Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Archive 77

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User:Drittner/Roger J._Cheng

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TALK: Rupert Sheldrake

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Talk:Intelligent design

  – This request has been open for some time and must be reviewed.

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute

Users involved

Dispute overview

User:North8000 wishes to add some information about previous uses of the phrase intelligent design before its adoption by creation scientists. I (and others) feel this information belongs elsewhere, in the Teleological argument.

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

This is a recurring discussion on the Talk pages. It gets much attention, the consensus ends up keeping the current page, and discussion dies down until the issue is reopened. No other steps have been taken.

How do you think we can help?

I think this dispute revolves around the common names for these subjects, and it would be nice to have some input on that front. North8000 often characterizes it as a problem of scope (i.e. that the article currently disregards all intelligent design (ID) that is not associated with the Discovery Institute), and we could probably use some expertise in distinguishing ID from the teleological argument (aka argument from design).

Summary of dispute by North8000

This is more complex than described:

  • There are three larger interrelated issues ("chicken-and-the-egg" type interrelations) and the described question is merely a proposed edit relating to them it is not the issue.
  • There is a larger longer term difference of opinion. The described edit is just a tiny bit of addressing concerns expressed by a large number of editors. Also, as many of those have been "chased away" an RFC with external eyes may be needed. (though the vast majority of the editors there keep it on a high plane and do not do such things which makes this very promising)

Nevertheless I would be happy to participate here. Sincerely,North8000 (talk) 09:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by dave souza

Since before April 2012, North8000 has been arguing that the scope of the ID article and the term is broader than the modern adaptation of the design argument as promulgated by the Discovery Institute. As an outcome of discussion on his June 2012 proposal for a scope-defining statement which would have widened the scope of the article, trimming of the Origins of the term section was discussed. Following broad agreement that original research and examples unrelated to the current usage should be trimmed, I made edits starting to implement this on 3 July 2012, then following talk page discussion, moved examples to a footnote.[2] Thus examples which are peripheral to modern use of the term are covered in summary style.

North8000 has persisted with discussions trying to widen the scope of the ID article beyond the modern usage of intelligent design, and has repeatedly requested that more prominence should be given in the article to these offtopic examples of what he calls Historic intelligent design material. Despite repeated requests, no new secondary sources have been shown to support these proposed changes. . dave souza, talk 12:30, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Guettarda

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Summary of dispute by Dominus Vobisdu

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Summary of dispute by Cla68

This is a content dispute that probably should be addressed in an RfC as recommended by North8000. North8000 mentions that editors have been "chased away" which is a reference to what I believe is a larger problem with that article. The talk page for the Intelligent Design article is one of the most hostile discussion forums I have ever come across in Wikipedia. I myself have been subjected to personal insults on that article talk page several times in the last few months after posting an opinion. Opinions left by new or IP editors are sometimes removed by other editors, and other editors on that page feel it is ok to revert war on contributions to the article without prior discussion. I believe effective administrator intervention may be necessary. Notice I said "effective". Unfortunately, I don't believe WP's current administration is up to the task. Cla68 (talk) 22:21, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Andrew Lancaster

Maybe more opinions can help but I note there are already a fairly large number of experienced good faith editors on the article talk page, and the discussion is fairly rational. The basic policies which are relevant are clear, and not really in dispute, and this is as far as I can see a case where careful balancing/judgment is inevitably going to require some discussion. I'd suggest anyone interested should look at the talk page first and consider whether it is better to post directly there (keeping all discussion in one place).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:22, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Johnuniq

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Summary of dispute by Noformation

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Summary of dispute by Yopienso

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Summary of dispute by BabyJonas

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Talk:Intelligent design discussion

