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::[[User:Icewhiz|Icewhiz]], I didn't understand: do you want me to ask arbitrators to suspend the case regarding VM (leave Poeticbent beyond the scope) while you (I mean you and VM) are discussing possible ways to resolve the conflict, or not? If yes, then the sooner you tell me that the better, because that may save a lot of time of other people.--[[User:Paul Siebert|Paul Siebert]] ([[User talk:Paul Siebert#top|talk]]) 14:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
::[[User:Icewhiz|Icewhiz]], I didn't understand: do you want me to ask arbitrators to suspend the case regarding VM (leave Poeticbent beyond the scope) while you (I mean you and VM) are discussing possible ways to resolve the conflict, or not? If yes, then the sooner you tell me that the better, because that may save a lot of time of other people.--[[User:Paul Siebert|Paul Siebert]] ([[User talk:Paul Siebert#top|talk]]) 14:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
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::: Paul - I suggested a possible compromise here for VM. If he commits to stop following me around (to approx. 38 articles between 15 and 30 may - I had over 30 reverts bells on the top of my screen at some point (I stopped paying them heed and let them pile up)) + recognizes that there are some issues with Poeticbent content - I can agree to move to suspend this at ARBCOM. I'm looking at this forward - I want to review Poeticbent content (and not just the 24 September 2011 sockpuppet content) - and this requires careful review (at least in important articles - e.g. - I already spotted issues in two extermination camps - [[Belzec extermination camp]] and [[Chełmno extermination camp]]). Look at what I got after I [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Casimir_III_the_Great&type=revision&diff=875294913&oldid=872558906 removed this (not Poeticbent) in December] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Casimir_III_the_Great&diff=prev&oldid=875967089] - I don't want this hostility at every turn. [[User:Icewhiz|Icewhiz]] ([[User talk:Icewhiz|talk]]) 14:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
::: Paul - I suggested a possible compromise here for VM. If he commits to stop following me around (to approx. 38 articles between 15 and 30 may - I had over 30 reverts bells on the top of my screen at some point (I stopped paying them heed and let them pile up)) + recognizes that there are some issues with Poeticbent content - I can agree to move to suspend this at ARBCOM. I'm looking at this forward - I want to review Poeticbent content (and not just the 24 September 2011 sockpuppet content) - and this requires careful review (at least in important articles - e.g. - I already spotted issues in two extermination camps - [[Belzec extermination camp]] and [[Chełmno extermination camp]]). Look at what I got after I [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Casimir_III_the_Great&type=revision&diff=875294913&oldid=872558906 removed this (not Poeticbent) in December] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Casimir_III_the_Great&diff=prev&oldid=875967089] - I don't want this hostility at every turn. [[User:Icewhiz|Icewhiz]] ([[User talk:Icewhiz|talk]]) 14:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
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:::::Icewhiz, I haven't put this in my evidence yet, but it's pretty obvious that you have "followed" me to far more articles than I have "followed" you. You also have a tendency to insert the same piece of text into multiple articles, so if I see you adding it one article which I already have edited, it's not surprising that I'll also say something if you put the same piece of text in another article that I may not have edited previously. From my end, I would AT THE VERY LEAST like for you to commit to stop turning [[WP:BLP]] articles on historians who don't agree with your POV (Davies, Musial, etc) into attack pages. If there are some truly extremist historians like Kurek where you really think we need to expand "Criticism" in their respective articles, you can bring it up on talk page.[[User:Volunteer Marek|Volunteer Marek]] ([[User talk:Volunteer Marek|talk]]) 15:11, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
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::::Frankly speaking, I see the problem not in VM's following you. The actual reason of a conflict is that you both advocate too extreme points of view. That is why you both are vital for the articles belonging to this topic. You both are biased, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, so if you both ''simultaneously'' decide to soften your positions, the overall result will be very positive. I think you just need to discuss major principles. I think [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FClarification_and_Amendment&type=revision&diff=892708616&oldid=892614416 these sourcing restrictions] are a good starting point for a discussion, although I think the rules you proposed were too strict. If you are ready to start a discussion with VM, we can inform arbitrators about that.--[[User:Paul Siebert|Paul Siebert]] ([[User talk:Paul Siebert#top|talk]]) 14:41, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
::::Frankly speaking, I see the problem not in VM's following you. The actual reason of a conflict is that you both advocate too extreme points of view. That is why you both are vital for the articles belonging to this topic. You both are biased, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, so if you both ''simultaneously'' decide to soften your positions, the overall result will be very positive. I think you just need to discuss major principles. I think [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FClarification_and_Amendment&type=revision&diff=892708616&oldid=892614416 these sourcing restrictions] are a good starting point for a discussion, although I think the rules you proposed were too strict. If you are ready to start a discussion with VM, we can inform arbitrators about that.--[[User:Paul Siebert|Paul Siebert]] ([[User talk:Paul Siebert#top|talk]]) 14:41, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
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:::::Those sourcing restrictions were rejected by the ArbCom [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment&oldid=895128154]. And for good reason. 4) is more or less already policy and there is very little practical objection to it. 2) and 3) however are a round about attempt to eliminate all Polish sources, even academic ones, from these articles which flies completely contrary to Wikipedia policies like [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:BALANCE]] and of course [[WP:SYSTEMIC BIAS]]. Like I've pointed out repeatedly - how come nobody makes ridiculous proposals like these which try to insist on removing all French sources from French history articles? This is straight up ethnic bias and a type of [[Orientalism]]. As far as I'm concerned 2) and 3) are non-negotiable. It's very important to have Polish sources (reliable ones of course) represented in Poland related articles. This is a no-brainer.[[User:Volunteer Marek|Volunteer Marek]] ([[User talk:Volunteer Marek|talk]]) 15:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
:::::Those sourcing restrictions were rejected by the ArbCom [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment&oldid=895128154]. And for good reason. 4) is more or less already policy and there is very little practical objection to it. 2) and 3) however are a round about attempt to eliminate all Polish sources, even academic ones, from these articles which flies completely contrary to Wikipedia policies like [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:BALANCE]] and of course [[WP:SYSTEMIC BIAS]]. Like I've pointed out repeatedly - how come nobody makes ridiculous proposals like these which try to insist on removing all French sources from French history articles? This is straight up ethnic bias and a type of [[Orientalism]]. As far as I'm concerned 2) and 3) are non-negotiable. It's very important to have Polish sources (reliable ones of course) represented in Poland related articles. This is a no-brainer.[[User:Volunteer Marek|Volunteer Marek]] ([[User talk:Volunteer Marek|talk]]) 15:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC) |
Revision as of 15:11, 13 June 2019
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Welcome! Hello, Paul Siebert, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}}
before the question. Again, welcome! Arnoutf (talk) 20:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Assistance request
Hello Paul Siebert,
May I have your opinion on Grylev, A. N. : Dnepr, Karpaty, Krym. Osvobozdenie Pravobereznoj Ukrainy i Kryma v 1944 g. 1970 which have been recently added to the article Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive?
I'm dubious of the claim made by Grylev that the harsh winter hindered the Red Army's advance, as claimed by Tai3chinirv7ana diff while still being victorious. This reminds me of German post-war apologetic historiography, see K.e.coffman excellent webpage, Brutal Winter. Also some claims of casualties and equipment losses seems highly suspect, and in stark contrast to recent studies. Regards Wildkatzen (talk) 11:16, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Wildkatzen, I see no problem with the statement about the effect of harsh winter: the Red Army was by no means immune to that factor. I also see no parallelism between the apologetic German historiography, which attributed their own defeat solely to the harsh winter, and the Soviet historiography that claim that the victory was achieved despite a harsh winter. By the way, according to modern historical data, in 1912, Kutuzov's army in Russia suffered from the cold weather at the same extent as the army of Napoleon, and it sustained comparable losses. However, it would not be apologetic to say about that (although it would be apologetic to claim Napoleon was defeated by "Gen. Frost": he lost his army primarily due to terrible logistics, and that happened long before the winter started).
- With regard to the rest, I agree that the book written in 1970 during post-Khruschev's censorship conditions is hardly a good source for figures, and if more fresh data are available they should be used instead. However, I am not sure the fresh sources based on German data are good for Soviet losses.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Paul, thanks for the reply. I didn't mean to draw doubt about the Soviet victory during the harsh winter, but I do find that some of the explanation given, could've been straight coming from exculpatory narratives. My point is that the attrition and losses experienced by harsh meteorological conditions applies to both, the attacker and defender and is not limited to one side. Or was it really praticular difficult for the Soviet AF to deploy their aicraft under these conditions? By the wording used, the German AF was apparently unaffected and only the Soviet AF had these glaring issues. It seems to be an excuse for the high losses during the offensive, even though in 1944, the Soviet pilots definitively fought on equal terms. The poor maintenance and reconditioning affected the Soviet AF much more than unavailable airfields because of mud as it was claimed. And supply lines on the German sides were also generally poorer as they mostly relied upon horse-drawn for transport and movement of heavy equipment.
- Well, I'm fine with using Russian sources, but Tai3chinirv7ana dismiss the use of recent studies diff based on German sources aswell. Is it possible that Grylev used Müller-Hillebrand book from 1956 for his work? That might explain the difference of the Divisions destroyed. Much of Hillebrands figures are estimates and based on memoirs and distorted German POV. Which why I don't recommend it either. Wildkatzen (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Wildkatzen, to the best of my knowledge, harsh weather has more impact on advancing forces than on retreating ones, because they are moving in the area where infrastructure is mostly destroyed. The same can be said about air forces: retreating Germans just relocated their plains to their own airfields that already had all needed supplies, whereas advancing Soviets had to use severely damaged airfields captured from Germans or to build new ones, and to deliver fuel, parts etc. That looks obvious.
- With regard to German sources, please, keep in mind the following general aspect. During the Cold war era and even after that, the Western scholars had a full access to German archival materials and to ex-Wehrmach generals, so lion's share of the information about Eastern front was obtained from Germans. In contrast, due to Iron Curtain, and due to ideological and language barriers, the information from the Soviet side was almost unavailable. As a result, the whole history of the Eastern Front is written from German perspective, and that happened not because Western scholars are biased, but because the sources they have are intrinsically biased, and another point of view was unavailable to them. In addition, the German sources, where everything is meticulously recorded and documented, look much more trustworthy than Soviet ones. However, that is not always the case. Let me give you just two examples.
- First, tank losses. When you read German books about tank losses, you may be surprised by the astonishing ratio of German and Soviet tank losses. Usually, it is attributed to better quality of German tanks (German "medium tank" Panther was just 2 tonnes lighter than than late Soviet IS-2 "heavy tank") and better training. However, another reason was the difference in the methods of calculation of losses. According to Germans, a tank was not considered lost if it had been evacuated into a repair facility. Even if the tank is totally destroyed and irrepairable, but the Germans had managed to transport it to a repair shop it was not considered as lost, just damaged. However, when we look at the number of operational tanks at every concrete date, we see that the number of losses was much greater. In contrast, the Soviets considered every severely damaged tank as lost, and this approach was reasonable, taking into account that their tanks were much cheaper.
- Second, it is generally believed in the West, that the Soviets were the initiators of the Soviet-German rapprochement in 1939, and that belief is based on the report about the meeting of the German state secretary with a Soviet ambassador Merekalov in April 1939. According to this report, Merekalov came to the secretary and, after some unimportant introduction expressed his concern about the state of Soviet-German relationship, and after that added that the Soviet side would take needed steps to their improvement. However, the Merekalov's own report about the same meeting, which was declassified only in 1990, gives a totally different picture: Merekalov had a very concrete goal: to request that Germany, which captured Czech Skoda military plant, took all needed steps to allow Skoda to fulfill the contract they signed before Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany, because the USSR already paid money for that. That was a very hard meeting, and at the end Merekalov said few general words about the needs to improve relationships, which, obviously, was just a politeness. What was the reason for this discrepancy? Obviously, a chief of German foreign ministry, Ribbentrop, was a sincere Russophil, who wanted a full alliance with the USSR, and his subordinates wanted to show to their boss that they are making progress in that direction, and their reports were written in such a way that their boss would be pleased. In contrast, Merekalov had no need to shift accents in his report: his boss, Litvinov, requested him to figure out the state of Skoda contract (the telegram from Moscow is available), and Merekalov did that. However, Western historians didn't know about that, and during 50 years after the war his books implicitlty reflected Ribbentrop's vision.
- In connection to that, due to the unintentional pro-German bias of English historical literature, it is always good to use good quality Soviet sources to somewhat dilute this bias. By saying that, I do not mean Soviet sources are better, they just biased in n opposite direction.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:59, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Kyiv vs Kiev
Hello, I am new to the realm of Wikipedia content editing, but I saw that you made a change in the post on Kyiv (Kiev) recently. In adding to the discussion, I would recommend having the main title of the page called Kyiv, with Kiev being secondary. While Russian is a major language in Ukraine, only about 8 million Ukrainians speak Russian as their mother tongue.
Furthermore, Ukrainian is the official language, and many Ukrainians, especially since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, have been trying to get western media outlets to use Kyiv instead of Kiev. However, some argue that Kyiv will confuse the readers. I think a great way to start getting Kyiv into more mainstream use is through Wikipedia, since many individuals get surface level information.
As an experienced editor, I would hope that you would consider this request.
If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer!
PK
Pkop1 (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Pkop1, please, read talk page discussions (we have had at least three during the last year). Briefly, "Kiev" should stay because it is a standard English word (like Prague, not "Praha", the "Hague", not "den Haag", Vienna, not "Wien", Rome, not "Roma"). The fact that English "Kiev" coincides with a Russian name transliterated to the Latin alphabet is misleading: "Kiev" is not just a transliteration of Russian "Киев", it is an English word.
- With regard to "official", Wikipedia is based on good quality secondary sources, whereas official documents are primary sources.
- And, by the way, Wikipedia's goal is not a popularisation of new trends, the goal is to adequately represent a status quo, and currently "Kiev" is an English dictionary word, whereas "Kyiv" is a transliteration of the official Ukrainian name. We do not popularise "Moskva" (instead of the English "Moscow") or "Köln" (instead of English "Cologne"), why should "Kyiv" be an exception?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:30, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for your prompt response. That makes sense about the other translations and that Kiev is an English word.
-keep up the good work! Pkop1 (talk) 04:50, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Notice of arbitration
You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland/Evidence. Please add your evidence by June 23, 2019, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, – bradv🍁 15:08, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
"Jewish Welcome" Photo
In regards to your comment here, a couple of comments/observations:
- The Polish text PB added to Commons - diff -
"To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku."
-"This is one of the most interesting photographs of Bialystok during the Soviet occupation. In the background, the church of Saint Roch, and around the sickle, hammers, five-pointed stars - the symbols of the new order."
- which does match more or less match TVP (itself - a questionable[1][2] source) - but completely mismatches the "Jewish welcome" in English. This Polish/English mismatch probably helped this survive longer in Commons - as a Polish editor verifying just the Polish description would see something OK (and I'll note - this file isn't used on Polish wiki.... So no reason for someone to amble by, but....) - "only" the English was bad. - Poeticbent added the image to the English Wikipedia 10 minutes after uploading it to commons - so the intended use of this file on-wiki was rather obvious.
- In a reverse image search - I see this appearing on wykop.pl on 24 Septmeber 2015. in this thread. One commenter (banned) describes this as "@czysta: #zydokomuna" - or "pure Żydokomuna" - however there is no description there that matches the "Jewish welcoming" text (other than extrapolating from the general Żydokomuna comment) - and obviously comments by wykop.pl users are not a reliable source. I'll note that the image on wykop.pl seems higher-resolution and fuller scene. The version of commons is also contrast adjustment + rotation + cropping (edges + bottom + alot of top) - this is trivial image manipulation (I could do it, and I'm not a photoshop/gimp wizard) - but does require some expertise. The other option is that it was cropped from a version of the musuem poster - which is rotated (but probably a slightly different version than the one in onliner) - cropping is even more trivial than rotating/contrast (close to anyone).
