaving aside any bias issues which I did not have enough time to dig deeply into - but both sets of problems exist in the topic area. (And now I get word that I'm a grandmother again - so there goes some more "free time" for wikipedia... but in a good way at least!)
I would like to point out that while I've seen a lot of statements in this case along the lines of "things haven't been bad in the area in the last few years" (that's a paraphrase, not an exact quote of any editor in particular) and that "no one has been driven from the topic area" (again, a paraphrase, not a quote from anyone) - I'm going to point out that, yes, I WAS driven from the topic area. I pointed this out before, but I guess no one took my word for it. The toxic editing environment did drive me away - from both "sides". The constant hunt for sockpuppets (ironically, one of the biggest editors in that hunt turns out to be a sockpuppet ... heh), the endless reverting, the nasty language, the general lack of good faith ... all that drove me away. So, yes, some editors HAVE been driven away and thus I don't think we can assume that the topic area is quiet because IW was banned ... it's that at least one editor could no longer handle the atmosphere.
As to what I'd like to see changed in the topic area? I'd like for folks to start arguing from sources instead of feelings or opinions. And to argue from a broad range of sources, as the academics covering the topic area have a range of views on the subject - so should our articles reflect the preponderance of viewpoints - not just one. I'd also like for folks to stop treating the area like a battleground. And, while I'm at it and being a utopian dreamer, I'd like for folks to start treating all the other editors with good faith. (Yeah, that'll happen.) But, for ArbCom? If you're going to pass remedies - you need to back up those remedies. If you pass a sourcing restriction for a topic area, don't let
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive280#Volunteer Marek happen - where the editor trying to enforce your sourcing restriction was admonished by admins for trying to do so. Basically, ArbCom's spinelessness there enabled bad behavior and gutted the very restriction you imposed. After that AE request - why should any editor not assume that the sourcing restriction was moot and that bad behavior was allowed?
I get it, IW harassed some editors, badly. But lets not let that be an excuse to allow the topic area to be turned into a toxic environment where trying to fix issues results in abuse either.
All I want is to be able to try to fix the issues I see in the topic area. This is important stuff, folks. Allowing our articles to have sourcing issues, or statements that are provably wrong ... all that does in enable the genocide deniers (and no, I don't think any of the editors that aren't blocked/banned are deniers of the Holocaust). Let's try to FIX the problems, not treat the topic area as a battleground for scoring points on the "other side".
Ealdgyth (
talk)
16:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
This section should be edited only by Arbitrators and Clerks. Any response to questions/requests posed here should be done on the Evidence page or done above as a section under #Analysis of evidence as appropriate.
[Subject mater experts] are expected to make sure that their external roles and relationships in their field of expertise do not interfere with their primary role on Wikipedia.There's obviously a scholarly dispute underlying this case. To be perfectly clear, the Arbitration Committee will not resolve that scholarly dispute because it is outside our jurisdiction. What we may consider, though, is how to manage potential conflicts of interest when editor-scholars become embroiled with external scholarly disputes, particularly when that "external role[ or] relationship[]" appears to "interfere with their primary role on Wikipedia". There's no hard line here, as the COI guideline says
How close the relationship needs to be before it becomes a concern on Wikipedia is governed by common sense, but I think we need to examine the potential conflict given that a public feud between Grabowski and specific editors has been ongoing for multiple years across multiple venues including on-wiki.So this is all framing for two questions that I would like evidence or analysis on:
— Wug· a·po·des 21:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
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Frequently asked questions (including details about the summary page)
Target dates: Opened • Evidence phase 1 closes 09 April 2023 • Evidence phase 2: 17 April 2023 - 27 April 2023 • Analysis closes 27 April 2023 • Proposed decision to be posted by 11 May 2023
Scope: Conduct of named parties in the topic areas of World War II history of Poland and the history of the Jews in Poland, broadly construed
Case clerks: Dreamy Jazz ( Talk), Firefly ( Talk), MJL ( Talk), ToBeFree ( Talk); Drafting arbitrators: Barkeep49 ( Talk), Primefac ( Talk), Wugapodes ( Talk)
Wikipedia Arbitration |
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Track related changes |
Place here items of summarized evidence (with diff or paragraph number) and detailed analysis
The article Naliboki massacre was vastly improved by a recent series of edits by editors with different points of view. Version as of mid February [2]. Current version (March 13) [3]. The old version was borderline antisemitic. I don't see such issues with the current version, though others may differ. The old version left the question of the participation of Jewish partisans a bit mysterious, with a few hints of yes, and somewhat-stronger hints of no. The current version makes it clear that the allegation is unproven at best and probably false. The old version contained useless info about a commission not having completed its work as of years ago. The new version summarizes what they did. The collaboration was required. For example, I certainly could not have done it on my own as I don't speak Polish.
That said, the differing points of view of the various editors, much of which involves issues I don't understand, is severe enough that it resulted in an AE thread [4] with some mild sanctions. Certainly some people were less than happy with each other. I do wish everyone would calm down. Adoring nanny ( talk) 02:15, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
The above are just recent things that I noticed in passing (thus, I believe these are illustrative examples), but that this is how VM and GCB conduct themselves while an APL2 case is pending, I think is indicative of their unsuitability for continuing to edit the topic area/s. Therefore, I submit that their previous indef TBANS should be reinstated by ArbCom at the conclusion of this case. El_C 00:20, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
Topic Banned for not removing diffs [etc.], then you have failed to read closely. But a terse one liner reply to my in-depth explanation is about par for the course. Anyway, for some reason, you were treated with exceptional leniency. You got an edge over others in that thread by violating the rules and then ended up getting your diff-filibustering violation retained. That is not a plus. Again, I emphasize: something that I ran into in passing. I strongly believe that this example is illustrative of an overall approach. It being WP:BATTLEGROUND, even when in a roundabout way. El_C 04:15, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
I wasn’t aware that WP:BLPCRIME applies to anonymous former Wikipedia accounts that are engaged in harassment. It doesn’t. And El_C is mistaken.Yes, it does apply—to any living or recently-deceased person whatsoever, anywhere on the project—and no I am not mistaken. You speak with such confidence about things you obviously have a poor grasp of. To quote Barkeep's reply to myself at the evidence talk page earlier today:
I think your interpretation of our BLP policy is correct and the idea that it only applies to article topics is at odds with the policy( 17:12, 15 March 2023) El_C 07:01, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
The redacted part would have to be very, very bad for ArbCom to base a TBAN on it( 18:32, 16 March 2023). Earlier today I had said (in part):
This piece of evidence is not the sole basis for my calling for[VM's]
previous EE TBAN to be reinstated( 14:29, 16 March 2023). El_C 23:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Explain to me why I should bother past your first two and a half sentences, which was rather rude, as VM acknowledged.
that is why I am so happy to comment about you and Iceweitz here right nowThis sentence is incomprehensible to me; I don't understand why MVBW thinks I was happy to comment on VM and Icewhitz. What I said is that I was happy to have resisted the tentation to dismiss VM's wall of text as he had done with me in the past. Instead of dismissing VM, I replied to him. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 01:48, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
happy to see VM in trouble- which I avoid doing. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:34, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
Wikipediocracy is for discussing Wikipedia, including ongoing ArbCom cases. Volunteer Marek 05:06, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
insanely biased and obviously incorrect[...]
I didn't really expect anything different from them. And 2. Attempting to antagonize myself (despite protestations to the contrary) for bringing this up, with statements such as:
they're mad they don't get to play police over here as well. El_C 06:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
...editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests the person has committed, or is accused of having committed, a crime...(emphasis mine.) It is very deliberately and very clearly worded in a way that does not outright prohibit, in some cases, stating that a living person (including another editor) committed a crime despite the lack of a conviction. Depending on the context such accusations against another editor would sometimes fall under WP:ASPERSIONS or WP:LEGALTHREATS, but when they don't, WP:BLPCRIME isn't likely to be useful. It might be reasonable to ask for sanctions under it in situations where someone made accusations that were plainly flippant to the point where they were clearly not giving them due consideration, but if people are going to argue that it is never permissible to say something that would imply that a living person has committed a crime, then they're going beyond our policies. And in this particular case (per Barkeep49's statement above) I don't think the statement about Icewhiz is so far out of line as to justify sanctions under a policy that merely tells editors to
seriously considersuch accusations. I can understand the argument that such accusations are serious and not to be made lightly, but we also have to allow editors to raise concerns about serious harassment, including harassment that may rise to the level of breaking the laws, in situations where there is sufficient reason to believe it occurred, without worrying over immediate retaliation; "that sort of harassment would be illegal and therefore you can't talk about it unless they were actually convicted in court" is not workable. The implication would be that anonymous socks could harass someone (even to an extent that would actually be illegal) and their victim could then get sanctioned for being too blunt in summarizing the harassment they experienced. -- Aquillion ( talk) 12:42, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Nothing in either source supports the first phrase "Given the severity of the German measures designed to prevent this occurrence" [...] and the next part is also not clearly related to the previous thoughts - are these fugitives ... fugitives from the ghettos? Or fugitives who fled to the Soviet Union? The last part is again, not supported by either of the sources given - neither source talks about fugitives vs. non-fugitive survival rates... so ... what's this supposed to be sourced to or discussing?I haven't gotten around to actually looking at the sources, and a single sentence out of context isn't really enough for me to decide that your reading of the sentence is unambiguously correct. I've updated the summary to say "might not" to make clear the factual ambiguity that still needs resolved.(2) Buidhe's objection was that it was an opinion stated in our voice, but Ealdgyth's objection, present in the evidence I was summarizing, is whether the claims were adequately supported. I appreciate the talk page link; as I said I hadn't read through it, just looked to see where it could be found so that I can read it later. I've updated the summary to better distinguish between Buidhe's concerns then and Ealdgyth's concerns now.(3) If your edit summary refers to a previous edit summary, I'm going to look at that previous edit summary so I can understand the first one. To do that, I need to open the edit history, and the first thing that appears on the page is a second revert. If you don't want me poking around the edit history, don't use edit summaries that make me go poking around the edit history. As to the summary specifically, in order to understand what it is you were saying in that diff Ealdgyth links, I need to quote your previous edit summaries to figure out what "ditto" meant. So there's 3 of the 6 extra. Ealdgyth also cited that as being the what added the claim, and in order to summarize where the claim came from, I need to look at the back and forth reverts as part of why it stayed.(4) We have, from the beginning, indicated that we would be asking participants for evidence pertaining to specific questions so that we can get a more complete view of the situation. That was originally to be done after Phase 1 of evidence, but given what we've received we've decided to move that timeline up similar to how we opened this analysis page earlier than originally planned. As such, /Questions was created, and I have moved my request for further evidence there. — Wug· a·po·des 02:31, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
It was only those Jews who escaped whose fate was in the hands of the Polish population, and, as we have seen, the rate of survival among these Jews was relatively high, despite adverse conditions.(pg. 35)
I consider this comment by Volunteer Marek and this edit to be tendentious and uncivil. The sequence leading to them:
the undisputed bosses of life and death in Jedwabneand
the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews, followed by an WP:OVERKILL on German responsibility in the Jedwabne pogrom. Why would one need a citation clutter to support such easily verifiable quotes? The quotes are on pp. 77-78, but on p. 78 Gross also says:
As to the Germans’ direct participation in the mass murder of Jews in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, however, one must admit that it was limited, pretty much, to their taking pictures. This passage was not quoted in the lead.
to restore source integrity and article balanceby supplementing those two quotes with others on Polish responsibility, and argues that the
selective quotationfrom Gross is distorting
the main point of the book. In fact, Gross's book Neighbors (2000) had a huge impact on Polish society and historiography by highlighting the responsibility of the ethnic Polish residents of Jedwabne in the massacre of their Jewish neighbours. The book opened a harsh public debate on the Polish-Jewish relations, which is also at the basis of the current malaise of the topic area. "The Germans were the undisputed bosses, full stop" simply misses the point.
original researchand complains of my
creative and selective reading of the source. My reading of Gross is everybody's reading. VM knows well that the whole book (starting from the very title, "Neighbors") is about Polish perpetrators. Gross's point is clear: the Germans had total control of the area, but the Poles were not forced to do the killings. One can't omit the second part without distorting the book.
The "own initiative" are your words, not Gross'and
Of own free will" and "on own initiative" are two different thingsIn the t/p discussion I mistakenly used the words "own initiative" but these words were not used in my edits and were not presented as a quote from Gross. The distinction between "initiative" and "free will" is therefore completely irrelevant, and mentioning it in the edit summary is misleading. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 01:13, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
It is uncivil, however, if you cannot answer the following question- I don't think that's what "uncivil" means. I also don't understand this question which you, just now, posed and which afaik you haven't posed before. It's obviously the second one. I did not revert your first one or refer to it or discuss it and you did not include it in your evidence. Are you perchance confusing me with the other editor who was disagreeing with you? Since the answer should be obvious and you haven't asked it before I am left wondering how this question can serve as a criteria for whether my calling of your edit "original research" was "uncivil" or not. Volunteer Marek 03:05, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
I am concerned by the Jan T. Gross quotation at the end of paragraph 1. It is very misleading and misrepresentative of his book Neighbors, etc. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Collapsing unhelpful back and forth between Gitz and VM. I do not think this conversation needs to be continued at this time.
Barkeep49 (
talk)
18:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
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My primary interest is in historical books. Following
a request for input at WP Books, I went to
the talk page for The Forgotten Holocaust. I made a small number of comments offering what I think were fairly unobjectionable suggestions, based on my expertise with book articles:
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]. For these comments,
an anonymous threat was left on my talk page. You will see that I am accused of Slandering the reputation of Poland and lying about Jewish communist crimes
even though not one of my comments said anything about Poland or Jewish people. That escalation suggests a severe and deeply entrenched battleground mentality somewhere. This is the very first online threat of any kind I have received in my life, and I am not a young person. Something is very, very wrong here.
I was already growing exhausted by the talk page when this threat occurred. Although the anonymous threat is the most alarming part, I would also observe the following troubling phenomena:
The key obstructive move I encountered was a large number of small claims that are so strange that they are hard to respond to. I question Piotrus' willingness or WP:COMPETENCE to evaluate appropriate sources in this context. I see very alarming behaviour from Piotrus, Nihil Novi, and GizzyCatBella, which will drive away constructive editors. And I think it would be well worth investigating the IP address of the anonymous threat I received.— Preceding unsigned comment added by LEvalyn ( talk • contribs) 03:20, March 16, 2023 (UTC) Addition/clarification: In case I was not sufficiently explicit, I am the editor who has been driven away. (c.f. asilvering's line about being the historian who is alarmed) The talk page was very challenging to read. I often couldn't see how some editors' comments were meant to constitute replies to what had been said (e.g., [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]). I attribute much of the confusion to editors who interpret all comments as attacks. (For example, Piotrus has expressed that his reply about AfD was based on the misunderstanding that we proposed blanking the whole page. I am sure that it was an honest misunderstanding; however, I believe that this misunderstanding sprang to mind due to a battleground mentality.) In an environment that felt hostile, I struggled to keep my own temper even though I have essentially zero opinions about Poland. I concluded that it wasn't worth it, and decided not to edit in the topic area in future. ~ L 🌸 ( talk) 08:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
In general, Piotrus' contributions were long, unconstructive, misrepresented academic norms, and misunderstood his interlocutors, as here (see the reply), and in this very strange argument about a review published in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
The key obstructive move I encountered was a large number of small claims that are so strange that they are hard to respond to. I question Piotrus' willingness or WP:COMPETENCE to evaluate appropriate sources in this context. I see very alarming behaviour from Piotrus, Nihil Novi, and GizzyCatBella, which will drive away constructive editors. And I think it would be well worth investigating the IP address of the anonymous threat I received. [signing retroactively, sorry ~ L 🌸 ( talk) 08:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)Note: This analysis was moved here on 18:41, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
You are welcome to add more quotes, or remove ones you think are undue. I did not try to have a "last word", I just expressed my opinions, quoted or linked to some policies I thought relevant, and let others have their say. I did not edit war - in fact I did not make a single revert of any recent changes to that article, even through I disagreed with some, explicitly to avoid any battleground-like deterioration. With all due respect, I am unclear what policies or best practices I have violated by making a few polite and respectful comments in a discussion (I don't believe my comments violated NPA or any other policies). If anything in what I wrote was offensive to anyone, they could've asked me to WP:REFACTOR and I'd gladly have considered this. I'll end by saying that I appreciated LEvalyn's comments, I consider her input valuable, I am sorry to hear she found the discussion less then ideal. It was, certainly, not my intention to drive her away, and if anything I said can be refactored, I again express total willingness to do so, and I apologize for any impression that her contribution are anything less then very much welcomed and appreciated. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:00, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
@
LEvalyn: In responce to
[30] I believe that it was not your intent to create an unpleasant editing environment. We have interacted fine in other topic areas, and I hope we will do so again in future.
