Case clerks: SQL ( Talk) & Bradv ( Talk) & L235 ( Talk) Drafting arbitrators: AGK ( Talk) & Opabinia regalis ( Talk)
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Purpose of the workshop
Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at fair, well-informed decisions. The case Workshop exists so that parties to the case, other interested members of the community, and members of the Arbitration Committee can post possible components of the final decision for review and comment by others. Components proposed here may be general principles of site policy and procedure, findings of fact about the dispute, remedies to resolve the dispute, and arrangements for remedy enforcement. These are the four types of proposals that can be included in committee final decisions. There are also sections for analysis of /Evidence, and for general discussion of the case. Any user may edit this workshop page; please sign all posts and proposals. Arbitrators will place components they wish to propose be adopted into the final decision on the /Proposed decision page. Only Arbitrators and clerks may edit that page, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.
Expected standards of behavior
Consequences of inappropriate behavior
1) Rename the case to "Eastern Europe 3"
References
2) Rename the case to "Polish-Jewish relations"
3)
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3)
4)
1) Wikipedia works by building consensus through the use of respectful discussion. The dispute resolution process is designed to assist consensus-building when normal talk page communication has not worked. Consensus develops from participation and agreement of the parties involved in lieu of soapboxing, edit warring, or other inappropriate behavior.
2) Wikipedia is not a battleground. Wikipedia is one team of editors, all working toward the same purpose. Editors should not treat editors with whom they disagree as belonging to another "side" or an opposing group. Bad blood, poor interactions, and heated altercations between users can complicate attempts to reach consensus on substantive content issues. Inflammatory accusations often perpetuate disputes, poison the well of existing discussions, and disrupt the editing atmosphere. Discussions should be held with a view toward reaching a solution that can gain a genuine consensus.
3) Retired editors should generally be given deference and peace of mind. Gravedancing is when a user essentially disrespects an editor who has chosen to retire; be it through insults onto that user's character, going through their contribution history to revert their contributions, casting aspersions against that user, or being otherwise uncivil or harassing that editor.
The repeated (and at times unfounded) attempts abuse an unrelated dispute as a platform to attack a retired user is a severe form of gravedancing known as graverobbing. Such abuse of arbitration processes are not to be tolerated by the committee.
4) It is not the role of the Arbitration Committee to settle good-faith content disputes among editors.
1) Editors involved in the topic area of Polish-Jewish relations have been mostly editing in good faith. Some of the editing however has been less than optimal, which resulted in longstanding content disputes over the principles of neutral point of view and the interpretation of reliable sources. This has involved some suboptimal user conduct.
2) Poeticbent ( talk · contribs) is a yearlong retired user added as a party to this case by Icewhiz. Icewhiz has repeatedly attempted to make this arbitration case into a trial on Poeticbent's conduct after making persistent claims against them ( [2] [3] [4] [5]). Also see the evidence submitted by starship.paint.
"after making persistent claims against them"is incorrect - diffs are following case request naming Poeticbent. "Graverobbing" is a novel concept here, not grounded in policy. As for WP:HOAXes in mainspace - I backed this up with evidence (sufficient examples, given diff and evidence length limits). The Wikipedia community should be concerned with hoaxes on the Holocaust history in mainspace - we should not be hosting such content. Icewhiz ( talk) 21:57, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
3)
Volunteer Marek (
talk ·
contribs) is a longstanding established editor who has previously been a party to an Arbitration case related to Eastern Europe (See
evidence submitted by MJL). Though it was later rescinded, Volunteer Marek was topic banned from articles about Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about same, widely construed, for one year.
4) Volunteer Marek has repeatedly made personal attacks against Icewhiz as it relates to this dispute ( [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]).
1) The community is encouraged to hold an RfC regarding the best practices for sourcing within the Antisemitism in Poland topic area. In particular, it is suggested interested editors within the community work to develop an explanatory supplement to the provisions of Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources for Jewish-Polish historiography.
2) The standard discretionary sanctions adopted in Eastern Europe for "[p]ages which relate to Eastern Europe or the Balkans, broadly interpreted" remain in force. For the avoidance of doubt, these discretionary sanctions also apply to any article regarding the country of Poland, Polish historical figures, and Polish culture. Any sanctions imposed should be logged at the Eastern Europe case, not this one.
3) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages about Antisemitism or The Holocaust, both broadly construed.
4) Icewhiz and Volunteer Marek are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
Icewhiz has made odious false allegations against me. He most definitely should be subject to a one way IBAN. His "evidence" that I "hounded" (sic) him is just the fact that I edited ... some same articles in the topic area, which considering I've been editing this area or 15 years is hardly surprising. A two way ban btw, would probably cause more headaches than its worth - we've both edited a lot of same articles and subjects so parceling out who gets to edit what would be a mess. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 22:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
"have been civil to VM throughout" User:Icewhiz, making false horrible accusations without evidence against other users is not "civil". Making false horrible accusations without evidence against other users and having to deal with the response does not make you a victim. It just makes you the perpetrator who somebody stood up to, finally. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
5) Icewhiz ( talk · contribs) is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with, or commenting on, Poeticbent ( talk · contribs) anywhere on Wikipedia (subject to the ordinary exceptions).
6) For their battleground behavior over the course of this case, Icewhiz ( talk · contribs) is admonished. They are warned that any further instances of battleground behavior during arbitration processes will likely result in sanctions.
6) For repeated personal attacks against Icewhiz, Volunteer Marek ( talk · contribs) is admonished. They are warned that any further instances of uncivil during both content and conduct disputes will likely result in sanctions.
1) Maintaining the reliability and accuracy of article content is extremely important. Where the accuracy or reliability of an edit or an article is questioned, contributors are expected to engage in good-faith, civil discussion and work toward a resolution of the concern.
2) Statements in articles should be supported by citation to reliable sources and may not constitute original research. Appropriate sourcing is particularly important where the contents of an article are controversial or their accuracy is disputed.
3) The contents of source materials must be presented accurately and fairly. By quoting from or citing to a source, an editor represents that the quoted or cited material fairly and accurately reflects or summarizes the contents and meaning of the original source, and that it is not being misleadingly or unfairly excerpted out of context.
4) Editors should exercise caution and avoid the introduction of questionable sources promoting views considered to be extremist by reliable sources. Editors should avoid advocacy of use of such sources in article talk pages or noticeboards.
We could start by having you practice what you preach. Here you use a trashy source (wpolityce) to attack a BLP. Here you try to use a guy who said that "Poles lack common-sense" and who, as editor of American Conservative published the white supremacist Steve Sailer. You do this to attack a BLP. Here you use a trashy right wing source (which you misrepresent) and, worse, an anti-semitic source, which you do however, represent accurately (that's not a good thing). You do this to attack a BLP. Here you use another low quality right wing source. You do this to attack a BLP. Here you try to use a guy who's an expert on ... catfish fishing, to source historical facts. I haven't gotten yet to the part where you try to use a celebrity gossip columnist to cite historical facts and attack people. Will dig that one out shortly.
It's a great principle. Why not try following it Icewhiz? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
5) Editors should assume a source is unreliable, unless proven otherwise. In sensitive topic areas, particularly those in which conspiracy theories and hate discourse is prevalent, editors should devote extra care to maintaining high quality sourcing.
1) Poeticbent created a number of anti-Jewish hoaxes which have persisted for several years in articles in the topic area.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"pure : # zydokomuna"- which still doesn't match the caption (and in any event is a clearly unusable source). Icewhiz ( talk) 05:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Icewhiz, are you going to include the WP:HOAXes you created, like this one here where you just invented a BLP's words to smear them or your incorrect captioning of that photo [41] [42] [43] with "1941" instead of "1939", in your proposal (same photo you're using to accuse to Poeticbent)?
"To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku."-
"This is one of the most interesting photographs of Bialystok during the Soviet occupation. In the background, the church of Saint Roch, and around the sickle, hammers, five-pointed stars - the symbols of the new order."- nothing Jewish or welcoming in the Polish language caption, is there? Icewhiz ( talk) 11:34, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
2) During the case, and as part of their evidence statement, Volunteer Marek falsely stated that a source had been misrepresented and in doing so misrepresented the source himself. Contrary to Volunteer Marek's statement, the cited journal article in Holocaust Studies and Materials by Dr. Grzegorz Krzywiec supports the text in the article. Volunteer Marek also asserted a " WP:BLPVIO" towards a subject that died in 2004, 15 years ago.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Oh please, this is complete nonsense. Read what I wrote: "BLP subject did NOT assert "neo-Stalinism" is dominant in American social sciences". He didn't. I made no false statement. And are you seriously trying to make this into a Finding of Fact? Here, let me run over below and propose a Finding of Fact that says "During the case, and as part of workshop discussion, Icewhiz falsely stated that Volunteer Marek falsely stated that a source had been misrepresented and in doing so misrepresented the source himself, except he didn't, Icewhiz just didn't read what Volunteer Marek wrote or pretended otherwise"
Also, let me make a proposal for Findings of Fact for every single one of your well documented false claims and this page will be longer than a magic unicorn tail. "Icewhiz used anti-semitic sources to attack a BLP". Fact. "Icewhiz claimed that stating that communist party officials were communists was POV". Fact. "Icewhiz falsely insinuated that it's illegal for Polish Wikipedians to edit Polish Wikipedia on Polish-Jewish topics" Fact. "Icewhiz compared an anti-Nazi resistance movement to the Nazi Party". Fact. "Icewhiz claimed that we can ignore WP:RS policy if a Stalinist court had adjudicated the matter". Fact. "Icewhiz pretended that massacred women and children took part in some kind of a battle that never happened." Fact. Etc. I don't actually want to get into a silly little game where we propose findings of fact on each other, I'll let you play it alone. I do want to noted that you're being your typical WP:BATTLEGROUNDy self.
Oh yeah, and please don't move my evidence around as you did here. It's petty and it's not up to you to decide where my evidence goes. Ask a clerk if you got a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Volunteer Marek ( talk • contribs)
"Worse, the sources are misrepresented". Academic journal article on BLP's subject's book chapter - [47] states
"The study scrupulously states that “neo-Stalinism” has certainly been dominant in the American social sciences since the 1960s.. Bandying false accusations in ARBCOM, or in any administrative fora, is a big deal. Icewhiz ( talk) 05:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
"might put these back later") is not cool. Furthermore multiple academic sources on the subject cover his radical negationist views. Icewhiz ( talk) 06:10, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
3) During the case, and as part of their evidence statement, My very best wishes falsely claimed, [50] that this journal article by J. Otto Pohl supports their viewpoint, while the journal article itself is on a different subject and doesn't mention the "Polish operation" or Poles. Present in closed evidence 24 June(bullet-5 (link #180) in section), despite MVBW being informed of the misrepresentation on 10 June. Furthermore, in diff they claimed that Icewhiz inserted "Harvest" (misnomer, usually: "Hearts of Gold") as a source, however in the diffs offered - [51], [52] - the cited sources are a journal article by Grzegorz Krzywiec, [53] and a review by Danusha Goska, [54] covering "Hearts of Gold" and the controversy in a secondary manner and not "Hearts of Gold" itself. ( evidence bullet-2 (links #162, #163))
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Reminder to Icewhiz: just because you claim something, doesn't mean it's true. In fact, you're kind of illustrating how WP:BATTLEGROUND your attitude is here. How about you let ArbCom do their job instead of trying to do it for them? You're desperately trying to control the narrative here, but it's slipping, and your panic is showing. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:17, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
"Icewhiz removes sourced information about political repression against Polish population by the Soviet NKVD and the similar organization of communist Poland .... Icewhiz tells it was ethnic cleansing, not genocide (discussion). Not according to some academic RS [179], [180]"(180=J. Otto Pohl). Pohl's article is on 1937-1951 deportations (a separate issue from the national sweeps in the Great Purge) - and does not contain "Poles", "Polish", or the "Polish operation". I will also note "removes" is incorrect in regards to - [55] [56] - where this was replaced with other sources (without misrepresenting Ellman, and without using Sommer's book, book jacket, tabloid interview ( Super Express) , etc.). Icewhiz ( talk) 12:55, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
4) Volunteer Marek harassed Icewhiz, hounded his editing despite multiple requests to stop and engaged in a pattern of personal attacks and incivility towards Icewhiz.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Yeah, I didn't even bother addressing this part of your "evidence" because it's so obviously bonkers. I've been editing this topic area since... 2005. You showed up in 2017. In fact, you seem to have gotten interested in this topic area AFTER we had a few disputes on Donald Trump and alt-right related articles (where you were supporting both). At the time, while I was annoyed by our disagreements I still naively thought you were acting in good faith, so when I saw your article Wrangell Bombardment at DYK I did a thorough copy edit of it and helped you to get it through the nomination process. Then, all of sudden, you began your crusade across all these Poland related article. I guess this was your own special way of saying "thanks", huh?
More specifically, like I said I've been here since 2005 and I've edited literally hundreds of articles, long before you showed up (afaik). We've both edited 173 articles in this topic area. Out of these, 115 were edited by me first. So if there was any hounding or stalking going on, it's the other way buddy. In fact, the nature of your accusation is kind of suspicious because it's so blatantly absurd, that it kind of looks like a pre-emptive strike ("someone might notice I hounded VM, so I better deflect by accusing him of it first!").
Out of the 57 articles which you edited first, about 40 of them have a pretty straight forward explanation for why I edited them - you were inserting the same piece of text, or making the same edit in multiple articles at once, the article was very closely related to another article we were both editing at the time and I edited first, the article involved a general dispute about sourcing in this topic area, and then there were new articles created by yourself or Piotrus which were also related to other contemporary disputes. The other 17 (out of 173!) articles which you edited first just look like they popped up on my watchlist since they're also very closely related to other articles I've edited.
So, sorry, no hounding there. Rather this is just your own WP:OWN and WP:BATTLEGROUND.
But as I was looking these data up, there was one striking phenomenon. A lot of the articles which I edited first, you edited a few years later. Here's the thing: the order in which you edited them in 2018 or 2019, matches pretty closely the order I edited them in ... 2008 or 2012 or 2014. So it's pretty obvious that you were sifting through my editing history going back many years and looking for what kind of trouble you could cause. Or perhaps you were gathering evidence already months ago, anticipating all the WP:AE reports you wanted to file (see the section below) and occasionally jumping in to make an edit. Now, for most of these, your edits did not revert mine. And you haven't brought any of this up in your evidence either. This means two things: 1) you didn't find any thing you could use as evidence against me, because my edits were solid, 2) you kind of figured that this might give your game away. Still, the close match between the order in which you edited them in 2017-2019 and in which I edit them in 2008-2014, tells a pretty clear story. While your intention may have been WP:HOUNDING in the end you wound up "only" WP:STALKING.
So your accusation is just more gaslighting.
(raw data here [60])
Volunteer Marek ( talk) 06:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
5) Volunteer Marek failed to follow the verifiability policy. Despite content being clearly challenged on verifiability grounds, Volunteer Marek has repeatedly restored content that is not present in the citation ( original research) and in some cases contradicted by other sources or the citation itself. Volunteer Marek failed to engage in meaningful discussion to rectify the issues.
6) Volunteer Marek has treated Jewishness as an immutable trait (describing former Jews as Jews),
[77]
[78]
[79]
[80] removed "Polish" as an adjective from the first lede sentence of Polish Jews,
[81]
[82]
[83] and openly advocated that for "people who were both Polish and Jewish"
that both Polish and Jewish be removed from the lede.
[84] These editing practices are counter to
MOS:ETHNICITY and community norms. Furthermore, Volunteer Marek has referred to editors, sources, and authors discussing antisemitism in Poland as bigoted,
[85], prejudiced,
[86]
[87], extremist,
[88], racist,
[89], "gratuitous stereotyping",
[90], "rant is stuffed so full of nonsense",
[91], and "stuffed full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, hyperbolic..."
[92].
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"very narrowly defined topic as described only"in Racism in Poland please note this removal - diff per
"Remove information about 15th century which has nothing to do with racism, but religious strife. Also Poles were subject to genocide by Nazis as well"- which contests that antisemitism in Poland was racist (when the instigator was the Catholic church - e.g. placing Jews in ghettos, anti-Jewish violence, expulsion of Jews from royal capital of Kraków). Icewhiz ( talk) 06:55, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"No idea what a "former Jews" means"[93] - perhaps this needs spelling out - but this has rather alarming (and very well known) connotations -
"Once a Jew, always a Jew"[5] (Inside Judaism - a strict interpretation of Halacha treats converts to other religions as Jews that are heretics - however most modern people respect the right of individuals to leave a religion). Had this been an isolated utterance, it could be explained as a mistake, an inadvertent slip, or perhaps even taking a very strict Jewish Orthodox interpretation. However VM's statement on removing "Polish" from the lede of Polish Jews was explicit (and was preceeded by VM actually doing this on articles), [94]. His repeated references to peer-reviewed scholarship on antisemitism in Poland (unsourced, his own personal opinion) being "full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes" - here in arbitration, as well as prior to arbitration, has highly troubling connotations, and regardless an editor rejecting scholarship on this basis, without any sources to back up their serious charges - is a serious issue. Icewhiz ( talk) 05:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
"Somehow because I removed the word "Polish" from a sentence which already implied that the person was Polish..."does not hold water - as this:
"he is insisting that we include that a person was Polish in the lede (this in the case of people who were both Polish and Jewish). I am saying, leave both out. ". [95]
Schumer's US nationality is already implicit from being described as a "United States Senator" - we would look very dimly at an editor who would remove "American" from "is an American politician". I gave the American example as it is close to home for many, however the same applies other nationalities - e.g. French - Robert Badinter. Icewhiz ( talk) 07:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Charles Ellis Schumer ( /ˈʃuːmər/; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from New York, a seat to which he was first elected in 1998.
Oh, this is both bizarre and more disgusting insinuations by Icewhiz. Note he also does the little trick where he asserts one things and then provides sources which are irrelevant. It's complete and utter horseshit that I supposedly "treated Jewishness as an immutable trait". I removed the wording "former Jew" because the wording was strange. In his second diff I just restore a lede after Icewhiz changed it all up, that actually had nothing to do with the person's ethnicity. His third diff is me actually clarifying the person's background exactly the way Icewhiz wanted it (!!!) and what exactly is suppose to be wrong with this comment??? This is some shameless insinuations by Icewhiz.
It's exactly THIS kind of behavior that makes collaborating with Icewhiz impossible. It's exactly him pulling this kind of nonsense that shows he needs to be removed from this topic area. And other ones too if this is in any way indicative of how he edits Wikipedia in general.
And god, the rest of it is total crap too. Nothing wrong with discussing anti-semitism in Poland. But pretending that everything about Poland is anti-semitic and that Poles as a group are a bunch of anti-semites, as Icewhiz does... yeah, that's a problem. With Icewhiz. Lying about it by misrepresenting sources or other editor's statements just makes it even worse.
Icewhiz than shamelessly presents three sources which are completely unrelated to this. Icewhiz is very clearly accusing me of "denying there's anti-semitism in Poland". Bullshit. NONE of his diffs show anything of the sort. This is the same barefaced lying that he engaged in at the Requests for this case Somehow because I removed the word "Polish" from a sentence which already implied that the person was Polish, I'm anti-semitic??? Why is he allowed to continue to do this??? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Volunteer Marek has treated Jewishness as an immutable trait (describing former Jews as Jews)
Complete and utter nonsense. "Former Jew" is simply awkward phrasing, "of Jewish background" is better. There's nothing here which says anything about any "immutable trait"s. See also
Who is a Jew?. Icewhiz is adhering to some extremist fringe notion here.
Volunteer Marek (
talk) 19:11, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
VM removed "Polish" as an adjective from the bios of Polish Jews, not other Polish nationals whose nationality was already implied in the lede.
- this is also some seriously dishonest manipulation of what actually happened. In both cases this was simply undoing Icewhiz's removal of OTHER information in the lede. He knows this. It's been explained to him half a dozen times. But he keeps pretending otherwise. Likewise when I said that both "Polish" and "Jewish" should be removed from the one sentence in one article (which Icewhiz claims is me "openly advocating" for ... something or other, not sure what this is even suppose to mean) it was simply because the rest of that sentence ALREADY IMPLIED both "Polish" and "Jewish" so the info was redundant. Icewhiz takes this - info is redundant - and in a very dishonest way tries to twist it into something it wasn't. The situation has been explained to him half a dozen times but we get the standard
WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT as he refuses to acknowledge even the fact that this has been explained.
Volunteer Marek (
talk) 16:31, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
And EVEN IF I did "openly advocate" for removal of both "Polish" and "Jewish" from the lede sentence of some articles (which I didn't, except in one case where it was redundant), how in the world would that warrant a ridiculous sanction like this??? This is just ridiculous. And regarding "other Polish nationals" - well, we weren't editing articles about "other Polish nationals". If the exact same issue - redundant info - came up on an article about some "other Polish national", I would also think it should be removed. There's some underhanded insinuations here that Icewhiz is trying to get across but they're bunk. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
And I have no idea what Chuck Schumer has to do with any of this but I'm pretty sure that EVEN IF someone removed "American" from that sentence (which would be a different situation), we would still NOT try to ban them "from all articles about Americans or referring to American editors" as a result. This kind of actually illustrates - although again, it's a different case - just how completely nonsensical this proposal is. Misrepresentation, hyperbole, pretending black is white and white is black, underhanded insinuations. This is all classic Icewhiz. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:39, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
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7) Across many articles involving modern Polish history, English Wikipedia articles presented a Polish right-wing POV stance. The POV stance of the English Wikipedia surpassed that of the Polish Wikipedia which generally presented a POV more in line with global norms.
vs. the EnglishWiki's lede:Michał Rola-Żymierski , also Michał Żymierski, Michał Żymirski, ps. "Rola", "Morski", "Zawisza", responsible Michał Łyżwiński [a] [b] (born September 4, 1890 in Cracow , died October 15, 1989 in Warsaw ) - Polish soldier , reserve officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army , Brigadier General of the Polish Army in 1927 degraded , commander of the People's Army (1944) , Supreme Commander of the Polish Army , head and minister of national defense(1944-1949) and chairman of the State Security Commission , Polish Marshal , Member of the Presidium of the National National Council (1944-1947), Member of the Legislative Seym (1947-1952), member of the State Council (1949-1952), vice-president of the National Bank of Poland (from 1956), honorary president of the Main Board and the Supreme Council of the ZBoWiD , member of the Military Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PZPR , supervising the Polish Army from May 1949 [1].
Which per diff conforms toMichał Rola-Żymierski (pronounced [ˈmixaw ˈrɔla ʐɨˈmjɛrskʲi]; September 4, 1890 – October 15, 1989) was a Polish high-ranking Communist Party leader, communist military commander, NKVD secret agent, and Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin's order from 1945 until his death. He supported the 1981 imposition of Martial law in Poland.[1]
"restore previous NPOV version". Can you find anywhere else to tack on communist, Stalin, NKVD, support for Martial law in Poland, etc. in the English Wikipedia's version? Icewhiz ( talk) 06:39, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"Within Poland those who recite unpopular historical facts are frequently accused of running down their country, while those outside often find themselves confronted with the reproach of "anti-Polonism."[106] - it is far from a neutral descriptor on a global scale ("anti-Polish POV" here - means a large chunk of Polish historians - as well as most historians outside of Poland). Icewhiz ( talk) 09:34, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
It's quite random. I mean, consider Stawiski vs pl:Stawiski, an article which you cite you your evidence as well - the Polish Wikipedia article has no POV... as in not mentioning anything about the Jewish community. Is this a POV? Sure there is - if one wants to take an issue with some Polish villages being unduly dominated by the Jewish history. Like, again, Stawiski, where 50% if not of the article content is about WWII-era destruction of the Jewish community. Polish-right wing bias, errr? Except nobody ever challenged such articles (Stawiski is hardly unique; look at Adampol, Lublin Voivodeship, Biała Niżna or Błonie - 90% of content is Jewish history; ) because the Jewish history is notable, and we just need to expand other sections or split the Jewish history into their own subarticles (consider for example Bełżyce or History of the Jews in Adamów). Something to consider with regards to argument that some ghetto articles have 'too long' sections about Polish rescue efforts - as I said elsewhere, it just means we should expand those ghetto articles with other sections, ex. on post-war efforts to catch and sentence the Nazi administration and war crime perpetrators, stuff discussed in USHMM ghetto encyclopedia but generally totally absent from our ghetto articles. Information should not be removed, whether it is about Holocaust rescuers or about Jewish history in villages or about any other encyclopedic topic. The relevant policies are WP:SUMMARY and WP:SPLIT. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
8) Citing the " WP:BAIT" essay, which advocates that "baited" editors "don't take the bait" so that they won't be sanctioned under the civility policy, Volunteer Marek has alleged during the case that he had been "baited" by Icewhiz into making personal attacks versus Icewhiz. However, an analysis of the personal attacks in evidence reveals that Volunteer Marek was not "baited" into making them.
Mvbw has it exactly right below. There are only TWO possibilities here. Either 1) Icewhiz genuinely believes the nonsense about Poland being just "like North Korea and Iran", or about it being illegal in Poland to edit Polish Wikipedia on Polish-Jewish topics, or about anti-Nazi resistance being just like the Nazis, or 2) he just said this stuff because he knew it would provoke other editors and then he could run with WP:AE with the response. Neither one makes him look good. He is either indeed an extremist with some strange WP:FRINGE views, or he is baiting others.
