User:Piotrus/Response

Response to “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” conspiracy theory invented by a banned Wikipedian

by Piotr Konieczny (User:Piotrus)

This is my response to the recently published essay article (Jan Grabowski & Shira Klein (2023) Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust, The Journal of Holocaust Research, DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939) which contains a number of factual errors, and further, makes numerous unethical allegations against me and others, which, taken together, to quote from this analysis by Volunteer Marek: "violate a number of professional codes of conduct as well as simple ethics".

I will also quote Volunteer Marek, because he said it better than I (TL;DR), and what he said fully applies to myself: "The allegations made against me in Grabowski and Klein’s article are completely false. I have not engaged in any “Holocaust distortion”, on Wikipedia or anywhere else. I am not a “right wing Polish nationalist”. I am not part of some nefarious “Polish conspiracy” on Wikipedia which seeks to manipulate content. All of these accusations are ridiculous and absurd. They are particularly disgusting and vile since they go against everything I believe in... it is crucial to state at the outset what the origins of Grabowski and Klein’s claims are. These accusations originate with a former Wikipedia editor named “Icewhiz” who has been subjecting me to real life harassment for at least the past four years."

Update: The allegations against my person (and others) made in that paper have been reviewed by the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (that case even attracted some media attention). That case, closed by May 2023, has not found me guilty of any "Holocaust distortion", did not impose any restriction on me, and instead it clearly states that my "contributions to the topic area have followed appropriate editor expectations. Piotrus has frequently helped to find consensus when there have been content disputes".

Background

The key problem with this essay is that it is significantly based on data and claims from an individual using the username Icewhiz. As the essay admits, “Icewhiz was indefinitely site-banned (prevented from editing any article, talk page, or noticeboard) on the charge of off-Wiki harassment of other editors.” The essay does not, however, clarify that “other editors” here include me (as well as several other subjects discussed in the essay). In September 2019, Icewhiz, an otherwise anonymous Wikipedian, found himself subject to restrictions after his behavior was reviewed by Wikipedia's senior administration (the Arbitration Committee). (In that case he was found guilty of accusing his opponents of Holocaust denial, among other transgressions). That restriction was initially limited to a year-long topic ban from "from the history of Poland during World War II, including the Holocaust in Poland" (Volunteer Marek received an identical sanction, no other volunteer was sanctioned). Instead of abiding by that community-imposed sanction, Icewhiz started editing through proxy accounts ("socks") and worse: he decided to take his revenge on those he deemed his “enemies” within the Wikipedia project and therefore launched an intense campaign of harassment aimed at me and several other volunteers he disagreed with, with the self-admited goal of making us retire from the project and/or destroying our reputations (sample expression of intent from one of his socks). In my case, that involved contacting my students (I am a university professor and I do not hide my real life identity on Wikipedia) with emails containing allegations such as “did you know your teacher and professor Piotr Konieczny is a Holocaust denier” and impersonating a Polish NGO activist in threatening me with legal action and/or “ruining my reputation” if I don’t retire from my volunteering at Wikipedia (the activist in question even contacted the police lodging a complaint against Icewhiz's impersonation). For a statement from Wikimedia Foundation's Trust and Safety body confirming the above, see here.

Icewhiz's continued violation of community norms led to him becoming indefinietly banned from English Wikipedia by 1 October 2019. However, around that time he also started to reach out to media to continue his "fight", pleading his case in off-wiki venues. He succeeded at having part of his story printed in Haaretz in 2019 ([1]). That article made a claim about a systematic effort by Polish nationalists to whitewash hundreds of Wikipedia articles relating to Poland and the Holocaust. A quote from that article illustrates Icewhiz's goals: ...[the Poles on Wikipedia] have built strong allies on Wikipedia that currently make them immune to criticism. Icewhiz, on the other hand, has failed to gain much support on Wikipedia. He says the Poles on Wikipedia benefit from an unholy alliance with editors affiliated with the American left... Icewhiz says that he brought his story to Haaretz because he has all but lost the battle against Polish revision on Wikipedia. Having a respected newspaper vet his claims and publish the story of the hoax plays a key role in his attempt to defend history. By reporting on Polish revisionism on Wikipedia, the facts being purged by Polish editors are preserved as true by a verifiable source, granting him ammunition for his last offensive in the footnote war. (For my response to that article, see here, for the major factual error in that article, i.e. portraying a simple error as an intentional hoax, and misattributting it to a Polish editor, see here).

Despite becoming site banned in 2020 for harassment Icewhiz continued his campaign. Eventually he contacted Jan Grabowski, a scholar with whose POV he strongly identifies, inspiring him to look at content on Wikipedia that Icewhiz considered problematic; this led to Grabowski publishing an article in a Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza ([2]) in which he presented Icewhiz’s narrative that several “Polish nationalists” (i.e. myself and several editors who disagreed with Icewhiz) are introducing falsehood to Wikipedia (side-note: I don't consider myself to be a "Polish nationalist" and I even find that description offensive). I published a rebuttal to Grabowski in the same venue a few days later ([3] - an open access mirror of my article is hosted here and you can use machine translation to read Polish content in English easily; my second rebuttal to the more recent piece by Grabowski, summarizing their recent English essay, can be found here, and the final piece of this - so far - is their short reply here which effectively is a refusal to continue the discussion). On a side note I will note that while the authors cite Grabowski's 2020 newspaper article in their essay, they do not cite or otherwise acknowledge the existence of my rebuttal published in the same venue (see also here, section 4.2).

At that time I exchanged several polite messages with Grabowski and held a VoIP discussion with him, where I tried to explain to him that Icewhiz is not a good-faithed actor; during our conversation, Grabowski admitted to me that he knows very little about “how Wikipedia works” (at that time he wasn't even aware of the existence of user pages, talk pages, and history function, IIRC) and that most of the technical details in his newspaper article (which contained many errors and inaccuracies that I pointed out in my newspaper rebuke) came from Icewhiz. Acting in good faith, I also reported Grabowski's concerns about a number of possible erros in Wikipedia articles, verbatim, to the community (see also here, section 13.2). Unfortunately, after few days, Grabowski blocked me on social media, apparently upset that I've created a Wikipedia article about an academic book he criticized and that the resulting Wikipedia article wasn't critical enough (he admits that in his newspaper article, and I address this incident in my second rebuttal).

A few months later I was contacted by Klein, who told me she and Grabowski are working on a more academically-minded analysis of this topic and asked if she could interview me (she also admitted she was interviewing Icewhiz, among a number of other editors). I agreed to an interview while informing her, in emails and in my interview, of the harassment I and others endured from Icewhiz, and asking her to follow ethical guidelines to avoid aiding that Internet troll in his/her campaign of causing harm to me and other volunteers through “destroying our reputations” . Sadly, I see no evidence that anything I said to Klein made it to the published essay; in fact, I recall we discussed some of Icewhiz’s claims and I provided my responses/corrected some factual errors - but I see the same errors repeated in the current essay, including misrepresentations of what I said that I specifically clarified during the interview.

Problems with the essay

From subsection 2 to 25, the issues are presented roughly in the order that they appear in the addressed essay. Note that it is not my goal to address every issue raised. I have limited time (the authors had ~2 years to work on this, I had about a month so far). Length is an issue too, sometimes addressing a claim made in a single sentence takes several paragraphs. Writing a book, which is what is needed to comprehensively address all issues, takes time.

That said, there are also parts of the essay that I agree with. At present time, I don't have time or will to point out such parts in all instances, but it would be dishonest of me not to admit that they exist. (For example, I agree with the authors that Wikipedia's coverage of this topic area has some errors and biases; several factual errors or problematic sources they've pointed out have been addressed by the community, including myself - see my undoing of old error introduced by an IP related to Blue Police and death penalty (Feb 20), my removal of low quality source by Zajączkowski (March 5), my comments about Glaukopis being a low quality source here (March 18), etc.).

1. Lack of neutrality

Whether any academic article in social sciences can be truly neutral is an interesting philosophical question, but an essay, as our very definition confirms, is an opinion piece (and the authors of the discussed piece refer to it as an essay themselves). Obviously, some POV is expected, but I find that piece very partisan. It portrays Icewhiz positively as a victim/”good guy”, even attempts to justify his actions such as socking (the end justifies the means?), while repeatedly describing me and several others with bad faith as “nationalists” or “distortionists”, all contributing to Icewhiz’s goal to damage our reputation.

Non-exhaustive examples of white-and-black framing:

• Icewhiz enemies are described pejoratively, in editorializing tone that presents allegations as statements of fact, in ways such as these:
  • the very term "distortionists", used throught the article and its title, refers to Holocaust distortion, a synonym for Holocaust denial. Accusing others of Holocaust denial is extremly serious and arguably slanderous. The authors use the term distortionist ~30 times in the article, ex.: " distortionists inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis", " a typical example of antisemitic tropes being used by distortionists", "In another example of legitimizing weak sources, the distortionist group has", " the distortionist group whitewashed the Wikipedia biography", "the distortionist editors rallied in defense of revisionism", "instead of trying to discredit trustworthy scholarship, the distortionist group takes the easier route of misrepresenting it", "Editors who brave the distortionists contend with aggression, such as racist slurs, uncivil language, and mass deletions", "The distortionist group has driven off editor after editor, wearing down anyone who tries to fix or expand articles on Polish–Jewish relations", "the distortionist editors commit any number of violations: they misrepresent sources, purposely use unreliable sources or no sources at all, violate Biographies of Living Persons rules, canvass, hound, and push nonmainstream points of view".
  • ”“a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia”,  
  • “Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism”,
  • “We will show how a handful of editors steer the historical narrative away from evidence-driven research toward a skewed version of history touted by right-wing Polish nationalists”,
  • The very title of the paper uses the word "intentional", with no qualifier, which suggests purposeful, not accidental, bad-faith actions on the part of the criticized actors. This interpretation of occasional errors as something intentional is one of the biggest problems here, an attack on the reputation of numerous volunteers, myself included. It's human to occasionally err, it's much more serious to accuse others of intentional malpractice.
  • Another example discussed in 6.1
• On the other hand, Icewhiz himself is defended, absolved or praised:
  • “The 2019 Arbitration Committee case [in which Icewhiz was sanctioned] ended dismally for defenders of historical accuracy.”
  • “Icewhiz made important edits on Holocaust-related topics and exposed the falsifications in the ‘Warsaw concentration camp’ article”
  • “Icewhiz himself may have strengthened the hand of the distortionists” (here note the contrast: Icewhiz is not judged, but his opponents are described as distortionists)
  • “Icewhiz eventually managed to replace the paragraph with findings supported by actual scholarship…"
  • "Icewhiz replaced the Mark Paul material with actual scholarship, most of which remains in the article as of the time of writing this”
  • Even Icewhiz’s abuse of Wikipedia policies - creating new accounts after his primary one is banned - is justified: “some of these socks have made valuable edits”
  • And the sentence "Icewhiz was indefinitely site-banned... on the charge of off-Wiki harassment of other editors." likewise creates the impression of doubt with the expression "on the charge". Authors do not acknowledge Icewhiz's harassment as a fact (despite it being confirmed not just by the Arbitration Committee but also by the Trust & Safety of the Wikimedia Foundation), but only as a charge (aka indictment, accusation).

2. Case of Halibutt

“Their massaging of the past ranges from minor errors to subtle manipulations and outright lies. In one glaring example authored by Halibutt... an entire Wikipedia article claimed for fifteen years that in a concentration camp in Warsaw, the Germans annihilated 200,000 non-Jewish Poles in a giant gas chamber”

This particular incident is well analyzed in an essay found here (see also Signpost coverage here), but it can be summarized as follows: in 2004 Halibutt created an article on the Warsaw concentration camp and included in it the following statement "According to various estimates some 200,000 people were killed there" that was later significantly tweaked by another, more anonymous editor [4], Vorthax, whom the authors only mention in a footnote; years later the information was proven wrong and removed. It was in fact Vorthax who made the claim more controversial (while Halibutt added an inflated number of victims to the article; Vorthax "clarified" that most of the victims were Poles which fits with the "nationalist/far-right" narrative). End of story - except that Icewhiz framed this as a "hoax" and even got a newspaper (see #Background) interested in running a story about "Wikipedia's longest hoax" (the error did survive for a long time, yes). But the word hoax implies intentional attempt to distort the history, and there is zero evidence that was Halibutt's (or even Vorthax's) intention. Further, why do the authors single out Halibutt rather than Vorthax for criticism? Could it be because Vorthax, who ceased editing in 2008, did not disclose his nationality/identity on Wikipedia, unlike Halibutt? Or is it because Vorthax had a measly 56 edits compared to Halibutt's 35k?

Halibutt, I should note, was not an anonymous editor; he disclosed his real name on Wikipedia, and was in fact a respected employee of the Polish chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. Sadly, he passed away several years ago, but I was personally familiar with him, and I have a vivid memory of him telling me how he discovered his Jewish heritage and how proud he was of it. I informed Klein of this fact during our interview - yet it is not mentioned in the article (perhaps it would not fit the main narrative of all criticized editors being part of this anti-Jewish, Polish nationalistic clique?).

In summary, while Halibutt, in a single instance, inserted erroneous information into Wikipedia, there is no evidence to assume it was intentional ("a glaring example [of] subtle manipulations and outright lies"), as the authors write. And the authors' choice to criticize Halibutt rather than Vorthax is puzzling. In the end, this is just a boring story of an error being removed from Wikipedia - nothing nefarious to see here, except a disheartening attempt to besmirch the reputation of Halibutt, a respected editor in good standing who sadly cannot say a word in his own defense anymore.

3. Example of exaggeration

“other manipulations remain and more are added daily to the online encyclopedia.”

Arguably, some errors exist on Wikipedia but whether it's "manipulation" or accidental error is very debatable. And the latter claim is an obvious exaggeration, not supported by any evidence in the cited essay.

4. Unreliable sources

“When distorting the past, the editors involved cite unreliable sources such as popular websites, self-published work, or academic work that has been widely discredited.”

4.1 (On authors not understanding that our standards improve over time)

The first part of this was something I addressed in my newspaper rebuttal to Grabowski. In the early years of Wikipedia, many volunteers did not know what is “reliable” and indeed used low quality sources, if they used sources at all (ex. Halibutt's 2004 entry on the Warsaw concentration camp, discussed in section 2, was completely unsourced - and that was pretty normal for that time). This has been changing in the last decade, certainly in the last few years (WP:APLRS helps). A major problem with Grabowski’s argument (which likely comes from Icewhiz) is seeing such old errors as intentional, rather than, well, poor scholarship from inexperienced volunteers (which is becoming less and less common as Wikipedia matures). In others, it is a subjective opinion (POV, as we say on Wikipedia). Let's review two cases.

4.2 (On Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust).

False claim about "sea of praise") One of the "discredited" works used, presumably, is that of Richard C. Lukas, whom the authors obviously hold in low repute, saying that Lukas' book The Forgotten Holocaust “borders on Holocaust distortion”, a sweeping and to use the adjective the authors of the essay are quite fond of, “scathing” assessment that they hardly elaborate on in discussing the book in a passing three sentences or so. The authors write that: “By portraying Engel’s opinion as a lone dissenter in a sea of praise, Piotrus massaged the Wikipedia article to show Lukas in a positive light.”, but the book article entry I indeed wrote (May 2020 version linked) included other critical or mixed reviews as well (in addition to Engel, I'd classify reviews or comments by Redlich, Maurer, Cooper as critical, and those by Marrus, Hetnal, Pawlikowski and Madajczyk as mixed). Bottom line is that the Lukas book in question is impactful and received numerous reviews, some negative, some mixed, and quite a few, positive (the latter IMHO include those by Davies, Pienkos, Hoffman, Wynot, Sword, Thompson, Manaday and Salmonowicz, among others). Wikipedia's articles need to respect policies such as WP:BLP and WP:UNDUE, which means that we cannot give undue weight to one particular review (Engel's) that the authors hold in high esteem while discounting or minimizing other reliable viewpoints. The authors are within their right to be critical of the book, but Wikipedia has to represent all due points of view. (As a sidenote, to quote Jayen466 from diff: It is worth noting that Richard C. Lukas' book The Forgotten Holocaust, along with another of his works, is part of the "Background Information" reading list provided on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website... I respectfully disagree with the review author's opinion that a work recommended on the USHMM website should not be suitable for citation in Wikipedia.). Also, see the analysis at 20.82 for lack of evidence that actual use of Lukas is used to promote any "Holocaust distortion".

4.21 Elsewhere, the authors criticize Lukas’s 1989 book Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust as "a book that has been heavily criticized by experts." They do not provide any footnote to back up that claim. While I have not investigated this source in-depth, as of early March 2023, Lukas biography which mentions this book, and which has been subject to significant scrutiny by uninvolved editors since the publication of the discussed essay still lists only three reviews of this book (first by John Klier's [5] and second by Jerzy Jan Lerski [6]; the first one seems positive, the second one, mixed-leaning-negative. The third review, by Pohl in German, I have not been able to translate and it has not been discussed on the article's talk page). Perhaps there are more negative reviews to be found, but the authors failure to back up a claim that this work has been "heavily criticized" is again problematic.

4.22. The above concerns Lukas's books. Regarding Lukas's biography, which the "sea of praise" claim might also refer to, see #6.5.

4.3 (On Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust. False claim that this book only has two reviews)

Another scholar the authors dismiss is Tadeusz Piotrowski, whose book is condescendingly described in their essay as follow: it “has received only two academic reviews, consists of little more than a collection of quotations taken out of context”. The authors do not inform us what the reviews say about the book, or which reviews they consulted. I quickly found a total of four academic reviews for it (at the time the essay was published, even Wikipedia’s biography of Piotrowski listed three (Olsak-Glass, Friedrich, Romanienko); I've found another one since (Cienciala), and another editor located an in-depth discussion of this book by Messina). My assessment of these commentaries is that four are positive and one (Friedrich) is negative. The fact that the authors could not locate more than two reviews is evidence of a minor but telling factual error (suggesting at minimum an insufficient literature review which failed to account for half of the reviews in existence).

4.4 (On unfairness of blaming editors for using sources that meet WP:RS)

Wikipedia being Wikipedia, the editors are always welcome to scrutinize those articles, see if NPOV/UNDUE and the like are properly respected, add missing reviews and/or critique the existing ones. In fact, as of late February/early March of 2023, a number of editors have done just that, and the articles are evolving. Perhaps the end result, as more sources are found, and more eyes assess them, will be more to the authors' liking. Perhaps not. As of the moment I am writing this, I do not think there is consensus among editors that those works are "widely discredited", although things can always change, both within scholarship and within Wikipedia. Again, time will tell, but at a minimum, given the ongoing discussions at the talk pages of these authors and books, the authors' claim that these works were "widely discredited" is not something that's glaringly obvious. To blame any volunteer editor for using such sources, written by reliable authors and published by reliable outlets, does not appear fair (Lukas is a professor at Wright State University, his Forgotten Holocaust was published by the University Press of Kentucky; Piotrowski, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, had his book (Poland's Holocaust) published by McFarland & Company).

5. [placeholder]

(Merged with #12. Collective responsibility as 12.6)

6. Criticizing or idealizing scholars

“The same group of Wikipedians also wage a war of legitimacy on Holocaust historians themselves, inserting scathing critiques into Wikipedia biographies of mainstream scholars, and idealizing the biographies of fringe academics.

6.1 (On non-neutral language)

“Scathing” is just one of many, many examples of non-neutral language in this essay, all aimed at creating a white-vs-black picture. The same applies to “war of legitimacy on Holocaust historians”, with the added note that only scholars who agree with the authors are presented as “mainstream Holocaust historians”, while those they disagree with are dismissed as “fringe academics” (presumably, some of the said "fringe" academics like Lukas or Piotrowski might beg to disagree).

6.2 (In this topic area, the only ArbCom finding on BLP violation was about Icewhiz)

It is worth noting that in 2019 the English Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee looked into Icewhiz’s accusations and found instead that “Icewhiz has used inappropriate sources in Biographies of Living Persons (BLPs, [71]), made negative edits to BLPs ([72]) including editorializing in Wikipedia's voice ([73], [74]), and made arguably BLP-violating edits on talk pages by posting negative claims or speculations about living scholars ([75], [76])” (Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland#BLP_violations). It DID NOT make such a finding about BLP violations made by any other editors, including those named by the authors. The essay authors make claims to the contrary, for example see 16.4.

6.3 (False claim that I inserted criticism into Polonsky's biography)

The authors write, in the section entitled "Discrediting historians": "Piotrus inserted unwarranted criticism into the Wikipedia biography of established Holocaust historian Antony Polonsky". First, let me stress that I hold Polonsky in high regard and consider him a highly reliable source, and I would never attempt to "discredit him". Second, I never inserted any criticism into that article (here is a list of my edits to that article: remove copyediting templates (likeresume, peacock), adding npov template, adding a wikilink, removing npov template, and few years later removing a category, moving content to a more relevant article and finally (as of now) adding another wikilink. So the cited sentence referring to my actions is a factual error. Third, as the authors describe later, I did indeed suggest on the talk page of Polonsky's article that a critical source that I found at that time and thought relevant might be added. This suggestion was reviewed and accepted by two other editors (Mick gold and Voceditenore with a passing comment by Malik Shabazz who found the resulting final version balanced). A few years later, following a new discussion, it was decided to remove that source and the mention of the minor incident it relates too. I never objected to this change, as over the years (2012-2018) both the Wikipedia policies related to BLP/RS, my understanding of them (as well as other policies such as UNDUE) and my appreciation of Polonsky as a scholar evolved, and by 2018 I had no objection to removal of that content. (I notice Voceditenore's views have likewise changed).

Other than that, in that section, the authors provide only three examples of critique of historians they consider reputable by three other volunteers (for the record, I personally think all three historians in question - Gross, Lang and Browning - are indeed reputable, and I don't endorse their critique). In either case, the authors assertion that I and others try to "discredit trustworthy scholarship" is based, in the end, on a single talk page suggestion and a few (total of three...) critical comments in discussions. That's a pretty small dataset, to say the least (and it again lumps different actions and different level of criticism, by different individuals, into one claim).

6.4 (On omission of evidence that I and others cited or praised Polonsky and other scholars the authors accuse us of discrediting)

The authors also don't acknowledge cases where I or others endorsed these or other scholars they support (for example of me defending Gross, see section 12; for examples of me calling Polonsky reliable in a discussion, see [7], for examples of me using Polonsky as a source, see [8], here or here; for example of me citing Engel, see [9]; for example of me citing Kassow, see here; Michlic, here; Libionka, here; Dreifuss, here; for example of Volunteer Marek calling Browning reliable, see here, or using Doris Bergen as a source, see here, etc.).

6.41 (On my addition of positive reviews to one of Grabowski's books and removal of undue criticism from the lead of the same article)

I've added positive academic reviews of a book edited by Grabowski ([10], [11]), positive media coverage ([12]), and removed some undue criticism ([13], [14]) of it from the lead of that article.

See also 13.2 for more of my quotations from Grabowski himself.

6.5 (On omission of evidence that I and others criticized scholars the authors accuse us of idealizing)

Regarding "idealizing the biographies of fringe academics".

The authors claim that “Despite Lukas’s clear weaknesses, the editor Piotrus has written him a glowing Wikipedia biography”. Setting aside whether Lukas is indeed "a fringe academic", that “glowing” biography (seen here: version from before the essay was published) includes criticism of Lukas works. It mentions the “critical review by David Engel” of Forgotten Holocaust (which is expanded upon in the article dedicated to that book: “David Engel published a more critical review in the same journal, in which he states that while the book purports to counter bias, it is a one-sided rebuke of "Jewish historians". In his 1987 review, he enumerated alleged inaccuracies in the book and viewed it as "not only unreliable but thoroughly tendentious"”) as well as critical reviews of books, such as Lerski's opinion on Out of the Inferno: “the weakest of Lukas' books up to date, criticizing it as uneven, poorly organized and [lacking] focus". Likewise, in the discussion of Lukas’ Forgotten Survivors, I quoted a reviewer saying that “due to methodological issues and containing mostly primary accounts, "it should be handled with care and needs to be supplemented and contextualized from other sources if it is to be used for scholarly purposes".". Finally, the biography mentions the controversy regarding the Janusz Korczak Literary Award from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for “Did the Children Cry?”: “The award was accompanied by a two-page analysis by the ADL describing why the book was "problematic in several ways". ... The ADL decided to withdraw the prize ten days before the award ceremony but reinstated it when Lukas threatened to sue them. According to the ADL, the book "strongly understated the level of anti-Semitism in Poland. It also strongly overstated the number of people who rescued Jews." The ADL canceled the award ceremony and mailed the $1000 US prize money to Lukas.” Yet despite including such items of critical reception, the authors chose to describe my activities as, repeating, “the editor Piotrus has written him a glowing Wikipedia biography”. Is this an unbiased interpretation of the actual facts?

Also, I can point out numerous examples where I have inserted critiques, not idealization, to the biographies of other scholars criticized by the essay's authors, such as Kurek or Muszyński (details are provided below, see sections 7, 8 and 16 to 19).

7. Embellishing Kurek

Related to the above, consider the authors claim that “Indeed, the nationalist-leaning group uses it to justify other unreliable sources, as in the case of Piotrus embellishing Ewa Kurek’s Wikipedia biography.”

7.1 (On the false claim of "Embellishing Kurek")

This is an example of the essay authors negatively framing my actions and associate me with a “nationalist-leaning group”. My actions, in this case (this is the link provided by the essay in a footnote to my “embellishment”: diff ), were simply limited to adding a review of Kurek’s work to her article - and a mixed review at that: “[the reviewer] praised Kurek for tackling controversial issues without worrying about stereotypes and political correctness, but noted that her work has a number of methodological issues, such as insufficient sourcing and attribution, that need a revision”. Let me stress that this single edit is provided as a "proof" of me "embellishing" this biography.

7.2 (On omission of evidence that I criticized Kurek)

Another fact that is inconvenient to the essay’s point and omitted to avoid distorting the narrative portraying me as some sort of right-wing nationalist: I have made many other contributions to Kurek’s article, such as noting in the early version of her biography, written by me and accessible here that “She has been accused of downplaying the suffering of Jews in World War II, anti-semitic views, and described as 'divisive'”. Ignoring this is again either poor research or selectively cherry-picking examples that further the black and white narrative, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Is this reliable, ethical research?

8. Whitewashing Muszyński

Similar again: “the distortionist group whitewashed the Wikipedia biography of its editor-in-chief, Muszyński. This man gained notoriety in 2015 for posting on his Facebook page a drawing of Barack Obama with a noose around his neck (Figure 3)... It was only after the fourth attempt by other editors to include the paragraphs on Obama and Razem that GizzyCatBella and Volunteer Marek finally stood down. Still, Muszyński’s biography, over 50 percent of which is authored by Piotrus, continues to read as a list of accolades. While GizzyCatBella and Volunteer Marek guard that page, few editors are likely to attempt any major changes, or participate in discussion of sources.”

8.1 (Side note on non-neutral Figure 3)

First, including Figure 3 in the essay makes the essay reminiscent of a partisan news article rather than a neutral, academic piece, effectively creating a loaded question-type of an argument (“Are you on the side of someone posting an image of hanging of Obama or the other side”?).

8.2 (On omission of evidence that I criticized Muszyński)

Second, the essay authors yet again mislead as to my involvement in this article, which I created and then effectively left (I have not been involved in any issues related to adding or removing of the Obama controversy). The article I created, seen here, instead stated that Muszyński is “controversial due to his association with Polish nationalist groups,” Again, this is a criticism of him that I have added to his biography.

8.3 (On claim that Muszyński article "authored by Piotrus, continues to read as a list of accolades")

Am I misunderstanding the concept of white-washing or accolades here? Yes, that article did mention, in an eight word sentence, that he received a single state award, but the criticism of him was over 30 words long. To imply that the article I created (my version linked above) was or is a "list of accolades" does not seem like a correct representation of the facts in quesiton. No lists of accolades were added later, the late 2021 verison of the article, stable for the next year, listed two awards, some resume-like details of biography, and almost half of it was composed of controversy/critique of the subject.

8.4 (On weird claim that GCB and VM are "guarding" a page... in a version they supposedly dislike?)

The quality of arguments presented by the essay’s author is further evidenced in their description of the events: first, they note that GizzyCatBella and Volunteer Marek lost an argument and the article now contains information they disagree with, then make an alarming claim that those editors are still “guarding that page” (for which they fail to provide any evidence and no edit warring can be seen in the article's recent history). So apparently those editors are “guarding” the page in the version that they dislike?

8.5 (On BLP in that article)

Lastly, the authors misrepresent the case by trying to argue that some “nationalistic editors” try to whitewash Muszynski’s biography due to some sympathy for him or his works, whereas comments by GizzyCatBella and Volunteer Marek make it clear they were concerned over the aforementioned Wikipedia policies (BLP) that caution against including defamatory content in Wikipedia’s biographies.

9. OKO is not a mainstream newspaper

“using the mainstream Polish newspapers OKO Press and Gazeta Wyborcza as their sources”

9.1 (On a minor but clear factual error)

This is a very minor point but OKO Press is not a “mainstream Polish newspaper”, it is an interesting but minor news portal launched in 2016. So, a factual error.

10. Not criticizing Żaryn

“Written almost entirely by Piotrus, the biography presented Żaryn simply as a ‘Polish historian and politician,’ with a few dry facts about his career”

10.1 (On blaming me for not criticizing Żaryn when I created his stub)

"The encyclopedia is generally supposed to present “a few dry facts” about an individual. Here, the authors seem to blame me for not fleshing out the subject’s biography and discussing controversies surrounding him, calling in the accompanying footnote that version “sanitized”. This is again negative framing, blaming me for starting the article but apparently not finishing it to the authors' satisfaction when I created the 145-word long stub for him. I routinely create short articles (“stubs”) on Wikipedia (I have written literally thousands of similar short articles, which per their very definition can be "lacking the breadth of coverage expected from an encyclopedia" but provide "some useful information and [are] capable of expansion"). I do not aspire to make them comprehensive, just to start a basic framework others can expand on. Sometimes, as in the case of Kurek (7.2) or Muszyński (8.2), I do include information about the controversies surrounding the subject, if they came to my attention. In this case I assume that such controversies did not surface in my cursory research that I carried out to write the few-sentence long biography in question.

10.2 (On failing to inquire about this or report my views)

As in all other cases concerning my editing, the authors could have reached to me for explanation, which they chose not to do (or if they asked me about this in my interview, which I do not recall, clearly none of my possible explanations made it to the text), instead assuming bad faith about my actions and accusing me of intentionally “sanitizing” this biography.

10.3 (On omission of evidence that I likewise did not include criticism in my similar short stubs for biographies of people praised by the authors, or their books)

On a side note, among the many short articles I started is also the biography of Jan Grabowski himself. It was at least neutral if not “glowing” and certainly did not include any criticism, due or undue, as can be verified here. I also started then-short articles about Grabowski’s book, likewise in what I believe is a neutral fashion, in English and Polish: diff , diff. I also started likewise neutral articles about many other relevant works that are critical of or criticized by the "nationalist right-wing Polish narrative", such as on Jan T. Gross’s books: diff, diff, and many others. Yet instead of acknowledging my efforts to improve Wikipedia’s coverage in the field of Holocaust studies, the authors unduly focus on the few cases where they thought my contribution was lacking in detail (or excessive in detail they dislike). I ask again: is this an academically honest, fair description of my activities, or a biased and often factually incorrect cherry-picking?

11. Israeli War Crimes Commission

“Wikipedia also downplays the scope and nature of Polish collaboration with the Germans. The Wikipedia article ‘Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust’ claims that ‘less than one tenth of 1 percent of native Poles collaborated, according to statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission.’”

11.1 (On omission of acknowledging this error was first spotted by me and then confirmed by Icewhiz, whose findings the authors reproduce nearly verbatim without any credit)

This is relevant to my claim that the essay published in the journal is significantly based on data from Icewhiz. Klein and Grabowski have a footnote here stating that “The “Israeli War Crimes Commission” statistics seem to originate from an essay from the 1960s by one Leo Heiman”. But this conclusion comes from… Icewhiz’s own research published on Wikipedia - interestingly, in a conversation from when he and I were still politely talking (Icewhiz did not start as a harassing troll, obviously - he was a volunteer in good standing for a while). Note that it was also me who first raised doubts about the veracity of this figure, something that Klein and Grabowski do not acknowledge. For proof (the original Wikipedia discussion from 2018) see Talk:Collaboration_with_the_Axis_powers/Archive_7#What_is_the_Israeli_War_Crimes_Commission?

12. Collective responsibility

The example discussed above, plus  “Still more exaggerated Polish heroism appears in the article ‘Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust,’”  “The Wikipedia article ‘Collaboration with the Axis powers’ provides still more errors of this sort.”, “Multiple Wikipedia articles portray Jews as perpetrators”, or “Wikipedia articles repeatedly inflate and distort the phenomenon of Jewish collaborators” and others.

12.1 (On how many examples of real or purported bias/errors are NOT a responsibility of editors the authors name and imply said errors are their fault)

Those are just some examples (I could list several more from the essay - this issue concerns numerous paragraphs) of criticism of content that may or may not be factually valid, but create a false impression that such errors are intentionally inserted, or inserted by the editors they criticize (including myself). Let me stress this: in numerous cases where the authors report some issue, they do not demonstrate through analysis or footnote that the said issues are related to any particular Wikipedia volunteer they criticize. The authors allege in numerous places that there is a group of several editors manipulating content, but most examples from their essay are about contents that were introduced by dozens of other, random editors, never identified in the essay. This is more “guilt by association” fallacy, compounded by non-neutral framing such as “Typical of the feel-good narrative commonly espoused by Polish nationalists” or “In another attempt at reinforcing the heroic Polish narrative”. While arguably some examples the authors cite do seem like they can be reasonably attributed to such a narrative, this point is tainted by the defamatory narrative that such errors are introduced mainly by a small group of editors including myself. Let me reiterate: the authors claim that “For the last few years, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland have been shaped by a group of individuals… with a Polish nationalist bent. Their Wikipedia names are Piotrus, Volunteer Marek, GizzyCatBella, Nihil novi, Lembit Staan, and Xx236, as well as previously active editors Poeticbent, MyMoloboaccount, Tatzref, Jacurek, and Halibutt”, but vast majority of errors they report cannot be attributed to the editors named in that quote.

12.2 (On a particular example - an error discussed by the authors, introduced to Wikipedia by editor Jjaggeropen, never named in the essay)

To illustrate the above, I’ll point to one particular example, with diffs (see VM's substack which has more similar examples). Authors write “One prominent example of editors warping the historical record appears in the Wikipedia article ‘Rescue of Jews by Poles During the Holocaust.” They do not say who added that information or when, creating the impression it was one of the aforementioned editors they single out. However, the editor responsible for the criticized number of 3 million that the authors take issue with was one User:Jjaggeropen, who added it in May of 2009: diff. Jjaggeropen is not mentioned at all by the authors even though they are the editor responsible for this number. Further, Jjaggeropen was in a conflict with users Poeticbent and Jacurek who are listed in G&K list of "nationalist Polish editors". In that dispute Jacurek objected to the inclusion of a claim that "Poles did more (to rescue Jews) than any other nation" as it was  not supported by sources and speculative: diff. This fact contradicts G&K characterization of Jacurek.

12.3 (On the implication that named editors are the ones responsible for adding sources criticized by the authors)

In another example, the reader may get the impression that I or Volunteer Marek are significantly responsible for adding sources criticized by the authors. This was fact-checked by Jayen466 Grabowski and Klein say Lukas' book The Forgotten Holocaust is cited in some 80 articles. (I agree that seems excessive compared to the other authors.) I am currently going through these 80+ articles, one by one, with WikiBlame. Among the first 15 articles I have reviewed, there is not a single one where Lukas' name was first added by either Piotrus or Volunteer Marek. In two cases it was User:Pernambuko (inactive), in three it was User:Matalea (blocked), in two it was User:NYScholar (blocked), in two it was User:Poeticbent (no longer active), in one or two it was an IP. Yet readers of your review will conclude that Wikipedia's relative over-reliance on Lukas is due to these two editors. (Additional note 1: Matalea was Poeticbent's sock. Additional note 2: "two editors" refers to me and VM, not Poeticbent.).

Note that I won't be surprised that upon review of all dozens or hundreds of citations, a few cases of use would be attributed to editors named, even myself. However, those sources have been and so far still are accepted as reliable on Wikipedia. See 4.4. In either case, the problem is the unproved assertion that editors named by the authors are responsible for over-using such sources.

12.4 (On a related factual error the authors made in the Polish newspaper they already retracted)

On a side note, I generally ignore criticism the authors provide of editors other than myself, as if I did not, this already very long commentary would be several times longer. I will note, however, that lumping all the above editors into one group is misleading. We do not always agree with one another, nor do our activities represent the same standards. The authors provide one or two examples of us disagreeing, calling them exceptions to the rule, without any statistical proof; I’ll argue such disagreements can be more common, and quote from an email I received from Klein inviting me to the interview, in which she said: “Two years ago I had a student edit the article on History of the Jews in Poland, and you were kind enough to support them in his endeavor on the Talk Page. In particular, there was one user – Xx236 – who kept discrediting my student’s plans, and you were one of the editors who stood up to Xx236, so to speak.” She refers to the exchange found at Talk:History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland/Archive_4#Postwar_Antisemitism (this link is not present in the essay). This particular example is doubly interesting, as nearly simultaneously with the publication of the essay in your paper, on January 10th, the authors published a summary of it in a Polish newspaper Wyborcza I mentioned already (link). And while they don’t mention me coming to the Klein’s student rescue in the essay published in your paper, in the newspaper article they say (my translation: “[Piotrus]” told [Klein’s student] to stop citing Gross” [a reputable Holocaust scholar that the essay praises as well]). As can be seen in the linked exchange, I never said anything like that; instead I said, quoting from the linked exchange: "Gross' Fear is a reliable source"... "Gross' book... is a reliable source" or " I fully support using Gross as a reliable source". While this obvious misrepresentation did not happen in the English-language essay, it illustrates yet another factual error in this essay (note: the authors have correct that single error after I pointed it out in the newspaper forum comments, acknowledging that they confused me with Xx236).