Thank you for your kind words. Nonetheless, if my intent and the outcome are distinct, I would like to ensure that I learn from this incident. I stand by my offer to
WP:REFACTOR any comment I made that you found problematic. Also, in reply to I attribute much of the confusion to editors who interpret all comments as attacks
, I would like to note that I never felt attacked in that discussion; IMHO, CIVIL/NPA/AGF were observed by all participants; polite disagreements happen on the way to
WP:CONSENSUS and the entire recent history of talk and associated article edititing seems to represent best practices per
WP:TALKDONTREVERT. Lastly, I hope you'll reconsider your decision to not to edit in the topic area in future
. I can only speak for myself, but I want to reiterate that your contribution to the discussion in question was welcome and appreciated. --
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here
09:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
In a discussion, honest difference of opinion and ineluctable mutual misunderstanding are common (indeed, if they did not occur, there would never be need of discussion). This is illustrated by some of the evidence that has been adduced in the present proceedings against some Wikipedia editors. In particular, a casual reader – one without the patience to delve into, and try to analyze, recondite and sometimes mis-characterized diffs – might come away without realizing that Piotrus is in fact a person of great tact and integrity, civil, polite, and welcoming. Nihil novi ( talk) 05:14, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE bookand Zero's rebuttal that
lots of mainstream history books get critical reviews and sometimes entire journal issues are devoted to debate about themare not contradictory: that is because many mainstream history books are controversial. Negative reviews and debates are the controversy. Both Zero and Nihil Novi appear to read quite a lot into my comment; my best guess is that this is a battleground-informed reaction to the fact that I wikilinked WP:FRINGE.
This area is one of the "contentious topics". But the fact is that for the past year it actually has NOT been contentious. The pattern is that the topic area has been quieting down since the imposition of the 500/30 restriction by the Arbitration Committee in May 2020 and especially since that was changed to extended confirmed protection in September 2021. To be sure, there was a lag, mostly due to the fact that it took some time for Icewhiz to burn through some of his "established" socks: [35] [36] [37] [38] (and at least a dozen more). In fact, most of the disputes between mid-2020 and early 2022 involved at least one Icewhiz sock, who were showing up to pour gasoline on a diminishing fire.
Of course the relative quiet of 2021 was "punctured" by the December 2021 WCC case request. This too had heavy involvement from Icewhiz as he was emailing several individuals, including the filer. This was closed in February of 2022 and really ever since then there hasn't been much going on (this is both why all the stuff in the G&K paper is so old and also why most of the evidence being presented here is stuff that happened AFTER this paper was published and case opened).
One way to see this is to look at the number of Poland-related (especially Holocaust in Poland) WP:AE reports by year. This is probably as good of a metric of "contentiousness" as you're going to get.
Here is the number of AE reports by topic area in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 there were seven AE reports in this topic area, sixth highest out of all the topic areas subject of such reports. In 2021 there were only three, third lowest, ahead of only "Motorsports" and "pseudoscience".
I am not including a graph for 2022 for the simple reason that there were exactly zero AE reports in this topic area last year.
It also helps to look at the trends over time. Here is a graph of Poland related (not just Holocaust) AE cases by year, going back to 2011. There was good bit of controversy in 2011 but this was mostly unrelated to the Holocaust (it was mostly related to the also-indef-banned User:Russavia). Between 2012 and 2017 things quieted down. It was the arrival of Icewhiz which changed things, as can be clearly seen from the graph. Icewhiz filed a record number of AE reports in very short time [39] and indeed this was one of the Findings of Fact during the 2019 case [40]
Beginning in 2022 and right up to the publication of the G&K paper, this was simply NOT a contentious area. The interventions by the Committee, as well as the work of several dedicated admins (yes, User:El_C, that does include you too) in blocking Icewhiz socks (even if sometimes with a bit too much of a delay) had done what it was suppose to. It worked.
Of course this doesn't speak to the content and it may very well be the case that several articles need some serious fixin'. But as far as conduct goes - which is what this case was labeled as being about [41] - there just hasn't been much going on in recent past.
(detailed data behind the graphs above available upon request) Volunteer Marek 06:33, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
probably as good of a metric of "contentiousness" as you're going to get. This is strange to me because we both know that there are more boards than just AE, and not every AE action occurs at AE. Why did you choose that over, say, the AE logs which are more comprehensive? By choosing the AE board instead of the AE logs, your analysis systematically undercounts AE actions done by an individual admin. Even looking just at noticeboard posts, your analysis excludes AN and its subpages which are far more prominent than AE as a dispute resolution venue. For example, this 2021 ANI report related to the case scope is not included in your data. You also do not provide data or results for 2023, so this 2023 appeal of a Poland-related AE TBAN at AN is also not counted. If reports are being diverted to other venues like AN or ANI rather than AE (which we have just seen they are), then an analysis which looks at AE only would artificially deflate the number of conflicts presented.Lastly, I'm interested in why you made these methodological decisions. I disagree that your methodology uses "probably as good of a metric of contentiousness as you're going to get" because it leaves out two of the most recent sanctions in this area. Your interaction ban from last week which makes explicit reference to this case was not the result of an AE report and is listed in the logs under EE not AiP. You participated in this AE report a few weeks ago which related to conduct on an article about a massacre in German-occupied Poland, but because your analysis stops at 2022 it's not included (it's also listed under EE so it's not clear from your write-up how your coding scheme would handle it). Are these recent sanctions in the topic area evidence of contentiousness? If so, why were they not included in your analysis? If they were included in your analysis, would your claim that
for the past year it actually has NOT been contentiousstill be supported by your data?I think the analysis provided is an interesting look at a narrow part of the AE archive, but the claims are too strong and the analysis too underpowered to convince me. The alternative hypothesis---a combination of editor attrition and undercounting of data---does a better job of explaining the constellation of evidence such as preliminary statements, posts to boards-not-looked-at, and sanctions occurring after the time-span researched. If an analysis or additional data were able to explain or refute that evidence, I'd be more open to a hypothesis that the topic area is not contentious. — Wug· a·po·des 01:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
the constellation of evidence such as preliminary statements, posts to boards-not-looked-at, and sanctions occurring after the time-span researched.Your rebuttal has focused on preliminary statements but has avoided the latter two issues which make up the bulk of my review.(7) You can personalize my review if you like, but in this venue I serve as a finder of fact and I have laid out in precise detail why your analysis above does not move me to support the finding of fact you want. I could have sat on my hands and saved this for the internal discussion, but because I am interested in a thorough and complete review of the facts, yes, I am being specific and up front about my thinking. I am, of course, not the sole finder of fact, and if you think your analysis is strong you may leave it for the full committee to consider. If not revised though, I will make the same recommendation to my colleagues that I did here: the flaws in the analysis prevent it from supporting a finding of fact as to its conclusions.(8) If you are claiming that
the pattern is that the topic area has been quieting down, then ignoring two months of data which contradict that undermines your argument. Similarly, you can try to find flaws with the examples, but the wider issue they pose for your argument remains. How many editors have been driven away? What "side" were they on? How many AN(I) reports are there? How many of them didn't involve Icewhiz? We don't know, but we know there are certainly more than 0 and that poses a serious problem for your argument.(9) You should consider placing further comments in the comments by parties section, not comments by arbitrators section. ( edit conflict) — Wug· a·po·des 21:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
Resolved error by Barkeep
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Resolved error by Barkeep
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Your rebuttal has focused on preliminary statements but has avoided the latter two issuesNo. I extended my analysis to include "posts to boards-not-looked-at". It shows the same thing. I didn't bother doing it initially because I knew it be pointless - WP:AE is by far the most utilized drama board for controversies for this (and other) areas, and whatever happened at ANI or AN or AN3 would be closely correlated with what is happening at WP:AE. So if WP:AE is quiet so will be those other boards.
I have laid out in precise detail why your analysis aboveNo, you have done more than that. Rather than responding to the evidence presented you started introducing your own evidence: claims by Mhorg and Francois Robere. Those users have not posted any evidence or made any claims. Indeed, one of them has said they do not wish to participate, if I'm not mistaken. So why are you presenting evidence on their behalf? As an Arb. Either stick to arbitrating or make yourself a party to this case.
If not revised...What is it you'd like me to revise?
then ignoring two months of data which contradict that undermines your argumentAgain, this is not true. What I said and what the data very clearly and unambiguously show is that prior to the initiation of this case the "topic area has been quieting down". I'm sorry, but you are strawmannin' here. One more time - of course the case itself resulted in controversy. That's what opening a case always does! I thought that part would be obvious to anyone looking at it but I guess not. That does not change the fact that the area HAS been getting quieter.
If reports are being diverted to other venues like AN or ANI rather than AE (which we have just seen they are)They are not. We did NOT "just seen that they are". In fact my evidence shows exactly the opposite is true. ALL drama boards were quiet. You keep making this completely unsupported and incorrect assertions, without expending any effort at backing them up, and then expect me to put in more hours of labor combing through the archives to disprove them.
How many editors have been driven away? What "side" were they on? How many AN(I) reports are there? How many of them didn't involve Icewhiz? We don't know, but we know there are certainly more than 0 and that poses a serious problem for your argument.We do know actually. For 2022, the answers are as follow:
Since I was explicitly asked about the possibility of the “contentiousness” of the topic area being diverted from WP:AE to WP:ANI and other boards I added the relevant info to my evidence [52]. I was wondering if that was going to be added to the summary or if I should just collapse it. Volunteer Marek 18:40, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
If you're an administrator then edit warring is like the Worst. Thing. Ever. A non-contentious topic-area, such as the post-Icewhiz "Jews in Poland", is the best administrators can hope for, since it means that they don't have
to get off [their] ass and do some of the things that administrators are supposed to do ... Which is "work". However, conflict can be good for article quality, since it prevents editors from getting
lazy, sloppy and stupid; without it,
You'd end up writing crappy articles and crappy content, simply because you could get away with it.
bureaucratic administrator, who is exclusively interested in avoiding conflict/drama/work. His evidence in no way impinges on the issues raised by "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust", which this case should address. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 01:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
My 2c. Or 5c, if I count my subpoints now.
I was thoroughly surprized to find me listed among the main Polish Holocaust revisionists on wikipedia :-(. In fact I have close to none contribution on the discussed subject. The only notable altercation I can remember is about the bio of Jan Żaryn. From this disproportionality I may guess who were the main "inside jobs" for the article of GK in question.
now readers opening Jan Żaryn’s page have access to his claims (for example, that Jews were to blame for the Kielce pogrom), without being told of their baselessness.-- In fact, the bio says:
Żaryn <...> has stated that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals... supported the communist authorities or... joined their ranks"; he blames those individuals for being part of Communist censorship and propaganda organs, who were "deceitfully ... silent about Soviet massacres." This, he believes, "intensified anti-Semitic attitudes" that resulted in the Kielce pogrom.-- I fail to see the logic in the transformation from: "some Jews were bad (provably true); this intensified [pre-existing] antiSemitism (provably true), hence pogrom (opinion)" - to: "Jews were to blame for Kielce Pogrom". In fact, Żaryn reasonably attributed pogrom to the rise of antiSemitism and he explained some reasons (in his opinion) of this rise, and GK made a sensationalist spin to make Zaryn look really bad. (He does deserve this, but what is "good" for a polemic newsblurb, not good for an article pretending to be scholarly).
As of 21 March 2023 02:43 (UTC)
Having been warned about their behaviour at Naliboki massacre towards other editors, (AE case, reaction to case, reaction to warning), TrangaBellam bulldozes articles, refusing to discuss ( Diff x, Diff y) But her rigid preconceptions and disdainful treatment of input raise the question of how well she knows the topics she rewrites. For example, she accused an editor many times more senior of "shenanigans" [Diff 1]
There is no policy that forbids me from removing unsourced or ill-sourced passages. As the t/p discussion shows, I demonstrated that the existing sources did not support the passages and repeatedly asserted that anybody, who is willing to source the content, can restore it. What else could I have done? That article has been in such a messy state for years.I do not oppose partial restoration AS LONG AS it is accompanied with citations to WP:RS, and you are willing to take responsibility for the content.
Senior editors can be wrong of course and most of them have the grace to admit it. But they often have the benefit of having made enough mistakes to recognize one when they see it, and this is why it is wrong to dismiss them out of hand. [Diff A], No, [Diff B], [Diff C], [ Diff D - edit summary],[Diff E],[Diff F]
TB's questionable expertise in the topics she unilaterally rewrites is concerning. She has for example opined on whether a pl.wikipedia was neutrally written. Was she correct? More correct than Piotrus, whom she was instructing? Maybe but maybe not. Is she competent to decide whether Holocaust denial belongs in the lede for a given historian? [Alpha][Beta], [Gamma][Kappa], [Phi], [Epsilon]
Since Grabowski, she has been editing in Poland. I noticed at the "Glaukopis" RSN post that this behaviour continues.
This is a factual assertion and I fail to see any misbehaviour of any kind.No - It appears from the reception section that there is an unanimous consensus among scholars that the journal disseminates far-right viewpoints.
A talk page I noticed cites this RSN.
I tried to report this thread. Allegations followed, which I hotly dispute but don't care to spend my words on. [Four Diffs]
personal attacks, civility, casting aspersions and battleground behaviour, and eleven months ago for
abusing conduct processes to thwart content opponents.
The following evidence supports the behaviour pattern. Deleting reference: Diff 2
Reliability of sources has some objective measures, but can this nuanced call be made for a publication you don't know in a language you don't speak about facts you're unfamiliar with? That's a *really* nuanced question for an amateur historian to opine upon in Wikivoice. Her userpage says she is an R programmer. (writing sample)
Accusations of trolling: Diff 3, Diff 3a
Large meaning change?: Diff 4
Sign of issue?: [..]
Dismissed BLP concern: Diff 6
Accusation of bad faith: Diff 7
Bias? Unsure: Diff 8
The latest number of periodical was presented in the press conference on January 21, 2021 in the Educational Center IPN of the Janusz Kurtyka's name in Warsaw.is useless trivia.
The bilingualism of the articles ensures a wide audience, the journal becomes a platform for scientific analysis of Polish-Jewish relations and discussions about it.is useless promotion, which belongs only at the about-us section of the website.
END. TrangaBellam ( talk) 09:18, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Before February 15, 2023 Gitz6666 had made ZERO edits to this topicand that
all of sudden, beginning with the opening of the request for this case (February 13), they began editing this area intensively. This is imprecise. I started editing the topic area on 9 February [57] and than from 10 February 2023 [58] [59] [60] [61] onward. I'm a bit disappointed that VM doesn't remember this because on 11 February he "thanked" me for this comment [62], which I invite you to read carefully because it falls within the scope of this case and comes from the alleged harasser.
