Talk:House demolition

message: I've completely rewritten and expanded this article, while preserving some of the original content. The original article was a fair start, but I felt that its scope was far too narrow, being almost exclusively focused on the Israeli-Palestine conflict when house demolitions have been a much bigger issue elsewhere (in the former Yugoslavia, for instance). The subject needs to be approach from a broad perspective of military utility rather than focusing on a particular conflict where a particular set of circumstances apply. I've therefore attempted to cast the article as a general survey of the use of house demolition, dividing its usages into three distinct areas. Please add any comments below! -- ChrisO 00:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you've done an great job and, once this article settles down, should consider nominating it for FA status. Raul654 00:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ChrisO -> congratulations on a great piece of work. I've taken the liberty of excising "House Razings" as being of very limited application - the hated google test gets only 3,900 hits for it, whereas even "House Demolitions" + Israel gets 50,000. Also deleting "Historically, it has also been used as a civil penalty against certain policy violators" which I fear is both confusing and duplicating. Hope that is alright. PalestineRemembered 08:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm concerned about that picture. We make it seem that "house demolitions" as "military necessity" (eg Iraq, even Jenin) are the concern, when in many cases such things are uncontentious and legal. Showing a moment of explosive destructon also risks treating the problem as part of a video game. By all means use pictures from somewhere other than the IP situation - do we not have anything for the atrocities committed by Saddam, entire Kurdish villages demolished? Bull-dozers in Chechnya? Are there tumbled temples in Tibet? PalestineRemembered 10:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewritten and expanded article

message: The "Legal Issues" section currently includes the following paragraph, sourced to an AI report: Israeli use of house demolitions has been particularly controversial. However, Israel, which is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, asserts that the terms of the Convention are not applicable to the Palestinian territories on the grounds that it does not exercise sovereignty in the territories and is thus under no obligation to apply the treaty in those areas. This position is rejected by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, which notes that "it is a basic principle of human rights law that international human rights treaties are applicable in all areas in which states parties exercise effective control, regardless of whether or not they exercise sovereignty in that area. I believe this is an incorrect description of what the cited AI document cliams, which is that Israel asserts that "UN human rights treaties to which it is a State Party", such as the  International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (but not the Fourth Geneva Convention), are not applicable to the Palestinian territories on the grounds that it does not exercise sovereignty. The claim with regards to the non-applicability of the 4GC rests on differnt grounds - the claim that the West Bank and Gaza are not the territories of any "High Contracting Party" to the 4GC, and are thus excluded by the convention's own language in article 2. Isarig 22:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Legal Issues

message: :Image:MyLai Haeberle P33 BodiesNearBurningHouse.jpg might be suitable for inclusion in the article.  "Burning hooches" in Vietnam is a pretty prominent example of the subject.--Father Goose 22:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested image 

message: "punitive civil" - is an oximoron considering the article centers about a military punitive action rather than a civil one. it is indeed a sometimes generalizing punitive action, but it is emloyed in a military fashion. Jaakobou 09:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  punitive civil 

message: I redirected the page on house demolitions in the Arab-Israeli conflict to this page, because it looks as though it was created as a POV fork to attack Israel. The history and context of house demolitions is important and interesting, and we do it no justice by pretending that only Israel does it. The material on that page should be woven into this article, if it hasn't been already. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a controversial move that should have been discussed first. There was some support here for branching off that topic, and I don't recall anyone saying the idea of a subarticle on the house demolitions involving Israel is a POV fork. nadav (talk) 01:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do. Also, which specific section of this article is the Israeli one a sub-article of? I don't see any "Main" heading using that article. Jayjg (talk) 01:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We could create country sections in this article, or else weave the material into the other sections. I've not been editing it, so it's not immediately clear what would be better or what's been tried already. Nadav, it's clearly a POV fork. Neither this nor the other article is long enough to require a separate page. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was the biggest proponent of keeping a global perspective in this article and making sure there is no undue weight given to Israel since are much more historically noteworthy uses of house demolition. I don't see how we would be able to expand coverage of uses of house demolition in Israel Palestine while at the same time keeping out WP:UNDUE here. Even fringe theories like Flat Earth get their own articles (with accompanying small mention in the main article), and there is no reason we cannot do the same here. The only criterion is whether the subject has received extensive discussion in the literature, and this one has beyond a doubt. WP is not paper, and there is no reason that subjects for which a verifiable article can be written should not get an article. (Jayjg: you're right. I was thinking of talk page discussions. The idea of creating a separate article for Israel Palestine was supported by ChrisO and some others on this talk page prior to its creation)  nadav (talk) 07:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Devoting an entire section in this article to the Israel Palestine issue would be undue weight in my opinion. A few lines mentioning it as part of another section is more than enough. nadav (talk) 07:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

text: That was a very inadvisable move on your part. There's absolutely no doubt that the topic is notable and far bigger than can be accommodated in this article. In researching this article, I came across literally hundreds of works - including entire books - specifically on the topic of house demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a topic which we deal with in only a couple of paragraphs in this article. There simply isn't room in this article to provide any more than a summary of a very complex and controversial issue; dealing with it in a separate spinout article is standard practice (per Wikipedia:Content forking#Article spinouts - "Summary style" articles). The current House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict article certainly needs a lot more work but that isn't by itself a reason to delete it. It's also very improper to unilaterally delete and redirect an active article without any prior discussion, particularly as you don't seem to have been involved with it before. If you believe it should be deleted, you should nominate it for deletion through the normal AfD process. -- ChrisO 08:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if and when it gets to be too big, it can be moved if there's an agreement to do so, but it currently isn't too big. And I didn't — as you know — delete anything; I redirected. It's the same old, same old, Chris. I don't see you creating a separate page about Zimbabwe. It's always Israel, it's always as negative as possible, and that's why it gets tiresome. SlimVirgin (talk) 08:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (There is an article on the Zimbabwe case: Operation Murambatsvina) nadav (talk) 08:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

text: We are getting into a vicious circle here. We have to decide: Are we going to write about the loads of Israel Palestine material in this article (argued against by some at [the RfC] and throughout talk) or in a separate article?  Pick a place, but whatever place is chosen, we should be free to include as much (verifiable NPOV) detail as possible. We should not return to the previous situation where attempts to expand coverage of demolitions in the Israel Palestine context were continually reverted. As I said at the RfC, I think it would be excellent if we could proceed in our article creation in the order of most significant demolitions to least significant. Unfortunately, we are bound by our fields of expertise and interest. We already have the Zimbabwe article, and since we all know something about the (very often discussed) Israel situation, we should be free to write about it somewhere. nadav (talk) 09:19, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how you can get away from the fact that in terms of notability, the Israeli-Palestinian case of house demolition is far and away the most significant in the eyes of the world. I agree with SlimVirgin's redirect because I do think the extra article was a POV fork intended to deflect criticism from Israel (this is apparently not her reasoning.) --Marvin Diode 14:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In the eyes of some, it will deflect criticism, and in the eyes of others will concentrate it, but how different people view it shouldn't be our concern. What should concern us is that the material about Israel was moved for effect, rather than for encyclopedic reasons, and that's what happens when editors care more about effect than about just telling the story. This page would be much more interesting with a range of descriptions of house demolitions by different regimes, but we don't care about interesting; we care only about politics, which is why these articles often end up reading so badly. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

text: The world's peculiar obsession with demonizing Israel should not be reflected in Wikipedia articles, which ideally operate according to Wikipedia's policies (though in practice also display much of that obsessive demonization of Israel (see, for example this and this). Jayjg (talk) 21:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jayjg, I think that was uncalled for. In circumstances where there are serious, documented charges of human rights violations, including coming from Statesmen like Jimmy Carter, I don't think you can write it all off as "the world's peculiar obsession with demonizing Israel." Some recognition of prevailing opinion has got to be used as a standard when writing an encyclopedia article on controversial current events. --Marvin Diode 00:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue is not that Israel commits human rights violations; all countries do, in fact, including Israel. The issue is the obsessive focus on Israel's actions, while the actions of much more habitual and egregious violators are ignored; indeed, some of those habitual and egregious violators line up to piously condemn Israel while committing vastly greater horrors of their own. Wikipedia editors who obsessively abet this activity are violating Wikipedia policy. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Marvin, your words are wasted.  Jay is pretty compulsive about smearing editors who dare to challenge his whitewashing, and he's well-connected enough to get away with it.  He almost succeeded in having PalestineRemembered permabanned on the strength of one such tactical smear; revelations about it led to a minor mutiny as well as an Arbcom case (still outstanding, last I checked), but allies of his have effectively circled the wagons.--G-Dett 02:33, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: G-Dett, please do not turn this Talk: page into yet another forum for your personal attacks on me. Focus on article content, not other editors. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jay, the editors of this page have raised content issues, and you've responded with personal smears against them; my response is to this latter.  Your advice to me to "focus on article on article content, not other editors" is therefore not only hypocritical but also entirely off the mark.  It is appropriate to focus on other editors when the issue at hand is persistent trolling and the deployment of tactical smears as a means of gaining leverage in content disputes.  It is inappropriate to focus on other editors when they are merely discussing content, as is happening now with your attacks on Abu Ali, and as has happened from day one of your eight-month campaign against PalestineRemembered.  "Focus on article content, not other editors" is a great general guideline and should be everyone's goal for their own editing and talk page interactions.  Try to get straight its underlying logic, and stop using it merely as a weapon.  Thanks.--G-Dett 10:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please focus on article content, not other editors. Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 06:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your strategic smearing of other editors, followed as it is by bad-faith and hypocritical admonitions to "focus on article content, not other editors," represents a persistent behavioral problem of yours and a trolling issue, not a content issue, and that of course is how it ought to be addressed.--G-Dett 07:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This talk page is not the right forum for listing problems you see with others. It won't help us resolve the question of where to put the Israel Palestine content, and it can only antagonize. Take your issues to a DR process. nadav (talk) 08:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I hope you will at least agree that personal attacks can only hinder any progress on this article. nadav (talk) 06:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict  was created on Jayjg's suggestion. Having removed content on the Israeli Palestinian conflict from this article and having suggested that the content is moved to House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is inconsistent to say the least to   blank the contents that article out and redirect here. ابو علي (Abu Ali) 06:18, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do not misrepresent my comments. You had created the House_demolition_in_the_Israeli-Palestinian_conflict POV-fork four days before I made that comment. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I stand corrected regarding the dates. This was an honest mistake, and I concider your accusation of lieing uncivil. Still could you explain why you are suggested in the comment to this edit  that the material on the Israeli Palestinian conflict should be moved to  the article you want deleted? ابو علي (Abu Ali) 08:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was subsequently convinced that the article was an unhelpful POV-fork, based on argumentation from others, and a review of the article history. Now, please focus on article content, not other editors. Jayjg (talk) 04:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Nadav -> I fear our mutual hope that this matter can be discussed without personal attack will not be possible. PalestineRemembered 11:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, it's deplorable that you would create such an obvious straw man version of my arguments. Have you no shame, ChrisO? The issue here is entirely about policy, particularly WP:UNDUE. Stop focusing so much on me, please, it's unseemly. Jayjg (talk) 02:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree. We almost certainly need articles for military/punitive House demolition in Zimbabwe, in Darfur/Sudan and probably Tibet and other places. But the process of building the encyclopaedia is done one step at a time, and this article is part of that very process. PalestineRemembered 11:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arab-Israeli conflict

message: It seems odd to me that this article has no mention of Rachel Corrie, whose death was chiefly responsible for bringing the issue of house demolition to public attention. IMO it would be appropriate to acknowledge this in the lead. --Marvin Diode 21:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's extremely odd. However, there is a WP policy by which articles should not become too long. That's why some editors here have created a "House demolition in the Israel-Palestine conflict" section and those editors are so irritated that it's been deleted. Go to this link where I've created a new page that I'm sure would satisfy all parties. (And it does mention Rachel Corrie!) PalestineRemembered 21:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is nowhere near the "too-long" length for Wikipedia articles, the reason for creating the "Israel demolitions" article had nothing to do with article length, and the "Israel demolitions" article was not "deleted". Please make more truthful Talk: comments. Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 02:46, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're absolutely wrong on your second assertion and evading the point on the third assertion. I'll reiterate something I thought I'd already made clear. When I rewrote this article, I deliberately cast it as an overview, not going into great detail about subtopics but summarising each and linking out to main articles. You can see those links at the top of sections 1.1.1, 1.1.2 and 1.1.3. The previous version of the article dealt in depth with one specific conflict and was therefore not suitable for an overview article. When Abu ali challenged my removal of the previous content (at #Deletion of Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict above) I suggested that it would be more appropriate to use the removed content in a spinout article. It was made clear from the start that that was why it was created, and you went along with it until SlimVirgin brought her circus to town. As for your third assertion, the content was deleted without consensus or even any prior discussion, while my requests that you follow normal AfD procedures were ignored. You don't get to unilaterally blank and redirect articles, Jay. How about following the advice of Wikipedia:Consensus for once? -- ChrisO 09:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