Please keep discussion to a minimum before being opened by a volunteer. Continue on article talk page if necessary.
  • I'd have to concur with Cla68 here. An RFC I think would be the best way to go - get as many uninvolved people discussing this as possible, and come to a consensus that way. I'd be happy to help set up the RFC. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 11:15, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Seems like this one has gone quiet - I'll close it out in 24 hours if there's nothing else discussed here but an RFC seems the way to go with this one. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 02:00, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Before closing this, perhaps people would like to take account of what is happening on the Teleological argument page. I see that it is involved in this dispute. In an edit blitz, the term "intelligent design" has been introduced by one editor (appearing above) pretty well everywhere. This seems to be a spill-over from the dispute going on here. I, and another editor, tried to show that the introduction of 'intelligence', in the phrase "argument from design" was a recent thing, while the editor, just referred to, removed my cited quotations, saying they were OR. It sounds very similar to what is going on here. I have asked for a Wikipedia:Third opinion. Myrvin (talk) 17:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Steven an RFC must definitely be in the minds of several of us, but I guess a major concern must come from the question of how to define the core of the complex question, and in such a way that it does not become a beauty contest. The concerns leading to proposals for change are still apparently poorly understood by some editors, partly because of the subject matter and partly because it involves areas of WP policy where people often have misunderstandings. And so the concerns tend to become simplified into absolute proposals whereas there must be dozens of ways of alleviating those concerns if editing and discussion were more healthy on that article. => Maybe it is a silly idea, but I was just thinking that a recent event might help: I have broken a recent major revert into 9 separable edits which I think could be considered independently: [3]. At least a few of them are kind of practical digestible versions of some of the core concerns separating the most active discussants. Just wondering if this makes any helpful sense. BTW although Myrvin probably thinks I'm annoying I agree with him fully that there are several articles which are clearly and openly linked back to the controversy on intelligent design.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:52, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
That's a reasonable concern, Andrew. In the past some mediations have functioned to just help define scope. I might head over to the talk page, do some reading and ponder how we can proceed from here but I'm open to the idea of guiding the discussion if that would be of assistance. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 12:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Simon Wells

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Marcos Avellan

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Government Finance Officers Association

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Template talk:G8+5#TfD result discussion

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Rambus

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2Cellos nationality

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Talk:Pokémon X and Y

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Kfar Etzion massacre

  – This request has been open for some time and must be reviewed.

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute

Users involved

Dispute overview

Nishidani deleted my editing. the Diff page. The problems are:

  • Is the term "After their surrender" correct?
  • The first sentence should include important facts ( who attacked, where was it) and possibly exclude less important information (the date relatively to the independence declaration).


Have you tried to resolve this previously?

it is discussed in the talk page. We could not find a compromise.

How do you think we can help?

Hopefully, a volunteer will convince us to find a compromise.

Summary of dispute by nishidani

This is being discussed on the page. Generally ykantor's edit (a) rewrote this, which is, as anyone can see a source-adequate statement of the totally misleading lead that preceded it. Ykantor complains I cancelled his revision of my edit. Were I to complain, I would note he cancelled my edit, and did so rewriting a contentless garbled and tediously repetitive sentence to replace it. (b) he added a totally irrelevant and lengthy note clearly intended to contaminate a neutral description of the event with the insinuation that 'Arabs' were accustomed to massacring Jews. That didn't provide historic context, it implied this event was a behavioural problem in Arabs. This is all I will say here. One does not go to this page to complain about a dispute when the talk page is productively engaged in resolving the questions mentioned.Nishidani (talk) 08:02, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Kfar Etzion massacre discussion

Please keep discussion to a minimum before being opened by a volunteer. Continue on article talk page if necessary.
  • Nishidani's version is much better than Ykantor's one. It provides the historical background, which is important in the context of controversial and dramatic events such the massacres of the 1948 war. Nishidani's version is also more detailled. Anyway, major problem is the behaviour of Ykantor who systematically adds "quotes" that tend to influence the neutral description of the events as well as the fact he systematically discusses each detail and complains when discussions don't go in the direction that he wants. He is in infraction with WP:POINT with his numerous requests and also by the way he intervenes on the different talk pages of wikipedia. Pluto2012 (talk) 10:08, 3 September 2013 (UTC)