12.5 (Other examples of errors discussed in the article for which authors do not provide information who added them. Majority where added by editors not named in their essay)

12.51 Regarding "he Wikipedia article ‘Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust’ claims that ‘less than one tenth of 1 percent of native Poles collaborated, according to statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission.’ " (see also additional discussion regarding this content in section 11). That claim was added to that article by User:Chumchum7 in 2010. Chumchum7 is not mentioned anywhere in the essay, leading readers to suspect this was added by one of the named "Polish nationalists".

12,52 Regarding "Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German-occupied Poland, there was little collaboration with the Nazis by its citizens." That content has been been added by User:Selfworm in 2008. Selfworm is not mentioned anywhere in the essay.

12.53 Regarding "The Wikipedia article ‘Collaboration with the Axis powers’ provides still more errors of this sort. ‘Shortly after the German Invasion of Poland,’ says the article’s section on Poland, ‘the Nazi authorities ordered the mobilization of prewar Polish officials and the Polish police (the Blue Police), who were forced, under penalty of death, to work for the German occupation authorities.’ The Germans did indeed impose severe punishments on those refusing to serve in the new police force, but not the death penalty...". This claim was initially added by an IP editor to the article on Blue Police in 2008 [15]. It was then copied to the Collaboration... article by User:Lysy later that year. Neither the IP nor Lysy are named in the G&K article.

12.54 In the same article the authors criticize another fragment: "‘While many officials and police reluctantly followed German orders,’ continues the article, ‘some acted as agents for the Polish resistance.’ This phrasing suggests Polish collaborators were at most reluctant, never willing; in fact, some police and civil administration officials served the Germans with zeal and devotion". That content once again originates in the Blue Police article; added there by Halibutt in 2007 it was copied to Collaboration article by Jacurek in 2008. Before one goes "gotcha" and points out those two authors have been named in the essay, I'll note that this content has been referenced by Halibutt to Swedish Holocaust scholar Gunnar S. Paulsson (who has not been criticized by the essay authors) and the cited source does appear to say [16] ...the Polish 'Blue' police were reluctant to carry out German orders to shoot Jews on sight..."

12.55 Regarding "Still more exaggerated Polish heroism appears in the article ‘Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust,’ which claims that ‘the Home Army (the Polish Resistance) alerted the world to the Holocaust through the reports of Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki, conveyed by Polish government-in-exile courier Jan Karski.’ Nearly everything is wrong here. ". This was added to the article in 2011 by Chumchum7.

12.56 The claims related to Markowa of Białka that the authors describe as "reinforcing the heroic Polish narrative" can be traced to the original version of the article created by User:Ecoleetage [17]. Ecoleetage is briefly mentioned in a different footnote.

12.57 The authors then write: "Even more misleading claims appear in the Wikipedia article ‘Nazi crimes against the Polish nation,’ which says, ‘About 20,000 villagers, some of whom were burned alive, were murdered in large-scale punitive operations targeting rural settlements suspected of aiding the resistance or hiding Jews and other fugitives.’ These statements distort and lie". Who added these statements? One User:HanzoHattori, in 2007. HanzoHattori is not mentioned in G&K's paper.

12.58 For another example of the authors blaming named editors for edits by non-named parties, see section 2.

12.59 Volunteer Marek discusses the same plus a few more examples here, with a nice table for visualization.

12.6. (Example of a sweeping generalization is not supported by a footnote or any evidence)

“At times they cite solid scholarship but misrepresent it to support their agenda.”

I believe the paper later cites a single example (19.1) of such misrepresentation by one not particularly active volunteer (User:Tatzref). It generalizes this for the entire group - for example, nowhere in the essay did I find an example of myself engaging in such an activity, but “guilt by association” is a major fallacy, both ethical and in terms of reliability, found in this paper.

13. 2008 GA nomination

The following sentence follows criticism of a Wikipedia: article “Polish Righteous Among the Nations”: “The person nominating this article for Good Article status was an editor named Piotrus, on whom we will expand further in the essay”

13.1 (On using 2008 example and omission of evidence that years later I initiated a review of that content, alerting the community to the very concerns about that article and several others that Grabowski himself criticixzed in 2020)

This is just one of many cases of obsolete information leading to defamatory framing. While I did nominate that article for such a status (i.e. I started Wikipedia's internal peer review process for that article, because receiving the Good Article status involves passing such a review), I did so... in 2008. Wikipedia’s and my own standards of quality have risen since. Following Grabowski’s comments two years ago in his newspaper piece that this article has issues, I have not only quoted his assessment, verbatim, on that article’s talk page (where interested editors can discuss how to improve it - Talk:Polish_Righteous_Among_the_Nations#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article) but immediately below I started a discussion suggesting this article is in need of a re-assessment of its Good Article status, because of the concerns raised by Grabowski. So here we have myself - a person described by Grabowski as a Polish nationalist distorting history - quoting Grabowski's critical assessment of this article on Wikipedia and suggesting he may be right. All of those are facts which Grabowski and Klein omit from their essay. The facts, however, are clear: the essay is saying that I did something presumably wrong (i.e. started a peer review of an article Grabowski considers weak or offensive) in 2008, without acknowledging I tried to address the very issues Grabowski informed me about in 2020. N-th item where I have to ask: is this poor research or of selective fact presentation aimed at reinforcing the black and white narrative?

13.2 (On omission of my additions of Grabowski's 2020 newspaper comments to talk pages of articles)

In addition to the example mentioned above, I've also added Grabowski's concerns, verbatim, to a number of other talk pages of articles he mentioned as problematic in his 2020 news article: Talk:Szmalcownik#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article, Talk:Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust/Archive_4#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article, Talk:Jedwabne_pogrom/Archive_6#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article. Despite me trying to effectively promote his views, none of this is mentioned in the essay.

14. Case of Poeticbent's photo

Regarding a "One vivid example of this form of antisemitism was made by an editor called Poeticbent..." “Photograph of a sign in Białystok, wrongly captioned by Poeticbent as a Jewish welcoming banner for the Soviets.”... "Poeticbent’s false caption, combined with the photograph’s particular composition – Hebrew letters directly under the USSR’s emblem – bolster the entrenched stereotype identifying Jews with communism"... “The image remained in Wikipedia, wrongly captioned, until 2018, when the editor Icewhiz corrected its description”

14.1 (On omission of evidence that errors in that image were fixed not just by Icewhiz, but also by me and VM)

Yes, Icewhiz corrected part of the description; while another part was corrected by the “Polish nationalists” criticized by Icewhiz and consequently, Grabowski’s and Klein’s essay. This was during the era when Icewhiz was a volunteer in good standing, so here, a year later in 2019, we have the “Polish nationalist” editor, i.e. Volunteer Marek (later one of the major targets of Icewhiz’s harassment) asking Icewhiz himself about another potential error in the image: User_talk:Icewhiz/Archive_6#that_photo I also participated in that discussion, where I raised a concern that “there is always a chance it was a hoax (promoting a zydokomuna stereotype)” and I corrected another error shortly in the caption afterwards, as seen in this diff. Again, neither mine nor Volunteer Marek’s contribution to fixing errors related to this image are acknowledged in the essay, all credit goes to Icewhiz, promoting the black and white narrative that one side is constructive, and other, “distortionist” (ironically, back then even Icewhiz himself acknowledged my part in identifying that error with the image: diff).

14.2 (On omission of evidence where Poeticbent defends himself)

Oh, and as for the error in the original caption by Poeticbent? He addressed this in his essay here, where he wrote: One of the more repulsive attacks on my reputation was a smear job about a blurry World War II photo from Białystok, which I downloaded to Wikimedia Commons. I do not read Yiddish, and the image from the collections of Stowarzyszenie Szukamy Polski (In Search of Poland Society © 2004) was misidentified at source. My contributions to the Final Solution and dozens of Holocaust articles from previous years devoted to memorializing Jewish suffering and heroism during World War II was intentionally overlooked. My understanding of his explanation is that Poeticbent did not "invent" the caption, he copied it, in good faith, from an internet website where the error was present. This was also confirmed by the 2019 ArbCom: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland#Assuming_bad_faith: Icewhiz interpreted an apparent error by Poeticbent as a deliberate hoax. Regardless of whether the authors agree with his defense or not, they were aware of it yet chose not to even acknowledge it. And bottom line is that this error got, in time, corrected on Wikipedia. Our system works - much better than that of Web 1.0 websites, where such errors can indeed languish forever.

15. Case of Jew with a coin

“The same Wikipedians who distort the historical record also lend a hand in whitewashing current manifestations of Polish antisemitism. This is evident in the Wikipedia article ‘Jew with a Coin,’”

15.1 (On lack of relevance of this topic to the issue at hand)

The two paragraphs discussing “Jew with a Coin” have next to no connection to the topic at hand (Holocaust in Poland). They are notable, however, as this article is one of the very few articles created by Icewhiz. Inclusion of this incident in the essay is yet another evidence of how widespread Icewhiz’s narrative is here: i.e. it’s all about how Icewhiz was wronged by other volunteers. Please see VM's substack here for an in-depth analysis of how much of that paper is based on Icewhiz's old "evidence".

15.2 (Rebutting a claim that I removed the word controversial from the lead)

In either case, the authors write that " For a time the article used the phrase ‘controversial good luck charm,’ at least hinting at the figurines’ pernicious character, but Piotrus struck ‘controversial’ from the sentence." (diff). They don't mention that in the same edit I added that word in the next paragraph, even elaborating on this ("been criticized and called controversial"). So I didn't strike (remove) anything as much as moving it to what I considered to be a more relevant place in the text (still in the very lead of the article).

On a sidenote, a comparable article about cigar store Indian still does not mention any controversy related to that topic in the lead of that article. Is there another conspiracy to be traced on Wikipedia?

16. Extolling Chodakiewicz

“In another example of legitimizing weak sources, the distortionist group has extolled the historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz.”

16.1 (On omission of my criticism of Chodakiewicz)

Yet another claim with very little evidence. The authors provide zero evidence that I or anyone else “extolled” that particular scholar. This framing however attempts to portray me as a supporter of Chodakiewicz (whom, on the contrary, I do not hold in high esteem) by writing that during a discussion about an essay collection Chodakwiecz edited: “When confronted with the fact that Golden Harvest or Hearts of Gold bordered on self-publication, Piotrus feebly protested, ‘it’s … still [an] academic press,’ ‘the essays seem to be well referenced,’ ‘no ‘red flags’ have been identified in the text, i.e. it makes no outlandish claims,’ and ‘it’s a reliable source that can be cited.’” Setting aside the non-neutral language “feebly protested”, the authors fail to acknowledge that my comment about an academic press comes from the discussion I started in the Wikipedia noticeboard for determining whether sources are reliable (RSN), where I acknowledged the book has been generating some controversy as to whether it is reliable or not, and asked the community to comment (and I also invited Icewhiz, then still active and in good standing, to weigh in). My request was written in what I believe is the neutral style, as can be seen in the following excerpt (for full context, see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_266#Golden_Harvest_or_Hearts_of_Gold): “the book is published by Leopold Press, a small printing press associated with the Institute of World Politics, and that Leopold Press is run by Chodakiewicz, thus raising an issue of potential self-publishing. My reply to this is that it's a minor, but still, academic press, and that while there is some minor COI here, we have no proof that peer review or such were not done.” In other words, I myself informed the community that the publisher of this book is of dubious reliability, presented two sides of the argument, and invited comments from uninvolved parties as to whether it’s reliable or not. The authors also fail to mention that in this very request I discussed the academic reviews of this book that they allege I’ve been “extolling”, acknowledging that it received mostly negative reviews ("the book seems to have received two relatively negative academic reviews... The only positive review I've found is non-academic"). Discussing whether a source is reliable or not is hardly “extolling” someone - yet another misinterpretation / biased framing of facts.

16.2 Authors omit information such as that Icewhiz himself had no problem citing Chodakiewicz (here, the exact book discussed) when it suited his agenda: [18]/[19] (ironically, he was edit warring there with Volunteer Marek who argued this use violates BLP).

16.2 (On not supporting the claim of extolling with any evidence)

The essay authors likewise fail to provide evidence that “the distortionist group has extolled” Chodakiewicz (they note he is cited on Wikipedia 119 times, but fail to prove that any of those citations come from editors they claim to part of the “distortionist group”; see also 12.3 and the detailed analysis at 20.81). While the authors could have made a fair point that Chodakiewicz, a relatively minor scholar, is over-cited on Wikipedia this is not the same as proving that he is “extolled” by anyone, or any perceived group of editors.

