Wikipedia and historiography

[Carcharoth]

I am posting this in the general discussion forum, as it applies to more than just arbitration, but it also naturally follows on from the locked thread Arbitration case on WWII topics (arbitration case proposed decision, nearly finished, is here). Please feel free to merge this topic if it fits better there (or maybe at least link from there to here?).

When checking back on this topic, I noticed a link to a now-published (18 July 2018) article that is mostly a damning indictment of Wikipedia by historian David Stahel (see original thread), with some nods to the good points of Wikipedia:

The Battle for Wikipedia: The New Age of 'Lost Victories'?

The article seeks to show why students must always evaluate the process behind the generation of information and engage critically with what they read on Wikipedia (or preferably avoid it in favor of peer-reviewed literature).

Not sure if the link to this article has been posted elsewhere, but well worth discussion, IMO. It is striking to see talk page contributions by Wikipedia editors being quoted in an academic journal. Some of them will not have expected that to happen at all. The behind-the-scenes comments dissected in an academic journal. Probably won't happen very often, but should it happen more often?

[Alex Shih]

This is very exciting and certainly a fascinating read. I wish this would happen more often; it's consistent with the eventual purpose of Wikipedia to become a reliable source.

[Dysklyver]

Certainly the number of entirely accurate comprehensive articles has steadily increased, as has the overall reliability of the entire corpus. Certainly there are many articles that are good enough quality to be considered a reliable source. And there is no reason the anonymous contributor should be discounted for lack of accreditable work when they have a good track record of articles.

It's the fact there are so many articles that sinks it, the people who find a particularly terrible article claiming that such and such senator is a such and such, then claiming that this means the whole site is unreliable. It's not. But some care should be taken to check the information yourself, as really should be done with any source.

[Kumioko]

I think some subjects are pretty good in a general sense and there are several areas that show improvement. I doubt Wikipedia will ever be considered a reliable source, especially considering it doesn't even consider itself reliable. Until that changes, I doubt anyone outside will either.

Having said that, with the ongoing attrition of editors and the inability to recruit new ones, there will come a point where the volume of vandalism and cruft exceeds the communities ability to deal with it. Automation may help that and I think its a few years off, but I do believe it's coming unless some serious work is done to reverse the losses. Call me a complainer if you want but unless the community is willing to do something about the toxic atmosphere that drives new editors away, the goal of being reliable is unachievable.

[AndyTheGrump]

So, ArbCom are going to indefinitely ban LargelyRecyclable (T-C-L) for harassment. Anyone know what LR's previous accounts were?

As for the rest of the case, ArbCom have, as I suspected, chosen to utter a few platitudes about policy, and then treated it all as a behavioural issue. Which it isn't. It is a matter of systemic bias, inherent in the structure of an 'anyone can edit encyclopaedia' which rewards shallow 'expertise' and discourages the participation of qualified academic experts. Possibly this case (and the external attention it has drawn) may result in some minor improvement to a few articles, but the underlying causes remain. Accordingly, I think the idea that Wikipedia can ever become a 'reliable source' for such topics is pure fantasy.

[GlwnDwr]

Yikes. Lots of familiar names being lambasted in the article.

[Dysklyver]

It's very interesting to see how an outsider examines a talk page debate. It's easy to forget these things are read by non-Wikipedians occasionally.

[Poetlister]

Certainly the number of entirely accurate comprehensive articles has steadily increased, as has the overall reliability of the entire corpus. Certainly there are many articles that are good enough quality to be considered a reliable source. And there is no reason the anonymous contributor should be discounted for lack of accreditable work when they have a good track record of articles.

It's the fact there are so many articles that sinks it, the people who find a particularly terrible article claiming that such and such senator is a such and such, then claiming that this means the whole site is unreliable. It's not. But some care should be taken to check the information yourself, as really should be done with any source.

I have often said that people here, understandably, usually overstate the unreliability of Wikipedia. But it is not and never can be as trustworthy as other sources. However good an article is, there is always a danger that someone will come along and add some subtle vandalism or even good faith errors.

[Carcharoth]

Couple of points:

1) I have no idea where Alex Shih gets the idea from that there is a goal and "eventual purpose of Wikipedia to become a reliable source". A carefully checked version of articles, possibly, but that will not be Wikipedia. Wikipedia (in its 'anyone can edit' form) should never be seen as more than a starting point, a jumping off point to go and read the actual sources on a topic; an introduction, not an end point in itself. If you are willing to take on trust what you find in a Wikipedia article, then fine (and we all do that sometimes), but when doing anything critical (e.g. health information, travel information, financial information, and so on), then you need to always remember that what is written on Wikpedia can be wrong and often is wrong.

2) The concept of using the pages of an academic journal to dissect Wikipedia talk page comments is arguably suspect. It is too easy to cherry pick quotes to give (intentionally or not) a misleading impression. It is never really possible to do more than survey an area and get a snapshot impression (unless you are really methodical about how you approach this). It might make more sense to use a wiki to do a critique of a wiki (and then publish the conclusions, referring to the analysis).

3) This article was published in 'The Journal of Slavic Military Studies' (the role of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front of WW2 is the connection). I am not sure what the reach or audience of this journal is, but the question I would ask is whether a critique of the editing of history articles on Wikipedia (not just military history articles) would ever get published in the top-ranking history journals (given the way the field splits into periods, it is difficult to say which are the leading academic history journals, but maybe someone could name a few - for more on how the humanities differs from the sciences in journal rankings, and why, see here).

A quote from the concluding paragraphs:

A considerable percentage of students have been encouraged during their high school years to engage uncritically with Wikipedia, treating it as an authoritative and objective research tool. Yet it seems Wikipedia’s community of editors on the Wehrmacht have no obligatory qualifications — neither formally in history nor in terms of the necessary language skills. Beyond qualifications, their motivations for writing also vary widely, which, while perhaps well-meaning in many cases, may in some instances reflect extremist views or romantic notions not grounded in the historiography.

(This may well be unfair on some of the editors quoted in the article, but can often apply in many areas of Wikipedia, to many editors.)

[Graaf Statler]

You are right, but I hope you also agree it is very wrong to monopolise the internet with a product like you describe top ranking in Google. And of course there are great articles written on WPEN and the German wiki. (Forget jokes like WPNL etc.) But topranking every piece of crap is so wrong! Because blocking in this way better source is a huge mistake, don't you agree least that with me? Because competitors or better articles have no change in this way. Wikipedia is poisoning the knowledge well in a terrible way at the moment.
And that is where I am protesting against. And if WMF thinks the solution is to SanBan and to troll everybody with a other opinion out, the only future I see for Wikipedia and WMF is a very black one!

[Alex Shih]

Carcharoth, I am literally just quoting WP:PURPOSE, the section quoting Larry Sanger. It is an idealised vision that would probably never be realised, sure, and in that sense I think your summary is far more accurate.

[Kumioko]

So, ArbCom are going to indefinitely ban LargelyRecyclable (T-C-L) for harassment. Anyone know what LR's previous accounts were?

As for the rest of the case, ArbCom have, as I suspected, chosen to utter a few platitudes about policy, and then treated it all as a behavioural issue. Which it isn't. It is a matter of systemic bias, inherent in the structure of an 'anyone can edit encyclopaedia' which rewards shallow 'expertise' and discourages the participation of qualified academic experts. Possibly this case (and the external attention it has drawn) may result in some minor improvement to a few articles, but the underlying causes remain. Accordingly, I think the idea that Wikipedia can ever become a 'reliable source' for such topics is pure fantasy.

Yeah it looks that way, which is unfortunately because LB was not the only ones with problematic conduct and you're right that the core of the problem is not behavioral. I was also not impressed with the notion that Kecoffman was some kind of hero for his obvious extremist motivations against anything relating to the German military. Not to say I think he is completely wrong mind you, there was a lot of bad writing in many of the Iron Cross articles, but it's obvious that Kecoffman has POV motivations in his quest to purge Wikipedia of these topics.

[Kingsindian]

I found the article rather bad. Just because the article appears in an academic publication doesn't mean the author knows what he's talking about (about Wikipedia, not history). I strongly suspect that this was "fed" to the author by K.e.coffman (T-C-L). To clarify, I don't find anything wrong with this -- it's an important topic. Unfortunately, the author says:

For the record, I should state that I have never been an editor on Wikipedia and have only recently learned about this process.

So they seem to have taken Mr. Coffman too uncritically. Let me go through some of the things the article says:

Worryingly, these are not maverick editors sniping from the sidelines but sometimes long-term contributors and ‘coordinators’ of the MILHIST (Military History) Wikipedia project, which dominates discussion and forms a caucus of opinion on the Wehrmacht’s pages.

They give four examples:

The first editor they quote: LargelyRecyclable (T-C-L), only started editing less than a year ago, and was recently indefinitely banned by ArbCom.

