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Communist-led resistance

Discussion has become so desultory and threatened by TL/DR, so I'm starting new section to revisit as yet unresolved issues previously raised. Here are sources / substantiation for communist-led resistance, (editors have questioned effectivness of communist-led partisans and/or berated me for not providing source references):

China: McArthur cited in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, (9 vols) Tokyo and New York: Dondasha 1983, Vol VII, pp.201-2 describes anti-Japanese communist guerillas as "only body of fighting men in China worth mentioning." US president Truman, describing effectiveness of communist guerillas: "If we told the Japanese to lay down their arms immediately (after surrender) and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over by the communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison ...” Harry S Truman, Memoirs, (2 vols), New York: Doubleday 1956, Vol II, p.66.

Korea: Communist anti-Japanese resistance is described in Jon Halliday & Bruce Cumings, Korea: The unknown war, London: Viking, 1988, Chap.1

Greece: Bruce R Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980; Prokopis Papastratis, "The British and the Greek Resistance Movements EAM and EDES", in Marion Sarafis (ed.), Greece: From Resistance to Civil War, Nottingham: Spokesman 1980, p.36

Italy: Sources already provided.

Europe general: Sources already provided.

Malaya: Sources already provided.

Phippines: Nick-D has sources, no doubt. Communicat (talk) 13:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

You make no suggestions for actionable improvements to the article, so I have no idea what you expect from this. Also a statement like "Italy: Sources already provided." has no meaning in this thread which should be understandable as a stand-alone discussion.
The previous discussion on this exact same topic (Anti-communist prejudice) seems to have died a natural death 5 days ago, so please do not try to revive this dead horse. Arnoutf (talk) 13:55, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
No, it has not died a natural death. Far from it. Nor is it my problem if Nick-D and others have thus far been unable to deal cohesively with the unresolved points at issue -- see postings of Nick-D (talk) 08:06, 8 August 2010 (UTC) and my responses Communicat (talk) 15:27, 8 August 2010 (UTC) under section "Editing dispute". I have made several actionable suggestions towards improvements. How about making some actionable / useful / thoughtful contribution yourself, towards improvement of the lead? Communicat (talk) 14:30, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Do not ever again change your posts AFTER a response has been given. This is unacceptable behaviour as you falsify the answer response structure of talk pages, and can, if you want to make look the editors you are talking to look as if acting in bad faith.
With regard to an actionable suggestion, where exactly in this thread "communust-led resistance" have you proposed an actionable action to the improvement of the article? Arnoutf (talk) 14:37, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
OK what is it your trying to change this time -- what are thsi refs saying??. Moxy (talk) 14:48, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
  • China: "McArthur cited in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, (9 vols) Tokyo and New York: Dondasha 1983, Vol VII, pp.201-2 describes anti-Japanese communist guerillas as "only body of fighting men in China worth mentioning." - You would like to do what with this? as its a pov by one person..
  • "Harry S Truman, Memoirs, (2 vols), New York: Doubleday 1956, Vol II, p.66." - we are to add what to were and how??
  • "Korea: Communist anti-Japanese resistance is described in Jon Halliday & Bruce Cumings, Korea: The unknown war, London: Viking, 1988, Chap.1" Interesting and we do what whit this one??
  • "Greece: Bruce R Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980; Prokopis Papastratis, "The British and the Greek Resistance Movements EAM and EDES", in Marion Sarafis (ed.), Greece: From Resistance to Civil War, Nottingham: Spokesman 1980, p.36 " - again not sure what we can do if we cant read the pages in question or are told what its for!
Response to Arnoutf re ... unacceptable behaviour as you falsify the answer response structure of talk pages, and can, if you want to make look the editors you are talking to look as if acting in bad faith If you read the history editing summary, you'll see that I merely added few more sources which I'd earlier forgotten to include. This change was in no intended to "falsify the response structure" nor was it intended to have a bad-faith effect on you or anyone else. There was a save-page editing conflict that prevented me posting the additions prior to your rapid response. In any event, please accept my apologies if I've hurt your feelings. My actionable suggestions which you inquire about were originally and clearly defined in related section headed "Anti-communist prejudice", which you might care to refer to. Those who've followed attentively / participated in the relevant discussion thus far should have no problem in understanding the pertinence of this present thread.
For the edification of Moxy above: I'm not trying to change anything "this time", as you irately put it. Instead, I'm still pursuing my earlier endeavours (see section Anti-communist prejudice, and later comment re Eurocentricism somewhere else above and other closely inter-related discussion about improvement of the lead). I'd proposed inclusion in a lead paragraph of the fact that the Allied side was actively supported by communist-led resistance groups around the world. My associated edit of the lead, (following Moxy's order of "don't put tags, just fix it") was rapidly undone and reverted by Nick-D. Further obstructionism from various other editors were to the effect that resistance was not communist-led, that resistance support was not worth mentioning because resistance was non-existent or negligible, and that I must provide sources to support any position to the contrary. I've now done all that. Take it or leave it. I'm outta here. Communicat (talk) 15:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I propose to split the issue onto 2.5 parts:
  1. Was the contribution of the partisan movement as whole into the Allied war efforts big enough to be mentioned in this summarystyle article? (of course I exclude Yugoslav partisans, who in actuality was a serious fighting force that tied down considerable Axis forces, and Polish resistance; both of them do deserve mention)
  2. Did Communists play a leading role in the partisan movement?
(and one subquestion): What about pro-Axis partisans?
IMO, the problem is that the dispute is mainly focused on #2, whereas I still am not sure if we need to discuss partisan movement (except Yugoslavs and Poles) at all (due to its relatively low military contribution), and, if we decided to do that, why should we restrict ourselves with pro-Allied partisans only.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:17, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
@communicat: 40 minutes between your post and my response can hardly be seen as a "rapid response" for a high traffic article like WWII. Also, this is not the first time you have been changing posts after responses to the post, so while in this case it was not very problematic, the pattern is seriously worrying me indeed.
@communicat: If you think this is part of another thread you should include it to that post. Treating the whole of a talk page as a single topic discussion smells a lot towards claiming ownership. The interested uninvolved editor should be able to respond to each single thread, and your claim that involved editors will understand goes against the idea that everyone can edit (THE main idea of Wikipedia).
@PaulSiebert, I agree with your arguments. Resistance movements were in general ineffective (although their after-war claims are rather more grandiose; with the exceptions of Yugoslavian and early Polish attempts).
More in general Even if communist resistance was perhaps stronger than most, they tended to be isolated in Western Europe and not leading. In the Netherlands (which did not have a strong resistance movement) for example, fundamentalist Christian and communist were among the fiercest resistance movements (as for both Nazism went against their core beliefs) but they did not like each other at all; let alone that either conceded leadership to the other. Arnoutf (talk) 17:33, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Arnoutf, you are irritating and disruptive. Please stop your personal attacks on me, assume good faith, and get on with the more interesting business of improving the lead. Communicat (talk) 18:29, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
To Paul: Not being an intelligence agency, it's impossible for me to quantify "proof" of extent of either non-communist or communist partisan contribution -- just as, by same token, it's not possible to quantity contributions of individual regular armies (see discussion at above section "US, USSR at top"). Besides, aside from actual fighting and tying down of enemy troops, how does one quantify the value of every shot-down Allied pilot rescued, every assisted escape of POWs, every piece of intelligence provided to Allied high command about enemy movements and disposition, and suchlike non-combatant resistance activities?.
The sources I've provided above and preceding, when considered collectively, indicate substantial communist-led resistance contribution that merits mention as proposed. Proposal does not suggest any fullblown discussion, just half a sentence, after identifying key belligerents, saying "Allies were supported by mainly communist-led partisans around the world". Polish resistance numbers are far outweighed by collective numbers of communist partisans.
I concur, Polish resistance was multifarious, was not fully communist-led, (and even included anti-communists and very active Jewish resistance group not usually mentioned in the literature). Chinese communist guerillas, by contrast, were very large and prominent factor in overall resistance equation. (To quote SSJW article, communist guerilla force estimated at more than a million combatants, and see also McArthur and Truman quotes provided above).
I think that answers your (1) and (2) above. As for pro-Axis partisans: now there's a relatively tiny and highly insiqnificant partisan grouping (including post-war nazi White Wolves) certainly not worth mentioning in summary. Communicat (talk) 18:29, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Excuse me but your remarks and actions in this and other threads are uncivil, assuming bad faith, and disruptive at the same time towards me to a degree none of my justified questions and remarks are. So basically in the light of your most recent response I cannot say more than SHUT UP you re going all that is Wikipedia by accusing me of all the thing you are doing to me at least several magnitudes more.
Basically, I never assume bad faith, but if the editor is confusing rather than illuminating whatever (s)he is suggesting that is sometimes hard to keep to. In the light of this large and over-arching article you have done nothing to suggest that the rather marginal resistance movements (except perhaps (notice this word) Yugoslavian partisan) require any mention in the lead, so my suggestion would be to stop listening to any suggestion you make and leave the lead as it is (which is an actionable suggestion). PS in my experience editors blaming other editors being the first in a discussion to explicitly question good faith of other editors tend to act in bad faith in 99 out of 100 cases......... Arnoutf (talk) 19:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Get a life Communicat (talk) 19:10, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Which is a personal remark and has no relevance whatsoever to improving this article and as such has no place on Wikipedia. But of course, if you cannot distinguish between discussion here and personal remarks towards other editors perhaps you just do not understand the meaning of Wikipedia. Arnoutf (talk) 19:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I understand perfectly your meaning, which is to impede progress by disrupting the cohesiveness of this section which, as you might have noticed, is headed "Communist-led resistance". If you (and others) don't like the message, don't shoot the messenger. If you want to attack me personally, you're invited to make use of my talk page. Otherwise, please cut it out and do some productive work here. Communicat (talk) 19:57, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, ignoring all personal attacks against my person, I will ask again these productive questions:

  1. What are your specific suggestions with this, as from your posts it is not clear what you think should be added/changed?
  2. Where exactly in this (rather large and broad) article do you think such information should be added?
  3. You seem to suggest that communist resistance should be added to the lead, is this correct?
    • In earlier discussions and in the present thread it has been discussed that resistance in general (including communist resistance) has only been of minor influence on the war effort (with the notable exceptions of Poland and Yugoslavia). If you indeed suggest to add resistance, or even more specifically communist resistance, I have not yet seen arguments to ustify that (but of course I may have misinterpreted you and you were not referring to the lead).

