All the Israel/Palestine infighting on Wikipedia

[Kraken]

Quite.

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern ... y-3643156/

[Kraken]

To Nableezy, you need to learn to stop engaging with people who clearly hate you. They're wind-up merchants and will do anything to bait/annoy you to get a laugh out of it. It's the best thing you can do. Also, avoid discussing your on-wiki activities in relation to the I/P area - it's bound to receive relentless scrutiny from some members here as we've seen recently.

Yeah, but I get a laugh out of it.

Maybe reconsider your reason for being there then.

British soldiers got a laugh out of luring the IRA into an ambush in deepest darkest Kilkenny.

And to be fair, it's funny as fuck seeing their jawbones and ribs go flying under a hail of 7.62 when you know these are the bastards responsible for planting bombs in shops.

But for obvious reasons, these guys weren't chosen to assemble the dossiers used by the peace negotiatiors.

[nableezy]

To Nableezy, you need to learn to stop engaging with people who clearly hate you. They're wind-up merchants and will do anything to bait/annoy you to get a laugh out of it. It's the best thing you can do. Also, avoid discussing your on-wiki activities in relation to the I/P area - it's bound to receive relentless scrutiny from some members here as we've seen recently.

Yeah, but I get a laugh out of it.

Maybe reconsider your reason for being there then.

British soldiers got a laugh out of luring the IRA into an ambush in deepest darkest Kilkenny.

And to be fair, it's funny as fuck seeing their jawbones and ribs go flying under a hail of 7.62 when you know these are the bastards responsible for planting bombs in shops.

But for obvious reasons, these guys weren't chosen to assemble the dossiers used by the peace negotiatiors.

The laughs are here my guy. Im laughing at Starship whatever, Charlie or Chuck, or any of the "wind-up merchants" here. That should have been obvious to anybody reading but YMMV.

[Kraken]

To Nableezy, you need to learn to stop engaging with people who clearly hate you. They're wind-up merchants and will do anything to bait/annoy you to get a laugh out of it. It's the best thing you can do. Also, avoid discussing your on-wiki activities in relation to the I/P area - it's bound to receive relentless scrutiny from some members here as we've seen recently.

Yeah, but I get a laugh out of it.

Maybe reconsider your reason for being there then.

British soldiers got a laugh out of luring the IRA into an ambush in deepest darkest Kilkenny.

And to be fair, it's funny as fuck seeing their jawbones and ribs go flying under a hail of 7.62 when you know these are the bastards responsible for planting bombs in shops.

But for obvious reasons, these guys weren't chosen to assemble the dossiers used by the peace negotiatiors.

The laughs are here my guy. That should have been obvious to anybody reading but YMMV.

OK. But to think this place isn't read by those you're engaged with on Wikipedia is a tad naive, no?

[nableezy]

To Nableezy, you need to learn to stop engaging with people who clearly hate you. They're wind-up merchants and will do anything to bait/annoy you to get a laugh out of it. It's the best thing you can do. Also, avoid discussing your on-wiki activities in relation to the I/P area - it's bound to receive relentless scrutiny from some members here as we've seen recently.

Yeah, but I get a laugh out of it.

Maybe reconsider your reason for being there then.

British soldiers got a laugh out of luring the IRA into an ambush in deepest darkest Kilkenny.

And to be fair, it's funny as fuck seeing their jawbones and ribs go flying under a hail of 7.62 when you know these are the bastards responsible for planting bombs in shops.

But for obvious reasons, these guys weren't chosen to assemble the dossiers used by the peace negotiatiors.

The laughs are here my guy. That should have been obvious to anybody reading but YMMV.

OK. But to think this place isn't read by those you're engaged with on Wikipedia is a tad naive, no?

I didn't say that? Why would I care? Listen, I saw this so Im curious as to when you were going to start with this making me crack thing.

[Elinruby]

To Nableezy, you need to learn to stop engaging with people who clearly hate you. They're wind-up merchants and will do anything to bait/annoy you to get a laugh out of it. It's the best thing you can do. Also, avoid discussing your on-wiki activities in relation to the I/P area - it's bound to receive relentless scrutiny from some members here as we've seen recently.

Yeah, but I get a laugh out of it.

Maybe reconsider your reason for being there then.

British soldiers got a laugh out of luring the IRA into an ambush in deepest darkest Kilkenny.

And to be fair, it's funny as fuck seeing their jawbones and ribs go flying under a hail of 7.62 when you know these are the bastards responsible for planting bombs in shops.

But for obvious reasons, these guys weren't chosen to assemble the dossiers used by the peace negotiatiors.

Yo, I'm the one talking about the IRA. You lost me at baby killers. Yes I am glad the peace accord has mostly held. Getting back to my original point, I'd be less.troubled and less sanctioned if I had followed a wiki-friend's advice and gotten tf out of Eastern Europe topics. Less troubled and less sanctioned isn't necessarily always the goal is what I was trying to tell you. Would Nableezy have fewer headaches if he edited about let's say versions of Doom? Probably, but maybe he thinks it is important to represent. And for the record there is no sign of any peace accord anywhere on the horizon in Gaza

[Kraken]

And for the record there is no sign of any peace accord anywhere on the horizon in Gaza

Which was what I was getting at in the middle of this post.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13385&start=50#p344531

People trying to represent and even getting a kick out of the battle (and to reference his link, losing it so hard they see grand Admin conspiracies against them) is a big part of the problem.

[Elinruby]

And for the record there is no sign of any peace accord anywhere on the horizon in Gaza

Which was what I was getting at in the middle of this post.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13385&start=50#p344531

People trying to represent and even getting a kick out of the battle (and to reference his link, losing it so hard they see grand Admin conspiracies against them) is a big part of the problem.

Don't use me to troll Nableezy, Crow

[nableezy]

People trying to represent and even getting a kick out of the battle (and to reference his link, losing it so hard they see grand Admin conspiracies against them) is a big part of the problem.

I dont know what I am supposed to be trying to represent, and your caricature of what I wrote about Wikipedia's inability to properly deal with people who push propaganda in to Wikipedia articles but do so politely as a "grand Admin conspirac[y] against [me]" does not in any way resemble what I actually wrote.