Based on my long term interactions with him I'm inclined to think it's mostly 2) or possibly "2) being done to push 1)", but I guess it could be either. Hey. Let's find out. So Icewhiz can you state explicitly whether you think that:
I kind of anticipate that you're gonna post something irrelevant to distract, so I let me ask for a straight yes/no answer to these. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:36, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
9) Following this personal attack by Volunteer Marek, [109] he was warned on 2 June 2019 to stop engaging in personal attacks by ARBCOM member SilkTork. [110].
"Volunteer Marek (VM), who adds little new content (see last article creation - one bareurl - a soldier's account), has been reverting and stonewalling corrections.". In regards to Polish-Jews, VM stated -
"The difference between me and Icewhiz here is that while he objects to stating that a person was Jewish, he is insisting that we include that a person was Polish in the lede (this in the case of people who were both Polish and Jewish). I am saying, leave both out. See the double standard?"[111] - explicitly advocating that Polish citizens who are Jewish (unlike other Polish citizens) - not be described as Polish in the lede. Icewhiz ( talk) 20:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
10) Despite being warned on 2 June 2019, [113] Volunteer Marek has continued to engage in personal attacks against Icewhiz throughout the case.
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"For the advocates of the national-Catholic outlook the concept of anti-Polonism is much clearer than that of antisemitism. It has been present in the Polish public discourse since the late 1960s. It has even earned a definition: “external or internal actions aimed at the destruction of the Polish state and nation, hostility towards Poland and Poles, use of lies and insinuations calculated to blacken the image of the nation”. In the popular usage the anti-Polonism is limited almost exclusively to the alleged ‘anti-Polish machinations’ on the part of Jews.[119] Icewhiz ( talk) 21:15, 29 June 2019 (UTC) Updated. Icewhiz ( talk) 06:01, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
How many times has it been explained to you that these were indeed sock puppets of neo-Nazi users and how you could verify that? WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. How many times has it been pointed out that the photographer which you keep calling a "historian" has no credentials or post in history? WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. And yes, you actually DID make the argument that Jewish scholars and academics were pushing 'anti-semitic hate speech' (sic). You just didn't stop and think how absurd that was before writing it down. And yes, your accusations against me HAVE INDEED BEEN DISGUSTING. I honestly don't know of another word thats more appropriate. Here is the diff for my comment in case anyone is interested. And as far as ""Hey, Francois Robere, can you tell me how we could rescue the puppies you and Icewhiz (potentially) drown?" - you fail to note that this is in response to Francois Robere demanding to know how Wikipedia will be protected from... future HOAXES that I am planning to create (!!!!). If you have a problem with my response you should really have a problem with Francois Robere's initial "have you stopped beating your wife" question. But no, you just present it out of context and cherry pick. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 00:06, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Also your last three FoFs are basically the same thing over and over again - it's basically: 1) Make false accusations against VM 2) VM complains 3) Use VM's complaint in your evidence 4) VM complains about your complaint 5) Use VM's complaint about your complain in your evidence... etc. oh when will this cycle end???!!?? Are you just trying to flood this page with text so that readers can't find the supported evidence against you? It's about quality not quantity. You may have the latter, but in terms of your evidence all you have is "VM dared to disagree with me about what's in sources" and "VM didn't like it when I accused him of stuff". On the other hand your sanctionable behavior is very well documented. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:37, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) The community is encouraged to make use of the material presented in this case to organize a systematic clean-up effort for Poeticbent's past contributions.
2) Volunteer Marek is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing Icewhiz anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
3) Volunteer Marek is banned from making edits relating to Jews or commenting on the characteristics of Jewish editors.
"while he objects to stating that a person was Jewish, he is insisting that we include that a person was Polish in the lede (this in the case of people who were both Polish and Jewish). I am saying, leave both out. See the double standard?), a statement not retracted.
"thanks for illustrating your manipulative nature here"[122] and
"an "essay" by a photographer full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes"[123] (denying professional credentials of literature historian/cultural anthropologist writing on antisemitism, actually a peer reviewed journal article [124] cited in another journal article [125] which also cites Shmeruk(1985) for the statement).
"thanks for illustrating your manipulative nature here"[126] and
"an "essay" by a photographer full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes"[127] - are troubling. Icewhiz ( talk) 08:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
1) {text of proposed enforcement}
2) {text of proposed enforcement}
1) We are here to Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia. Editors should work in a collegial manner to create and improve the article content.
2) Editors should avoid actions that promote WP:BATTLEGROUND, such as 1) personal attacks against other editors, 2) controversial aspersions against authors of sources cited, particularly where they can infringe upon WP:BLP 3) adding WP:REDFLAG content with inadequate sourcing 4) or by removing uncontroversial, relevant content, as such actions can antagonize and radicalize other editors and lead to the loss of good faith in the other party. Uncontroversial, relevant content which is poorly sourced should be tagged with {{ Citation needed}}, {{ Unreliable source?}}, {{ Self-published inline}} or such to encourage other editors to improve referencing quality without compromising current verifiability. Editors are also reminded of WP:BRD.
1) {text of proposed finding of fact}
2) {text of proposed finding of fact}
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Editors should use quality sources per WP:RS, WP:V. Editors are encouraged to replace low quality sources with high quality sources. Editors should avoid using low quality sources for any controversial ( WP:REDFLAG) claims. Low quality sources used for any controversial claims can be removed by any editor together with said controversial claims. Low quality sources used for uncontroversial claims which are relevant to the article should instead be tagged with {{ Unreliable source?}}, {{ Self-published inline}} or other relevant template, as they still serve the purpose of verifiability. Adding controversial content, or removing relevant, uncontroversial content without prior discussion and consensus should be avoided, as it can promote a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality.
2) If an editor active in this content area wants to do a significant edit that may be controversial, and if they are aware of other parties that may be interested in this, they should demonstrate good faith and desire to reach consensus by explaining it on talk with a ping and/or notifying relevant WikiProjects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Poland or Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish history.
3) {text of proposed remedy}
1) {text of proposed enforcement}
2) {text of proposed enforcement}
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for Antisemitism, broadly construed.
2) {text of proposed remedy}
1) {text of proposed enforcement}
2) {text of proposed enforcement}
1) Talk pages are not forums nor social networking sites - they are work environments. Editors active on talk pages are expected to treat and be treated by others in a respectful, professional manner.
2) WP:NPA is policy; its enforcement is not optional.
3) Wikipedia is a reflection of human society. As such, expressions of bias and prejudice among its editors are to be expected.
4) Bias and prejudice are not always overt and explicit; oftentimes they are not even aware. Neither one is a "content issue".
5) Admins have a responsibility to the community to enforce its rules and facilitate its collective endeavor.
TBD.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Administrators are encouraged to enforce NPA, but do so sensibly - taking into account the frequency and severity of offensive statements, as well as recent interactions between the parties.
2) The Committee will ask the MediaWiki Foundation to provide the community with expert resources on bias and prejudice, under a suitable Creative Commons license.
3) Editors and administrators active in cases likely involving bias or prejudice are encouraged to educate themselves on what these are and what they are not; how they are expressed; and when legitimate interests, beliefs and editorial considerations cross the line to tendentious editing, prejudice and bias.
4) The community is encouraged to develop better guidelines for handling tendentious and disruptive editing in the context of complex disagreements that likely reflect "real world" current affairs.
5) Where administrators find themselves unable to resolve a severe and longstanding dispute, they should direct the parties to ARBCOM or make a preliminary ARB/R themselves.
TBD.
All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view, with all relevant points of view represented in reasonable proportion to their importance and relevance to the subject-matter of the article. Undue weight should not be given to aspects that are peripheral to the topic. Original research and synthesized claims are prohibited. A neutral point of view requires fair representation of all significant historical interpretations. This refers to legitimate differences in interpretation of the historical record, as opposed to views considered fringe, outdated, or significantly biased or inaccurate by the substantial consensus of reliable sources.
An editor must not accuse another of inappropriate conduct without evidence, especially when the accusations are repeated or severe. Comments should not be personalized, but should instead be directed at content and specific actions. Disparaging an editor or casting aspersions can be considered a personal attack. If accusations are made, they should be raised, with evidence, on the user talk page of the editor they concern or in the appropriate dispute resolution forums.
1) Tatzref promoted fringe POV in the realm of the Judeo Bolshevism / Żydokomuna canard.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
t is an undeniable historical fact—acknowedged by historians who specialize in the field—that Jews first came to Poland as traders, and that the main commodity of their trade was the export of Christian slaves to international markets, largely Muslim.-- and yet, predictably, none of your sources including your tokenized YIVO support your defamatory conclusion that the
main commodity of their trade was the export of Christian slaves. -- Calthinus ( talk) 17:51, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
2) {text of proposed finding of fact}
1) Articles on pre-1989 Polish-Jewish history are placed under sourcing restriction. Only high-quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers. English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance. Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans.
Two things: we already have a perfectly good Wikipedia policy on this. It's WP:RS. It just needs to be followed. Again, I note that when somebody removes clearly non-RS sources, nobody objects, hence this appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Second, sourcing policy and guidelines are really up to the community, not ArbCom. This is something that could be decided at WP:ANI or through a general RfC on the topic (going waayyyyy back into Wikipedia history, I'm reminded of the Gdansk Vote). Indeed, for something like this to actually be workable (and perhaps it would be) you would need the input of a significant number of editors, particularly those with some expertise and knowledge in, if not this topic area, history and particularly non-Western world history (less we get into WP:SYSTEMICBIAS). I don't know if we have any historians on the ArbCom currently or folks with expert knowledge in related areas.
I have no problem with the last sentence of the proposal and have implicitly called for something like that in the past repeatedly. I do have some concerns about this kind of provision about "escalating topic bans" being weaponized in furtherance of WP:BATTLEGROUND given the history of some editors in this topic area, but I would support it, if that particular sentence was split off into its own proposal. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:38, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
In other words, just because Icewhiz uses unreliable Polish sources in his edits I don't see why other editors, who use reliable Polish sources should be penalized for Icewhiz's actions. The problem is with him. Address the real problem, not an imaginary one. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:51, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@ K.e.coffman: Ok, so Tec qualifies (even though it's a book for a popular audience and she's a sociologist not a historian - but I can accept that), how about Timothy Snyder writing in the New York Review of Books?
The thing is, the actual non-reliable sources like this Mark Paul guy ... nobody here thinks they should be used and there's no objections to them being removed. Well, maybe Tatzref (I haven't looked that closely) but even then, we do have WP:CONSENSUS not to use him. Same goes for Anna Poray or whoever. Problem doesn't actually exist. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@ K.e.coffman: Well, I did make an exception for Tatzref, and Piotrus comment there is that MP could possibly be used for non-controversial claims. Even if you disagree with that, that's not really standing in a way of removing of MP from articles nor does it make it challenging. AFAICR, when MP was removed as source, those removals weren't reverted or undone.
It'd be simpler here to just reiterate that self-published sources cannot be used in this topic area and be done with it, rather than inventing some new convoluted and unnecessary sourcing restriction that may ended up accerbating the BATTLEGROUND in the topic, as editors start to argue over whether a particular source falls under this restriction or not. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 17:58, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@ K.e.coffman: Also, K.e., I'm fine with us sitting down and discussing and coming to an agreement as to what sources can and cannot be used. But this is a much more of a complicated issue than something that can be decided simply by ArbCom fiat. See my proposal below. After this is over we can start a dedicated sub-page (a workshop if you will) to hash this out. As long as this involves editors who are acting in good faith (like yourself), I have hopes that it would work. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 18:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
The thing is, the actual non-reliable sources like this Mark Paul guy ... nobody here thinks they should be used and there's no objections to them being removed-- Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland/Evidence#Removing unsuitable sources has been challenging where I provide examples of Tatzref and Piotrus arguing for the retention of "Mark Paul". It required an RSN discussion & an RfC to get him removed. (A third editor also supported retention but I did not mention them as they are currently topic banned). -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 15:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
accerbat[e] the BATTLEGROUND in the topic? -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:03, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
1) Articles on Polish-Jewish history are placed under civility restriction. Users are required to follow proper decorum during discussions and edits. Users may be sanctioned (including blocks) if they make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith.
3) For promotion of fringe theories, Tatzref is indefinitely topic banned.
4) { }
1) Icewhiz has violated WP:BLP policy by using questionable sources and/or emphasizing exclusively negative information in articles on living subjects as well as on various talk pages
Articles affected: Norman Davies Bogdan Musial John Radzilowski Gunnar Paulsson Richard C. Lukas Piotr Gontarczyk Antony Polonsky (more), also Tomasz Strzembosz (dead for 15 years but same kind of edits)
"A lawsuit by a British scholar who contends he was denied a professorship because Jewish faculty members considered his work "insensitive" toward Jews and "unacceptably defensive" of Polish gentiles in World War II .... Mr. Davies's lawsuit contends that the vote was based not on bona fide academic criteria but on a "conspiracy" to deny him the position "because of political views plaintiff had expressed in his written publications with respect to Poland, the Soviet Union and the teaching of Polish and Soviet history which such defendants believed, among other things, to be insensitive to people of the Jewish faith and unacceptably defensive of the behavior of the Polish people, particularly during the German occupation of Poland in World War II."[164] Discussing whether a source is possibly WP:PARTISAN (in this case - in regards to the Home Army treatment of Jews) is what talk pages are for. Icewhiz ( talk) 08:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"Janicka is a photographer, not a historian..."when the subject is in fact "Elżbieta Janicka is a historian of literature, cultural anthropologist, photographer ... PhD at Warsaw University (2004) ... Currently working at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences." [165] are probably more questionable from a BLP standpoint than pointing out Davies' tenure rejection at Standford. Icewhiz ( talk) 09:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"single NGO"- we're talking about the Southern Poverty Law Center profiling this individual (twice, over a decade) [166] [167] - and specifically also covering his writings/opinions on the topic matter we're discussion. As for the "essay" published by this individual - I will note that the "essay" seems awfully well informed regarding editing on Wikipedia. In particular the mention of the Wrangell Bombardment ( [168] - paragraph prior to last) - something brought up by Volunteer Marek in this arbitration - diff and previously as well (for some reason VM thinks I should be beholden evermore to his service for copy edits performed for 11 minutes - 02:06-02:17 - well I will say thank you for the copy edits, but really - I don't decide on whether to edit or not to edit Polish topics (heck - I'm not sure I knew back then VM was involved in Polish topics) based on a copy edit!) - as a rather interesting coincidence. In terms of Trust & Safety in this community - how many editors want to be constantly followed around, personally attacked, and have a column devoted to them by a SPLC-profiled individual? Icewhiz ( talk) 08:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
2) Icewhiz has engaged in WP:TENDENTIOUS editing by misrepresenting sources and by presenting irrelevant sources to WP:STONEWALL discussions
The following are particularly egregious: [177] (makes claims about alleged censorship in Poland, but uses a source about censorship in Russia), [178] (pretends dispute is over whether a story is legendary or factual, actual dispute is about how the legend is portrayed in literature) [179] (claims interview by Antony Polonsky is not by Polonsky. At first he actually claimed that the interview could have been faked, he then backed off and "only" insisted it wasn't by Polonsky but by the interviewer. This after advocating for using Polonsky on talk), [180] (pretends dispute is over funding over organization, actual dispute is over uniqueness of organization. Blind revert)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Volunteer Marek ( talk • contribs)
And User:Icewhiz, please drop this whole "use of non-English media" hypocrisy. YOU yourself have used PLENTY of "non-English media", some of very very very low quality, yourself, when it suited your purpose. Do I really need to bring this diff out again? (prawy.pl - anti-semitic website, fronda.pl - right wing magazine, pch24.pl - right wing Catholic source (which also makes your complaints about and attempts to remove "Catholic" sources look hypocritical, tysol.pl - not reliable Polish media) You've also used this source (conservative magazine - maybe RS?) When other users use reliable Polish media sources written by historians you scream to high heavens about "use of non-English media" (and attack the authors). Then when it fits in with the narrative you're trying to push you turn around and use junkety unreliable Polish sources. How the hey does that work? Wanna explain that one? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
3) Icewhiz has made provocative and vexing unsourced comments on talk in an effort to WP:BAIT other editors.
There are a number of issues in this FoF proposal and comments above:
"Don't take the bait"- so that they won't get sanctioned under the civility policy.
"sock puppets of banned neo-Nazi user(s)"- without any evidence to back up that said IP/editors are indeed sockpuppets, their alleged "neo-Nazi" nature, or for that matter - my awareness of any of the above. These are WP:ASPERSIONS towards me and said editors (IPs or registered) - very serious ones - and unless Volunteer Marek can back them up with iron-clad evidence (that said IPs/editors were sockpuppets, "neo-Nazis", as well as my awareness of such) - this sort of comment is sanctionable (I will note I had a few other such socking aspersions in early versions of my evidence - but as part of a diff pare down (to meet diff limits in evidence) - I removed PAs not towards myself).
Icewhiz ( talk) 09:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Also, Icewhiz's argument here seems to be "yeah I baited him, but hey, he fell for it at least once, so what's the problem?" This is exactly the problem. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
The conflicts between Jews and Poles were mostly based on the faith disputes and economic issues. Some Poles, for example, being Catholics unfairly blamed Jews for the death of Christs. Some Jews, on the other hand, favored other Jews in business and discriminated Polish traders. The list of this minor conflicts between the Jews and Poles is very long but in general Jews in Poles lived in Poland together in relative peace and harmony for centuries. This all changed on the outbreak of the warWhat a naive, ignorant view of Polish-Jewish history. "Conflict between Jews and Poles"? In a historically Catholic, eastern European country with only 10% Jews? What kind of a conflict is that? And pretending everything was fine, with no antisemitism whatsoever, until the Nazies arrived?
Jews lost all rights because of the Nazi orders and that is when some of the antisemitic elements within the Polish society blossomed. Jewish life was worthless, criminal element further demoralized by the reality of the war took advantage of the situation and committed many crimes against the Jews, rapes and murders. But you need to understand that these people didn't represent Polish society as a whole. Majority of the Poles were rather sympathetic to the Jewish situation, and many actively helped despite the fact that any help was punished by death (imagine that!)Yeah, she actually wrote that. You know, "criminal elements demoralized by the war" is a curious phrase, typical to wartime underground publications. Yes, here on Wikipedia we have editors promoting the same apologia the Polish underground promoted while trying to maintain order in occupied Poland, without actually doing much for about a tenth of its population. So yeah, there's some "minimization" of antisemitism going on around here, and you not noticing it at all - this "cherry picking" of sorts, where out of five links you pick something that's completely irrelevant to the point I was making - is as telling as anything. François Robere ( talk) 17:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
The above statement unfortunately is indictative of the battleground behavior of FR and Icewhiz-no matter what topic they engage with Polish users, their aim seems to be maximizing allegations of Poland wronging Jews, leading to such hyberpole statements as above, completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.As mentioned previously if someone is on moral crusade on Wikipedia than it doesn't create good atmosphere for cooperation and reliable sourcing.Never mind the absurdity of claiming Polish underground in German occupied Poland, had any resources to "maintain order" while fighting for survival.Unfortunately such statements completely disconnected with reality of Second World War are commonplace when discussing topics with FR and Icewhiz.-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 18:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
4) Icewhiz has inflamed the atmosphere in the topic area by trying to "win" disagreements by seeking sanctions against other editors rather than making a good faith effort to resolve disputes on talk
5) Icewhiz has made several very serious accusations and insinuations regarding Holocaust and anti-semitism. The serious nature of such accusations normally requires that they are supported by evidence which Icewhiz has failed to provide.
"Editors who reinstate edits made by a banned or blocked editor take complete responsibility for the content"would seem to apply) - performed near the Straw that broke the camel's back that led to AE . However - VM is responsible for placing that language.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Icewhiz is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing Volunteer Marek anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
Note that while this is outside the topic area, the situation here in many respects resembles what happened between User:Icewhiz and User:Malik Shabazz. Malik had been editing since 2006, almost as long as I have. And Malik, who is Jewish, was one of the first editors to raise the alarm about Icewhiz, both regarding their actions in Israel-Palestine topic area (note Icewhiz's BLP violation even back then) [210] and in regard to Poland [211]. As a result Icewhiz began following Malik around, filing AE reports against him and trying to provoke him, all the while of course trying to play the victim. At one point Icewhiz even tried to secretly (by privately emailing Sandstein) get Malik sanctioned [212] for an alleged topic ban violation involving edits made... before the topic ban was actually placed (Malik's topic ban from I-P was placed on him on May 23 2018, Icewhiz tried to get him banned for edits made on May 12 2018) (a pretty good example of how Icewhiz operates and the level of honesty he brings to the Wikipedia). After continued baiting and baiting and baiting and baiting by Icewhiz, Malik finally lost his temper [213] [214] and told Icewhiz off in no uncertain terms. Icewhiz's tactic worked and Malik got a block. Pissed off, he left Wikipedia after more than twelve years. Icewhiz drove him off.
Now, yeah, Malik over stepped. But this was after having to put up with so much crap from Icewhiz, who was never held accountable for his actions, that it's no wonder he left. Since his tactic was successful the last time, he's trying to use it again here, by likewise making extremely offensive provocative claims and hoping he can get somebody (me) sanctioned for their response. How many long time editors is Icewhiz gonna drive off the project before somebody does something about it? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
2) Icewhiz is banned for one year from any articles about living or recently deceased persons (BLPs) relating to Poland. He may still discuss BLPs on talk pages but is reminded that WP:BLP needs to be followed.
3) Icewhiz is banned for one year from filing or commenting upon any reports to WP:AE concerning the topic of Eastern Europe unless he is the subject of the report or as a response to being mentioned by another user in the report.
4) The editors involved in this dispute are directed to work together to develop a dedicated guideline to the best-practice use of sources in this topic area.
5) Icewhiz is topic banned for one year from making edits related to the topic of Poland, broadly construed
"the narrative of Judeo-communism constitutes a premise for historical thinking characteristic of the new ethnonationalistic or 'monumental' historiography claiming to defend the good name of Poland. Its leading representatives are Marek J. Chodakiewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, Leszek Zebrowski, Bogdan Musial, the late Tomasz Strzembosz, Igor Cyprian Pogonowksi and Krzysztof Jasiewicz".( page 118), as well as use of these authors when they are self-published (e.g. blogs, op-eds, self-published books). Conversely - I have suggested we use the Polish Wikipedia as a POV guide (e.g. [259]), and have introduced works by Polish scholars belonging to other schools of thought (oddly omitted from Wikipedia articles, perhaps since VM has viewed some of these as:
"full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes"[260]). Icewhiz ( talk) 07:23, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
5) Icewhiz is topic banned for one year from making edits to articles related to Poland, broadly construed, but he may still make suggestions on talk pages and participate in discussions
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Forgive me, I will go slightly off template here -- I don't intend at the moment to contribute anything else on this page. I will not pretend to be a major party involved here. Neither will I pretend to be impartial. However I have an idea that perhaps could be of use.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) For one year beginning with the realization (if it happens) of this rule, all articles and disputes covering Polish-Jewish history are covered by a collective 5RR (henceforth C5RR) rule. What this means is that if more than five reverts by any editor of the same semantic contact occur within 48 hours, the page in question will be locked so that only admins can edit, for a time chosen at the discretion of the admin imposing the penalty.
Caveats:
A. This does not cover reverts of banned users or sockpuppets.
B. This does not cover material on information that happens to be Polish-Jewish related pages that is not directly related to Polish/Jewish relations (broadly construed). For example, details of fighting between Bolsheviks and Whites or the Polish-Lithuanian conflict is not covered; on the other hand, Pilsudski, Sanation, Dmowski, Karski etc are, as although clearly solely Polish in identity and not Jewish, they were important entities in Polish-Jewish history.
C. This does not cover reverts of information that could endanger the safety or privacy of living persons.
D. If the sixth reverter self reverts before the page lock is placed, the penalty can be averted, just like at 3RR.
E. Admins involved in the dispute cannot edit a page locked by this remedy.
F. Just like at 3RR, participants should be given a chance to make a case that 6 reverts of the same semantic content did not happen.
Wikipedia should be based on sources which are judged by objective criteria.Rejecting sources based on ethnicity/nationality of the author shouldn't be allowed.
Wikipedia articles are to be written from neutral point of view taking into account reliable and mainstream sources.Using Wikipedia to correct or condemn perceived wrongs harms the principle of neutrality-especially if such perceived wrongs aren't suppored by mainstream views.
The case goes beyod the single issue of antisemitism, and concerns issues such as genocide of Poles by Nazi Germany, Soviet occupation and MOS:Ethnicity among others.As such it should be renamed.
Throughout the evidence it is clear that Icewhiz is engaged in edits dictated by uncompromising stance and is unwilling to compromise with others.
From comments about Polish media being used as source, to comparing Poland to Iran, North Korea, constantly claiming that Polish sources are unreliable, comparing Poland to Nazi Germany, and Polish resistance to Nazis, to claiming that occupation of Poland in Second World War is Polish nationalist POV and so forth, it is clear that there is a stance where sources and information is judged on basis of ethnic criteria rather than objective value.
The most controversial of Icewhiz's edits happened when he lost arguments or nominations to DYK articles.After this happened Icewhiz went on wide spree on Polish related articles entering highly controversial claims or straight ahead blanking whole articles.
"mostly added by blocked sock. A number of NPOV, MOS, V, and SYNTH issues"leaving a stub. Half the article is unrelated SYNTH. Some information fails V - e.g.
