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Naming Conventions for Locations in Jerusalem

Hi, I've put up a proposal re: Naming Conventions for Locations in Jerusalem here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration/Current_Article_Issues#Naming_Conventions_for_Locations_in_Jerusalem) and would very much appreciate any comments you have on this issue. BothHandsBlack (talk) 19:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by BothHandsBlack (talk • contribs)

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Support

Hey Nishidani, I just want to thank you for your support and contributions against the recurrent fallacies on the aspects of the Palestinian page. It's like some of these random editors on Wikipedia have never taken a proper history course in their life. Lazyfoxx (talk) 01:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Hey Nishidani, I think it would benefit the Jesus Christ page to have your input as well pertaining to the current discussion of Jesus as a Palestinian. Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:40, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I may get banned on wikipedia soon it seems, I hope you keep working towards the truth on these pages that have clear pro-israeli bias with editors in high numbers. I re-added the infobox before Jesus Christ was added in, I hope if I get banned you will work towards restoring it if it gets taken down again, or worst case, will have to take out st. george, and just have the infobox be the 15 remaining palestinians. Lazyfoxx (talk) 05:37, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, no, I don't work that way. There are a lot of areas in wikipedia where pure irrationality plays a large role, mainly on ethnic and nationalist grounds, and the I/P area ranks high in that regard. I've learnt not to rush things. The response, predictably, to many suggestions is a mechanical blanket stacking by numbers in order to crush a delicate issue, as this one is. It is rather pointless allowing oneself to get sucked in to the game. I thought about this proposal for several years, decided to raise it while on vacation, and have made one or two comments. The reaction was as expected, and the verdict will be no, but the issue has been raised, and will return. Good articles require constant work over years, and commitment to the encyclopedia or any specific group of articles requires irony, sobriety and patience. It is pointless getting oneself banned, which is precisely what partisan editors dedicate themselves to achieving with regard to their 'adversaries'. This happened with one of our best editors, and when that happens, I tend to withdraw my own presence here, more to protest with the (unfairly) banned editor, than remonstrate with the undisguised gaming that goes on in the I/P area. If you wish me to continue to edit here, then don't break the rules, don't allow yourself to get banned, and above all don't think in terms of 'truth'. The irrationally pro-Israeli majority, as in other media, will always be here, so you have to live with it, just as the Palestinians have to live with the fact that they will never have the rights that settlers have. They too are subject to the rules, and only insistence on regard for rules permits that minimum of article development that is slowly achieved here. It's not much, but many articles have benefited from the dedication of editors who think in the long term.Nishidani (talk) 10:08, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Wasn't Saint George a Roman Soldier born in a colony? Putting him on the Palestinian infobox is like calling the son of a Crusader or Moshe Dayan a Palestinian.Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 11:38, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Lightbulb here, guys! Moshe Dayan was born in Mandate Palestine. I bet we could get some sources that call him a "Palestinian" or "Palestinian Jew" since they'll use the pre '48 vernacular. Maybe I could even get my handler at AIPAC to translate the Hebrew Palestinian Post to get a juicy quote calling him the thing we want to call him. Moshe Dayan in the Palestinian people infobox will add some much needed pirate-ness. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 11:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

And also Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon.--Shrike (talk) 12:00, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Please, if you wish to be silly, use someone else's page. Only I am permitted to be an idiot here. By silly, I mean uninformed. Dayan in his autobiography admitted he was technically a Palestinian by land of birth, but brushed off the fact by asserting he grew up in 'an independent Jewish society that spoke Hebrew', fostered by 'Israeli values' 30 years before Israel was founded.Nishidani (talk) 12:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

All three, and many others, were 'Palestinians' before they adopted their Israeli nationality on the declaration of the state of Israel. There is nothing, despite your assumptions, that is demeaning about having the word 'Palestinian' on your passport. Ask Daniel Barenboim. Attempts to mock the term are inappropriate here.Nishidani (talk) 12:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not mocking anything except your argument. Daniel Barenboim was awarded a Palestinian passport in recognition of his support for Palestinian people. Saint George is recognized as a local Saint in Palestine for he doth slain the dragon. Neither figure could be called a Palestinian person, but each could be called Palestinian in a variety of settings, except not on the page that helps people understand who are the Palestinian people, because that would be confusing. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 23:03, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you ever edited under another name? It's rather odd, very few edits, sudden entry into wikipedia, a few stray articles and then concentration on Palestinians, to back any editor who is opposed to the use of the word outside of contemporary times.Nishidani (talk) 09:23, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Allow this new guy to school you. WP:NPA and WP:DONTBITE, and Ad Hominem aint just a desert in Egypt. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 13:00, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

So, I'm feeling lukewarm support for Moshe Dayan filling in the missing square on the Palestinian people infobox. Are you cool with this, Nishidani, or do you want to go deeper in the past? Maybe someone with two eyes and who is beloved by many of the contemporary Palestinian people as one of their own. You know, Saladin. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 06:16, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused here, Nishidani. Though I love you and concider you my brother-editor and want to make castles in the sky with you, I don't understand why Justin Martyr is a realistic choice for the Palestinian infobox, but Sala al-Din is not? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 02:53, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Forget Saladin and Saint George, you are the new Defender of Palestine. The great dragon of Zion is trying to stop you and your narrow blade of an argument, but fear not, for as long as you have the last word, you win! Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 22:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Justin Martyred

Hello old chap, I restored your ref to Justin Martyr however in your source Scripture as logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the origins of midrash 2004 Page 175 it is Azzan Yadin himself who identifies Clement's greatest teacher "as a Palestinian thinker" - I don't think Clement uses the term "Palestinian"? You may want to check this and adjust ref/copy accordingly. Or you may consider Yadin more relevant than Clement? Be it so. Cheers. It would be nice also if West Bank related tensions could not spill into Justin's article ;) In ictu oculi (talk) 12:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Hey pal! Actually, I wiped out my file copy of the passage after editing the fact in, and now find I can't access it on google books anymore, presumably because it's been consulted to death in the last few days, and the algorithm banned access! I do remember in reading the chapter (fascinating on nomos/Torah syncretism by the way) pausing when I came to the sentence, and wondering precisely on this. Thank goodness your keen eyes clarified this marr-tyro-dom! I share your wish that these tensions were not on wiki, but it's a fact of life. I only wish people who edit articles had more respect for sources, whenever this vexed area is touched on, than for their misprisions and political obsessions. Well, I'm on strike and broke it like a scab, and now spring calls me to hoe and plant, which is more productive that sewerage maintenance on wikipedia. See you round. Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Plant one for me :) Ciao! In ictu oculi (talk) 12:04, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani, I moved the disputed content to the talk page. This needs a content RfC. Don't take it personally. Best. Ignocrates (talk) 03:08, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I believe you are on the threshold of 3RR. I won't pull the trigger on you but someone else might. Ignocrates (talk) 17:16, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I made one revert today, and none yesterday. Or perhaps I've missed something?Nishidani (talk) 17:24, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem is my inability to calculate intervals of time. You're fine as far as 3RR. Good luck with the dispute. I have to move on. Ignocrates (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, pal. I've dropped a note on your page.Nishidani (talk) 20:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

1920 Palestine riots

Hi Nishidini. I read in the talk page of the article that you had concerns about the title of this article. It was moved back recently ([1]). Regards, 91.180.146.182 (talk) 07:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look at it. The article lacks any historical contextualization, giving so far, as before, the impression that, out of the blue, the Arabs just rioted and attacked Jews, with the innuendo that this was 'anti-semitic' and not, as most sources say, a result of intense worries that the political arrangements in Paris were designed to deprive Syrian and Palestinian Arabs of their rights to self-determination. I've made a brief sketch of some of this, which can be finessed in due course. Nishidani (talk) 10:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

fully agree. 87.65.234.118 (talk) 19:13, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Your deletion of genocides in history sections

Please explain your reason for deleting any reference to the 1517 Safed pogrom, 1517 Hebron pogrom, Safed Plunder, 1929 Hebron massacre, 1660 destruction of Safed, 1660 destruction of Tiberias, and the 1929 Safed pogrom which were all directed at indigenous pre-Zionist Jewish populations. The article clearly attempts to claim that the modern so-called "Palestinians" are descendant from indigenous Hebrews as well as Arab settlers therefore it must be mentioned that the Arab settlers carried out various genocides upon that indigenous population they're claiming descent from.