[Kraken]

People trying to represent and even getting a kick out of the battle (and to reference his link, losing it so hard they see grand Admin conspiracies against them) is a big part of the problem.

I dont know what I am supposed to be trying to represent,

You'd have to ask Erin what she meant by that.

and your caricature of what I wrote about Wikipedia's inability to properly deal with people who push propaganda in to Wikipedia articles but do so politely as a "grand Admin conspirac[y] against [me]" does not in any way resemble what I actually wrote.

It seems to be a fair reading. This is what was said....

The fact Nableezy also seems to think there is some grand Administrator conspiracy or just mass incompetence to ensure his life as a Wikipedia editor is torture while his opponents can supposedly do whatever they like, is just yet more proof this guy is not and probably never has been a Wikipedia editor in any meaningful sense, and Wikipedia's well known inability expel [to? sic] toxic and combative editors if they simply master the relatively easy task of content editing and are prepared to do it for hour after hour, day after day, is the easiest explanation for his personal experience.

.....as as interpretation of your words here....

Wikipedia has this fundamental weakness of not being able to deal with people who edit in such a way. It is clearly tendentious to anybody without blinders on, but our admins feel obliged to keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved. I wish WP had a way of dealing with it short of an actual arbitration case, but alas I have not found one yet. 

....seems reasonable to me.

It would appear to be your position that all Administrators are either deliberately or through mass incompetence ignoring you when you try to highlight when editors are inserting IDF propaganda into Wikipedia.

You seem to think that them simply doing it politely is enough to get past Wikipedia's defence mechanisms. Namely Administrators.

I'm unclear what is meant by the reference to blinders and uninvolved. But it certainly seems to imply Administrators are for whatever reason, deliberately choosing not to help you.

The point seems to be that there doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy actually in effect for you to be acting as if there was one in place to thwart you - c.f. "seems to think".

[jf1970]

This is what was said....

The fact Nableezy also seems to think there is some grand Administrator conspiracy or just mass incompetence to ensure his life as a Wikipedia editor is torture while his opponents can supposedly do whatever they like, is just yet more proof this guy is not and probably never has been a Wikipedia editor in any meaningful sense, and Wikipedia's well known inability expel [to? sic] toxic and combative editors if they simply master the relatively easy task of content editing and are prepared to do it for hour after hour, day after day, is the easiest explanation for his personal experience.

.....as as interpretation of your words here....

Wikipedia has this fundamental weakness of not being able to deal with people who edit in such a way. It is clearly tendentious to anybody without blinders on, but our admins feel obliged to keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved. I wish WP had a way of dealing with it short of an actual arbitration case, but alas I have not found one yet. 

....seems reasonable to me.

That you think the first passage is a reasonable interpretation of the second passage explains a lot about your writing.

I'm unclear what is meant by the reference to blinders and uninvolved.

No kidding! So you just made something up to fill the gap. And the funny thing is, "the reference to blinders and uninvolved" is the core of the whole passage, the whole point. If you didn't understand that, you didn't understand any of it. I'm guessing you didn't understand it because you don't actually edit Wikipedia so you don't understand the dynamics between admins, editors, and "involved."

"our admins feel obliged to keep those blinders on" is not the same thing as "there is some grand Administrator conspiracy or just mass incompetence".

"to remain uninvolved" is not the same thing as "to ensure his life as a Wikipedia editor is torture while his opponents can supposedly do whatever they like"

Here's an idea: if you don't understand what someone meant by "keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved", why don't you try asking the author what they meant?

[Kraken]

Here's an idea: if you don't understand what someone meant by "keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved", why don't you try asking the author what they meant?

Well I thought that was implicit in the reply.... but if not, consider it asked.

Or more generally, what is actually being said in this (rearranged for a hopefully accurate logical rendering) statement?

Wikipedia has this fundamental weakness of not being able to deal with people who edit [Wikipedia articles to] twist the lead into an IDF press release. It is clearly tendentious to anybody without blinders on, but our admins feel obliged to keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved.

I perhaps wouldn't have said "I call bullshit", but my thoughts on the factual accuracy of this assessment of Wikipedia are similar.

[jf1970]

If one doesn't understand something, arguing against it is not how one typically asks for clarification.

Wikipedia has this fundamental weakness of not being able to deal with people who edit [Wikipedia articles to] twist the lead into an IDF press release. It is clearly tendentious to anybody without blinders on, but our admins feel obliged to keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved.

Can't speak for Nableezy but I can explain what I understand it to mean:

Admins can't use their admin powerz in situations where they're "WP:INVOLVED" in a content dispute. In order to avoid becoming "involved", admins put on "blinders", intentionally avoiding looking at certain things (sources) because they think that looking at those things will make them "involved" in the content dispute.

Example: somebody adds some pro-IDF bullshit to an article ("twist the lead into an IDF press release"). Someone else recognizes it as bullshit because they've read the sources ("clearly tendentious to anybody without blinders on") and removes it because it's bullshit. It's re-added, and re-removed. Most admins will just see two editors edit warring and treat them equally. Arbcom recently proclaimed "being right isn't enough", which is stupid because when it comes to content, being right--not adding bullshit to articles--is what's most important.

Anyone who actually looks at the sources will understand that it's pro-IDF bullshit, that one edit warrior is trying to add bullshit to an article, and the other edit warrior is trying to remove bullshit, but in order to understand that, one must read the sources. Admins, however, will refuse to read the sources ("blinders"), and refuse to generally make any kind of decision as to whether the edits are, or are not, bullshit, because they think that if they do that, they've become "WP:INVOLVED" in the content dispute. As such, they go back to "all I see is two people edit warring", and do something like protect the page or block both users. They put on blinders in order to avoid being involved.

This results in people who are adding bullshit to be treated the same as people who are removing bullshit. That enables the bullshitters and discourages everyone else. This is the "fundamental weakness of not being able to deal with people who" add bullshit to articles, because admins won't call the bullshit out, because WP:INVOLVED prevents them from doing so.

