Talk:Ian Lustick

Medad

Um, Nishidani, BLP I think rules out using an unreliable source as balance here. I dont think that should be included. If there are negative reviews in better sources then sure. But this one should not be included. nableezy - 22:07, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Early here, but as I spoon in some porridge to feed the dessicated grey matter and get it to spark up, I'll get my thoughts together on this. The gravamen of your challenge is policywise:

Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced

Nishidani (talk) 07:00, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay, for once I’ll go into the nittygritty (a word Joseph Brodsky loved) - all of that close knowledge and intuitive awareness of the implicit issues long-term editors have, but rarely use out of discretion – and dissect what happened, so show that there’s no real BLP problem here, and while 'Fathom' ain't scholarship, it represents the reflex POV of semi-official Israeli political and settler circles, and understanding the latter has been one of the central concerns of Lustick since his early days in Brandeis, and his sojourn in Israel in the late sixties. If he allows it to stand, so should we.

• The Medad source was added by Buidhe here, on May 14. Buidhe has a strong editing profile, with important work on WW2 Nazi atrocities against Jews and broader conttributions to the Eastern Europe articles.
• Two weeks later, an editor responded to Buidhe’s addition, noting it was a ‘possible unreferenced addition to BLP’ and adding that the critic was a ‘West Bank settler’, This was WP:OR, based on personal knowledge, You don’t have to be a genius (though it helps to have been raised at an impressionable age on Sherlock Holmes films featuring Basil Rathbone and that lovable duffer Nigel Bruce) to twig that this edit was performed, not by Lustick, but by a woman acquainted with him understandably concerned that his wiki page maintain a tone of fairness . This is something like a WP:COI fine point of course. But the point of the edit was to ‘balance’ the settler sniping with a mainstream evaluation, which however was unsourced, its content being cited without identifying who wrote it.My evaluation was that the edit, despite the technical faults, showed diplomatic finesse and liberal tolerance for disagreements, and so could stand, if adjusted.
• At this point, Lustick himself stepped in 50 minutes later and, rather than challenging the piece (Fathom is a hasbara outlet toeing the party (also in the best celebrative sense of that word) line)), simply clarified that the ‘settler’ in question was Yisrael Medad, adding the settlement in the West Bank where he lives, namely Shilo, and that the positive review already there was by an eminently good source, Nathan Brown. Still, that too was unsourced. These oversights were understandable. Indefatigable scholars working on the cusp of their research field don’t have much time to lose frigging about, like the rest of us, with the niggling niceties of wikipedia policy. It’s up to the minor myrmidons to don their Jeevesian tweeds when luck sends a don our way, and butler about fussily with a bit of timely help
• We know this edit was done by Lustick himself, since, honest to the day, he signed it. We know the signature is authentic because 13 years ago, he admitted as such in an edit summary.
• I removed the reference to Medad’s place of residence, since that was ‘original research’ based on personal knowledge. I referenced the anonymous Brown quote; removed the ref to Shilo and identified his POV by the more neutral, documented reference to whom he represents, the POV of the settlers’ council. In the same edit I added a footnote throwing light on the slight frisson of ressentiment in Medad’s opening remarks, since, as a reader of Lustick’s early masterpiece would remember, Lustick mentioned him and his background.

Bref. Buidhe responded to mention of Lustick’s new book by citing a critical dismissal, not troubling to balance it by inserting also Brown’s piece, readily available. A person connected to Lustick but concerned with the integrity of reportage on him, didn’t use the rules to erase the criticism but in the best traditions oif liberal tolerance, merely noted that the anoymous critic (Medad) had a conflict of interest in spouting that superficial pejorative assessment. Lustick showed the same instinct for fairness, but erred by identifying the source’s residence in the West Bank, for which his profile on Fathom gave no indication. Therefore, technical errors were made with these details, but, patently, the two editors with a natural interest in Lustick’s page did not object to Medad’s position being cited there. What they required was ‘balance’, which was provided by adding Brown.

I concur with their judgement: there is no ‘damage’ to Lustick in having Medad’s airy negativism noted. All that was required was an explanation of the critic’s implicit POV and conflict of interest, as a settler who is a party to the I/P conflict.

I’ve suspended a long rewrite of the Ma'ale Adumim article which I intended putting up today to show how all major settlement articles are flawed, and how to fix them. They are flawed because they give the skeletal outlines of when and where they were established, but never quite provide the known and intricate maoeuvers and politicking involved in their establishment. That can wait, because this little Medad issue reminded me that Lustick really does deserve a page adequate to his scholarly achievement. Medad’s remarks can stand because, if one takes care to go through the record, there’s an abundance of outstanding critical material by or on Lustick that, once added, will relegate cheap cracks to the corner. At the same time, given L’s standing, the page does require the odd piece of rancorous huffing and puffing or beefing by the disaffected, It does his reputation no harm, and he, apparently, is not offended. To the contrary, there is a certain wryness in tweaking Buidhe’s reference so that Medad, an old acquaintance, not be forgotten and be allowed to have his say, as long as his conflict of interest is clear to the reader.