DionysosElysees (talk) 10:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)DionysosElysees

I didn't delete 'any reference' (I deleted your one reference, unsourced, to these facts, as not pertinent to the page).

Your unreliability as an editor is indicated by the fact that you include the 1929 Hebron massacre and 1929 Safed pogrom as directed against the indigenous pre-Zionist Jewish populations, when in both these cases, both old Yishuv and Zionist emigrants were murdered.

Your unreliability as an editor is confirmed by your defining as 'genocides' acts of random carnage or plunder, in disparate areas, often amounting to no more than several victims (hundreds of such incidents, affecting all communities and ethnic elements in the population, occurred in Palestine over this period, and you single out only the Jewish victims)

Your unreliability as an editor is further corroborated by the fact that you haven't read the page you edited, since you assert that it is a claim that Palestinians 'descend' from prior populations, when genetic evidence on the page corroborates precisely this, making it not a 'claim' but an accepted fact.

Generally the 'game' in these pseudo-articles, which should not be given separate pages, but collected into one page (Massacres of Jewish Communities in historic Palestine?), has been to

• create stubs on incidents of violence to Jewish communities.
• The articles remain stubs because despite multiple sourcing, none of the sources can give any details, other than the same generic statement.
• Strictly speaking their function on wikipedia is to serve as ammunition to be linked in to comprehensive pages on Arabs, Palestinians, etc. to remind readers that these people are murderous, barbaric antisemites.
• I'm surprised most of them haven't gone to Speedy Deletion or Deletion. Some of us don't get a rash over trash, on second thought, so I'm not surprised.
• The article from which your POV WP:OR snippet was removed has no place for this 'lachrymose conception of Jewish history' (Salo Wittmayer Baron). Defend it by all means, but on the talk page, where a prior attempt to cram this stuff in received a thumbs-down.Nishidani (talk) 15:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

So according to your logic the reference of the Holocaust in the German people section should be removed as well, correct? The fact of the matter is that the Arabs settling what is now Israel/Palestine exterminated the indigenous pre-Zionist Jewish population therefore if they're going to invent a history of being descendant from the indigenous people of the land it must be added that the settling Arabs exterminated that indigenous population. If you're a so-called "Palestinian" or a so-called "Palestinian" sympathizer then I suggest you learn about how denying the Armenian genocide has turned out for the Turks :) The more so-called "Palestinians" mush the lie that they're indigenous and the lie that "Jews and Muslims lived peacefully before Zionism" or even the lie of so-called "Palestinian Jews", the more people are going to learn about these genocides and your movement/narrative is going to not only be damaged but receive hatred. I really don't care either way but you should look at what the consequences of your genocide denial can be :)

DionysosElysees (talk) 10:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)DionysosElysees DionysosElysees (talk) 10:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)DionysosElysees

Price tag

Your amendments were overall satisfactory (and I enjoy your prose). However, I would like re-insertion of the Hebrew sources which some would consider to be less partisan than those cited.
Best Wishes AnkhMorpork (talk) 17:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not a matter of partisan sources. I've long complained that it is unfair to English readers to use language sources not readily available, and in particular, to cite them without transcription, and some promised to fix this up on the page, which however has not been improved in this regard. I would commend here the use of Hebrew sources, when (a) they provide content used on the page not available in English sources and (b) are accompanied by transliteration and translation of author, title and source and title.

I removed the Yeshiva source because it repeats the Jewishworld source, meagrely, and nothing there is lacking on the other page.

Several Hebrew sources I checked there (deciding to do some work the original editors refused to do), by the way, are highly partisan and dubious as RS, but I haven't fussed over it. But from here on in, collaborative, collegial editing should nod to non-Hebrew readers by following the citational mode I suggest above.

4 sources for the one event, which is not disputed, are rather too much, I should think, esp. since (as is proper structurally), those four sources were referred to in 3 different sections (allegations/price tag events/cop work), as both you and myself thought proper. Regards Nishidani (talk) 17:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

My main desire for the additional sourcing was to obviate future dispute. As you state, the content is currently undisputed so I shall leave it in its current state. However, one thing I have learnt in my brief stint on Wiki is: never count your chickens especially in the I-P remit. By the way, your sagacious essay above regarding I-P editing is eminently sensible, and as an "irrationally pro-Israeli", I shall bear it in mind.
Best Wishes AnkhMorpork (talk) 20:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Best not to jump the gun anticipating future disputes. You won't get any from me on this, and I'll back you if any editor starts challenging reports like this out of sheer dislike. I'd prefer personally to stick to mainstream English sources like Haaretz and Ynet/Jerusalem Post, but if they don't report it, we go with the one we have. What RS say stays, however uncomfortable it may be, and that goes for 'my side' as well. The only thing that worries me there at the moment is the huge section on condemnations of the price tag policy. They were generated by one or two incidents in a short time frame, over the burning of two mosques. But it's tricky to edit this appropriately, so I'm not going to touch it now. Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You don't want to get your fingers burnt.
Best Wishes AnkhMorpork (talk) 20:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I was deeply impressed as a boy by reading the legend of Gaius Mucius Scaevola, and immediately set to holding lighted matches between two fingers till they burned out. Then I graduated to candles, and finally holding large 'crackers' at my finger tips till they exploded. They're the only cases where I got burnt fingers, though my cousin went one step further, with gelignite, and blew off his arm. It takes no courage to be an edit-warrior, since it's all virtual. It does impress to see that in warring, a certain chivalrous code is observed by all parties. I'm occasionally surprised by edits for the good of the encyclopedia coming from people I never thought would do them, disproving my reservations or cynicism. That's the standard I set myself, but I don't think it fair to demand it of others.Nishidani (talk) 22:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I exhibited similar pyrophilic proclivities in my youth. I was interested in grasping a calefacient combustible using oral means, and testing my capacity to withstand its heat. My endurance of smoke inhalation was also examined. I have now determined that the Montecristo 2 is best suited for the task. Much akin to edit-warring, the ennui of fuming and spewing out hot air can be overbearing, and the exhalation of an obfuscatory smog dissatisfies many. Perhaps it is time to aerate my cerebral chamber, burnish its fittings, and restore it to its former reposeful and more indulgent state. You may have discovered that the candles you held rapidly burnt, and in our hour of strutting and fretting upon the stage, there exists but a brief period when they can be used to provide illumination.
Best Wishes AnkhMorpork (talk) 10:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

retaliated by launching vs step-up lunching rocket

Could you please visit Talk:March_2012_Gaza–Israel_clashes#retaliated by launching vs step-up lunching rocket (phrase) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.226.51.252 (talk) 13:14, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

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Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite Hello Nishidani. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released. Please click HERE to participate. Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts. You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang DR goes to Wikimania! 11:35, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Point of interest

"The clumsy prose of most of this kind of writing is full of POV jargon, and a narrative mode that adopts a peculiar language, hirsute with rhetorical themes taken from partisan newspaper accounts, rather than historical works." I have never observed the word "hirsute" being used in this manner which prompted me to read this article.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 17:04, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