I'm out of words at ARBCOM (and I have alot yet to add - the image isn't the worst of it - just perhaps the most striking - the ethnicity table you uncovered is worse IMHO) - so anyway - this is what I was able to track down of this photo online. Icewhiz (talk) 06:47, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
About that photo
This source issue is not as straightforward as I thought. At first I thought that Poeticbent most likely took it from the same website from which he copied, word to word, the misleading description: "To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku." [3], but that site indeed seems to only have a zoomed in part of the image. The original source is a mystery. The site of the Polish description, a Polish regional TVP, is reliable, through clearly, it makes mistakes (journalists are not perfect). That said, I have no clue how this mutated into the English description "Jewish welcome banner" since the Polish text does not say something like that. But note that a bit later Poeticbent linked in edit summary a new source, [4] (also roughly reliable, publication related to IPN). It has an even (larger frame, at least) better version of the photo on page 25. The document is in English and and contains a caption for it "Soviet street propaganda in front of St. Roch Church in Białystok. (From Tomasz Wiśniewski’s collection, “In Search of Poland” Society)". Personally, I don't think the caption change is malicious, never attribute malice to what can be explained as a common mistake, but I also remain puzzled re to the source of "welcoming banner". Perhaps Poeticbent saw the photo described as such at whatever site he copied it in the first place, but at the very least, failure to provide proper source is, well, a mistake. Hardly bannable, unless of course we assume he introduced a bias/falsehood on purpose. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:41, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
- User:Piotrus, "Soviet street propaganda" does not contradict to the statement that it was taken during first days of German occupation, and it directly contradicts to the original Poeticbent's statement (it was directed at Jews, not at Soviet army). Moreover, I am sure that during any military occupation, the occupying administration makes posters written in local languages: thus, I believe it is easy to find photos of German occupation administration posters written in Ukrainian, Polish, etc.
- However, definitely, this photo has lower resolution than the museum poster photo, so the original photo was different. And, definitely, this is an election banner (some words are possible to read).
- Piotrus, unless Poeticbent provided the information on where exactly did he take the "Jews greeting Soviet Army" description, we should assume he himself invented it. Taking into account other examples of his edits, where he links Jewish ethnicity and Communism and Stalinist crimes (using the sources that either do not say so or say otherwise), the only explanation is that he was introducing a bias/falsehood on purpose, so he must be banned. You are a reasonable and intellectual person, and I really cannot understand why you do not understand that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:36, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
- WP:AGF. Two edits out of thousands are not a pattern. But I am open to reviewing more evidence, and seeing if it can indeed outweigh things like him creating articles for dozens of Jewish WWII ghettos and many other Jewish Polish topics that wouldn't exist on English Wikipedia if he didn't do it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- AGF suggests to assume good faith unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. These two edits seem to be a very clear evidence. Note, I didn't look any evidences against Poeticbent: I just was reading this case, and I found several accusations against Icewhiz. The diffs demonstrated that he removed the mention of ethnicity from the articles about some Jewish Stalinists. And I asked myself: how the articles about Polish Stalitists are organized? I started to read, and I fount the article where the infamous table was presented. I ased myself: "interesting, who added it?" I looked through the article's history, and I found that that table was added by Poeticbent. Note, I was not looking for evidences against him, I found that table by accident. Therefore, we cannot rule out a possibility that we are dealing not with "two edits out of thousands", because I have no idea what the result of the comprehensive analysis of Poeticbent's "legacy" will be.
- By the way, you yourself do not seem to be totally innocent. When I was analyzing accusations against Icewhiz, I found that the edit he reverted was done by you. Do you realize that to start the section about antisemitism of Poles as one of the factors of the Holocaust with the words "Rescue of Jews..." creates a totally wrong impression that a significant fraction of Poles was engaged in rescue of Jews (especially, taking into account that the previous section tells about saving of Jews by Warsaw Poles)? However, majority of non-Polish sources say that the Poles who were saving Jews were more an exception than a rule, and a general attitude was deeply hostile. I perfectly understand that currently Poland is inventing its brilliant past (which is quite normal, every nation during some period of its history does that), however, that is definitely a local, and deeply mangled version of history. It is impossible to study the history of Great Patrioic War using predominantly Russian sources, it is impossible to write a history of OUN based on writing of Ukrainian scholars, and it would be equally wrong to write a history of Poland during WWII based on predominantly Polish sources. You know English, you seem to have a full access to good articles of Western scholars - please, look at the works of your compatriots through a prism of Western scholars: they have no reason to be biased, and they will help you to identify a bias in Polish sources. --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- This cuts two ways though. Three, actually. So first, I don't think anyone thinks that we should write these articles with only, or even predominantly Polish sources. The argument is kind of about including Polish sources at all - Icewhiz has been trying for awhile now to basically have a prohibition on Polish sources in articles on Polish history. If you just step back and think about it... it's kind of messed up. How come nobody ever shows up on articles about, I don't know, French history, and demands that we ban all French sources from articles on French history? There's an underlying theme of a kind of Orientalism here - "a general patronizing Western attitude toward", in this case EASTERN Europe. It manifests itself in an implicit or explicit belief of some Western Europeans and Americans that Eastern Europeans are "backward" and "primitive" and they're all "nationalist" (as if nationalism didn't exist in the west) so they can't be trusted to study their own history. So these Westerns have to write it for them and "get it right". And this often involves implicitly describing these Eastern Europeans as "backward" and "primitive" and "nationalist" which creates a kind of confirmation bias. And I say "Eastern Europeans", because this happens not just with Poles but also with Russians and Ukrainians and Lithuanians and even to some extent Eastern European Jews.
- Since your text is long, and that is my talk page, I took a liberty to wedge my comments after each paragraph.
- I don't think Icewhiz is totally right in this conflict. My understanding is as follows: you guys form an overwhelming majority in this topic, and you even don't need off Wiki coordination for efficient collaboration, so the outside observer may conclude that old good EEML is still alive (btw, I don't think it is, and, technically, you are doing nothing that violates our rules). In the situation when the opposite party is much more numerous and powerful, Icewhiz believes that the more Polish sources he removes the better, because he would be incapable of removing all of them, so some reasonable balance will be established. The problem is that both him and you guys do not show signs of collaboration.
- Yes, Eastern Europe was backward, and still is backward in some aspects. Thus, one friend of mine (she is an ecologist and a former director of one national park) moved to Poland (she has Polish roots, her son speaks Polish), and soon after that decided to move to Russia, because, as she explained, "clericalism and reactionary policy is too strong in modern Poland". And, by the way, it is Polish nationalism that was a primary cause of many terrible things in EE. Believe me, I am very critical towards OUN, and I am persistently re-adding the epithets like "terrorist" and "Nazi collaborator" to the articles about Bandera, Schukhevich ets, which are being constantly removed by various Ukrainian nationalists. However, the primary cause of all what OUN did was Polish nationalism. You Poles re-established Poland (Second Republics) as a successor of the Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, however, whereas Rzeczpospolita was a polyethnic state, its alleged successor was build around the slogan "Poland for Poles". That is not your fault, because during the Rzeczpospolita times, no nations existed in Europe: people identified themselves as subjects of some monarch and as members of some estate, not as a part of some nation. In that sense, XIX revolutions, which were driven by nationalism, had a very positive impact, because they replaced an old feudal society that was split unto small social groups with different rights into a larger entity, a nation. In other words, XIX revolutions declared: "We all are now equal, and we all are now a nation: Frenchmen, Germans, Americans etc." In contrast, newer, XX and XXI century nationalism is organized as an ethnic nationalism. Is says: "Our country is called Poland (Ukraine, Latvia, etc), therefore, its citizen are those who speak Polish (Ukrainian, etc), are ethnic Poles (Ukrainians etc) and all others must fit some criteria to get full citizenship. In other words, XIX nationalism united people, modern nationalism divides them.
- By the way, the term "nationalism" is somewhat misleading, because in different countries it has different meaning. Western countries are based on the concept of nation-state, and their nationalism is not ethnic one. In contrast, nationalism in Eastern countries is ethnic, and that is why they are backward.
- Going back to Rzeczpospolita/Second Polish republic, the latter pretended, politically and territorialy, to be a successor of Rzeczpospolita (a multiethnic pre-nation era feudal state), but it was built as a national state of ethnic Poles. Western sources agree that the latter was a "prison of people", only Poles had full rights, and other groups were oppressed. That means Ukrainians had a very serious reason not to love Poles, and Vohlyn massacre is explainable (although not forgivable). Jews were competing with ethnic Poles, who refused to accept Jews as a part of their society, and, since Jewish competition was successful, the hatred was mutual and widespread.
- The problem with Polish sources is that many of them negate any significant misdeeds of Poles, negate the fact that something was fundamentally wrong with the Second Polish republic, and negate the fact that Poles also were responsible for what happened in mid XX century.
