Talk:Joel Hayward

message: As I recreate this bio, I'm going to list what I'm putting in step-by-step and my rationale for including it.  I'll check my talk page periodically if you'd like to chime in.  I'm not going to flesh out the article very much, I'm just going to put in the basics.
# :  Hayward was born and raised in New Zealand, but currently works in Britain, ergo this stub instead of 
# Categories:  Historians, Historical revisionism (political), Living people, Academic scandals, Authors.  Great, I haven't even started on the body text yet and already I've hit material that might prove to be upsetting, to wit "revisionism" and "scandals".  I'm including "revisionism" because Hayward even acknowledges that he was writing about revisionists in his infamous thesis.  "Scandal" however is knottier, and I'm sure will draw fire for being a POV-term.  Hear me out though:  look at Wikipedia's own definition of scandal:  "A scandal is a widely publicized incident involving allegations of wrong-doing, disgrace, or moral outrage. A scandal may be based on reality, or the product of false allegations, or a mixture of both."  That is a PERFECT description of the events surrounding the 2000 thesis inquiry.  Were the allegations against Hayward based in reality, false, or a mix?  Let the reader decide.  But the fact is that the brouhaha was "widely publicized" and is ergo a scandal.  If somebody wants to move the category "Academic scandals" to "Academic controversies" I will not object, but some sort of cat tag along those lines should be present.
# I'm also adding "1964 births" as a category.  I'm omitting "Holocaust denial" as a category, although I think it might fit.
# Opening sentence:  "Joel Hayward (Joel S. A. Hayward) was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1964. He is a military historian and analyst who has worked in the United Kingdom since 2004."  That's the opening sentence from the June 9, 2007 Google cache version.
# Next paragraph/sentence:  "Hayward is the author of a critically-acclaimed assessment of aerial warfare at the Battle of Stalingrad entitled Stopped at Stalingrad:  The Luftwaffe and Hitler’s Defeat in the East 1942-1943."  That's also pretty much from the 6/9/07 version, but I've enhanced the language a little.  I'm omitting the pub and ISBN info because that info belongs on the page for the book, not the author.
# For now, I'm tagging the intro section with .  Refs should not be too hard to find.
# New section, Next paragraph, next sentence:  Now we hit the hairy bits.  "Hayward was involved a controversy in New Zealand surrounding his 1993 Master's Degree thesis in which he was accused of citing the works of (and expressing support for some arguments of) proponents of the Holocaust denial school of historical revisionism."  This is from the 6/13/07 deleted revision.  I'm citing this article as support.
# Sorry, I got tired of documenting this point-by-point.  I'll let the final results speak for themselves. 
Groupthink 16:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Here we go again 

message: OK, I've invested all the time and energy I'm willing to put into this, for now.  I've pre-emptively added the  tag because I'm sure that people are going to complain that it's still unbalanced.  I've tagged places where expansion could bring about a better balance, but it is my good-faith belief that everything I've put in is reliably sourced and relevant.  There are warts here, but in my opinion they're fair warts.  Now I beg of y'all, please, don't let my work be in vain.  Don't delete, correct and expand! Groupthink 18:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm done, let others carry on 

message: With respect to Groupthink my objection to his original text on my life was that it mentioned an accusation that lay at the heart of a controversy in 2000 but did not adequately point out the result of the accusation: that a working party of the University of Canterbury concluded in December 2000 that the MA thesis contained mistaken and unsustainable conclusions based on my poor supervision and my inadequate preparation and training for such a project, but that no malice, racism or dishonesty led me to my mistakes. Another writer on the talk page alleges that I write controversial books. That is inaccurate. I am author or editor of several well-received and mainstream studies, including one on Lord Nelson, whom I extol. Joel Hayward.
:Hi there, Dr. Hayward. As an historian, I'm sure you can appreciate that while your perspective on the events culminating in the University report of 2000 is unarguably an invaluable primary source of considerable weight, your perspective is also unarguably biased and inevitably favorably colored. While I will strive to create a fair and balanced encyclopedia entry on you, I will not omit verifiably sourced material on you that may reflect poorly on you or displease you. Now I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but Wikipedia is very much driven by sourcing concerns and by notability concerns (see WP:N and WP:Verify for more information). Based on what's out there on the web and what's been discussed here on Wikipedia, you seem to be generally notable for two things: Stopped at Stalingrad and the hullabaloo surrounding your thesis. As far as I'm concerned, those two items are the appropriate scope for an encyclopedia article on you. If I do my job correctly, said article will not praise you, but neither will it bury you. Groupthink 16:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It would help a lot if you could give us a link or some other pointer to the UofC's working party's report.JoshuaZ 16:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's here  Addhoc 16:31, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: This article was specifically deleted at Mr. Hayward's request. I'm a little spoofed you guys are willing to recreate it. However, if it's recreated, I'm not at all in favor of dumming it down - if he is famous for something, it needs to get mentioned too. Mr. Hayward, we'd be glad to write a balanced article, but all things need to be included - Wikipedia does not shy away from controversy, and if something is well-sourced and notable, it needs to be included. The Evil Spartan 16:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Based on deletion review for this article, I took it upon myself to repost this. Now as I've said numerous times, I will stop right now if there's no way that a bio for this person can exist, but if that's the case, I'd like the article salted. Otherwise, this thing's going to keep on coming back. If you think what I've written is unbalanced, you should see what was reposted after the initial delete... Groupthink 16:50, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Again, with all due respect sir, what you think is fair, what I think is fair and what the WP community are going to regard as fair are all entirely different things.  I've noted your assertions throughout, but I have to be bound by what's in verifiable primary and secondary sources. Groupthink 16:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please remember that you cannot speak for the Wikipedia community, Groupthink.  Whatever you write will have to abide by all Wikipedia policies.  --Tony Sidaway 16:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Who says that I was?  In fact, the comment I just made specifically said that what I think is fair and what the WP community is going to regard as fair might very well be entirely different things. Groupthink 17:06, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: As for abiding by all policies:  I've never thought otherwise, but if you think something violates policy, change it.  Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by killing the whole article however. Groupthink 17:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Groupthink's above version looks fine to me as long as we add a sentence noting the working party's conclusion. Hayward's summary of their conclusions looks accurate. JoshuaZ 17:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Done, done and done, but I'll also add a ref to Dr. Hayward's statement in the University report. Groupthink 18:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments from BLP's subject 

message: I've only just discovered this article (through the AfD for Stopped At Stalingrad - which I opposed) and so am coming to this with little knowledge of past debates. I've made a few edits in the interest of trying to address the balance and bring things more in line with the manual of style. I'm hoping that the balance tag might soon be removed. Victoriagirl 21:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the MOS cleanup and for resorting in chronological order.  I'm still worried that there's going to be charges of bias (I'm waiting with dread for the subject of this blp to object) so I've put in two section breaks and put back an  template in the hopes that adding material on Dr. Hayward's later career will bring about sought-after balance. Groupthink 23:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: That's appreciated, but you should be warned that Wikipedia has a mercurial nature, and what one reads at a given point in time might change substantially further down the road.  Already there's some disagreement as to what the Canterbury report does or does not indicate.  You might want to check back in a month or two to see if this article settles down to a stable version.  Again, I do not speak for WP as a whole, just myself. Groupthink 06:43, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit from left field 

message: I commend everyone who's stepped in and improved this article, particularly Ace of Swords and Victoriagirl.  At this point, I would say that the article is balanced enough to remove the  tag, and the post-graduate section has been expanded enough to remove the  tag.  However, to avoid any semblance of conflict-of-interest, I'm not going to remove the tags myself (but I have put in hidden comments indicating that any editor can feel free to do so).
Assuming the AfD will result in this article being kept (and it sure looks like that's what's going to happen), I will not be actively editing this article, but I am going to keep it in my watchlist for a while to make sure that the warts of this bio are appropriately preserved.  I'm worried that the balance of this article's tone is going to tilt too far towards the favorable, so I'd like to urge everyone to remember that this article should not and must not be a fanvertisement for Dr. Hayward.  Like I said above, we shouldn't edit to bury, but we shouldn't edit to praise either. Groupthink 11:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the  tag which, as I recall, was only put in as a pre-empt and not because any editor actually thought the article really was unbalanced! I didn't think it was unbalanced then, and it has only improved since. So let's see if anyone replaces it and what justification they give. I've left the 'expand' tag later, as I'm sure there's more to be said here. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk to me) 11:23, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well... I don't think it's a matter of being "favorable" or "unfavorable," just of being fair and accurate or not. There's more to go, both on the controversy and on other aspects of his life. I saw a ref to the Nelson book being placed as a standard for the U.S. Naval Academy, I want to see if another source verifies.  I'm about to remove the "expand" tag: yes there's more to add, and I will be adding it as I can. --Ace of Swords 15:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sufficiently balanced and expanded? 

message: From the opening sentence of historical revisionism:  "Historical revisionism has both a legitimate academic use and a pejorative meaning. The pejorative use refers to illegitimate manipulation of history for political purposes, for example Holocaust denial."  Given Hayward's past connections to David Irving, the term is apt.  Your edits are not appropriate, Jayjg, and I request that you stop making them. Groupthink 02:53, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. BTW, back from an absence, now back to work on the material on the controversy and Working Party. --Ace of Swords 17:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Holocaust denial cannot be a "school of historical revisionism", since it is not historical revisionism at all, as the many sources in the Holocaust denial article attest. On Wikipedia we use the proper term that scholars prefer for Holocaust denial. Jayjg (talk) 23:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Holocaust denial isn't historical revisionism?  Denying the Holocaust existed isn't an "attempt to change commonly held ideas about the past"?  That's silly, Jayjg, and while you many have a notion about correct terminology, I doubt that you speak for the entirety of Wikipedia, much less the majority consensus.  Seriously, there's been a lot of hashing out about consensus terminology in this article here, and you're barging in and changing it without discussion.  Please don't make these edits again until and unless you make your case here on the talk page. Groupthink 03:57, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not technically violating the letter of 3RR by reverting this edit again, but I do feel I'd be violating the spirit of it.  I'll leave it to others to judge whether or not these edits should stay. Groupthink 04:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm going to concede the point that Holocaust denial is not a legitimate branch of academic/mainstream historical revisionism.  But what about the pejorative usage of the term, to wit, Historical revisionism (negationism)?  Wouldn't it be fair to say that Hayward studied "Holocaust negationism?" Groupthink 23:41, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The term "negationism" is sometimes used as a general term for denial of history, but the common term for denial of the Holocaust is "Holocaust denial". As a simple test "Holocaust negationism" gets around 250 Google hits, "Holocaust denial" around 775,000. Jayjg (talk) 03:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holocaust denial is a subset of historical revisionism 

message: Is it worth noting that in 2011 Dr Hayward converted to Islam?203.184.41.226 (talk) 09:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is already well covered in the article (and well referenced) and clearly it was not in 2011. He spoke at the 2010 GPU as a Muslim. George Custer's Sabre (talk) 12:01, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Islam 

message: The first time I read this article I was looking for information on Hayward's thesis controversy, and was surprised to find it at the end of the second section rather than in chronological order in the "Education at UC" section. This seems to be both counter-intuitive (chronological order of events being intuitive) and counter to the standard writing of biographies of either living people or dead, when similar information is grouped together (i.e. all information about the person's education at UC should be grouped together). TBH, I was looking for this information and almost gave up after reading the "Education at UC" section, assuming it wasn't included at all. I had to read through almost the whole article to find it, which doesn't make it easy for readers to access. 
Thus, I moved the sub-section on the thesis up to the appropriate chronological point at the end of the "Education at UC" section. However,  disagreed with me and undid my revision. I stand by my view that chronologically and logically that sub-section should sit in the "Education at UC" section. Any other thoughts from other editors?? MurielMary (talk) 05:09, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Dear MurielMary, thank you for your reply. I don't want to edit war with you, and I don't feel super passionately about your edit. Why don't we both sit back and see if it's edited again (or not). Regards, George Custer's Sabre (talk) 10:48, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sure, let's see if there are any other opinions. (BTW I love how "edit war" is a verb here, there should be a Wikipedia dictionary/glossary of terms!) MurielMary (talk) 20:54, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sequence of sections in this article 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 7 external links on Joel Hayward. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added  tag to http://www.londondeclaration.com/shtml
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111001104653/http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/APRVol13No3%20-high.pdf to http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/APRVol13No3%20-high.pdf
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110725210558/http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/Final-revised-APR%20Booklet_%20Vol%2013%20No%202_Final.pdf to http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/Final-revised-APR%20Booklet_%20Vol%2013%20No%202_Final.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111001104653/http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/APRVol13No3%20-high.pdf to http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/APRVol13No3%20-high.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110511104950/http://www.joelhayward.org/Global%20War%20Studies%207.2.pdf to http://www.joelhayward.org/Global%20War%20Studies%207.2.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110903131716/http://www.airpowerstudies.com/APR%20Vol14%20No1%20Booklet.pdf to http://www.airpowerstudies.com/APR%20Vol14%20No1%20Booklet.pdf
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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

message: Much of Hayward's academic biography is based inappropriately on his autobiography and organisational biographies he's likely to have had a hand in writing. The article also contains claims which were questioned by the canterbury report (such as 'maternal grandmother's Jewishness'). I trimmed much of this and rewrote it in the style of most other wikipedia biographies of academics. I left the Islamic stuff, since to be honest I don't have the background to evaluate that side of the biography. These changes should be bought back, but I'm not going to edit war over it. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:24, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your reply, Stuartyeates. I see your good faith but continue respectfully to disagree. Unless you can demonstrate which "organisational biographies he's likely to have had a hand in writing" it seems unhelpful to remove information based on a supposition. This would surely apply to very many articles. Other statements about Hayward are certainly from third-party sources and should not be removed and need not be trimmed. I see the article as a reasonable and balanced (and solidly referenced) overview of a full academic and scholarly career without much personal or non-encyclopedic material in it. Thank you for not wanting to edit war. I appreciate the wisdom. All the best, George Custer's Sabre (talk) 09:35, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree with you on multiple points above. I'll start with tagging some sources. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:34, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope you will do more than that and cut the BLP down to 25% of its present size by removing the exorbitant bloat. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:53, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trimming 

message: Hi all, I appear to have bollocksed the AfD process for this article. I got thrown by the fact that there were already three other AfD reqs, two of which were titled "2nd nom" and "second nom". Rather than continue to try to manually fix this, I've reached out for help at Wikipedia:Help desk. Apologies. Groupthink (talk) 05:32, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jacked up AfD nom