Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/Archive 79

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The issued have already been discussed in June 2018 under Talk:Gas_van#Soviet_vans with and Talk:Gas van/Archive 1#Soviet Union section.

I am concerned with NPOV issues, WP:UNDUE and WP:PROPORTION in particular, in this version[1] of the article.

According entries in standard encyclopedias of the Holocaust like Bartrop, Paul R. (2017). "Gas Vans". In Paul R. Bartrop; Michael Dickerman (eds.). The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p. 234–235: "Gas vans were used by the Nazis to murder Jews and other prisoners through asphyxiation by carbon monoxide. As such a gas van was equipped a mobile gas chamber.” (p. 234). As other scholars have put it “the gas van is a product of the Third Reich, whose origin is traced back to 1939.” (Patrick Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, 2012, p. 199) In his standard work on the origins of the Holocaust Henry Friedlander wrote: “For this purpose [killing patients in numerous Wartheland hospitals in 1940], a kind of mobile gas chamber had been invented. We do not know the inventor, but the KTI [Kriminaltechnisches Institut] was probably involved.” (The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 1995, p. 139) None of this scholarship does make any mention of Soviet gas vans.

In 1990 the Russian journalist Evgeny Zhirnov was shown an investigative file on Isay Berg, section chief in the Moscow NKVD who had been tasked with the preparation of the Butovo firing range for the mass execution of people from greater Moscow. Berg was to ensure that these executions occurred without interruption. In this file were transcripts of an investigation against Berg from 1938 and a reopened investigation in 1956. According to some of these documents Berg devised an airtight van in which prisoners were gassed with exhaust fumes during their transport to Butova. Zhirnov published about this in the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya pravda in October 1990. Yevgenia Albats referred to that story in her book KGB (1995) drawing a direct line between Soviet and Nazi gas vans. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn picked up this story in his infamous book Two Hundred Years Together, emphasizing that Berg was Jewish and noting that Berg “created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves”.

As for the other historians being cited, Catherine Merridale and Timothy Colton, they also rely upon Zhirnov’s 1990 article, but both do not link any Soviet gas van to the Nazi gas vans. Merridale speaks about the varius methods of killing employed by the NKVD, stating: “One policeman. Isai D. Berg, gassed some of his prisoners to death...” Timothy Colton devotes one sentence in his 900+ pages book to this: “Isai D. Berg, a cutthroat section chief in the Moscow NKVD, ginned up a gas chamber (dushegubka) on wheels, an airtight lorry camouflaged as a bread van that suffocated internees with engine fumes on the drive out to Butovo.” (p. 286) Futher citations in the Wikipedia article are to Russian newspapers, including another, more recent article by Evgeny Zhirnov.

I am concerned that one minor aspect in the history of gas vans is overemphasized. In fact, based upon highly opinionated sources like Albats and Solzhenitsyn Wikipedia contradicts the whole body of scholarship on gas vans being used during WWII (cited above). Source is heaped upon source, many referring to the same 1990 article, to create the impression, that the topic of Soviet gas vans is well researched and established, which it isn’t. I put some of the sources under review at the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#An eyewitness account. I may note that the notion of gas vans being a Soviet “invention” has become a staple of Holocaust denial.

I proposed this version [2] which treats the Soviet gas vans as a separate entity and according to their overall significance in a brief section. Thereby I mainly relied upon scholarly sources.----Assayer (talk) 15:48, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• Reply. This is mostly about section "Soviet Union" here. Here is the essence of the disagreement. In this series of edits, Assayer did the following.
• First, Assayer removed claims made by the following several RS, together with RS themselves:

1. Yevgenia Albats, KGB: The State Within a State. 1995, page 101. This is a book by a well known political scientist and a notable expert of KGB/NKVD subjects
2. The man in the leather apron (Russian), by Nikita Petrov, Novaya Gazeta, an article by well known mainstream historian Nikita Petrov published in Novaya Gazeta
3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Two Hundred Years Together (Двести лет вместе), volume=2, Москва, Русский путь, 2002, ISBN 5-85887-151-8, p. 297. - Claims by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner for writing on the history of NKVD and Gulag. Note that the included information (as in this edit) is on the subject of NKVD repressions. It has absolutely nothing to do with Jews or with Berg being Jewish.
4. Александр ЛИПКОВ, "Я к вам травою прорасту…", Alexander Lipkov, Kontinent, N 123, 2005., a secondary RS published in Kontinent
5. On the way to the place of their execution, the convicts were poisoned with gas (Russian), by Yevgeniy Zhirnov, Kommersant, a secondary RS published in Kommersant

• Second, Assayer placed the events related to the usage of gas vans not in chronological order, but in such order to minimize the significance of the gas van usage in the Soviet Union.
• Third, Assayer excluded any mention of the Soviet vans from the lead [3], even though there is a section about Soviet gas vans on the page.

"According entries in standard encyclopedias of the Holocaust...". Yes, sure. The Soviet gas vans were not a part of the Holocaust. Only Nazi gas vans were.

The description/"story" in the 4th and 5th paragraphs of the statement by Assayer (staring from "In 1990 the Russian journalist Evgeny Zhirnov") is original research/synthesis by Assayer. For example, there is no any reason or sources to assume that the claims in books by Albats and Solzhenitsyn were based exclusively on a publication in the tabloid, even if they used it as one of references ([...]). None of these books directly quotes the article in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Instead, the experts tell their own views (Albats: Owning to the shortage of executioners, Chekists used trucks that were camouflaged as bread vans as mobile death chambers. Yes, the very same machinery made notorious by the Nazis - yes, these trucks were originally a Soviet invention, in use years before the ovens of the Auschwitz were built). We are not in the business of speculating how exactly experts or historians on the subject came to their conclusions. We simply say what RS (their books) say.

• The NPOV-based solution is to include all significant views published in RS, such as claims cited by Assayer in the beginning of this thread, along with RS he wants to exclude, as I suggested on talk [4]. My very best wishes (talk) 16:34, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
• "It has absolutely nothing to do with Jews or with Berg being Jewish." How can anyone say that when the entire subject of the book is Jews in Russia? GPRamirez5 (talk) 10:33, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

This is also being discussed at RSN. As I mentioned there, the story is briefly mention in at least one rs, and traces to a 1990 article in Komsomolskay Pravda, which frequently publishes anti-Semitic material. But the vast majority of literature about Stalin's murders, and all the books by the leading experts, ignore it entirely. TFD (talk) 14:50, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

"vast majority of literature about Stalin's murders" does not mention it. Yes, sure, because this is a low-significance "local" subject, i.e. something related to delivery and execution of a small (presumably) part of prisoners specifically at the Butovo firing range. We can only use sources that tell something on the subject (of the soviet vans), but can not use sources which tell nothing on the subject. You say "Komsomolskaya Pravda frequently publishes anti-Semitic material". Said who? Sources? I did not see any such materials in this newspaper. And even if it does, it was not used on the page and not among RS listed just above. My very best wishes (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Assayer wrote:
"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn picked up this story in his infamous book Two Hundred Years Together, emphasizing that Berg was Jewish and noting that Berg “created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves”. ... I am concerned that one minor aspect in the history of gas vans is overemphasized. In fact, based upon highly opinionated sources like Albats and Solzhenitsyn Wikipedia contradicts the whole body of scholarship on gas vans being used during WWII (cited above)."

1. Solzhenitsyn and his book, "Two Hundred Years Together" faced, and were defended against, accusations of antisemitism. That may be seen in the articles on those subjects, though they are slanted towards the criticisms. For examples of outside source see [5],[6], [7] and [8]. The descriptive adjectives used by Assayer, infamous and opinionated, are biased.
2. The description of the brief mention of Berg in "Two Hundred Years Ago" is inaccurate and misleading. The mention is in a passage about the reaction of Jewish emigrants: "Who would have guessed during the fiery 1920s that after the enfeeblement and downfall of that “beautiful” (i.e., Communist) regime in Russia, those Jews, who themselves had suffered much from communism, who seemingly cursed it and ran away from it, would curse and kick not communism, but Russia itself – blast her from Israel and from Europe, and from across the ocean!?" Solzhenitsyn goes on to say that ex-citizens of the Soviet Union, Russian and Jewish, both need to share contrition for what happened in the Soviet Union: "We, brothers or strangers, need to share that responsibility. It would have been cleanest and healthiest to exchange contrition for everything committed." He writes: "I will not stop calling the Russians to do that." He goes on: "And I am inviting the Jews to do the same. To repent not for Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev; they are known and anyway can be brushed aside, “they were not real Jews!” Instead, I invite Jews to look honestly into the oppressive depths of the early Soviet system, at all those “invisible” characters such as Isai Davidovich Berg, who created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves, and I call on them to look honestly on those many much more obscure bureaucrats who had pushed papers in the Soviet apparatus, and who had never appeared in light." Solzhenitsyn is calling on Jews to share in the act of contrition by not concentrating on major figures such as Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, but minor ones. As an example of a minor figure he names Berg. Berg's Jewishness is not being emphasised as Assayer claimed.
3. The history of the use of the gas van in the Soviet Union was probably unknown to historians of the Nazi Holocaust. It is not surprising that what they wrote has been contradicted.
4. Assayer writes about the "whole body of scholarship on gas vans being used during WWII." The Germans first investigated the viability of euthanasia in late 1936 or early 1937. The committee responsible was re-activated just before the start of the war, when the compulsory registration of severely malformed children was required. Within weeks of the invasion of Poland, German special task forces massacred 13,000 inmates of asylums and clinics in annexed areas there, using shooting or converted removal vans rquipped with bottled carbon monoxide. Afterwards the euthanasia programme for adults extended back into Germany itself. Poison injections were used first, then static and mobile gas chambers. So, gas vans were first used on the Nazi's original euthanasia victims, the mentally and physically handicapped.

    ←   ZScarpia   21:59, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

@ZScarpia: I do not understand why did you conclude that Berg's ethnicity was not being emphasised. Honestly, if Berg's ethnicity was not emphasised, then what was the reason to mention his name? Just imagine his name was Ivan Ivanivuch Ivanov - that would have made mentioning of the gas van story absolutely pointless. In reality, as many sources correctly noted, all those ethnic Jews mentioned by Solzhenitsyn broke all connections to their Jewish ethnicity. They all self-identified themselves as Soviet citizens, and even the very pointing at their ethnic origin is a manifestation of antisemitism.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:30, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Would it help if I quoted the whole passage from Two Hundred Years Together? The context is that the necessity of everyone showing contrition is being written about. On the Jewish side, Solzhenityn says that it is not the acts of major, well-known characters who should be looked at, but those of minor characters. As an example of a minor character, he gives Berg. Assayer implies that Solzhenitsyn is writing about the vans and pointing out that its developer was Jewish, whereas it is the other way around, Solzhenitsyn picks out Berg as an example of a minor Jewish character involved in Soviet oppression and then identifies his role.     ←   ZScarpia   22:46, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

From "Two Hundred Years Together":

    ←   ZScarpia   22:57, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

@ZScarpia: You are still not understanding. The very fact that Solzhenitsyn divides people on "us" (Russians) and "you" (Jews) is antisemitism. Why he is calling "Russians" and "Jews" separately? I think the analogy to this situation would be when some American writer of WASP origin would called "White Americans" to repent for something, and then addressed separately to Americans of Italian or Jewish origin.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:45, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I suspect that Russian is being used in the ethnic sense. See the Ethnic groups in Russia article, where Russian and Jewish are two of 186 designated ethnicities in Russia, with Russians forming 78% of the population. For comparison, there are articles on ethnicity and ethnic groups in the United States here and here.     ←   ZScarpia   08:29, 7 October 2019 (UTC)   [Apologies if I've sidetracked the discussion at great length to little useful purpose]

No, you by no means sidetracked it. Just imaging if some American writer proposed some American ethnic group (e.g. Italians, Jews or Chinese) to repent for something?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

"The very fact that Solzhenitsyn divides people on Russians and Jews is antisemitism". No. Subjects like History of the Jews in Russia are completely legitimate and not antisemitism. My very best wishes (talk) 15:09, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

• This is just ridiculous. Someone with a family name "Berg" can be 100% ethnic Russian or 100% ethnic Armenian or whoever. But regardless, the ethnicity of the subject is completely irrelevant because the included text does not say anything about his ethnicity: [9]. Even if we had a page about him like on ruwiki (see ru:Берг, Исай Давидович), his ethnicity would still be irrelevant and should not appear on the page per MOS:ETHNICITY. My very best wishes (talk) 23:17, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
• "Assayer implies that Solzhenitsyn is writing about the vans and pointing out that its developer was Jewish, whereas it is the other way around, Solzhenitsyn picks out Berg as an example of a minor Jewish character involved in Soviet oppression and then identifies his role" This is a distinction without a difference. Either way, Solzhenitsyn is invoking Berg because he is Jewish. The longer passage only demonstrates that Solzhenitsyn is implying collective Jewish responsibility for the gas vans.GPRamirez5 (talk) 23:19, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Are you saying that the claim of collective Jewish responsibility should be included on the page? I do not think it should be included, and it was never included on the page per WP:FRINGE. The included claim was about gas vans used by the NKVD. That one is a "majority [of sources on the the subject of soviet gas vans] view" or just a matter of fact. My very best wishes (talk) 00:12, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

That Solzhenitsyn implies Jewish responsibility for the gas vans and calls for their collective repentance, makes him WP:FRINGE even by your logic, doesn't it? Even the large majority of reaearch on the Great Purge does not mention gas vans. You cannot assess the significance of a Soviet gas van by confining yourself merely on sources on the the subject of soviet gas vans. This is not only about Soviet gas vans, and the implicit equation of Soviet and Nazi gas vans which is misleading. I am reminded of WP:FLAT, since I have been subject of personalisation and of reversed burden of proof, whereas the definition of RS is being stretched.--Assayer (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I think this specific claim is fringe. But it does not make the entire book "fringe". It can be cited as an attributed opinion by Solzenitsyn even on the subject of Jewish history, although I would rather not do it. And it is definitely an RS of the subject of NKVD repressions. Consider another famous Nobel Prize winner as an example: would the racial views by James Watson disqualify his books in Molecular Biology? Of course not. My very best wishes (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Some comments:

• Though, on the surface, the issues look fairly simple, it has swelled so enormously, with huge amounts of reading, that it's really too complicated to deal with at the NPOV noticeboard. It needs mediation if anything. I think it would be better to return this to the article's talkpage.
• From what I can make out, it looks likely that one gas van was used in the Moscow area in the late 30s, preceding their use by the Germans, in undetermined but probably small numbers, from the latter part of 1939. The question of the "invention" of gas vans was a contentious issue. I'm not sure whether it still is. "Invention" can be a fairly ambiguous term and is often used inaccurately. Things can be "invented" independently in different places and "re-invented" in time. We can say that the earliest reports of the use of what we might term a gas van were in the Soviet Union. However, the assumption in the Russian sources that the Soviet use of a gas van had any affect on their use in the German's euthanasia programmes appears extremely tenuous, with no supporting evidence. We can say that there are sources that say that the gas van was "invented" by the Nazis, but, in the sense of where they were first used, that appears incorrect.
• The original publication of details of the Soviet gas van was in an article titled "A Horrible Execution" by E. Zhirnov in the 28 October 1990 issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda. Besides Solzhenitsyn, authors who have subsequently mentioned it have been Yevgenia Albats, Robert Gellately, Catherine Merridale and Timothy J. Colton. Something I'm unsure about is whether the subsequent writings have added any extra information to what was known or whether they have just been repeating what Zhirnov wrote.
• Has consideration been given to starting child articles, one for the German use of gas vans and another for the Soviet's? Perhaps that might help to solve the current dispute?
• I think we all agree that "Two Hundred Years Together" isn't a great historical source. As far as I can see, Solzhenitsyn repeats gas van material from only one source, Zhirnov. Would it be true to say that the only reason we're referring to "Two Hundred Years Together" is because Zhirnov's Komsomolskaya Pravda article is unobtainable?
• Solzhenitsyn and "Two Hundred Years Together" have had their detractors and defenders. The way both have been described, including in the introduction, has been from a very non-neutral, negative point-of-view. The problem that stems from that for me is that I have no confidence that anything else written is fair or accurate. It's also evident that a very skewed interpretation is being put on what Solzhenitsyn wrote. Hopefully, since he appears to be merely repeating Zhirnov, we will be able to bypass referring to "Two Hundred Years Together". Editing in contentious areas means allowing "the other side" to use authors or sources you don't like in order to detail other viewpoints. I've had to put up with the use of authors I've considered liars, propagandists, charlatans, bigots, chauvinists, racists, fanatics or extremists many times, so I don't really appreciate other editors blocking the use of authors for point-of-view reasons or insisting on describing them in a non-neutral way.  (Oh ... don't forget the denialists ... there's a lot of them around! I do hope I'm not one of them.)