It was an allusion to A. E. Housman, who used it in his edition of Manilius 's Astronomicon (1903) vol.1 p.xxi, of the work of Friedrich Jacob ('himself possessed by a passion for the clumsy and hispid'). I changed 'hispid' to 'hirsute' as more familiar. One can never escape the fingerprints of style. Nishidani (talk) 18:21, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Well you certainly thought so when you mused, "style and slips bear a signature, and I recognize yours from way back". Assuming an absence of confabulation, my curiosity is piqued as to who I may resemble? Or then again, you may have been referring to a notional ideated 'Zionist spinner of truth' for which you have a predilection of detecting their ubiquitous presence.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 18:53, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

• 'as to who' should be 'as to whom'
• 'notional ideated' is a pleonasm. Had you put a comma after, 'notional', you might have just scraped up an excuse for justifying the combination as an inchoate gesture towards rhetorical copia.
• 'one can't 'spin the truth', since 'the truth' is what spinning entangles when the intent is to dissimulate, if I might be permitted to allude to Sir Walter Scott. The truth, accept the apophthegm, is whatever resists 'notional' or 'ideated' spin.
• 'for which', given that 'Zionist spinner' is the subject of the clause, should have been 'for whom'. What happened was that you meant to write 'notion' or 'idea' of, then got befuddled by the effort at euphuistic mimicry or hyperbolic orotundity, and produced the tautological pastiche we have. Had you written 'notion', then 'for which' would have been grammatical.
• one doesn't 'have a predilection of', which is solecistic. Idiomatically 'one has a predilection for.' You can write 'predilection of' but only when 'of' indicates the agency of the genitival subject, which is not the case here. Back to the TV.Nishidani (talk) 21:02, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

"for which you have a predilection of" - If I had written 'tendency' instead, would 'tendency of' be grammatically correct or is it still 'tendency for'? Also, you recommend "for whom"; is 'of which' equally acceptable?
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 16:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

If it took five days to think that one up...? I suggest you read the opera omnia of Thomas Browne or, for the short course, John Lyly's Euphues, but Browne is more instructive and less boring, and you will get the hang of it.Nishidani (talk) 17:49, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

It was a polite request for information seeing as are fond of dispensing advice quite freely. I have no doubt that such a solicitation would take a sizeable amount of time for you to construct, but recognise that people more accustomed to communicating in a mannerly fashion will have less difficulty in doing so. Perhaps once again you have identified a sinister undertone in a benign request and your hyper-sensitive radar is detecting subliminal murmurings within the text that you are opposed to?
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 18:27, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

You omitted 'you' before 'are fond of'. The second sentence is not ungrammatical: it just doesn't mean what both context and the intention I infer you wished to express therein would have it signify. Parsed, it runs:-

I have no doubt that such a solicitation would take a sizeable amount of time for you to construct

'Solicitation' refers to your 'polite request'. It is you who 'construct' the 'polite request' or 'solicitation', not I, which is, however, as it stands, the apparent meaning of the sentence. Bref. I do not 'construct' your solicitation. I might perhaps 'deconstruct' it, to use the poststructuralist jargon loosely. I might indeed, having parsed your request, respond to it, were it not for the fact that the syntax you adopt for our exchanges generates such a multitude of semantic misprisions, that I would be at a loss to know precisely what it is you want clarified.

An undertone is not, ipso facto, sinister. That undertones are everywhere is not a paranoid insight à la Daniel Schreber,(whom Sartre transformed into the major eponomous figure in his masterpiece Les chemins de la liberté) but rather the common wisdom of those who write and read books. Was gesagt werden muss, wrote Günter Grass, and, despite the explicit premonitory warning about how not to misread it, it was then tortured to death for precisely a sinister 'undertone' which the author had disavowed preventively, and that does not exist, except in the minds of critics obsessed with brandishing the word 'anti-semitic'. It articulated something darüber muss man schweigen, as Hitler's schoolmate once wrote. With such profound resonances in mind, I reach for the homely proverb to achieve closure: 'what's sauce for the goose is a source for to gander.Nishidani (talk) 20:10, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

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Personal Attack

I will readily remove any personal attack that you object to, and similarly grant you permission to do so. I rarely protest at PA's that form part of a frank exchange of views, and have previously ignored your suggestions that I am a sock or that I am exploiting Antisemitism. That being said, others think differently, and I probably wrongly applied my personal ethos to yourself, misled by your brusque manner.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 22:04, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

There's no need to remove anything, and I in principle don't complain about attacks. I just wish that people who do attack me do so with more rhetorical form and wit than I usually see. Otherwise it's boring. No harm.Nishidani (talk) 22:11, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree, and it is for that reason that I tolerate (and dare I say it - perhaps occasion) your masterful Wilde-esque barbs. It is like being smacked with a ticklish feather.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 22:35, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

You would like to see an exemption for elegant personal attacks? EdJohnston (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

It would be wrong to repress an artistic milieu and stifle creative expression:-) On a serious note, there is a distinction between jocular banter and malicious abuse, though not always readily discernible.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 22:58, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Clever. You've managed to imply I attack people. Actually, I remonstrate with them over the slipshod use of language. I don't appoint myself a teacher, but I admit that I feel it's rather like having students complain about their teacher's behaviour when they receive an essay corrected with red-ink. Doctor Cottard missed the point of the verbal games in the Verdurin's salon quite often, and when picked up for his failures by Forcheville, just blushed. Nishidani (talk) 07:02, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I like you, so I want to tell you that...

this comment is ridiculous... this page is tightly controlled to disallow any mention of a Palestinian history predating the modern period... -Nishidani

There are numerous claims on the Palestinian people page using Wikipedia's neutral voice to push minority opinions. Maybe you can look at your own beliefs and see that they are built on assumptions. People who claim to know what the Earth was like a thousand years ago are very likely to be asserting what they can not know.

With all my love, Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 01:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh, come on. What goes on stands out like dogs' balls.Nishidani (talk) 07:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I know that that page and others sometimes get like Michael Vick's backyard, but do you really think that your side (I'll summarize it as Palestinian indigenousness) is the factual side?

Ok, people have to decide where they think the evidence is. I think evolution makes more sense than heavenly lightswitches, but I do so in a way of acknowledging that the Truth is unknowable, and everyone is just casting their lot in with their worldview.

Israelis and Palestinians do alot of fighting. I wish my country (US) would stop sending so much money and military hardware to Israel, but I understand that to be a hard sell to folks who want bombs to stop exploding first.

I'm off topic here. I think I'm right most the time, like I think the State is right about most things, wrong about other things (settlements, religious laws, walls). This doesn't stop me from looking at Wikipedia edits objectively.

You, on the otherhand, seem to think that any Palestinian or pro-Palestinian assertion is valid, based on it being good for Palestine. Is that right, or am I making unfair personal attacks here?