16.3 (Additional examples of omission of my criticism of Chodakiewicz)

On another side note, the authors fail to mention facts such as this: I wrote a Wikipedia article about one of Chodakiewicz’s “better” books (Intermarium:_The_Land_between_the_Black_and_Baltic_Seas) and yet I noted in that article that it has received mixed reviews, with several reviewers highly critical of it. I have also added information about said critical reviews (including one by Engel) to Chodakiwiecz’s main biography: here and here. Hardly the action of someone extolling or “idealizing the biographies of fringe academics” - but such inconvenient facts would go against the essay’s black and white narrative.

16.4 (On false claim that VM deleted all criticism of Chodawkiewicz, or that the parts he deleted did not violate BLP)

Related to this, authors write: “In 2018, several editors added a number of scathing reviews of Chodakiewicz’s work to his Wikipedia biography, not before ensuring that these abided by Wikipedia’s policies on ‘Biographies of Living Persons’ (BLP in Wiki parlance), which requires that criticism of living persons relies on trustworthy sources, takes a conservative and a disinterested tone, and does not represent the views of small minorities. Volunteer Marek deleted them wholesale”

First, the essay authors present no evidence for the claim that “several editors added a number of scathing reviews of Chodakiewicz’s work”. From what I see in the history of this article, most of said criticism was added by Icewhiz (and... some by me, as evidenced in the diffs in the paragraph just above, 16.3).

Anyway, this is a classic example of a statement of opinion presented as fact. There is no evidence presented in the essay that the content that was removed by Volunteer Marek, who is criticized by the authors, did meet Wikipedia's BLP (anti-defamatory) policy. In fact, English Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, which passed a topic ban on Icewhiz, explicitly noted that Icewhiz committed BLP violations in the article on Chodakiewicz: (see section 6.2 or check Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland#BLP_violations). And after Volunteer Marek deleted some content they judged, according to his edit summaries, as violating BLP, the article still contained a section on criticism: version diff. Therefore, everything the essay authors write here is incorrect: “several editors added” -> not several, but two or so (mostly Icewhiz); “abided by… BLP” -> no, as explicitly stated by the ArbCom, and “deleted them wholesale” -> no, some criticism was left. Numerous factual errors again.

17. Selective quotation (Kurek)

[on Kurek] “Piotrus pushed back. ‘I don’t think she is too unreliable to be cited for uncontroversial facts,’ he stated, leaving it up to editors to decide what qualified as ‘controversial.’

17.1 (On selective quotation and misrepresenting what I said, implying I defended Kurek when in fact I criticized her)

This is a case of very selective quoting trying to create the misleading impression I endorse Kurek (a controversial scholar). Let me quote myself from the same discussion (archive)  to undistort the picture and I'll italicize the part the authors quote: ‘Limited reliability, avoid for controversial claims, no need to remove ASAP for non-controversial claims, replace all in long term… amateur historian. Recommend to avoid, there are likely more reliable sources on what she claims. However, I don't think she is too unreliable to be cited for uncontroversial facts (but again, better to replace all cites to her with more reliable works)’. This is an example of misleading, out-of-context quoting that nearly completely changes what I am saying to its opposite.

17.2 (On omission of Icewhiz positive comments about Kurek)

Authors could just as well selectively quote Icewhiz and argue he defended Kurek. In the same discussion, Icewhiz admitted that Kurek indeed did receive some neutral of even mildly positive reviews early in her career. ("of" instead of "or" is a typo in the original)

18. Selective quotation (Paul)

“Mark Paul’s work, defended by the nationalist group of editors, epitomizes Holocaust distortion.” and “Piotrus echoed his colleagues, saying, ‘I think it is fine to link his works,’ and when pushed on the point, weakly conceded, as he did on Kurek, that Mark Paul’s work should be ‘avoid[ed] for controversial claims’ but that ‘Paul is acceptable as a source for non-controversial statements.’

18.1 (On selective quotations and omission of my criticism of Paul, again)

This is an again selectively quoting what I wrote in the discussion I cited just above where I wrote that “he is pretty much like Kurek: self-published amateur historian” and that he “is not publishing in academic press” and “ is much less acceptable of a source” [than Michlic]. Further I am pretty sure I was asked about Paul in the interview with Klein and I discussed how my perception of this source changed over the years (decade+, really). At first, when I knew little about both the literature and the concept of reliability, I considered his account reliable, then amateurish, and eventually I agreed with the assessment that it this is a fictional person whose work cannot be considered reliable. None of this made it to the essay.

19. Case of 2018 RfC on Paul

The authors write: "Mark Paul was not supposed to be cited again following the July 2018 Request for Comment. The nationalist-leaning editors, however, found workarounds. In February 2019, Tatzref added a paragraph to the ‘History of the Jews in Poland’ article, taken from one and the same, Mark Paul... although the text did not once reference Mark Paul (doing so would have breached the Request for Comment), careful examination shows Tatzref plagiarized this paragraph from a Mark Paul online essay")... then editors tried to correct the Mark Paul content, however, the distortionist group once again rallied. One editor [Icewhiz] removed the paragraph, but Piotrus reinserted it, stating, ‘I don’t see any red flags in this.’ Next another editor, Yaniv, tried to remove it, explaining that to leave it in amounted to ‘antisemitic vandalism.’ Volunteer Marek reverted that deletion and claimed that to call it ‘antisemitic vandalism’ amounted to a ‘personal attack’ against the editors who supported it (administrator Tony Ballioni accepted this claim and blocked Yaniv immediately). Icewhiz eventually managed to replace the paragraph with findings supported by actual scholarship."

19.1 (On the insinuation that I or Volunteer Marek supported plagiarizing or "workarounds")

First, the authors never provide evidence that suggests that anyone but Tatzref was aware the content was plagiarized (if it was plagiarized at all); the talk page for the corresponding article for that period (Talk:History of the Jews in Poland/Archive 6) does not mention Mark Paul until May of that year, and it does not mention the term plagiarism at all (the author's footnote links to an external website containing the allegedly plagiarized text, with no analysis). Even assuming that Tatzref indeed plagiarized that content, the insinuation that I or Volunteer Marek supported plagiarizing or "workarounds" related to RfC is bad-faithed and unsupported by any evidence. The authors also engage in selective quoting, as my full edit summary was "I don't see any red flags in this, please explain on talk what is this OR and misrepresentation of sources here?", a request which follows Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle (best practice). After my request to discuss this, an extensive discussion on talk ensued, which among others focused on the preference for English-langiage sources, Icewhiz's version from March 12 (the authors don't link to the correct diff) was retained. This incident demonstrates once again that Wikipedia works: editors disagree, editors discuss, consensus version is worked out.

19.2 (On the authors surprising defense of another indef-banned editor, Yaniv, and his accusation that VM committed "antisemitic vandalism" was not a personal attack)

The authors also inexplicably try to defend a disruptive editor (Yaniv, or actually User:יניב הורון) who indeed engaged in personal attacks (accusing others of "antisemitic vandalism" during a regular content dispute is not allowed on Wikipedia) and was sanctioned for it, both then and more seriously shortly afterward. The authors also fail to note that Yaniv's block was reviewed and endorsed by several other administrators (full discussion is here). Tony's justification is worth reading: I’m about as sympathetic of an administrator as you will come across to fighting anti-semitism on this project, but the diff Volunteer Marek linked above is entirely unacceptable and only makes it more difficult to deal with actual anti-semitism and racism. Using that as an attack in a content dispute, combined with your block log and your exhibiting the exact same aggressive behaviours and focus on winning that led to your TBAN from the Arab-Israeli conflict have caused me to conclude that a topic ban in Eastern Europe would only shift the problem to other areas, and that because of this, the only option is an indefinite block.. It is worth noting that Yaniv often agreed with Icewhiz, and has been given the standard offer to take a six months break then request another unblock, but instead, he immediately started abusing multiple accounts which led to his indef-block, later this year. Again: Wikipedia works, content is improved, and people who try to disrupt this process through personal attacks or abusing multiple accounts are the ones who create the toxic environment (WP:BATTLEGROUND) and need to be either reformed or kicked out. Which happens, and which once again proves the system works.

20. On Chart 3

Regarding Chart 3

20.1 (On what the chart purports to show)

This chart is one of the few quantitative elements presented in the cited essay. This is makes especially interesting to analyze, because opinions are opinions, but numbers, well...

This chart, as I understand it, purports to show that on Wikipedia two selected “Polish nationalistic” scholars (Chodakiewicz and Lukas) are cited or mentioned more than five scholars endorsed by Grabowski and Klein (“Nechama Tec, Samuel Kassow, Doris Bergen, Deborah Dwork, or Zvi Gitelman, to name some well-known experts on Holocaust history”). I spent considerable amount of time puzzling over the purpose of this chart, and I remain unsure if the authors want to imply a generalization that “Polish nationalistic” scholars are overcited (overmentioned) on Wikipedia compared to "well-known experts on Holocaust history” or if their purpose is to just show that Chodakiewicz and Lukas are overcited. In either case, the chart has numerous problems (more if it is intended to be generalized from).

20.2. (On methodology problem #1 - the chart presents comparison of seven random scholars)

First, it is limited to only few names, once again raising concerns of cherry picking (I've identified at least 11 scholars criticized by the authors, and 19 praised by them in their essay - but the chart is showing data for just seven scholars, and the authors never presented any rationale for choosing those seven and not any others. How were those five scholars, described by the authors as "some well-known experts" chosen? Why Tec and Kassow and not, for example, Dreifuss, Bauer, or Gross, or Polonsky, or Browning or...?). See also comment by Zero0000: [20].

When we compare the total number of Wikipedia articles mentioning all scholars praised and criticized by the essay authors, the picture looks much less alarmist. "Mainstream Holocaust scholars" are cited much more often than the scholars authors consider less reliable. Caveat: Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

Version with more scholars added (some arguably mainstream Holocuast scholars not mentioned by the authors that I'd expect they'd endorse too). Legend: red - scholars criticized by the authors, green - endorsed, blue - not mentioned but arguably mainstream. The more scholars we add, the less alarmist the picture becomes (presumably, if there were some other nationalist, problematic scholars extensively used on Wikipedia, the authors would mention them).

Same data as above but in a form more similar to Chart 3. Please compare with left side of this.

A version of the second chart, with more scholars, just arranged in vertically. Bottom line: no, Wikipedia is not being overrun with citations to problematic scholars.

20.3 (Elaborating on the above - if we chose different authors mentioned in the essay, the picture is quite different)

Second, using the same method that the essay authors show in their Footnote 130 (which they used to demonstrate that Chodakiewicz is cited on Wikipedia a bit over ~100 times: diff), I count that most other “nationalistic scholars” prominently discussed by the authors receive very few citations. Ewa Kurek is quoted on enwiki in all two articles. Wojciech Muszyński, about dozen each, Jan Żaryn, a bit over thirty. Mariusz Bechta - in just one. On the other hand, Christopher Browning, praised by the authors as "one of the world’s top Holocaust scholars" but not included in their chart, has well over 300 citations; less prominent Berel Lang still over 30. Jan T. Gross, nearly 200, and Antony Polonsky places between these two with ~150 mentions. And Jan Grabowski himself with ~65 citations himself is quoted more than Bechta, Żaryn, Muszyński and Kurek combined. So while arguably Chodakiewicz is overly cited, considering his relatively fringe status and reputation, Graph 3 creates a misleading impression that “nationalistic” scholars are cited several times as much as “well-known experts on Holocaust history”. Chodakiewicz and Lukas (and Piotrowski, criticized by the authors but also omitted from that graph) are an exception, not the rule, contrary to what the essay authors imply (see figures in this section). And let's not forget about how many prominent Holocaust scholars are not accounted for by the authors. For example, Yehuda Bauer, a respected scholar of the Holocaust, has well over 200+ mentions on Wikipedia (~246 by quick count), and would be placed second after Browning, for example (I haven't included him in the current figures, as he is not mentioned by the authors).

20.4 (On factual, numerical error - undercounting of Lukas, which substantially skews the Chart)

The problems with Chart 3 don't stop with the unclear choice of data to present. Even the numbers cited are wrong. The authors claim, for example, that "It is telling that the volume of Lukas’s citations on Wikipedia is inverse to the volume of citations he enjoys on Google Scholar, a more objective measure of reliability". This sentence, I should note, contains a factual error in the part about "Lukas' citations". The authors do not count the number of times scholars are cited on Wikipedia - they just count the number of articles they are mentioned in. This seems to be correctly described in Chart 3 which uses the term mentions, but the error in the primary text can be confusing to the readers (it did confuse me for quite a while).