    ←   ZScarpia   22:39, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

• No, the issue is indeed very simple. We are on NPOVNB, so let's just follow WP:NPOV. If a book about KGB by notable expert on this subject (e.g. Albats) tell something, we include this claim to the page. If another RS claims something, we include it too. Note that all sources tell essentially the same; the differences are only in details. IMy very best wishes (talk) 23:41, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

in my previous comment, there are a number of points I've asked for clarification of or more details on. It would help me if that was provided.     ←   ZScarpia   00:07, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Sure:

1. The article by Zhirnov was published in Kommersant in 2009, not in Komsomol'skaya Pravda in 1990 (see refs above, Журнал "Коммерсантъ Власть" №44 от 09.11.2009, стр. 56). Let's forget about Komsomol'skaya Pravda, we do not need this source, I can not check it, it is not available online
2. the assumption in the Russian sources that the Soviet use of a gas van had any affect on their use in the German's euthanasia programmes appears extremely tenuous. Indeed, none of the sources claims it, and it is not claimed on the page.
3. it looks likely that one gas van was used in the Moscow area in the late 30s. No, according to Albats and Golovkova (Konyinent) those were multiple trucks.
4. I'm unsure about is whether the subsequent writings have added any extra information - Yes, they did, especially the publications by Petrov and Golovkova ("Kontinent").
5. No, the publications by Petrov and especially Golobkova (Kontinent) clearly did not use KP (Golovkova tells about her source and it is entirely different), and Albats very clearly makes her own claims. My very best wishes (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
6. I did not read this book by Solzenitsyn, we could omit it easily. However, per WR:RS we should use the book by Solzhenitsyn, rather than article in Komsomol'skaya Pravda because it is a lot more reliable source per WP:RS - a book by a Nobel Prize winner. My very best wishes (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

ad 1 Zhimov published an article in Komsomol'skaya Pravda in 1990 and in Kommersant in 1990. Did anyone actually read the piece from 1990?

ad 2 The assumption currently being made is, that gas vans are trucks reequipped as a mobile gas chambers, that these gas vans have been used by the Nazis on a large scale, but first by the Soviet secret police. This establishes a narrative which is untenable and sourced to Yevgenia Albats who claims, gas vans were a Soviet "invention", and Solzenitsyn. Other sources which make that claim are Holocaust deniers and thus obviously fringe.

ad 3 Some sources speak of one gas van (Colton, Merridale), others use plural. One historian, Robert Gellately, called for further research.

ad 4 Golovka added more details. It is being debated how reliable an interview is. She has published about it, but that source has not yet been assessed. A blog post utilizing her publication is vehemently disputed by Mvbw.

ad 5 Petrov wrote mainly about Vasily Blokhin. It’s a newspaper article. I did not see any sources given. Golovkova relates information by an unknown eyewitness. Albats very clearly did only use one source, Komsomol'skaya Pravda, but drew her own conclusions.

ad 6 Solzenitsyn makes use of just one source Komsomol'skaya Pravda It seems that Mvbw thinks that sources has been somehow vetted by a Nobel price, that was awarded some 30 years before 200 Years Together came out.

Finally, Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion.--Assayer (talk) 01:39, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

If you did not even read the original in Komsomol'skaya Pravda (I did not), let's just forget about it. "A blog post utilizing her publication is vehemently disputed by Mvbw." Are you really suggesting to use this blog for sourcing instead of multiple RS noted above? My very best wishes (talk) 01:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I may note that My very best wishes significantly edited their original contribution more than 11 hours after it was posted without indicating the changes.[10] I responded to the original version.--Assayer (talk) 14:02, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

E. Zhirnov, „Protsedura kazni nosila omerzitelniy kharakter“ (A Horrible Execution), Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 28, 1990, p. 2. This sources is cited by Albats, Colton, Solzhenitsyn, and Robert Gellately. In his comparative work Lenin, Stalin and Hitler (2007) Gellateley notes: "While Lenin and Stalin created more concentration camps, the Communists did not create killing centers. The Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka), as in Moscow during the 1930s, but how extensive that was needs further investigation.(39) They used crematoriums to dispose of thousands of bodies, but had no gas chambers." (p. 460) (i.e. direct contradiction of Albats and article lead). Note 39 is KP, Oct. 28, 1992 [sic], 2. On p. 367 he notes: "The killers sought and found a still more efficient and secretive killing process; they invented the first gas van, which began operations in the Warthegau on January 15, 1940, under Herbert Lange." Merridale cites Colton. Only a few researchers turned to the orignal files. (investigation against Berg). The vast majority of sources in the current version of the article in question, however, simply repeat one source over and over again.--Assayer (talk) 13:56, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

No, they do not simply repeat one source over and over again. In particular, Albats does not, Perov and Golovkova do not, etc. OK, let's provide direct quotation from Robert Gellately and other RS on the page. That's fine. Note however that it does not contradict the book by Albats (he tells according to you that "The Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka), as in Moscow during the 1930s, but how extensive that was needs further investigation."). My very best wishes (talk) 14:28, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Albats adds her own personal commentary, but as a source she only refers to Komsomolskaya Pravda. "mobile death chambers. Yes, the very same machinery made notorious by the Nazis" (Albats) ≠ "The Soviets ... had no gas chambers". (Gellateley) What other sources claim, that the Soviets has gas chambers?--Assayer (talk) 15:31, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, just as any other expert, Albats tells her view/interpretations based on her general knowledge of the subject, along with her sources, some of which are not cited in her book. Therefore, this is "according to Albats,...". Yes, there was no Soviet gas chambers because gas chambers are different from gas vans. Robert Gellately tells:"The Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka)...". Note that he describes Nazi gas van in the same book and same context as Soviet gas vans. Hence, his view is consistent with view by Albats ("same van(s)") My very best wishes (talk) 16:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

It's hard to tell what the exact issues are here. What I think is: (1) If there is a good source that the NKVD used a gas van in the 1930s, there is no reason it shouldn't go in the article on gas vans. (2) One should not write that the Soviets invented the gas van in a way that might lead readers to think that the Nazis copied it from the Soviets, unless a strong source is found for that (by which I mean a source that cites a Nazi document, not just a source which infers it from the chronology). Neither country invented execution by gas (see USA 1924) and it doesn't take a genius to think of doing it on wheels. (3) Solzhenitsyn might think that the (alleged) Jewishness of the Soviet inventor is significant, but we have our own criteria for significance and should not follow Solzhenitsyn's lead. It would be best to only use sources other than Solzhenitsyn. Zero^talk 03:18, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with everything here. Speaking about (2), yes, we can not state this as a matter of fact, but only as a directly cited view attributed to an academic source. My very best wishes (talk) 14:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not argue that we should not mention a Soviet gas van altogether, all the more, since this story is on the Internet and should be addressed. I argue against the way that it is currently presented. You'd have to read about Soviet gas vans first, before you will read about Nazi gas vans for simple reasons of chronology? This rather implies a continuity which did not exist. Significance is more important here. --Assayer (talk) 13:56, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Why not change it so that German vans are mentioned first then? Seems an easy solution.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:23, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I think that it would be better to stick with chronological order, but you could have a pre-amble explaining, for example, that gas vans appear to have been developed independently in the two places and that, though German gas vans had long been known and written about, information about the Soviet version only began to appear from 1990. I also see no reason not to have a separate article devoted to the development and use of gas vans by the Germans if there's a desire for that.     ←   ZScarpia   14:52, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

We can not say they have been developed independently because none of the sources say it or even implicitly assume it. A cited academic sources (Albats) simply tells the vans were "the same", without any further explanations. The best we can do is to directly quote this source and provide the events simply in chronological order. Whatever a reader can infer from reading a page is none of our business as long as we provided an NPOV-compliant version. My very best wishes (talk) 15:07, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

simply tells the vans were "the same", without any further explanations - that should raise a red flag concerning reliability in the first place.--Assayer (talk) 15:31, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Of course, we have to stick with what we can verify, but correct me if I'm wrong, we do have sources which say that gas vans were a German development, implying the absence of knowledge of any outside influence. I suspect that we could also point out that particular detailed sources on German gas vans do not mention any influence. And although Albats may say that the vans were "the same", we can point out that, although the Soviet vans used engine exhaust gases, the first German gas vans used bottled carbon monoxide.     ←   ZScarpia   15:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

This is not clear. According to discussion on talk, one of sources tells: For this purpose [killing patients in numerous Wartheland hospitals in 1940], a kind of mobile gas chamber had been invented. We do not know the inventor, but the KTI was probably involved. (The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 1995, p. 139). Hence it tells We do not know the inventor (in Germany). My very best wishes (talk) 17:23, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I suggested this version, which does not delve into the issue of "invention" nor the question, who used it first. I also omitted mention of Soviet gas vans in the lead, because if true it was merely an isolated incident and I omitted Albats and Solzenitsyn, because they merely add opinion, but no new evidence. I will also proceed to expand the section on Nazi Germany and the lead, but that work takes time.--Assayer (talk) 16:40, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

In my opinion, this version correctly describes a Soviet gas van story. I would say, it might be possible to rename a section to "Controversy", because the Kontinent article contains memoirs that cast a doubt on a trustworthiness of Berg's interrogation protocol (I quoted this passage either here or in the RSN discussion). Taking into account that that protocol was the only source used by Zhirnov (according to his article in Kommersant), that makes the whole body of sources that cite KP questionable. In addition, the same article says that the primary goal was to suppress the ability of the victims to resist, which, although was even more brutal, still does not makes Soviet gas van a killing machine per se.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:20, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

If there were any specific technical differences between the Soviet and Nazi gas vans (and this can be sourced), such differences must be noted on the page, but I did not see anything on this so far; only claim(s) they were the same. Of course the stationary death chambers were different, but they were used only in Nazi Germany. The bottled carbon monoxide was used only in stationary death chambers. My very best wishes (talk) 20:43, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

The key issue here is the use of poison gas for mass murder, regardless if the death/gas chambers were stationary or mobile. Albats explicitly speaks broadly of "machinery" and alludes to Auschwitz, where gas chambers were built. The first German gas vans used pure CO from steel cylinders for killing like in the gas chambers of German euthanasia killing centers. --Assayer (talk) 01:32, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. That answers my question about the differences between Soviet and Nazi gas vans. This needs to be reflected on the page. My very best wishes (talk) 01:45, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

While the first Nazi gas vans did indeed use bottled carbon monoxide, this proved to be not practical (they had to wait to replenish new cylinders from Germany, etc), so KTI went on to develop gas vans using exhaust fumes to replace them, see this source on pages 199-200. So in fact Albats was right, both the Soviet and final Nazi version of the gas vans were the same. —Nug (talk) 03:32, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Interesting detail about how the Germans settled on the use of gas vans using engine exhaust which is currently not in the article. I think that consideration should be given to listing the book in the Bibliography (the book's Appendix is cited as a reference). "The idea of using exhaust gases had already been discussed by Nebe and Heess. Nebe had come up with the idea after almost killing himself when returning home drunk from a party and falling asleep in his garage with the engine running. The concept circulated around the halls of the KTI, but no specific steps were taken at the time. Dr. Albert Widmann, a toxicology expert and head of KTI's chemical section, was summoned to Minsk to conduct experiments in order to find the most practical killing method." A pity that it's unknown whether poisoning by engine exhaust was among the experiments conducted by Widmann because of Nebe's suggestion. I've got hold of a copy of the full text so that I can read the pages not available on Google Books.     ←   ZScarpia   12:38, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

That clarifies things. Both details (by you and Nug) should be included on the page. The problems are with Nazi Germany sections. What is the source here, exactly? My very best wishes (talk) 13:36, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Chelmno and the Holocaust, A History of Hitler’s First Death Camp (2012) - Patrick Montague. For details about the use of bottled carbon monoxide I mentioned in earlier comments I was using David Cesarani's "Final Solution, the Fate of the Jews 1933-49".     ←   ZScarpia   13:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Poisoning by engine exhaust fumes was among the experiments conducted by Widmann. Together with Nebe he devised of a sort of gas chamber in the mental asylum of Mogilev in September 1941. Sources are multiple. Some say, that next Nebe came up with the idea of constructing a car for the gassing. As I said, I will work on the article.--Assayer (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi there,

I am fairly new and haven't difficulty getting a page published. It is with regards to a AAA Game writer who has worked on some of the biggest games in the past few years and I didn't think it would be difficult to publish. I've referenced multiple articles noting their work across games, moves to different project, BBC interviews and so on but I'm being told that they are only passing mentions and I'd need more to show their impact in their field? Comparing this to other articles I've seen, I'm just not sure where I'm going wrong? I don't think they have done lots of interviews or have won any awards specifically as they write for various companies but they are well known in the industry as the Senior Scriptwriter for quite a few multi-million dollar games. Any advice would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mousemouse10 (talk Mousemouse10 (talk) 09:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)mousemouse10

Can you give an example of someone who has garnered no more attention and yet has an article?Slatersteven (talk) 09:21, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Edwards_(producer) I was comparing it to this one. I can't quite see the difference in references? Again, any advice would be great - thank you. Mousemouse10 (talk) 09:40, 10 October 2019 (UTC)mousemouse10

From who?Slatersteven (talk) 09:46, 10 October 2019 (UTC) Sorry, I don't quite understand the question (and again, very new!). I was just confused as I saw this article and it didn't seem like this person had more references of notability in comparison to the person in my article. Kim MacAskill is the AAA Game writer I'm trying to put on following her move from the Arkham Batman series to the new AAA Playground game. It doesn't seem Edwards has more to offer? How could I do this better to avoid rejection? Again, thank you! Mousemouse10 (talk) 09:52, 10 October 2019 (UTC)mousemouse10

OK so has she been appointed to any managerial position at a major broadcaster?Slatersteven (talk) 09:58, 10 October 2019 (UTC) - She was a producer for BBC Comedy, Senior Scriptwriter for Warner Bros Rocksteady (Batman Arkham Series) and now Senior Scriptwriter for Playground (game is rumoured t be Fable 4 which is pretty significant given its one of the most famous games). Most of the articles I am finding are on her games career (admittedly the better one) with one BBC Comedy Article with her giving advice to new writers. I'm not sure why the references aren't enough? Mousemouse10 (talk) 10:04, 10 October 2019 (UTC) Mousemouse10

So no then she was not.Slatersteven (talk) 10:06, 10 October 2019 (UTC) This is where I'm confused. The other person was simply a producer and writer for the same broadcaster. I can't see how this is different? Mousemouse10 (talk) 10:09, 10 October 2019 (UTC)Mousemouse10

""BBC appoint Edwards acting head of radio comedy".Slatersteven (talk) 10:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Four or more editors have been pressuring at the Talk:Criticism of Swaminarayan sect want to include all of the justification from the sect. They tried to give it so by giving more weight to apology and justification. As WP:Criticism states criticism article is for negative viewpoints of the particular philosophy and religion then why justification from the sect can be included in the article? Like, Criticism of Marxism exists and there is no such balancing and inclusion of the arguments regarding justification from marxists. Same with Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Buddhism and Criticism of Religion. If the article will go for balancing the thoughts and inclusion of justification from apologetic then how it will serve the purpose of the criticism as per heading? I tried to let them understand that this is sub POV of Swaminarayana sect in which negative points are included by keeping NPOV in mind but none of them is agreeing on the issue and most of them are not even extended confirmed and pressurising to include positive viewpoints. I had made the page by looking at the pages stated above and if all the things will be added in this article then how it will be different from original POV article i.e. Swaminarayan sect. I am looking for the comments of more experienced editors and administrators regarding this page. -- Harshil ^{want to talk?} 18:55, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

That one should go to AfD I think. This is not anything notable. My very best wishes (talk) 00:21, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

@Harshil169: posted this article on the NPOV noticeboard and has ignored the other editors @Ms Sarah Welch, Nizil Shah, Gazal world, Apollo1203, and Sacredsea: and myself who are striving to maintain NPOV and balance on this article. Harshil insists it doesn't apply, which has led to some disagreement, and Harshil has responded with some incivility in his talk and actions (see diffs below).

1. Harshil never honored Apollo’s request for exact quotes from the non-English sources he initially cited in the article, even after I followed up. (See Talk Page)
2. Harshil quoted a statement verbatim from a source he initially referenced and then changed this reference twice without changing the words (non-English source, English book). No explanation was offered to me when I asked for one. (See Talk Page)
3. He reverted three edits made by me, Apollo, and Sacredsea in trying to make the article adhere to NPOV.