- There definitely are some authors in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, who present an absolutely balanced and astonishingly deep analysis of their country's history. However, the picture those authors create is rather unpleasant, and their works are usually ignored by nationalist Wikipedians. In general, I think it would be much safer to avoid the authors who are not recognized (or criticized) outside of its country when one writes about sensitive moments of country's history. The examples are Viatrovich (in Ukraine), Gareev (in Russia) etc. The story with "Golden harvest of the Hearts of Gold" belongs to the same type: this work is totally ignored in the West, and it was written as a response to the book of a renown author. It is definitely a fringe view, but you guys are pushing it. Why?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Related to this is simply the issue of access to primary documents, which is vital for good historical scholarship. With some exceptions, most Western scholars do not speak Polish (or Lithuanian or Latvian... with Russian it's a bit better which is good part of the reason why Western scholarship on Russian history is better). So they don't have access to the primary documents. Even in cases where they do speak the language, there's still cultural barriers - knowing where to look and whom to ask. Most Western writers who write about Eastern European history rely on secondary sources, which in turn makes them tertiary (or even further removed). And this creates a lot of errors. Coming back to the Orientalism aspect, one often finds when reading Western authors, that they confuse basic locales (to Westerners all Slavic place names look like just a bunch of szczchsszzlszgsz's) names or organizations (this one is kind of understandable given the love of confusing acronyms in Soviet Union as well as some inborn tendency for factionalism and splinter groups among Eastern European political movements). Polish scholars on the other hand usually have a much more extensive knowledge of archival material and primary documents. They know a lot more details. They avoid silly mistakes. Etc.
- One, good, example is the work of Timothy Snyder. I believe he taught himself some Polish, but pretty much all he writes about, for example, Polish-Ukrainian relations during WW2 is based on the work of the Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka. If you've read both, it's pretty obvious, even the presentation of the material is pretty similar. And Snyder does do due diligence and cites Motyka where appropriate (except not many people read footnotes). But in many ways Snyder is an exception, which is why he's such a popular author. Most Western writers don't bother and they fudge it.
- Finally, you write "it would be equally wrong to write a history of Poland during WWII based on predominantly Polish sources" and this is true. But in this particular controversy, it's also true that a lot of the English language sources have been written by Israeli historians who spend the war... as Soviet Partisans. Yitzhak Arad, Dov Levin, Rachel Margolis for example. Since many of these disputes involve confrontations between Polish and Soviet partisans, it would be equally wrong to write a history of Polish-Soviet relations during WWII based on predominantly former Soviet Partisan sources". Of course, all of these authors are reliable - indeed, some of them are excellent writers and scholars - and should indeed be used. But the same thing applies to reliable Polish historians and authors. The key here is WP:BALANCE. (There's also the issue of some writers who were part of the Stalinist security apparatus in the 1950's which I think are even more biased).
- Yes, Israeli sources are considered good quality sources, however, one has to keep in mind two considerations. First, Soviet POV is significantly underrepresented in Western historiography because of the Iron Curtain, and because German (and emigrant Polish) sources were much more available. That means German and Polish POV is already represented sufficiently well, and Israeli author (former Soviet military) just restore balance. Second, Poland is much better integrated into the Western intellectual community, so there is a lot of Polish publications in Western journals and books. That should be sufficient to describe a real history (which was not as pleasant as Polish nationalists, who are trying to polish Polish history :) beyond any reasonable limits).--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for the detailed reply.
- "you guys form an overwhelming majority in this topic" - not true, I think this perception is a biased perspective resulting from where one is standing. The "Icewhiz Team" (him, FR, koffman + couple accounts that managed to get themselves blocked by now) is at least on par with the number of active Polish editors, and they are far more tendentious and dedicated. AFAIK EEML has been dead for 10+ years (I left before it got disbanded). And if you actually pay attention it's easy to note that it ain't all rosy between the former members. MyMoloboaccount has tried to get me banned at WP:AE several times. Another member, Miacek/Estlandia, went a bit nutzoid on and off Wiki and got really nasty with his harassment of me. Most of the people from there have long ceased editing Wikipedia (I mean, the Wiki-life of an average user is like 2? 3? years and this was more than a decade ago). There is way more (indirect) evidence of coordination on the other side (and remember, even back then there was a good bit of coordination on the other side too, and in fact, in the aftermath of the EEML case, it was the "anti-EEML" editors that ended up with long bans. *Without* help from the EEML people, most of whom were topic banned or keeping low profiles after the case. These dudes managed to get themselves sanctioned all on their own, partly cuz they felt so flush with victory that they went too crazy with the POV pushing, which was too much even for the clueless admins)
- "Icewhiz believes that the more Polish sources he removes the better, because he would be incapable of removing all of them, so some reasonable balance will be established." - he does in fact try to remove ALL of them... except in a few cases where he'll find something he likes in one of them and try to use it, completely contradicting his uncompromising stance on Polish sources. Like when he used far-right anti-semitic Polish publications, because he found them useful. Or like when he used a Polish historian which he shortly thereafter adamantly insisted wasn't reliable. And this isn't just Polish sources really. Like when he demanded we use Antony Polonsky on an article but then as soon as someone actually tried to use Polonsky, he began removing it because it turned out that Polonsky wasn't sufficiently anti-Polish for him, and had some critical things to say about Soviet partisans. He's um... very flexible, to put it diplomatically, about what he considers appropriate or not at a particular time. The POV comes first, the sources are chosen and evaluated to buttress that POV. It should be the other way around.Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- " Western countries are based on the concept of nation-state, and their nationalism is not ethnic one. In contrast, nationalism in Eastern countries is ethnic, and that is why they are backward." - also not true. There's both kinds of nationalism in Eastern Europe. The "ethnic nationalism" is the nationalism of Roman Dmowski. The "Nation-state nationalism" is the nationalism of Jozef Pilsudski. There's always been tension (sometimes great hostility) between these two conceptions and world views. Why do you think the "nationalist" Eligiusz Niewiadomski murdered the Polish President (oh my! Icewhiz might report me for calling him "Polish" when he was "Lithuanian"!), also a "nationalist", Gabriel Narutowicz? I don't know man, it seems like your background in Western historiography is showing here and kind of highlighting the very problem I'm talking about. Just because you perceive, on the basis of Western sources, Eastern Europe, a certain way, that doesn't mean it actually is that way. This is the colonialist/orientalist kind of framework, that is so ingrained in many Western scholars that they don't even notice it. Was it Michel Foucalt that pointed out that the dominant paradigm never sees itself as dominant but always reflexively believes itself to be "just normal"? Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:05, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "Soviet POV is significantly underrepresented in Western historiography because of the Iron Curtain" - I actually don't think that's necessarily true. Academia has been more sympathetic to "the socialist experiment" than your average Westerner for, well, ever since it came up. To the extent you see under representation it's not a under representation of a view point but of material (which is part of what I already said). There's 50 books published about Normandy landing for every book that's published about Kursk. Etc. But "giving the Soviets the benefit of a doubt" is very much present in lots of Western scholarship. "(and emigrant Polish) sources were much more available" - this is not true at all. Polish emigrant sources (I don't know about German ones) were always scarce, barely existing. They constantly struggled for funds, had low readership and circulation (somewhat ironically, the most popular publications of Polish emigre press were the writings of Russian dissidents like Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn). Historical works were limited to mostly to (thin) bibliographies and collections of primary documents. Most Western AND Eastern European academics had scant access to the emigre publications and whatever little scholarship it managed to published hardly made a dent in general historiography. "That means (...) Polish POV is already represented sufficiently well" - but that is not true at all. Timothy Snyder or Norman Davies are the exceptions. Even when "Polish POV" does make it into Western works it's... kinda caricaturish (more Polish than the Poles) or at least very general and shallow. What are these "Polish publications in Western journals and books" you refer to? I'm sincerely interested.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:41, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, Israeli sources are considered good quality sources, however, one has to keep in mind two considerations. First, Soviet POV is significantly underrepresented in Western historiography because of the Iron Curtain, and because German (and emigrant Polish) sources were much more available. That means German and Polish POV is already represented sufficiently well, and Israeli author (former Soviet military) just restore balance. Second, Poland is much better integrated into the Western intellectual community, so there is a lot of Polish publications in Western journals and books. That should be sufficient to describe a real history (which was not as pleasant as Polish nationalists, who are trying to polish Polish history :) beyond any reasonable limits).--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- This cuts two ways though. Three, actually. So first, I don't think anyone thinks that we should write these articles with only, or even predominantly Polish sources. The argument is kind of about including Polish sources at all - Icewhiz has been trying for awhile now to basically have a prohibition on Polish sources in articles on Polish history. If you just step back and think about it... it's kind of messed up. How come nobody ever shows up on articles about, I don't know, French history, and demands that we ban all French sources from articles on French history? There's an underlying theme of a kind of Orientalism here - "a general patronizing Western attitude toward", in this case EASTERN Europe. It manifests itself in an implicit or explicit belief of some Western Europeans and Americans that Eastern Europeans are "backward" and "primitive" and they're all "nationalist" (as if nationalism didn't exist in the west) so they can't be trusted to study their own history. So these Westerns have to write it for them and "get it right". And this often involves implicitly describing these Eastern Europeans as "backward" and "primitive" and "nationalist" which creates a kind of confirmation bias. And I say "Eastern Europeans", because this happens not just with Poles but also with Russians and Ukrainians and Lithuanians and even to some extent Eastern European Jews.