This "fundamental weakness" is neither a grand conspiracy nor mass incompetence, nor does it have anything to do with ensuring anyone's life is torture or ensuring anyone's opponents can do whatever they like. It's a structural flaw in the system.

[nableezy]

Or more generally, what is actually being said in this (rearranged for a hopefully accurate logical rendering) statement?

Wikipedia has this fundamental weakness of not being able to deal with people who edit [Wikipedia articles to] twist the lead into an IDF press release. It is clearly tendentious to anybody without blinders on, but our admins feel obliged to keep those blinders on to remain uninvolved.

I perhaps wouldn't have said "I call bullshit", but my thoughts on the factual accuracy of this assessment of Wikipedia are similar.

The edit there I was complaining about was this. Among the IDF press release-esque changes there are a. the occupation of Gaza ended in 2005 (there's an argument for that, but it is Israel's argument and the UN and the ICRC, and most human rights organizations and academics, say that Gaza remains occupied), that "Israel provides the Gaza Strip water, food, and electricity from its own supplies during times of peace" (that ignores that Israel as occupying power is obliged to provide for the humanitarian needs of the population of Gaza, and was added to reframe the order to cut off all water, food and fuel to Gaza early in the war as something that was being suspended as it was not a time of peace, and for that matter Israel sold water to Gaza, not simply "provide" it).

These types of edits are clearly tendentious, but no admin will get involved enough to really examine the edit and the sourcing. And if they do read enough to see that these edits are presenting propaganda as fact and try to do something about it they will be called "involved" and be barred from doing anything about it anyway. What I was saying in that bit was that Wikipedia has a structural weakness in how it treats the editors that are, in my opinion obviously, the actual problem editors in controversial topics. I was saying that the civil POV-pusher is something that Wikipedia is fundamentally incapable of dealing with. That it treats being impolite as harshly, or more even, as it does lying in articles.

[Kraken]

I see no structural weakness here at all.

Examining sources for reliability and due weight is a matter for editors to come to a consensus. It would be absurd for Admins to take a view on it themselves. They are there solely to weigh the arguments made by editors.

(BTW, if anyone thinks Wikipedia has a shortage of Administrators willing to take a view on a politically charged content matter and start issuing blocks to ensure one side wins, you may not have been paying attention.)

But it would be equally absurd to suggest Admins are not required to read sources when they are called upon to rule on accusations of tendentious editing. That doesn't make you INVOLVED in any conceivable way.

This doesn't seem to be anything more than the usual weakness Wikipedia has in handling disputes in contentious topics. Administrators take an all too lax approach to incivility by established editors, failing to recognize that without civility, consensus is unlikely to form.

This simply means a topic becomes dominated by editors with strong views and a battleground mindset, who then get frustrated that the right way (good faith consensus building, and properly making the case against those who are preventing it) takes longer and is harder than the easy way (provoking your opponent so they can be blocked). But rather than go the hard route, they pretend there is something wrong with Wikipedia. A structural flaw.

Hence the oft seen complaint about polite but tendentious editors. Anyone who can't prove someone lied in an article to the satisfaction of an Administrator is either not being true to themselves about the content dispute or isn't presenting their case properly.

Which might be as simple as not showing an Administrator the courtesy of giving them precise and compete information about sources and other editors/edits to see the situation how you see it, in recognition that they aren't being paid for this work.

Nobody should be finding it very hard to prove an editor is being tendentious, if they're being fair and honest. If they're trying to convince an Administrator that grey is black and cream is white, they won't get very far, and will probably only make it harder for themselves when they are seeking help.

An editor merely being polite isn't a magic shield that would somehow prevent an Administrator seeing tendentious behaviours. It's often precisely because some editors would rather fight prolonged battles in some hope of winning the easy way, that ensures the hard way is so much harder.

The long and the short of it is, the more biased the editor, the less likely it is they can cope with Wikipedia working as intended. They will always think the system is working against them.

[nableezy]

blah
...
The long and the short of it is, the more biased the editor, the less likely it is they can cope with Wikipedia working as intended. They will always think the system is working against them.

Pretty sure I've been able to cope with Wikipedia working as intended fairly well.

[Elinruby]

People trying to represent and even getting a kick out of the battle (and to reference his link, losing it so hard they see grand Admin conspiracies against them) is a big part of the problem.

I dont know what I am supposed to be trying to represent,

You'd have to ask Erin what she meant by that

I see I should have dealt with this before telling Kraken to fuck off. Sorry Nableezy.

it's California slang and people in my social media understand it, but I should have considered whether that would be the case here. This isn't Oakland.
.
To represent simply means to speak up against something that is fundamentally wrong, usually but not always on behalf of a group to which one has some tie. it comes up in discussions of systemic racism in the U$ against blacks for example. There is an implication that something needs to be said even if it isn't listened to.

To Kraken: it's Elinruby to you, with an L. Also I am a "they" not a "she". The username leads a lot of people into that error though, so I am not particularly upset by the fact that you made it, but try not to make it again, please.

I thought jf1970's explanation was rather good, but it doesn't go far enough. Where I edit, source misrepresentation is a given. It is indeed difficult to get admins to look at sources but it can be done. It's true however that they tend to view their role as tamping down the vehemence, not settling the content dispute. They like edit warring because there is a bright line as to who is wrong.

There is cowardice at play quite often in addition to the frequent unwillingness to do the work to understand what the dispute is about. I've had an admin tell me on IRC that a talk page is a powder keg and they aren't touching it, and seen another tell someone else that they wouldn't touch a certain problem with a barge pole. On another I was told that only a committee could handle something. He probably meant Arbcom, but I didn't understand that at the time.

So yes there is a problem and no it isn't Nableezy, Crow.

Now fuck off.

[Kraken]

The role of an Administrator in a content dispute is clear and well understood. To deny this truth is to highlight that you are indeed the problem, not the system or the other editors. No Administrator would ever want to help someone who doesn't understand their role, but is strident to the point of rude in defending their misconception. Seemingly because the alternative, apportionment of blame for their failure on their own heads, is unpalatable.