"Romkowski himself taught Różański everything about torture"does not appear in the inline citation - Night voices: heard in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin by Heather Laskey. We generally do not trust sockpuppets to accurately represent sources (see WP:BANREVERT) - and in this case the revert was performed only after an attempt of verification - that failed. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:40, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 11:28, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
At the moment it isn't clear what type of descriptions are allowed to clearly describe complex identities in Central European/Eastern European topics, especially in context of 19th century and Second World War history.Wikipedia is edited by editors from many national and cultural backgrounds-there might be some cultural miscommunication/clash on what to consider the best description of nationality/ethnicity in places with very detailed and complex history of inter-ethnic relations.These edits are not necessarily expression of ill will, but better guidance would be welcomed.
I could understand if two editors are in conflict with each other but in this case Icewhiz gets in conflict with any Polish user that he comes across on Wikipedia.Even those who strived hard to reach some kind of compromise and cooperation like Piotrus have eventually been attacked by Icewhiz.
any Polish user that he comes across on Wikipedia... Well, what can you do. François Robere ( talk) 16:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Throughout his edits Icewhiz has presented cherry picked information and sources to present extreme claims and statements(Poles=mass murderers of Jews, Poland is equal to Nazi Germany,Poles mass murdered 200,000 Jews). These statements were selected to present the most extreme statements regarding Jewish-Polish history. Even in cases where source later distanced itself from extreme claims(like Grabowski retreating from claim of 200,000 Jews murdered by Poles), Icewhiz continued to add this information, knowning fully that is no longer supported by source, and even dismissing Grabowski's statement as "Polish media report". This example shows that the user was interested in provoking and causing controversy by carefully selecting the most controversial material to be presented on Wikipedia.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Community has discussion on how to better define MOS:Ethnicity in regards to Eastern Europe history, especially in regards to complex identities emerging in 19th century and Second World War. For example on how problematic MOS:Ethnicity is now:should a member of Selbstschutz-a paramilitary organization of German minority in Poland that fought on side Nazi Germany in WW2 be described as Polish in the lead? Should members of Polish Uprising against Germany in 1919 Poznan be described as Germans solely based on their citizenship at the time? I don't want to go into details here, but recent discussions showed that current MOS:Ethnicity is very inadequate in relation to complicated issues in history of Central and Eastern Europe.
2) Community has discussion on how to improve evaluating sources and to avoid extreme use of sources known to be controversial or pushing forward non-mainstream views on history.
1) Due to heavy battleground behavior and tendentious editing this would be in my view a justifiable cool off period for the editor to rethink his behavior.As Icewhiz is in conflict with almost everyone editing this area, the conflicts he is having are likely to continue unless he changes the behavior.
Icewhiz is warned not to make ethnic based remarks.Icewhiz is also warned not to push for rejection of sources based on their ethnic/national background.Sources are to be judged on objective criteria.
Place here items of evidence (with diffs) and detailed analysis
First, the most constructive thing this ArbCom could do is to review and hopefully rescind, with an apology, the topic ban against User:Poeticbent which caused his retirement. He was the author of 1000+ quality articles including 200+ DYKs, many of them on Polish-Jewish history, like his GA on the Treblinka extermination camp, and also a contributor of helpful infographics like a map of the Holocaust in Poland. See AE where he received his topic ban for a single diff perceived as violating NPA and comments on his talk page. While this ArbCom may or may not issue sanctions against others, it is also high time ArbCom tried to foster a good editing environment by repairing past damage and actively encouraging editors who are here to build the encyclopedia, sending a message that Wikipedia is here for content, not for fighting and flaming. This is also relevant to this case, not only because Poeticbent is listed as a party, but because a prolific content creator, being driven away after having been baited into making a single NPA, is a prime example of the damage done to our community and to the project's overarching mission, when 'remedies' are being handed out in a cowboy fashion without considering the 'big picture'. ArbCom should therefore review the appropriateness of Poeticbent's topic ban in its findings, and consider the pros and cons of an apology to him. While such apologies and outreach are not common practice, precedents are to be set, and I specifically recommended that Wikimedia Foundation creates an outreach program targeting retired, prolific contributors in my peer reviewed paper. If a precedent is set and he returns, recovering a very prolific content creator for the project, it my humble opinion it would mean this ArbCom would have already achieved much, much more than most others. And I wager that you, dear committee members, would probably feel better about your role, too, being remembered as a THE Committee that started the process of actually helping people and saying nice things about them...
Second. analysis of my evidence. MVBW wrote in his evidence "Icewhiz thinks that others downplay crimes by Poles against Jews and therefore fights back by downplaying crimes committed by Nazi, Soviet NKVD and communists against Polish people. Others feel offended (see evidence by Molobo). That ensure the battleground." This a very good summary, except downplaying crimes committed by Nazis on Poles is IMHO not that common. Instead what is happening is that IMHO Icewhiz (and Francois, an editor who joined the topic area together with Icewhiz and whose edits are effectively limited to being a "tag-team" yes-man to him) thinks that Poles are trying to exaggerate the extent to which they helped the Jews during the war to counterbalance the shameful revelations about the extent of Polish antisemitism, and so he is trying to both remove the mentions of rescue efforts (as exaggerated) and stress the (according to him - and he is not totally wrong here, marginalized) extent of Polish antisemitism. Now, in all fairness, Polish sources (and populace in general) are biased, roughly in the way he thinks they are... but neither are Israeli (or American, etc.) sources free of bias, and NPOV does allow us to use biased sources, as long as they are reliable, with care to undue and such. I also strongly believe that no editor discussed in this case so far has done anything that warrants anything but a warning at most (this certainly includes Poeticbent, whose topic ban and retirement was actually the worst thing that has happened to this topic area). In particular, I want to stress that while the arrival of Icewhiz (and FR) in this topic area two years ago has created, sadly enough, conflict and battleground, it has also been valuable from the neutrality perspective. The topic area has been indeed unduly dominated by pro-Polish sources, and it needed more balance. It is just a shame this could not have been done in a more collegian fashion, and instead resulted in a progressing battleground mentality (please see my mini-essays on radicalization and the related model). The crux of the issue, really, is the near total erosion of good faith. One side perceives the other as borderline antisemitic; the other, offended, perceives other as anti-Polish, and instead of collaborating, I am afraid too many editors on both sides are increasingly trying to get their opponents banned or blocked (hence, the numerous AE reports that have culminated in this ArbCom). So far, the only real damage was the driving away of Poeticbent, which resulted in the net loss of dozens of articles he would have written and expanded if he was still here. It is nonetheless a great loss, because Poetcibent has done more in this area than all of the other parties here combined, myself included (and while I am a major content creator, I am pretty sure that Poeticbent created more content in this area than me). It is crucial to prevent this from happening again, and if possible, to reverse it by inviting him back (with a note that his contributions are appreciated, and maybe a caution that he should be more careful when editing topics related to the zydokomuna topic). How to solve the bigger issue, i.e. mandate good faith, is mostly besides me (hey, that's why you, the Committee, gets the big wikibucks, eh?). All I can do is to demonstrate why one can perceive Icewhiz edits as anti-Polish (through I am sure from his view he is only restoring the balance and removing undue pro-Polish POV, and hence, per AFG, I personally don't believe he consciously has such a POV). While things need to be 'centered', and pro-Polish bias should be tamed, the examples I presented in my evidence are where IMHO Icewhiz (and occasionally, FR) have went to far, skirting if not violating NPOV, BLP, and other polices, which in turn led to the spiral of retaliation, radicalization and battleground creation which landed us here.
I will also note that one way to decrease battleground mentality is to realize one's POV, and try to make compromise edits, not only grudgingly allowing "others" to have their say, but actually agreeing with them - and putting one's "edits" where one proverbial mouth is. For example, even through I am a Pole, I've created articles on topics controversial to many Poles, such as Collaboration in German-occupied Poland, Hunt for the Jews, Jan Grabowski (historian), or the Golden Harvest (book), because they are notable and needed, even if some of them tackle issues that make my nation appear less then the perfect ideal some wish it was. Poeticbent, as noted, created dozens of articles on Jewish suffering. While one cannot mandate content creation as an enforceable remedy, one can partially judge whether an editor is attempting to compromise or not, and whether their conduct is constructive or not in a given topic, by their edits, in the spirit of Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia. I strongly encourage all involved parties to consider whether they are here to build an encyclopedia, or fight a war and prove a side "right" or "wrong".
Lastly, analysis of evidence presented by others. First I do not believe than anyone, myself included, has presented anything that warrants more than a warning, or at least I can't think of what other type of solutions would be helpful, as, IMHO crucially, the quality and neutrality of various articles has been improved. It just would be nice if somehow we could all follow WP:AGF. One recommendation I have, for Icewhiz and FR (that they are already familiar with), would be to treat Polish sources with less suspicion then they do. They are, of course, biased, but so are others, and the Polish sources are often able to access a wealth of primary sources like the Polish eyewitness accounts Western academics simply can't read. And while we should strive to use reliable sources, sometimes WP:SPS or such are acceptable, if they do not raise any WP:REDFLAGS (per Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when...). Case in point, Icewhiz removal of Poray as a source from various ghetto articles (and more recent criticism of Lux Veritas Foundation's website) was very much not helpful.
First, 90% of the content sourced to Poray that was removed could have been verified with more reliable sources (as I've shown).
Second, none of the content removed was 'redflag'. Challenged contented was limited strictly to uncontroversial statements of facts, with no opinions or such being offered. Some common sense perspective is needed. I often deal with cleanup of spam/vanity ( WP:NORG, etc.), nominating many articles for deletion. A low quality, SPS, promotional source like a company's website or a press release is still acceptable for uncontroversial statements of facts like company's year of founding or location of their HQ or other facilities, and what Icewhiz is challenging here is no more controversial - simple statements that Person X attempted to aid Person Y, more often then not receiving the Righteous Among Nations award. No heated opinions, just cold and uncontroversial facts that help build content, but whose removal creates a heated controversy as some editors are offended by what they perceive as attempts to censor simple facts.
Third. Icewhiz argues that such facts nonetheless are an attempt to push a particular POV. The relevant policy for us to consider is WP:UNDUE, and the relevant solution, discussion on talk. Generally, per WP:NOTPAPER, we have room for all the facts, but if there are concerns about some sections having undue length or such, the solution is, per WP:SUMMARY, to split them off and only offer a summary in the main article. This is the constructive approach. Removing such information, or trying to get editors who add it sanctioned, is the opposite of being constructive and building an encyclopedia, and results in battleground creation and related problems.
Fourth, going after content added by an editor one was in conflict with, and who retired after an unfair accusation and sanction, is not particularly 'sporting'.
Fifth, the few paltry diffs there were gathered as evidence of my misdoing are little more than illustration of battleground mentality and an attempt to win content disputes by trying to get the other party sanctioned (sadly, it works often enough, case in point being what happened to Poeticbent). Consider (headings adapted from Icewhiz's evidence, through constant revisions of it can make things confusing):
Lastly, it is imperative to stress that it is such challenge and removal of uncontroversial facts that fueled the battleground situation, creating an impression that there is a drive to remove (censor) information about Polish rescuers from Wikipedia. Icewhiz could have reduced the battleground mentality on both sides in this area by extending an olive branch and replacing substandard sources with reliable sources (like I did later, it took just a few hours). But he chose to remove information that he knew well would antagonize editors on the other side further. This type of editing and attitude should be curtailed; either voluntarily or through community's guidance.
"the result of many years of research carried out by the Lux Veritatis Foundation") run by Lux Veritatis Foundation (Rydzyk), which probably counts as self-published, and is
"Lux Veritas Foundation run by the ultra-conservative and nationalistic redemptorist Tadeusz Rydzyk, infamous for his anti-Semitic enunciations"Wóycicka, Zofia. "Global patterns, local interpretations: new polish museums dedicated to the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust." Holocaust Studies (2019): 1-25. - is beyond the pale. This during the case being open. Also - 12 June 2019 addition of pamiecitozsamosc.pl by Piotrus. This is alarming, to say the least. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:09, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
"Radio Maryja and the other extreme nationalist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic media of the controversial Father Rydzyk"as a source on Wikipedia?! Kucia, Marek, Marta Duch-Dyngosz, and Mateusz Magierowski. "Anti-Semitism in Poland: survey results and a qualitative study of Catholic communities." Nationalities Papers 42.1 (2014): 8-36. Nationalities Papers is peer reviewed and published by Cambridge University Press, prof. dr hab. Marek Kucia is tenured at Jagiellonian University. Up to snuff for Holocaust history in Poland per comments here, it would seem. Icewhiz ( talk) 15:11, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
- specifically saying "in addition to Icewhiz's examples" - so no, not a single diff. Icewhiz ( talk) 14:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC) Cut out sig from quote - so it won't appear like comment was made here. Icewhiz ( talk) 15:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)":*I've looked more closely at Icewhiz's counterallegations regarding Poeticbent. The charge of misusing SPS isn't something I'd act on, because it's close to a content dispute and it's not realistic to expect admins here to check the reliability of this number of sources; that would need an ArbCom case. But I think that Icewhiz's complaint regarding personal attacks by Poeticbent are actionable; one needs only to look at their most recent edit ("you are being manipulated by a POV pusher with a deep bias against Polish people in general") in addition to Icewhiz's examples to get the impression that this is somebody who operates in full WP:BATTLEGROUND mode. I think that a topic ban from the World War II history of Poland (the apparent topic of this set of disputes) would be appropriate here."
"The charge of misusing SPS isn't something I'd act on, because it's close to a content dispute and it's not realistic to expect admins here to check the reliability of this number of sources; that would need an ArbCom case"- is exactly the issue with the current DS regime / AE enforcement. Users may introduce dubious sources, repeatedly, a WP:V policy violation - yet face no enforcement under DS as it is deemed too complex for enforcement. Icewhiz ( talk) 14:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
User:Icewhiz says in his rebuttal to MVBW I urge Arbs to contrast EnglishWiki version (...) vs. PolishWiki version. The POV slant (even only lede) in English is striking. This exemplifies topic area: PolishWiki is Polish left-of-center POV, while EnglishWiki slants Polish right-wing POV.
Icewhiz, can you clarify which parts of the EnglishWiki lede you consider to be POV?
Can you clarify which parts of the EnglishWiki lede of this article [312] you consider to be "right-wing"?
Can you clarify which parts of the PolishWiki lede of this article [313] you consider to be "left-wing"?
Volunteer Marek ( talk) 09:13, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
User:Icewhiz Reply: No, actually the comment in your Evidence section is NOT "general" and it is in fact "directed to this specific article", since you explicitly name it (quote: Nazi crimes against the Polish nation: I urge Arbs to contrast ...
Can you please clarify what in that specific article's lede on English Wikipedia is "right-wing"? What in that specific article's lede on Polish Wikipedia is "left-wing"?
And are you seriously complaining that individuals such as Karol Świerczewski (general in the Red Army, high ranking member of the communist party) Michał Rola-Żymierski (high ranking member of the communist party, officer in the NKVD and Minister of Defense in communist Poland) being described as "communist" is "POV"? Wow. This is worse than I thought. None of your other examples AFAICT include these "value judgements" (sic) of calling things "communist" or "Stalinist". Just, you know, people who actually were communists. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:21, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm also puzzled as to why you are objecting to my removal of a copy-paste
WP:COPYVIO
[314] when you say note also rationale in...
(the exact text in the source is in the 6th paragraph). Are you suggesting we should leave COPYVIOs in our articles when they happen to agree with our POV?
Volunteer Marek (
talk) 08:32, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Can you also provide examples of these "outsiders" who, like you, were surprised that communist army generals and communist party members were referred to as "communist" or that COPYVIO copy-pastes were removed from articles? I'm not seeing any but maybe I'm missing it. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:39, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
And nota bene that while Rola-Zymierski's Polish Wikipedia article does not mention his service in the NKVD in the lede, it actually has a whole, large dedicated section to it in the body (hence, someone should fix the Polish Wikipedia, assuming their lede guidelines are the same as ours). The English Wikipedia version does not have a such section. So ... you actually kind of got it backwards. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:43, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
"Polish high-ranking Communist Party leader, communist military commander, NKVD secret agent, and Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin's order from 1945 until his death"- not so Polish.... (note diff). Whereas on PolishWiki's lede we have a factual description of his military and political career (including pre-1927 in Poland) - no "by Joseph Stalin's order" or "NKVD agent" in the lede. Radical negation is
"expressed by right-wing groups". [324]
"the same reaction on the part of right-wing ethno-nationalistic historians and politicians: highly emotive and sinister attempts to counterbalance the ‘dark history’ by underscoring the ‘feel-good, light history.’[325]
"The extreme right traditionally thrives on debates about history, especially when the integrity of the nationalist narrative is questioned. Thus, extreme-right groups and leaders are frequently active during symbolic conflicts such as the controversy around the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom and similar tragic events. The debates have polarised Polish society with respect to its relationship with the past, especially the issue of anti-Semitism". [327]
" Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin's order from 1945 until his death- Stalin died in 1953. Rola-Żymierski died in 1989. I believe Rola-Żymierski remained Marshal of Poland (OF-10 - 5 star general) until 1989 (it seems it is the rank is still on his gravestone) - well after Stalin's order or influence dissipated in the USSR, Warsaw Pact, and Poland. Seems he kept the rank after being dismissed/imprisoned in 1953-56 (purges) - and that he fulfilled a number of roles in Poland (e.g. National Bank, Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy) from 1956 and until his death. Icewhiz ( talk) 12:02, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
This is partly in response to evidence presented by User:MJL. In addition to past Arbcom cases, it's also instructive to look at what has happened at WP:AE and, basically, why "WP:AE failed". Indeed, this was one of - if not THE - rationale given for accepting the case by some arbs.
Since June 2017 Icewhiz has been involved in a whopping ... FIFTY WP:AE reports (it's possible I'm UNDERcounting) . That's more than one and a half WP:AE report per month. He easily holds the record as the most frequent participant during this period, if not overall.
Of these 50 reports, 32 are related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, 15 to Eastern Europe, 2 to UK Politics and one to American politics. The ones related to Eastern Europe don't start until 2018. In both these topic areas there has been an explosion of WP:AE reports since Icewhiz arrived on the scene(s)
Of these 50 reports, Icewhiz was a commentator in about 54% (27/50) of them, he filed the report in about the third of the (16/50) and was the subject of the report in 14% (7/50). In the topic area of Eastern Europe, Icewhiz was filer in 46.6% (7/15) of the reports, subject of report in a third (5/15) and commentator in 2.
By my count, out of all the reports he participated in, discounting those in UK and American politics and one which was withdrawn, the % of reports that were closed inline with Icewhiz's views and/or requests was 37%. The % of reports that were closed against Icewhiz was 45.7%. The rest were closed as neither for or against Icewhiz.
There is an interesting pattern here as far as WP:AE admins are concerned. Out of those reports that were closed against Icewhiz, 5 or 23.8% were closed against him by Sandstein. The remainder of reports that were closed against him, 76.2%, were closed by other admins (AGK, TonyBallionni, GoldenRing, NeilN, a couple others - Sandstein is by far the most active admin at AE so it makes sense to lump all not-Sandsteins together).
Of the reports that were closed in Icewhiz's favor, 82.4% were closed in such a favorable manner by Sandstein. Of the reports that were closed in Icewhiz's favor only 17.6% percent of were closed by other admins.
To put it another way, out of all the Icewhiz-related reports that Sandstein closed, he closed them favorably for him 73.8% of the time. Out of all the Icewhiz-related reports that were closed by OTHER admins, they closed them favorably to Icewhiz only 15.8% percent of the time.
I don't know about others, but this looks very very skewed. I could do a p value test here but I'm pretty sure even with a low N (number of observations) it'd pop out as a statistically significant difference.
I think Icewhiz has been using WP:AE as a weapon in his WP:BATTLEGROUND - this is evidenced by the sheer volume of reports he's involved in AND that's he's filed. This is true for BOTH Eastern Europe and Israel-Palestine topic areas (hell, maybe we should expand the scope of this case). He's had some success, particularly because of one particular admin, who, unlike other admins there, has been very favorable to him. This has incentivized Icewhiz to seek "resolution" of disputes by trying to get those that disagree with him sanctioned, rather than trying to achieve consensus on talk pages. This in turn results in Icewhiz's uncompromising attitude on talk, his derailing of discussions when they start not to go his way, and his taunts and provocations. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:03, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
@ MJL: Here is raw data. If you copy-paste it into a text file, then open it as tab delimited text in Excel it should line up nicely. I'll try to do a proper table but right now I got to get finished with this Evidence beeswax. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 06:28, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
@ MJL: Thanks! I might throw some more raw data at you then (that's what you get for being helpful). One thing - the Notes column is off because I was sorting the rows to do the calculations above and didn't sort that column. Probably best to just remove it as it's kind of irrelevant anyway. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:02, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Note: Actually it's a bit worse, because for 3 months out of those 2 years, Icewhiz was topic banned from EE which prevented him from filing WP:AE's in the area. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 02:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphim System is reminded not to respond to 1RR violations with violations of their own. GoldenRing (talk) 10:17, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
R9tgokunks is now fully aware of the editing restrictions existing in this area and is expected to edit accordingly. --NeilN talk to me 04:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
E-960 needs to be more careful when reverting. --NeilN talk to me 13:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Icewhiz constant BATTLEGROUND at WP:AE more or less overwhelmed that systemI'm not seeing comparative statistics here, or testimonies of admins, or anything else that can establish that statement. I'm also not clear on how filing 16 cases in two years can "overwhelm" the system, or how filing or being filed against in 46% of the cases equates to 99% of the problems...
In my evidence I'm generally ignoring
User: François Robere (for now) since he is not party to the case and his evidence is so vacuous, but this one is so obnoxiously false that I feel compelled to address it. His evidence still falsely claims in reference to me: Suggesting we do OR to involve a Jewish leader in a massacre: [175][176]
. Diffs are
[332]
[333]. I do no such thing. I'm doing THE OPPOSITE. Some sources say Kovner was involved. *I* am saying he is not. This is obvious. There's no room for interpretation here, I explicitly state: "There are some sources which for some reason mention Kovner in connection to this massacre. I think they're garbage and they got it wrong." I'm sorry, but this is just somebody straight up lying about me pretending black is white and white is black. The instructions for the evidence page clearly state "Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all)." This is the opposite of that.
In response to my diff which shows
User:Icewhiz using anti-semitic and fringe sources
[336] to attack a BLP, Icewhiz claims This is an WP:ABOUTSELF situation
[337].
No. This is all kinds of wrong.
First, WP:ABOUTSELF is about stuff like "I graduated from high school in 1998". You *could*, potentially use the subject's own claim like that in an article according to ABOUSELF. It absolutely in no way justifies taking an opinion piece written by the subject and then doing WP:OR on it smear the subject.
Second, it's actually NOT a "WP:ABOUTSELF" situation despite Icewhiz's repeated false claims to that effect. This is NOT a "ABOUSELF" statement by the subject. It's an anti-semitic garbage source writing ABOUT the subject. Icewhiz is simply ... I'm running out of euphemism here ... "misportraying" (?) the situation here. This is indeed (a reprint of) opinion piece by the subject (see first part) but, crucially, it doesn't say ANYTHING like what Icewhiz claims. There's NOTHING in there about "American Jews" as Icewhiz falsely writes in his BLP violating edit.
Here's the thing. If Icewhiz just admitted "I screwed up. I shouldn't have used an anti-semitic source on a BLP", this matter would have been dropped long ago. But it's his repeated denials and deceptions and this lame WP:ABOUTSELF excuse making that shows he's learned absolutely nothing from the episode, and that he still has absolutely no qualms in using garbage sources - despite all his grand posturing about "only high quality academic sources" on talk and arbitration pages - when it suits his purpose. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:41, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
One of the sources is indeed an oped by the subject but. it. doesn't. say. what. you. wrote. it. says. Reason I keep bringing it up because you keep trying to make excuses for it. And because it's very illustrative of your cynical approach to editing in this topic area in general ("Wikipedia policy applies to thee but not to me") Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:09, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
"restoring views material. note wp:aboutself. questionable sources may be used for statements made by chodakiewicz if there is no doubt as to their authenticity") - I removed the citation and matched the source more closely - diff. VM first raised his objections to the content at AE, not in the article. This was subsequently removed - diff - and I didn't challenge this (in retrospect, I will also admit to the sin of WP:RECENTISM in 2018). Icewhiz ( talk) 20:00, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The "antisemitic source used to attack a BLP" angle - it was one source out of four" - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, my bad. That makes it ok. It was JUST ONE itsy bitty teeny weeny anti-semitic source Icewhiz used to attack a BLP. Nevermind, then /s. Lol. Seriously?
Icewhiz took the reference to "Vistula Stalinists" as an allusion to JewsYeah, that's HIS problem. He doesn't get to make up what a source says. If a source says "A" then Icewhiz doesn't get to say "well I think the source really meant B so I will put that in instead". Are we editing the same Wikipedia here?
historical prevalence in certain parts of Poland- uh, what??? Seriously, what in the hey are you talking about???
they were mostly the BLP's own words- NO. THEY. WEREN'T. That's kind of the whole point here.
Icewhiz did right to quickly remove the one- except he didn't. He removed the anti-semitic source on June 5th. So Icewhiz's BLP attacking WP:HOAX stayed in the article for two and a half months. That's not "quickly". Additionally, he ONLY removed it AFTER I brought it up at WP:AE (June 4th), meaning, he only removed it because he realized admins would see it and he could get in big trouble.
Throughout the evidence it is clear that Icewhiz is engaged in edits dictated by uncompromising stance and is unwilling to compromise with others.
From comments about Polish media being used as source, to comparing Poland to Iran, North Korea, constantly claiming that Polish sources are unreliable to claiming that occupation of Poland in Second World War is Polish nationalist POV and so forth, it is clear that there is a stance where sources and information is judged on basis of ethnic criteria rather than objective value.