Anyway, according to their data [21], Richard Lukas is estimated to have 108 citations in Google Scholar citations, less than a quarter of the 500 mark. How did the authors arrive at this ridiculously low number is a good question. A simple Google Scholar query for "Richard Lukas" provides, in entry 5 in my query, a number of 325 for citations for The Forgotten Holocaust alone, plus smaller numbers for his other books (Strange Allies: 79, Eagles East: 47, Bitter Legacy: 32, Out of the Inferno: 21, Forgotten Survivors: 15 - and that's just for his books, not academic articles). A 80% underestimation is a clear factual error, to say the least.

Note1: my data for all other scholars suggests smaller errors as well; the second biggest error was for Tec (authors claimed 644 GScholars citations, my count suggests over 1500; see my spreadsheet here for my data).

Note2: the authors seem to have acknowledged a problem in citations regarding Lukas as of early March by claiming in a revised data released here that the counts on Google Scholar have changed in the meantime. While Google Scholar counts do indeed change over time, they generally don't jump by 80% over few months, in my experience. A more simple explanation for the number 108 is a copypaste error (the number 108 is a number of Chodakiewicz's count of publication that appears in this query, at the top at "About 108 results" - coincidence?

20.5 (On undercounting of all numbers cited for Wikipedia)

Next, this entire chart is poorly executed when it comes to on-Wikipedia citations. The authors appear not to understand that Wikipedia citations are often malformatted (additionally, the mediawiki "insource" query, which returns results not just for footnotes but also for further reading/bibliography sections and like). This error actually results in slight overcount of citations (but if we go with the concept of mentions, it is not very relevant).

Additionally, if we want to consider the concept of citations, than looking at mentions is can be misleading. If scholar A is cited once in an article, but scholar B, 50 times, then the simple count of mentions which returns 1 for both counts is not helpful. So the entire methodology of comparing "Wikipedia mentions" to "Google Scholar citations" is a bit like an the classic problem of apples and oranges.

Leaving the issue of mentions vs. citations aside, we arrive at the final the undercounting problem that arises from the problem that a query for insource:"Adam Bart" will not return results for "Bart Adam" or "A. Bart". What does it mean in practice? Well, for example, their data states that Zvi Gitelman is cited on Wikipedia only 34 times, which suggests they used this query insource:"Zvi Gitelman", which a few months later (their data is from August 2022) also gave me the same result (34). The problem is that this doesn't include results returned for insource:"Gitelman Zvi" (15), insource:"Zvi Y. Gitelman" (22) or insource:"Gitelman Z." (5).

So their results for the Wikipedia chart is rather poorly executed, and all of the numbers in it can be suspect (assumed to be undercounted).

20.6 (On how any findings this chart purports to show are weak due to errors in most numbers, from Lukas to Wikipedia)

In summary, the authors used unknown criteria to chose some data points for this graph (as I note above, it's unclear why they chose those particular seven authors and not others mentioned in their essay), and then made a number of errors in gathering data, ending up with suspect numbers, both when it comes to counting Google Scholar citations for scholars, and their citations to Wikipedia. Therefore, I'd strongly caution against treating this data (Graph 3 and its accompanying discussion) as reliable for any generalizations (GIGO...).

20.7 (On the omission of evidence that I have added citations for the authors supported by G&K, in the context of implying, without evidence, I am responsible for citing "the wrong" authors)

With regards to the authors narrative that some editors, for example, myself, are responsible for this over- or undercitation, please note that in some of my edits I have added citations to some of the authors endorsed by the essay's authors in Chart 3 to Wikipedia. For example, here I add Kassow as a source. Tec, here, here or here (the unformatted GBook ref). Gitelman, here or here. See also more examples of me adding citations to authors recommended by the essay authors in section 6. As for implied claim that I or VM have added many of citations to authors criticized by the essay authors, see #12. Collective responsibility (or this).

20.8 (On major methodological error: assumption that “Polish nationalistic” scholars are used to advance a "Holocaust distorting" narrative, not backed by any evidence. On the contrary, I show that evidence - actual usage - seems not related to any "Polish nationalist Holocaust distorting narrative").

Another major methodological problem concerns the assumptions that citations to Lukas or Chodakiewicz are used to support a particular ("Holocaust distorting") narrative. For that the authors would need to first demonstrate that citations to scholars criticized by the essay authors are actually used in contexts that are related to Holocaust or antisemitism (or "heroic Polish narrative"). For example, some of Chodakiewicz work I am familiar with concerns Soviet partisans. Let's look at the actual use, by analyzing the use of both authors in the first 10 Wikipedia articles they are cited in. (TL;DR I show that the authors are often not used in the context of Polish-Jewish history, or when used in this context, are not used to support any controversial claims).

20.81 (Analysis of use of Chodakiewicz)

I'll start with Chodakiewicz. The first citation to this author (arguably, a much more controversial scholar than Lukas) I checked, following [22] which lead me to History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#cite_ref-179 is used to... debunk an antisemitic stereotype (Other historians have indicated that the level of Jewish collaboration could well have been less than suggested). It's ironic, really, all things considered. The second cite to him (in the same article) is used to source a number of Jewish casualties, perhaps controversial (lower range?), ideally likely replaced by a more respected scholar, but the sentence it is referencing to is just terrible anyway, peppered with citations needed for other numbers - click and weep (History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#cite_ref-Chodakiewicz-212_257-0). Perhaps this entire sentence should be deleted. Use 3 in Article 2 is just a list of his book in further reading in Invasion of Poland. Use 4 at Occupation_of_Poland_(1939–1945)#cite_ref-Chodakiewicz_146-0 seems to have nothing to with Polish-Jewish history (PJH). Use 5 at History_of_Poland#cite_ref-The_Warsaw_Rising_1944:_Perception_and_Reality_337-0 is also not related to Polish-Jewish history. Use 6 is the same as Use 4 I think, copypasted sentence, not related to PJH (Gulag#cite_ref-Chodakiewicz_70-0). Uses 7-8 (two citations in the article) is, again, not related to PJH (Home_Army#cite_ref-Chod_142-0). Use 8 (Vistula#cite_ref-chodakiewicz_43-0), again, just generic military history. Use 9, ditto (History_of_Poland_(1939–1945)#cite_ref-Chodakiewicz_96-0, History_of_Poland_(1939–1945)#cite_ref-Chod_120-0). Uses 10 plus few more in Article 9 (he is cited 8 times in that article I think), again, not PJH but about Soviet partisans in Poland (Soviet_partisans#cite_note-MJC-76 and several others). Article 10 has two citations to him, Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation#cite_ref-Chodakiewicz-Between_51-0 (mentions Jews but is an uncontroversial way I think? The Einsatzgruppen were also responsible for the indiscriminate murder of Jews and Poles during the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union) and the second citation is once again not related to PJH (Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation#cite_ref-120). This is just 10 out of 100+ articles he is used for, but I think this demonstrates a major fallacy in the assumption by the authors, that such sources are used to advance some "Holocaust distorting" narrative. Here I just showed that out of 10 articles he is cited for, only in one article he is used in the context of PJH, and even there it's not obvious he is used to support some claims of the "Polish heroic/nationalistic narrative" (maybe the second use there would qualify?).

20.82 (Analysis of use of Lukas)

Second author criticized in that Chart is Lukas. Following [23], first article and single use there does not concern PJH but instead, Germans ([24]). Second article has two uses: History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#cite_ref-Lukas_26-0 is relevant to PJH but confirm, not challenge or question (as "nationalists would do") the Polish participation in pogroms such as the Jedwabne pogrom. The second use of Lukas in that articles also concerns PJH but does not appear controversial - his is one of three citations for the claim that many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at the Central Committee of Polish Jews or CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union); the other two scholars cited in the sentence seem reputable Jewish history scholars (Natalia Aleksiun), Michael C. Steinlauf). Article 3 is just an inclusion of one of his works in the further reading for Invasion of Poland. Use 4 includes two citations to him about Nazi crimes against children (no ethnicity is specified) in Heinrich_Himmler#cite_ref-FOOTNOTELukas2001113_158-0 and Heinrich_Himmler#cite_ref-FOOTNOTELukas2001113_158-1. Article 5 has one use that does related to PJH: Occupation_of_Poland_(1939–1945)#cite_ref-cry_46-0. Article 6 is Warsaw Uprising and has five citation to Lukas. Four concern military history citing his The Strange Allies: The United States and Poland, 1941–1945 in the context of Allied air support (Warsaw_Uprising#cite_note-WUairfields-22). The final use (Warsaw_Uprising#cite_ref-46) is used to quote Himmler on Polish resistance (again, nothing to do with PJH). Article 7, in Szlachta#cite_ref-44, has nothing to with PJH again, and is just used for the claim that Nazi racial ideology, which dictated the Polish elite were largely Nordic. Next use at article 8 at Home_Army#cite_ref-FOOTNOTELukas2012175_91-0 sees a use related to PJH but it does appear to be controversial and is more related to the milhist trivia: Jewish fighters of the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) received from the Home Army, among other things, 2 heavy machine guns, 4 light machine guns, 21 submachine guns, 30 rifles, 50 pistols, and over 400 grenades. Article 9 on that list sees three uses: Polish_resistance_movement_in_World_War_II#cite_ref-occupation_18-0 is a quote by Himmler on Polish intelligence again; Polish_resistance_movement_in_World_War_II#cite_ref-google_24-0 is another listing of some weapons owned by a Polish resistance organization (but this time not related to PJH), and only the last use (Polish_resistance_movement_in_World_War_II#cite_ref-lukas_86-0) is related to PJH (On 5 May 1945 in Bohemia, the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne brigade liberated prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp in Holiszowo, including 280 Jewish women prisoners). This doesn't seem controversial, but perhaps one could make the case it is undue "Polish heroic narrative" trivia? Final article 10 has one use, related to PJH but again plainly uncontroversial - Lukas is just used to reference the claim that The outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of the Nazi and Soviet security forces.

So in summary, while G. and K. may be right that Chodakiewicz, for example, is overcited on Wikipedia, they should prove first that he is usually cited in ways that advance the "Holocaust distorting" narrative. And same with Lukas. As I demonstrated above, it is likely this key assumption is not met, and if this is the case, well... even if some scholars are overcited, this entire argument that said narrative is actually "winning" starts looking a bit dubious, to say the least.

20.9 (On alternative and innocent explanations for the data presented)

Instead, a number of alternative hypothesis should be considered. For example, H1: Polish military(?) history is covered on Wikipedia better than some other topics, so there will be more citations to scholars writing about this topic than to scholars in another random field (ex. general Holocaust history). For example, overcitation of Chodakiewicz may be related to above-average Wikipedia's coverage and reference density in the context of Soviet partisans in Poland and like, and not Polish-Jewish history. To test this, need to check citation numbers for scholars of Polish and Polish military history and see if they resemble group "criticized" or "praised". H2: The number of citations to particular scholar is correlated more to his works availability in Google Books and open access and such rather than to the narrative they are associated with (FUTON bias?). This, however, is much harder to test as many of those citations were added years ago and availability of sources changes over time (many more sources are available now then were 10 years ago, etc.). H3. G. made claims (ex. in his Polish newspaper pieces) that English Wikipedia is more biased than Polish one. Dubious, but possible to test - just need to collect data on citations present on Polish Wikipedia. Those are some ideas just from some quick brainstorming (the first two are plausible alternative explanations for data about overcitation of certain scholars). A proper research piece should discuss all of the above in the limitations section - a section that doesn't exist in that essay (nor does it have a methodology section...).

20.91. (Testing H1)

Note that I am not aware of any definitive list of Polish historians or military historians (I've asked at pl wiki milhist for suggestions). At this moment I have a dozen or so names for the former group (of course, ideally we should plug all 100+ names from Category:Historians of Poland) and four names the latter (Jerzy B. Cynk, Michael Alfred Peszke, Zbigniew Wawer, Konstanty Górski). In either case, my findings seem to support H1 (i.e. that Polish history, in particular military, is "overcited" on Wikipedia). Scholars of Holocaust praised by the authors in their essay (19 individuals) have a total of 1293 mentions in English Wikipedia (as noted above, G.&K. incorrectly interpret the number of articles mentioning a scholar as a number of citations, I am using the same metric). That's 2.5x the number "nationalist" scholars criticized by the authors (560 articles), but only half of the number of scholars of Polish history (~2500 when adding my current regular and military scholar lists). When comparing the ratio of Wikipedia article count (citations according to G&K) to Google Scholar mentions, the praised scholars have the lowest ratio - 0.05. Criticized, 0.25. However, when we look into the ratio for scholars of Polish history in general, we have 0.14 and the ratio for scholars of Polish milhist is 0.65! Now, let's consider that both Chodawkiewicz and Lukas, as I show in 20.81 and 20.82, are often cited for milhist context, and next, as anyone familiar with Wikipedia knows, our coverage of military history is extremely good (due to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history being very active, and presumably fans of milhist flocking to Wikipedia due to certain systemic biases). This leads me to conclude that G&K misinterpret Wikipedia's "bias for military history" for "bias for Polish heroic nationalist Holocaust distorting narrative". The overcitation to Lukas and Chodakiewicz is not a result of "nationalist bias" but "milhist bias". Arguably, one could argue that writing about Polish military topics is a form of "heroic Polish narrative", but to demonize the volunteers interested in Polish history is quite unfair. What the findings show - both G&K and mine - is that the field of military history is more popular on Wikipedia than the field of Holocaust history. It is a form of systemic bias, but it is not a sinister bias, and IMHO it results from a simple fact that writing about military geek topics, battles, tanks, etc. is less stressful, more popular and "cool" than writing about the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust. The solution to this would be to encourage some edit-a-thons and like aiming at getting people interested in improving coverage of the Holocaust on Wikipedia (just like WMF has done when addressing the gender gap issues on Wikipedia, through WP:Women in red and like), not to attack volunteers who edit topics of Polish military history.