Ms Sarah Welch has graciously stepped in and is offering feedback to help maintain NPOV. Several editors in good faith are attempting to achieve this balance, and it would be good if it can happen with civility. I have notified the other users mentioned in this article should they wish to weigh in on the neutrality of this article. Moksha88 (talk) 04:24, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

You folks, which includes both of you, need to discuss this further on the talk page before seeking help on this board. For reasons mentioned in the next thread, I am not a fan of separate articles on criticism and prefer that criticism + apologetics be integrated into the main article. There are exceptions, of course, where the main article is too big and the criticism is big and notable too in peer-reviewed sources. I am not persuaded that Swaminarayan-related articles belong to that group of select articles. But, at this point, you all need to first resolve your content disputes by respectful discussion and collaboration. Once a consensus version emerges, we can decide the best place for that version: a separate article or a section in an appropriate article. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 12:18, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the views expressed in this and the below discussions that there have to be relevant and extensive secondary sources on the whole subject otherwise such criticism pages become WP:POVFORKs or WP:COATRACKs. For the Swaminarayan criticism page in particular, I think that the substantive topics on this page which have ample secondary sources supporting them are better incorporated into the main articles on this topics and this page should be a candidate for AfD.Sacredsea (talk) 17:35, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

[11] seems like WP:SOAP. Please chime in. Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:25, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I could see this as a valid edit. One would need to be rather well versed in A Course of Miracles writings to have a working understanding of what books could add to the article. It would possibly help everyone involved to discuss on talk which books could be reasonably incorporated into the prose of the article in some way, and which candidates best serve the readers in a further reading section. Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

There are about 10-20 books written by a variety of ACIM students/teachers over the last 50 years. I have tried to add these to the article. I thought it would be helpful to readers. Nirvana2013 (talk) 12:24, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

No WP:FRIND WP:SOURCES in order to WP:Verify your claims. You have given absolutely no reason for why we should have that list of books instead of any other random list of books on the subject. Perhaps you know why, but we don't, since we cannot examine your WP:RS for such information. Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:28, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Nirvana2013, the long-term quality of the article could be improved with talking about the more important books on the subject that have been penned, as noted in reliable sources. Anything in the Further Reading section is disposable, just like most external links.

Finding the connections to the best of those books through reliable sources and documenting it all in the article will actually help the readers. Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Agreed Gleeanon409 that would improve the article. I don't have time just now to make the necessary edits but I would propose a reading list is a good first step. All the books can be verified as being related to ACIM by a quick Google search. Nirvana2013 (talk) 16:04, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

@Nirvana2013: Readers are not expected to do any Google searches to understand why something is included. Just be aware that the listings remain disposable, anyone can just remove them as not adding much value. I suggest pruning down to a handful of the most helpful books that add to article’s information. Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:57, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Self-coup (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There's currently a request for comment over the inclusion of Boris Johnson in the article. At the moment, I think most of the contributors — including myself — are British, so we might all have tinted glasses over it and evaluations from editors in different countries would be appreciated. Sceptre (talk) 21:57, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I can't say "Self-coup" is the right term for the events that took place concerning Johnson. What do reliable sources say about it? Have they used the term "self-coup" very often? Aman.kumar.goel (talk) 04:00, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Jim, the subject of the James D. Zirin article. In the past, I've made some missteps attempting to update the article, but I've since learned how to work with editors to make changes on my behalf. If you review Talk:James D. Zirin, you'll see I now understand how the edit request process works, and you'll also notice I've tried in earnest to work with editors to remove the 'close connection' tag at the top of the article.

My most recent post to the talk page outlines how I've attempted to resolve the tag by asking both uninvolved and involved editors to identify any non-neutral or otherwise problematic text. If the editor who added the tag is not willing to discuss, the tag is not meant to be a "scarlet letter", and no other editors can point out problematic content, then I'm lost as to why the tag is still needed. I've tried to seek assistance on the article's talk page, at this noticeboard (almost 2 months ago), a WikiProject, and at user talk pages, but no one seems available to help.

I'm hoping someone who reads this page can take a look at the article's text and either remove the tag if there are no major concerns, or share which text is problematic so I can take steps to address. Please, I'm running out of ideas. Thanks. Jim Zirin (talk) 23:39, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

The tag has been removed, and thanks to User:Gleeanon409 for helping. Jim Zirin (talk) 20:05, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Pinehouse Photography Club Good day. Im am asking for anyone to help with this page. It seems I need more neutral opinions and edits, although I believe its well cited. Any talk or constructive thoughts welcome :) ----Dreerwin (talk) 14:24, 16 October 2019 (UTC) Even maybe re wording:

The Pinehouse Photography Club was established in 2017 by a primary care RN(AAP) in Pinehouse Lake. It is a nonprofit organization in northern Saskatchewan whose goal is to help heal and transform lives in its remote community through the use of therapeutic photography.[1] 350 kilometers north of Saskatoon, it’s a place where people, especially youth, can feel isolated and alone, often choosing to make unhealthy choices as a way to cope with the loneliness.[2] The club was created to help youth through the use of therapeutic photography who are at risk for mental health problems and addictions. It has been shown that using photography as a form of therapy helps start the conversation about mental health, without even saying a word.[3]

The nonprofit organization has a studio, a full-time employee who acts as the director of operations, a board of directors, and a van for the youth.[4][5][6] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dreerwin (talk • contribs) 14:31, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Please take a look at the following RfC, wherein we discuss whether applying the label "pro-Maduro" to certain Venezela's institutions/branches of government is neutral: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Responses_to_the_2019_Venezuelan_presidential_crisis#RfC:_Should_Venezuelan_crisis-related_articles_use_terms_like_'pro-Maduro',_and,_if_not,_what_alternatives_can_be_used? Notrium (talk) 09:13, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Mathura Art needs eyes who are familiar with art history and willing to deal with nationalist revisionism. Simonm223 (talk) 12:38, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

There is a request for comment regarding the neutrality and weight of claims in the Jeffrey Epstein article. If you are interested, please participate at Talk:Jeffrey Epstein § RfC: Virginia Giuffre and Bill Clinton. — Newslinger talk 13:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

See talk:Maryland#Popishness. There is currently a dispute over whether using the word “Popishness” to describe Catholicism in the lead of Maryland is appropriate. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:10, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

• Russia investigation origins counter-narrative (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This has been nominated for deletion and some suggest WP:TNT. That's a bit of a problem as it's spun out of sections in other articles, so may indicate NPOV problems at William Barr, for example. I believe the topic to be notable (several sources addressing it directly) and separate from the Ukraine shakedown. Can people please help by reviewing the sourcing and tone? I am by now in the "marking your own homework" zone so I need assistance. Thanks. Guy (help!) 11:01, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The article on Kang Yong-suk seems to be pretty flagrantly POV: [12],[13],[14],[15],[16]. However, I don't know Korean and am unable to read the cited sources to see what they actually say or to judge them for reliability. While I could just delete the majority of the article, I don't know enough about the subject to rewrite the POV parts. What do people think should be done? Darthkayak (talk) 11:45, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Looking at it (no I do not read Koran, I am using google translate) there are serious issues with some of those cites. I get there could be translation errors, but some of it just seems to dodgy for that to be the case (such as not saying something was false).Slatersteven (talk) 12:00, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

That was part of my impression as well - apart from the more obvious puff, the citations seemed kind of off. I believe one of the cited pieces was from Nocut News, which I know is religiously affiliated, but other than my hunch that it isn't, I don't know enough about its reputation or quality to tell if it's reliable. Darthkayak (talk) 12:43, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Frankly I am finding precious little about him, what I have found is all about his penchant for putting his foot (or other body parts) in places they should not be.Slatersteven (talk) 12:48, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Same, although I suspect enough Korean language articles are out there to establish a degree of notability. I'm pretty much basing that entirely on him having competed on The Genius show though - the contestants are usually rather famous. Darthkayak (talk) 13:04, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

There is an ongoing move discussion regarding whether to move Great Replacement → Great replacement conspiracy theory. The discussion currently only has 4 participants, and has been relisted. Additional input would be helpful. Nblund ^talk 16:48, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Fellow wikipedians,

For some time now there has been a dispute on which map to include on the introduction of the United Nations wikipedia page. It involves the following two:

1) United Nations Members (green–grey scheme) (the established map)

2) United Nations members de facto borders (the new map)

The green-scheme map broadly follows the norms of the UN and international diplomacy by keeping it to internationally recognized member-states.[17] It has also been used for several years on the page until recent edits brought up the issue. Lastly, it is used in over twenty languages across wikipedia.

The blue-scheme map highlights various de facto (unrecognized) states who are not members of the UN and is highly contentious as 'new' de facto states come and go every now and then and who is to say what a de facto state is? There is no broadly agreed upon standard. Moreover, it is only used one page and only on the English wikipedia.

I wish to receive feedback on this issue from neutral wikipedians who are are not politically invested in this topic.Wadaad (talk) 12:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

What is the source for the "de facto" map? Simonm223 (talk) 12:44, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@Simonm223: as far as I can tell. It has no source. Wadaad (talk) 12:45, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

If it has no source, it should not be used. However I would like confirmation from someone not asking for support removing said map before I'd say explicitly that it should be taken down. Simonm223 (talk) 12:52, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

What is the source of the green-gray "Establishment (sic) map"? I don't believe that the UN has that map on its official website. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 13:32, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Wadaad, you left a long edit on my User Talk page with excuses for your most recent edit-warring regarding the United Nations article, and I replied in your Talk page to make sure that you see my response. Given that it explains my concerns with your methods of imposing your views on other editors, and the process that I believe would allow us to settle this controversy, I will include my response here as well.

First of all, the map that you wish to include in the article is not an NPOV presentation of the world, even if the UN pretends that Taiwan is ruled by the People's Republic of China and Kosovo is ruled by Serbia. It is misleading to color de facto states that are not members of the UN in the same color as UN member states. When readers see Taiwan colored green, their first thought will be that Taiwan must be part of the UN.

But more to the point, you have a lot of chutzpah to use the fact that you were blocked for edit-warring on this same article (and regarding this same issue) as the reason why you should be permitted to revert, without seeking a consensus, edits made during your month-long ban (which followed several shorter blocks for edit-warring). I'm no expert on Wikipedia's edit-warring policies, but I'm pretty sure that having been blocked from editing for a month because of your persistent edit-warring does not give you carte blanche to continue edit-warring on the same article the minute that your ban expired (or did you wait a full half hour before making your Bold reversion?). And once your Bold reversion was reverted, you should have gone to the Talk page and sought a consensus. Instead, you reverted a second time (and added a POV "clarification" that only made things worse), and when I was forced to revert you again and explain that when Bold reversions are themselves reverted that you should seek a consensus at the Talk page you then reverted for a third time. I'm not going to file a formal accusation of edit-warring (I prefer to talk things through), but it is likely that some other editor will do so unless you don't start acting more civilly.

On another matter, during your edit war last month, you also engaged in inappropriate canvassing when you sought out known anti-Taiwan editor Lo meiin (who soon thereafter was blocked indefinitely for his abusive behavior--most persistently against me--and POV pushing) and asked him to join the map discussion. I see that you now have invited SharabSalam to participate in the discussion of this new controversy, but you did so *without having commenced the discussion in the Talk page*. I am familiar with SharabSalam and, while we've had heated debates in the past, I can vouch for his fairness and civility: If you were seeking another Lo meiin, you will be disappointed. I also see that SharabSalam participated in the map discussion last month, so it was not inappropriate for you to invite him to a new discussion--but you need to start one at the Talk page.

In the spirit of civiliy and seeking a consensus, you should self-revert your third reversion, start a new discussion at the Talk page, and invite all participants in the prior discussion (including Ythlev, Vanilla Wizard and NightHeron) and other frequent collaborators in the United Nations article. But please cease with the edit-warring.

And I would be remiss if I did not add that the discussion of this topic should be open to all interested editors willing to follow the rules, including editors who are "politically invested" in the topic, whom Wadaad apparently wishes to exclude. For example, given that the blue map notes that the de facto Republic of Somaliland is not a UN member, while the green map colors it green as part of Somalia, an editor from Somalia could be said to be "politically invested" in the topic. However, I don't believe that Wadaad should be prohibited from opining just because he's Somalian, and neither should editors from Taiwan, the PRC, Kosovo, Serbia, Cyprus, Georgia, etc. be excluded. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 13:30, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Does the map pass wp:or and wp:v?Slatersteven (talk) 13:47, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• I suggest we remove all maps from UN related articles. I have never seen the UN drawing maps with borders. This map borders are original research. If we want to mention the members of the UN we can just mention them, for God's sake, there is no need for a map in the infobox. The UN logo is enough in the infobox.--SharabSalam (talk) 14:12, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
• I agree. If the maps were uncontroversial and/or sourced directly to the UN, that would be different. But as far as I can see, these maps are neither, and they're not even particularly helpful to a reader. The first map in the current United Nations article looks just like the whole world colored green, even if you click on it to magnify the size. There are a few white spots not colored green, but it's unclear whether those are countries not in the UN or just lakes. Deleting the maps would free editors' time for more worthwhile pursuits than endless disputes about Taiwan, Kosovo, etc. NightHeron (talk) 15:45, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
• I'm starting to like the idea of removing the maps. They're just not the best way to convey which polities are and are not part of the United Nations. The article Member states of the United Nations does a much better job at this by simply using a table. The best solution would be to direct readers to the list article where relevant, and simply use another graphic wherever the map is currently used.  Vanilla  Wizard  💙 18:36, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
• Given that both maps could be misconstrued, and that (as SharabSalam mentioned) the article easily could list the 193 UN member states and 2 UN observer states (or else make a cross-reference to the Members of the United Nations article), I think that you three are on to something when you suggest that the article not include a map at all. Now, personally, I love maps, and a map that shows the few states (de facto or otherwise) that are not UN members would be of interest to me, but with the level of heartache that such map creates for some other editors I will support a decision not to include either map. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 18:40, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I just realized that the green-scheme map that colors green everything but for the strip of Western Sahara controlled by the SADR, the State of Palestine, Vatican City and (adding to the confusion) a few lakes currently appears at the top of the Member states of the United Nations article. If the editing community reaches a consensus that neither the green-scheme map nor the blue-scheme map should appear in the infobox of the United Nations article, may I assume that such consensus also would extend to the Member states of the United Nations article, where inclusion of either such map may lead to confusion? AuH2ORepublican (talk) 20:41, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I think any map with borders that demonstrate member states of the UN is problematic. Especially when it comes to disputed areas like China and Taiwan, Palestine and Israel etc etc. The borders in the maps implies that the UN recognize these borders. I think the logo and the flag, which also contain maps but without borders, are enough in the infobox. If we want to mention UN members we can simply create a table in the UN article or in the Member states of the United Nations article and make a link to it. Other editors might say that mentioning of the members of the United nations should be in the lead, we can put a link to member states of the UN in the infobox.--SharabSalam (talk) 14:02, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

@Simonm223: If you mean is the map based on something outside Wikipedia, no, it is based on discussion on Wikipedia. At first I just took the base map, which is sourced, coloured the undisputed territories of member states and left everything else grey. Then the discussion led to me removing separate colouring for Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. I agree that not having maps is a good idea. Ythlev (talk) 15:15, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

It's pretty clear from the discussion here that the United Nations members de facto borders map is WP:OR and inappropriate for Wikipedia. Simonm223 (talk) 15:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

@Simonm223: WP:OI: Original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments. Is this particular way of categorising territories an "unpublished idea"? I think not. Ythlev (talk) 16:09, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

• I think we should just remove the map from this article, or alternatively use the actual file the current map is based on (if the copyright allows). Any map we create will be lying to our readers, one way or another, either by claiming that certain governments control territory that they in fact do not control or by implying that the UN recognizes the existence of certain countries that it does not recognize. There are a half dozen or so cases in addition to Taiwan that make mapping the UN very messy. Perhaps for that reason, the UN doesn't present a map of member state territories in its sections about member states, and you have to do a bit of digging to find any map at all. Additionally, once you do, it has "The designations employed and the presentation of material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country" and other disclaimers printed right on the image itself. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 03:20, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

I vote for removing the map from the United Nations and Member states of the United Nations articles. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 18:20, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi all, I believe your help is needed concerning EOKA's article (a guerrilla struggle during 1955-59) and a lawsuit on torture that was filed ~55 years later. I believe a sentence or a couple of sentence would be enough, other users though believe a detailed section is needed.

My main argument is that torture allegations are discussed elsewhere in the article (section: Detention Camps and claims of torture"). The lawsuit is an unimportant issue per se, it was settled out-of-court, of course it was covered by some RS newspapers. A lot of RS talked about torture by UK, their opinions are mentioned elsewhere in the article, so it is like we are re-addressing the issue to tell a different story- a sensational one. Talking about the specific lawsuit and its details adds nothing to the article.

Currently, the specific section is 4,212 bytes, in an article of 52,611 bytes. That is ~8%. We skipped many serious events (ie tortures by EOKA - see Menoikos case, or the death toll of EOKA is summarized in a tiny single sentence). In my opinion, the lawsuit shouldnt be mentioned, but even if we mention it, it should be trimmed to 1-2 sentences. No secondary source is covering the specific lawsuit (apart from some newspapers reporting the news, I am not sure they are deemed secondary sources)

Pls @Dr.K.:, make the counterargument.Cinadon36 19:22, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

On Wikipedia's front page, we currently state in Wikivoice that "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi kills himself during a US raid," when all reliable sources (and our article on the topic) attribute the claim of Baghdadi's suicide to Trump or US officials:

• The Atlantic [18] like the Abbasids, he is dead—smashed to bits, according to Trump, by a self-detonated suicide vest.

• NBC News [19] Trump said the ISIS leader "died like a dog, he died like a coward. He was whimpering, screaming, and crying."

• ABC News [20] The president said al-Baghdadi, "went into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way," and died when he detonated a suicide vest.

• Reuters [21] Baghdadi killed himself during the raid by detonating a suicide vest, Trump said in a televised address from the White House.

• BBC [22] The fugitive leader of the Islamic State (IS) group killed himself during a US military operation in north-west Syria, President Donald Trump has said.

• The Guardian [23] US president says jihadist leader detonated suicide vest in US raid in north-west Syria.

• Agence France-Presse [24] As U.S. troops bore down on al-Baghdadi, he fled into a “dead-end” tunnel with three of his children, Trump said, and detonated a suicide vest.

• Associated Press [25] US media cited multiple government sources as saying Baghdadi may have killed himself with a suicide vest as US special operations forces descended.

Based on these sources, our text should clearly be rephrased to something like Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead after a US raid in Idlib, Syria."

However, at In the News, otherwise very reasonable editors (e.g. pinging Masem for courtesy) are arguing that we should convert attribution to fact, unless a reliable source contests the nature of his death. This is really inappropriate, especially for something that is so easy to get right, and when every other reliable source is correctly attributing the claim. -Darouet (talk) 20:46, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

• Buy Nothing Day (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Per [26], is a press release by Adbusters a valid source as a rebuttal for criticism in the following para:

While critics of the day charge that Buy Nothing Day simply causes participants to buy the next day,[6] Adbusters states that it "isn't just about changing your habits for one day" but "about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste."[7]

I would argue not. Guy (help!) 15:39, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, we attribute it, and seems to me they are an RS for what they say.Slatersteven (talk) 15:43, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes if this material can be considered "about self" and if this release is in reply to comments/criticism directed at Adbusters/their project. I'm not clear if Adbusters is the organizer and target of BND criticism or if they are a third party offering this in support of BND. Basically if the criticism of BND is DUE then we are making a better article by including a reasonable reply from the organizer (assuming Adbusters is the organizer). If this release was published as a general statement then only if it helps the reader understand the subject. In either case, attribution is required. Springee (talk) 17:15, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I'd say, since Buy Nothing Day is very much an Adbusters thing, the test should be whether inclusion of the material would be unduly self-serving. In this case I don't think it is. As such, I'd think it's allowable under WP:ABOUTSELF though borderline. Simonm223 (talk) 17:28, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

We are in agreement in this case but I don't think "unduly" enters into it here if the material was in response to criticism that we are discussing in the article. Springee (talk) 19:17, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The first part of the contention ("... critics of the day charge that Buy Nothing Day simply causes participants to buy the next day") does not seem reliably sourced (not what the on-line article (blog?) really says, nor would the 101 forum comments that follow it in any guise or format be a reliable source), nor does Wikipedia's "summary" seem free from WP:EDITORIAL, so I can live with the entire section being removed as it happens to be now, per WP:CRITICISM. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:41, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

If the discussion of the criticism is UNDUE then we should remove both. Springee (talk) 19:17, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The "rebuttal" isn't clearly related to the specific criticism at all. In fact it was written before the article cited as criticism. 199.247.44.10 (talk) 06:54, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

But it is a rebuttal of the criticisms is not not, just not that specific incident of it?Slatersteven (talk) 10:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, no, the segment wasn't written in response to any criticism at all. Positioning it there as a rebuttal is actually borderline OR. 199.247.44.10 (talk) 10:39, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Was it not, both were published on the same day (not one later), so how do you know one was not a reaction to the other?Slatersteven (talk) 10:45, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Sorry I'm now not sure what you're talking about. The Adbusters press release was written November 16th, the Tyee article November 24th. 199.247.44.10 (talk) 11:00, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Sorry my mistake It was the title.Slatersteven (talk) 11:25, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

A trick I use to see if two contrasting viewpoints are being presented neutrally... swap the viewpoints. So, what happens if we put the two parts in reverse order, and say:

Adbusters states that BND “isn’t just about changing your habits for one day” but “about starting a lifetime commitment”. Meanwhile, critics state that it simply causes participants to buy the next day.

If this swap significantly changes the meaning then we have a neutrality problem. Blueboar (talk) 13:42, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

See this twitter with 16K followers calling disciples into action.AstuteRed (talk) 18:28, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Quite ironic that a brand new SPI account would complain about canvassing. There appears to be all kinds of shenanigans going on on this article from all sorts of folks. Volunteer Marek 14:51, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Also https://www.wykop.pl/link/5198225/wedlug-wikipedii-w-polsce-istnieja-no-go-zones/ and https://www.wykop.pl/link/5199751/strefy-no-go-w-polsce-w-wikipedii-dalszy-ciag-walki/ I checked the comments using Google translate and there are plans to flood the article with bogus information as well as deleting things. Also see WP:NOSOLICIT and WP:CANVAS. // Liftarn (talk) 13:41, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

There very well might be such comments buried somewhere in there, but at least on the first link most of the discussion is about whether... rainbow colored park benches in Kielce cost the government 6k zloty or 60k. The general consensus seems to be that if it’s 6k zloty (about 1500$) then that’s fine, but 60k (about 15000$) is too much for a park bench, even if it is rainbow colored. Kielce is in one of those supposedly “LGBT free zones” (sic) so there’s some surprise about these benches being put up in the first place. Volunteer Marek 14:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

That article is already terrible to begin with. Simonm223 (talk) 13:49, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Yup. Aside from being horribly written and organized it’s an obvious POV pushing magnet. Volunteer Marek 14:51, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

There is a discussion on whether the Daily Mail is a usable source of opinions that are not used under WP:ABOUTSELF. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Opinions in the Daily Mail. — Newslinger talk 14:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Scope creep, DIYeditor, and Gwenhope:The use of the word executed is too sanitary and anesthetic when used for the judicial murder of persons, by the state. The same thing goes for the word phrase lawful killing ". A lawful killing is execution by the state,or if you will state sanctioned murder.

When speaking of people put to death for the crime of murder we might use the euphemism: executed, or judicial murder. What then of people put to death, as in Iran, Saudi Arabia for adultery or homosexuality, or authoritarian countries for political reasons. These are lawful (judicious) murders by the law of the land. Hitler had thousands of political opponents judiciously murdered,and millions more murdered simply because of their ethnicity or some undesirable feature. So is it a white wash of a horrific event to call the judicicious murder of some resister, adulterer, pr homosexual execution a lawful killing? And what is an "unlawful killing" anyway. Killings by their nature are unlawful, unless carried out by the state, ostensibly (but not necessarily) after being given due process of law. Then they are actually judicious murders. Or as the coroner reports, "Death by homocide".

So how do we refer to these events in article names and in the articles themselves.? Oldperson (talk) 23:06, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing. Please see: WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. The word we should use is “executed”. Blueboar (talk) 23:17, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks.Blueboar I am familiar with and thought about WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. I am not trying to right a great wrong, but to be accurate. Wwhenever the state murders someone for what ever reason we call it an execution, and we only use the word murder or killing when it is done by an individual. So Adolph didn't murder anyone he only executed them. How about the phrase "Unlawful Killing"? It is nonsense, A lawful killing is murder by the state (execution) all other murders, by definition are unlawful. Is that not so?Oldperson (talk) 23:47, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

For anyone's information, this stems from List of unlawfully killed transgender people. No, Oldperson, as I already told you, other lawful killings may include self defense, defense of another, assisted suicide, accidental deaths not caused by negligence, acts of war, and possibly other circumstances. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Lawful killings include whichever killings the the relevant authorities deem to be lawful, and these are not murders, by definition. Lawful killings occurring outside of proscribed court procedures may be accurately termed extrajudicial killings. Where there is a dispute over the lawfulness of a killing or the identity of relevant authority (perhaps involving an authority of disputed recognition, or a conflict between national and international law), that dispute is settled by using or describing the language found in reliable sources. In fact, there should not be a dispute as far as Wikipedia is concerned unless there is a dispute in the reliable sources to begin with. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Someguy1221:Thanks, that clears up a lot.What then is the diff between an "unlawfull killing" and a murder. I am not trying to be cute here, but this is a serious question. The beheading of tens of thousands of political prisoners by the NAZI's were lawful killings. Stoning, beheading, hanging for adultery, homosexuality or political dissent in Iran, Saudi Arabia, China or many other countries are lawful killings. And the extermination of peoples by official decree are lawful killings. The answer, if I interpret you correctly is that we are to resort to RS for proper terminology. If the opinion in some RS calls it a lawful killing, then so it is, if another journalist in another RS calls it murder then so it is, if there is a conflict. we seek out a plurality. The death of a Saudi journalist in an Embassy in Turkey is a lawful killing, because it occurs on Saudi territory under the direction of the supreme authority of Saudi Arabia. I think I understand now. it is situational.What is a lawful killing in one country is judged to be murder by another country. Say, for instance, dissent in county X is punishable by death, then dealing death with an expat is a lawful killing. Salman Rushdie had a fatwa (a ruling by recognized religious authorities and the country of Iran) of death issued against him by the mullahs of Iran, killing him, anytime, anywhere would be a lawful killing, if I understand your explanation.Oldperson (talk) 04:59, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

In all of the situations you present, there will be inevitable conflicts in the terminology used, if not between reliable sources, than at least between involved parties. If someone were to kill a person in Country A after being given permission by Country B, there is a conflict of appropriate legal authority. If a national government were to endorse a genocide, this is likely to be condemned and possibly even punished under the guise of some international authority. It's not up to Wikipedia to decide which nation's laws apply, whether they were followed, or whether international law matters. Follow the reliable sources. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:59, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Oldperson, executed is the correct term for this particular form of barbarism. Guy (help!) 15:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

However for WP purposes I guess execution and unlawful killings will have to do, however I do think that the word murder should be used rather than "unlawful killings"Oldperson (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• There is a discussion in Talk:Plimpton 322/Archive 2#Era style about the neutrality of the Eras style in the article, comments are apreciated. Rupert Loup (talk) 20:18, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

My version have been repeatedly reverted without proper reasoning on t/p. No reasoning has been given after I was done with article overhauling. Following are problems with current and old version:

• Wikipedia description says that site propagated fake news by quoting one other site but don't let to include justification from this one.
• This article has been used to declare that it is politically partisan but justification from same article has not being included.
• Uses satirical opinion (reference 3) to write article.
• Has overcitation and when I compiled in one citation then it was removed.
• No adequate details about any establishment has is given. It states that it is owned by Kovai Media while [https://www.opindia.com/2018/11/announcement-opindia-is-now-a-separate-legal-and-business-entity/ it was separated in July 2018].
• Only retaliation about negative things are given and positive details is not being allowed in the article.

If some editor can look into matter then it will be great help. -- Harshil ^{want to talk?} 11:37, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

This is an invitation to participate at the following RfC regarding the 2019 Hong Kong protests: Add US or other counties or not as supporting counties and official organizations in the infobox's pro-protester side. starship.paint (talk) 13:42, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

• @KasimMejia: - if you are concerned about attention on this RfC, I have notified this noticeboard and also added the RfC to the category: Society, sports, and culture. starship.paint (talk) 13:43, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Saint Peter, Saint Nicholas and Saint Joseph etc. I feel that Wikipedia is biased towards Christianity than other religions. We cant put (prophet) next to Muhammad article yet we have these articles describing Christian leaders as Saints. Should we change the titles?.--SharabSalam (talk) 15:09, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

In part this has been done because Peter, Nicholas and Joseph are already taken. For the handful of named Islamic prophets whose given name has an article about the name itself, there is an article of the form NAME_(Prophet). Obviously, <HONORIFIC>_NAME is inconsistent with NAME_(<HONORIFIC>). Many figures from the Hebrew Bible get titles of the form NAME_(BIBLICAL_FIGURE). There have been at least a dozen discussions over moving Saint Peter to another title, all of which land at "no consensus". Anyway, conclusion, these title are the result of necessary disambiguation, but the solutions are extremely inconsistent. By the way, I am only attempting to provide a description of the issue - not to argue any which way. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:19, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I think you raise some good points, and would be interested in seeing a discussion somewhere about changing the way these are disambiguated. I will note that Someguy's assessment of the situation seems spot on; it is not done as a means to grant extra status to these figures, but as a means of expediency to draw a distinction between these and other articles of the same title; for example other Christian figures such as Bartholomew the Apostle or John the Evangelist have been disambiguated other ways. I don't believe that the intent was nefarious, as the OP implies, but agree that situation is inconsistent with both Wikipedia policy and with other similar cases. --Jayron32 15:01, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

In addition to what the two above posters said, WP:COMMONNAME. the three you mentioned are most commonly known as "Saint <their name>" whereas Muhammad is known to everyone but Muslims as, well, Muhammad.

Plus your insinuation that this is a purposeful bias makes you look petulant or jealous. 2604:6000:FFC0:54:5D97:40B6:3599:6C13 (talk) 15:48, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

That's a rather rude assumption of bad faith on the part of the OP. The point that these are disambiguated using their honorific is a valid concern, given that other people are not. WP:COMMONNAME only makes ssense when there is a single, very obvious common name we can point to; in these cases there are multiple, easily recognizable common names. No Wikipedia guidance exists in isolation, and in these cases WP:HONORIFIC also needs to be taken into account, especially since in many of these cases we can come up with another, rather obvious and very common name that ALSO abides by other Wikipedia guidance better. --Jayron32 17:01, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks Jayron32, Someguy1221 and the IP, in my opinion the problem here are the articles that contain "Saint" or anything that implies holiness. I am not saying that we should make the article title of Mohammad as "Prophet Muhammad" or "Muhammad (the prophet)" I am saying that we should change articles titles that contain implications of holiness, which are mostly Christian related articles. Wikipedia should not be used as a hagiography. Most editors in Wikipedia are probably Christians which is probably why Wikipedia is written from a Christian perspective. I am not saying that they purposely did make wikipedia biased towards Christianity, not at all, it is their religion and they are writing what they know. See for example in FAQs it says The presence of articles written from a United States or European Anglophone perspective is simply a reflection of the fact that there are many U.S. and European Anglophone people working on the project. There is also the argument of sources and COMMONNAME in which the common name is biased but I would note that "Saint" here is a honorific term that should be not regarded as a title and I think for example in Saint Peter the name should be changed to "Simon Peter". I don't have much knowledge in Christianity but I think we can use the full names of these Christian Saints if there is any to disambiguate instead of using the honorific terms. If there is no full name then I think the honorific term should be change to NAME_(Christian Saint). Sorry for the late reply I was busy these days and I totally forgot about this discussion.--SharabSalam (talk) 11:47, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

SharabSalam, I wonder how many readers will know that Simon Peter refers to Saint Peter? I didn't know that his first name was Simon. You are completely correct about Christian bias, but it's not necessarily Wikipedia's fault and not necessarily related to the religious backgrounds (if any) of Wikipedia editors. The English language itself, which has been dominated for centuries by two Christian-majority countries (UK and US), has a strong Christian bias. This might be gradually changing as the proportion of non-Christian English-speakers (even in those two countries) increases. To give an example, in some public school systems in the US, teachers are instructed to refer to the break in late December as the "winter vacation" and not say "Christmas vacation" out of respect for non-Christian students. I think that the best response to the bias in common English usage is not to rename Wikipedia articles with titles that would confuse many readers (such as Simon Peter rather than Saint Peter), but rather to be sure that articles related to Christian subjects are balanced and give ample coverage to criticisms. For example, I was very glad to see that there's an article Criticisms of Mother Teresa. Note that the article's title still refers to her as Mother Teresa, although the content of the article makes it clear that "motherly" might be the wrong word for her. NightHeron (talk) 13:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Some honorifics are just so ubiquitous in English usage that they become the individual's name (i.e. Augustus, Genghis Khan). Anecdotal I know, but prior to this discussion I'd have drawn a complete blank if someone asked me who "Simon Peter" or "Nicholas of Bari" were. --RaiderAspect (talk) 10:44, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Past discussions on the use of "climate crisis" on Wikipedia concentrated on the timing of such use, claiming that "not enough climate scientists use the term, so we shouldn't either."[27][28] Counter claims include the fact that "hard" scientists are trained against using superlatives, resulting in under-use even where appropriate; and that the term "crisis" is in the realm of the social sciences and humanities, and scientists in these fields use the term frequently. Well, these concerns should be resolved now: the "Alliance of World Scientists" - a 23,000 strong network - had published a "call to arms" titled World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, signed at the time of publication by over 11,000 scientists, most of which from the earth and atmospheric sciences, and biology.^[1][2][3][4] The statement includes such language as: "climate emergency", "catastrophic threat" and "climate crisis".