(PS Your edit summary is rather rude (quote) "reply to disrupter" and proves you do not assume good faith, if you do not see that you are at least a significant part of the problem you have with other editors you really should consider another forum than Wikipedia) Arnoutf (talk) 20:42, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It's implicit in my suggested changes to the lead that appropriate changes / deletions / additions / corrections should be made to the main body of article wherever highly relevant and important article mainbody topics/subject matter have either been overlooked, understated or are otherwise absent from the article. For instance: role of signficant communist partisan resistance apart from Yugoslavs in supporting Allies; precis of belligerants' military strategies; decolonisation in aftermath of war; etc. I've several times already justified / substantiated / argued the rationale for all those changes in preceding discussion, together with supporting references, citations etc. I'm very sorry but I just don't have the time or energy to repeat myself yet again. (I've had to repeat myself for a couple of other editors already). If you're really interested and have the motivation, (I'll forgive you if you don't), you'll find everything you need to know in the current, unfortunately complex and convoluted discussion dispersed over the several inter-related sections above (i.e. flawed overview; editing dispute; anti-communist prejudice; communist-led resistance etc; and probably some more, unresolved and already in the archives, together with my undone and reverted edits concerning some of this. Communicat (talk) 22:56, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
If you put it like that I can only say that all my reasons why I think your suggestions go too far can be found somewhere in the British library. To paraphrase you "If you're really interested and have the motivation, (I'll forgive you if you don't), you'll find everything you need to know in the books and other resources of the British library".
Of course you can also just accept that repeating a point where you did not get agreement again and again and again will not change the majority view that your suggestions should not be incorporated in the article. Just like you, me and other editors do not have time or energy to keep repeating the problems with your suggestion.
Simply put, if you want to reopen a discussion that has ground to a stalemate, it is up to you to open it as a comprehensible stand alone discussion. Otherwise other editors cannot be expected to give any useful responses to your new thread. Arnoutf (talk) 09:36, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I'll wait another few days, if all foregoing outstanding issues are not resolved thoughtfully by then, I'll request mediation and declare a dispute tag at head of article. Communicat (talk) 11:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
"All foregoing outstanding issues" - this is not workable. Each discussion point needs to be solved on its own merit (as I have said repeatedly before)
The dispute as it is seems to be the case of a U-1 consensus not to change, with one editor having a problem with that. If you put up a dispute tag make sure that you create a single talk page section that contains all relevant information to discuss the dispute (i.e. a section that does not point back to other threads).
Please read WP:mediation Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy. Basically you will need agreement of the other editors here to take it to mediation. Arnoutf (talk) 17:11, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Re your I can only say that all my reasons why I think your suggestions go too far can be found somewhere in the British library. That's not good enough. Please cite your sources, just as I've taken the time and trouble to do. Re your "paraphrasing" of "my" comments: "... you'll find everything you need to know in the books and other resources of the British library" ; please don't put words in my mouth, and/or don't alter the meaning of what I've said to suit yourself. And don't presume to have the authority to speak on behalf of "other editors", e.g. your "... me and other editors do not have time or energy etc ..." PS: If I stop responding to your silly remarks from now on, please don't interpret my silence as agreement with anything further that you might still feel the need to say to me. Communicat (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
To Paul: In view of your silence thereto, I take it that you concur with my posting of 18:29, 14 August 2010 (UTC) above, which responds to yours of 16:17, 14 August 2010 (UTC) above, before Arnouft started butting in with raving diversions. Communicat (talk) 17:48, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Please, explain what concrete text do you propose to add into the article (with sources), and explain where it is supposed to be inserted.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes please do as most of my "raving" have been requests to do just that. Give a concrete proposal supported by reliable sources, a specific location where to change the text, and a rationale why you think it should be so? Arnoutf (talk) 18:27, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Re Paul above -- Concrete text proposed: "Allies were supported militarily by mainly communist-led guerrilla movements around the world." (Source: Myron J. Smith, The Secret Wars, Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1988). To be inserted in lead, after identifying key belligerents, either in present lead or in new lead currently under revision (?). Communicat (talk) 19:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
There are three things. First of all, we have argued above that in some countries communist movements were leading but not in all, probably not even in the majority. (Note that I think communist movements were important in many countries, but your statement goes much further claiming that it was by far the most important (based on the word "leading") in the vast majority of countries (based on the word "mainly"). Secondly, most of the resistance were not guerilla but much more modest resistance movements. Thirdly, around the world needs rephrasing as that would imply there were important communist lead resistance movements in the majority of countries, including those of the Americas, Africa and Oceania. Arnoutf (talk) 20:11, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe it is premature to speak about this modification of the lede until at least one para about partisan resistance is added into the main article. Let's speak about modifications of the main article first.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:07, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Wish someone had said that in the first place, at the outset of topic. Would have saved lots of time and trouble. Thanks however for granting / recognising that one-paragraph mention should be made of partisans world-wide. That should dispel what could otherwise be construed as racist view that only white Europeans were capable of resistance. Comment by other editor is blinkered and effete, and can easily be countered if/when appropriate edit time arises. Communicat (talk) 12:10, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Agreed that we first have to work in partisan resistance before it can be part of the lead, which should indeed be a summary of the main text.
After we have created such a paragraph where there is much more space for information (e.g. where resistance movements were effective and where not, where they were communist led, where not etc (with references of course). We can revisit if and what should be in the lead about resistance movements, and whether the whole issue of communism is still relevant once we have contructed a main text about resistance movements.
The section "impact" or possibly the lower level section "occupation" seem relevant for resistance (although for Yugoslavia and China that were never fully occupied this may not be the best. Arnoutf (talk) 13:57, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Admin pse do not archive; not dormant; may be subject to dispute mediation Communicat (talk) 11:44, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Note to mediation committee + parties

Mediation request was filed to mediation committee on 21 August 2010. Request cites intertwined threads on discussion page. Some of the threads have since been moved to archives on 22 August. (Archiving dormancy procedure was suddenly reduced from 20 days to 15 days and now 10 days). Movement of relevant sections to archives may make it difficult and/or complicated for cohesive mediation request assessment and parties' participation, if any, relative to past discussion as referred to in request for mediation.

For ease of reference, the interrelated dispute elements are contained either wholly or partly under various talk topic section headings, either archived at archives #38 and #39 or still on this current page (as at 22 August), are as follows in more or less chronological order:

Link to www.truth-hertz.net

WW2 origins of Cold War

Flawed overview -- para 3

Anti-communist prejudice

USSR and USA at the top?

German surrender

Editing Dispute -- expressions of interest invited

Duplication / cleanup

Lead: problems

Communist-led resistance

At this late stage...

Communicat (talk) 17:26, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh you did make a mediation request. You probably should have told so here so that the involved parties can tell the committee whether they think mediation is in order.
I had a look and found your request here: Wikipedia:Request_for_mediation#World_War_II_.28overview_article.29
The following editors were mentioned as involved parties, so if your name is here, have a look at the link above.
  1. Communicat , filing party
  2. Nick-D
  3. Arnoutf
  4. Paul Siebert
  5. White Shadows
  6. Moxy
  7. Hohum
  8. Habap
  9. Binksternet
I will do so soon Arnoutf (talk) 17:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
The mediation committee itself notifies named parties within two days Arnoutf, likely to give them time to see if the request is valid. See WP:Requests_for_mediation/Guide#After_filing. (Hohum @) 18:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I use to notify users if I involve named persons myself, but fine I'll wait for their invitation then. Thanks Arnoutf (talk) 18:09, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
For those who might have missed it, here is Observation by mediator: "I would express my disappointment at what seems to be the acutely partisan nature of the editing of this article ... it saddens me to know that there are articles with regular contributors who are either so devoid of a collegial outlook or who have not yet reported such a disruptive user for administrative attention." (AGK 20:10, 24 August 2010) Communicat (talk) 19:54, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Just asking

What triggered the Japanese to attack the Pearl Harbor? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.255.215.222 (talk) 13:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Good question. The article didn't tell about that clear enough. The attack was triggered primarily by the US oil embargo. I fixed that, and now the article says:
"German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in south-east Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, while refusing to hand over political control of the colonies. Vichy France, by contrast, agreed to a Japanese occupation of French Indochina.[1] The United States, United Kingdom, and other Western governments reacted to the seizure of Indochina with a freeze on Japanese assets, while the United States (which supplied 80 percent of Japan's oil[2]) responded by placing a complete oil embargo.[3] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in Asia and the prosecution of the war against China, or seizing the natural resources it needed by force; the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[4]"
Thank you for pointing my attention at that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:32, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Page numbers

Page numbers are really helpful for verifying what a writer actually wrote. If the "entire book narrates content of relevant sentence text", then, surely the thesis of the book is in a sentence or paragraph on some page. Provide that page number so that people can go to the book, look and say, "Ah, yes, he does say exactly that!" Otherwise, you force someone to read an entire book and decide if they interpret the author's meaning in the same way. You'd never be able to submit a paper for a history class and simply footnote it with "entire book". --Habap (talk) 21:56, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Could you say the ones that are missing because i see page numbers all over.Moxy (talk) 22:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Up in the aftermath section, Communicat cites several sources without page numbers, as he did in this diff, stating that page numbers are unneccessary because the entire contents of the books support the statement, kind of like the British library comment above. --Habap (talk) 01:21, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
O i see ..It has been removed ...yes we should have them for a 501 page book. (as as per Wikipedia:Citing sources#Identifying parts of a source) ..they also need to be in the proper templates. However that said this can simply be fixed in most cases and if not a tag added as done here will do or replace it all together......i Dont believe they should be removed (if not replaced) because an editors is not up to speed on layout...However this additions are part of a greater issue as see above, that i have backed away from some time ago...Moxy (talk) 02:02, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
What is the current situation here? If I understand it correctly, Moxy says my aftermath contribution should remain. HoHum, took the trouble to fix the ISBNs for me, before Nick-D butted in, so he appears to be implicitly in favour of the sentences at issue. Nick-D of course disagreed at the very outset and tried to strangle it at birth. Others seem noncommital. I would like to see it remain, since IMO it's a key aftermath issue. So, what to do? Should I take the time and trouble to provide relevant page numbers without pondering the probability or possibility of the whole thing being undone again? (as per usual) Communicat (talk) 18:38, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Please ask Moxy to confirm your interpretation of what you think was said. I read Moxy's response as a context free statement that edits should not be merely removed because page numbers are missing. However, page numbers were not given as reason for removal, so in my view Moxy does not comment on this specific removal. Of course Moxy would have to clarify. The same with HoHum, correcting stuff can also be noncommited and in my view is not support of a sentence (but also no clear objection). Here we need HoHum to ake the interpretation explicit. Arnoutf (talk) 19:25, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
You are correct in your assumptions of what i was saying Arnoutf ...thank you for making it clear for others :) ..Moxy (talk) 03:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Fixing the ISBN links meant that I prefer to have working links to enable easier verification of sources. I made more explicit suggestions regarding content at the time - In essence, I think a sentence mentioning the US and Soviet attempts at grabbing Nazi scientists is relevant, but not exactly essential, the rest was too much detail for an overview about WWII. (Hohum @) 22:29, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Describing other editors actions as "butting in" and to "strangle at birth" is not assuming good faith, and hardly helps to repair relations. (Hohum @) 22:34, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Communicat and fringe-POV pushing

(copied on Talk:World War II and Communicat's talk page. Please primarily respond on Talk:World War II)

Having reviewed the Arbcom case filing and the talk pages here and at the Strategic Bombing article that Communicat also was intensively involved in last month, I am intervening as an uninvolved administrator.