Truth is, I did not follow VM from one topic area to another (nor did I wikihound him in the Russo-Ukrainian topic area, where I never followed his edits and indeed distinctly remember that on some occasions I avoided editing certain articles for the sole reason that he was active there). I did not follow VM to Holocaust in Poland (HiP) but I started editing there after the publication of G&K paper and because of that publication (for the purpose stated here
[63] – to correct errors). At first I did so very reluctantly precisely because of VM's involvement, as is evident from this these two diffs
[64]
[65]; I invite you to read the second one, and then, as it happens, I became passionate about the topic, as I explained here
[66]. There's been nothing provocative or disruptive in my edits at HiP, which indeed on a few occasions have been kindly appreciated by
GizzyCatBella
[67],
Horse Eye's Back
[68],
Piotrus (several "thanks"),
TrangaBellam
[69] and VM himself (I think most of your edits are fine
[70]). The opening of this case had no effect on my decision to edit here: it was neither a reason to do so nor a reason not to do so. The interactions with VM have been rare, have taken place mainly on my user talk page (
here and
here) and have not been hostile at all. Besides,
this thread on the t/p of "Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust", after VM had reverted some of my edits, shows that I have no difficulty in interacting with him cooperatively.
The only exception to this mutual collaborative attitude was the incident at
Jedwabne pogrom, which I reported here as
evidence. In this regard, I am sorry that VM refuses to understand my complaint. Commenting that someone is doing WP:OR is not tendentious and uncivil
in and of itself – I agree – but if you comment that someone is doing OR and are not able to point to their information/fact/allegation/thesis that is not supported by sources, either you don't know what "OR" means and are lacking competence, or you're trying to debase your interlocutor and mislead the others. I trust Volunteer Marek's WP:COMPETENCE. This edit summary mentioning OR and fairly inaccurate reading of the source
[71] IMHO is tendentious and uncivil because VM knew perfectly well that my reading of Gross was accurate and that our disagreement did not revolve around an OR.
Anyway, these are trifles. I'm sure I have done nothing that deserves sanction, but there's much truth in what VM implies about our experiences in the Russo-Ukrainian topic area being related to my attitude and submissions in this case. In fact, my opinions about VM's editing were formed in the RU topic area, were very negative and were confirmed by what I read in the G&K paper and found in the HiP topic area. So I'm not looking for revenge, but I don't claim to be an unbiased and uninvolved editor either. I made that very clear from the beginning, when in my
preliminary statement I said that I was formally an uninvolved editor in this topic area
(emphasis added) because In the Holocaust in Poland topic area I see the same users (at least four of them) and the same practices that led to my recent topic ban from the Russo-Ukrainian war
. I also said that I feared that the pattern of problematic behaviour and the network of collaborations that led to systematic bias in Holocaust in Poland might be exported and applied elsewhere, leading to more tendentious editing and low-quality coverage of politically sensitive subjects
, which means that I agree with
Wugapodes when they say that "a strict division between conduct in the case's topic area and conduct in the Russo-Ukrainian topic area limits our understanding of conduct in this topic area".
Gitz (
talk) (
contribs)
03:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
digging out edits [of him] from 2009and that this qualifies as wikihounding. He finds evidence of this in a sandbox of mine, this one (as it was on 31 March) and shares this illustration of wikihounding.
My comment: I did not research VM's activities since 2009; it would take forever to chack VM's activities back to 2009. Even if I were the worst hate-filled wikihounder in history, I wouldn't see the point, since no one gets sanctioned for what they did ages ago. However, when I started editing the HiP area, I came across article contents based on selective and misleading quotations of sources, falsification of sources or subtle vandalism disguised as verifiable content. In view of the upcoming ArbCom case, it came natural to me to use "WikiBlame" and check who was responsible. In most cases it was Poeticbent, who is no longer active on this project; on one occasion it was Volunteer Marek. I took note of this and added a diff + comment in a sendbox of mine where I keep material related to the ArbCom case. Volunteer Marek sifted through my sandboxes, as he is used to do (see
here, this thing with you combing my sandbox is not healthy
) and found his old edit. Now, I don't understand why VM is so eager to let the ArbCom know that he was already pushing the Polish nationalist POV back in 2009, but note that it is he, and not I, who is submitting this as evidence. From my point of view, his 2009 edit demonstrates, at most, his consistency, coupled with an early misunderstanding of what this project is about (NPOV, V, NOR as core policies), but no actual policy violation worth mentioning. I therefore kept it in my sandbox and did not intend to present it here.
Gitz (
talk) (
contribs)
10:48, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
you are an anti-Russian POV-pusher in the RU topic area, which would be consistent with the fact that you are also a Polish nationalist.comes very close to being racist since it implies that Poles are by nature "anti-Russian". Newsflash: the actual "Polish nationalists" associated with the far right are by large extent, same as far-right ideologues in other parts of Europe and US, pro-Putin. For example Konfederacja [75]. Volunteer Marek 00:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
very close to being racist. Beware your civility restriction in the EE topic area. By the way, could you please tell which
direct personal attacks at me, addressing me directlydid you find in my sandboxes? Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:13, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Newsflash: the actual "Polish nationalists" associated with the far right are by large extent, same as far-right ideologues in other parts of Europe and US, pro-Putin.The actual Polish nationalists associated with the far right who are currently running Poland, PiS, have been arming Ukraine; they are not pro-Putin. Except maybe unintentionally, as " Poland’s Historical Revisionism Is Pushing It Into Moscow’s Arms". Levivich ( talk) 03:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
very close to being racist? In no way can one say that my statement - Polish nationalists are generally hostile to Russia - is "very close to racism" because it imples that Poles are by nature "anti-Russian".
could you please tell [what] did you find in my sandboxes?You should answer, since you claim that you found
direct personal attacks at me, addressing me directly. Your claim is false and is a blatant case of WP:ASPERSION, as you know very well (and therefore you did not answer).
I recently copied that sentence and pasted it into my sanbox because I needed the two diffs about your views on torture, which then I used in my recent comment at AN/I. In fact, I used that diff again at the January 2023 ANI discussion ( 11:23, 11 January 2023). You should remember this well, since I told you a second time at ANI (at 23:23, 11 January 2023). Nonetheless, here above you say
I ping @ Callanecc: so that they can check if the civility restriction is working well here. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 11:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)I looked at your sandbox are because you've used it in the past to direct personal attacks at me, addressing me directly, (I guess thinking that if you put them in the sandbox it doesn't count and you won't get sanctioned for it?)
combative nature(@ Primefac), etc., then please let me know now and I will stop immediately - there's no need to apply sanctions. If, however, you think that my contribution to the case could be helpful, then please don't sanction me for that contribution. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 00:34, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
I can assure you that my presence in the area will be marginal and practically non-existent.)- you began making a ton of edits across the topic area. These edits were generally ones to articles where I had disputes with Icewhiz in 2018-2019 and the new edits you made - as part of your marginal and practically non-existent involvement in the topic area - were often in line with Icewhiz's arguments or edits he made back then. The main reason why we have no serious current conflicts in this topic area is simply because *I* haven't responded to your provocations. Volunteer Marek 03:01, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
the new edits you made ... were often in line with Icewhiz's arguments or edits ... *I* haven't responded to your provocationsMy edits in the HiP topic area are "provocations" in line with Icewhiz's arguments, you say? This only shows your battleground mentality. No one but you, Marcelus and Chumchum7 objected to my "provocations", which were actually accepted quite easily because they were obvious improvements. I understand from your reply that, had there not been a case pending before ArbCom, you would have reverted my "provocations" and possibly those of other users who in recent times have worked to remedy the distortions reported by G&K (deliberate or not, they are distortions and, alas, Icewhiz was often right). What you said about my provocations concerns me because, once the ArbCom case is settled, you are likely to resume that editing style of yours that has been so disruptive in the recent past.
... after stating publicly that you weren't going to involve yourself much in the topic area. I said "publicly" (that is, on my user talk page, responding to a post of yours) that I intended to limit my presence in the area because that was what I thought at the time (on 12 February). I also wanted to avoid or limit interactions with you as much as possible. Then I got interested in the topic and on February 28 I deleted that sentence because
I've changed my mind about my commitment in the area and got involved. However, I can still assure you that this has nothing to do with you and that I have no bad feelings towards you. Note, however, that as early as 12 February, I made it clear that
With regard to noticeboard and other general discussions, I will always express my concerns and warn the community of the risk of severe disruption, deviations from our policies and removal of users, resulting from a deeply problematic pattern of behaviour. In fact, from my past experiences in the RU topic area, I believe that your editing is deeply problematic - and by the way, it constitutes a problem that a possible topic ban of yours from the HiP topic area IMHO would resoundingly fail to address.
My edits in the HiP topic area are "provocations" in line with Icewhiz's arguments, you say? This only shows your battleground mentality.No, it accurately describes your actions. Starting on Feb 10th you became active on Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust. On Feb 11 I posted to your talk. On Feb 12 you said you weren't going to involve yourself in this topic area. On the same day you were busy trying to use the G&K article to get your topic ban on Ukraine-Russia removed [81]. That didn't work (Callanecc: (this) "isn't helping your case") so by the 14th you jumped right back into the topic area you just had said you weren't going to involve yourself in [82]. I think THIS is probably where you "changed your mind" with regard to becoming involved, not "February 28th" (really?) - if you couldn't use this opportunity to get your topic ban lifted, might as well follow me to another topic area. On the 15th you became active on another article [83]. On the 16th another [84]. Also on the you were once again trying to use this situation to get around your topic ban [85]. You did get a partial exemption that time [86] which is why you're here. Feb 23 another controversial article in topic area [87]. 23rd is still not "February 28th". This is of course also when you started posting to the ArbCom case. the 25th another [88].
"I don't plan on posting evidence"? Diff, please.
"I am going to step away from this dispute"? Diff, please.
the main problem with your editing here Gitz. You say one thing, but then you do another...). Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 21:31, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
As for me, at most I will propose a few edits based on Grabowski and Klein, but I can assure you that my presence in the area will be marginal and practically non-existent.[91]. Does that sound like what you're doing here? Volunteer Marek 15:41, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
You made a generalisation ("that's the main problem") and you supported it by referring to specific cases. So my question is: when did I say "I don't plan on posting evidence"? I've always said that I feel it's my duty to expouse your disruptive and tendentious editing at the appropriate forums. When did I say "I am going to step away from this dispute"? On which "multiple articles" I never edited did I show up? It happened only at Vita Zaverukha and I already explained why here at 21:52, 19 April 2023. So please, provide the diffs or strike through your false statements. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 19:35, 21 April 2023 (UTC)And that's the main problem with your editing here Gitz. You say one thing, but then you do another. "I am not going to edit this topic area" --> proceeds to extensively edit the topic area. "I don't plan on posting evidence" --> proceeds to post evidence. "I am going to step away from this dispute" --> proceeds to take the dispute and restart it at another article. "I am not following your edits" --> proceeds to show up to multiple articles they never edited just because someone else did. Etc. etc. etc.
Here's a pic of a table which summarizes the !votes and comments in these RSN discussions. I'll send the spreadsheet to the committee (and anyone else, upon request). I've included only editors who are parties to this case. Orange/brown means the editors said the source was unreliable (with darker color meaning stronger opinion). Green means the editor said the source was reliable (darker color = stronger opinion). Yellow is "no consensus" or "on the fence" or similar. Grey means they didn't participate. Bolded and dashed borders means the editor was the initiator of the discussion. Volunteer Marek 01:19, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
A lack of knowledge and incentives, and a fear of ostracism prevent many academics from publicly collaborating with Wikipedia.This is the real problem, and this case is not going to solve it. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:13, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Elinruby's evidence consists in sharing
this interaction analysis between VM, MVBW and me, and commenting This is relevant
. I agree with him, but the analysis is easier if we distinguish 1) interaction between VM and me, 2) interaction between MVBW and me, and 3) interaction between VM and MVBW.
This off-wiki behaviour [G&K WP:OUTING VM's personal information] might be some kind of harassment and it should fall within the scope of administrative action, [106] so I was actually agreeing with VM on this point, as I repeated to him in a conversation on my talk page:
I also sympathise with the recent attack on your privacy and reputation, which I find, as you know, not OK to say the least.We had another conversation on my talk page, which was polite and sincere. There's no basis for an I-ban. I'm very critical of VM's editing, and in an open and transparent way, but I've always been polite and honest with him, and I've never targeted, followed, threatened, offended him or harassed him in any way.
following a contributor you would like to help with improvement of pages is actually great. There's evidence of MVBW joining VM's arguments/edit wars in the HiP topic area: e.g. [110] [111]. I think that the alliance between VM, MVBW (and also GizzyCatBella) has been a common element in the distortions of the HiP and RU topic areas. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 17:14, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
basically trying to hijack this case to relitigate his own topic ban in a different topic area(see also here [113] pinging @ Callanecc).
year-long pattern of disruptive editing in this topic area combined with a WP:BATTLEGROUND approach. He accused me of deliberately lying
(I never said or did anything like that and Gitz6666 knows that very well). Finally, he shared no less than 19 diffs (!) of Elinruby arguing with me in the RU area. So, what does he want me to do here? Obviously, as a party to the case, I will comment on the RU topic area: it's the only area that I have substantially edited in this project. VM wants me to be here as a party because of my activities in the RU topic area, but doesn't want me to speak about the RU topic area? This double bind could drive me crazy - it's me, not him, who should complain about being harassed!
Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 14:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)From my point of view, the EE controversy stems from the fact that there are 3 or 4 users who cause disruption by engaging in nationalist editing ... I may be right, I may be wrong, but from my point of view this is the "global" issue of the EE area, and it affects the war in Ukraine only indirectly.
I was never doing nationalist editing, I can point to this diff of yours, [114]
Unfortunately, I probably can not edit neutrally this subject [Russian war crimes], followed by a poem in Russian on the Russian world/peace (Русский мир) being a "latrine" (сортир), an "army of slaves, zombies, brainless vatniks" (армия рабов, Зомби, ватников безмозглых). After making this statement, you became full time involved in Russian war crimes and you never made one single non-trivial edit that could not be interpreted as anti-Russian POV-pushing. Or I can point to this diff [115] explaining Russian war crimes in terms of the
Russian culture/characterbeing informed by
slavish obedience and cruelty. These statements are more than nationalist, they are close to racism - because cultural racism is a kind of racism - and I find it objectionable that you use your user page to publish (in Russian!) insults aimed at the Russian people.
@ Gotz6666: also, I don't know if the above text got here before or after I took issue with it on the evidence talk page, but I am getting bad flashbacks. Again: What those diffs show is *you* arguing with French grammar as I try to disengage without validating your insistence that you are right and I am wrong about the conditional verb tense.
For the sake of everyone else's sanity, I told you at the evidence talk page to take it up with me on my talk page if you weren't able to stop claiming that I argue with you. Dude. I avoid *talking* to you, let alone arguing. I will have to turn you into a frog or something if you don't stop saying that. Please acknowledge that you have read and understood this. At my talk page.
And yes, Barkeep asked VM for those diffs and I have no problem with him finding them. I especially like the one that he calls a good description of your editing style. Elinruby ( talk) 11:08, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
On the scope of the case. Perhaps my squabble with MVBW was "out of scope", as Barkee49 commented (above at 14:52, 20 April 2023). However, I think it touches upon a fundamental issue of this case, which concerns precisely its scope, and thus the information that Arbs should be interested in gathering.
Because of the G&K paper, the scope of the case was defined as "WWII and the History of Jews in Poland" (or "HiP", Holocaust in Poland). But that was unfortunate: now that we know that GizzyCatBella was a SP of Jacurek, we see more clearly that the scope and name of the case should have been something like "The ex- EEMLs 14 years later". The presence of 5 or perhaps 6 ex-EEMLs among G&K's alleged "distortionists" (Volunteer Marek/Radeksz, My very best wishes/Biophys, GizzyCatBella/Jacurek, Piotrus, Poeticbent, and I guess also Molobo/ MyMoloboaccount, if they are the same user) cannot be taken as mere coincidence. And if it is not a coincidence, then the ArbCom should look at the bigger picture and not limit themselves to the HiP topic area, for at least two reasons.
