User:HG1/archive2007 2

Euthanasia

Hi, I noticed you've made some edits to the euthanasia page. I'm really unhappy with the state of the first sentence, maybe you could check it out and throw in your 2 cents on the talk page? fyi, it currently reads:

euthanasia... is the practice of terminating the life of a person or animal with an incurable disease, intolerable suffering, or a possibly undignified death in a painless or minimally painful way, for the purpose of limiting suffering.

I've tried reasoning with the editor, jorfer, but he seems determined to make his mark. Most frustrating is that he seems to be concerned about the ethics of the issue, whil I'm just concerned about good grammar and comprehensibility. This newest sentence of his is really awkward, confusing, and ungrammatical.

the way I want it is the way it was before he edited it in the first place:

euthanasia... is the practice of terminating the life of a terminally ill person or animal in a painless or minimally painful way, for the purpose of limiting suffering.

Part of the problem is that jorfer is convinced "terminally ill" shows POV, and I'm convinced it's totally neutral. Thanks, --Kangaru99 22:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it's appropriate to mention that in countries where its legal there is often a substantial body of regulations(living wills forinstance in canada are often not respected until various regulatory hudrles have been crossed). I agree we should use language that clearly shows it is not all significantly regulated in all countries that have legalized it, and that we should not use words like 'strictly' or 'enforced' as this is often not true. but I think the fact and level of regulation in many countries deserves some mention in the overview. I also respect your desire not to begin an edit war. Please Write back with what you specifically find inappropriate about my scentence. Thanks for keeping this so civil

• Jethro 82 05:04, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

You're right ofcourse the overview should mention all those things. feel free to delete my comment at least until the entire intro can be redone Jethro 82 12:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Temple Anshe Hesed

Thanks for the typo fixes on Temple Anshe Hesed. I named the article, yet I couldn't spell the name correctly in the article. Go figure! I even sent the link to a friend who is a member there and she said nothing. Oh, well. I heard there is an Orthodox community in Erie, too. Do you know if they have a deep history in Erie worthy of writing a separate article about them in Wiki? I'm part of Wikiproject Erie and am always watching for notable entities to include. Thanks again for the edits.--Pat 22:46, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Spertus Institute

A tag has been placed on Spertus Institute, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article appears to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion. To do this, add {{hangon}} on the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag) and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Giggy _U^CP 06:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Spertus Institute

An admin agreed with you and removed the CSD tag. Giggy _U^CP 22:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

thank you...

thank you for your edit on tobacco smoking...wish he user:amatulic will not undo it and call u a vandal...regardsMULAZIMOGLU 11:15, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I also thank you for your constructive edits. User:Omulazimoglu can wish all he wants, but doggedly re-adding unsourced and poorly-written opinion — without a single word of explanation for his edits — is vandalism, and gets reported as such.

Your edits are a vast improvement. However, I am now concerned with undue weight given in the article to Islamic views on tobacco smoking, given its length compared to all other sections in the article. -Amatulic 16:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Reply: Stargate Horizon

What do you mean? please give me more advice, do you think it looks like an ad for the programme? if so how do i make it less seem like that?

no im not associated with the programme, i just like Stargae related stuff (for lack of a better word)

It isn't a TV programme. It appears to be a fanfiction website - perhaps with a greater degree of immersion (or added 'meta') than normal, in that the writer(s) are writing "TV scripts" rather than straight fanfic. I've nominated the article for deletion under A7, but there may be greater problems in that the article page is written so as to suggest it really is a TV show with real actors' names listed as appearing. Regards, Bastun^{BaStun not BaTsun} 14:15, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Tobacco smoking

Hey HG! Your edits to Tobacco smoking are excellent! Nice catch! Sometimes when reverting what is perceived to be vandalism, we may not go back far enough, or in some cases even some good information may be inadvertatntly reverted. I am usually very cautious about what is being removed, but sometimes I'll come across an article with a subject that I'm not entirely familiar with...and then I'm glad thoughtful editors like yourself are there to make sure the article is in perfect post-vandalisim shape!

Nice work! And thanks for letting me know! – Dreadstar † 15:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind comments about my adding on Islam to Tobacco smoking. If you have a chance, perhaps you can explain to me about how reverts work. Is it possible to revert sections of an article, not the whole article, using the prior history? Can undo be delimited to a section? Well, you don't have to bother with this... . HG | Talk 17:34, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

And thank you for your kind response and questions! I'm always happy to help, it's never a bother! Yes it is possible to undo or revert specific edits, or a series of edits in an article. The new 'undo' button next to each edit in the 'history' tab of an article, can be used to try and undo that specific edit, it's success is dependent on there not being any conflicting intermediate edits between that particular edit and the current version of the article. One can also go back to a previous version, by going to the article's history, and editing an old revision of the page. If you do this, any changes made since that revision will be removed.

Here are some links with more detail on this subject: Help:Reverting, WP:VANDAL, WP:Vandalproof. Hope this helps! – Dreadstar † 18:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello there!

Thank you for the kind compliment and of course I don't mind the correction. (Sometimes I infer the presence of particles and prepositions that are not there and miss them - especially when I am up writing into the wee hours of the morning). Your comments at Talk:Palestinian people page on how the content of the material could be improved were also very welcome. I am holding back a bit right now on changes to let other views come in but hope to work more to improve it. There hasn't been enough stability there to allow for building. But I am hoping that will change in the days and weeks to come. Tiamat 23:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind at all. It's an insightful comment and I appreciate how you prefaced it as well. But I must admit that I am immensely frustrated and I guess it was my way of pointing of double standards. While one editor can insert sentences in his own prose that misrepresent sources (twice) without anyone lifting a finger, I can't even place a quote from a geneticist as a footnote without getting everything reverted. I don't feel that I am being fairly treated. And I do think that by and large, people's POVs are influencing their approaches to the material here, some much more than others. I also think many other things, but per your advice, I will leave it there. Thank you for everything. :) Tiamat 15:39, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey. I appreciate your suggestion and will definitely keep looking over the DNA section. While I don't have a strong science background, I've been looking into the subject rather intensively for about three months (on and off wiki). I think my latest draft is pretty straightfoward is terms of reporting the sources. I tried to make it as easy as possible for a layperson to understand. I'm sure it could still use improvement, but that's why I posted it. I'd like to incorporate it or something close into the article in the place of what's there, because as I pointed out in earlier discussions of the page it's inaccurate as it is now. And as other editors have commented, it's in terrible shape and needs copyediting. I've done that. It's taken months to feel confident enough to do that, but I have. I think it should be posted into the article and we can work from there - unless you think I need a science degree to be bold in that section. :) I don't think there's a lot of distance between the outline you raised and the version I offered, with the exception of the historical record issue which I responded to you about there. I'm sure we'll be able to close the gaps with a little give and take and the contextualization of things you think need as much. See you again soon. Tiamat 17:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

HG, again, you've made yet another excellent point about how I can engage more constructively with my talk comments. I want to be able to do that, but I am having trouble assuming good faith.

This is not my first run-in with Jayjg. Indeed, the very first time was some time before I even had an account and was trying to add some edits to an article on a political activist, which he just deleted, citing poor sourcing. I provided refs. He said the sources weren't good enough and the stuff would have been deleted were it not for another editor with an account who stepped in and restored the edit. I've had an account now for a year and a half, I use scholarly sources, I engage in discussion, I read policy and try to abide by it. But nothing much has changed in my experience with Jayjg.

I'm sure some of our problems stem from the subject matter. I'm sure you know that scholarship is often biased towards Western subjects and viewpoints. There is a paucity of material on Palestinians produced by Palestinians themselves because they don't have the stability or infrastructure of a nation-state required to support the development of different schools and disciplines.

I'm also sure that some of this also has to do with Jayjg's views. It is definitely not a "Palestinian-Jew" thang. That he is Jewish (I didn't know if he was or not, I don't really care) has nothing to do with it. RolandR (talk · contribs), MalikShabazz (talk · contribs), you, Steve and many other Jewish editors and I get on just fine. That he is a man doesn't really bother me either. Sure he displays typical male arrogance sometimes, but in the Arab world, we're used to that. :)

The problem is more that he has a very strong POV about Palestinians that sometimes interferes with his ability to give space to our viewpoints. I say this after more than a year of intensive experience co-editing with him at many many articles. There are certain red lines for him, in terms of opinions and information, and he will do everything he can to prevent them from being included in articles. I've seen stonewalling, evasion, rhetorical tricks, false accusations, uncivil comments, lots and lots of discussion with no real effort to see the other side and a tendency to delete, rather than improve upon. That's my honest opinion. You invited me to vent. I hope I didn't overstep the bounds of acceptable discourse. And once again thanks. Tiamat 20:18, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi HG. You asked me to answer two questions at the Talk:Palestinian people#Canaanite civilizations material page. Then you left a message on my talk page telling me to hold off placing comments there so Jayjg can answer. Should I not answer your questions there then? Tiamat 20:39, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

It's called sumoud. Tiamat 20:56, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