This should be more than enough for us to allow the use of "climate crisis" and "climate emergency" in Wikivoice. François Robere (talk) 20:27, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Why didn't you ask this question on the article talk page before coming here? Your last edit to the talk page was 2 Sept. It seems like the talk page should have been the first stop before coming here. BTW, the material was correctly removed as out of scope for an article: "This article is about the term or expression, "Climate crisis". For substantive discussion of the current warming of the Earth's climate system, see Global warming. For an understanding of any enduring change in the Earth's climate system, see Climate change (general concept)." Springee (talk) 21:34, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Because this isn't about the article, it's about terminology across Wikipedia. François Robere (talk) 12:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• There was an extensive discussion of this exact issue two months ago at Talk:Climate crisis#Wikivoice and "climate crisis". In that discussion there was no consensus that it was now okay to use the term "climate crisis" in Wikipedia's voice; the majority of participating editors disagreed with such a change. It is not appropriate, per WP:FORUMSHOP, to reopen the discussion here so soon after the discussion in September. NightHeron (talk) 12:22, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• I know and I linked to it. The point is there is new material to consider from yesterday. François Robere (talk) 13:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• By your own admission the material is new. Wikipedia shouldn't blaze the trail and act as an agent of linguistic change. Unless you can show that there is a clear consensus among scientist and researchers, not activists, politicians etc, then we should use terms with a neutral tone. It also isn't clear that this newly released paper actually indicates a change in language or something else or was simply the phrasing selected by the authors with the intent to create urgency in the readers. Springee (talk) 13:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• We're not blazing any trails here, but following RS' consensus. Can you show a better way of showing consensus than a letter signed by thousands of RS? As for a "change in language":

Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.” On the basis of this obligation... we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.

François Robere (talk) 15:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

That makes a pretty clear case that the authors want to change the language, not that the language has already changed. Wikipedia waits until the language has changed. That could be judged in perhaps 5-10 years. Not the day after the paper. Springee (talk) 15:31, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

So 11,000+ people (plus the UN, and other governmental, non-governmental and scientific bodies) "changing their language" isn't good enough? François Robere (talk) 15:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Who exactly are these 11,000+ people? What exactly did they sign? Was it in English each time? Has the language demonstrably changed in the scientific literature (not the political/advocating stories) since then? Do you have any RSs that indicate this paper has resulted in a change? Springee (talk) 15:50, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Scientists, researchers, and other scholars in the fields of earth and atmospheric sciences, and biology. There's a list - you can check for yourself.

Has the language demonstrably changed This letter is the evidence. It's thousands of RS using those terms. You're moving the goal posts claiming this isn't enough to show use. François Robere (talk) 15:55, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

If the letter "is" the evidence, then its inclusion in an article that is strictly about the term "climate crisis" constitutes original research. There needs to be secondary sources that have discussed that specific letter's impact on the change in language/ how it relates to a reframing of climate change in order for it to be included. Zortwort (talk) 17:50, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

It's not about inclusion anywhere, it's about "Wikivoice". François Robere (talk) 21:45, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Springee, Really? To my reading it makes it clear that the scientists want to explicitly join the general consensus that this is an emergency, and use a term that already has widespread currency in the non-scientific literature, rather than continuing to use the cautious language which is being exploited by denialists to minimise the problem. Guy (help!) 14:14, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

OK. So you should be able to show that the new scientific term is "climate emergency" vs "climate change". Also, you presuppose that the current consensus is "climate emergency". Let's say this paper is the cross over point. After this paper the future scientific works will start to refer to changes in various climates not as a change in the ecosystem due to "climate change" but a change in the ecosystem due to the "climate emergency". How long should Wikipedia wait to decide there has been a new consensus? Conversely, if we were to look at the papers published by some of those 11,000 signatories or even the authors, and find that they continued to use the term "climate change", would we decide this isn't really a consensus for a new term? Let's keep the emotions out and logic in here. Springee (talk) 14:18, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Springee:

1. There is pretty clear consensus that "climate change" is going to be disastrous.
2. The term "crisis" has been in use for some time by those scientists concerned with crises - political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, crisis management experts and economists.
3. We don't need consensus for any one term, because multiple terms can be used in parallel. This is the case here. François Robere (talk) 17:16, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

JzG, Scientists often sign advocacy statements and reports that use strong wording, but don't necessarily use the same language in their other writing. Do we know that all of those 11,000 scientists would use terms such as "climate emergency" even in their non-advocacy writing? For example, if they're invited to write an article for a traditional encyclopedia, would they use that term in the encyclopedia's voice? Also, is it really the case that denialists are basing their arguments on cautious language by scientists? You might be right about that, but it's not clear to me. NightHeron (talk) 14:33, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

NightHeron, True, but this is an unusually large number of them and an unusually emphatic statement. As to the substantive question, I believe we go through three phases of development of a phrase like this.

1. Promulgation / early adoption, where WP:ATT applies: Thunberg spoke of a "climate emergency"...
2. Mainstreaming, where we can repeat it without explicit attribution but only where the term is correct in context: Scientists discussing mechanisms for addressing the climate emergency considered various approaches... but some politicians reject the need for urgent action on climate change not the climate emergency
3. General acceptance, which is the current case with climate change and climate change denialism, which we use in wiki-voice.

I don't think we're at 3 yet, but we probably are at 2. Guy (help!) 15:53, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I just think we have to be extra careful about terms that are emotionally loaded and easily misinterpreted by the public. Terms like "crisis" and "emergency" can be misinterpreted to mean (1) we're facing calamity in the immediate future (rather than within a few decades), or that (2) anyone who's devoting energy to any other issue (economic inequality, racism, sexism, human rights) should drop that and prioritize climate activism. NightHeron (talk) 16:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

NightHeron, Looking at the raging twelve-appliance fire that is Western politics right now, it is easy to see why people are keen to reinforce the urgency of dealing with climate change, because we might not have time to wait for sane governments before it's too late (if it isn't already). I don't think it's alarmist to describe climate change as a crisis or an emergency. One might justly debate the level of climate induced extinction, suffering and death that reaches the level of crisis, but that would be to risk asking the fabled frog how he feels when the water is just below blood temperature. Guy (help!) 16:34, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

JzG, I doubt any of the editors involved in this discussion disagree about the urgency of the climate crisis. But objections to using terms like "climate crisis" and "climate emergency" are serious, non-fringe, and shared by many people who agree about the urgency. In addition to the reasons given in Climate crisis#Concerns about crisis terminology, another important viewpoint is that the term "climate crisis" understates the problem. The term "climate crisis" can be criticized for suggesting to the public that it's an isolated issue. But the impact will be felt soonest and most acutely by the poor, the powerless, and the people of color. That is, we're not talking about a future with bad weather; we're talking about social and ecological dystopia. Many (such as Naomi Klein) see the crisis as inseparable from other consequences of capitalist excess, and would like to see coordinated activism that focuses on climate change in conjunction with class oppression, racial oppression, and violation of human rights. One of the sources for our discussion praises CNN for getting its viewers to switch to bamboo toothbrushes, thereby undoubtedly feeling that they've contributed to averting the crisis. There's a long history of trivial actions, press releases about "sustainability", and corporate cooptation of environmentalism. Lip service -- strong words and emotional pronouncements -- is not the same thing as activism. NightHeron (talk) 20:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: Scientists often sign advocacy statements and reports that use strong wording, but don't necessarily use the same language in their other writing So what? Why does this statement - a statement of consensus - less worthy than any individual paper? François Robere (talk) 17:24, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@François Robere: I'm not saying that the statement signed by 11,000 is "less worthy". It is worthy as advocacy, and there is nothing wrong with advocacy by scientists or anyone else. My point, rather, is that the style of writing in an encyclopedia should resemble scholarly/scientific writing more than it should resemble advocacy writing -- in the sense of using factual rather than emotional terms. Thus, although the 11,000 might agree that strong language is appropriate for advocacy writing, they do not necessarily agree that it is appropriate in their own scientific writing. NightHeron (talk) 14:23, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

That's a valid point. Would you agree to stating in Wikivoice that "the change would result in a crisis in so and so" (economy, migration, water distribution etc. etc.)? This is widely agreed upon by sources, and is routinely described in papers discussing the human consequences of climate change (eg. [29][30][31][32]). François Robere (talk) 16:09, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@François Robere: It would be fine to write something like "Several researchers and environmental organizations have stated that climate change will result in economic, social, and political as well as ecological crises" followed by several references to those researchers and organizations. That would not be in Wikivoice, since the use of "crisis" is being attributed to reliable sources, rather than being a word choice of an editor. NightHeron (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I know there are numerous papers that present well-supported events that will happen in many geographical and topical spheres of influence, but they are all theories and predictions. They still cannot be presented in wikivoice as fact. A statement like "70% of the world's icebergs would thaw at a 1.5 degC average temperature increase" is not appropriate - we don't know how factually true that is, but "It is estimated that 70% of the world's icebergs would thaw at a 1.5 degC temperature increase" with one or more immediate sources would be fine. --Masem (t) 16:25, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Science is by definition all about theories and predictions... Regardless, how are we with ongoing climate-related crises? eg. associating Cal. fires to global warming? François Robere (talk) 17:54, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It usually takes years/decades/centuries of observations that conform to the theory to justify treating the theory as fact, eg something like the principles of Quantum mechanics can be taken as fact as we have years of understanding and evidence that all conform to the basic tenets. We have not seen a "climate crisis" so it remains theory and prediction, and thus can't be taken as fact in Wikivoice. We don't have strong confirmation that the fires in California are tied directly to climate change, though elements of climate change do directly provide reasons for these fires (drought, unusual weather patterns, etc.) --Masem (t) 19:40, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

So essentially you're taking the freedom to determine what is "fact" and what isn't, rather than relying on scientists' consensus. François Robere (talk) 19:48, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

No, we'd look to sources, where there should be dozens/hundreds of proper research papers to support that a theory holds. The case here , trying to argue we are in a climate crisis, is based on only a handful of sources, nowhere need that level of sufficient support to make it a "fact". I would also suspect that in general, for events that are predicted to happen, that until they happen, most research-based sources will take care to call the event happening as a fact, and would still use weaker assertive language, that something is likely to happen but not saying explicitly it will happen. --Masem (t) 20:36, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Note there is a distinction between scientists' consensus and scientific consensus; and that it is the latter that we should be interested in when determining what to couch as fact in Wikipedia's voice. - Ryk72 ^talk 05:49, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• The OP's explanation of the lack of consensus on crisis language (that "'hard' scientists are trained against using superlatives") is far from the only or the best explanation. For some of the other reasons why many scientists prefer not to use "such language as: climate emergency, catastrophic threat and climate crisis," see Climate crisis#Concerns about crisis terminology. NightHeron (talk) 15:10, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• I didn't make any such claim. I said it's one of the explanation, and that it - along with any other - is irrelevant now that we have thousands of subject experts signed on a letter using that terminology. François Robere (talk) 15:28, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

We know that the "crisis" terminology is still controversial in the mainstream, as is the more-used term "climate emergency". Maybe in ten years, after there's an historically horrific undeniably-climate-related disaster, the mainstream will actually replace "climate change" with "climate crisis". But the mainstream and a few influential politicians^{T cough ru cough mp} are still largely in denial or deflection, so for the time being it is the term "climate crisis", including its controversiality, that should be recognized. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:03, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Here's something on "mainstream". François Robere (talk) 21:45, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Again: using examples of use of the term, mainstream or not, would constitute original research (see WP:OR). Additional observations about the "climate crisis" characterization are at this diff. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:52, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

This isn't an "example", but agreement among over 150 "mainstream" media outlets... François Robere (talk) 11:22, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Could you clarify that sentence? I don't understand what you mean by "but disagreement among over 150 "mainstream" media outlets." Thanks. The reason for citing WP:OR is that an editor is gathering evidence to show that "crisis" is becoming the consensus term in RS, but is not finding any citations to RS that say something to the effect that "'crisis' is becoming the consensus term." Meanwhile, the understanding of other editors is that there is still disagreement among climate scientists and others about whether or not non-advocacy sources (such as scientific publications and encyclopedias) should use the term "crisis" in their own voice. NightHeron (talk) 12:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Corrected - "agreement". Primary sources (eg. scholars referring to X as Y) are usually sufficient to establish consensus - we don't usually look for meta-analyses on terminology. Hence, agreement among 150 outlets and 11,000+ scientists should be sufficient to establish mainstream use. François Robere (talk) 13:21, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

But mainstream use is not the same thing as consensus. To establish that there's a new consensus, that is, that there is no longer controversy among mainstream sources, you need sources that say that. An editor's own selective examination of primary sources does not establish that there's consensus. NightHeron (talk) 14:10, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@NightHeron: Wide mainstream use is. Regardless, this isn't our concern - sources already agree that climate change will be disastrous, and that's the only thing we as an encyclopedia should be concerned about. The political and PR reasons for using or not using some term on popular media, which you agree are the causes of this "controversy", don't apply to us. François Robere (talk) 17:30, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I read "climate crisis" in the same sense as "humanitarian crisis" - it is a type of LABEL geared to draw people into well-intended action, but does have a certain emotional weight to it, ala the calls of "won't someone think of the children?!". We should avoid such terms until they have more consistent use, which is probably going to take more than than past reports and a single paper that is supported by thousands of scientists, even if it comes after the fact of a point of no return in terms of the climate change issue; remember that WP is not here to right great wrongs and that includes being amoral to something as severe as climate change (that is: we clearly recognize it in Wikivoice, but we have to be careful of dramatizing it in Wikivoice). And even it were to become an accepted term, the use of the term would still need to be judges related to the context and sources around it. A topic that dealt with the state of climate change 5-10 years ago should not suddenly be changes to push the "climate crisis" language into it. --Masem (t) 14:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

MasemThe voice of wikipedia is the voice of the common vernacular, save where the article is technical, such as in computer programming, medicine, science, engineering, etc. If the common vernacular speaks of "climate crisis" then so should wikipedia. There is dispute over the terms "global warming" and "climate change" because the carbon industry and their handmaidens in press and politics used the word "warming" to distract and confuse the public, like when a U.S. Senator shows up on the floor of the senate with a snowball and uses that to scoff at "global warming", and wikipedia even reflects that fact with articles on both. The situation is mired in money and power and wikipedia is caught up in the politics of it all trying to remain neutral, yet neutral they are not, because WP is in fact choosing sides, by treating climate change global warming as two different subjects, and now arguing against "climate crisis". By the time the crisis is recognized it will be too late. The world was in crisis in 1937, it wasn't recognized until Sep 1,1939 and then it was too late. And I assume that you, Masem, speak English as a second (or third or fourth)language, you do well, very wellexcept that you should have used the past tensed "judged" instead of judges and "changed" instead of changes.Oldperson (talk) 16:44, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia's voice is impartial (that's set in NPOV). The discussion around climate change does have some impartial aspects (it is happening, humans have contributed to it, it is of major concern), but it also has some very biased language in the larger discussion that is meant to draw people into action (calling it a crisis or emergency), and that's what we cannot get involved with, especially given WP:RECENTISM. It is a politically-charged area, and we have to stay out of those politics. --Masem (t) 16:49, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem, true, but playing down the importance of climate change is in itself a political stance. I think we are now at a point where we don't need to pretend that it's a minority or fringe view, we can use it without saying "according to..." if a source uses it, but we also don't assert it as fact or apply it when sources don't. Guy (help!) 17:03, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@JzG and Masem:Major point Guy. Never thought of it, but you are absolutely correct, at this point in time pretending that climate crisis is a fringe or minority view is in fact taking a political point of view, and abandoning NPOV. There is another axiom to bear in mind, "silence=assent".Oldperson (talk) 17:10, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