The most controversial of Icewhiz's edits happened when he lost arguments or nominations to DYK articles.Just after this happens Icewhiz goes on wide spree on Polish related articles entering highly controversial claims or straight ahead blanking whole articles.
At the moment it isn't clear what type of descriptions are allowed to clearly describe complex identities in Central European/Eastern European topics, especially in context of 19th century and Second World War history.Wikipedia is edited by editors from many national and cultural backgrounds-there might be some cultural miscommunication/clash on what to consider the best description of nationality/ethnicity in places with very detailed and complex history of inter-ethnic relations.These edits are not necessarily expression of ill will, but better guidance would be welcomed.
I could understand if two editors are in conflict with each other but in this case Icewhiz gets in conflict with any Polish user that he comes across on Wikipedia.Even those who strived hard to reach some kind of compromise and cooperation like Piotrus have eventually been attacked by Icewhiz.
Throughout his edits Icewhiz has presented cherry picked information and sources to present extreme claims and statements(Poles=mass murderers of Jews, Poland is equal to Nazi Germany,Poles mass murdered 200,000 Jews). These statements were selected to present the most extreme statements regarding Jewish-Polish history. Even in cases where source later distanced itself from extreme claims(like Grabowski retreating from claim of 200,000 Jews murdered by Poles), Icewhiz continued to add this information, knowning fully that is no longer supported by source, and even dismissing Grabowski's statement as "Polish media report". This example shows that the user was interested in provoking and causing controversy by carefully selecting the most controversial material to be presented on Wikipedia. -- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 10:18, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
needless, provocative baiting, won't you want the Arbs to notice it in its entirety? starship .paint ( talk) 10:29, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
which was immediately reverted by François Robere who falsely claimed a "BLP issue" in edit summaryThe revision included the statement "based on no research, Michael Meng speculates that...". This is a BLP vio against Michael Meng, an Associate Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill. I explained the removal on Talk, and I mentioned Talk in the edit summary. François Robere ( talk) 12:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Some issues on Polish Holocaust complicity are debated by mainstream Polish voices. However many issues related to the Holocaust, antisemitism, post-war violence are not contested by anyone of note.
Jewish Bolshevism, and in its Polish form - Żydokomuna, is an antisemitic canard. It has a long history in Poland. It was used to justify anti-Jewish pogroms by Haller's Army in the post-WWI Polish–Soviet War. It was a dominant theme in the antisemitic discourse in the Second Polish Republic. During WWII, "Żydokomuna" was used by the nationalist underground to justify the killing of Jewish fugitives in the countryside who were seen as sympathetic to communist (Polish and Soviet) partisans (catch-22 - in many areas the communist partisans were the only ones willing to accept Jewish fugitives). Following the war it was used by the nationalist rebellion ("cursed soldiers") to justify killing Jews seen as sympathetic to the post-war government. This is still used in antisemitic discourse in Poland today.
Turning a drab election notice into a "Jewish welcome banner" ( 2015, 2015, 2017) fits within "Żydokomuna" discourse.
In regards to the 1941 pogroms (introduced by Poeticbent 2009-2011 - but defended in 2015) - while there was some public debate in Poland on the Jedwabne pogrom circa 2001-3 following the publication of Neighbors and during the IPN investigation - the events in Jedwabne and surrounding towns in which Polish citizens (with limited German involvement) carried out anti-Jewish pogroms (including the burning alive of victims in barns in Jedwabne and Radziłów) are not debated by any mainstream element. The president of Poland apologized for Jedwabne back in 2001. [1] For the past 15 years - discourse over Jedwabne is limited to fringe far-right denialist elements. Inserting a denialist narrative into Jedwabne pogrom would be met with a rather swift revert or challenge as this is a well watched article. However, inserting content that denies Jedwabne as well as the local atrocity in one of 23 small towns that are seldom watched by editors - may persist for years (almost a decade!). Poeticbent, being involved in the Jedwabne pogrom article as far back as 2006, [355] and being one of the main editors of the article, [356] was well aware of sourcing on Jedwabne and surrounding towns. The text he inserted to Radziłów and Stawiski not only denied the local atrocity but also denied Jedwabne (by stating that the supposed German action in Radziłów/Stawiski was also carried out in the same manner in Jedwabne). This denial - fits into a very specific peg in Poland.
Editing
Chełmno extermination camp (in
2013) fits into this discourse: "young Poles have a sense that Polish suffering during World War II might not be acknowledged enough if Jewish suffering is highlighted. ... Denial of the fact that only Jews and Roma were condemned to death on the basis of their identity may have something to do with the strength of that sense of unique suffering in the national consciousness.
.
[2] There are no reliable sources (including not the Majdanek museum website used as a citation) stating Chełmno was "targeted at removal of Jews and Poles from all nearby towns and villages"
.
The edits to
Belzec extermination camp (in
2013,
2014,
2015,
2015) to remove (and in the process - misrepresent the cited source which contradicts) Polish grave-digging is related to a recent public debate, but again - these are facts that aren't disputed by anyone of note - and for Belzec are well-known and publicized from the late 40s. The wartime grave-digging is what prompted the Nazis to guard the vacant Belzec, and other extermination camps, after they shut down the camps. The release of Gross's Golden Harvest in 2011, which in respect to Belzec really said nothing new, did trigger "several attempts to deny historical facts"
.
[3]
Post-war violence against Jews, the most infamous incident being the Kielce pogrom, isn't disputed by any mainstream element. Poland's post-communist government apologized in 1996. [4] Anti-Jewish violence being one of the factors for the mass departure of Jews from post-war Poland is not disputed by anyone of note - this was well known from 1946 onward and well covered in the relevant literature. As in other countries, there is a small camp of denialists in Poland who would deny this - and would frame Jewish departure as merely a move to "greener pastures". Poeticbent's creation( [357]) is contradicted by the very source he was citing. Poeticbent had edited Kielce pogrom back in 2006, and is one of the top editors on the article - [358] - not a topic he is unfamiliar with. In a lesser watched article such as this - this lasted a decade.
These edits had a context, which is far from innocent. Icewhiz ( talk) 07:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
References
WP:BAIT (an essay advocating "don't take the bait" to avoid being sanctioned for civility infractions) has been bandied around in the evidence and workshop quite a bit. Therefore, I have compiled a table below of the personal attacks below. Ignoring attacks during the case ( on a user's talk page, and on the case) I've sifted through the attacks in evidence. It seems Volunteer Marek launches personal attacks when sources on Polish antisemitism are cited, when the DUEness/reliability of sources are questioned, and other cases (e.g. [361], [362]) what seems to be completely random interjections. There's not much of anything rising to "bait" that a balanced editor could possibly be excused for "lashing out" at.
Article | Icewhiz action | Volunteer Marek reaction |
---|---|---|
Talk:Szymon Datner | Saying content is SYNTH/irrelevant to subject + not in cited source. | [363] " It's not "OR" it's just "knowing what the fuck one is talking about when trying to write an article rather than just making obnoxious POV edits"." |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | Pointing out that the summary of Krzyżanowski in our article is not an accurate representation of the cited page (in Polish) nor Krzyżanowski's subsequent self-citation of his work in English in an academic journal. | [364] "first off, cut out the hysterical hyperbole. Even if you disagree with it, it's not "defamatory". Stop being ridiculous. That kind of false rhetoric signals a lack of good faith in your approach to achieving consensus" |
Talk:Jew with a coin | Providing quote from source: "another possible reason for the existence of the Zydki: It has to do with a newly published book in Poland that is creating an uproar similar to the one that Jan Gross’s book “Neighbors” elicited. The book, “Klucze i Kasa” (“Keys and Money”) details the ways in which Poles got rich off Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust – by plundering property that was left behind, charging exorbitant fees for hiding them, and so on. This may be another underlying reason for the Polish perception of Jews as a source of wealth – they literally enriched them. And paradoxically, their guilt feelings over this are being projected onto the Jews.. |
[365] "The figurines do exist but they are not common, and as several sources note, they are a recent phenomenon. The source does NOT "tie two phenomena together". You do. It's a COATRACK for the whole disgusting and racist "Poles are anti-semities" POV into this article." Note also WP:REDFLAG assertion vs. mainstream facts in mainstream sources. + [366] [367] vs. sourced information. |
Act on the Institute of National Remembrance | Icewhiz might have inserted some of this at some point in the past. | [368] Referring to sourced (English) attributed statements as: "remove some gratuitous and off topic Pole bashing" |
"Never Again" Association | "Already discussed elsewhere. Reported in Polish media as well - so UNDUE has no legs here. Please discuss on the talk page, as opposed to edit-warring over content in the STABLE version of this article." | [369] "Please stop using ridiculous, absurd and dishonest rationales for your edit warring - like claiming to restore a 'stable version" of an article... that was created just freaking hours ago. This has been explained already. WP:ONUS is on you to get consensus" |
Jew with a coin | Directed at scholar. | [370] Referring to a scholar's assessment as: " rmv POV, rmv gratuitous stereotyping and ethnic generalizations" |
Talk:Casimir III the Great | removing fiction from article, stating that if this legend is to be included its antisemitic origin - per three academic sources should be included. | [371] - "Your second source is that photographer, Janicka, again, that you drag out, every time you want to accuse Poles of being antisemitic about, well, everything. You really need to find a new hobby. It's really the tediousness and dull-mindedness of your bigotry that is tiring, not the continued indulgence of your prejudices on Wikipedia (which is par for the course around here)." |
Paradisus Judaeorum(+talk) | Statement at scholar Icewhiz inserted | [372] - "Janicka is a photographer, not a historian so not really qualified to make this assessment. Normally I'd just say "not in the lede" but that rant is stuffed so full of nonsense and is barely coherent, so it's pretty much a non-RS". Also - [373] - "she's just someone with an academic degree in something else, that went to a museum and didn't like an exhibition, so she wrote basically a long rant about it, stuffed full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, hyperbolic and exaggerated language, failed attempts at irony and faux outrage. And that's the parts that are coherent." |
Talk:Esterka | Providing three academic sources on the antisemitic origin of the myth, saying this should be present in the article per NPOV. | [374] "You're making shit up. Again.", " your dishonest approach to editing" |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | Quotations from academic sources. | [375] - "You are once again engaging in ethnic attacks and giving free rein to your prejudicial proclivities", "Please stop making shit up". |
Talk:Jan Grabowski (historian) | Raising concerns on the reliability of post-2018 Polish media sources on the narrow issue of Polish Holocaust complicity due to the Polish Holocaust law. | [376] - " This is complete and utter nonsense and Icewhiz has repeatedly been warned about engaging in ethnic discrimination and his propensity to evaluate sources on the basis of racial criteria. This kind of approach is odious and disgusting and very much against Wikipedia culture and policy." |
Talk:Helena Wolińska-Brus | Suggesting Polish allegations against the individual (Polish extradition requests denied by the UK) should be attributed and that we should use mainstream English coverage ( Independent, Telegraph, JTA, Chicago Tribune). | [377] - "You have been asked REPEATEDLY to stop evaluating sources on the basis of racist ethnic criteria", "odious behavior" |
Helena Wolińska-Brus | POV tag, "tag POV - over-reliance on Polish media reporting and rejected Polish extradition requests - does not reflect coverage of our subject in mainstream English language media in the UK (where she lived) and elsewhere." | [378] "another spurious WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT tag, WP:BATTLEGROUND tag. There's no "over reliance" on anything and your previous objection was addressed, so now you're just trying to make any ol' excuse up" |
Talk:Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia | Saying genocide should be attributed in the lede as use of "genocide" is disputed (and is a minority position). Saying lede should also reflect majority position of this not being a genocide. Pointing out the article has a whole section discussing the genocide question. | [379] - "Translation: "the lede does not reflect my extremist POV so I'm gonna claim it's "unbalanced" and make WP:TENDENTIOUS edits". |
Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 December | Commenting in move review. Noting that the source asserting notability of the full phrase was by "an anti-Semitic Polish politician who advocated at the time for the mass expulsion of most of Poland's Jews". | [380] - "It's almost childish" ... "Neither are there any sources which refer to it as a "anti-Semitic slogan" (except maybe that one cherry picked Janicka source you managed to drudge up somewhere)." ... "Gimme a fucking break. The truth of the matter is that it's actually you who holds an extremist POV, one which is not shared among mainstream scholars regardless of their ethnicity and religion. You are trying to exploit the lack of knowledge about the topic and the general gullibility of average Wikipedians to push your extremist POV by engaging in this hyperbolic scare-mongering. You're hoping that if you just call something "anti-semitic" people will feel compelled to support you or at least not oppose you. But it's all bullshit." |
Albert Forster | Restoring POV tag as there was no discussion on the talk page section opened to discuss the tag, placed by Icewhiz a couple of months prior. | [381] "spurious tag, appears to be WP:STALK of another user and WP:BATTLEGROUND" |
Talk:Marek Jan Chodakiewicz | Mentioning journal article by Dariusz Libionka, quoting from it, and saying that summary may merit consideration for incorporation. | [382] - " I am not going to just take your word for it since I've been burned before and WP:V is policy" |
Koniuchy massacre | Icewhiz didn't do anything, but User:Sparafucil reverted Volunteer Marek. | [383] - "and again, a strange account which has never before edited this article or topic area (except one previous blind revert on behalf of Icewhiz) shows up out of nowhere" |
Icewhiz ( talk) 09:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
This whole statement and (Icewhiz's - add on 12:24 6/29/19 for clarity VM) table could be used as Evidence for this proposed FoF regarding Icewhiz. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 18:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, here is my response table:
Article | What Icewhiz claims happened | What actually happened |
---|---|---|
Talk:Szymon Datner | "Saying content is SYNTH/irrelevant to subject + not in cited source." | This is a dispute about a minor change in the Institute's name. Its something that's actually common knowledge in this topic area. Icewhiz is being petty. |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | "Pointing out that the summary of Krzyżanowski in our article is not an accurate representation of the cited page (in Polish) nor Krzyżanowski's subsequent self-citation of his work <snip>" | Disagreeing about which portion of the source should be quoted is most certainly NOT "defamation" as Icewhiz is pretending, so yeah this is being hyperbolic in order to intimidate and badger those who disagree with him. In my comment I stated explicitly that it would be fine to add other information from the source but there was no reason to remove this part |
Talk:Jew with a coin | "Providing quote from source <snip quote for brevity>" | A (non academic non scholarly) source makes a short passing remark and Icewhiz uses it to WP:COATRACK pov into the article |
Act on the Institute of National Remembrance | "Icewhiz might have inserted some of this at some point in the past." (note strange practice of referring to Icewhiz in 3rd person) | I think my response is a pretty accurate description of what was going on here |
"Never Again" Association | "Already discussed elsewhere. Reported in Polish media as well - so UNDUE has no legs here. Please discuss on the talk page, as opposed to edit-warring over content in the STABLE version of this article." | Several problems with Icewhiz's edit and self serving explanation. The source for this was crap. Oh wait, I thought Icewhiz was AGAINST using "Polish media" (in this case very crappy media). Guess that doesn't apply if it fits with his POV. Second Icewhiz actually used the rationale "restore STABLE version" for an article that was created just hours before. As if such existed. Third, WP:ONUS - and Icewhiz lovvvessss using this as a justification for removing any text he WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT - is indeed on Icewhiz here. Fourth, the person doing the edit warring here was Icewhiz. |
Jew with a coin | "Directed at scholar" | See explanation above table. Not "directed at scholar" at all. Directed at text Icewhiz inserted, which is accurately described here |
Talk:Casimir III the Great | "removing fiction from article, stating that if this legend is to be included its antisemitic origin - per three academic sources should be included." | See above. Nobody objected to Icewhiz "removing fiction". This is about Icewhiz trying to spam a particular source - an "essay" by a photographer full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes - into as many articles as he could. Other two sources are being blatantly misrepresented by Icewhiz. |
Paradisus Judaeorum(+talk) | "Statement at scholar Icewhiz inserted" (again, strange use of referring to Icewhiz in third person) | See above. Accurate description of the WP:REDFLAG source Icewhiz is trying to use |
Talk:Esterka | Providing three academic sources on the antisemitic origin of the myth, saying this should be present in the article per NPOV. | This is same issue as two rows up. Read the rest of my comment. It explains in detail exactly WHAT Icewhiz is making up and HOW he's misrepresenting sources. Note that this is like the third time I was forced to explain this because of his WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | "Quotations from academic sources." | Please read entire comment. It explains in detail how Icewhiz is misrepresenting sources and how he's using false edit summaries. It also notes that Icewhiz keeps referring to "Polish POV" as if all Poles were exactly the same. Which is… problematic to say the least |
Talk:Jan Grabowski (historian) | "Raising concerns on the reliability of post-2018 Polish media sources on the narrow issue of Polish Holocaust complicity due to the Polish Holocaust law." | See above explanation above table. This wasn't "raising concerns", this was Icewhiz unilaterally declaring all Polish post-2018 sources unreliable because… he said so. Icewhiz here is indeed evaluating source reliability according to an ethnic criteria - Polish sources bad, non-Polish sources good. |
Talk:Helena Wolińska-Brus | Suggesting Polish allegations against the individual (snip) should be attributed and that we should use mainstream English coverage (snip)" | Ditto. Icewhiz wants to falsely label views he doesn't like as "Polish views" (because you know, all Poles hold exactly same views as one another, it's just in their blood or something), despite the fact that the claims are backed up by multiple non-Polish sources |
Helena Wolińska-Brus | "POV tag, "tag POV - over-reliance on Polish media reporting and rejected Polish extradition requests - does not reflect coverage of our subject in mainstream English language media in the UK (where she lived) and elsewhere."" | Given how false Icewhiz's assertion was, my comment was an understatement. Icewhiz claims the article has "over reliance on Polish sources" (it's an article about a Polish person and Polish history, what would be wrong with that?) despite the fact that the article is sourced to The Guardian, The Telegraph, Anne Applebaum (in English) and The Times. Icewhiz is just complaining that his chicanery was called out. |
Talk:Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia | "Saying genocide should be attributed in the lede as use of "genocide" is disputed (and is a minority position). Saying lede should also reflect majority position of this not being a genocide. Pointing out the article has a whole section discussing the genocide question." | Again, Icewhiz's assertions are simply false, in particular his claim about "most scholars" and "minority position" (whatever Icewhiz disagrees with) and "majority position" (whatever Icewhiz believes), which he just… made up (note no sources to back that up). This again after having to deal with a ton of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT |
Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 December | "Commenting in move review. (snip - not exactly comprehensible anyway) | Icewhiz was falsely claiming that just because the article's title was changed, there was consensus to POVFORK it to a different topic (basically about how anti-semitic the Poles are). There was no such consensus. He also kept referring to a 16th century tract (!!!) as "hate speech" which is anachronistic at best, but still ridiculous. He kept doing this as a way of trying to badger others into agreeing with him (they didn't anyway). Add (6/290) - oh yeah, I missed this part: my comment was a response to Icewhiz's claims that ... Jewish scholars and academics were pushing "anti-semitic hate speech". Yeah, you read that right. Basically, the Jewish scholars and academics under discussion were apparently insufficiently anti-Polish for Icewhiz's taste, hence they were guilty of "anti-semitic hate speech" (this was of course a claim lacking any sources from him).
Please read my comment in full [386] as it accurately illustrates the problem with Icewhiz in this topic area (and please understand the strong words are a result of immense frustration) |
Albert Forster | "Restoring POV tag following as there was no discussion on the talk page section opened to discuss the tag." | The tag was indeed spurious (Icewhiz seemed upset that the article mentioned that Nazis murdered Poles - see his dismissive comments of, and jeering at, the Nazi crimes against Poles documented elsewhere in evidence) and it did look like Icewhiz was stalking another user around. |
Talk:Marek Jan Chodakiewicz | "Mentioning journal article by Dariusz Libionka, quoting from it, and saying that summary may merit consideration for incorporation." | Given that Icewhiz tried to create a WP:HOAX to attack the subject of this very article, requesting WP:V is a perfectly reasonable request |
Table by VM - Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:39, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
François Robere ( talk) 11:50, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
MVBW doesn't edit this topic areaThey're active on several talk pages, though.
if there's stonewalling and ganging, then you and Icewhiz and (now indef banned) Yanniv certainly qualifyHow can 2-3 editors "stonewall" and "gang" against 5-7 editors? And Yaniv was about as active in this area as MVBW, if not less.
the problem is not necessarily with those sources (some yes, but most no)Didn't you object Grabowski, Michlic and Krakowski, and support Bella's perversion of Kochanski ("The Eagle Unbowed", in the "puppet state" arc)? You may have objected Kunicki (Home Army arc) and supported Tatzref's perversion of Cichopek-Gajraj, I don't remember for sure.
it's with how they're being used. I.e. misrepresentedSo you're claiming that someone has been distorting sources for a year and a half and you haven't even once raised it with the admins or in an RfC?
"The biggest problem I have with VM is his refusal to ever see the other side's POV as legitimate" - this is completely falseYep. And just to remind us of the short discussion MVBW and I had regarding some of your comments from last year.
my stats show he "won" at best a third of the AEs he was involved in, which is worse than a coin flipYeah, only you count things like comments, etc. See my objections above.
Icewhiz created HOAXes on BLPs by fabricating quotations for an authorAgain, not really. You showed one case where, if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he made a bad SYNTH call. That's it. [427] AGF, it's hardly a "smoking gun".
Icewhiz made absurd and provocative commentsSo what? You're an adult. Do you need protection from stupid comments? Handle it like an adult and move on. And you would do well, by the way, to listen when someone tells you "that's not what I meant" instead of trying to convince them it is.
In a couple instances he simply lied about other editorsI could fill a small box with all the instance I could've claimed you were lying, if I didn't give you the benefit of the doubt. But I do, so I don't, so I won't, and you should as well, much more often than you do. François Robere ( talk) 19:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
(MVBW is) active on several talk pages, though- not really. List'em. Don't just make assertions, prove it. There might be a couple, but given that this dispute has spanned literally dozens of articles, this is just false.
How can 2-3 editors "stonewall" and "gang" against 5-7 editors- who are these 5-7 editors? And freakin' a, if it really is 5-7 editors you might want to seriously think about what WP:CONSENSUS means.
You may have objected Kunicki
supported Tatzref's perversion
I don't remember for sure- right. How about you make the effort to "remember for sure", come back here, and THEN we can take your WP:ASPERSIONS seriously.
So you're claiming that someone has been distorting sources for a year and a half<-- this part is true.
and you haven't even once raised it with the admins or in an RfCI have. Unfortunately most admins don't really have an expertise in this topic area so they're never sure so they haven't done anything about it. That and Icewwhiz continuously playing the victim. However, you'd think that at least with a blatant BLP-attacking WP:HOAX [428] they'd do something. What happened? Oh yeah. Sandstein removed my "raising of it" because "it was over the word limit" and freely admitted he wasn't going to bother reading any diffs. He did topic ban Icewhiz for awhile at least (though mostly because he was annoyed, which is doing the right thing for the wrong reason)
Again, not really. You showed one case where, if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he made a bad SYNTH call. Yes. Really. You have to give a LOT of benefit of a LOT of doubt to pretend that fabricating a quote, misrepresenting a source, using anti-semitic sources, all to smear a BLP is a "bad SYNTH call". This wasn't "SYNTH". This was Icewhiz making stuff up pure and simple in an attempt to destroy a person. WP:INDEF long overdue.
I could fill a small box with all the instance I could've claimed you were lying- Do it. Let's. See. You. Do. It. And not just where you "claim" this. That's easy. Anyone can "claim" anything they want. But actually support it with evidence. Like I have. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 22:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
That's an interesting statement, which implies certain assumptions.
-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 18:19, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
"Some Poles, who emerged from their forest hideaways, including prisoners released by the Nazis from the NKVD prisons,[4] were led to acts of revenge-killing in German presence (approximately 6 suspects...) - is rather self evident. Particularly given that the same fabrication was performed in other towns (e.g. Radziłów) in a manner unsupported and contradicted by sources. Icewhiz ( talk) 06:59, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
" direct involvement of the Stalinist troops (official findings of the Institute of National Remembrance)"(none others named... not quite the usual presentation) in regards to the well known Kielce pogrom (an article that on enwiki has related issues - see USHMM) is instructive. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:44, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Poeticbent created a number of anti-Jewish hoaxes. In that respect it is inevitable that the case will have to involve some examination of Poeticbent's conduct, in order to see if Icewhiz is correct - and, if not, whether Icewhiz' behavior towards Poeticbent goes beyond WP:AGF, violates WP:HOUND, etc. In retrospect, thinking about it, I feel that the lopsided topic ban for Poeticbent may be one of the root causes of the WP:AGF breakdown, since it's clear that Icewhiz in particular took it as vindication (even though, as I understand it, it was related to civility and not bias.) I haven't examined the evidence in depth, so I can't say whether that is true or not, but if it is not, then a general statement of "no, Poeticbent's topic-ban was inappropriate, or at least doesn't imply any content issues; back down and stop contesting their edits just because they made them" might be useful. -- Aquillion ( talk) 20:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
You've probably noticed my proposals above are more general than simply "ban this, block that"; that's because this conflict resulted, in part, from systemic problems with Wikipedia and its community structures, and I refused to believe these can't be changed for the better (though I do appreciate most of your skepticism). Where systemic problems can be solved at any level of DR, they should; and ARBCOM being the highest level of that, it should strive to reduce the overall number of conflicts, and not only resolve them one at a time. François Robere ( talk) 05:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Case clerks: SQL ( Talk) & Bradv ( Talk) & L235 ( Talk) Drafting arbitrators: AGK ( Talk) & Opabinia regalis ( Talk)
Wikipedia Arbitration |
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Track related changes |
Purpose of the workshop
Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at fair, well-informed decisions. The case Workshop exists so that parties to the case, other interested members of the community, and members of the Arbitration Committee can post possible components of the final decision for review and comment by others. Components proposed here may be general principles of site policy and procedure, findings of fact about the dispute, remedies to resolve the dispute, and arrangements for remedy enforcement. These are the four types of proposals that can be included in committee final decisions. There are also sections for analysis of /Evidence, and for general discussion of the case. Any user may edit this workshop page; please sign all posts and proposals. Arbitrators will place components they wish to propose be adopted into the final decision on the /Proposed decision page. Only Arbitrators and clerks may edit that page, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.