This is the problem with allowing people to think Wikipedia is there to assist them in representing their interests. Wikipedia doesn't care about you. That's just one of many things about Wikipedia that people who are not on it for the right reasons have great difficulty coming to terms with. To the point of constructing elaborate and frankly tortured explanations for why it has some kind of fundamental structural flaw to explain their experience.

[Elinruby]

The role of an Administrator in a content dispute is clear and well understood. To deny this truth is to highlight that you are indeed the problem, not the system or the other editors. No Administrator would ever want to help someone who doesn't understand their role, but is strident to the point of rude in defending their misconception. Seemingly because the alternative, apportionment of blame for their failure on their own heads, is unpalatable.

This is the problem with allowing people to think Wikipedia is there to assist them in representing their interests. Wikipedia doesn't care about you. That's just one of many things about Wikipedia that people who are not on it for the right reasons have great difficulty coming to terms with. To the point of constructing elaborate and frankly tortured explanations for why it has some kind of fundamental structural flaw to explain their experience.

See, that isn't what I said. And I don't think it's what Nableezy said either, but he can speak for himself. I am pretty sure this is creative misunderstanding on your part, but I will try one more time to get through to you.

Take Bucha massacre (T-H-L). Hot and cold running IPs are claiming that it is fake and/or staged. Lots and lots of sources exist but these are dismissed as "Western media" or just the Ukrainians lying again. Someone wants to use an NGO report from before all the autopsies were complete to prove that the death toll in the massacre is "only" fifty and the other 400 bodies with their hands tied behind their backs must have died of missile strikes or natural causes. Should that be allowed to stand?

I was in that discussion of the nature reality and I said I believed my lying eyes.

Denying that a knowable truth exist makes you part of the problem in my view, and I note that you are a Wikipedia critic who doesn't mind defending Wikipedia when it suits your wish to make personal attacks on someone you dislike for whatever reason.

[nableezy]

…

I’m just not sure why it is you think that you, random person who repeatedly has shown he can’t participate in either Wikipedia or this website productively, feel so confident in saying that I, having primarily edited the most contentious topic on Wikipedia for like 15 years or something, can’t handle editing on Wikipedia. Or that I don’t understand the role of administrators or that I think Wikipedia is there to represent my interests or any of the other fantasies you have about how I must think and feel. Nobody has constructed any elaborate or tortured explanations, that’s just your imagination. You seem to pretty obviously want to win an argument that you don’t even understand. But you don’t understand it, and I feel dumber for having tried to explain it to you.

[Randy from Boise]

…

I’m just not sure why it is you think that you, random person who repeatedly has shown he can’t participate in either Wikipedia or this website productively, feel so confident in saying that I, having primarily edited the most contentious topic on Wikipedia for like 15 years or something, can’t handle editing on Wikipedia.

I wanna say that you're godhead for being willing and able to slog in one of the worst back alleys of WP fighting one-on-three against zealots for so long. It's pretty impressive.

Then again, I was impressed with Malik and he ended up getting smoked in the end, so tread lightly and keep your head on a swivel.

t

[Starship Enterprise]

Is nableezy still pretending he's editing to represent both Israel and Palestine fairly instead of pushing a pro Palestine view

I don't know why he puts in the effort for this act because no one believes it

[Zoloft]

Is nableezy still pretending he's editing to represent both Israel and Palestine fairly instead of pushing a pro Palestine view

I don't know why he puts in the effort for this act because no one believes it

Your attack on an established member here is noted. Discuss issues and topics, don't attack, is our preferred approach.

[Starship Enterprise]

Is nableezy still pretending he's editing to represent both Israel and Palestine fairly instead of pushing a pro Palestine view

I don't know why he puts in the effort for this act because no one believes it

Your attack on an established member here is noted. Discuss issues and topics, don't attack, is our preferred approach.

How Wikipedian

[Kraken]

See, that isn't what I said. And I don't think it's what Nableezy said either, but he can speak for himself. I am pretty sure this is creative misunderstanding on your part, but I will try one more time to get through to you.

Take Bucha massacre (T-H-L). Hot and cold running IPs are claiming that it is fake and/or staged. Lots and lots of sources exist but these are dismissed as "Western media" or just the Ukrainians lying again. Someone wants to use an NGO report from before all the autopsies were complete to prove that the death toll in the massacre is "only" fifty and the other 400 bodies with their hands tied behind their backs must have died of missile strikes or natural causes. Should that be allowed to stand?

I was in that discussion of the nature reality and I said I believed my lying eyes.

You claimed "it is indeed difficult to get admins to look at sources" and they "tend to view their role as tamping down the vehemence, not settling the content dispute."...and..."There is cowardice at play quite often in addition to the frequent unwillingness to do the work to understand what the dispute is about."

Now you have presented a scenario where people are simply not going to believe you couldn't find a single Administrator willing to read the sources and issue blocks for tendentious misrepresentation etc. So either the scenario is not as you presented it, which is a common problem in contentious topics, or there is indeed something that you do that dissuaded Admins from assisting you.

Such as you're either not helping them to help you, or you're being rude to them (such as attributing cowardice to explain what you don't understand or won't accept about their role). Or you have a mistaken belief that they are supposed to make judgements about content rather than making judgements about editors making judgements about content.

I suspect it could be both misrepresentation and your behavior that explains your evident frustrations. That and the fact the behaviour of established editors in contentious topics in general (fanning the flames and freely engaging in BATTLE) just generally don't make wanting to help a very attractive proposition. Not for volunteers who are either completely uninterested in the dispute or are taking great efforts to ensure their personal view isn't evident. An approach to collaboration that many established editors happily choose to ignore, even though it is the advised approach in all cases, but especially in contentious disputes.

It's pretty clear what you think about the content dispute, and it seems to go far beyond what you can prove with sources and proper editorial judgement, verging into original research if not just blind assertion of the TRUTH. If that isn't the case, then you should probably take a step back and ask yourself what it is about what you're saying that would give someone that impression.