"Climate crisis" is certainly no longer a FRINGE view, I will agree with that, but based on the limited sources and RECENTISM, it should be treated as a minority view with respect to UNDUE and other facets of NPOV, particularly given it is loaded language. Wikivoice should not pretend climate change doesn't exist nor that it isn't caused by humans, no question; the scientific basis of this ideas is far too great to dismiss over thousands of peer-reviewed papers. But being asked to put this as "climate crisis" in Wikivoice based on a much smaller number of papers is not appropriate here. We can certainly be assertive in that "Over 11,000 scientists supported the statement that the world is undergoing a climate crisis and action must be taken immediately." - that gets the emphasis across in Wikivoice without violating NPOV. --Masem (t) 19:08, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

based on the limited sources and RECENTISM, it should be treated as a minority view with respect to UNDUE and other facets of NPOV Are you commenting on the language or the actual thing? François Robere (talk) 19:16, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Both the way this discussion is being presented. As I see it, "climate change" is the more general term for anything like global warming, global cooling, etc. I know that all of what is being talked about is the climate change since the 20th century, which we know cannot be strictly blamed on external factors and which we know was human-caused to a significant degree, so unless its clear from context, I read "climate change" to refer to what's happening now. The question being asked seems to be if we should call this period a "climate crisis" instead, but that itself is really a different concept, in that there is climate change but that dealing with it is utmostly critical. That is not as much of a scientific assessment as compared to determining if there is climate change occurring, but is a combination of science, politics, social views, etc. While I personally agree that we are in a climate crisis, as a WP editor we don't have the sufficient sourcing or time to be able to yet just that we should call the current climate change period as a climate crisis in Wikivoice, but would certainly assert that this has been called such with attribution is fine. --Masem (t) 20:52, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Masem: You're assuming "crisis" is just a "buzzword", but it isn't. When there's famine in Yemen and a whole generation of children is at risk of stunted growth and death, that is a crisis. When tens of thousands of people have to be evacuated in California because of wildfires, that is a crisis. We don't need to wait ten years for the terminology on either to stabilize. François Robere (talk) 18:33, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps you should talk about the electrical grid maintenance crisis in California. Springee (talk) 18:37, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

If sources name it so, why not? We can certainly talk about scandals shortly after the fact. François Robere (talk) 18:41, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem has addressed your concerns quite effectively. Wikipedia is not an advocacy site and we should use neutral language even when dealing with politically charged topics, especially when the politically loaded language has not been established as the consensus language. Springee (talk) 18:48, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

On the basis of neutral point of view, it would seem most appropriate to continue using the term "climate change" as the general reference term. In any sections dedicated to controversy specifically, the terms "climate crisis" or "climate emergency" could be used if given proper in-text attribution to the source(s) of those labels. This would be in line with the predominate coverage by reliable sources over time. François Robere, while your sources may indeed be WP:RS compliant, they are all very recent (dated within the last 48 hours from the reflinks generated). It might be useful to review the policy on recentism to evaluate whether they should be given the weight that you are advocating (see also due weight). For the discussion format I've been watching, it might also be useful to review the policy on bludgeoning the process for ideas on how you might help foster a more productive discussion. That's all I have, and I'll go back to watching for the time being. Thank you all. Ihuntrocks (talk) 19:01, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Just clarifying that I'm not pushing to replace the term as a "general reference term", only for allowing other terms in Wikivoice alongside it. François Robere (talk) 19:20, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Springee: No, he didn't. Again, calling famine a "crisis" isn't more or less objective than calling the effects of global warming "crises". The only reason not to do so is politics. François Robere (talk) 19:12, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

François Robere, please see the definition of bludgeoning in the context of discussion. Ihuntrocks (talk) 19:29, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Retracted. François Robere (talk) 21:45, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Discussion continues. François Robere (talk) 17:05, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Masem wrote: "We can certainly be assertive in that "Over 11,000 scientists supported the statement that the world is undergoing a climate crisis and action must be taken immediately." - that gets the emphasis across in Wikivoice without violating NPOV." He also said: (he) would certainly assert that this (climate change) has been called such (climate crisis) with attribution is fine. If that is 'fine' and doesn't violate NPOV, why was all reference to the 11,000 scientists calling it a crisis deleted?

And if @Springee thinks that "Masem has addressed your (François Robere's) concerns quite effectively" (which appears to suggest he agrees with Masem that we can assertively state that over 11,000 scientists supported the statement that the world is undergoing a climate crisis without violating NPOV) why has the reference to the 11,000 scientists not been reinstated? Notagainst (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

As Francois Robere has pointed out to myself as well, this section is not about the content's inclusion in Climate crisis but about wikivoice. So saying, the reasons for not including your reference to this statement by 11000 "scientists" is independent of the point that Masem is arguing. The content you're referring to was removed from Climate crisis as it was out of scope. Another point I'd like to make, which has been under the nose of everyone here for some time, is that the paper that Francois Robere is referring to, which was allegedly signed by 11000 scientists, was in fact not vetted for credentials in any way. A cab driver in Hamilton got his name on as a signee by calling himself a scientists of "BS detection and analysis." Also on the list of signees are "Micky Mouse" and "Dumbledore". Robere's claim that this list represents "11000 reliable sources" is not accurate-- the reliability of those who have signed this release is in no way guaranteed. Zortwort (talk) 03:59, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

So you're saying its acceptable to use the term climate crisis in wikivoice but not in the article called Climate Crisis - because its out of scope. The original objection to much of the material I posted on the CCrisis page was that we can't use the term climate change because its not accepted in wikivoice. NAEG wrote QUESTION - Can Wikipedia describe global warming (aka climate change) as "the climate crisis" in WP:WIKIVOICE, without violating WP:Neutrality? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:39, 1 September 2019 (UTC). Masem and Springee are now saying we can. So do @Simonm223, @india.OHC and @Vision Insider. So it appears the wikivoice argument is no longer a concern.

So instead, you say information can't be included because its out of scope. But you also want to argue that the 11,000 scientists were "in fact not vetted for credentials". This suggests you think the source is unreliable. If the problem is that an article referring to the climate crisis is "out of scope" in an article about the climate crisis (!!!), then whether or not that article comes from a reliable source is irrelevant. If its out of scope, its out of scope. Or are you suggesting that if a more reliable source is found for the same information, suddenly that information would magically become within the scope. If you keep changing your objections and muddying the water with contradictory arguments, no one participating in this discussion can tell what your real objection is to including information about the climate crisis on the Climate Crisis page. Notagainst (talk) 04:56, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Also I just checked the list of signatories myself. The signatories are listed in alphabetical order. "Micky Mouse" and "Dumbledore" do NOT appear on the list. Who is the cab driver in Hamilton you are referring to - or are you just making shit up? Notagainst (talk) 05:18, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

The problem is not that other editors are being inconsistent or contradictory or making shit up (it might be helpful if you read WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF before using such language). The problem is that you are repeatedly failing to understand what other editors have patiently been explaining to you. Namely, (1) the consensus is that the scope of Climate crisis should be the development of the debate about what terms to use, and so the article should only cite sources that address this issue directly; (2) on Wikipedia generally there is no consensus that the terms "climate crisis", "climate emergency" or "climate destruction" should be used in Wikivoice, although of course it's perfectly okay to quote reliable sources that use those terms (just as it's okay to quote reliable sources that prefer less emotional terms). The specific question being debated in this thread is whether the statement signed by 11,000 people (perhaps all of them scientists, perhaps not) is sufficient reason for (2) to change. It's clear from the discussion that (2) still holds. NightHeron (talk) 12:41, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

The names "Micky Mouse" and "Dumbledore" were struck from the list but were in the original copy of the release. See https://globalnews.ca/news/6138812/mickey-mouse-global-climate-emergency-letter/ and https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9683052-retired-hamilton-cabbie-gets-himself-on-list-of-fake-scientists-declaring-climate-emergency/ . The fact that these names were ever allowed onto the release calls into question the veracity of the credentials of every other signee on that release, and indeed whether those listed as signees exist at all. I think this is somewhat besides the point when the discussion is about wiki voice, but something to note anyways. @NotAgainst: the accusations of bad faith are not warranted or appreciated, by the way, you'd do well to use other language. Zortwort (talk) 14:29, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

The original objection to much of the material I posted on the CCrisis page was that we can't use the term climate change because its not accepted in wikivoice. ... Masem and Springee are now saying we can. I do not believe that this accurately reflects the statements by either Masem or Springee. - Ryk72 ^talk 05:12, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I have specifically stated that it can be used only with attribution ("According to 11,000 scientists..."), not in Wikivoice without it. --Masem (t) 05:27, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Two users, Deathlibrarian and XelatSharro (suspected sock puppet), Have been changing the result of this town battle from "attacking side victory" to draw. This change is not backed by sources and the user(s) have been arguing it ended in a draw due to defending side withdrawing. Even though the town has been captured. The user Deathlibrarian also unilaterally changed the result and has been constantly reverting me, saying discussion is taking place. Even though he made the change right after opening a discussion about it. 1RR has not been violated by either side. [33] [34] [35] [36] KasimMejia (talk) 10:33, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

KasimMejia both of us have issues with the result being listed simply as a "Turkish victory" - because Turkey didn't win the battle and defeat the SDF. The SDF forces withdrew because of a treaty, and the Turkish forces then claimed it. I am very happy to have more opinions given on the issue by a fresh set of eyes - thanks Deathlibrarian (talk) 10:45, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Look at the result of this battle Siege of al-Fu'ah and Kafriya. I send it to you two times, you didn't respond both times. SDF was sieged in the town when they decided to withdraw, even if they weren't the town is captured, making this a victory for the attacking side. I'm not gonna respond anymore and wait for admin's thoughts. KasimMejia (talk) 10:51, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• I agree the result was a Turkish victory and that the article's infobox should state that. This would also appear to be the long-standing version of the article-- I'm unsure how Deathlibrarian can justify restoring the challenged content rather than reverting to the version that had remained for weeks before XelatSharro made his uncited, and contentious change to the battle result. Zortwort (talk) 14:22, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

FPSTurkey, XelatSharro and I all had made variations to the infobox that it needed to indicate that it was not a military victory, but the city was gained as the result of a wider negotiation. IMHO I think its misleading to the reader of the article to indicate otherwise, and that seemed to be the consensus of the three editors. Just my opinion, but the other two users also found issue with it, so it seemed worth discussing.Deathlibrarian (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I would like to get some uninvolved editors' opinions on the Craniosacral therapy article.

I am an editor that is uninvolved with the subject of the article – who seems to have walked into the nest of opinion-pushing editors with my improvement suggestions driven by some simple general (i.e. subject-agnostic) logic. (Is it crazy to think that naming the jurisdiction(s) is a necessary part of mentioning a particular law or regulation? More on this on the Talk page which is linked below.)

I had only made or suggested to make a couple simple and fairly minor improvements to the text/source integrity, but was forcefully rebuked and reverted a couple times. This prompted me to take a closer look at what happens around that article.

Looking at its Talk page discussions, it seems that there's a fairly vocal group of editors that is trying to keep the article in the state of being locked into a certain viewpoint – to the extent that even fairly non-controversial copyediting suggestions (e.g. tagging passages with the "where?" tag in search of a clearly missing piece of info) by the editors like myself got rejected.

Again, let me be clear: I have no involvement whatsoever with the article's subject – so it's strange that I'm being addressed on the Talk page as if I'm trying to push a POV on it, which I was not even remotely attempting to. Please review the following two sections of the Talk page: "Jurisdiction..." and "Neutrality dispute" for mine and another editor's attempts to address what's essentially a text/source integrity issue – with these attempts quickly degenerating into a not-at-all-productive discussion with flinging barely useful references to things like WP:1AM and WP:FOC (the latter, ironically, by the editor not being focused on the content at all) and statements like "we are biased towards reality. <the article's subject> is bollocks" – all while refusing to address a very straightforward issue I had originally raised.

For reference, here are my edits that got reverted – which pretty much shows how the good-faith attempts at copyediting/improving the article get reverted flat-out: [37], [38], [39]. In almost any other article these edits would be non-controversial – but here they became controversial even after my attempts to resolve this on the Talk page. cherkash (talk) 00:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Cherkash, Yet another WP:TLDR in support of WP:FRINGE nonsense. Wikipedia is reality-based. Unashamedly so. The fact that the real world finds the claims of CST to be nonsensical is not Wikipedia's problem to fix. Guy (help!) 00:56, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

And yet you once again refuse to engage on substance: i.e. of the text/source integrity – the two just don't match in the article. cherkash (talk) 01:03, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed a systemic problem across Wikipedia: Leaders who are universally described as "dictators" or "authoritarian" in peer-reviewed academic research are not being described as such on Wikipedia pages. Check Kim Jong-un's lede and you'd never know that he happens to rule a non-democracy, never mind one of the most repressive dictatorships in existence. Same goes for the Bashar al-Assad page before I fixed it (the page even brazenly suggested that he was a democratically elected leader). I noticed that similar problems plagued the pages of Putin (whose regime is typically characterized as a hybrid regime or competitive authoritarian regime) and Viktor Orban (who is universally described as having overseen democratic backsliding in Hungary) before I fixed those pages.

There's a humongous literature out there, which is peer-reviewed and written by recognized experts - in many cases, political scientists explicitly list regimes which are democratic, hybrid regimes, authoritarian. Furthermore, there are measures of democracy (Polity, Freedom House) that can inform our language. Use it, people! Snooganssnoogans (talk) 21:03, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans: Just because a source says something does not mean you can repeat it in Wikipedia's voice. Quoting is a more sure way to do things, unless the quoted source would be given undue weight, of course. Remeber that (almost?) all sources are biased. Notrium (talk) 22:10, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

This is not a question of one source saying something. This is a question of universal agreement among the best available sources (there is an enormous peer-reviewed academic literature on democracy and authoritarianism) that a particular regime is not democratic. That Wikipedia systemically fails to stick to the sources on this particular topic is a horrendous NPOV violation. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:15, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Actually there's a substantial peer-reviewed literature on how blurred the lines are between authoritarianism and democracy. See The Rise of Authoritarian Liberal Democracy and Authoritarianism and The Elite Origins of Democracy.GPRamirez5 (talk) 22:54, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Cambridge Scholars Publishing is a predatory scam press, and the author is a nobody who just publishes weird monographs for non-academic scammy publishers. The second book, which is by actual recognized experts and published in a top tier academic press, does not at all say that there is no distinction between democracy and authoritarianism. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:03, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I didn't say "no distinction" either. I said blurred lines. From the second book: "...cracks have begun to emerge in the consensus that democracies are actually forged by the people and that their policies are intended to benefit the people...In short, democracies might not be all that different than their authoritarian predecessors in terms of material consequences." GPRamirez5 (talk) 00:07, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Christ almighty - what a brazen distortion of the book. The book is about the causes of democracy, and the authors argue that the onset of the democratization process is elite-driven. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 01:13, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm comfortable calling many regimes "authoritarian", less so "dictatorial". The former is broader, "milder" and more inclusive, so the risk of error is low and we shouldn't have qualms using it where appropriate; the latter, in addition to being rarer and more "extreme", sees frequent use in common parlance (talk shows, etc.), so we should limit it to scholarly or high quality sources, to avoid error. François Robere (talk) 23:16, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans, François Robere, and GPRamirez5: Wikipedia is not perfect, and many articles stay non-neutral and even non-encyclopedic for far too long; I wish you good understanding and recall of Wikipedia's guidelines in your efforts (and luck). Maybe you should start a WikiProject (maybe called "Authoritarianism")? That could help in efforts on specific persons like Orban. On the other hand, I do not like the way those "Democracy indices" try to aggregate data that does not seem like it should be aggregated ("measuring democracy" and "conceptualizing democracy" seem like productive search terms on libgen). I prefer specific examples of governmental misdeeds of all kinds (crimes, corruption, just immoral) and criticism of policy and laws to simplistic labeling of governmental leaders. Notrium (talk) 23:35, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Using a term like "dictator" should only be in Wikivoice well after the regime that would be called that is over (like, on the order of decades) and the presence of strong academic views, or if there is overwhelming academic evidence to call it such while the regime is active. It's a label, and definitely BLP applies. --Masem (t) 23:56, 21 October 2019 (UTC) (ETA to apologize to @MPS1992:, though the H3 was accidental). --Masem (t) 00:09, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Why this time gap? François Robere (talk) 11:15, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree this should be the case, contempory sources are always going to be far more subjective then those written with the benefit of hindsight.Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The time gap deals with issues that fall into WP:RECENTISM especially with the media today and some academics who are quick to judge. We're an encyclopedia and thus should be writing from the long-term POV, not what everyone is saying today. A good example would be Reagan's presidency. At the time, it was generally seen as good, but we recognize today that it set some events in motion related to Reaganomoics that we are still feeling today, and broadly, it's not a pinnacle presidency. --Masem (t) 15:00, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

