[WikiEN-l] Occupation of Palestine - edit war

Fri Sep 24 16:30:03 UTC 2004

>From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Occupation of Palestine - edit war
>Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:56:29 -0700
>Return-Path: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>
>An edit war is brewing over [[Occupation of Palestine]] and [[Israeli
>occupation of Palestine]]. I am heavily involved in editing those pages,
>and I am an admin. I am determined not to 'break the rules'. I have no
>intention of using sysop rights to 'get my way' here.
>
>Jayjg and Gadykozma want these pages to REDIRECT to some other article
>-- [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]], I guess. However, a vfd vote went
>heavily against them. Less than 30% voted for redirect, even before I
>started editing.

I must object to this characterization of the conflict.  Gadykozma wants to 
re-direct, I want to delete.  And the VfD vote did not "go heavily against 
[us]"; rather, 30% voted for redirection (usually with protect), and 40% 
voted for simple deletion.  As Cecropia pointed out on the relevant Talk: 
page:

"I did not make the decision in this case, but I affirm that the admin that 
redirected made the right decision. VfD decisions are not made on the basis 
of strict numerical voting. Furthermore, you cannot determine consensus by 
simple percentages for a single choice when you have multiple possibilities. 
It is almost impossible to get a 2/3 vote when you have at three or more 
choices.

Admins are given leeway to determine consensus and it can be a thankless 
job. Yet consensus has been demonstrated. There were 31 votes to remove this 
as a stand-alone article; there were 13 votes to keep it; that is 70%+ 
support for content removal. I'm well aware that there is an intentional 
bias toward non-deletion on Wikipedia; however, for the article's supporters 
there is the point that accurate content can be merged into the target 
article.

For the admin to have taken the middle course of leaving the article name as 
a redirect is consistent with maintaining the spirit of consensus, since 
there is significant support for this..."

I might also point out that while the page was under VfD and being heavily 
debated and voted on, Ed Poor decided to arbitrarily re-name the article, 
write a new article under the original name, and link the two, which defied 
any consensus on either side.  He also continued to edit the article when it 
was protected.

As a final note, I would like to add that I have never edited the article in 
question, nor have I protected or un-protected it.  The only thing I have 
ever done to the article is make the original listing on VfD.

>Moreover, the fact that I have added considerable new material means
>that there should be a new vote. No such vote has been made.

That's one way to describe it; I would describe it as hijacking the article 
in order to overturn a vote which had gone a way Ed didn't like.  If one can 
massively re-write any article under VfD and then claim that all previous 
votes are void, it makes a mockery of the VfD process.

_________________________________________________________________
Powerful Parental Controls Let your child discover the best the Internet has 
to offer.  
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines 
  Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN® Premium right now and get the 
first two months FREE*.