Expected standards of behavior
Consequences of inappropriate behavior
1) Rename the case to "Eastern Europe 3"
References
2) Rename the case to "Polish-Jewish relations"
3)
1)
2)
3)
4)
1) Wikipedia works by building consensus through the use of respectful discussion. The dispute resolution process is designed to assist consensus-building when normal talk page communication has not worked. Consensus develops from participation and agreement of the parties involved in lieu of soapboxing, edit warring, or other inappropriate behavior.
2) Wikipedia is not a battleground. Wikipedia is one team of editors, all working toward the same purpose. Editors should not treat editors with whom they disagree as belonging to another "side" or an opposing group. Bad blood, poor interactions, and heated altercations between users can complicate attempts to reach consensus on substantive content issues. Inflammatory accusations often perpetuate disputes, poison the well of existing discussions, and disrupt the editing atmosphere. Discussions should be held with a view toward reaching a solution that can gain a genuine consensus.
3) Retired editors should generally be given deference and peace of mind. Gravedancing is when a user essentially disrespects an editor who has chosen to retire; be it through insults onto that user's character, going through their contribution history to revert their contributions, casting aspersions against that user, or being otherwise uncivil or harassing that editor.
The repeated (and at times unfounded) attempts abuse an unrelated dispute as a platform to attack a retired user is a severe form of gravedancing known as graverobbing. Such abuse of arbitration processes are not to be tolerated by the committee.
4) It is not the role of the Arbitration Committee to settle good-faith content disputes among editors.
1) Editors involved in the topic area of Polish-Jewish relations have been mostly editing in good faith. Some of the editing however has been less than optimal, which resulted in longstanding content disputes over the principles of neutral point of view and the interpretation of reliable sources. This has involved some suboptimal user conduct.
2) Poeticbent ( talk · contribs) is a yearlong retired user added as a party to this case by Icewhiz. Icewhiz has repeatedly attempted to make this arbitration case into a trial on Poeticbent's conduct after making persistent claims against them ( [2] [3] [4] [5]). Also see the evidence submitted by starship.paint.
"after making persistent claims against them"is incorrect - diffs are following case request naming Poeticbent. "Graverobbing" is a novel concept here, not grounded in policy. As for WP:HOAXes in mainspace - I backed this up with evidence (sufficient examples, given diff and evidence length limits). The Wikipedia community should be concerned with hoaxes on the Holocaust history in mainspace - we should not be hosting such content. Icewhiz ( talk) 21:57, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
3)
Volunteer Marek (
talk ·
contribs) is a longstanding established editor who has previously been a party to an Arbitration case related to Eastern Europe (See
evidence submitted by MJL). Though it was later rescinded, Volunteer Marek was topic banned from articles about Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about same, widely construed, for one year.
4) Volunteer Marek has repeatedly made personal attacks against Icewhiz as it relates to this dispute ( [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]).
1) The community is encouraged to hold an RfC regarding the best practices for sourcing within the Antisemitism in Poland topic area. In particular, it is suggested interested editors within the community work to develop an explanatory supplement to the provisions of Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources for Jewish-Polish historiography.
2) The standard discretionary sanctions adopted in Eastern Europe for "[p]ages which relate to Eastern Europe or the Balkans, broadly interpreted" remain in force. For the avoidance of doubt, these discretionary sanctions also apply to any article regarding the country of Poland, Polish historical figures, and Polish culture. Any sanctions imposed should be logged at the Eastern Europe case, not this one.
3) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages about Antisemitism or The Holocaust, both broadly construed.
4) Icewhiz and Volunteer Marek are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
Icewhiz has made odious false allegations against me. He most definitely should be subject to a one way IBAN. His "evidence" that I "hounded" (sic) him is just the fact that I edited ... some same articles in the topic area, which considering I've been editing this area or 15 years is hardly surprising. A two way ban btw, would probably cause more headaches than its worth - we've both edited a lot of same articles and subjects so parceling out who gets to edit what would be a mess. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 22:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
"have been civil to VM throughout" User:Icewhiz, making false horrible accusations without evidence against other users is not "civil". Making false horrible accusations without evidence against other users and having to deal with the response does not make you a victim. It just makes you the perpetrator who somebody stood up to, finally. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
5) Icewhiz ( talk · contribs) is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with, or commenting on, Poeticbent ( talk · contribs) anywhere on Wikipedia (subject to the ordinary exceptions).
6) For their battleground behavior over the course of this case, Icewhiz ( talk · contribs) is admonished. They are warned that any further instances of battleground behavior during arbitration processes will likely result in sanctions.
6) For repeated personal attacks against Icewhiz, Volunteer Marek ( talk · contribs) is admonished. They are warned that any further instances of uncivil during both content and conduct disputes will likely result in sanctions.
1) Maintaining the reliability and accuracy of article content is extremely important. Where the accuracy or reliability of an edit or an article is questioned, contributors are expected to engage in good-faith, civil discussion and work toward a resolution of the concern.
2) Statements in articles should be supported by citation to reliable sources and may not constitute original research. Appropriate sourcing is particularly important where the contents of an article are controversial or their accuracy is disputed.
3) The contents of source materials must be presented accurately and fairly. By quoting from or citing to a source, an editor represents that the quoted or cited material fairly and accurately reflects or summarizes the contents and meaning of the original source, and that it is not being misleadingly or unfairly excerpted out of context.
4) Editors should exercise caution and avoid the introduction of questionable sources promoting views considered to be extremist by reliable sources. Editors should avoid advocacy of use of such sources in article talk pages or noticeboards.
We could start by having you practice what you preach. Here you use a trashy source (wpolityce) to attack a BLP. Here you try to use a guy who said that "Poles lack common-sense" and who, as editor of American Conservative published the white supremacist Steve Sailer. You do this to attack a BLP. Here you use a trashy right wing source (which you misrepresent) and, worse, an anti-semitic source, which you do however, represent accurately (that's not a good thing). You do this to attack a BLP. Here you use another low quality right wing source. You do this to attack a BLP. Here you try to use a guy who's an expert on ... catfish fishing, to source historical facts. I haven't gotten yet to the part where you try to use a celebrity gossip columnist to cite historical facts and attack people. Will dig that one out shortly.
It's a great principle. Why not try following it Icewhiz? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
5) Editors should assume a source is unreliable, unless proven otherwise. In sensitive topic areas, particularly those in which conspiracy theories and hate discourse is prevalent, editors should devote extra care to maintaining high quality sourcing.
1) Poeticbent created a number of anti-Jewish hoaxes which have persisted for several years in articles in the topic area.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"pure : # zydokomuna"- which still doesn't match the caption (and in any event is a clearly unusable source). Icewhiz ( talk) 05:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Icewhiz, are you going to include the WP:HOAXes you created, like this one here where you just invented a BLP's words to smear them or your incorrect captioning of that photo [41] [42] [43] with "1941" instead of "1939", in your proposal (same photo you're using to accuse to Poeticbent)?
"To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku."-
"This is one of the most interesting photographs of Bialystok during the Soviet occupation. In the background, the church of Saint Roch, and around the sickle, hammers, five-pointed stars - the symbols of the new order."- nothing Jewish or welcoming in the Polish language caption, is there? Icewhiz ( talk) 11:34, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
2) During the case, and as part of their evidence statement, Volunteer Marek falsely stated that a source had been misrepresented and in doing so misrepresented the source himself. Contrary to Volunteer Marek's statement, the cited journal article in Holocaust Studies and Materials by Dr. Grzegorz Krzywiec supports the text in the article. Volunteer Marek also asserted a " WP:BLPVIO" towards a subject that died in 2004, 15 years ago.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Oh please, this is complete nonsense. Read what I wrote: "BLP subject did NOT assert "neo-Stalinism" is dominant in American social sciences". He didn't. I made no false statement. And are you seriously trying to make this into a Finding of Fact? Here, let me run over below and propose a Finding of Fact that says "During the case, and as part of workshop discussion, Icewhiz falsely stated that Volunteer Marek falsely stated that a source had been misrepresented and in doing so misrepresented the source himself, except he didn't, Icewhiz just didn't read what Volunteer Marek wrote or pretended otherwise"
Also, let me make a proposal for Findings of Fact for every single one of your well documented false claims and this page will be longer than a magic unicorn tail. "Icewhiz used anti-semitic sources to attack a BLP". Fact. "Icewhiz claimed that stating that communist party officials were communists was POV". Fact. "Icewhiz falsely insinuated that it's illegal for Polish Wikipedians to edit Polish Wikipedia on Polish-Jewish topics" Fact. "Icewhiz compared an anti-Nazi resistance movement to the Nazi Party". Fact. "Icewhiz claimed that we can ignore WP:RS policy if a Stalinist court had adjudicated the matter". Fact. "Icewhiz pretended that massacred women and children took part in some kind of a battle that never happened." Fact. Etc. I don't actually want to get into a silly little game where we propose findings of fact on each other, I'll let you play it alone. I do want to noted that you're being your typical WP:BATTLEGROUNDy self.
Oh yeah, and please don't move my evidence around as you did here. It's petty and it's not up to you to decide where my evidence goes. Ask a clerk if you got a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Volunteer Marek ( talk • contribs)
"Worse, the sources are misrepresented". Academic journal article on BLP's subject's book chapter - [47] states
"The study scrupulously states that “neo-Stalinism” has certainly been dominant in the American social sciences since the 1960s.. Bandying false accusations in ARBCOM, or in any administrative fora, is a big deal. Icewhiz ( talk) 05:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
"might put these back later") is not cool. Furthermore multiple academic sources on the subject cover his radical negationist views. Icewhiz ( talk) 06:10, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
3) During the case, and as part of their evidence statement, My very best wishes falsely claimed, [50] that this journal article by J. Otto Pohl supports their viewpoint, while the journal article itself is on a different subject and doesn't mention the "Polish operation" or Poles. Present in closed evidence 24 June(bullet-5 (link #180) in section), despite MVBW being informed of the misrepresentation on 10 June. Furthermore, in diff they claimed that Icewhiz inserted "Harvest" (misnomer, usually: "Hearts of Gold") as a source, however in the diffs offered - [51], [52] - the cited sources are a journal article by Grzegorz Krzywiec, [53] and a review by Danusha Goska, [54] covering "Hearts of Gold" and the controversy in a secondary manner and not "Hearts of Gold" itself. ( evidence bullet-2 (links #162, #163))
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Reminder to Icewhiz: just because you claim something, doesn't mean it's true. In fact, you're kind of illustrating how WP:BATTLEGROUND your attitude is here. How about you let ArbCom do their job instead of trying to do it for them? You're desperately trying to control the narrative here, but it's slipping, and your panic is showing. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:17, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
"Icewhiz removes sourced information about political repression against Polish population by the Soviet NKVD and the similar organization of communist Poland .... Icewhiz tells it was ethnic cleansing, not genocide (discussion). Not according to some academic RS [179], [180]"(180=J. Otto Pohl). Pohl's article is on 1937-1951 deportations (a separate issue from the national sweeps in the Great Purge) - and does not contain "Poles", "Polish", or the "Polish operation". I will also note "removes" is incorrect in regards to - [55] [56] - where this was replaced with other sources (without misrepresenting Ellman, and without using Sommer's book, book jacket, tabloid interview ( Super Express) , etc.). Icewhiz ( talk) 12:55, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
4) Volunteer Marek harassed Icewhiz, hounded his editing despite multiple requests to stop and engaged in a pattern of personal attacks and incivility towards Icewhiz.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Yeah, I didn't even bother addressing this part of your "evidence" because it's so obviously bonkers. I've been editing this topic area since... 2005. You showed up in 2017. In fact, you seem to have gotten interested in this topic area AFTER we had a few disputes on Donald Trump and alt-right related articles (where you were supporting both). At the time, while I was annoyed by our disagreements I still naively thought you were acting in good faith, so when I saw your article Wrangell Bombardment at DYK I did a thorough copy edit of it and helped you to get it through the nomination process. Then, all of sudden, you began your crusade across all these Poland related article. I guess this was your own special way of saying "thanks", huh?
More specifically, like I said I've been here since 2005 and I've edited literally hundreds of articles, long before you showed up (afaik). We've both edited 173 articles in this topic area. Out of these, 115 were edited by me first. So if there was any hounding or stalking going on, it's the other way buddy. In fact, the nature of your accusation is kind of suspicious because it's so blatantly absurd, that it kind of looks like a pre-emptive strike ("someone might notice I hounded VM, so I better deflect by accusing him of it first!").
Out of the 57 articles which you edited first, about 40 of them have a pretty straight forward explanation for why I edited them - you were inserting the same piece of text, or making the same edit in multiple articles at once, the article was very closely related to another article we were both editing at the time and I edited first, the article involved a general dispute about sourcing in this topic area, and then there were new articles created by yourself or Piotrus which were also related to other contemporary disputes. The other 17 (out of 173!) articles which you edited first just look like they popped up on my watchlist since they're also very closely related to other articles I've edited.
So, sorry, no hounding there. Rather this is just your own WP:OWN and WP:BATTLEGROUND.
But as I was looking these data up, there was one striking phenomenon. A lot of the articles which I edited first, you edited a few years later. Here's the thing: the order in which you edited them in 2018 or 2019, matches pretty closely the order I edited them in ... 2008 or 2012 or 2014. So it's pretty obvious that you were sifting through my editing history going back many years and looking for what kind of trouble you could cause. Or perhaps you were gathering evidence already months ago, anticipating all the WP:AE reports you wanted to file (see the section below) and occasionally jumping in to make an edit. Now, for most of these, your edits did not revert mine. And you haven't brought any of this up in your evidence either. This means two things: 1) you didn't find any thing you could use as evidence against me, because my edits were solid, 2) you kind of figured that this might give your game away. Still, the close match between the order in which you edited them in 2017-2019 and in which I edit them in 2008-2014, tells a pretty clear story. While your intention may have been WP:HOUNDING in the end you wound up "only" WP:STALKING.
So your accusation is just more gaslighting.
(raw data here [60])
Volunteer Marek ( talk) 06:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
5) Volunteer Marek failed to follow the verifiability policy. Despite content being clearly challenged on verifiability grounds, Volunteer Marek has repeatedly restored content that is not present in the citation ( original research) and in some cases contradicted by other sources or the citation itself. Volunteer Marek failed to engage in meaningful discussion to rectify the issues.
6) Volunteer Marek has treated Jewishness as an immutable trait (describing former Jews as Jews),
[77]
[78]
[79]
[80] removed "Polish" as an adjective from the first lede sentence of Polish Jews,
[81]
[82]
[83] and openly advocated that for "people who were both Polish and Jewish"
that both Polish and Jewish be removed from the lede.
[84] These editing practices are counter to
MOS:ETHNICITY and community norms. Furthermore, Volunteer Marek has referred to editors, sources, and authors discussing antisemitism in Poland as bigoted,
[85], prejudiced,
[86]
[87], extremist,
[88], racist,
[89], "gratuitous stereotyping",
[90], "rant is stuffed so full of nonsense",
[91], and "stuffed full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, hyperbolic..."
[92].
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"very narrowly defined topic as described only"in Racism in Poland please note this removal - diff per
"Remove information about 15th century which has nothing to do with racism, but religious strife. Also Poles were subject to genocide by Nazis as well"- which contests that antisemitism in Poland was racist (when the instigator was the Catholic church - e.g. placing Jews in ghettos, anti-Jewish violence, expulsion of Jews from royal capital of Kraków). Icewhiz ( talk) 06:55, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"No idea what a "former Jews" means"[93] - perhaps this needs spelling out - but this has rather alarming (and very well known) connotations -
"Once a Jew, always a Jew"[5] (Inside Judaism - a strict interpretation of Halacha treats converts to other religions as Jews that are heretics - however most modern people respect the right of individuals to leave a religion). Had this been an isolated utterance, it could be explained as a mistake, an inadvertent slip, or perhaps even taking a very strict Jewish Orthodox interpretation. However VM's statement on removing "Polish" from the lede of Polish Jews was explicit (and was preceeded by VM actually doing this on articles), [94]. His repeated references to peer-reviewed scholarship on antisemitism in Poland (unsourced, his own personal opinion) being "full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes" - here in arbitration, as well as prior to arbitration, has highly troubling connotations, and regardless an editor rejecting scholarship on this basis, without any sources to back up their serious charges - is a serious issue. Icewhiz ( talk) 05:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
"Somehow because I removed the word "Polish" from a sentence which already implied that the person was Polish..."does not hold water - as this:
"he is insisting that we include that a person was Polish in the lede (this in the case of people who were both Polish and Jewish). I am saying, leave both out. ". [95]
Schumer's US nationality is already implicit from being described as a "United States Senator" - we would look very dimly at an editor who would remove "American" from "is an American politician". I gave the American example as it is close to home for many, however the same applies other nationalities - e.g. French - Robert Badinter. Icewhiz ( talk) 07:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Charles Ellis Schumer ( /ˈʃuːmər/; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from New York, a seat to which he was first elected in 1998.
Oh, this is both bizarre and more disgusting insinuations by Icewhiz. Note he also does the little trick where he asserts one things and then provides sources which are irrelevant. It's complete and utter horseshit that I supposedly "treated Jewishness as an immutable trait". I removed the wording "former Jew" because the wording was strange. In his second diff I just restore a lede after Icewhiz changed it all up, that actually had nothing to do with the person's ethnicity. His third diff is me actually clarifying the person's background exactly the way Icewhiz wanted it (!!!) and what exactly is suppose to be wrong with this comment??? This is some shameless insinuations by Icewhiz.
It's exactly THIS kind of behavior that makes collaborating with Icewhiz impossible. It's exactly him pulling this kind of nonsense that shows he needs to be removed from this topic area. And other ones too if this is in any way indicative of how he edits Wikipedia in general.
And god, the rest of it is total crap too. Nothing wrong with discussing anti-semitism in Poland. But pretending that everything about Poland is anti-semitic and that Poles as a group are a bunch of anti-semites, as Icewhiz does... yeah, that's a problem. With Icewhiz. Lying about it by misrepresenting sources or other editor's statements just makes it even worse.
Icewhiz than shamelessly presents three sources which are completely unrelated to this. Icewhiz is very clearly accusing me of "denying there's anti-semitism in Poland". Bullshit. NONE of his diffs show anything of the sort. This is the same barefaced lying that he engaged in at the Requests for this case Somehow because I removed the word "Polish" from a sentence which already implied that the person was Polish, I'm anti-semitic??? Why is he allowed to continue to do this??? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Volunteer Marek has treated Jewishness as an immutable trait (describing former Jews as Jews)
Complete and utter nonsense. "Former Jew" is simply awkward phrasing, "of Jewish background" is better. There's nothing here which says anything about any "immutable trait"s. See also
Who is a Jew?. Icewhiz is adhering to some extremist fringe notion here.
Volunteer Marek (
talk) 19:11, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
VM removed "Polish" as an adjective from the bios of Polish Jews, not other Polish nationals whose nationality was already implied in the lede.
- this is also some seriously dishonest manipulation of what actually happened. In both cases this was simply undoing Icewhiz's removal of OTHER information in the lede. He knows this. It's been explained to him half a dozen times. But he keeps pretending otherwise. Likewise when I said that both "Polish" and "Jewish" should be removed from the one sentence in one article (which Icewhiz claims is me "openly advocating" for ... something or other, not sure what this is even suppose to mean) it was simply because the rest of that sentence ALREADY IMPLIED both "Polish" and "Jewish" so the info was redundant. Icewhiz takes this - info is redundant - and in a very dishonest way tries to twist it into something it wasn't. The situation has been explained to him half a dozen times but we get the standard
WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT as he refuses to acknowledge even the fact that this has been explained.
Volunteer Marek (
talk) 16:31, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
And EVEN IF I did "openly advocate" for removal of both "Polish" and "Jewish" from the lede sentence of some articles (which I didn't, except in one case where it was redundant), how in the world would that warrant a ridiculous sanction like this??? This is just ridiculous. And regarding "other Polish nationals" - well, we weren't editing articles about "other Polish nationals". If the exact same issue - redundant info - came up on an article about some "other Polish national", I would also think it should be removed. There's some underhanded insinuations here that Icewhiz is trying to get across but they're bunk. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
And I have no idea what Chuck Schumer has to do with any of this but I'm pretty sure that EVEN IF someone removed "American" from that sentence (which would be a different situation), we would still NOT try to ban them "from all articles about Americans or referring to American editors" as a result. This kind of actually illustrates - although again, it's a different case - just how completely nonsensical this proposal is. Misrepresentation, hyperbole, pretending black is white and white is black, underhanded insinuations. This is all classic Icewhiz. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:39, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
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7) Across many articles involving modern Polish history, English Wikipedia articles presented a Polish right-wing POV stance. The POV stance of the English Wikipedia surpassed that of the Polish Wikipedia which generally presented a POV more in line with global norms.
vs. the EnglishWiki's lede:Michał Rola-Żymierski , also Michał Żymierski, Michał Żymirski, ps. "Rola", "Morski", "Zawisza", responsible Michał Łyżwiński [a] [b] (born September 4, 1890 in Cracow , died October 15, 1989 in Warsaw ) - Polish soldier , reserve officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army , Brigadier General of the Polish Army in 1927 degraded , commander of the People's Army (1944) , Supreme Commander of the Polish Army , head and minister of national defense(1944-1949) and chairman of the State Security Commission , Polish Marshal , Member of the Presidium of the National National Council (1944-1947), Member of the Legislative Seym (1947-1952), member of the State Council (1949-1952), vice-president of the National Bank of Poland (from 1956), honorary president of the Main Board and the Supreme Council of the ZBoWiD , member of the Military Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PZPR , supervising the Polish Army from May 1949 [1].
Which per diff conforms toMichał Rola-Żymierski (pronounced [ˈmixaw ˈrɔla ʐɨˈmjɛrskʲi]; September 4, 1890 – October 15, 1989) was a Polish high-ranking Communist Party leader, communist military commander, NKVD secret agent, and Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin's order from 1945 until his death. He supported the 1981 imposition of Martial law in Poland.[1]
"restore previous NPOV version". Can you find anywhere else to tack on communist, Stalin, NKVD, support for Martial law in Poland, etc. in the English Wikipedia's version? Icewhiz ( talk) 06:39, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"Within Poland those who recite unpopular historical facts are frequently accused of running down their country, while those outside often find themselves confronted with the reproach of "anti-Polonism."[106] - it is far from a neutral descriptor on a global scale ("anti-Polish POV" here - means a large chunk of Polish historians - as well as most historians outside of Poland). Icewhiz ( talk) 09:34, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
It's quite random. I mean, consider Stawiski vs pl:Stawiski, an article which you cite you your evidence as well - the Polish Wikipedia article has no POV... as in not mentioning anything about the Jewish community. Is this a POV? Sure there is - if one wants to take an issue with some Polish villages being unduly dominated by the Jewish history. Like, again, Stawiski, where 50% if not of the article content is about WWII-era destruction of the Jewish community. Polish-right wing bias, errr? Except nobody ever challenged such articles (Stawiski is hardly unique; look at Adampol, Lublin Voivodeship, Biała Niżna or Błonie - 90% of content is Jewish history; ) because the Jewish history is notable, and we just need to expand other sections or split the Jewish history into their own subarticles (consider for example Bełżyce or History of the Jews in Adamów). Something to consider with regards to argument that some ghetto articles have 'too long' sections about Polish rescue efforts - as I said elsewhere, it just means we should expand those ghetto articles with other sections, ex. on post-war efforts to catch and sentence the Nazi administration and war crime perpetrators, stuff discussed in USHMM ghetto encyclopedia but generally totally absent from our ghetto articles. Information should not be removed, whether it is about Holocaust rescuers or about Jewish history in villages or about any other encyclopedic topic. The relevant policies are WP:SUMMARY and WP:SPLIT. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
8) Citing the " WP:BAIT" essay, which advocates that "baited" editors "don't take the bait" so that they won't be sanctioned under the civility policy, Volunteer Marek has alleged during the case that he had been "baited" by Icewhiz into making personal attacks versus Icewhiz. However, an analysis of the personal attacks in evidence reveals that Volunteer Marek was not "baited" into making them.
Mvbw has it exactly right below. There are only TWO possibilities here. Either 1) Icewhiz genuinely believes the nonsense about Poland being just "like North Korea and Iran", or about it being illegal in Poland to edit Polish Wikipedia on Polish-Jewish topics, or about anti-Nazi resistance being just like the Nazis, or 2) he just said this stuff because he knew it would provoke other editors and then he could run with WP:AE with the response. Neither one makes him look good. He is either indeed an extremist with some strange WP:FRINGE views, or he is baiting others.