But we're not talking about future implications, but about contemporary acts. Could we say that "Reagan was/n't a fiscal 'hawk'"? We could, if sources support it, because it's based on what he said and did in real time. François Robere (talk) 15:25, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

As an encyclopedia we should be far less focused on contemporary acts unless it is clear they will have long-term impacts. Which means we may not cover some contemporary acts until the future where academics/analysts realize that that prior act had more weight or the like then it seemed at the time. So yes, if these later sources support the inclusion of what a leader did during their term, they can be included. But basically, this is where Wikipedia's overall approach on anything political should start with "wait and see", or at least using better judgement to know when such analysis and opinion have appropriate merit to include with attribution. We are not good with "real time" coverage of politics because that is where the combination of media and editor biases (which happen, unavoidable) both interplay and create numerous difficult situations. AmPol2 is awash with those problems, and same with something like this for other current world leaders. Attributing broadly-made claims from strong RSes made about current leaders and regimes while waiting for academics to work out the historical facets does no harm to WP and sticks to neutrality policy (among other things). --Masem (t) 19:14, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Minimalist definitions of democracy are very simple, and there is simply no dispute at all in the academic literature about whether Kim Jong-un rules an authoritarian state or a democracy, and there is no reason at all to expect that to change as academics obtain more information about the regime. These assessments are not just flippant subjective opinions, but are determined with cold hard criteria that political scientists are essentially in agreement over. What you're essentially arguing is that Wikipedia should run interference for the tyrants of the world by intentionally omitting (or hiding in 'disputed'-style language) the nature of the political systems that they run because stating facts is not nice when the facts happen to not be nice? We should omit that North Korea prohibits a free press, because communicating that fact reflects poorly on the North Korean regime? What you're advocating for is a grotesque neutrality violation and an extreme distortion of Wikipedia policy. It's postmodernist tripe - the notion that nothing is real and nothing can be stated plainly. And unintentionally, it's very same obfuscatory language that these dictators rely on to polish the image of their regimes. Wikipedia can either be a party to these tyrants' branding strategies or we can stick to peer-reviewed academic RS and stay beholden to the spirit of Wikipeda's NPOV policy. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:39, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

First, we're not here to right great wrongs and trying to frame the argument that way is not helpful; it is not required for us to make sure a leader who many believe or consider a tyrant is actually factually called as such, though WP:DUE does require to acknowledge that that numerous assessments do exist and we should not hide that. This is not about eliminating that criticism, just to recognize it just shouldn't be said in a factual tone but as a broad agreement from sources. I am not saying that that is not true, but we should wait for sufficient time to pass following the closure of the regime so that we can see where the broad academic assessment lines and declare something as fact. Let's consider scientific theories; there are some theories that we accept as fact today, but only because there have been decades or centuries of observations and evidence to support the theory to be true despite not being able to prove it true. But a freshly published theory, which appears to be consistent with all existing knowledge and available observations is not going to be declared true for some time and will require broad agreement from across the specific field. Its the same principle here. We want our point of observation to be outside of when the activities are current to start to judge if hypothesis can be taken as fact. At the end of the day, it is simply being conservative/cautious with our writing to avoid aggressive stance. There is zero harm is saying "Many assert X is Y" over "X is Y". --Masem (t) 20:12, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The harm is that it gives readers the appearance that there is a dispute as to whether the Kim regime is authoritarian or not. It's the same reason we don't write "Many scientists say the Earth revolves around the Sun". Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:17, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

We've had centuries to validate the Earth's motion around the sun. We've had only 8 to judge Kim's regime, and its still ongoing. That's my whole point about theories, they need time to be accepted as truth with question. --Masem (t) 20:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The question isn't really about time - we're an open encyclopedia, so we can and should be up-to-date - it's about "labeling": you're afraid of political influence, and your remedy to that is waiting; mine is sourcing restrictions - that way we can be both up to date and accurate. François Robere (talk) 16:12, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

• ...If someone is using the term dictator and they're not talking about the Romans, isn't that figurative use of the term? I mean, "dictatorial", meaning "like a literal dictator" would still be technically correct, but dictator was a specific historical office. GMG^talk 20:24, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Dictator, Authoritarian and Autocrat are synonymous in the academic literature. Then there are all kinds of typologies of authoritarian regimes. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:41, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Well, authoritarian and autocracy are both terms with specific meanings that are not necessarily anachronistic in the same way that dictator is. There is lots of colorful language that sources might use because they're writing for a different format than an encyclopedia, where we follow the substance of the sources, but we don't necessarily follow their colorful language. But I'm the history guy more than I am the politics guy, so make if it what you will. GMG^talk 21:27, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment There's no problem with describing people as dictators if reliable sources consistently indicate such, but I think it is probably more helpful for readers to describe what, exactly, we're talking about and acknowledge some of the vagaries of the definitions here: Dictatorial institutions are complex and vary quite a bit. Kim Jong Un (in theory) holds absolute control of the state through torture and oppression, Putin holds power through a more complex system of competitive authoritarianism that relies on a mixture of repression, co-optation, and bribery. Readers will likely get more from seeing the details rather than simply reading that "X is a dictator" Nblund ^talk 01:27, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

• Definitely not - Whats going to happen is wikipedia will just become even more of a proxy of the US Department of Foreign Affairs. Your idea to use Freedom House (A predominantly US gov funded org) as an authority speaks for itself.103.127.65.123 (talk) 14:46, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: This is drive-by editing. Each article should be treated individually, and the terminology used should be selected as appropriate to it. The article should also be viewed holistically. It's wrong to focus on one word in the introduction. In my experience, drive-by editing like this leads to perverse outcomes. An edit that is completely appropriate in one article can be inappropriate in another article. If there is a problem with the neutrality or accuracy of an article, that should be addressed on an individual basis.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:26, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment Wikipedia is supposed to follow the normal descriptions used in reliable sources. Here's what Sidney Goldberg, father of Jonah Goldberg, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Castro is clearly not squeamish about using rhetoric straight out of the Marxist-Leninist handbook, or ruling Cuba the same way. And yet the imperialist bourgeoisie seems to be squeamish about labeling Castro for what he is. The latest edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary calls him merely: "Cuban revolutionary leader, prime minister and president." Sounds rather impressive--you can almost see it on the résumé for a MacArthur genius award. But is Castro a dictator? Apparently not enough of one to define him as such.

This is not the only instance of labeling-hesitation in Webster's New World--at least when the "leader" in question belongs to the "revolutionary" left. The dictionary can call Hitler the "Nazi dictator of Germany" but Stalin merely the "Soviet premier, general secretary of the Communist party of the U.S.S.R." Mussolini is an "Italian dictator," but Tito is "Yugoslav Communist Party leader, prime minister and president of Yugoslavia." Franco is "dictator of Spain" and Salazar "prime minister and dictator of Portugal," but Mao Tse-tung is "Chinese Communist leader, chairman of the People's Republic of China and of its Communist Party."

And Lenin? "Russian leader of the Communist revolution of 1917, premier of the U.S.S.R." This seems especially unfair, since Lenin's writings openly urged the deadly ruthlessness with which he ruled. Still, a good bourgeois dictionary must not go too far.

It's not Wikipedia that is biased, but the sources. If that bothers you, you can always switch to a right-wing wiki and watch Fox News.

TFD (talk) 05:53, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

I could only find two stylebooks that mention the issue. According to Reuters Handbook of Journalism, "Use of the word dictator implies a value judgment, so avoid it unless quoting someone."[handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=D&oldid=3147#dictator] The U.S. government information network Voice of America (VOA) says, "As with similar terms, use fairly across the political ideological spectrum."[40] But the VOA represents a certain bias. TFD (talk) 23:43, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Why has the OP felt it necessary to "fix" the Bashar al-Assad page? Did not that fellow work as an eye surgeon in a UK hospital, before fate called him back to do something that he did not wish to do? MPS1992 (talk) 23:46, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

What bearing does that have on whether his rule is a dictatorship or not? AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 05:49, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Isn't the main distinction in U.S. media that authoritarians we like are called presidents while ones we dislike are called dictators? TFD (talk) 06:09, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

As an example of the misguided ideas on this subject, my text which described the Kim regime as a "dictatorship" in Wiki voice has been changed into saying the Kim regime "is frequently considered" a dictatorship.[41] This attributedpov qualifier is completely unnecessary, and is in fact a brazen NPOV violation because it suggests that there is an active debate about whether Kim rules a dictatorship when there is ZERO debate about it. If the Kim regime is not a dictatorship, then there is simply no such thing as a dictatorship. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:34, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Just because there are no obvious contrary points to several RSes that say "X is Y" (eg whether that's "X is not Y" or "X is actually Z"), does not mean "X is Y" becomes fact in wikivoice, especially around labels, which "dictatorship" falls into. --Masem (t) 14:45, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Dictatorship is not a contentious opinion. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:57, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Given what the rest that you added to support the idea of a dictatorship are all elements that are generally seen as "negatives" (lack of rights, free elections, etc.), the use of "dictatorship" in that sense is clearly a label. NK is a one-party state, legally, which is the factual element that should be stated, but under Jong-un (as Jong-il), it has all the appearances of a dictatorship, which is fully appropriate to point out, with attribution. --Masem (t) 15:07, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

We're not obliged to follow NK's own definition of itself ("legally"). Both North Korea and Syria define themselves as "republics", and NK even styles itself a "democracy" - should we write that in Wikivoice? François Robere (talk) 15:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

It would be completely wrong to not factually state the form of government that NK has from their constitution. That's a hard fact. Whether the government is effectively run that way is a wholly separate manner , and its where one can say "NK is a one-party state as established by its constitution, but is commonly considered a dictatorship by political analysts." or something to that extent. That's a impartial, neutral statement but that still hits that there is a lot of criticism at the way NK is run. --Masem (t) 18:38, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Supporting what Masem has written, it is always preferable to attribute statements or labels of this kind. -Darouet (talk) 18:43, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

But constitutions themselves are only a meaningful feature of Western-style democracies - they carry very little weight in dictatorships, both formally and informally. Put differently: following NK's constitution doesn't actually means you're being "objective" - rather it means you're impose Western standards on a country that works completely differently. "Objectivity" here would be stating things as they are; and how do we know what they are? By following RS. François Robere (talk) 16:17, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

As I posted above, the criterion is how they are normally described in reliable sources. Kim Jong un is normally described as the president of North Korea, while General Noriega was described as the dictator of Panama. That could be because left-wing dictators give themselves normal sounding titles such as president or premier while right-wing dictators call themselves duce or Fuehrer or Generalisimo or have no official titles at all, but let's follow the lead of mainstream sources. TFD (talk) 06:07, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

There is ZERO disagreement in the best available sources about how to describe Kim and his regime. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 06:21, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

See what I posted above. Reliable sources will say "Augusto Pinochet, dictator of Chile," but "Joseph Stalin, premier of the USSR." We follow the lead of reliable sources, not Fox News Channel hosts. BTW, why don't you ask us to refer to the kings of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc., that you view favorably as dictators? TFD (talk) 06:27, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

I have no clue what you are ranting about. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 06:43, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

If you want to be persuasive, you might try to be polite to other editors. Anyway, read the explanation I entered above by Goldberg. TFD (talk) 06:54, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

You are suggesting that the sources that I use are Fox News hosts (???), and that I support the authoritarian regimes of Saudi-Arabia and Jordan (???). Then, after making these unhinged and baseless accusations, you ask me to be polite about your absurd accusations. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 07:09, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Here is what Sidney Goldberg wrote:

Castro is clearly not squeamish about using rhetoric straight out of the Marxist-Leninist handbook, or ruling Cuba the same way. And yet the imperialist bourgeoisie seems to be squeamish about labeling Castro for what he is. The latest edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary calls him merely: "Cuban revolutionary leader, prime minister and president." Sounds rather impressive--you can almost see it on the résumé for a MacArthur genius award. But is Castro a dictator? Apparently not enough of one to define him as such.

This is not the only instance of labeling-hesitation in Webster's New World--at least when the "leader" in question belongs to the "revolutionary" left. The dictionary can call Hitler the "Nazi dictator of Germany" but Stalin merely the "Soviet premier, general secretary of the Communist party of the U.S.S.R." Mussolini is an "Italian dictator," but Tito is "Yugoslav Communist Party leader, prime minister and president of Yugoslavia." Franco is "dictator of Spain" and Salazar "prime minister and dictator of Portugal," but Mao Tse-tung is "Chinese Communist leader, chairman of the People's Republic of China and of its Communist Party."

And Lenin? "Russian leader of the Communist revolution of 1917, premier of the U.S.S.R." This seems especially unfair, since Lenin's writings openly urged the deadly ruthlessness with which he ruled. Still, a good bourgeois dictionary must not go too far.

TFD (talk) 07:16, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Interesting issue. I think this has to be discussed on the talk page of each article, as individual cases. I'd be happy to participate, and feel free to ping me if such individual discussions are started. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:55, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

He's a dictator and Wikipedia should say so in its own voice. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:04, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

• Popular Front of India (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A recent edit request drew my attention here, which seems to have been tagged for neutrality for quite some time. There have been questions raised that the sources used to portray the article subject positively are not independent (owned by them). This is a bit complicated and beyond what I'm used to dealing with, I'm afraid, so if anyone would like to take a crack at this one, that would be great. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:27, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I have copied my text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Popular_Front_of_India#Semi-protected_edit_request_on_18_November_2019 to here,

The lead mentions it as a "neo social movement" which is what the organization says about itself , but secondary sources say it's an Islamist outfit and radical Muslim organization.

The official twitter account says; "A Neo-Social Movement which strives for the empowerment of marginalized section of India." - https://twitter.com/PFIOfficial

But what it says about itself is not right. What other news media says should be seen by Wikipedia.

In this article those sections which mentions about positive works by PFI are mostly Muslim owned websites which have links with Popular Front of India, while very few are neutral and true.

This was correct according to above sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Popular_Front_of_India&oldid=895190630 AntonyGonzalveZ (talk) 16:26, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

The map is supposed to be showing Polish borders since 1920, Polish claims after World War One and the areas inhabited by Polish people in 1912. Polish claims looks like authors OR, as far as I know Polish state didn't claim prepartition borders of PLC, what the map suggest, but the areas inhabited by Polish people and free access to the sea. But that's not the main problem. The main problem is misleading representation of the extent of Polish people, especially in the east.

The main source of this map is supposed to be Polish map from 1912 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polska1912.jpg. Nonetheless it is using it very arbitrary. First of all 20-50% scope to indicate territories with large Polish minority is chosen very arbitrary, second of all even this isn't reflected properly on the map. For example city of Vilnius and Trakai county on the base map have over 20% of Polish population, yet they aren't marked in any way on the map in question. What's more the original map is based on 1897 Russian census, which deliberately was diminishing number of Polish people on territories of today's Lithuania and Belarus. The next Russian census of 1909 (so called spisok zémstv) gave much different numbers (for example in Vilnius county the number of Poles raised from 17,8% to 47%). German census made during the war in 1916 also portrayed much different demographic situation, the same goes with post war Polish and Lithuanian censuses.

I was trying to delete this map from article History of Vilnius, but my edit was reverted by @Sabbatino:. We had a User talk:Sabbatino#Map in history of Vilnius.

Marcelus (talk) 20:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

The article on the book Forced into Glory (2010) seems to have a sharp WP:POV problem, as has been pointed out on its talk page for over a decade (and the article has actually gotten more one-sided since then). Our article is a misleading hatchet-job that cites nothing but critics of the book and opponents of its message (either politically motivated or directly fiduciary conflicts of interest – it's relying almost entirely on authors of competing (and much more complimentary) books about Abraham Lincoln and slavery, even where it claims to be citing just "a 2009 review" rather than someone engaged in a protracted academic dispute with the author, Lerone Bennett Jr. His analysis of Lincoln's own statements on slavery and Africans has been "an academic controversy" (term from an RS not me) that he initiated all the way back in the 1960s (FiG was a very belated followup volume).