So the answer to your question is I would title the subsection Ancestry of Palestinians. I would break it into three maybe four sections: archaeological perspectives, historical, genetics, and possibly anthropological perspectives. My problem with the debate taking place on the talk page is that it focuses in on the Canaanite material without putting it into the broader debate about Palestinian identity being a modern national identity, but that it is rather commonly accepted that most Palestinians descend from people who were in Palestine before them. There is no way to prove this definitively. It is not in the purview of historians to make such conclusions really. They can only offer hypotheses. Different disciplines hold different views on the matter. The genetics evidence is fast-changing ancestry scholarship, functioning as a kind of archaeology of the human body. In any case, the consensus among geneticists is rather more clear than that of archaeologists and historians and anthropologists and it is in favor of genetic continuity. So I don't like the idea of a separate article. (We Palestinians don't really like Hafrada:) But I am open to considering the view of others. Tiamat 21:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Again, I fully appreciate your breakdown of that section. Almost all of your comments have been helpful to building a new and improved section there. Part of the problem in my opinion is that the ancestry section and the origins of Palestinian identity section need to be merged in order to give proper coverage to this topic. Indeed, per my comments above, I feel like ancestry, origins of identity and DNA should be in the same section, with sub-headings. In any case, I have stepped back from the article. I have some real life editing work to do for a professor with a looming deadline that I've been ignoring for some time now to write things here. (?!?) So, I will look over all the material article, your comments, the talk pages, do some additional research, write some prose and come back with some new ideas in the days and weeks to come. Thanks for everything. I'm hoping that when I return to work in earnest on the article that I won't be faced with the same patterns that prompted me to file the WP:ANI. Happy editing HG. Tiamat 10:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Kibbutz Gal On

I have responded to your concerns on the discussion page for Kibbutz Gal On here: Talk:Gal On. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to ameliorate the trouble. Peace. Notecardforfree 04:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of religious leaders with Jewish background

Unfortunately, this list may get deleted. So here's what I wrote, for the record:

Keep because the list concerns a notable set of people, sharing a common characteristic that is noteworthy -- admittedly controversial, even offensive -- in both scholarship, religious circles and popular culture. Jon513 raises notability but I hope he will modify his vote based on discussion above. Others have mainly focused on the criteria as vague or POV. However, terms like "religious" "leader" and "Jewish" are not vague. Yes, "Jewish" is always a controversial identity, but we deal with that all over wikipedia. We've got some good ways to clarify Jewish. More importantly, each leader is notable, so their Jewish background can be dealt with (if nec, on a case by case basis) in their main article. I think there is an underlying concern here that the list will help publicize people who many of us find objectionable, e.g. heretics, anti-Semites, "traitors to Judaism" and proselytizers. I concede that the list will include unsavory characters, but I am convinced that this list can work with feasible criteria and exceed notability requirements. HG | Talk 11:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be glad to continue the conversation here, if not at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of religious leaders with Jewish background. HG | Talk 11:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi HG

Thanks for your note. You ask a very good question. And it's certainly true that editors sometimes interpret WP:NOR as setting an "incredibly high standard," precisely in order to rule out what they don't want. I don't think that's what I'm doing in the case of this classification – "allegations of apartheid" – but I can see why it might seem that way from the outside. Consider, however, all that's being filed away under this heading. Desmond Tutu travels to the occupied West Bank, and says "It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through," and Wikipedians call it an "allegation of apartheid." OK, fair enough I suppose. I can easily imagine Tutu saying, "I was just saying it reminded me of apartheid – I didn't say it was apartheid," but close enough let's say. But then we have Tutu meeting with the Dalai Lama and saying: "We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side." Is that an "allegation of apartheid"? (That quote has been used in one "allegations of apartheid" article or another for six months now, despite my repeated objections; I note however that it was swiftly removed from the China article after I posted the AfD). For the purposes of these articles, any statement of solidarity from a South African figure is being classed as an "allegation of apartheid." And since the articles (with the exception of the Israel article) have literally no secondary sources discussing this species of verbal act, we have only the Wikipedians' subject to go by. Take a look at that line in the China article that says, "Jimmy Wales compared China's restrictions on internet usage and free speech to South African apartheid." As one editor in the AfD dryly pointed out, that's an allegation of censorship, not an allegation of apartheid. But if you look at the actual source, things get curiouser and curiouser:

The Wikipedia co-founder compared the situations in China to apartheid in South Africa in the past. During the apartheid era, foreign companies were required to choose whether to boycott the country's market or be engaged in it, he said.

"Google's argument in this area is that by being involved in China, it's better for the Chinese people than not being involved," Wales said, calling the logic "fairly plausible."

