On 6/1/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's a consequence of the endless debates about these various lists of Jews that have been raging since the dawn of wikitime. It's to counter the criticism that "how can you incontrovertibly declare that so-and-so is Jewish?" -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

On 01/06/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: I don't feel the intent is to out people - after all, the proect has a page thanking people for being so proud of their gay friends, I think we can assume well-meaning editors for actual content :-) It's just that when read in conjunction with something about outing, it does seem a little... uh. Slightly not quite right, you know? Imagine, hum, "The following list of people are cigar smokers. The list contains individuals who, in accordance with Wikipedia's verifiability and no original research policies, have been identified as cigar smokers by reliable sources." Something about that sort of notice just oozes suspiciousness. [I do *also* have issues with labelling people as Jewish or as "of Dutch origin" or whatever based on inferences from known relatives or the like, when they don't self-define as part of that grouping, but that's another matter, one to do with article content, and partly stems from an American/not-American cultural divide.] -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 01/06/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: It appears to be ethnic promotion. Look at the wranging over which nationality makes it into an infobox. Neutral point of view? What's that? Why aren't these categories being removed as blatant NPOV violation and incitement to more? Is NPOV up for a vote at CFD or something? - d.

On 6/1/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: By the way, on the latter you will note that four of the Poetlister sockpuppets voted "keep".

On 6/1/07, The Mangoe <the.mangoe(a)gmail.com> wrote: Um, *somebody* was running that sockpuppet army. What name would you prefer to use for that person?

And Madeleine Albright is categorized both as an "American Episcopalian" and a "Czech Jew", the latter claim being tenuous at best, seeing as how she actually started out Roman Catholic. It's very hard to get rid of these. RfC has been hit with a lot of religious subcategorizations like this, and mostly they've been gotten rid of, except for the Jewish ones which are "ethnic" and thus OK, apparently. We're now having a run of LGBT subcats of the same ilk, and it seems that they may or may not be deleted. At least one doesn't have to look for records about Liberace's parents to categorize him accurately in that regard. Meanwhile Albright is in 20 subject categories, of which seven are these sort of ethnic/religious pride cats. She's also in four college cats.

On 6/1/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's not so easy. In late January someone brought to my attention the [[List of Jewish American businesspeople]], pointing out that an IP editor had, for over a month, been adding dozens of names to the list without any sourcing. When he had removed a bunch of unsourced names, the IP editor simply reverted him. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_American_businessp… I then went to the page, and removed the items several times, but the IP editor reverted me several times as well, insisting it was up to *me* to "prove they are not Jews": http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_American_businessp… and then went on to add even *more* unsourced names: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_American_businessp… At that point I warned him that if he did this again, I was going to take the article down to a stub, listing only the names that had proper sourcing Of course, he did it again, so I stubbed it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_American_businessp… Of course, he reverted me, with the edit summary "What is this, a dictatorship? Fascistpedia? You should get some arbitration on this -- restoring page." After the page was semiprotected, the IP editor eventually joined as [[User:Wassermann]], and has been adding literally thousands of "Jew categories" to articles, and ranting and raving ever since about "censorship"; take a look at his User: page to get more information. Since then I've been working quite hard at insisting that all items on the list be properly sourced, in lieu of deleting it altogether, which would be the preferred course. Currently there are five names on it. Of course, that doesn't stop people from trying to restore the previous unsourced list, and add even more names, e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_American_businessp… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_American_businessp… The latter person, Scifiintel got quite incensed when I stubbed the list again: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jayjg&diff=prev&… As to motivation? Well, I'll just note that Scifiintel has most recently been trying to add paragraphs about Jews having too much influence in America to the "Jewish lobby" article, based on the work of a Holocaust denial outfit, the Institute for Historical Review - and, of course, he insists that the IHR doesn't deny the Holocaust, it just question certain aspects of it, like whether millions of Jews were killed etc. So, that's what I'm up against for *one* single article. Now imagine trying to do this on hundreds of them.

On 6/1/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Indeed. We can joke, but I think these lists of people categorized for some attribute, which are useless except for serving the pov-pushing impulses of various parties, will drag on and on until one day we all just wake up because someone, perhaps not Doc but someone determined enough to cut throught he crap, will say "this whole class of article is so manifestly useless that it should be speediable on sight, or something else that will somehow gather enough consensus to enable us to get rid of them all.

On 6/1/07, The Mangoe <the.mangoe(a)gmail.com> wrote: And when they are sourced, the sourcing can be inconsistent, because there's often no agreed definition of the term. So with the Jew lists, any reliable source that has called someone a Jew means they're added to the list, even if they're clearly not Jewish according to most definitions, and don't self-identify. So all we''re doing is repeating the mistakes of sources. Of course, we do this in articles too, but in articles you can produce another source that says something else, and you can discuss the nuances. But with the lists and categories, the entry is either in or out.

On 6/1/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote: It *should* be, but in practise it's been a nightmare to enforce. There was a small group of accounts (some of them now proven sockpuppets) that was determined to maintain these lists (speaking now about the Jew lists), and usually not with sources. Attempts to oppose them were often met with personal attacks. In fact, that is one of the early reasons I ended up being attacked on Wikpedia Review: they decided I was removing unsourced names from lists of Jews because I was an antisemite who wanted the lists to be very accurate, so that when the names on them were attacked, no innocent non-Jews would be caught up in it. I kid you not. There's only so much of this people can take, so they dip their toes into the dispute but withdraw when they see the silliness. Plus you have lots of anon additions, because it's an easy and fast way to make a contribution. Every attempt that I know of to put them up for deletion has failed because people hate to see what they think is information disappearing, even if it's useless, unsourced, and they're not themselves willing to maintain it. Try looking after any of the lists yourself for a couple of weeks. It's soul-destroying. It's been tried. When we did it, we were accused of WP:POINT, because it did leave us with some absurdities i.e. having to decide whether to remove people we *knew* were Jewish and everyone knew were Jewish, but where no reliable source had ever actually said or implied it. If we did remove them = WP:POINT. If we didn't remove them = other unsourced names must be allowed in too.

On 6/1/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's the sort of thing that makes admins targets on Wikipedia Review. :-) I don't disagree. It's just that everyone who has tried to cope with these lists has burned out because of the personal attacks and the pointlessness of the whole thing. I found myself last year googling pop singers to see whether their mothers, or only their fathers, or was it their grandfathers, were Jewish, or had Jewish names, or had ever referred to their rabbis or lighting candles. This is not a happy way to spend one's time. Meanwhile, Wikipedia Review held a poll to decide whether I was an anti-semite, threatened to report me to the Jewish Council of Australia, and discussed whether the Mossad would kill or imprison me if they knew what I was "up to." Frankly, during my googling sessions to find out how much Jewish blood people had, I was starting to wonder what I was "up to" myself. Yeah, exactly. :-)

One of the curious things that happens with LGBT people is that they tend towards the theory that homosexuality is notable, whereas articles about social impact tend to be pushed towards the POV that homosexuality is normal and largely accepted-- implying that homosexuality is not per se notable.

On Mon, June 4, 2007 9:13 am, Charlotte Webb wrote: Well, except that it's society that's not NPOV in this direction. There's "LBGT studies" and "African American studies" and "gay cinema" and whatever else, which is just as much a reaction to the POV way society handled those groups previously. To de-emphasize these things would probably be more POV than to note them properly. Do we overdo it sometimes? Probably. But is there no place for it? -Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

On 6/4/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: I'm not advocating any of this, just making random observations and asking rhetorical questions, to see what other people think about the ironic and unwritten general practice: If the subject is Black, or Asian, or Pacific Islander, or American Indian, or Alaska Native, or Hispanic, we say so. We add them to categories and to lists. If they are white, rather than saying so, we look for a photo. If we can't find a photo, we assume that the reader assumes the subject is white, because we haven't stated otherwise, because white is the default skin tone.{{fact}} If the person knows which boat their ancestors arrived on, we might say they identify as "Norwegian American" or as "Irish American", then the reader can conclude the subject is white, but only if they know the demographics of Norway or Ireland. Failing that, we assume that the person's race is irrelevant, and drop the issue completely [1]. Disable images and try reading [[The Streets]] or [[Brent Barry]] [2], then think about the blind people who might be listening to a recorded or synthesized reading of the article. Likewise if a subject identifies as "gay" or "bisexual" we say so, we back it up with reliable sources, we put them in a category, we add them to a list, we put a big LGBT project banner on the talk page. If they identify as "straight", again, we explain it by example rather than statement. We give a thorough account of the person's various heterosexual relationships and marriages and the children which resulted, possibly invading families' privacy along the way. Again I'm not pushing for any changes. I'm just wondering if others actually think this is the most neutral way to write, or if it is just what we have conveniently decided to settle upon. —C.W. [1] For the record I'm about 37.5% "white". [2] "Trivia", really?

On 6/14/07, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: People actually do add ", [[United States]]" to the end of American place names, but they get reverted for pedantry more often than not, which upsets me just as well. —C.W.

On 14/06/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hence [[Paris]], not [[Paris, France]]. My personal standard is to avoid piped links in place names.

On 6/14/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: In the previous post I was referring to the practice of adding both the state name and country name at the end, such as "Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States", which I believe would be helpful for at least a portion of non-U.S. readers, and redundant but not harmful to the everyone else. If a paragraph said "Shaftesbury, Dorset" or "Dartford, Kent" it would only raise more questions than it answered, for a typical American reader. Sometimes it depends on the context. If the subject of the biography (the actor in this case) is crossing the pond for a notable, life-changing event, I think the article would be more likely to completely spell out place names. Doing so might even be considered a necessity rather than a concern. —C.W.

On 6/1/07, The Mangoe <the.mangoe(a)gmail.com> wrote: Deleting every unsourced entry in [[List of banned books]] worked quite well.

On 6/1/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: Maybe one of these--that one, that you mentioned specifically--should be used as an example. Link it on both the BLPN and AN/I, and here; draw attention to it, and atom bomb it into compliance with BLP. If anyone trolls or fights back outside of what is policy compliant with BLP/ATT/RS, the hordes now drawn there will beat them with the rv stick, and it will be done with. Since BLP-protecting reversions shouldn't be subject to 3RR (unless that's changed?) then anyone causing crap is on the outside looking in. Move in, clean it, beat it, secure it, and then do another list article days or a week later. Same thing. Action becomes practice becomes policy, and done. Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com