Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:32, 27 July 2007

== Sock puppet == (from Nihonjinron' page)

Nishidani's comment

Hermeneus’s behavior here violates all the implicit rules of serious contributions to Misplaced Pages in so far as he refuses to write the article (apart from some mediocre contributions to the corresponding Japanese voice), asserts a knowledge of the material he never divulges, and seems intent only on impeding others from contributing to the article. In fact, if you go back over the discussion, it becomes quite clear that he has succeeded in driving away anyone who tries to write anything substantive on the subject. It is clear by now that he knows, with acute omniscient insight, what should not be written. The joke it he cannot write one word as to how it should be written. He always of course appeals to Wiki rules, but in such a laboriously dull-minded style, that, while he manages invariably to convince himself, he bores the rest of the potential readership to tears.

It is scandalous that Hermeneus and a few of his allies have managed to hoist a ‘disputed site’ banner when the person whose contributions they took exception to erased his material (some of it appears to have been adopted in the meantime). Since what was objected to was removed, the flagging of the article as ‘disputed’ should also have been dropped. No. It stands there as a warning to all and sundry not to meddle with Hermeneus’s fussypot dominance over the page, and its meagre contents. Nothing can, apparently, stand without his approval. Nothing can pass his scrutiny, which asserts an ideal of ‘neutrality’ in order to defend a perspective of bias. The bias being, nothing that injures what he, with thin-skinned punctiliousness, thinks is the proper international reputation of Japan. His scrupulous call for documentation can be read also as a fishing expedition, to elicit information he pretends to know, but actually lacks. Thus, while stopping the article from being written, he enriches his own personal knowledge by badgering potential contributors. A clever game, in so far as the pedestrian mind that plays it can be called ‘clever’. If no one in Misplaced Pages monitors Hermeneus’s spoiling tactics, the article will never be written. There is no device to stop sterile kibitzers of his kind from playing this malevolent game. Therefore, I propose that Hermeneus, ‘the interpreter’ translate the Japanese article he apparently approves of, and post the English version here. If he does not accept the challenge, his bad faith will be self-evident. Nishidani 18:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

(1) We are currently discussing the relevance of this particular excerpt from a book written by an armature historian and published from a vanity publisher. If you think that such an excerpt should be included in the article, then state the reason why and prove it's relevance. (2) ja:日本人論 on the Japanese Misplaced Pages has no more significant contents than this article and so there is no point in translating it into English. (3) The "Types of Nihonjinron" section, "History" section except the first paragraph, and the first half of the "Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism" section are my inputs, all of which are well-sourced with reputable works of scholarship by Dale, Yoshino, Sugimoto, and Mouer as required by the Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines. I'm only holding other edits to the same decently rigorous standard. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and not a personal website; you cannot publish any unfounded unsourced craps on here. See WP:NOR and WP:NOT. (4) You created a new account just to say this? Hermeneus (user/talk) 18:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Nishidani,

I know this may seem rude, but I think you should make a personal page containing your introduction as it seems a certain editor named Hermeneus considers your account a sock puppet created by me to bolster my argument with him on the Nihonjinron article's discussion page.--Jh.daniell 01:24, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

I don't think a personal page would help. On the net, we are all virtual, and personal pages can be as fictional as, say, much of Hermeneus's thinking about his knowledge of the nihonjinron. Let me say that were I you, I certainly would not write 'Nihonshoki', the title of one of the two primary classics of early Japanese mythohistory, for 'Nihonjinron' as you did in your last post. I should add that I think Hermeneus had a point, only it got lost in his attitude, which certainly lacks any delicacy of feeling, in its hypersensitiveness to, apparently, what he takes to be Japan's endangered status. My argument was with his attitude, which might be tolerable were he erudite, since his knowledge would balance out his character defects. I detect in his manipulation of contributions to this site a political strategy to tone down to what he construes to be ideas that might cast shadows ons Japanese dignity, by throwing up pseudo-distinctions, as though there were established academic distinctions, between 'stereotype' and 'theory' (ron). All stereotypes, as Lord Keynes would have reminded Hermeneus had the latter ever read him, are born of theories. Most cultural theories of the kind we witness in the nihonjinron degenerate into clichés. In some sense the cliché reflects back on the theory. But Hermeneus can't grasp this. If, in warning you, I upset you by creating a misleading impression, I apologize. But the game underway has been played many times in here, and the eventual outcome was forseeable. I hope I saved you your time and probable wasted efforts, at least Nishidani 20:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