Do you see what's happened? Despite the careless phrasing of the AP report, it's obvious that Wales isn't alleging that Chinese censorship is apartheid. He's comparing the ethical decision whether or not to do business with China with the decision companies faced during the apartheid/boycott era of whether or not to do business with South Africa. He is, in short, pondering the efficacy of boycotts as a form of moral protest, and considering the China example side-by-side with the South Africa example. It's a serious abuse of common sense as well as the English language to call this an "allegation of apartheid."

At the far other end of the spectrum is something like the Adam and Moodley book, Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians, which pursues the comparison between Israel/Palestine and apartheid South Africa from ethical, historical, and pragmatic perspectives, with an emphasis on the dynamics of peacemaking. They say the two situations have similarities and differences, but their goal "above all" is to "apply lessons learned from the South African experience" to Israel-Palestine. Is this an "allegation of apartheid"? To my mind, the answer is obvious. Both to call this an "allegation of apartheid," and to classify it as a specimen of a family of verbal acts that includes Jimmy Wales' musings on boycotts and Tutu's vague statements of solidarity with Tibetans, is original research in its most elementary and unequivocal sense.--G-Dett 19:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi again HG. You're quite right that the Wales and Tutu quotes ought simply to be eliminated, and therefore aren't a good example of OR – or rather, they're an example of local, incidental OR, but don't demonstrate that the very term "allegations" is OR. But maybe I wasn't clear on the following point: I do not think the Adam and Moodley stuff constitutes "allegations" either. Incidentally, I also think the word "allegations" is simply the wrong word, WP policies and guidelines aside. An "allegation" is an assertion of facts; it implies falsifiability, and it conceivably can be proved or disproved. Properly used, it shouldn't apply to interpretations, comparisons, subjective evaluations, and so on. "There were allegations that so-and-so fathered three illegitimate children," but not "there were allegations that so-and-so was a bit of a lady's man." To be sure, "alleged" and "allegedly" are used a little more loosely....but "allegations" is the word we're using in these titles.

Anyway, all that is by-the-by. I'd prefer "analogy" or "comparison" to "allegations," but the point is, you need sources establishing the notability of the comparison. If it's become a subject in itself, it can be the subject of an article. If not, as Gertrude Stein would say, not.--G-Dett 20:36, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi HG, I'm not following the reasoning that leads you to determine that non-notability "is a non-starter." To me, it is obvious that if allegations of Chinese apartheid were notable and important, someone would have talked about them. But nobody has. They've sure talked about allegations of Israeli apartheid: *Ian Buruma, "Do not treat Israel like apartheid South Africa", The Guardian, July 23, 2002; "Oxford holds 'Apartheid Israel' week," Jerusalem Post by Jonny Paul; Heribert Adam, Kogila Moodley, Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians; Alex Safian, "Guardian Defames Israel with False Apartheid Charges," Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, February 20, 2006; Joel Pollack, "The trouble with the apartheid analogy," Business Day, 2 March 2007; "Israel Is Not An Apartheid State," Jewish Virtual Library; Benjamin Pogrund, "Apartheid? Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote"; "Carter explains 'apartheid' reference in letter to U.S. Jews," International Herald Tribune; "Archbishop Tutu, please be fair," Jerusalem Post Dec. 5, 2006; Norman Finkelstein, "The Ludicrous Attacks on Jimmy Carter's Book," CounterPunch December 28, 2006; Gerald M. Steinberg, "Abusing 'Apartheid' for the Palestinian Cause," Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2004. And so on and so on. There are literally hundreds more where those came from.

But no one has yet come forward with a single source where someone talks about allegations of Chinese apartheid. Not one, nada. I would go further than saying notability has not been established; I'd say there's pretty conclusive evidence of non-notability.

You write, "if you do a Google Scholar search (which was what I did), I'm confident you'll find that there are highly notable and substantive statements that clearly refer to (aka allege or analogize) Chinese programs."

It's an understandable fallacy, but a basic fallacy nonetheless, to conclude that because a number of notable people have used a word in a certain way that their use of that word is notable. The likelihood of falling prey to this fallacy increases markedly the less one knows about a subject and the more one is depending on search engines to provide an overview. Search engines are like gigantic prismatic mirrors. In a Pynchonian sort of clustering illusion, search engines give the world back to us with whatever's on our mind as the key repeated motif. Jay and Urthogie's article is a compilation of search-engine results, with modest little bits of original-research connective tissue threaded through and holding the little Frankenstein together (e.g., "these tensions have spilled over into the tourist industry"). Most of their results, and yours from the Google Scholar search, are from books where the term is used incidentally and in passing; except for the David Whitehouse source (which is not a reliable source), none is using the comparison as a key analytical concept.

There is, in short, simply no evidence of notability. There is another fallacy at work here, where if you talk about something enough it becomes very difficult to believe it isn't notable. But "apartheid," besides having its historically specific meaning, has become a generic term of art in human-rights discourse. It's very common indeed. Its use with regards to various issues in China is common enough, but that versatile use hasn't raised any notice in its own right.--G-Dett 22:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You seem to me to have impeccable manners, so no worries about the document dump.  :) And let me also say I appreciate what you're doing and if anyone has the intelligence, the persistence, and the saintliness to pull it off it might be you.

Now, to the document dump, which I'll confess to being a little puzzled by. Jay's four sources I've already discussed in my long "statement" on the AfD page; in short, three use the comparison in passing and the fourth is a non-reliable source. Three of the four you've given me are just instances where someone uses the word "apartheid" or "apartheid-like," usually once and in passing, to describe this or that Chinese policy. Again, you can't have an article about patterns of rhetorical figuration (or prevalence of a given metaphor) as detected by Wikipedians.

One of your four sources, however, the Chan & Alexander piece in the Journal of Migration Studies, has promise. Its thesis, like the Whitehouse thesis, is that a given Chinese policy is comparable to apartheid, and it explores the comparison in detail. Unlike the Whitehouse piece, it is an article by specialists and is published in a peer-review academic journal (as opposed to being an unpublished conference paper by a non-specialist journalist for the Socialist Worker). If other sources could be found responding to the Chan/Alexander thesis, perhaps its notability could be established, and a small article on the Chan/Alexander thesis would be warranted.

But to repeat, a bunch of quotes where various writers use the word "apartheid" in different contexts with relation to China does not amount to a topic, much less a notable one. Unless – at the risk of repeating myself – some reliable sources have noted the rhetorical trend and remarked upon it. The notable violations are of WP:N and WP:NOR.

Lastly, I think you may be mistaken – or shall we say overly sanguine – in your belief that Ideogram has conceded the great possibilities of Analysis of Hokou as apartheid. He described the suggestion as "increasingly hypothetical" and his answer was that nevertheless it was "conceivable." Well, I'll second that. Even Allegations of Chinese apartheid is conceivable. But you'd need notability. And notability, as always – per WP:N and WP:NOR – means secondary sources. Take care – in light of your note at the top of your user talk page, I hope you're not gone for long!--G-Dett 23:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello HG, In response to your question in my Talk, I have stated in several fora that using the term "allegations of XXX" de facto forfeits the possibility of NPOV, and that efforts should be made to merge the material on these articles into other articles in which context and competing viewpoints can be explored. As for the specifics of the material at Allegations of Chinese apartheid, I somewhat disagree with the honorable editor that profess his viewpoint above. Please take a moment to read the article and the sources and you will will see that after just less than 48 hrs of research (and I am not done yet) there are new and abundant sources on the subject. The material is encyclopedic and interesting and I am sure that regardless of the result of the AfD fracas, it will find a good home, eventually. If only editors could dismount their battle horses... Be well. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Re: Casualties

Hi, I apologise for not being clear - WP can sometimes have that effect :-) What I meant to say was that B'Tselem may be uncontroversial for its body count (x Palestinians, y Israelis killed), but the rest of its data is criticised and disputed, so that I would have no problem with using the former (status quo ante Timeshifter's "new edit"), but see no reason for us to include such problematic data, especially when it is still just a click away from someone interested. What I meant about 'selecting some' was that by cherry-picking some details at the expense of others, even B'Tselem's controversial conclusions are further skewed. Keep in mind that the B'Tselem estimates about combatants were not touched by me, and should remain alongside the other combatant estimates. I hope this clarified the issues, but if it didn't, feel free to drop another message. Cheers, Tewfik^Talk 21:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello HG,

I'm glad that we are progressing, but I don't feel that it is conducive to the discussion for myself or Armon to have to tolerate Timeshifter's allegations of bad-faith and incivil tone, etc., and I think it would be helpful if you could remind everyone to comment on content, and not contributors. Cheers, Tewfik^Talk 17:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks

For your efforts in this mess. I am sorry not to have responded to your queries yesterday; frankly, I wasn't keen to enter into negotiations on an AfD because I thought it would send the wrong message to the closing admin. I believed (and still believe) that straight-out deletion on policy grounds would have been the most salutary thing for that article.