After a few days, I fell that I have to say that those reactions are mostly not true:

  • rewriting a contentless garbled and tediously repetitive sentence
  • added a totally irrelevant and lengthy note clearly intended to contaminate a neutral description
  • ...that 'Arabs' were accustomed to massacring Jews
  • talk page is productively engaged in resolving the questions
  • ... systematically adds "quotes" that tend to influence the neutral description of the events
  • ...He is in infraction with WP:POINT with his numerous requests

All these sentences are not true. The Talkpage discussion is fairly elaborate, and one can read it and decide for himself. I am sure what will be the consequences. Ykantor (talk) 16:46, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Good evening! I'm sorry it took so long for a volunteer to take on this case, but we've all been busy with other cases. Whilst, in theory, I think I could give summary judgment and close this case, I want to ask some questions first - namely: Why is the date of this massacre relative to the date of the Israeli Declaration of Independence considered important enough to warrant inclusion in the article? (to be answered by the party who wishes to include such information). --The Historian (talk) 18:43, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Historian, Thank you for your intervention. If no answer is given to your question today I will make a comment on this particular point. Pluto2012 (talk) 04:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(1) This was the state of the lead before either I or Ykantor began to look at the page. Nobody for months, perhaps a year, worried about the received connection between the date of the massacre and the day of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

(2) I intervened, since the whole lead sentence falsified a complex reality in which, certainly a massacre occurred, but it did not consist of the whole population, which was not just ‘Jews’ or ‘inhabitants’ but an entrenched military force with an active role in waging war in the Arab sector. I respected the consensual indication in that sentence linking the episode to the Declaration of Independence, because the whole battle and tragedy occurred in order to secure time for that Declaration's military consequences.

(3) Ykantor reverted both my rewriting which is attentive to the problems, and which included the consensual text point you worry about, a reference to the Israeli Declaration of Independence that had been stable for months, with the deceptive edit summary ‘add important points to the first sentence’.