Communicat - It is evident that you are disrupting the article here. It is also clear that you do not understand or will not agree to abide by our policies on neutral point of view (one of our core / pillar values), and to some degree our policy on original research. Out of those flow our policies against overly emphasizing minority viewpoints (WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE). You are steadfastly fighting against normal community application of our reliable sources policy here and attempting to insert fringe viewpoints.

We are not here to post original research or be a battleground or advocacy site for new ideas. We are an encyclopedia. We reflect consensus (in verified, reliably sourced external publications and references) of what the world has already concluded.

Additionally, Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It's an encyclopedia that everyone edits together. We value both our core policies and values of community discussion and working together to improve articles and build a better encyclopedia. Using process and discussion as a stick to attempt to push radical change, ignoring all feedback given and refusing to discuss in good faith, is disruptive activity. It's inherently disrespectful to the rest of the community when you do that.

Nobody has yet complained (that I noticed) on an administrators noticeboard such as WP:ANI, however there's no reason for us to wait for that to happen. The conversations with you have gotten increasingly nasty, you're attempting to use process as a stick (the Arbcom case filing), it's evident that you don't agree with Wikipedia's core values and aren't respecting the community here. The short description for all that is "Disruptive editing". Disruptive editing is a blockable offense here on Wikipedia. We don't do it lightly, and we are particularly aware of not wanting to club minority viewpoints into submission or interfere with content discussions arbitrarily. But there are limits, when things become disruptive.

Communicat - you are nearing or at the limits for acceptable behavior now. I would like to warn you that you need to at least tone down your behavior and reconsider how Wikipedia works, and whether your goals in coming here match our goals and core values of producing a neutral encyclopedia. If you continue down the confrontational course you currently have set, I or another administrator may well block you from editing for disruption. That is not my goal or intention. It would be much preferable if you reconsider on your own, and continue engaging in a less confrontational and more collaborative manner. I don't ask or expect you to change your historical opinions. But you can hold them and edit collaboratively and collegially, cooperating with everyone else here.

If you chose not to, again, this behavior is disruption, and disruption is blockable.

I respect your interest here and want to be honest here. You deserve the chance to stay engaged and do so in a more cooperative manner, and to work with us to understand what our community standards are and how to do so. If you are willing to listen to criticism going forwards you are likely to succeed within Wikipedia.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest and for your comments as an uninvolved administrator. On the face of it, there seem to be some things with which I am not entirely in agreement, but I shall study your posting more carefully and respond accordingly in due course. In the meantime, just to ensure that we're both on the same page, I'd be much obliged if you could clarify for me the following:
(1) Am I correct in assuming that you are not a formal arbitrator or formal arbitration reviewer?
(2) Am I correct in assuming that you have no forml history or military history qualification? (Your userpage does not mention any).
(3) I'm a bit baffled. You refer to "intensive" contributions that I made to Strategic Bombing article. I have no recollection of any such contributions, with the exception only of a brief submission quite a long time ago, around maybe six or more weeks back, citing author Max Hastings. Can you kindly clarify specifically which other of my contributions in that article, if any, you are referring to? (I shall meanwhile endeavour to study the bombing article and its editing history myself). 19:39, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
No, I'm not on Arbcom. I'm just one of the many (thousand-ish) administrators. Very few issues go to Arbcom, most are handled within the community or by administrators.
Formal training in history, military or other? No, not particularly, though I'm reasonably well read in the field.
The reaction to your source and edits at Talk:Strategic bombing during World War II#Link to www.truth-hertz.net were relatively enthusiastic. I count 14 edits by you to the talk or article there. It was for a while your major point of contribution. If you disagree with the description as "intensive" that's fine; the wording is immaterial to the larger issue.
Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:12, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Not to be overlooked - general breakdown in collegiality

In response to the Arbcom case filing, AGK has noted that there has been a breakdown in collegiality on the article talk pages in general, and he made the comment with a wide brush and about many not few contributors.

Having reviewed here (and the Strategic Bombing article) I also wanted to agree with AGK's comment on that issue. Our policy on collegial, civil, and collaborative editing expects that people will treat the community here - and all editors within it - with respect and by default assume good faith about their contributions. Even in the face of significant disagreement, we expect people to continue to be graceful and cooperative.

This is necessary to keep the community and collaborative aspects of Wikipedia working smoothly.

I can point to recent edits by Communicat here on this talk page which show the breakdown. I could also list at least a dozen, probably as many as 50 other diffs by other editors between this page and the Strategic Bombing talk page. This breakdown was general and not one-sided.

We expect better of everybody. The point of having uninvolved administrators is that when things start to break down, you come get us, and we work to calm situations down. Since we're not already tangled up we can be fair and independent arbiters. We are here to keep the encyclopedia working, the community working, and to keep the big picture in mind. Writing a great article tomorrow is no solution for communications degrading so that we can't write good other articles next week and into the future. We need to be able to do both.

Please keep this in mind. I don't think I need to do any warnings for personal attacks; but there's a wide range of behavior that corrodes and degrades the community and makes it harder to solve problems and move forwards, that falls short of personal attacks.

Thank you. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:08, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for these and the above comments George - I agree completely. Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I shall respond in due course, upon receipt of your valued answers to my queries at bottom of above section "Communicat and fringe-POV pushing". Communicat (talk) 19:39, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
PS: Please don't get me wrong where I inquire above regarding your formal historical qualifications. I'm not trying to be a smart-arse. I'm trying to establish the level of your understanding of historiography, so that I may choose my words appropriately in responding to your comments. Some technical and advanced concepts may be involved. Again, thank you for your interest and concern. Communicat (talk) 22:49, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
For the purposes of this discussion, I am not a professional historian (military or otherwise) but have on the order of 250 military history books in my personal collection, have read a number more, have done some original source research in documentation and interviews on points of interest. I am a defense and military analyst part time. I am also reasonably well read in geopolitics and modern military policy areas. I have not studied the process of doing academic or analytical history at a university, per se. If you're referring to technical concepts of the process of doing historical research you need to explain it in general terms for the well-read, not professional jargon. If you're referring to the output materials, in terms of actual military or geopolitical history writings, you can use the terminology found in them and assume I can follow. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Okay. Thanks. A man after my own heart. Your book collection is noted with envy.
I've checked the strat bombing edit history, and see you're referring in fact to a few edits of about six months ago, not last month as stated. The intensive editing to which you're possibily referring was even before that, concerning article Western Betrayal which morphed into "Controversial command decisions, World War II" and which was then AFD'd and reverted back to original Western Betrayal by Nick-D et al -- despite well-founded objections from the late Tony Judt who described my edits at that time as "valuable work". (His view was supported by at least one other respected editor). The beginnings of current furore can be traced back to that time. Of which more later. I'll soon be making my position clear, when I have some breathing space. Communicat (talk) 01:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

At this late stage...

Recently, Comunicat has been lamenting that attempts to change this article "at this late stage" are futile. Checking the history, I found an old copy of the article from late 2001. That was only the oldest copy still available. So, the article is probably MORE than 10 years old. Communicat, my friend, we're not at any more of a "late stage" than we were in January when you started editing. This article will continue to be edited as long as Wikipedia exists. We don't have to worry about a deadline after which no more edits can be made. The article should be continually edited and improved. We won't have a final version unless they pull the plug on Wikipedia. So, the removal of dubious sources and the addition of other POV sources (or, preferably, NPOV sources) can and should continue, with vigorous attention to detail for many years to come. Once more into the breach my friends! --Habap (talk) 14:20, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

If you're gonna quote me, please do so in proper context and with relevance. My "lament" pertains to topic entirely separate and different from commendable revision of lead as currently underway. Said revision has my full support. In fact, and modesty aside, I believe it was I who instigated the currently ongoing revision in the first place (see topic sections Flawed Lead etc originated few weeks ago, somewhere above). So I'm certainly not complaining about any "late stage" in that particular context. Get over it.
As for your stated intention to add "other POV sources etc", good luck to you. My own experience has been that when any sources are submitted that deviate from the conservative / Western / mainstream paradigm, they are rejected, obstructed, or dismissed arbitrarily by certain self-styled "senior editors" using an unconvincing variety of pretexts / excuses / "justifications" etc,. The numerous marxist, Western revisionist, and other non-mainstream sources that I have submitted are all contained in foregoing sections where you can find them at your own convenience if you're really interested and want to put your bibliographic talents to good use. Communicat (talk) 20:02, 20 August 2010 (UTC) PS: The "late stage" I was referring to, and in relation to which you have quoted me completely out of context, was in fact the late stage of your entry into discussion, without your being properly aware of the facts and matters at issue. Why have you started this particular topic section here, with its curious heading, immediately below the ongoing lead discussion (to which you've evidently not contributed in any way), instead of commenting at the appropriate section in which my quote applies? Are you still busily trying to discredit me? I think so. Communicat (talk) 23:24, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Geez. I was trying to reassure you that there is plenty of time for changes, not trying to discredit you. You have sounded as though you lament any chance of making the article NPOV and I had hoped to reassure you that it is possible.
I did not include this in any of the other threads because it was intended to be a separate point and a reminder to all parties that continuing change in the article is certain and that no one should walk away out of frustration. The lamentations and despair are seen in many of the threads above. I have confidence in the editors here.
I have not contributed to discussion of the lead because I did not feel I had anything to add. As much as I like to hear myself speak, I did not feel cluttering the discussion was useful when others were handling it ably. --Habap (talk) 14:49, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Very well then. How 'bout putting your money where your mouth is? Just try coming up with some non-Western majority position sources and/or Western revisionist significant-minority position sources and/or any other sources that deviate from the dominant conservative mainstream position, and you'll see how the Old Guard reacts. Communicat (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Looking at what you've previously posted, it appears that much of it was rejected only because of the link-spamming of Winer's book.I will begin looking to see if I can find any of the works you cited in that 8 August entry. --Habap (talk) 21:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes, there's quite a lot that you've misinterpreted, and which it seems you're slowly coming around to understanding. While you're at it, have a look at the article reference to No, Kum-Sok; Osterholm, J. Roger, relating to "brutal North Korea." As the title states clearly, it's a memoir; memoirs are not allowed. Yes, I know, it was co-authored by an American journalist, but that was simply to overcome English language writing difficulties on the part of the Korean. Three down, 24 to go.
Or, if you're desperate to keep the "brutal North Korea" part, how about some balance by mentioning the brutal American-sponsored covert assassination programme that killed thousands of South Vietnamese civilians, viz., "Operation Phoenix". Or the American-inspired brutal massacre of around one million civilian communist suspects in Indonesia? All very well documented. No sourcing problem. Communicat (talk) 23:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Topic still active. Don't archive for the moment. Tks. Communicat (talk) 17:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Himeta's quote

