User talk:Cimicifugia

Welcome

Hello, Cimicifugia! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking

or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! — Mikhailov Kusserow (talk) 02:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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Dark Ages

I noticed you are sending out messages to certain editors who have worked on Dark Ages in the past. Just to let you know, this is against the canvassing guideline. Thanks.--Cúchullain ^t/c 22:05, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - I didn't know that. What is the proper procedure for trying to stop a few people from dominating page with a single POV?--Cimicifugia (talk) 22:21, 26 July 2008 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Check out the page on dispute resolution. It will tell you that talk page discussion is the first step, but you'll have to be less confrontational than you've been (ie, no attacking or disparaging folks you don't agree with.).--Cúchullain ^t/c 07:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the domination, although Cuchullain is right about assuming good faith on everyone's part. I consider that the page has improved in two regards: the title shows that it is about the term, not the epoch in Western European history (or more generally), and it shows how to find the page about the epoch. This isn't ideal -- I made the same "error" you did when I first went there -- but at least it's easy, IF you happen to notice the title and link at the top. (That isn't how I read WP articles, though.)

There is a mechanism to have a page locked against editing for a period of time, until all editors who wish to do so have weighed in. I do not know how to invoke that, but persistent reversion by one or a few people is one of the grounds for it, I believe. Jmacwiki (talk) 03:09, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NYT

Hi and thanks for your major contribution to the NYT article. I see another editor has removed the section, and as one among many controversies, perhaps it had undue weight. However, I see there's an article entitled Criticism of The New York Times which is dedicated to controversies; that could be the place for it. Best regards -- Timberframe (talk) 23:13, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of The New York Times and the Holocaust

The article The New York Times and the Holocaust has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Personal essay with dicey citations.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. PhGustaf (talk) 21:43, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for deletion nomination of The New York Times and the Holocaust

I have nominated The New York Times and the Holocaust, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The New York Times and the Holocaust. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. PhGustaf (talk) 18:19, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring

Please be aware of the rules on edit warring here WP:3rr particularly the limited number of reverts.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:31, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring report

I've mentioned you here: [1]

Blocked

You have been blocked for a period of thirty hours for edit-warring on The New York Times and the Holocaust. To contest this block, please reply here on your talk page by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} along with the reason you believe the block is unjustified, or email the blocking administrator. For alternative methods to appeal, see Wikipedia:Appealing a block. -- tariqabjotu 23:25, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Cimicifugia (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

Why it is unfair to block me and why Bali ultimate should be stopped from vandalizing this article: I originally wrote a sub-section for the New York Times page on this topic, New York Times coverage of the Holocaust, and was asked by that page’s editors to boil it down to a few sentences and make a link to a new, separate page for the topic, as it was out of proportion in size to be suitable for the Times page. Fair enough. I then created a separate page. It was not perfect. It needed work, but was accurate except for small errors, easily fixed. I was expecting that other wiki contributors interested and knowledgeable about Holocaust studies would join me and put in some time and work to improve it. I am a retired professional author and I enjoy this kind of collaboration with editors. However, the only other editors who have ‘contributed’ to his page have been two or three people who seem to have followed me over from the New York Times page. Judging from their other contributions and talk pages, their interest is politics, and their mission is to prevent criticism of the Times. They have no knowledge of the subject or context for this article. This article’s topic is under the general subject of America’s policies during the Holocaust, addressing the common question of why the American public afterwards said they hadn’t known the Holocaust was happening, and the contribution of this article is specifically what the Times reported and didn’t report and why. Because of their very obvious total ignorance of the subject and any of the well-known literature on it, the editors who have been gutting this article mistook the entire entry for a personal essay and POV by myself. All I did was accurately and precisely summarize the work of the top authorities in this field. They get $25K speaking fees. Perhaps I should be complemented that the editors who want to delete or gut the page think I made this up myself, but in fact, none of it my POV. My wiki entry is fully footnoted, and crammed with quotes, and relies heavily on the primary source, the New York Times itself. The wiki editors who hate this topic claim my main source, Laurel Leff, is not valid. This actually just shows their own ignorance and political mission – see my discussion below of Leff’s credentials, which are impeccable and meet every Wiki standard. Note that I did continue through the discussion to take the points that were valid seriously and make changes to the article. I improved the original article greatly based on these criticisms. For example, I was correctly criticized for mentioning Lipstadts’s book with no page numbers, so I changed the reference to Lipstadt to be general background, merely saying she had written a book on the topic. If I am unblocked I could improve this sentence to even more accurately describe her contribution. I added links. I worked to make the language read in a more neutral way. I shortened it to the essentials. My fellow editors just kept reverting back to their own, gutted, version. You can see the quality of our two versions simply by comparing the first sentence. The editors who are undoing my article want this lead sentence:

“According to at least two authors, The New York Times coverage of the Holocaust during World War II was not as prominent as they felt it should have been. Author Deborah Liptstadt alleged the paper was particularly responsible for the press not covering the Holocaust in greater detail in her 1985 book Beyond Belief.”

Problems with this lead: A lead is supposed to tell who, when, what, where. Instead, the first phrase is polemical, starting off with their ignorant argument that only two authors are involved, and that they have personal feelings that NY Times Holocaust reporting is not as they ‘felt’ it should have been. See my discussion below, but since the two authors I used for the article are the New York Times itself and the foremost, highly credentialed and praised authority on the New York Times coverage of the Holocaust, the fact there are two main resources is not actually a problem. To repeat, the two sources are the Times and the main academic authority. Moreover, we are talking about documented, mainstream, history here, not anyone’s opinion or feelings. The phrase, “not as prominent as they felt it should be” is ludicrous and obnoxious to anyone in the field of Holocaust studies. The New York Times itself considers its coverage of the Holocaust a disastrous failure. (see below) Moreover, the second sentence is inaccurate. It was not Lipstadt who alleges the paper was particularly responsible, it is Laurel Leff. Lipstadt’s earlier book is more general, and while it cites the NY Times 200 times (according to an amazon.com search), it discusses many newspapers, and does not single out the Times. This is my lead sentence:

“On November 14, 2001, in the 150th anniversary issue, The New York Times reported, under the byline of retired executive editor Max Frankel, that before and during World War II, the Times had maintained a consistent policy to minimize reports on the Holocaust in their news pages.”