Whatever the next phase (forced mediation?), I think you could play a decisive and hugely beneficial role – if you're willing, that is, to drive a school bus full of fighting children and resist the temptation to drive it off a cliff. All best, --G-Dett 14:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I am so sorry

... but I cannot participate any further. --Ideogram 15:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Your questions

I posted some comments in reply at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Apartheid#Some policy observations. Hope this helps. -- ChrisO 00:56, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Never

You never have to apologize to me. Never. --Ideogram 02:35, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! :)

Thank you for your beautiful words and warm wishes on my birthday, dear HG! I took a well-deserved one-day wikibreak and spent it with my family and my friends... and actually had a beer after months of forced abstinence! :) Of course, there's no way I'd forget about you, so I saved a great, tasty piece of chocolate cake just for you - but sorry, no beer left! Again, thank you so much for taking the time to wish me well, and have a wonderful day, my friend! Love, Phaedriel - 19:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC) While I don't recall us ever interacting, the fact that you've taken the time to dedicate me your kind words is very special in my eyes, dear HG. From this day on, let me tell you you'll always be welcome to visit me, and I'll make sure to visit you often... that's what friends do! :) xxx, Sharon

No problem

I respect you greatly. --Ideogram 03:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey

I thought you were going to bed? For God's sake, don't lose sleep over this. --Ideogram 04:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Allegations of Chinese apartheid

Hi HG, Thanks for the friendly heads up. I posted my thoughts on the issue in the AfD page.

Thanks again,

--xDanielx^Talk 02:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I added my (rather confused) comments to your proposal. :) I did as you suggested and changed "Keep" to "Keep and rename." --xDanielx^Talk 04:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		I think you deserve one of these for your very amicable behavior. :-) xDanielxTalk 08:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I like this kind of appreciation. HG | Talk

Hi HG,

I think your efforts to find compromise were very good. On the Chinese apartheid AfD, I guess there were just too many users involved in the heated debate to notice a small voice suggesting compromise, but it seems to be working out on the Israeli apartheid article. I still think it's best to settle naming disputes on the talk page, since they tend to make AfDs messy and ambiguous (e.g., I voted "keep and rename" - if my naming proposal doesn't get consensus but "keep" might, should my vote count towards "keep"? "Delete"? Neither?). But I guess the advantage is that it draws in lots of attention so that a more accurate consensus can be taken.

Best,

xDanielx^Talk 16:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Q's on AoIA proposal

Hi HG. I'll try to answer your questions, but it will be very brief and summative for now. There is general agreement that the Adam/Moodley book is of a different order than most of the other, highly polemical material in the article. Editors on both sides seem to find it valuable. If you're not already familiar with it, here's the deal: it was written after the fall of apartheid and after the breakdown of Oslo. It looks to the South African model of peacemaking both for pragmatic "lessons learned" with regards to peacemaking, and for a roadmap of what it calls "moral literacy." It is very critical of those who dismiss the analogy, and equally critical of those who use it for simplistic sloganeering. Of course human-rights abuses make their way into the discussion, but they are decidedly not the emphasis. Its angle is that of comparative politics. There are many books of this sort; as I said on the talk page, I think we've gotten fixated on A/M simply because a chapter or two of their book was easily available online. I have given some other titles on the talk page, and am just beginning to read into them now. Some of them focus on Israel and South Africa only; others bring in Northern Ireland as well.

The analogy has become a commonplace for discussions of what is politely called Israel's "demographic problem." The very mainstream and moderately pro-Israel writer Thomas Friedman has invoked the specter of Israeli "apartheid" very routinely in this respect – he calls it "the reality principle." He's not talking about long waits at checkpoints; he's not talking about human rights per se.

So, briefly, here are some dimensions of the analogy that wouldn't find a natural home in a "human rights" article:

1. The demographic and strategic problem;
2. Shifting and controversial categories of "native" and "settler";
3. The pragmatics of peacemaking (peace and reconciliation commissions, one- vs. two-state solutions);
4. appropriateness of boycotts, sanctions, etc. "Pariah" status worked wonders in bringing an end to apartheid, but has antisemitic connotations for many when contemplated against Israel.

I'll source these for you when I have a moment. The quality of the sources and the issues presented in the Israel article could be brought way, way up. There is a serious, multifaceted, nuanced, and yes controversial discussion about alleged parallels between Israel and South going on in the main hall, and then there's this crazy food fight in the foyer. Both because of heightened tensions/POV disputes among editors, and because of the vagaries of what's easily available on the internet, this article has tended to cover the food fight.

