Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Archive 33

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Recent research, 3 March

Latest comment: 1 year ago218 comments15 people in discussion

As usual, we are preparing this regular survey on recent academic research about Wikipedia, doubling as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter (now in its twelfth year). Help is welcome to review or summarize the many interesting items listed here (also for future issues), as are suggestions of other new research papers that haven't been covered yet. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG, HaeB, and Groceryheist: I've made some copyedits to the Holocaust in Poland review which I feel are advisable – from a BLP point of view and because there is a pending ArbCom case whose outcome we can't and shouldn't try to prejudge. Diff. Please see what you think. Andreas JN 466 14:01, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

And another two: Diff 1, Diff 2. Note that Richard C. Lukas is recommended background reading on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. What they say about him there is:

Lukas, Richard. Did the Children Cry? Hitler’s War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994. (D 810 .C4 L82 1994) [Find in a library near you]

Focuses on the experiences of Polish children, Jewish as well as gentile, under German occupation. Organized into thematic chapters such as “Invasion,” “Deportations,” “Hiding,” “Germanization,” and “Concentration Camps.” Includes a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and several photographic images.

Lukas, Richard. The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944. New York: Hippocrene, 1997. (D 802 .P6 L85 1997) [Find in a library near you]

An account of the systematic persecution of the Polish nation and its residents by the German forces. Features endnotes, a bibliography, appendices including lists of Poles killed for assisting Jews, primary source documents, and an index.

If the guy is recommended without caveat on the USHMM website, then I don't think it is helpful in the overall scheme of things for us to describe him flat-out as "distortionist" in The Signpost's voice and argue that The title of his most-cited work, "The Forgotten Holocaust," refers to the suffering of Poles under Nazi occupation and so insinuates a false equivalence between Polish and Jewish suffering. Arguably, Wikipedia should not reference this at all, at least not without blinding clarity about how it contradicts mainstream sources. Doing so surely would put us outside the mainstream. --Andreas JN 466 16:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the stylistic improvements. I'm not comfortable adding "allege" everywhere. This is a positive review, not a neutral one and I don't see how an arbitration case should influence it.

As for Lukas, it's interesting that the Holocaust Memorial Museum website has a bibliography about the Poles and the Holocaust that includes Lukas. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that this legitimizes Lukas as a Wikipedia source, however. I left these sentences in for now, but I'll think about removing them later. Groceryheist (talk) 17:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Lukas' book was published by an American university press (Kentucky) and has 325 scholarly citations according to Google Scholar. Looking up the "mainstream" people he's being compared to, i.e. Doris Bergen, Samuel Kassow, Zvi Gitelman, Debórah Dwork, Nechama Tec, I find their most widely referenced works in this topic area all have similar citation numbers in Google Scholar:

Doris Bergen's War and genocide: A concise history of the Holocaust: 351 citations
Samuel Kassow's Who will write our history?: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes archive: 241 citations
Zvi Gitelman's A Century of Ambivalence, Second Expanded Edition: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present: 332 citations
Debórah Dwork's Children with a star: Jewish youth in Nazi Europe: 387 citations
Nechama Tec's Resilience and courage: Women, men, and the Holocaust: 198 citations

If I put that together with the (multiple) references to Lukas' works on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, then any argument that Wikipedia shouldn't reference him looks unreasonable. What am I missing? Andreas JN 466 18:33, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I have Googled for mentions of all the above scholars on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, taking this to be reasonably representative of the mainstream in the U.S., at least. The result (based in each case on clicking through to the last results page):

22 hits for "Richard Lukas"|"Richard C. Lukas"|"Lukas, Richard" site:ushmm.org
52 hits for "Dwork, Deborah"|"Deborah Dwork"|"Debórah Dwork"|"Dwork, Debórah" site:ushmm.org
66 hits for "Bergen, Doris"|"Doris Bergen" site:ushmm.org
27 hits for "Samuel Kassow"|"Kassow, Samuel" site:ushmm.org
27 hits for "Zvi Gitelman"|"Gitelman, Zvi" site:ushmm.org
224 hits for "Nechama Tec"|"Tec, Nechama" site:ushmm.org

The only scholar who is in a different order of magnitude here is Nechama Tec, and this surely reflects the fact that she "was appointed to the Council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". Lukas' hit count seems to me perfectly respectable, given that the main thrust of his scholarship appears to have been the Holocaust experience of ethnic Poles, which can obviously be only a secondary topic of the Holocaust Memorial Museum site. Nathan, I'd love it if you could reconsider that sentence. Regards, Andreas JN 466 21:39, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I've concluded that I want to leave the sentence in. I want to make a point that the error in Chart 3 doesn't invalidate the point that Wikipedia's over-relying on these dubious sources.

University of Kentucky press is not a very high-status academic publisher and an 1980s book from them doesn't necessarily inspire a lot of confidence, especially in conflict with more recent scholarship. I've pursued a handful of reviews of The Forgotten Holocaust available online, and my assessment of these is similar to Gabrowski and Klein's. The positive reviews don't provide academically rigorousness evaluations and are often very excited that the tale of Polish suffering compared to Jews has finally been told. An important takeaway from the negative reviews is that the book relies on both reliable and apocryphal data, but does a poor job distinguishing between the two.

As far as citation counts go, these are not a very good indicator that the source is reliable. If you peruse the recent citations that are publicly available, you'll see that they either cite Lukas briefly for a number (e.g., number of Poles killed in concentration camps) or cite him negatively, as evidence of efforts to broaden the definition of the Holocaust (e.g., [1], [2]).

[Edit: Attempt to fix links Groceryheist (talk) 02:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)]

It is a bit puzzling that Lukas gets cited on the USHMM website. Maybe this suggests that there's a need for new high-quality research about the Polish experience of the 20th century and Lukas is among the best available.

To be clear, I'm also not 100% convinced that this book shouldn't be used on Wikipedia. I'm just leaning that way. Hence, my hedge of "Arguably." The argument should be had, but the review isn't the place to have it. Groceryheist (talk) 23:15, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Nathan: Well, thanks for considering it. Here is another thing I would like you to consider. Grabowski and Klein say Lukas' book The Forgotten Holocaust is cited in some 80 articles. (I agree that seems excessive compared to the other authors.)

I am currently going through these 80+ articles, one by one, with WikiBlame. Among the first 15 articles I have reviewed, there is not a single one where Lukas' name was first added by either Piotrus or Volunteer Marek. In two cases it was User:Pernambuko (inactive), in three it was User:Matalea (blocked), in two it was User:NYScholar (blocked), in two it was User:Poeticbent (no longer active), in one or two it was an IP ...

Yet readers of your review will conclude that Wikipedia's relative over-reliance on Lukas is due to these two editors. How certain are you that that is a fair accusation to make? Can you say how many cases there have been where the editors you name have either added that source (which, let's not forget, is also used by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) to an article, or advocated for its retention? Andreas JN 466 00:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Andreas I'm only naming these 2 editors in reference to their defenses / critique's of G&K's essay. So I don't think a reasonable reader would conclude that they added any particular citations. This review isn't about them, but G&K's essay. Groceryheist (talk) 00:39, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, the review text is quite clear about them only being two out of a small group of committed Wikipedians "with [according to the paper] a Polish nationalist bent". And it also already mentions Poeticbent as another member. By the way, regarding Matalea, it is worth being aware that the account was blocked as a confirmed sockpuppet of Poeticbent, so it looks like Andreas has been unearthing additional evidence in favor of Grabowski and Klein's thesis here. (Not that anyone should assume that the on-wiki evidence presented within the paper's 317 footnotes is comprehensive, anyway.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:41, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate that may have been the intent, but it wasn't how it read to me. Have a look at the flow of the text. Piotrus and VM are the only editors mentioned by name in the body of the text. Their mention is preceded and followed by comments about citations of Lukas as a key driver of the distortion. Following the discussion of Lukas, there are then multiple references to "these editors". Piotrus and VM are the only referents available – to me it sounded like you were talking about them. (Poeticbent – thanks for the sock list, HaeB, I hadn't realised – has a mention in the picture caption only.) Andreas JN 466 07:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Respectfully disagree, Piotrus and VM are only mentioned in the final paragraph about the distortionists, the subject of which is clearly their critique. Everything in that paragraph and the following one applies to these two. There is no implication they had anything to do with adding the citations to Lukas because it is explained that they brought up Lukas in their critique. Everything preceding clearly refers to the overall group of accused distortionist editors. How much more can I spell this out for you? Groceryheist (talk) 07:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I made a minor edit to clarify that the final sentence of that paragraph refers to the entire group of accused distortionists. Groceryheist (talk) 07:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the edit. (I was just about to say there're at least two paragraphs where you're explicitly talking about them – once by name and then by referring to "these editors' Wikipedia careers (spanning over 18 and 17 years, respectively)".) Andreas JN 466 07:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Andreas, it's reasonable to ask that judgments and opinions are attributed and I'm open to adding an "in this reviewer's opinion" etc. here or there, but overall this should already be clear from the byline and the topic. I'm also unclear what you mean by "prejudging" an ArbCom case - I do recall quite a bit of Signpost writing from yourself that expressed strongly held opinions about a topic (including many with BLP implications) for which there was no community consensus yet.

And please refrain from making direct edits with rationales of the form "but this review doesn't align with my opinion about topic X", especially not based on cherry-picked pieces of evidence. I'll leave it to Groceryheist if he wants to remove his tentative (Arguably,...) remark about the book in light of your objection. But clearly Grabowski and Klein offer some weighty arguments why they consider the book as distortionist. And your claim surely would put us outside the mainstream doesn't make sense - at WP:RSN it would be a rather mundane event if the use of a source is discouraged based on scholarly criticism in a number of peer-reviewed publications (Grabowski and Klein are far from being from the only researchers who have raised concerns about this book) even though it is also listed in a bibliography web page by some institution. - Anyhow, this is obviously a complicated topic with many subtopics about which reasonable people can disagree, but we need to distinguish differences in the weighting of evidence from clear factual errors; I'm not seeing any of the latter in this review so far.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:11, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with HaeB. GroceryHeist's review is fairly reflective of my reading of the G&K article - it is not that every single claim made by G&K is accurate (some of Piotrus' and VM's rebut do have merit) but a preponderance are, as is the overall thrust. Lukas can be listed on the HMM website but is a bottom-tier source. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:21, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

It's Piotrus's and VM's arses that are on the line here. It's one thing to report in Wikipedia's community newspaper that two IRL-named volunteer editors have been accused by two scholars of being "holocaust distortionists". It's another for them to simply be described as "two of the [holocaust] distortionists" – which is one step away from being called "holocaust deniers", and a nuance probably lost on a lot of people out there (even though Groceryheist did take the trouble to explain the difference), once the thing has gone through Twitter and Instragram. Given that all of us can readily see that some of the claims in the essay don't stand up to scrutiny, and it takes hours to go down each rabbit hole, I'd rather have us reserve judgment until they have all been properly looked at and ArbCom has rendered its verdict.

You can't unpublish this if ArbCom decides in half a year's time that the paper substantially misrepresented what happened on Wikipedia. Andreas JN 466 19:19, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm curious why you are trying to blame Groceryheist for the thing [potentially going] through Twitter and Instragram [sic] when it has already been the subject of extensive media coverage and highlighted in other Signpost articles including by yourself. And no, we don't need to withhold coverage of academic publications in "Recent research" until ArbCom has rendered its verdict. Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:02, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I didn't say we shouldn't publish a review. I said we should reserve judgment and attribute opinions (unless we had performed an exhaustive study ourselves and were reporting our own findings). Andreas JN 466 22:49, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

The ArbCom case is in part there to judge whether these editors were or were not "distortionist". They have been accused, but the jury is literally still out.

Adding an "in this reviewer's opinion" or "in Grabowski and Klein's opinion" here or there would help.

I also wonder whether we should provide direct links to the rebuttals if we're explicitly not trying to remain neutral on the case being litigated.

(I don't know when JPxG intends to publish, but having these discussions at the eleventh hour doesn't make this easier.) Andreas JN 466 18:55, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

For clarity, the review already highlights and discusses these rebuttals, linking to your own summary of them (Piotrus and Volunteer Marek, have defended themselves by enumerating many omissions and some possible errors in the essay). I have added some attribution clarifications per your suggestion, but again, there is no requirement that every Signpost piece must agree with or wait for hypothetical future ArbCom judgments or other forms of community decisions. Quite a bit of your own past opinion writing for the Signpost might not have adhered to such a maxim either. (Did ArbCom even say that they would specifically rule on whether Grabowski and Klein's term "distortionist" is correct or not?) Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:59, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the edits. I was wondering whether a courtesy link to User:Piotrus/Response and https://volunteermarek.substack.com/p/main-response-to-grabowski-and-klein might be more appropriate. My summary begins with Grabowski and Klein's abstract, then describes the ArbCom happenings, then mentions Piotr's article in a Polish newspaper, then mentions where people can find the Polish newspaper text, and only then mentions Piotr's English response and VM's piece. I think we should make it easier for those interested in what they have to say to find their English-language responses. What do you think? Andreas JN 466 21:48, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I have changed this to the two direct links you suggested. Either way, I think that the review text already duly acknowledges these objections, and that it is not obliged to agree with their overall conclusions over those of an academic paper published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Arbitary break 1

I'm sorry but this piece is extremely bad. "Grabowski and Klein provide very strong support for this first claim,". Well, no, no they don't. First third of the article is general complaints which mostly involve text added like 15 or 14 years ago by people who are NOT the editors mentioned in the paper and many weren't even Polish. Second section is almost entirely lifted from Icewhiz's 2019 ArbCom case, evidence that was reviewed and rejected by the committee (and in numerous WP:AE reports previously). Dozens of uninvolved (and non-Polish) admins and arbitrators have looked at this "evidence" and saw through it - it's fabrications and manipulations. Third part is a hodge podge of misrepresentations, and involves some arguments started by Icewhiz's sock puppets, after he was indefinetly banned from all Wikimedia Projects for making death threats and other forms of harassment.

The fact that Grabowski and Klein rely so much on User Icewhiz in their piece, and try to portray him as a innocent "defender of historical accuracy" (in reality he was banned in multiple ways for multiple forms of abuse of policies and people) is not even mentioned in GroceryHeist's article.

Same thing applies to claims like "Grabowski and Klein persuasively argue". Or this One notable error is that the method for counting citations is imprecise and considerably underestimates Richard C. Lukas' academic citations. I'm sorry but, that's small potatoes compared to the other ridiculous accusations and false allegations in that paper! If you're going to try and describe how we defended ourselves please at least do so honestly and provide REAL reasons why I am objecting, not some trivial red herring.

Oh my god, you actually call Icewhiz a "defender of historical accuracy" too. "Short word-limits in case statements were too constraining for defenders of historical accuracy to be able to explain to non-experts the problems with the heroic Polish narrative in the articles". Is this serious??? The short word-limits is what saved Icewhiz's butt from getting indef'd right then and there and allowed him to squeak away with just a topic ban! The indef ban would have to wait till his abuse of multiple people off wiki came to light.

User:HaeB - initially you said I would have a right to reply to anything the Signpost posted. I asked to do so but you never replied. I said oh well, and basically decided to wait for the ArbCom case. But now you're going to publish THIS? This is something that GroceryHeist should put on their User page if they want, that's it.

There's going to be an ArbCom case. You don't know how it will turn out. Evaluation of the G&K paper will be part of that. As will be the activities (both on and off wiki) of Icewhiz and his sock puppets and of other editors in this topic area. To write and publish this super irresponsible piece is a really bad look. Volunteer Marek 18:50, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

User:HaeB - initially you said I would have a right to reply to anything the Signpost posted. I asked to do so but you never replied - that's not at all what I said in this discussion. I invite others reading along here to compare my actual statements there with Volunteer Marek's summary, as an illustration of how some of the editors whom the paper criticizes as distortionist also distort on-wiki evidence. (In the linked discussion I had pointed out another example, search for "rehas".)

Groceryheist was well aware of your rebuttal attempts, of the Icewhiz case and of potential BLP concerns when writing this review. Icewhiz isn't even mentioned in the review at all. I understand that there were grave misconduct issues with that particular editor that affected Piotrus and yourself personally, but these have been covered elsewhere and are ultimately not very relevant to the overarching questions that are the focus of the paper, the review and the upcoming ArbCom case.

Obviously you are entitled to your opinions and should feel to post them in the comments section, or submit a separate opinion piece, which I had suggested the Signpost could consider for publication (without speaking for JPxG or otherwise anticipating judgments about the suitability of a not yet unwritten piece). But you'll need to understand that the Signpost regularly covers severe criticism that the criticized people may not agree with. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:28, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, what you said was this: I think it could be a good idea for the Signpost to offer them (meaning me - VM) (and/or other editors covered) to write a response, to be considered for publication as an opinion article. Maybe I read a bit too much into that. But that offer never came.

The fact that Icewhiz isn't even mentioned in the review is part of the problem (although he is... as a "defender of historical accuracy") How in the world is that not relevant?