One of the sources mentioned by Communicat as dubious was the quote on casualties from Mitsuyoshi Himeta that came from Sharon Linzey's speech to the Kurdish National Congress of North America with a citation directly to the study by Himeta. One down, 26 to go? --Habap (talk) 21:23, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Source so-called "dubious" in so far as it does not conform to alleged requirements demanded by some wiki editors in respect of "self publishing" without peer review mechanism. You will note that Kurdish National Congress is self publisher and apparently without academic peer reviewers. Meantime, before jumping the gun (again), how about waiting for committee to decide whether or not mediation request is admissable? Communicat (talk) 22:09, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Restoring Habap's full talk entry, with "Kurdish National Congress" as posted. Communicat, do not refactor others' talk posts, not to correct facts or spelling or anything. Per WP:TPO, only very specific changes can be made to others' comments. Binksternet (talk) 22:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Refactoring was not intentional. I'd meant to copy and paste words, but in late-night haze I copied and cut by mistake. Thanks for fixing & pointing it out to me. Communicat (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
A better reason than self-publishing for removing it was that it was not a direct quote of Mitsuyoshi Himeta. If you search for Mitsuyoshi Himeta on the internet (I happen to use dogpile for my searches, since I prefer it to google), you'll find more than a dozen speeches and papers that all use the same quote from him. From a historian's perspective, it's better to quote directly from the source (i.e use a primary source) than to use a secondary source for what he said.
I'm trying to fix the article. You've stated that one of the problems is that there is a double-standard for evaluation of sources. I think that there isn't and it's just sloppiness. I think you said there were 27 self-published works quoted. Since they are likely dubious sources, I am trying to find them and replace them with sources that are not dubious.
Do you want the article improved or do you want to "win" at mediation? I think our goal should solely be the improvement of the article. --Habap (talk) 14:04, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Note the subtle difference for the use of a primary source for a direct quote (as is the case here) but a secondary source to use for interpretation of these statements; as interpreting a statement is original research (but a direct quote is not). Arnoutf (talk) 17:05, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
"Winning" some stupid argument doesn't come into it. The whole point of going to mediation is, among other things, with a view to improvement of this and related wiki articles, as also to prevent any future fractious and time-wasting NPOV and similar disputes of this nature.
As for questionable sources, I don't have time to go into all that right now. It's a major undertaking which might or might not be handled in the fullness of time. You don't need me for that right now, if you want to make a start on your own. Maybe commence with checking out the several "Illustrated Histories", which use visuals to back up unverified and unsourced text, which text in turn is then quoted in WW2 article as supposedly reliable secondary source. I've mentioned this before; seems you missed it. (WW2 article, IMO, has vaguely similar problem: i.e. strong on visuals, fotos, graphics etc, but text is grammatically and stylisticaly a bit of a mess, even if highly sourced. All those irritating ellipses, for example).
Re Arnouft comment above: Can't make much sense of it. Rules are fairly clear in banning the use of primary sources. Communicat (talk) 19:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
No they are not banning primary source, the rules state you should use utmost care and caution to use primary sources and only use them for non-controversial facts and not analyse their content. A verbatim quote (without analysis) is clearly non-controversial as a fact (because easily verified by looking at source, whether you agree with quote or not is of no relevance). Quotes are however often misinterpreted and therefore in the specific case of quotes (without analysis) the primary source in that specific circumstance is often more reliable. For example, if I were to quote the line "to be or not to be" (without further analysis) should I source that with Shakespeare play Hamlet (primary source) or any of the hundreds of analyses of the text (secondary source). I hope you agree the sourcing to Hamlet is far superior to "my high school textbook on English literature". Arnoutf (talk) 20:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

If you have already done the hard work of identifying 27 dubious sources, listing them will be trivial, so that they can be checked, and the article improved. Thank you in advance. (Hohum @) 20:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

My apologies for introducing the terms on sourcing. It has obviously confused the issue. The speech stated that Himeta said there a certain number of casualties. Rather than providing a citation to the speech, it is much more correct to point the citation to the article that Himeta wrote, so people can read what he actually said instead of a partial quote and interpretation of what he said. --Habap (talk) 21:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
To all the above: Okay, I'll read the primary source rules again. Must have misunderstood them in relation to what user arnoutf is now telling me. Thanks for pointing it out.
Re "hard work" of identifying 27 questionable sources, no it wasn't hard work. Most were self-evident from just a quick scan. By the way, I actually said "at least 27" questionable sources. There are possibly more, if one makes the effort and takes the time to analyse in depth each and every one of the source notations. The alleged dubious sources in question didn't make their appearance overnight, but accumulated gradually and fragmentarily over a period of 10 years, and they have become so ingrained in the fabric of the article that it's gonna take a lot of time and effort to clear them up. I'm not over-enthusiastic to become more involved in such a clearing up operation at this particular moment in time because, as you can see, dissecting even just one questionable source has already accounted for the expenditure by Habap of considerable time and number of words. Imagine what it's going to be like with 27 or more such questionable sources. In fact, I'm starting to regret I even raised the matter in the first place, but I guess someone had to do it. Communicat (talk) 22:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
So, there is no list? --Habap (talk) 22:42, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
It would seem not. I ran through the sources yesterday (my time) and could only see one which appeared unreliable - I replaced it with a reference to the Oxford Companion to World War II (and tweaked the text as I couldn't verify in the several sources I checked that Hitler ordered an end to the bombing of England on 11 May 1941; the sources I consulted said instead that the bombing campaign largely ended in this month as bomber units were transferred to support the invasion of the USSR but that limited bombing of England continued). 23:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Re habap's, "So, there is no list". Read my posting properly and/or stop wasting my time. Where are all those NPOV alternative sources YOU were bragging about earlier? Communicat (talk) 19:19, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
I stated that there must be some Soviet sources written by authors who perused the Smolensk archive. I do not read Russian, so have no way of reading them. I only own Western sources, so have to get to the library to find "other POV" sources. While you have stated that it should be obvious which are the dubious sources, it would be easier for everyone involved if someone created a list and we could all go through it, removing the dubious ones and replacing them with valid sources. I recently read someone posting that NPOV was "not a lack of viewpoint, but is rather a specific, editorially neutral, point of view." --Habap (talk) 14:31, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I posted that, about POV, which conforms in all major particulars with my own understanding of the rule.
Re Smolensk, not only Russians have perused the archive. Among others, a professor of defence studies at Edinburgh university also perused them, and if my memory serves me correctly, his findings are quoted on the basis of a personal interview in Winer's now apparently banned online book. So unfortunately that quote can't be used. But I digress. Yes, I agree, it would be easier if "someone" created a list for the purpose stated. But that someone is not going to be me at this time, because the list and the arguments for and against each case on its own individual merits would take up more time and trouble than I can presently afford to volunteer. Not to mention all the further discussion and debate necessary if/when any discovered reliable Soviet sources are ready to be appropriately reworked into article text. I'm snowed under with other, equally challenging projects in my other life.
What I can do, however, is feed you with bits and pieces of existing questionable sources, as I've done with a few already, (including the various "illustrated histories" already mentioned in talk). How about this one (ref 32): Chaney, Otto Preston (1996). Zhukov. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 76. ISBN 0806128070. It is a biography. Biographies are disallowed. As for the incorrect spelling of Georgy (Zhukov) in the aftermath pic caption, and also in the infobox, it should in fact be Georgi (source Georgi Zhukov, Reminiscences and Reflections, (2 vols), Moscow: Progress 1985), and no I'm not citing in the text a biographical source, just trying to prove spelling, because I'm fairly confident the author knows how to spell his own name. The text sentence to which said ref 32 refers is also incorrect in so far as part of it is contextually digressive and irrelevant (viz., "avoiding sacking"), and the rest is incorrect in so far as Zhukov was not only involved in defence of Moscow, but played a central role along the entire Russian-German front (or "Eastern" front as it is generally and confusingly referred to in the West), and other fronts too (e.g. Russo-Japanese front).
I correcteed the spelling of Zhukov's first name a few days ago, which you then reverted. If I remember correctly, you said it first had to be corrected in another article somewhere, before being corrected in the main article. So, I'll leave it for you to do the honours with correcting it wherever it appears, which will save me the time of having to look for it in other articles which you're already familiar with. (I still can't get my head around the concept that an inaccuracy in one article needs to be repeated in another for the sake of consistency. But that's just me.) Communicat (talk) 21:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
PS I also use dogpile. I've seen they list several items near the top about Soviet historians relative to recent stuff about role of USSR in the Pacific, which I don't have time to follow up. Might be worth pursuing if you have the time and interest. Communicat (talk) 23:04, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
PPS I will await your response to above, and also your response to Korean memoir source referred to at 23:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC) in section "Late stage" above, before proceeding to provide further instances of questionable sources on a case-to-case basis.
I would of course have been happy to prepare a fully itemised list with explanatory notes for mediation committee, had my mediation request not been blocked by Nick-D and others opposed to open mediation in this matter. Your voluntary initiative to go into the breach alone is appreciated by me, for one. I'll do my best to help on a case by case basis until such time, if any, that it becomes essential to provide a full, detailed and itemised list. Communicat (talk) 16:40, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Zhukov source

As mentioned, I will be going through sources to attempt to remove any judged dubious (or potentially dubious) and posting my thoughts and ideas for changing them here. Above, Communicat mentioned the biography of Zhukov, the relevant comments collapsed here for easier reading:

Communicat on the Zhukov biography
How about this one (ref 32): Chaney, Otto Preston (1996). Zhukov. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 76. ISBN 0806128070. It is a biography. Biographies are disallowed. As for the incorrect spelling of Georgy (Zhukov) in the aftermath pic caption, and also in the infobox, it should in fact be Georgi (source Georgi Zhukov, Reminiscences and Reflections, (2 vols), Moscow: Progress 1985), and no I'm not citing in the text a biographical source, just trying to prove spelling, because I'm fairly confident the author knows how to spell his own name. The text sentence to which said ref 32 refers is also incorrect in so far as part of it is contextually digressive and irrelevant (viz., "avoiding sacking"), and the rest is incorrect in so far as Zhukov was not only involved in defence of Moscow, but played a central role along the entire Russian-German front (or "Eastern" front as it is generally and confusingly referred to in the West), and other fronts too (e.g. Russo-Japanese front).

I correcteed the spelling of Zhukov's first name a few days ago, which you then reverted. If I remember correctly, you said it first had to be corrected in another article somewhere, before being corrected in the main article. So, I'll leave it for you to do the honours with correcting it wherever it appears, which will save me the time of having to look for it in other articles which you're already familiar with. (I still can't get my head around the concept that an inaccuracy in one article needs to be repeated in another for the sake of consistency. But that's just me.) Communicat (talk) 21:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I have not been able to find anything in either Wikipedia:Sources or Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons that disallows biographies as sources. However, I'm not sure that the sentence belongs anyway.

They also prevented the sacking of experienced Soviet military leaders such as Zhukov, who would later play a vital role in the defence of Moscow.

As to the spelling of Zhukov's personal name as Georgi, citing his autobiography is not particularly helpful as he'd already been dead for 11 years by the time it was printed and likely never saw that printing. Since his name is spelled Гео́ргий in Russian, it might be transliterated as "Georgi", "Georgii", "Georgy" or "Georgiy", depending on who does the transliteration and in what era (for example, I prefer Mao Tse Tung, but modern transliteration usually spells it Mao Zedong). You are correct that the reason to not change it here is for consistency. If Georgi is, in fact, incorrect in commonly accepted transliteration, then I would urge that it first be done on his own article, where people who understand the issue much better than most of us will be more likely to be involved. Otherwise, we end up with people changing the spelling in a variety of articles in ways they think are correct without establishing consensus among editors who are focussed on the issue.

So, I don't think there's anything wrong with the source (since I can't find anything that says biographies are disallowed), but I'd like comments from others on whether that sentence should remain or not. --Habap (talk) 16:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks your thougthful comment. It might have been useful to stick to the relevant thread so that cohesion (what there is of it) is retained without topic becoming disjointed and things falling apart, (as seems to the unfortunate and perhaps unavoidable custom, but never mind). I should have said autobiography, and not biography. I recall having seen something in one of the many rules re primary sources, about autobiographies per se not being allowed. If I misinterpreted rule, my mistake. Communicat (talk) 17:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
My reason to break it out was the hope that it could be discussed separately, since it had nothing to do with the section header (Himeta's quote) and we could open this discussion, concentrate on ONLY Zhukov, complete the discussion of ONLY Zhukov and close it when it was complete. Discussing 15 different things in the same thread confuses many people, including me. I await comments from others about the value of the quote in the article....
Autobiographies are not disallowed either. Wikipedia:Autobiography states that you shouldn't write an autobiography on Wikipedia. --Habap (talk) 18:38, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
The WP biography is Georgy Zhukov so this article should use that spelling. Stuff from autobiographies has to be used carefully. Zhukov was a major figure in the war, so anything he had to say about it is significant, but anything in any autobiography tends to be self-serving. 67.119.3.248 (talk) 19:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
AFAIK, many Russian names have no unique spelling in English. For instance, the name of present Russian president is spelled as Dmitry [1] (10,100,000 results) and Dmitrii [2] 8,930,000 results. Therefore, I don't think we have to stick to some single transliteration here. More importantly, I am not sure that the idea that Stalin planned to sack Zhukov before the war is supported by mainstream sources, because the Great Purge essentially had ended by this time. In my opinion, it would be more correct to say that in Mongolia Zhukov obtained reputation and experience which appeared to be extremely useful in December 1941.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:14, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
You're more knowledgeable about the historical stuff than I am. About the spelling, I think it's best to use the same spelling that the biography article uses, among other things to wikilink it easily. If you think the biography uses a non-best spelling, the right approach is to try to get the biography renamed, by explaining your reasons and proposing a page-move on the biography's talk page. 67.119.3.248 (talk) 08:36, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Brutal North Korea

In the 'late stage' discussion above, Communicat brought up the use of "brutal" to describe the North Korean regime and the sources used. In the article, it reads:

Soon after these conflicts ended, North Korea invaded South Korea,[238] which was backed by the United Nations,[239] while North Korea was backed by the Soviet Union and China. The war resulted in essentially a stalemate and ceasefire, after which North Korean leader Kim Il Sung created a highly centralised and brutal dictatorship, according himself unlimited power and generating a formidable cult of personality.[240][241]

The two sources in question are:

[240] Oberdorfer, Don (2001). The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Basic Books. pp. 10–11. ISBN 0465051626.
[241] No, Kum-Sok; Osterholm, J. Roger (1996). A MiG-15 to Freedom: Memoir of the Wartime North Korean Defector who First Delivered the Secret Fighter Jet to the Americans in 1953. McFarland. ISBN 0786402105.

In Oberdorfer's book as seen on Google books, he does NOT identify North Korea as a brutal dictatorship in the pages cited. In fact, he talks more about the corruption in the south. While I agree with the assessment of the North Korean regime, it's not what Oberdorfer says. I wouldn't be at all surprised in the memoir (which, as noted in the discussion on Zhukov, would be allowed) identified the regime as brutal. If we wish to use that characterization of the regime in this article, it might be prudent to find a more neutral source than a defector's memoir. --Habap (talk) 19:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

have np with the removal of term "brutal".. as the term regime on its own generally implies harsh rule anywas to most readers.Moxy (talk) 19:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Remove it since it isn't supported. (Hohum @) 19:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
More radical solution. Remove whole Korea war section, as the aftermath section is way too long as is (see aftermath discussion), and this was 5 yrs after the end of the war. Arnoutf (talk) 19:34, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. In my opinion, we have to agree about the duration of the period covered in the Aftermath section, e.g. 5 years. If events fall into this period they should be included, if not, they should be omitted. In connection to that, the para about the Korean war can be removed and the 4th para can be modified as follows:
"In Asia, the United States occupied Japan and administrated Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands; the former Japanese-governed Korea was divided and occupied between the two powers, which eventually lead to Korean War and de facto division of the country onto two independent states. The Republic of China reclaimed Taiwan."
The latter correction is needed because Taiwan was a part of Qing Empire, so this territory was not occupied and annexed, put re-occupied and re-annexed.
Regarding "Mounting tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union soon evolved into the formation of the American-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliances and the start of the Cold War between them.[5]" it is unclear for me why this sentence is placed into the para starting with "In Asia...", because neither NATO nor Warsaw Pact are situated there. I propose to move it into a separate section and expand.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:46, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Also see my suggestion for restructuring aftermath section at Talk:World_War_II#Restructuring_Aftermath_section Arnoutf (talk) 21:15, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Habap: you've misquoted me at beginning of this section. The "brutal Korea" issue that I raised in the original thread was with reference only to Oberdorfer, and not Osterholm as wrongly attributed to me in your miquotation. Please read my postings properly. Saves having to repeat myself later. Many thanks. Communicat (talk) 22:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
To quote you directly, While you're at it, have a look at the article reference to No, Kum-Sok; Osterholm, J. Roger, relating to "brutal North Korea." That was what that link was pointed at. You need to re-read what you've written, because you did NOT point to Oberdorfer, but to Osterholm. The pedantic tone of your post is not helpful, especially since you are incorrect about what you wrote.
That said, because both citations appear for the same sentence, I felt they both deserved attention. --Habap (talk) 23:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes, yes. So in my haste I confused the two names in my otherwise correct (and not pedantic) observation that you'd misquoted me at the beginning of this thread. Nobody's perfect. Please don't misquote me again, and I'll try likewise. Communicat (talk) 00:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
I didn't misquote you and there is no other content in your observation that could be "otherwise correct". You are being pedantic when you say Please read my postings properly. Saves having to repeat myself later. The way you chide the rest of us for 'failing to read your posts properly' implies that we are silly 12-year-olds who didn't bother to read your posting. I did read it. In your haste, you did not. --Habap (talk) 11:32, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Quick fix: How about just getting on with the removal of "brutal Korea" as already agreed by everyone above including yourself? Communicat (talk) 16:55, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Never mind, I've done if for you and substituted something relevant. Communicat (talk) 17:36, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Looks like good changes so far. --Habap (talk) 01:50, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

The "brutal North Korea" and the source MiG-15 to Freedom is a prime example of the crappy POV that is constantly pushed to Wikipedia. I am not saying it is not true, it just has no place in this article. What should be given emphasis is the "division and occupation" of Korea and Europe. The Korean War is not a result of WW II but of the unsolved division and occupation.

I do not think we need to put any time limit on the aftermath, the Allied occupation of Berlin only ended in 1990. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 22:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Expanding on my previous comment on the lack of referencing; The brutality or otherwise of NK, referenced or not, doesn't seem relevant to the subject of this article. (Hohum @) 01:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Re: "the Allied occupation of Berlin only ended in 1990" So what? There is still no peace treaty between Japan and Russia, the Roman occupation of Cartage lasted for centuries, etc. Every global event has long lasting consequences, however, if we will list all major consequences of WWII, the section will be megabytes long.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Date of Start of war

Incredible that Wiki still has the wrong date for the start of the war and even blocked the page from updates. Germany invaded Poland on September 1st. This was not a world war, it was simply a German invasion of Poland. Had the UK remained neutral this state of affairs could have continued for many months. In actual face what happened was - after some considerable polictical discussion on September 2nd a British ultimatum was issued to German. War began at 11.00 and the following speech to the nation was made at 11.15. "I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11.00 a.m. that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. No other possible date can be considered as start of the war. So please change this, the war began on September 3rd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.251.207.11 (talk) 22:48, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. The War began at dawn on September 1 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. The UK only entered the war a few days later. It was still the same war but with the UK intervening on the side of the Polish.--White Shadows Your guess is as good as mine 22:52, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia reflects what reliable sources generally say the date is, not what opinion of a particular editors is. The article already notes that there is disagreement, and gives the generally used dates in historical publications. This has been argued ad nauseam, read the archives. (Hohum @) 00:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Reply to "uninvolved" intervening party

Georgewilliamherbert, in response to your postings above of 23:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC) & 00:08, 26 August 2010 (UTC), I am unable to accept your intervention is that of a neutral and impartial party.

Your stated intervention, at the very outset, alleges "fringe-POV pushing" by me, thus supporting unequivocally the claims of other involved parties, as though those claims are a settled and unquestioned premise, which they are not. In so doing, you have prejudged the issues at hand, and you obviously support the views of those opposed to me, which views I contest. Nor, before jumping to your own wrong conclusions, have you invited my point of view in relation to the partisan editing of the article as complained of by me.

Moreover, you have not familiarised yourself with the full recorded background to this dispute, which runs into many thousands of words. Nor have you exhibited any discernable desire to establish why the editors opposed to me are not prepared to compromise their unyielding positions or to consider alternative historiographic positions, which positions are at the heart of the dispute.

In addition to prejudging the matter and exhibiting bias and prejudice even before acqainting yourself with my side of the story, you have come into this dispute with all guns blazing, in an intimidating fashion and issuing loud threats to ban me. For these and other reasons, you have made it very difficult for me to assume good faith on your part, or to engage with you in reasoned discussion. Communicat (talk) 21:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I spent about four hours reading and looking at diffs; I'm not sure how much more familiar you want or expect. Most admins would have waded in with far less due diligence.
If this were purely about historical disputes and you had provided adequate high quality references and resources to the dispute we would not be here. I intervened due to behavioral issues, and in the process concluded that you're not providing adequate evidence to establish that you aren't working from a fringe viewpoint.
You are welcome to ask additional uninvolved administrators to intervene here. However, I am what you have now. Administrators aren't disqualified by dint of having established an opinion on the incident or behavior they are responding to. They're only disqualified if they have been personally involved beforehand either with the articles or with the persons involved in a significant manner. In this case, I have not been previously involved in any significant way in either manner.
Your statement that you find it difficult to engage in reasoned discussion is somewhat at odds to our perfectly reasonable exchange where you asked additional questions of me. You asked entirely appropriate context setting questions and I think I answered entirely reasonably. I am perfectly happy to keep discussing reasonably; your response above is somewhat discouraging but doesn't rule out ongoing constructive engagement.
If you would like to continue arguing the underlying issue of whether you represent a reasonably mainstream or sufficiently well supported minority viewpoint on the underlying history issues, please feel free to do so. That discussion should ideally be on article talk and not article edits per se, until you are able to find some consensus on the points you are supporting. I would especially like to see more survey evidence and a widening of your presented references and resources, rather than continued arguing over single sources. Good information usually is multiply reliably referenced, with multiple reinforcing sources in areas of both factual data and critical commentary regarding the conclusions. There has been a lack of healthy breadth to the source discussions here so far. If you'd like to open it up that would be an entirely reasonable way to discuss things going forwards.
Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:22, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Your effort is very much appreciated, and from your balanced, nuanced comments (with fair criticism on all parties involved) the first time around it became clear you spent a lot of time looking through this murky issue. Thanks for all the effort. Arnoutf (talk) 15:38, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I stand by my statement above. But I shall endeavour to try just one more time. If there's no constructive and conclusive outcome within 48 hours, I'll refer the matter to arbitration.
Firstly, it would he helpful if you could acquaint yourself with the fundamental precepts of historiography. (There's a useful summary of the subject near bottom of Cold War page. This might obviate future allegations of "fringe POV-pushing" directed at me. But to save you the trouble in the meantime, suffice it to say that historiography basically concerns METHOD. The method of revisionism (or "fringe POV-pushing" as it is falsely described by some editors and by yourself) is basically the revision of pre-existing historical accounts. This method in military history relies frequently on declassified official documents that were previously classified secret and withheld from the public domain. Now, these are my main points:
(1) WP:FRINGE, (and probably other wiki rules as well), states that: "In general, Wikipedia should always give prominence to established lines of research found in reliable sources and present neutral descriptions of other claims with respect to their historical prominence (and) ideas should not be excluded from the encyclopedia simply because they are widely held to be wrong." Please note that the rule does NOT state: Wikipedia should always give prominence to established WESTERN lines of research found in reliable WESTERN sources." Yet this is exactly what the existing WW2 article does do. Not even one non-Western source is cited among the 340 odd sources cited. This reflects clear POV bias through omission, which may or may not be due to personal political preferences, which have no room in accurate and objective editing.
(2) Moreover, not even highly authoritative Western revisionist works such as Professor FH Hinsley's, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its influence on Strategy and Operations, (4 Vols), London: HMSO, 1977-1988 are to be found in the article's source citations. Perhaps this is because Hinsley's work contains some uncomfortable truths, which ultra conservative individuals may find difficult to accept. The same applies to other reliable Western revisionist accounts, a number of which were submitted by me as sources, which were then summarily rejected as "commie propaganda", or "there's not enough space for them", or even more outrageously, the submission of the sources was simply subverted and/or reverted, as was the case recently by Nick-D (see Aftermath section above) while I was in the very process of uploading them.
(3) Your assertion is false that I have not provided "adequate high quality references and resources" and/or that this is not "purely about historical disputes." The record shows exactly the opposite. Whatever the true reason or reasons for the rejection and/or subversion of the sources provided, and the deeply conservative and partisan nature of the editing of the article, it is clear to me that something needs to be done about this situation, which impacts negatively on the editorial quality of the article. That is why we are here. Communicat (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
You already referred this for arbitration - they said "no". My investigation and response to you were as the initial "no" answers were coming in, and was noted over there. They're aware of what's going on.
Again:
The problem here isn't (just) viewpoint, it's how you're trying to argue it. It's evident that you don't currently understand Wikipedia community standards for evidence, discussion, and consensus, nor the usual process for getting more reviewers involved.
Note that the way you're trying to argue it would be problematic even if the viewpoint was unambiguously mainstream.
Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:51, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Reply continued

(1) To return to your assertion: If this were purely about historical disputes and you had provided adequate high quality references and resources to the dispute we would not be here.

Below is list of NPOV and highly reliable reference sources from a wide spectrum, submitted either as supporting text references in various contexts and/or in support of various relevant discussion topics with a view to suggested textual changes, improvements etc. All of these below were rejected out of hand, and sometimes with insults. (To save time and possibly more wasted effort, alphabetical order, ISBNs, italics, page nrs etc are not shown here but are available if ever necessary at some stage):

  • Stewart Richardson (ed.),The Secret History of World War II: Wartime Letters and Cables of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, New York: Richardson and Steirman, 1986,
  • Tom Bower, Blind Eye to Murder: Britain, America and the puging of Nazi Germany, London: Andre Deutsch 1981
  • Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1988,
  • Richard Harris Smith, OSS: Secret history of the CIA, Berkeley: University of California Press 1972,
  • EH Cookridge, Gehlen, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971
  • Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation, Yale University Press: 2003.
  • Ian Trenowden, Operations Most Secret: SOE, the Malayan Theatre, London: Wm Kimber, 1978
  • Association of Asian Studies, "Anti-Japanese Movements in Southeast Asia during World War II". Abstract (1996) http://www.aasianst.org;
  • Yoji Akashi, "MPAJA/Force 136 Resistance Against the Japanese in Malaya, 1941-1945".
  • Association of Asian Studies. Abstract (1996) http://www.aasianst.org.
  • Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, London: Faber, 1971.
  • Spenser Chapman, The Jungle is Neutral, London: Chatto and Windus, 1948;
  • Ian Trenowden, Operations Most Secret: SOE, the Malayan Theatre, London: Wm Kimber, 1978
  • Bradley F Smith and Elena Agarossi, Operation Sunrise: The Secret Surrender. New York, 1979.
  • R Harris Smith, OSS, Berkely: University of California Press, 1972, pp.114-121
  • Vladimir Petrov (ed.), Soviet Historians and the German Invasion, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press 1968
  • Y Larionov, N Yeronin, B Solovyov, V. Timokhovich, World War II Decisive Battles of the Soviet Army, Moscow: Progress 1984,
  • Gar Alperovitz, "How Did the Cold War Begin?" in Walter LaFeber (ed.) The Origins of the Cold War 1941-1947, New York: John Wiley 1971;
  • Alexander Werth, Russia at War 1941-1945, New York: Avon 1965:
  • Norman Davies, Europe at War 1939-1945, London: Macmillan 2005;
  • DF Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins: 1917-1960, New York: Random 1961
  • Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare (online link to US Military Corps archive of previously banned books).
  • Bruce R Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980
  • LS Stavrianos, "The Greek National Liberation Front (EAM): A Study in Resistance, Organisation and Administration", Journal of Modern History, March 1952.

(2) Regarding your latest posting above: You already referred this for arbitration - they said "no". The arbitration request you refer to was in fact exclusively in relation to a matter of process viz., procedural infringement by one Nick-D, which is a completely separate and different matter to this current matter that we are attempting to discuss. I am free to lodge a new request in relation this separate and different matter, should it become necessary. I repeat, if a constructive and conclusive outcome is not forthcoming within 48 hours (of this posting), the matter will be referred to arbitration, since mediation and subsequent attempts at discussion will by then have visibly failed and/or become unmanageable.

(2) Your The problem here isn't (just) viewpoint: Agreed. It's a problem of content and what I suspect is politically biased resistance to certain content and to the free flow of information, viz., it is also a matter of discipline, integrity and ethics.

(3) Your It's evident that you don't currently understand Wikipedia community standards for evidence, discussion, and consensus, I understand them perfectly, and also the manner in which they are sometimes arbitrarily conducted in violation of wiki standards. In particular I understand that consensus may not involve just the editors concerned, but includes also the wider wiki community, such as arbitrators if necessary as a last resort. And beyond the wiki community there is a wide international community of professional historians, researchers, writers and history institutions, such as George Mason University which recently published the widely quoted article by historian Edwin Black titled Wikipedia: The Dumbing Down of Knowledge.

(4) It is noted that you have not yet addressed the key issues raised in my long, earlier reply above, in particular the absence of parity in reference notation list. It is not necessary for me to repeat them here again. On the face of it thus far, however, it seems you are unable to come up with any convincing response to that specific and central issue.

(5) There is also the small matter of numerous questionable and/or disallowed sources that exist in the present reference list, which one disagreeing party to my mediation request cited as a subject that I'd failed to discuss properly with other editors before going to mediation request. I have since attempted to discuss the duious nature of those sources by providing a number of specific examples. The record shows that my attempt at discussion on that particular issue has so far been met with editorial silence, which I interpret as concurrence. Communicat (talk) 11:49, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Communicat, I guarantee you that arbcom will reject a new filing from you (with the present set of facts) just like they rejected the last one. I've been around a lot of arb cases and I know what it takes to get one started, and you're not even 10% of the way there. The next step if things don't work out here is wp:Requests for comment (RFC). You can start one of those, but I don't think it would go in your favor. You're just completely wrong when you say you understand Wikipedia standards for evidence, discussion, and consensus "perfectly". You've read a bunch of policy documents as if they were statutes, a common newbie error. They're more like grammar manuals, descriptive rather than prescriptive, often in conflict with each other, and not always accurate. Learning Wikipedia practices is like learning to speak a language. You can't do it by reading grammar manuals. You instead have to open your mind and spend a lot of time actually speaking the language and participating in the surrounding culture. 67.119.3.248 (talk) 01:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Refactored addition: Behaviour / Collegiality

(1) Re intervening party's claim: "It's evident that you don't currently understand Wikipedia community standards for evidence, discussion, and consensus, nor the usual process for getting more reviewers involved."

The editing rules I've followed are contained in WP:CONS which I quote verbatim: "Someone makes a change to a page (any page other than a talk page), then everyone who reads the page has an opportunity to leave it as it is, or change it. When two or more editors cannot reach an agreement by editing, consensus is sought on talk pages ... (the editing process) begins with an editor boldly changing an article ..."

That is precisely the understood procedure, which I have followed and obeyed in spirit and to the very letter. A certain milhist editor / administrator, after I made brief changes (to lead, and to aftermath sections), immediately undid and reverted the changes before allowing other editors to agree or disagree to the change, or to voice any opinion whatever. This is a clear violation of the consensus building process as clearly stated and understood. The editor / administrator then obstructed and disrupted my further attempt to clarify and improve the changes submitted. The content and meaning of the changes originally made by me were only revived after I was compelled to complain loudly and repeatedly.