First, it is possible that a small but cohesive collaborative network of experienced users has developed on this project, based on shared political values and committed to nationalist editing. Looking at the parties involved in the case, it can be seen that – with the sole exception of Piotrus – their interactions took place also, but not exclusively or primarily, in the HiP topic area. No doubt, the memory of Nazi occupation is an important element in Polish national identity, but it is not the only area of concern for the ex-EEMLs (and it is very marginal for MVBW). If some ex-EEMLs are still editing Wikipedia in pursuit of a political agenda, which I strongly believe to be the case, then it is likely that their activities and modus operandi (massive removals of sourced materials, edit warring, tag-teaming, casting aspersions) are also to be found in other areas. To address the roots of the HiP distortions, ArbCom should carefully examine this interaction analysis [117] and check the articles where there's been close collaboration – i.e., editors adding or removing the same text in a close sequence. A few examples are given below in the collapsible box. This is the best way to establish whether there is a pattern of disruptive and tendentious editing by a close-knit group of veteran editors: focusing on the HiP area alone may be too narrow and not conclusive.
Secondly, Arbs should look at the bigger picture to determine the best remedies for possible misconduct. If the ex-EEMLs hypothesis is well-founded, then reacting to misconduct in the HiP topic area by applying topic bans would be a cure worse than the disease: banning from one area would only shift the burden to other areas. Topic bans should at least cover the whole EE area instead of being limited to the HiP area, but even these topic bans would still be too narrow (politically sensitive areas outside EE would remain unprotected) and also too harsh: less restrictive measure are at hand, and there is no need to completely renounce the contribution of experienced users. I'd suggest the adoption of 1RR or 0RR – if these users notice disruption, they should turn to the talk pages and noticeboards instead of edit warring –, strict bans on tag-teaming/following each other around, a comprehensive restriction on incivility and possibly other well-targeted measures of this kind.
a few examples of close collaboration between VM, MVBW and GCB
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Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 02:03, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
If you disagree with me about it, you are entitled to your opinionor
I realize that other people may have very different views, they are probably just trying to manipulate me into violating my T-ban. Please, Arbs, do not be fooled: I've never been a pro-Russian supporter, I consider Putin a dictator and the invasion of Ukraine a crime. My editing in the RU area were inspired by our core policies NPOV, V and NOR. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 13:16, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
these questions. The questions I asked them can be read here on my user talk. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 13:21, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Use of Jan T. Gross as a source
I agree with Icewhiz.leaps out at the top of the diff. It might perhaps be tempting to see that as some sort of smoking gun about the G&K paper, but it really isn't. Chapmansh goes on to agree with Piotrus, and with another editor (not a named party), who had been arguing that the source was unreliable. So she is really saying that in a peacekeeping posture, finding things to agree with, with editors on all "sides" of the content dispute (as opposed to siding with Icewhiz). The reason I'm going to some lengths to point this out is because it's natural for those of us who have been editing a long time to read the situation as if it were:
no specifics about the reliable sources who criticized were givenin a way that sounds to me like Piotrus might have failed to give such specifics, but my evidence actually shows Piotrus commenting in a discussion where other editors had already described the criticisms, so I think that wording in the summary might be a bit misleading. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:05, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
how about adopt Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus's ideaand [131]
I fully agree with everything Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus wrote.). In a email later she wrote to me:
Two years ago I had a student edit the article on History of the Jews in Poland, and you were kind enough to support them in his endeavor on the Talk Page. In particular, there was one user – Xx236 – who kept discrediting my student’s plans, and you were one of the editors who stood up to Xx236, so to speak. Later, in a newspaper piece, the authors summarized this incident... confusing me with Xx236 (they later corrected that error in that newspaper). Ironically, this incident (me helping/defending Champansh's student, not mentioned in the essay) was what sparked her interest in researching this topic area on Wikipedia. No good deed, eh? PS. Regardin the summary and "no specifics about the reliable sources who criticized were given" I believe I and others referred the student to multiple sources included in the article about the book in question, hence "no specifics were given". My recommendation to the studend who stated that they'll use Gross' book was "good, that's a reliable source, but read more". -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:43, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
As summarized here.
Matyjaszek (2017), Polonsky (2017) and Tokarska-Bakir (2004), it has been implemented in the article (see ex. here or here for me adding Tokarska-Bakir to the article).
According to Agnieszka Wałęga, Kot was "among the founders of the history of education as a scholarly discipline in Poland". Lucyna Hurło writes that "his works in the... history of education, culture, literature, and [the R]eformation and Antitrinitarianism exemplify [scholarly] reliability." Waclaw Soroka writes that "in Kot, the intellectual history of Poland and Eastern and Central Europe gained an outstanding researcher and exponent." Lech Szczucki has called him "likely the most influential and industrious Polish historian of the interwar period", and writes that his contribution to the study of the Polish Reformation is of extreme value. Wiktor Weintraub has termed him "one of the leading 20th-century Polish historians" and writes that "in the Polish scholarly community... Kot secured [a] position as a first-rank historian." Brock and Pietrzyk have assessed him to be a "historian of major stature". Wojciech Roszkowski and Jan Kofman [pl] summarized his life: "He left a vast scholarly legacy in the history of education and history of culture, including particularly the history of the Reformation.".
Kot writes that the pasquinades are some of the most pointed examples of self-criticism originating in Polish society and that the nobility's refusal to accept that such criticism could come from within that society reflects sadly on the deterioration of Polish discourse in the 18th and 19th centuries. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:15, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
zatrzymam się na chwilę przy znaczeniu tego przysłowia. Solidne statium źródłowe, publikowane w roku 1937, poświęcił mu Stanisław Kot, który przytacza następujący fragment...which translates as
"I will dwell on the meaning of this proverb for a moment. Stanisław Kot, who published in 1937, devoted a solid source to it, and quotes the following excerpt.... She later cites Kot thoughts on the authorship (
W przekonaniu Stanisława Kota, paszkwil ten dowodzi nieszlacheckiego (od siebie dodajmy na pewno też nieżydowskiego)...)->
In the opinion of Stanisław Kot, this lampoon proves a non-noble (let us also add a non-Jewish) [autorship]..., and then goes on to agree with Kot that the original poem was not about tolerance, but xenophobia (
Na podstawie wyjaśnień Kota i Klonowica, moralna intencja określenia "Polska rajem dla Źydów" rysuje się nieco inaczej niż się ją zazwyczaj prezentuje. W określeniu tym nie rozbrzmiewa głos tolerancyjnego gospodarza, ale sarkazm człowieka bezsilnego, przerażonego bezkarnością przybyszów...->
Based on the explanations of Kot and Klonowic, the moral intention of the term "Poland is a paradise for Jews" is somewhat different than it is usually presented. This term does not echo the voice of a tolerant host, but the sarcasm of a powerless man, terrified by the newcomers' impunity). The same point I make in my paper, which is in English and which you should be able to read. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:53, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
shoot the messenger), is whether this is what Kot thinks, or what the sources tell him Polish populace thinks, and he is simply summarizing them? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:28, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
refactor [my] misleading post, as you ask, but I will do the following:
Zimmerman, pp. 111-112
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Meanwhile, the London government’s Council of Ministers received a report from the Polish ambassador to Soviet Russia, Stanisław Kot. Dated November 25, 1941, Kot’s report, “News from the Homeland,” took up the theme of Polish-Jewish relations. Based on accounts from German-occupied Poland, Kot offered a detailed discussion of the current state of Polish-Jewish relations. The four-page, typed, single-spaced report began with a pessimistic note, stating that in the period of the German-Soviet partition, one would have assumed that the persecution of both Jews and Poles “would have brought these two peoples, heretofore alien to one another, closer together – that the [shared experience] would have, at the very least, brought about a softening of the sharp influence of the Jewish question. The very opposite is nonetheless the case,” Kot wrote disappointingly.92 Kot, a professional historian from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, offered an extended analysis of why the gap between Poles and Jews had widened rather than narrowed. |
Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 08:59, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
My point is not that Kot was antisemitic or that he shouldn't be used as a source: I'm just saying that if one wants to prove that he was not antisemitic, one cannot rely either on Zimmerman or on what Kot wrote in November 1941. I'm happy that Zero acknowledges that his readingJust when Ambassador Kot filed his analysis with the London government’s Ministry of Information and Documentation, the ZWZ-Home Army’s BIP submitted an intelligence report on the situation in Eastern Poland. In southeastern Poland, the report cited several mass executions of Jews. In Równe and Łuck, the report stated, the number of massacres that had taken place was estimated at a total of 22,000 Jews
doesn't mean he [Kot] didn't share any of the opinions he reported on, but this text only provides evidence for that in a few limited cases. Inevitably encyclopaedists want to discuss these kinds of things: I propose that the conversation, if it is to continue, continue in Stanisław Kot's talk page. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 14:28, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Zimmerman (2015), The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, pp111–112, as evidence of Kot's antisemitism. However, Kot's report was about the attitudes of the Polish population, not for the most part a statement of Kot's own opinions. Zimmerman takes pains to make this clear. Kot's report was "a detailed discussion of the current state of Polish-Jewish relations". "The most disturbing aspect of Ambassador Kot’s analysis was his portrayal of general Polish views on the Jews." Even the sentence quoted by Sarah begins "Speaking of Polish perceptions". We don't need to guess what Kot's own opinions were because Zimmerman tells us: Kot "wrote disappointingly" that Polish-Jewish relations had widened rather than narrowed since the German–Soviet occupation. All of this is close to the opposite of the claims that were made about this source. The purpose of the report was also summarised in
Fleming (2014), Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust : "the British were advised of anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland by Stanisław Kot" (p86).
A couple of pertinent quotations from the Wikipedia biography on Stanisław Kot:
"At university he [...] clashed with right-wing National Democrats over his insistence on respecting the rights of the region's ethnic Ukrainian citizens. Kot also rejected the National Democrats' antisemitism." [1]
"Kot was popular with his students, particularly those from ethnic minorities, and has been described as 'a strong opponent of nationalism and antisemitism'". [2]
"[M]any outstanding Polish scholars of Jewish descent, when up for promotions, ran into difficulties for 'extra-scholastic' reasons... One of the most outstanding historians, Józef Feldman, had trouble getting through his habilitation because one of the [examining] professors had maliciously prepared questions that were impossible to answer (Prof. Stanisław Kot came to [Feldman's] rescue, declaring that if Feldman were not given his habilitation, he [Kot] would resign his own [professorial] chair, because he did not know the answers to the questions either)" [3]
His opposition to the antisemitism then common among Polish chauvinists has been attributed to the political activism that he had begun in his student days. [1]
References
Nihil novi ( talk) 06:04, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
@ Gitz6666: It would help if you didn't misquote the source.
Gitz6666 claims "Kot, as reported by Zimmerman, writes about Polish perceptions in a way that expresses his own evaluations and bias." Says who? Not Zimmerman, only Gitz6666. Now you double down and present the text with your cherry-picked sentence fragments underlined. Why didn't you underline the bits that cast a different light on it?
Zimmerman, pp. 111-112
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Meanwhile, the London government’s Council of Ministers received a report from the Polish ambassador to Soviet Russia, Stanisław Kot. Dated November 25, 1941, Kot’s report, “News from the Homeland,” |
The whole thing is exactly what Zimmerman explicitly says it was, namely a report on Polish-Jewish interrelations. I was wrong that Zimmerman said that 4 times; actually he said it 9 times. Kot was a professional historian analysing a society and his report was a report on that society, not an op-ed. That doesn't mean he didn't share any of the opinions he reported on, but this text only provides evidence for that in a few limited cases. Zero talk 09:28, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Incidentally, and I'll try to be brief as this feels off-topic for this case, at the time of Kot's report (Nov 1941) it is true that Poles and not Jews were being sent as slave laborers to Germany and sent in large numbers to the concentration camps. Jews had been mostly ghettoised but not sent to camps yet. From June 1940 to mid-1942, the inmates of Auschwitz were mostly thousands of Polish political prisoners, "members of the intelligentsia and anyone potentially involved in the Polish nationalist resistance, above all teachers, scientists, clerics and doctors" (Steinbacher, Auschwitz, A History, Ch. 2). Some Jews in those categories incidentally were included, but the mass murder of Jews as Jews started later. The Reinhard death camps started killing Jews in early 1942. What Kot wrote should be judged according to the facts at the time he wrote it. Zero talk 12:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I haven't read the source material on its own, but based upon what Zero has presented here, it appears to me that Gitz (with some encouragement from Levivich) may be seriously misrepresenting source material right here on a case page. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 19:39, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Note that there is no point arguing on the basis of what Kot didn't say, as we don't know what he didn't say. We only have a few sentences out of a long report. For example, we don't know whether or not Kot mentioned mass shootings. Zero talk 01:34, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Personal_information_in_Wikipedia's_Intentional_Distortion_of_the_History_of_the_Holocaust
The UCoC is also policy.The UCoC states, in relevant part (my emphases):
This Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) defines a minimum set of guidelines of expected and unacceptable behaviour. It applies to everyone who interacts and contributes to online and offline Wikimedia projects and spaces. This includes new and experienced contributors, functionaries within the projects, event organizers and participants, employees and board members of affiliates and employees and board members of the Wikimedia Foundation. It applies to all Wikimedia projects, technical spaces, in-person and virtual events, as well as the following instances:
- Private, public and semi-public interactions
- Discussions of disagreement and expression of solidarity across community members
- Issues of technical development
- Aspects of content contribution
- Cases of representing affiliates/communities with external partners
The Universal Code of Conduct provides a baseline of behaviour for collaboration on Wikimedia projects worldwide. Communities may add to this to develop policies that take account of local and cultural context, while maintaining the criteria listed here as a minimum standard.
voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia.
on the Wikimedia projects or elsewhere). It applies
to all Wikimedia projects, technical spaces, in-person and virtual events, as well as Private, public and semi-public interactions, Discussions of disagreement and expression of solidarity across community members,etc.
explicit consentof the contributor (cf. [143]).
This policy is approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. It may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project.
violations involving the nonconsensual disclosure of personally identifiable information Generally handled by users with oversight or edit suppression permissions(formatting removed)
Cases shall be judged in an informed way, which makes use of context, in alignment with the principles of the UCoC
In line with the movement principle of decentralisation, the UCoC should be enforced at the most relevant local level possiblethe community will have the chance to elect arbs who would act differently in the future. Barkeep49 ( talk) 22:23, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
For example, claims of stalking, sexual harassment, or racism could harm an editor's job prospects or personal life, especially when usernames are closely linked to an individual's real name. These types of comments are absolutely never acceptable without indisputable evidence.
Psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming... research participants...or perhaps more relevant, Royal Historical Society's Statement on Good Practice:
taking particular care when research concerns those still living and when the anonymity of individuals is required. In my own field, sociology, ASA's ethical code states:
Sociologists take all reasonable steps to implement protections for the rights and welfare of research participants as well as other persons and groups that might be affected due to the research... In their research, sociologists do not behave in ways that increase risk, or are threatening to the health or life of research participants or others.
no harm to participantsand
wasting volunteer time(which is what, IMHO, we are mostly doing here) - although that page does not seem to consider issues related to off-wiki harassment through serious accusations, or outing issues. The Committee may suggest to the Community that that page needs an update. As to what to do with academics and similar individuals who violate our policies and have on-wikipedia accounts, while I generally agree with Tryptofish's view that nobody should get special treatment, I'd like to note that some academics also do uncontroversial "teaching with Wikipedia" activities, so any sanctions on academics may contain an exception to their activity as a course leader (assuming said activity was not found problematic in itself). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:19, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
@
User:Barkeep49 A review of the personal information in G&K by a few oversighters and then by the Committee as a whole determined the information had been disclosed on-wiki by those editors
. This is simply not true. I have never disclosed where I work/employer on-wiki. Grabowski and Klein got this info from "somewhere else" (take your guess). If I'm wrong I would like to see a diff.
This is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that one of the forms of harassment that Icewhiz engaged in was contacting my employer/encouraging others to do so. Why do I even have to explain this in public, potentially opening myself up to even more abuse???