Again, super love and kindness Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 08:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't edit after making a close evaluation of cui bono. I write according to, primarily, academic sources under major publishing house or university imprint. Look at Yamit before I began editing it a few days ago, after stumbling on it by pure chance. Not a word about the expulsion of 5,000-20,000 Bedouins; not a word about the bulldozing of their orchards, the destruction of their wells, the demolishing of their houses and goods in order to provide immigrants to Israel with a nice Club Med environment. It has a key photo showing soldiers yanking a Jewish kid out of his home, and none of the many photos taken of the massive destruction Ariel Sharon's engineers caused to the pre-existing Bedouin community. I fixed it. But, if I were, as you assert, a one-eyed 'pro-Palestinian' partisan, I would not have added also that the ethnic cleansing on which the Israeli Yamit was premised was vigorously protested by many kibbutzniks, who organized tours to shock the Israeli public into pressuring the government to compensate the deracinated and homeless traditional dwellers. I haven't finished, by the way. I have a distinct memory that a great Israeli lawyer took up their appeal before the Supreme Court, and, tragically, died a few days before he was to give his closing address. If you can find a source for his name, and those facts, and add them in, I'd appreciate it. It won't compromise your principles, which I presume, from the record, consists of giving only the 'non-Arab' side in editing. It will consolidate my principle, of insisting that articles cover everything, from all angles, according to RS, and damn the consequences for POV warriors, who constitute the majority in this area.Nishidani (talk) 10:01, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Faget it. I've found out where I read that. The man was Chaim Holzmann. In any case, Yamit is a good example of the problem here. Five years of editing got the article, focused on Yamit as an Israeli thing, to 6kb. An hour of work doubled it, and covered all angles. What I object to is the huge number of partisan editors sitting on what other editors, who build articles, do here. They never get off their arses, once they show up, to actually construct the encyclopedia and their behaviour is obstructive, one-eyed, and political. They sit round, nitpick, tagteam, and once the edit, politically evaluated, is blocked, disappear until the next emergency from the 'problematic' 'pro-Palestinian editor' is rumoured to require attention. Nishidani (talk) 10:29, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

It's funny that you think a Haaretz news story is a primary source. Furthermore, if a person lives in a house, they are definitively not a bedouin. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 15:12, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

It's funny you cannot see I wrote 'primarily' and that you think I regard Haaretz as a 'primary source'. As to the comment about Bedouin, that is funny, in the sense that the dumb smugness of the historically illiterate is 'funny'. True, the Bedouin tribe, the Jahalin, that sits out sweltering summers in tin shanties below Israeli settlements, because anything they buiold is bulldozed by the 4th most powerful army in the world, say the huts the one you see below Ma'ale Adumim where a few are employed to fix the sewage otherwise dumped on their land, as you drive up from Jericho to Jerusalem (and makes, at least Christian pilgrims turn their heads in shame) are nomadic, because, like the Bedouin near Umm Kheir every time their houses are bulldozed and they are kicked off their land, they are forced to become homeless nomads, as you define them, or the 70,000 Negev Bedouins who live in villages, and whom Israel is driving out, so Club Med accommodation can be secured for Russian and Americans who have someone in the family background with the appropriate certificate testifying to his racial authenticity as Jewish, and therefore has a right to live in subsidized luxury in a foreign land where the stolen land is expropriated from their traditional owners.

P*ss off. You know nothing and pontificate, or is it sh*t-stirring? and your chirpy comment about the masssive violence done to poor people in the name of Zionism sound to me like someone smug German or Russian laughing at a pogrom. I dislike having these alerts to my page come up while I'm editing. Today you've made 7 piddling edits, 2 here. Check my contributions today and compare the volume of substantial work. Who's here to build pages rather than play reverts or chiack?Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

ps. that last question mark is rhetorical, so don't answer it, and don't disturb my work on articles, or play disruptive if smarmy games here.Nishidani (talk) 16:08, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani, I thought I could help you grow. A good intellectual is one who questions his own assumptions. A pseudo-intellectual thinks that reading some articles makes them an expert. You realize that the Palestinians are right in everything, and that all academia agrees. If a source doesn't agree, it is Zionist and no good.

I have looked at your edits and you run into contention on a regular basis. I thought we could have a chat about POVs here. If you aren't ready to look into your soul, than that is fine, Alice. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 21:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh, how paedeutically condescending for a teenagery airhead! That kind of slush always makes me start the day with zest! Thanks. It brought to mind the saying about teaching grannie how to suck eggs. Nishidani (talk) 07:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Teach your grannie to su... If you mean I shouldn't give you lessons on how to be a loudmouth know-it-all, you may be right. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 04:17, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

You're way out of your league, son. As I said, p*ss off. Play in some other sandpit. I don't do kindergarten here.Nishidani (talk) 07:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately you also are a keen exponent of the sand pit and choose to ignore certain incontrovertible facts which do not conform with your dogmatic views.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 14:42, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Look I should be grateful to both of you tagteaming POV warriors because your behaviour and attempts at thinking makes me feel sorry for you, and compassion is a virtue to be cultivated. But I don't need a stimulus for that kind of sentiment, sharing with Mencius the view that it is instinctive, but differing from him in my understanding that some sort of political and ethnic cultures can restrict the natural expression of compassion to one's own race, and think anyone outside the chosen genetic fold is an annoyance or only deserves whatever catastrophe your folks meet out to them. Your cleft-thumbed, nobrainer attempts to 'stir me', other than making me feel sorry for the vacuity you must experience in the real world, only draw me away from working on wikipedia articles. This last pathetic attempt at taunting by a dumb, banal link kept coming up on screen as I was working on Dickens, so, p*ss off, watch some gridiron, or IDF videos on terrorism or whatever makes your life meaningful, and don't crap on here. ThanksNishidani (talk) 15:25, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

And Fox News! Rofl, you can pigeonhole with the best of 'em. To paraphrase Muhammad (apeessfrummhizbottum) If one man calls another a hypocrit, surely one of them is. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 18:29, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Muhammad and Mencius, fell in a well. The things they discussed, I'll never tell.

Nishidani and a book, found with Google. "My argument is right," said his mouth-like-bugle.

Israelis and Arabs, will always fight. As long as assholes like you, think your side is right.

Luke and his edits, always no viewpoint. Review them, my padwan, you are my student.

Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 18:46, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I've seen better doggerel on a dunny wall. Only sonnets are accepted here as forms of address, so I'll have to remove it, and this thread to the archives tomorrow unless you can improve the conceit beyond the nursery-rhyme level of composition.Nishidani (talk) 20:06, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Let's see one better, or have thee no wit? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 01:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Rubbish dump

This is your talk, but...

dont remove comments from the talk pages of articles that aren't yours. Removing something for being "uninformed" is wrong on many levels. Don't be so eager to let your arrogance show. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 23:43, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and I love you and know that you meant well. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 06:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Below removed under edit summary: 'I really think you are 'talking over the mike' and no one is interested in grabbing it from you'.

A quick little observation before the mike is grabbed from me and I am roughly shoved off stage. You rather unkindly derided No More Mr Nice Guy's use of the word 'hubris', yet you appear to have confused it with 'hybris', which a google search informs me is a studio album by a Swedish progressive rock group. I think its time to revisit WP:POT.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 17:53, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Those diffs you requested (Removed by reverting by Sean.hoyland, as was appropriate)

• [2] "All that is being applied here is a stacked veto gaming sources by the sheer weight of blow-ins who know nothing of the topic, and whose unison with more familiar objectors to anything Palestinian has paralysed the page. You keep repeating mechanically that no one before Bar Kochba's revolt was 'Palestinian'. This is a hasbara theme, and has no place here, since you refuse to confirm what a simple google search will tell you: that 'Palestinian' is the default term in historical scholarship for the area nows called Israel/West Bank, and is customarily employed by all scholars, Jewish, goy, whoever, for describing the people and culture of that land from high antiquity down to modern times. The line you take is ideological, political, and contradicts these sources" -Nishidani

That's you being combative against a consensus, like three S's against one C.

• [3] "...in (Khalidi's) view American and European Israeli discourse is dismissive of the 'deep roots' of Palestinian identity, and most objectors are in an ethnic WP:COI on this, lacking the serenity to look at the question encyclopedically, as opposed to politically." -Nishidani

That's "Mr. Scholarly 5000" telling the consensus that this books outweigh their hasbara. A goodfaith massacre.