- WP:AGF. Two edits out of thousands are not a pattern. But I am open to reviewing more evidence, and seeing if it can indeed outweigh things like him creating articles for dozens of Jewish WWII ghettos and many other Jewish Polish topics that wouldn't exist on English Wikipedia if he didn't do it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- So you really got to have both if you hope to have a serious NPOV article. Like I said, if someone showed up to articles on Italian history and demanded that we ban the use of all Italian sources, they'd be laughed at and I'm sure someone would point out the problem with that kind of ethnic criteria for sourcing. Why is it different for Poland here? Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- No difference. If some local source (Italian or Polish) says something that pleases your national pride - be careful. As soon as some Polish source tells about Polish antisemitism and it understate its scale, the source should be treated cautiously. As soon as an Italian source discusses Mussolini, and it describes him more positively than it looks in Western books - it should be treated very cautiously, unless there are many positive reviews on this source (internationally).--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Re: the diff - my wording was not the best, but the original sentence was just as bad, OR about "deeply rooted". Now that entire sentence is gone and I think that section reads better, through IMHO it is still mostly a SYNTH mess. But that's for another time. Anyway, regarding sources, consider the POV of the writers. Are Polish writers biased? Of course. But English/Western scholars are also biased. Just like many Polish/Canadian-American scholars are, so are Jewish-Americans, etc. If someone or their family had connections to the Soviets, who fought Polish resistance, can they be neutral when they discuss Polish resistance actions against Soviet forces as actions against the Jews? Consider the case of Antoni Gawryłkiewicz and Yaffa Eliach's accounts. Did Polish resistance really beat Gawryłkiewicz to punish him for helping the Jews, and Polish media / scholars censor this fact, and he decided to stay silent about it, even during his visit to Israel? Or did Eliach mis-remembered things, and to what extent is her memoir about her childhood memories, written decades later, reliable? And could the fact that her father, killed during the war, collaborated with the Soviets, who fought the Polish resistance, color her memories? As in, her father dies in a Polish-Soviet shootout, her father was a Jew, so Polish resistance murdered him because they were antisemites? Reliable, Western source, eh? Another case study: when I was expanding the bio of Shmuel Krakowski, another scholar known for his critique of Polish resistance as antisemitic, what are the chances his two decades of career in Polish communist secret police, where his coworkers were involved in stuff like hunting cursed soldiers, color his view? Is he a neutral party here? Also, Israeli accounts of his career in the Polish secret police simply summarized it as him having served in the Polish army... whitewashing? Why wouldn't the obituaries written by his co-workers, etc. discuss his two decade career in Poland in more detail? Again, Polish sources are biased, but perhaps we should not assume that 'Western' sources have no agenda. Particularly sources written by people who where either directly involved in said events, or were exposed to family/friends narrative.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, Western sources are biased, but they have much less reasons for a bias, and the are biased in a much lesser extent.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- This is disputable. Less reason? Less overt government interference, that I would agree. But we would need some quantitative data if we want to talk about bias between Western and Polish sources, and that's hard. Also, do you include Israeli in Western? Frankly, I consider any source written by someone with family connection (name can tell) to a side of this likely POVed, which is why IMHO the few reasonably neutral scholars on this are people like Norman Davies or Timothy Snyder, since AFAIK they have no family connection to EE. Everyone who has such a connection (not to mention, citizenship) is biased.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:20, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, Western sources are biased, but they have much less reasons for a bias, and the are biased in a much lesser extent.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- So you really got to have both if you hope to have a serious NPOV article. Like I said, if someone showed up to articles on Italian history and demanded that we ban the use of all Italian sources, they'd be laughed at and I'm sure someone would point out the problem with that kind of ethnic criteria for sourcing. Why is it different for Poland here? Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Paul, I'm guessing that Poeticbent got it from this sentence in the article itself: "Na zdjęciach z lat tysiąc dziewięćset trzydzieści dziewięć - czterdzieści jeden Białystok jest miastem, które radośnie wita wojska sowieckie i czeka na nową władzę.". Translation: "On the photos from the years 1939-1941 we see Bialystok as a city which joyously welcomes the Soviet Army and awaits the new authorities". The plural, "photos", is in the source. I assume, that Poeticbent assumed that this was one of these photos, although carefully reading the source there is no indication that this particular photo is one of these. The article is about an exhibition of wartime photos at the University of Bialystok library. Presumably, judging by the description of the exhibition, there were some other photos in the exhibition which had signs welcoming the Red Army. Whether these were written in Polish or Russian or Yiddish or whatever is unknown. This is definitely a mistake. A very sloppy mistake. But there's no indication of malice or any intent to misrepresent the photo purposefully. I presume (reasonably I think) that Poeticbent does not read Yiddish.
The issue as it relates to this ArbCom case, is that Icewhiz has been parading this photo around so he can scream and wail about the collapse of Wikipedia, play himself as some kind of martyr, and try to smear OTHERS by association. He keeps referring to this as a WP:HOAX in fits of hyperbolic, but calculated, faux-outrage. It's not a hoax. WP:HOAX states: "It is considered a hoax if it was a clear or blatant attempt to make up something, as opposed to libel or a factual error". This was a factual error based on a confusingly written source. Icewhiz, on his user page after proclaiming bombastically that the existence of this photo proves that Wikipedia has entered the "post-truth era" (sic), then proceeds to award himself multiple accolades and salutations for having corrected the caption. Great, good for him. On the case request page he tried to not-so-subtly associate me with it. But here is a thing: when he fixed the caption nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody disagreed with him, or challenged him or reverted him. Hell, I've never even edited the Bialystok Ghetto article. And of course by the time he fixed the caption Poeticbent has been long gone from Wikipedia. But he's pretending like this was some odious dispute he was part of. There was no dispute. There was an error. He fixed it. Good for him. Nobody disagreed. That's it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:06, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Even if that was just a mistake, only a deeply anti-Semitic person could have done that. He cannot edit Wikipedia.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I disagree. He seems to have been just following the source. I'm actually curious about the actual photo - can you tell if there is a date on it? Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- That only means there are much more problems with you than I thought. Look:
- The Poeticbent's description was "Jewish welcome banner in Białystok during the Soviet invasion of Poland of September 1939." The source he used just said that some photos show the occupied Poland in 1939-41 and those photo were aimed to demonstrate the Soviet Army was welcomed. To write the description of that kind required a great deal of creativity: one has to conclude that this particular photo depicts a welcome banner, and it was taken during the invasion, not during some time between 1939-41. This conclusion requires not only a fantasy, but also a lack of elementary logic: obviously, that type banner does not created an impression it was hastily erected, which rules out an possibility this photo was taken during the invasion. And the context this photo was placed was pretty obvious: it was supposed to demonstrate the idea Jews were pro-Soviet and pro-Communist (Zydokommuna). If you don't understand that, than your own mentality is to some extent anti-Jewish, and you need Icewhiz to compensate that problem. Similarly, Icewhiz's mentality is too Jew-centric, and you both would be an excellent tandem for writing balanced texts.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:07, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- "and it was taken during the invasion, not during some time between 1939-41" - that's actually why I keep asking if there's a date on the photo.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- But yeah, I agree there does appear to be some problematic WP:SYNTH here. But without the user being here, able to speak for themselves, I don't think you can properly ascertain their intent.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:14, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I disagree. He seems to have been just following the source. I'm actually curious about the actual photo - can you tell if there is a date on it? Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Even if that was just a mistake, only a deeply anti-Semitic person could have done that. He cannot edit Wikipedia.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Also, can you tell if there is a date written anywhere on that board? Volunteer Marek (talk) 08:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Actually, while I'm here I got a favor to ask. We've had plenty of disagreements (and I'm about to disagree with you on something else right above) in the past and I'm sure we will disagree again. But I've always appreciated your knowledge of these topics, as well as your honest approach to editing (unlike some editors *cough*Icewhiz*cough*, you don't misrepresent what they say to win disputes or go running around lying about them, trying to get them sanctioned, and I've never seen you misrepresent a source). So here is the thing - Icewhiz is making A LOT of accusations against me. Obviously I got to respond to at least some of them. You know, "rebuttal". But we're limited in how much we can write (1000 words apparently). Equally obviously I can't respond to all of them. Most of them are total bullshit where he is either lying about what's in them or taking a minor disagreement and pretending like it is some super horrible thing, or insinuating stuff by linking to irrelevant sources and notions I've never used or presented. But nobody's perfect, so maybe I did make some mistakes. I'd like to have some way to separate out the wheat from the chaff and equally equally obviously I may not be the best judge of which of MY OWN edits are "bad". And I don't mean the silly stuff like "you should've been more diplomatic on the talk page", I mean the real content, substance stuff. So I'm asking you to audit me. Can you look through his evidence and see if there's anything there that I should take seriously? I genuinely am interested, and your opinion does carry weight with me (though again, I might very well disagree). Like I said, don't pay attention to the "Volunteer Marek was uncivil" crap, just the actual content related stuff. And if you don't have time, or don't want to get too involved, I totally understand. Thanks either way.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- You will save a lot of my time if you dropped me the diffs here (the most important ones). I'll try to comment on them on the arb page. I think you both are not right in this dispute, you could save a lot of time of other people if you (both) harnessed your nationalism and elaborated some common rules of collaboration (something similar to what I described on the ArbCom page).--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Well, that's kind of the thing. I'm not sure WHICH ones are important cuz it all looks like a bunch of BS to me.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Then drop some of them, on your choice (not very trivial ones).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:09, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Mmm, let's start with this one:
- "[5] - edit-summary: "per sources, "enormous", "most" etc. ..." - claiming "most Poles" (more than 12 million) were involved in Holocaust rescue is in WP:FRINGE turf. Mainstream sources see rescuers as a minority.[5] "Most" rather impossible to source outside of Nasz Dziennik,[6] see also Rydzyk.[7][8][9]"
- I'm not asking for an opinion of whether "some" or "many" is better to use here. The sources used [6] do support something like "many". Of course you can find other sources or quibble over whether "several hundred thousand" is "many" or "some". But my interest here is in whether Icewhiz's presentation of the diff - his characterization of the nature of my edit, as well as him bringing up sources like Nasz Dziennik and Rydzyk which have nothing to do with this disagreement - is accurate or not.
- You can also take a look here.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- VM, I hope a positive response from Icewhiz will make all of that redundant. Let's wait for a clear response from him.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Then drop some of them, on your choice (not very trivial ones).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:09, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Well, that's kind of the thing. I'm not sure WHICH ones are important cuz it all looks like a bunch of BS to me.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry - Paul, I'm going to butt in here and discuss the edit VM just pointed out.
- I'm assuming you mean to discuss this edit by Icewhiz, and not your revert? Let's look at the edit as a whole -
- First, instead of looking the edit, let's look at the entirety of the sources. There are two sources given for this edit - 1) Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Righteous Among the Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin January 1, 2011. Statistics and 2) Lukas, Richard C. (1989). Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust. University Press of Kentucky. p. 13. ISBN 0813116929.
The estimates of Jewish survivors in Poland... do not accurately reflect the extent of the Poles' enormous sacrifices on behalf of the Jews because, at various times during the occupation, there were more Jews in hiding than in the end survived.
. The first source is actually a deadlink and it is from 2011. We should be using the most current stats - which are at https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/statistics.html. So, a good thing would have been for the editors involved to have updated this ref. - So, these two refs are supporting "Polish Jews were among the primary victims of the German-organized Holocaust. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, some Poles risked their lives – and the lives of their families – to rescue Jews from the Germans. Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons who rescued Jews during the Holocaust." The YV source does not support anything in that sentence. Before folks start screaming - the YV source only details those people who are recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" - which is only a subset of those who rescued Jews, and a small subset at that. Anyone who accepted money/etc for rescuing Jews is disbarred from the Righteous title - which actually impacts rescuers in Eastern Europe disproportionately. Because of the conditions in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, it was just plain more difficult for even the most altruistic of rescuers to be able to support hidden Jews without some help - rations/etc in Eastern Europe were set by the Germans to such a low bar that most non-Germans had extreme difficulty getting enough for their own families, much less any Jews they were trying to hide. Leo Cooper discusses this in chapter 8 of his In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle: The Poles, the Holocaust, and Beyond (specifically p. 164 of the 2000 paperback edition). But the YV source is ONLY dealing with the Righteous - it does not say anything about "Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons who rescued Jews during the Holocaust." And the YV source does not say anything at all about the first two sentences of the three.
- The second source - Out of the Inferno edited by Richard C. Lukas. This should actually be cited as Lukas, Richard C. (1989). "Introduction". Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust. University of Kentucky Press. pp. 1–16. because it's actually a collection of remembrances with an introduction by Lukas. And page 13 doesn't support much of this either. Lukas claims "Recent research suggests that a million Poles were involved [in rescues], but some estimates go as high as three million." Well, those are REALLY high estimates, and Lukas just prior to this states that Zegota figures are "several hundred thousand". There are other figures out there - Cooper cites Teresa Prekerowa who gives a figure of perhaps 1-2.5% of the Polish population involved in rescue attempts, whether they succeeded or not. (Cooper, p. 168) Cooper, then on page 169, estimates 160,000-360,000 rescuers.
- Lukas does not support most of these three sentences (at least not on page 13). "Polish Jews were among the primary victims of the German-organized Holocaust." is not supported at all. The next sentence "Throughout the German occupation of Poland, (some/many) Poles risked their lives – and the lives of their families – to rescue Jews from the Germans." includes the disputed words some/many, but this is not completely supported by Lukas - he supports the "risked their lives" part, but not the "and the lives of their families". And the numbers he gives - even if we go with 3 million - is still not easy to reconcile with "many". Instead of trying to quantify this number with vague terms - we would be better off dropping the "some/many" and just going with "Poles risked their lives" and discussing the many different estimates in the body of the article.
- Lukas does not support the last sentence "Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons who rescued Jews during the Holocaust." either - he never states such a thing. At best he says "The Polish record of helping Jews thus compares very favorably with that of Western Europeans, who were in far less threatening circumstances."
- First, instead of looking the edit, let's look at the entirety of the sources. There are two sources given for this edit - 1) Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Righteous Among the Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin January 1, 2011. Statistics and 2) Lukas, Richard C. (1989). Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust. University Press of Kentucky. p. 13. ISBN 0813116929.