Even regarding the 14 year old diff where I disclose my name - I have tried to get that oversighted and was told by oversighters that it would be "too complicated" to remove it. In other words I have certainly tried to have it removed but was refused so that's kind of crappy too. Volunteer Marek 02:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
And just as a reminder, as User:Jayen466 quotes from the UCoC: "Disclosure of personal data (Doxing): sharing other contributors' private information, such as name, place of employment" <-- it's right there. Volunteer Marek 02:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
page on VM mentioning his name and profession is an attack on the serenity and independence of editing here, which is the purpose of WP:HERASS, WP:CIV and WP:NPA to proect. It's an ugly misstep, which should not go unnoticed[144]. In fact, that paragraph on VM
is completely gratuitous and non-academic. Why did they even think that VM's uncivility (which is truly astounding) is relevant to the reader? They are clearly speaking as Wikipedians to Wikipedians: they are not addressing Holocaust scholars[145]. Furthermore (and I think I said this somewhere, but now I can't find the diff) to claim that it was not WP:OUTING because VM had voluntarily released his private information seems to me a mere formalism contrary to common sense. It had been 14 years since this had happened and the information was no longer in the public domain. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 03:50, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Personal information includes real-life name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organisation. I did NOT "provide this information".
make the target feel threatened or intimidated, and the outcome may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine, frighten, or discourage them from editing. For the record, I do feel intimitated by the criticism (which is at the level of serious accusations, i.e. they
could harm an editor's job prospects or personal life, especially when usernames are closely linked to an individual's real name), and I think the authors wish for certain editors to be discouraged from editing the Holocaust in Poland topic area (since their paper explicitly invokes ArbCom and WMF and suggests those bodies should intervene). As I noted in my evidence, I have alraedy been subject to threats sent to my workplace back in 2020; G&K knew about them; I've explicitly asked them to avoid aiding Icewhiz in his campaign to damage my reputation - and yet the authors chose to repeat the same claims in their paper. I cited above some ethics codes from social sciences, and I have hard time seeing how this paper adheres to them. Which is why I suggested above that the most constructive outcome of this case would be for the Committee the "formulate a guidance to academics researching or writing about English Wikipedia" which would stress the importance of not harming (intimidating, etc.) Wikimedia volunteers, so that future volunteers are less, not more, likely to suffer from the severe levels of stress I have been exposed to since February. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
@ User:CaptainEek - again you appear to be purposefully ignoring the context in which the G&K paper was written. It really is the culmination of a four year (five if you count the posts he was making on Reddit in late 2018) campaign of harassment by Icewhiz. We know Icewhiz contacted Grabowski. He told us in various fora he contacted Grabowski. His sock puppets mentioned it. He said it on WPO. He told Jehochman that. He told probably told some others about it (see this comment from... 2019! by Winged Blades of Godric). Klein has said she interviewed Icewhiz (that interview, along with those by Francois Robere, Levivich and a couple of others was never released, unlike the "safe" interviews with Ealdgyth, Joe Roe, and Buidhe). Additionally we also know that at least half the text in the paper is exclusively based on Icewhiz and his disputes (the stuff from 2018-2019). We also know that Grabowski and Klein use the exact same non-Wiki sources as Icewhiz used in his disputes on Wiki (in some case they even misuse them the exact same way). You can't divorce the info in this paper - both the accusations against editors or the doxing - from this long term abuse by Icewhiz. That makes all the discussion about academic norms and comparisons to citing scholars in normal papers moot since most academic papers aren't written based on info provided by someone who has been WMF banned for very very vile harassment - and Wikipedia policy makes no exception when it comes to harassment and doxing for academics. Also, the other arbs here have asked specific questions and made specific inquiries here, which at least I personally found very useful, since honestly, it's very hard to know what parts of the evidence are being taken seriously and which aren't (since, to put it diplomatically, this evidence is of very varying quality). And I also think some of the resulting discussions based on these inquiries has been quite constructive (in particular Wugapodes comments/questions about COI). I would ask, since you believe that "evidence raised in this case shows they (G&K) were on to something", to articulate your own questions and inquiries regarding the parts of the evidence you think show this something.
at least in my social science, the goal is not usually action or activism but understanding, I think this is a nice illustration of differences between some fields (such as economy and sociology). In my field, sociology, calls for action are not uncommon (see also social criticism and critical theory), although there is an eternal debate about whether scholars should be neutral or not. IMHO activism is fine, as long as it doesn't end up hurting others through the "end justifies the means" logic. Hence the need for academic ethics (wait, this is a red link...? I see Category:Research ethics but no main at research ethics... well, go figure). -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
I argue that doxing may be justified in cases where it reveals wrongdoing (such as deception), but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing. Revealing additional information, such as that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation, is unjustified.Such an academic view is clearly quite congruent with the spirit of the UCoC, as well as of longstanding en-wiki policy. It seems to me that what is in G&K fails the criterion of being necessary to reveal POV on WP. Rather, it fits with being additional information, which ArbCom already knows has actually been used to target an editor for harassment and intimidation. ArbCom should understand that the use of personal information in G&K is not in accordance with academic views of the ethics of the matter. ArbCom would be on very thin ice if they were to take the position that, as a routine matter of academic expression in a peer-reviewed journal, the G&K paper should be off-limits for consideration of its implications for the WP editing privileges of one of the authors. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 16:57, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
normal research... [t]he sort that academics and journalists do every day. I was addressing that in terms, specifically, of academics. Douglas shows the academic view of the ethics of this. I'm not saying it was misconduct, and it would make no difference to the decision here if it were. I'm saying that it isn't just an everyday kind of scholarship, not according to me, but according to a reliable source. By the way, I've seen named parties say that they came, over time, to find it more difficult to control their tone in discussions, because of the persistent push-back that follows anything anyone says in the topic area. I'm beginning to get a first-hand sense of what that feels like. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 17:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
One more time.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that 1) G&K obtained this info from Icewhiz and the diff that is being used to excuse it, either from Icewhiz or some other Wikipedian, and 2) that the only reason they included it in the paper was to intimidate and harass.
I think some people have this really naive fairy tale idealized image of what academics are like and so would never harass anyone. Guess what? They’re just like regular people, with all the bad and good that comes along with it. Volunteer Marek 14:40, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
or links to such information. So the letter of the policy simply does not support any argument that the 2009 diff was a voluntary disclosure of personal information as defined in WP:OUTING and the information was therefore no longer protected by policy. That applies to both the 2009 version and the 2023 version of the policy, which has been remarkably stable in that respect.
using various techniques of disruption and manipulationGitz, there are no "techniques of disruption and manipulation". Once again you are using exaggerated and hyperbolic rhetoric to attack people with no evidence. It's a rhetorical trick you have been constantly employing here. Oh wait, I can see an instance of a "technique of manipulation". Right in your statement above where you try to associate me with GCB in the same sentence as if I was also guilty of sock puppetry or something. People keep talking about these "tactics" and "techniques" and god knows what other evil and underhanded stratagems have been supposedly employed... ok, what are they??? Maybe I'd like to learn some. But at this moment other than "making an argument for one's views on talk page" I don't see one. Oh wait, I can think of another. Constantly go running to WP:AE or WP:ANI to file reports! Like Icewhiz did, until it boomeranged on him in 2009. Or like you did last year until it boomeranged on you. Maybe that's my "super sekrit technique". Let people use the WP:ROPE they've been given and just wait for the boomerang.
Comment on content, not on the contributor). While, to repeat myself, I appreciate constructive criticism as a concept, which wiki policy do you think encourages it, given NPA's recommendation not to discuss other users? On the sidenote, it's hard to figure out what's best - consider the two contradictory interpreations of the three wise monkeys proverb. It seems to me that my view represents the first interpretation, and yours, the second. PS. Or The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing vs The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I used to believe in the first one, but as I get older, the appeal of the second one becomes more clear (up to and including summarizing my ~2 decades of editing Wikipedia as no good deed goes unpunished). Ok, enough proverbs for today, I promise. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:18, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Add: in an interview (can send link) Grabowski stated that I, supposedly, revealed my identity "in a chat room". This is of course nonsense. Chat room? Huh? This shows that 1) Grabowski seems not to know what is in his own paper (the paper relies on a Wikipedia diff, not any "chat room") or can't tell the difference between a Wikipedia talk page and a "chat room" and 2) he is not even aware that it is this 15 year old diff that supposedly "justifies" doxing me. Basically the excuse that some people are making for Grabowski and Klein's doxing and harassment is not even the excuse that Grabowski himself is making. This also shows that there's absolutely no way that Grabowski and Klein could have found this obscure 15 year old diff without help from someone actually knowledgeable about Wikipedia. Volunteer Marek 15:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
reveals wrongdoing (such as deception), but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing, or as
that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation. And ArbCom has to explain which of those it is, and why. It's not enough to say that it's an academic paper and we don't second-guess academic papers. As I've said numerous times already, ArbCom isn't being asked to evaluate what should or should not be in the G&K paper; ArbCom is being asked, given what is in the G&K paper, how should WP maintain community norms for a safe environment in which editors can collaborate. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 22:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Deanonymizing doxing releases personal information establishing the identity of a formerly anonymous or pseudonymous individual.For ArbCom's purposes, editors who edit under user names that are not their real names (including VM and myself) fit the definition of anonymous or pseudonymous. In the section about this subcategory, Douglas goes on to say:
It also covers instances where someone’s identity is revealed publically regardless of whether she has deliberately sought to conceal her identity or not.In my reading of the situation, VM did something like post that he was unhappy about harassment, but in the course of doing that he revealed his name, without explicitly revealing his workplace. (I'm basing that on what he says here, and I have deliberately never looked to see what the diff actually said, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong.) That sounds to me like, in Douglas' view, there are potential ethical issues, even if VM had been, well, inconsistent, in seeking to "conceal [his] identity". Now I come to where Douglas cites Bok. Douglas starts by saying:
My interpretation of the concept is based on two claims by Bok (1989). Note: two. The first is where he quotes Bok saying "all information about matters that might affect its welfare". But then Douglas refers to the second, saying:
information reported to the public that only satisfies their curiosity rather than affects their welfare must take into account the privacy of those affected– so, before we put too much weight on the isolated word "all", we had better recognize that Douglas draws a distinction apparently also drawn by Bok, that information that readers might be curious about, but which is not a matter of affecting public welfare, is not presumed to be fair game for revealing to the public, when the information is that "of a formerly anonymous or pseudonymous individual". As for Douglas commenting specifically about routine academic practice, I don't think that's in the source. So I think I've read the source correctly. If I'm missing something, I'm happy to discuss that further.
Re: As Elinruby put it: "polite distortions of the truth seem to prevail in wiki proceedings over attempts to defend it that also express irritation."
[150]
I stated this as a general rule and am correctly quoted; I just wanted to note that while I do still think that this is a true statement, the two editors who have so far publicly agreed with me were talking about quite different situations than I was.
I for one found that interesting and do not envy the arbitrators their task.
I also addressed a question to François on the evidence talk page that Barkeep asked me to move here, about an old edit summary from Collaboration with the Axis powers ca. 2018, where he called some text in the Jewish collaboration section "blood libel". I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the description, just neutrally asking if he would like to expand on that or anything else in the diffs provided for context: [151] [152] [153] [154] [155] [156] [157]
Just so that doesn't seem like a gotcha question, it may be worth pointing out that a page patroller tagged the Poland section of the article as long ( patroller tagging), whereupon another editor at the page accused François of vandalism. [158]. Noting that. Elinruby ( talk) 08:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
The 1944–1946 Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, which according to some estimates killed as many as 1000–2000 Jews (237 documented cases), involved, among other elements, accusations of blood libel, especially in the case of the 1946 Kielce pogrom.
An alleged 1370 Brussels miracle involves an allegation of host desecration; a Jew attempted to stab several Hosts, but they miraculously bled and were otherwise unharmed.On the subject of repating/endorsing antisemitic myths, perhaps someone should take a look at that article? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:33, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Despite spending 20+ hours on a deep dive as requested by Wugs, Im torn on if Ive presented my findings fairly, and as to what sort of remedy they indicate. Im leaning to the view that VM would benefit from an adomishment level directive to comply with WP:Cival , in its broadest sense, if he choses to futher edit in this TA, as an upgrade to the useful Callanecc restriction . But if Arbs chose to give VM an exoneration & commendation, I couldn't deny there's plenty of evidence for such a result.
One thing I am confident on, even if it may equate to platitude level of obviousness, is that full compliance with
WP:CIVAL in its broad sense by all involved editors, seem extra desirable for this sensitive topic class, especially the call for radical compassion for different perspectives, e.g. not just 'how would I feel if someone said that to me', but How would I feel if someone said that to someone I love who cannot just 'brush it off'?
Some may benefit from reading WP:ENEMY - just an essay, but if one is going to be forcefully bossing article content like VM sometimes seems to, it's a near essential practice for compliance with the non negotiable WP:NPOV policy. VM's editing as competition philosophy as laid out in his essay and exemplified by his conduct is admirable to a degree, and in other topic classes I've direct experience of it leading to article improvement just like he says. But competition generally means there has to be both winners & losers. Competition mode isn't that far from gladiator mode, and who does that serve?
Competitive editing seems at best orthogonal to the sort of win-win collaboration encouraged by WP:Cival. And especially not appropriate for hyper sensitive areas like holocaust adjacent topics. What Im less confident on, but which I guess was the guiding thought for how I presented my evidence, is that in this sensitive TA, the competitive approach, combined with VM's past aggressive editing , apparent aversion to sugar coating his words, etc, may have led others to see him as at best unsympathetic, even as a bad actor, and hence he triggers emotional effects that don't bring out the best from normally excellent editors.
Im self boxing the rest of my analyses, its not compareable to the quality sourced based analyses many of you guys are posting, maybe isn't worth anyones time, but some may find value in it as Im looking at matters a little differently than others.
Expansion on the above, sub boxes on Dov Levin, Icewhiz, Polish heroism
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In my investigation, I found VM invariably seemned correct in his various complaints on opponents making false claims about what sources and diffs actually say. But one of his assertions seems wrong – when he suggests folks are counting on admins to be too busy or lazy(!) to do the work to verify said claims. That implies they are dishonest. I don't think that's the case with most of the quality long term editors VM has tangled with. Rather, they get provoked into a 'passion rules reason' state that all of us are prone to under the right duress. When folk are emotional about something - but lack the time, energy or clarity to make an optimal rational decision – they'll sometimes fall back on heuristic shortcuts. In this case, possibly: 'VMs a baddie – the opposite of what suits him is for the best!'. VM's propensity to use belittling language etc may have helped create such an impression. Along with his apparent aversion to sugar coating his words – sometimes even if you have a great grip on the sources, you should take care to express extra empathy for different perspectives when discussing issues as sensitive as the holocaust. When in a 'passion rules reason' state, you're more likely to misread things in a way that suits your objective. I suspect some of the normally good editors who made mistakes opposing VM sincerely believed the evidence supported them. If VM was to return to the TA editing with a whole hearted WP:Civil mindset, showing sincere & sensitively expressed empathy for those with different perspectives, then after a while, social contagion effects would likely see others do the same. If my read is correct that VM may be the editor most responsible for amping up -ve feelings in this TA (despite his general high integrity & policy compliance) then this might be a fitting penance for him. Again, my read might be entirely wrong, the contentiousness may be entirely due to other actors, the inherent divisiveness of the subject & external factors. And VM might have been a huge net +ve, upholding policy, eliminating undue anti Polish sentiment & antisemitism (as he does do both, if not necessarily to an equal degree.)