Sorry for the length (bad background – growing up on Sunday listening to sermons, and ever after habituated to countering the oratorical persiflage with a counter-narrative), and I know you’ll cut to the chase and pull policy in its strictest possible wording in disagreeing. Ultimately good editing doesn’t need fundamentalist literalismn. It understands, but is discretional, evaluating things in the best spirit of WP:IAR, as long as no one is harmed, and the questioned material, in context, is congruent and with the topic and cogently contextualized.Nishidani (talk) 09:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Fathom actually prints a considerable variety of opinions, including those critical of Netanyahu [1] [2] are featured on its homepage right now, so it can hardly be dismissed as some kind of pro-settler propaganda outfit. As for reliability, it is reliable for being printed there and being Medad's opinion, while due weight is satisfied by the journal being notable. Discounting opinions because of the (alleged) nationality, ethnicity, religion, or place of residence of their holders is completely against WP policy. Trying to guess what the supposed motivation of writers may be or editing according to one's own opinion is also prohibited according to policy. I find the detail on Medad to be excessive—this article is not about him. If notable, he should have his own article. buidhe 09:54, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Fathom is half-bankrolled by its founder,the British magnate Chaim Poju Zabludowicz whose family made their pile through the Israeli arms manufacturing corporation Soltam, though he himself transformed the financial base into property development. He has links to what is comically known as the Israel political centre-left, though is on amicable terms with Netanyahu. Bicom has been a major pro-Israeli lobby group, and the voices it sponsors in Fathom are pitched to appeal to the muddle-through-somehow decent constituency of upper British public opinion. In that sense it's not much different from many mainstream newspaper sources we read.

I am not editing 'according to my own opinion'. To the contrary, I am editing against my personal opinion that Medad's views are not worth a nob of goatshit, out of respect for the apparent fact that the affected person of this article has not removed Medad's piece. If the subject of a wiki bio has no objection to a source critical of them, I don't think we peons can run roughshod over that, and cancel it on technical grounds.

I didn't characterize Bicom as pro-settler. I stated the obvious, Fathom hosts an official settler spokesman as a regular columnist. I see nothing wrong in that, though it was odd that a journal that vaunts its desire to introduce 'intellectual rigour' into the public conversation on Israel, would send a reviewer's copy to Medad in Shilo for review. Wiki has to live with opinions, unfortunately, as opposed to the 'informed opinions' of scholarship or area experts. I'd be a hypocrite using double standards, as someone who (very occasionally) cites articles from Mondoweiss (if written by established journalists or analysts), to object to Fathom. While neither fit my ideal of citing only academic works for the encyclopedic content, most 'pro-Israeli' editors cite newspapers, the majority of which spin any topic Israel's way. Most editors (about 7) concerned with the content of articles regarding the Palestinian half of the equation, underwrite higher standards, preferring historical scholarship, but have to live with (a) wiki's acceptance of newspapers/magazines esp. if (b) we are dealing with 'breaking news' and reviews of a book just published, hoping that, somewhere down the line, all of this ephemera will fade away as the results of long-term scholarship's research are harvested to replace them. Nishidani (talk) 13:14, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Im sorry but that isnt how any of this works. A notable journal does not mean reliable. We dont include the opinions of unreliable sources in articles on living people. WP:BLP is very clear on this point. Due weight is not "satisfied by the journal being notable", and even the most basic reading of WP:N would make obvious just how irrelevant the notability of a journal is to any part of this conversation. I am going to remove the bit by Medad again, and I am citing WP:BLPRS which reads contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion. and WP:BLPREQUESTRESTORE which requires a consensus for any restoration of material removed per BLP. nableezy - 16:32, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Well I disagree. Medad's opinion doesn't reflect on Lustick at all, but on Medad. Any reader can see that, and he was writing of the book, not of Lustick. But it's no skin off my nose. I do recall when a new edition of my book was being prepared, that the Routledge editor asked for puffery quotes for the blurb. I replied with two that were minority views, that ripped hysterically into my approach. I thought telling people some reviewers were deeply upset was fair, and the outrageously silly quality of the quoted remarks contrasted with other assessments would have been obvious. Editors here don't seem to understand these subtleties, alas, and the ironic piquancy of Medad's dismissal will be lost, together with a note to the effect that serious scholarship, as opposed to the churning pamphleteering of meme machines, angers settlers.Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, You're correct as always in your technical call, and it is a good thing that the record shows that members of the 'anti-Semitic anti-Israeli' wiki cabal, as hysterics smear several of us, will on principles like this challenge and revert each other's work, insouciant of the usual political teamwork which mars this place. But to my finicky temperament, losing a well researched note takes the wind out of my drive to perfect things - it reminds one that anything one does here can suffer and will suffer erosion and that time is short. I'll drop it. It's only half the size I intended, but I think in a much more decent state that it was until yesterday. Must get time to do the Ma'ale Adumim article, somehow.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