- So... on investigating this one diff - no one comes off well. No editor actually looked critically at the sources and what they were supporting - or at least it sure doesn't look like it because as detailed above, there are some big problems with the sentences the sources are supposed to be supporting. At the very least - someone should have noticed that the YV source was no longer working - that's like a big red flag. This isn't meant to make everyone look bad - it's just that there are so many sloppy sourcing things going on in this area that it's just feeding into the whole problem. And I haven't even touched on the problems with using Lukas himself - while he's not fringe, he's definitely on one side of the whole historical debate, and he needs to be balanced by those on the other side. This is how history works - there isn't usually one monolithic "correct history" but instead a lot of different historians who take the same events and get not only different interpretations, but often different "facts" (which are actually just guesses) - in this specific editing dispute the facts are in dispute because, in the end, it's all guesswork - we don't have hard figures for rescuers so historians make their own best guesses and they often conflict. When these situations arise, the way we should do things on Wikipedia is present all sides. What is actually happening here is that there are sets of editors who are (at least to this outsider) trying to only present the side they agree with, and thus the fighting gets vicious. It's also not helped by, at least as it appears to me, a historian, that many of the editors aren't actually historians. Granted, I'm a medievalist, not a WWII historian, but in many respects, the principles are much the same. Too much emphasis is being placed on newspaper and other sources that are not the best choices for Wikipedia editors to be using. Too much reliance is being placed on Google searches rather than reading entire books. There is so much written about Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust - and much of it is not in agreement. Wikipedia needs to present that range of opinions, rather than trying to present a single narrative. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks, Ealdgyth. That perfectly demonstrate my point: when lion's share of efforts is devoted to a conflict, users just have no time for careful representation of what the sources say. And, as I already said, more strict approach to source selection (more strict than our policy allows) would be extremely beneficial in this area.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:51, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Ealdgyth: - Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust actually has much bigger problems - first in source selection - currently it represents only high-ball estimates (and often misrepresents the scholars it is using - for instance see diff by Gspaulsson). Lukas, is, umm, very much on one side here - e.g. see this. There is a whole range of scholars that estimate rescues at a small multiple of the YV Righteous number (e.g. x2 or x3) - a proper presentation would state their view contrasted with larger estimates (some of which use laxer criteria - e.g. "help" vs. "rescue"). The article itself requires a through rewrite and evaluation of sources (both of what it uses - misrepresentations, and what it doesn't use). There are also many aspects that are not well covered by the article - e.g. see Michlic, Joanna B. "'I Will Never Forget What You Did for Me during the War': Rescuer-Rescuee Relationships in the Light of Postwar Correspondence in Poland, 1945–1949." Yad Vashem Studies 39.2 (2011): 169.. The whole thing probably requires work akin to writing it from scratch (the photos are probably mostly usable). I have this marked as a future project (unless someone else does this first) - so far I've just watchlisted it and challenged some sources that clearly shouldn't be used (e.g. Paul) - but I haven't done anything here beyond that. It probably requires a few days work to really do it any justice.Icewhiz (talk) 14:57, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- That blurb by blurb by Paulsson is currently at the beginning of Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust#Statistics - and one might add that beyond selection from within Secret City, this work itself was critiqued for methodlogy - Dreifuss, Havi. "Utajone miasta. Kilka uwag o metodologii Gunnara S. Paulssona." Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały 10 (2014): 823-852.. However, this is probably not even close to the worst of the problems. Icewhiz (talk) 15:03, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Need your 2c
Hi Paul, I'm in the midst of trying to expand and rewrite Mass killings of landlords under Mao Zedong from content from zh:土地改革运动, which unfortunately require a large amount of translation. Mind if you look at the current article and see if there are issues with NPOV and reliability? Thanks.--LucasGeorge (talk) 06:56, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- I cannot do that right now, will take a look a little bit later.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Polish sources
RE - diff - I've actually grown appreciative of some very good Polish language scholarship and sources over the past year and half (when I jumped into this a year and a half ago - I was not up to date on modern Polish scholarship). Unfortunately, my work on Wikipedia in this topic area has shown me that Polish sources (in this particular historical field) actually used on Wikipedia are often:
- Poor quality media/local-sources and/or by writers very much on the right-wing extreme - as opposed to mainstream or "leftist" sources from within Poland.
- Fail verification. The amount of times I've challenged Polish language sources/content for failing WP:V - is in my mind staggering. In some cases, these are totally reasonable sources - even very good sources - however they are misused - by extreme cherrypicking and/or even outright fabrication (information not in the source). The amount of editors actually willing to verify a Polish language source - is small.
Piotrus linked to AE here, in which I noticed I did some stats on the time (not Polish language): at the time of that AE, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Poray was used in some 50 Wikipedia articles (a self-published author cited by noone), whereas Jan T. Gross's Fear had 359 google-scholar cites vs. 11 Wikipedia uses and Neighbors had 718 google-scholar cites vs. 13 Wikipedia cites (and some of the citations - were self-uses to articles on Gross or his books). Regards. Icewhiz (talk) 16:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- That is exactly what I meant when I proposed the way to resolve the current conflict: if you both (Volunteer Marek and you) develop a common criteria to the selection of sources, the major part of the problem will be resolved. If you both will come to an agreement that the source that has been cited by many scholars has more weight than the one that is ignores, and if you both will play a "ignorant wikipedian" before starting to edit any topic, you will be able to collaborate fruitfully. I personally think you both bring some bias to Wikipedia, and this bias is of opposite signs. The result of that is an overall improvement of the content. However, you may achieve the same result (with much less efforts) if you both agree to be less biased (for example, according to the rules outlined by me, of whatever rules you both will stick with).
- I am totally on your side regarding Poeticbent: that deeply anti-Semitic user should not be allowed to edit this topic. However, I don't think any actions against VM are needed, because you both are quite capable (potentially) of collaboration. I believe if you both address to ArbCom and propose that, you will save a lot of time of other people.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- And again, I never undid any of Icewhiz's removals of Poray, I did not vote in the AfD (and would have voted delete if i had been bothered to do so), and I agree that this is essentially an unreliable WP:SPS, although in some case it may serve as useful starting point for further research, which doesn't mean it should be used on Wikipedia. Icewhiz, in this arbcom case which you started, and in which the only active participants are me and you, you keep bringing up shit which I never had anything to do with. It'd be one thing if you were doing this in some kind of pre-emptive "I know VM is going to accuse me of a bunch of stuff, so here ArbCom, look! I made some good edits too like remove Poray" but rather the running theme throughout your statements and "evidence" is to insinuate that I did this or was somehow associated with it. Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Believe it or not, I am much more concerned with the content introduced by Poeticbent (and to a limited extent, others) than stonewalling, partial reverts, and reverts of cleanup attempts.Icewhiz (talk) 20:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- (ec)Clarify that in your statement/evidence then.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Guys, I am somewhat busy this week, so I've exhausted my time I can allocate for Wikipedia. I can address to arbitrators to inform them that you both are currently discussing possible ways of future collaborative work on this topic, and it would be good if the arbitrators exclude VM from that case (or, at least, the case should be suspended for N weeks). If we do that, we will save a lot of time of many people (including yourselves). Icewhiz and Volunteer Marek, are you ok with that?
- You can use my talk page for further discussion, and if you need a third opinion, I am always glad to say something.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- No problem, thanks Paul.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, that would be fine with me.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Ok, I am waiting for a response from Icewhiz.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- Believe it or not, I am much more concerned with the content introduced by Poeticbent (and to a limited extent, others) than stonewalling, partial reverts, and reverts of cleanup attempts.Icewhiz (talk) 20:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- While your proposal on source moderation makes sense, I cannot agree with calling Poeticbent "deeply anti-Semitic". Did you look at my (revised) evidence? How can someone who created so many sympathetic articles on Jewish history and suffering be antisemitic? The only problem is that like many people associated with Poland he gives more credence to the zydokomuna stereotype than people in the West. This, however, is a matter of academic discourse, and it's not like Western view represents the pure neutrality here. Sure, Poles tend to exaggerate the extent of Jewish involvement in the communist regime, but again, per my case study above (Krakowski...) Western sources will try to minimize it (I don't want to say whitewash, but...). The only thing here, IMHO, would be to caution Poeticbent on the use of Polish sources that may be unduly stressing this view, and ask him to consider UNDUE in such cases. But taking part in the argument about this issue is hardly antisemitic. To say that one is not allowed to discuss the possible connection between Jews/Jewish culture and communism (outside of denying it) is just a different form of censorship (reminds me less of the classic totalitarian one, and more of some political correctness chilling effect, as well as the semi-censorship in the US of topics like global warming or gun violence, where the Republicans passed laws that people cannot get federal funding for that, which wrecks havoc with attempts to study those issues at most public or semi-public universities, etc.). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:26, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Piotrus - what you seem to think is a problem with Krakowski (who was, AFAICT from the IPN dossier, in a GRU/DIA equivalent - foreign affairs, not local "secret police") - is not seen as a problem in most of the West. Holocaust survivors serving with the Soviets (often described in Western sources as liberators) and the post-war states? Is not seen in anywhere the same light as seen in post-communist Poland (or other EE states) - if at all the post-communist backlash is seen as akin to previous episodes in the West that are today seen in a dim light (IMHO - possibly overly dim - the contemporary backlash to the historic backlash is an overcompensation of an overcompensation - Positive feedback). And in any event - whatever he did in the 40s-50s (+afterwards in the reserves) - his career as a historian was well after. Western, and Israeli, sources aren't whitewashing this - they tend to disagree this is an issue. We have a few Wikipedia articles on individuals that post-1989 Poland requested their extradition - however Sweden, UK, and Israel - have refused. Was there even one extradition request (for a communist figure, request post-1989) that was accepted by a Western state? I personally see where lustration is coming from, however this isn't viewed the same way elsewhere.Icewhiz (talk) 06:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Piotrus, these two cases (the banner and the table) is a demonstration that every Poeticbent's contribution into the Polish-Jewish relationship area must be carefully checked. That requires a significant time. Thus, I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out the situation with the election banner (and I was just one out of 3 Wikipedians who was doing that, and I am sure other two spent even more time), and I spent approximately 1.5 hour to read the original source and understand what concrete point did that table demonstrate in the source (which required some skills that not every Wikipedian has). And I am leaving beyond the scope the time needed to identify all suspicious and questionable edits made by him. Do you really value his contributions so high that they outweigh the time of other users who will have to carefully check Poeticbent's writing?