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FeydHuxtable ( talk) 19:37, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
minor errors ... subtle manipulations and outright lies(G&K's quote) must have been unbearable. If G&K are right and there are serious distortions in the topic area that could not be addressed through the usual editing process – collaborative editing didn't work, articles remained unbalanced, improvements got stonewalled, talk page discussions were blocked and dysfunctional – then it was inevitable that sooner or later some arch-POV-pusher would show up, ready to do anything to publish their content: we can blame the POV-pusher, but we should also try to understand the underlying dynamics. This is particularly true if the distortions were originated by repeated violations of WP policies such as CIV, HARASS, WAR, DIS: these policies are meant to protect not only the integrity of the editorial process and the quality of its outcome, but also the well-being and mental health of us editors. If these policies were systematically disregarded in the HiP topic area, which then became "toxic", this would not only be detrimental to the reliability of the encyclopaedia, but would also raise a health and safety issue. The observation that Icewhiz's editing was impeccable before he entered the HiP topic area is quite instructive: while in no way excusing Icewhiz for his misbehaviour, it underlines the urgency of addressing the problem that this case is intended to solve. Gitz ( talk) ( contribs) 10:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Further reply to Barkeep, long reply to VM
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@Barkeep, I did try to avoid offense, & cut out over 1,000 words I'd originally typed out, to avoid possible adverse consequence, sorry I didn't quite cut enough. I'd guess the reason VM himself doesn't seem too offended is he senses I was sincerely tyring to help even if I didn't get everything right. I thought Id try to contribute in a similar way that Trypto did in the skeptic case, by being insightful and fair to both sides, but getting a proper grip on the core mainstream strands in the WP:RS proved too difficult. So I thought I'd turn from the big picture to look at personalities, and from there try to say something central about Conduct issues. @VM Sounds like you're a lot harder on yourself on incivility than I'd be. I was initially concerned by the G&K quotes, but not after investigating the context. Some of them needed a bit of work, but with a couple they made you look good even after 2 mins looking at why you made the heated remark. One of the sub boxes I cut from my earlier post was about how in certain circumstances cussing can be not just excusable but even a good thing. Had 2nd thoughts as best not to be too equivocal about some things, and Id not say even this except it doesn't look like you have a major problem with cussing. 17 instances over ~5 years, none of which were especially vulgar, isn't that bad for a highly productive editor working on difficult topics. As said to Piotrus Id already saw the PA thing as probaly already resolved. Ive a different view on competitive editing and think its very relevant to discuss here, especially as it relates to the Conduct concerns central to this case. In RW, I'd guess we'd agree on the benefits of competition & that well meaning attempts to shield folk from its harsh side are often ultimately harmful. I think its (mostly) different on wiki – we're in an artificial environment, in some senses better than RW due to our Policies and community. Maybe Im wrong in the general sense, but not in regards to how competitive & aggressive editing is especially harmful to this TA. I'd guess you can think of many examples outside the TA, where your competitive approach has caused an opposing editor to raise their game, leading to article improvements by the process your essay describes. (I know diffs that prove this are out there, there are a couple of cases where the editor whose game you raised was me. Normally Im not the sort to get into even mild content disputes, you made me work harder than anyone else has except a certain other buddy of Trypto's , and it led to very worthwhile article improvements.) But can you pick out even one diff where your approach has raised the game of an opposing editor in this particular TA? There does seem to be abundant evidence that the converse may be happening. As said, you seemed invariably correct in the many instances I investigated where you accused an opponent of gamesmanship or worse. Sorry if I am overly focussing on you – its important for all editors to be deep sense cival in this TA. This would be even more difficult to discuss at a more general level. It's true that hyper sensitive topics, disruptive editing always a possibility now matter how deeply cival and NPOV the main editors are. But there are many examples of articles on high impact topics that are controversal in RW, but which due to haveing been written with good NPOV, are easy to update, and have next to no trouble even from socks. My contention is that in this TA, competetive, sympathy-light editing unavoidably provokes conduct issues in other editors. Including with some of far more peaceful character than Mr disruptive. At best uncollegial editing, or allowing emotions to cloud reading of sources. At worst, intentional deception and major rule violations. The rest of this post is will be to elaborate on 'unavoidably' . Im going to get a bit real world. We'd not be here if not for a RW publication that itself reports of top level government officials discussing a large budget for interventions in the TA. Whether or not that particular report is correct, we all know governments and corporations do sometimes fund such editing, as its widely understood our article content can have significant RW impact. VM, apologies for spelling out a few things you'll understand better than me. I'm doing so in case others read this, as this is EN wiki, and there's aspects to this TA that may be less obvious to some in the Anglosphere. Im going to say something that may be shocking. There are certain circumstances, where playing by the rules is not merely difficult , its unthinkable. An example US editors might relate to is the Cuban missile crisis. That was seen by some as an existential threat. Very unlikely it even entered the heads of US officials at the time that they should be observing international law, respecting the sovereign right of Cuba to partner with Russia how they liked. Existential threat is also a thing for this TA. Different people have totally different attitudes on these things, but anyone with the energy to have read this far into the box likely doesn't need an explanation as to why antisemitism is a life and death thing for some. Why the TA might invoke existential fear for some Poles may need a few more words. I wish I had a good source for this, its something I know only from conversation with Poles – that there's a centuries old fear in Poland about the Great Bear, and for at least a few this fear is always at the back of their minds. One of the sub boxes I cut from my analyses was on the plight of the Poles, mentioning my experience of Brexit negotiation back in 2018. I had some colourful but I guess distracting anecdotes on the single minded focus some of the Polish diplomats had on ensuring post EU UK would have their backs if Putin started trouble, and the unconventional means they used to max the chances of that. To appreciate the link to this TA, one has to understand that big decisions, both in terms of billion dollar capital flows & geostrategic commitments, aren't always made on a rational P&L bases. 'Don't help the antsemtie' can be the decisive thought. This is not to argue that our coverage of antisemiticism in Poland ought to be minimised. It is to say that when the balance of WP:RS supports such content being added, there should be sympathy for those editing from a pro Polish perspective. And vice versa. Ive several examples where Ive seen first hand wiki pages seemingly have a major influence on RW events, this one is perhaps the most relevant, given your interest in global Macro. Back in 2011, DSK was the living economist I most admired due to how he'd transformed IMF for the benefit of the world's poor (At leas that's how I saw it at the time, as did some rank economists, per sources I added [ added some positives about him here. It was distressing to think about DSK being locked up in Rikers Island. There were dozens of sources about him likely having been stitched up in French, but less than 1% of the English ones mentioned that possibility. I doubt anti-semiticism had anything to do with it, but its impossible to make the sort of changes DSK brought about without upsetting some. I've enough experience working in Investment Banks & for central government to know [ Peter Pumkinghead reflects reality. Certain ultra rich people will come at you rather hard if they perceive you as a threat to their livelihood. So I thought it would be due weight to add a few lines on the possible setup to the article . The next day, there were hundreds of English sources covering the possible setup. As some here will know, when covering a hot topic, journalists & producers can only read a tiny fraction of what other sources are saying, but many can be relied on to check the wiki page. The coverage generated much sympathy for him, and seems very possible it contributed to his freedom. Later I learnt he has unsophisticated views on GENsex , to say the least, and regretted possibly helping him out, but the possible mistake doesn't detract from the point. Trying not to say too much on a certain issue as Arbs hate to see anyone doubling down. I'll just say you might well be right, but that Solzhenitsyn who Id guess you might have read, was good on how every one of us has the potential to more towards the light or dark, and sometimes it's the interaction between our environment and our virtues that leads us astry. |
FeydHuxtable ( talk) 16:58, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Icewhiz denies that they ever harassed anyone, and claims that Piotrus and friends colluded to make false complaints, which were accepted uncritically by WMF, without giving Icewhiz a chance to respond.[private email] My experience with WMF is that they are not infallible. ArbCom can't overrule WMF, but we should not necessarily accept as fact whatever WMF says without ArbCom seeing proof and hearing a response from Icewhiz.[168] <-- Jehochman posting on behalf of Icewhiz and basically suggesting that Icewhiz is correct. What word would you use to summarize you posting this stuff for him?
Oh, wow, we're actually pulling stuff from the "Russavia era", literally more than a decade old. Ok, I know some of you around here are kind of young in Wikipedia years, but everyone remembers who User:Russavia was, right? That's what most of these diffs are about. The block by WGFinely? Why not link the AE report itself? Here: [173]. Russavia. Sandstein's iban? Russavia. The incivility warning from 2013... well, not Russavia, but rather this account. Seriously, why is it that every time someone complains that "VM didn't assume good faith towards user XYZ" and then you click on User:XYZ's page you get something that looks like this:
Or like this:
Every. Single. Time.
(This applies to a good chunk of Francois Robere's evidence too).
This MAY indeed show something, but I don't think it shows what the people presenting the evidences think it shows. Volunteer Marek 07:36, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
According to the Committee statement, the Committee believed at the time that the matter was suitable for onsite discussion. I would infer from that, that there are some significant elements of the complaint that can be made public without violating personal information. It also sounds like the complaint is back in the Committee's lap, after Trust & Safety sent it back to them. Therefore, if ArbCom ends up basing anything in the Proposed Decision on their evaluation of that complaint, I want to encourage them to make clear, onsite, what that was. (I say that particularly in the context of the motion about there not having been any outing violations in the G&K paper, along with a named party taking issue with that motion, although I might be entirely incorrect in my inference that this is what the private complaint was about.) --
Tryptofish (
talk)
20:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
This is an important part of the overarching timeline and was one of the main factors in convincing me that a case was needed. Moneytrees🏝️ (Talk) 02:46, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
GCB's evidence [176] buti n regard to question asked by User:Primefac here: [177]
@
User:Primefac I’ll try to help in understanding --> Heavy socking wasn't the thing in that topic area before Icewhiz's ban but it started immediately after. Icewhiz didn't operate his sock puppets all at once. After one got blocked - 1 or 2 new ones showed up and so on. While those sock accounts were getting blocked, it was
clear who is behind them. François Robere knew about the
Icewhiz's investigation board because he commented
defending Icewhiz's sock puppets during examinations <--(scroll down). In some instances, François Robere restored sock puppet's edit after sock puppet was already blocked and identified as Icewhiz. For example:
That’s four days after KasiaNL was identified and blocked as Icewhiz. -
GizzyCatBella
🍁
18:49, 12 April 2023 (UTC) —
GizzyCatBella (
talk ·
contribs) is a suspected
sock puppet of
Jacurek (
talk ·
contribs).
@ Buffs: Thanks for the ping. I haven't had time to review much of GCB's evidence, and will likely not be able to do so for a few more days, so I can only comment on VM's claims.
Going through the first few examples of GCB:
There's also some current affairs ("LGBT Free Zones", "Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement"), articles linked from articles that I follow ("About the Civilization of Death"), and other such stuff. Most of it is either the "sock" following me, public boards, or articles I've been editing for a while. François Robere ( talk) 12:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
User:François Robere I believe you're suppose to answer here in "Comment by parties" rather than "Comment by others". Regardless:
Charts like that, which neglects to mention significant "real-world" events
Well, yes, the chart fails to mention "real world events" because it is, as titled, a chart of "Total number of Poland related WP:AE reports by year" rather than a chart of "Real World Events". If you want to do some chart titled "Correlation between AE reports in this topic area and real world events" then please, present it to us. This chart here, just shows purely factual info. There were X # of AE reports in a given year. Then it adds in a few arrows which show "this topic on Wikipedia events".
I guess you're bothered by the fact that it shows that when Icewhiz arrived the number of WP:AE reports exploded. This isn't controversial. And guess what? It wasn't just the number of Poland-related WP:AE reports that exploded. There was another topic area which saw an explosion in number of WP:AE reports. Guess what was it? Yup, Israel-Palestine topic area, and yup, also because of the record number of WP:AE report Icewhiz filed in that topic area. This excuse-making-for-Icewhiz would be minimally plausible if he hadn't been doing it in multiple topic areas.
Anyway, you have other data which shows something else? Ok, let's see it. Where is it? Right now all the objections are nothing but "I just don't like what this chart shows because it is not convenient for me or my prior beliefs".
And sure correlation is NOT ALWAYS causation but if someone sticks their hand in a fire and each time it gets burned and this happens over and over and over again, with different fires (at least 12 different ones it seems) then yeah, concluding causation seems justified. And maybe you didn't disagree with K.e.coffman and SarahV all that much - ok, but were you together with them in 100 different disputes?
Like seriously, if it was one or two... maybe three, ok fine, four socks, there'd be room for ambiguity and argument here. But 12+? Nah. Volunteer Marek 18:51, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@
User:Buffs In most of these cases, IW was responding quickly to everyone on these pages, (not just FR).
Yeah, no, that's not true either. In most of the cases that are analyzed (which are comprehensive for pre 2019 ArbCom case) it's the other way around - FR following Icewhiz around not vice versa. I said this originally in 2019: The best thing that you could say about this, if you're Icewhiz at least, is that FR tends to supports Icewhiz a lot more than vice versa. Icewhiz reciprocates... occasionally.
[182] Even a quick glance at the table
[183] shows that there are far more "FR supports Icewhiz" than "Icewhiz supports FR" entries in there. Icewhiz usually led the way and FR followed. That's also probably partially why they were not included in 2019 case.
Volunteer Marek
18:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@Buffs - The evidences I delivered of Francois Robere tag-teaming with Icewhiz sock puppets paint a clear picture and leave no room for doubt. I typed it in a logical and organized manner, I backed it by facts and examples making it easy to follow and understand. The evidence isn't based on my assumptions or opinion, but on verifiable data. -
GizzyCatBella
🍁
15:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC) —
GizzyCatBella (
talk ·
contribs) is a suspected
sock puppet of
Jacurek (
talk ·
contribs).
@ User:Buffs sure, FR also made edits which are completely irrelevant to the issue we're discussing. I'm not sure what your point is. And I'm not accusing FR of sock puppetry. I don't know why you think that. I'm accusing them - based on extensive evidence - of coordinating with Icewhiz sock puppets. Backed by evidence, it's not "casting aspersions". And *this right here* is the "appropriate fora" since it's exactly the purpose of this case to determine the causes of disruptions in this topic area and surely sock puppetry by Icewhiz is at the top of that list.
And speaking of "aspersions", you might want to refrain from accusing others of making "aspersions" if you're throwing around "aspersions" yourself. To wit, your claim that "You've made many specious assertions that others were acting upon IW's behalf because they disagreed with you" is - unlike the evidence on FR and Icewhiz sock puppets - completely unbacked by evidence. So I'd appreciate it if you struck it. Volunteer Marek 19:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
this is not a wholesale analysis of every edit they have made, only those where you found they agreed and disagreed. You have omitted all points that are neutral.- this is not true. It's every discussion (prior to 2019 case) they participated in together. So agreed, disagreed OR neutral. So no, I did not omit those... there just weren't ANY "neutrals" or "disagreed" (almost)
So no, not "all opposition". Just FRYou've made many specious assertions that others were acting upon IW's behalf because they disagreed with you. This level of vitriol and hostility are antithetical to WP editing. Buffs ( talk) 16:45, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
(Moved here from Evidence talk page per unopposed suggestion made there)
I want to commend any community members who have made sincere efforts to improve, and strongly recommend that ArbCom recognize such improvements. To err is human. The circumstances around this case and the topic area are complicated to the extreme. We shouldn't be too critical of editors, administrators, and arbitrators who may have been confused, but are willing to learn from mistakes. Jehochman Talk 13:03, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
VM and Naliboki massacre. Haeb says that G&K "back up their assertion with a diff link", but that is a partial description. G&K (footnote 92) give two diffs, one of which acts to exonerate Jews and doesn't refer directly to the massacre ("The routine attacks on Polish underground units by Soviet partisans could not have been circumvented by Jews in their ranks.", with source), and the other was revert of a Yaniv revert. The reason for VM's upset is that G&K introduces these diffs with "For Volunteer Marek’s edits on Naliboki see" as if they are presenting a comprehensive or at least representative sample of VM's contributions to the article, while not mentioning the fact that after consensus on the issue of Jewish involvement was reached VM assisted in removing it. [185] [186] [187]. In my opinion, VM's complaint against G&K is justified. Zero talk 06:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus and The Forgotten Holocaust. Piotrus is correct to note that the May 17, 2020 article on the book mentioned multiple criticisms. Haeb seems confused to mention G&K's footnote 106, as it links to a different article. At some point of time both articles said there was a single critical review, but since February neither does. It is generally a matter of judgement whether a review is positive or negative, so NOR was sufficient reason to remove it. G&K's implication of malicious intent has no basis. Zero talk 07:26, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus and Chart 3. In the few months between G&K's paper and recent discussion, G&K's Scholar citation counts for Richard Lukas jumped by a factor of 6, even though the cited works are quite old. There are several possible reasons, of which human error is one. For almost a month now, Piotrus' discussion has not said "acknowledged [an] error" but rather "acknowledged a problem", which is true, and Piotrus has never claimed that G&K made a mistake on purpose. So there is nothing here. However, there is plenty to be said about G&K's chart and what it says or doesn't say about citations on Wikipedia. G&K compared wiki-mentions of two authors they dislike (Lukas and Chodakiewicz) against five they like (Dwork, Kassow, Tex, Bergen, Gitelman), showing the former are mentioned much more often than the latter. However, they don't explain why they choose these five "controls" over, say, Polonsky, Gross or Browning, who are mentioned approvingly in their essay and have more wiki-mentions than Lukas or Chodakiewicz. In fact, the scholars they mention approvingly have between them more than twice the number of wiki-mentions as the scholars they mention disapprovingly. If other mainstream Holocaust scholars are included (Lipstadt, Hilber, Cesarani, Bauer, etc, all with many wiki-mentions) the story gets even more distant from what G&K want us to believe. Zero talk 06:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
reason for VM's upset, but about one specific "lie" accusation of his (
Regarding the Naliboki massacre article, the authors falsely claim that I added “Jewish partisans” to it. This too is just another lie Icewhiz tried to peddle on Wikipedia before he got banned. I *removed* the claim that Jewish partisans were involved, not added it!). However, VMs "not added" claim is plainly false [188]. (You appear to argue that it was not an addition but a
revert of a Yaniv revert, but that's the second problem with VM's accusation - Grabowski and Klein merely say that he
brought backthe "Jewish partisans" claim, not that he
added). Even if you think that this part of the paper can be criticized (which would be a different discussion), that does not justify false accustions against the authors. HaeB ( talk) 23:45, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus is correct to note that the May 17, 2020 article on the book mentioned multiple criticisms.- so what? That's not G&K's point here.