Based on my long term interactions with him I'm inclined to think it's mostly 2) or possibly "2) being done to push 1)", but I guess it could be either. Hey. Let's find out. So Icewhiz can you state explicitly whether you think that:
I kind of anticipate that you're gonna post something irrelevant to distract, so I let me ask for a straight yes/no answer to these. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:36, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
9) Following this personal attack by Volunteer Marek, [109] he was warned on 2 June 2019 to stop engaging in personal attacks by ARBCOM member SilkTork. [110].
"Volunteer Marek (VM), who adds little new content (see last article creation - one bareurl - a soldier's account), has been reverting and stonewalling corrections.". In regards to Polish-Jews, VM stated -
"The difference between me and Icewhiz here is that while he objects to stating that a person was Jewish, he is insisting that we include that a person was Polish in the lede (this in the case of people who were both Polish and Jewish). I am saying, leave both out. See the double standard?"[111] - explicitly advocating that Polish citizens who are Jewish (unlike other Polish citizens) - not be described as Polish in the lede. Icewhiz ( talk) 20:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
10) Despite being warned on 2 June 2019, [113] Volunteer Marek has continued to engage in personal attacks against Icewhiz throughout the case.
|
"For the advocates of the national-Catholic outlook the concept of anti-Polonism is much clearer than that of antisemitism. It has been present in the Polish public discourse since the late 1960s. It has even earned a definition: “external or internal actions aimed at the destruction of the Polish state and nation, hostility towards Poland and Poles, use of lies and insinuations calculated to blacken the image of the nation”. In the popular usage the anti-Polonism is limited almost exclusively to the alleged ‘anti-Polish machinations’ on the part of Jews.[119] Icewhiz ( talk) 21:15, 29 June 2019 (UTC) Updated. Icewhiz ( talk) 06:01, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
How many times has it been explained to you that these were indeed sock puppets of neo-Nazi users and how you could verify that? WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. How many times has it been pointed out that the photographer which you keep calling a "historian" has no credentials or post in history? WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. And yes, you actually DID make the argument that Jewish scholars and academics were pushing 'anti-semitic hate speech' (sic). You just didn't stop and think how absurd that was before writing it down. And yes, your accusations against me HAVE INDEED BEEN DISGUSTING. I honestly don't know of another word thats more appropriate. Here is the diff for my comment in case anyone is interested. And as far as ""Hey, Francois Robere, can you tell me how we could rescue the puppies you and Icewhiz (potentially) drown?" - you fail to note that this is in response to Francois Robere demanding to know how Wikipedia will be protected from... future HOAXES that I am planning to create (!!!!). If you have a problem with my response you should really have a problem with Francois Robere's initial "have you stopped beating your wife" question. But no, you just present it out of context and cherry pick. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 00:06, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Also your last three FoFs are basically the same thing over and over again - it's basically: 1) Make false accusations against VM 2) VM complains 3) Use VM's complaint in your evidence 4) VM complains about your complaint 5) Use VM's complaint about your complain in your evidence... etc. oh when will this cycle end???!!?? Are you just trying to flood this page with text so that readers can't find the supported evidence against you? It's about quality not quantity. You may have the latter, but in terms of your evidence all you have is "VM dared to disagree with me about what's in sources" and "VM didn't like it when I accused him of stuff". On the other hand your sanctionable behavior is very well documented. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:37, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) The community is encouraged to make use of the material presented in this case to organize a systematic clean-up effort for Poeticbent's past contributions.
2) Volunteer Marek is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing Icewhiz anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
3) Volunteer Marek is banned from making edits relating to Jews or commenting on the characteristics of Jewish editors.
"while he objects to stating that a person was Jewish, he is insisting that we include that a person was Polish in the lede (this in the case of people who were both Polish and Jewish). I am saying, leave both out. See the double standard?), a statement not retracted.
"thanks for illustrating your manipulative nature here"[122] and
"an "essay" by a photographer full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes"[123] (denying professional credentials of literature historian/cultural anthropologist writing on antisemitism, actually a peer reviewed journal article [124] cited in another journal article [125] which also cites Shmeruk(1985) for the statement).
"thanks for illustrating your manipulative nature here"[126] and
"an "essay" by a photographer full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes"[127] - are troubling. Icewhiz ( talk) 08:24, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
1) {text of proposed enforcement}
2) {text of proposed enforcement}
1) We are here to Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia. Editors should work in a collegial manner to create and improve the article content.
2) Editors should avoid actions that promote WP:BATTLEGROUND, such as 1) personal attacks against other editors, 2) controversial aspersions against authors of sources cited, particularly where they can infringe upon WP:BLP 3) adding WP:REDFLAG content with inadequate sourcing 4) or by removing uncontroversial, relevant content, as such actions can antagonize and radicalize other editors and lead to the loss of good faith in the other party. Uncontroversial, relevant content which is poorly sourced should be tagged with {{ Citation needed}}, {{ Unreliable source?}}, {{ Self-published inline}} or such to encourage other editors to improve referencing quality without compromising current verifiability. Editors are also reminded of WP:BRD.
1) {text of proposed finding of fact}
2) {text of proposed finding of fact}
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Editors should use quality sources per WP:RS, WP:V. Editors are encouraged to replace low quality sources with high quality sources. Editors should avoid using low quality sources for any controversial ( WP:REDFLAG) claims. Low quality sources used for any controversial claims can be removed by any editor together with said controversial claims. Low quality sources used for uncontroversial claims which are relevant to the article should instead be tagged with {{ Unreliable source?}}, {{ Self-published inline}} or other relevant template, as they still serve the purpose of verifiability. Adding controversial content, or removing relevant, uncontroversial content without prior discussion and consensus should be avoided, as it can promote a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality.
2) If an editor active in this content area wants to do a significant edit that may be controversial, and if they are aware of other parties that may be interested in this, they should demonstrate good faith and desire to reach consensus by explaining it on talk with a ping and/or notifying relevant WikiProjects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Poland or Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish history.
3) {text of proposed remedy}
1) {text of proposed enforcement}
2) {text of proposed enforcement}
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for Antisemitism, broadly construed.
2) {text of proposed remedy}
1) {text of proposed enforcement}
2) {text of proposed enforcement}
1) Talk pages are not forums nor social networking sites - they are work environments. Editors active on talk pages are expected to treat and be treated by others in a respectful, professional manner.
2) WP:NPA is policy; its enforcement is not optional.
3) Wikipedia is a reflection of human society. As such, expressions of bias and prejudice among its editors are to be expected.
4) Bias and prejudice are not always overt and explicit; oftentimes they are not even aware. Neither one is a "content issue".
5) Admins have a responsibility to the community to enforce its rules and facilitate its collective endeavor.
TBD.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Administrators are encouraged to enforce NPA, but do so sensibly - taking into account the frequency and severity of offensive statements, as well as recent interactions between the parties.
2) The Committee will ask the MediaWiki Foundation to provide the community with expert resources on bias and prejudice, under a suitable Creative Commons license.
3) Editors and administrators active in cases likely involving bias or prejudice are encouraged to educate themselves on what these are and what they are not; how they are expressed; and when legitimate interests, beliefs and editorial considerations cross the line to tendentious editing, prejudice and bias.
4) The community is encouraged to develop better guidelines for handling tendentious and disruptive editing in the context of complex disagreements that likely reflect "real world" current affairs.
5) Where administrators find themselves unable to resolve a severe and longstanding dispute, they should direct the parties to ARBCOM or make a preliminary ARB/R themselves.
TBD.
All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view, with all relevant points of view represented in reasonable proportion to their importance and relevance to the subject-matter of the article. Undue weight should not be given to aspects that are peripheral to the topic. Original research and synthesized claims are prohibited. A neutral point of view requires fair representation of all significant historical interpretations. This refers to legitimate differences in interpretation of the historical record, as opposed to views considered fringe, outdated, or significantly biased or inaccurate by the substantial consensus of reliable sources.
An editor must not accuse another of inappropriate conduct without evidence, especially when the accusations are repeated or severe. Comments should not be personalized, but should instead be directed at content and specific actions. Disparaging an editor or casting aspersions can be considered a personal attack. If accusations are made, they should be raised, with evidence, on the user talk page of the editor they concern or in the appropriate dispute resolution forums.
1) Tatzref promoted fringe POV in the realm of the Judeo Bolshevism / Żydokomuna canard.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
t is an undeniable historical fact—acknowedged by historians who specialize in the field—that Jews first came to Poland as traders, and that the main commodity of their trade was the export of Christian slaves to international markets, largely Muslim.-- and yet, predictably, none of your sources including your tokenized YIVO support your defamatory conclusion that the
main commodity of their trade was the export of Christian slaves. -- Calthinus ( talk) 17:51, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
2) {text of proposed finding of fact}
1) Articles on pre-1989 Polish-Jewish history are placed under sourcing restriction. Only high-quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers. English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance. Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans.
Two things: we already have a perfectly good Wikipedia policy on this. It's WP:RS. It just needs to be followed. Again, I note that when somebody removes clearly non-RS sources, nobody objects, hence this appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Second, sourcing policy and guidelines are really up to the community, not ArbCom. This is something that could be decided at WP:ANI or through a general RfC on the topic (going waayyyyy back into Wikipedia history, I'm reminded of the Gdansk Vote). Indeed, for something like this to actually be workable (and perhaps it would be) you would need the input of a significant number of editors, particularly those with some expertise and knowledge in, if not this topic area, history and particularly non-Western world history (less we get into WP:SYSTEMICBIAS). I don't know if we have any historians on the ArbCom currently or folks with expert knowledge in related areas.
I have no problem with the last sentence of the proposal and have implicitly called for something like that in the past repeatedly. I do have some concerns about this kind of provision about "escalating topic bans" being weaponized in furtherance of WP:BATTLEGROUND given the history of some editors in this topic area, but I would support it, if that particular sentence was split off into its own proposal. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:38, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
In other words, just because Icewhiz uses unreliable Polish sources in his edits I don't see why other editors, who use reliable Polish sources should be penalized for Icewhiz's actions. The problem is with him. Address the real problem, not an imaginary one. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:51, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@ K.e.coffman: Ok, so Tec qualifies (even though it's a book for a popular audience and she's a sociologist not a historian - but I can accept that), how about Timothy Snyder writing in the New York Review of Books?
The thing is, the actual non-reliable sources like this Mark Paul guy ... nobody here thinks they should be used and there's no objections to them being removed. Well, maybe Tatzref (I haven't looked that closely) but even then, we do have WP:CONSENSUS not to use him. Same goes for Anna Poray or whoever. Problem doesn't actually exist. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 01:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@ K.e.coffman: Well, I did make an exception for Tatzref, and Piotrus comment there is that MP could possibly be used for non-controversial claims. Even if you disagree with that, that's not really standing in a way of removing of MP from articles nor does it make it challenging. AFAICR, when MP was removed as source, those removals weren't reverted or undone.
It'd be simpler here to just reiterate that self-published sources cannot be used in this topic area and be done with it, rather than inventing some new convoluted and unnecessary sourcing restriction that may ended up accerbating the BATTLEGROUND in the topic, as editors start to argue over whether a particular source falls under this restriction or not. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 17:58, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@ K.e.coffman: Also, K.e., I'm fine with us sitting down and discussing and coming to an agreement as to what sources can and cannot be used. But this is a much more of a complicated issue than something that can be decided simply by ArbCom fiat. See my proposal below. After this is over we can start a dedicated sub-page (a workshop if you will) to hash this out. As long as this involves editors who are acting in good faith (like yourself), I have hopes that it would work. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 18:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
The thing is, the actual non-reliable sources like this Mark Paul guy ... nobody here thinks they should be used and there's no objections to them being removed-- Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland/Evidence#Removing unsuitable sources has been challenging where I provide examples of Tatzref and Piotrus arguing for the retention of "Mark Paul". It required an RSN discussion & an RfC to get him removed. (A third editor also supported retention but I did not mention them as they are currently topic banned). -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 15:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
accerbat[e] the BATTLEGROUND in the topic? -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:03, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
1) Articles on Polish-Jewish history are placed under civility restriction. Users are required to follow proper decorum during discussions and edits. Users may be sanctioned (including blocks) if they make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith.
3) For promotion of fringe theories, Tatzref is indefinitely topic banned.
4) { }
1) Icewhiz has violated WP:BLP policy by using questionable sources and/or emphasizing exclusively negative information in articles on living subjects as well as on various talk pages
Articles affected: Norman Davies Bogdan Musial John Radzilowski Gunnar Paulsson Richard C. Lukas Piotr Gontarczyk Antony Polonsky (more), also Tomasz Strzembosz (dead for 15 years but same kind of edits)
"A lawsuit by a British scholar who contends he was denied a professorship because Jewish faculty members considered his work "insensitive" toward Jews and "unacceptably defensive" of Polish gentiles in World War II .... Mr. Davies's lawsuit contends that the vote was based not on bona fide academic criteria but on a "conspiracy" to deny him the position "because of political views plaintiff had expressed in his written publications with respect to Poland, the Soviet Union and the teaching of Polish and Soviet history which such defendants believed, among other things, to be insensitive to people of the Jewish faith and unacceptably defensive of the behavior of the Polish people, particularly during the German occupation of Poland in World War II."[164] Discussing whether a source is possibly WP:PARTISAN (in this case - in regards to the Home Army treatment of Jews) is what talk pages are for. Icewhiz ( talk) 08:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"Janicka is a photographer, not a historian..."when the subject is in fact "Elżbieta Janicka is a historian of literature, cultural anthropologist, photographer ... PhD at Warsaw University (2004) ... Currently working at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences." [165] are probably more questionable from a BLP standpoint than pointing out Davies' tenure rejection at Standford. Icewhiz ( talk) 09:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"single NGO"- we're talking about the Southern Poverty Law Center profiling this individual (twice, over a decade) [166] [167] - and specifically also covering his writings/opinions on the topic matter we're discussion. As for the "essay" published by this individual - I will note that the "essay" seems awfully well informed regarding editing on Wikipedia. In particular the mention of the Wrangell Bombardment ( [168] - paragraph prior to last) - something brought up by Volunteer Marek in this arbitration - diff and previously as well (for some reason VM thinks I should be beholden evermore to his service for copy edits performed for 11 minutes - 02:06-02:17 - well I will say thank you for the copy edits, but really - I don't decide on whether to edit or not to edit Polish topics (heck - I'm not sure I knew back then VM was involved in Polish topics) based on a copy edit!) - as a rather interesting coincidence. In terms of Trust & Safety in this community - how many editors want to be constantly followed around, personally attacked, and have a column devoted to them by a SPLC-profiled individual? Icewhiz ( talk) 08:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
2) Icewhiz has engaged in WP:TENDENTIOUS editing by misrepresenting sources and by presenting irrelevant sources to WP:STONEWALL discussions
The following are particularly egregious: [177] (makes claims about alleged censorship in Poland, but uses a source about censorship in Russia), [178] (pretends dispute is over whether a story is legendary or factual, actual dispute is about how the legend is portrayed in literature) [179] (claims interview by Antony Polonsky is not by Polonsky. At first he actually claimed that the interview could have been faked, he then backed off and "only" insisted it wasn't by Polonsky but by the interviewer. This after advocating for using Polonsky on talk), [180] (pretends dispute is over funding over organization, actual dispute is over uniqueness of organization. Blind revert)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Volunteer Marek ( talk • contribs)
And User:Icewhiz, please drop this whole "use of non-English media" hypocrisy. YOU yourself have used PLENTY of "non-English media", some of very very very low quality, yourself, when it suited your purpose. Do I really need to bring this diff out again? (prawy.pl - anti-semitic website, fronda.pl - right wing magazine, pch24.pl - right wing Catholic source (which also makes your complaints about and attempts to remove "Catholic" sources look hypocritical, tysol.pl - not reliable Polish media) You've also used this source (conservative magazine - maybe RS?) When other users use reliable Polish media sources written by historians you scream to high heavens about "use of non-English media" (and attack the authors). Then when it fits in with the narrative you're trying to push you turn around and use junkety unreliable Polish sources. How the hey does that work? Wanna explain that one? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
3) Icewhiz has made provocative and vexing unsourced comments on talk in an effort to WP:BAIT other editors.
There are a number of issues in this FoF proposal and comments above:
"Don't take the bait"- so that they won't get sanctioned under the civility policy.
"sock puppets of banned neo-Nazi user(s)"- without any evidence to back up that said IP/editors are indeed sockpuppets, their alleged "neo-Nazi" nature, or for that matter - my awareness of any of the above. These are WP:ASPERSIONS towards me and said editors (IPs or registered) - very serious ones - and unless Volunteer Marek can back them up with iron-clad evidence (that said IPs/editors were sockpuppets, "neo-Nazis", as well as my awareness of such) - this sort of comment is sanctionable (I will note I had a few other such socking aspersions in early versions of my evidence - but as part of a diff pare down (to meet diff limits in evidence) - I removed PAs not towards myself).
Icewhiz ( talk) 09:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Also, Icewhiz's argument here seems to be "yeah I baited him, but hey, he fell for it at least once, so what's the problem?" This is exactly the problem. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
The conflicts between Jews and Poles were mostly based on the faith disputes and economic issues. Some Poles, for example, being Catholics unfairly blamed Jews for the death of Christs. Some Jews, on the other hand, favored other Jews in business and discriminated Polish traders. The list of this minor conflicts between the Jews and Poles is very long but in general Jews in Poles lived in Poland together in relative peace and harmony for centuries. This all changed on the outbreak of the warWhat a naive, ignorant view of Polish-Jewish history. "Conflict between Jews and Poles"? In a historically Catholic, eastern European country with only 10% Jews? What kind of a conflict is that? And pretending everything was fine, with no antisemitism whatsoever, until the Nazies arrived?
Jews lost all rights because of the Nazi orders and that is when some of the antisemitic elements within the Polish society blossomed. Jewish life was worthless, criminal element further demoralized by the reality of the war took advantage of the situation and committed many crimes against the Jews, rapes and murders. But you need to understand that these people didn't represent Polish society as a whole. Majority of the Poles were rather sympathetic to the Jewish situation, and many actively helped despite the fact that any help was punished by death (imagine that!)Yeah, she actually wrote that. You know, "criminal elements demoralized by the war" is a curious phrase, typical to wartime underground publications. Yes, here on Wikipedia we have editors promoting the same apologia the Polish underground promoted while trying to maintain order in occupied Poland, without actually doing much for about a tenth of its population. So yeah, there's some "minimization" of antisemitism going on around here, and you not noticing it at all - this "cherry picking" of sorts, where out of five links you pick something that's completely irrelevant to the point I was making - is as telling as anything. François Robere ( talk) 17:03, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
The above statement unfortunately is indictative of the battleground behavior of FR and Icewhiz-no matter what topic they engage with Polish users, their aim seems to be maximizing allegations of Poland wronging Jews, leading to such hyberpole statements as above, completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.As mentioned previously if someone is on moral crusade on Wikipedia than it doesn't create good atmosphere for cooperation and reliable sourcing.Never mind the absurdity of claiming Polish underground in German occupied Poland, had any resources to "maintain order" while fighting for survival.Unfortunately such statements completely disconnected with reality of Second World War are commonplace when discussing topics with FR and Icewhiz.-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 18:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
4) Icewhiz has inflamed the atmosphere in the topic area by trying to "win" disagreements by seeking sanctions against other editors rather than making a good faith effort to resolve disputes on talk
5) Icewhiz has made several very serious accusations and insinuations regarding Holocaust and anti-semitism. The serious nature of such accusations normally requires that they are supported by evidence which Icewhiz has failed to provide.
"Editors who reinstate edits made by a banned or blocked editor take complete responsibility for the content"would seem to apply) - performed near the Straw that broke the camel's back that led to AE . However - VM is responsible for placing that language.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Icewhiz is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing Volunteer Marek anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
Note that while this is outside the topic area, the situation here in many respects resembles what happened between User:Icewhiz and User:Malik Shabazz. Malik had been editing since 2006, almost as long as I have. And Malik, who is Jewish, was one of the first editors to raise the alarm about Icewhiz, both regarding their actions in Israel-Palestine topic area (note Icewhiz's BLP violation even back then) [210] and in regard to Poland [211]. As a result Icewhiz began following Malik around, filing AE reports against him and trying to provoke him, all the while of course trying to play the victim. At one point Icewhiz even tried to secretly (by privately emailing Sandstein) get Malik sanctioned [212] for an alleged topic ban violation involving edits made... before the topic ban was actually placed (Malik's topic ban from I-P was placed on him on May 23 2018, Icewhiz tried to get him banned for edits made on May 12 2018) (a pretty good example of how Icewhiz operates and the level of honesty he brings to the Wikipedia). After continued baiting and baiting and baiting and baiting by Icewhiz, Malik finally lost his temper [213] [214] and told Icewhiz off in no uncertain terms. Icewhiz's tactic worked and Malik got a block. Pissed off, he left Wikipedia after more than twelve years. Icewhiz drove him off.
Now, yeah, Malik over stepped. But this was after having to put up with so much crap from Icewhiz, who was never held accountable for his actions, that it's no wonder he left. Since his tactic was successful the last time, he's trying to use it again here, by likewise making extremely offensive provocative claims and hoping he can get somebody (me) sanctioned for their response. How many long time editors is Icewhiz gonna drive off the project before somebody does something about it? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
2) Icewhiz is banned for one year from any articles about living or recently deceased persons (BLPs) relating to Poland. He may still discuss BLPs on talk pages but is reminded that WP:BLP needs to be followed.
3) Icewhiz is banned for one year from filing or commenting upon any reports to WP:AE concerning the topic of Eastern Europe unless he is the subject of the report or as a response to being mentioned by another user in the report.
4) The editors involved in this dispute are directed to work together to develop a dedicated guideline to the best-practice use of sources in this topic area.
5) Icewhiz is topic banned for one year from making edits related to the topic of Poland, broadly construed
"the narrative of Judeo-communism constitutes a premise for historical thinking characteristic of the new ethnonationalistic or 'monumental' historiography claiming to defend the good name of Poland. Its leading representatives are Marek J. Chodakiewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, Leszek Zebrowski, Bogdan Musial, the late Tomasz Strzembosz, Igor Cyprian Pogonowksi and Krzysztof Jasiewicz".( page 118), as well as use of these authors when they are self-published (e.g. blogs, op-eds, self-published books). Conversely - I have suggested we use the Polish Wikipedia as a POV guide (e.g. [259]), and have introduced works by Polish scholars belonging to other schools of thought (oddly omitted from Wikipedia articles, perhaps since VM has viewed some of these as:
"full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes"[260]). Icewhiz ( talk) 07:23, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
5) Icewhiz is topic banned for one year from making edits to articles related to Poland, broadly construed, but he may still make suggestions on talk pages and participate in discussions
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Forgive me, I will go slightly off template here -- I don't intend at the moment to contribute anything else on this page. I will not pretend to be a major party involved here. Neither will I pretend to be impartial. However I have an idea that perhaps could be of use.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) For one year beginning with the realization (if it happens) of this rule, all articles and disputes covering Polish-Jewish history are covered by a collective 5RR (henceforth C5RR) rule. What this means is that if more than five reverts by any editor of the same semantic contact occur within 48 hours, the page in question will be locked so that only admins can edit, for a time chosen at the discretion of the admin imposing the penalty.
Caveats:
A. This does not cover reverts of banned users or sockpuppets.
B. This does not cover material on information that happens to be Polish-Jewish related pages that is not directly related to Polish/Jewish relations (broadly construed). For example, details of fighting between Bolsheviks and Whites or the Polish-Lithuanian conflict is not covered; on the other hand, Pilsudski, Sanation, Dmowski, Karski etc are, as although clearly solely Polish in identity and not Jewish, they were important entities in Polish-Jewish history.
C. This does not cover reverts of information that could endanger the safety or privacy of living persons.
D. If the sixth reverter self reverts before the page lock is placed, the penalty can be averted, just like at 3RR.
E. Admins involved in the dispute cannot edit a page locked by this remedy.
F. Just like at 3RR, participants should be given a chance to make a case that 6 reverts of the same semantic content did not happen.
Wikipedia should be based on sources which are judged by objective criteria.Rejecting sources based on ethnicity/nationality of the author shouldn't be allowed.
Wikipedia articles are to be written from neutral point of view taking into account reliable and mainstream sources.Using Wikipedia to correct or condemn perceived wrongs harms the principle of neutrality-especially if such perceived wrongs aren't suppored by mainstream views.
The case goes beyod the single issue of antisemitism, and concerns issues such as genocide of Poles by Nazi Germany, Soviet occupation and MOS:Ethnicity among others.As such it should be renamed.
Throughout the evidence it is clear that Icewhiz is engaged in edits dictated by uncompromising stance and is unwilling to compromise with others.
From comments about Polish media being used as source, to comparing Poland to Iran, North Korea, constantly claiming that Polish sources are unreliable, comparing Poland to Nazi Germany, and Polish resistance to Nazis, to claiming that occupation of Poland in Second World War is Polish nationalist POV and so forth, it is clear that there is a stance where sources and information is judged on basis of ethnic criteria rather than objective value.
The most controversial of Icewhiz's edits happened when he lost arguments or nominations to DYK articles.After this happened Icewhiz went on wide spree on Polish related articles entering highly controversial claims or straight ahead blanking whole articles.
"mostly added by blocked sock. A number of NPOV, MOS, V, and SYNTH issues"leaving a stub. Half the article is unrelated SYNTH. Some information fails V - e.g.