I'm not saying you weren't being productive elsewhere, but... I wasn't gonna add the above to the AE. Shrike did, hope that don't make us look like a cabal. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

TLDR

Your voice, your body, your name mean nothing to me now. Ankh.Morpork 18:02, 10 May 2012 (UTC) (said in a Brodsky context)Ankh.Morpork 22:22, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Dickens

Just wanted to drop by to say that I'm very impressed with the work there, I quite like your talk-page style and the recent edit summary, and now I find that you're retired! Anyway, I stopped at the library earlier (very small local library) to see what I could find, and dragged home a few sources. I need to bring myself up to speed though - it's been a while since I've read much about Dickens. The prose seems to be in good shape - now it's a question of trimming back, and then adding. I have Ezra Pound on the back-burner, so it's interesting to compare the structure of the two pages. Btw - I hope it's okay to post here - being retired and all. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:58, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Retirement?

This really is bad news for several of us, myself included. Let me maybe propose an idea which might help bring you back, maybe. I am currently going through the rather incredible number of encyclopedias and dictionaries out there, with the intention of adding the relevant ones to the relevant project pages. I think doing so might help make it easier for involved editors to determine what is and is not notable enough for inclusion, and, maybe, help them find good sources for such material. I think, although I'm not sure of this, that at least one of them relates to Dickens, and others to other individual authors. I've even seen one source which seems to exclusively deal with the topic of Shakespeare on TV and film. If you would like to maybe find one such source, or request my help in finding one relevant to a topic of interest to you, I think we would definitely benefit from having a good, quality editor, like you, develop some of the early content. Trust me, some articles, like John the Baptist, which I've just been reviewing, look, well, like hell, really. Getting some other articles off on a solid start would definitely be of use to all of us. John Carter (talk) 23:18, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

That's very kind of you, John. See my note on TK's page. I'm retired from the committed editing of the past till, if he does came back, Nableezy's ban is finished, but have done a few desultory edits just out of a sense of duty. Most religious articles are a total mess, like the I/P area, because of edit-warring and POV manias, with their rampant suspicions and enmities. All those articles should be written as controversies, since scholarship itself has no unanimity on anything to do with historicity/religion. Thanks too for the offer re Dickens. At least there, several hands seem happy to pitch in, and don't have ideological beefs so that progress in reforming articles which can never been seen on several of the areas I used to work in is visible, and an incentive to work.

I hope all's well, and that the injury you suffered is on the mend. Best Nishidani (talk) 07:43, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

They aren't particularly strong concerns. I have in about three years suffered one small seizure of about 10 seconds, and I think one or two (its hard to tell) of a second or so. But doctors, being doctors, tend to perhaps overstate everything. And thank you very much for the work on Docetism, but, believe it or not, I wasn't really thinking specifically about religion articles when I first posted here. I've found any number of reference books on JSTOR about such things as woodwind instruments, place names of Britain and elsewhere, biographical dictionaries of countries and specialties, music, and God knows what all else. I think there are several thousand reviews I've found so far on any number of subjects. If there are any subjects of any sort that you have an interest in, if I can access them myself, I would be more than happy to maybe give you a list of the articles included, almost all of which I think would probably qualify as notable. Anyway, just a thought there, but thank you for the work. John Carter (talk) 23:10, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

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As boys use to say in dog-Latin while serving mass: 'Me a cowboy, me a cowboy, me a Mexican cowboy.' Something to do with mea culpa, I believe. I hope the algorithm governing this bot has a conscience, and condignly extends me, on perusing my grief-stricken reply, the grace of an absolution for the sin of failing to be disambigamous or whatever it is registered here.Nishidani (talk) 11:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Soliciting Critique

The Dickens and Racism article was rather hastily cobbled together by me as a way of doing somewhat soundly what now-banned editor Yogesh Khande was doing poorly and ineptly (although I think he created it). Essentially, it bought him off, so he stopped interfering with the parent article.

I certainly don't consider it my best work, but what do you think are the major ways in which it could be fixed?--WickerGuy (talk) 16:43, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if I seemed dismissive of the article. I didn't even check the edit history. I was measuring some of the paragraphs against what I know of the scholarly debates, and it didn't seem quite to get them mastered in detail, as a fork on one theme of a general article should do. But this is normal in the early stages of any article development. I know what it is like, having to cope with bee-in-the-bonnetism, and that article does indeed contain all of the central elements. I only read it rapidly, mind you, and noted that it lacked completion. By way of apology, I'll undertake to join you on it when,(if?) we can get the Dickens article close to some GA/FA review level. Best Nishidani (talk) 16:53, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Email?

Your email isn't enabled to send the ODNB. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:36, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Whoops, sorry about that. Have extracted the digit, and used it to change my settings. Sorry for the bovver.Drop me a note if I stuffed it up, and it won't work. A few kind techies have bookmarked the page to assist me when geriatric amnesia and befaddled behaviour makes these things dysfunctional, and I'm sure they'll give me the inside dope on how to fix the email.Nishidani (talk) 17:10, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

That's okay - mine was disabled as well. Anyway - sent. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:22, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Robert's a not too distant rellie. Nabbed. ThanksNishidani (talk) 17:28, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm stupid today: Robert who? Truthkeeper (talk) 17:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Robert's avuncular = Robert's a close relative = Bob's your uncle. Nishidani (talk) 19:25, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

That flew right over my head ... Truthkeeper (talk) 21:11, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

An update: I think I mentioned on the CD talk that I won't be around much in May. After tomorrow I'll be sucked into a vortex (work, family obligations, etc) - well not really, but my time will be really limited. I will be checking in, and I've ordered some books, so will be reading as well. Just wanted you to know, I'm not bailing at all - I think we're making progress. Truthkeeper (talk) 02:46, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

If you don't mind...

...can you explain where you got this from?

Judaism didn't exist before the 6th century BCE. Judaism didn't exist in David's day... Nishidani (talk) 08:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You freak out when people suggest a historical narrative of Palestinians different from your own. Why are you tossing out contentious assertions like the above? Just curious, Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 16:51, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Stop mental mainlining on Fox News and Arutz Sheva and read a book, preferably by any ranking Jewish historian. Nishidani (talk) 17:23, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

So who did the Babylonians exile? Are you defining a "ranking" historian as one who shares your views? Honestly, I come to your talk page to find common ground, but your assertions that I am brainwashed by right-wing media is baseless. I don't own a TV and my main news source is Al-Jazeera English. But this isn't news, it is history. It is certainly true that some scholars wait until a certain finalization of the Bible to declaire Judaism in existence. Finkelstein agrees with your 6th BC claim, I believe. But you'll find a butt load of Jews who call Abrahim the first Jew, or at least Moses. Some of this butt load are historians.

The truth is probably somewhere between Abrahim and David. But since both those figures might be imaginary characters, its hard to say. But one thing I know, Nishidani don't know for sure. Even if David wasn't a Jew, you can't say it "didn't exist in his day," it was atleast a sect or school of thought in the region, if not the official faith.