It’s deceptive because he didn’t add: he wiped out both my edit and the stabilized points in the phrasing prior to my intervention. Why, I repeat, he thinks he can wipe out an item no one has challenged, and with it, wipe out my polishing of that page’s lead sentence, and say he is ‘adding’ when he just deleted information, and then charge that there is a ‘dispute’ requiring mediation, is beyond me. By the same logic, I could have hauled him here to dispute his erasure of both my edit and the embedded consensual linking of the episode to the Israeli Independence Declaration. This is a complete waste of time. The issue is under the scrutiny of several editors, and only Ykantor complains. If he is dissatisfied, he must convince several editors that his erasure improves the text. It doesn’t, and I haven't time to broker a compromise on ever edit I might make through exhaustive recourse to pages like this. We are a community of editors, and Ykantor's habit of picking out one and trying to open yet one more huge thread contesting the p's and q's of an edit challenging one of his, is ridiculous, and contrary to wikipedia's procedures, where these things are a last resort. The problem has been resolved.Nishidani (talk) 11:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I concurr with what Nishidani writes. Particularly regarding Ykantor's behaviour.
Regarding the content, the fact that the massacre took place two days before the end of the Mandate is important because the Yishuv (Jewish) population and leadership really feared what was going to happen and particularly what the "powerful" (was it ?) Arab Legion would do. They were prepared but a war is always uncertain. (eg Lebanon announced not participating a few hours before 15 May). In this context, the involvment of the Arab Legion in a massacre (controvesed but not at the time) had a deep impact : voluntary or not, a message was sent and Jewish Leadership reacted accordingly.
This remains a complex question and the current lead may not be the best to take into account that point but the "dispute" between Nishidani (more others) and Ykantor is not about this. As Nishidani points out, Ykantor without the support of any other contributor performs modifications on complex and controversial articles that are followed by tenths of others and, after complains everywhere against those who reject his actions. Pluto2012 (talk) 06:12, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
As I already proposed to Nishidani:"Your English is better than mine, and you can re-write the sentence as you wish", he could have polish, balance, make it attentive, de-garble and stabilize the sentence by himself. So we can concentrate in the dispute itself- The problems are:
  • Is the term "After their surrender" correct?
  • The first sentence should include important facts ( who attacked, where was it) and possibly exclude less important information (the date relatively to the independence declaration). Ykantor (talk) 10:17, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
  • You rewrote my sentence; I expanded the earlier sentence. You are complaining I should rewrite your sentence which eviscerates the earlier text, and my modification, and introduces a POV. Really, man. Think this over with precision. Peer editorial review seems to favour my version. Punto e basta. If it has some wobble in it, Pluto, Zero and yourself can thrash it out and trim it further. We are a collegial society. This is not a me against him/her one-off battle edit per edit.
  • (b) My edit reads:'a massacre that took place after a two (two=day) battle between Jewish settlers and soldiers and a combined force of the Arab Legion and Arab villagers, at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion.'
  • (i) sources are totally confused. (ii)POV sources number all those killed in the 2-day battle as victims of the massacre which apparently (in my view almost certainly) took place after a signal (deceptive or sincere is not the point) was given that Jewish fighters were surrendering. A 'massacre' strictly speaking occurs when unarmed people or people not capable of adequately defending themselves, are murdered in considerable numbers. It took place after the main battle. We simply don't know exactly what happened, we do not know for sure if the flag was a feint or a real surrender (I personally tend to think the latter). The only way to handle this per WP:NPOV is to write 'after the battle'.
  • (b)Other editors disagree with your unique preference.Nishidani (talk) 11:24, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
There is some advance, as you accept adding {killed} "at Kfar Etzion" to the first sentence. Would you advance further and add who killed?, and who was killed? in the first sentence? Ykantor (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
Don't be silly. This sounds like a pilpul exercise (which would be fine by me if we were arguing on the Torah and Talmud). 'at Kfar Etzion' already exists. Of course it was Jews who were killed in the massacre. That's obvious in the text. You want me to make the first sentence somewhat ugly by adding 'Jews' just before 'Jewish settlers and soldiers'? I'd have no problem with that other than stylistic and commonsensical. It's called 'overegging the pud'. Sources blame the Arab legion (b) local villagers.It's dumb. Edits are made on the page, and discussed there, between several editors. You do not use this page to negotiate a binding agreement between, say, just one editor (me) and yourself that is ostensibly binding to that page.
To repeat, the fundamental editing principle here, which Pluto, Zero and myself all underwrite in blood, is that drafting anything where several good sources are in conflict, requires all serious editors (and I think you are developing promise in that regard, and I say that without any air of being patronizing. We have a lot of bad editors who just push crap or POVs in here, and you are a class apart) to phrase everything with an acute ear to the dissonances. One must not (a) entertain a private theory (b) privilege one source over another. That is why close attention to phrasing, modulation is crucial for these articles. Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
yours:"Of course it was Jews who were killed in the massacre. That's obvious in the text.". so why should not it written in the first sentence? Once an ignorant reader read the article, he should know the important facts before the less important one. Ykantor (talk) 17:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
For Yahweh/Christ/Allah/Satan/Juppiter's sake, if that's what bothered you, why didn't you just add the word. Go for it, but please, please do not make extraordinary extenuating exasperating use of boards and talks when a simple edit or point is at stake.Nishidani (talk) 17:47, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
Do we agree that my initial opening sentence is correct? ( except of "after their surrender"). For our convenience, the sentence is:"The Kfar Etzion massacre refers to the massacre of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion members and soldiers, on May 13, 1948, after their surrender to the Arab Legion and Arab villagers, who attacked their village, Kfar Etzion". As discussed, the sentence style and syntax can be improved. Ykantor (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
I added myself to the dispute. We are all tired of the "pilpul" situation.
If Ykantor is good faith (I know "WP:AGF"), he will be able to and will answer precisely to the following question in compliance with the 4th pilar of wikipedia.
  • What is the main difference between your version and the current one ?
  • Why do you refuse by yourself to introduce all pov's of view on any topic and do you consider there are sides (even among contributors) and that each side (represented by contributors) would have to give his point of view and another side would have to take care of others in order to comply with WP:NPOV ?
Pluto2012 (talk) 12:00, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Will you please write it in the talk page? I try to minimize my editing here to reducing the number of the friction points. BTW your 2nd point is not clear. Ykantor (talk) 16:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Hi Ykantor,
What is not "clear" ? You have been warned about this since 20 May ie for nearly 4 months. On this talk page and here and at other places. You keep making as if you was not aware of that point. Pluto2012 (talk) 05:29, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