In other words, G&K observed, correctly, that there are occasional errors in the PJH/Holocaust topic areas, and then observed that an occasional author they consider associated with the "nationalist Polish heroic narrative" is overcited, then concluded that those issues are related - but this is a spurious relationship, as what those authors are used for, primarily, is military history coverage. Lukas and Chodakiewicz are not overcited because they are pushed by some Polish nationalists, they are overcited because they write about military history, and military history scholars are cited on Wikipedia more often than Holocaust scholars. Really, their proper headline should be "Wikipedia's coverage of Holocaust history lags behind that of military history". That's all - except Icewhiz poison pill added the second dimension to their paper, arguing that said spurious relationship is the fault of editors Icewhiz hates with passion.

Side note 1. Overcitation, it itself, does not suggest any problem. Systemic bias cuts both ways. There are topics which are notable but which are not discussed in scholarly works much (popular culture, etc.). There are cases where an active editor with interest in super niche field X can develop that content area on Wikipedia so that citation numbers are significantly skewed, because other topic areas have not "caught up" yet.

Side note 2. Since I talked about ratios. If the authors are concerned with overcitation by Chodakiewicz (.42) and Lukas (.22) , my data suggests that several scholars endorsed the authors are even more "overcited": Andrzej Żbikowski (1.27), Adam Puławski (.85) and Dariusz Libionka (.82), for example. I don't see it as anything to be concerned about - Żbikowski, Puławski and Libionka appear to be reliable scholars. But when the authors say that Chodakiewicz and Lukas' "numerous mentions on Wikipedia... bear no relation to [their] modest visibility outside of the online encyclopedia (Chart 3)", we have to ask - so what? This is only a problem IF Chodakiewicz and Lukas' are deemed to be unreliable. And at the end of the day, there is a simple solution for this (WP:RSN). Storm in a teacup, really - except that this Chart can mislead readers to think that some problematic scholars dominate the relevant Wikipedia topic areas. Which, as I have shown above, does not seem to be the case. QED.

20.10 (Thoughts for future research, feel free to skip)

1) Systemic bias warning. Google Scholar like underrepresents citations to Polish language literature, which likely disproportionately affects the "criticized" group

2) Even when counting scholars praised and criticized by the authors, many others, some arguably "mainstream Holocaust scholars" like Havi Dreifuss or Yehuda Bauer are not mentioned in that essay at all and may need to be added to the data to get an ever more clear picture (a ton of work...).

3) Should test the citation/mention count on Polish Wikipedia, to test the claim by G. made in his newspaper that Polish Wikipedia is less biased

4) Should also test coverage of milhist and history in general for few other countries to check whether Polish case is any outlier or not.

Maybe I'll get a publication of this over the next few years... :)

21. Bad faith regarding off-Wiki communication

“The distortionist editors appear to be communicating ‘off-Wiki,’ a term the Wikipedia community uses for contact outside the encyclopedia, for example through email or text message…. email contact seemed to continue. In May 2018, for example, Piotrus asked GizzyCatBella to let him email her, explaining, ‘there may be circumstances when people want to send you an ‘eyes only’ communique”.

I am at a loss for words here. Do the essay authors believe that some people should be prevented from being able to privately communicate? The authors acknowledge that “many editors communicate off-Wiki regardless, including for purely social purposes”, but do not extend that good faith to “Piotrus” or “GizzyCatBella “, implying that any and all communications we engage in must be nefarious. Black and white framing at its extreme.

22. Random diff from 2007

“Piotrus wrote of the Żydokomuna myth that ‘every great lie is based on a grain of truth.”

Setting aside that this is a comment dug up from 2007, do the essay authors disagree that this myth is “a great lie”? Or that there wasn’t a tiny fraction of Jews who were, indeed, supporting the communist regime, and whose existence was later exaggerated by various anti-semites? In either case, this entire comment about something I said 15 years ago is out of place in the article (even in the very paragraph it’s tackled on), and just serves to stress the piece's defamatory character, as in the context given it creates an impression I endorse the antisemitic Żydokomuna myth.

23. Etiquette

There is an entire paragraph that concerns “Volunteer Marek, who has identified himself in the past as [real life name and job information]”.

It serves no purpose other than to besmirch that academic and volunteer due to his unfortunate tendency to occasionally use strong language, including the f-bomb. What’s the point of this other than to attack Icewhiz’s opponents from yet another angle?

24. Case of Naliboki

“Wikipedia’s coverage of the Naliboki massacre should not even mention Jews; yet Jews occupy a third of the article. Various editors over the years tried to fix these edits, but they were brought back by Piotrus and by his like-minded colleague, Volunteer Marek.”

24.1 (On false claim that I "brought back... mentions [of] Jews")

As anyone can verify in the public history of this article (here) or even from the links in the essay’s footnote, described by the authors as presumably relevant ("For Piotrus’s edits on Naliboki see"): diff 1 and diff 2) I have made eleven edits to the article, ten of which were minor copy edits and unchallenged removal of unsourced text, and in one I simply summarized existing text of the article in the introduction, per Wikipedia's Manual of Style). In particular, I did not “bring back” any information about Jews - this is another factual error, attributing to me something that I did not do (as can be verified with a simple CTRL+F "Jew" while checking the above diffs the authors claim are evidence).

24.2 (Link to a relevant rebuttal by VM concerning this very example)

Volunteer Marek addressed this very claim about him in his responce here: Grabowski and Klein’s lie is even more shameless when it concerns myself. Rather than preventing other editors from removing “mention of Jews”, I was actually busy REMOVING the alleged participation of Jewish partisans in the massacre myself: diff1, diff2 Grabowski and Klein falsely accuse me of exactly the opposite of what I was actually doing. In fact I *removed* the very photograph they complain about in their article.

24.3 (On the community view on whether "Wikipedia’s coverage of the Naliboki massacre should not even mention Jews")

It is worth noting that following the publication of G. and K. essay, substantial discussion involving numerous editors has taken place at Talk:Naliboki massacre. Neither me nor VM edited the article; however the article, stable for the last few days (I am writing this as of March 11, last edit to the article was on March 5) still contains a section about the Jews (it occupies a quarter of the article). Will the authors criticize numerous other editors who arrived at the current consensus?

25. Who has been driven away, and by whom

“The distortionist group has driven off editor after editor, wearing down anyone who tries to fix or expand articles on Polish–Jewish relations.”

25.1 (On the lack of evidence that "The distortionist group has driven off editor after editor")

First, there is no evidence presented that anyone has been “driven off” from the project by “the distortionist group”, except perhaps the main “victim” driven away - Icewhiz, whose ban from the project and resulting vengeance is the main mover behind the scenes here. The essay accuses one side of driving editors, but fails to provide evidence for this. Based on my reading of the quotations the authors provide, Ealdgyth blames not any particular individual, but the entire topic area. This is true for most other editors cited in the essay; only one, a volunteer who goes by Ermenrich, named editors from “the distortionist group” by writing that “[Piotrus and Volunteer Marek] … basically control the topic area.’ As far as I can tell, I have never significantly interacted with that volunteer, who has never edited this topic area substantially, and their comment, as can be seen in the context cited by the essay authors, seems to simply take at face value Icewhiz’s narrative, which Ermenrich read in a newspaper, took at face value and summarized). The other quote meant to criticize me, about bludgeoning, comes from a discussion by the Arbitration Committee judging a claim that I “bludgeon” discussions, a complain that was rejected by the Committee at 7:3, hence proving me “innocent”, a fact that the essay fails to mention (version diff). Biased framing, again.

25.2 (On omission of evidence that editors have been driven from this topic area by Icewhiz and/or editors who agree with him)

Further, while the evidence for "Polish nationalists" driving people away is lacking, there is undeniable proof that Icewhiz himself has been responsible for driving away a number of other editors, something that the essay’s authors are totally ignoring. Those editors include, among others, Poeticbent - author of hundreds of articles on Polish-Jewish topics, including majority of articles on Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, or MyMoloboaccount, who suffered a nervous breakdown dealing with Icewhiz’s harassment. Poeticbent described his experience with Icewhiz in an essay of his own, published on Wikipedia on his user page and after clashing with Icewhiz on wiki, left before Icewhiz even engaged in his main off wiki harassment campaign; the nervous breakdown of MyMoloboaccount can be seen in his final edit summaries (“STOP HARASSING ME. YOU RUINED MY LIFE.LEAVE ME AND MY FAMILY ALONE. DELETE MY ACCOUNT. LEAVE ME ALONE”) or the comment here: “The continued harassment by Icewhiz, and wikipedia attacks by François Robere and to lesser extent Levivich has led to severe detoriation of my health, loss of my job and contributed to eventual mini stroke and hospital confimment. As such I have largely decided to leave Wikipedia and will no longer be active. Unlike Piotrus or Volunteer Marek I do not have the mental resilience to withstand such amount of harassment, stalking and attacks.” Alas, in the one-sided account presented in the essay, the voices of Icewhiz’s victims are not heard.

26. Case of what Tec said

The authors say, at one point, that “Tec never said that Jews looked different, though”.

As the Wikipedia community analyzes the article, here is an example of a factual error in the article that does not concern me directly (although I paraphrased it as noted by Zero0000 in his statement - thank you for drawing my attention to this incident). The source used on Wikipedia and cited by the authors in the essay as not supporting this clearly states: “for Jews to hide in Christian society was a daunting task. Some of the challenges have been discussed by Nechama Tec… Appearance-Jews with the physical characteristics of curly black hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, a long nose were in special jeopardy…”. The contradiction between the source and what the authors say seems rather obvious. Nevertheless, that isn't even relevant to my edit. All I did was summarize "physical characteristics of curly black hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, a long nose" from the website as "specific physical characteristics" in response to a copyvio determination. Contrary to G&K's tendentious claim that I was proposing that "Jews are racially different from ethnic Poles", my innocuous copy-edit actually removed the stereotypical details. This practice of finding a fault where there is no fault to find is unfortunately all too common in G&K's work.

27. What is being ignored

In creating this one sided narrative, the authors ignore - or are blissfully unaware - of numerous other facts. Such as that those “right-wing Polish nationalists” are responsible for creating and improving numerous Wikipedia articles about various aspects of Polish-Jewish history, educating the Englsh-speaking public about it - and that includes topics related to Jewish suffering in The Holocaust (and not related to Polish heroic narrative). For example, I have created articles on topics such as the Jewish suffering and heroism during World War II (Ponary Massacre, The Holocaust in Lithuania, Japan and the Holocaust, Będzin Ghetto, Radom Ghetto, Photography of the Holocaust, Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews, The Black Book of Polish Jewry, Jewish Legion (Anders Army), Eiss Archive, Karski's reports, Polish Wikipedia's pl:Pogrom w Wąsoszu and pl:Pogrom w Radziłowie), antisemitism (Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, Jews and the American Slave Trade - two books that refute antisemitic claims of Jewish involvement in slave trade), articles about Holocaust scholars and their works (I've already mentioned Jan Grabowski and his Hunt for the Jews, others include Gunnar S. Paulsson and his Secret City, Engelking's Such a Beautiful Sunny Day, Contested Memories - a volume with chapters by Gitelman, Tec, Kassow and Engel, Tehran Children, Zimmerman's The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, Bikont's The Crime and the Silence - a book about the Jedwabne massacre picketed by right-wing nationalists in Poland, Feliks Tych, Polish Wikipedia's translation of Adam Puławski, a historian praised by the authors of the discussed essay, Joanna Michlic - another historian recommended by the authors, Daniel Blatman...), books on other aspects of Jewish history (FDR and the Jews), Jewish culture (Bródno Jewish Cemetery, CENTOS (charity)), Jewish figures (Samuel Orgelbrand, Samuel Adalberg, Ludwik Maurycy Landau, Julian Aleksandrowicz, Shmuel Krakowski, Adam Ulam) and others (including articles critical of the current Polish right-wing government I've been alleged to support, such as Kaczyzm, Lex TVN, or anti-heroic Polish narrative topics such as Polish collaborators with the Nazis such as Jan Emil Skiwski and Andrzej Świetlicki and his National Radical Organization, and even the main article on Collaboration in German-occupied Poland). Poeticbent, an editor chased from the project by Icewhiz, wrote dozens of articles about this topic as well, from many articles about WWII-era Jewish ghettos to topics like the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland or the New Jewish Cemetery, Kraków to Holocaust scholars like Joshua D. Zimmerman and Dariusz Libionka (praised by the authors), or Conversations with an Executioner. Volunteer Marek authored the articles on the Białystok pogrom, Częstochowa Ghetto and the Częstochowa Ghetto uprising, Artur Eisenbach or the Festival of Jewish Culture in Warsaw, among others. How do the authors attempt to square such facts with their narrative that we are “far-right Polish nationalists”? They don’t.