My lead sentence is far superior. It is neutral. It is factual. It tells when, where, who and what. It is the Times itself that says their policy was to minimize reports of the Holocaust. Here are the first few paragraphs of the New York Times article, their mea culpa. The author was retired executive editor Max Frankel and the title was “Turning Away From the Holocaust.” This is an exact quote starting with the Times lead sentence:

“AND then there was failure: none greater than the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler's methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe as a horror beyond all other horrors in World War II, a Nazi war within the war crying out for illumination. The annihilation of six million Jews would not for many years become distinctively known as the Holocaust. But its essence became knowable fast enough, from ominous Nazi threats and undisputed eyewitness reports collected by American correspondents, agents and informants. Indeed, a large number of those reports appeared in The Times. But they were mostly buried inside its gray and stolid pages, never featured, analyzed or rendered truly comprehensible. Yet what they printed made clear that the editors did not long mistrust the ghastly reports. They presented them as true within months of Hitler's secret resolve in 1941 to proceed to the "final solution" of his fantasized "Jewish problem." Why, then, were the terrifying tales almost hidden in the back pages? Like most ? though not all ? American media, and most of official Washington, The Times drowned its reports about the fate of Jews in the flood of wartime news. Its neglect was far from unique and its reach was not then fully national, but as the premier American source of wartime news, it surely influenced the judgment of other news purveyors.”

To paraphrase: the Times says it failed to depict the horror of the Holocaust; that this failure was staggering and shameful (“staining”);that the information was available and known to be true; that the Times ‘buried the news.” Judge my lead sentence. : “On November 14, 2001, in the 150th anniversary issue, The New York Times reported, under the byline of retired executive editor Max Frankel, that before and during World War II, the Times had maintained a consistent policy to minimize reports on the Holocaust in their news pages.” Am I lying or writing a personal essay, doing a hatchet job, or engaged in a personal POV, as those who keep reverting this article claim? Not at all. I used the word ‘minimized’ instead of “buried” in my lead sentence, since buried is more inflammatory and minimize seemed more like encyclopedia neutral language. Am I distorting the Times own description of what happened? No. Am I summarizing accurately what the Times says itself? I am reporting accurately. My opponents in the revert war are very incensed that I relied heavily on Laurel Leff, and referenced other resources that are only general background. They have a point that the general background books should be clearly presented as such, and that is one of the things I tried to correct, by labeling them in a footnote as the bibliography from the Newseum exhibit. There are two famous books important as background on this general subject by Deborah Lipstadt and Donald Wyman, neither one as recent as Leff’s work. Wyman wrote a landmark book on the American policy during the war called The Abandonment of the Jews. Lipstadt wrote the classic work on press coverage of the holocaust across the country, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust 1933-1945. She does not delve into the New York Times editorial policy, or the motivations of Sulzberger. A major exhibit on the precise topic of New York Times journalistic failure to report properly on the Holocaust was held by the nation’s museum on journalism, the Newseum in Washington, DC, and I also referenced their web page on the show and their bibliography, which is also general. There are two important sources that treat the specifics of this topic, which is the New York Times’ Holocaust coverage. One of the sources is the Time’s itself, which acknowledged publicly and dramatically in its own pages, in its 150th anniversary issue, that it had a policy, set by owner and publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, to minimize and suppress news of the persecution of the Jews and later of the Final Solution. Here is how the Times itself admits the fault of its owner/publisher in setting a policy to not report on the Holocaust. As I said earlier, the author was retired executive editor Max Frankel and the title was “Turning Away From the Holocaust”:

“At The Times, the reluctance to highlight the systematic slaughter of Jews was also undoubtedly influenced by the views of the publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. He believed strongly and publicly that Judaism was a religion, not a race or nationality . that Jews should be separate only in the way they worshiped. He thought they needed no state or political and social institutions of their own. He went to great lengths to avoid having The Times branded a "Jewish newspaper." He resented other publications for emphasizing the Jewishness of people in the news. And it was his policy, on most questions, to steer The Times toward the centrist values of America's governmental and intellectual elites. Because his editorial page, like the American government and other leading media, refused to dwell on the Jews' singular victimization, it was cool to all measures that might have singled them out for rescue or even special attention.” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/specials/onefifty/20FRAN.html?pagewanted=all Yet this is the comment of loonymonkey, one of the editors who wanted to delete the article, and are now gutting it in place: “ridiculously non-NPOV language like "...Sulzeberger’s firmly held personal beliefs that it was wrong to ever treat Jews as a people" or "The paper of record deliberately hid the Holocaust from the American people."

Is it POV for me to have stated Sulzberger had “firmly held beliefs” that it was “wrong to ever treat Jews as a people”? The Times itself says Suzleberger “believed strongly and publicly.” This is well characterized by my use of the word ‘firmly.’ The Times says Sulzberger believed “Judaism was a religion, not a race or a nationality.” That means Sulzeberger believed Jews are merely a religion, like Episcopalian, not a people - not a race or nationality. The Times uses much stronger language than I do, talking of Sulzberger’s resentment of papers that stress “the Jewishness of people,” and says “his editorial page” did not discuss Jews being targeted by Hitler and was against (‘was cool to all measures’) measures to rescue Hitler’s Jewish victims or even to pay “special attention” to them. Sulzeberger wanted no special attention by any paper, including his own, to the fact that Hitler was targeting Jews for persecution and later annihilation. He deliberately hid from the American people that Hitler was targeting Jews. The Times goes into this last point in much greater detail. loonymonkey argued that my language "...Sulzeberger’s firmly held personal beliefs that it was wrong to ever treat Jews as a people" is “ridiculously non-NPOV?” Is he arguing with me or with the New York Time’s assessment of its owner and publisher? My description of the New York Times assessment is accurate and fully NPOV. In fact, I tone down their language. The Times mentioned by name the excellent work of one researcher, who had recently published a paper on the exact topic of my article: the New York Times coverage of the Holocaust: Laurel Leff. The New York Times quotes her at extraordinary length – paragraphs of their anniversary issue article are direct quotes from her. She is a professor of journalism; her full length book on the subject, published after the Times 150th anniversary, was published by Cambridge University Press. She got total affirmation in her research by the biggies in the field, Lipstadt and Wyman. In short, she is THE person to go to for authoritative information on the subject of the article. The wiki editors who have gutted my article and keep reverting it have cut out virtually all of the information from Laurel Leff, and substituted a reference that minimizes what she has to say. They include a misleading quote that there were daily articles in the Times, but leave out the dramatic and damaging statistics on coverage that Leff documents at length. They cut out information from her articles in scholarly journals, ignore her full length book, and substituted a hard to digest sentence from an abstract. They do not tell the reader where the abstract they quote is from, which would reveal that it is an important article published by Harvard. Their version of the wiki article says: “Journalism professor Laurel Leff published an article in 2000 that argued the Times did not pay enough attention to the extermination of Jews. "My own research reveals that during the war a story on what was happening to the Jews appeared on average every other day in the New York Times," she wrote in the abstract for the article. "The question then becomes, if all this information was available, why do we think we did not know? This article argues that the placement of news about the Holocaust almost uniformly on inside pages, as well as the failure to highlight it in editorials or in summaries of important events, made it difficult for most Americans to find the facts and to understand their importance." Here is the New York Times own description and treatment of Laurel Leff’s findings. I have added the underlining.:

