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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by LargelyRecyclable (talk | contribs) at 04:57, 6 June 2018 (→Rebuttal: + rebuttal Canvassing). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Evidence presented by TonyBallioni

LargelyRecyclable was created to harass K.e.coffman

Their first mainspace edit was to tagbomb an article extensively worked on by K.e.coffman. They followed this up with their next mainspace edit a day later, proposing a merge of one of the GAs created by K.e.coffman, Rommel myth. They then taggbommbed Rommel myth, and edit warred over keeping the tagbomb: [1], [2] (note, I warned them about it, and further explained here).

LargelyRecyclable's next edit on different mainspace article was this edit. It seems minor, until you realize that the last edit to that article was 15 months previous, by K.e.coffman. Following some other edits on the articles already mentioned, LR tagged the Rommel myth article for community GA review.

These are just LR's first 48 hours worth of edits. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC) [reply]

LargelyRecyclable was warned

While unblocking them, MastCell warned LargelyRecyclable not to repeat their edit warring and tagbommbing. MastCell additionally pointed out that their singular focus on one editor was below the standards we expected on Wikipedia, but did not amount to to block at that time: [3] TonyBallioni (talk) 00:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

LargelyRecyclable continued to harass K.e.coffman

LargelyRecyclable's first edits outside of their userspace after getting unblocked were to engage in an argument with K.e.coffman on an article that LR had not previously edited: [4] [5]

LR then later took up the tactic of responding to K.e.coffman on other talk pages and boards that they had not previously edited, and only when Coffman had asked a question: [6] [7] [8]

Their following of K.e.coffman's edits continued as recently as March and April before this case was filed, the following being direct reverts of K.e.coffman, or edits to pages they had never been before but where K.e.coffman was substantially involved: [9], [10] (originally edited by LR in October, but by Coffman substantially before that), [11]

The following in April also includes articles that were part of LargelyRecyclable's initial harassment round where they tagged articles K.e.coffman was involved with: WWII renactment October tag April revert WWII renactment,October tag Waffen-SS in pop culture, April revert Waffen-SS in pop culture

Finally, I'm not sure where the best section to include this is, but it's worth including, so I'll put it here. This is an account with not many edits in the grand scheme of what normally comes to ArbCom. At the time of this writing, that account had 134 total edits to the Talk: namespace according to xtools. Of those, a full 16% included the string 'Coffman' in the edit summary (22 total). TonyBallioni (talk) 00:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

LargelyRecyclable engaged in personal attacks on arbitration pages during this case

[12] TonyBallioni (talk) 13:27, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

LargelyRecyclable was blocked for harassing Bishonen

I'm sure you all are aware, but knowing how cases can be, might as well put it in evidence: [13]. This was for thanking Bish after she asked him not to with which he replied by a thank button, and in context, a snarky reply: [14]. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:22, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Pldx1

This is quite only a conflict about contents

1.The opening sentence of this case is, K.e.coffman speaking: "My op-ed in the Bugle, WP:MILHIST's newsletter, summarises my findings on the subject of Wikipedia's mythmaking when it comes to the German war effort of 1939-45. [1]"

2.User LR appeared on 20 September 2017. His total number of edits is 135. It has been suggested that he could be an avatar of some more involved user... but this has been rebuked. It's hard to figure how these 135 edits were key steps to implement a large pro-Nazi bias, as brushed by K.e.coffman.

4.On the contrary, it seems that we are facing to yet another reductio ad Hitlerum, with the objective of including an ordinary "edit war" into a conspiracy with ulterior motives.

9.In his public tribune[2], K.e.coffman says "nowhere is it more apparent than on English Wikipedia". Nowhere can we see a more Popper-prone assertion!

White-washing is not a recently discovered fact

5.Indeed, large white-washing campaigns have been undertaken in the past, to allow the recycling of the defeated mass-murderers into murderers with our God on their side[3]. MacArthur protecting Hirohito, Churchill protecting Kesselring, and so on were not isolated facts... but describing this situation as orchestrated by Wikipedia is too large a brush... and slightly anachronistic.

7.About Rommel. He was the Hitler's special "not Nazi nor Junker officer", used from the beginning to symbolize and facilitate the rallying of the Reichswehr to the regime. Surely, Rommel was not a direct perpetrator of the Preußenschlag (1932/07/20) nor of the Night of the Long Knives (1934/06/30). But the Goslar parade (1934/09/30) was organized as an assertion of approval. 1934! By the way: on the picture, one can identify Rommel as well as the dictator, with his famous 'Heil myself'. Who are the other four ?

Fancruft at milhist

6.As an example, praising a quidam for "successfully conducting a car over the distance from Los Angeles to El Paso" [4] can surely be questioned. Even our porn-star articles aren't going that far. But this can not be brushed as Nazi propaganda, whatever source is used to backup such an irrelevant factoid.

8.About the emphasis put on the Knight's Cross of the Aluminium Cross (or the Knight's Cross of the Aluminum Cross, according to your ENGVAR). One should acknowledge that giving each date of elevation to the next class, with Rhinestone, Glitter or Whatever provides a full paragraph, easily referenced... but mostly useless. But describing this as Nazi-propaganda is over the top. Look at the Louis Mountbatten article: how many lines about the ribbons ? About being mentioned in the dispatches ?

10.By the way, one can also examine if using Eichenlaub, Schwerter und Brillanten to adorn some chevrons is to be attributed to blatant stupidity (most probable) or to some other reason (largely improbable).[5]

Pldx1 (talk) 09:24, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Die Träger (the 28 wp articles)

Since we are discussing about an alleged bias about die Träger articles, it could be useful to look about the 28-articles directory, as it is published.

  1. The structure of these 28 files has not been published, nor discussed by anyone and is to be guessed from the articles. Since this structure is not so simple, maintenance of individual lines results quite ever into a break of this structure.
  2. Instead of using the Family_name, Given_name natural order, the US order is used, requiring an hidden sort key.
  3. Instead of using the Year/Month/Day natural order, the US order is used, requiring an hidden sort key.
  4. This, together with unused fields (vcard and fn), useless links to the four armed branches and even to 'killed in action' (who can ignore that "killed in action" means killed in action ?), in addition to poorly handled references (most of the time, only the page in Fellgiebel is needed) result in inflating the size of the files, requiring 28 of them in order to obtain a reasonable time of loading.
  5. Ranks are completed by a nato-like 4 characters code, used as an hidden sortkey. For example, Oberfeldwebel des Heeres is coded as 10-H. This code is the most important feature of the directory, and should be apparent (and all the useless equivalences stripped). Five of them are incoherent (and perhaps more are wrong).
  6. 1021 (upon 7321) have a rank "der Reserve". This is linked to Military reserve force. Such a link suggests a poor knowledge of the topic.
  7. Of the 7321, 1249 are linked to an individual page, 2025 are redirects to the main pages, 344 are ordinary, and 3703 are red links. This reflects the 'not so simple' history of the topic.

The personal opinion of anyone is not a sufficiently Reliable Source

It seems that some individuals have been recruited by K.e.coffmann to provide their own personal opinion and sustain the K.e.coffmann's point of view in the present content's dispute. This is rather surprising after being so vocal about Reliable Sources. A real expert in the field, speaking ex cathedra, would publish the results of her investigation in a professional, peer reviewed publication in the History field. This would provide one Reliable Source. In comparison, anything released in a private, unpublished form, would only be in a lower standard than the Landser literature... i.e. rather low according to KEC. Obviously, a panel of experts could be obtained by drawing at random 10 names among a list of hundreds of tenured Professors across the world... This would only change the paradigm here of a crowd sourced encyclopedia. And arbitrators are only supposed to arbitrate, aren't they ?


Pldx1 (talk) 17:26, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/News/April_2018/Review_essay
  2. ^ http://www.smh-hq.org/docs/HQG/GazetteWI18.pdf
  3. ^ With God on Our Side
  4. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AWikipedia_Signpost%2F2018-04-26%2FOp-ed&type=revision&diff=838862161&oldid=838712166
  5. ^ original statement: 10:50, 17 May 2018 (UTC) ; §10 added 14:10, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Pudeo

K.e.coffman involvement in an offsite community

I've submitted private evidence about K.e.coffman's involvement in an offsite public "anti-Wehrmacht" community that directly relates to his Wikipedia editing to the ArbCom via email. It included no actual personal details and he had himself publicly acknowledged to being K.e.coffman there.

K.e.coffman's deletionism doesn't have consensus

See this AN/I thread: [15] Besides Dapi89's actions, several editors also found K.e's behavior problematic and many diffs were provided.

K.e's biggest problem with the topic area is that German military articles have "intricate detail" and that a lot of decorated German soldiers should not be notable.

K.e's definition of intricate detail was contested at MilHist in a very long thread.[16]. Here it's catalogued[17] that K.e. redirected 1742 Knight's Cross biographies to a list based on "rough consensus" at WP:BIO [18] that the award alone doesn't guarantee notablity. But a lot of notable soldiers were also redirected because of his industrial scale. He based[19] his later flying ace deletion spree on a MilHist vote that failed to gain consensus [20]. K.e.coffman stated this fact in the message but nevertheless went on with it. I personally reverted Adolf Dickfeld because he was a colonel, commander of II./JG 11, had 136 air victories & KC w/Oak Leaves, for instance.

In November 2017 he attempted[21] to add German military personnel awarded with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross as an exception to common deletion outcomes. Everyone except him opposed singling out the German award in the !votes.

Gist

K.e.coffman alleges systemic bias in his essay: the average MilHist editor has been too pro-Wehrmacht. I have to especially defend User:MisterBee1966 who has been working like a horse for German military personnel articles. He has a clean block log[22], 600 created articles[23] and hasn't even edit-warred to get the deleted material back. Military hobbyists like him love details like commands held, Wehrmarchbericht mentions, awards etc. It doesn't mean they are pro-Nazi because of that. Please assume good faith.

Compare K.e.coffman's original version of the Rommel myth article [24] to the present one[25]. His own version presents the critical historians' view as the only view whereas the present one also acknowledges that not all historians view it is a pure myth. These are content disputes! I also feel K.e. displays a battleground attitude by compiling a staggering list of disputes on his user page.[26]

Lastly, I disagree with the view that the English Wikipedia is somehow too biased for the German military. There are plenty of articles on American World War II aces with less notable battles and less victories than German pilots. Also there are other editors who write very in-depth articles about WWII British naval personnel and Australian involvement. If K.e.coffman was an ideological pacifist, he'd also clash with all the people writing those articles because of the intricate detail. There is no evidence of actual pro-Nazi POV-pushing like Holocaust denial; indeed the Nazi military history topic area is very calm compared, for example, to the "Polish death camp" controversy that is covered by WP:ARBEE. --Pudeo (talk) 20:02, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Bishonen

I'm a sparrow in the dance of cranes[27] here on the German war effort evidence page, since I don't know much about the central matters of historiography and sourcing for the subject. But I'll just offer my encounters with a couple of users, LargelyRecyclable and Cinderella157 (a MILHIST project coordinator), as potentially relevant to interpersonal relations in the area, specifically as they impact on K.e.coffman. I met LR and Cinderella in November 2017, after K.e.coffman had posted a question on my page about possible socking.[28] The IP edit KEC was concerned about was an attack on KEC and also on Assayer on Talk:Werner Mölders.[29] It seemed inappropriate to me that the attack was still sitting on that page (indeed along with some other attacks on KEC's good faith), so I posted there, and thereby came in contact with the two users.

LargelyRecyclable in November 2017

See this talkpage section. Unfortunately it's a long section, and the relevant discussion comes at the end, so please do a search for the phrase "I was pointed", where it starts. In the course of that discussion, LargelyRecyclable restored the IP's attack on K.e.coffman after it had been removed by a CheckUser, and continued lawyering (IMO) about it. I wouldn't blame anybody for not being aware that CheckUsers won't publicly connect an account and an IP — probably most editors don't know that — but LR insisted on their own position that the nasty anonymous attack on K.e.coffman should be kept public, and went into mansplaining and personalising mode with it, beyond what I thought reasonable. LR's use of policies and wikijargon, including a suggestion that KEC's note to me amounted to adminshopping, seemed both random and aggressive on this occasion.

LargelyRecyclable's conduct during this case

(Added 30 May 2018.) LargelyRecyclable posted this comment to me on Evidence talk, which was removed by a clerk as "little more than an attack", with a note on LR's page about the expectations of decorum on arbitration pages.[30] LR has now linked, apparently with pride, to this removed attack in his evidence.[31] Compare also TonyBallioni's (currently) last two sections above. I'm not sure where this high resentment against me comes from, as I don't edit MILHIST topics. I suppose it's possible there was bad blood between LR's previous, secret, account or accounts[32] and myself; I've no way of knowing that. Bishonen | talk 10:18, 30 May 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Cinderella157 November 2017 + April 2018

In the course of posting at Talk:Werner Mölders per above, I also noticed this comprehensive attack on KEC by Cinderella157: "I would observe that K.e.coffman (talk · contribs) clearly has an agenda... The 'excessive zeal' sails close to Wikipedia:POV warrior, Wikipedia:Wikilawyering and Wikipedia:Troll - perhaps indistinguishably so." Whoah! I complained about these statements on Cinderella's page,[33] hoping for a retraction, but instead got this long reply.

In April 2018, Cinderella posted a comment on the Request page before this case was opened, which ended with links to Inquisition, Salem witch trials, the Great Purge and Night of the Long Knives.[34] It's not clear to me what the links refer to. Is Cinderella comparing KEC's action in filing the RFAR to the Inquisition etc? Or are these atrocities used as a metaphor for what ArbCom would be perpetrating by accepting the RFAR? Or for something else altogether, that might eventually happen in consequence of any of these actions? It's unclear to me, and Cinderella's explanations in this discussion with TonyBallioni on Cinderella's page don't enlighten me much ("I deliberately did not overtly state my intent. It was a literary device."). But IMO those links to atrocities in the real world are extremely offensive and disproportionate taken as any kind of metaphor or "literary device" in relation to mere disagreements on a website. Bishonen | talk 14:17, 18 May 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Evidence presented by Nick-D

The historiography on Germany in World War II is evolving

There are significant, and changing, differences in historians' views on the conduct of the German military in World War II. Historians now often focus on the key role of the German military in the Nazi regime's actions and crimes (a topic largely ignored in popular works until the 1980s). Many works once considered reliable have been discredited.

The changing historiography means that Wikipedia articles need to evolve to reflect WP:NPOV. This includes reworking articles. As such, article re-writes, etc, should not be seen as intrinsically problematic. This process has generally been uncontroversial, though there are some tensions. I think that there's scope for some of the involved editors to be more open-minded towards different sources and perspectives.

K.e.coffman has found highly problematic material

I've reviewed most of the examples at User:K.e.coffman#Problematic WWII content, and in almost all cases agree with their judgement on it.

The views of historians they obtained are also concerning.

K.e.coffman's conduct

  • Regularly active since 2015, never blocked: [35]
  • 95% of edits include an edit summary: [36]
  • Frequently explains potentially contentious changes on talk pages and invites comment (examples: [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45], [46])
  • Regularly constructively and politely engages in discussions of their changes (examples: [47], [48], [49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55])
  • Uses relevant noticeboards: XTools shows hundreds of posts to WP:RSN and WT:MILHIST and 95 to WP:NPOVN
  • When these discussions have produced a consensus, I'm not aware of K.e.coffman subsequently going against this.
  • Rarely edit wars (as an example of this and the above point, see Template:Top German World War II Aces - after a civil discussion [56] rejected much of their bold changes [57], K.e.coffman did not further edit the article)
  • Developed nine articles in this topic area to GAs
  • Can be over-zealous/over-enthusiastic at times, despite discussing their actions and, IMO, these generally being justified.
  • For instance, by making lots of similar changes to articles on German fighter aces mid last year they needlessly got several good editors off side. A better approach would have been to have started a broad discussion or a RfC to determine consensus.
  • This may be a lesson already learned, as I can't see this occurring recently.

Example: Wehrmachtbericht

Until recently, many articles included lengthy quotes from the Wehrmachtbericht, a Nazi propaganda broadcast.

  • Concerns had been raised over this multiple times (examples: [58], [59], [60], [61])
  • K.e.coffman started discussions at WP:NPOVN which concluded that this was not suitable content: [62], [63].
  • There were differing views in these and the earlier discussions, but they were generally civil and constructive

LargelyRecyclable continued another editor's harassment and disruption

I filed Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Makumbe/Archive regarding LargelyRecyclable soon after they started editing. A checkuser judged that the accounts were unlikely to be connected , and I note ArbCom's similar comments. However, it's concerning that their early edits continued those of another editor who was hostile towards K.e.coffman and the broader agenda of balancing articles, and escalated this matter through tag bombing articles and attacking reliable sources (diffs in the SPI case).

Military History Wikiproject

As a member of this project since 2006, former coordinator of it (and joint lead-coord for a period) and frequent contributor to its A-class reviews, I don't think that the project has a systematic problem with pro-Nazi bias at all.

Two other examples

Examples of problems not being attributable to current editors, and there being no difficulties addressing them (hence no current deeply-seated bias, etc):

  • Until 2016 the Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke article was a hagiography. It excused his Nazi beliefs and excluded his war crimes [64]
  • The editor who added the most problematic material is not a named party (rarely active since 2012)
  • K.e.coffman and I experienced no difficulties improving the article [65]
  • Similarly, I had no difficulties improving the Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk article from a version which falsely portrayed him as an apolitical functionary [66]
  • No single editor was responsible for the article's previous state [67]

Peacemaker67

  • Has developed at least 13 articles on Nazi war criminals, organisations and events of World War II to FA, with all being a model of how Wikipedia should cover such topics: frankly and accurately
  • Played a major role in turning Wikipedia's coverage of WW2 in Yugoslavia from a highly problematic area to an area of real strength

Evidence presented by power~enwiki

On the content of military biographies

For articles on less-prominent sportspeople, we often have a very narrow focus on their athletic accomplishments (some arbitrarily-chosen examples include Obed Owusu, Pinky May, Gordon Forbes, Li Junsheng, Uta Poreceanu). Their (presumably-existent) non-sports careers are often not known or mentioned, and there is certainly no discussion of their political views.

Whether or not the articles on military persons should focus purely on statistical information is a content dispute. A dispute at Panzer ace in December involving additions by LargelyRecyclable (diff) was on this basic topic. Several of the names listed have been edited fairly heavily by K.e.coffman; I note Ernst Barkmann as an example involving reduction of content.

When and how to discuss the political views of Nazi soldiers is also a content dispute. Primary sources may be unreliable; I assume that almost all soldiers would have attested to pro-Nazi views during the war, and anti-Nazi views after, regardless of their actual beliefs. Concerns about changing historiography and the reliability of secondary sources have been discussed in other sections better than I can do so.

LargelyRecyclable is a declared WP:CLEANSTART account

Diff by Callanecc stating that ARBCOM has determined that LR had no previous issues involving K.e.coffman or World War II topics.

Evidence presented by Icewhiz

K.e.coffman‎'s conduct is reasonable

I disagree with KEC quite a bit on many topic areas (and in some - we do agree) - notability standards for WWII is one of those areas we disagree. Following KEC's BOLD redirection of KC recipients to a list, I challenged him on the narrow topic area of aces - undoing several dozen of the redirects (by running down the WWII ace list) - and challenged him to place them at AfD. He did - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fritz Lüddecke. And it closed Delete (I think I would still !vote Keep, and I think it might close differently today - but it is also fairly clear to me this is borderline notability wise). Following this one AfD - we reached a compromise on what I wouldn't contest - [68]. What I am trying to say - is that while I disagree with KEC on WWII personnel notability - his conduct is reasonable. While he can be focused (not a bad thing) - he also discusses, is civil, and operates within policy guidelines.Icewhiz (talk) 19:35, 20 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by K.e.coffman

Preliminaries

The case was prompted by the Signpost essay, which I'm linking here: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-04-26/Op-ed. I'm presenting evidence that spans 2016–2018 to help ArbCom identify patterns in this long-running dispute. In addition to LargelyRecyclable, I've mentioned MILHIST coordinators and editors who have participated in the RFAR: Auntieruth55, Peacemaker67, Chris troutman, and Cinderella157. I've also included Hawkeye7 since he commented on Singpost. LR's whitewashing & harassment campaign took place in an atmosphere of indifference from MILHIST coordinators, and even with their direct participation (e.g. Evidence#Cinderella157). 

MILHIST's interpretations of WP:IRS and other WP:PAGs seem to be outside of wider community norms. My contention is that the project has assumed ownership of articles on the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, including biographies and socio-political, cultural, and criminal aspects of these topics. This has created a walled garden of articles, including GA/MilHist A-Class/FA ('A-Class' is a grade between GA and FA awarded by project consensus). Editing peer-reviewed articles has been objected to, citing consensus or being out of process. On source evaluation in peer-reviewed articles, I recommend reading this MILHIST discussion: GA / FA articles (2017).

LR misrepresented sources

  • In Erich Hoepner, LR added new material, ostensibly cited to Zabecki: Despite the superior Soviet tanks and numbers Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group destroyed over 700 Soviet tanks, (...) led his forces to within 11 kilometers of Leningrad...{{snf|Zabecki|2014|p=615}} Zabecki is a brief entry on Hoepner [69]; it does not discuss “700 Soviet tanks” nor “11 km”. LR did not acknowledge this misuse of the source. 
  • 13 November 2017, same edit added ...serious doubts about the viability of the coming offensive (..). [Hoepner] was consoled by Albert Kesselring, an old friend of his, and was eventually convinced the plan would work.{{snf|Stahel|2015|p=326}}, misrepresenting Stahel as the page listed did not contain this information. 
  • In Karl Strecker, LR used a source written by the subject's grandson, Uli Haller. I was initially skeptical of the source since it was credited to the subject. Our discussions started on 21 October 2017: 
I then posted to RSN: Source in WW2 bio article. LR claimed: "Every academic review of the book I've seen (...) has been adulatory", but failed to provide them. I offered a review of Haller's portion of the book: "larger than life" & "marred by errors". LR accused me of providing a "skewed" picture and described the author as "a professionally trained archivist who is now on the staff of the University of Washington". My response: "he works there as a Senior Director of Finance and Administration, not in an academic capacity." 
I was perplexed as to why LR a. would not disclose the familial relationship; b. would insist that reviews were "adulatory" but was unable to provide them; c. continue to defend the source: 8 November 2017, because he did not see "any actual evidence of bias".
The overall impression was of evasion, propensity towards accusations, and possibly a lack of competence in evaluating sources; full TP discussion. That's why I was surprised when LR presented that article as an example of a "success in coming to resolution in content disputes" [71]. 
  • In Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, LR inserted the language of …prompting Leeb to file official protests.{{sfn|Goda|2005|p=112}} 27 October 2017; compare with Goda, p. 112: "the extent and intensity of Leeb's protests against these atrocities remain highly problematic" Corrupt Histories. This is likely a self-exculpatory legend. 
  • In Battle of Raseiniai, LR changed: According to some accounts, the crew was buried by the German soldiers with full military honors; in other accounts, the crew escaped during the night.{{Sfn|Buttar|2013|p=85}} to: The crew was killed and then buried by the Germans, with full military honors.{{Sfn|Buttar|2013|p=85}} 27 October 2017. However, the uncertainty comes from the source: "by some accounts (...) while other accounts": Between Giants, p. 85. LR defended the edit, not acknowledging that he had misinterpreted the source.
Given that LR has edited a limited number of articles, these examples are troubling, since they seem to happen in all and any WW2 bio articles that LR made substantive changes to. They show misuse of reliable sources, use of fringe sources, misrepresentations when challenged and / or marshalling non-existent reviews.

LR misinterpreted WP:IRS

  • 18 April 2018: “...the willingness of a publisher to put out what could be characterized as apologist literature is largely irrelevant to the reliability of a source”, about the notoriously pro-Wehrmacht J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing. 
  • 10 April 2018: restored fringe / apologist sources, as discussed here, offering a dismissive comment on TP: [72].
  • 17 February 2018: removed RS-cited material about the subject, claiming a lack of "biographical notability"; then defended the removal as SYNTH: 21 February 2018.  
  • Suggesting that veteran org’s materials are secondary sources, vs primary: 28 December 2017, "…anything they put out that is analyzed and then used to make an assertion by a third party, is a secondary source." 
  • 21 September 2017: "Reuth is a journalist" – this was incorrect, see: Ralf Georg Reuth.

LR engaged in hounding and harassment

LR canvassed MILHIST

  • The matter of disputes involved alleged crimes (Dietrich von Choltitz), cultural history (Rommel myth), & historiography (Panzer Battles), not military–operational matters: 

LR cast aspersions

  • On his TP:
    • 23 December 2017: "[[WP:SOAP|advocate]] a particular view point" and "[[WP:TAGTEAM|tag teaming]]"
    • 26 September 2017: "The wreckage goes back over the past year and a half. MILHIST worked to push back some but a lot of them seemed to just give up and go home out of fatigue."
    • 24 September 2017: "two or three activist editors working in coordination"
  • On an article TP:
    • 23 September 2017, "[[WP:CHERRY|well worn strategy]] of a [[WP:COAT|coat rack fork]]"
    • 21 September 2017: "grooming and sussing of any tangentially related material to [[WP:BOMBARD|reference fluff]]"
    • 21 September 2017, "The issue is that of content forking, original research, weight, improper use of references, tone, POV, and the introduction of a neologism in the form of advocacy."   

Auntieruth canvassed MILHIST coordinators

Auntieruth misinterpreted WP:IRS

  • AR recommended an extremist writer as a source on an SS-Police security operation: 4 April 2018
  • AR admits to, apparently, not being familiar with the historiography of WW2: 27 April 2017: "I don't know what the problem is with these sources. Everything is checked and double checked."
  • AR apparently suggested editors engage in OR: 17 January 2017, "Sometimes we have to read 'against' the source, which means using a source to extract information it was not originally intended to provide". AR also made claims about works of certain authors being "sponsored" by the German Federal Archives. Assayer's rebuttal: [73].
  • From a GAR of an article that Auntieruth reviewed; as passed, it was based on the pulp writer Franz Kurowski, and included the neo-Nazi publication Helden Der Wehrmacht ("Heroes of the Wehrmacht") & other WP:QS: 2010 version  
    • 6 October 2016: "Part of the role of the historian is to separate the chaff from the grain, so to speak." (about a hagiographic source that was originally self-published)
    • 6 October 2016: "The fact that his books are self-published simply means that he did not get them published in an academic publication." (same source, and that’s not what WP:SPS means)
  • AR’s participation in discussions generally serve to confuse matters, not clarify them:
    • AR’s evidence symptomatic of similar problems: [74]: suggests that her list relates to "radicalizing local populations against Jews and non-communists in the Baltic states". This makes little sense: a. Why would the Germans target non-communists? b. "Radicalizing" may have applied in the context of the incitement of anti-Jewish "self-cleansing actions" (pogroms) during the 1941 invasion, but that strategy was long past in 1943. c. The article was about an SS-Police operation in Minsk, Belarus, which is not part of the Baltic states. Further from AR: "...particularly in the General Government", i.e. occupied Poland, not Belarus either.
    • This response exemplifies AR’s approach: she conflates Dictionary of National Biography with Günter Just, collaborator of the article’s subject; insists that sources are "reliable"; and accuses others of "incessant bickering" [75], while ignoring a follow-up: thread. 

Peacemaker encouraged MILHIST coordinators to monitor my editing

  • 6 June 2016: In a coordinator-only thread, Peacemaker expressed concerns about "hard line anti-Nazi de WP which is now being aggressively pushed here by a few editors", i.e. myself, as I was mentioned by name later. PM offered this justification: "No-one should be seeking to undermine the merit of the actions of a member of the Wehrmacht because they were on the losing side, or because they were a member of the Nazi Party. It must be remembered that the Nazi Party was a popular mass movement in Germany, at least pre-war."
PM closed by proposing that "all coordinators keep a weather eye out for this behaviour". The overall sentiment was apparently echoed by others, as no one spoke up against this inappropriate and aberrant suggestion. Instead, there was a pile-on concern about “diehard anti-Nazis”: (Thread).
  • Somewhat related: PM commented on a number of articles I submitted for peer review or GA, generally critically, such as 10 January 2018; 5 December 2007; 16 April 2017; 14 December 2016. I'm always open to critiques of my contributions and I'm not suggesting that PM follows my edits, as noms come up on various project alert pages. Still, PM seems to be the only coord to have done so consistently, and even during this ArbCom case: 30 May 2018.
This is in contrast to PM having expressed reservations about me commenting on an article he had nominated for FA, noting that "User:K.e.coffmann and I have been at odds for some time over his editing approach" and suggeting my comments were not "entirely in good faith": 21 November 2016.

Peacemaker misinterpreted WP:IRS & NPOV

References

  1. ^ Stimmen zum Buch "Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945" von Veit Scherzer
  2. ^ Scherzer 2007, cover.
Side note: by the time Seidler made these comments, he'd been long retired from the university and was best known for publishing revisionist texts with extremist presses. See also revert on Seidler’s own page: [76].
  • Confused IRS with WP:OR: 2 December 2016: "But it is not our job to determine who is mistaken by questioning where different authors drew their information from. That is getting very close to WP:OR."
  • Disputed that the claims were "controversial", even if sourced to apologist / QS publications: 18 November 2016. Also pinged prior reviewers; this may be fine, but note that GA, ACR, and FAR reviewers were mostly MILHIST coords.

Peacemaker cast aspersions

  • June 2018: "pushing his point of view" (twice); "tendentious editing behaviour"; "has an anti-military POV"; "not reviewing in good faith".
  • May 2018: "censorious zeal"; "deletionism"; "undermines building the encyclopaedia"; "His editing behaviour is tendentious"; "censorious editing behaviour"; "wikilawyering"; "problematic editor". etc.
  • 1 December 2016: “Assayer, your tagteam support of K.e.coffman is becoming highly predictable.”
  • 29 November 2016, Accusations of COI: “Your relationship to Smelser et al begs the question...” (thread)
  • 20 November 2016, “The whole pattern of behaviour is tendentious (…) …complete lack of acceptance by coffmann that community norms rule on WP, not his personal views”.
  • 28 July 2016 & same "Yet more wikilawyering and pointy behaviour." PM also described WP:BURDEN as a "guideline" or "essay".

Hawkeye misinterpreted WP:IRS

3rd party editor: Would you care to enlighten me why you think, Neo-Nazi publications (e.g. Range, Kurowksi, Schaulen) are needed in WWII articles?
Hawkeye7: Mass changes require an RfC. (...) Take it to WP:MILHIST.
K.e.coffman: If these sources were used for citations, would an RfC be required to remove these sources and citations?
Hawkeye7: Not if it was done individually, and the source was replaced with another.
K.e.coffman: What if a neo-Nazi source was the only one available, such as Franz Kurowski at Otto Kittel article?
Hawkeye7: They must have used some source. Replace with their original source.

I.e., if editors wanted to remove such sources, they should procure them to determine original sources these (neo-Nazi) publications used. He referred to MILHIST as apparently the final arbiter on such sources.

Chris troutman personalised disputes

  • 20 May 2018: “…Kecoffman is at ARBCOM (…) making sure we can't talk about WWII flanking attacks or encirclements without reiterating that all Germans are Nazis and therefore evil” (commenting on an unrelated topic)
  • 24 April 2018: “I have complained in the past about K.e.coffman's de-Nazification campaign.”
  • 8 November 2017, “Seeking deletion for articles about Nazis seems like de-Nazification to me.” Note my objection, which CT described as “sensitivity to mere words”.
  • 30 October 2016 “I am against K.e.coffman's misguided de-Nazification efforts.” CT also suggested that notability of soldiers is “for MILHIST to collectively decide.”

Cinderella engaged in personal attacks

  • See evidence by Bishonen: Evidence#Cinderella157
  • Since Cinderella seems unclear [77], a clarification: one would reasonably interpret this statement as me conducting a witch hunt and a Stalinist-Nazi purge simultaneously – while also exemplifying Spanish Inquisition. Since I'd already been accused of "book burning" [78] [79] and "Nazi-hunting" [80], that was not remarkable. However, I'd not seen four of these activities, separated by ideologies and centuries, combined in such a fashion. It had generally been either / or, i.e. being "on a crusade" [81] but not "McCarthyist fervour" [82] in the same sentence, for example.

Cinderella misinterpreted IRS & OR

Diffs are from June 2017, focused on The Blond Knight of Germany, the main source for an A-class article. Sub-thread at WT:WikiProject Military history/Archive 140#Erich Hartmann:

  • [83], "just what are 'exceptional claims', why are they just 'plain wrong' or controversial? Why? (…)  Perhaps this is the conundrum of WP (it does not allow original research or synthesis) or perhaps this is (politely) just your POV."
  • If only QS are available: "A negative review on a particular aspect of a work does not render it questionable in all respects of that work": [84].
  • Cinderella then suggested we apply the same criteria to the 2008 book The Myth of the Eastern Front, authored by two academics, and The Blond Knight of Germany, written by two amateurs during the Cold War era: [85].  Assayer sensibly responded, [86]:
It seems as if the burden of proof is routinely reversed. If a source is dubious because its author, its publisher or both have a reputation for historical distortions and a certain bias (e.g. heroication), I consider it unreasonable to be asked for sources which question specific dubious claims... (...) The whole situation becomes Kafkaesque, when any attempt to demonstrate how exceptional certain claims are, is struck down as "original research" with reference to WP:SYNTH.

Project ownership led to walled garden

Auntieruth suggested during RFAR that she had "served predominantly as copy editor/grammarian" [87] in MILHIST peer-reviewed articles. AR reviewed three GA noms and commented in six discussions that resulted in promotion to A-class (ACR) / FA of articles that I consider problematic, with relevant TP discussions: 

Peacemaker stated at the RFAR that "much of [the mistakes] has happened at GAN which is not a Milhist process at all" [88]. However, he participated in reviews of same or similar articles:

Separately, Peacemaker strongly defended a page that looks like a mini-version of my user page: "Tanks must be led from the front!"; "rose to fame";[according to whom?] joined the Nazi Party, but strictly for reasons of civic duty: Strachwitz GAR. A non-affiliated editor commented: 

  • This is a GAR for a 10,000+ word essay full of Nazi WP:FANCRUFT that apparently meets the GA criteria of a wikiproject with its own set of rules for what's encyclopedic (Source).

Local consensus resulted in bias in articles

Despite having project MOS guidance on suitable sources (WP:MILMOS#SOURCES), in practice, questionable, apologist, and fringe sources have been accepted. Editors questioning them are routinely asked to present evidence disproving specific statements, e.g. #Hawkeye misinterpreted WP:IRS. By this logic, the most obscure sources are the most reliable ones, since nobody had anything to say about them. Source evaluation is dismissed as "WP:OR".

PM's comment from the RFAR: "Those mistakes [in accepting unsuitable sources] do not justify tag-bombing and butchering perfectly good articles..." [89]. Can you have "dubious and entirely laudatory sources" in "perfectly good" articles? No, IMO. Separately, MILHIST members do "disagree" that sources are dubious. Some examples: 

  • 26 June 2017. About an FA sourced to an obscure author from a small-time militaria publisher. Library holdings are not proof of reliability.
  • 23 June 2017, "there’s no consensus for this". About The Blond Knight of Germany, despite evidence that the book is likely semi-fictional [90].
  • Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_216#Sources_at_Artur_Phleps_article, on whether sources written by a former Nazi propagandist and by a former Waffen-SS commander should be accepted in FA, such as for statements about the subject’s "disdain for corruption". PM: "Every author gets criticised, and the above criticism of [the propagandist] is not about the book in question…" & "The onus is on you". Mentions of “comprehensiveness criteria” by PM brought comparisons with WP:EINSTEIN.

My edit on 16 March 2017 (in AR's evidence): “Trivia cited to a neo-Nazi publication”, which was reverted. The edit resulted a TP discussion: Neo-Nazi publication and a NPOVN thread Fringe source, where AR suggested that this was " part of a larger 'crusade'" to "discredit these previously approved articles!" Common sense suggests that neo-Nazi publications can be removed despite existing project consensus. Auntieruth called it evidence of “Repeated deletions of legitimate information without discussion”.

Apologetics

Whether consciously or unconsciously, the practices outlined above led to a non-neutral portrayal of articles' subjects:

  • LR’s Strecker article contained dubious statements and apologia diff, including the assertion that his "ethics caused strain with, and sometimes outright defiance of, the Nazi regime" (!). Compare the two leads: [91].
  • The Hoepner article, as revised by LR, described him as a "longtime, vocal opponent of Hitler's regime": 13 November 2017. It used inappropriate tropes in Wiki voice, while presenting his crimes as mere "complicity". LR's version:
Hoepner framed the theater as an ideological war, telling his troops that it was the final stage in a long standing struggle in defense of the German people, and a necessary bulwark against Jewish Bolshevism.
This reads like NS-propaganda, while LR recorded the article as "rehabilitated". For more targets, see: User:LargelyRecyclable/dashboard. The interpretations chosen by LR present Wehrmacht personnel in the best possible light: they are in "outright defiance" of Hitler's regime, behave chivalrously, file "official protests", and so on.
  • Peacemaker’s RFAR statement: [92], “Smelser and Davies[‘s] (...) is a quite unique POV” – this “POV” is not unique; see The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality by Wolfram Wette, or even Melson’s quote in the Signpost.
  • Peacemaker then alludes to Wehrmacht’s affinity with Nazi ideology as: “sympathy for the dominant ideology of the time” (three times). Compare with:  "In this case [the transcript] may have included euphemisms for criminal actions, but it may equally have been referring to bravery in combat..." [93] & "Nazi Party was a popular mass movement..." [94].
  • 10 January 2018, this is subtle, but illustrative. Peacemaker suggests that the article I nominated for GA has “an obvious gap in information” because it didn’t discuss the unit’s role in "fight[ing] partisans". Since it was primarily a murder unit, this suggests a lack of familiarity with the topic or perhaps an unconscious bias. My rebuttal: [95].
  • Cinderella defended Waffen-SS reenactment against “an implied syllogism that all members Waffen-SS re-enactment groups are racist neo-Nazis”: 28 October 2017. See historian Robert Citino: “It sends a shiver up my spine to think that people want to dress up and play SS on the weekend.” The Atlantic.
  • Cinderella’s RFAR contribution [96] contained many strange statements, but I’d like to highlight this one:
In both Hoepner and Leeb, I find that the insertion of war crime allegations (regardless of accuracy) disrupts the chronicle.
This is both factually incorrect and historically ignorant. War crimes mentions are not "allegations" or "inaccurate" once the subject is convicted (Leeb) or when documentary evidence of such crimes exists (in both cases; on Hoepner, see: Commissar order). These were senior commanders in a war of conquest and racial annihilation. Complaining about war crimes “disrupt[ing] the chronicle” betrays a dated / hobbyist POV that seeks to compartmentalise and minimise unpalatable aspects of military history, just as the 'clean Wehrmacht' proponents did in the 1950s.

MILHIST on PAGs & purpose of Wikipedia

Some observations:

  • While Auntieruth acknowledges that Wikipedia is "constructed by volunteers, not professional historians" [97], amateur editors, somewhat incongruently, are entrusted with separating facts from distortions: "[WP:QS] material may be used to cite facts but not necessarily for analysis and opinion" [98], without specifying how to distinguish between the two. When sources are questioned, Auntieruth suggests that editors "address anything blatant, either by eliminating the blatant part or turning down the volume" [99]. PM states that material cited to a known fabulist Franz Kurowski in a GA is all "fine", unless I "have info that contradicts the detail", and to just "cut down" the "flowery language": [100].
  • All sources are apparently equal, i.e. "We compare and contrast sources, we don't just delete the material from sources we don't like..." [101]. The retort was: "Or do you just believe in the sources that you like?" [102] (thread). Auntieruth advocates for Wehrmachtbericht as a "reliable source": 16 February 2017, adding "Is propaganda necessarily false? Absolutely NOT."
  • Pudeo states, “Military hobbyists (…) love details like commands held, Wehrmachtbericht mentions, awards etc.” [103]. My counterpoints are: a. Wikipedia is not a personal publishing platform, and b. the result was indeed a "gallery of heroes" (per Assayer [104]), based on fringe sources and Wehrmacht press releases. See User:K.e.coffman#100% unadulterated Nazi propaganda (aka Wehrmachtbericht). 
Dealing with the latter was at times a frustrating process, necessitating discussions across various venues & over time. Removing verbatim Nazi propaganda from Wikipedia shouldn’t be that controversial. Yet Auntieruth continued to object, even voting twice in a deletion discussion: 21 February & 23 February 2017, while "strongly" objecting to "removing the transcripts".
  • This comment by Pudeo combines misrepresentations, scare quotes, and circular reasoning, while misunderstanding what notability means on Wikipedia: 17 May 2017: "K.e.coffman is a deletionist who's afraid the Nazis look 'too cool'..."; "He wants to remove what he calls 'intrinsic detail'...". Pudeo contrasts me with "content creators" (?) who focus on "military enthusiast details" & concludes by suggesting that "detailed biographies can't be written without popular non-academic books, simply because academics don't write biographies about every notable fighter ace or general". The response from a non-affiliated editor was: "Wow".

Rebuttals to evidence presented

(Section added 5 June)

  • Pudeo's evidence "K.e.coffman's deletionism doesn't have consensus" contains a mistaken assumption. The redirects were pursuant to the Redirect proposal, widely commented on and formally closed; WP:SOLDIER was modified accordingly: [105]. See also Current consensus where I pinged several editors; Auntieruth55 chose not to respond. Statements re: “rough consensus” not being what Auntieruth understands it to be look like attempts to reargue the closed discussion.
  • Auntieruth’s section "Purity of sources" includes an apparent quotation from me: [Coffman] insist that everything is cited to a specific set of "pure" sources…. That’s either Auntieruth’s invention or scare quotes.
  • In his section "Cherry-picking and monitoring", Peacemaker67 suggests that encouraging project coordinators to monitor my editing was entirely appropriate and provides three examples from MILHIST/Coordinators; these were discussions about: 37.193.25.42; “He Who Shall Not Be Named” (presumably a notorious troll); and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AnnalesSchool. None were registered accounts in good standing. Peacemaker apparently equates me with IP vandals, socks, and trolls and affirms: I stand by my actions. Side note: The pejorative use of “hard line anti-Nazi” has not been explained; compare with “hard line anti-genocide”. --K.e.coffman (talk) 22:07, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Summary

This case is, in part, about the project ownership that led to enforcing a local consensus outside of community norms. Multiple discussions at MILHIST and NPOVN/RSN have been ineffective. Harassment by LR did not happen in a vacuum; his editing was tacitly approved, or even embraced.

Addendum: Historians' statements

Note: ArbCom has confirmed receipt of the emails from these historians here: 31 May 2018.

Courtesy ping Peacemaker and Cinderella157. --K.e.coffman (talk) 22:07, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Auntieruth

Never having participated at Arbitration before, I may have included things that should be discussed later. I apologize in advance. Just let me know! auntieruth (talk) 14:41, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated deletions of legitimate information without discussion

This happened in several articles. Hans-Ulrich Rudel is one example. On this edit: Coffman had argued that Obermaier and Just are unreliable sources, yet the German historian Sönke Neitzel based his entry in the Neue Deutsche Biographie [106] on Just. In addition, the deletion justification ignored information previously based on the research of Matthews and Foreman, who had analyzed material found in the Federal Archives. All info based on Matthews and Foreman was removed in the deletion as well. The result of this deletion gives undue weight to Rudel’s post-war activities, which Coffman classified as a “Nazi activist” , rather than contextualizing Rudel's post-war activities with his wartime activities. This occurred repeatedly, despite several attempts to point out that there was no consensus on deleting the information, the latest being Rudel consensus (I think...but I'm not good at finding diffs) Efforts to reestablish the article at its consensus status here are discussed at length here, and on the talk page here

Regular deletion of contextualization, background is identified as unnecessary and "intricate" detail.

On an FA Werner Mölders....(which still has one of the tags he placed on it)

Sometimes the "trivia hunt" by-passed FAR processes

Coffmann is very good at his edit summaries. They are quite detailed, such as this one. Kudos to him. However, he consistently ignores group consensus about content, sources, POV and removes detail that would be normally included in any reasonable biography. I'll look up the links in the next couple of days. For example:


Coffman excess tagging tagging tagging

assumptions about "rough consensus

  • here Setting up a page to track redirects was a good idea, but Coffmann's idea of "rough consensus" about knights cross recipients was not what I understood it to be. Consequently, we have this page or articles he deleted based on a discussion here.
  • here Although Bishonen directed us to a specific section of this conversation, I found the entire conversation helpful in understanding how coffman ignores the process of consensus building.
  • here, if you can stand to lose about 30 minutes of your life in unraveling a singularly pointless exercise in wikilawyering

Coffman misleads with the differences he uses

  • article in its current form predominantly establishes the Wehrmachtbericht as an instrument of propaganda. Propaganda on Wikipedia is defined as “information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda”, in essence, propaganda is or at least can be, a lie or at best a distortion. But, to German soldiers, a named reference in the Wehrmachtbericht was an award. K.e.coffman deleted the following passage from the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wehrmachtbericht&type=revision&diff=832610799&oldid=829860903) “Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer state that the German award system was foremost a military performance indicator and not a connoted requested by the Nazis for self-sacrifice in combat and that Hitler only intervened in the awarding of the highest military decorations. Awards, in which the political mindset of a soldier was to be recognized, subsequently remained the great exception. According to the authors, for a soldier to be singled out in the Wehrmachtbericht, the individual had to have performed extraordinary acts. The named reference in Wehrmachtbericht lead to the Honor Roll of the Army, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine in which soldiers who had performed acts of exceptional military valor were listed.” The justification given “Does not quite match the source“. See also WB

I can attach scans of the source for your reference, in German, but I need instruction on how to do it. The deletion of this information retains a POV in the article which can give the readers the impression that a named reference was fiction, which it is not.

distortion of comments

  • In another article, the material to which coffman directs us here is more fully discussed here, where an astute reader can see that the range of materials suggested include a variety of legitimate and reliable sources, all of which might have helped to strengthen the article. Instead, coffeman rejected general works that might have provided background for the broad effort at radicalizing local populations against Jews and non-communists in the Baltic states here auntieruth (talk) 21:08, 20 May 2018 (UTC) }}[reply]
  • Further distortion of individual comments: According to Coffman, AR admits to, apparently, not being familiar with the historiography of WW2: 27 April 2017: "I don't know what the problem is with these sources. Everything is checked and double checked." Actually, I'm not AS familiar with the historiography of WW2 as I am with other historiographies.
  • Further distortion of individual comments: According to coffman, AR apparently suggested editors engage in OR: 17 January 2017, "Sometimes we have to read 'against' the source, which means using a source to extract information it was not originally intended to provide". AR also made claims about works of certain authors being "sponsored" by the German Federal Archives. I'll leave with Assayer's rebuttal: [65]. (from coffman's evidence) How is reading a source and extracting a fact (such as a birth date, or name of parents) conducting original research? And some works were sponsored by the Federal Archives. How is this a problem?

unfounded accusations of canvasing

  • Notifying other editors of an editing thread is common courtesy. Asking for additional opinions on content and sourcing questions from other editors is not IMHO a questionable practice.

sources and context

(updated 5/28/18)

First: Purity of sources. A couple of editors, particularly Assayer (talk · contribs) and K.e.coffman (talk · contribs), insist that everything is cited to a specific set of "pure" sources that they have identified.In a recent article listed for assessment, I asked Coffman for additional information on background/context of an article before it was raised to B class. see HERE. While I understand (but do not always accept) Coffman's abhorrence to anything related to Schiffer (see I would not use Schiffer Publishing for anything relating to the German security operations in occupied Europe), there are many other sources that would broaden the perspective of this particular article. I'm not convinced that looking for sources that deal specifically and only with a given event is helpful in contextualizing the horrors of WWII and German operations in Central/Eastern Europe, particularly in the General Government.
Second: Context is a way of understand the purification of Eastern Europe. By refusing to use monographs that offer a wider view of the situation, or even other sources that deal with events similar to this particular operation, the article has no wider context. See here It is simply one event, not connecting one event to a trend of Germanization. I tried to direct him to several other books that would offer a wider view than simply the one source he used, which he categorically refused. Instead, he preferred to rely on one source to document the article, and to limit the article to its barest bones. There is no context of the operation, no sense of how and why it happened in the broader Nazi operation. It sounds to me more like a book report than an article.
Third: Generally, I see this dispute as, first, a sourcing dispute, complicated by personal styles of communication. We have, obviously, a conflict between the kinds of secondary sources acceptable. Librarians identify the distinction between scholarly, trade, and popular sources. Second, we also have a dispute over the level of detail appropriate to an article.

Evidence presented by Drmies

I will focus on one article: Panzer ace.

K.e.coffman in behavior and content

I know Coffman best from Panzer ace where I came to know them as a conscientious editor with a good sense of policy--it seems to me they're academically trained and can tell a good source from a bad: much of their work seems to get an initial impulse from neutrality concerns but is then guided by the proper use of reliable sources. Thus, they get into editing disputes like here; see Talk:Panzer ace/Archive 4 for a discussion of the sourcing problem. That particular problem (whether a former military person who runs a tank museum should be called a reliable source on a seriously difficult historiographical matter) was still not solved a few months ago, with User:Deathlibrarian continuing the refusal to accept that that amateur historian is just not an RS (certainly not for historiographical information) and being unable to produce cogent arguments.

Throughout those discussions Coffman maintained decorum and a professional tone, even when confronted with such poorly-founded stubbornness, a trait I admire. This dispute went on for quite a while; had it not been for the assistance of Nick-D, we might still have an article that was essentially a list of glorified German tank commanders (here is a portrait gallery of famous Nazi commanders, and here is the version with the cute Nazi flags). Yet Coffman was as professional as could be, not edit warring, continuing to seek the talk page, without being insulting or condescending. I don't like to exaggerate but they've shown the patience of a saint.

  • Having looked at LR's evidence--more a polemic and a mission statement than anything else--it is clear to me that a ban is warranted. Their behavior (insults to Bishonen, insults to Nick-D, derogatory comments to Doug Weller, personal attacks on the very talk page of this case) is sub-par, and that's putting it mildly. It is exactly the kind of behavior we saw in the gun case, and not being privy to what ArbCom is privy to, I wonder if there is a connection. If they want to claim that this version of an article is somehow a "hit piece", though it cites four books (three from a university press) by notable scholars, and this whitewashed version which adds sources but also completely buries the historical revisionism, dropping it from the lead into an overlong final single-paragraph section, is somehow better, then the agenda has completely taken over. A hit piece? Because the autobiography of a poor misrecognized Nazi included reliable sources? Note that the poor Nazi, Friedrich von Mellenthin, also has a whitewashed biography, with such unverified rhetoric as "Like most Wehrmacht officers, he was non-political, writing in his memoirs: 'not until we were behind barbed wire did we learn of the misdeeds of the Supreme Authority, deeds which shook us to the core and made our cheeks burn with shame'". If that isn't Wikipedia propagating the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht, then what is? (Note to Checkusers who ran CU in relation to MILHIST: anyone recognize 176.186.77.180?) Drmies (talk) 17:00, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What K.e.coffman is up against

The pushback is great and endemic. Panzer ace was visited by drive-by SPAs (PanzerSkad (talk · contribs), Kindleberger (talk · contribs), Milhosz (talk · contribs), Duskinvo (talk · contribs), Kubovsky (talk · contribs), Mrserge70 (talk · contribs), likely socks, possibly of HansZwiller (talk · contribs), a confirmed sock. The work of Deathlibrarian consisted mostly of undoing Coffman's work and adding/expanding/Naziflagifying the list of heroes. As for LargelyRecyclable, this edit demonstrates LR's poor grasp of policy and their different means of disruption; "ad hominem" refers to Nick-D's socking accusation (LR was blocked for a Cleanstart violation). In that massive revert you can see how disruptive they are. Scroll down the edit with me:

  • tag bombing in the lead, to discredit the information that comes from unassailable sources cited in the article
  • spurious request for citations in the third paragraph of the lead--a request made pertaining to sources included by Coffman (possibly Nick-D), but not for the second paragraph which sings the praises of two Nazis
  • remove quotation marks around the word "Tank Ace" (in "Contemporary use"), reifying the concept that historians know is at least flawed and frequently a propaganda tool
  • whitewashing Franz Kurowski by removing "hagiographic": Kurowski was a revisionist Nazi, more responsible than many others for Nazi glorification and Wehrmacht whitewashing
  • casting doubt on Smelser/Davies, a book published by Cambridge UP (discussed on the talk page AFAIK)
  • removing a comment made in an RS about Wittmann, "Zaloga describes Wittman as the 'hero of all Nazi fan-boys'"--a pertinent comment precisely because the very term "Panzer ace" is a post-war invention meant to glorify German tank commanders, and the Nazi fan-boys may well be exemplified by the SPAs I mentioned earlier
  • in the paragraph "Zaloga uses Michael Wittmann's career...", LR adjusts the text to have the technological superiority of Wittman's tanks be less a factor than his skill, and throws in a "dubious" claim to cast doubt on this note of technology

So in one edit we have POV tag bombing, removal of claims qualifying the status of revisionist historians, casting doubt on reliable sources, removal of language that tars the reputation of "the hero of all Nazi fan-boys", etc. This, including the lengthy edit warring, is symptomatic for the problems here. Search for "Smelse" on the talk page and see this belligerent and nonsensical comment by Makumbe (talk · contribs), who discredits Smelse and Davies (again, their book The Myth of the Eastern Front is an RS)--Makumbe calls them "neocon propagandists who have ridden a wave" and sneers that one of the two is a sociologist, which already warrants a topic ban for WW2 articles: "There is a problem in general in Western history either professional or of the History Channel sort in giving the WW2 German military any credit because they were BAD BAD Nazis", and in this edit they're pissing on an expert like Sönke Neitzel. We saw this in the gun case too: much disruption comes from editors not recognizing reliable sources, out of incompetence, ignorance, or willfulness. As for LR, if you want just one, try this--with thanks to Nick-D and Google Books. Drmies (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • After seeing Peacemaker's evidence, I am only more convinced that there are indeed larger problems here--if Coffman's removal of uncited information is problematic, and if adding Nazi flags is not problematic, then the whole thing smells.

Evidence presented by Cinderella157

{Work in progress}

Misrepresentations and personal attack by MastCell

During the request phase of this case @MastCell posted allegations regarding my actions at Talk:World War II reenactment[107] I have detailed why the post by MastCell is a gross misrepresentation of events and statements.[108]. The allegations made by MastCell cannot be substantiated to the extent that they are a misrepresentation. I consider their actions (including an allegation of tag-teaming) to be an unsubstantiated personal attack. MastCell also misrepresented this statement by me on the request page.[109] @User:The ed17 makes a similar observation of MastCell selectively quoting [and thereby misrepresenting] @Peacemaker67.[110] Pinging @User:Auntieruth55. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 00:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Assayer

No "pro-Nazi POV-pushing", but problematic POV nonetheless

The POV in question romanticizes military history by emphazising military professionalism, achievements and success while neglecting historical context. It can be found in many articles covering topics of military history of all times and nations. But it becomes particularly problematic in articles dealing with the German war effort in WW II, because then it feeds well into the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht” or even the “clean Waffen-SS”.

For example, I have put some effort into criticism of the term “ace”. See AfD German tank aces [111], AfD Submarine ace[112] and the ongoing, bulky debate Panzer ace, see Edit break 2 in particular. [113]. One may or may not agree with my conclusions concerning notability. It should be clear, however, that there is a significant body of RS which analyze the positive judgements conveyed by the term “ace” in military contexts.[114] Thus such a term should not be used in Wikipedia altogether except within quotations and/or attribution.

Instead, English Wikipedia not only hosts articles about “Luftwaffe flying aces of World War II“ like [115], but also boasts their “extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership”. To remove these kinds of peacock words[116] turned out to be difficult.[117], and has once been described as “potentially controversial”, so I sought consensus.[118]. The extreme bravery of German soldiers is still maintained in Wikipedia, because it is alleged that “aces” with a certain amount of kills are notable.[119], [120], and so forth. As I have argued at AfD Fritz Lüddecke[121], [122] it is not the number of kills that matters, but the coverage in reliable sources.

Dubious, unreliable and primary sources are routinely defended

The sourcing is crucial. Two different types of sources merit attention. First, there is a sizable body of literature written by non-academics and published outside historiographical discourse, respectively. The reliability of such source becomes more difficult to assess, the less noteworthy these sources are, because then there are often virtually no sources to supply criticism or contextualization. When I showed that a particular source made extraordinary claims, that was called WP:SYNTH. [123]. Matters were also discussed at RS Noticeboard.[124]

I discussed the problems further [125] The whole discussion can be found at [126] It captures much of my concerns with the ways editors deal with sources.

Memoirs are often being used, although they are both primary sources and notoriously unreliable. Memoirs of German Wehrmacht generals are a major source of the clean Wehrmacht myth. The Battle for Moscow reached FA status in 2006[127] while it was significantly based upon Guderian’s memoirs (and Zhukov’s, which I do not condone, either, all the more since a 1971 edition has undergone Soviet censorship). Guderian's POV is featured here.[128] Since then the bibliography has greatly improved, but Guderian’s POV is still there.[129] I have tried to outline Guderian’s POV here.[130]

The disputed[131] unreliability the Wehrmachtbericht as a source may be demonstrated by [132] According to the Wehrmachtbericht a destroyer was sunk. The article still claims that.[133] The battle has been described from the Allied perspective at Exercise Tiger[134]. No destroyer has been sunk. At least since 11 May 2014 the creator of the Mirbach article was aware of that.[135] [136]

I objected that a self-published work was described on the grounds of its author/publishers's advertising,[137], see reaction and discussion, respectively [138] [139]. Alas, advertising seemed ok, criticism needed reviews.[140] I further do not see how sources with a bias could be legitimated by the fact that a historian refers to them, because historians frequently make use of dubious sources. auntieruth has asked, why it is a problem that some works were sponsored by the Federal Archives, probably based on this argument[141] Well, because those works were not ‘’sponsored’’ by the German Federal Archives.[142]

Sometimes researching primary records is legitimated for so called “uncontroversial” information. I remember very well [143] leading to the creation of Service record of Karl Wolff[144]. My rationale was this[145] Among other things I was told that SS service records were easily available at the National Archives.[146] When the same editor was confronted in Talk:Theodor Eicke#Removal of dates of rank and awards[147] that the dates he gave for promotions differed from dates given in publications by historians[148] [149] it turned out that access was not that easy.[150]

A major line of argument is, that for an article on a military person to be comprehensive, the military career has to be presented in minute detail.(argument, [151], restored, defended).Since academic historians seldom work on those subjects, so the argument goes, Wikipedia editors have to rely on their own judgement[152] and it is suggested that they themselves seperate the facts from the bias.[153][154] (updated --Assayer (talk) 02:24, 29 May 2018 (UTC)) It is argued "not to set the bar abnormally high."[155][156][157] (updated. --Assayer (talk) 16:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC))[reply]

Historical context is neglected

Since the article on Ernst Lindemann,[158] captain of the Bismarck, has been mentioned: This is mainly based upon a biography by one Jens Grützner who, according to the back cover of his book has studied history for two years, but did not graduate. He makes his living working for Nestlé and is a supporting member of the Ordensgemeinschaft der Ritterkreuzträger (OdR) since 1999, the same year in which the German Ministry of Defence determined to cut all ties to the OdR because of its revanchist political outlook. What Wikipedia does not tell: Historian Holger Afflerbach has written about the last battle of the Bismarck as the most famous example of a refusal to surrender. He has published about it in an article in the eminent German historical Magazin VfZ in 2001 and discusses the question, why Lindemann and his superior Lütjens, under orders from Admiral Erich Raeder, fought a fight they could not possibly win (pp. 608-10). The article is available online. (PDF) Even eye witness Burkard Freiherr von Müllenheim-Rechberg in his memoirs asked, why the increasingly horrifying and hopeless slaughter was not ended by surrender. Wikipedia tells nothing of that, but rather of service medals, skilled leadership, Raeder’s comradeship and emotional support.

esprit des corps

Major contributors associated with the MilHist project exhibit a remarkable degree of esprit de corps even when it comes to blatant incivility. My impression was this.[159] --Assayer (talk) 20:10, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by LargelyRecyclable

Context

After being away as an editor for about a year, I was looking up the publishing history of a book I own. The first result was the corresponding Wikipedia article. When I clicked on the link what I found was this. I was horrified. I didn't understand how Wikipedia's article on a seminal account of the war had been reduced to a hit piece. This is a book that is widely disseminated across professional military reading lists for both senior enlisted and commissioned officers in militaries around the world. It's literally required reading for Armor officers the world over. The book and its author where substantial influences in the post-war reconstruction of European militaries and were substantial influences on the strategic planning of NATO against Warsaw Pact nations. I was totally bewildered. MILHIST had always been diligent in its curation. So, I pulled up the edit history. What I found plunged me down the rabbit hole of a multi-year campaign by K.e.coffman to "right the record" on Wikipedia. I broke a promise to myself and came back to the project.

Being an experienced editor, it didn't take long for me to find other editors who had objected to coffman's campaign. It also didn't take long to find his off-wiki activities, where he coordinated editing with other editors and gloated about the successful pushing of his POV(Email #1). Ironically, the mocking of others over the rewrite of the Panzer Battles article was his first salvo(email #2), to be continued to other subjects across the project. Corresponding evidence cannot be presented in public, for the community, per the guidance of the ArbCom. So, I will attempt to correlate redacted evidence as efficiently as possible, for both the ArbCom and the Wikipedia community at large. What I can say is that I archived the off-wiki material almost a year ago. It demonstrates not only coffman's complicity in explicitly disallowed behavior, but also his subsequent attempt to cover it up, knowing his guilt.

I'll try to, as concisely as possible, demonstrate that coffman's history of editing over the past few years is almost entirely dedicated to the goal of furthering his POV, and was undertaken in bad faith, to include the harassment and denigration of editors in good standing. This campaign includes an intentional gaming of the system, and a commitment to isolating and driving off editors who resisted his efforts.

I don't know why coffman chose to undertake this campaign. His efforts focus on discriminatory edits against Germans and favoritism toward Soviets. Whether or not the fact that he grew up in the Soviet Union himself lends to this or not I don't know. What is clear is that his account was created to engage in tendentious editing, in order to "right a great wrong" and push a POV. This doesn't mean that coffman is a bad person. It doesn't mean he lacks competence. I still, even now, believe that he's an intelligent and capable person, more than able to be productive. Coffman's transgression isn't malice, it's hubris.

Assertions

The historiography of WWII is evolving and coffamn has found issues[160]

Yes. Yes! YES! Historiography is always evolving. Coffman has found sub-par sourcing. I applaud coffman's work across some of the project. The very first personal interaction coffman and I had was him posting on my talk page about the unsuitability of Franz Kurowski and my subsequent support for that source's general disenfranchisement. While the lack of adequate sourcing can be isolated, it's not unique to WWII. We can and should do better, especially in instances where there is controversial material to be covered.

Coffman is happy to bear witness against himself

Coffman's user page is a showcase of battleground behavior, aggression, harassment, and grave dancing.

  • With the complaint that "Nazi bomber pilots never "bombed" anything" on Wikipedia, he decided at retribution with the following text on his user page:
  1. "For fun, I turned "American bombing raids" into "American operations over Germany". In Jagdgeschwader 3.
  2. From the same article: "to bomb" into "to attack" & more. Somebody has to stand up for "victor's justice" :-) (For context, "victor's justice", in addition to its usual meaning, is a frequent meme on the anti-German website that coffman was an active member of, and used in conjunction with his POV pushing on Wikipedia. This is, in effect, signaling to other Wikipedia editors and readers who are members of this anti-German group. The site was submitted privately to ArbCom.
  • Speaking to his battleground behavior, Coffman has created a "Wall of Shame" on his user page to harass other editors with ridicule and mud slinging. Due to sheer size, this section will be abridged:
  1. "So Nick-D have totally embraced K.e.coffman..." :-)
  2. "Personal attacks for 'antifascist reputation' by user: Stonedtower"
  3. Fan mail: +1
  4. translations or country name?
  5. 100% unadulterated Nazi propaganda (aka Wehrmachtbericht): recent developments
  6. "Nazi-hunter": +
  7. new section: "McCarthyism" (part of an extensive tiraid against Peacemaker67, where he mockingly awards him "points".
  8. Special mention: "Book burning": 10 points (a small piece of the extensive harassment of MisterBee1966, who also gets points)
  9. + Down with "de WP"! (another purposeful misrepresentation of Peacemaker67)
  10. 5 + bonus (again)
  11. more (and again)
  12. "Not dropping the stick" / "Campaigning" / "Forum shopping": + "canvassing" (one of many against Dapi89)
  13. double + single (with bonus) (an attack and misquote of Peacemaker67)
  • Coffman regularly denigrated MILHIST and its membership before realizing that he can better pursue his agenda from inside MILHIST
  1. Here he "awards himself" what he calls a "Vandal's Cross of the Iron Cross" in condescension of editing awards given at MILHIST, and which was a running joke on the anti-German website used to coordinate editing, previously submitted. He also uses the opportunity to again mock MisterBee1966.
  2. And the Deletionist's Cross of the Iron Cross including more "call out" antagonism.

Wehrmachtbericht is a legitimate primary source

Coffman has denounced and attacked other editors for their use of Wehrmachtbericht. He's made accusations that the use of such sources constitutes an unthinking, or even worse, knowing, spread of "Neo-Nazi propaganda," a serious charge to make against another, one that veers well into the realm of Personal Attack. It speaks to his battle ground mentality and a propensity to demonize editors who disagree with him. The term "propaganda" was, until after the Second World War, a neutral term. Many countries have had Ministries or Departments for Propaganda. It didn't take on a universally pejorative meaning until after the war. I find it hard to believe Coffman doesn't know this. The Wehrmachtbericht is, like any official release by any nation in the war, a primary source. As such, it should be treated with all due caution, but not categorically disallowed. There are many instances of outright falsehoods in official releases, from the German's lie that Karl Strecker was actively fighting in Stalingrad long after he had surrendered, to the Allies lying about the nature of the infamous Air raid on Bari. To undertake a campaign of total removal of any Wehrmachtbericht while implying that editors, including professional historians, who defend its historical value are complicit in legitimizing Nazi propaganda, is inappropriate. Official releases are a foundational aspect of modern Military History.

Rebuttal

I created this account to harass coffman

The impetus of my return was the the aftermath of finding issues from Coffman's World War Two activities which I'd call systemic (referred to as an "industrial scale" by another editor) problems in the project. I have absolutely no interest in Coffman's general activities nor his person. He's active in firearms and political articles that I have zero participation in. I made all the effort I could to create content and make the small marginal contributions all experienced editors do, in areas such as AfD. I have had absolutely zero contact with Coffman outside of WWII articles, other than to solicit his help in the fending off of vandalism for a single BLP that I found myself in proxy to him in.

To quote the policy:

...there is an endemic problem on Wikipedia of giving "harassment" a much broader and inaccurate meaning which encompasses, in some cases, merely editing the same page as another user. Therefore, it must be emphasized that one editor warning another for disruption or incivility is not harassment if the claims are presented civilly, made in good faith, and in an attempt to resolve a dispute instead of escalating one. Neither is tracking a user's contributions for policy violations (see above); the contribution logs exist for editorial and behavioral oversight. Editors do not own their edits, or any other article content, and any other editor has a right to track their editing patterns, and, if necessary, to revert their edits. Unwarranted resistance to such efforts may be a sign of ownership behavior and lead to sanctions.

Assertions have been made by TonyBallioni that I have "harassed" coffman in the continuance of my own editing. The provided evidence falls very far short of any substantive proof and so I'll leave it as it lies, to be judged as is.

My block

My account was blocked after engaging in a disagreement with Bishonen and Doug Weller, over the appropriateness of the redaction of criticism of coffman's editing. The corresponding pages are already accounted for. I believe MastCell was solicited to block my account, for spurious reasons. All I will add is that Doug has still not recused himself and I consider my actions to be undertaken in good faith. I have no additional comments other than what I've already said in the linked discussion.

My "personal attacks"

I meant it and I believe it. No regrets.

I am a Meat/Sock puppet[161]

I am not a meat or sock puppet, as asserted by Nick-D. In fact, the accusations by Nick-D cross into harassment. I demonstrated that I am not a Sock at a CheckUser. I demonstrated that I am not a Meat Puppet when I submitted my entire edit history to the ArbCom. Still, Nick-D harasses and attacks me. He has reverted my contributions wholesale and attacked my character here. He deserves censure and a de-sysop for this alone. His solicitation and encouragement of harassing behavior in conjunction with coffman's editorial are an addendum. LargelyRecyclable (talk) 10:33, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I canvassed MILHIST

Coffman describes my alerting MILHIST to disputes or potential issues in Military related articles as canvassing because they are not "military-operational" matters. I have no idea what this means. It's possible, although unlikely, that Coffman doesn't know that MILHIST has purview of all military biographies, which are the first two, and the third is a military memoir written by a military officer. The very first bullet at WP:CAN descibing what Canvassing is not says, "The talk page or noticeboard of one or more WikiProjects or other Wikipedia collaborations which may have interest in the topic under discussion."

Conclusions

Evidence presented by Peacemaker67

There is no doubt that military historians can focus too closely on organisation, training, strategy, operational details and tactics, promotions, awards and battles etc, and not pay enough attention to the political, social and ethical/criminal aspects of conflict. The entry for Erich von Manstein in my copy of the Oxford Companion to Military History demonstrates this, there is no mention of the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht” or the Commissar Order. Other entries in that source for leading German WWII figures are similarly silent on these issues.

This systemic bias is created by the same mechanism that creates it in other areas of English Wikipedia, in that some editors are focussed on one (in this case, military) aspect, and lack the interest or wisdom regarding other aspects to ensure that a holistic approach is taken and NPOV is assured. This isn’t insidious forces at work, it is just that people edit things that interest them, and because sources on military subjects tend to be oriented towards the purely military aspects. The sources for such other contextual information may also be harder to access (including due to being in languages other than English, or being in academic journals), than popular sources on purely military aspects, which also creates perspective bias. There are, of course, a few editors who don’t wish to have any mention of a given figure’s political, social or ethical/criminal aspects in an article, and oppose their introduction or try to remove them, but in my primary area of interest (Yugoslavia in WWII, which is itself pretty fraught at times) they are fairly rare, and are dealt with effectively via the drama boards.

It is my view that although KEC has done some passable content creation work recently with a few GAs, and has shone a light on the need for greater attention to what I would describe as the problematic “fanboy” oeuvre (eg Panzer aces), he is clearly here to “right great wrongs”, and has a very black and white approach. He significantly overstates the problem within articles covering the German war effort in WWII, which basically need appropriate focus on political, social and ethical/criminal aspects to place the military aspects in their full context, not the wholesale deletion of military and other aspects to leave only the former, which itself undermines NPOV.

In my interactions with him, KEC comes across as an editor in whose work censorious zeal and deletionism in relation to the military aspects of the German war effort of WWII undermines building the encyclopaedia. His editing behaviour is tendentious, “battlegroundy” and extremely persistent. He demonstrates a pretty unique take on WP:IRS and WP:OR, which he claims just about everyone else misinterprets. I avoid him as much as possible, as I find his censorious editing behaviour, wikilawyering and repeated refusal to “drop the stick” frankly quite odd, unpleasant and exhausting. Given the view I formed about KEC’s editing, it is not surprising that I mentioned him on the Milhist coord page. In my experience, the more eyes are on a problematic editor, the better for the encyclopaedia. More eyes levels out individual perspectives, much as ArbCom does. However, the idea that there is some sinister force at work because some editors oppose KEC’s editing behaviour is wrong-headed in my view.

Because of my primary area of interest, my interaction with KEC has related mainly to German personnel that served in Yugoslavia in WWII. I’ve looked at all of the relevant articles on my watchlist, and there is barely a single one in this area that he has not edited in the two ways explained below. Given his prolific editing rate, it is a quite reasonable assumption that what I link here twenty or more times from my watchlist would be twenty thousand diffs on articles relating to the German war effort of WWII. From my interaction with him, KEC’s long-term problematic behaviour can be grouped into source removal and deletion of information, which are often interrelated and undermine NPOV. Examination of his contributions page shows that the amount of sources and material he has removed from Wikipedia is huge, and is the principal cause of friction with other editors.

Removal of sources

KEC removes sources that are clearly not RS, such as what I would describe as problematic “fanboy” websites, like feldgrau.com and axishistory.com, and good on him for doing that. I do the same myself, and have conducted wide purges over the years to get rid of them, and their Yugoslav equivalent. He has also identified some problematic book sources that could also be described as being “fanboy” in approach, and some publishing houses that are considered right-wing in Germany. Mostly good work by KEC, as these things should at least have attention drawn to them, even if some sources can still be used with care. However, KEC assiduously removes from articles book sources he has personally decided are unnecessary or “militaria”, despite their having clear encyclopaedic value for the future expansion of an article and assuring NPOV is maintained. He commonly uses a number of misleading and/or spurious justifications in edit summaries, including that their use is “over-citation”, when in fact in most cases it is only the second citation for a given piece of information often where the sources slightly vary in detail provided. He sometimes removes the citations, then subsequently states the source is “unused” and removes it. Neither of these practices are in the interests of building the encyclopaedia, as they remove markers of potential sources of information for those that might wish to expand an article. One example of books he commonly deletes are the specialist indexes and dictionaries of biography on recipients of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest military award issued by Nazi Germany; books by Scherzer, Fellgiebel, Von Seemen and Thomas & Wegmann in particular. In the military history context, such medal indexes and dictionaries of biography are common with higher military awards, there are equivalents on recipients of the Victoria Cross and Medal of Honor. I’m not aware of any consensus having been achieved assessing these books as unreliable, they are used extensively on FAs and FLs covering these recipients. When reverted, [162] KEC doesn’t accept or learn from this, he merely moves on to the next article and does the same thing, sometimes returning later to delete them again,[163] and again, [164] and again. [165] More examples of this behaviour in my area of interest: [166] [167] [168] [169] [170] [171] [172]

”Intricate detail”

KEC deletes or comments out large sections of information from articles, often on the basis that they are “intricate detail” or “non-notable detail”, contrary to WP:NOCITE. It has been pointed out to him many times what a comprehensive level of detail is for a WWII military biography,[173] and that it includes details of early life and service in WWI (as applicable), dates of ranks achieved, awards, battles fought in etc, but he apparently refuses to accept this, and continues with his deletions regardless. Such deletions also undermine NPOV because they remove coverage of the military and other aspects of the subject. He also displays a misunderstanding of notability, in that it applies to whether we should have an article on a person, not whether a given detail is relevant to a notable subject. He often deletes or comments out entirely unremarkable information about place of birth and death,[174] [175] [176] ranks and awards because it is uncited (but most likely sourced to books like Scherzer, which he has previously deleted), thus taking away points of reference for editors who might wish to expand the article using such things as award indexes, dictionaries of biography, and similar reference works on, for example, members of the Nazi Reichstag. Here is an example of the latter.[177] He also comments out images and removes information about early life and service in WWI, and “See also” sections using the edit summary of “streamlining”, despite the fact that historians like Ben Shepherd have posited that experiences in WWI may have had an impact on unethical/criminal behaviour during WWII. [178] He sometimes deletes cited material in his effort to remove “intricate detail” or what he describes as “flagcruft”. [179] [180]. There are many examples of this deletion of supposedly “intricate detail” in my area of interest, here are a few more: [181] [182] [183] [184] [185] [186]

Personal and project perspective

As far as any suggestion that I am in any way involved in pro-Nazi POV pushing, would shield those who are, or edit in a manner to whitewash Nazi’s, the idea is risible. My content creation record speaks for itself. In the first instance, I direct ArbCom members to the FAs Kragujevac massacre, August Meyszner and Gottlob Berger for community-reviewed examples of my NPOV work on German war crimes and war criminals in my area of interest. As a coord of the Military history project for several years, I also wholly reject any assertion that the project in general or the coord team in particular is involved in such activities.

I believe that I should be permitted to provide responses to KEC’s specific allegations against me, and I am happy to provide same, but am not sure whether this is appropriate here or during the workshop phase, so I request guidance on this. I note that KEC has thus far been given a 4,500 word limit, plus the Signpost article to make his case. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rebuttal

Cherry-picking and monitoring

In my evidence I’ve addressed my take on KEC’s editing behaviour and why I raised it on the Milhist coord page. It was far from being an “inappropriate and aberrant suggestion”, and I stand by my actions, they were entirely appropriate given what I had concluded about KEC’s editing behaviour. This sort of attention is regularly garnered on Milhist talk pages when problematic behaviour is identified in articles covered by the project.[187] [188] [189]

In the first dot point he quotes me talking about the “merit” of recipients of the Knights’ Cross of the Iron Cross, people awarded the highest award in Nazi Germany. This quote is cherry-picked out of context. I was making a reference to the military merit, bravery, skill etc of these recipients, not any political, social or ethical/criminal “merit”. The point I was trying to make (perhaps clumsily) was that there are brave and skilled soldiers on all sides in any conflict, and I am sure many brave and skilled soldiers who were also members of the Nazi Party, and brave and skilled soldiers who also committed war crimes. KEC’s source removal and deletionism is targeted exactly at the material that shows any military merit, like awards, promotions and skill, and his editing therefore undermines NPOV. And, is he seriously questioning whether the Nazi Party was a popular mass movement in Germany pre-war? The Nazi Party got 33% of the vote in the last free and fair German federal election in November 1932. If that isn’t popular, what is? I was just stating a fact.

In the second dot point, KEC effectively implies (by saying he isn’t) that I follow his edits to undermine his work. I review or comment on many articles that are listed at Template:WPMILHIST Announcements, and I also conduct B-Class and below reviews listed at WP:MHAR. Last calendar year I reviewed 22 FACs, 39 Milhist A-Class Reviews and dozens of GANs. I am one of the most active coords in the project, as evidenced by the results of our quarterly reviewing tallies. [190] Far from singling KEC out, I’ve avoided him for the reasons I have identified above. I haven’t reviewed any of his articles except his current FAC (see below), and have only ever commented on the talk pages of articles he’s nominated, and very few of them. I’ll comment on three of his examples:

  • The first is a comment on Talk:Police Regiment Centre which I came to via the template, as it was a GAN. The article was almost completely dedicated to the war crimes committed by this regiment. I am aware that there were large areas of the Army Group rear areas that were dominated by partisans from the earliest stages of Operation Barbarossa, and made the quite reasonable assumption that a police regiment intended for anti-partisan work probably actually did some actual fighting of partisans as well as committing war crimes (probably concurrently in many cases). The fact that KEC has chosen to highlight this comment by me to try to indicate I am wikistalking him, demonstrates yet again his tendentious approach to editing, opposing coverage of the military aspects of the subject, and concentrating only on the ethical/criminal aspects.
  • The second relates to me noting that a GAN of Talk:Waffen-SS in popular culture had been waiting for a reviewer for a long time, which, as a coord, I keep a weather eye out for. I pointed out an overreliance on one source (Smelser and Davies' The Myth of the Eastern Front, which KEC assiduously promotes [191] across many articles despite its mixed reviews), and suggesting an additional quality source (Stein) which contains more information on a number of aspects of the Waffen-SS which appeared to have been largely ignored. An entirely appropriate piece of advice which I stand by. Once again, KEC was pushing his point of view in the article and not covering the subject properly per NPOV.
  • The last relates to KEC’s nomination of HIAG at FAC: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/HIAG/archive1, another article for which KEC is almost solely responsible. I had avoided commenting on it for some time through wanting to avoid his tendentious editing behaviour, but felt that I could not hold off despite the chilling effect of this case having been opened. At the time I commented on it, the article basically ignored the stated purposes of the HIAG (providing comradeship, legal assistance, support for those in Allied captivity, help for families and aid in searches for those still missing, much like any post-war ex-service organisation, German or otherwise) and concentrated almost entirely on the role of the HIAG in historical revisionism, rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS and its later right-wing politics (which of course it was involved in). For an article on any ex-service organisation (even a Waffen-SS one) to be comprehensive and written with a NPOV, it clearly must address the stated purposes of the organisation and what it did/does to fulfil them. The article didn’t as it stood, once again, concentrating only on what KEC wants to emphasise (the political, social and ethical/criminal), and not looking at the subject holistically, or really even exploring the “military” purposes of the organisation other than stating what they were. As a regular FAC reviewer, I felt I had a duty to raise the issue before an article was promoted that wasn’t comprehensive or NPOV. I will also note that another editor has identified significant problems with sloppy citation practices in the article, and, prompted by this, my cursory checks on a source I have a copy of have found several similar problems as well.

His comment about his review of my Gottlob Berger FAC betrays what I have said about his editing behaviour in my evidence. He has an anti-military POV and a pretty unique take on WP:IRS. He attempted to push his editing approaches onto the article via his review. I noted in my response there that we were (and are) at odds about a number of issues regarding his rather unique views about sourcing and deletion/reduction of “intricate detail”, and I believe my reference to him not reviewing in good faith was accurate. He was pushing his POV, even to the extent that he was suggesting some material be sourced to a book that didn’t even support the information. I was bringing our differences to the attention of the FAC coords when they were making a decision about whether to promote or not. Entirely reasonable in my view. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:06, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IRS and WP:NPOV

In his first dot point, it is hard to follow what KEC is alleging here. Is he saying that we cannot use comments about a book that are printed on the cover of the book in question? Many book covers incorporate observations by other authors or prominent people about the book in question, publishers and authors solicit these comments and send copies of their books to people in the hope that they will obtain positive feedback they can print on the cover. They also do that with forewords and introductions. This is what Scherzer clearly did, and he got positive feedback from some people, including a (former) Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) University professor and a section head of the Wehrmacht records agency, and printed it on the cover of his book. What I was defending with my comment in the FLC in question was the need to explain the history and development of these Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross indices, starting with Fellgiebel and then Scherzer, explaining how they came up with different figures by ruling people in and out based on their examination of the available records and other information. I fail to see what this has to do with WP:IRS or WP:NPOV, or any possible misinterpretation of those policies. If anything, KEC’s opposition to this information being included in the list undermines NPOV because it doesn’t permit a full explanation of the history and development of the sources relied upon for the list or the views of relevant experts on their value as a resource. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IRS and WP:OR

In his second dot point, KEC claims that I confused WP:IRS with WP:OR in a talk thread about the Artur Phleps article. This is patently wrong and demonstrates a misunderstanding of the policies, and in fact of the discussion on the talk page between Assayer and I. WP:IRS states that Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered. Assayer was essentially saying that he believed (because of his analysis of the published material) that one source was mistaken, and therefore one version of a particular event should be removed from the article and the version he believed was correct should be the only one in the article. He did not claim that any of the sources was unreliable, he just stated that there was a mistake in one, and we should therefore remove the version of events cited to it. I responded that reliable sources often vary in detail, and what we do with non-fringe conflicting sources on Wikipedia is that we compare and contrast them, not decide for ourselves which is correct then only use that version. I stated that the latter approach would be getting very close to WP:OR, meaning that it would be an analysis of published material that implied a conclusion not stated by the sources. I stand by my statement. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:11, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Indy beetle

Peacemaker67 and German-related World War II content

In an early 2018 MILHIST project A-class assessment for an article he developed on the World War II German occupation Serbian Commissioner Government, I twice suggested (Special:Diff/822059371, Special:Diff/823601550) that Peacemaker67 might want to include an opinion on the effectiveness of the Nazi-collaborationist regime by Gavrilo Dožić. The opinion in question was somewhat apologist in nature (I thought it should have been included simply because Gavrilo was a prominent Serb, not because his comments were necessarily an accurate analysis). Peacemaker67 twice (Special:Diff/822092081, Special:Diff/823604134) said he thought the opinion was not an accurate analysis of the government and instead added a critical analysis from a historian (Special:Diff/823745809). -Indy beetle (talk) 07:49, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by {your user name}
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