text: According to whom was Rachel Corrie's death chiefly responsible for bringing the issue of house demolition to public attention? Jayjg (talk) 02:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't aware it did, the issue has certainly been the topic of controversy long before that incident. -- ChrisO 09:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

text: The bulldozing of Rachel Corrie was certainly a factor in popularizing the issue of house demolition, but I'm not sure if it was chiefly responsible or not. In either case, it would be totally appropriate to mention Rachel Corrie, even in an overview article, as she is a very well-known victim of a bulldozing in the I/P conflict. Organ123 17:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree - it's one incident in one conflict, and I doubt it was even the most significant episode in the I/P house demolition saga. It's too fine a level of detail for an overview article. If anything, we already have too much detail and too much weight on the I/P conflict in this article - there's more on I/P than World War II, which is pretty disproportionate considering the relative scales of the conflicts. -- ChrisO 17:26, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it was the most significant episode either, inasmuch as one bulldozing death is no more significant than any other. I do think that it was much more discussed in the Western media than other specific deaths, probably for racist reasons, but there's also a play written about her, and a song, and whatnot. I don't think it's too fine of a detail to mention her in an overview article, but I don't feel that passionately about it. However, it's hard to have this discussion at all in light of the deletion activities of the new I/P-related article. If editors aren't allowed to have a space to discuss the issue in some more detail, then I would feel more strongly about including Corrie in this article. Organ123 18:06, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rachel Corrie

message: As predicted by some people above, the creation of a spin-off article was cut short by its blanking as a POV-Fork. See here for the on-going discussion. With the article itself no longer present, you can only see an archived copy of it, see here. PalestineRemembered 15:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But if the article ends up bieng deleted, all of its sourced content will have to be merged here.Bless sins 18:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is already 35K, so it's over the first touch-wire at which splitting should be considered. Merge another article that is already either 9K or 17K and you're approaching the level (60K) at which splitting becomes urgent. One of the people calling for merge/redirect of this article is at Kiryat Gat calling for a 6.5K (or perhaps 10K) article to be split. I think it's high time we edited to policy - splitting is over-due and the time of good-faith editors is being wasted. PalestineRemembered 19:37, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

text: And as I said in the AfD discussion, this will result in the I-P issue being given grossly disproportionate prominence. It's already too prominent IMO - it has more coverage than World War II, which is ridiculous. We need less I-P content in this article, not more. That's the whole point of an overview article. -- ChrisO 19:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of article "House demolition in the I-P conflict" 

message: Now that the AfD on House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has closed with a substantial majority in favour of keeping the separate article, it's open for editing again. I'm not going to involve myself in developing it because it's not my area of expertise or interest, but I've posted a suggested outline at Talk:House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hope that it will help editors to find a more productive way forward. I've simultaneously reduced the Israeli-Palestinian content in this article (see diff) to ensure that its coverage is consistent with maintaining this article as a broad-brush overview. I suggest that the removed content be repurposed in the spinout article. I highly recommend that the editors who've been disputing content on this article take their dispute elsewhere, as the disputed content is simply too specific and verbose for the brief coverage required of an overview article.
As for this article, Raul654 has suggested nominating it for FA status. Obviously this is something I'd like to achieve, but I think it requires a bit more work before it can be nominated successfully. I'll do some more tweaking and researching over the next few days, with the intention of starting the ball rolling on FAC shortly thereafter. If anyone has any suggestions for areas that need to be developed or modified, please post them below. Thanks in advance. :-) -- ChrisO 00:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The way forward

message: I was sorry to oppose the article at FAC - it's great but the name was misleading for me. Can I propose moving the article to House demolition (punitive)? Punitive seems to sum up and dab the military or civil 'punishment' demolitions the article refers to. It was my only gripe with what is otherwise, a great article --Joopercoopers 11:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: FAC and forward

message: Marvin, [Category:Human rights abuses] is the parent category of [Category:Collective punishment].
Lapsed Pacifist (talk) 19:49, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing category 

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thread_title: File:Sacking of Balbriggan 1920.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I made slight edits to remove what appeared to be implicit bias or npov in the article. Probably remaining from when this article was a battleground pre the fork.
I think maybe we should think about replacing the photograph of israeli military equipment but I didn't feel it was appropriate without consensus 2601:240:C400:1480:415A:4DF6:4766:4D0C (talk) 21:45, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improved npov