Talk:Western Institute

Criticism

I moved this POV fragment:

"Most of the institutes publications during the communist era that refer to Polish-German questions have an anti-German slant based on political considerations. This is due to the Polish communist regimes belief that perpetuating "the idea of eternal German-Polish enmity was key to its own efforts to justify that regime's existence in Polish eyes". However, it should also be noted that "while many of the historical works published by this institute have revealed its overriding political purpose, it has also sponsored a good deal of high-quality research at a time when Polish scholars had few other outlets." It's based on not working web link and written by Richard Blanke-this is a German-American historian as far as I understand, that some authors classify as pro-German or representing pro-German POV. This singled out quote can't be used as whole description of such renowned and established scholarly institute in Poland.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 18:40, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Criticism should be mentioned and there are a lot of reasons for criticism at the Western Institute of the Communist era. Blanke is a Professor at the University of Maine, no need to remove him just because his name sounds "German". HerkusMonte (talk) 17:09, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Presently the article is a classic example of POV pushing. Yes, there are criticisms of the Institute out there, but there is also a lot of praise. If nothing else, the works published by the Institute are widely used and cited in academic studies, usually without any kind of criticism and reservation. What StorStar7 did was to look through sources and cherry pick the most negative quote he could find. You appear to be doing the same. That is a violation of NPOV, you know (which if anybody cared would be a serious matter, but since no admin gives a flip about NPOV anymore, I guess you're off the hook).Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I just looked at the source you provided for your quote - aside from the fact that it is plucked out of context, it is not exactly what is in the source. The source is talking about a sub-period within the Communist period, rather than the entire period. Hence, I removed it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:24, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The seventies and eighties are hardly an "epoch", however I quoted the source. Everybody should judge on his own what the author meant. HerkusMonte (talk) 17:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

What "epoch" are you talking about?Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

HK-he is named as German-American historian by scholars Blanke is an American historian of German descent teaching at the University of Maine

He also has been criticised by Christian Raitz von Frentz and one of his books classified by him as part of a series that have an anti-Polish bias IIRC. Also professor Cienciala wrote that Blanke's views are sympathetic to Germany IIRC.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 18:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I would not normally have reacted, had not one in the proven EE mail list team[1] above brought my name up. Volunteer Marek, your claim above[2] has the hallmarks of the paranoia that I find unpleasantly visible in the EE domain. Not only do you make borderline allegations regarding how I came across the source, you also display a failure to grasp NPOV. Are you seriously arguing that you can take away WP:RS based on some claimed paranormal ability to do mind-reading on your part visa-vi the editor? Funny. I also find it interesting that in your first sejour here chose to believe only the god things that R. Blanke had to say about the institute, the "bad" things were per definition POV to you.[3]

I do not se a need to justify myself, but I think it could be useful to provide some background considering Volunteer Mareks comments. I came across Blanke when editing Bloody Sunday (1939) a long long time ago, before running into another of the EE mail list members. The source has since also been used, in what is to me academically really bad taste, in the Operation Himmler article. In a way it is almost funny, a source that vehemently states that German civilians in Poland had no weapons or 5th column activities is used in a way that makes it looks like they did bring the wartime massacres upon themselves, simply because Blanke (only partly) supports the last part of a sentence about propaganda.

@Volunteer Marek, If you truly think the sources are wrong regarding the bias of the institute during the dictatorship era, then I'm sure you will be able to provide sources stating the Institute was academically unbiased during the time it was working inside the umbrella of the Polish Communist Regime. That approach is very much preferable to deleting reliable academic sources that say the opposite to your opinions, per WP policies. Thank you.

@Molobo, I saw you had edited the article again to remove bits. Please remember that you are restricted to one revert per week per this --Stor stark7 ^Speak 22:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Compare this version [4] which, according to you is "NPOV" and "balanced" (seriously?), to this version [5], which retains the criticism but tones down the blatantly unencyclopedic language. And yes, you are the one who inserted the original highly pov wording [6] - and "my reading" is simply based on my familiarity with your pattern of editing, for example in your authorship of this version of a particular article, which is such a blatant POV attack piece it is almost a self-parody. You did it there, you're doing the same thing here - cherry picking sources and presenting things out of context.

Of course I'm also familiar with your editing on, among others, Rape during the occupation of Germany, Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union, World War II, Preemptive war, Aftermath of World War I (trying to replace a photo of destroyed Warsaw, with image of Hamburg?), American propaganda during World War II, Allied war crimes during World War II (edit summary suggests you tend to misuse the word "balanced" as you're doing here), World War II casualties, Japanese prisoners of war in World War II and many other articles. Anyone who cares can click through these and judge for themselves what kind of editing and POV you've been bringing to Wikipedia.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:14, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I had a quiet laugh reading the above. Thank you for reminding me about the Christ of Europe article.[7] I can recommend it to anyone who has come across the EE mailing list members. I also compared your summaries of the edits to the actual edits and conclude that not much has changed since the EE mail list arbitration. Funny thing is, the vast majority of the text I edited in were deemed valid by the community and still stand, just check the current versions. I was even "complimented" for the edit on Guernica that you link to in the WWII article. [8] Yet you see things differently, and a overuse of Polish images in aftermath of WWII is not a problem to you, apparently. Again, I strongly recommend Christ of Europe. Now, I agree that in the past I sometimes lost my temper when confronted by the tag teams, but it happened rarely, and became even rarer after reading the mailing list archives were I read bragging about trying to provoke "opponents" into doing something stupid.