“No article about the Jews' plight ever qualified as The Times's leading story of the day, or as a major event of a week or year. The ordinary reader of its pages could hardly be blamed for failing to comprehend the enormity of the Nazis' crime. As Laurel Leff, an assistant professor at the Northeastern School of Journalism, has concluded, it was a tragic demonstration of how "the facts didn't speak for themselves." She has been the most diligent independent student of The Times's Holocaust coverage and deftly summarized her findings last year in The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. "You could have read the front page of The New York Times in 1939 and 1940," she wrote, "without knowing that millions of Jews were being sent to Poland, imprisoned in ghettos, and dying of disease and starvation by the tens of thousands. You could have read the front page in 1941 without knowing that the Nazis were machine-gunning hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Soviet Union. "You could have read the front page in 1942 and not have known, until the last month, that the Germans were carrying out a plan to annihilate European Jewry. In 1943, you would have been told once that Jews from France, Belgium and the Netherlands were being sent to slaughterhouses in Poland and that more than half of the Jews of Europe were dead, but only in the context of a single story on a rally by Jewish groups that devoted more space to who had spoken than to who had died. "In 1944, you would have learned from the front page of the existence of horrible places such as Maidanek and Auschwitz, but only inside the paper could you find that the victims were Jews. In 1945, [liberated] Dachau and Buchenwald were on the front page, but the Jews were buried inside." A story buried but not, over time, forgotten. After the Nazis' slaughter of Jews was fully exposed at war's end, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, the influential daughter, wife and mother of Times publishers, changed her mind about the need for a Jewish state and helped her husband, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, accept the idea of Israel and befriend its leaders. Later, led by their son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, and their grandson Arthur Sulzberger Jr., The Times shed its sensitivity about its Jewish roots, allowed Jews to ascend to the editor's chair and warmly supported Israel in many editorials. And to this day the failure of America's media to fasten upon Hitler's mad atrocities stirs the conscience of succeeding generations of reporters and editors. It has made them acutely alert to ethnic barbarities in far-off places like Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. It leaves them obviously resolved that in the face of genocide, journalism shall not have failed in vain.”

Note that in addition to fully endorsing Leff’s research, the New York Times links this policy of burying news of the Holocaust to Sulzberger’s anti-Jewish hiring polices, his sensitivity about his Jewish roots and his opposition to the creation of Israel. They tell us that the failure of the media to report on Hitler is well known to “succeeding generations of reporters and editors.” How is it known? The work of Laurel Leff. Is the Times the only source to praise Leff’s research? Here are some more. Stuart E. Eizenstat was appointed by President Clinton as Special Representative on Holocaust-Era Issues. Eizenstat also praised Laurel Leff's research on the Time's coverage of the Holocaust, and the role of Arthur Sulzeberger. He wrote for Cambridge University Press that Leff's book, Buried by the Times. The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper is:

An engrossing and important book about the abject failure of the world's most influential newspaper, The New York Times, to report on the Holocaust its owner and key figures knew was occurring. Her book tells us much about America at the time, the level of anti-Semitism, and the assimilationist desire of the Jewish owner of the Times to avoid stressing the unique Jewish nature of the genocide. It is part and parcel with the same mindset of the Roosevelt Administration. One can only wonder in great sorrow at how many lives might have been saved if the nation's and world's conscience had been touched by full and complete coverage by the Times of what remains the greatest crime of world history." http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521812879</ref>

Two extremely famous names in American Holocaust studies are Donald Wyman and Deborah Lipstadt. Here is their praise for Leff’s work:

"This important book answers--in a compelling fashion--some of the questions which have long been asked about the New York Times' coverage of the Holocaust. Probing far behind the headlines, Leff tells the fascinating story of how the Sulzberger family was rescuing its relatives from Germany at the same time that it was burying the story of the Holocaust in the inner recesses of the paper." -Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust

"This is the best book yet about American media coverage of the Holocaust, as well as an extremely important contribution to our understanding of America's response to the mass murder of the Jews." -David S. Wyman, author of The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust

The two editors who have tried to delete or ruin this article dismiss an article based on Professor Leff’s work as amateurish scholarship and not a ‘reliable source’. I quote below their argument for deleting the article in its entirety. When they failed to have it deleted entirely, they deleted most of the relevant facts and indeed turned it into a meaningless stub: Loonymonkey:

“If it were boiled down to the notable and the reliably sourced, it would just be a stub of an article, a paragraph or two in length. Really, the entire article seems to be a summary of a single source, the book by Leff (which also accounts for almost all of the cites in the article). The claims and opinions of that author are repeated as fact, producing ridiculously non-NPOV language like "...Sulzeberger’s firmly held personal beliefs that it was wrong to ever treat Jews as a people" or "The paper of record deliberately hid the Holocaust from the American people." Since this article exists to simply repeat the thesis of a single book (with a little original research thrown in as well) it's not possible for mere editing to make it compliant with Wikipedia policies.”