WP:MOS-JA

Hello. I would like to make sure that you are aware of WP:MOS-JA. When transcribing Japanese, Misplaced Pages uses macrons for long vowels instead of the circumflex. Also, the {{nihongo}} template may be of use to you. Regards. Bendono 12:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Message received, Bendono. My apologies for the oversight and my thanks for the corrections, and for your many contributions. Regards Nishidani 10:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

(== A query Bendono's homepage== Dear Bendono, A clarifying link to Kizama Kiyozo on the Ono Susumu page, with a stub on that linguist (I would be interested eventually in creating a category of profiles on Japanese scholars of classical Western languages) has been deleted by an administrator apparently interested in birding and rock groups, Jimfbleak. Is it normal practice for administrators unfamiliar with a terrain or discipline to interrupt work in progress so mercilessly, without even signposting for the author that the article they wish to delete is unsatisfactory, or without consulted with informed colleagues in the area concerned?

Regards (Nishidani 19:54, 20 June 2007 (UTC))

Hello. Unfortunately really short articles with little information and references are often deleted quickly. Ideally it would be best if a little bit of time was given to allow that to be improved. Kazama Kiyozō is an important linguist, and I would like to see an article on him. As a start, you could begin with the Japanese content: ja:風間喜代三. I suggest that you take the issue up here: Misplaced Pages:Deletion review. Regards. Bendono 21:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. Actually, I have one of his books awaiting me in the library and will do more when I get to read it. I know quite a bit from memory, but can't clearly write from personal recollection.

I'd like to restore my stub, adding the little the Kazama Jap.stub has, but I have the distinct impression Jimfbleak looks bleakly on my stubs as bumf. For, unfortunately, after I took up the issue with the administrator who deleted that small stub, I suddenly found he'd taken umbrage within minutes, and started hunting or stalking through the entries I'd written on Japanese scholarship, branding 'unreferenced' 'could be deleted unless' (Ueyama Shunpei, Takeda Taijun (which is a translation of the Japanese text in Wiki (unbannered), slightly touched up); Murayama Shichiro etc.)on every single stub that could warrant the banner. (I note that no adminsirator has wasted time bannering the Japanese stub on Kazama, which has no footnoted references). I've done twenty in the last several days, some reasonably detailed, but I must admit that this behaviour does not strike me as 'neutral' but rather a petty abuse of authority. I'm rather disappointed that an administrator/editor, when questioned on one issue, especially in an area he knows nothing of, can be allowed to run amuck, running down everywhere I have posted and putting up 'banners'. That smacks of personal vendetta, and I confess I feel like withdrawing from what has been an interesting new hobby. I dislike working, freely and happily as I have until now, under conditions of an abused right of surveillance. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Sorry for this note. But I have been impressed and instructed by your many contributions, and have appreciated your own mode of quiet but firm suggestions, not bannering but by direct intervention in the problem at a textual level, or by dropping notes on a user's discussion page. Forgive me the impropriety of discussing another administrator/editor on your page, but I don't know how to protest to Wiki at what looks like a personalized campaign against my honest efforts to pitch in. Please feel disobliged from replying, which would only embarrass me, and perhaps the person referred to.Best regardsNishidani 22:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)).)

I think the page you meant was Kazama Kiyozō. It was deleted because it did not give sources or references for notability, that doesn't necessarily mean he's not notable. Please be aware of WP:OWN. I don't have to be an expert on Japanese topics to see whether notability is demonstrated. Also note that messages should be added to the bottom of talk pages or they may be overlooked. If you haven't saved the text, it will shortly be here Jimfbleak 19:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

deleted page

Well, could you do me a favour and flag the problem before deleting pages on Japanese matters the next time round. That stub clarifies another text in Wiki where his notability is evidenced, with references. The link I made to Kizama is now useless, and readers of that article will not know who he is. (2) I am still waiting for a book that will assist me in defining Kizama's work. I consider this erasure an abuse, since it should have been preceded by a query, a note or a heading flagging the reasons for your dissatisfaction.

p.s.WP:OWN. I can't see the point of your referring me to this. I have a lifetime's reading on the subject, and freely give to the public domain things I know about the subject in question. I have no problems with other people using 'my' material. I do object to someone who knows nothing about a topic erasing it as soon as a squeak of an outline is made of it, because it is not, apparently, a full and complete article. Sir, I am not at your beck and command to write full articles. I do them when interest and time allows. Stubs are indications to surfers that there is a page they may know something about which they are invited to improve. I'm quite welcome to mark out the large number of areas in Wiki's English-Japanese section where collaboration is needed. All you have done is to badger the initiative, and destroy the possibility for others who might have caught the stub of improving on it. Read Aristophanes, 'Ornithes' and get a sense of humour, and patience.

Thanks for your work on the Japan-related articles. A few things: it is a generally established practice to delete incomplete and unverified articles that do not establish the notability of the subject, because it is thought that they detract from the reliability and professionalism of the encyclopedia. Some may laugh at applying the terms "reliability" and "professionalism" to Misplaced Pages, but that is precisely why such policies are in effect. In actuality the page was temporarily flagged before it was deleted, and it required the judgment of two editors (the person who left the tag, and the person who hit the delete button) for the article to be deleted. I highly doubt that the article will be deleted again in its current state.

Next, a few conventions: by the manual of style for articles related to Japan, we use Western naming order for modern Japanese subjects, particularly when those subjects have never published works in English. Accordingly, I have moved Kazama Kiyozō to Kiyozō Kazama. Also, when creating articles that utilize macrons in the title, please be sure to create redirects from the unmacronned forms. Most users cannot type the macronned o into the search box, and this can cause navigation trouble. I created the redirects this time. I'd appreciate it if you could do the same fixes in the future, although you are not at my beck and call. Dekimasuよ! 11:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm seventy five years old, and I'm afraid I haven't the time, health and patience to learn all of the conventions you speak about. I tried to apply what you requested and found I was messing up articles. Particularly on the issue of Japanese name order. My generation learnt to despise eurocentric impositions on the non-white world, and why I should have to sweat and fiddle with dots, brackets and programming mumbojumbo, when a vital young pup like yourself can fix it all in a jiffy, and leave the grind of actual writing to sappers in the front-line like myself, is beyond me. Why, uniquely, do we have a convention for the Japanese wiki of imposing a eurocentric world order as 'defaultsort' (?) when Korean and Chinese names are left in their proper, and natural order?

There are quite a few of us out here, of my wrinkled generation, who have much information, but a poor understanding of what you call netiquette, and whatnot, and not enough time left to learn. Just a little time left to instruct. I can contribute in several languages, but I'm afraid it looks like taking more trouble than it is worth it for an old 'geezer' like myself. I know this sounds prickly, but you youngsters have the instinctive knack for the clean-up side of things, with all of its odd (to folks teetering on their anecdotage like me) conventions and it would be nice if in looking at contributions, you could just adjust them technically. Sorry for the grumbling, but I don't like being hounded by editors who know nothing of the subject they are bungling about supervising, and the editor in question began stalking posts in my name as soon as I asked him what he was up to on the Kazama file. (Nishidani 15:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)).

Stalking behaviour by an administrator

Thank you for your message. I have not taken up any interest in articles dealing with Japanese scholarship, I was simply housekeeping, based on your recent contributions.

You are welcome to work through my contributions if you wish, all non-deleted edits are open to everyone to see. Your message implies that adding a ref tag is an abuse of admin power; adding tags is not an admin-only function, it is one that any editor can do. I would accept that one may have been incorrect, but that can easily be removed and isn’t exactly an issue deserving what seems to me to be a disproportionate response.

I’m sorry that you find the refs tags silly, but they are not designed by me.

You should be aware that any editor can edit any page, and they should not be viewed as personal property. I don’t remember (I’m sure you will correct me if I’m wrong!) changing any of the actual content, so I’m not sure why I’m being accused of meddling with material I know nothing about, or why I need to consult anyone else. If you don’t like my edits, just change them (none of these pages are on my watchlist, so I won’t even know), you don’t need to leave a message to tell me.

All the best, Jimfbleak 16:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

A civil answer, Jimfbleak. Had I had a note like this dropped in earlier I should have saved myself the shot-nerve syndrome, with its ticklish sensitivities. I went, to borrow a youngster's idiom, "ballistic" when I noted several tags placed on my work-in-progress within a half-and-hour of my initial query. You know, paranoia afflicts all ages, but old-fangled gits like myself are especially prone to it when finangling with new-fangled media like the Internet.

Best regards Nishidani 19:10, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I myself was worried that the article might seem like hype. I'm far more comfortable with the dead! I generated this in order to provide background for the Gill citations in the bibliography of the Nihonjinron article. I have taken the information from Gill's website, and from reading 7 books, some two thousand odd pages. Though he frequently alludes to his life in these books, the allusions are scattered all over the place, and it has taken a lot of time to draw them in. He doesn't even have an adequate curriculum posted on his own site, since he appears too busy to trouble himself about one. If the curriculum is fine, the problem remains of summing up what he is doing, without promoting him. One could just leave a bibliography, of course, but that is not informative, since it is hard to gather from the titles exactly what he is doing, which strikes me as important. I have adjusted the text, but would ask Dekimasu or others for further precise indications on how to present the material. Biographical articles on contemporary authors vary from excessive, if carefully hidden hype (the most notorious example I know off is the wiki article on Ayn Rand, which is several pages of promotion for the institutions associated with her philosophy), to moderate synopses of works (Le Carré) to simple bibliographies after the CV (Donald Keene and Roy Andrew Miller). I suspect that part of the problem is that Gill, unlike many, is an unknown quantity for academics, save for a handful of specialists, so that merely mentioning him looks like hype. Some way round the impasse must be found, preferably with help from you guys out there, because it would be silly to wait round for an obituary to write up the fact that he is the most productive translator of Japanese haiku in the history of Western studies on Japan, as far as I, who have never met him, am aware. Nishidani 08:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Dekimasu et al. Re Robin Gill:-

I myself was worried that the article might seem like hype. I'm far more comfortable with the dead! I generated this in order to provide background for the Gill citations in the bibliography of the Nihonjinron article. I have taken the information from Gill's website, and from reading 7 books, some two thousand odd pages. Though he frequently alludes to his life in these books, the allusions are scattered all over the place, and it has taken a lot of time to draw them in. He doesn't even have an adequate curriculum posted on his own site, since he appears too busy to trouble himself about one. If the curriculum is fine, the problem remains of summing up what he is doing, without promoting him. One could just leave a bibliography, of course, but that is not informative, since it is hard to gather from the titles exactly what he is doing, which strikes me as important.

I have adjusted the text, but would ask Dekimasu or others for further precise indications on how to present the material. Biographical articles on contemporary authors vary from excessive, if carefully hidden hype (the most notorious example I know off is the wiki article on Ayn Rand, which is several pages of promotion for the institutions associated with her philosophy), to moderate synopses of works (Le Carré) to simple bibliographies after the CV (Donald Keene and Roy Andrew Miller). I suspect that part of the problem is that Gill, unlike many, is an unknown quantity for academics, save for a handful of specialists, so that merely mentioning him looks like hype. Some way round the impasse must be found, preferably with help from you guys out there, because it would be silly to wait round for an obituary to write up the fact that he is the most productive translator of Japanese haiku in the history of Western studies on Japan, as far as I, who have never met him, am aware.Nishidani 08:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Munich massacre

Hi! Regarding this edit to Munich massacre, do you have a published source supporting that striking analogy? I have no problem with the text being in there, as long as it can be sourced per Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. Please do cite your source, as otherwise the analogy will almost certainly be removed. Thanks! -- Jonel (Speak to me) 01:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear Jonel.

Your remark 'otherwise the analogy will almost certainly be removed' is odd in its peremptory threatening. In the overwhelming number of cases I am familiar with, editors who query an edit that is unsourced post 'citation required' and leave it at that. Will you please explain why my single contribution is to be wiped out because it requires, according to you, a source? If you do go ahead and wipe it out, then you legitimate the application, by anyone, of this arbitrary critierion to every unsourced line in the article, which will only make a mess of it.

The verifiability of the factual content is in the links in the passage I posted, which will send the reader to the relevant facts. (2) The analogy is precise, in that the Munich Massacre consisted of the elimination by terrorist groups of athletes at a prestigious international competition, precisely what occurred with the Posada Carriles downing of the Cuban airline. In the text, nothing that is subjective is asserted, but only factual correlations, and therefore it cannot with any editorial justification be eliminated simply because it happens to be an analogy. I could overcome your objection by simply removing the word ‘analogy’, and rewriting, in perfect accord with the rules again, that the Munich massacre’s terrorist assault on athletes is only superceded by the Cubana airline downing. Would the slight word change alter anything? No. I might add that the quotation from Simon Reeves preceding it is sourced, but demonstrably untrue (nb. Wiki rules state:'Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources.'. Reeves has made an exceptional claim, but he is not an exceptional source, since he has no technical qualification in the area he writes about). The Lod Airport Massacre of May that year was far more violent, and costly to Jewish lives. In the relevant Cubana Flight 455 article, that massacre is defined as ‘what was then the most deadly terrorist attack in the Western hemisphere.’

(3) A large part of this article lacks ‘publishing sources’ for each ‘fact’. There is much irrelevant information (that murdered athletes had children is not pertinent, to note but one example, and it is not sourced). I would suggest that if you wish to blue-pencil, go to these numerous passages first, before challenging the ‘analogy’, which you agree is striking. If I wished to annoy or damage contributions by others, I could apply wikipedia verifiability criteria to the article strictly and wipe half of it out. I do not do so because were those criteria applied with relentless mechanical efficiency, no article would ever be written. It is facile for individuals to erase, quite difficult to write consensually. I prefer the latter approach.

(4) Look at the Qibya Massacre and Deir Yassin massacre articles where numerous unsourced and tendentious assertions bury the historically verifiable record, and which is a disgrace to careful neutral historical writing in what it carefully omits. Since it deals with Arabs, these prior episodes can be fiddled down to a minor ‘incident’, understandable in context, though one could find many better scholars within Israel who take these 'incidents' (like El Burj in Gaza which has no article in Misplaced Pages), like Reeves does Munich, as a defining moment in modern terrorism and Arab-Israeli relations. In all cases of an Israeli massacre of Palestinians, the articles have a 'background' that contextualizes the massacre in a prior record of Arab provocations. In the Munich massacre, there is no such 'background'. Personally I am opposed to such 'background' contextualizing, which frames the obscenity, whoever commits it, in some form of retaliatory justification. Wiki articles on massacres are disturbingly partisan (5) To remove an analogy which, you yourself say, repeating my words, is ‘striking’ cannot but strike a neutral observer as aleatory, or make many wonder whether it is not an invasive and unscrupulous use of editorial niggling censoring details in order to maintain the semblance of ‘singularity’ which Reeves’s tendentious opinion has underlined.

Woah, calm down. I guess I wasn't clear: I wasn't saying that I would remove it. I agree with your analysis here of Misplaced Pages's articles on massacres. They tend towards partisanship, there are often major problems with sourcing, and so on. Editing them can be like stepping onto a battlefield. But that's exactly why I expected your addition to be removed (especially with your aggressive edit summary--that was just asking for someone to revert). I also note that my prediction was accurate (). The bottom line here is that no matter how blindingly obvious the comparison is, you'll probably need a source to make any addition stick when faced with those who disagree with you (which you'll find plenty of in any of these sorts of articles). -- Jonel (Speak to me) 14:05, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Jonel. I can assure you I am quite calm. And not, I think, aggressive. Stern, yes. It seems that when I am voluble in explaining what went on to make me form the judgements I do make, it is taken as intemperate. As you will appreciate, when someone writes 'it will be removed' the impersonal future form in English often functions as a threat or a warning of automatic penalty ('People who deface buildings will be fined' etc). As to people not agreeing with me, and therefore exercising the right of erasure, I fail to see how sourcing the point makes my contribution safer. There is a vast amount of material throughout wikipedia which is sourced, uselessly, because the opinion quoted is not really relevant to the article. In the Qibya article one datum is sourced to the New York Times 1954, with no link, and therefore unverifiable, unless you go to a public library. If you do, and check it out, it turns out that the article was based on reportage of what government spokesmen said at the time to cover up the scandal. But it sits there, unchallenged, as a 'source', a convenient one since it allows the poster to filter in misleading evidence that no historian, in retrospect, would now use.

Sourcing simply means 'I patched this bit in after reading it elsewhere', independently of whether it is appropriate, germane or insightful. The quote from Reeves is demonstrably wrong, since, as I have been now forced to add, the Munich massacre cannot be said to the a defining moment in modern terrorism by any competent student of the subject (I'm ethnically Irish, which gives me some personal feeling for the subject, as the IRA bombed its way through England in the same period). Whoever stuck that Reeves piece in, did so however in order to create the false impression that the Munich Massacre was different from so many other massacres. Since this is not the case, it requires balance. I'd much prefer that the Reeves quote be eliminated, since it is tendentious. If eliminated, then I would be happy to excise my own clarification. But if it stays, it requires a corrective that allows the reader to balance the tendentious perspective purveyed by Reeves with information on the public record which counters its subjective interpretation of the significance of that event. Sorry to be long-winded.

I'm sorry to hear you have so little faith in sourcing. And my initial comment was indeed meant as a warning, but more in the manner of "People who pour grease on fires will get burned" than anything else. A probabilistic expectation of result rather than a threat of penalty; my apologies if you took it otherwise. And now, since I am no student of terrorism and have little interest in getting embroiled in articles on that topic, and since you seem quite well equipped to argue your case, I guess there's not much left but to wish you the best of luck in future editing. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 16:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Jonel, in response, closing the issue.

It is not that I have little faith in sourcing, but rather little faith in pseudo-sourcing. I could source the statement of analogy I made (Noam Chomsky, “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World,” South End Press, Cambridge Mass. rev.edition 2002 p.99 footnote 8) but I don't think it necessary, because an analogy of this kind does not need sourcing since the given, uncontrovertible facts speak for themselves. I.e. you do not need to, but may of course, source the obvious, put a link under 'is' and refer us to Parmenides, or 'fact' and refer us to the dictionary, as any academic knows. The Reeve quote was sourced, but was a misleading item in that page in so far as it was one of any number of subjective opinions immaterial to the article in question. Wiki cruisers should have spotted that before my intervention. In erasing both Reeve's exaggerated and strategically placed 'quote' I have also eliminated my counter-example. And I think the article's first paragraph gains in lucidity.

1929 Hebron massacre

i found you a clear explanation to the discrepancy, please stop reverting to include false material as if it were factual. Jaakobou 04:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Three-revert rule

You are in serious danger of violating Misplaced Pages's three-revert rule. I suggest you review the policy and self-revert. Tewfik 17:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for informing me, I hadn't noticed. Mind you, I don't think I am the only one to have engaged in extensive reverting. I will 'self-revert' and then post my version tomorrow. Thanks

Between myself and Jayjg there are only three total reverts - you've reverted far more than both of us combined. The point of the rule is to signal that your position is against the consensus on the page (else yours would have stayed). The solution is not to simply revert back later, but to work things out on Talk, though if you hadn't realised it on your own, I can assure you that charging "censorship" will not end productively. Please self-revert soon (Hertz only repaired the mark-up that you inadvertently broke). Tewfik 18:06, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, well, then, I haven't checked, but I take your word for it that I am in violation. Moral. Never play by a 'game' without mastery of the rules. I was trained as a youth to take the scrupulous ascertainment of facts, textual or historical, as a moral obligation, in a community of scholars. Perhaps I fall short of the ideal inculcated into me, though I've never had that charge laid against my academic work. It only appears to function in wikipedia.

Pity, I would have liked to do this on a daily basis, collaboratively, but this is pointless. Without alluding to yourself or jayjg, obviously the rule which convicts me, can be rigged, like any system of rules. You only need 1 revert each by 3 people who agree in disagreeing with a single poster, to make him trip the wire, and have his record marked as a rule violator. Now that you have clarified this rule for me, I can see it militates against day by day work on wikipedia. I'll take it more casually. Indeed I'll drop it, and Sozomenos and the terebinth ritual, and so much else, to my gain - I much prefer reading up history in real books, that being sucked into the subtle politics of editing. Politics it is. What is remarkable about this and so many other sites, is the inability to be informed adequately. It's Orwell's memory hole, under daily revision. Thank goodness the Encyclopedia Britannica, and scholarly journals still exist.