Thanks again for what you're doing; I can't imagine a better approach, or a better temperament for it than yours.--G-Dett 22:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nope

Wasn't me that put it up there, the template was already there before my edit. >Radiant< 09:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi again

Just touching base. I realized the last set of questions you put to me on my talk page went unanswered. The discussion has moved on a little since then, to the point where I am not even sure what I was being asked...but if there's something you need me to clarify let me know. Many of the title suggestions that have been made are acceptable to me. You have my permission to revise any talkpage subheadings anywhere you like. I was also thinking of doing a dummy draft of what I think the article could look like if it were to dig deeper into the secondary sources who explore the analogy (as Cerejota and I have been suggesting), and move away from the he-said-she-said format; but I won't be able to get to this til next week.--G-Dett 18:16, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Enjoy

... your break. Come back soon! --Ideogram 18:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Palestinian people

I made some changes there, adding a lot of new material while keeping in mind many of the points you raised. I have not tackled the DNA section again, but will try to do that in the coming weeks. Check it all out if you are still interested. Tiamat 15:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments on how to make the text more comprehensible to the average reader. I will try to incorporate some of those suggestions in the coming days. Tiamat 11:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Allegations of Israeli apartheid

Hi. I don't think we've corresponded before but I'd like to give you some feedback on your recent comment at Talk:Allegations of Israeli apartheid. Certainly, I agree that the discussion has consumed lots of time and effort. I happen to think that this (time-consuming effort) reflects a sense that there is still an underlying discomfort and an absence of stable consensus (in the sense of broad mutual acceptance) over the article title. You disagree and say that the current title has a rough consensus. However, you then say "attempts to change it [title] start to look like disruption" and you specifically express concern about the back-and-forth over votes. Here you've made a sweeping and negative characterization of efforts by many people, including my own efforts, in which I've invested a fair amount of time. (See next section, also Talk Archive 24.) I feel discouraged by your implication that I and various conversation partners are disruptive. Instead, I think that I and many others are making good faith efforts to resolve a difficult question. If you don't mind my saying so, you could play a more constructive role by stating your Oppose vote with policy-based reasons alone. This would enable those who choose to spend time on reconsidering the title to take into account your reasoning. In any case, I do wish you'd strikeout or remove the phrases in your statement that express negativity about our efforts. Thanks for hearing me out. HG | Talk 14:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't think we have corresponded before. I'm startled that you think that more effort needs to go into the existence/name of this article, since it appears to have been all round the houses (and has survived 6 attempts to have it deleted). To my mind, some of these discussions (and the change of name discussion in particular) are attempts to overwhelm and silence other good-sense participants. It's also been the source of what some people consider quite serious disruption.

I did not mean to impugn people generally (certainly not yourself, of whose contributions I was barely aware) as to their contributions. However, there is a hard-edge of persistent questioning of the votes of others from certain quarters. It's tiresome and intimidating (actually, it reminds me of the tactics of Socialists in meetings). I'm not sure how to bring it to the attention of the community, but "disruptive" is the word I'd use. It'd be perfectly acceptable in small doses, but when it goes on constantly (as in that one section I was looking at), it becomes a campaign to drive out good sense (very much like the tactics of the Socialists in tenants meetings I'm thinking of!).

Later - looking at your contributions on that page (but rejecting your kind invitation to go to Archive 24) I have a better idea what you're talking about. But I do *not* understand your wish to re-hash everything again. The same people/person I'm thinking of who questions every "vote" will make the same mess of anything you do. If you really, really, really want to get something done in this case (rather than helping with deletions, vandalism etc) then I suggest you create "a personal page" with each of the significant options listed, and then invite people to go there simply and solely to vote. With none of the dross and back-chat allowed in, you might provide a framework to get to something better. But make sure you provide an option "I am sick of this, the name change/deletion debate has found a rough consensus in 'leave as is', that's good enough" - because that's the only one I'll vote for! PalestineRemembered 15:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I like your idea of trying to cut out the "dross and back-chat" especially if the questioning gets to be "tiresome and intimidating." Your idea for a separate page on renaming has merit too, though I see little point in continued straw polls and voting at this stage. On the other hand, I see two strong reasons to revisit the article name. First, voting on various proposals shows that people are pretty split. The "allegations" compromise still left many dissatisfied. Second, more importantly, the current title has weaknesses in terms of WP Policy, which various proponents of the article concede. I worked on a policy-related discussion here. As I tried to tease out people's responses, perhaps you would have found me tiresome but hopefully not intimidating! If and when you have a chance to look at that discussion, I'd be curious to get your opinion. Meanwhile, take care. HG | Talk 16:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I can quite accept you have good "semantic" (?) reasons for not being entirely happy with the name of this article. However, things have panned out the way they have, most likely because it's the least worst of all the options.