The second editor they quote: Makumbe (T-C-L), has about 500 edits in total.

The third editor they quote, Nug (T-C-L), is indeed a longtime editor with >20k edits. However, when they say:

One editor named ‘Nug’ was so indignant in maintaining his claim that the 36th Estonian Police Battalion had not participated in the murder of Jews that he deemed the information provided by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 to be coming from an unsuitable ‘tertiary source’ and removed the material in question.

They wildly misrepresent the issue. Here's the actual talk page discussion. The issue is that two sources differed on what exactly happened. Here was Nug, giving their justification for using one source over the other:

I have to agree with Jaan on this. Encyclopaedias are tertiary sources, and the one referenced by K.e.coffman doesn't even appear provide any cites or footnotes to any secondary source to support its claim, as one would expect. As I said, the Commission report cites a four year West German investigation (Documents of the 36th Estonian Defence Battalions, ERAF 4-1-9; Estn. Schuma. Btl. 36, Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen Ludwigsburg II 202 AR-Z 219/1967) which found no evidence to support the allegations, and per WP:RS AGE "With regard to historical events, older reports (closer to the event, but not too close such that they are prone to the errors of breaking news) tend to have the most detail, and are less likely to have errors introduced by repeated copying and summarising", indicates that K.e.coffman's source may be prone to such error. --Nug (talk) 11:17, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

The next example is complicated. Perhaps people might want to read this section themselves and judge who's right. I am not knowledgeable enough to say anything.

***************************************

Of the four examples cited, only one probably has any merit, for me at least.

[Kingsindian]

I should clarify that I found the general points made by the author to be mostly valid. The specific examples, however, are rather bad.

[Graaf Statler]

The next example is complicated. Perhaps people might want to read this section themselves and judge who's right. I am not knowledgeable enough to say anything.
.

What you are saying here is the complete wiki drama in a nutshell, Kings. Because only a few people has really the knowledge to judge about this matter. But many, many are doing on Wikipedia!

[Dysklyver]

Naturally whether a source is reliable or not can be highly subjective. I seriously doubt that anyone could claim these editors were acting in bad faith.

[Carcharoth]

An update to this.

- The arbitration case closed with a final decision of a ban (of LargelyRecyclable who revealed who they are on the proposed decision talk page) plus a topic ban and a reminder. It also includes findings about two Military History WikiProject (MILHIST) coordinators (which is quite a big step to take) who were the ones on the receiving end of the topic ban and reminder.

- There is an ongoing discussion at the MILHIST talk page on the journal article I linked to in the original post above. The page history version at the time of writing is here, the ongoing discussion is here.

- In the MILHIST talk page archives is a discussion relating to a change in the A-class review criteria, prompted by this case, which resulted in a requirement for a source review for all A-class reviews. Some interesting comments and thoughts there.

It is interesting seeing the response this case and the journal article seem to have prompted in Wikipedia.

[Kumioko]

An update to this.

- The arbitration case closed with a final decision of a ban (of LargelyRecyclable who revealed who they are on the proposed decision talk page) plus a topic ban and a reminder. It also includes findings about two Military History WikiProject (MILHIST) coordinators (which is quite a big step to take) who were the ones on the receiving end of the topic ban and reminder.

- There is an ongoing discussion at the MILHIST talk page on the journal article I linked to in the original post above. The page history version at the time of writing is here, the ongoing discussion is here.

- In the MILHIST talk page archives is a discussion relating to a change in the A-class review criteria, prompted by this case, which resulted in a requirement for a source review for all A-class reviews. Some interesting comments and thoughts there.

It is interesting seeing the response this case and the journal article seem to have prompted in Wikipedia.

Honestly the Arbcom didn't take a big step in identifying 2 Milhist coordinators, you're kidding yourself there. The Arbcom whimped out as they always do and banned the only non admin. If the others wouldn't have been admins you would have banned them to0.

I also think it's interesting that Wikipedia chose to delete or redirect hundreds of articles rather than clean them up and have effectively ensured German topics are going to be a wasteland unless your intentions are to delete them, strip them down to stubs or ensure that none of them are ever mentioned or improved. Just to clarify, I am no fascist. The best way to ensure history repeats itself though is to remove any record of the atrocities and make sure people forget about what happened. American soldiers did things in the Pacific that weren't flattering either, should we remove those articles as well? Maybe we should remove all the Civil War Medal of Honor recipient articles because most of the sources are military original source or worse.

