Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Viriditas (talk | contribs) at 12:43, 19 December 2005 (→A major concern: lower the tone). 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)

No, he doesn't have a "bad" record at all. I've only seen these so-called "frequent accusations of bias" from trolls, and one-sided editors with an agenda. As SlimVirgin has pointed out before, Jayjg is "someone who wants to see good sources when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, because it's an area that attracts endless nonsense and bad editing. I've seen Jay support people with an anti-Israel POV and good sources and I've seen him strongly oppose pro-Israel editors who don't use good sources." Very true statements, and in fact, here is a sampling of Jayjg's edits which are certainly not the edits of a "zionist pov pusher": I'd like to see the trolls who make these accusations against Jayjg produce evidence of any edits they've made that aren't one-sided (anti-Israel). The beef they have with Jayjg is that he requires them to cite their sources and won't allow original research. He requires the same from anti_Palestinian/anti-Arab/anti-Muslim editors and gets the same kind of flack. If the trolls are successful with their slander campaign, and get results from arbcom just because they've made loud noises, it will chase off a lot of editors, including me. I hope the arbcom doesn't succumb to feeding the trolls, I'm so tired of trolls who waste everybody's time attacking editors, I'm just about ready to abandon Misplaced Pages myself. --MPerel 01:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

In such situations, it is best to compare like with like. Of the 17 film listed at Category:Israeli_films, none of of them have been bombarded with requests for sources. In fact, the amount of citations in all 17 films combined is less than the one film (Divine Intervention (film)) that Jayjg and Viriditas have targeted. The difference? Divine Intervention provides a Palestinian perspective. As Fred Bauder says, "Masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources is inappropriate." - Xed 12:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

There is no evidence for "masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources". --Viriditas 12:39, 19 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" and "Zionist right-wing extremists" for denying the entry of Divine Intervention in 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, claims similar to: "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 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 Balsam, Bruce informed 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. --Viriditas 13:20, 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 14:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Xed, your computer appears to be posting duplicate messages. You've spammed the exact same reply twice: I've addressed your questions. To recap, I removed two of your links because they didn't say what you claimed they did, and four were removed because they repeated rumors and rhetoric that did not accurately describe or represent the issue in a balanced manner. For me, the issue is not quantity but quality. Did you take issue with my preceeding comments? I support accurate and balanced content. You repeatedly inserted content which stated:

After a vigorous campaign by Zionist activists to bar the movie, the film was denied consideration by the California-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, based on a spontaneously declared informal policy that "The academy does not accept films from countries that are not recognized by the United Nations," and "Palestine does not have membership in the United Nations." Some have claimed that the Academy's decision was based on political consideration.

That content is not only blatantly false and misleading, but the text you present as direct quotes is attributed to the producer of the film (Humbert Balsam), not to the AMPAS. These errors occurred because you blindly reverted to an anonymous contributor without actually checking out the sources you cited. --Viriditas 14:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

You removed all the sources after asking for them. That's the issue. You still haven't addressed that. - 14:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, we agree to disagree. I feel that I've addressed the issue to the best of my ability. --Viriditas 14:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)