The authors write that: “By portraying Engel’s opinion as a lone dissenter in a sea of praise, Piotrus massaged the Wikipedia article to show Lukas in a positive light.”, but the book article entry I indeed wrote (May 2020 version linked) included other critical or mixed reviews as well), the former contained the same problematic characterization in the lede ("It has received a number of positive reviews and a single dissenting critical review which resulted in a series of letters published in the Slavic Review between 1987 and 1991 "). So what exactly is the
False claimthat Piotrus accuses the authors of? Regards, HaeB ( talk) 00:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
a neutral description of a topic- whereas it is obviously not a Wikipedia article beholden to NPOV). But I'm also not here to defend or criticize G&K: This part of the evidence is not about them, but about Volunteer Marek and Piotrus, and about specific false or misleading claims they made about G&K. And even if G&K have made other mistakes, I entirely disagree that that would justify making such false or misleading claims about them.
For almost a month now, Piotrus' discussion has not said "acknowledged [an] error" but rather "acknowledged a problem", which is true- the fact that Piotrus corrected his false claim about G&K after I pointed it out is appreciated. But that does not change the fact that it was made in the first place. And by the way, this is one of the very few parts of his and VM's rebuttals that I have fact-checked in some detail (mostly because that particular topic had come up in the Signpost discussion). And in that small portion already, several claims did not hold up. This makes me feel much less confident about taking the rest at face value than apparently a lot of other editors. Again, these are serious BLP and ASPERSIONS topics.
and Piotrus has never claimed that G&K made a mistake on purpose- that seems to be a strawman distraction; who said that Piotrus claimed that G&K made a mistake on purpose?
So there is nothing here- I entirely disagree, see above.
that Piotrus and VM are somehow responsible for not maintaining the topic area to what you consider a sufficiently scholarly standard. Regarding
you seem to be arguing that we should not expect it to meet that [scholarly] standard, it appears that you may have misinterpreted my (admittedly brief) summary of the full response that I have now posted here. (Among other things I point out there that making an argument with a few examples is standard scholarly practice in the humanities, even though it is of course not a fully-fledged statistical argument of the kind that would be accepted in a quantitative research paper in other fields.) And concerning "accepted [the paper] at face value", I would also like to mention that the whole reason I'm here is that since over a decade I've been organizing a newsletter/Signpost section where academic publications are regularly assessed critically - i.e. not accepted at face value. Even Groceryheist's review (which - especially - VM tried so hard to prevent from appearing in the Signpost, with all kinds of incivil attacks and distorting claims) points out various shortcomings of the paper and discusses VM's and Piotrus' rebuttals.
By portraying Engel’s opinion as a lone dissenter in a sea of praise, Piotrus massaged the Wikipedia article to show Lukas in a positive lightwas specifically referring to Piotrus' lede sentence(s)
It has received a number of positive reviews, and a single dissenting critical review. I don't buy your argument that the subsequent description of Piotrus revert of François Robere
makes it clear that at this point, at least, [...] they are talking about the article as a whole, and not just the lede.Either way, this evidence is not about how you would have fixed Piotrus' "False claim" argument to be valid - it is about the fact that Piotrus' rebuttal entirely omitted the fact that G&K were referring to his
single dissenting critical reviewsummary here.
single dissenting critical reviewclaim into both articles and that G&K could have clarified in the paper's main body when they are talking about which. But I don't think that weakens their argument.) Regards, HaeB ( talk) 19:12, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World_War_II_and_the_history_of_Jews_in_Poland/Evidence/Summary#Sanctions_history Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World_War_II_and_the_history_of_Jews_in_Poland/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_François_Robere
@ François Robere: you seem to have a misunderstanding of what an interaction ban means. An interaction ban means an editor should not interact with the person with whom they're banned anymore. This is about actions after the ban. So in the following timeline there is an interaction ban violation:
There is an exception to the ban for Engaging in legitimate and necessary dispute resolution
which includes an Arbitration Case for which both are parties.
Barkeep49 (
talk)
15:40, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus: how do you decide when to publicly discuss something with another editor/admin/arb and when to email that editor/admin/arb? Barkeep49 ( talk) 15:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
I guess the decision is based on consideration on whether privacy is needed, for example to reduce the chance of harassment, both to myself and to the other parties. Some emails could contain discussion of harassment, including how I am affected by it, and similar stuff I don't necessarily feel to make a part of public record (as they could empower or encourage the harassers or other disruptive editors - see WP:DENY). An email could also, for example, contain a friendly warning to behave better, without leaving that warning in one's public record, per my thoughts here. Over the years I have become increasingly concerned not only about how people may use what I say against me, but also, how they can use what I say against others. We are responsible not only for protecting ourselves, but protecting others, and the community in general. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:19, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
the damage CANVASS policy has done to Wikipedia and its community.? Absolutely because maybe it will convince me. Do I have some belief that such an editor might not follow CANVASS, whcih as it stands remains a behavioral epxectation? On its own maybe, maybe not - there are some pieces of polices and guidelines I don't agree with and I'd expect any other editor to be the same so that's not a problem on its own - but when combined with the off-wiki contact I've personally witnessed, I absolutely become concerned. Barkeep49 ( talk) 23:06, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
editors should attempt to follow... though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Editors can be and are sanctioned for failure to follow guidelines. Barkeep49 ( talk) 00:26, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I am somewhat concerned by the timeline in the Zygmunt Krasiński and The Undivine Comedy section presented by François Robere. The other sections around it can be reasonably explained by watchlists, but the timeline in this section is a bit more suspect. Volunteer Marek, how is it that you came to learn of Mellow Boris and their edits to Zygmunt Krasiński, which you reverted wholesale in Special:Permalink/958695415?regarding FR's evidence which says "The very minute MB finished his edits, VM accidentally reverts Piotrus, then self-reverts."
BTW, a good follow up question may be "how did Francois Robere come to edit this article". Prior to Feb 2021 [196] they hadn't edited it either. But when they do show up, first thing they do is restore Mellow Boris' (yes it was a sock) edits [197]. They did edit Undivine Comedy [198] earlier in June 2020 but that's also after my interaction with MB on Krasinski in May. Now, I'm Polish, I like poetry, Krasinski is a famous Polish poet - the article was on my watchlist, there's no mystery here. But AFAIK these don't apply to Francois Robere (I don't know, maybe they do like poetry too) so... how did they find it? Either they were following Mellow Boris' edits (which is not a good look) or they were following mine or Piotrus' edits around (better, but not by much). If there's another explanation I can't see it - was it posted at NPOVN or RSN or something? Which means that this piece of evidence presented by FR seems to fall squarely into the "accuse others of what you are doing yourself cateogry" (and that's not unique to this one piece of evidence). Volunteer Marek 16:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
One more thing that occured to me over lunch. Francois Robere hasn't thought this through - the edits are actually evidence AGAINST the idea of coordination, not for it. Why? Well, the whole the "the very minute" thing in the "The very minute MB finished his edits, VM accidentally reverts Piotrus" Presumably coordination would involve some kind of off-wiki communication. But off-wiki communication would take time. Like if the insinuation here is that Piotrus send me an email or something (to be 100% clear: he didn't), what are the chances that I would see that email instanenously and then be able to respond to it on wiki instanenously? The very fact that this was in "the very minute" means that I had to be watching the article independently, saw Mellow Boris' edits, and made the decision to undo them myself.
This I think applies generally - since someone else has commented somewhere that Polish editors "show up within minutes of each other". Supposing that's true (and it seemed more like a "feels" kind of statement) that would be evidence of people having similar watchlists and reacting to the same stimuli, NOT evidence of coordination. In fact it would be evidence AGAINST coordination.
Now, if there were brand new accounts involved in all of this? Then yeah it'd be different because then you have to anticipate what articles the new account (yes I mean socks) will edit and the only way you can do that is if you're communicating with them off-wiki. But pretty much the only new accounts running around in all of this have been Icewhiz (and related) socks. Volunteer Marek 18:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
It feels like several of the discussions since the release of the paper have been better at finding consensus and that some of the conduct issues I observe haven't spiraled out of control. One explanation for this is the absence of Icewhiz.
Piotrus provided examples of changes to his editing over time. I would be interested in similar evidence from/about other long time editors in this topic area, particularly from Volunteer Marek and François Robereone, and how my approach has changed in that respect. But I didn't want to drop a ton of text on ya'll at once so I'll wait a bit to give a fuller answer. Volunteer Marek 20:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
a public feud between Grabowski and specific editors has been ongoing for multiple years across multiple venues including on-wiki.
Volunteer Marek 06:40, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The general question doesn’t have a clear-cut answer.. I can think of *some* scenarios where a COI (maybe there's a better way to characterize it) would indeed be apparent - for example, if Person X criticizes Editor Y for work on article Z, and Editor Y begins to immediately make negative edits to BLP of Person X even though they'd never edited it before. I think such a case would be about as clear cut as you gonna get. Not sure if that's exactly COI or just plain ol' crappiness. Like "aggravated BLP violations" or something but regardless, I take BLP very seriously (probably more than most) and iif it was up to me in such cases I would definitely expect some sanction or at least warning against the Editor. But that's not what we have here, at least not in any cases that I'm aware of. Volunteer Marek 23:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
What does the conduct of named parties at noticeboard discussions show and tell usw/ link to this discussion. Again, this is one of those "happened two years ago so not going to be able to recall all the details" things, but looking at that one again, it starts out as a contentious, but rather standard discussion about sources. It was a bit confrontational from the get go seemingly because FR first said to me "Take your time" [204] (10:18 March 7) but then went ahead and took it to a noticeboard less than an hour later [205] (11:18 March 7) - basically, not giving me a chance to reply (I had started replying to their points but had not finished). There's some confusion about which sources are actually being discussed. One source said "but not in an Orwellian sense" but it looked like FR wanted to use it to say the opposite, that it was Orwellian. But then there was another source which also said something about Orwell, so... yeah, confusion. I think all of that up to this point though was really exactly the kind of discussion about sources people need to have and which will be unavoidable in a contentious topic.
@ User:Barkeep49, User:Primefac, User:Wugapodes and any other arbs - I plan on answering Barkeep's question about "changes in editing over time" soon (that one is actually quite complex) but since Phase II is going to close in a few days it would be good if any other questions or inquiries that ya'll have were stated giving me (or others) enough time to reply. As I mentioned above, these questions are particularly useful in figuring out which parts of the evidence(s) are important and which are, well, less important. They also help to keep the discussion more focused. Volunteer Marek 04:44, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
@
User:Barkeep49,
User:Primefac - Piotrus provided examples of changes to his editing over time. I would be interested in similar evidence from/about other long time editors in this topic area
I have attempted to answer this question several times, was never satisfied with what I wrote and repeatedly started over. Since time is running out I guess I'll have to go with what I get right here below.
One thing that has changed for me is that I think I've gotten better at walking away. Or disengaging. Or just not engaging in the first place. I know it may not necessarily seem like it from this case but please keep in mind that these are very specific and particular circumstances and if there's one kind of a situation where it's hard to disengage it's exactly something like this here.
But having said that, please also note that participating in this case is really me coming back to the topic I've left alone almost completely alone for the past year. And it's not that shenanigans and hijinks were completely absent in this topic area but if I did see them I mostly chose to ignore them. Not everything on Wikipedia or in this topic area is my responsibility and I can’t task myself in trying to fix it all, watch it all, adjudicate it all. Some disagreements you just need to let go and I think I’ve gotten much better at that.
Additionally, even after this paper came out a whole bunch of editors rushed in to change the articles mentioned in the paper - some of these changes were good, some bad, some really just lateral moves, but regardless I really tried to NOT get involved in all this, except in a few instances where I thought either there was some significant issue at hand. And honestly, I don't really plan on getting re-involved in this topic area in the future - it's just not worth it, and I think editors like Elinruby or Marcelus, who are new-ish to the topic area but not new editors - are both competent and operating in good faith. It's actually nice to see *real* new faces in the topic area (as opposed to constantly seeing new faces of the same you know who).
I think I also got better at controlling my temper and being diplomatic? I ended that with a question mark because, yeah, that's a work in progress. There are a couple things that will set me off and I've really done some introspectin' to identify what these are so that I can either avoid them or take a deep breath before dealing with them. I kind of hesitate to state what these are since unscrupulous observers might take it as a "manual on how to provoke VM". But obviously Icewhiz-related stuff is one of these things. I think this is understandable given the circumstances and it's also unfortunately that it's very hard for me NOT to get involved. Other than that I get irked with 1) BLPs, when someone tries to use them as attack pages. I think this may be because my view of BLP policy is stuck in like 2010 when ... was it User:Doc James? went and mass WP:PROD'ed all the unsourced BLPs on Wikipedia. I think over past few years how seriously BLP policy is taken on Wikipedia has dramatically declined. Same as rest of internet I guess. And 2) when someone else is getting bullied. This could be another editor or sometimes someone an article is about.
There are a few other things. I basically made a mental list of "situations to watch out for and take extra care to be diplomatic"... and then this whole paper/case happened! I say "diplomatic" rather than "uncivil" because I'm very rarely outright uncivil (it's happened in a few isolated case, which of course made it into the paper) but rather most of the time it's me just being a little too blunt and a little to forthright with what I think, which some people perceive as being combative.
I think I simply just view disagreement differently than other people. I think it's natural, to be expected and just something that happens. If someone's wrong I'll let them know and I expect them to do the same. But yeah some people - and maybe MVBW is right that this is a cultural thing - perceive disagreement as an insult: "if you think I'm wrong then it means you think lowly of me". Well, no. I don't see "you're wrong" as a incivil, or a personal attack or insulting. It's just disagreement. But yeah there are different and perhaps better ways of saying "you're wrong", which are more inline with the nature of this project.
I already mentioned this elsewhere but I find Callanecc's civility restriction useful in this regard. Sometimes it's good to have constraints. In fact, I think the Committee should impose this civility restriction on the topic area as a whole.
Finally, as much as you try to disengage, it may not always work. Sometimes you keep walking away, but someone else keeps walking up. The issues of people following others to different topic areas or popping into every discussion that the other person is involved in or watching every edit someone makes just to "harvest diffs" have come up in various places here and I'm not going to repeat the evidence already submitted. But it is those situations where the only way disengagement and walking away can successfully happen is if there's a barrier put in between parties - the IBAN.