There's a difference between publishing criticisms and writing "oh my god these guys are so right!". Seriously, this is a really really bad piece and it can even be seen as an attempt to prejudge the upcoming ArbCom case. Volunteer Marek 20:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand this contrived argument about having to mention (or not mention?) Icewhiz, and it's worth pointing out both the paper and the review talk about defenders of historical accuracy in plural, which you changed to singular in your quote above. E.g. the paper also highlights K.e.coffman in that regard (whose efforts to combat misinformation in this area is held in high esteem by many). What's more, regardless of Icewhiz' inexcusable misconduct against particular editors on a personal level, it also seems indisputable that he did find and address important historical inaccuracies on a content level. Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

No, K.e.coffman was not a party to the case, the plural is just Icewhiz talking about himself in third person. The argument about Icewhiz is NOT "contrived" as literally half the paper is lifted straight from his "evidence" in the 2019 case. It is essentially this except wrote up in paragraph format rather than a bulleted list. And if this guy was topic banned for presenting this evidence, because it falsely accused people of crap [3] [4] [5] then the fact that G&K repeat these false accusations is kind of relevant. And no, he didn't really uncover major historical inaccuracies - he did find some sketchy sources, he removed them, nobody reverted him, they haven't been used in the past five year, then he went around pretending like he saved Wikipedia itself and demanded that anyone who disagrees with him gets banned. Oh and then, facing that topic ban he tried save himself by claiming credit for discovering the false information in the Warsaw Concentration Camp article, even though that was K.e.coffman not him.

And of course there's also the fact that many editors find and address important historical inaccuracies on a content level all the time - myself included - but we do it without being creepy sociopaths that make death threats and threats to rape other people's children, and we don't use our volunteer work to try and excuse the POV pushing in other aspects. This guy was at WP:AE like fifty times. He was before ArbCom. And ANI and AN and countless admin's talk pages. And people saw through that BS. But here is Signpost, reposting it, or at least a gushing review of it. Volunteer Marek 02:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Nobody said that K.e.coffman was a party to the case (my emphasis). Rather, the paper cites from the evidence she provided as a non-party editor at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_K.e.coffman (footnote 243), where such comments were indeed subjected to a strict word limit (the page mentions it was enforced against several other editors):

K.e.coffman reached similar conclusions, writing, ‘VM [Volunteer Marek] has behaved in an aggressive and belittling manner towards others, using article TPs [talk pages]/edit summaries to accuse them of: lying; being hysterical; edit warring/dishonesty; holding consensus hostage/sabotaging productive dialog; being offended by sources positive towards Poland; and losing it.’

(Is that also among the alleged "lies" and BLP violations against you?)

And no, he didn't really uncover major historical inaccuracies - uh, just looking at the following part of the paper, I would definitely count that as a major inaccuracy discovered by Icewhiz (it also looks like you and Piotrus actually agreed with Icewhiz in that case, eventually):

Poeticbent’s false caption, combined with the photograph’s particular composition – Hebrew letters directly under the USSR’s emblem – bolster the entrenched stereotype identifying Jews with communism. Furthermore, in a country brutally occupied by the Soviets, Poeticbent’s edit painted Jews as perpetrators. The image remained in Wikipedia, wrongly captioned, until 2018, when the editor Icewhiz corrected its description.

I also noticed K.e.coffman started her above mentioned arbitration comments by providing evidence that Icewhiz identified problematic content & sourcing (not just "some sketchy sources"). That doesn't excuse harassment behavior of course and I understand why you are upset about the latter, but you have to understand that many people and the general public will ultimately be more interested in the overall content questions (has Wikipedia's holocaust coverage been distorted by the "heroic Polish narrative" over the years, and if yes, what were the mechanism and actions causing that) than in the off-wiki misconduct of one particular editor.

I think this discussion has reached a point of diminishing returns. I have now spent time debunking several claims raised in objection to publishing this review that were not even about statements in the review itself. For others reading along, the above provides yet two more examples about how some of the editors whom the paper criticizes as distortionist also distort on-wiki evidence. Yes, the Signpost should do some due diligence if it reports about criticism of Wikipedia, ArbCom cases, etc. But that has been done at this point, and we are not obliged to ride along a gish gallop of objections that continue to fall apart upon closer scrutiny. As always, not everyone will agree with everything in this Signpost piece, but that's OK - it's why we have a lively comment section that sees such disagreements in every issue. Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:14, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

K.e.coffman accused me of being mean to Icewhiz, yes. Guess why I was "uncivil" to him? Oh, it was precisely because he was making vile false accusations against me, and also faking sources etc. Annnnddd guess what did Icewhiz get topic banned for? Yup, it was for making false accusations and getting sketchy with sourcing on BLPs. The whole decision on the case was "Volunteer Marek accused Icewhiz of lying and that's uncivil so he gets a topic ban. But, well, Icewhiz WAS lying so he gets a topic ban too". Why did she not criticize Icewhiz's behavior? I don't know, ask her. Good question. Why overlook seriously disruptive behavior on his part and focus on some incivility on mine? Why are some people still trying to rehabilitate Icewhiz on Wikipedia after all he's done? I don't know, ask them.

And I don't appreciate your little snide "Is that also among the alleged "lies" and BLP violations against you?". First, you're being sarcastic here as a way of trying to dismiss real genuine and serious concerns about the truthfulness of these accusations. You're trying to imply that when I say that Icewhiz lied about me, I'm just making it up. No, this is exactly what he was doing and this is what ArbCom found and the fact you can so blithely dismiss this really doesn't put you in a good light. Again, ask yourself how would you feel if somebody accused you of awful things? And then someone like me came along and made fun of you being accused of these things and put up little taunts the way you're doing now. Second, I never said anything about BLP violations against me so I have no idea what you're talking about.

With regard to Poeticbent's caption, I don't know how many times I have to say this - no one objected to it being corrected! What was at issue was Icewhiz false claim that the miscaptioning was intentional (IIRC the miscaptioning was in the original source that Poeticbent used). Guess what the ArbCom case found? Icewhiz interpreted an apparent error by Poeticbent as a deliberate hoax. And man, did Icewhiz try to milk this one correction he made for all the good faith that was worth. Hell, he's still trying to milk it and you're right there for it.

If you think that this was a case of "the off-wiki misconduct of one particular editor." that just shows you have absolutely no idea of what has been going on here for the past four years. It's not just one editor (Icewhiz has some friends) and it's not just off-wiki.

And you haven't debunked diddly. All you did is taunt me with your "Is that also among the alleged "lies" and BLP violations against you?" You want more examples? Here:

The claim I called Ewa Kurek a “mainstream scholar” is simply untrue. A lie. G&K provide a link to a discussion where no such thing is said, hoping, I guess that no one will check them. In fact I explicitly stated that Ewa Kurek is a source which should not be used on Wikipedia [6] (regarding Ewa Kurek I believe I've expressed the opinion that she should not be used as a source given some of her statements in the media) and removed her as source myself [7].
Regarding the Naliboki massacre article, the authors falsely claim that I added “Jewish partisans” to it. This too is just another lie Icewhiz tried to peddle on Wikipedia before he got banned. I *removed* the claim that Jewish partisans were involved, not added it! Here and here and here. Please explain to me how claiming I did the opposite of what I actually did is not a lie?
More examples? Sure. I never called Gazeta Wyborcza unreliable (just said it wasn’t comparable to Washington Post), I didn’t “guard” the article on Wojciech Muszynski for months (I made two edits on one single day, reverting sock puppets), I actually said Christopher Browning was a reliable source, I never added or removed anything about Obama from the Muszynski article (I don’t even know where this fabrication comes from), I never said that Glaukopis was a reliable source and “shouldn’t be a concern”, in fact I explicitly said that it should not be used. Etc. etc. etc.

The fact that some people don't know how to actually click on diffs and examine what's in them really shouldn't be my problem. But apparently it is. Volunteer Marek 06:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

It's funny Volunteer Marek says “The claim I called Ewa Kurek a “mainstream scholar” is simply untrue”. G&K give this link where Volunteer Marek writes: “After I posted this here, he chilled out for a couple of days, but once it started to look like the admins here were not going to do anything he resumed his attacks on BLPs of historians that disagree with his extremist views. Gunnar S. Paulsson (and [53]), Norman Davies, and also Ewa Kurek. Now some of his edits on these articles may be justifiable. But there are plenty that aren't and taken as a whole it's one obvious attack by Icewhiz on multiple mainstream scholars (Polish, Swedish, British) whom he decided should be attacked because what they wrote doesn't let him push his POV. ... .Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:13, 12 June 2018 (UTC)”. Caught red handed much? 122.56.201.114 (talk) 07:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Stop socking Icewhiz. You know that this was me referring to your general practice of turning multiple BLP articles into hit pieces, something you got sanctioned for. You know that this statement does not call Kurek a "mainstream scholar" unless one tries really really hard to read that into it. You know very well that in the very same discussion [8] I said that Kurek should not be used as a source. This was your lame attempt at a pathetic "gotcha" when you first made it in 2018, it was pathetic when you brought it up at AE again in 2019, it was still pathetic when you included it in your 2019 ArbCom statement, and it is pathetic now. Volunteer Marek 14:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

See. My review is actually quite generous. The defenses have a few things right, but also a lot wrong. It's important to point out when work has errors. Yet I didn't specifically mention that the critiques have errors. I have edited my draft to correct this. Hope that is okay at this time. If not please revert. Groceryheist (talk) 08:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Your review is anything but generous. The fact that you sincerely appear to believe that indicates that you've completely lost the plot. Volunteer Marek 14:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

[9] is a clear and unambiguous statement specifically about Kurek and only about Kurek, with VM saying he agreed she shouldn't be cited. The one you link is not a clear and unambiguous statement specifically about Kurek. It's also noteworthy that the diff where he clearly deprecates Kurek is from a few days earlier, so it's not a case of his having changed his tune.

I see what you're saying but looking at both diffs I don't think the essay's presentation is quite fair to him. Andreas JN 466 08:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

In, the IP's link VM, refers to "Polish, Swedish, British" authors. From the hyperlink previews I can see that Kurek is the Polish one and the other two mentioned are Swedish and British. Groceryheist (talk) 09:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

One of the others, Norman Davies, was granted Polish citizenship in 2014, a fact that was in his article by January 2018. Andreas JN 466 11:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I guess VM could have been more clear if he had pointed that out. But then who's the British historian he's referring to? Groceryheist (talk) 15:31, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually, Grabowski and Klein already note themselves that VM had on some occasions described Kurek as unreliable source, which makes his above protestations (In fact I explicitly stated that Ewa Kurek is a source which should not be used on Wikipedia ...) look rather disingenuous:

Within less than 30 min, Volunteer Marek had deleted Nihil novi’s mention of Kurek. ‘I don’t think [Kurek] can be considered an RS [reliable source],’ he said, echoed by GizzyCatBella (‘Agree’) and Piotrus (‘It would be best to cite others’), although the three of them had vigorously defended Kurek in the past.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:31, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Grabowski and Klein present VM's comment (made at an Arbitration Enforcement thread touching on edits to various scholars' biographies) as though he had made it at the 2018 Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion started to assess whether Kurek was a suitable source. VM had already given his opinion on the quality of Kurek's scholarship, and it was the exact opposite of what Grabowski and Klein make the reader believe his opinion was. That is inexcusable. Andreas JN 466 11:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

No, Haeb, what it makes is Grabowski and Klein look manipulative. They accuse me of calling Kurek a "mainstream scholar" which I didn't. Then later on they acknowledge that I removed her as a source but claim, without evidence, that I only did so because of a "losing hand". They further manipulate the reader by claiming, again falsely, that I had "vigorously defended Kurek in the past". I have NEVER defended Kurek and had said previously she shouldn't be used as a source! How much clearer can that get? And you think *I* am being "disingenuous"? I'm sorry guy but this right here, you, Grabowski, Klein and your way of describing this situation, this manipulative way of misrepresenting a situation to make it appear the opposite of what actually happened, that right there is the very definition of "disingenuous". Volunteer Marek 14:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I took a closer look at the second "lies" example that Volunteer Marek offered above, and there too he distorts and misrepresents what Grabowski and Klein write. VM said:

Regarding the Naliboki massacre article, the authors falsely claim that I added “Jewish partisans” to it. This too is just another lie Icewhiz tried to peddle on Wikipedia before he got banned. I *removed* the claim that Jewish partisans were involved, not added it! Here and here and here. Please explain to me how claiming I did the opposite of what I actually did is not a lie?

The corresponding part of the paper is this:

Wikipedia’s coverage of the Naliboki massacre should not even mention Jews; yet Jews occupy a third of the article. Various editors over the years tried to fix these edits, but they were brought back by Piotrus and by his like-minded colleague, Volunteer Marek.⁹²

So first, Volunteer Marek misrepresents the paper as saying that he had added this, whereas Grabowski and Klein merely say that he brought back the "Jewish partisans" claim. And secondly, that "brought back" is evidently true - Grabowski and Klein back this up with this diff in footnote 92, a fact that VM omits in his aggressive accusations against the authors. (After VM's edit, the "Jewish partisans" were again removed by Icewhiz.)

Now we can debate possible reasons why VM removed the claim in some edits and later restored in another - perhaps he changed his mind on the matter, or made inadvertent editing mistakes; we can also criticize Grabowski and Klein for not going back far enough in the edit history to find these other edits. But Volunteer Marek's lie accusation against them is unambiguously false here. HaeB (talk) 12:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Holy crap, you're trying to, again, Wikilawyer a semantic difference between "added" and "brought back". Does this distinction matter? No. You're just being disingenuous and playing ridiculous "gotcha" games where you seize upon an irrelevant word. And then you claim, that because I said "added" rather than "brought back" I am "misrepresenting the paper". You're being ridiculous and the amount of bad faith you're showing here beggars belief.

Second, you're playing little rhetorical tricks were you describe my criticism of Grabowski and Klein as "aggressive". Guess what? Making false accusations against other people is "aggressive".

Third, you know why I restored it in that one case, it's right there in the edit summary. This guy (yup, another user banned for abuse and sock puppeting), an Icewhiz meat puppet jumped in and reverted on his behalf without discussion. That's it. It was neither an endorsement nor a rejection of the text, it was just "stop meat puppeting for Icewhiz, join the discussion". You omit that part.

Fourth, a minimum standard of honesty would require that even if you try and misrepresent that diff, you also acknowledge that I removed this info on several occasions. Grabowski and Klein don't do that which violates that standard. Along with the multiple examples presented by Andreas, this clearly shows a pattern of them trying to hoodwink readers via lying by omission. You are endorsing, celebrating and engaging that approach. The disturbing part is that you yourself are active in what is suppose to be a "newspaper". Is that how you approach your "journalistic" work here? By playing semantic games with words or omitting relevant context to misrepresent people? This is deeply troubling. Volunteer Marek 13:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

a minimum standard of honesty would require that even if you try and misrepresent that diff, you also acknowledge that I removed this info on several occasions - I literally did just that above (VM removed the claim in some edits and later restored in another). Yet another example of one of your accusations that squarely contradicts the facts. Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:00, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

He wasn't accusing you of failing to do that but Grabowski and Klein ("Grabowski and Klein don't do that which violates that standard.")

That aspect of Grabowski and Klein's essay – the way Piotrus and VM are misrepresented on multiple occasions – is something I continue to find troubling. A person might argue that the end justifies the means, that Wikipedia coverage was unbalanced and fixing that is all that matters, but that is not scholarship. Andreas JN 466 08:23, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

He was using "you" to refer to me in his first, second and third point, so to argue that the word suddenly does not refer to me in the next sentence is a very contrived defense of Volunteer Mareks' communication style here - especially considering that he goes on to use it to refer to me again right afterwards to (falsely) claim You are endorsing, celebrating and engaging that approach.

And I wasn't expressing a judgment about Grabowski and Klein's essay here. As a reminder, Groceryheist's review already acknowledges that the paper has made some errors and omissions (it is clear Grabowski and Klein have interpreted their actions unsympathetically to the extent that they overlooked their many valuable contributions to Wikipedia, at least some of which involved removing distortion). I see your point and it's reasonably to be concerned about these issues and hold the authors accountable for them. But what I think our readers are mostly interested in is whether the paper's overall conclusion - that the history of the Holocaust has been distorted on English Wikipedia - is correct, and what may have caused that.

And, Andreas, regarding misrepresented on multiple occasions, by now it should be clear that Volunteer Marek has himself misrepresented Grabowski and Klein's paper on multiple occasions. Yet in this thread you (again) deflecting attention from such misrepresentations by VM to instead talk about criticism of the other side.

Also a reminder that Volunteer Marek constantly accuses Grabowski and Klein of lies, i.e. deliberate falsehoods, without presenting any evidence that the supposed errors and omissions he calls out were intentional. I think you should find that troubling too - after all, Grabowski and Klein are living people as well (one of them also a Wikipedian, in case one is inclined to make distinctions in that regard, although she has not posted 50 comments within two days on this Newsroom page to influence an upcoming Signpost piece in her sense), and you linked and highlighted Volunteer Marek's accusations prominently in the last Signpost issue. HaeB (talk) 19:45, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

If we were discussing the idea of quoting VM approvingly in the Signpost as saying that Grabowski and Klein told deliberate falsehoods we would be having a different conversation, and I would be making different arguments. I would not be in favour of it. Andreas JN 466 20:13, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Andreas, I agree that deciding on which opinions to feature in the Signpost (and how attribute them) matters in terms of our internal standards at this newsletter.