Lets do a comparison shall we, what is in your block log, and what is in mine? Or this finding re the mailing list where we see you've been deliberately manipulative, and also proxied for your blocked friend.[9]

Your claim of mind reading simply does not stand, except to anyone who just does a cursory check of your misleading summaries instead of checking the actual links, which perhaps was the purpose of the above text? And still you cling to the belief that you are allowed to take away RS simply because of your beliefs about the mindset of the editor?--Stor stark7 ^Speak 08:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I realize you're trying to provoke here, but that really is not the way to approach a discussion on Wikipedia. The previous wording was clearly intended to convey a particular biased POV in the article. It did this by cherry picking a source, and cherry picking a quote from that source. It is fine to note the criticism but that should be balanced with other views of the Institute.

Part of the problem here is that a few authors, like Blanke, who have some kind of axe to grind, have explicitly criticized the Institute. On the other hand, most scholars working in the topic area have no problem with the Institute's research and happily make use of it, but without engaging - with some exceptions - in outright praise of the organizations. In acdemia, if something's a good piece of research, the biggest compliment you can pay to it is by citing in your own work. Aside from occasional "restrospectives" and things like that, that is really the measure of the quality of the Institute's research. And the institute's work is used and cited in numerous studies by Western scholars who cannot be painted or accused of having a "anti-German" bias.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:15, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

All of a sudden it's not even mentioned any more that the critique refers to communist era publications, just some carping idiots remain. Usually even in Poland the communist era is judged with a little more distance. HerkusMonte (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

You're right that the fact that the criticism being made applies only to Communist era - if we're going to be precise, to a sub-period within the communist era - and not overall, should be mentioned explicitly.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me. Btw, we still need articles on most national historiographies (German historiography, Polish historiography...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:57, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Usually even in Poland the communist era is judged with a little more distanceNope. It was in initial euphoria in early 90s.Now it is viewed more objectively. For instance almost all information on German genocide comes from 1945-1989 era and is respected today as valuable research. Also after 1970 the research isn't even criticised regarding relations with West Germany which harboured thousands of Nazi criminals implicated in atrocities(including genocide of Poles).--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 21:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, this is essentially right. Most of the "censorship" of scholarly research and propaganda under Communism in Poland was pretty much about Polish-Russian relations, or more specifically Polish-Soviet relations (whether or not and to what extent criticism of Tsarist Russia was allowed depended on how the leaders in Moscow felt at a particular time about the relative merits of Russian nationalism vs. strict Marxist orthodoxy, as well as to what extent the censors could pick up on literary allusions and metaphors), rather than Polish-German relations. To the extent that there was bias - not "censorship" or propaganda - in Polish-German studies it was more of a selection bias, or in other words, the researchers concerned picked topics and areas which didn't piss off the Russians/Communists. The research wasn't false or misrepresentative (unlike some pre-WWII German research) but it focused on particular areas; Piast Poland, Teutonic Knights, Kulturkampf etc. (one area which was more or left alone was study of East Prussia for example - because there the German presence did go back much further and was more complete, then in other "controversial" areas). So to the extent there was some kind of bias in the work of things like this Institute, it was in WHAT was studied, not HOW it was studied - the research methods and approach were completely legitimate, as judged by Western scholarly standards, while the access to concrete data, actually made some of the research world class. This is why the works of the Institute were/are so widely cited.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I see Volunteer Marek is discussing mainly with two of his EE Mail list friends, Piotrus and Molobo, and Wow, the page seems to be getting filled with random speculations and blankets of text. Is there a reason behind this? Marek, I realize you're trying to provoke here, ever since your first statement about my mind. Lets get down to discussing the topic shall we. You claim the source was cherry picked. You have provided no evidence for this that in any way is valid by wikipedia policies. In fact, you have not even demonstrated that you even read Blanke.

As to the Contents of Blanke, all you have provided is repeated and repeated ad nauseum claims of POV, without ever attempting to show exactly how the text of Blanke would be POV, which is understandable since you apparently didn't bother to read the source, Blankes review, the first time you showed up in the article either. This is clearly a case of a "I just don't like it" effort.

Now, Blanke clearly explains the reasons why the Institute was taking the communist lead in its bias towards Germany, and the reasons he outlines for his stating this will be reinstated in the article despite this spirited defense of communist literature. It is scary that you are unable to understand this, and seem to see a Communist Poland Institutes material as good per automatic. Imagine doing that for material published by a Nazi Germany Institute. Gee.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 07:02, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't make any "first statement about your mind" and frankly I am not interested in having a discussion with you, unless you cut out the personal attacks.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:53, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Thum

Ok, now the problem with the disagreement over the sentence beginning with "German historian Gregor Thum criticised the Institute for..." is actually that it states that he criticized. Of course he mentions ethnic nationalism but he also mentions other things. In fact, here both Mymoloboaccount's and Herkus' statement as to what is being critizied are correct - it's a matter of what you want to emphasize. But at no point does he say "I am criticizing the institute for this and that". What he did is write a book about it and that's all we should say without engaging in OR which labels his work as this or the other. So I propose to just skip that first sentence entirely and just start that paragraph with the sentence "Thum writes that premise of the research concept...", which is factual and based on the source.Volunteer Marek (talk) 08:46, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Re: [10] the source does not state that WI was a "Nazi equivalent". Indeed, if it did say stuff like this - practice this kind of moral equivalency - it probably wouldn't be taken seriously as a source. What the source does, is draw SOME parallels between propaganda of Nazi Germany and some propaganda of the immediate post-war Poland. The relevant sections in fact focus on describing Nazi Germany's practices, its destruction of Polish culture and other not-nice-things the Nazis did. It than says explicitly: "Nevertheless there was a fundamental difference..."

Just because some editors try to draw a moral equivalency between the Allies and the Nazis during WWII for whatever reason, does not mean that this is in fact supported by sources.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2011 (UTC)