Here is bali ultimate’s argument for total deletion. He or she is the person who engaged in a revert war with me:

“this is effectively a topic made up one day by a wikipedia editor. It is not treated in any depth by any reliable sources as a topic of its own. Allowing this kind of amateur scholarship to be invented here (and a bad job of it, I agree with loonymonkey) is a constant failing of wikipedia. To take one slanted book and paint the entire sulzeberger family as raging anti-semites who deliberately hid the reality of the holocaust is the sort of rank distortion of the historical record that occurs whenever this kind of invention/OR is allowed to pass.Bali ultimate (talk) 22:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Need I point out that bali ultimates attacks are not valid. I did not personally make up this topic. He claims Leff is not a reliable source. She is published by Cambridge University Press, named by the new York Times as “the most diligent independent student of The Times's Holocaust coverage”, and has been praised by Wyman, Lipstadt and Stuart E. Eizenstat, who was appointed by President Clinton as Special Representative on Holocaust-Era Issues. So Bali’s main criticism is 100% wrong. The topic has been treated in great depth by a highly reliable source. My summary of her findings, and of the New York Times self-analysis is neutral and accurate. It is not amateur scholarship. It is filled with quotes. Lastly, while this article may report on a very sorry chapter in journalism history, it is history. It is the record. It the shabby, inaccurate stub that they keep reverting to that is the amateurish, ill-informed distortion. The editors who hate this topic have not cited one single reference or have one single quote to support their claim that Leff should be dismissed ‘just one voice’ and ‘a hatchet job’, not realizing that she is THE authority on the subject. It’s as if someone who had never heard of the atom wanted to delete the page on relativity and kept saying Einstein is just one opinion. I kept having all my valid work deleted. When loonymonkey and bali ultimate failed to have the article deleted in its entirety, they have worked to delete it in place, by taking out most of the information. Inaccurate polemics were put in the place of quality writing. It finally descended into a revert war. Not only do I want to be unblocked, but I would like bali ultimate to be told to stop gutting this article.Cimicifugia (talk) 13:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Decline reason:

You clearly have failed to read WP:GAB as requested. The issue at hand is not the content, it's your edit-warring. You may wish to read about the bold, revert, discuss cycle - note, it's not bold, revert, re-add, revert and then re-add. Your edits require consensus to be reached on the talkpage of the article. Please do not add content discussions to your unblock requests in the future. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:16, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

BTW, adding a false unblock request to another user's page can be considered disruptive editing. It adds that user's page to the unblock queue, and therefore wastes the time of the unblock review admins. In other words, do not do that again...especially just after coming off a block for disruptive editing. Syrthiss (talk) 13:41, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - Reminder. not everyone editing wiki is as familiar with these rules as yourselves. isn't one of the rules not to assume ill intent? i did read he guidelines. perhaps i did not understand. i didn't see a rule that said not to dicuss content. i saw this rule:

"• If your request doesn't help us find out whether your block was justified or not, the reviewing administrator may decline your request out of hand. • In complicated situations, the reviewing administrator may not want to spend a long time reading your whole talk page and all of your contributions. He or she may instead choose to review only the issues that you raise in your unblock request. Arguments made elsewhere may not be read."

I understood it to mean that my request should help you find out if the block was justified by discussing the reasons for the revert war. since it is said you wouldn't want to read the whole talk page and all my contributions, i thought it was asking me to summarize the key elements from the talk page and some of the key issues in the contributions. Now you are saying that nothing on the talk page or from my contributions is relevent? that the only issue is whether i and this other user were reverting each others work? please explain. i am trying to abide by the rules.

{{helpme}} if the only issue to be discussed re blocking is whether or not there was a revert war, yes there was. which raises a question. how do i cope with the content issues I raise in my unblock request? where is the proper place to post these problems? there are only two of us working on this page, and we disagree completely. no consensus has been reached. when bali ultimate failed to get the page deleted in its entirety, he has succeeded in deleting most of the content and meaning. working together has shown no signs of success. now what do i do, since i am not allowed to undo his work?

speakiing of which, i don't understand the next thing i am being accused of. i don't know what a 'false unblock request' is. i don't know what BTW means either, for that matter. i though tariq's name was listed so that i could contact him re my being blocked.

BTW = by the way. The false unblock request was because you pasted your unblock request onto Tariq's page. This wasn't particularly helpful because (1) since you were able to post it there, you weren't blocked anymore, (2) Tariq was not himself blocked, (3) doing so caused Tariq's page to go into the unblock queue and ultimately led to me reading through your 20 page summary until I got to the end and realized Tariq hadn't posted it himself and was not himself blocked. I realize that you may have done it inadvertently which is why I assumed good faith and didn't reblock you, but part of my duties was to then come and tell you that you had misstepped and to not do that again. I left your request on Tariq's page so he may or may not reply to it, at his discretion. Syrthiss (talk) 14:20, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for the polite explanation. i realize i am unblocked. however, as bali ultimate keeps reverting my work (more cleverly than i, since he didn't to it three times in 24 hrs), i want to deal with the problem of having him destroying the page instead of just going back into an editing war. i am actually making a request to have bali ultimate stopped from reverting my work. is that possible and how do i go about it?

You discuss the content issues on the article talk page. People will make a consensus about the content. The article follows the consensus. You simply raise the issue on the talk page, and no one is supposed to remove it from there unless your material is attacking or a copyright violation (I don't think it's the latter, but you could be a bit nicer). You cannot make someone stop reverting your work. —fetch ·comms 02:01, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

May 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to The New York Times and the Holocaust, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. PhGustaf (talk) 15:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

hi gustaf - the place for this kind of comment is on teh discussion page. i put in the superior version of this arrticle and further improved it, and have explained my improvements. if you don't like them, you're supposed to discuss the changes with me on the article discussion page and reach a consensus with me.Cimicifugia (talk) 16:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

That's not how it works (see WP:BRD). You made changes, they were removed - it's then YOUR requirement to try and build WP:Consensus for your changes, not the other way around: if you don't get new consensus, don't re-add them, or else your next block is longer (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 16:43, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{helpme}} :I don't think i'm following. i am not allowed to make changes on teh page unless the people who are trashing it agree, but they are allowed to make changes? i have to make comments on the discussion page but the other editorors on the article don't have to use the discussion page? and if i re-add changes, I am blocked, but if they re-add their changes they are not blocked? is that really what you are saying? that at wiki we are all equal but some pigs are more equal than others? i must be misunderstanding you.Cimicifugia (talk) 00:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

{{helpme}} :next question: i have now posted suggestions for two different improvements on the discussion page, yesterday at 5 and at midnight. when i reinstated text, it was deleted within minutes, now my fellow 'editors' are not commenting. Bwilkins wrote i cannot work on the article until i get permission from these two 'editors' who wanted the topic deleted, what he calls consensus. so if they don't answer, there's no concensus and i can't put in changes? am i understanding this right? is bwilkins an administrator - is this really the rule?Cimicifugia (talk) 23:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Replies to requests for help

Hi there Cimicifugia, I'm sorry that you are having trouble, and I hope I can help explain.

You used 3 {{helpme}}s on this page - two at first, and one while I was writing this reply. I believe that the comments I have made below help answer all three questions;

The principle of WP:BRD is a three-step process - Bold, Revert, Discuss.