The article's talk page seems to have a WP:OWN problem, as well, and said party showed up at my talk page to essentially threaten to edit-war against me simply for "loose, inaccurate, and semi-inflammatory language you use in your edit summaries and on this page" (i.e., my own talk page). This editor does not frequently edit the article itself, so it's kind of weird.

The meat of the matter: I've laid out a detailed bullet list of issues with the article and probable solutions to them at: Forced into Glory#Balance: Conflict between Lincoln critics like Bennett, and critics of those critics. I point to plenty of sources and where to find more of them. The response from this only apparent regular watcher of the page has been a bunch of ad hominem and otherwise fallacious blather, and some WP:OR / WP:FORUM ranting about Bennett and then some "what ifs" regarding how Lincoln could have proceeded other than he did, based on the editor's personal analysis of a historical failed politician.

I don't think this is constructive (much less collegial), and would appreciate some attention to the article from both WP:NPOVN regulars and those who edit within the broader subjects of Lincoln, the US Civil War, and American slavery and abolitionism. It's our "job" to document the academic disagreement, not help one side of it demonize the other (even if the one side might mostly be in the right as historians). I don't want this to focus on editorial personalities and haven't named any other editor, but will drop off a {{NPOVN-notice}} anyway. What I really care about is the unbalanced article being improved, with enough editorial input that it stays improved.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:52, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I really don't know what SMcCandlish's problem is with respect to "Forced Into Glory", but he seems to be taking a certain little pleasure in spreading loose, inaccurate, and semi-inflammatory statements in his edit summaries to the article, then on his user talk page, and then on the article talk page. In his latest round of nonsense that I replied to, he was pushing a strange conspiracy that the "Lincoln-praisers" (his term for mainstream respected professional historians!) are conspiring to suppress Bennett's book because of their "fiduciary" interest in selling their own books! This "fiduciary conflicts of interest" stuff is pure personal WP:OR nonsense cooked up by SMcCandlish, and if he tries to push it into the article, then he will be violating WP:FRINGE. I made a pre-emptive move (leaving a comment on his user talk page) in order to prevent this type of nonsense from spreading from his edit summaries onto the actual article itself, and in doing so I apparently brought down upon myself the full wrath of SMcCandlish, but somehow I remain completely unmoved by the display.

Meanwhile, SMcCandlish has been trying to obfuscate (but cannot honestly deny, if asked directly) such facts as that:

1) Bennett is NOT a professional historian (he's a professional magazine publisher who dabbled in history).

2) The quasi-consensus of those who ARE mainstream professional historians is overall against Bennett's interpretations of history (though of course there is no absolute unanimity, and some may be more favorable to certain aspects of it).

3) Bennett himself may have been a very earnest civil-rights supporter and advocate for the African-American community, but nevertheless there's an objectively-observable convergence between his views of Lincoln and the views of Lincoln held by many neo-Confederates and white supremacists... AnonMoos (talk) 03:07, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Personally don't see evidence of a serious academic dispute yet. James M. McPherson, Eric Foner, and Allen C. Guelzo are all well regarded specialists in the Civil War era. If you've got reviews or articles from academic historians supporting Bennett then by all means bring them to the table, but for the moment only one side has presented quality sources. --RaiderAspect (talk) 22:38, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm just going to ignore AnonMoos's pointless ad hominem and straw-man sputterings (I already addressed this focus-on-contributor behavior at the article talk page and in user talk, and seeing it continue here at the noticeboard tells me I was definitely right to bring it to the noticeboard). Let's get back to the meat of the matter, which has not changed despite this distraction attempt:

• Bennett being a journalist not an academic doesn't mean he's wrong, and trying to dismiss him on that basis is fallacious. Some of the best secondary-source history material is produced by journalists (e.g. 1491 and 1493 by Charles C. Mann).
• If there's a "quasi-consensus", that's not a consensus. It's clear evidence of dispute within the field, which WP should be documenting, not picking a side in (though we have to weight our coverage in a due manner). It is correct that most US Civil War historians disagree with some elements of Bennett's analysis, but the general point of Bennett's work was to criticize their analyses, so this is a tautological observation. It doesn't make Bennett wrong, nor does it mean that it's okay for us to quote a few authors Bennett criticized, in their own defensive counter-critiques, and call our work done. That's just illustrating two parties to the dispute sniping at each other, and siding with one of them.
• As I made clear already, we need to be drawing on secondary responses written by historians who do not have their own competing Lincoln books to defend against Bennett's counter-analysis (which I repeat has been published, in salient part, since the 1960s and controversial since that era). WP's "job" here is to outline the nature of that dispute – to neutrally document the conflict – and this article is probably the place to do that, since it serves as the article on both the book and the original article that developed into it, and dwelling on this at Bennett's bio would be undue. Because so many historians – including ones Bennett did not single out, ones who do not have their own competing Lincoln books to sell, ones who did not rush to criticize the book the month of its release, in short ones we should be quoting instead – disagree with Bennett on several key matters, it's clear where the WP:DUE / WP:FRINGE line is, and AnonMoos's suggestion that I'm trying to move or erase it is nonsense.
• "[S]ome [historians] may be more favorable to certain aspects of [Forced into Glory]" – Well, yes. And our article ignores this fact entirely. As I already covered at the talk page in detail.
• "there's an objectively-observable convergence between [Bennett's] views of Lincoln and the views of Lincoln held by many neo-Confederates and white supremacists." = Blatant WP:OR, and character-assassination WP:POV. The fact that we can find one critic/competitor with his own Lincoln book drawing one inflammatory and shallow comparison to the work of one libertarian-right oddball (DiLorenzo) does not support AnonMoos's claim, and it's a fallacious one to begin with. It's the "Hitler liked cake, so cake must be bad" fallacy, as I already went over at the talk page. Repeating it here in these particular terms is also guilt by association, argument to emotion, and several other fallacies; DiLorenzo is neither a neo-Confed nor a white supremacist, and mentioning them in this context is simply inflammatory hand-waving, an attempt at the thought-terminating cliché.
• "James M. McPherson, Eric Foner, and Allen C. Guelzo are all well regarded specialists in the Civil War era." They're also people (as is Brian Dirck, whom we wrongly imply is a neutral reviewer) with competing Lincoln books and whose work is the subject of Bennett's own critical analysis, and thus are not "quality sources" in this micro-context, but defensive parties to a dispute who have a fiduciary and reputational interest in pooh-poohing Bennett's work and views. Their personal reviews of Bennett's work are primary not secondary sources. They're appropriate to quote/paraphrase, with specific attribution, in a section on the nature and sides of the dispute, but are not who to quote about general public and academic reaction to the book. I've suggested some specific such sources to quote, and how to find more of them.
• "Personally don't see evidence of a serious academic dispute yet." That's why I cited The Chronicle of Higher Education and other independent, reliable sources indicating that there is one, at the article talk page. No WP:IDONTKNOWIT need apply; just follow the sources. :-)

After I get a clear edit-warring threat on my talk page, and repeated blatantly false claims like "taking a certain little pleasure in spreading loose, inaccurate, and semi-inflammatory statements in his edit summaries to the article" (never happened) and "pushing a strange conspiracy that the 'Lincoln-praisers' ... are conspiring to suppress Bennett's book" (never happened), it's clear that any attempt I make to move the Dirck quote to be with Foner, et al. quotes, in a paragraph or section on the conflicting sides of researchers, and then create a separate section for actually independent and secondary reviews, I'm going to meet with unreasonable opposition from AnonMoos, who virtually never edits the article but is "squatting" on it and being uncivil on its talk page, and the user talk pages of those who disagree with him, and now even noticeboard pages. If no one at this noticeboard cares to help improve the article (the talk page of which has a bullet list including additional sources), then oh well. "There is no deadline", and I can just try again some other time when my antagonist seems to have moved on.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Nothing that Bennett said is necessarily wrong just because he wasn't a professional historian, but in a situation where a non-professional's views of history diverge from those generally held by actual scholars of history, his non-professional status can be one of several factors relevant to assessing what the mainstream of scholarship is. And McCandlish's focus on the prefix "quasi" in "quasi-consensus" is extremely pointless -- of course when it comes to interpretation of the meaning of history, things are not going to be as clear-cut as when it comes to simple verifiable historic facts. That does nothing to change the fact that the preponderance of scholarly views is overall not too favorable to Bennett's thesis.

And McCandlish is saying something which is not only false, but which he has good reason to know is false, when he claims that there's not an "objectively-observable convergence between [Bennett's] views of Lincoln and the views of Lincoln held by many neo-Confederates and white supremacists" -- something which is documented on the article talk page, and does NOT refer only to DiLorenzo...

At this point the real issue isn't Dirck, it's McCandlish's unproductive behavior on all discussions of this article in which he has been involved. His personal conspiracy theory about how the "Lincoln-praisers"[sic] are suppressing the Bennett book out of their "fiduciary conflicts of interest"[sic] is simply bizarre (both WP:OR and WP:FRINGE), and if he's trying to push such nonsense onto the article itself, then it will be well-deserving of immediate reversion. McCandlish has been spreading loose, inaccurate, and semi-inflammatory statements from beginning to end of his involvement with this article. If he's able to restrain himself to act in a more constructive manner, then at that point it will be easier to conduct more useful discussions. Not sure what McCandlish's confidence that I'll soon go away is based on, since I've been watching the article for over ten years, while he seems to have stumbled across it this month... AnonMoos (talk) 05:54, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

The latest addition to this article has been imposed by a "consensus" of three contributors intent on having the content of this source, including the journalist's personal prejudices, included in its entirety. I feel it would be helpful if some contributors whose first language is English could join the discussion. Deb (talk) 12:38, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Users Bondegezou and TU-nor, state that the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War should not be listed under invasion due to word invasion not being used by RS's. The US presence in Syria has been dubbed an illegal occupation by the UN recognized Gov of Syria [42]. Not necessarily the word invasion has been used. Meanwhile both users support the "Turkish Invasion of Syria" due to the word invasion being used by the media. I see absolutely no difference between the two, both countries are illegally present and are occupying Syria. KasimMejia (talk) 12:16, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Well one difference is how RS treat it, and that is the difference that matters to us.Slatersteven (talk) 12:18, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

What is a reliable source according to you if not the Syrian Government? Does an article piece by The New York Times (for example) journalist have more reliability by that of the Syrian Government when it comes to whether US is occupying or has invaded that country or not? KasimMejia (talk) 12:42, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I would avoid both... look for reliable sources from beyond both the US and Syria. Blueboar (talk) 12:52, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Please read wp:rs, that will tell you what WE think an RS is.Slatersteven (talk) 14:09, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Look at the history and finance sections in particular. I cannot address this myself at the moment, but it's pretty egregious imho. Elinruby (talk) 03:32, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Greetings,

I would like to bring to your attention, and for your consideration, the errors in the following article that has been written as though alleged events have already been proven to have occured.

Title: Marie Yovanovitch URL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Yovanovitch

This article omits in several sentences the word "alleged" and treats as yet undertermined circumstaces as though they are foregone conclusions. For example, not one sentence in the following paragraph has been proven to be true and is therefore merely conjecture on the part of the writer/editor though presented in such a way as to appear that it is already history:

"While ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch was subjected to a conspiracy-driven smear campaign, amplified by President Donald Trump and his allies. In May 2019, Trump abruptly recalled Yovanovitch from her post following claims by Trump surrogates that she was undermining Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former vice president and 2020 U.S. presidential election candidate Joe Biden. Yovanovitch's removal preceded a July 2019 phone call by Trump in which he attempted to pressure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden. Following revelation of a whistleblower complaint about the phone call and attempts to cover it up, an impeachment inquiry against Trump was initiated by the House of Representatives. Yovanovitch testified in several House committee depositions in the inquiry."

My contention is that, in the very least, each statement sould include the word 'alleged' until such time as the facts have been proven. I could not make these changes myself as the editor has conveniently locked the entry. Is this not privileged vandalism in itself?

Thank you for considering this matter and I hope that you will act in a manner that will further the integrity of the Wikipedia ideal.

Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8804:8100:B84:9876:C489:880D:2866 (talk) 04:48, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

It may not have been proven in court, but a congressional hearing is a pretty good alternate, and there was wall-to-wall media coverage of the hearings. If the sourcing on this paragraph is reliable, I can't say that I agree with you. If it's unsourced, ok, it should be sourced, but having followed the hearings I am quite certain that this can happen. Elinruby (talk) 03:37, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

OK I went and looked at the article and yeah, the above text is in that article unsourced, so yes, there is an issue. I got one reference in there but while I think that the text as written is basically true, it should in my opinion be carefully and heavily sourced, so ya, eyes needed. I will try to get another reference in there before I need to go away. Elinruby (talk) 00:38, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairmont_Private_Schools

Hello, I am a new employee at Fairmont Private Schools and I am just seeing that there has been a history of edits by Kansari123== Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion ==

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. and Looper808== Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion ==

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia: Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. which doesn't meet Wikipedia criteria of neutral point of view and which are not verifiable. While I want to go in and take it out immediately I wish to put it here on this board as I do not wish to be considered biased or as a conflict of interest since I am a school employee.

All text in question which I recommend deleting in entirety and seems to be from dubious sources can be found here and is stated in an erroneous way with a sole goal to damage Fairmont's reputation under "Drawbacks: While Fairmont Private Schools has received a multitude of academic and scholarly awards, many issues hide behind a facade. Fairmont offers a minute number of schools in its operating region (Orange County), this can make it strenuous for students who live beyond Tustin and Anaheim city limits to attend Fairmont. Fairmont also is becoming known to hold a greater amount of foreign students, who can lower the level of education that can be taught in a classroom. Fairmont also struggles with the effects of a small student body, a private investigation found that an approximated 43% of students attending Fairmont have suicidal tendencies."

1) "many issues hide behind a facade" - not verifiable and a judgment statement 2) "Fairmont offers a minute number of schools in its operating region" (this should be deleted as Fairmont offers four schools in its operating region as previously stated elsewhere and this isn't a "drawback.") 3) "This can make it strenuous for students who live beyond Tustin and Anaheim City limits to attend Fairmont." This needs to be deleted. This is like saying that La Salle High School in Pasadena CA makes it strenuous for students who live beyond Pasadena to attend La Salle. Schools service a primary area geographically, by definition and this is said with judgment and does not reflect a neutral point of view. 4) "Fairmont also is becoming known to hold a greater amount of foreign students, who can lower the level of education that can be taught in a classroom." Needs to be deleted. International students primarily attend Fairmont Preparatory Academy (a separate page) and it would be a non-verifiable statement to suggest that these students lower the level of education that can be taught in a classroom. Studies show that international students enrich classrooms. 5) "Fairmont also struggles....43% of students have suicidal tendencies." This needs to be deleted. The most blatant of edits, there is no source for this. In fact, as shown in the link below and through editing history, one can see that the edit first stated 80% of students have suicidal tendencies and there was no mention of a private investigation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fairmont_Private_Schools&oldid=927947025

curprev 21:09, 25 November 2019‎ 98.153.164.154 talk‎ 3,836 bytes +1‎ . undo curprev 21:07, 25 November 2019‎ 98.153.164.154 talk‎ 3,835 bytes -2‎ . undo curprev 20:45, 25 November 2019‎ Looper808 talk contribs‎ 3,837 bytes +657‎ undothank curprev 20:32, 25 November 2019‎ 98.153.164.154 talk‎ 3,180 bytes +1‎ . undo curprev 20:26, 25 November 2019‎ 98.153.164.154 talk‎ 3,179 bytes +12‎ . undo curprev 20:25, 25 November 2019‎ Kansari123 talk contribs‎ 3,167 bytes -148‎ undothank Tag: section blanking curprev 20:25, 25 November 2019‎ 98.153.164.154 talk‎ 3,315 bytes -12‎ . undo curprev 20:25, 25 November 2019‎ Kansari123 talk contribs‎ 3,327 bytes -107‎ undothank Tag: section blanking curprev 20:24, 25 November 2019‎ Kansari123 talk contribs‎ 3,434 bytes +108‎ undothank curprev 20:22, 25 November 2019‎ Kansari123 talk contribs‎ 3,326 bytes +148‎ undothank

While there is no such thing as a perfect school, the drawbacks referenced here are biased and created to make the school in a poor light undeservedly.

This seems to have been dealt with. However more eyes are needed due to the sudden appearance of a few wp:spa.Slatersteven (talk) 11:11, 30 November 2019 (UTC)