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Archives

Archive 1 (Oct 2005 – July 2010)

Misuse of sources

This article has been edited by a user who is known to have misused sources to unduly promote certain views (see WP:Jagged 85 cleanup). Examination of the sources used by this editor often reveals that the sources have been selectively interpreted or blatantly misrepresented, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent.

Here are examples of edits that introduced undue material:

• Diff introduced: 'al-Jazari, who is considered the "father of robotics" and "father of modern day engineering"' (text now removed).
• Diff introduced: 'Another contemporary, al-Kindi, described an early concept of relativity, which some see as a precursor to the later theory of relativity developed by Albert Einstein in the 20th century. Like Einstein, al-Kindi held that the physical world and physical phenomena are relative...' (text now removed).

I have archived this talk page; many comments on undue material can be found in Archive 1.

Please see the Cleanup subpage for more information. It is hard to see how best to move forward: there were many significant scientific developments in medieval Islamic civilization, yet the article contains many cherry-picked and undue claims, and dubious sources. I favor heavy pruning: remove all material that is poorly sourced or with only generic references without page numbers; remove many of the quotes (classic cherry picking). I regard http://www.muslimheritage.com as an unreliable source, and all material based on that source should be removed. Text including "first to", "pioneer of", or "a forerunner" should be assessed for UNDUE. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 02:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I support your actions 100%. This article is a real headache. It makes the average reader think meideval muslims were modern thinkers, something they clearly were not. They were people from their time and their culture. Regarding Al Jazari as the father of robotics is ridiculous, becuse there were people making more complex machines some 1000 years before, like Hero of Alexandria or Ctesibius (to name a few). Regarding al Kindi as a forerunner to Einstein is simply ludicrous (easily the biggest lie Jagged85 has written so far). Similar thoughts can be found in greek philosophers and even St. Augustine.

I begin to wonder if this article should be deleted and started from scratch... --Knight1993 (talk) 21:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I suggest replacing it with a stub, consisting of

• the present Lede section,
• the present Overview section, revised to include only
  • the present Historiography section, followed by
  • the Views of Historians and Scholars.

Such an abbreviated outline would provide a framework for further development by showing the main issues and diversity of opinions in the study of Science in medieval Islam. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 01:44, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I've begun a draft following that outline in a user page. Feel free to edit or comment. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for undertaking this task. I have looked through your draft (and done a file diff comparing it with the current article), and it looks like a good solution. You are unlikely to benefit from my assistance so I can't do any more than provide mechanical wikitext checking, and confirming that unsuitable text from the old article has been removed.

Anyone interested in this topic should see a new section at WT:Requests for comment/Jagged 85#Wholescale deletion where an editor has expressed discontent with some significant deletions that have occurred in related articles (and has reverted those deletions). Johnuniq (talk) 09:54, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Be Bold I cut and pasted Steve's draft this is a good start.J8079s (talk) 01:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, it wasn't quite ready for publication, but it's an improvement (IMHO). I'd like to add an outline of future development, one that would be structured chronologically and geographically, rather than by scientific discipline. This structure would direct the article to a discussion of how science developed in the Islamic world and away from a mere catalog of scientific achievements -- "of one damn fact after another." --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 23:05, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Certainly listing "damn fact after another" is not the way to approach articles. But articles do contain such facts, and often these facts give the article structure (again not the best way to approach writing). However, I see nothing in wiki policies that justify deletion of facts, given they are well-sourced.Bless sins (talk) 20:03, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

• On the face of it, your edit appears unacceptable. While there were many problems with the previous article, the current article has removed all mentions of contributions made to various fields. For example, taking a look at this reliable source shows medieval Muslims were engaged in many disciplines of science. Yet you have deleted all of that without providing an adequate replacement. If Jagged85 was guilty of exagerrating the contributions, you are guilty of obliterating them. Bias is bias, whichever direction it goes.
• More importantly, the question remains: did you verify that every sentence you deleted violated wiki policies like described above? If not, then it appears you're simply blanking, or deleting edits without justification. Bless sins (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Although all content in an article must, by policy, be verifiable, there is no policy whatever requiring an article to contain all possible verifiable information about its subject. What to include is an editorial decision. In a case where an article has extensive problems, both factual and in point of view, it may be best to make cuts or to rebuild the article from scratch. Spacepotato (talk) 21:34, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

That maybe a route (an) editor(s) may take in the user space. However, while its bieng built, it shouldn't suddenly replace the problematic article. Else, you have what exists right now - an article completely devoid specific Muslim scientists, treatise, achievement or contribution. (Compare with History of science and technology in China).

My other fear is, of course, once the article is deleted it will not be rebuilt. Deleting information is far, far, far easier than contributing. It takes months, if not years to write an article. It takes a second to delete it. The user in question (User:J8079s) seems to be going around deleting articles, and has made little effort of building articles. As examples: Islamic ethics, Islamic metaphysics, Physics in medieval Islam and Islamic economics in the world were deleted, and no effort was made to rebuild them (some of the deletions have since been reverted). I see that there is a pattern of deleting and leaving - not deleting and rebuilding.

Thus, an article can very well be built from scratch in user space. But it shouldn't replace an entire article prematurely.Bless sins (talk) 23:14, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I believe that on other talk pages you have acknowledged that at least some of Jagged 85's edits were excessive, but I have not seen you acknowledge the extent of the problem. The two examples above (father of robotics and precursor to relativity) are possibly the most egregious cases, but there are plenty of other known false claims (see WP:Jagged 85 cleanup). Sites like muslimheritage.com demonstrate that Jagged is not the only person seeking to cherry pick and embellish claims regarding Islamic achievements, and it is clear that Misplaced Pages has been used as part of a promotional POV campaign for some years. There are sure to be cases where the editors seeking to cleanup the mess are themselves excessive, but it would not be appropriate for Jagged's clearly undue edits to stand until each of the hundreds of claims is investigated and individually tweaked to correct original research, synthesis, and misrepresentation of sources. Apart from accepting SteveMcCluskey's rewrite, is there some other plausible procedure for cleaning up an article like this? It is expected that editors will add material, after verifying that it is well sourced and not synthesis, which places the burden appropriately. Johnuniq (talk) 03:25, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Certainly Jagged85's edits were POV. But obliterating all contributions (even mention) of Muslim scholars, scientists and philosphers, as if Muslims made 0 contribution to science is not POV?

WP:UNDUE says,

Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint, giving them "due weight".

Once again, blanking Muslim contributions to science is a gross violation of presenting "all significant viewpoints" (unless you argue that indeed Muslims made no contriution).

I never rejected the addition of SteveMcCluskey's contribution, only the removal of all of Jagged85's without actually checking for violations of policy.

"It is expected that editors will add material". Except they haven't!!

Four articles were similarly deleted, and the deleting editors have done little to add anything. I have asked a question at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Reasonability_in_WP:burden that you should look at.Bless sins (talk) 14:26, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

An article is POV if it unduly advocates one viewpoint or group of viewpoints over others. The article does not currently advocate the viewpoint that medieval Islam made no contribution to science. Your objection to the article, that it does not discuss the disciplines of science present or the accomplishments of specific scientists, has nothing to do with point of view. It is rather a matter of the scope of coverage of the article. So, I think the tag {{Missing information}} will better represent the concerns expressed with the article. Spacepotato (talk) 20:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Bless Sins has requested that I give some input on this issue, though I wasn't sure if there would be any point, since no matter what I say, it will always be interpreted in the most negative "assume bad faith" manner possible by a handful of editors. Nevertheless, it would have been a disservice to Bless Sins if I didn't give any input considering his efforts in preserving this article and other Islamic articles I was heavily involved in (though it personally makes no difference to me). As confirmed by Bless Sins and several other editors, many of my edits are actually well in-line with Misplaced Pages's policies. To date, I have in fact only seen a tiny percentage of my contributions (probably no more than 1% even) being proven misleading, and yet some editors see this as enough evidence to conclude that ALL of my contributions are misleading and therefore all traces of any contributions I've made should be purged from Misplaced Pages, like some kind of inquisition, and that the best thing to do is revert Misplaced Pages back to being more Eurocentric like it was before I came along. Not only is such an approach logically fallacious in itself to use such a relatively small sample to assume all 100% is unreliable (like the user above who cherry-picked two seemingly "ridiculous" examples to arrive at the fallacious conclusion that the whole article must therefore be unreliable), but shows a kind of bias that, in my view, exceeds any bias I've shown in all my years of apparently "biased" editing, with some of my critics not only showing some of the same biases they accused me of (in the opposite direction), but even making wholesale deletions of anything they deem pro-Islamic/anti-Western in any articles I was involved in (even deleting material added by other editors) without even attempting to verify the material using my apparent "misuse of sources" as a pretense.

It makes me wonder, if I had been more biased towards Western contributions rather than Islamic contributions, I have no doubt that some of these same editors would not have reacted in the same way. Since this is an English-language encyclopedia, it's only natural that Eurocentrism is far more acceptable than Islamo-centrism, and since I was probably the most prolific contributor to Islamic articles at the time (with over 60,000 edits in total), that only made me stand out like a sore thumb, so an RfC filed against me was only bound to happen. My lack of experience in dealing with an RfC (since it was the first RfC I was ever involved with, whether as a defendant, prosecutor or participant) led to an unwillingness to mount a defense on my part (since I lacked the dedication to go through such a long process) or even ask for help from fellow editors (I could have asked some editors, like from the Islam Wikiproject for example, to back me up) because I was clueless about RfCs in general. My failure to mount a defense or request help from fellow editors (like what those on the prosecution were doing) only ended up making my overall body of contributions look worse than they actually were, and has since made it much easier for some of those previously involved in the RfC to carry out some kind of purge/inquisition against all of my previous contributions. The side effect of this is, of course, that many other contributions that have been mixed in with my own are also being purged as a result.

Bless Sins, here's an interesting discussion you might want to have a look at: Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability/Archive 37#A massive loophole in WP:Verifiability. It's obvious the "user" that is apparently "exploiting a loophole" in the discussion is none other than myself. In order to "cleanup" my apparent "misuse of sources", a clause was added in WP:V that gave editors the power to make wholesale deletions to material that fail verification. Such a clause never existed back in the days when I was active on Misplaced Pages, though such a clause was no doubt later used to take action against me for edits I had made previous to its existence. For a comparison to how WP:V was previously like prior to this new clause, see . This meant that even if most of my edits were not in-line with the sources cited (though most of my edits were in fact in-line with the sources), the grounds used to take action against me would still have been faulty. While it's a good policy, the problem with this new clause was that it could easily be abused by editors who can remove any material on mere suspicion alone, as we are now seeing in this article and the other articles you've mentioned. In other words, the new clause may have prevented one loophole, but it certainly opened the path to another more extreme loophole as a result.

I can already guess what kind of responses I will receive, especially from those previously involved in the RfC, but I have no intention of posting any replies, as I no longer have the time or the passion to dedicate to Misplaced Pages (besides making a few minor Wikifying edits if I happen to be reading a Misplaced Pages article when I'm online), though I don't mind responding to comments posted on my talk page.

Regards, Jagged 85 (talk) 17:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I am certain everyone would agree as to the gravity of the issues Jagged has raised. Any agreement he entered into under a related Rfc would be voided by such actions. I use the term "voided" in the ethical sense, as an Rfc has no force in itself. Aquib (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

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