But from the BLP policy angle that some are still trying to hold up as a big concern here, there is little difference between

1. "The critics persuasively argue that Jimmy Wales is an axe murderer"

2. "The critics argue that Jimmy Wales is an axe murderer"

3. "In this report [link], the critics raise concerns about Jimmy Wales' past behavior" (with the linked report saying "Jimmy Wales is an axe murderer")

You used the analogue of 2. & 3. yourself in the last Signpost issue (for both sides), correctly judging that the paper is not in fact a case of unsubstantiated axe murderer allegations 😉 So I still don't understand why you seem to think that an added "persuasively" (1.) makes such a big difference in case of the review, or why a lack of such an expression of approval does much to assuage concerns about featuring "lies" accusations in the Signpost in the form of 3. (To be clear, considering the overall context and the goal of informing our readers, I am still inclined to stand by the decision to linking VM's Substack post in this review directly as you had suggested. But I'm starting to wonder if we should do more to alert readers to the possibility that some of his claims may not be accurate, in particular - but not only - regarding intentions.)

PS: Since I had noted above that Klein (and Grabowski) has ''not'' resorted to excessive badgering on this talk page to influence the review, I will note in transparency that shortly after I posted that, Groceryheist looped me into an email thread where she had contacted him today with some reasonable and specific clarifications regarding one criticism he is expressing in his review, about the paper's citation counts analysis. (And while I'm at this transparency thing, I have also responded by email to Piotrus after he contacted me with his input about Groceryheist's review, and like with many past RR reviewers, I have been communicating with Groceryheist himself to shepherd his review.) HaeB (talk) 00:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Per my correspondence with Klein, I have updated the article with a link to her updated table, which includes additional information about her methods. While I was making changes I also made some copy edits. Since the source of the original inaccuracy seems to be unanticipated instability in Google scholar citation counts (counts for all the authors went up, but Lukas' went up the most), and because so many claims of inaccuracies in G&K have been shown to crumble under scrutiny, I have softened my language discussing possible errors in the paper. There are so many interpretive nuances involved that it seems overly generous to assume that G&K get 100% of them right, but the one clear-cut error I thought I saw doesn't seem that way now. I have no reason to think it was inaccurate at the time the paper was submitted. Groceryheist (talk) 03:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

So I still don't understand why you seem to think that an added "persuasively" (1.) makes such a big difference I didn't say it did.

You made edits to the review several days ago that attributed opinions and addressed the concerns I expressed. (I agree that a "persuasively" falls within the range of opinion a reviewer is entitled to express and that it is also clear that this is the reviewer's personal opinion.) Andreas JN 466 10:39, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I also note that you have failed to address the main point, which is that your "lie" accusation against Grabowski and Klein was unambiguously false here. You did in fact bring back the "Jewish partisans" claim in one edit just as they said, for whatever reason (and I had already acknowledged that there may have been various possible ones). As for "added" vs. "brought back", the former implies that the editor authored the text in question, whereas the latter assumes that it was already present in the article before. That difference is relevant.

For others reading along here: I think it is by now clear that while the paper's copious collection of evidence (contained within 317 footnotes) may indeed contain several errors (as Groceryheist's review points out too), we must not rely on Volunteer Marek's claims about Grabowski's and Klein's alleged scholarly failings without fact-checking them. HaeB (talk) 14:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Hey, I can play petty word games too HaeB, when I said "acknowledge" that means the same thing as "not dismiss", which is exactly what you did. So no, it doesn't "contradict the facts". And my accusation against Grabowski and Klein was not false, either unambiguously or otherwise. They are blatantly and dishonestly misrepresenting my edits on that article and anyone who actually looks at those diffs can easily see that. I don't think you're aware how your behavior here looks to outsiders and how bad it really is. This is serious stuff, real people, real issues, but you keep playing these silly "gotcha" games and keep Wikilawyering over words. And you're doing it all in order to defend a really bad decision you made and have been unable to back down from. Volunteer Marek 15:31, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

"Assuming bad faith" doesn't even begin to describe what you're doing here. Volunteer Marek 15:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

From these editors' defensive responses OMG, this is like a bad junior high school essay. Volunteer Marek 23:35, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I see we have descended into mere name-calling now. Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

It's easy to act all high and mighty and detached and disinterested when you're not the one being lied about. If you were accused of these things how would you react? Volunteer Marek 03:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: This should be publishable now (I also just added title and blurb, feel free to adjust). Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:02, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

So can I write a response or not? Volunteer Marek 23:31, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions is that way. As indicated before, acceptance will really depend on the content and the decision will not be up to me.

I will also point out that since I floated that idea on February 10, the Signpost (Andreas) has already prominently featured your and Piotrus' objections in the last issue's "In the media", where the top headline read "Wikipedians rebut paper alleging 'intentional distortion' of Holocaust history" (a wording that, by the way, Grabowski and Klein could be forgiven for criticizing as rather biased against them, see e.g. WP:ALLEGE). Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll just mention here that I didn't write that headline. (The draft headline I wrote read 'Academic paper alleges Wikipedia's Holocaust coverage suffers from "intentional distortion", Wikipedians publish rebuttals', with the second part a later addition.) Andreas JN 466 06:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Andreas Yes, I saw that, but your draft headline already had the same bias ("alleges" vs. "rebuttals").

But anyway, while I would have written that headline differently, I did not mean to argue that you violated BLP or such. Rather, I'm pointing out the extremely different standards that some people (not necessarily you) are trying to hold this "Recent research" issue to, compared to that "In the media" piece from the last Signpost issue - which after all already quoted the paper's abstract, i.e. prominently highlighted the thesis of Grabowski and Klein, including:

[...] In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group's zealous handiwork, Wikipedia's articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles' role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. [...]

If that was OK in the last Signpost issue, why is it such a big problem now? Just because Groceryheist arrives at the conclusion that the paper's thesis largely has merit, despite various Wikipedians having a different opinion? If so, why was it OK to prominently feature Piotrus and VM's conclusions ("rebuttals") about the paper in the last issue, even though obviously there also lots of editors who disagree with these too? (Yes, these are rhetorical questions, and are not addressed at Andreas per se.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:07, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:ALLEGE actually says, alleged and accused are appropriate when wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined, such as with people awaiting or undergoing a criminal trial. Given the upcoming ArbCom case, I thought that fitted.

I guess the reluctance is about asserting guilt in the Signpost's voice now, given that there is a "trial" looming. The New York Times wouldn't report ahead of a major trial that a particular defendant is guilty. Of course you can argue that ArbCom is not a real court of law, only a pretend one in our little make-believe world; but on the other hand, we at the Signpost are subject to ArbCom's jurisdiction. Andreas JN 466 12:21, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the wording, my point was mostly about the asymmetry. But again, it's not that I'm accusing you of major journalistic malpractice here or such, more that if you are concerned about possible biases influencing ArbCom or others among our readers, this would have been a good starting point...

As for the "reluctance", and various contrived theories put forth below by VM and others to postulate the existence of a rule that the Signpost must not report about the paper (or feature opinions about it) until the ArbCom case has concluded, that doesn't make sense to me at all:

Yes, of course we at the Signpost are subject to ArbCom's jurisdiction, but last time I checked ArbCom has not issued a prohibition of discussing or reporting on this paper before their case is decided - which would be very weird of them indeed.
And even we were to construct such an unwritten rule for the Signpost ourselves (as per your "trial"/NYT analogy, which I find honestly a bit contrived), the Signpost already heavily violated it in the last issue, which was published at a time when it was already known that ArbCom would open a case. (I mean, it was the very first thing we highlighted in the overall section title: "Arbitrators open case after article alleges Wikipedia 'intentionally distorts' Holocaust coverage".) In your analogy, we already reported on one "guilty" and two "not guilty" claims there ;)
We are not going out of our way to influence an ArbCom case here, we are doing what we have always been doing at the Signpost for many years - covering new media reports in "In the media" and recent research publications in "Recent research". To the contrary, artificially holding up coverage would mean going out of our way (especially so if we do that with RR but not ITM).
People have insinuated that this research review would somehow be redundant to the upcoming ArbCom ruling, or even an attempt to usurp ArbCom's authority (e.g. Volunteer Marek's accusations against Groceryheist: you [...] wrote a review and made yourself the entire ArbCom). But that's nonsensical. First, opinions expressed the Signpost are of course not binding law in the sense ArbCom decisions are. (Can't believe that I feel it necessary to write down this super controversial statement.) What's more, I highly doubt that there will be much direct overlap between the review and the eventual ArbCom decision. In the paper, Grabowski and Klein are not focused on violations of Wikipedia policies (they barely even mention NPOV, say) - from their perspective this is internal stuff, rather, their criticism is based on external norms and baselines (their distortion claims refer to comparisons with historical scholarship). ArbCom on the other hand (which hasn't even announced the structure of the upcoming case yet, making those confident redundancy claims extra weird) is in fact usually focused on violations of Wikipedia policies. The ArbCom ruling is also unlikely to provide an overview of related academic research literature on Wikipedia's systemic flaw, say, or various other things that this review does. Yes, the paper triggered the opening of the case, but in a different sense than some here have been trying to imply. It's worth reading through the arbitrator statements from the case opening vote (e.g. I believe our failure to open the Warsaw Concentration Camp request was a major mistake. Well, now we've received scholarly rebuke for our actions, and it is apparent that the entire Holocaust in Poland topic area is broken).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The concern was not about featuring a review of the essay at all but about reporting its allegations as established fact rather than attributed opinion. Now I feel you and Nathan made a good-faith effort to engage with the criticism and addressed this and various other failings over the past few days. I would have written a more critical review but to my mind we are now in "reasonable people can disagree" territory, as I think you put it the other day in another discussion. Andreas JN 466 10:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It's interesting that you perceive an asymmetry between "allege" and "rebuttal". I hadn't intended that.

Merriam entry "rebut":

1: to drive or beat back : REPEL

2a: to contradict or oppose by formal legal argument, plea, or countervailing proof

2b: to expose the falsity of : REFUTE

The meaning I had in mind was 2a; I should have used a less ambiguous word. Andreas JN 466 13:35, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Arbitary break 2

Nathan T's review is disgraceful, violating every consideration of neutrality. It reads as a paraphrase of both Icewehiz and Grabowitz/Klein's contentions. I edited the opening paragraphs just to show that but the review is not worth a nob of goat's shit, in that it consciously espouses the authors' conclusions, everywhere endorsing the thesis proposed with glowing terms of appraisel ('persuasively') that Arbcom is now set up to examine. It anticipates in a Crystal Ball reading a commendatory verdict it assumes Arbcom must make several months ahead, and in that sense forms part of the indictment, rather than being a cool-headed and topic-informed overview of Grabowski and Klein's claims and the responses of the editors named. I'm quite surprised that editors could even imagine this partisan trash could be seriously considered for inclusion in the Signpost.Nishidani (talk) 09:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

And I note that my correction of that essay's in-your-face hackwork partisanship was duly reverted as 'extremely slopping editing' by HaeB whose eye for style is so acute they can even write something like 'initialismized' on their main page.Nishidani (talk) 10:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, no. Fecal curses are not a substitute for valid arguments. You are trying to make big scandal of the fact that the reviewer .... largely agrees with the overall conclusions of a peer-reviewed academic paper in the Journal of Holocaust Research, after extensively examining the paper and the two editors' objections? It anticipates in a Crystal Ball reading a commendatory verdict it assumes Arbcom must make several months ahead - it does nothing of the sort. As discussed above, this review is not about the ArbCom case and there is no valid reason for demanding that it must only be published after that case's conclusion. What is true is that the arbitrators obviously took the paper seriously enough to re-open (and potentially reconsider) their earlier case.

For those unfamiliar with the Signpost's "Recent research" section, it has used this format (reviewers are, well, reviewing papers, and are welcome to include a well-argued judgment of their validity and value, as one does in a review) for over a decade already, and welcomes contributions from all editors in good standing - see the note on top of this section. Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Any competent academic review or peer-review does not, as this paper does, endorse at the very outset the viewpoint of the paper under examination. If you cannot see the distinction between an endorsement and a detached evaluation, then you haven't learnt much about NPOV in two decades.Nishidani (talk) 10:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

To the contrary, it's absolutely common to begin a review with the reviewer's overall conclusions about validity and importance of the reviewed work, be it in academic contexts for reviews of papers or books. The reference to WP:NPOV is another absurd argument - Signpost articles are not mainspace encylopedia articles and regularly feature opinion pieces etc. That doesn't mean that no other policies apply, but your arguments here do not make sense. HaeB (talk) 01:40, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Every review takes an overall point of view, and there is no prima facie reason to condemn Nathan (Groceryheist) for taking a pov favorable to G&K. What we expect though, in a good review is some degree of critical analysis, some evidence that the reviewer actually investigated the claims rather than just deciding to believe them, and at least a little attempt at balance. Search as one will, none of those things can be found. Jayen466 made a very modest attempt to address the balance but was brushed off with petty excuses. It gets worse; consider this: "because it recasts Poland's role from the occupied location of Nazi genocide to that of Holocaust victim and hero." Wow, two million non-Jewish Poles died (which G&K admit) and Nathan thinks "the occupied location of Nazi genocide" is a fair summary! Let's be kind and assume this was ignorance speaking, but then why is someone so ignorant writing this review? Zero^talk 12:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The paper reviewed took 2 years of laborious examination by two scholars looking at two decades of wiki editing, and the vast cited scholarship. Arbcom's ten or so admins, in taking up the issue, will foreseeably be obliged to spend several months of exceedingly arduous checking, both of talk pages and the whole editing record. Nathan TeBlunthuis/Groceryheist's review represents an opinion formed in a few weeks, I presume. A serious review presumes area competence for one. Where are Groceryheist's credentials as a knowledgeable expert on the Holocaust and Poland? Unless they have some background in the topic and indeed, competence in evaluating complex historical claims in an immensely intricate area, their remarks look like massive presumptuousness, an assertion of an authoritative voice in an area the said editor appears to know nothing of other than reading G and K's paper and making a few personal checks on tidbits here and there. At this point, by highlighting it, Signpost is saying any Tom, Dick or Harry's personal views are welcome as news.

I myself have absolutely no opinion as to the numerous claims made, as opposed to decided views about the methodological flaws intrinsic to their paper. It would be extremely facile to make a similar claim of nationalistic conspiracy about any other controversial area where nationalist interests are high and which wikipedia covers. The paper does endorse, evaluate in a highly positive light, the claims of an editor permabanned for his disruptive on-wiki and menacing offline behaviour, and, there is a distinct possibility that the paper's publication will set a precedent allowing wikipedia to be coerced or challenged via the instrumental use of scholarly journals by editors with a grievance, which can be reformulated as 'factual', though dismissed by internal wikipedia processes of conduct and content review, and be imposed on any one contentious area. That alone means Signpost should not lend itself as a venue for frivolous editorializing by anyone who gets a notion or two.

It is disturbing that Signpost should allow an incompetent review - incompetent because Grocyerheist, apparently in two weeks or so concluded by a hasty glance over a few edits cited in the paper that its authors are stating facts, and not an hypothesis. My attempt at a minimal rewrite of the blatantly partisan language of Groceryheist's review was reverted as 'extremely sloppy editing' with an amateurish edit summary abuse. Sloppy editing consists of grammatical errors, discursive incoherence, misspellings etc., for which no evidence was provided. It is a quixotic description of what was a straightforward attempt to rewrite neutrally the first paragraph, after which the editor, with their two weekish mastery of Polish holocaust scholarship and two decades of editing diffs is welcome to declare that, in their view, the case is closed, the facts ascertained and the paper's authors correct in arguing this area of wikipedia is toxically antisemitic.Nishidani (talk) 13:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it's clear at this point that there's no way it can be published in this issue; we can look into it for next issue. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 14:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree. The essay describes claims by G&K as factually correct claims, essentially as the truth, whereas they are not. I think the article by G&K is not even an RS [10]. The article by G&K is about WP, not about Holocaust in Poland, but authors are not experts about WP, they do not understand a lot of things. To get some insight on the subject of WP, authors interviewed the banned user and several other participants, so that the publication probably reflects just their views as a typical "opinion piece". The misguided here is the trust in the publication by K&G just because it was peer reviewed. But it does not mean much given the well known deficiencies in the peer review process. The poor quality of many original peer reviewed publications is the reason we have WP:MEDRS. My very best wishes (talk) 15:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

In response to the above criticisms, let me point out that I am not an historian, but I am a scholar that is confident in my ability to assess this paper and reach the conclusions about quality and evidence that I wrote. I'm not currently a very active Wikipedian, but I have enough experience to check G&K's footnotes.

I didn't check all 317 of G&K's footnotes, but I checked enough to justify each sentence of the review. I didn't check all of VM's and Piotrus' defenses but I checked enough to know that they often stretch facts and interpretation to such an extent that they make G&K look meticulous. I am generous in my coverage of these responses, emphasizing an actual error they found instead of explaining their manipulative strategies. Groceryheist (talk) 15:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh yeah? How exactly did I "stretch facts and interpretation"? Care to actually support that with, well, anything? And please, don't try to bring up number of citations for Lukas or something here, as I said, that's like the smallest issue in this whole mess. Volunteer Marek 16:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Groceryheist, Volunteer Marek, Piotrus, and HaeB: Usually, Recent Research being ready last minute (this month's was written on the 4th; publication was meant for the 5th) isn't a problem. But we absolutely must get this one right, and that means discussion; more discussion than we can have in the time before publication.

Our fortnightly schedule's biggest benefit is that we can cover things in a timely manner. That both means covering things sooner, and being able to wait. In this case, I think the latter is vital. There's BLP issues (Marek and Piotrus are living people) and, if we get called up to ArbCom over this - and there's an ongoing case just waiting for us to be pulled into - that we pointed VM and Piotrus to the Submissions page and rushed to publication isn't going to hold up very well.

I'm not an expert on the subject. I'm not trying to choose a side. But we need more time. I think the best thing we can do is to use our more rapid publication schedule to our advantage, and split off Groceryheist's contribution into next issue's recent research. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 16:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, no. Whatever the process timeline for "Recent research" has been in other cases, your "last minute" point glosses over the fact that Groceryheist did submit his review on the day of writing deadline, the deadline that we communicate to any contributor to "Recent research" or the Signpost in general. And at this point his contribution has seen more pre-publication scrutiny and discussion (and edits in response to several suggestions) than almost any other Signpost piece in recent times - including your own, I might say (looking at these reactions to one of your own recent stories that also very much had BLP implications, I think you are very much applying a double standard here).

Yes, we owe it to VM and Piotrus to take their factual objections to this peer-reviewed paper seriously, but that has been done at this point (FYI, I told Groceryheist from the outset, weeks ago, that the review would need to take these into account, and also made sure he was aware that Icewhiz had been banned for harassment). We can't allow the Signpost's process to be torpedoed by the kind of tactics that VM has been sanctioned for before when trying to get his way in this topic area (including by ArbCom, see also [11]). As I documented above in detail for two cases, his objections to this piece have contained several false or seriously misleading claims, strawmen arguments and goalpost-shifting.

that we pointed VM and Piotrus to the Submissions page and rushed to publication - just to correct another misrepresentation here, my suggestion that the Signpost should offer them to publish their own piece about the paper was actually made on February 10, more than four weeks ago.

I will defer to the editor-in-chief on this, but it is not your decision to make. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

at this point his contribution has seen more pre-publication scrutiny and discussion (and edits in response to several suggestions) than almost any other Signpost piece in recent times Yes, and pretty much all of this scrutiny and discussion has said, "this is bad, don't publish it". What is the point of scrutiny and discussion if you're just going to completely ignore it?

And I wasn't sanctioned for any "tactics", I was sanctioned for my "incivility" to Icewhiz. Icewhiz was sanctioned for "tactics" and worse. This has already been pointed out to you, so I don't know why you insist on pretending otherwise. Likewise, you didn't "document" anything, you just started nitpicking some irrelevant point about whether k.e.coffman was a party to the case or not.

And User:HaeB, not counting me you got ~~FOUR~~ FIVE experienced editors here telling you "this is really bad, don't publish it" (ok, Adam may be just saying "it's too important to run it as is). On the other hand, it's you and the author (and if you count him, you should count me), and a sock-puppeting IP. You seem hell bent on digging in your heels and are refusing to listen to others and this may have reached a point where your refusal to change your mind becomes a matter of pride rather than reason. Volunteer Marek 18:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

By "too important", I mean it's too important that we do this correctly. One well-accepted rule in journalism, which also appears in libel laws and such, is that public people get a bit less protection than random members of the public. Marek and Piotrus are random members of the public. If we're going to publish anything about them, we absolutely must get it right, or we shouldn't publish it at all. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 20:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This is not an investigative report publishing previously non-public information about members of the public. It is also not even an opinion piece that brings forth new criticism against someone (such as, for example, your own "cobweb" piece in the last Signpost issue).

What we have here is simply a review that summarizes a peer-reviewed academic paper that has already received a lot of public attention (over 31k pageviews according to [12], plus the media coverage) and whose central thesis we already publicized prominently in last issue's "In the media", where we reproduced the paper's entire abstract with whatever supposedly damaging information it contains, while also naming Piotrus and Volunteer Marek as two of the criticized editors.

What people are so strenuously objecting to now is simply that the present reviewer dares to express the judgment that he finds the authors' arguments overall persuasive (while still criticizing some aspects of the paper). Yet nobody had a problem with the Signpost prominently featuring the very negative judgments of two other Wikipedians in the same ITM piece (even in the headline), even though they could very reasonably be interpreted as attacking the professional reputation of paper's two authors.

And may I remind folks that we had already weeks ago publicly decided to run a review of this in "Recent research"; which was also announced in said "In the media" story (Watch out for an independent review of the paper in the upcoming issue of the Signpost's monthly "Recent research" section). I don't recall seeing objections to that at that time. But now, after some people found that the review doesn't align with their views on the paper, there are suddenly all kinds of contrived arguments why the Signpost must not run such a review now for this or that formal reason.

Yes, it is important to get things right, but by now this review has received more pre-publication scrutiny than any other Signpost piece in recent history. HaeB (talk) 19:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek 18:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Yet another comment that doesn't even get the basic facts right. Here, your "count" conveniently leaves out TrangaBellam's input (GroceryHeist's review is fairly reflective of my reading of the G&K article - it is not that every single claim made by G&K is accurate (some of Piotrus' and VM's rebut do have merit) but a preponderance are, as is the overall thrust.). I also agree with Levivich's later comment here.

And regarding your objection I wasn't sanctioned for any "tactics", I was sanctioned for my "incivility" to Icewhiz. - Leaving aside your mocking dismissal of the ArbCom findings about your behavior in that case: As [13] makes abundantly clear, you were blocked for problematic actions many times outside your interactions with Icewhiz (who started editing in 2017 and was banned in 2019). The 2019 case also wasn't the first or only time that ArbCom sanctioned you, it issued a topic ban against you as far back as 2009, having found that you had "participated in a variety of disruptive activities". I'm all for letting bygone be bygones if an editor improved their behavior and the fact that your last topic ban was eventually lifted would have let one have hope so. But looking at your behavior in this discussion, aside from the repeated distortion of facts, there are clearly parallels to what multiple other editors had called out as problematic behavior in the ArbCom case that lead that most recent topic ban (see e.g. K.e.coffman's already mentioned comment from back then: VM [Volunteer Marek] has behaved in an aggressive and belittling manner towards others [...]).

And regarding You seem hell bent on digging in your heels and are refusing to listen to others - no, I have been listening to and addressing lots of comments in this discussion, and in several cases changes were made to the review text based on the feedback. But that doesn't mean that I have to agree with your opinion or automatically find your accusations against Grabowski and Klein or Groceryheist valid. Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Why are you making me do this? Ok, fine I forgot to add TB short comment. That still makes it FIVE editors (not counting me) telling you that this is a bad review and you have no business running it. That. Doesn't. Change. The. Main. Point. And all five of these editors have articlated and explained *extensively* why this is a bad review in contrast to the short one sentence "Ijustlikeit" comments. You ARE refusing to listen. You're doing a lot of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, stone walling, deflecting with tangents on some minor matters and along the way making some just bizarre claims (like 'Icewhiz has nothing to do with this'). And oh yeah taunting me and being sarcastic. You made have made some extremely minor changes to the review, as a way of deflecting more substantial criticism, but that actually kind of makes your behavior here worse, not better. Like, why do you think that these insignificant changes are going to fool anyone here into thinkin "oh it's all ok now". Remove all the gushing cringy stuff or better TNT it and rewrite the whole thing.

My "behavior" in this discussion reflects this very fact - I am being lied about and smeared based on lies told by a guy who has been harassing me for past four years. So yes, I certainly am frustrated. Your complete unwillingness to even consider that you could be wrong, combined with your constant repeated snipes and taunts add to that frustration. If anyone is behaving in a "belittling manner" here, it's you. This is some of the worst WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT and WP:STONEWALL I've seen in a very long time, basically since, well, since I had to deal with Icewhiz on Wikipedia. Volunteer Marek 01:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

You're [...] making some just bizarre claims (like 'Icewhiz has nothing to do with this'). - Please provide evidence that I actually said that (diff link). I remind others reading along here that your very first comment in this discussion already seriously misrepresented something I had said earlier.

I will keep calling out your distortions of facts in this discussion, large and small. (As for the larger ones, I just took a closer look at one of the examples you had highlighted as "lies" by Grabowski and Klein below and published on your Substack. My conclusion is that your "lie" accusation there is unambiguously false.)

I also find it really interesting that your reaction to being called out on your incivil behaviour in this discussion (including a reminder that this already was a factor in past ArbCom cases) is to double down on the name-calling (gushing cringy), mocking and belittling (You are literally starting to argue with yourself, The "pattern" is in your imagination) etc. Same goes for your WP:ASPERSIONS attempt to liken me to a WMF-permabanned editor. Regards, HaeB (talk) 13:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Groceryheist. G&K made very serious accusations about WP, in particular, "Four distortions dominate Wikipedia’s coverage of Polish–Jewish wartime history: ... antisemitic tropes insinuating that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland, and that Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution." Well, this indeed would be a blatant antisemitism in WP. Do you really believe this? I was surprised after reading this, started looking on WP pages, but found no support for such sweeping and highly offensive claims. For example, we do have pages Żydokomuna and Judeo–Bolshevism, but they are described as antisemitic canards in the first phrase. Or where our pages say that "money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland" and that "Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution"? My very best wishes (talk) 16:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

They don't manage to substantiate the claim that Wikipedia's coverage does any of these four things, but this one: "that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland" (sic) ... they don't even TRY to back that up. They just throw it as an extra bonus smear into the overall mix. Like this supposed Wikipedia-problem doesn't even come up again in their own paper. Volunteer Marek 16:49, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This is the central thesis of the paper, and I believe it correct. The term "insinuating" is important here. Articles position claims that reinforce each part of the distortion narrative, even if they do not spell it out explicitly. The review describes:

articles ... have made distortionist claims supported by dubious sources or have overemphasized facts aligned with the heroic Polish narrative while ignoring or underemphasizing facts that do not support the narrative. Many of these errors, and their role in the narrative, are not obvious to non-experts, and so an important contribution of Grabowski and Klein's scholarship is to make the pattern of distortion clear.

G&K find support about each element of the narrative. VM says they ignore the part about money-hungry Jews controlling Poland. But G&K do provide evidence for this. For example, they show in footnote 64 that the History of the Jews in Poland claims that in the interwar period Jews controlled the majority of retail businesses, and say that this claim misrepresents the source. The same section making this claim does not state the historical fact that the majority of Jews in the interwar period were impoverished. This reflects the current state of the article. Groceryheist (talk) 17:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This takes us deep into content, but this happens to be one point I looked into (you are in fact referring to footnote 66 of G&K's paper, not 64, which contains another canard that we can discuss if you're interested).

The very work Grabowski and Klein themselves cite in footnote 66, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939 by Joseph Marcus, says on pp. 41–43: Although Jewish per caput income was more than 40 per cent higher than that of non-Jews, the average Polish Jew was a poor man by western standards. In 1929, his income was less than a third of the income enjoyed by an average Englishman and less than half of that enjoyed by an average German (in both cases, compared at the purchasing power conversion rate).

This is relevant context. Jews were unquestionably poor, but ethnic Poles were on average poorer still. Poland was one of the most backward countries in Europe.

Here is the exact passage from G&K's paper: Equally problematic in the same article is the sentence, ‘In many areas of the country, the majority of retail businesses were owned by Jews, who were sometimes among the wealthiest members of their communities.’ Since research on interwar Polish Jewry has shown that most Jews lived in poverty, this emphasis on Jewish wealth misleads readers.

As for retail businesses, Marcus – the very source I understand G&K to be offering as a corrective – says, on p. 24, An artisan, if not idle, was far better off than a manual worker, while in 1929 the average petty trader was modestly prosperous. In terms of Poland's entire working population, the petty bourgeois proletarians formed a relatively insignificant group, but in 1929, about one-third of the home-workers and artisans, and a majority of the shopkeepers, were Jews.

Apart from the word "wealthiest" (now gone), Marcus actually backed up the sentence G&K found problematic.

I accessed Marcus via the Wikipedia Library. I am happy to email you the pdf. Andreas JN 466 18:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see the problem with G&K's argument here. In your quotation, Marcus appropriately contextualizes the relative wealth of traders and artisans, but the Wikipedia article at the time does not. Also, observe the implication of wealth and status in the term "business owner" relative to "shopkeeper" or "trader". Groceryheist (talk) 18:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)\

Yes of course you don't. But putting the economic question of what it means to be poor etc. aside, you still haven't explained how this is suppose to support the notion that Wikipedia promotes the anti-semitic idea that "money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland" (sic). Like ok, the Wikipedia article says that in interwar Poland Jews had above average income, which appears to be borne out by sources, although that income was still below Western European average. But it doesn't say anything about anyone "controlling Poland", much less "still" controlling Poland. The authors just made this stuff up. Volunteer Marek 18:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, "retail businesses" is odd phrasing. But the reason for this is far more pedestrian than you may imagine: there was a copyvio complaint from User:Moonriddengirl about the previous wording with "shopkeepers". Volunteer Marek set about fixing it.

The same was the case with footnote 64, by the way. Text had been taken verbatim from holocaustsurvivors.org and then flagged as a copyright infringement. Piotrus spent half an hour fixing numerous passages. The phrase "physical characteristics" that so rubbed Grabowski and Klein the wrong way was actually the one phrase left from holocaustsurvivors.org, which is as far from an antisemitic website as one could possibly imagine (from the entry "Hidden Jews" on the linked page). Andreas JN 466 19:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Links: [14], [15]. It seems unfair to me to accuse Piotrus of antisemitism based on that volunteer edit fourteen (!) years later. Andreas JN 466 19:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I do not see how this background is relevant to whether or not G&K are wrong that WP insinuated the element of the heroic Polish narrative about wealth and political power. This is the question at hand, not if Piotrus is an antisemite. Groceryheist (talk) 19:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I am quite convinced that Wikipedia contained and contains a good number of antisemitic canards. It would be very surprising if it were otherwise (just recall what happened in the Croatian Wikipedia). But if we prominently mention specific volunteer editors – editors moreover who are not anonymous – and imply that they are personally responsible for this state of affairs, I would very much like to have an unimpeachable basis for that. The G&K paper isn't it, a fact remarked on by the majority of arbitrators in the case request. Andreas JN 466 19:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I just don't see how the review implies that any specific editors are responsible for the state of affairs. This despite the fact that if one delves into the edit histories even a little it becomes abundantly clear that Piotrus and VM are highly involved. They are good at getting their way on Wikipedia and almost always follow the rules but they did an enormous amount of work to add and defend this distortion. B&K cite (and Piotrus and VM "refute") only a portion of possible examples they could have used. More are easy to find if you are looking for it. My review mentions these two who have been very public and vocal about their involvement in order to provide an assessment of their published defenses, which are linked at there request. The draft review currently hedges, saying they are "criticized as distortionists" instead of just calling them "distortionists", which would be less diplomatic, but frankly defensible. What else do you think would make this "unimpeachable"? Groceryheist (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

"they did an enormous amount of work to add and defend this distortion." No, no I didn't and please stop making false claims like that! If you want to make personal attacks and cast WP:ASPERSIONS (since you are no longer just quoting the authors but are using your own voice) I suggest you do it on your own talk page or some discussion, not in a Signpost article. I didn't do any distortion and you really need to cut this out. And you're also being slightly, let's say "inaccurate" here. Your initial draft had "the distortionists" (in your own voice) in it, and only HaeB added the "criticized as". And jimmy flying cactus, you call me a "distortionist" and in the same paragraph have the nerve to write "I just don't see how the review implies that any specific editors are responsible for the state of affairs." You mention me repeatedly in your little review. But supoosedly, "the review (doesn't) imply any specific editors". What? How am I suppose to answer to obviously bad faith claim like that? Oh maybe you meant that the review didn't "imply" that "any specific editors were responsible" but rather "directly accused specific editors of being responsible". That's the only way your comment makes sense, or else this is just gaslighting. Volunteer Marek 21:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I found distortion added/restored in the very first diff by you I checked on History of the Jews in Poland. It's about the section about Jewish property. Although the first paragraph you restore makes it clear that Jews found reconstructing their lives "nearly impossible", this paragraph emphasizes the Soviet Union's role in this while obscuring some legal barriers instituted by the Polish state with a vauge explanation that the returning survivors were technically German and their homes were now under Polish jurisdiction.

Other changes in this edit (1) make the limitations on policies allowing Jews returning to Poland after WW2 seem less strict by removing details about barriers to reclamation that resulted from state nationalization and limitations on inheritance. (2) Removes a claim that, through nationalization, the Polish authorities benefited from the Holocaust, supported with a reference a Jan Gabowski book. (3) Adds claims that despite the financial and legal barriers, impoverished claimants could still navigate the legal process thanks to court exceptions and assistance from Jewish organizations. This claim seems well sourced, but in VM's version of the article it contributes to a sense that reclamation was easy. (4) Changes the emphasis in the following sentences from the risks of violence that returning Jews faced to that Jews could repossess their rightful property with "additional lengthy proceedings." (5) Adds a description of a few small towns where "relatively many" Jews were able to reclaim property. (6) Removes the claim that movable property (e.g., housewares) was rarely returned with a citation to Jan Gross (7) Removes the link between the violence and legal barriers and the choice of many Jews not to attempt reclamation. (8) Removes a paragraph about how Poland is the "only former Eastern European communist state not to have enacted a restitution law."

These changes serve the distortion narrative because create a sense of confusion about the experience of returning Jews. What was the role of the Polish state and nationalization? Were legal channels open to them for collecting property or were these difficult to access? If legal barriers and the risk of violence were such that many Jews chose not to return, then how did "relatively many" successfully reclaim?

This diff happens in the context of a conflict about this section involving User:François Robere, Icewhiz, User:MyMoloboaccount, User:Nihil novi, and others. Some of VM's edits in this conflict involve removing distortion, but this should be interpreted in the context of the conflict. Other editors add even more extreme or badly sourced claims, which VM, perhaps recognizing they are not sustainable, removes. Most of the changes described above reflect the state of the article at the end of VM's series of edits. Ultimately User:El C protected the page, with a version of this section that, while somewhat less skewed, and following a good description of postwar anti-Jewish violence, retains many elements of VM's final version.

Documenting this is a lot of work and time, which I do not have much more of for today. If anybody wants additional evidence, they read G&K's paper, check the footnotes, and browse the edit histories of this article and its talk page. Once you realize there is WP:POVPUSH with a POV that can be summarized by the heroic Polish narrative, the pattern is easy to see. The above, as well as other examples mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, should be sufficient to justify claiming that VM is a distortionist. The review, hedging as it does with "accused" or "criticized as" is thus on safe ground. Groceryheist (talk) 22:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Guy, this is not "distortion", this is trying to work out a compromise between multiple editors about how to best summarize information based on sources in the middle of a big discussion. This is how Wikipedia works. And even though you're paraphrasing it, all you've done in your paragraphs above is just really repeated what G&K claim. I mean even your "VM, perhaps recognizing they are not sustainable, removes" is the whole "Polish editors make good edits only when they have a losing hand" nonsense that G&K push. If you had made this accusation (that this is "distortion") on the article talk page you'd be, correctly, accused of assuming bad faith and casting aspersions.

"Once you realize there is WP:POVPUSH with a POV that can be summarized by the heroic Polish narrative, the pattern is easy to see." The "pattern" is in your imagination. It's like when people are shown graphs of a random walk, many will see "patterns". This whole argument with you goes something like this:

You: "Editor X did A!" Others: "No, they actually didn't". You: "But Editor X did B!" Others: "No, they didn't do that either". You: "Editor X did C!" Others: "Well, no, that didn't happen either". ... ... ... You: "Editor X did Z!" Others: Sigh, no, again no. You: "But but but... don't you see how many examples there are? A through Z! Even if anyone of them is not actually true there is so many that it makes for a pattern!". WP:TENDENTIOUS. WP:STONEWALL. WP:AGF. WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. WP:CIR. Volunteer Marek 01:19, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, working out a compromise is an important and normal part of wikiwork. This time, the compromise was between a group advocating a narrative that Jews found it relatively easy to recover their stolen property and did so in a surprisingly friendly legal environment and another smaller group that attempted to prevent this and pushed for coverage emphasizing the limited opportunities, practical challenges, and specter of violence faced by Jews seeking to reclaim. Which side was VM on? Were they a neutral arbiter?

Let's dig a little deeper and find out. VM's edit summary is "restore NPOV version per talk. Please get consensus for these changes" on May 19th 2019. An explanation for this on the talk page is difficult to find.

Rather, core to the debate was the question of which version counts as the "NPOV" version. VM prefers the version they restored (and includes changes they introduced), and François Robere prefers another.

Another important part of the debate covered in G&K's paper was about whether Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's book Golden Harvest or Hearts of Gold is a reliable source. Following an inconclusive WP:RSN discussion, François Robere removed VM's additional citations to Chodakiewicz, leaving the edit summary "There was certainly no consensus for including Chodakiewicz et al." Citations which VM restored and which remained when EL C protected the page. Groceryheist (talk) 02:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm really not interest in relitigating the 2019 case and arguing about this with you, since it's not really the point. This is what the ArbCom case is for. Let them work it out. But apparently you decided to quickly hold a little arbcom case in your head, wrote a review and made yourself the entire ArbCom and are already issuing rulings and finding of fact. You have 5 editors here telling you this is a bad review. They're telling you that what you think is evidence of distortion is simply you twisting facts and statements to satisfy your own bad faith and prejudices. You should try listening. I mean... you were JUST arguing that a single sentence. In a single article. About how Jews in interwar Poland were involved in retail trade. Constitutes evidence that Wikipedia promotes the anti-semitic trope that "that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland". I'm sorry, but that's just insane. I woke up in bizarro world today. Volunteer Marek 03:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

(ec) You think that a single sentence in one article about how in interwar Poland Jews were involved in retail trade is equivalent to Wikipedia supposedly promoting the idea that "that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland"? Seriously? And the same paragraph says that Jews were also shoemakers and tailors, which isn't exactly top of the income distribution. If this isn't clutching at short, frail straws I don't know what is. I don't think you're aware what this kind of argumentation looks like to outside observers. Volunteer Marek 18:08, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I was surprised after reading this, started looking on WP pages, .... - at some point you really need to read the paper itself and examine the evidence it cites, instead dismissing it wholesale based of an impromptu examination of two current article versions. To be clear, I don't think that VM or Piotrus engaged in blatant antisemitism, but I don't see the paper or the review making that claim either. Rather, the paper appears to point at Polish nationalism/the "heroic Polish narrative" as the overall driving force, arguing e.g. that

The same Wikipedians who distort the historical record also lend a hand in whitewashing current manifestations of Polish antisemitism. This is evident in the Wikipedia article ‘Jew with a Coin,’ which describes the recent phenomenon of Poles collecting miniatures and paintings of ‘Jewish-looking’ figures holding money.

Grabowski and Klein go on to argue this point in detail; we could start examining this diff by diff, but from a first looking at the edit history of Jew with a coin, it does seem that they may have a point there. Regards HaeB (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that VM or Piotrus engaged in blatant antisemitism, but I don't see the paper or the review making that claim either. Oh my god. They're calling me a "Polish nationalist" and accusing me of "distorting the Holocaust", by repeating Icewhiz's lies and insinuating whole bunch of other crap about me. "But I don't see the paper or the review making that claim". What the hell??? Volunteer Marek 18:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Polish nationalism, blatant antisemitism and distorting (not: denying) the Holocaust are three very different things. Again, where do you see the paper or the review making the claim that you were engaging in blatant antisemitism? Stop muddying the waters. Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:44, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

In this case accusations, of Polish nationalism and "distorting" the Holocaust are a way to insinuate anti-semitism when the accuser has no evidence of actual anti-semitism to present (since there's none of it here, and no evidence for the first two accusations either). You seriously think that readers are going to make these fine grained distinctions that you are wikilawyering about here? Volunteer Marek 18:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

HaeB, the Spiegel article for example says, summarising the essay, "Und nicht zuletzt arbeiteten sie mit klassisch antisemitischen Narrativen". The JTA write-up, republished in multiple newspapers, says: "Not only was the website accused of being used to spread antisemitic propaganda, but it was also alleged to be vulnerable to large-scale manipulation by a small group of bad-faith actors." The G&K essay itself contains multiple references to the use of "antisemitic tropes", etc. Andreas JN 466 19:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

What's the problem? Some distortion involved antisemitism, but not all of it. Moreover, many people invoke antisemitic tropes in everyday life without being ideologically antisemitic. So it's obvious that these editors may not be antisemitic. Again, we aren't responsible for what other newspapers may insinuate. And this reply doesn't show how the paper or our coverage make accusations of blatant antisemitism. Groceryheist (talk) 19:44, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Does not? I am sorry but antisemitic tropes insinuating that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland, and that Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution is a typical antisemitism, exactly as this is described on our pages Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism. Some other allegations, like exageration for the number of Polish resquers is not. My very best wishes (talk) 20:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand the point of this comment to the discussion at hand. Groceryheist (talk) 20:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I am saying that the Signpost article "sanitizes" the "central claim" by G&K to make it looking more reasonable. Their central claim is about WP promoting antisemitic tropes, such as Żydokomuna, "money-hungry Jews" controlling Poland and Jews bearing responsibility for their own persecution (see quote above). I think G&K has resorted to tricks (such as looking at the old versions of pages and edits by banned users) to prove this point, and they failed to prove it. Simply looking at corresponding WP pages, I do not see any antisemitic tropes promoted by WP. My very best wishes (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Antisemetic tropes is 1 of the 4 types of distortion they identify. As for tropes.

For those following along, Levivich did a great job documenting the case of User_talk:Levivich#Jew_with_a_coin (perhaps the most clear-cut antisemitism, but there are other examples), and observe the usual suspects trying to discredit this. Judge for yourself by revisions like [16]. The lede mentions antisemitism, but in a very hedging passive voice way "the figurines have been criticized and called controversial as they drawn on an antisemetic canard". But, really, the figurines seem to represent the canard.

As for Żydokomuna, G&K have plenty of examples and none of them have been convincingly refuted. Groceryheist (talk) 18:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

For those following along, Levivich did a great job documenting the case of. NO. HE. DIDN'T. Levivich posted a bunch of diffs and claimed, as usual, that they show something they don't show. You have to have INSANE amounts of bad faith to think that these edits constitute "anti-semitism", which has already been pointed out at his talk page. Stop making these accusations against other editors. Really. I don't think you get how serious this is which is the only explanation I can come up with for why you keep doing this (and for your horrible review). The diffs show editors 1) describing the figurines as anti-semitic 2) summarizing a reliable source (from US Holocaust Museum) which discusses the fact that a lot of people who buy these figurines don't think of them as anti-semitic. You and Levivich are pretending that because an editor summarizes "people who bought these don't think of them as anti-semitic" that makes the editor themselves anti-semitic. And this "passive voice" is a summary of what the source says.

And no, G&K don't have "plenty of examples", at least not from any current editors. And yes, some of their - actually Icewhiz's - claims have been refuted (like the Naliboki smear) numerous times. Just stop dude. You're really crossing multiple lines here. Volunteer Marek 20:52, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I have checked and double-checked the "Naliboki smear," and honestly, it's quite clear-cut. Not a good example of a factual error in G&K. Groceryheist (talk) 21:15, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're doing then because I very clearly showed you diffs where I'm *removing* "Jewish partisan" from the article not adding them as G&K allege. I'm sorry, but it's pretty clear at this point that there's absolutely nothing that will convince you otherwise, and you are 100% devoted to the false narrative that you're pushing, which is exactly why you shouldn't have been the one to write this review in the first place.

The fact that this is just Levivich doing the usual "throw up a bunch of diffs and claim they show something they don't", a pretty worn technique (Icewhiz tried to use it a lot), has already been pointed out by others

Oh and btw, regarding this Example text. Guy, you are linking to a revision by *some other user* (some account named "AFreshStart" blocked for vandalism and sockpuppetry). Yet you are pretending, falsely, that this is some kind of indictment of MY edits or of OTHER editors edits. And just for completeness here is previous edit, and here is following edit. I don't know why this has to be explained, apparently to someone with a PhD, but if you're going to SMEAR people, at least make sure that you get the right person and the right evidence. Yet here you have the audacity to claim that this is some kind of "great job" which "documents" your claim and can't even get the diff right. Volunteer Marek 21:54, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Re Naliboki: In one of the diffs (from 2019), you are indeed removing the distortion. In the other (2018), you are restoring it. It's just not the smoking gun you make it out to be. Groceryheist (talk) 22:21, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

In the 2018 diff I am reverting an IP sock puppet. To take that edit and pretend that it shows what you and Icewhiz and Grabowski and Klein claim it shows is simply dishonest. To omit the other diffs (not just from 2019) where I'm removing the "Jewish partisans" - making exactly the OPPOSITE kind of edits I'm being accused of - makes it even worse. Seriously, how can you not see just how ethically messed up this kind of presentation is? And after this has been explained multiple times??? Volunteer Marek 22:43, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I just don't see the fact that you're reverting an IP edit as much of a defense. Groceryheist (talk) 22:56, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

It was an IP sock puppeting. And I know you don't. Why? Because you are setting Wikipedia all time records in assuming bad faith. Among other things that I'm not even going to mention. Volunteer Marek 05:37, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

As somebody who edits as an IP, I think IP editors deserve good faith too. Groceryheist (talk) 06:17, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Do you actually known anything about this topic area? Why do you think the Committee had to impose the 500/30 restriction on it? Oh, that's right, I forgot, Grabowski and Klein mention it but somehow manage to avoid explaining WHY it was imposed. In fact, they actually have the nerve to insinuate that it had something to do with these evil Polish editors. The truth? It was precisely the insane levels of sock puppetry here by that "defender of historical accuracy" and tragic hero of their story, Mr. Ice Whiz. And friends. Yanniv Huron. E.M. Gregory. NoCal. Kaiser von Europa. Jacob Peters. Russavia. Whole bunch of others. And yes, a good chunk of it even predated Icewhiz's ban. Volunteer Marek 06:29, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Andreas, the question you are responding to was where do you see the paper or the review making the claim that you [VM] were engaging in blatant antisemitism? I don't see an answer to that above. Also keep in mind that the review mentions Volunteer Marek and Piotrus exactly once, namely when linking to their rebuttals.

On the other hand, Grabowski and Klein do point out several examples of problematic content, e.g. the "Jewish welcoming banner" for the Soviet invaders of Poland, which they argue supported the Żydokomuna trope. VM has been trying to explain that away as a honest mistake by Poeticbent. But whether or not Poeticbent was aware that the caption was a hoax, his edit here clearly supported that trope. So it's hard to deny that Wikipedia helped spread this trope for years before this was corrected. (BTW, K.e.coffman documents more context about that image this on her user page, search for More of the "Jew-Bolshevik" construct.)

As for Der Spiegel, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency or other media reporting on this, I don't see how you can blame Groveryheist's review for their possible misunderstandings (if that is indeed the case). May I also remind you that we (more precisely, Adam) are highlighting these exact media reports in this issue's "In the media", without a lengthy debate and accusations that this is unfair to the editors at the center of the controversy (e.g. the JTA also names VM directly). HaeB (talk) 00:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

VM has been trying to explain that away as a honest mistake by Poeticbent No, this was the actual finding of the Arbitration Committee. Here, I can link that again [17]. Come on, it's not actually hard to get this fairly basic point right. You have to be trying to get it wrong. Volunteer Marek 00:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, no. That's not what I was talking about. My point was that even if Poeticbent genuinely believed the translated text was accurate (and sure, I agree that there doesn't seem to have been solid evidence to assume otherwise and to accuse him of creating a deliberate hoax), that still didn't justify his decision to add it to this and the other article with this caption, in a way that clearly supported the trope.

You seem to be trying to distract from this point by arguing that that "honest mistake" (not the actual ArbCom finding either by the way, they write apparent error instead) about the translation would automatically also justify adding the image to articles in this fashion. That's what I was referring as "trying to explain that away". HaeB (talk) 01:31, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

If we're going to get into this pointless nitpicking then allow me to point out that the phrasing "honest mistake", which you put in quotes in order to pretend that this is a phrase I used, is actually YOUR words. Not mine. Your. You are literally starting to argue with yourself. Perhaps you should reflect on that. Volunteer Marek 01:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Happy to clarify regarding the quotes (I can see how that was a bit ambiguous). But that does not change the fact that your claim about this exact phrase - this was the actual finding of the Arbitration Committee (my emphasis) - left out the important "apparent" qualifier.

And yes, there are bigger issues here, like how thanks to Poeticbent's edits, Wikipedia was furthering what can reasonably be described as an antisemitic trope. HaeB (talk) 01:59, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Poeticbent's userpage says:

One of the more repulsive attacks on my reputation was a smear job about a blurry World War II photo from Białystok, which I downloaded to Wikimedia Commons. I do not read Yiddish, and the image from the collections of Stowarzyszenie Szukamy Polski (In Search of Poland Society © 2004) was misidentified at source.

Here is Poeticbent's 2015 Commons upload of the photo. It was sourced to Scanned postcard at TVP: 16 stycznia 2012. "Białystok w sowieckiej fotografii.", which links to http://bialystok.tvp.pl/6206967/bialystok-w-sowieckiej-fotografii, which is now a dead link but here it is archived.

We can see from the diff that Poeticbent included both a Polish and an English caption. The Polish caption, "To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku." is copied from the linked source, as can be seen at the archive link. It Google-translates to "This is one of the most interesting photographs of Białystok from the times of the Soviet occupation. In the background, the church of St. Roch, and around the sickles, hammers, five-pointed stars - symbols of the new order."

But Poeticbent's English caption is not a translation of that, it's Jewish welcome banner in Białystok during the Soviet invasion of Poland of September 1939. In the background the Catholic Church of St. Roch (achival photo). He linked and copied from that source, he said the image was misidentified at source but I don't see "Jewish welcome banner" anywhere in that source, or "Jew" at all. Perhaps someone can explain this to me. Levivich (talk) 02:30, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:APL#Assuming bad faith is where Arbcom2019 finds (as "Assuming Bad Faith") that "Icewhiz interpreted an apparent error by Poeticbent as a deliberate hoax" and as evidence of that, they link to Icewhiz's evidence in the Arbcom case about this photo. And that is an example of Wikipedia, the institution, distorting the Holocaust. Because when someone brought an anti-Jewish hoax to Wikipedia's attention, Wikipedia whacked that guy for calling it an anti-Jewish hoax. That finding of fact passed 6-0. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Levivich (talk) 06:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I know that it sounds more dramatic and serves the constructed narrative better, and maybe even plays better at WP:AE if you call it a "hoax" rather than an error, except for the fact that there's still 0 evidence that it was an intentional hoax rather an error. More generally, this little rhetorical trick of calling every mistake that someone makes a "HOAX!!!" has kind of played itself out. Volunteer Marek 07:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

And come on. It's not that hard to figure out why the Committee made that finding of fact wrt Poeticbent and the banner. It was their way of saying "why the hell are you requesting a case and presenting evidence on a user who has long left Wikipedia???" Like, what was Icewhiz hoping to accomplish going on about a guy who had been gone from Wikipedia for like a year? I think we both know actually. 1) It was a useful deflection from his own misdeeds ("yes, I might have misrepresented sources, fabricated quotations and turned BLPs into attack pages, but look guys! I found a HOAX!) and 2) It was a little trick he was trying to pull where he attempted to blame Poeticbent's edits on others. Because you know, all Poles are the same and if one Polish editor makes a bad edit then all Polish editors, especially those that Icewhiz doesn't like, are to blame. Volunteer Marek 07:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Levivich: The probable source of Poeticbent's incorrect caption can be seen on the same page you linked to: "Na zdjęciach z lat tysiąc dziewięćset trzydzieści dziewięć - czterdzieści jeden Białystok jest miastem, które radośnie wita wojska sowieckie i czeka na nową władzę." Google: "In the photos from the years one thousand nine hundred thirty nine - forty one Białystok is a city that joyfully welcomes the Soviet army and waits for a new power." I think this is careless use of a source, but it isn't evidence of deliberate deception. Zero^talk 08:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Where does that say anything about a "Jewish welcome banner"?

Also, read in context, the source appears to decry the sentence you quoted, as well as the photo itself, as Soviet propaganda (citing historian Wojciech Śleszyński from the University of Białystok), so it would have been extra weird for a Wikipedia editor to rely on that:

To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku. Choć trwa druga wojna światowa - miasto wydaje się ciche i spokojne.
Jak powiedział prof. Wojciech Śleszyński z Instytutu Historii i Nauk Politycznych Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku - Jest to świat szczęśliwy, są tu radośni obywatele, pełnia szczęścia, obietnica nowych lepszych czasów i nie znajdziemy w tych zdjęciach żadnych zbrodni, żadnych wywózek.
Bo tak działała sowiecka machina propagandowa. Na zdjęciach z lat tysiąc dziewięćset trzydzieści dziewięć - czterdzieści jeden Białystok jest miastem, które radośnie wita wojska sowieckie i czeka na nową władzę. Jeszcze do lat dziewięćdziesiątych taki obraz był oficjalną wersją historii.

Google Translate:

This is one of the most interesting photographs of Białystok from the times of the Soviet occupation. In the background, the church of St. Roch, and around the sickles, hammers, five-pointed stars - symbols of the new order. Although the Second World War is going on - the city seems quiet and peaceful.
As said by prof. Wojciech Śleszyński from the Institute of History and Political Science of the University of Bialystok - It is a happy world, there are joyful citizens here, full of happiness, the promise of new better times and we will not find any crimes or deportations in these photos.
Because that's how the Soviet propaganda machine worked. In the photos from the years one thousand nine hundred thirty nine - forty one Białystok is a city that joyfully welcomes the Soviet army and waits for a new power. Until the 1990s, such a picture was the official version of history.

(my bolding)

BTW, the source is also archived here in a version from March 2016, with the text unchanged from the 2012 archived version Levivich posted above. So we can also pretty much rule out that Poeticbent saw a different version of the text on that page at the time of his Commons upload in 2015.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep. Andreas JN 466 12:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

HaeB, "In the photos...a city joyfully welcomes" alongside a photo of a banner in Hebrew letters can easily be interpreted by a careless editor as a Jewish welcome banner. And the writing in the photo is too blurry for a non-Yiddish speaker to check. (I'm familiar with the alphabet but I couldn't identify enough letters; a Yiddish-speaking friend could read it though.) P's interpretation was completely wrong, and you are correct that the full text makes that interpretation suspect even without a translation of the banner. But that makes it an example of bad editing and I still haven't seen evidence that it was anything else. Zero^talk 12:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

So why didn't the Polish caption mention a Jewish welcome banner? And why did he write an incorrect explanation on his userpage years later? And then what about those other edits of his? "I haven't seen any evidence" my foot, Zero. There's hundreds of diffs in that paper. Don't defend this stuff, join me in condemning it. Levivich (talk) 15:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I condemn all bad editing, especially malicious editing. In this case I provided a credible explanation why the banner thing could be an unintended error. I don't know if it's the true explanation, but neither you do. I have no general opinion of Poeticbent as I haven't studied his record and I don't trust G&K to give me a fair summary. I don't know why you bring up all the rest of G&K's diffs here. I looked at enough of them to have an extremely low opinion of their paper. If someone writes a properly reasoned non-polemic analysis of the same subject, I'll show it more respect. Zero^talk 09:19, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The "hundreds of diffs" all lifted from Icewhiz's AE reports and Icewhiz's "Evidence" in the ArbCom case. The "hundreds of diffs" that have been scrutinized extensively on numerous occasions and rejected as BS by a wide spectrum of admins and arbitrators. Yes, yes, yes, I know, you think that is evidence of "Wikipedia systems not working". Right. And lots of Republicans and Qanon types think the 2020 election was "stolen". A lot of people who don't get what they want, when things don't go their way, when many others disagree with them, come up with justifications about how it was really someone else fault.

And it's not like there's some crazy hypothesis here. We know Icewhiz was abusive as hell and as part of that he lied about people in his off-wiki harassment. Why is it suppose it to be so controversial that he also lied about people on Wikipedia when he was here? Why are you pretending that it's some kind of big stretch that a person who lied about people off wiki, and lied about them on wiki, also was likely to lie about sources and content? I mean, come on, the guy literally fabricated quotations to smear BLPs. Any efforts to try and rehabilitate the guy are really what pisses me off here and these 100% should be part of the current case. Volunteer Marek 15:37, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, here we see another deployment of the distraction tactic. Deflect from Poeticbent by talking about Icewhiz. Also, the totally untrue statements that "The "hundreds of diffs" all lifted from Icewhiz" and "The "hundreds of diffs" that have been scrutinized extensively on numerous occasions and rejected as BS by a wide spectrum of admins and arbitrators." But when someone scrutinized them and doesn't reject them -- like the author of the Signpost review -- VM says they should be taken to arbcom (see below). These are the tactics on full display here. Levivich (talk) 15:45, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you're the one who brought up these "hundreds of diffs" so why are you trying to accuse ME of "deflection"? Are all hundreds of these diffs about Poeticbent? If you accuse others of "tactics", then I got one for you: accusing others of what you yourself are guilty of. I think right here you very nicely illustrate how to "deploy" that one.

And no, that's not why HaeB should be made party to the case. They can agree with Grabowski and Klein all they want. Rather, it's their WP:TENDENTIOUS approach in this discussion, the constant WIKILAWYERing (over whether "added" and "brough back" mean same thing etc), the amazing amount of bad faith that has to underlie these kinds of comments, the taunting and sniping at people over issues that have real life implications, and the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT attitude in the face of many editors telling them not to run the piece because it's so bad. Volunteer Marek 15:51, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

You're so close to getting it that it hurts... All you're missing is a mirror. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:35, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@HaeB: I'll point out that the In the media links our previous coverage for context, and then simply links the news reports. There's a difference. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 03:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you about the pernicious nature of that picture caption about the "Jewish welcoming banner" (the actual text apparently refers to an upcoming council election; IceWhiz did good spotting that one). That sort of thing is a stark demonstration of Wikipedia's potential as a bullshit generator (regardless of whether the misrepresentation was intentional or accidental).

Also keep in mind that the review mentions Volunteer Marek and Piotrus exactly once, namely when linking to their rebuttals. There are two paragraphs in the current draft that are almost entirely about them, from Two of the editors criticized as distortionists ..." to "Polish narrative on Wikipedia". G&K list eleven "Wikipedia names" (about half of them no longer active). At the very least we should mention somewhere that they are talking about a dozen editors rather than two or three. How about editing the second of the two paragraphs concerned as follows:

From these editors' defensive responses, it is clear Grabowski and Klein have interpreted their actions unsympathetically to the extent that they overlooked their many valuable contributions to Wikipedia, at least some of which involved removing distortion. This omission is mostly understandable. A thorough account of these editors' Wikipedia careers (spanning over 18 and 17 years, respectively) would have distracted from identifying and accounting for the Holocaust distortion on Wikipedia. But even if these defenses are taken on board~~entirely factual~~, it remains unambiguous that the overall activities of the entire group of accused distortionists, comprising around a dozen currently or formerly active accounts, had the effect of privilegingon many occasions, either contributed or defended distortion or distortionists. Although Grabowski and Klein have made errors, in this reviewer's view these are small relative to their abundant evidence that a group of distortionist editors helped secure a foothold for the heroic Polish narrative on Wikipedia.

Thoughts? Andreas JN 466 12:00, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

There are two paragraphs in the current draft that are almost entirely about them, from Two of the editors criticized as distortionists ..." to "Polish narrative on Wikipedia". - Most of the first paragraph is not about Piotrus and VM, unless you count the acknowledgment of their criticism of the citation count analysis and the general remarks about The Forgotten Holocaust.

At the very least we should mention somewhere that they are talking about a dozen editors rather than two or three - I think this is a reasonable point, yes, and your addition comprising around a dozen currently or formerly active accounts makes sense. I don't see a good rationale for some of the other changes though, e.g. the removal of the qualifier "entirely factual" - especially now that there is good reason to doubt that in VM's case. HaeB (talk) 12:44, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@HaeB: Not a major point to me, the "entirely factual" wording.

Part of my reasoning for the wording "privileging the heroic Polish narrative on Wikipedia" is that (1) it acknowledges that this is a valid narrative (Polish heroism was very much a real thing, existing alongside Polish antisemitism) (2) it shifts the focus a little more on article content, which is a more legitimate thing to express an opinion about in the Signpost at this time and (3) the current wording the entire group of accused distortionists, on many occasions, either contributed or defended distortion or distortionists is obviously tautological.

Beyond that, I think we need to hear from our editor-in-chief. There is little point in working on the text if the review will be spiked. Andreas JN 466 13:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Jayen466 I don't have much to quibble with about this edits, except for a few minor points I'll elaborate below.

I suggest:

From these editors' defensive responses, it is clear Grabowski and Klein have interpreted their actions unsympathetically to the extent that they overlooked their many valuable contributions to Wikipedia, at least some of which involved removing distortion. This omission is mostly understandable. A thorough account of these editors' Wikipedia careers (spanning over 18 and 17 years, respectively) would have distracted from identifying and accounting for the Holocaust distortion on Wikipedia. In this reviewer's view, even if we take these defenses on board, Grabowski and Klein's errors are small relative to their abundant evidence that this group, comprising around a dozen or so accounts, helped secure a foothold for the heroic Polish narrative in Wikipedia articles and in doing so distorted Holocaust history.

I didn't accept adding the phrase "overall activities of the" because How else would the group help secure a foothold if not through their overall activities?

I didn't accept "had the effect of privileging", because I prefer the phrase "helped secure a foothold". I don't feel comfortable leaving the validity of the heroic Polish narrative (as defined by G&K and in my review) open to interpretation. Although it is certainly true and important to document how some individuals and groups Poles were heroic, the heroic Polish narrative and this historiographic debate is not about these Polish people, but about the Polish nation. Indeed one problem with the heroic Polish narrative is in how it weaves a narrative about a nation using the stories of exceptional, not typical, individuals. I also think that "foothold" is perhaps a narrower claim than "privileging". I changed "on Wikipedia" to "in Wikipedia articles" as a way to emphasize article content.

As well as a few minor tweaks for readability, I also brought back the part explaining G&K's omissions. This isn't the most important point, but I think it is useful to suggest that a thorough account of these editor's careers is beyond a reasonable scope for this paper. Groceryheist (talk) 17:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I also cut "currently or formerly active" because it felt wordy and describes all possible accounts. Groceryheist (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Nathan. Maybe it would be better to say "a dozen or so editors". But my main concerns are addressed. Regards, Andreas JN 466 19:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good, I've made the edits. Groceryheist (talk) 19:50, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I did not dig deeply into this, but speaking in general, providing data about wealth of different parts of population should be OK, if this is relevant to the subject of the page and properly framed. If someone reading such page concludes that the "money-hungry Jews control Poland" this is their problem. This is something typical antisemites conclude. If we would assert on our pages that "money-hungry Jews control Poland", then yes, it would be our problem. But I do not see it. My very best wishes (talk) 19:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
This is an interesting response. I agree that would be OK if relevant and properly framed. Yet I think (and I think this is part of G&K's broader point) that proper framing should account for how such phrases may function as dog whistles or otherwise seem to support such antisemitic conclusions. To me, in the case of the specific quote in History of the Jews in Poland, the context has several elements of the heroic Polish narrative (currently less so). Antisemitic violence was covered in the prior section, but here the frame was strangely minimizing, inexplicably and awkwardly mentions that many perceptually Bolshevik Jews were young, and puts greater emphasis on exaggerations by some contemporaneous accounts of this violence than on the facts that Pogroms occurred during the years 1917 and 1919 and their political significance. Juxtaposed to the statement about occupations are paragraphs demonstrating a large economically, culturally, and politically flourishing Jewish population, one largely not "assimilated" in Polish culture. The following section covers the substantial antisemitic violence between 1921 and 1939 relatively well. But, with this framing, an ignorant or mildly antisemitic reader might imagine the link between flourishing Jews and subsequent Pogroms somehow justifies the violence. Groceryheist (talk) 20:41, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Jayen466 made a very modest attempt to address the balance but was brushed off with petty excuses. - to the contrary, as the the above discussion shows, Andreas' points were discussed in detail and several of his suggestions were implemented, see e.g. [18] (and the discussion prior to that comment) or [19]. (The one that hasn't been so far - but which too has been taken seriously, with Groceryheist and Andreas and myself looking into the matter above, is the remark about the Forgotten Holocaust book, where Groceryheist agrees with concerns that had been expressed by several other scholars besides Grabowski and Klein, and tentatively suggests - Arguably, ... -suggests that it should not be used as a source on Wikipedia, a rather mundane opinion of the kind you can find on WP:RSN any given day.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

As everywhere else, Groceryheist just echoed G&K. What readers will see is Groceryheist's reason given in the review: "The title of his [Lukas'] most-cited work, The Forgotten Holocaust, refers to the suffering of Poles under Nazi occupation and so insinuates a false equivalence between Polish and Jewish suffering." Is the problem here the word "Holocaust", or does Groceryheist think that Poles didn't suffer under Nazi occupation? If it is the first, that is a stupid reason to discard the content of a whole book. If it is the second, that would demonstrate either profound ignorance or something worse. No points either way. Zero^talk 04:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It's probably the false equivalence between Polish and Jewish suffering part. Levivich (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

That's not an observation, it's a conclusion which doesn't follow from the premise. Zero^talk 08:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 3

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I think the author of a review should get to write their opinion of the work being reviewed, even if it's different from other people's opinions. Levivich (talk) 20:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Nathan is a very accomplished mathematical analyst of communications patterns. But with no trace of any familiarity in his CV with the field of history, he is venturing to assess the (a) accuracy of G&K's history of editing in 25 articles on Poland and the Holocaust, going back decades and (b) the accuracy of their deployment of the scholarship as opposed to the way the editors criticized use it. Since he has no known knowledge of the topic area or its scholarship, he is incompetent for making an informed analysis of the claims by either party. In that regard he is like numerous wikipedians with a scholarly background who however don't barge into topics that their training tells them they lack the tools necessary to make a useful evaluation. If Nathan, then anyone can 'have a go' but the result will be tediously flawed. This was evidenced by the startling inability in his essay to distinguish the authors' interpretation of two interlinked historical issues, from the factual records of both. He wrote their conclusions up as factual in his introduction, and that means, he isn't familiar with the nature of reviewing protocols in the humanities. All we have is an opinion, that is neither here nor there, and not newsworthy. Nishidani (talk) 21:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

One pointer. If historically, you want to evaluate a diff and this paper cites hundrefds), then historical method would require one to read back ten edits prior to it, and ten after, and then look at each thread on the history of that page coincident with the edit conflict. Then one would have to have some knowledge of the reliable sources being cited, and their standing in their field of scholarship. This is technically all but impossible. That is why arbitration draws its conclusions by shortcuts, which mainly work, but not infrequently, lead to flawed conclusions. Given wikipedia's nature of incremental improvements, often linked to stronger editorial competence over years, the only humanly practical way to handle this kind of criticism is to measure the accusations against the articles as they presently stand. Was that done? No. The G&K essay has all the hallmarks of an attempt at historical vindication of a stale grievance that failed to get its way through our normal processes of arbitration. So any well-meaning attenpt to rush to state one's superficial impressions is by definition pointless. That is why I suggested we get external peer review of the contested articles from competent area specialists, who, unlike virtually all of us, can grasp the issues with cogent mastery of the state of the historiography.Nishidani (talk) 21:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm a Wikipedia researcher who has published 5 peer-reviewed papers about Wikipedia and other Wikis. I'm not a historian, but my field (Communication) and my training (e.g,. two of my qualifying exams touched on Humanities-adjacent questions) actually overlap substantially with the humanities (admittedly, I am more familiar with Philosophy, Science and Technology Studies and Media Studies than with History). Most of my research is quantitative and mathematical, but from this background I actually do have a pretty good grasp on how the Humanities treat textual evidence, of how such conflicts over narrative and interpretation play out in these literatures, and of the social importance of these debates. I am not only prepared as a Wikipedian to check G&K's footnotes, but I am equipped to understand their argument and its broader significance. The conclusion quoted in the first paragraph is treated as factual because it is trivial to demonstrate through only a handful of edit histories.

It is a total misrepresentation of these fields to suggest that Historians cannot produce facts.

Your suggested historical method of looking at larger windows of edit history isn't a bad idea. If you actually do something like this on articles mentioned in G&K's paper and start on edits by accused distortionists you'll find ample evidence for G&K's narrative.

It isn't reasonable to ask that an academic publication, which is archived once following a lengthy editorial and review process, consider articles "as they currently stand" on an ever-changing digital encyclopedia.

It is reasonable to suggest external peer review of articles in this topic area. Is that somehow relevant to my review? Groceryheist (talk) 21:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The conclusion quoted in the first paragraph is treated as factual because it is trivial to demonstrate through only a handful of edit histories.

Would you like to parse that? It is unintelligible to me, and I've spent several hours every day over a half century reading books and articles closely. No, you have no grasp, even mediocre, of how peer-review works in the humanities. At least three people run your draft through the mill of their grindingly informed scrutiny and almost invariably even in positive assessments, they will, thank god, spot several infelicities of style, summation, and other defects or flaws.Tell me: in the few weeks available, how many of the original contested sources did you read from cover to cover to get an idea of what G&K and the editors are disagreeing over? It takes extraordinary self-confidence to think one can master the substrate of learning on which these debates are founded by skimming. The G&K paper is very odd because it shows no trace of simple corrections of this sort, it resonates with their close self-identification with the views of a disreputable wikipedian who elsewhere consistently trashed high quality academic RS, not to speak of their intemperate language and their failure to carefully signal any awareness of the dangers of the very hypotheses, of conspiracy, coordination, malice and willed distortion, which you naively take to be 'factual'. And you can't see that either. We work consensually here, and too many editors are not impressed by yourn piece. Obviously, you could try rewriting it according to suggestions by very experienced colleagues here, beginning with the detachment any serious evaluation of a controversial thesis demands.Nishidani (talk) 23:10, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The claim that Wikipedia supports the assertion that "money hungry Jews control or controlled Poland" has no support whatever (owning retail stores doesn't bestow control over a country, nor does it make anyone money-hungry). Everyone here knows that if a statement like that appeared in Wikipedia it would be removed within minutes. The reason G&K wrote it like that is obvious: it is a classical antisemitic canard. The reason they provide no evidence for it is that they have no evidence. But, despite not being able to provide any evidence for it either, Groceryheist believes it. That's the story of this "review" in a nutshell. Zero^talk 03:59, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

You'll have a different opinion after reviewing the history of Jew with a coin. Levivich (talk) 04:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

That article provides evidence that Wikipedia supports the assertion that Jews control or controlled Poland? Please explain. Volunteer Marek 04:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It's actually the "money-hungry" part I was more bothered by. Levivich (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the statuettes are anti-semitic and embody anti-semitic stereotypes. I believe the article always stated this so again, not sure how this is "Wikipedia supports the assertion that..." Volunteer Marek 05:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Would it change your mind if I showed you diffs of people removing content saying it was antisemitic, or people adding content saying it wasn't antisemitic? Levivich (talk) 05:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Unnecessary since I can (and have) read all about it here. Volunteer Marek 06:02, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Are you sure you read all about it there? Where on that page are there diffs of people removing content saying it was antisemitic, or people adding content saying it wasn't antisemitic? Icewhiz's diffs and G&K's diffs are not the only diffs. Levivich (talk) 06:44, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Levivich, I'd be interested in such diffs. But really you have to show someone supporting the money-hungry nature of Jews, not just arguing about what sources say on Polish attitudes. Beyond that, if you really want to support G&K on this you need to justify their assertion that support of the money-hungry nature of Jews "dominate[s] Wikipedia’s coverage of Polish–Jewish wartime history". I don't think you can. Zero^talk 09:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I want to see them too. I'm guessing this is instances of Mymoloboaccount adding sources which said that lots of people who buy these statues didn't perceive them or didn't think of them as anti-semitic, like this one [20], kind of like lots of people who watch the Borat movie, which is basically minstrelsy in "Eastern European face", don't think of it as racist either. Volunteer Marek 15:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I have posted the diffs at User talk:Levivich#Jew with a coin out of respect to the request that we all move along and let SP do their thing (which we should). Levivich (talk) 21:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I must be anti-Chinese and antidisabled because my mother laughingly told me when I was 11 to touch a Chinaman's coat or a hunchback's shoulder, if I saw one, before laying a bet at the Flemington racecourses. Really Levivich, that link is fatuously irrelevant. I suppose it is antisemitic canard to say:'when a Jew has a lot of money and a Gentile just a little, he lives better than the Jew' to cite one of a million East European proverbs. It happens to be Yiddish. Every ethnic group has its bubbe meises about avoidance or imitation of practices believed to be typical of some other group. They often reflect a prejudice, but the habit of boiling down every example in this genre to a toxic antisemitic impulse ready to explode if not tamed into another holocaust is the other side of the Reductio ad Hitlerum strategy. American East European Jewish immigrants are said to have considered Ukrainians, Poles, Irish neighbours etc as 'coarse, drunk, illiterate, dumb,and volatile.' I can't speak for the former two, but being of Irish descent, the remark only reminds me of hundreds of anecdotes about my forebears. Nishidani (talk) 08:30, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I just want to commend HaeB and Groceryheist for their professional conduct here. I think they understand that this story isn't just about Piotrus and VM: many other editors are mentioned in the essay, including myself, and how this is covered could affect them - us - as well. Above all, though, it's Wikipedia's reputation for accuracy that's on the line; the problems identified by the authors are real - some of them are evident in this very thread - and unless they're brought to the wider community's attention, they will not be fixed. François Robere (talk) 10:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

So how come Klein didn't release the interview she did with you? Or Levivich? Or Szmenderowiecki? Or Icewhiz? Seeing as how entire paragraphs in the G&K paper are copied almost verbatim (what on Wikipedia we would call "close paraphrasing", a copyright violation and worse, if not attributed) from not just what Icewhiz posted on Wikipedia, but also what you posted on Wikipedia (without attribution) that seems like a pretty serious omission. And it also puts your comment above in the proper light. Volunteer Marek 15:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Reporters who anticipate the outcome of a trial underway, and not yet deliberated on by the jury, and who take sides militantly on behalf of the plaintiff exist, but they are not living up to professional standards, ethically or otherwise. It is not professional conduct that two Signpost contributors (a) espouse almost verbatim the views set forth by a polemical research article attacking wikipedia (b) and when it is pointed out by several other experienced wikipedians that it is not our job, esp. in a news article, to applaud an assault on wikipedia nor defend it from such an attack. The professional approach would be to paraphrase the gist of the accusations and the counter-arguments of those whose editing is lambasted as a symptom of a coven of bad faith nationalists smearing Jews and pumping up Poles. In any case, because of the ineptness of both editors you cite, who presume to have verified the truth of a complicated set of insinuations made by G&K, and write as if their paper was, not one of any number of possible interpretations of the data, but a synthesis of the facts, we now find ourselves preempting what Arbcom has taken on as its responsibility to do, creating just one more messy pastiche of positions that will demand Arbcom take into its deliberations. Arbcom will have a manifold of eyes pouring over this for months, while the two editors arrived at their endorsement of the truth' of a set of claims in a few weeks of skimming, and they won't budge an inch in the face of serious challenges to their essays. We should therefore just describe the papers thesis neutrally, and remark that it has been challenged by the editors it names, and leave conclusions to Arbcom, and Signpost those when its deliberations are completed and made public. Nishidani (talk) 12:36, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

In any case, because of the ineptness of both editors you cite, who presume to have verified the truth of a complicated set of insinuations made by G&K, and write as if their paper was, not one of any number of possible interpretations of the data, but a synthesis of the facts, we now find ourselves preempting what Arbcom has taken on as its responsibility to do, creating just one more messy pastiche of positions that will demand Arbcom take into its deliberations. I mean, yeah, exactly. At this point HaeB and Groceryheist should pretty much be added as parties to the case for trying to publish this stuff and for their tendentious behavior on this very page. Volunteer Marek 15:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

You really want to add every author who is critical of you to the case? Levivich (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

(ec) No, obviously not, see my comment above where I already explained it. But when someone does the equivalent of jumping into an AE report on one side with extremely partisan accusations, then they are essentially adding themselves to that case. There was absolutely nothing here stopping HaeB and Grocery from taking other - uninvolved - editors' comments seriously and trying to understand where they were coming from. Instead they dug in their heels, and as a way of justifying their stubbornness they began making personal attacks, assuming bad faith and casting aspersions themselves. If there wasn't a case about to be opened already, half the stuff they said here would've wound up at AE

There's at five uninvolved editors (at least) here who have repeatedly said this piece shouldn't be ran, that it's really bad, that it violates all kinds of policies beginning with BLP, and all of them explained in detail why. HaeB and Grocery made ZERO effort to listen to any of that (oh wait, they made some cosmetic changes and pretended like that should satisfy folks). With you and FR showing up here now, this discussion is not going to get any better.

I'm done here.I'll just add that the addition of this little "subscribe" (notifications) button to Wikipedia might actually be a bad idea as it enables this kind of back-and-forth high velocity bickering. Turning it off now. Volunteer Marek 16:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

What five uninvolved editors? Levivich (talk) 16:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This is tl;dr for me, sorry, but as I said above [21], this whole thing is well known as overinterpreting data. People (antisemites, G&K, scientists, nationalists, whoever) strongly believe in something and view facts through the prism of their conviction. In particular, beliefs about conspiracies, and not only in WP, are widespread. This is frequently a problem in natural sciences, but especially in humanities. Unfortunately, this is a phenomenon of collective conscience. Meaning that someone with false authority said something, and a lot of people are looking and finding arguments to support such view. That is how rumors and outrageous accusations spread in society. Perhaps me too fell into the trap [22]. Why do you think millions of Russians truly believe that Ukraine attacked them? One of famous examples here is Witch-hunt. I would hate to see the arbitration becoming a witch hunt. My very best wishes (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what purpose this type of review serves. But as I understand it, it should not simply be an affirmative repetition of the theses presented in the reviewed article. Because it would essentially be pointless, better to read the article itself. I agree with Nishidani that the review should look from some distance at the allegations made in the article. First of all, we cannot agree without reservation with the statement that English-language Wikipedia, so influential in shaping collective memory in today's world, has been presenting systematically misleading information about Nazi Germany's genocide of the European Jews, by "whitewash[ing] the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolster[ing] stereotypes about Jews. Even the G&K article does not confirm this, showing errors or potential distortions in just a few of the by no means most popular articles on the subject. Besides, some of them do not deal at all with the subject of the Holocaust, but, for example, with the subject of the return of Jewish property after the war (this is what the comments on the articles The Holocaust in Poland or History of the Jews in Poland refer to). Some of the distortions are no longer on Wikipedia, having been removed for Wikipedia standards rather quickly, contrary to what G&K claims. And articles such as Stawiski have an average of less than 200 views per month (truly, the name of this town does not exist in any way in the popular consciousness even in Poland), which leads us to believe that whatever was written there did not affect the general knowledge of Wikipedia readers. This is essentially true of most of the allegations made by G&K, only some of the problems they point out are big enough and are in popular enough articles to actually distort the real picture of the Holocaust in Poland.

I also agree with Zero0000 that the sentence The narrative is harmful, Grabowski and Klein persuasively argue, because it recasts Poland's role from the occupied location of Nazi genocide to that of Holocaust victim and hero is unacceptable. If only because G&K do not claim that Wikipedia should portray Poland merely as "the location of Nazi genocide". And we cannot present it as their opinion. Besides, such a choice of words is completely scandalous for obvious reasons. In my opinion, this sentence may be wrongly taken by G&K.

I also think that the review should refer to Icewhiz in any way, since he is one of the main positive characters of the article, and descriptions of his clashes with other Wikipedians occupy a significant part of the article.

The sentence Many Poles believe the narrative and Poland's current government has taken legal and administrative steps (e.g., creating monuments for apocryphal Poles who rescued Jews) to popularize it, is in my opinion incorrectly phrased, because this law is since 2019 "void and non-binding", and erecting monuments is a rather peculiar example of the "adminsitrative step". Also, I don't know what Groceryheist means by "apocryphal Poles"? It suggest that Poles who are popularized by the current government for saving Jews during the war did not in fact save them. This is an important issue for me, so I would ask you Groceryheist to respond.

The author of the review devotes a lot of space to the "Polish heroism" thesis allegedly propagated wrongly on Wikipedia. More than G&K, who devote relatively little space to this topic. It would be appropriate for the review to focus more extensively on the other points raised in the article as well.

It is also well worth the effort to provide at least a partial response to the allegations made by G&K. It is worth reviewing the ongoing discussions on the problems that G&K mention. I can recommend my comments on the objections made by G&K to the Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust article and a discussion ensued.Marcelus (talk) 15:59, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

GIYF. Reviews are meant to "place the [work] within the scholarly discourse, compare [it] to other works in the field, and analyze the author's methodology, interpretations, and conclusions",[23] not serve as point-to-point rebuttals of the author's claims. Asking Groceryheist to put every single objection by every single Wikipedian - including the erroneous ones - in his review is unreasonable. François Robere (talk) 17:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

But as I understand it, it should not simply be an affirmative repetition of the theses presented in the reviewed article. - That's not what the review does. Groceryheist provides an independent assessment of the paper - yes, he largely agrees with the authors and says that he finds their arguments persuasive overall, but he also points out several shortcomings and prominently mentions the objection pieces by VM and Piotrus. Besides, as I said in my customary monthly note at the very top of this section, "Recent research" welcomes both reviews and summaries, anyway. May I also point out that this issue of "Recent research" contains not one but two reviews, with the second one, about an entirely different topic, being much closer to an affirmative repetition of the theses presented in the reviewed article (coincidentally, it is by Piotrus, who is a longtime valued contributor to "Recent research").

Regarding the wording The narrative is harmful, Grabowski and Klein persuasively argue, because it recasts Poland's role from the occupied location of Nazi genocide to that of Holocaust victim and hero, I think it is simply assuming that readers will already have an idea of what "occupied" meant in this context (Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)). (The accusations against Groceryheist further up - not by Marcelus - about his alleged "ignorance" about the suffering of non-Jewish Poles under occupation are rather preposterous; for starters, the very paper that he read and reviewed here already extensively discussed victim numbers in that regard (The most recent estimates put the ethnic Polish losses at closer to 2 million etc). But I can see how this wording could potentially create a wrong impression with folks who are entirely new to the topic. So if someone can come up with a modified version that avoids such potential misunderstandings, while still providing an accurate summary of Grabowski and Klein's argument, then I think we should consider that. HaeB (talk) 19:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This is exactly what I mean, I'm not accusing Groceryheist of lack of knowledge, I'm just pointing out that such a summary of G&K's argument is wrong and hurtful to them in the first place. Besides, even if we limit the definition of the Holocaust only to the genocide of the European Jewish population, the claim that Poland was a victim is not wrong - after all, it lost about 3 million of its citizens. As you can see this sentence is problematic on many levels. I would suggest moving away from it and expressing this thought in a completely different way. For example: A narrative that focuses exclusively on the heroism of Poles during World War 2 is harmful, Grabowski and Klein persuasively argue, because it ignores the collaboration of part of Polish society in the persecution of Jews. Marcelus (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This suggestion is quite helpful. It is important to note that Polish Jews killed in the Holocaust were Polish! I can see how the current phrasing could lead to confusion.

How's the following?

"The narrative is harmful, Grabowski and Klein persuasively argue, because overemphasizing the heroism of Poles during the Holocaust ignores that parts of Polish society were complicit in the persecution of Jews" Groceryheist (talk) 22:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. About 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland died. Between 2 and 3 million non-Jewish citizens of Poland died as well. Your essay mentions non-Jewish complicity (which is reasonable) and totally ignores non-Jewish suffering (which is shameful). When are you going to correct this severe distortion of the facts? Zero^talk 09:45, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

You keep suggesting that up to 3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed, repeating a distortion identified by G&K in Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust (May 2022). This distortion remained in this article until after G&K's publication. Contemporary mainstream sources (e.g., the ushmm) put the number at around 1.8-1.9 million.

Maybe I can improve my review by pointing to the changes in Rescue of Jews by Poles ... as an example of how G&K's work has already contributed to correcting Wikipedia's coverage in this topic area? As a benefit, the review would then remind readers that Nazi occupation was horrible for non-Jewish Poles. Groceryheist (talk) 17:03, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

This is not as easy as it looks. Luczak for example, widely cited, says that in addition to 2.9 million Polish Jews and 2 million ethnic Poles (of which 0.5 million were killed under Soviet occupation), there were also 1 million losses of other ethnic groups in Poland. So "3 million non-Jewish citizens of Poland" is not necessarily the same as 3 million ethnic Poles.

