[WikiEN-l] NPOV and Viajero's claims

Fri Jan 9 20:23:33 UTC 2004

Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> writes:
> I was the one who listed the original article,
> [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], on VfD in 
> mid-December. I had encountered the article last 
> summer and was appalled by it,

Yes, but only because it made available verified
Palestinian quotes that you wanted to hide. You could not
point out any POV problems; rather, you claimed that the
topic's mere *existence* was a POV violation. That, of
course, is not tenable.

In theory, I could have written editorials containing my
point of view about these Palestinian views; but as you can
see for yourselves, I did no such thing. I merely allowed
both groups of Palestinians to speak for themselves, in
their own words. That includes both those that are working
for a permanent peace with Israel, and those that view the
peace process as a "Trojan horse" (their own words) for
destroying Israel.  People can see the array of views and
draw their own conclusions. This is the very definition of
NPOV, precisely what we have been aiming for in all our
other articles.

> six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a
> POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation,

Six or eight people can write all the fiction they want.
But their claims cannot be made true by repeating them. As
you can see for yourself, that text contains zero points of
view _about_ the Palestinians; rather, it only presents
their own points of view, and allows readers to draw their
own conclusions. Your problem is that you do not want
readers to draw their own conclusions; you have your own
conclusion you are forcing on us.

> At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor
> the scholarly resources to offer a detailed explanation
> as to why the material in that article was so bad:

So we should delete entire articles just on your say so?
While Danny and Zero agree with you, I think most of us can
agree that this is silly.

> suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of
> quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context,

Sorry, but now you are making things up in an effort to
slander me. These quotes were presented in detail precisely
because left-wing Wikipedia readers kept denying their
existence. That is precisely why lenghty quotes were given;
so that no one could possibly see them as being out of
context.

Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider
Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the
original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these
quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the
Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are
proud of them. The only problem is that some people are
uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to
hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus