Talk:Paul Lendvai

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Hungary

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AVH

Miért is törölted az ÁVH-s vonatkozást?? Itt is le van írva, a megfelelő forrásokkal: http://www.fusz.hu/node/6544

AVH-s vonalról jó lenne élő link, lehetőleg hitelt érdemlő angol forrással is. Gondolom az 1951-53 közötti AVH-hoz tartozó szervezetbeni tevékenységére gondolsz. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.134.203.128 (talk) 17:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please use English. Chzz ► 09:28, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Our policy on biographies of living persons

See WP:BLP. Anything contentious that cannot be reliably sourced should be removed, and anything that can be must be written from a WP:NPOV perspective. The accusations against him were in part unsourced, in part clearly pov, and have been removed. The page is also protected against anonymous editors. Dougweller (talk) 14:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I should also add I've got no dog in this race and am simply enforcing our BLP policy. I'm not saying the accusations must be kept out, but they must be reliably sourced, specifically attributed where appropriate, and show all perspectives. Dougweller (talk) 15:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You will have to do better. You also removed reliably sourced information. In fact while complaining about sourcing you just about removed all sources from the article. I am the only one who finds that quite a bit of problematic? You will need to explain your specific concerns and work on improving the article. As a temporary solution I had to revert your changes as you simply removed too much sources and material without explanation. Please explain especially every source that you remove. Tüzes fal (talk) 08:12, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We should work on addressing specfic concerns as I'm sure there are problems with the article, no article is perfect. Also I have to agree with Dougweller on problems for example there was an editor [1] who simply falsified a source. (switched out a source without changing the text, making it look like the text is disconnected from the source. Tüzes fal (talk) 08:19, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to incorporate the changes though now going through them one by one, and putting back the changes that didn't include the removal of sourced information. In one case I saw Dougweller remove "Lendvai was a member of the Communist secret police ÁVH and also the author of the infamous PR-booklets of the Hungarian Communist Party, such as "Tito, the Enemy of the Hungarian Nation"(1951), and "France at the Crossroads" (1955), in which he claimed that evil capitalists throw kids into the fire in France. " which was unsourced so I put that change back. But with other stuff I need specific help (which was removed why). However will but back the parts that can be sourced. As the time when he was living in Hungary is very much under covered now. Tüzes fal (talk) 08:36, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Claims by Dougweller

Let's go one by one on the claims of Dougweller. "Use of blogs"[2]. Where are the blogs. Which blogs and where. Tüzes fal (talk) 10:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Below there is yet another claim of blogs, without explaining once more which source is supposed to be a blog. Pleas please an explanation for this. Tüzes fal (talk) 10:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[3] is a blog. Dougweller (talk) 10:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you that was not something I inserted originally, (or even realized was there unfortunately so I could remove that from the earlier version) let's cut that and all content related to it, immediately I'm not even discussing it any further. Was that the only blog meaning that the blog issue is solved? Tüzes fal (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed something deeply troubling. One of the main reasons cited the mass deletions ("[4] were the "use of blogs", and above the blog was indentified as that wordpress blog. However the exact same blog that was complained about was left in the version that received the deletions. So while newspaper sources were deleted the complained about blog source remained. This very strongly suggests to me that the article wasn't even read prior to editing because there is a complete disconnect between the edit summary (complaining about "use of blogs") and the actual edit (leaving the blog but removing newspaper sources). Tüzes fal (talk) 08:12, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The edit I protected is [5] and I don't see a blog. I'll add that the removal of my protection was a good faith error - something extremely similar is discussed at WP:ANI. Dougweller (talk) 08:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please click on reference number two in the version that you linked. Do you see a different link than I do? i see this under reference number 2 in your above link [6] Tüzes fal (talk) 09:08, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Missed that, sorry, I obviously would have removed it. Dougweller (talk) 09:21, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fully protected now

This is a BLP, we'll do it the other way around. Material to be restored or added will need a request using the {{pp-protected}} template to have it restored or added which will be reviewed by an Administrator. There may have been material removed which can be quickly restored (although there is no rush, this is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper). Blogs are not acceptable sources, and statements of fact are going to need reliable and impartial sources. Comments such as the one about other countries having certain laws need reliable sources discussing Lendvai in the context of those other laws, see WP:NORN. The article must present all significant aspects of any dispute - see WP:NPOV. WP:BLP is the applicable policy, eg (but please read the rest before making an edit request)

Tone

BLPs should be written responsibly, cautiously, and in a dispassionate tone, avoiding both understatement and overstatement. Articles should document in a non-partisan manner what reliable secondary sources have published about the subject, and in some circumstances what the subject has published about himself. BLPs should not have trivia sections.

Criticism and praise

Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. Care must be taken with article structure to ensure the overall presentation and section headings are broadly neutral. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, and biased or malicious content. Dougweller (talk) 10:50, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Parts to be reincluded

The following is fully sourced and should be uncontroversial as it is not debated or contested by anyone as far as I know

"Lendvai was born on 24 August 1929 in Budapest. In the early 1950s (also known as the Rákosi era) Lendvai was a member of the armed forces and also worked as a journalist in Hungary. The unit in which he served was a part of the State Protection Authority (ÁVH) ^[1] Lendvai wrote for Szabad Nép and was also chief of foreign reporting in the Hungarian news agency (MTI).^[2] Lendvai's books in the 1950s include "Tito the enemy of the Hungarian people" (1951) and "France at a crossroads" (1955), with 50,000 copies. ^[3] He was a member of the communist party, but he did not participate in the brutal suppression of the Revolution of 1956. After the revolution Lendvai participated in putting together the so-called "White Books", aimed at defaming and discrediting the revolution of 1956 talking about the "the horrors of the counter revolution" Lendvai later claimed he took part out of "cowardice and opportunism".^[4] He left Hungary on assignment to report from Poland and in 1957 he went to Vienna, Austria."

You need to use the edit protection request template. I will note that there are questions about whether the right wing heti válasz is a reliable source for such assertions. Dougweller (talk) 11:11, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I reinstated the above segment with two additional papers as sources, other than heti válasz, to be used as well. So there are three different unrelated sources from different newspapers sourcing this brief passage. I will see how this is received and will deal with the article piece by piece to see what is reverted and what is not. I think the problem previously was that too many edits were reverted in one go. By doing the edits one by one we shall see more clearly what is reverted on by one not everything wiped out in a single edit. Tüzes fal (talk) 14:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Paul Lendvai leleplezése: A nem vonakodó csatlós "Paul Lendvai önéletrajzaiban leírja, hogy sorkatonai szolgálatát az ötvenes évek elején a belső karhatalomnál, részint agitációs és propagandafelelősként teljesítette - nem említette viszont, hogy ez a testület az Államvédelmi Hatóság (ÁVH) része volt."
^ Lendvaiság "hirtelen a Szabad Néphez került, majd az MTI-hez külpolitikai rovatvezetőnek."
^ Heti Válasz Paul Lendvai leleplezése: A nem vonakodó csatlós "Titó, a magyar nép ellensége címmel könyvecskéje jelent meg 1951-ben" "1955-ben ötvenezer példányban jelent meg Franciaország válaszúton című munkája"
^ The unreluctant henchmen

Heti válasz

I note that the Budapest Times in 2009 referred to this as a right wing weekly[7] which is more recently echoed by this blog (which we can't use in the article of course) Clumsy attempt at discrediting Paul Lendvai, critic of Viktor Orbán. I have found a recent article On the March Hungary’s Ascendant Right Wing in the Boston Review which discussed Lendvai and Heti válasz and which looks like a good source for some of this as we need sources that are as independent as possible. Dougweller (talk) 11:11, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the article and counted about 40 mentions of Lendvai. It's basicly reviewing Lendvai's views statements positions and opinions (which we already know from his writings) just a few examples from that article: Lendvai argues, Lendvai writes, Lendvai, believed, Lendvai calls, Lendvai inquired, Lendvai describes. I mean it could be a source for stating Lendvai's views but I wouldn't say that Lendvai's views are independent of Lendvai. Tüzes fal (talk) 11:32, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also that blog is a far left blog as far as I know so I wouldn't rely on them too much. Budapest times on the other hand is a newspaper although they may be electronic only as I couldn't find any circulation data. In any case calling something/someone right wing wouldn't really effect statements like "PL wrote book xy in 1951, he was correspondent for Z and K newspapers". I mean for that you have to assume they would outright fabricate easily checkable information (such as someone wrote a book or did this or that). Anyway these probably could be sourced to a different paper as well. However there is an Enlgish version of the article[[8] that I assume you would prefer to another Hungarian language paper for the same information. Am I correct in this? Is there a specific concern before we reinsert this part? Tüzes fal (talk) 12:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

One of the external links in the current version leads to a broken link because of extra chars ("%20http:") please replace it with the one from the previous version:

Paul Lendvai's strange affair with the hungarian secret service (documents and letters)

Tüzes fal (talk) 11:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done (though the page is no longer protected). Ucucha (talk) 11:39, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the documents Lendvai provided to communist authorities

The following documents are from the national archives. [9] [10] as you can see they are confidental for personal use documents, about an opposition gathering in 1985 that Lendvai obtained in his position as an Austrian journalist and then personally handed them to communist authorities. Here are the once classified foreign ministry documents that detail the case further about Lendvai providing the documents And additional information that Lendvai provided (2 pages)[11] [12] in formulating a strategy on how they should deal with the issue of this opposition gathering. Tüzes fal (talk) 12:51, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is utolag.com acceptable EL?

http://www.utolag.com/Paul_Lendvai_kulonos_esete.htm It seems to be an highly critical WP:SPS page. It all depends on who Ilkei Csaba is. FuFoFuEd (talk) 12:29, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That specific site has serious copyvio problems, and the article itself is copied from somewhere. The author is an MP, but that doesn't mean he can automatically be used.

Does the article need protection? I protected it and the protection was removed, but my actual protection was then endorsed at ANI as all I'd done was removed text that had BLP issues. Dougweller (talk) 17:51, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You mean former MP for the Hungarian Democratic Forum. He seems to be a journalist by profession [13] with a nationalist/populist tint [14] -- the kind of person you'd expect to support Viktor Orbán. Iffy. FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:33, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell the exact same page appears on the far-right website http://kuruc.info/r/9/75485/ FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:49, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FuFoFuEd are you an expert on Hungarian politics? You seem to be speaking from an expert position certainly. For example one of your cited sources is a 50 minute youtube video with a total viewership of a few hundred. It seems like an odd choice for a source, did you actually watch that to form your analysis about Ilkei? I admit I won't spend 50 minutes on this video to analyze Ilkei's possible views. Another problem with the video source is it doesn't seem to be indicating which year is it from (there is a logo of a now defunct TV station on the video suggesting it's from several years ago.) Your claim that Ilkei is a former MP surprises me. Are you sure it's the same Ilkei who is a researcher who scanned some of the the documents regarding Lendvai from the Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (ÁBTL)? As far as I know those archives are only open to researchers though I might be wrong about that. Tüzes fal (talk) 13:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you really think a politically neutral researcher would have his work featured in a far-right website? FuFoFuEd (talk) 13:41, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see an indication of any such thing. In the article Ilkei's text was sourced to utolag.com. And in this subsection we discuss utolag.com. Even if utolag.com is unreliable the ultimate source is not even Ilkei's research but the actual documents from the archives which are at least in part scanned in the article. For us to analyze these scanned documents from the archives we don't have to read a single letter of Ilkei's text. But still the question remains that how did you reach those conclusions based on that youtube video. It's important because if you are an expert and can speak Hungarian (I assume analysis of Ilkei's views would require some understanding of Hungarian) you could help us further with the article as well in finding Hungarian language sources. Bringing in new sources on the actual topic of the article, Lendvai would help us better than an analysis of Ilkei. I have an unrelated question as well. Is it possible to upload the scanned pictures of the documents to wikipedia? I am fairly sure they are not copyrighted and if nothing else they include a picture of Lendvai which the article currently lacks. Tüzes fal (talk) 13:58, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The bottom line is that the WP:BURDEN is on you to show the source is reliable to be linked in a WP:BLP. If you claim he is some unknown researcher with no other publications we can find, he clearly fails the WP:SPS test. FuFoFuEd (talk) 14:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Recent problematic changes

Recent changes introduced several problems into the article. For example the section title about "collaboration" which was introduced in this edit [15]. Unfortunately almost all of the content is not about any "collaboration" but New York Times and other sources which never mention anything close to "collaboration". Most of it is sourced to text written by Lendvai himself, he also used nothing close to the term. There are indeed sources that describe Lendvai's actions as collaboration or being an informer “Paul Lendvai finds it ridiculous that he’s being accused of ‘having been an agent’ of the Hungarian communist regime and he’s absolutely right. The Viennese journalist, an executive member of the Austrian Social-Democratic party, was definitely not an agent, but voluntarily collaborated with the dictatorship. And as such he did harm to the Hungarian democratic opposition and has marred the memory of the uprising in ’56,” comments Lukács Ádám Petri (whose father György was an important dissident figure) in Népszabadság. but it should be attributed right? And it's currently not even in the article. So can I ask what is the reason for introducing collaboration section title without a source? Tüzes fal (talk) 13:16, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Change title to "Allegations of ..." if that makes you more comfortable, although he clearly admits to some level of cooperation. I think the extent of detail on that matter is unsuitable for a brief bio like this though. FuFoFuEd (talk) 13:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the bio is too short currently. More should be added on Lendvai's Austrian career in the 70s 80s. The problem is because of being a journalists most sources only mention his opinions and not his life story. Few of the sources are actually about him. Other sources mention things like "presented his newest book" and do not have any real information.Tüzes fal (talk) 14:04, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the section tile, [16] hopefully. FuFoFuEd (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What Tuzes fal quoted, is Petri's opinion which appeared in the opinion section of Nepszabadsag. It is not a source and why should we consider it true? The claim should be removed.

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[1] Paul Lendvai leleplezése: A nem vonakodó csatlós "Paul Lendvai önéletrajzaiban leírja, hogy sorkatonai szolgálatát az ötvenes évek elején a belső karhatalomnál, részint agitációs és propagandafelelősként teljesítette - nem említette viszont, hogy ez a testület az Államvédelmi Hatóság (ÁVH) része volt."

[2] Lendvaiság "hirtelen a Szabad Néphez került, majd az MTI-hez külpolitikai rovatvezetőnek."

[3] Heti Válasz Paul Lendvai leleplezése: A nem vonakodó csatlós "Titó, a magyar nép ellensége címmel könyvecskéje jelent meg 1951-ben" "1955-ben ötvenezer példányban jelent meg Franciaország válaszúton című munkája"

[4] The unreluctant henchmen

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]