I started a discussion at Talk:World_War_II_casualties_of_Poland#3.0_million_ethnic_Poles_and_3.0_million_Jews a while back because the one figure nobody seems to support any more is that of 3 million ethnic Poles killed (which currently is still the first mentioned in the casualties article). You and others here are welcome to join that discussion. Andreas JN 466 17:22, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, Zero was not specific about how the non-Jewish Poles were killed. Per Marcelus's comment from Feb. 26, which Jayen466 agreed with, the 1.9 million number from the ushmm refers to civilians killed during Nazi occupation. The larger number accounts for war casualties and ethnicities beyond Poles and Jews. The ~2 million number also lines up with Luczak's estimates from the tables in the current version (6 million total - 2.9 million jews - 0.5 million outside of Poland - 0.45 million in war = 2.15 million). Even if we include those killed outside of Poland we are below 3 million.

I thought Zero was referring to civilian victims, not war casualties, but this isn't clear.

I don't want to get into the business of comparing the severity of atrocities (a motivation for leaving numbers out of the review), but its clear to me that comparing Holocaust victims to war casualties (as implied by an upper bound of 3 million) is distortive. Groceryheist (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you, but even so, the Germans killed at least 1.8 to 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians (I still don't know whether that number includes Belarussian, Ukrainian etc. citizens of Poland; for what it's worth, if you ask ChatGPT, it tells you "it is estimated that approximately 2.7 million non-Jewish Polish citizens died during the Holocaust"). Hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens ended up doing forced labour in munitions factories etc., just as Jews did, with large numbers of both mistreated, tortured and killed. These Polish citizens were all people official Nazi policy considered "subhuman" just as Jewish people were considered to be of lesser worth, for no other reason than bigotry and homicidal madness. The phrase because it recasts Poland's role from the occupied location of Nazi genocide to that of Holocaust victim and hero isn't circumspect enough to do this justice in my opinion. Please consider working on it. I thought Marcelus' suggestion above had merit (I was actually surprised we still had the old wording). Andreas JN 466 18:38, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Please consider working on it. I thought Marcelus' suggestion above had merit (I was actually surprised we still had the old wording) - Actually Groceryheist had already taken up that suggestion above and proposed a new wording, so I'm not sure what that "consider" exhortation is about? In any case I don't think it's productive to get into the weeds here (citing ChatGPT, seriously?) - the task at hand is merely to summarize Grabowski and Klein's argument succinctly without creating misunderstandings among readers who are unfamiliar with the basics regarding the Nazi occupation of Poland. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:05, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That explains why I was surprised we still have the old wording. Andreas JN 466 19:31, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Based on comments above and elsewhere on this page, I have taken a new pass on the review. I will summarize the changes here:

1. I strike the phrase "because it recasts Poland's role from the occupied location of Nazi genocide to that of Holocaust victim and hero" and replace it with a quote from G&K about the importance of Wikipedia to collective memory. This fits better with the overall topic of the paragraph, which relates distortion on Wikipedia to the popularity of distortion in Poland and its governments related actions.

2. I replace "heroic Polish narrative" with "the narrative". I think this better represents G&K because "heroic Polish" seems to describe only a part of the distortion narrative.

3. I addressed the concerns about overlooking Polish suffering in the paragraph about Lukas by noting that Germany had a murderous colonial policy and linking to the USHMM encyclopedia page on Polish victims and explaining that this is distinct from the Holocaust. I think this helps make it clear what is problematic about Lukas' title.

4. I made copy edits to ensure grammar and readability given the above changes. Groceryheist (talk) 19:54, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

1 is actually an extremely elegant solution. Well done.

3: I will mention that both the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website and the UK Holocaust Memorial site consider non-Jewish deaths and suffering part of the Holocaust (here e.g. is a page from the UK site). So do the definitions offered by Merriam ("the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II") and Britannica ("the killing of millions of Jews and other people by the Nazis during World War II"). But Oxford for example prefers the narrower definition ("the killing of millions of Jewish people by the German Nazi government in the period 1941–5") and we should all leave you free to choose the definition you prefer. Thanks. Andreas JN 466 20:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, perhaps the USHMM site is inconsistent about this. Eg., [24], defines it in a similar way to The Holocaust.

Since G&K define the Holocaust in this more narrow sense it seems like the appropriate choice for the review. Groceryheist (talk) 20:53, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Good point, I was actually surprised reading all the recent discussions how many people are convinced that Holocaust always refers only to the destruction of European Jewry by Nazi Germany, while in fact it's often used in relation to all attrocities comitted by Nazi Germany in years 1933-45, with an emphasis on those with racist motivations. Marcelus (talk) 20:54, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

UK Holocaust Memorial Day website ("The Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew) was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder all the Jews in Europe.") and USHMM website ("The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.") seem to define it the same way. Levivich (talk) 21:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

You're right. And on some USHMM pages like Introduction to the Holocaust it seems the distinction is carefully maintained (note the subheader "Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder?" (my emphasis) preceding the discussion of non-Jewish victims).

But I had looked earlier at USHMM pages like –

"Forced Labor" (part of the "Holocaust Series"; intro: "Forced labor played a crucial role in the wartime German economy. German military, SS, and civilian authorities brutally exploited Jews, Poles, Soviet civilians, and concentration camp prisoners for the war effort. Many forced laborers died as the result of ill-treatment, disease, and starvation.")
"Women during the Holocaust" (intro: "The Nazi regime targeted all Jews, both men and women, for persecution and eventually death. The regime frequently subjected women, however, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to brutal persecution that was sometimes unique to the gender of the victims. Nazi ideology also targeted Roma (Gypsy) women, Polish women, and women with disabilities living in institutions");
"Who were the victims" ("The Nazi regime persecuted different groups on ideological grounds. Jews were the primary targets for systematic persecution and mass murder by the Nazis and their collaborators. Nazi policies also led to the brutalization and persecution of millions of others. Nazi policies towards all the victim groups were brutal, but not identical."), also "Mosaic of Victims: In Depth", etc.,

where the distinctions seem to melt away. Andreas JN 466 22:58, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I feel like that third article makes the distinctions crystal clear. Levivich (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

My point was that despite these important distinctions all these varied groups are included in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's answer to the question: "Who were the victims?" Andreas JN 466 10:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm concerned about whether you're actually reading or just skimming what you're linking to. The article "Who were the victims" is about victims OF THE NAZIS as made clear by the opening paragraph. The very first section in that page is called "Who were the victims of THE HOLOCAUST" and it answers Jews, and only Jews. The next section is called "What OTHER GROUPS did the Nazis Target and Why?" It really could not be clearer that Jews were the victims of The Holocaust and that Nazis also targeted other groups (who were victims of Nazis but not of the Holocaust). The article even explains why Nazis treated Jews differently than the other groups they targeted. Levivich (talk) 13:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Regarding administrative steps / apocryphal memorials. This is documented and cited in B&K. B also has published an NYT op-ed about this. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/opinion/holocaust-poland-europe.html My use of "apocryphal" is not meant to suggest intentionally duplicity, only a weakness of evidence in contrast to "canonical". Groceryheist (talk) 22:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The NYT also has journalistic coverage of the Polish government's activism in this area: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/europe/poland-massacre-jews-nazis-blame.html Groceryheist (talk) 22:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The use of "apocryphal" suggests that people who are currently celebrated in Poland for saving Jews did not actually save them. Apocryphal means of doubtful authenticity. Without giving specific examples, we are casting doubt on the authenticity of the actions of people such as the Ulma family, Irena Sendler, Aleksander Ładoś and others (because they are the main protagonists of the politics of memory on this subject in Poland). The articles you provided are behind a pay wall so I can't address them. Marcelus (talk) 10:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The first article is a guest essay by Grabowski, the second is a report on the Polish court case against Grabowski. Both can be accessed via the Internet Archive. [25][26] Andreas JN 466 12:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I assume that everything G. said in these two articles is true. In particular, According to a national poll published in 2020, nearly half of Poles today think that Auschwitz is most of all a place of Polish suffering. Thus Auschwitz — which is also a museum funded by the Polish government devoted to the memory of nearly one million Jews who lost their lives in the gas chambers of Birkenau — has emerged, to a certain extent, as a place of Polish suffering as much as a Jewish one. But it is irrelevant to alleged WP distortions. Now, I am not sufficiently familiar with RS on this subject. How the suffering of non-Jewish people during Holocaust should be reflected on WP pages? I can see this prominently described on our page about Holocaust, i.e. The_Holocaust#Other_victims_of_Nazi_persecution. Is it good or bad? I can only say that the content is well sourced and that such version reflects WP:Consensus. Sure, I would suggest to reduce this "non-Jewish" section. But then someone crying wolf off-wiki can say "Hey, you are minimizing crimes by Nazi!" And I would not be able to rebut such claim because I would have indeed remove a sourced content about crimes by Nazi. And I would be topic-banned by Arbcom if someone off-wiki complains. My very best wishes (talk) 14:53, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

@Groceryheist @Jayen466 I read Grabowski's text, and nothing in it suggests that these Poles who saved Jews were "apocryphal." Grabowski says only that the Polish government's effort to commemorate every Pole who died saving Jews is intended to create the impression that this was a widespread phenomenon. This is his opinion. At no point does he dispute that those commemorated actually died helping Jews. Therefore, I find the use of "apocryphal" unacceptable. Try to rephrase the thought. Marcelus (talk) 09:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

He does distance himself from the claim somewhat in his wording: [...] a monument honoring Jan Maletka, a 21-year-old Polish railroad worker. Mr. Maletka, Polish researchers say, was shot in 1942 by the Nazis for giving water to the Jews as they waited in locked cattle cars idling outside the camp. (my bolding)

But I see what you mean.

On the other hand, fhis article (cited in Jan Maletka) is a bit clearer:

Maletka’s commemoration is part of an extensive initiative, led by the Pilecki Institute, to commemorate Poles who were killed because they helped Jews. In addition to his new memorial stone, Maletka's name and image were also displayed last week in the streets of Warsaw.
Although there is a consensus that any aid to the Jews during the Holocaust should be honored, historians like Grabowski doubt the authenticity of some of these stories. It is difficult to rely on the historical accuracy behind them, they add, because the entities promoting them have a political agenda, which is to defend the “good name” of the Polish nation – and not necessarily historical truth.
It is unclear which historical sources proved that Maletka offered Jews water out of compassion. Haaretz’s query to the Pilecki Institute on the subject has thus far received no response. Grabowski and other historians who are experts on the Holocaust in Poland are not familiar with this particular instance, although that does not necessarily mean it did not happen. Given that most of the Jews who would have witnessed the incident were certainly murdered immediately afterward, it is hard to find a basis for this story in independent sources.

Still, "apocryphal" may not be the best word for Groceryheist's intended meaning a weakness of evidence in contrast to "canonical".

On a clerical note, now that this Signpost issue is published, we need to limit further meaning-changing edits to corrections of clear errors. (not saying that this is or isn't one, just that discussion should remain focused in that regard) Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

If it's possible to change the wording at this point, I'd be open to it. I don't think "apocryphal" implies falsehood, but I understand that others think it does. Any suggestions for an equally concise way to signal a lack of documentary evidence behind commemorative monuments?

By the way, a more interesting and perhaps clear-cut example of administrative action would have been the expansion and rightward shift of the IPN since 2015. I picked the monuments as an example because that was easier to explain in brief. Groceryheist (talk) 17:13, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I have read more on the subject of Maletka including Jan Grabowski's extensive text in Polish, and indeed there is a strong possibility that he may have given water in exchange for payment. I understand that, in view of this, it is difficult to define his action as "aid". However, this does not change the fact that Maletka's is the only case of commemoration that Grabowski disputes. His main objection is that the Polish government, by commemorating every possible case of aid, is trying to cover up the truth about the general indifference or resentment of the Polish society toward Jews during the war. In this text, Grabowski mentions several other monuments recently erected and does not dispute the fact that the people commemorated on them provided aid. Marcelus (talk) 19:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

What folks need to do now

Let's not beat this horse to death. There are pretty standard ways we've dealt with this type of article in the past. Let's just stop the un-needed walls of text and stick with what actually needs to be done.

My role is self-appointed here, but I hope people realize I have some experience dealing with this type of thing. Personally, I was a bit disappointed in the paper reviewed, but that shouldn't affect how The Signpost reviews it.
The paper IMHO could easily have mentioned Icewhiz and judged his role as being very harmful. But we can't change how that paper was written.
The review could have mentioned several things mentioned above. I'll suggest he considers those things, but ultimately it's his call what he writes in the review. If we can publish it, we should.
@HaeB: is the editor of Recent research, so he has the major call on whether the review is publishable. He might want to make some suggestions to the review and probably already has. I respect HaeB's judgement in this matter. So should everybody else.
Readers and other non-Signposters can briefly post comments before publication, but we've gone far enough that I say - without fear of contradiction - that everybody who has posted above has made their points and it's time to move on.
Andreas - think of how you would be reacting right now if somebody tried to censor your reporting like this. You had more than your say. It's time to withdraw.
@JPxG: - you need to decide whether this meets the standards of journalism ethics and the rules of en Wikipedia. I personally think it does. If you get deep into the weeds of this, you will find out that this (and anything to do with Icewhiz) is a bottomless pit. I suggest you do no more than a couple of changes in word choice. The major issues have been covered above. Let HaeB do his job as he has done for years very well. It's your choice, but I suggest publish. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

One learns something everyday. I didnt know that in this nook of the wikiwoods, there is a personal fiefdom where WP:Consensus has no traction because the habitués of Signpost can call the shots', overruling numerous objections from the foreign peonry knocking at the door.Nishidani (talk) 19:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree. There is no consensus. I think this whole story, i.e. the off-wiki activism by I., publication by G&K and arbitration, is about overriding the existing WP:Consensus in WP, whatever it might be. Introducing editorial boards in WP would be a much better and more organized approach. My very best wishes (talk) 14:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

As a practical suggestion, I think you need to start an RfC if you want to publish this. My very best wishes (talk) 14:12, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
- As a practical suggestion, no an independent newspaper cannot operate in that fashion. We've got deadlines, we sign our work, we do not publish mainspace articles. We've been operating in this manner for 18 years. What we publish is subject to the same rules that apply to talk pages. You cannot change somebody else's comment on a talk page. If you don't like what somebody writes here, you have plenty of opportunity to respond, but we cannot operate with readers who don't like a story censoring a story before publication. If you think we've broken a rule after publication, by all means take it to ArbCom or wherever you think is best. But there's already a similar case at ArbCom. You're not going to change anything by trying to censor us. If you want to join our project, all you need to do is submit an article (and have it accepted) or help with copyediting on a regular basis. But having readers tell us what we have to publish or not publish. No, a newspaper just can't work that way. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:40, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I understand this not a truly independent newspaper because you are a part of WP. Hence you are bound by our BLP policy rules that applies to talk pages, and that one definitely has significant BLP implications. But the claims are sourced, hence probably not an outright violation. Still, creating a biased report prior to the arbitration, would not be good for the project, in my opinion. My very best wishes (talk) 16:59, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

'we've got deadlines, our project, we cannot operate with readers etc. Thanks for confirming my impression that there is a groupthink mentality commanding a personal fiefdom here. Newspapers vary from high quality reliable print media to junk tabloid journalism, and the way they work depends on whether the editors privilege competence, or go for sensationalist anything-goes-ism and its principle of catching attention or manipulating the gullible. Since there has been substantial evidence that this whole ruckus has its roots in a number of people registering and then editing to endorse an ethnonationalist POV (Icewhiz in the IP area), and, using methods of intimidation to destroy wikipedians' workplace honourability offline,with one permabanned as a toxic threat, and since in the meantime another quiet POV militant was caught out redhanded as they were quietly on the verge of being given administrative tools, reporting this required absolute neutrality. Esp. so since the same banned editor appears to be still trying to pull strings - it may be wholly coincidental that the G&K essay which so thrills a few inhouse editors here for its 'persuasive' accuracy - started as a project shortly after Icewhiz was locked out from this venue, which took his brief/grievance as the basso ostinato for an orchestral addition to their attack on the encyclopedia, and identified as a group of antisemitic Polish muggers precisely the editors who, after several AE procedures, survive to be active contributors here and whom Icewhiz clashed with, anything but rigorous neutrality of reportage cannot but translate into anything other than giving the appearance of vindicating that banned editor's hyperactive on- and offline methods of challenging what we do and how we do things here. There's no scoop here. There is the distinct possibility of naive editors being scooped up into an immensely intricate mess of labyrinthine complexity, part of which seems to reek of ongoing offline intrigue whose thrust may have even escaped the two authors who wrote the essay. The possibility of that seems to have escaped this 'newsroom.' No one objects to reportage, but in a matter as serious as this, pseudscorner hack opinions that don't cut the mustard even as apprentice journalism is not something wikipedia should encourage featuring in its newspaper. I use that description with a sense of sadness, because the two editors have a solid record elsewhere and a notable competence in their respective fields, but are way out of their depth of this, as I too, for one, and I had quite a lot of interaction with the banned editor as a few others commenting negatively here, would be (and I could easily pull G&Ks essay apart as substandard in terms of academic method (while reserving judgment on the gravamen of the charges)-nah, lifes short, too busy). Any review here that anticipates one of several potential Arbcom outcomes months down the line can be read as just one more attempt at manipulating and prejudicing the case, mirroring the stubborn offline meddling which has been characteristic of that banned editor for years.Nishidani (talk) 16:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thing is, most of the time... almost ALL of the time, you obviously don't need an RfC. But exactly in cases like this is where Wikipedia policies of WP:CONSENSUS kicks in and those trump whatever "we have deadlines!" issues there may be. If nothing else, you folks *really* need to think about developing some kind of procedure precisely so this kind of thing doesn't happen in the future. Volunteer Marek 18:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)