So I think the Committee should make the 2 way IBAN imposed by ScottishFinnishRadish on Levivich and myself permanent. Likewise I think the Committee should implement the 2 way IBAN between Francois Robere and myself that I proposed on Callanecc's page and which they stated they were already considering. These two just seem like no-brainer actions. These kinds of decisions/sanctions would be particularly beneficial as they would help editors make the kind of positive changes to their editing and approach that they themselves want to – or should want to make. Volunteer Marek 01:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
(ping User:Primefac because I messed it up above)
@
User:Barkeep49 Want to hear more perspectives/evidence about why RfCs in the topic area would attract a small, but reasonable, number of participants but then fail to be closed. Examples include the Jan Żaryn RfCs, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_355#RfC:_Polish_sources, and Talk:Justice_for_Uncompensated_Survivors_Today_Act_of_2017#RfC:_Mentioning_the_protests_against_the_law.
Others have addressed this I believe but to add to that: short answer is that many of these RfCs were badly framed to begin with. The Jan Zaryn and "Justice for..." RfCs are good examples of that. They tend to look like they're about one thing but then if you look carefully they're really about another.
Look at the Justice for one. In the wording of the RfC FR asks "Should Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act of 2017 mention the protests against the law that took place in Poland and the US?". This is reasonable and looking at the comments there isn't anyone - including myself - that doesn't think the protests cannot be "mentioned". But at the end of the question FR sticks in a diff to one of his edits [209] so... it looks like the RfC is really FR asking "can I restore exactly my edit that other editors objected to". This results in confusion as many of the "Yes" !Votes basically say "it should be mentioned but don't do the COATRACK and OTT that was in there". This is what Pincrete says, what Tserton says (in the discussion), what SMcCandlish says and what Szmenderowiecki says. So if you're the potential closer you look at it and think "what exactly am I suppose to close here?" and give up.
The Jan Zaryn RfC suffered similar problem. I chose that to present as evidence for a reason. In that RfC Francois Robere asked us to vote on proposed text but "only the part that's bolded". Except... the actual dispute was about the OTHER text, the portions that weren't bolded but were also to be included. The bolded parts were, for the most part reasonable. But if you voted 'yes' on those you were implicitly giving approval to the non-bolded parts too which were much less reasonable. So... what is it exactly that is being voted upon? Again, the RfC is set up to LOOK like it's about one thing (the bolded parts) but it's really about another (basically FR asking for their previous edits to be legitimized wholesale). And similar to the "Justice for" RfC you have outside editors (Drmies) telling FR that the way they want to set up the RfC is a "terrible idea". But they plow through anyway.
Add the fact that both of these RfCs - indeed, probably ALL RfCs in 2021 in this topic area - saw very heavy involvement from Icewhiz socks. Which means that any potential closer would have to make judgement calls as to which accounts were legit and which weren't. So yeah I 100% understand why no one wanted to deal with it. Volunteer Marek 04:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
I'll speculate that if *I* had written the exact same words as Marcelus, you'd probably be seeing it as "evidence" against me in this very case from someone or otherfor a moment? I'm guessing you've written the answer to the question I'm about to ask and even that I've read it, but I don't see it anywhere in my notes so I'm going to ask again: why do you think this is true for you? I don't see other longterm editors making those claims, so what about you, from your perspective, induces this behavior in others? Barkeep49 ( talk) 20:16, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
According to Joanna Michlic, "the image of the secularized and radically left-wing Jew who aims to take over [the country] and undermine the foundations of the Christian world" dates back to the first half of the 19th century, to the writings of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Zygmunt Krasinski; by the end of the 19th century it has become part of the political discourse in Poland.) It makes sense that both articles would be on VM's watchlist. I'd also tend to say that the tight timeline, and especially the immediate self-revert, supports the idea that it was on his watchlist already - even the most aggressively efficient WP:MEAT is unlikely to call an editor in within a minute of another edit, and it certainly wouldn't call someone in to revert someone, then immediately decide they'd made a mistake and self-revert. That's the kind of thing that does easily happen, however, when seeing something at the top of your watchlist. As an aside, regarding why VM immediately self-reverted - the edit on Żydokomuna led to a dispute with SlimVirgin over VM's then-topic-ban from the history of Poland during World War II, including the Holocaust in Poland; the conclusion was that it was borderline, but VM agreed to leave the article. While Żydokomuna (who died almost a hundred years earlier) would be another step removed, the edit in question stated that the Undivine Comedy was
similar to the work by by Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt in 1938; in light of the recent discussion, VM probably decided, a moment after hitting "edit", that this was too close to the line. -- Aquillion ( talk) 23:16, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I dont find any consensus that there is COI with Grabowski. Realistically, if someone were to ask Grabowski if he is ok with named parties editing his biogrpahy, he would likely say "no", and it's not like there aren't many neutral non-parties which can take care of this article in the future. For the record, I certainly have zero desire to make any edits to his article (which, ironically, I started, and which I believe was perfectly fine and neutral for a tiny stub).
Someone having a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgment about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith.I get the sense that people view COI as some kind of character flaw to be defended against instead of a situation to be managed. I have conflicts of interest with regard to many linguists, and I generally avoid editing articles of living linguists even if I don't know them. The issue isn't "wow Wugapodes has a COI, they must be up to something", the issue is that my external relationships with article subjects can lead editors and the public to question my or the encyclopedia's integrity regardless of merit. Even just looking at Tryptofish's example, the issue I'm concerned about is "some other editor goes to COIN to complain that Chapmansh used the student editor to advance G&K's 'agenda'". That's bad. We bite a student who probably was doing just fine, stir up tensions in the community, and waste time throwing around accusations because of a perceived conflict of interest. All of this can happen even if no one did anything wrong, and that's why I view this as an issue to be cognizant of even if we ultimately do nothing on our end. This isn't 2005 when what happens on-wiki might wind up in a quirky blog. People have personal, professional, and commercial relationships that interact with the interests of the encyclopedia in complicated ways. That's not a bad thing, but like any editorial organization we need to understand conflicts of interest as more than a simple "promoting your own interests" or self-dealing. It's being aware of situations that can cause strife and working to manage them before they blow up. That's my concern w.r.t. student editors. They may be put into a situation where their interests are questioned (without them even necessarily knowing why) and the outcomes are negative for everyone. I would like to avoid that, and the lens other organizations use to understand this problem (and even this one if WP:COI is read carefully) is conflict of interests. — Wug· a·po·des 05:48, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I know from experience over time that the excellent staffers at WikiEd make a strong effort to guide all class assignments away from Contentious Topics, but I also know that a significant number of classes slip through the cracks each year, and end up at WP:ENB.-- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The final third probes into the distortions of German, Italian, and French Holocaust memory.-- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:06, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
legitimate concerns about their behavior. And for me what separates legitimate concerns from concerns (which are real, if not something I feel the need to remedy) is the evidence that justifies them. Barkeep49 ( talk) 22:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
the distortions of German, Italian, and French Holocaust memory. I'll ping @ Ian (Wiki Ed):, who is the WikiEd person for that course, as an fyi, right now. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I hope that the emphasis is on "potential" here because much of the evidence is circumstantial and weak. I'll mention
this example:
"Later in August François Robere created
Property restitution in Poland; a few hours later Volunteer Marek started editing the page, followed
only a few hours later by Piotrus."
The summary makes it look like VM and Piotrus were tailing FR, but a much simpler picture appears on following the timeline on 15 Aug 2021.
It is obvious that VM and Piotrus learned of the new page because FR drew it to their attention by linking to it from a page that VM and Piotrus edit frequently. So the facts of the case are that FR advertised the page and now claims it is suspicious that anyone accepted his invitation. Zero talk 19:19, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Piotrus provided examples of changes to his editing over time. I would be interested in similar evidence from/about other long time editors in this topic area, particularly from Volunteer Marek and François Robere. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:15, 12 April 2023, Wednesday (13 days ago) (UTC+3)
Changes to positions:
Changes to editing practices:
Changes to conduct:
I also try to pass this on to less experienced editors who find themselves in similar situations, as you can see in my communications with Mhorg, Szmenderowiecki and Michael60634, among others. François Robere ( talk) 18:52, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
After undressing, newly arrived Jews were beaten with whips to drive them towards the gas chambers; hesitant men were treated particularly brutally. Rudolf Höss, the commandant at Auschwitz, contrasted the practice at Treblinka of deceiving the victims about the showers with his own camp's practice of telling them they had to go through a "delousing" process.and
The killing process at Treblinka differed significantly from the method used at Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the poison gas Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) was used. At Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec, the victims were murdered by suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning from engine exhaust in stationary gas chambers. At Chełmno, they were carried within two specially equipped and engineered trucks, driven at a scientifically calculated speed so as to murder the Jews inside it during the trip, rather than force the drivers and guards to murder them at the destination. After visiting Treblinka on a guided tour, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss concluded that using exhaust gas was inferior to the cyanide used at his extermination camp.
They (Buidhe) are further warned that AE must not be used to "win" content disputes. These are final warnings - any future examples of this or similar behaviour in the topic area will result in sanctions.
discretionary sanctions are not available as a gotcha to remove opponents. Perhaps Volunteer Marek was wrong on the issue (I don't know) but I don't see anything like the Daily Mail being used as a source so Buidhe's request at User talk:Volunteer Marek#Article sourcing requirements was entirely inadequate.
If you need to spell out the evidence to Arbitration Enforcement, it should be worth a try to spell out the same evidence to your fellow editor first.
It's quite simply inappropriate to try to win a content dispute in an admin report after repeatedly refusing to explain your position in the content space. In fact, it's a good way to get boomeranged. Communication is required. Refusing to explain your edits when necessary is disruptive. Buidhe claims they explained in edit summaries, but they really didn't, most of their edit summaries just said "article sourcing requirements", meaningless words, no better than leaving no edit summary.
No information about what the problem was with those sources was posted on the talk page either before or after that revert, nor before posting this AE report.
I may not be able to get back to Wikipedia before this phase closes, so there are a couple of comments I would like to make, even though they are likely to be unpopular and are almost certainly politically unwise.
It's been educational participating in an investigation of secret information about an undefined topic. The word "educational" is a euphemism in that sentence, although I have in fact learned a great deal. Such acrimony when deeply-ingrained beliefs clash.
So why are we here? Grabowski, in my opinion, found errors in the HiP topic area because that is where he was looking. He was looking in HiP because he is an HiP historian. Note: there is no policy that says that an editor cannot make an error of fact, see above. The bad news is that these problems are by no means confined to Poland, however.
If in fact the sources now say something that our articles did not, imho this is in my opinion a systemic failure of the preconceptions of the reliable sources policy, which should be reviewed.
That's a big enough bite to be going on with. I know the committee wants to hear about what might help, and I have some thoughts on that, which I think I can probably get in before I Have To Go, and I will try to do that next. Elinruby (talk) 08:53, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
There were multiple significant disruptions in this subject area by sockpuppet accounts and currently banned users. They should be treated per
WP:DENY. Their actions are not a proof of wrongdoing by any currently active contributors. There is no collective responsibility. Moreover, these sockpuppet accounts poisoned negatively affected a significant number of discussions (AfD, RSNB, etc.) which became a lot more heated than they suppose to be. But I do not think such discussions should be a reason for sanctions with regard to any other contributors.
The central claim by G&K was an alleged "group" of contributors placing intentional distortions and antisemitic tropes to WP pages. I do not see any evidence of this. Most of the Evidence (the Summary page) describes disputes about including or not including various well sourced claims to pages (i.e. typical "due weight" disputes). However, neither including nor excluding these claims would be an intentional distortion.
I think the purpose of arbitrations is to resolve serious and currently ongoing issues. However, most of the Evidence is very old. I would say nothing older than one year is relevant, unless that was placing an intentional misinformation by currently active contributors. But I do not see evidence of this. Importantly, this subject area was relatively quiet during last year. I found evidence about this [217] convincing.
Moreover, any grievances that come from other subject areas (such as that one) are hardly that much relevant to this case.
More recent disputes in Evidence are merely content disputes and reflect a commendable effort by several contributors to improve pages after the article by G&K.
What remains after applying the WP:DENY and excluding all very old and remotely related evidence? I am not sure, but there is no evidence of intentional distortion by active contributors, in my opinion. My very best wishes ( talk) 18:02, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
In increasing order of the difficulty and/or unlikelihood of implementation:
This will be my last bits of evidence. My spring has been .. wildly busy outside of Wikipedia and continues to keep me busy. I'd hoped to get further with
User:Ealdgyth/Holocaust article audits and have a better idea of how big the problem is, but I haven't, and that's on me. But there are some big problems with source/text integrity and source usage in the articles in the area, leaving aside any bias issues which I did not have enough time to dig deeply into - but both sets of problems exist in the topic area. (And now I get word that I'm a grandmother again - so there goes some more "free time" for wikipedia... but in a good way at least!)
I would like to point out that while I've seen a lot of statements in this case along the lines of "things haven't been bad in the area in the last few years" (that's a paraphrase, not an exact quote of any editor in particular) and that "no one has been driven from the topic area" (again, a paraphrase, not a quote from anyone) - I'm going to point out that, yes, I WAS driven from the topic area. I pointed this out before, but I guess no one took my word for it. The toxic editing environment did drive me away - from both "sides". The constant hunt for sockpuppets (ironically, one of the biggest editors in that hunt turns out to be a sockpuppet ... heh), the endless reverting, the nasty language, the general lack of good faith ... all that drove me away. So, yes, some editors HAVE been driven away and thus I don't think we can assume that the topic area is quiet because IW was banned ... it's that at least one editor could no longer handle the atmosphere.
As to what I'd like to see changed in the topic area? I'd like for folks to start arguing from sources instead of feelings or opinions. And to argue from a broad range of sources, as the academics covering the topic area have a range of views on the subject - so should our articles reflect the preponderance of viewpoints - not just one. I'd also like for folks to stop treating the area like a battleground. And, while I'm at it and being a utopian dreamer, I'd like for folks to start treating all the other editors with good faith. (Yeah, that'll happen.) But, for ArbCom? If you're going to pass remedies - you need to back up those remedies. If you pass a sourcing restriction for a topic area, don't let
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive280#Volunteer Marek happen - where the editor trying to enforce your sourcing restriction was admonished by admins for trying to do so. Basically, ArbCom's spinelessness there enabled bad behavior and gutted the very restriction you imposed. After that AE request - why should any editor not assume that the sourcing restriction was moot and that bad behavior was allowed?
I get it, IW harassed some editors, badly. But lets not let that be an excuse to allow the topic area to be turned into a toxic environment where trying to fix issues results in abuse either.
All I want is to be able to try to fix the issues I see in the topic area. This is important stuff, folks. Allowing our articles to have sourcing issues, or statements that are provably wrong ... all that does in enable the genocide deniers (and no, I don't think any of the editors that aren't blocked/banned are deniers of the Holocaust). Let's try to FIX the problems, not treat the topic area as a battleground for scoring points on the "other side".
Ealdgyth (
talk)
16:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
This section should be edited only by Arbitrators and Clerks. Any response to questions/requests posed here should be done on the Evidence page or done above as a section under #Analysis of evidence as appropriate.
[Subject mater experts] are expected to make sure that their external roles and relationships in their field of expertise do not interfere with their primary role on Wikipedia.There's obviously a scholarly dispute underlying this case. To be perfectly clear, the Arbitration Committee will not resolve that scholarly dispute because it is outside our jurisdiction. What we may consider, though, is how to manage potential conflicts of interest when editor-scholars become embroiled with external scholarly disputes, particularly when that "external role[ or] relationship[]" appears to "interfere with their primary role on Wikipedia". There's no hard line here, as the COI guideline says
How close the relationship needs to be before it becomes a concern on Wikipedia is governed by common sense, but I think we need to examine the potential conflict given that a public feud between Grabowski and specific editors has been ongoing for multiple years across multiple venues including on-wiki.So this is all framing for two questions that I would like evidence or analysis on:
— Wug· a·po·des 21:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)