Criticism by other parties

To illustrate that some other Wikipedia editors have also found the essay by G. and K. problematic, here I'll link to public statements by others that are critical of said essay.

Note to fellow volunteers cited here: if you think I am misquoting you, or quoting selectively, or that I misunderstood your point entirely, please reach out to me and I'll expand the quotation (or add your commentary) as you see fit.

Comments by arbitrators (from Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Holocaust_in_Poland_<9/1/0>, archived at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World_War_II_and_the_history_of_Jews_in_Poland#Arbitrators'_opinions_on_hearing_this_matter_(9/1/0)):

• SilkTork: A large part of my reasoning behind not accepting this case request is that it is based on seemingly random (and inaccurate) allegations by two academics of misconduct from sometimes over nearly twenty years ago - such as..." (example follows). And from SilkTork's talk page: [25]: it is clear to me as it must be to most reasonable and neutral people reading the essay that it is more of a Daily Mail opinion piece than an example of a balanced academic research paper. The title of the essay sort of gives away its intention. One of the things I am considering is gathering the evidence to propose that The Journal of Holocaust Research is listed as a non-reliable source.
• Barkeep49: So we're left with a talk page rant that has been peer-reviewed in a reputable journal alleging major conduct issues.
• GeneralNotability: I certainly believe the authors downplayed the reasons for Icewhiz's ban

Comments by other editors (if the links are broken, please see archive at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Preliminary statements):

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_My_very_best_wishes If the comments by Piotrus and VM are correct, as they appear to be, then this entire story (i.e. the interviewing WP participants off-wiki, the publication, and the complaint submitted to WMF) is a scientific misconduct by Grabowsky and Klein; this misconduct was instigated by the banned user Icewhiz; and the publication in The Journal of Holocaust Research should be retracted (MVBW then elaborates at lenght on this and many other problems with this article in his statement)
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Adoring_nanny I have concerns about the Grabowski/Klein article underlying this case". They then discuss an error they noticed.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Zero0000_(non-party) Reading Grabowski's article. Editors who support his position are angels who are incapable of doing wrong, while those holding other views are devils pushing antisemitic canards. Black hats and white hats like old Westerns. All mistakes made by the black hats are deliberate, and a Wikipedia-wide conspiracy involving admins is hinted at darkly. Many of the examples have long disappeared, but this self-correcting nature of WP is not acknowledged. (Zero0000 then points out an example of a factual error)
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Mzajac_(non-party) I’m concerned about how this is framed through public shaming by a third party
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Comment_from_Harry_Mitchell I would suggest that the journal paper in question be given limited weight at least because of the obvious association with Icewhiz... It is disappointing that somebody whose conduct was so abhorrent has been treated so sympathetically in the journal.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Jeppiz_(Non-party) I'm no expert neither on the Holocaust nor on Poland, and cannot speak to the accuracy of the article (although I can comment on the methodology of it, which I find simplistic and would have challenged if used in my own field). My comment is merely to point out that the accuracy of the charges in the article cannot be assumed to be verified just because it is peer-reviewed.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Nosebagbear_(Non-party) Zero000 correctly notes that just because something has been peer-reviewed, does not mean that the reviewers have done fact checking for each diff in it - and discussions elsewhere on and off-wiki have already raised multiple factual failings in the article, non-included interviews, significant missed or agenda-based statements (most notably regarding Icewhiz and an "unfair ban"). All of which make it questionable to start a case based off this article, and an absolute need not to allow the article to act as an evidence source. The diffs within it exist on wikipedia so can be used as free-standing evidence, but the analysis and accusations by the authors can't inherently just be bought in.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Nishidani_(non-party) I concur with Elmidae and Zero's wise cautions. The writers of that piece use as a primary source an editor with an aggressive ultranationalist approach to wiki.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Robert_McClenon_(Holocaust)_(non-party) The authors of the G&K paper state that they are using a novel method of research. The novel method of research consists simply of reading the Wikipedia articles and talk pages and their histories. They have written a long user space essay on content and conduct issues that is masquerading as a peer-reviewed academic paper. Or perhaps they have written an academic paper masquerading as a user space essay on content and conduct issues.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Red-tailed_hawk_(Non-party) I am particularly sensitive to thinly evidenced accusations of conspiracy to intentionally distort certain topic areas on Wikipedia... The allegation of off-wiki coordination contained within the journal article is somewhat different—it's that there is some sort of grand successor to the EEML—but the evidence offered in support of this claim is largely that editors with shared interest in a topic area are showing up to edit in that topic area. The evidence laid out for EEML2 existing is unconvincing, and alleging that editors are engaging in off-wiki conspiracy requires stronger evidence than shared interest in a topic area. Wikipedians, of all people, should know that exceptional claims require exceptional evidence; sadly, such evidence of conspiracy was not present in the journal article.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Aquillion. Statement_by_Aquillion points out several prior academic papers that have analyzed Holocaust coverage on Wikipedia and DID NOT find it particularly biased. Those papers are only briefly acknowledged in G. and K.'s essay and effectively ignored.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Marcelus the tone of the article is far from balanced, and undoubtedly Grabowski and Klein are clearly aiming not so much to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles as to undermine the editing rights of specific editors.... Another issue is that the allegations made by G&K are not always accurate, sometimes even wrong, quite often advocating one of several equally possible interpretations of an event... If one reads the G&K article calmly, turns a blind eye to the emotive tone and the accusations made, the list of actual errors and distortions in the articles is not that long at all (moreover, some of them have already been removed)
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Jayen466. ...given how much in it is plain wrong – trivially wrong – just from looking at some of the edit histories and the article stats...
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Keneckert_(Non-party) as a publishing academic in other fields I am shocked that this dubious article should be published, even in a mid-tier-level non-Web of Science journal. The author refers to Wiki lexicon with unnecessary scare quotation marks, and to editors with nicknames even where he knows the names and qualifications of the individuals involved, with the apparent passive-aggressive aim of discrediting or frivolizing the site and editors... The author refuses to differentiate with any nuance between Wiki contributors who mostly accord with him, others who take a differing historical reading apolitically, and possible bad-faith actors; all are lumped together as wild-eyed pro-Polish government far-right anti-semitic "distortionists." Again, not my circus or monkeys; but were it me, I would be consulting legal counsel, or contacting the journal about a retraction or rebuttal; or failing this, lodging the case with Scopus' accreditation management.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Femke_(non-party) By digging up a 15-year old diff, the spirit of that policy was breached, and some of the information in the paper (employment) was never mentioned onwiki. This topic area has seen severe harassment, and it is my belief that this instance of outing in spirit puts the safety of editors at risk, and may warrant an admonishment or warning.

Comments I've spotted in other discussions:

• Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-03-09/Recent_research#Zooming_out ([26]) by User:Elinruby: I found that some of what Grabowski said about the [Collaboration with the Axis powers] article was quite true and remained uncorrected. My focus has been on correcting problems, not responsibility for the problems, but the look that I did take at the history indicated that edits that I knew to be questionable were mostly carried out by IPs. ... I am very much unconvinced that there was "intentional" distortion by the parties. Also, I have previously pointed out that Grabowski mocks Piotrus for saying that a source was reliable, but does not appear to understand the term of art as it is used in Wikipedia. It is entirely possible to my mind that the problem with that assessment was Wikipedia's misconceptions about print sources, which have always seemed a kind of snobbery to me. I do agree with the assessment that polite distortions of the truth seem to prevail in wiki proceedings over attempts to defend it that also express irritation.

Conclusion

I spent about 10k words (half of the criticized essay's length) pointing numerous errors in said piece. The essay, as I demonstrate above, contains many factual errors, is written in a partisan style, attempts to create a black-and-white narrative, and is highly defamatory towards me and other Wikipedia volunteers. It is significantly based on tainted data (information provided to the authors by an Internet troll and harasser). It plays a role in the off-wiki harassment of me and other volunteers by Icewhiz, whose goal is to gain control of this topic area through his socks, one of which almost became an administrator not that long ago(!), and through making the editors he perceives as "enemies" either sanctioned based on media pressure ("Wikipedia needs to do something about those evil editors!") or retire from Wikipedia as they get tired of being accused of being antisemites, Holocaust distortionists, and like, not just on Wikipedia or some Internet fora, but even in usually reliable media and scholarly outlets (which is an interesting commentary on how fake news are created and spread - sometimes all it takes is a single individual who can convince a journalist or a scholar of their conspiracy theory...).

However, nothing is black and white, despite the essay's attempts to create such an illusion. There are, indeed, still errors on Wikipedia; most were likely inserted in good faith, but some might be a result of an attempt to misinform. Editors, myself included, used lower quality sources in the past. Some editors who edited Wikipedia and perhaps some who still edit may hold antisemitic views or at least identify with the "Polish heroic narrative" or "Polish nationalistic narrative" and such. The essay identifies some errors or potential biases that the Wikipedia community should discuss (for example, I believe we should replace citations to Paul, Kurek or Chodakiewicz with higher quality scholarship). Therefore it is important to distinguish the valid criticism ("Wikipedia's articles related to The Holocaust are imperfect, subject to controversy, contain occasional errors, and need to be monitored and improved") from unfounded allegations ("Such and such editors do not agree with me and therefore need to be sanctioned for being Holocaust distortionists").

In the end, I believe the community is perfectly able to address the content issues, through the traditional Linus' Law. One good thing to come of this mess is that some previously uninvolved editors (not to be confused with neutral editors, per NPOV and common sense, nobody can be perfectly neutral) have taken some interest in this subject. Hopefully, it will last for a while and revitalize this topic area (which was devastated through Icewhiz's harassment which led to editors burning out and leaving or withdrawing from it). So on that level, the "crying wolf" media attention alleging that there is a group of evil editors (here "right-wing antisemitic Polish nationalists"...) has one positive effect, namely increasing the number of proverbial eyeballs looking for "bugs" in this topic area. The system works. Wikipedia is not broken. On the contrary, in the long run, Wikipedia's quality is rising, and this is true for this content area as well.

However, this incident also illustrates a different failing that I am not sure the community is able to handle well. Despite our Wikipedia:Harassment policies, including the sections dealing with off-wiki harassment, we remain vulnerable to peer pressure, something that Icewhiz is exploiting. We have site banned him, yet his shadow is still affecting us. His goal, as stated, is to gain control of this topic area by destroying the reputation of those he disagrees with, and he is not alone in believing that his version, his side, his POV is "right" and that the "end justifies all means". This is a conflict of attrition, and attrition works. We all know that some disputes on Wikipedia are won by the "last man standing", and nothing says that the "last man" cannot be an indef-banned harasser with an army of socks. Yes, involvement of new editors, many of whom, per Wikipedia:Assume good faith, will be helpful, is part of our eiki immune system, and as I said in the preceding paragraph, it should and does work, ensuring slow but steady improvement in the quality of content (which also means that no, this topic area is not broken, outside of suffering from harassment originating from Icewhiz). However, I believe we need to figure out a way to address the "reputation destruction" part of his strategy. There are victims here, victims of on- and off-wiki harassment, and the community should figure out how to support them before they burn out and leave. This is something I have written about in my peer reviewed research on "Volunteer retention, burnout and dropout in online voluntary organizations: stress, conflict and retirement of Wikipedians" (OA mirror), and in my on-wiki essays before. Already ~10 years ago I wrote that we need to "enforce WP:CIVIL, promote non-anonymity, ban "true believers", promote positive reinforcement". To end with something that may lead to a constructive change in how we do things around, here, consider this: how many good, constructive editors would still be here if the Arbitration Committee, for example, would not just ban those who harassed them, but also stated, authoritatively, that said editors are cleared of wrongdoing and are in good standing within the community? Food for thought, folks. Now go and click a thank you button, spread WikiLove and make our community a nicer place. Signing off -- Piotrus

Notes