2Cellos nationality

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Talk:Pokémon X and Y

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Talk:Wolf attacks on humans

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Meaning of word INDIAN

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Marc Y. Chenevert

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Anti-Serb sentiment

  – This request has been open for some time and must be reviewed.

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute

Users involved

Dispute overview

A group of users think that it is wrong to have criticism section in the article about hatred towards an ethnic group, in this case Serbs, because it implies that such a sentiment may not even exist and justifies this sentiment (based on source which I believe is outdated politically motivated primary source). This view is also based on WP:CONSISTENCY - because no other article (link to navigation template with 45 of them) on hatred toward an ethnic group does not have criticism section.

I proposed not to deny or justify hatred in Controversy section but to present explanations in one or couple of sentences within the main body of the article (with no outdated politically motivated primary sources) or to point to articles which provide more context in the See also section.

Peacemaker67 and Joy do not agree.

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

Discussion

How do you think we can help?

To organize discussion based on human common sense, arguments and wikipedia policies without unnecessary personalization, uncivility and fallacy, which would hopefully lead to consensus about this dispute.

Summary of dispute by Peacemaker67

Please keep it brief - less than 2000 characters if possible, it helps us help you quicker.

I will not be able to enter into this discussion properly until I have access to a real computer (at least five days away). I'm on iPhone, and it just isn't practical. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 13:25, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I will just briefly add that the "group of users" Antidiskriminator alludes to is a group of one. The other two editors that have engaged in this discussion are a registered account that has made a total of two edits (both to the talk page thread in question), and an IP that has made one edit (also to this talk page thread). Peacemaker67 (send... over) 12:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your patience. I'll put aside the other problems with the article (such as WP:SYNTH and WP:COATRACK, on which I agree with Joy and bobrayner). The central issue here is the means by which we include in the article an examination of how entirely legitimate examples of "Anti-Serb/Serbia sentiment" during WWI (the reaction to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand) and WWII (Hitler's attitude to the Serbs and the genocidal policies and actions of the Ustashe) were woven into a propaganda narrative in the 1980's and 1990's by Slobodan Milošević and his fellow travellers. This propaganda narrative of perpetual Serb victimhood was then used to justify and encourage "all sorts of nastiness" (as Joy puts it) during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Antidiskriminator relies on WP:CONSISTENCY, which has been an inactive proposal since 2006 and on which there was no apparent consensus. A quick look at Wikipedia talk:Consistency will confirm what the perceived problems with the proposal were, and several editors made cogent observations against the proposal with which I have sympathy. In my view, key amongst them are, "The fact that two different groups of people say two different things is not logically contradictory" and "encyclopedia articles are more like separate stories. Individual stories have consistency--truth relative to them. Taken together, however, they are a jumble of purported facts that don't really have much to do with each other." Whether this article is stylistically consistent with other articles on ethnic hatred is WP:OTHERSTUFF in my view. The actions of Serbs in the past that have contributed to "Anti-Serb sentiment" (such as colonisation of Albanian-speaking areas during the Balkan Wars), and the use of past misdeeds against Serbs to justify Serb misdeeds in the 80's/90's are both central to the story of "Anti-Serb sentiment", and to remove them or reduce discussion of them to a couple of sentences (as Antidiskriminator proposes) would mean that the article would not tell the whole story (and would lack context). The idea that discussion of the use of "Anti-Serb sentiment" as propaganda in the 80's/90's could imply that "Anti-Serb sentiment" has never existed is inherently contradictory. Regards, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 23:19, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Joy

Please keep it brief - less than 2000 characters if possible, it helps us help you quicker.