If your first instinct on being told something like that is to assume there is creative misunderstanding or even truth denial at work, you're definitely never going to be happy on Wikipedia. Accepting the fact other people are not obliged to see things the way you do, is a pretty key requirement of fitting in and getting along at Wikipedia. And if you fit in and get along, people will be far more inclined to help you.

Quite what it is people who claim there is a structural flaw about Wikipedia that gives preference to polite tendentious editors think Administrators are on Wikipedia to do, if not help good faith editors produce accurate and neutral content, is beyond me. Drop that blinkered view, and the rest comes into focus pretty easily. For most people anyway.

The others should be shown the door, and often are. But in far too may cases, precisely because Administrators fear the backlash, it's all too easy for established editors with an extremely poor attitude to survive simply because they don't do the more obviously bad things like edit warring or telling people to f off.

Or rather they do, but they do it within the established tolerances that allows them to do things that outsiders are swiftly blocked for. They are openly biased, quick to anger and routinely uncooperative. But they're smart enough to know Wikipedia allows all of this, to a certain extent, due to the dearth of truly model editors, who are usually not just easy to Admin for, but an absolute pleasure to.

[Elinruby]

See, that isn't what I said. And I don't think it's what Nableezy said either, but he can speak for himself. I am pretty sure this is creative misunderstanding on your part, but I will try one more time to get through to you.

Take Bucha massacre (T-H-L). Hot and cold running IPs are claiming that it is fake and/or staged. Lots and lots of sources exist but these are dismissed as "Western media" or just the Ukrainians lying again. Someone wants to use an NGO report from before all the autopsies were complete to prove that the death toll in the massacre is "only" fifty and the other 400 bodies with their hands tied behind their backs must have died of missile strikes or natural causes. Should that be allowed to stand?

I was in that discussion of the nature reality and I said I believed my lying eyes.

You claimed "it is indeed difficult to get admins to look at sources" and they "tend to view their role as tamping down the vehemence, not settling the content dispute."...and..."There is cowardice at play quite often in addition to the frequent unwillingness to do the work to understand what the dispute is about."

Now you have presented a scenario where people are simply not going to believe you couldn't find a single Administrator willing to read the sources and issue blocks for tendentious misrepresentation etc. So either the scenario is not as you presented it, which is a common problem in contentious topics, or there is indeed something that you do that dissuaded Admins from assisting you.

Such as you're either not helping them to help you, or you're being rude to them (such as attributing cowardice to explain what you don't understand or won't accept about their role). Or you have a mistaken belief that they are supposed to make judgements about content rather than making judgements about editors making judgements about content.

I suspect it could be both misrepresentation and your behavior that explains your evident frustrations. That and the fact the behaviour of established editors in contentious topics in general (fanning the flames and freely engaging in BATTLE) just generally don't make wanting to help a very attractive proposition. Not for volunteers who are either completely uninterested in the dispute or are taking great efforts to ensure their personal view isn't evident. An approach to collaboration that many established editors happily choose to ignore, even though it is the advised approach in all cases, but especially in contentious disputes.

It's pretty clear what you think about the content dispute, and it seems to go far beyond what you can prove with sources and proper editorial judgement, verging into original research if not just blind assertion of the TRUTH. If that isn't the case, then you should probably take a step back and ask yourself what it is about what you're saying that would give someone that impression.

If your first instinct on being told something like that is to assume there is creative misunderstanding or even truth denial at work, you're definitely never going to be happy on Wikipedia. Accepting the fact other people are not obliged to see things the way you do, is a pretty key requirement of fitting in and getting along at Wikipedia. And if you fit in and get along, people will be far more inclined to help you.

Quite what it is people who claim there is a structural flaw about Wikipedia that gives preference to polite tendentious editors think Administrators are on Wikipedia to do, if not help good faith editors produce accurate and neutral content, is beyond me. Drop that blinkered view, and the rest comes into focus pretty easily. For most people anyway.

The others should be shown the door, and often are. But in far too may cases, precisely because Administrators fear the backlash, it's all too easy for established editors with an extremely poor attitude to survive simply because they don't do the more obviously bad things like edit warring or telling people to f off.

Or rather they do, but they do it within the established tolerances that allows them to do things that outsiders are swiftly blocked for. They are openly biased, quick to anger and routinely uncooperative. But they're smart enough to know Wikipedia allows all of this, to a certain extent, due to the dearth of truly model editors, who are usually not just easy to Admin for, but an absolute pleasure to.

Creative misunderstanding it is.

I was tempted to read and respond to this wall of text, since it is fascinating to watch you tie yourself into knots to defend Wikipedia admins en masse.

But right off the bat you took "it is indeed difficult to get admins to look at sources but it can be done" and turned it into "it is indeed difficult to get them to look at sources" and apparently all the rest of this is speculation about how I am either lying or too inept to edit, which... demonstrated to me that there was no point in continuing. You also overlooked the part about a plethora of gold:star sources being available but dismissed. But I guess you think I don't really know what an RS is, shrug. I don't even have to read your post, it's so utterly predictable

Quite a few admins were watching the page at the beginning, yes. There were as I recall admin actions I approved of. However this was all happening on multiple talk pages and noticeboards. They were probably also exhausted towards the end. I chose Bucha as an example because most people have heard of it, and the archive is rather short. Have at it if you don't believe me.

The three quotes are about Azov Brigade, one of the subordinate arguments over the Holocaust in Poland, and Azov Brigade respectively. I don't actually blame anyone for not wanting to engage on this stuff. But not doing so leaves relatively powerless editors a choice between ignoring distortions of the truth or trying to fix them, which has been a fatal mistake for some people. The guy who suggested natural causes was eventually topic banned, yes, and it only took eleven or twelve trips to the noticeboards.

Now fuck off and stop misquoting people.

[Kraken]

…

I’m just not sure why it is you think that you, random person who repeatedly has shown he can’t participate in either Wikipedia or this website productively, feel so confident in saying that I, having primarily edited the most contentious topic on Wikipedia for like 15 years or something, can’t handle editing on Wikipedia.