Finally, I'd like to direct your attention to the hypocracy of throwing out your opinion of Judaism as fact, and then pouncing on people for saying "Justin Martyr wasn't a Palestinian. Let's remember that a goal of religion is self-reflection. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 23:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Saying Judaism didn't exist until a Bible was compiled is like saying Islam didn't exist during Muhammad's lifetime. Abu Bakr compiled the written Quran. Thoughts? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 04:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The Babylonians exiled some 10% of the population of Israel. Judaism is an abstract noun referring not to people, Jews, but a developed series of practices and beliefs that were drawn up after the priestly caste returned from exile, and was finalised with the Bavli, a millenium afterwards. As I said, read a book or two. You're asking an astronomer to justify his POV that the earth revolves round the sun. And anyone who poses such self-evident questions is simply underwriting an impression he is confused or ignorant about the subject. Which is fine, but if you know nothing, you shouldn't arrogate a tone that is sceptical of what other who do know, say.Nishidani (talk) 07:21, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

You are comparing your synthesis of various contentious viewpoints of things that happened millenia ago, with what an astronomer can see everyday. Again, you need to separate your opinions from facts. How would you feel if I said Palestinian nationality has roots in the Ottoman period, but wasn't finalized until the Arab League created the PLO? I could find many books to back this up. Since these books agree with my opinion, I should concider them reliable, eh? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 08:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, you're just dumb, throwing moronic conclusions at me on a subject you know nothing about. P*ss off.Nishidani (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Meaning, you realized your argument to have perfect knowledge of the past is stupid and decided to direct that anger at yourself outwards. Neat! Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 10:31, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. The soap-opera psychologism, that endlessly recycled lingo of the psychobabbling pseuds you get in kiddies after their first few weeks doing coursework in Psychology 1, always sharpens my picture of the street-parasitic mental life of those who trot these clichés out. I expect, next, that you'll come out with: 'you're projecting'. Look. It's not shameful to be dumb about a lot of things: I'm hopeless with electronics, and trust my nephew to figure it out. So, lad, just accept that you're 'dumb' in this area, and shift to editing articles you might know something about: I dunno, bios of Fox news TV announcers, or actors like Rex Harrison, or whatever. As I said, p*ss off: empty vassels make the most zounds.('Neat!')Nishidani (talk) 10:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

You're the one with the psycho-babble. Just like a kid who finished psych 101 and thinks he can read people's minds. "Oh, he said Jesus isn't a Palestinian, must be a Zionist." It is also quite childish to think that anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant or stupid. That goes quite counter to Wikipedia's AGF policy. Why does every conversation with you have to get off topic once you start throwing around mud.

I asked you if Jews started in the 6th BC when the Bible was compiled, does that mean Palestinians got started in the 70's when the Arab League wrote the PLO Charter? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 11:11, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Duh!! I'm late in replying as I try to sort out your mental typology. I've winnowed the possibilities down to two species: Beavis and Butt-head or Mr Bean. Bye, sonnyboy. Seder Rav Amram: BT Berakhot 28b-29a(talk)16:00, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Can you satisfy my curiosity and clarify whether the above is a meaningful reference, seeing as you have combined Seder Rav Amram, an early liturgical compilation, with tractate Berakhot 28b-29a which expounds upon the recondite topic of the supplicant that omits the Blessing on the rain in the initial stages of his Shmoneh Esreh, and how the halakha will differ if he is a sheliach tzibbur, and I doubt that you intended to refer to this recherché discussion.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 14:46, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Since that nob-twiddler, Cool Hand Luke, has been playing games, I mirrored his handle. Pretty obvious really. I don't think we need email Guglielmo da Baskerville, or bother Shmuel ha-Katan with a buzz in Edensville (James Joyce allusion), to figure it out.Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The only thing more condesending than a Joyce allusion, is pointing out your Joyce allusion. You namecall once you are put in a corner. You have yet to disprove that the creation of the PLO Charter coinncides with the creation of the Palestinian nation? You should believe this, given your statements about Jews. Or, do you have doublestandards? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 23:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Yawn.

condesending is spelt condescending, but might qualify as a Joyceanism in terms of the polyphonic punning of Finnegans Wank, con being what you are, in both English argot and polite French. Or perhaps it refers to birthing, since we all descend from cons. coinncides might figure in a game of swy in discussing heads or tails, unless it is an attempt at a portmanteau meaning 'suicide on a corner (coin in any French dictionary)' (namely this little angle of the web, which is what your provocations here read like). But I wouldn't put my money on it.

It's a failure of virtue to get a 'hi' from a lowbrow, esp. from Hilo. So this conversation, as the C.I.A. operatives used to say, is 'terminated'. Do something useful for yourself: go catch a bluebird on the Banzai Pipeline, or beachcomb on the black sands. Nishidani (talk) 21:31, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Word games aren't impressive. You further prove my theory that people only read Joyce to condescend. If I want a bunch of references, I'll watch Family Guy. But bygones, you still haven't explained your conviction on Jewish origins. How do you determine that this hypothesis is the correct one. Is it politics? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 23:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess you can't defend your assertions with anything other than, "all the scholars/historians/French dictionaries agree with me." So instead, I will conclude my remarks by pointing out that you attempted to ridicule a misspelled word, yet your witty reply required four edits to get right. Also, there is no black sand on O'ahu. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 23:49, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Your presumption is that I am interested in dull people, and that I find it profitable to talk to people who can't construe the meaning of the sentences I say or write. Every representation here of my views is a pathological symptom of the fact that you are literally as thick as a brick. Try doing what Charles Dickens would do, when constructing Uriah Heep, Pecksniff, Murdstone et al.: stand before a mirror and mouth or mumble the sentences you think appropriate to the character you are projecting. If you do so, you will have just a glimmer of a hint that the mug you observe, and the dumb remarks that slobber from its lips, are not credible, and distort everything heard in order to launch a fishing expedition, trying to land me as though I were a gudgeon that takes tasteless bait. Or, improbably, you might twig that what you are doing has one purpose, to vindicate a psychological need summed up beautifully in esse est percipi of the type"if Nishidani (deigns to) respond(s), I am." By not responding, I am saying "you don't exist", which may indeed contradict your confident sense that you are someone, but you won't finangle my complicity in a project to be someone other than what you appear to be, a vacuous tin-eared (Ezra Pound allusion) spouter of misguided clichés. I've given you the flick pass, and you rebound back with the vigour of the obtuse. Dither over construing Yaakov Y. Teppler's Birkat HaMinim:Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient World, Mohr Siebeck, 2007 p.9, pp.13-14 for several months, figure out why I think a person who adopts your hostile handle is an agent provocaturd who shouldn't be on wikipedia, whose presence here is only disuptive, but worse still, lethally boring, and accept the fact that I herein extend to any watcher of the page the right to cancel, revert any comment you will drop here immediately on sighting your signature beneath it. Have a nice day or get a life. If you can't work it out in a few months, drop an email to Morepork. He almost understood my point, but didn't quite catch the connection in his deductions above. He'll no doubt clear up your perplexities. Seder Rav Amram: BT Berakhot 28b-29a (talk)

Ahh, Wikipedia! Where all opinions are equal, and the most CIVIL wins. Haven't read a history book? No problem! Where else could our tolerance be given such a strenuous workout? Johnuniq (talk) 11:46, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't a total waste of toime. I did learn than the black sands I alluded to have, since my visit to them in 1963, been covered by lava, and that several other deductions about this drongo's age, and certain linguistic traces to background, were corroborated! Still, piddling trivia. Back to the tomato patch!Nishidani (talk) 12:18, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Question

Nish, do you have a view on the following question ? If a person's behavior over an extended period is consistent with sociopathy, they have been expelled from a population several times because of their inability to conform to social norms, but they keep returning, is it better to leave them in place so that their activities can be monitored and contained, or is it better to expel them again ? Sean.hoyland - talk 04:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Geez, pal, that's a bit harsh! I mean, I really do my best despite being a tad autistic. Mum did take me to the shrink yonks ago about it - I was just out of toddler's togs- and described my attitude as one where: 'everyone's out of step but my Johnny'. The poor old gent, a Viennese chap, could hardly get a word in edgewise after that, because I dressed her down, not oedi-pally though, for implying I was either her 'john' or her 'John', and I protested that maternal rights didn't extend to treating offspring, however obnoxiously right, as either a toilet one could crap on, or a paramour. I accused her of a Medea complex which she was projecting onto me all the time, calling me, not herself, 'M'dear', which in her vulgar dialect came out as 'M'deea'. After our 45 minutes ended, we got a dual diagnosis: mum was a tekno- or paidopathic. As for me, he withheld a pathological judgement since, on the evidence of my counter-analytic tirade, he said I wasn't so much socipathic, as much as a lover of my mother-tongue, which might indeed betray a cathexis of oedipal feelings from her onto the language I had learnt from her since she cooed to me in the cot, but was relatively innocuous, and possibly a creative aufheben (well, he was also a Hegelian, but that can be forgiven) of our universal male plight, and that, forseeably, that would give me a swollen head rather than a 'swollen foot' like the one our Theban ancestor had.

