Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Israeli apartheid/Proposed decision

message: From Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Israeli apartheid/Proposed decision#Negotiation:
:#May I suggest "Status of Palestinians in the occupied territories" Fred Bauder 19:51, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

message: I have the feeling this proposed decision is unbalanced, it defacto allows certain POV's in Wikipedia, and it does not address the issues sufficiently. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 22:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a start not a definitive solution. Fred Bauder 16:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I forgot about this train derailment. There's only two choices the way I see it. 1. Ban everyone and give me exclusive authority to edit the article (sorry, no Kims, we already have one). 2. Amnesty everyone, and give exclusive authority to 72.232.204.226 to edit the article. El_C 12:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or you could go out of your way to get input from good wikipedians who never or rarely edit jew/israel/arab/muslim articles. A few admins who usually stick to science articles come to mind. WAS 4.250 18:13, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good idea.  Maybe get some people from completely different cultures, from China or Japan perhaps.   --John Nagle 19:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Coming from "completely different cultures" doesn't guarantee someone neutrality. The conflict is highly polarizing and I am afraid it would be practically impossible to find someone unbiased (even though some people claim to be). This is especially true today, in light of the ongoing war and image-rich media. ←Humus sapiens ну? 03:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lack of perfection in choices is no reason not to choose a better choice over a worse choice. WAS 4.250 07:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Asking people who know nothing about the Arab-Israeli conflict for opinions about it doesn't sound like a very helpful thing to me, and the reality is that people who do know about it tend to have a POV. Therefore, the way forward is to trust that good editors will write carefully and will use good sources well. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: As Leibniz said, it doesn't necessitate, but it does incline. By all means find a good Wikipedia editor, possibly from China or Japan, who doesn't edit Arab-Israeli articles, but who knows a lot (or an adequate amount) about the topic; and bear in mind that "adequate" would mean s/he would have to know at least as much as the editors who do edit a lot in that area. That's a tall order. SlimVirgin (talk) 08:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: You'd still have to know the literature: who had used the term, where, when, why; who had argued against it; who has used it but later repudiated it, and so on. Just as I'd have difficulty being a neutral and useful admin over an evolution dispute, my guess is that most science admins would have difficulty evaluating a mid-east related dispute. There was an idea a year or so ago to set up a small committee of users with PhDs (or professional equivalent) in a variety of fields, who would act as neutral content advisors, but it didn't get off the ground, and I'm not sure there would be a welcome for such a committee, as WP tends to be somewhat anti-expert. SlimVirgin (talk) 09:11, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WAS, the way round all these disputes is for editors to become very familiar with NOR, V, and NPOV, and then to stick to them; and the more the content is in dispute, the more rigidly the policies should be adhered to. I have never seen a dispute continue where the policies were being correctly interpreted and stuck to. SlimVirgin (talk) 09:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unbalanced 

message: Whatever. I have come to the conclusion that Wikipedia cannot work, and NPOV will always represent that of the largest group. Until that is fixed, Wikipedia will not be reliable. Just check an article at a bunch of different wiki's, and compare them. If NPOV works, they should roughly provide the same NPOV, which is just as illusive as a unicorn.  See for example the taxonomy of the Psittaciformes, which differs per wiki... :-( -- Kim van der Linde at venus 21:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The ban on Zeq seemed to work, and banning a few more editors under the same terms would probably work, too.  If nobody gets banned, that's a signal that the way to push your point of view on Wikipedia is to organize a team, preferably one with some admins, to do so.   --John Nagle 22:35, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A block was proposed against Zeq for having written an article about another editor, so how would you ban others "under the same terms," and how did the block against Zeq "work"? You have to be very careful here not to talk about "teams," when all you're seeing is editors who agree with each other, either about the substance or about the interpretation of policy. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Nagle, if we're blocking people for creating attack biographies, perhaps we need to start with the person who created this:  Jayjg (talk) 03:04, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: How are you going to determine when people are acting as a "team," as opposed to simply agreeing with each other? For example, from my perspective Homey and KimvdLinde were acting as a "team," though they probably didn't see it that way. People who share the same interests end up with the same articles on their watchlists, and therefore edit the same pages. I don't see that we can, or would want to, do anything about that. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:57, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure. Any more evidence-free accusations? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 02:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not going to argue with you, but you've missed the point. My point is that who is and isn't a "team" often boils down to perception. From my perception, you were acting as part of a "team." From yours, you weren't; you were simply making edits that you thought were correct. Ditto for other people. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said, the usuall unfounded evidence-free accusations. Maybe you should show the evidence for that. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 02:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct that it might be very difficult to show teamwork, but it happens. It should not be confused with people who simply share a point of view. Fred Bauder 02:54, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it isindeed difficult to show that. However, it can be done. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 13:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Kim, you're missing the point, and wikilawyering again. Has this case not shown you the problem with that? Jayjg (talk) 03:04, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you are missing the point that this proposed decision is offering a blue-print for Guideline: How to push your POV at Wikipedia gaming using the system. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 13:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: There were a couple of editors who until recently used to edit the same pages a lot, in what KimvdLinde would undoubtedly call a "team" if they were opposing her (though not if they were on her side). They had a strong POV, which I don't share, and so it was mildly annoying when both would arrive at an article. But what it meant was that I had to work even harder to persuade them; had to find better sources; had to use the sources well; had to do my best to represent their POV. In doing that, I learned more about the topic than I otherwise would have, and discovered that, although I still think my position was good, they had a valid point too. The result was better editing and better articles. How would it have benefited me or WP to start screaming "tag team" at them? All they were doing was sharing interests and agreeing with each other, and anyway, the correct response to opposition is to become a better editor, not start throwing around accusations. There are very, very few regulars on Wikipedia who don't respond positively to good editing. Most editors act in good faith, and people acting in good faith don't as a rule interfere with well-written and well-sourced material, so if you produce that, most of the time your edits will stick. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whow, maybe you should take your own advise at hand, and before you make wild baseless accusations again, base those on evidence instead. Maybe show that I was material for blocking the RfM as you accused me of many times without any evidence. Or show that I indeed showed up at articles where Homey showed up as well. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 13:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It's biased in that way in your opinion, but that's because you have a strong anti-Israel POV. Everyone with an anti-Israel POV thinks the articles are biased in favor of Israel. People with a pro-Israel POV think the articles are biased against Israel. I can therefore only repeat: the way forward is always, always to use the best sources available, read them carefully, and write up their material faithfully with as little spin as possible. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: NPOV implies: "I talk as if I do not care if the State of Israel got pushed into the sea today." It is very difficult for people who do care about Israel to see this as "neutral", but that is the difficult task we impose on EVERYBODY in order to be able to talk about a genuine NPOV that we can try to agree upon. It is called "just not caring at all" about anything except encyclopedia quality. You get to be like a god in Greek mythology looking down upon the struggle except that you DO NOT get to do any divine intervention. You do not waste time with "what if..." or "My, how heroic!". You just sit there passively and observe — just like watching a sit-com on TV. In this case, that is not inherently anti-Israel.  In that world that these gods live in, all the people doing the fighting are pretty dumb. There are no heros. There are no terrorists. There is no us/them. There is no good or evil.  There is no right and wrong. No drama. It is kinda boring because the plot does not change: They are all gonna be fighting the same ol' fight on next week's episode. Just different people then because most of the one's from last week's episode died. The only thing the observer should care about is getting the story accurately in a way that we mostly agree on. The observer should be obsessed with the Truth, but that Truth should be rather dull and boring because we all agree on it. Boring! You do not even get to explain WHY a person did a certain thing unless they maybe wrote a book about it afterwards AND you believe what they wrote in their book. Don't you see? It does not matter WHY Booth shot Lincoln. What is MUCH MORE important than that is the way the bullet entered behind Lincoln's left ear and lodged behind his eyeball, passing through and causing trauma to some intervening grey matter. It is much more interesting the way Booth's right leg broke moments later, than that he felt pain. It is much more important that Jackie picked up some of her husbands brains than to explain that she, in her stupor, imagined that such material would be good for anything.  When was the last time Kennedy's penis entered her vagina? Did she like it? That last time? Does it matter if she liked it? Had he fucked anybody else in the mean time? Why such details? Because we all agree on them if we can get the supporting evidence and therefor we "know" them to be fact. What went on in the minds of Lincoln and Kennedy are rather abstract. We do not know them to be fact. Even Hitler becomes merely "of interest". In NPOV-land, there is no Holocaut. There are just accurate damage reports.-- 75.24.106.82 14:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Very cynical. I think a more appropriate view is that if people have access to good information then they have some chance to make wise decisions which advance human welfare and avoid suffering. Fred Bauder 16:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: There is no "threat of ban hanging over some of the editors", unless you're looking at a different proposed decision than I am. The fact that User:HOTR has left Wikipedia is helping to an extent, though his constant sockpuppeting is a problem, and the fact that Kim is restricting her edits mostly to wikilawyering on this case has also helped calm various articles down. However, I cannot agree with your claim that your behavior has "improved considerably" - on the contrary, you still see Wikipedia as an adversarial place where one must find various means of punishing those who disagree with you, and you still continue to edit Wikipedia as means for promoting an agenda, often in contravention of policy. This issue still needs to be dealt with. Jayjg (talk) 20:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia cannot work