Or that I don’t understand the role of administrators or that I think Wikipedia is there to represent my interests or any of the other fantasies you have about how I must think and feel. Nobody has constructed any elaborate or tortured explanations, that’s just your imagination. You seem to pretty obviously want to win an argument that you don’t even understand. But you don’t understand it, and I feel dumber for having tried to explain it to you.

And I am equally perplexed why you continue to ignore the wishes of the site Administrator here and avoid distracting speculation of this nature. Unless it is to show what kind of issues you would likely pose for an Administrator on Wikipedia trying to ensure productive editing in contentious topics.

There is of course a difference between handling/coping, and actually being productive or a net benefit. And that is different again from being happy to be a Wikipedia editor. Are you a happy Wikipedia editor? 15 years is a long time to be unhappy. Especially if you have always been this confident you are right and people like me are not just wrong they're too thick to even understand your attempted explanations of why you are right.

I'm confident I'm not the only one who thinks "fundamental structural weakness" is not the most likely explanation for your belief that Wikipedia Administrators are not doing what you think they're supposed to be doing in certain situations when you look to them for assistance.

I think most people familiar with Wikipedia would definitely feel like they were in someone else's vivid imagination if they were being expected to believe an Administrator simply doesn't have the powers to deal with the scenarios you describe, or are too afraid to use them.

Administrators are indisputably allowed to "really examine the edit and the sourcing [to] read enough to see that .... [tendentious editors] are presenting propaganda as fact and try to do something about it." This does not make make them involved and being polite but tendentious is not a magic spell that somehow ties their hands.

If you can't accept these as fundamental truths then you really need to start naming these Administrators and providing specific quotes to show where they have said and done things to make you believe this is their view. And maybe then we can start removing Administrators who aren't doing their job (or make some progress in persuading you they are, you just don't accept that they are).

An Administrator would block an editor in a heartbeat if you were able to show they were inserting propaganda into an article and were being tendentious in their approach. They do not exist to do your job for you, the editors.

It is and always will be your job as an editor to prove they are inserting propaganda and being tendentious. If you approach an Administrator nicely and make it easy to see the truth of the former, they might be inclined to put more effort in than they are expected to, to establish the latter. Such as read very long arguments and dissect prolonged edit wars from the source code. But they are by no means obliged to do the work there either. Read the manual. If anything, changes to the manual over 15 years have only made it clearer what the obligations of editors actually are when it comes to proving someone is a problem.

Admins are not the police, they are the janitors. That is the literal meaning of that concept. Just as a janitor will not take kindly to being expected to hunt high and low for every piece of litter when the school has kindly provided sufficient waste bins and notices against littering, Administrators will not take kindly to people expecting them to get as deeply immersed in a dispute as the warring parties to establish who needs to be dealt with. To expect that level of commitment is to show where you are going wrong as an editor, and how your own failures are to blame for your frustrations rather than a fundamental structural weakness.

Politeness is expected from everyone. It is not and never was the case that provoking someone to anger was meant to be a shortcut to effective dispute resolution. It's just a sad fact of Wikipedia, an actual structural flaw if you will, that being on Wikipedia for long enough to realise this is a literal cheat code for getting your way in a dispute by default, is readily exploited by people with the wrong mindset. Administrators do very little about that problem, for reasons that make perfect sense as cultural not structural issues.

[Kraken]

Creative misunderstanding it is.

I was tempted to read and respond to this wall of text, since it is fascinating to watch you tie yourself into knots to defend Wikipedia admins en masse.

But right off the bat you took "it is indeed difficult to get admins to look at sources but it can be done" and turned it into "it is indeed difficult to get them to look at sources" and apparently all the rest of this is speculation about how I am either lying or too inept to edit, which... demonstrated to me that there was no point in continuing. You also overlooked the part about a plethora of gold:star sources being available but dismissed. But I guess you think I don't really know what an RS is, shrug. I don't even have to read your post, it's so utterly predictable

Quite a few admins were watching the page at the beginning, yes. There were as I recall admin actions I approved of. However this was all happening on multiple talk pages and noticeboards. They were probably also exhausted towards the end. I chose Bucha as an example because most people have heard of it, and the archive is rather short. Have at it if you don't believe me.

The three quotes are about Azov Brigade, one of the subordinate arguments over the Holocaust in Poland, and Azov Brigade respectively. I don't actually blame anyone for not wanting to engage on this stuff. But not doing so leaves relatively powerless editors a choice between ignoring distortions of the truth or trying to fix them, which has been a fatal mistake for some people. The guy who suggested natural causes was eventually topic banned, yes, and it only took eleven or twelve trips to the noticeboards.

Now fuck off and stop misquoting people.

Perhaps if you spent more time explaining and less time expecting, Administrators would not be so reluctant to get involved and relatively simple disputes would not balloon into massive multi venue debates requiring multiple trips to noticebaords to get satisfaction.

If it sounds too absurd to be true, such as this claim it took eleven trips to a noticeboard to get someone who claimed black was white to be topic banned, then that's probably not what happened.

You are either overstating their guilt or you didn't approach the problem the right way. It's nobody else's problem which of these things better explains your lack of customer satisfaction at the hands of unpaid volunteers.

They key here is the reason why you're wanting an Administrator to read a source. If it is to merely confirm that the hard work done by editors to establish reliability, contents and weight is true, and therefore remove the person who is being tendentious in the face of reason, then you're doing it right. If it's to establish these things for themselves so they take your side in a content dispute, you're doing it wrong.

I can't explain it any simpler than that. Such are the frustrations of an Administrator. Brevity opens the door to silliness. Detail is usually not worth the effort. A better class of editor would help. It is trying to have to treat even the established editors as if they are under absolutely no obligation to have read the manual and conduct themselves the right way. Theoretically they can be disinvited from Wikipedia for ignoring the manual because it doesn't suit their objectives. But they aren't. At least not without great effort and eleven trips to a noticebaord at a minimum.

[Zoloft]

Is nableezy still pretending he's editing to represent both Israel and Palestine fairly instead of pushing a pro Palestine view

I don't know why he puts in the effort for this act because no one believes it

Your attack on an established member here is noted. Discuss issues and topics, don't attack, is our preferred approach.

How Wikipedian

[nableezy]

….

[nableezy]

Then again, I was impressed with Malik and he ended up getting smoked in the end, so tread lightly and keep your head on a swivel.

t

Malik had a reasonable expectation that after all that he had done for the project that it would have his back. But then NoCal with sock number 726 was able to rile him up by calling him boy and the whole community that he had been a part of and helped for years and years just shrugged. If anything proved that Wikipedia doesn’t give a fuck about its editors, or at least was unable to understand the position of its minority editors, that was it.

[Vigilant]

Crowken doing his best Abd.

When does he start adding colors to the text?

[Zoll]

People trying to represent and even getting a kick out of the battle (and to reference his link, losing it so hard they see grand Admin conspiracies against them) is a big part of the problem.

I dont know what I am supposed to be trying to represent,

You'd have to ask Erin what she meant by that

Now fuck off.

Chill down. By the way, why do you have the same Profile Picture as Kashmiri now? It's confusing.

[nableezy]

In other news, Drsmoo has been topic banned for a year and Nishidani warned against inflammatory language. Drsmoo retired a bit prior to the ban coming down.

[eppur si muove]

Kraken, you say that admins don't want to wade through lots of reading in order to decide something. Maybe you can then understand that there is a limit to how many of your extended posts that I am prepared to read. More is sometimes less.

[eppur si muove]

In other news, Drsmoo has been topic banned for a year and Nishidani warned against inflammatory language. Drsmoo retired a bit prior to the ban coming down.

I was going to speculate about whether Drsmoo's account was going ot last any longer that Nishidani's. However, a scan of his last 500 contributions, which go back to October, suggest that this is a single purpose account. So "retire" and reincarnate looks like the most likely thing they will do.

[charliemouse]

In other news, Drsmoo has been topic banned for a year and Nishidani warned against inflammatory language. Drsmoo retired a bit prior to the ban coming down.

I was going to speculate about whether Drsmoo's account was going ot last any longer that Nishidani's. However, a scan of his last 500 contributions, which go back to October, suggest that this is a single purpose account. So "retire" and reincarnate looks like the most likely thing they will do.

A major victory for Team Palestine! I'm sure Drsmoo has prepped a sock in advance of this expected outcome.

[nableezy]

So "retire" and reincarnate looks like the most likely thing they will do.

Never struck me as the type but who knows.

[Midsize Jake]

I'm confident I'm not the only one who thinks "fundamental structural weakness" is not the most likely explanation for your belief that Wikipedia Administrators are not doing what you think they're supposed to be doing in certain situations when you look to them for assistance.

I wont deign to argue on Mr. Nableezy's (or Mr/s. Elinruby's) behalf, nor will I try to cast doubt on your motivations for taking this sort of position, but I don't think anyone here realistically believes that administrator misbehavior on WP (including a tendency to favor one side's propaganda over another's) is entirely due to "structural flaws." We've all been observing this stuff for a long, long time, and I think it's pretty clear that there are structural flaws, quite a few of them in fact. These flaws attract a certain type of person into the Wikipedia "user ecosystem" who wants to either exploit those flaws, or fix them, or both. (Or else just complain about them.) Many, if not most, of these people are smart, manipulative, and narcissistic. The more power and authority they get, the more tempted they are to place their own "personal stamp" on how things are run, and Wikipedia lets them do it — a "structural weakness" in itself — and if they're really successful at it, they can develop an outsized influence over the whole thing, which is often quite negative. (Or, if not strictly negative, tends to favor one side or agenda over others.)

I could argue that it all starts with anonymity, or COI suspicion, or lack of term limits (and/or a working recall procedure), or failure to defer to real-world expertise, or rule-inconsistency (both internal and over time), or any number of other things which might be treated as "structural" flaws and weaknesses. Things we've all known about for years, and which never get changed or fixed. But ultimately, the point is that a better system would be better able to deal with people who occasionally need to be knocked down a peg. Obviously it's the I/P topic area, so it's an outlier in terms of how bad the disputes are and how they're dealt with, but until it becomes "The Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit Except When It's About Israel and Palestine," it's still fair game for criticism, right?

Politeness is expected from everyone. It is not and never was the case that provoking someone to anger was meant to be a shortcut to effective dispute resolution. It's just a sad fact of Wikipedia, an actual structural flaw if you will, that being on Wikipedia for long enough to realise this is a literal cheat code for getting your way in a dispute by default, is readily exploited by people with the wrong mindset. Administrators do very little about that problem, for reasons that make perfect sense as cultural not structural issues.

On this I suspect we mostly agree, other than to say that "cultural" and "structural" in this context may not be as separate and/or conceptually distinct as you might think.

[nableezy]

I don't think anyone here realistically believes that administrator misbehavior on WP (including a tendency to favor one side's propaganda over another's) is entirely due to "structural flaws."

I dont even think it is a tendency to favor one sides propaganda over the others. I think it is an unwillingness to get dragged into the content, where the propagandizing actually happens, lest they be accused of making decisions based on their personal opinions. Like, and this is going a ways back, but once upon a time a user changed the article on Katzrin (T-H-L), an Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights, from saying that it was the largest settlement, which it was and is, to saying it was the largest town, which it never has been as Majdal Shams (T-H-L) is and always has been larger. And nothing happened. Like it isnt debatable, that was placing a lie in an encyclopedia article, and it was done with very obvious intentions, to not call Katzrin a settlement. And whatever on that, that can be argued if it should be primarily be called a settlement or a town. But it cannot be argued that it was the largest town. Dan Murphy had my favorite rejoinder at what I thought was a surreal RSN discussion:

The argument is being deployed by someone who edits exclusively with an ideological agenda (that is, you). The people on the other side of this are ideologically opposed but they're right. This is isn't a debatable issue, or even one of nuance. The math is the fricking math. The reason this horseshit argument is being used is because you actually think the pro-settlement argument for keeping the Golan heights is strengthened somehow by skewing the content of an encyclopedia article ...

But I couldnt convince anybody that this blatant misuse of Wikipedia, including placing lies in articles, merited any sanction at all. And with the exception of the two former admins in that AE thread, the admins involved are all solid IMO. But the system basically makes them close their eyes and say "content dispute" when somebody brings up anything about the actual content.

[Midsize Jake]

Well, I didn't mean to suggest that was the only problem, or even the main problem. Also, to be fair to the Wikipedians (at least in this case), nobody wants to be called an "anti-semite," even if it's just your pseudonym that's being so accused. So as long as supporters of the current Israeli/Zionist government use that particular tactic to the extreme extent they've been using it recently, that's going to create a chilling effect on discussions and also intimidate people who might otherwise agree to involve themselves in some sort of constructive way.

Stuff like that is obviously not going to be true for 99% of topic areas, though there are certainly other cases where people try to take advantage of, if not simply manufacture, various existing pretenses for fighting over things.

[Elinruby]

Well, I didn't mean to suggest that was the only problem, or even the main problem. Also, to be fair to the Wikipedians (at least in this case), nobody wants to be called an "anti-semite," even if it's just your pseudonym that's being so accused. So as long as supporters of the current Israeli/Zionist government use that particular tactic to the extreme extent they've been using it recently, that's going to create a chilling effect on discussions and also intimidate people who might otherwise agree to involve themselves in some sort of constructive way.

Stuff like that is obviously not going to be true for 99% of topic areas, though there are certainly other cases where people try to take advantage of, if not simply manufacture, various existing pretenses for fighting over things.

Meh. I am not in the heads of the admins in question so maybe calling them cowards is a bit much, but when the admins won't admin the alternative for editors is living with distortions of the truth, or outright falsehood, or getting sanctioned for not dropping the matter.

I was looking at the ANI over Torture in Ukraine (T-H-L) last night for reasons unrelated to this thread. Short version: an assertion that Ukrainians torture people, note present tense, was being sourced to HRW reports from 2013. The reports were probably accurate but Ukraine had had a revolution since then. So it was "he is misrepresenting sources" vs "he's being rude".

Anyway the thread was closed as "content dispute, TL:DR", even though in his close Ad Orientem (T-H-L) added "I am sure they didn't *really* misrepresent any sources", so that admin did realize that the issue was source misrepresentation. I really don't want to re-litigate this specific thread, but I can send a link to anyone that wants to see that. I don't think anyone cares about the specifics but I have to agree with Nableezy (T-C-L) that it does happen. Except maybe Kraken, who would probably misquote it and post some more walls of text. Hopefully he has now gotten all the personal attacks out of his system. He was really trying pretty hard to pick a fight. Is he here for the entertainment value, I guess?

That said, I agree with Jake that the average article about let's say warblers doesn't have these problems, and in general most admins act in good faith; this was before the Arbcom finding that misrepresentation of sources is a behavioral problem, and the mutual recriminations were indeed hard to read. It also isn't really fair to say nothing was done, since they also put the page under 1RR. Much later, after problems predictably continued somebody redirected the page to Human rights in Ukraine (T-H-L), which I wished they had done sooner.
.

[Kraken]

Just notting here for the record that there is a difference between not getting involved and not placing as harsh a sanction that you want. Also, choosing to deal with a dispute via methods other than user sanctions.

If an Administrator has simply failed to act at all on someone who they admit had misrepresented a source, then sure, they're probably a coward. But there are mandated methods of dealing with that. If they're not working for you, chances really are that it is more likely to be something to do with your approach or that specific Admin (or a structural flaw in Admin management), rather than any structural flaw with the dispute resolution system in general or something specific to I/P.

One of the most interesting things about Wikipedia of course is that it often surprises you (and Administrators are likely to be more aware of this than users who aren't) how heated some people will get about the most seemingly uncontroversial of topics. What matters is how you deal with someone who is emotional and chooses only to see matters through their own eyes. To take one side in a content dispute even there, probably ensures a small issue becomes a long running problem. Editors have the luxury (if they were never interested in the first place) of walking away. Administrators do to. It's a feature, not a bug. You want more, pay more.

[Elinruby]

Just notting here for the record that there is a difference between not getting involved and not placing as harsh a sanction that you want. Also, choosing to deal with a dispute via methods other than user sanctions.

If an Administrator has simply failed to act at all on someone who they admit had misrepresented a source, then sure, they're probably a coward. But there are mandated methods of dealing with that. If they're not working for you, chances really are that it is more likely to be something to do with your approach or that specific Admin (or a structural flaw in Admin management), rather than any structural flaw with the dispute resolution system in general or something specific to I/P.

One of the most interesting things about Wikipedia of course is that it often surprises you (and Administrators are likely to be more aware of this than users who aren't) how heated some people will get about the most seemingly uncontroversial of topics. What matters is how you deal with someone who is emotional and chooses only to see matters through their own eyes. To take one side in a content dispute even there, probably ensures a small issue becomes a long running problem. Editors have the luxury (if they were never interested in the first place) of walking away. Administrators do to. It's a feature, not a bug. You want more, pay more.

(Voiceover: And Kraken continues to escalate in his campaign to prove that Wikipedia is Just Fine) I feel like i am talking to Cullen328. Did you get banned at Sucks or something?

[MysteriousStranger]

Wikipedia shouldn't give a pass to people pushing pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian points of view; Wikipedia has to stay neutral.

At the same time, I'm mindful there's an absolutely brutal war started by massive Hamas atrocities now followed by a punishing Israeli attack on Gaza that's causing massive civilian deaths.

So I understand how this may bring out the worst in otherwise nice, moral people on both sides.

That's what war does - War itself takes on a soul of its own and it's true evil. This evil soul seeks to infect all whom it touches with evil so evil can be further propagated.

Call me crazy but the more history I read and the more I see nowadays, the more I absolutely believe this.

Been a minute since I’ve been active here, but I read this post and had to log in to give you kudos. War and violence and racism are a bigger enemy than any group of humans could possibly hope to be.