Misplaced Pages

As I mentioned in the section below, there is clearly no consensus for change demonstrated here. It is contrary to our usual practice to change the status quo ante (i.e. consensus content before the discussion started) once a discussion has begun until consensus for a change is established. The removal of this information was part of an single complex edit and not mentioned at all in that edit summary. The related list in See also was removed in another edit a bit later (this time with edit summary). This unresolved discussion is reason enough to restore the information, but while I was checking other changes in the big edit I noticed that the Israeli source Haaretz also uses the same description in the title of an article we are already using as a reference. I am restoring the lead content and adding the Haaretz reference so it is clear that this is an appropriate term, in widespread use in reliable sources, to summarise Corrie's activism. The list is clearly appropriate since Corrie is listed there. I've restored it at the end so it does not interrupt the links to other casualties. --Mirokado (talk) 21:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I've restored back to the stable version of Sean.hoyland from late June, there's been a serious POV attack on the article this month, a lot of unnecessary and bias "according to" and "allegedly", well poisoning, removing her non-violence, addition of fringe advocacy groups, etc.. Sorry if good edits were caught in that mess, but it had to be done. Sepsis II (talk) 00:12, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

As expected one of the editors that hounds me reinstated the clealy unacceptable revisions, if someone could undue the unexplained drive-by hounding that would be great. Sepsis II (talk) 00:48, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, I still think I oppose the description "peace activist" in the lede. I appreciate the BBC but it appears to be the only RS calling her such and there thousands of articles about her. Indeed her activities cannot fairly be described as "peace activism" because most of her activities involved some sort of protest. Not saying that's not a good thing but that type of activity is not typically described as "peace activism." --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 00:50, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. The designation of RC as " peace activist" seems highly POV. It is also vulnerable to deletion in terms of the paucity of RS cites thus far demonstrated supporting this epithet Irondome (talk) 01:05, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that the Haaretz article has to count as reliable for this context. It is how she was described by a source which had no reason to be particularly sympathetic to her, immediately after her death, thus undistorted by any source bias in her favour or propaganda spin. This is a biography of Corrie: I don't see how we can provide a fair summary in the lead if we suppress information about what sort of "activity" she was performing. Perhaps editors who do not like the phrase "peace activist" can suggest a well-sourced alternative which they consider more acceptable while still providing the necessary background. I don't buy the suggestion that pacifists do not protest, have a look at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp for example. --Mirokado (talk) 23:52, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Which Haaretz article? Also I guess you're not aware, but Haaretz (not to dispute its reliability for news reports) is considered to the far left of the Israeli political spectrum. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 00:02, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

The first callout in the lead, also used twice more in the article:

"American peace activist killed by army bulldozer in Rafah". Haaretz. March 17, 2003. Retrieved May 8, 2008.

No I'm not that familiar with the Israeli press, thanks for the information. --Mirokado (talk) 00:34, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. That's in the headline so that's not as good as if it were in the body of the article. Regardless, I think what we have to answer is how do most RS's describe her in their opening sentence. If most do not refer to her that way it would not make sense for her Misplaced Pages article to refer to her that way in the opening sentence of the lede despite the procurement of one or two articles out of a few thousand article that do refer to her that way. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 00:42, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Type Rachel Corrie into the google search bar and is asks you, Rachel Corrie - Peace activist or MV Rachel Corrie, ship? This conversation is beyond the pale really, there's no question that someone who spent their life defending an occupied people against war crimes is a peace activist. Sepsis II (talk) 03:42, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

It is what documents support it rather then by what websites say. Also how many of those websites are disqualified to use as a source? Also that the current version is heavily written with a biased against the IDF, which goes against Misplaced Pages's Neutrality view for each article. Articseahorse (talk) 05:05, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

What evidence in the article and/or evidence present in RS but absent from the article led you to conclude that "the current version is heavily written with a biased against the IDF" ? Can you cite examples of that bias, explain why they qualify as bias (using policy and RS based arguments) and propose improvements so that they can be discussed one at a time ? Generally speaking, in my experience, editors who show an interest in this article do so because of their own bias, which very often makes their assessment of bias unreliable. I hope you are different because what this article needs is disinterested editors who don't care about Corrie, the IDF or anything else this article discusses but who can identify genuine instances of bias/NPOV non-compliance that can be discussed and fixed without anyone giving their personal opinions about any of the real world issues, people, organizations etc. Sean.hoyland - talk 10:06, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Unexplained removal of content, removal of sourced content

In the first of a series of edits, user:Monochrome monitor removed about 2Kbytes of content with the edit summary: "categorized testimonies into ISM, israeli, other (some testimonies weren't labelled as ISM), added controversy on richard falk".

• The added content mentioned in the edit summary is:

  Richard Falk, a controversial former UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories (condemned repeatedly during his term by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the U.S., Britain and Canada for promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories and endorsing an anti-Semitic book) (ref) http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/category/richard-falk/ (/ref)

  for which the reference has not been formatted consistently with the others. "Condemned repeatedly" is a quote of the language used in the reference, probably needs to be quoted here. Is the referenced blog a reliable source?
• I have been mostly unable to identify what has been removed or why. but I do notice that the word "peace" has been removed from the lead, despite there clearly being no consensus for such a change in the preceding section Talk:Rachel Corrie#Peace activist?. A change like this which is bound not to be accepted must not be buried in a mass of other changes, must be explained in the edit summary and must be supported by reliable sources. The reference callout for that sentence very clearly supports the content before the change.
• It looks as if there are a lot of other controversial changes hidden away in this edit, but it is impossible to be sure we have seen and evaluated them all because content changes are mixed up with the moving of blocks of text. The has already been reverted once by user:Irondome and, unless someone else has already done so while I am typing this, I will revert it again, not using rollback which would be inappropriate but restoring the previous version by normal editing. Just to be clear, I have looked at the diffs for all the affected edits and satisfied myself that
  • it is impracticable to revert the first edit and retain any of the others
  • it is impossible to evaluate the first edit in detail with a reasonable amount of effort but it very clearly contains changes for which there is demonstrably no consensus

MM, please plan and structure these substantial changes more carefully. You need to separate content changes completely from content reorganisation, and avoid tangling up unrelated potentially controversial changes in the same edit. --Mirokado (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Whilst I think that a lot of user:Monochrome monitor's edits were solid, I would also counsel to take things slowly. This is a contentious article with a lot of editors interested in providing their input. It is best to make/propose changes piecemeal. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 01:05, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I have given my original rationale for using rollback on my talkpage. It was best, in my opinion, to have done the editing process in incremental steps, and to sought consensus on the relevant talk page. I have also sought dialogue with MM. I do believe his edits could balance the article far better after a good debate, but I do believe it should have been discussed first. Irondome (talk) 01:11, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that. If I removed any content, feel free to add it back. I mostly meant to add content and reoorganize the article so that ISM activists were clearly labelled as such and visa versa. It was very hard fixing the refs for me as I'm a new editor. I'm just trying to add both sides so it's more clear. --monochrome_monitor 04:33, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

And as for the "blog" it's an accredited NGO and it links to American and UN statements on Falk. He was sacked for being so controversial. He said that the Boston Bomber was do to "America" and "Tel Aviv" or something like that. Crazy dude. --monochrome_monitor 04:36, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Here's the statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome monitor (talk • contribs) 04:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

As I have said, I support your edits MM. My only concern was article stability, and I may have been over-cautious. Have you reverted my perhaps unwise rollback? I haven't checked. I certainly will not revert anything. If you have not, then revisit the incremental approach in some of the eds, or at least their sequence. There was some good advice given upthread on this. I totally agree with your view on Falk. Irondome (talk) 19:08, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I think Monochrome Monitor's changes were substantial NPOV improvements and removed many weasel words. For example describing ISM activists accounts as objective "witnesses", while all the accounts of all the Israeli soldiers, government investigation, the driver, and even video evidence are all lumped together as the opinion of the Israeli government. Wikieditorpro (talk) 20:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

So should we rollback the rollback, if you like? I'm certainly in favor.--monochrome_monitor 21:25, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh great someone already did that. Thanks for your contributions, guys!--monochrome_monitor 21:29, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Well I'm obviously not satisfied with the way these changes have been added wholesale to the article. but it looks from other contributions above as if we will have to work from the current version. In order to enable us to see what has been changed, I will update the article with versions which generate a clean difference display. In order to do this, I will place {{In use}} on the intermediate versions and finish this editing session by restoring the current version (as I write this, a bot edit restoring a missing ref). Some of the intermediates will look like wholesale reversions, please do not panic they will be short-lived. I have prepared the two versions we will need for the comparison using an offline diff tool, but I must also check the diffs as I apply the updates here, so the In use flag may be around for 20-30 mins. I will update further here when I have finished. --Mirokado (talk) 23:39, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

The heads-up is appreciated Irondome (talk) 00:09, 4 July 2014 (UTC)