Please see Talk:Anti-Serb sentiment#Criticism?? etc. The entirety of the article has a variety of problems; pruning the criticism altogether, which is what was suggested originally, would easily be seen as whitewashing, and adding just another problem to the pile. Antidiskriminator seems to have a tendency of making various edits consistent with Serbian nationalist talking points, recently he 'earned' an WP:ARBMAC topic ban over one Serbian World War II issue (a Chetnik commander) and led to a move ban over another (the article about the Nazi occupation of Serbia), and this appears to be no exception - let's shun the criticism from the get-go just because it doesn't fit our preferred narrative. Assorted Croatian and other nationalists who tried to delete the entire article on their own deluded premises notwithstanding -- the criticism of the use of this term in the more recent history is entirely legitimate, and is already sourced to several English-language publications that appear to be reliable sources. The term has been tainted in the 1980s with the SANU Memorandum's perfidious invocation of "Serbophobia", and in turn Slobodan Milošević's fake outrage about it - they used it as a blatant technique to make the Serbs look like the perpetual victims, while at the same time they orchestrated all sorts of nastiness in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The encyclopedic entry on the phenomenon and the phrase would be incomplete without the clear description of this issue. Also, as I said earlier, having the criticism section does not in any way invalidate the description of the legitimate applications of the phrase, such as those related to WWII. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:11, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by bobrayner

I agree with Joy's stance that the article has broader problems; it's a collection of Serb-nationalist talking points; any fragment that fits the Serb-victimhood trope is put on the page without context. The issue over the criticism section raised by Antidiskriminator seems to be highly selective; there are wider issues that need to be fixed. Same problem we had at Persecution of Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo. bobrayner (talk) 21:47, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Timbouctou

I agree with Peacemaker67, Joy and bobrayner. Although the article has been cleaned up in the meantime, it still suffers from issues which I am not sure can be dealt with at all. Anti-something articles need to rely on sources which deal with the topic directly, and unlike antisemitism and a host of other examples of ethnic hatred, not a single book (Serbian or otherwise) exists which does that in this particular case. The only work written on the subject directly is by MacDonald, and he actually talks about it as a narrative that was used by Serb nationalist to justify Serbia's role in the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Nobody is saying that Serbs hadn't been persecuted in WW2, but we already have a dedicated and much more detailed article about that issue. Once you remove that part, all you have left is a WP:SYNTH of quotes cherry picked from Google Books, from various historical periods, and provided with little or no context. Also, I object to Antidiskriminator's usage of those quotes. Many works written by credible historians talk about "anti-Serbian" sentiment or policies (as in "against foreign policies led by Serbia"), which in Antidiskriminator's interpretation are interchangeable with "anti-Serb" (as in "against the ethnic group"), which then he uses as synonymous with "Serbophobic" (as in "irrationally obsessed with persecuting Serbs"). These are not the same thing and treating these terms as if they are without taking into account the context of the sourced text and the events talked about is way below encyclopedic standards. Although anti-Serb sentiment does exist and has manifested itself overtly on several occasions over the course of history - especially when talking about periods of WW1 and WW2 and the Yugoslav wars - this article presents it as a coherent historical narrative which depicts Serbs as perennial victims of their neighbours. And that idea a) is not represented in any source and b) was outright debunked by at least some sources. So removing criticism of the term would hardly be helpful. Timbouctou (talk) 10:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Anti-Serb sentiment discussion

Please keep discussion to a minimum before being opened by a volunteer. Continue on article talk page if necessary.

Hi;

I've asked another regular to help me mediate in this matter, and until he agrees, this will be quite slow to kick off.

--The Historian (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

OK, I've got a second mediator who's willing to assist on this matter, and he's going to take the lead. To start off, I'd like parties to provide summaries of no more than one paragraph of their cases. Antidiskriminator, I want you to have a look at your link that is entitled "45 of them", since it just shows a template - I'm not 100% sure as to what it's meant to show, and I'd like it if you'd correct that please. The Historian (talk) 12:26, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Corrected.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 12:43, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Fromm looking at the Wikipedia:Consistency, the rule described therein only applies to factual consistency. Stylistic consistency, which is what I think you're arguing over, is dealt with in the manual of style. From what I've read on the manual of style, it appears that Wikipedia does favour consistency across all articles. This is my opinion, and I'd like the leading mediator to take a look to see whether I'm on the right track, so don't take my reasoning here as gospel until the lead mediator has given it the OK. --The Historian (talk) 18:42, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes you are right. Stylistic consistency is dealt with in the manual of style. WP:CONSISTENCY only say that "the organization and presentation of the information should be uniform across articles" which confirm your oppinion that "Wikipedia does favour consistency across all articles"--Antidiskriminator (talk) 17:03, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Based on this fact, could parties make submissions of not more than one paragraph, written in this "discussion" session, on what effect the fact that WP:Consistensy does not apply might have on this dispute, and how we should proceed. I ask this merely because one of the parties (I've lost track of whom) alleges that WP:CONSISTENSY does apply. Since we have worked out that it doesn't, the original claimant's submission that it does has fallen away. --The Historian (talk) 20:11, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I believe I've essentially addressed this above, but once WP:CONSISTENCY is put to one side, the remaining issue is that User:Antidiskriminator thinks "that it is wrong to have criticism section in the article about hatred towards an ethnic group, in this case Serbs, because it implies that such a sentiment may not even exist and justifies this sentiment". Antidiskriminator's apparent belief that detailed discussion of the use of "Anti-Serb sentiment" as propaganda in the 80's/90's implies that "Anti-Serb sentiment" has never existed, or somehow denies or justifies hatred of Serbs, is inherently contradictory. My view is that either the section should stand as is, or the existing content of the section in question should instead be placed in chronologically appropriate places in the lead and body. The use of "Anti-Serb sentiment" in the 1980s/90s by Milošević and his fellow travellers is an integral part of the chronological narrative of "Anti-Serb sentiment". Regards, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 11:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Although WP:CONSISTENCY does not directly apply here (because it deals only with factual consistency) it is helpful for this dispute because it confirms that "stylistic — the organization and presentation of the information should be uniform across articles" and explains that Wikipedia:Manual of Style exists to deal with stylistic consistency. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Consistency is a red herring. Whether or not the article should have exactly the same headings as other articles about anti-whatever-sentiment, that sidesteps the article's bigger issues. Focussing on the name of a heading rather on serious content problems is worrying. bobrayner (talk) 21:57, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about not coming back earlier - real life and a long and messy arbitration case in which I'm an involved party got in the way. I've reviewed the article in its entirety. There is very little in each section describing the history of anti-serb discrimination look a bit "empty". I would suggest that parts of the "criticism and controversy" section should be integrated into the main historical section of the article. The "Serbophobia" section...I'm not 100% sure where that goes. The "breakup of Yugoslavia" section is quite lacking in substance, so think about putting "serbophobia" in there. Otherwise, there's very little else I can do.


--The Historian (talk) 18:37, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

There are two other editors that could help resolving this dispute. One actually added this disputed section to the article (PRODUCER) and another (User:Timbouctou) substantially edited it. I notified both of them about this discussion.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:14, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
I think we can safely assume (after a week's wait) they are not interested in engaging here. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 04:52, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Maybe second mediator can help to resolve this dispute.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 05:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
I added my opinion above. Timbouctou (talk) 10:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Hridayeshwar Singh Bhati

  – General close. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

Talk:Remington Model_870#Washington_Navy_Yard_Massacre

  – General close. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

Anthony Johnson (colonist)

  – General close. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion