[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and anti-Semitism

Tue Dec 10 16:33:31 UTC 2002

> I'm not really asking for a chorus of opinions from the list, but an
> authoritative, once-and-for-all pronouncement from the Founders.

That's all nice and good, but before you do so, you should present an
accurate and complete summary of the facts that made you pose this question.

1) Since Clutch started an Edit War by unilaterally removing large parts of
the Richard Wagner article on the English Wikipedia (one of several edit wars
he got involved in yesterday), that article has been edited back and forth.

2) Specifically, it has been debated whether statements about Wagner's
anti-Semitism should be part of the article, or moved into a separate article
because they "distract" from Wagner's work as Clutch argued. Unfortunately, so
far, Clutch has succeeded in separating this part from the main article, even
though we include dubious and extensive claims about anti-Semitism in the Noam
Chomsky article.

3) That Wagner was an anti-Semite has not seriously been disputed by anyone,
including Clutch. Wagner's publication "Das Judenthum in der Musik", where
he accuses Jews of being hateful, greedy, powerful and heartless matches any
reasonable definition of anti-Semitism perfectly.

4) Ed has repeatedly used his administrative powers to protect the page in
an attempt to prevent edit conflicts. At first, I had no problem with that,
but now he is getting involved in the debate and locking the page from further
edits to protect his version at the same time.

5) Ed holds the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the fact that
Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed, even if the attribution is
something as fishy as "is universally regarded as".

6) I have countered this position with the analogy of requiring similar
attribution for statements like "Wagner attended university at ..". 

The point here is, if there is no disagreement about facts among people
whose opinions are verifiable and should be included in the article, I see no
point in attributing any claims, regardless of the nature of the statement. As
someone (Jimbo?) pointed out in the North Korea example, if North Korea
actually disputes the numbers, that's a verifiable fact. If somebody, say, disputed
the authenticity of Wagner's publication, that would be a verifiable fact.
In these cases, we would clearly have to tone down the claims. But if there
are no counter-opinions, why should we?

Furthermore, I consider Ed's use of his administrative privileges to protect
articles he is involved in an abuse of said privileges. He should only use
them in the way he initially did, as a "time out" to direct discussions in
case of conflicts to the talk page, but he should not even do that if he states
a position in the matter. Otherwise he is no longer a sysop or a moderator
but an editor, which is not the function assigned to him. If I recall
correctly, this is not the first time this has come up, so I think some kind of
reaction is in order.

Regards,

Erik

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