I also think it's shameful that Arbcom patted Kecoffman on the back for being a POV pusher. Anyone can clearly see he has an agenda and all he is doing by soliticiting the opinions of "experts" is recruiting people with his same beliefs to justify his own crusade. It doesn't matter how he words the letters, if you are asking questions of people who you already know share your mindset, then you already know what they are going to say. it's the same when he goes to certain websites and asks people in what appear to be unbiased attempts to recruit editors. If you go to a Jewish page and ask for recruits you are going to get people who share that view, same with muslims, same with fascists, etc. The fact that the Arbcom was to stupid to recognize what Kecoffman is doing should be embarrassing to the members of the Arbcom, the community and the readers.

[Carcharoth]

Can you give links for this bit please: "Wikipedia chose to delete or redirect hundreds of articles rather than clean them up".

What this case has highlighted for me is how difficult it can be to evaluate sources (especially primary sources, though secondary sources often also have their own problems) and how the skills and background to be properly critical of sources is not always apparent from the editing taking place. The end-result of editing by an uncritical lay editor may look very different to editing done by an academic trained to evaluate specialist historical sources, but the thought processes in both cases are not visible to the reader (this is one of the major flaws of the whole wiki process - edit summaries and talk pages and review processes help, but can never replace proper editorial oversight).

[Kingsindian]

K.e.coffman redirected about 1700 Knight's Cross recipients to a "list" page. Presumably that's what Kumioko is talking about.

I have no opinion on whether it was the right thing to do or not. I don't know enough about the topic.

[Kingsindian]

As for the ArbCom case, I made one comment on the PD page. The only MILHIST person sanctioned was Cinderella157 (T-C-L); they were sanctioned based on ... one talk page comment.

If that's the standard, it's a wonder anybody is able to edit in political areas at all. IIRC, I have never edited WW2 articles, but I found the comment to be extremely mild. I see 10 times worse comments every day in the American politics, Israel-Palestine and every other political area.

[Kumioko]

K.e.coffman redirected about 1700 Knight's Cross recipients to a "list" page. Presumably that's what Kumioko is talking about.

I have no opinion on whether it was the right thing to do or not. I don't know enough about the topic.

Yes that's it thanks and I fully admit most needed work, as most Wikipedia articles do and some should have been deleted after review, but not 1700.

I would also add that if you had no idea about this Carcharoth, as one of the arbs, then that is even more problematic because it shows the arbs yet again failed to fully research the case and do their due diligence before making a decision on the outcome.

I also agree that warning an editor for one talk page comment is also problematic when you have admins like Floquenbeam routinely telling editors to F off and you do nothing about it.

[Carcharoth]

You keep making this mistake Kumioko, thinking that I am still an arb when I am not. It is wearisome to have to keep correcting you. Why should anyone take you seriously as a Wikipedia critic when you make basic errors like that?

[Kumioko]

You keep making this mistake Kumioko, thinking that I am still an arb when I am not. It is wearisome to have to keep correcting you. Why should anyone take you seriously as a Wikipedia critic when you make basic errors like that?

Well, as someone who was bullied out of Wikipedia, I just don't remember who's who in the zoo because, quite frankly, you and your status really doesn't mean enough to me to follow. If Wikipedia still cared about editors then I would still be a high output editor doing thousands of edits a day and I would be in a position to care about and know, when arbs change. But since I am not, spending the time to remember which morally corrupted suck up is promoted and another demoted just isn't important. So I tend to forget.

[Midsize Jake]

But since I am not, spending the time to remember which morally corrupted suck up is promoted and another demoted just isn't important. So I tend to forget.

It's a problem, I know... So, I have helpfully placed a reminder of Mr. Carcharoth's Arb-or-not-Arb status beneath his name for future reference. Problem solved!

Also, I have - admittedly, with some hesitation - approved Mr. LargelyRecyclable's registration here on Wikipediocracy, so let's all please try to avoid any needless or gratuitous name-calling and general nastiness regarding this whole "Clean Wehrmacht" business, irrespective of where we stand on it as individuals.

Within reason, of course.

[Kumioko]

But since I am not, spending the time to remember which morally corrupted suck up is promoted and another demoted just isn't important. So I tend to forget.

It's a problem, I know... So, I have helpfully placed a reminder of Mr. Carcharoth's Arb-or-not-Arb status beneath his name for future reference. Problem solved!

