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Revision as of 03:31, 13 January 2011

Investigation: .Faustian (talk) 06:26, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Lwów pogrom (1918)

The information that the Blue Army participated in the pogrom comes from a reliable source. The sentence in question attributed the information to its source:

Writing in the journal Central European History, William W. Hagen reports that the pogrom was carried out by Polish Blue Army forces, together with lawless civilians, with the connivance or toleration of their military superiors.

If you wish to add a sentence from a reliable source (not one that is self-published) that denies the Blue Army participated in the pogrom, please do so. Do not delete this sentence, however.

If you delete the sentence again, I will have you blocked. I hope we understand each other. — Malik Shabazz /_Stalk 04:42, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

January 2011

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Blue Army (Poland). Users who edit disruptively or refuse to collaborate with others may be blocked if they continue. In particular the three-revert rule states that making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period is almost always grounds for an immediate block. If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the talk page to discuss controversial changes. Work towards wording and content that gains consensus among editors. If unsuccessful, then do not edit war even if you believe you are right. Post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. — Malik Shabazz /_Stalk 22:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Reply

what in H** is a sockpuppet in the world of Wiki? I have not a clue. - see . User Loosmark was a user who was active in Polish topics, including those having to do with Polish-Ukrainian relations. He was caught using several sock puppets and banned. Because he edited some of the same or similar articles as you, Faustian apparently suspected you were him, circumventing his ban.

Is there a way to communicate with you directly? - it's best to keep stuff on wiki. However, if you turn on your email address I can send you a copy of the Hagen article.

I also do not like having my comments criticized and removed for the exact same reasons I was accused of - well, not many people enjoy having their comments criticized (actually I appreciate constructive criticism very much). But criticism is part and parcel of how Misplaced Pages works so it's best to just get used to it - appreciate the good criticism and learn to shrug off the bad faithed kind. The main thing here though is that you should make your comments on articles' talk pages rather in the article itself or even in edit summaries (which are meant to be short). Reverting another user without discussion is frowned upon, as is frequent reverting even with discussion. This applies even if you're 100% convinced that the other person is wrong.

On that note, please be aware that Misplaced Pages is driven by verifiability, WP:V: "The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.". This is because Misplaced Pages is supposed to be an encyclopedia - a collection of already published knowledge - rather than a research vehicle. What this means is that we generally, with some exceptions, use secondary, rather than primary sources. The job of interpreting and making sense of primary sources is the job of researchers and scholars, while the job of encyclopedists is merely to report what these scholars say, even if it happens (as is the case here with Hagen) that a given scholar is blatantly wrong.

As to the specific content, I agree with you. Everything I've read states that Haller's army did not return to Poland until spring of 1919 and hence could not have been involved in that particular pogrom (though I'm pretty sure they were involved in other antisemitic incidents later - Lida perhaps?). I've looked up some sources just recently and in fact, the first units of the Blue Army did not leave Paris until April 14, 1919. Even the Cambridge History of Poland states this. So Hagen is in fact incorrect - it isn't the first time that a Western author writing about Eastern Europe got something completely wrong. However, he is a published academic and hence for Misplaced Pages's purposes a "reliable source". The two things that can/should be done is for someone to contact Hagen himself and ask him where he got that idea, or more practically to include in the article information from other sources about the non-presence of Haller's army in Poland at the time of events, which I'll do in a little bit. Best as I can make out, Hagen is relying on German published reports from 1919 in Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums though he's not exactly clear on that (also, the AZdJ published exaggerated death tolls for the pogrom and some sensationalist reports about stuff that never happened - not sure why Hagen takes it at face value). BTW, here's a good article from a Jewish genealogy journal by a person who's father served in Haller's Army and it addresses some of the issues involved . Volunteer Marek  23:41, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello Marek,

Thank you for taking the time to teach me the intricacies of Wiki. I never realized so much went on in the background. I have already written to Dr. Hagen without an answer. I also have written to other University professors I know who may or may not have opinions on this matter. Time will tell.

As for the article you mention on Jews in Haller's Army, not only do I know it well, but I'm the source for locating the material which the author used. I am the one who discovered the Jewish Hallerczycy and asked for more feedback from both Poles and Jews. You can get my address from the site.

What I want to see are first hand writings published or not, by Jewish and Ukrainian participants who lived through this period. And closer to the timeframe is better. Writing about something which took place 60-80 years ago is surely different then 5-10 years after the event.

Even in some of the comments I received from Faustian and Malik Shabazz, there are obviuos holes in their reasoning and answers. You can see what I wrote to Shabazz today. He sends me a snippet of the article with incomplete source information so I cannot look it up for myself. As a researcher, that is not acceptable. Let me see all of the material, not just what you think I should see.

Hallersarmy (talk) 00:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Lwów pogrom (1918)

Please see the recent discussion at Talk:Lwów pogrom (1918). As I wrote there, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that Hagen's identification of the Blue Army as the pogromists is mistaken.

I'd like to apologize for the manner in which I treated you. I should have been more welcoming and I should have listened more to what you were saying. I hope your experiences on Misplaced Pages in the future are better than your experience with me has been. — Malik Shabazz /_Stalk 04:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't be too hard on yourself. He did remove a reliable source without discussion on the talk page and did add nonreliable eyewitness testimony.Faustian (talk) 05:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Malik. Thank you for your words. Its encouraging. The editing errors I made at the beginning were from being new to the system and not knowing all of the fine details. You see, I have learned many of them since. Again, this should be a positive step. As for removing a "reliable" source, how reliable is something when it is inaccurate? A reputation is only as good as its total work. And for unreliable eyewitness testimony, that works both ways. Who says my eyewitnesses were blind and the opposition had 20/20 vision? Neither of us were there and have to rely on sources. Isn't this what historical research is all about? Hallersarmy (talk) 19:23, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Blue Army (Poland)‎. Users who edit disruptively or refuse to collaborate with others may be blocked if they continue. In particular the three-revert rule states that making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period is almost always grounds for an immediate block. If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the talk page to discuss controversial changes. Work towards wording and content that gains consensus among editors. If unsuccessful, then do not edit war even if you believe you are right. Post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. — Malik Shabazz /_Stalk 03:31, 13 January 2011 (UTC)