"Romkowski himself taught Różański everything about torture"does not appear in the inline citation - Night voices: heard in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin by Heather Laskey. We generally do not trust sockpuppets to accurately represent sources (see WP:BANREVERT) - and in this case the revert was performed only after an attempt of verification - that failed. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:40, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 11:28, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
At the moment it isn't clear what type of descriptions are allowed to clearly describe complex identities in Central European/Eastern European topics, especially in context of 19th century and Second World War history.Wikipedia is edited by editors from many national and cultural backgrounds-there might be some cultural miscommunication/clash on what to consider the best description of nationality/ethnicity in places with very detailed and complex history of inter-ethnic relations.These edits are not necessarily expression of ill will, but better guidance would be welcomed.
I could understand if two editors are in conflict with each other but in this case Icewhiz gets in conflict with any Polish user that he comes across on Wikipedia.Even those who strived hard to reach some kind of compromise and cooperation like Piotrus have eventually been attacked by Icewhiz.
any Polish user that he comes across on Wikipedia... Well, what can you do. François Robere ( talk) 16:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Throughout his edits Icewhiz has presented cherry picked information and sources to present extreme claims and statements(Poles=mass murderers of Jews, Poland is equal to Nazi Germany,Poles mass murdered 200,000 Jews). These statements were selected to present the most extreme statements regarding Jewish-Polish history. Even in cases where source later distanced itself from extreme claims(like Grabowski retreating from claim of 200,000 Jews murdered by Poles), Icewhiz continued to add this information, knowning fully that is no longer supported by source, and even dismissing Grabowski's statement as "Polish media report". This example shows that the user was interested in provoking and causing controversy by carefully selecting the most controversial material to be presented on Wikipedia.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) Community has discussion on how to better define MOS:Ethnicity in regards to Eastern Europe history, especially in regards to complex identities emerging in 19th century and Second World War. For example on how problematic MOS:Ethnicity is now:should a member of Selbstschutz-a paramilitary organization of German minority in Poland that fought on side Nazi Germany in WW2 be described as Polish in the lead? Should members of Polish Uprising against Germany in 1919 Poznan be described as Germans solely based on their citizenship at the time? I don't want to go into details here, but recent discussions showed that current MOS:Ethnicity is very inadequate in relation to complicated issues in history of Central and Eastern Europe.
2) Community has discussion on how to improve evaluating sources and to avoid extreme use of sources known to be controversial or pushing forward non-mainstream views on history.
1) Due to heavy battleground behavior and tendentious editing this would be in my view a justifiable cool off period for the editor to rethink his behavior.As Icewhiz is in conflict with almost everyone editing this area, the conflicts he is having are likely to continue unless he changes the behavior.
Icewhiz is warned not to make ethnic based remarks.Icewhiz is also warned not to push for rejection of sources based on their ethnic/national background.Sources are to be judged on objective criteria.
Place here items of evidence (with diffs) and detailed analysis
First, the most constructive thing this ArbCom could do is to review and hopefully rescind, with an apology, the topic ban against User:Poeticbent which caused his retirement. He was the author of 1000+ quality articles including 200+ DYKs, many of them on Polish-Jewish history, like his GA on the Treblinka extermination camp, and also a contributor of helpful infographics like a map of the Holocaust in Poland. See AE where he received his topic ban for a single diff perceived as violating NPA and comments on his talk page. While this ArbCom may or may not issue sanctions against others, it is also high time ArbCom tried to foster a good editing environment by repairing past damage and actively encouraging editors who are here to build the encyclopedia, sending a message that Wikipedia is here for content, not for fighting and flaming. This is also relevant to this case, not only because Poeticbent is listed as a party, but because a prolific content creator, being driven away after having been baited into making a single NPA, is a prime example of the damage done to our community and to the project's overarching mission, when 'remedies' are being handed out in a cowboy fashion without considering the 'big picture'. ArbCom should therefore review the appropriateness of Poeticbent's topic ban in its findings, and consider the pros and cons of an apology to him. While such apologies and outreach are not common practice, precedents are to be set, and I specifically recommended that Wikimedia Foundation creates an outreach program targeting retired, prolific contributors in my peer reviewed paper. If a precedent is set and he returns, recovering a very prolific content creator for the project, it my humble opinion it would mean this ArbCom would have already achieved much, much more than most others. And I wager that you, dear committee members, would probably feel better about your role, too, being remembered as a THE Committee that started the process of actually helping people and saying nice things about them...
Second. analysis of my evidence. MVBW wrote in his evidence "Icewhiz thinks that others downplay crimes by Poles against Jews and therefore fights back by downplaying crimes committed by Nazi, Soviet NKVD and communists against Polish people. Others feel offended (see evidence by Molobo). That ensure the battleground." This a very good summary, except downplaying crimes committed by Nazis on Poles is IMHO not that common. Instead what is happening is that IMHO Icewhiz (and Francois, an editor who joined the topic area together with Icewhiz and whose edits are effectively limited to being a "tag-team" yes-man to him) thinks that Poles are trying to exaggerate the extent to which they helped the Jews during the war to counterbalance the shameful revelations about the extent of Polish antisemitism, and so he is trying to both remove the mentions of rescue efforts (as exaggerated) and stress the (according to him - and he is not totally wrong here, marginalized) extent of Polish antisemitism. Now, in all fairness, Polish sources (and populace in general) are biased, roughly in the way he thinks they are... but neither are Israeli (or American, etc.) sources free of bias, and NPOV does allow us to use biased sources, as long as they are reliable, with care to undue and such. I also strongly believe that no editor discussed in this case so far has done anything that warrants anything but a warning at most (this certainly includes Poeticbent, whose topic ban and retirement was actually the worst thing that has happened to this topic area). In particular, I want to stress that while the arrival of Icewhiz (and FR) in this topic area two years ago has created, sadly enough, conflict and battleground, it has also been valuable from the neutrality perspective. The topic area has been indeed unduly dominated by pro-Polish sources, and it needed more balance. It is just a shame this could not have been done in a more collegian fashion, and instead resulted in a progressing battleground mentality (please see my mini-essays on radicalization and the related model). The crux of the issue, really, is the near total erosion of good faith. One side perceives the other as borderline antisemitic; the other, offended, perceives other as anti-Polish, and instead of collaborating, I am afraid too many editors on both sides are increasingly trying to get their opponents banned or blocked (hence, the numerous AE reports that have culminated in this ArbCom). So far, the only real damage was the driving away of Poeticbent, which resulted in the net loss of dozens of articles he would have written and expanded if he was still here. It is nonetheless a great loss, because Poetcibent has done more in this area than all of the other parties here combined, myself included (and while I am a major content creator, I am pretty sure that Poeticbent created more content in this area than me). It is crucial to prevent this from happening again, and if possible, to reverse it by inviting him back (with a note that his contributions are appreciated, and maybe a caution that he should be more careful when editing topics related to the zydokomuna topic). How to solve the bigger issue, i.e. mandate good faith, is mostly besides me (hey, that's why you, the Committee, gets the big wikibucks, eh?). All I can do is to demonstrate why one can perceive Icewhiz edits as anti-Polish (through I am sure from his view he is only restoring the balance and removing undue pro-Polish POV, and hence, per AFG, I personally don't believe he consciously has such a POV). While things need to be 'centered', and pro-Polish bias should be tamed, the examples I presented in my evidence are where IMHO Icewhiz (and occasionally, FR) have went to far, skirting if not violating NPOV, BLP, and other polices, which in turn led to the spiral of retaliation, radicalization and battleground creation which landed us here.
I will also note that one way to decrease battleground mentality is to realize one's POV, and try to make compromise edits, not only grudgingly allowing "others" to have their say, but actually agreeing with them - and putting one's "edits" where one proverbial mouth is. For example, even through I am a Pole, I've created articles on topics controversial to many Poles, such as Collaboration in German-occupied Poland, Hunt for the Jews, Jan Grabowski (historian), or the Golden Harvest (book), because they are notable and needed, even if some of them tackle issues that make my nation appear less then the perfect ideal some wish it was. Poeticbent, as noted, created dozens of articles on Jewish suffering. While one cannot mandate content creation as an enforceable remedy, one can partially judge whether an editor is attempting to compromise or not, and whether their conduct is constructive or not in a given topic, by their edits, in the spirit of Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia. I strongly encourage all involved parties to consider whether they are here to build an encyclopedia, or fight a war and prove a side "right" or "wrong".
Lastly, analysis of evidence presented by others. First I do not believe than anyone, myself included, has presented anything that warrants more than a warning, or at least I can't think of what other type of solutions would be helpful, as, IMHO crucially, the quality and neutrality of various articles has been improved. It just would be nice if somehow we could all follow WP:AGF. One recommendation I have, for Icewhiz and FR (that they are already familiar with), would be to treat Polish sources with less suspicion then they do. They are, of course, biased, but so are others, and the Polish sources are often able to access a wealth of primary sources like the Polish eyewitness accounts Western academics simply can't read. And while we should strive to use reliable sources, sometimes WP:SPS or such are acceptable, if they do not raise any WP:REDFLAGS (per Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when...). Case in point, Icewhiz removal of Poray as a source from various ghetto articles (and more recent criticism of Lux Veritas Foundation's website) was very much not helpful.
First, 90% of the content sourced to Poray that was removed could have been verified with more reliable sources (as I've shown).
Second, none of the content removed was 'redflag'. Challenged contented was limited strictly to uncontroversial statements of facts, with no opinions or such being offered. Some common sense perspective is needed. I often deal with cleanup of spam/vanity ( WP:NORG, etc.), nominating many articles for deletion. A low quality, SPS, promotional source like a company's website or a press release is still acceptable for uncontroversial statements of facts like company's year of founding or location of their HQ or other facilities, and what Icewhiz is challenging here is no more controversial - simple statements that Person X attempted to aid Person Y, more often then not receiving the Righteous Among Nations award. No heated opinions, just cold and uncontroversial facts that help build content, but whose removal creates a heated controversy as some editors are offended by what they perceive as attempts to censor simple facts.
Third. Icewhiz argues that such facts nonetheless are an attempt to push a particular POV. The relevant policy for us to consider is WP:UNDUE, and the relevant solution, discussion on talk. Generally, per WP:NOTPAPER, we have room for all the facts, but if there are concerns about some sections having undue length or such, the solution is, per WP:SUMMARY, to split them off and only offer a summary in the main article. This is the constructive approach. Removing such information, or trying to get editors who add it sanctioned, is the opposite of being constructive and building an encyclopedia, and results in battleground creation and related problems.
Fourth, going after content added by an editor one was in conflict with, and who retired after an unfair accusation and sanction, is not particularly 'sporting'.
Fifth, the few paltry diffs there were gathered as evidence of my misdoing are little more than illustration of battleground mentality and an attempt to win content disputes by trying to get the other party sanctioned (sadly, it works often enough, case in point being what happened to Poeticbent). Consider (headings adapted from Icewhiz's evidence, through constant revisions of it can make things confusing):
Lastly, it is imperative to stress that it is such challenge and removal of uncontroversial facts that fueled the battleground situation, creating an impression that there is a drive to remove (censor) information about Polish rescuers from Wikipedia. Icewhiz could have reduced the battleground mentality on both sides in this area by extending an olive branch and replacing substandard sources with reliable sources (like I did later, it took just a few hours). But he chose to remove information that he knew well would antagonize editors on the other side further. This type of editing and attitude should be curtailed; either voluntarily or through community's guidance.
"the result of many years of research carried out by the Lux Veritatis Foundation") run by Lux Veritatis Foundation (Rydzyk), which probably counts as self-published, and is
"Lux Veritas Foundation run by the ultra-conservative and nationalistic redemptorist Tadeusz Rydzyk, infamous for his anti-Semitic enunciations"Wóycicka, Zofia. "Global patterns, local interpretations: new polish museums dedicated to the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust." Holocaust Studies (2019): 1-25. - is beyond the pale. This during the case being open. Also - 12 June 2019 addition of pamiecitozsamosc.pl by Piotrus. This is alarming, to say the least. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:09, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
"Radio Maryja and the other extreme nationalist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic media of the controversial Father Rydzyk"as a source on Wikipedia?! Kucia, Marek, Marta Duch-Dyngosz, and Mateusz Magierowski. "Anti-Semitism in Poland: survey results and a qualitative study of Catholic communities." Nationalities Papers 42.1 (2014): 8-36. Nationalities Papers is peer reviewed and published by Cambridge University Press, prof. dr hab. Marek Kucia is tenured at Jagiellonian University. Up to snuff for Holocaust history in Poland per comments here, it would seem. Icewhiz ( talk) 15:11, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
- specifically saying "in addition to Icewhiz's examples" - so no, not a single diff. Icewhiz ( talk) 14:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC) Cut out sig from quote - so it won't appear like comment was made here. Icewhiz ( talk) 15:44, 26 June 2019 (UTC)":*I've looked more closely at Icewhiz's counterallegations regarding Poeticbent. The charge of misusing SPS isn't something I'd act on, because it's close to a content dispute and it's not realistic to expect admins here to check the reliability of this number of sources; that would need an ArbCom case. But I think that Icewhiz's complaint regarding personal attacks by Poeticbent are actionable; one needs only to look at their most recent edit ("you are being manipulated by a POV pusher with a deep bias against Polish people in general") in addition to Icewhiz's examples to get the impression that this is somebody who operates in full WP:BATTLEGROUND mode. I think that a topic ban from the World War II history of Poland (the apparent topic of this set of disputes) would be appropriate here."
"The charge of misusing SPS isn't something I'd act on, because it's close to a content dispute and it's not realistic to expect admins here to check the reliability of this number of sources; that would need an ArbCom case"- is exactly the issue with the current DS regime / AE enforcement. Users may introduce dubious sources, repeatedly, a WP:V policy violation - yet face no enforcement under DS as it is deemed too complex for enforcement. Icewhiz ( talk) 14:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
User:Icewhiz says in his rebuttal to MVBW I urge Arbs to contrast EnglishWiki version (...) vs. PolishWiki version. The POV slant (even only lede) in English is striking. This exemplifies topic area: PolishWiki is Polish left-of-center POV, while EnglishWiki slants Polish right-wing POV.
Icewhiz, can you clarify which parts of the EnglishWiki lede you consider to be POV?
Can you clarify which parts of the EnglishWiki lede of this article [312] you consider to be "right-wing"?
Can you clarify which parts of the PolishWiki lede of this article [313] you consider to be "left-wing"?
Volunteer Marek ( talk) 09:13, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
User:Icewhiz Reply: No, actually the comment in your Evidence section is NOT "general" and it is in fact "directed to this specific article", since you explicitly name it (quote: Nazi crimes against the Polish nation: I urge Arbs to contrast ...
Can you please clarify what in that specific article's lede on English Wikipedia is "right-wing"? What in that specific article's lede on Polish Wikipedia is "left-wing"?
And are you seriously complaining that individuals such as Karol Świerczewski (general in the Red Army, high ranking member of the communist party) Michał Rola-Żymierski (high ranking member of the communist party, officer in the NKVD and Minister of Defense in communist Poland) being described as "communist" is "POV"? Wow. This is worse than I thought. None of your other examples AFAICT include these "value judgements" (sic) of calling things "communist" or "Stalinist". Just, you know, people who actually were communists. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:21, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm also puzzled as to why you are objecting to my removal of a copy-paste
WP:COPYVIO
[314] when you say note also rationale in...
(the exact text in the source is in the 6th paragraph). Are you suggesting we should leave COPYVIOs in our articles when they happen to agree with our POV?
Volunteer Marek (
talk) 08:32, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Can you also provide examples of these "outsiders" who, like you, were surprised that communist army generals and communist party members were referred to as "communist" or that COPYVIO copy-pastes were removed from articles? I'm not seeing any but maybe I'm missing it. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:39, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
And nota bene that while Rola-Zymierski's Polish Wikipedia article does not mention his service in the NKVD in the lede, it actually has a whole, large dedicated section to it in the body (hence, someone should fix the Polish Wikipedia, assuming their lede guidelines are the same as ours). The English Wikipedia version does not have a such section. So ... you actually kind of got it backwards. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 08:43, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
"Polish high-ranking Communist Party leader, communist military commander, NKVD secret agent, and Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin's order from 1945 until his death"- not so Polish.... (note diff). Whereas on PolishWiki's lede we have a factual description of his military and political career (including pre-1927 in Poland) - no "by Joseph Stalin's order" or "NKVD agent" in the lede. Radical negation is
"expressed by right-wing groups". [324]
"the same reaction on the part of right-wing ethno-nationalistic historians and politicians: highly emotive and sinister attempts to counterbalance the ‘dark history’ by underscoring the ‘feel-good, light history.’[325]
"The extreme right traditionally thrives on debates about history, especially when the integrity of the nationalist narrative is questioned. Thus, extreme-right groups and leaders are frequently active during symbolic conflicts such as the controversy around the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom and similar tragic events. The debates have polarised Polish society with respect to its relationship with the past, especially the issue of anti-Semitism". [327]
" Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin's order from 1945 until his death- Stalin died in 1953. Rola-Żymierski died in 1989. I believe Rola-Żymierski remained Marshal of Poland (OF-10 - 5 star general) until 1989 (it seems it is the rank is still on his gravestone) - well after Stalin's order or influence dissipated in the USSR, Warsaw Pact, and Poland. Seems he kept the rank after being dismissed/imprisoned in 1953-56 (purges) - and that he fulfilled a number of roles in Poland (e.g. National Bank, Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy) from 1956 and until his death. Icewhiz ( talk) 12:02, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
This is partly in response to evidence presented by User:MJL. In addition to past Arbcom cases, it's also instructive to look at what has happened at WP:AE and, basically, why "WP:AE failed". Indeed, this was one of - if not THE - rationale given for accepting the case by some arbs.
Since June 2017 Icewhiz has been involved in a whopping ... FIFTY WP:AE reports (it's possible I'm UNDERcounting) . That's more than one and a half WP:AE report per month. He easily holds the record as the most frequent participant during this period, if not overall.
Of these 50 reports, 32 are related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, 15 to Eastern Europe, 2 to UK Politics and one to American politics. The ones related to Eastern Europe don't start until 2018. In both these topic areas there has been an explosion of WP:AE reports since Icewhiz arrived on the scene(s)
Of these 50 reports, Icewhiz was a commentator in about 54% (27/50) of them, he filed the report in about the third of the (16/50) and was the subject of the report in 14% (7/50). In the topic area of Eastern Europe, Icewhiz was filer in 46.6% (7/15) of the reports, subject of report in a third (5/15) and commentator in 2.
By my count, out of all the reports he participated in, discounting those in UK and American politics and one which was withdrawn, the % of reports that were closed inline with Icewhiz's views and/or requests was 37%. The % of reports that were closed against Icewhiz was 45.7%. The rest were closed as neither for or against Icewhiz.
There is an interesting pattern here as far as WP:AE admins are concerned. Out of those reports that were closed against Icewhiz, 5 or 23.8% were closed against him by Sandstein. The remainder of reports that were closed against him, 76.2%, were closed by other admins (AGK, TonyBallionni, GoldenRing, NeilN, a couple others - Sandstein is by far the most active admin at AE so it makes sense to lump all not-Sandsteins together).
Of the reports that were closed in Icewhiz's favor, 82.4% were closed in such a favorable manner by Sandstein. Of the reports that were closed in Icewhiz's favor only 17.6% percent of were closed by other admins.
To put it another way, out of all the Icewhiz-related reports that Sandstein closed, he closed them favorably for him 73.8% of the time. Out of all the Icewhiz-related reports that were closed by OTHER admins, they closed them favorably to Icewhiz only 15.8% percent of the time.
I don't know about others, but this looks very very skewed. I could do a p value test here but I'm pretty sure even with a low N (number of observations) it'd pop out as a statistically significant difference.
I think Icewhiz has been using WP:AE as a weapon in his WP:BATTLEGROUND - this is evidenced by the sheer volume of reports he's involved in AND that's he's filed. This is true for BOTH Eastern Europe and Israel-Palestine topic areas (hell, maybe we should expand the scope of this case). He's had some success, particularly because of one particular admin, who, unlike other admins there, has been very favorable to him. This has incentivized Icewhiz to seek "resolution" of disputes by trying to get those that disagree with him sanctioned, rather than trying to achieve consensus on talk pages. This in turn results in Icewhiz's uncompromising attitude on talk, his derailing of discussions when they start not to go his way, and his taunts and provocations. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:03, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
@ MJL: Here is raw data. If you copy-paste it into a text file, then open it as tab delimited text in Excel it should line up nicely. I'll try to do a proper table but right now I got to get finished with this Evidence beeswax. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 06:28, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
@ MJL: Thanks! I might throw some more raw data at you then (that's what you get for being helpful). One thing - the Notes column is off because I was sorting the rows to do the calculations above and didn't sort that column. Probably best to just remove it as it's kind of irrelevant anyway. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:02, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
Note: Actually it's a bit worse, because for 3 months out of those 2 years, Icewhiz was topic banned from EE which prevented him from filing WP:AE's in the area. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 02:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Seraphim System is reminded not to respond to 1RR violations with violations of their own. GoldenRing (talk) 10:17, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
R9tgokunks is now fully aware of the editing restrictions existing in this area and is expected to edit accordingly. --NeilN talk to me 04:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
E-960 needs to be more careful when reverting. --NeilN talk to me 13:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Icewhiz constant BATTLEGROUND at WP:AE more or less overwhelmed that systemI'm not seeing comparative statistics here, or testimonies of admins, or anything else that can establish that statement. I'm also not clear on how filing 16 cases in two years can "overwhelm" the system, or how filing or being filed against in 46% of the cases equates to 99% of the problems...
In my evidence I'm generally ignoring
User: François Robere (for now) since he is not party to the case and his evidence is so vacuous, but this one is so obnoxiously false that I feel compelled to address it. His evidence still falsely claims in reference to me: Suggesting we do OR to involve a Jewish leader in a massacre: [175][176]
. Diffs are
[332]
[333]. I do no such thing. I'm doing THE OPPOSITE. Some sources say Kovner was involved. *I* am saying he is not. This is obvious. There's no room for interpretation here, I explicitly state: "There are some sources which for some reason mention Kovner in connection to this massacre. I think they're garbage and they got it wrong." I'm sorry, but this is just somebody straight up lying about me pretending black is white and white is black. The instructions for the evidence page clearly state "Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all)." This is the opposite of that.
In response to my diff which shows
User:Icewhiz using anti-semitic and fringe sources
[336] to attack a BLP, Icewhiz claims This is an WP:ABOUTSELF situation
[337].
No. This is all kinds of wrong.
First, WP:ABOUTSELF is about stuff like "I graduated from high school in 1998". You *could*, potentially use the subject's own claim like that in an article according to ABOUSELF. It absolutely in no way justifies taking an opinion piece written by the subject and then doing WP:OR on it smear the subject.
Second, it's actually NOT a "WP:ABOUTSELF" situation despite Icewhiz's repeated false claims to that effect. This is NOT a "ABOUSELF" statement by the subject. It's an anti-semitic garbage source writing ABOUT the subject. Icewhiz is simply ... I'm running out of euphemism here ... "misportraying" (?) the situation here. This is indeed (a reprint of) opinion piece by the subject (see first part) but, crucially, it doesn't say ANYTHING like what Icewhiz claims. There's NOTHING in there about "American Jews" as Icewhiz falsely writes in his BLP violating edit.
Here's the thing. If Icewhiz just admitted "I screwed up. I shouldn't have used an anti-semitic source on a BLP", this matter would have been dropped long ago. But it's his repeated denials and deceptions and this lame WP:ABOUTSELF excuse making that shows he's learned absolutely nothing from the episode, and that he still has absolutely no qualms in using garbage sources - despite all his grand posturing about "only high quality academic sources" on talk and arbitration pages - when it suits his purpose. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:41, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
One of the sources is indeed an oped by the subject but. it. doesn't. say. what. you. wrote. it. says. Reason I keep bringing it up because you keep trying to make excuses for it. And because it's very illustrative of your cynical approach to editing in this topic area in general ("Wikipedia policy applies to thee but not to me") Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:09, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
"restoring views material. note wp:aboutself. questionable sources may be used for statements made by chodakiewicz if there is no doubt as to their authenticity") - I removed the citation and matched the source more closely - diff. VM first raised his objections to the content at AE, not in the article. This was subsequently removed - diff - and I didn't challenge this (in retrospect, I will also admit to the sin of WP:RECENTISM in 2018). Icewhiz ( talk) 20:00, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
The "antisemitic source used to attack a BLP" angle - it was one source out of four" - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, my bad. That makes it ok. It was JUST ONE itsy bitty teeny weeny anti-semitic source Icewhiz used to attack a BLP. Nevermind, then /s. Lol. Seriously?
Icewhiz took the reference to "Vistula Stalinists" as an allusion to JewsYeah, that's HIS problem. He doesn't get to make up what a source says. If a source says "A" then Icewhiz doesn't get to say "well I think the source really meant B so I will put that in instead". Are we editing the same Wikipedia here?
historical prevalence in certain parts of Poland- uh, what??? Seriously, what in the hey are you talking about???
they were mostly the BLP's own words- NO. THEY. WEREN'T. That's kind of the whole point here.
Icewhiz did right to quickly remove the one- except he didn't. He removed the anti-semitic source on June 5th. So Icewhiz's BLP attacking WP:HOAX stayed in the article for two and a half months. That's not "quickly". Additionally, he ONLY removed it AFTER I brought it up at WP:AE (June 4th), meaning, he only removed it because he realized admins would see it and he could get in big trouble.
Throughout the evidence it is clear that Icewhiz is engaged in edits dictated by uncompromising stance and is unwilling to compromise with others.
From comments about Polish media being used as source, to comparing Poland to Iran, North Korea, constantly claiming that Polish sources are unreliable to claiming that occupation of Poland in Second World War is Polish nationalist POV and so forth, it is clear that there is a stance where sources and information is judged on basis of ethnic criteria rather than objective value.