Whether or not there exists a formal milhist cabal led by one administrator is open to conjecture. However, there certainly exists a small and apparently influential clique of reactionary milhist individuals whose editorial actions and omissions reveal a consistent pattern of blockage and disruption. There is also evidence in the archives of apprehension by other individual editors who fear they will be blocked or intimidated if they contradict or cross swords with the alleged clique. And there is further evidence in the archives of at least one other (non-Western) newcomer whose contributions based on (non-Western) reliable sources were dismissed out of hand as "communist propaganda".

I have been rebuked and threatened for metaphorically describing my own experiences with the milhist clique as comparable editorially to being set upon by a pack of wild dogs. If anyone can come up with a suitably polite alternative metaphor for describing the phenomenon of being singled out as a newcomer, and then being attacked from every angle by people intent on tearing him apart, then I'd like to hear that polite metaphor.

I am not intimated by the repeated threats of banning, blocking or whatever that I've received. Banned editors can still have recourse to the arbitration committee, and of course there's always the open line to Jimbo Wales.

This refactored addition to the discourse between myself and intervening party does not in any way alter the spirit or the meaning of the preceding exchanges between that party and myself. And in any event the intervening party has not yet responded in full and on a point-by-point basis to my preceding submissions. So refactoring should be permissable. If not, I'm posting a duplicate of this addition under a separate section head. Hohum (or whoever) is free to delete only one of whichever posting is deemed inappropriate or unnecessary. Communicat (talk) 19:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Dear Communicat, in my opinion, it would be better if you, instead of blaming other persons in various sins, simply presented your version of the text here on the talk page. Try to do the following:
  1. Explain what concrete article's paragraphs need modification;
  2. Propose your versions of these para.
Although you probably have done that somewhere on this talk page, your posts are too wordy, so it is somewhat problematic for me to follow your main idea. Please, for the beginning try to choose a single piece of text which does not satisfy you, propose your own version (with full references and, if necessary, with quotes, just to demonstrate that you transmitted the source's main idea correctly), wait for the response from others and, when all criticism is addressed, implement proposed changes. After that we can pass to other parts of the article. --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:55, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
To Petri who cleaned up refs layout: You meant well, but it was hardly worth the effort. Refs were posted solely for the record, and to counter interventionist's assertion that I'd not provided "adequate high quality references." Anyway, looks nice now. Many Thanks.
To Paul: Yeah, I know my above posts are too wordy, but it had to be done that way, seeing as discussion had and was still becoming increasingly unmanageable and not helpful to the record. All the intertwined threads were being archived out of sequence relative to the order in which they were originally posted and subsequently evolved etc., and some kind of coherent record is necessary for my purposes.
I need to clear up some macro policy issues before considering any further involvement with that article and some of its editors. In any event, I think I've already achieved my objective with what I'd set out to do initially, which was to precipitate extensive reworking and improvement of the lead (decolonisation etc etc), which was previously in a parlous state and long overdue for a facelift. You did well in reworking all that stuff. And maybe I've managed also to precipitate some improvements to Aftermath section, but we'll just have to wait and see exactly what is to be the outcome there (re denazification etc). Those preliminary few sections are probably the ones most likely to be read before the readers' eyes glaze over. Only the most dedicated soul would be sufficiently motivated to read the rest of that excessively overlong article. Thanks for your comments / suggestions, anyway. Communicat (talk) 20:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Communicat, ISBN's are not important if you give the title and author of a book, since we can easily find the ISBN and other publication info ourselves from a book site or search engine. The most vital thing, and the thing which you leave out in every case, is the page number of a citation in the book that supports the argument you are making, preferably along with a quote of up to a sentence of two showing the exact words with which the book backs you up. Can you supply those please? Saying "the whole book supports my argument" is simply not persuasive here, and will get you nowhere. You have to give the exact chapter and verse or else it's WP:OR. If you've already supplied page numbers and are saying they weren't received appropriately, please supply diffs of your edits with the citations, and of the responses that you're taking issue with.

You also misunderstand how arbitration works. Your requesting arbitration on an issue like this is like a newcomer to the city of London getting in an argument with his neighbor about a spilled drink, and then on not getting satisfaction, marching straight off to Buckingham Palace and asking Queen Elizabeth sort it out. Her Majesty is simply (almost) never going to look at any disputes between subjects unless every possible attempt (negotiations, police, courts, and ballot referenda) have been made to solve them some other way, a lot of people have looked into it and given their own conclusions, and there is still widespread disagreement about what to do. (Note that when one person A says "X" and everyone else says "Y", as seems to be happening here, that's not widespread disagreement, that's general agreement on Y even if person A doesn't like it.) If you refer a matter to arbitration, the first question the arbs will ask is "what else has been tried to solve this problem?" and unless they see a long list of prior failed attempts, they won't take the case.

GWH is doing a good job administratively (you can think of admins as the equivalent of the local police) and has also offered to get into a content discussion with you (he is more than qualified for this, as he knows a ton about military stuff). Have you read our guidelines on reliable sources and citations and our No original research policy? You should be familiar with those before getting in an argument like this.

I think your easiest solution is to switch to editing some other topic for a while, til you have more experience. GWH and others are right in observing that the editing atmosphere for this particular article is not very good. You are potentially a good editor but this place takes a while to get used to. You could also look for help from more experienced editors, perhaps from wp:Adopt-a-user. Finally, if you really want to pursue dispute resolution, the next step is probably to file a Request for comment. That asks for editors from other areas of wikipedia to look in on the issue and say what they think. In this case it's a safe bet that they will say roughly the same things that Arbcom, GWH, and others have already been telling you. 67.119.3.248 (talk) 22:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Additional comment I just noticed that Communicat says s/he had an edit or proposal rejected that cited something by Harry Hinsley, a respected WW2 historian. I don't think anything by Hinsley should be rejected as "fringe", though there may have been other reasons to think the edit was misplaced in the article. Communicat, the way to make a claim like that is to include a diff of the edit. The debating style around here basically requires including diffs of anything that you attribute to another editor that you're taking issue with. If your statement doesn't have diffs, it looks like you're presenting opinions without evidence. With the diffs, it's much easier for others to tell whether your complaints have merit. 67.119.3.248 (talk) 07:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
A search of this page and the archives shows that Hinsley has not been rejected, and no concrete edit supported by Hinsley has ever been suggested on the talk page by any editor. Using the article revision history search feature, I couldn't find a reference to Hinsley all the way back to 2003, so it seems unlikely one has ever been included then reverted.
Anyone is free to suggest a concrete edit, with references, but complaining that particular sources aren't used without suggesting an actual edit is pointless IMO. There are, no doubt, hundreds of reliable WWII sources that aren't used in this article. (Hohum @) 13:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Both of you miss the point completely. Please read my posting properly, which concerned editors' oft-stated aversion / prejudice towards "revisionist" sources. Same editors evidently don't understand the historiographic meaning of "revisionist", which they derisively misinterpret as "commie propaganda", and Hinsley was referred to by me as an example of revisionist work (since Hinsley is certainly not a commie propagandist). The absence of highly relevant and authoritative Hinsley from article's source notations is also a good exmaple of the poor standard of sourcing / bias through omission, or whatever is the cause of said omission. Whereas, by contrast, we have a plethora of dubious questionable sources citing e.g. Kurdish Association of North America, and so forth. See relevant thread —Preceding unsigned comment added by Communicat (talk • contribs) 17:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
The word "revisionism" (in a context of history) has two meanings: the reinterpretation of orthodox views, or Denialism. Whereas denialism is hardly appropriate to this article, reinterpretation of old orthodox views must be included into this article, because majority of existing mainstream historical concepts were revisionist in the past. However, before making any edits it is necessary to demonstrate that these revisionist concepts have already become at least significant minority views.
One way or the another, the way you want to achieve your goal is hardly satisfactory. You are trying to convince everyone that you are right and only after that you are going to propose something concrete. Although this way seems to be shorter and easier, you can see by yourself that it leads just to endless discussions, which are more relevant to someone's talk page, not to this page. Please, try to propose some concrete text. I am sure that that will be a way out of an impasse.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Full circle: Thanks for now conceding that revisionist accounts "must be included in this article", whereas before you were saying "there's no room in this article for revisionist accounts." But never mind. There's also the small intellectual challenge of accepting that what might be perceived in the West as minority position can and is at the same time perceived elsewhere as significant majority position.
Re your Please, try to propose some concrete text. That's exactly what I been doing repeatedly the past, together with sources from established lines of research, and it was either blown up in my face or derisively strangled at birth as "fringe POV-pushing." A lot of thought and labour went into my proposed changes, sourcing etc etc. So, rather than having to go through all that again, (and to have it yet again mauled to death by those who fiercely resist change), it seems to me that the only practical way out of this impasses is via rapid and impartial arbitration, from which we all might learn a thing or two. Communicat (talk) 19:31, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Incidentally, I have in fact tried the user-talk page route a few times. It was met with stony silence. Communicat (talk) 19:45, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


(edit conflict) Communicat, responding to some of your points above:

  1. You wrote: "A certain milhist editor / administrator, after I made brief changes (to lead, and to aftermath sections), immediately undid and reverted the changes ...". As mentioned before, in Wikipedia dispute resolution, allegations like that are worthless without diffs. If you want anyone to look into it, you have to give the diffs of the actual edits you are referring to. I already pointed to the help page about making diffs, but here it is again: WP:DIFF.
  2. Your other allegations of people being intimidated, disrupted, dismissed, etc. are also worthless without diffs. I'm sorry but that's just the way it is. Even people sympathetic to you and willing to give you a hearing are not going to read through 40+ volumes of talkpage archives to find the incidents you are complaining about. You have to give the diffs so observers can examine the statements firsthand without having to search for them.
  3. You also wrote "Re your Please, try to propose some concrete text. That's exactly what I been doing repeatedly the past, together with sources from established lines of research". I'd like to see a diff for that which includes a citation with a page number. I can discuss it with you starting from there. If it has something to do with Stan Winer's "Between the Lies", you either have to establish notability for that book or (probably easier) find a better-known author with a similar viewpoint. I'm no WW2 expert but I think you'll do a lot better trying to insert something cited to Hinsley than cited to Winer.
  4. I'm sorry I misinterpreted your statement about Hinsley. I thought you meant that you had submitted an edit cited to Hinsley and had it rejected, a complaint worth investigating. You were actually complaining that other people hadn't put anything into the article citing Hinsley, even though you had made no attempt to do it yourself. I overlooked that interpretation because it didn't occur to me that anyone might make such a ludicrous complaint. The way it works is if user X (that would be you) wants the article to include material citing Hinsley, user X is the one expected to find and add that material. Paul Siebert's advice is very well taken and you should try to absorb it as well as you can. If you can write a concrete proposed addition based on Hinsley, that's great, or at least worthy of discussion. Otherwise, you're completely on the wrong track complaining about Hinsley's absence from the article.
  5. Georgewilliamherbert (GWH) is an experienced and respected admin who does a lot of on-wiki DR (dispute resolution) work. He is doing a good job offering to engage with you about content and help you make good contributions. He is not going to ban or block you improperly. Admins in general don't do improper blocks very often, because they have to know what they're doing in order to become admins at all, and improper blocks get the blocking admin slapped around a fair bit. Most blocks are proper even though the blocked person often thinks otherwise. Actual improper blocks (they do happen sometimes) usually get sorted out at a level far below Arbcom. For that reason, appeals to Arbcom or Jimbo that say "I was blocked improperly" rarely succeed. Successful appeals involve the blocked person agreeing to modify their conduct to not repeat whatever got them blocked. And you might as well forget about Jimbo. If Arbcom turns down your appeal, Jimbo will too.
  6. Anyway though, the disagreements here aren't yet anywhere near the level of having to talk about blocks in other than a theoretical sense. Right now it's just a tedious but basically civil conversation trying to get misunderstandings straightened out.
  7. You asked GWH if he'd had formal training as a historian. If you don't mind I'd like to ask you the same question. Wikipedia does have a number of trained historians and they are in general very skilled at evaluating sources and writing arguments based on source citations. It would be helpful if you'd also write in that style.
  8. More generally I'd really like to suggest that you (temporarily!!!) find a less conflicted area of the encyclopedia to work in. Don't you have any interests besides WW2? The problems you're having in this talkpage are mostly because you're not a very experienced editor yet, and things don't work the way you expect them to, and that gets frustrating because you see others as acting badly, but they in turn see you as a newbie with unrealistic expectations. I think if you'll find it easier to get things done in this article, if you first improve your understanding of wiki collaboration by editing other articles. Thinking you can get that understanding by reading policy documents is a classic newbie error. That's like trying to learn English by reading grammar manuals, and even telling fluent speakers that they're speaking incorrectly, by citing manuals. The result is they laugh at you. The manuals can help clarify some issues, but you really have to learn by actual practice, and it takes a while. 67.119.3.248 (talk) 00:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC) Regards,

67.119.3.248 (talk) 00:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. As for my failure to provide diffs for mediation / arbitration purposes regarding offensive reverts without offending party allowing discussion, don't worry; I have all the relevant diffs. Where I come from, my understanding is that complainant first states grievance, responding party then replies and indicates whether h/she agrees or disagrees, if the latter, then complainant files evidence, (i.e. would be diffs in case of wiki). But it seems wiki process has other rules. And even if there are rules, the rules are worthless, as you've apparently stated above.
Re your: If you've already supplied page numbers and are saying they weren't received appropriately, please supply diffs of your edits with the citations, and of the responses that you're taking issue with. Okay, the archives are full of examples, but here's a recent example submitted 23 August 2010 relative to denazification and improvement WW2 Aftermath section and still on the current talk page above, so diff isn't necessary:
TEXT AS SUBMITTED: Secret arrangements were concluded between American military intelligence and former key figures in the anti-communist section of German military intelligence or Abwher, headed by General Reinhard Gehlen, to advise the Americans on how to go about establishing their own anti-Soviet networks in Europe. REFS: Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1988, pp.42, 44 ISBN 1555841066; Richard Harris Smith, OSS: Secret history of the CIA, Berkeley: University of California Press 1972, p.240 ISBN 0440567351 OUTCOME: Quietly dropped from New Aftermath section. Finished. Kaput. Even though there was no consensual agreement to do so. In fact, consensus seemed to support inclusion of this topic. Discussion still on this current page at Restructuring aftermath section.
Thanks for your interest.
OK, I found that section. The first thing I noticed was that your proposed paragraph had five citations, but only two of the five citations had page numbers. So anyone examining the paragraph critically will immediately be on edge. You really have to include the page number in each and every citation. Second, I see that an awful lot of your remarks are written rather angrily and are about the actions of other users, rather than trying to discuss the proposed edit directly. That is called BATTLEGROUND editing and it's considered misconduct if it goes on for too long (we all engage in it occasionally so we are pretty forgiving if it's unintentional and doesn't persist). Please try to stay WP:COOL at all times. Third, there were some reasonable doubts raised about the paragraph's neutrality. Neutrality doesn't only mean that the paragraph is cited to mainstream sources, since mainstream sources don't always agree with each other, and your presentation of the source's facts may not match the source's overall viewpoint (that's why we want page numbers, to be able to check the source's viewpoint against yours). Rather, it means you've neutrally summarized the perspective you would get if you took every mainstream source on that subject (plus some minority sources), threw them all in a blender, and sampled the mix, while at the same time citing the individual sentences in your paragraph to specific sources. For a sentence like "When the divisions of postwar Europe began to emerge, the war crimes programmes and denazification policies of Britain and the United States were abandoned in favour of realpolitik." you really have to make a case that this is a wide consensus of many sources, not just one. Otherwise, you have to describe it as being the source's opinion, which is fine in a detailed article, but in an overview article requires justifying the amount of space.

Writing neutrally per the above is of course 1) quite hard to do, maybe even an unattainable ideal, and even harder in a high-level overview article like this, because you have to distill so much material into each sentence (plus you have to make the case that the topic is important enough to include at all); and 2) hard for others to recognize once you've done it, since what constitutes a neutral summary is of course a matter of opinion and can't be determined by a computer. So it's done by a consensus discussion, which means you have to develop much better diplomacy and negotiation skills than you're currently showing. Even after you've written what you think is neutral, you have to convince other people, which usually means accepting some changes that they propose. Regarding #1, you may have an easier time getting a paragraph like that into one of the subsidiary articles, instead of the main WW2 article which may not want to go into such low level details. Regarding #2, just try to relax, be less confrontational, don't threaten people with dispute resolution processes (which you will lose in anyway), that sort of thing. One way to help a paragraph's neutrality is to make it rely primarily on extremely prominent (not merely mainstream) sources, since the most prominent perspectives get the most representation under WP:WEIGHT. You can check prominence of a source by (among other methods) seeing how often it's cited by other works, e.g. through scholar.google.com. Of course that only scratches the surface--you probably know better than I do that historical research training puts a huge amount of emphasis on source evaluation. And you are still required to include some minority perspectives (not necessarily in every paragraph). This is all determined by consensus. There is not any computer formula to weigh sources neutrality, and shouldn't be, since Wikipedia is not "Botpedia". It's all about human collaboration, careful research, and sound editorial judgment, not policies or formulas. The parts of the encyclopedia that revolve around policies and disputes (e.g. partisan politics articles) are IMO basically crap and not worth reading, but this WW2 article isn't nearly that bad. So be nice. Anyway, I hope this helps. 67.122.209.135 (talk) 03:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Revisionism Consensus?

If there is broad consensus re Paul's assertion above that "reinterpretation of old orthodox views must be included into this article", then a major breakthrough will have been achieved, with possible progress on the horizon. I'd much appreciate if active / involved editors would now indicate either "Yes" or "No". If there's consensus on "Yes", I will be happy to submit a concrete proposal, text and reliable sources for editorial consideration concerning changes. "No", will imply revisionism is still regarded as "fringe-POV pushing", which is at the heart of this dispute, and discussion will be terminated accordingly. Communicat (talk) 22:53, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

in principle yes, but you have to work by suggesting or making concrete sourced changed. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 23:33, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
The article should reflect the weight of modern scholarship on the war, and I think that this has been largely achieved (though there will always be room for improvement). I'd be happy to consider and comment on any concrete proposals to revise the article's text (which should be posted on this talk page first), but this is always going to have to be a very high level article, and there isn't much room to discuss different interpretations of events - hence the reason the article is simply a description of events and doesn't discuss the causes or results of events in any detail (as there isn't room to do so here and there are multiple sub-articles for just about every sentence in the article where this is - or should be - covered). Nick-D (talk) 23:58, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
It isn't important whether you label them revisionist or not. What matters is their reliability. We don't have a quota on revisionist sources. We do have a quota of unreliable sources of zero, and for reliable of 100%. You are asking for a rubber stamp for an unknown variable, and you are unlikely to get it. I suggest that you make a concrete edit suggestion, with the sources you want, and take part in the same wikipedia processes as everyone else. (Hohum @) 00:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm perfectly willing to see a variety of non-Western or revisionist sources, provided the article stays at a high level and that the sources are reliable. However, if you bring up Winer again, I will laugh out loud and know you're not serious. I promise to keep an open mind about any other source and review any concrete proposal. --Habap (talk) 01:29, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Provisional yes. Following Pauls qualifiers that (1) revisionism should not be denialism (which in the context of war crimes of the allies is less far fetched than Paul seems to suggest), and (2) the included revisionist concepts are at least significant minority views (preferably attributed to more than 1 reliable source). Arnoutf (talk) 11:07, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Simple "yes" or "no" would have sufficed. But for purpose of this poll I'll take it as four times "yes", regardless of qualifications and preconditions attached. Two or three abstentions from other active editors noted. Loud silence from "uninvolved" intervening party, so I'll take that as an abstention as well. I'll wait another 24 hrs for any late response, then I'll take it from there. Communicat (talk) 23:23, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Um. Wikipedia is not about Black and White. If you can't follow the policy's greyness here (Arnoutf's conditions seem reasonable) then you're going to get yourself in trouble rapidly.
We've always had policy on minority viewpoints. We certainly encourage discussion of them. We also have WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOV.
If the sources are notable, meet Reliable Sources policy, and you can keep proportional balance in coverage and not singlemindedly promote fringe viewpoints (revisionist or not) then go ahead.
Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I'll take that as a "yes". WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOV are precisely the rules that I propose be enforced. Communicat (talk) 01:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I was, before you blocked me, going to provide some concrete text & reliable sources, seeing as every one polled was ostensibly in support of the view that "reinterpretation of old orthodox views must be included into this article". However, plans have changed in view of subsequent developments and arrangements. So, no concrete text and supporting refs for you. See instead new section at bottom of page. Communicat (talk) 00:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ Weinberg, Gerhard L (2005). A World At Arms. Cambridge University Press. p. 248. ISBN 0521618266.
  2. ^ Anderson, Irvine H., Jr. (May 1975). "De Facto Embargo on Oil to Japan: A Bureaucratic Reflex". The Pacific Historical Review. 44 (2): 201. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Peattie, Mark R.; Evans, David C. (1997). Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Naval Institute Press. p. 456. ISBN 0870211927.
  4. ^ Lightbody, Bradley (2004). The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis. Routledge. p. 125. ISBN 0415224047.
  5. ^ Leffler, Melvyn P.; Painter, David S (1994). Origins of the Cold War: An International History. Routledge. p. 318. ISBN 0415341094.
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