As to the whingeing about my behaviour, my only defence is that the English wikipedia should not allow people a licence to write transitioned or did used to be. I don't mind the fact that Cool Hand is as dumb as they come, and grotesquely chock-a-block with Goebbellish improperganda, but even late immigrants to the English language like himself shouldn't be allowed that kind of catachrestic rape of my mother's tongue (and I refuse to admit this last slip has pornographic-oedipal innuendoes that might be used against me!). Nishidani (talk) 08:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Seriously though, WP:Hound is his problem. He knows nothing of patristics, and yet, when I edited Justin Martyr on the 3rd of March for the first time, sure enough, he turns up within a few hours to revert me and throw painfully dumb statements at me on the talk page. At Zeitoun incident yesterday, his appearance there does look like a vendetta. I came across the article reading yesterday's Haaretz, and began duly editing in the results of an official investigation, which makes much of the early reporting used in the article dated. Our Mutual Fiend, sure enough, wiping the egg off his face here, immediately trundles through my contributions to go there and exact revenge. The whole page, technically, has to be written because it is based on immediate newspaper reports full of impressions and "facts" that two later investigations corrected.

Still, nothing one can do about it. It's called bassa manovalenza, mugs who do the dirty work of reverting, objecting, dragging you into arguments while the others on their side quietly say nothing, but tacitly support the shadow's behaviour. The classic 'division of labour'. The I/P area refuses to face the problem that it should not be written by the illiterate, the obtuse, the bellicose or gamesters and as a result these clones of banned editors have a free hand. So we just ignore them. Nishidani (talk) 08:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Broken 1RR

Hello You broken 1RR on Zeitoun incident please revert yourself.--Shrike (talk) 11:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I will if you can tell me how (a) one revert and (b) and edit which returned to the text you restored, studied its source, and noted that, as so many things there, it does not justify what was written by Luke from it. Dutifully, since the text was verifiably WP:OR, I removed the offending invention. That makes 2 edits. One was a revert of a WP:HOUNDer who followed me there. The other was not a revert of this crap Luke invented: it was a distinct edit controlling all sources minutely to see if they correspond to the text. Since you blanket reverted a series of edits I saw serious problems with from a problematical POV warrior, and restored patently false information he had inserted, and I had reverted, you have a technical point, but only if you ignore what Luke was doing, i.e., rewriting sources to fit his POV, and making a WP:OR infraction.

Specifically Taghreed El-Khodary, For Arab Clan, Days of Agony in a Cross-Fire, at New York Times, 9 January 2009, was cited for the following passage in the lead:

Militants were launching rockets into Israel from the area, and Hamas was known to conduct operations in the vicinity.

The area is the Zeitoun compound which was struck by two missiles. The source says about Hamas:

• (a) 'the ground invasion began on Jan. 3, part of the offensive against Hamas that Israel says is intended to stop the firing of rockets into southern Israel.'
• (b) ' A military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, said Monday that the army had “no intention of harming civilians.” Hamas, which governs Gaza, “cynically uses” civilians for cover by operating in their midst, she said.'
• (c) ' In the case of the United Nations school, Israel has said that Hamas militants were firing mortars from a location near the school.'
• (d) 'The Zeitoun neighborhood is strategically located and is known to have many supporters of Hamas.
• (e) 'Samouni family members did not deny that Hamas militants operated in the area. A family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity, although militants were firing rockets at Israel a little more than a mile away.

Nowhere in these 5 generic remarks is there even the faintest suggestion that 'Militants were launching rockets into Israel from the area' of Zeitoun dealt with in the article. To the contrary, the article specifically says (1)the family said there was no active Hamas resistance there (2) militants had fired from over a mile away from the Zeitoun compound, which is not the meaning of 'conducting operations in the vicinity' and (3)the United nations school allued to was not near Zeitoun but in the Jabalia Camp on the other side of Gaza city.

In short, what I emended and both Luke and yourself, failing to actually read sources, affirmed, is WP:OR, and cannot stand.

So, if you think any one who has reverted a text once, cannot touch it, even to correct patent disinformation, grass to the cops. If not, apologize to me, and keep out of pages which you haven't edited, and arrived at only to support a provocation by a probable banned editor who stalks me, and messes up obstructively the efficient editing of wikipedia I/P articles. As you admit on the page you think neither my edit nor Luke's was good, and yet you automatically supported the latter's bad edit. As for the point, attribution. Well, had you actually looked at my second edit, it has attribution: 'A Samouni family member said' there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity.'

Okay? And by the way your You broken is broken English. I guess this will be on breaking news if some pencilneck goes to AN/I, and gets a WP:IAR edit framed for a ban. I might even enjoy the repose. Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend adopting caution and reverting your second edit.     ←   ZScarpia   14:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I can see the technical point. But since reverting would mean restoring a falsification of the source, morally, as opposed to technically, I can't do that. I throw caution to the winds when I'm threatened with a penalty for doing the right thing. Caution, closely examining what a source says, and being faithful to it, whatever one side or another prefers not to hear, is the only value I attribute to the term in working here. It really doesn't matter, does it. If someone wants to score a scalping, I'm bald anyway. It's late spring, and I have a huge amount of work to do in my gardens. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 14:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, I won't even dispute it, if a report is made. Any admin, Ed Johnson, is welcome to just apply whatever sanction discretionally. So much boring fuss is made here on these equivocations or peccadillos as we lose sight of the purpose of this labour, writing faithfully towards encyclopedic reliability. I'll drop him a note to get him to make a sanction automatically on report, and save everyone the usual trouble of the usual shenanigans of pro and contra. I'll be fascinated to see who elects to do Luke's dirty work, if a report is made.Nishidani (talk) 14:49, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Would you mind if I did the reversion on your behalf? I think that the best approach would be to state the reasoning you've given here on the talkpage and to establish a consensus, circumventing the development of an edit war.     ←   ZScarpia   15:18, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

No, absolutely not. That would be a WP:TAGTEAM violation, where my assent would make me complicit in an infraction, but worse still, smirch your own impeccable record.Nishidani (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

If it was tagteaming, since that normally involves editors bypassing the consensus process to ensure text either remains or is removed, it would be an unusual form of it.     ←   ZScarpia   18:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

If you wish to "save everyone the usual trouble", I would suggest that you reconsider this reasonable request to revert, as an editor has expressed opposition to your 1rr breach.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 15:23, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

There's 'no trouble' except if someone wants to make it, which, I expect on precedent, they soon will. I won't defend myself if someone who thinks Jean Martinet and martinets generally are the what wikipedia's rules are all about (rather than ensuring that reliable encyclopedia articles are written), exercises his or her punitive option. If that option is exercised to avert the "clear and present danger" to wikipedia caused by my presence, it will be comical, not tragic. I have no objection to people jumping at their technical right to get at someone on 'the other side' over this piddling issue. I'm sure the champagne corks will pop. Luke stalked me to that page, and I unwittingly hit the trip wire, will probably be hors de combat for some months, and that is what his cast of POV warrior, incapable of editing anything sensible into articles as opposed to hounding people he dislikes, is all about. And that's why, though serious editors can read this as his function, all remain complacently silent, and complicit in that kind of disordered intrusion into this encyclopedia. What I did was inadvertent, but since I underwrite ignoratio legis non excusat, that's no excuse. Ah, that reminds me of a limerick:

There was a young feller named Rex

With diminitive organs of sex.

