[WikiEN-l] Re: Bot for generating articles on cities in Israel

Tue Sep 16 22:15:40 UTC 2003

Steve Vertigum wrote:

>I think the point of the argument against is that
>statistics from an apartheid state (regardless of how
>much the US happens to sanction it currently) must be
>treated as suspect.  UN statistics should be
>better--ie, more NPOV--even if they are not as
>"complete."
>
>The same could in many ways be said for the US as
>well-- the US until very recently was more or less an
>apartheid state, and still has lingering aspects of
>this left over, in terms of its sociological/financial
>barriers. Etc.  If this was the case today in the
>US--as it was 1950--there would be every justification
>for Wikipedians to look upon statistics coming out of
>such a country's official machinery as smelly.
>
Oh geez... If you have some proof, let's see it.  Otherwise you're
just spreading FUD. Almost every official statistic in Wikipedia
has a political opponent or conspiracy theorist ready to challenge
its validity; that's why we say "according to the Census Bureau"
or whatever, so if somebody has some differing numbers, they
can add those, citing the alternate source, rather than having an
edit war.  In the case of Israel, there are plenty of reasons to
challenge any UN numbers - and plenty of books doing just that, in
great detail - so it's not neutral to simply declare that UN
numbers must be better than Israeli numbers.

Stan