1. Bold - we encourage all editors to make bold changes to pages - it is the Enyclopaedia that anyone can edit.

2. Revert - if any other user disagrees with your edit, they may remove it.

This is the critical point in the process. At this stage, stop, and talk

3. Discuss - talk about it, with the person who removed the edit and with other editors. Form a consensus, and go with that.

There is no deadline - it does not matter if it takes a few days, or even weeks, to come to an agreement. Wikipedia will be around for a very long time, so if the page is 'wrong' for a while, it really does not matter.

It is essential that you try to follow this process - even if others do not. If other editors refuse to enter the discussion, that is their prerogative. I suggest you seek the opinion of other editors - in this specific case, I suggest that you put a short note in a new section on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history - make a new section there, saying something like;

Please see the discussion in Talk:The New York Times and the Holocaust#Assessing References. I have suggested some edits which have been reverted, so I would welcome comments from others to help form a consensus.

Try that, and give it a few days. If you cannot form a consensus that way, then there are further options - asking for a third opinion, asking the mediation cabal, and others - as detailed in WP:DISPUTE.

The absolutely essential thing to understand is, you must wait for a consensus before changing the page again - regardless of the actions of others. See WP:NOTTHEM.

Please, have a cup of tea and try to stay calm.

We will help you in any possible way, as long as you follow the guidelines, and you remain calm and civil. If you do not understand something, please ask.

For more help, you can either;

Leave a message on my own talk page; OR
Use a {{helpme}} - please create a new section at the end of your own talk page, put {{helpme}}, and ask your question - remember to 'sign' your name by putting ~~~~ at the end; OR
Talk to us live, with this or this.

The last of those is particularly useful - please try it; pop in now and say hello. Chzz ► 02:12, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion and consensus

{{helpme}} I think I already had a consensus to keep my page and improve it, not turn it into a stub. There was a discussion on deleting it (who takes part in this? Are these all administrators?) and the result was:

The result was keep. Point of view and essay-like attributes can be fixed, and the discussion has shown that the topic is moderately notable. Regards, Arbitrarily0 (TALK) 03:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The support for the article, five comments: Keep. An important subject, worthy of coverageSteve, Sm8900 (talk)

Keep. Well sourced and a notable topic. This article gives more depth of coverage than would a paragraph Racepacket

Keep. An important subject about the reactions of US mass media to HolocaustMilowent

Keep The references strongly indicate that this is a notable subject. I do not think it is correct to say that the entire article is sourced to the one book; but the book is over-represented in the article. The article needs some work, the subject of US Press coverage of the holocaust is covered broadly, just look around. The article needs work, no question, but if you look for press articles about this subject, they are legionMkativerata

Keep An article on a notable subject backed by appropriate reliable and verifiable sourcesAlansohn

Delete comments, two: Strong Delete. As currently written, it's just an essay (and not a very good one at that). It's plagued with WP:OR and WP:SYNTH problems (as well as clear ax-to-grind WP:NPOV issues) but it's difficult to imagine how this could be corrected through editing. If it were boiled down to the notable and the reliably sourced, it would just be a stub of an article, a paragraph or two in length. Really, the entire article seems to be a summary of a single source, the book by Leff (which also accounts for almost all of the cites in the article). The claims and opinions of that author are repeated as fact, producing ridiculously non-NPOV language like "...Sulzeberger’s firmly held personal beliefs that it was wrong to ever treat Jews as a people" or "The paper of record deliberately hid the Holocaust from the American people." Since this article exists to simply repeat the thesis of a single book (with a little original research thrown in as well) it's not possible for mere editing to make it compliant with Wikipedia policies.--Loonymonkey

Delete this is effectively a topic made up one day by a wikipedia editor. It is not treated in any depth by any reliable sources as a topic of its own. Allowing this kind of amateur scholarship to be invented here (and a bad job of it, I agree with loonymonkey) is a constant failing of wikipedia. To take one slanted book and paint the entire sulzeberger family as raging anti-semites who deliberately hid the reality of the holocaust is the sort of rank distortion of the historical record that occurs whenever this kind of invention/OR is allowed to pass.Bali ultimate

So, the votes to keep and improve v delete were 5 to 2. However, the 2 contributors who don’t want the article at all have not allowed me to improve it –they keep deleting my improved version and substituting an inaccurate stub. As loonymonkey says, he doesn’t agree it can be improved through editing, which I have done. He says at most he would accept a one or two paragraph article, with the main source of information deleted. He did NOT get consensus on this, but he has gone ahead and done it anyway. Do I have to get consensus over and over? This can’t be right.Cimicifugia (talk) 03:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

(edit conflict - I wrote the below reply prior to your adding the second question)

The decision to keep the article is a totally separate thing. It has nothing to do with your current suggested improvements.

It has nothing to do with administrators; all of Wikipedia works on decisions made by the entire community. Everyone is very welcome to participate in deletion discussions - and it would be absolutely great if you could help out a little yourself - head over to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2010 May 29 (for today), and in each entry, you can 'edit' and add your comments - such as "Keep, I think this is notable ~~~~" or whatever you like.

At the end of deletion discussions, an administrator looks at the arguments, and tries to work out the consensus - and if it is to delete, the admin deletes it - that is their role - to push the button to delete, but only based on the opinions of the community - that's how everything works.

So, with regards to your suggestion - yes, I'm afraid you do need to get a new consensus. If a suggestion is not removed by other editors, then no discussion is required. However, each time there is a dispute about a suggestion, it is necessary to stop, discuss it, and reach agreement.

I honestly am sorry that this is difficult to understand at first.

We try to keep Wikipedia as simple as possible - but that is hard, with 6,914,258 articles and 48,299,663 users.

To answer you directly - yes, you need to get a consensus every time there is a dispute. That is the way Wikipedia operates. Thank you for your understanding, and please do continue to ask as many questions as you like. Best, Chzz ► 03:32, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking other editors

{{helpme}}i am going to follow your suggestion to seek more contributors. is there a reason you suggested teh military history page instead of a page relating to the holocaust? i don't think military historians will know much about media coverage of the holocaust. do you think i should avoid the holocaust page because there are hostile people on that page or do they not have a discussion group? how would i find it?Cimicifugia (talk) 03:22, 29 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

The reason I suggested MilHist was, that is the most active, largest project group on Wikipedia. They have tremendous resources, and it is very active. We have hundreds of project groups, but some are very quiet, and unlikely to provide a timely response.

I certainly encourage you to ask on any and all project groups that may be appropriate.