It doesnt matter, Medad's opinion is by a person that does not appear to have any academic qualifications that would make him a reliable source in a journal that does not have any type of peer review that would make it a reliable source. It is a personal opinion by somebody who does not qualify as a reliable source and it does not belong in an encyclopedia article. We dont cover personal opinions by unqualified sources here. We especially dont do it for living people. nableezy - 17:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, it does actually. Wikipedia is a chaotic universe with a mass of rules which are applied with the coherence of a despot's arbitrary ukases (or should that be ukazi (указы)?). I don't have time to illustrate how the norm you mention is observed more in the breech and that praise of an academic or institutional figure in any number of wikibios gets in (take the ridiculous figure of Manfred Gerstenfeld whose 'scholarship' is lauded to ballistically hyperbolic limits by people with no background to judge the absurdities he spouts re anti-Semitism, such as Anshel Pfeffer and Isi Leibler )God or the tetragrammaton bless him). Organisations expressing their views, written anonymously by some hack in a backroom, on living persons get in all the time. So the rule is absolutely erratic. The ADL on Tony Judt or John Mearsheimer/Stephen Walt, though if you check the screeds, no name is attached to them to indicate who wrote the tripe. What's Paul Bogdanor doing being on the Norman Finkelstein page? He's a raucous nobody. Or even Alan Dershowitz. He knows zilch of Judaism, the history of Israel/Palestine, and yet his views are paraded everywhere. yeah, he's an academic and gets publishers, but the works he writes are not peer-reviewed by any competent scholar as far as I can see. Looks like scrambled eggs on toast tonight:I've eaten up all my cooking hour.Nishidani (talk) 18:34, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I have not once said that criticism is in any verboten or should be restricted. However, it must come from reliable sources. Not from unqualified writers in unreliable sources. nableezy - 18:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Fogspeak. What determines a reliable source? Not any rule but the arbitrary combination of who happens to chance on some page, and, if opposed, barters a text with other editors whose criterion of reliability is a rule-of-thumb thing, a negotiated outcome between competing interpretators of what each would like to see, or not see, on a page. Fathom is no less or more reliable than Salon or Commentary yet on the Noam Chomsky wikibio we have a metallurgist turned journo Jonathan Kay writing for Commentary, when stuff was still vetted by the ridiculous Podhoretz père and or fils and calling Chomsky a "hard-boiled anti-American monomaniac" while David Horowitz with a mere BA in Englit and, writing on the website Salon calls him "the most devious, the most dishonest and ... the most treacherous intellect in America", whose work is infused with "anti-American dementia". Both views are fatuously nescient of course, and any reader will only think: yeah, airheads will say anything against someone whose genius they envy. This is the wiki norm, not the rule you invoke.

I admire your Calvinist rule-rigourism here but when you write;We dont cover personal opinions by unqualified sources here, as above, you are using the pluralis majestatis with we and restricting the practice to this page in using the locative adverb 'here', despite meaning 'wikipedia'. Now, having hopeless endeavoured to cause you a minor hiccup I must catch an old eastwood rerun. No harm done.Nishidani (talk) 20:19, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

And we can add more reviews. This by Lawrence Davidson looks usable. But we dont create a balance by using unreliable sources. We reflect the balance that exists in reliable sources. nableezy - 17:50, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Technicality

Nab, by placing the Arbcom restriction on the page, automatically Lustick is excluded from emending any error he might find on this wiki biography of himself. Only insane people like myself or rag'eads like you would, in such circumstances, take time off a busy workiload to ratchet up 500 edits promiscuously over hundreds of articles in order to quality for editing access to the notorious attritional deathzone of I/P wiki coverage. It wouldn't be worth the candle. If Lustick or whoever feels problems exist here that need correction, as it stands their only option is to place a note on the talk page requesting an admin to see to it. Rather unfair. Any ideas? What are the damn rules in such circs?Nishidani (talk) 13:58, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

He should not be editing the page anyway, he should come to the talk page to say what the problem might be. nableezy - 16:29, 31 May 2020 (UTC)