I won't 'self-revert', because I'm too tired to check out how to do that (it's a new word to an old man like myself), so denounce me to the appropriate authorities. I won't resent it. It is the rule, and rules are there to be obeyed. The law does not admit of ignorance.Regards Nishidani 18:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Blaming this on 'politics' seems quite unfair to me, as very specific norms in play across Misplaced Pages are what I have been attempting to preserve. Imagine the mess if everyone could add whatever point they felt was relevant to whatever subject, or the same point to a dozen articles. It is natural human urge that many a contributor have felt, but the result is a mess. We all very much appreciate any new attributable and neutrally presented information you could add to broaden the coverage of this entry, but they must be just that. Cheers, Tewfik 19:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Tewfik

In my opinion, you both misuse the norms, and are incoherent in your application of those norms, often, in my view, abusing them. You never reply to the points raised by those who contrast your judgements, but simply repeat ostensible violations of rules. I am not to cite other wiki pages for evidence. Okay. I remove the link. I note that the remarks on 700 BC seals links to a wiki page, not to an independent archeological document, and, thinking to impose the policy I just learn about, remove it. It is immediately restored, in violation of the principle which I was accused of transgressing. No comment from Jayjg or Tewfik.I have no problem with the evidence. It seems fine to me. But it needs a specific non wiki-source, relating to reliable sources reporting the digs of 1998.

Hence what is not good for the goose is great for the gander. You are both obsessively strict on what you regard as anything that might upset the sensibilities of Kiryat Arba settlers. On this material, the pedantic scruples of pilpul are exercised. You both wasted time, with Jaacobou,dithering anxiously over the 59/67 figure, even though I had a source that fits wiki rules. The ref. at last, was kept, but the figure erased, so that the curious can not see it, but must tramp off to a library to consult the material book. It was suppressed, challenged, doubted, erased, reverted. I will note that in all cases where Arabs are the victims of a massacre,the pages allow at the beginning the issue of disputed figures (see Deir Yassin). In pages, like Hebron, where a dispute exits, this is disallowed. That is incoherent, and your dual failures to address the incongruity show most lucidly your parti pris.

All this finangling amused me, because I was waiting for a NPOV scruple to emerge about the loss of the number of wounded in that other Hebron massacre by Baruch Goldstein (and it merits an independent wiki page 1994 Hebron Massacre, since the place in modern times has had two, one against Jews, one against Arabs (the latter with higher casualties, by the way). How many of those wounded by BS, namely, 150, died afterwards as a result? This interests no one. What passionately interests people here, by contrast, is the rigid confirmation of the figure of 67 at Hebron, maintaining the difference of 8 is due to fatalities following the 59 apparently killed on that day. (citation required. One of that 8 died not of 'wounds' but of a heart attack several days later. Not that it makes much difference to the horror, but technically it renders the word 'wound' inexact, and perhaps accounts for why the figure 66 occasionally crops up). The dead and wounded are meticulously defended in one context, the Jewish one, the details in the other disattended to. It doesn't interest you. Go to the Baruch Goldstein site and most of it is filled up with material saying what a decent guy he was to Arabs, testimony coming unilaterally from members of own community who praised his act as saintly, worthy of a martyr, on the day of his burial, and then testified before the Commission, of his respect for Arabs later on! Such are the indignities to truth enacted by a very well planned intent to play the pedant with adversary but reliably sourced information, and close a generous eye to whatever is passed off as 'reliable' by biased posters on your side of the interpretative line. The partisan POV is structural, in short, as much in what never catches your eyes on a page marked by unbalanced reportage, in the silences of a waved editorial posture, as much as in what you do censor, for no other word fits the behaviour.

Cheers Nishidani 13:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Raymond Tallis

Nishidani, the formatting problem with this article is now solved. The chnages I made to the punctuation were to conform to Misplaced Pages house style, rather than necessary for the tags to 'work' properly. See Misplaced Pages:Footnotes if you need further details.

Cheeers. Philip Cross 19:07, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Scholem edit

Nishidani, Congratulations on a very short and elegant, but so precise and accurate edit to the Gershom Scholem page. One word makes all the difference! Thanks, warshy 12:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

warshy My pleasure. Nishidani 12:40, 26 July 2007 (UTC)