To find them...project groups are normally listed on the discussion page of articles. So, if you look at the talk page of some other articles in similar topic areas, you should see, at the top, which project groups they belong to.

I am no expert in this area, but I will try to illustrate with an example, below, in a few minutes. Chzz ► 03:37, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As an example, to illustrate a way of finding more contributors to help build a consensus and to help improve the article:

I just looked at the article The Holocaust, which is about the WWII genocide as a whole. The discussion page is Talk:The Holocaust, and at the top of that page, you can see a line saying, This article is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. Click [show] for further details. Clicking 'show' reveals links to several project groups, and each of them has an associated talk page;

I remain utterly neutral when I give advice, and so I offer no opinion about which groups may or may not be most appropriate. You might be surprised (as I was) to see LGBT listed there, but...I just list what I see. It is up to you to decide which of the above projects, or others, may be appropriate to ask for help.

Please remember that the above was designed to be an illustration of how you can find related project groups. Please do look on the talk pages of other articles, and see which groups they are in. I only chose "The Holocaust" as it seemed the most obvious related article, to me.

I encourage you to also be neutral in your choices of where to ask and in your comment on their talk pages - do not, for example, say "I have made THIS SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENT and it has been rejected for no reason at all" - instead, just ask them to "Please see the discussion and add comments, to help form a consensus".

Asking on related project-groups in a neutral way is usually acceptable, and a good idea - but if you do have concerns about introducing a bias from the editors that frequent them, refer to Wikipedia:Canvassing which has some tips.

Best of luck, Chzz ► 03:54, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{helpme}}other questions. what does it mean to sign up for a wikiproject group? what results from signing up?Cimicifugia (talk) 14:03, 29 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Leave messages at the bottom, not the top, of Talk pages

Hi. When you start a new discussion, as you did at WikiProject Judaism, you should start the discussion at the bottom of the page, not the top. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:59, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

User Page

{{helpme}}most people choose to remain anonymous it seems. do you think there are advantages to my describing myself on my user page - that is, my qualifications, areas of expertise and interest?Cimicifugia (talk) 14:07, 29 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

on my user page, i let people know some info about me, if you have any special skills what might help wikipedia, feel free to add them. You then might also get asked to help with some articles. :) Sophie ^(Talk) 14:24, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Understanding Edit Warring

{{help}}can you explain the rule 'reverting vandalism is not edit warring.'Cimicifugia (talk) 15:23, 30 May 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Please see the fourth bullet point here. Regards, 7 03:35, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Don't use edits to fight with other editors – disagreements should be resolved through discussion. If there is any question about a user's edits being vandalism, there should be a discussion whether it is vandalism. Do not continue reverting past 3 reverts a day and have a civil discussion with the other user. It can be helpful to ask another user their opinion. monosock 03:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting obvious vandalism – edits which any well-intentioned user would immediately agree constitute vandalism, such as page blanking and adding offensive language. If it is "questionable" vandalism, discuss. When in doubt, discuss.monosock 03:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{help me}}blanking is defined as "Removing all or significant parts of a page's content without any reason, or replacing entire pages with nonsense. Sometimes referenced information or important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary. However, significant content removals are usually not considered to be vandalism where the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary." so the removal of referenced information, important and verifiable references without valid reasons given in summary. is a valid reason defined anywhere, or do i assume it means a referenced, verifiable reason? if blanking happened, does it mean one does have the right to revert?Cimicifugia (talk) 04:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

It's mostly a judgment call. If someone blanks a valid and/or referenced point, then by all means revert it. If they remove trivial, unsourced, vandalism, etc, then don't revert it. CTJF83 pride 04:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AN/I thread

Bali ultimate initiated an AN/I thread about The New York Times and the Holocaust, but failed to notify you, as he should have done. 173.52.182.160 (talk) 17:53, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{help}}i can't find the an/i notice. if it isn't on teh board anymore, is there a way to find it?Cimicifugia (talk) 03:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Please see this archive page. 7 03:33, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

i need help with a disruptive editor

{{help}} I want to start wiki proceedings to complain about Bali's disruptive editing. my complaints consist of his removal of most content without comment, his pov editing, his attacks on me personally, his not responding to issues raised on teh discussion page so that no collobaration is possible. the rules are very complex and voluminous. Am I supposed to put the following on his talk page first as warnings? I haven't reverted anything and don't intend to, as i am trying to work collaboratively and get consensus before returning to original version of article and improving from that base. it has proven impossible to work with Bali and his tag team, as they do not seem to be sincere. i would like Bali blocked from the page for disruptive editing. is this possible? what is the first step? please advise.

No I would not. The warnings are to inform new users and possible vandals of policies. See WP:Do not template the regulars. I would explain to this user that you want to know why your content is removed. If the user refuses to give you a answer you could take it to WP:ANI and request intervention, or I could try and help if you like. I hope this helps. --Alpha Quadrant (talk) 16:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Friendly advice: read WP:TLDR. If you have a point to make in a discussion, you should be able to make it in a screenfull or two. Trust me on this: nobody reads your multipage screeds. PhGustaf (talk) 18:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest he take this up at AN/I. Here's the relevant page WP:ANI to ask for assistance in having me and my "tag team... blocked from the page for disruptive editing." I urge you to do so in fact -- either that, or shut up and stop personalizing this.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edits at Talk:The New York Times and the Holocaust

Hi! A couple of things:

(1) It's generally considered impolite to post disproportionately long messages on talk pages, as it can be seen as trying to minimise the views of other editors or give undeserved weight to your viewpoint simply by taking up more page space. It also makes the page unreadable and dissuades new editors from entering the discussion. Consensus is that, generally, if you can't make your point in a couple of paragraphs you probably didn't have a very good argument. I have therefore collapsed your most recent discussion points on that page to ensure they are still available for editors to read without allowing them to derail the discussion.
(2) The merge discussion at that page is not concerned with the merits of the material. I think all editors agree that there is encyclopedic content on the topic of the NYT's treatment of the holocaust. The argument is that that material should appear at the page Criticism of The New York Times, and not in a separate article, as per WP:FORK. You might get further if you address your arguments to that policy.
(3) Are you the same editor as 173.52.182.160? If so, please remember to sign in before making edits. Editing anonymously when you have a registered account is contrary to WP:SOCK and can be grounds for blocking. If this is an innocent mistake, that's fine; please revisit your unsigned edits and make sure they are correctly attributed to your registered account. - DustFormsWords (talk) 00:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure that Cimicifugia has enough editing experience to understand the implications of your final accusation. We are unrelated users. 173.52.182.160 (talk) 00:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Several editors, including myself, have given Cimicifugia pointers to relevant policy pages, but he shows no sign of having read them. I'll keep trying, but he seems sufficiently agenda-driven that it's not likely to help. PhGustaf (talk) 01:49, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PhGustaf, since when has accusing an editor of being a SPA and POV pusher helpful advice? And DustFormsWords was worse, by calling this user a sock. Amazing. You guys are treating a new used like shit, and should be ashamed of your selves. 173.52.182.160 (talk) 13:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

first: Thank you for your defense #173. i do feel bullied, and at one point i did wonder if i cared to contribute to wiki any longer since bali and his cohorts have made it so unpleasant and actually impossible to put in straightforward, , well referenced information on an important topic - that is not the least bit controversial in the field of holocaust studies.Cimicifugia (talk) 22:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

{{helpme}}my own question - why is this discussion going on on my talk page instead of the discussion page? shouldn't this debate about the issues involved in the merge discussion be on the article's discusion page? Cimicifugia (talk) 22:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

It just turned out that way. It doesn't really matter. mono 22:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I only see the discussion about you here, not the article itself. The first message was directed toward you only, right? —fetch ·comms 22:17, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Cimicifugia. You have new messages at Alpha Quadrant's talk page.
Message added 16:21, 14 June 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

An/I

I have mentioned you, here [2]Bali ultimate (talk) 13:56, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{help me}}Bali ultimate posted the above after, not before, he reported me to the an/I page. aren't the rules that he is supposed to discuss his complaint with me first? doesn't discuss mean waiting for a reply? do i have grounds for complaint about his not telliing me his complaints first and allowing me time to respond? about his telling me he'd reported me only after doing so?

this whole thing is ridiculous: His complaint is about me seeking help in formulating a complaint. he is angry that i used terms such as 'hostile' in characterizing his editing. I was seeking feedback to make my planned an/i complaint rule-compliant, readable and neutral. i was going to improve it, then post it on his page first (that's what i'm supposed to do, right? or you just have a few words warning like bali did above?), then go to an/i. since he reported me immediately to an/i, i put in my plea for help there without having had an opportunity to improve it. was that the advisable thing to do? i need help in how to handle this very experienced and hostile editor, who is quick to use every wiki procedure against my attempts to seek redress correctly.Cimicifugia (talk) 15:15, 18 June 2010 (UTC)cimcifugia[reply]

As this is now on that noticeboard, please ask questions and respond there, where it will be dealt with. Thanks, Chzz ► 15:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

June 2010

Please do not attack other editors. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{help me}}is the threat above okay by wiki rules? can i really be threatened with peramanet banishment for asking for help in how to follow wiki rules? who is sarekofvulcan? does he have some authority? is this an official warning from wiki administration, or just a threat from another wikipedian following this dispute? how can I tell?Cimicifugia (talk) 15:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Any wikipedian can warn another one when that editor is behaving against policy. You might also want to read up on the difference between "blocking" and "banning".--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:10, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

how do you get problem editors blocked without complaining about them?

{{help me}}how do you get problem editors blocked without complaining about them? i am at my wits end. I asked for help on the Judaism project page to get feedback on a proposed complaint so i could improve it so it would be readable, accurate and neutral, and within an hour I've beened attacked/warned that doing so is violating rules and threatened with being permanently blocked. this whole system seems stacked against newcomers. is this really how wiki works? banned for seeking advice? or is the person above threatening me against the rules and should I report him as well? this is so confusing and unpleasant. forgive me for whining.Cimicifugia (talk) 15:07, 18 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

I notice that you posted here, on the admin noticeboard, so perhaps this has already been dealt with?

It is important to note that two wrongs do not make a right; I see that you, too, have been cautioned above.

I suggest you read WP:DISPUTE, WP:COOL, and WP:NAM. Have a cup of WP:TEA or something; there is no deadline; no rush.

It is often best to simply step away from the incident area for a while - work on other, unrelated areas. After a bit of time, things often calm down.

Please note, in writing this reply, I have - deliberately - not looked at the details of it; I do not take sides or form opinions, and I would give the same advice to the other editor.

So - please consider if it really worth pursuing this matter - what possible benefit will be gained, and how it will help make Wikipedia better. If it will not, then, perhaps you could just forget about it, and move on to better, different things.

If you do insist on pursing things though, then there are many options available - probably the best place to start is Wikiquette alerts, or the mediation cabal. However, please do not shop around - see what happens (if anything) on the current noticeboard first. Give it time; relax.

Please do ask for more help if you need it. Chzz ► 15:24, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{help me}}

i was cautioned because i am inexperienced and was entrapped. the hostile editor i am dealing with deleted the entire article and substituted a polemical, inaccurate stub. the rules of wiki are voluminous, arcane, byzantiine and not at all user friendly. they are easy to misunderstand for a beginner and easy to manipulate maliciously by an experienced wikipedian like bali. from my reading of the definition of vandalism, i thought bali deleting the entire article was against the rules and my putting it back with minor changes was completely legal. he basically entrapped me into a revert war. he was not punished, but i was not just cautioned, but banned and told I must get consensus to make any further changes. since then the article has been frozen.

your other advice would be useful if this was an ordinary dispute with well meaning people who disagree. or if the topic was indeed trivial. it is not appropriate to walk away from an article on the Holocaust because there are malicious and hostile editors who want to falsify the record or, what is happening here, ban basic facts on the Holocaust. this is not a topic where it is acceptable to let the bad guys win - for me. is it okay with wiki administrators?

i don't think it is appropriate to use mediation with what are functionally Holocaust deniers. this has been going on for six months. posts asking for consensus are ignored. any post they see as a challenge is answered within minutes. i did walk away for several months, and more recently for days at a time and there is no relief. there has to be another level of getting help at wiki for truly intractable problems like unreasonable, malicious attacks on Holocaust information.

not taking sides or even knowing the topic of the dispute is fine when the dispute is between two sincere editors. but what if the dispute is about incontrovertible, non-controversial Holocaust history and editors who have dedicated themselves to keep it out of wiki and also to drive sincere editors off the page, if not to discourage them from ever participating in wiki again? this is much bigger than my individual problem or this one article. this is a wiki problem of how to deal with malicious spoilers.Cimicifugia (talk) 15:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 24 hours for persisting in personal attacks, particularly "Holocaust denier", after being warned by multiple editors. Please stop. You are welcome to make useful contributions after the block expires. If you would like to be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:53, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Cimicifugia (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

