Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Viriditas (talk | contribs) at 13:16, 18 December 2005 (→Viriditas and Jayjg reminded regarding NPOV: cm). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

a somewhat impertinent suggestion

Principle #2 is currently phrased as:

Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view requires fair representation of all significant points of view regarding a topic. This foundational policy of Misplaced Pages rules out gaming of Misplaced Pages' consensus process by masking point of view editing as demands for sources which, when provided, are then deleted together with the information they support.

Principles should be of broad scope, it seems to me the meat of the principle should be:

Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view requires fair representation of all significant points of view regarding a topic. This foundational policy of Misplaced Pages rules out deleting sources together with the information they support in order to further a point of view.

In other words, it matters not whether someone demanded sources and then deleted them ... the problem is only that he deleted them. Asking for sources is in itself a good thing. Derex 01:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

A major concern

The third remedy here says, and I quote, "Jayjg reminded that Misplaced Pages is a cooperative enterprise which operates by consensus. Masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources is inappropriate." No source is cited for this fairly serious accusation against Jayjg, and there is no evidence of of any misconduct on his part whatsoever on the evidence page.

Jayjg is an esteemed editor with a damned good record in an area that can be extremely difficult at the best of times. This makes a nasty claim that is likely to be used against him in the future, without any apparent basis at all. I strongly urge the remainder of the committee to vote this remedy down. Arbitration should not be a trial for those who haven't done anything wrong. Ambi 06:57, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Jayjg actually has a rather bad record according to just about everyone but the arbitrators and Jimbo, apparently, who sharply disagree. There are frequent accusations of bias (I cannot vouch for that, he may be perfectly NPOV for all I know) against him, and furthermore—and I can attest to this, although it may not pertain to the point of the remedy—he is very unfriendly and unsympathetic, always hanging around the borderline of incivility and occasionally crossing it, which is the kind of attitude that would stir up problems even on uncontroversial articles. When the arbitrators find themselves disagreeing with such a large portion of the community, they should perhaps consider that they are out of touch. I should also note that editing in a difficult area doesn't give anyone an excuse to cause trouble. Everyking 07:09, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Viriditas and Jayjg reminded regarding NPOV

Anonymous user 209.212.72.19 (talk · contribs) made a series of unsourced, POV edits to Divine Intervention between 15:03-15:30 on November 1, 2005.

• Jayjg attempted to NPOV the anon's unsourced additions at 18:28, on November 3.
• Four minutes later, Xed reverted to the anon's unsourced POV at 18:32, November 3, with the edit summary: rv bizarre censorship.
• Instead of reverting Xed's support of uncited POV wholesale, Jayjg wikified, removed some POV, and added citation requests at 18:48, 3 November 2005.
• At 19:20, on November 3, Xed removed Jayjg's citation requests from the article with no mention of doing so in the edit summary, and changed the claim of one attributed author (Tariq Shadid) to "many observers" with no citation, and added a personal attack in the edit summary: remove weasel-like wording from propagandist.
• At 19:56, November 3, Jayjg reverted to the previous version, which included the citation request and the proper author attribution, with the edit summary: if there are "many observers", then please provide evidence of it. So far you have one non-notable (see talk), also, please don't remove requers for citation, instead provide citations.
• At 09:10, November 4, Xed reverted, removing Jayjg's citation requests and again changing the name of one attributed author to "many observers", with the edit summary: rv weasel. .
• At 10:24, November 4, I (Viriditas) reverted Xed's changes to Jayjg's version with the edit summary: Reverted edits by Xed to last version by Jayjg. Please do not remove citation requests.

The Proposed findings of fact states: "Viriditas and Jayjg are reminded that Misplaced Pages is a cooperative enterprise which operates by consensus. Masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources is inappropriate." I fail to see any evidence for "POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources" by either Jayjg or myself. --Viriditas 08:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Disingenuous. Jayjg in particular is notorious for POV editing. The fact is, when I provided SIX sources they were all removed . This shows that the previous demand for sources was not really serious As Fred Bauder asks on Viriditas' talk page, "How come he had to provide (citations) anyway for such a notorious event that it Googles 80,000 hits. How come a article on a film which portrays the Palestinian point of view is being stripped of that point of view by you and Jayjg?". - Xed 09:33, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Please follow the edit history above. The "previous demand for sources" was based on your 18:32, November 3 reversion to an unsourced, POV version by an anonymous user (User:209.212.72.19) . Your other edits to the page were again unsourced. There remains no evidence for any "masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources", nor do I know what Mr. Bauder means by "a notorious event that...Googles 80,000 hits". For example, the first 10 hits in a Google search for "Divine Intervention + film" turns up nothing that would verify claims made by the anonymous poster or by you. What notorious event is Mr. Bauder referring to, and what does that have to do with your failure to cite accurate sources for your edits? You either didn't read the sources you posted, or you didn't care, because a close reading showed that they weren't substantiated. --Viriditas 10:02, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Most of the sources remain in the article. To recap - when I provided SIX sources they were all removed , showing that the previous demand for sources was not really serious. Do you understand? You removed all the sources after asking for them. That's the issue. I think I had to provide 8 sources in total. For such a small article, that's ridiculous. - Xed 10:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

You failed to cite accurate sources for your edits as the edits above demonstrate and as this edit by Jayjg shows: . For example, you blindly reverted to an unsourced contribution by an anonymous editor who claimed that there was a "vigorous campaign by Zionist activists to bar the movie". When asked for a source, you posted a link to Al Jadid Magazine, which doesn't appear to say anything of the kind. You also claimed as fact, that the film was "based on a spontaneously declared informal policy", and you cited the BBC, but no such statement appears on that site. --Viriditas 10:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

So you removed all the sources because you disagreed with two of them? Most of the sources remain in the article. To recap - when I provided SIX sources they were ALL removed , showing that the previous demand for sources was not really serious. Do you understand? You removed all the sources after asking for them. That's the issue. I think I had to provide 8 sources in total. For such a small article, that's ridiculous. - Xed 10:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The two sources removed above were removed because a fact-check determined that they didn't source what you claimed they did. Moving on, the third source, namely Tariq Shadid was removed in the subsequent edit due to what I perceived as a reliance on his medical credentials for authority, and a "guilt by association" argument (see WP:V) which blames "primitive tribalism" for denying the entry of Divine Interventionin the race for Oscar nominations. When one looks beyond the heated rhetoric, one finds that there's no evidence that such an act ever occured, and the remaining links merely serve to repeat the same allegations, such as, "The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has hinted darkly that pro-Israel forces in Hollywood may have been behind the controversy." The entire claim boils down to a statement made by the film's producer, Humbert Balsam. Balsam claims that in in October 2002, the executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Davis Bruce, told Balsam that a film from Palestine would not be eligible to compete in the Academy Awards. According to Balsan, Bruce told him the film could not run for best foreign language picture. However, there are no published rules which require that a country needs a particular status to qualify. Further, Academy spokesman John Pavlik has stated that the film was never submitted for Oscar contention, and as a result was never considered or rejected. In other words, there is no evidence for the claims presented, claims that have been repeated over and over again, mostly in the context of the heated rhetoric espoused by Tariq Shadid. I'm sorry, but in an encyclopedia, I prefer to stick to facts, not rumors. Should a well-sourced and balanced assessment of the controversy be presented on the article page? Yes, of course.