The advantage of doing a "personal page" on it is that that is a permanent resource for people to see what they last voted, and change their minds if something has changed. I promise you, I *am* prepared to change my mind - but not at the cost of wading through pages of material that look increasingly like a Forum. Show me a chart of the possibilities (along with all the votes and brief comments of those going before), and I'll be very reasonable and thoughtful. But if you carry on as some people wish to do, the project is locked into vote-warring constantly. That kind of thing poisons the whole collegiate way that the project is supposed to run.

I am disappointed to see your next correspondee, Steve, canvassing you as he's attempting to do. It's very much frowned upon. Furthermore, that article is now starting on it's way up the chain of mediation, quite possibly getting to ArbCom eventually. The actions of everyone involved will likely go under a fine tooth-comb. PalestineRemembered 18:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Help needed

HG, your help is desperately needed atTalk:Battle_of_Jenin#Western_media_accept_.22massacre.22. Palestine remembered posted some quotes which obviously and glaringly dispute the claims of what he himself is saying. We are actually having a dispute over the basic meaning of his text, whcih e seems to have problems with. any help would be appreciated. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 17:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Really PR? Is this frowned upon? I didn't know that requesting the help of someone who has repeatedly and consistently served neutrally as a mediator only, was frowned upon at Wikipedia. --Steve, Sm8900 18:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know who User:HG is or what his interests are, though I must say my impression of his good sense have spiralled upwards since I first started speaking to him directly.

In the meantime, you appeared to solicit a partisan intrusion from HG - if this matter escalates (and I'd not be surprised, given some of the bizarre behaviour we've seen), then this canvassing might be considered to reflect on your attitude to cooperative and NPOV editing of articles. PalestineRemembered 21:47, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Canaanite claims

Hi HG. The more reading I have done, the more it has become clear to me that there is some evidence for a Canaanite descent for modern-day Palestinians and that this is not a fringe opinion in anthropological, historical, genetic, and even archaeological circles. For example, [this article http://nidal.com/anaccash/THE_EMPIRE_OF_THE_AMORITES_REVISITED.html] presented an the International Symposium on Syria and the Near East explains that:

The "Formative Period", ca. 1,000 BC to 1,000 AD, is the period during which the characteristic social morphology of the area was formed. The specificity, or cultural and civilizational "flavor" of the North-Western Mashriq [Syria and Palestine] was established during the "Foundation Period", but it is during the "Formative Period" that, through various processes and under many different influences, the peoples of the area organized themselves in the "multiconfessional societies" typical of the "Modern Period." At the start of the "Formative Period" it is as if we could see three "ethnic" super-groups emerging from the "Amoritic" nebulae that characterized the previous period. We could provisionally designate these super-groups as the "Arameans", the "Cananeans" and the "Arabs" (including all their various kingdoms and/or emirates). These groups then mix and mingle in various ways, and also variously interact with the successive dominant military powers until they are nearly linguistically and socially homogenized by the end of the period, but organized in the characteristic mosaic of religious communities.

I think the article needs to be more clear on the fact that the issue is largely one of semantics caused by the shifting use of self-identifying terms by people in the region. In any case, I do appreciate you feedback and will be using some of it in future edits. Tiamat 22:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Kermit the frog singing, "It's not easy being green" popped into my head for some reason after your comments which didn't dampen my enthusiasm, though I think I heard what you're saying. Summarizing dense scholarly materials in an easy-to-read format is a little challenging though, particularly on a subject that people are quite emotionally sensitive about and are apt at finding ways to disqualify as invalid paraphrasing - thus, the tendency toward quotation. Nevermind though, I'm up for the challenge as always. Tiamat 23:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi HG. You are entitled to your skepticism. My opinion on the subject is not informed by only this source (which as you correctly point out is not explicit in the claims it makes). My point is that the idea that there was continuity in the population resident in Palestine over the years is not a fringe opinion. Logically, it followed that explicit claims of descendency from earlier populations like the Canaanites, while often shied away from by scholars, are not so far out of left field within this context. It is important I think to highlight the semantic differences in the population's conception of self, as raised in the article I provided you above, but there is a general consensus that continuity of residency, mixing and intermingling was the norm, rather than the exception among the various groups who passed through Palestine. Tiamat 10:26, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement HG. I have searched for literature reviews, but the pickings are slim. I think part of the problem is the hesitancy of scholars to take up this debate due to its political implications. For example, this study on Palestinian DNA and its relationship to Canaanite and other earlier populations in Palestine was pulled from publication (an unprecendented occurrence) after complaints surrounding the political terminology employed by its authors. There are some secondary sources on this issue, which may also prove valuable to the article and the reader's understanding of how these issues relate to Palestinian identity and the conflict with Zionism over Palestine's patrimony. Tiamat 10:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)