It would never have occured to me in a million years that I could be blocked for asking a question on my talk page about how to appropriately seek redress on wiki from malicious, hostile editors who are blocking basic, well known information on the Holocaust. I was not calling names on a public discussion page, I was asking a question in which i was describing the problem as accurately as I know how. I called the destructive editors (will i be banned for that word also?) 'functionally Holocaust deniers' because they initially denied that this piece of Holocasut history is true; next they denied it is signficant; next they denied it was as big as it is ('the new york times dropped the ball a little); then they denied the use of experts such as the founding director of the Holocaust Musuem. what do you call behavior like that? To me, it is Holocaust denial in action: it wasn't true, it wasn't significant, it wasn't six million only half a million, don't believe those giving you the facts. It's all small scale as in a petrie dish, around this one small piece of Holocaust history, but the germ is the same. Lastly, Wiki invites people from off the street to participate in editing articles. You cannot then turn around and yell 'off with their heads' and execute them on the spot for failure to thread an impossible maze of byzantine rules. I was in the midst of asking for help re your initial warning. i didn't know who you were and whether it was one more hostile attack on me from someone against accurate Holocaust history in wiki, or if you were an administrator. Which brings me to my last point - why am i banned for using the term Holocaust denier thoughtfully, but bali and his cohort have been savaging me and all other sincere editors for weeks with impunity? He's allowed to call me names such as liar over and over, but I'm not allowed to ask a question on my own talk page in which I point out what i can best describe as 'functional holocaust denial'? this is truly a Kafkaesque experience of The Trial. actually i have another point. i was not warned by two editors. i was threatened by the person who is the hostile destructive problem, and then i was threatened by you, who is not identified to me in any way. this is justice in the wiki system? this is how you want to encourage decent people to participate? please explain who you are and why you feel justified in blocking me in plain english. do not refer me to pages and pages of rules that are incomprehensible. plain english please.Cimicifugia (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

Decline reason:

"Holocaust denier" is a very serious insult. Wikipedia is a collaborative project; it works through people working together. Insulting other users makes it impossible to work together to improve the articles. Editing disputes can be stressful and difficult; this block will help you, by preventing you from making the situation any worse than it already is. When your block expires, try some of the solutions at WP:DISPUTE, but restrain yourself from making personal attacks. Are you saying that User:Bali ultimate has claimed that only half a million people were killed during the Holocause? Can you provide a diff showing where he said that? FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 23:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

from wordIQ. definition "Holocaust denial is the claim that the mainstream historical version of the Holocaust is either highly exaggerated or completely falsified." Bali and his cohorts have claimed repeatedly that the mainstream historical version of Holocaust history being covered in this article on the New York Times and the Holcaust is false or exaggerated, and they have denied including authortative facts, figures and quotes from the New York Times itself, from the directors of the Holocaust museum and the Wyman Center for Holocaust studies. you may disagree with my use of this term, but it is a use about which reasonable people may differ. i am not going to apologize for using it. the apology is owed to me for being abused for speaking out for the truth about Holocaust history. the fact that bali admits he has been called a holocaust denier before should be an absolute red flag. this is not an accusation people make for no reason. i have too much respect for Holocaust history to do that - something the administrators at Wiki evidently lack. you should all be ashamed of yourselves. this is a scandal.Cimicifugia (talk) 23:10, 18 June 2010 (UTC)cimicifugia[reply]

The Holocaust happened. It was a terrible thing. When I read the article you've been creating, it seems to take the form of using citations to support an opinion (the form of a personal essay), rather than a simple statement of facts about a subject (the form of an enyclopedia article). I am not a Holocaust denier for being concerned that what you are writing might not be quite right for an encyclopedia, though it would be very useful in a collection of persuasive essays about the Holocaust. I can tell that you have very strong feelings about the Holocaust, and I respect that- most decent people do. But if your strong feelings about the Holocaust make it impossible for you to write in a neutral way about that subject, why not, when your block expires, try some of the other subjects that you're interested in, and then come back to this difficult article after you've learned a little bit more about Wikipedia? I've often had editing disputes that made me so angry that I had to simply go work on something else until I was able to interact reasonably calmly with the people I disagreed with, more than once. It happens to all of us at some point- it's just unfortunate that it's happening to you as one of your first experiences on Wikipedia. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 23:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is by far one of the worst blocks I've seen this year. I'm appalled. I do not understand how BaliUltimate is allowed to use vulgar language, is allowed to be incivil, is allowed to attack others and not be blocked?? But yet, innocents who are trying to build an encyclopedia get blocked? What is wrong with this picture? Caden ^cool 00:15, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that User:Bali ultimate has not always been a paragon of courtesy during the course of this disagreement. But this user's entire unblock request consists of explaining that User:Bali ultimate really is a holocaust denier- something which she's been warned is a serious insult, and something which I don't see any solid reason to believe is true. How could I unblock her based on that? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 00:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. So the message is clear that it's okay to treat newbies (and experienced editors) who oppose Bali's biased POV like dirt? So it's okay to be disruptive (as long as your Bali) and censor historical, truthful facts, that are and can be sourced? It's okay to be abusive to other editors and break the rules just as long as your like Bali? It's okay to protect the NYT, (who admit they were wrong) by censoring the truth in order to not make them look bad? In other words, editors like Bali are valued and respected? Wow! No wonder all the good newbies quit! Caden ^cool 00:58, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This block is only about this user. If you think someone else should be blocked, you should make that point at WP:ANI, where someone is likely to see it. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 11:28, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cimicifugia, I agree Bali has been at best uncivil, but there are lines you cannot cross, and calling someone a Holocaust Denier, much like calling them a Racist, is just always over the top even if you believe it. I'd strongly suggest you A) apologize B) make it plain you understand the problem and C) just ignore him. Hobit (talk) 19:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for deletion nomination of Nazism in the Middle East

I have nominated Nazism in the Middle East, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nazism in the Middle East. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Stonemason89 (talk) 13:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ANI

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.Stonemason89 (talk) 13:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

May I help you

Hi. May I help you? I see you running into a number of brick walls. If you would like, contact me and I will attempt to help to understand things better. Basically, it looks like you are/will be an excellent Wikpedia editor, but you need a little guidance/experience on how to get your edits to stick. Feel free to contact me, either here or by sending me an email message, and I'll try to explain things. Okay? Good luck. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 18:26, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]