Also, I have - admittedly, with some hesitation - approved Mr. LargelyRecyclable's registration here on Wikipediocracy, so let's all please try to avoid any needless or gratuitous name-calling and general nastiness regarding this whole "Clean Wehrmacht" business, irrespective of where we stand on it as individuals.

Within reason, of course.

[Anroth]

K.e.coffman redirected about 1700 Knight's Cross recipients to a "list" page. Presumably that's what Kumioko is talking about.

I have no opinion on whether it was the right thing to do or not. I don't know enough about the topic.

Its a reasonable situation for any 'award'. Often the recipients have no real notability other than winning the award (which can trigger BLP if they are still alive) and a list article with a clearly defined criteria is a suitable place to gather them all together. As with a prolific award, often little can be written about them individually to take an article to more than a stub. It doesnt prevent those winners who have a lot more that can be written having their own article as well as appearing on the list.

The real argument is always over what awards/decorations are notable, does winning a particular award/decoration instantly make someone inherantly notable etc. And this argument happens all the time - its not unique to the milhist project. Milhist has fairly well argued out over the years what the comparative 'ranking' of awards/decorations are.

[Carcharoth]

But since I am not, spending the time to remember which morally corrupted suck up is promoted and another demoted just isn't important. So I tend to forget.

It's a problem, I know... So, I have helpfully placed a reminder of Mr. Carcharoth's Arb-or-not-Arb status beneath his name for future reference. Problem solved!

Heh. I didn't know that that bit could be edited or changed. Can I do that or is it a superpower? I haven't been an arb since 2014. That is over 3.5 years. I've been participating here all that time without that disclaimer. If I am going to need to remind people of something like that, it would be better in a custom signature I can edit. Could you please change it back for now, to whatever it said previously? (Unless I can do that myself.)

[Kumioko]

Don't worry you don't need it there for my sake.

Being an arbitraitor[sic] on Wikipedia is like being a United States Marine. "Once an arbitraitor, always an arbitraitor!"

[Ming]

K.e.coffman redirected about 1700 Knight's Cross recipients to a "list" page. Presumably that's what Kumioko is talking about.

I have no opinion on whether it was the right thing to do or not. I don't know enough about the topic.

Its a reasonable situation for any 'award'. Often the recipients have no real notability other than winning the award (which can trigger BLP if they are still alive) and a list article with a clearly defined criteria is a suitable place to gather them all together. As with a prolific award, often little can be written about them individually to take an article to more than a stub. It doesnt prevent those winners who have a lot more that can be written having their own article as well as appearing on the list.

The real argument is always over what awards/decorations are notable, does winning a particular award/decoration instantly make someone inherantly notable etc. And this argument happens all the time - its not unique to the milhist project. Milhist has fairly well argued out over the years what the comparative 'ranking' of awards/decorations are.

It's particularly a problem when the significance of the award changed over time. The US Medal of Honor, for instance, was handed out like candy in the Civil War, whereas these days, if you survive, chances of major mutilation are pretty high, and there's always a story. Milhist has done better by this than most groups; the tendency elsewhere has been all-inclusion, though some lines inevitably do get drawn. In lighthouses, the US standard mostly was to go off the CG historical pages, with the implication that unmanned lights, as a rule, weren't notable, and there had to be more structure than just a post. From what I can tell the Europeans stuck to similar standards. The problems in that case were genuinely edge cases: fake lighthouses on the one end, and some cases where there was never enough information to say more about the light than where it was and maybe when it was built on the other. It probably doesn't hurt things much because the fakes can be shoved off as other people's notability problems, and there aren't enough of the undocumented cases to have much of a fight over. NHRP forms demand that the submitters explain what's important about the property, so even if it may be a low bar, it's not unreasonable. The roads project, on the other hand.... and the "every dot is sacred" on geographical features crowd. There is a huge lack of understanding of how unreliable maps can be.

Milhist is better off than a lot of areas because the level of amateur expertise is relatively high, but the issue of dated material and perspectives is not helped by it being very difficult from the outside to read the state of the field where there is any significant controversy. The initial version of the article on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife (T-H-L) hoax appears to have been built entirely around the initial announcement and Laurie Goldstein's NYT article, which was credulous because that's what she is when it comes to heterodox statements. Before the article was even started, however, there was plenty of doubt expressed in the textual scholarship community. They were vindicated in the end: the textual guys picked the thing apart over the next several years (mostly on-line: it wasn't hard to follow), and eventually a guy at The Atlantic traced the provenance and found the forger. the article passed a GA review, but it's terrible because the refutation of the original claims are just tacked on here and there, probably because someone read a news story rather than followed the scholarly discussion.