- Anyway, I presented my point of view on Poeticbent, I am not going to discuss it anymore. I am not going to add new evidences against him, let's wait for arbitrators decision. The current section is primarily about a conflict between Icewhiz and VM. I am seeing some signs of a possibility of its resolution. I propose to focus on that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- I'll add a bit on Poeticbent. Here Poeticbent adds Jean-François Steiner's "novelization" of Treblinka history in 2013. To be fair, Steiner was already in use in the article - but in 2016 Poeticbent created the wiki article on Steiner, and included as a source Richard Glazar's critique of Steiner - but Poeticbent did not remove Steiner as a source - which just boggles the mind. No historian would consider Steiner at all as a source, but when I looked at the Treblinka article (here's the diff from 9 November 2018) it was still used at least twice. (We'll leave aside the use of Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which is generally considered to be a memoir by most historians and not an academic or particularly reliable history either). Steiner is NOT reliable. Should not be used. And even if PB didn't know that in 2013, he SHOULD have known it when he created Steiner's article in 2016... and should have made an effort to remove Steiner as a source on the GOOD ARTICLE on Treblinka. There are other issues with the Treblinka article - it appears to rely on a large number of memoirs/primary sources rather than secondary sources for one, but this is another example of issues with PB's editing. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Piotrus - what you seem to think is a problem with Krakowski (who was, AFAICT from the IPN dossier, in a GRU/DIA equivalent - foreign affairs, not local "secret police") - is not seen as a problem in most of the West. Holocaust survivors serving with the Soviets (often described in Western sources as liberators) and the post-war states? Is not seen in anywhere the same light as seen in post-communist Poland (or other EE states) - if at all the post-communist backlash is seen as akin to previous episodes in the West that are today seen in a dim light (IMHO - possibly overly dim - the contemporary backlash to the historic backlash is an overcompensation of an overcompensation - Positive feedback). And in any event - whatever he did in the 40s-50s (+afterwards in the reserves) - his career as a historian was well after. Western, and Israeli, sources aren't whitewashing this - they tend to disagree this is an issue. We have a few Wikipedia articles on individuals that post-1989 Poland requested their extradition - however Sweden, UK, and Israel - have refused. Was there even one extradition request (for a communist figure, request post-1989) that was accepted by a Western state? I personally see where lustration is coming from, however this isn't viewed the same way elsewhere.Icewhiz (talk) 06:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- And again, I never undid any of Icewhiz's removals of Poray, I did not vote in the AfD (and would have voted delete if i had been bothered to do so), and I agree that this is essentially an unreliable WP:SPS, although in some case it may serve as useful starting point for further research, which doesn't mean it should be used on Wikipedia. Icewhiz, in this arbcom case which you started, and in which the only active participants are me and you, you keep bringing up shit which I never had anything to do with. It'd be one thing if you were doing this in some kind of pre-emptive "I know VM is going to accuse me of a bunch of stuff, so here ArbCom, look! I made some good edits too like remove Poray" but rather the running theme throughout your statements and "evidence" is to insinuate that I did this or was somehow associated with it. Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:31, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Volunteer Marek: - If you would agree to stop following me around to articles you've never edited / haven't edited recently (articles not on your watchlist) + recognized the problematic nature of some of Poeticbent's contributions (I'll note - you've already done so on June 2018 - "If you want to blame somebody for that text, then blame whoever put it in [7], which was this guy" - as that guy (Lewinowicz) - was confirmed to Poeticbent at SPI (the 14 September 2011 batch is confirmed to each other)... At least my understanding of Poeticbent's impact on the topic area has vastly expanded since then - IIRC Stawiski was the first really big one I found, and if not among the first) - then that would be a way forward.Icewhiz (talk) 05:31, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Icewhiz, I didn't understand: do you want me to ask arbitrators to suspend the case regarding VM (leave Poeticbent beyond the scope) while you (I mean you and VM) are discussing possible ways to resolve the conflict, or not? If yes, then the sooner you tell me that the better, because that may save a lot of time of other people.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Paul - I suggested a possible compromise here for VM. If he commits to stop following me around (to approx. 38 articles between 15 and 30 may - I had over 30 reverts bells on the top of my screen at some point (I stopped paying them heed and let them pile up)) + recognizes that there are some issues with Poeticbent content - I can agree to move to suspend this at ARBCOM. I'm looking at this forward - I want to review Poeticbent content (and not just the 24 September 2011 sockpuppet content) - and this requires careful review (at least in important articles - e.g. - I already spotted issues in two extermination camps - Belzec extermination camp and Chełmno extermination camp). Look at what I got after I removed this (not Poeticbent) in December - [8] - I don't want this hostility at every turn. Icewhiz (talk) 14:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Icewhiz, I haven't put this in my evidence yet, but it's pretty obvious that you have "followed" me to far more articles than I have "followed" you. You also have a tendency to insert the same piece of text into multiple articles, so if I see you adding it one article which I already have edited, it's not surprising that I'll also say something if you put the same piece of text in another article that I may not have edited previously. From my end, I would AT THE VERY LEAST like for you to commit to stop turning WP:BLP articles on historians who don't agree with your POV (Davies, Musial, etc) into attack pages. If there are some truly extremist historians like Kurek where you really think we need to expand "Criticism" in their respective articles, you can bring it up on talk page.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:11, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Frankly speaking, I see the problem not in VM's following you. The actual reason of a conflict is that you both advocate too extreme points of view. That is why you both are vital for the articles belonging to this topic. You both are biased, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, so if you both simultaneously decide to soften your positions, the overall result will be very positive. I think you just need to discuss major principles. I think these sourcing restrictions are a good starting point for a discussion, although I think the rules you proposed were too strict. If you are ready to start a discussion with VM, we can inform arbitrators about that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:41, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Those sourcing restrictions were rejected by the ArbCom [9]. And for good reason. 4) is more or less already policy and there is very little practical objection to it. 2) and 3) however are a round about attempt to eliminate all Polish sources, even academic ones, from these articles which flies completely contrary to Wikipedia policies like WP:NPOV, WP:BALANCE and of course WP:SYSTEMIC BIAS. Like I've pointed out repeatedly - how come nobody makes ridiculous proposals like these which try to insist on removing all French sources from French history articles? This is straight up ethnic bias and a type of Orientalism. As far as I'm concerned 2) and 3) are non-negotiable. It's very important to have Polish sources (reliable ones of course) represented in Poland related articles. This is a no-brainer.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Paul - I suggested a possible compromise here for VM. If he commits to stop following me around (to approx. 38 articles between 15 and 30 may - I had over 30 reverts bells on the top of my screen at some point (I stopped paying them heed and let them pile up)) + recognizes that there are some issues with Poeticbent content - I can agree to move to suspend this at ARBCOM. I'm looking at this forward - I want to review Poeticbent content (and not just the 24 September 2011 sockpuppet content) - and this requires careful review (at least in important articles - e.g. - I already spotted issues in two extermination camps - Belzec extermination camp and Chełmno extermination camp). Look at what I got after I removed this (not Poeticbent) in December - [8] - I don't want this hostility at every turn. Icewhiz (talk) 14:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
- Icewhiz, I didn't understand: do you want me to ask arbitrators to suspend the case regarding VM (leave Poeticbent beyond the scope) while you (I mean you and VM) are discussing possible ways to resolve the conflict, or not? If yes, then the sooner you tell me that the better, because that may save a lot of time of other people.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)