The most controversial of Icewhiz's edits happened when he lost arguments or nominations to DYK articles.Just after this happens Icewhiz goes on wide spree on Polish related articles entering highly controversial claims or straight ahead blanking whole articles.
At the moment it isn't clear what type of descriptions are allowed to clearly describe complex identities in Central European/Eastern European topics, especially in context of 19th century and Second World War history.Wikipedia is edited by editors from many national and cultural backgrounds-there might be some cultural miscommunication/clash on what to consider the best description of nationality/ethnicity in places with very detailed and complex history of inter-ethnic relations.These edits are not necessarily expression of ill will, but better guidance would be welcomed.
I could understand if two editors are in conflict with each other but in this case Icewhiz gets in conflict with any Polish user that he comes across on Wikipedia.Even those who strived hard to reach some kind of compromise and cooperation like Piotrus have eventually been attacked by Icewhiz.
Throughout his edits Icewhiz has presented cherry picked information and sources to present extreme claims and statements(Poles=mass murderers of Jews, Poland is equal to Nazi Germany,Poles mass murdered 200,000 Jews). These statements were selected to present the most extreme statements regarding Jewish-Polish history. Even in cases where source later distanced itself from extreme claims(like Grabowski retreating from claim of 200,000 Jews murdered by Poles), Icewhiz continued to add this information, knowning fully that is no longer supported by source, and even dismissing Grabowski's statement as "Polish media report". This example shows that the user was interested in provoking and causing controversy by carefully selecting the most controversial material to be presented on Wikipedia. -- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 10:18, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
needless, provocative baiting, won't you want the Arbs to notice it in its entirety? starship .paint ( talk) 10:29, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
which was immediately reverted by François Robere who falsely claimed a "BLP issue" in edit summaryThe revision included the statement "based on no research, Michael Meng speculates that...". This is a BLP vio against Michael Meng, an Associate Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill. I explained the removal on Talk, and I mentioned Talk in the edit summary. François Robere ( talk) 12:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Some issues on Polish Holocaust complicity are debated by mainstream Polish voices. However many issues related to the Holocaust, antisemitism, post-war violence are not contested by anyone of note.
Jewish Bolshevism, and in its Polish form - Żydokomuna, is an antisemitic canard. It has a long history in Poland. It was used to justify anti-Jewish pogroms by Haller's Army in the post-WWI Polish–Soviet War. It was a dominant theme in the antisemitic discourse in the Second Polish Republic. During WWII, "Żydokomuna" was used by the nationalist underground to justify the killing of Jewish fugitives in the countryside who were seen as sympathetic to communist (Polish and Soviet) partisans (catch-22 - in many areas the communist partisans were the only ones willing to accept Jewish fugitives). Following the war it was used by the nationalist rebellion ("cursed soldiers") to justify killing Jews seen as sympathetic to the post-war government. This is still used in antisemitic discourse in Poland today.
Turning a drab election notice into a "Jewish welcome banner" ( 2015, 2015, 2017) fits within "Żydokomuna" discourse.
In regards to the 1941 pogroms (introduced by Poeticbent 2009-2011 - but defended in 2015) - while there was some public debate in Poland on the Jedwabne pogrom circa 2001-3 following the publication of Neighbors and during the IPN investigation - the events in Jedwabne and surrounding towns in which Polish citizens (with limited German involvement) carried out anti-Jewish pogroms (including the burning alive of victims in barns in Jedwabne and Radziłów) are not debated by any mainstream element. The president of Poland apologized for Jedwabne back in 2001. [1] For the past 15 years - discourse over Jedwabne is limited to fringe far-right denialist elements. Inserting a denialist narrative into Jedwabne pogrom would be met with a rather swift revert or challenge as this is a well watched article. However, inserting content that denies Jedwabne as well as the local atrocity in one of 23 small towns that are seldom watched by editors - may persist for years (almost a decade!). Poeticbent, being involved in the Jedwabne pogrom article as far back as 2006, [355] and being one of the main editors of the article, [356] was well aware of sourcing on Jedwabne and surrounding towns. The text he inserted to Radziłów and Stawiski not only denied the local atrocity but also denied Jedwabne (by stating that the supposed German action in Radziłów/Stawiski was also carried out in the same manner in Jedwabne). This denial - fits into a very specific peg in Poland.
Editing
Chełmno extermination camp (in
2013) fits into this discourse: "young Poles have a sense that Polish suffering during World War II might not be acknowledged enough if Jewish suffering is highlighted. ... Denial of the fact that only Jews and Roma were condemned to death on the basis of their identity may have something to do with the strength of that sense of unique suffering in the national consciousness.
.
[2] There are no reliable sources (including not the Majdanek museum website used as a citation) stating Chełmno was "targeted at removal of Jews and Poles from all nearby towns and villages"
.
The edits to
Belzec extermination camp (in
2013,
2014,
2015,
2015) to remove (and in the process - misrepresent the cited source which contradicts) Polish grave-digging is related to a recent public debate, but again - these are facts that aren't disputed by anyone of note - and for Belzec are well-known and publicized from the late 40s. The wartime grave-digging is what prompted the Nazis to guard the vacant Belzec, and other extermination camps, after they shut down the camps. The release of Gross's Golden Harvest in 2011, which in respect to Belzec really said nothing new, did trigger "several attempts to deny historical facts"
.
[3]
Post-war violence against Jews, the most infamous incident being the Kielce pogrom, isn't disputed by any mainstream element. Poland's post-communist government apologized in 1996. [4] Anti-Jewish violence being one of the factors for the mass departure of Jews from post-war Poland is not disputed by anyone of note - this was well known from 1946 onward and well covered in the relevant literature. As in other countries, there is a small camp of denialists in Poland who would deny this - and would frame Jewish departure as merely a move to "greener pastures". Poeticbent's creation( [357]) is contradicted by the very source he was citing. Poeticbent had edited Kielce pogrom back in 2006, and is one of the top editors on the article - [358] - not a topic he is unfamiliar with. In a lesser watched article such as this - this lasted a decade.
These edits had a context, which is far from innocent. Icewhiz ( talk) 07:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
References
WP:BAIT (an essay advocating "don't take the bait" to avoid being sanctioned for civility infractions) has been bandied around in the evidence and workshop quite a bit. Therefore, I have compiled a table below of the personal attacks below. Ignoring attacks during the case ( on a user's talk page, and on the case) I've sifted through the attacks in evidence. It seems Volunteer Marek launches personal attacks when sources on Polish antisemitism are cited, when the DUEness/reliability of sources are questioned, and other cases (e.g. [361], [362]) what seems to be completely random interjections. There's not much of anything rising to "bait" that a balanced editor could possibly be excused for "lashing out" at.
Article | Icewhiz action | Volunteer Marek reaction |
---|---|---|
Talk:Szymon Datner | Saying content is SYNTH/irrelevant to subject + not in cited source. | [363] " It's not "OR" it's just "knowing what the fuck one is talking about when trying to write an article rather than just making obnoxious POV edits"." |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | Pointing out that the summary of Krzyżanowski in our article is not an accurate representation of the cited page (in Polish) nor Krzyżanowski's subsequent self-citation of his work in English in an academic journal. | [364] "first off, cut out the hysterical hyperbole. Even if you disagree with it, it's not "defamatory". Stop being ridiculous. That kind of false rhetoric signals a lack of good faith in your approach to achieving consensus" |
Talk:Jew with a coin | Providing quote from source: "another possible reason for the existence of the Zydki: It has to do with a newly published book in Poland that is creating an uproar similar to the one that Jan Gross’s book “Neighbors” elicited. The book, “Klucze i Kasa” (“Keys and Money”) details the ways in which Poles got rich off Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust – by plundering property that was left behind, charging exorbitant fees for hiding them, and so on. This may be another underlying reason for the Polish perception of Jews as a source of wealth – they literally enriched them. And paradoxically, their guilt feelings over this are being projected onto the Jews.. |
[365] "The figurines do exist but they are not common, and as several sources note, they are a recent phenomenon. The source does NOT "tie two phenomena together". You do. It's a COATRACK for the whole disgusting and racist "Poles are anti-semities" POV into this article." Note also WP:REDFLAG assertion vs. mainstream facts in mainstream sources. + [366] [367] vs. sourced information. |
Act on the Institute of National Remembrance | Icewhiz might have inserted some of this at some point in the past. | [368] Referring to sourced (English) attributed statements as: "remove some gratuitous and off topic Pole bashing" |
"Never Again" Association | "Already discussed elsewhere. Reported in Polish media as well - so UNDUE has no legs here. Please discuss on the talk page, as opposed to edit-warring over content in the STABLE version of this article." | [369] "Please stop using ridiculous, absurd and dishonest rationales for your edit warring - like claiming to restore a 'stable version" of an article... that was created just freaking hours ago. This has been explained already. WP:ONUS is on you to get consensus" |
Jew with a coin | Directed at scholar. | [370] Referring to a scholar's assessment as: " rmv POV, rmv gratuitous stereotyping and ethnic generalizations" |
Talk:Casimir III the Great | removing fiction from article, stating that if this legend is to be included its antisemitic origin - per three academic sources should be included. | [371] - "Your second source is that photographer, Janicka, again, that you drag out, every time you want to accuse Poles of being antisemitic about, well, everything. You really need to find a new hobby. It's really the tediousness and dull-mindedness of your bigotry that is tiring, not the continued indulgence of your prejudices on Wikipedia (which is par for the course around here)." |
Paradisus Judaeorum(+talk) | Statement at scholar Icewhiz inserted | [372] - "Janicka is a photographer, not a historian so not really qualified to make this assessment. Normally I'd just say "not in the lede" but that rant is stuffed so full of nonsense and is barely coherent, so it's pretty much a non-RS". Also - [373] - "she's just someone with an academic degree in something else, that went to a museum and didn't like an exhibition, so she wrote basically a long rant about it, stuffed full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, hyperbolic and exaggerated language, failed attempts at irony and faux outrage. And that's the parts that are coherent." |
Talk:Esterka | Providing three academic sources on the antisemitic origin of the myth, saying this should be present in the article per NPOV. | [374] "You're making shit up. Again.", " your dishonest approach to editing" |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | Quotations from academic sources. | [375] - "You are once again engaging in ethnic attacks and giving free rein to your prejudicial proclivities", "Please stop making shit up". |
Talk:Jan Grabowski (historian) | Raising concerns on the reliability of post-2018 Polish media sources on the narrow issue of Polish Holocaust complicity due to the Polish Holocaust law. | [376] - " This is complete and utter nonsense and Icewhiz has repeatedly been warned about engaging in ethnic discrimination and his propensity to evaluate sources on the basis of racial criteria. This kind of approach is odious and disgusting and very much against Wikipedia culture and policy." |
Talk:Helena Wolińska-Brus | Suggesting Polish allegations against the individual (Polish extradition requests denied by the UK) should be attributed and that we should use mainstream English coverage ( Independent, Telegraph, JTA, Chicago Tribune). | [377] - "You have been asked REPEATEDLY to stop evaluating sources on the basis of racist ethnic criteria", "odious behavior" |
Helena Wolińska-Brus | POV tag, "tag POV - over-reliance on Polish media reporting and rejected Polish extradition requests - does not reflect coverage of our subject in mainstream English language media in the UK (where she lived) and elsewhere." | [378] "another spurious WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT tag, WP:BATTLEGROUND tag. There's no "over reliance" on anything and your previous objection was addressed, so now you're just trying to make any ol' excuse up" |
Talk:Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia | Saying genocide should be attributed in the lede as use of "genocide" is disputed (and is a minority position). Saying lede should also reflect majority position of this not being a genocide. Pointing out the article has a whole section discussing the genocide question. | [379] - "Translation: "the lede does not reflect my extremist POV so I'm gonna claim it's "unbalanced" and make WP:TENDENTIOUS edits". |
Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 December | Commenting in move review. Noting that the source asserting notability of the full phrase was by "an anti-Semitic Polish politician who advocated at the time for the mass expulsion of most of Poland's Jews". | [380] - "It's almost childish" ... "Neither are there any sources which refer to it as a "anti-Semitic slogan" (except maybe that one cherry picked Janicka source you managed to drudge up somewhere)." ... "Gimme a fucking break. The truth of the matter is that it's actually you who holds an extremist POV, one which is not shared among mainstream scholars regardless of their ethnicity and religion. You are trying to exploit the lack of knowledge about the topic and the general gullibility of average Wikipedians to push your extremist POV by engaging in this hyperbolic scare-mongering. You're hoping that if you just call something "anti-semitic" people will feel compelled to support you or at least not oppose you. But it's all bullshit." |
Albert Forster | Restoring POV tag as there was no discussion on the talk page section opened to discuss the tag, placed by Icewhiz a couple of months prior. | [381] "spurious tag, appears to be WP:STALK of another user and WP:BATTLEGROUND" |
Talk:Marek Jan Chodakiewicz | Mentioning journal article by Dariusz Libionka, quoting from it, and saying that summary may merit consideration for incorporation. | [382] - " I am not going to just take your word for it since I've been burned before and WP:V is policy" |
Koniuchy massacre | Icewhiz didn't do anything, but User:Sparafucil reverted Volunteer Marek. | [383] - "and again, a strange account which has never before edited this article or topic area (except one previous blind revert on behalf of Icewhiz) shows up out of nowhere" |
Icewhiz ( talk) 09:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
This whole statement and (Icewhiz's - add on 12:24 6/29/19 for clarity VM) table could be used as Evidence for this proposed FoF regarding Icewhiz. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 18:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, here is my response table:
Article | What Icewhiz claims happened | What actually happened |
---|---|---|
Talk:Szymon Datner | "Saying content is SYNTH/irrelevant to subject + not in cited source." | This is a dispute about a minor change in the Institute's name. Its something that's actually common knowledge in this topic area. Icewhiz is being petty. |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | "Pointing out that the summary of Krzyżanowski in our article is not an accurate representation of the cited page (in Polish) nor Krzyżanowski's subsequent self-citation of his work <snip>" | Disagreeing about which portion of the source should be quoted is most certainly NOT "defamation" as Icewhiz is pretending, so yeah this is being hyperbolic in order to intimidate and badger those who disagree with him. In my comment I stated explicitly that it would be fine to add other information from the source but there was no reason to remove this part |
Talk:Jew with a coin | "Providing quote from source <snip quote for brevity>" | A (non academic non scholarly) source makes a short passing remark and Icewhiz uses it to WP:COATRACK pov into the article |
Act on the Institute of National Remembrance | "Icewhiz might have inserted some of this at some point in the past." (note strange practice of referring to Icewhiz in 3rd person) | I think my response is a pretty accurate description of what was going on here |
"Never Again" Association | "Already discussed elsewhere. Reported in Polish media as well - so UNDUE has no legs here. Please discuss on the talk page, as opposed to edit-warring over content in the STABLE version of this article." | Several problems with Icewhiz's edit and self serving explanation. The source for this was crap. Oh wait, I thought Icewhiz was AGAINST using "Polish media" (in this case very crappy media). Guess that doesn't apply if it fits with his POV. Second Icewhiz actually used the rationale "restore STABLE version" for an article that was created just hours before. As if such existed. Third, WP:ONUS - and Icewhiz lovvvessss using this as a justification for removing any text he WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT - is indeed on Icewhiz here. Fourth, the person doing the edit warring here was Icewhiz. |
Jew with a coin | "Directed at scholar" | See explanation above table. Not "directed at scholar" at all. Directed at text Icewhiz inserted, which is accurately described here |
Talk:Casimir III the Great | "removing fiction from article, stating that if this legend is to be included its antisemitic origin - per three academic sources should be included." | See above. Nobody objected to Icewhiz "removing fiction". This is about Icewhiz trying to spam a particular source - an "essay" by a photographer full of anti-Polish cliches and stereotypes - into as many articles as he could. Other two sources are being blatantly misrepresented by Icewhiz. |
Paradisus Judaeorum(+talk) | "Statement at scholar Icewhiz inserted" (again, strange use of referring to Icewhiz in third person) | See above. Accurate description of the WP:REDFLAG source Icewhiz is trying to use |
Talk:Esterka | Providing three academic sources on the antisemitic origin of the myth, saying this should be present in the article per NPOV. | This is same issue as two rows up. Read the rest of my comment. It explains in detail exactly WHAT Icewhiz is making up and HOW he's misrepresenting sources. Note that this is like the third time I was forced to explain this because of his WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT |
Talk:History of the Jews in Poland | "Quotations from academic sources." | Please read entire comment. It explains in detail how Icewhiz is misrepresenting sources and how he's using false edit summaries. It also notes that Icewhiz keeps referring to "Polish POV" as if all Poles were exactly the same. Which is… problematic to say the least |
Talk:Jan Grabowski (historian) | "Raising concerns on the reliability of post-2018 Polish media sources on the narrow issue of Polish Holocaust complicity due to the Polish Holocaust law." | See above explanation above table. This wasn't "raising concerns", this was Icewhiz unilaterally declaring all Polish post-2018 sources unreliable because… he said so. Icewhiz here is indeed evaluating source reliability according to an ethnic criteria - Polish sources bad, non-Polish sources good. |
Talk:Helena Wolińska-Brus | Suggesting Polish allegations against the individual (snip) should be attributed and that we should use mainstream English coverage (snip)" | Ditto. Icewhiz wants to falsely label views he doesn't like as "Polish views" (because you know, all Poles hold exactly same views as one another, it's just in their blood or something), despite the fact that the claims are backed up by multiple non-Polish sources |
Helena Wolińska-Brus | "POV tag, "tag POV - over-reliance on Polish media reporting and rejected Polish extradition requests - does not reflect coverage of our subject in mainstream English language media in the UK (where she lived) and elsewhere."" | Given how false Icewhiz's assertion was, my comment was an understatement. Icewhiz claims the article has "over reliance on Polish sources" (it's an article about a Polish person and Polish history, what would be wrong with that?) despite the fact that the article is sourced to The Guardian, The Telegraph, Anne Applebaum (in English) and The Times. Icewhiz is just complaining that his chicanery was called out. |
Talk:Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia | "Saying genocide should be attributed in the lede as use of "genocide" is disputed (and is a minority position). Saying lede should also reflect majority position of this not being a genocide. Pointing out the article has a whole section discussing the genocide question." | Again, Icewhiz's assertions are simply false, in particular his claim about "most scholars" and "minority position" (whatever Icewhiz disagrees with) and "majority position" (whatever Icewhiz believes), which he just… made up (note no sources to back that up). This again after having to deal with a ton of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT |
Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 December | "Commenting in move review. (snip - not exactly comprehensible anyway) | Icewhiz was falsely claiming that just because the article's title was changed, there was consensus to POVFORK it to a different topic (basically about how anti-semitic the Poles are). There was no such consensus. He also kept referring to a 16th century tract (!!!) as "hate speech" which is anachronistic at best, but still ridiculous. He kept doing this as a way of trying to badger others into agreeing with him (they didn't anyway). Add (6/290) - oh yeah, I missed this part: my comment was a response to Icewhiz's claims that ... Jewish scholars and academics were pushing "anti-semitic hate speech". Yeah, you read that right. Basically, the Jewish scholars and academics under discussion were apparently insufficiently anti-Polish for Icewhiz's taste, hence they were guilty of "anti-semitic hate speech" (this was of course a claim lacking any sources from him).
Please read my comment in full [386] as it accurately illustrates the problem with Icewhiz in this topic area (and please understand the strong words are a result of immense frustration) |
Albert Forster | "Restoring POV tag following as there was no discussion on the talk page section opened to discuss the tag." | The tag was indeed spurious (Icewhiz seemed upset that the article mentioned that Nazis murdered Poles - see his dismissive comments of, and jeering at, the Nazi crimes against Poles documented elsewhere in evidence) and it did look like Icewhiz was stalking another user around. |
Talk:Marek Jan Chodakiewicz | "Mentioning journal article by Dariusz Libionka, quoting from it, and saying that summary may merit consideration for incorporation." | Given that Icewhiz tried to create a WP:HOAX to attack the subject of this very article, requesting WP:V is a perfectly reasonable request |
Table by VM - Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:39, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
François Robere ( talk) 11:50, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
MVBW doesn't edit this topic areaThey're active on several talk pages, though.
if there's stonewalling and ganging, then you and Icewhiz and (now indef banned) Yanniv certainly qualifyHow can 2-3 editors "stonewall" and "gang" against 5-7 editors? And Yaniv was about as active in this area as MVBW, if not less.
the problem is not necessarily with those sources (some yes, but most no)Didn't you object Grabowski, Michlic and Krakowski, and support Bella's perversion of Kochanski ("The Eagle Unbowed", in the "puppet state" arc)? You may have objected Kunicki (Home Army arc) and supported Tatzref's perversion of Cichopek-Gajraj, I don't remember for sure.
it's with how they're being used. I.e. misrepresentedSo you're claiming that someone has been distorting sources for a year and a half and you haven't even once raised it with the admins or in an RfC?
"The biggest problem I have with VM is his refusal to ever see the other side's POV as legitimate" - this is completely falseYep. And just to remind us of the short discussion MVBW and I had regarding some of your comments from last year.
my stats show he "won" at best a third of the AEs he was involved in, which is worse than a coin flipYeah, only you count things like comments, etc. See my objections above.
Icewhiz created HOAXes on BLPs by fabricating quotations for an authorAgain, not really. You showed one case where, if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he made a bad SYNTH call. That's it. [427] AGF, it's hardly a "smoking gun".
Icewhiz made absurd and provocative commentsSo what? You're an adult. Do you need protection from stupid comments? Handle it like an adult and move on. And you would do well, by the way, to listen when someone tells you "that's not what I meant" instead of trying to convince them it is.
In a couple instances he simply lied about other editorsI could fill a small box with all the instance I could've claimed you were lying, if I didn't give you the benefit of the doubt. But I do, so I don't, so I won't, and you should as well, much more often than you do. François Robere ( talk) 19:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
(MVBW is) active on several talk pages, though- not really. List'em. Don't just make assertions, prove it. There might be a couple, but given that this dispute has spanned literally dozens of articles, this is just false.
How can 2-3 editors "stonewall" and "gang" against 5-7 editors- who are these 5-7 editors? And freakin' a, if it really is 5-7 editors you might want to seriously think about what WP:CONSENSUS means.
You may have objected Kunicki
supported Tatzref's perversion
I don't remember for sure- right. How about you make the effort to "remember for sure", come back here, and THEN we can take your WP:ASPERSIONS seriously.
So you're claiming that someone has been distorting sources for a year and a half<-- this part is true.
and you haven't even once raised it with the admins or in an RfCI have. Unfortunately most admins don't really have an expertise in this topic area so they're never sure so they haven't done anything about it. That and Icewwhiz continuously playing the victim. However, you'd think that at least with a blatant BLP-attacking WP:HOAX [428] they'd do something. What happened? Oh yeah. Sandstein removed my "raising of it" because "it was over the word limit" and freely admitted he wasn't going to bother reading any diffs. He did topic ban Icewhiz for awhile at least (though mostly because he was annoyed, which is doing the right thing for the wrong reason)
Again, not really. You showed one case where, if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he made a bad SYNTH call. Yes. Really. You have to give a LOT of benefit of a LOT of doubt to pretend that fabricating a quote, misrepresenting a source, using anti-semitic sources, all to smear a BLP is a "bad SYNTH call". This wasn't "SYNTH". This was Icewhiz making stuff up pure and simple in an attempt to destroy a person. WP:INDEF long overdue.
I could fill a small box with all the instance I could've claimed you were lying- Do it. Let's. See. You. Do. It. And not just where you "claim" this. That's easy. Anyone can "claim" anything they want. But actually support it with evidence. Like I have. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 22:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
That's an interesting statement, which implies certain assumptions.
-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 18:19, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
"Some Poles, who emerged from their forest hideaways, including prisoners released by the Nazis from the NKVD prisons,[4] were led to acts of revenge-killing in German presence (approximately 6 suspects...) - is rather self evident. Particularly given that the same fabrication was performed in other towns (e.g. Radziłów) in a manner unsupported and contradicted by sources. Icewhiz ( talk) 06:59, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
" direct involvement of the Stalinist troops (official findings of the Institute of National Remembrance)"(none others named... not quite the usual presentation) in regards to the well known Kielce pogrom (an article that on enwiki has related issues - see USHMM) is instructive. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:44, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Poeticbent created a number of anti-Jewish hoaxes. In that respect it is inevitable that the case will have to involve some examination of Poeticbent's conduct, in order to see if Icewhiz is correct - and, if not, whether Icewhiz' behavior towards Poeticbent goes beyond WP:AGF, violates WP:HOUND, etc. In retrospect, thinking about it, I feel that the lopsided topic ban for Poeticbent may be one of the root causes of the WP:AGF breakdown, since it's clear that Icewhiz in particular took it as vindication (even though, as I understand it, it was related to civility and not bias.) I haven't examined the evidence in depth, so I can't say whether that is true or not, but if it is not, then a general statement of "no, Poeticbent's topic-ban was inappropriate, or at least doesn't imply any content issues; back down and stop contesting their edits just because they made them" might be useful. -- Aquillion ( talk) 20:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
You've probably noticed my proposals above are more general than simply "ban this, block that"; that's because this conflict resulted, in part, from systemic problems with Wikipedia and its community structures, and I refused to believe these can't be changed for the better (though I do appreciate most of your skepticism). Where systemic problems can be solved at any level of DR, they should; and ARBCOM being the highest level of that, it should strive to reduce the overall number of conflicts, and not only resolve them one at a time. François Robere ( talk) 05:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)