[WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 1

Tue Jun 1 20:52:06 UTC 2004

"Having taken a look at the Serdar Argic article,
I note that you twice insisted on qualifying "Armenian Genocide" as 
"alleged",
& when both of those changes were reverted, you blanked the article."
I am making variou changes, and the reason I blanked the article is that I 
didn't see any credibility to the story. There is virtually none whatsoever. 
The point of the article is that, there is one bad Turkish who tried to 
disturb people over the Usenet and that he was trying to rewrite the 
history. The only link I have seen is from Armenian Genocide page. If I add 
some obscure page that points out a discussion between two people and claim 
that he was the first one who actually spammed, what would you think? Where 
is the credibility of the articles? I also didn't understand what's wrong in 
changing your opinions for a given article, at one time you may think 
something is ok, at another time you may conclude that it is unnecessary.

"The reasons you gave for this change was that without the word "alleged" 
the
article was POV -- only this assertion, with no proof or evidence either
at the Talk page for this article, nor at [[Talk:Armenian Genocide]].
(Incidentally you made 10 edits to the main Armenian Genocide page, which
were removed every time, & you never discussed the reaons for your 
changes.)"
I couldn't discuss it because with the old interface I couldn't figure out 
how to discuss it. With this new interface everything is much clearer to me, 
and thus I started to leave comments. This is not vandalizing, you can check 
out the policy again. Also the admin who blocked me accused me of being 
Serdar Argic, but never left a note how to discuss it.

"Uh, everybody except Turkish nationals (& perhaps even some of them) agree
that it happened"
You are quite arrogant on this topic, nobody denies what had happened, what 
people couldn't disagree on is whether it was an intentional genocide. 
Genocide has a specific meaning, during wartime people die all the time, 
nobody call those "genocide".

"From a quick glance at the history logs, your contributions was to 
misrepresent
cited sources to reduce the number of victims."
Could you please give me the proof for the Hitler's quote. A specific page 
so that I can go to the library and find it? It is in the article though.

"If you have access to a source that provides different numbers, you are 
welcome to add those figures;"
Many sources have different numbers, one person reading the article can 
easily see that this is pure propaganda as it stands now. Link to Serdar 
Argic is one example, just to discredit anybody who opposes this idea, 
another one is accusing me of vandalizing even though according to 
wikipedia's own rules I didn't vandalize. Vandalizers do not join mailing 
lists and complain!

"you are welcome to change verifiable numbers -- unless you can clearly
show that they are misquoted, which you did not bother to do."
I will, but as I said none of these are proving that I was vandalizing it. 
If these were proofs then you should better check out the authors of that 
article, since they also put so many number of "facts" which are not facts.

"I will concede one point about [[Armenian Genocide]]: I did not see an
explanation for the Turkish POV."
If you accuse them of vandalizing I don't you will ever see. By the way I am 
not Turkish.

"The article would be better if it were provided -- although it would need 
to be clearly identified as such."
The article should contain only facts and clearly explain why it is 
disputed. Right now, what happened is provided as intentional and 
systematic. It doesn't tell how many number of Turks have died to the same 
events. Also, currently the article is highly political, it puts Turkish 
government as the adversary, rather than historians with opposing views. It 
doesn't tell the motivations behind lobbying governments like France to 
accept this allegation as a law. The claims over the soil of the Turkey and 
so on.

"The acts I detail above clearly show why you were blocked."
NO! What you showed me is NOT vandalism. Go and read the blocking policy. It 
clearly states that vandalism is not different point of view, is not being a 
newbie (leaving a reason or discussing the article). If you block everybody 
making modification without leavnig a reason or discussing then we will have 
a problem.

"But had you created an account, it would have added to your credibility."
I was planning to create an account, but looks like it is useless if someone 
accuse me of vandalising everytime I try to correct an article for being 
objective.

"New editors often make mistakes out of ignorance, & creating an account on 
Wikipedia
tells the rest of us that you are interested in doing more than making
only a few, specific edits; by that simple act, you are showing that you
want to contribute for a while, & it worth someone's time to work with you."
Yes, it seems to me that quite a few article are not as good as it should 
be, giving one sided views, sometimes totally wrong and highly political. I 
would like to make them more objective, as well as add tons of information 
that is not there yet.

"If I were to edit an article on the fictional J. Random Publicperson, to
add "Publicperson is a jerk", & offer nothing more, I'd expect it be 
speedily
reverted: I have made a claim, with no collaborating evidence or arguments
for why I wrote this."
Yes, but there are so many edits I have seen in wikipedia that is simply 
wrong and without evidence. Someone just put there and nobody either didn't 
object it or that didn't have time to play this revert game.

"However, if I wrote the same sentence, then added
details such as he is known to have appeared drunk in public, made
inappropriate sexual comments to his colleague's children, & squandered
public funds to buy bauble-head dolls for his personal collection, some if
not all of that text should remain in some form. And even better would be
if I cited the journalist Busybody's book "The Embarassing Politician",
which made all of these claims, or mentioned that Publicperson was indicted
or arrested on these charges."
You are right that I should spend some more time on this aspect of editing.

"ometimes a non-anonymous editor can get away with making a contribution
of the first example -- e.g., "Publicperson is a jerk", especially if the
article is not on a controversial topic. But with any controversial topic,
one has to make one's point as convincingly as possible."
One serious problem here is that though, right now some of the articles are 
so much distorted that, you can't be convincing enough no matter what. For 
example, you flat out reject the idea that this may not be a genocide, 
claiming that only Turkish nationals (I am not one) reject this. You seem to 
take the word genocide lightly, as if you can put it anywhere when lots of 
people die. If you look at the article, all the point of views are to prove 
that Turkish government is bad, Turkish people are bad, they already killed 
lots of people and so on. Serdar Argic (which seem to be a discussion 
between two sides, there is another party which does the same but his name 
is not mentioned there), Varlik Tax (Vergisi) which has nothing to do with 
the disputed massacres are also mentioned there. You also have to do a 
better job in explaining exactly why you reject these or similar points, 
rather than simply saying that only Turkish nationals reject this idea.

"And from the record, speaking as someone who is entirely disinterested
in the matter (I didn't even know that there was an article on Serdar Argic
until now), I find you have failed to be convincing."
I will fail on this as long as I am being accused of vandalizing and 
considered to be a Turkish National by default.

Jim

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