Archaeological maters are worse, especially in fraught areas such as Britain and the Middle East, where pushing back against politics and woo-woo requires knowledge not only of the field, but of the cranks.

[Kumioko]

Its funny you bring up the Medal of Honor recipients. I really anticipate a major change to the process to eliminate most of the early ones due to either a lack of perceived notability or references.

[Poetlister]

Archaeological maters are worse

Aha, we're back to Latin. Yes, these maters (mothers, for those who know no Latin) are a perishing nuisance to archaeologists. They are forever running round at digs, telling their children to be careful, not hurt themselves, keep well wrapped up, eat their lunch and so on.

[Carcharoth]

But since I am not, spending the time to remember which morally corrupted suck up is promoted and another demoted just isn't important. So I tend to forget.

It's a problem, I know... So, I have helpfully placed a reminder of Mr. Carcharoth's Arb-or-not-Arb status beneath his name for future reference. Problem solved!

Heh. I didn't know that that bit could be edited or changed. Can I do that or is it a superpower? I haven't been an arb since 2014. That is over 3.5 years. I've been participating here all that time without that disclaimer. If I am going to need to remind people of something like that, it would be better in a custom signature I can edit. Could you please change it back for now, to whatever it said previously? (Unless I can do that myself.)

Funny guy, whoever did that (changing that bit in the display to say "whatever it said previously"). I am not assuming it was Midsize Jake, as they are far too sensible to do something like that. Well, usually they are... I couldn't find anything in the settings that I can change myself, so can it be changed back please?

[Midsize Jake]

Funny guy, whoever did that (changing that bit in the display to say "whatever it said previously"). I am not assuming it was Midsize Jake, as they are far too sensible to do something like that. Well, usually they are... I couldn't find anything in the settings that I can change myself, so can it be changed back please?

Oh, all right... let's just do it your way...

Anyway, I'm a little surprised Mr. Recyclable hasn't posted here (yet) - maybe he just doesn't think very highly of us, but he hardly seems like the conflict-avoidance type. Still, I did ask people to be "civil" just in case, so... maybe I just took too long approving his registration and he forgot we even existed.

[LargelyRecyclable]

Also, I have - admittedly, with some hesitation - approved Mr. LargelyRecyclable's registration here on Wikipediocracy, so let's all please try to avoid any needless or gratuitous name-calling and general nastiness regarding this whole "Clean Wehrmacht" business, irrespective of where we stand on it as individuals.

Within reason, of course.

Hey, thanks.

Anyway, I'm a little surprised Mr. Recyclable hasn't posted here (yet) - maybe he just doesn't think very highly of us, but he hardly seems like the conflict-avoidance type. Still, I did ask people to be "civil" just in case, so... maybe I just took too long approving his registration and he forgot we even existed.

I've just been busy. I'm not even sure I have anything to say here, or what it is that I would say. I feel pretty conflicted about the whole thing and I've already talked it out with a lot of people in private. I mostly just registered for site functionality while I was reading some of what the peanut gallery had to say on that whole train wreck. For what it's worth, I've become a lot more conflict...discriminating as I've gotten older. It's part of the reason I was MIA during the much of the process. I just couldn't balance my disgust with my desire to just be done with the entire farce and spent weeks with the attitude that it just wasn't worth it. It was clear early on that they wanted a witch to burn and Coffman was going to be protected, regardless of her editing history.

[Midsize Jake]

...I just couldn't balance my disgust with my desire to just be done with the entire farce and spent weeks with the attitude that it just wasn't worth it.

Well, I blame Trump, but if you do end up sticking around you'll find that I do that for pretty much everything.

It was clear early on that they wanted a witch to burn and Coffman was going to be protected, regardless of her editing history.

Hmmm... so do you believe K.e.coffman (T-C-L) is a woman? Have you read any comments, etc., in which (s)he self-identifies in some way, or are you maybe basing that off this Facebook page? If it's the latter, it seems hard to believe that someone with her (the Facebook user's) stated background and interests would be so exhaustively interested in WW2 history... she doesn't even claim to have a college education (though I guess that wouldn't be a strict requirement). It could be a ruse, but then that would mean the picture is part of the ruse, so that doesn't help... Anyway, don't worry about it, I was just curious.

So welcome to Wikipediocracy and all that!

[Midsize Jake]

...I just couldn't balance my disgust with my desire to just be done with the entire farce and spent weeks with the attitude that it just wasn't worth it.

Well, I blame Trump, but if you do end up sticking around you'll find that I do that for pretty much everything.

It was clear early on that they wanted a witch to burn and Coffman was going to be protected, regardless of her editing history.

Hmmm... so do you believe K.e.coffman (T-C-L) is a woman? Have you read any comments, etc., in which (s)he self-identifies in some way, or are you maybe basing that off this Facebook page? If it's the latter, it seems hard to believe that someone with her (the Facebook user's) stated background and interests would be so exhaustively interested in WW2 history... It could be a ruse, but then that would mean the picture itself is part of the ruse, so that doesn't help. Anyway, don't worry about it, I was just curious.

Welcome to Wikipediocracy and all that!

[LargelyRecyclable]

Hmmm... so do you believe K.e.coffman (T-C-L) is a woman? Have you read any comments, etc., in which (s)he self-identifies in some way, or are you maybe basing that off this Facebook page? If it's the latter, it seems hard to believe that someone with her (the Facebook user's) stated background and interests would be so exhaustively interested in WW2 history... It could be a ruse, but then that would mean the picture itself is part of the ruse, so that doesn't help. Anyway, don't worry about it, I was just curious.

Welcome to Wikipediocracy and all that!

Yeah, Coffman's a woman. After I went back to Wikipedia one of my first, obvious, questions was "What's this dude's deal?" Once I actually started to look it took me about 20 minutes to find out who she is. The only reason I mention it is that I hate the they/their/them pronoun game. As far as her biography goes, I'll just leave it at that. Despite everything, I don't have any real ill will toward her as a person and I try respect peoples' desires to remain anonymous on the internet. From my perspective people like her are not the central problem with Wikipedia, she's just another game-playing POV warrior who likely believes that she really is just stacking all those bodies in the interest of the greater good. Those people are a dime a dozen on Wikipedia. I thought her behavior, on and off-wiki, was obnoxious and destructive, but it's the people in positions of power who facilitate that sort of non-sense due to their own pettiness, ideology, or simple incompetence, who can claim whatever enduring disdain I have left.

[LargelyRecyclable]

Honestly the Arbcom didn't take a big step in identifying 2 Milhist coordinators, you're kidding yourself there. The Arbcom whimped out as they always do and banned the only non admin. If the others wouldn't have been admins you would have banned them to0.

Neither Cinderella or auntieruth are Admins, only Peacemaker. They're "just" really respected coordinators and content creators on the single best Project on Wikipedia, which makes them far more valuable than at least 80% of Admins. Hell, auntieruth is an actual Professor of History. Banning those two likely would have caused a full on revolt at MILHIST. That said, ArbCom really had to stretch any remaining credibility it had to give Cinderella a topic ban. Unfortunately, Cinderella's moral outrage just wouldn't let him drop the issue and so they stepped on him with a topic ban.

I also think it's interesting that Wikipedia chose to delete or redirect hundreds of articles rather than clean them up and have effectively ensured German topics are going to be a wasteland unless your intentions are to delete them, strip them down to stubs or ensure that none of them are ever mentioned or improved. Just to clarify, I am no fascist. The best way to ensure history repeats itself though is to remove any record of the atrocities and make sure people forget about what happened. American soldiers did things in the Pacific that weren't flattering either, should we remove those articles as well? Maybe we should remove all the Civil War Medal of Honor recipient articles because most of the sources are military original source or worse.

Nazi hysteria is en vogue.

I also think it's shameful that Arbcom patted Kecoffman on the back for being a POV pusher. Anyone can clearly see he has an agenda and all he is doing by soliticiting the opinions of "experts" is recruiting people with his same beliefs to justify his own crusade. It doesn't matter how he words the letters, if you are asking questions of people who you already know share your mindset, then you already know what they are going to say. it's the same when he goes to certain websites and asks people in what appear to be unbiased attempts to recruit editors. If you go to a Jewish page and ask for recruits you are going to get people who share that view, same with muslims, same with fascists, etc. The fact that the Arbcom was to stupid to recognize what Kecoffman is doing should be embarrassing to the members of the Arbcom, the community and the readers.

This was a very conscious decision on the part of a few (four-ish) members of the ArbCom. A few other usual suspect type Admins "prepped" Coffman for the filing with the arraigned understanding that I'd get nuked from low orbit. It was an intentional play to get rid of me after I ruffled some Important People's feathers while simultaneously building up her POV's bonafides going forward. Basically everything else was just collateral damage for the poor souls who where honest enough to strenuously object in public. Some of ArbCom was clearly not super impressed with the whole situation but, in the end, they stuck together. You can't have Important People spending months on something like this without someone to squish. In other words, same old story it ever was.

[Kumioko]

Auntieruth is an admin on Simple, so a lot of people treat her like an admin on ENWP as well.

[Maunus]

the question I would ask is whether a critique of the editing of history articles on Wikipedia (not just military history articles) would ever get published in the top-ranking history journals

I don't know about History, but for anthropology they would. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wile ... aman.12598. The linked argument article by the way makes a very similar argument for a different historical topic.

As for the problems with WWII, the editor K. E. Coffman (whom I am quite sure is *not* a woman) has made a much larger and more detailed analysis of it, which is available on his userpage. Really it is ridiculous to call his well documented work against unrealibel sourcing and the use of romantic tropes in WW2 articles for "POV-pushing". The POV he is pushing is actual history as opposed to the military romances many people in MILHIST like to write.

[Kingsindian]

I analyzed the article by David Stahel above, and concluded that the author does not really know much about how Wikipedia works -- indeed they admit as much in the article. For instance, do you think the description of the dispute with editor Nug was portrayed accurately in the article? (I don't.) It seems to me that Coffman corresponded with Stahel and the latter mostly took the former's word as to the points at issue. As I said, this is completely fine -- but it's important to understand what's going on.

As for POV-pushing, everyone is "pushing" some POV or the other when they make some edit to an article. Some POVs are better than others. I don't really know much about WW2-related articles, so I can't say much.

As for the ArbCom case, MILHIST is pretty powerful and well-connected -- so I did not expect any serious action by ArbCom. They didn't do much at all. The action against Cinderella57 was bad, for reasons I explained on the ArbCom PD page. I am not sure if anything really changed in MILHIST related articles -- I don't edit much in the area, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

[Alex Shih]

Well Kingsindian, they did update their guideline for military bios, but I think that's about it.

[La Blanche Hermine]

Well Kingsindian, they did update their guideline for military bios, but I think that's about it.

We also introduced mandatory source reviews for all new A-class article nominations.

[Kumioko]

Well Kingsindian, they did update their guideline for military bios, but I think that's about it.

We also introduced mandatory source reviews for all new A-class article nominations.

I don't know how to say this but, source reviews were going on when I was submitting A and FA class articles for review all the way back in the 2008-2009 time frame. I remember getting a hard time when I submitted a couple because I was using book sources that were nearly impossible to verify because I got sources from the Archives and Library of Congress. In a couple cases I had to scan in pages and email them to the reviewer before they would pass it. I guess maybe they stopped at some point since there are a lot less editors than there used to be.

[Maunus]

As for POV-pushing, everyone is "pushing" some POV or the other when they make some edit to an article. Some POVs are better than others. I don't really know much about WW2-related articles, so I can't say much.

No, pushing for the responsible representation of history in line with reliable sources is not POV pushing, it is writing articles the way they are supposed to be written.

[Kingsindian]

Yes, I said some POVs are better than others (middle sentence).

What do you think about the other things I said?

[Cla68]

Here's an example of run-of-the-mill POV pushing in Wikipedia. In the article Raid on Makin Island (T-H-L), the book Forgotten Raiders of '42: The Fate of the Marines Left Behind on Makin, described the movie Gung Ho!, which is based on this event, as a "propaganda film." I've seen the film, and I agree that it matches the description of a propaganda film, being made to promote patriotism and a sense of righteous inevitability in its American viewers. So, I added that description to the article.

Guess how long that lasted? A few days and someone reverted it. Calling a US film which glorifies US Marines as "propaganda" is going to get reverted lickety-split, every time, no matter how good your source is. It's part of the American-POV which is prevalent in the English WP.

[Poetlister]

No, pushing for the responsible representation of history in line with reliable sources is not POV pushing, it is writing articles the way they are supposed to be written.

Wanting the responsible representation of history is a kind of POV, albeit a good one that few people here would oppose.

[Eric Corbett]

No, pushing for the responsible representation of history in line with reliable sources is not POV pushing, it is writing articles the way they are supposed to be written.

Wanting the responsible representation of history is a kind of POV, albeit a good one that few people here would oppose.

But is it "POV pushing"?