When charged with exposure

He quipped with composure,

"De minimis non curat lex". Nishidani (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, in your own opinion, if Luke's edit, with the POV summary "Things don't happen in vacumns (sic)" (he's taking sides) is, as I have proven, wholly out of whack with the source he cites, and can find no justification there, should I, knowing that, leave the error on the page?Nishidani (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

If you're handed a sanction, I suspect that Luke's conscience probably wouldn't be too troubled by the circumstances. Apologies if the following is more "teaching your Granny" lecturing. Editors are expected to abide by expected standards of behaviour. Here, the principle of concern is that editors abide by the 1RR restriction on ARBPIA articles. The restriction applies unless vandalism, an IP editor's contribution or a breach of the BLP rules are being removed. Unfortunately, original research isn't one of the exceptions. What constitutes a revert is, notoriously, a matter of very subjective interpretation, but your second edit does look like a revert to me. I think that what you see as a stand for common sense will just look like a stubborn refusal to abide by the rules to admins (but, then, my ability to predict the responses of others isn't good, myself being a bit on the autistic side). I've watched Luke slowly wind you up and think it would be a pity to allow him to reap a reward for that.     ←   ZScarpia   18:23, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I just had dinner, minded to come back here and suspend myself as I had in the past. Unfortunately, as I got up, I suddenly remembered the final pages of Kafka's Der Proceß, and walking up the stairs to my den, realized that self-suspension was inappropriate. If you punish yourself excessively for a peccadillo, the person who made it look scandalous is relieved of the burden on his own conscience, and you abet his hypocrisy. You know, the fellow's on the execution block and the executioners dither with the knife, and he realizes that they are waiting for him to grab the knife and kill himself, relieving themselves of any guilt in the farce, while he carks it wie ein Hund. I sat down to write a note, but see Shrike, predictably, made his complaint. Don't intervene there. I don't mind at all. p.s. Luke didn't wind me up. I actually wind down pulling his pathetic intrusions on this page to pieces. Cheers, pal.Nishidani (talk) 20:21, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Cheers!     ←   ZScarpia   20:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

In any case, while I'm banned, I hope some damage control is maintained on the damage this fellow is doing. He can't construe the English of the sources, and is now wreaking damage in his victory celebration, over at Zeitoun, and the first results are a total mess. I'll be interested to see how Shrike and co., that includes you Morpork, respond to his edits, which show no familiarity with the complex details of the UN report that is indispensable if that article is to be fixed. Nishidani (talk) 22:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

AE

[4]

Dickens

I'm sad to see this [5]. I'll do what I can to hold the fort during your absence. I'm waiting for books to arrive that I have on order and for things to slow down a bit with me, so looks as though we'll both be gone at the same time. If you have talkpage access, we could bounce ideas around here. Truthkeeper (talk) 11:25, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

A quick question and not terribly important - I've had a bit of a break in a busy work schedule and I'm not so tired that I can't edit a bit in the evenings - I'm worried that we'll have a large number of refs and wonder whether you have a preferred system in terms of using named refs to double up a bit? I could go digging around to find out, but it's easier to simply ask. I'm adding bits and pieces with the expectation that you'll be rewriting and am only at the beginning of the vast amount of reading to be done. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:37, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Can't quite reply as I don't know what a named ref means precisely. I used that template because it worked for the Shakespeare Authorship Question. I think the first thing to do with all articles is make the reference system uniform. Any standard ref system will do. If you prefer another by all means adopt it. I'll adjust all the other references to the one of your preference when I am off my ban. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 07:58, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll have a look at SAC. By named ref all I mean is when the same is used multiple times, i.e. <ref name = "Smith215ff">{{harvnb|Smith|2012|pp=215-218}}</ref> for the first occurrence and then for subsequent occurrences using <ref name = "Smith215ff"/>. It's only a small question - and not terribly important at the moment. Truthkeeper (talk) 11:47, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh of course. Must be ther heat of working in the garden, which is a better excuse that just being on a lot of technical things, admittedly, dumb or nescient. Yep, Nableezy, NSH001 and Johnuniq gave me several tutorials on how to use ref names, and I fucked up despite them every time, causing a ref error to redden the page. By all means, then.Nishidani (talk) 13:37, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm a bit of a champion in regards to making the big red errors myself, so I think I'll do without them for now. It's easier to tidy up at the end, if it's necessary. I hope the garden is doing well. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:11, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

You know, I was tempted...

to remind the AE board of your shameful behavior on Jesus and Justin Martyr. You were opposing a mountain of concensus with your personal idea of truth and sholarship. It makes you look quite bad. When you said something like, "I'm gonna put 'Palestinian' on Jesus and other's pages," it then became appropriate for me to go to these pages and stop your political advocacy, as per WP:HOUND. To quote, fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles isn't stalking. I didn't use your contribs, I showed up at the articles you said you were gonna war at. You eventually gave up (like Custer). Much later, when we both show up on a popular I-P site that already had several editors common in the area (al ameer son, sean, shrike, etc.) doesn't qualify as stalking.

You and Sean are throwing alot of slander. I think it makes you look silly, and I wanted to tell you. But do as you will, I can't try to control what I love. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 17:57, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Consensus. Oui, le concensus là était une espèce de recensement (census) des cons comme toi, des cons qui ne savent ce qu'ils font (allusion biblique). If 'you can't control what you love', I suggest that this thing you love is getting out of hand.Nishidani (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Since this joker is stalking me, and trying, in another editor's words, to 'wind me up', as my case is being deliberated upon, and since he is excusing himself, while admitting he does stalk my edits, with two very serious lies:

• When you said something like, "I'm gonna put 'Palestinian' on Jesus and other's pages,"
• I didn't use your contribs, I showed up at the articles you said you were gonna war at.

I would hope that, while I won't report this formally, some administrator asks this fellow, whom I have told twice not to disturb these pages, to provide the diffs for these extraordinary claims about my bad faith, and my ostensible boasting that I go to a variety of articles in order to engage in warfare. And now, to bed, and to some good reading. My apologies for breaking my self-imposed ban, which will apply, whatever the verdict, to all articles and talk pages.Nishidani (talk) 21:32, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

You attempted to put pictures of Jesus and St. George on the Palestinian ethnicity article. When you were flatly shut down, you went to those figure's articles to try to write a Palestinian heritage into the bios. I knew you would do this, because you said you would do this.

When an editor says they are going to begin a campaign of POV OR on multiple articles, it is appropriate to follow-up and correct policy-lacking edits. I wasn't stalking you, as per WP:HOUND, I was being a good editor. Sometimes when I see graffiti, I will look at the editor's contribs to see if there is a streak of vandalism. In your case, after the consensus was "Nishidani, don't put a picture of Jesus on this page," you said "consensus, I don't care what you think. I'm going to Jesus, George and Justin's pages and making them say Palestinian-born-n-raised."

I could find the diffs, but you and I both know it happened. Unlike you, I'm not posturing for an audience. You were edit-warring, calling people zionists and ventriloquists. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk)

Nishidani, unless Luke produces something of substance, such as a list of diffs backing up his claims, would you like the permission you extended to revert his comments on sight to be taken up?     ←   ZScarpia   01:01, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

All the kibbitzing isn't necessary. Nishidani knows what I'm talking about. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 02:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC))

I've reiterated ZScarpia's removal of "Luke's" comments here, which he restored. "Luke" has been "told twice not to disturb these pages" by Nishidani.  – OhioStandard (talk) 09:52, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That's what is requested hereforth. (I've restored the removed material just in order to have the archive record clean when I chuck all this there, shortly. But from hereon in anyone is free to remove any addition comments.) Since what he appears to wish to do is get me to take him to WP:AGF, and then watch the spectacle as my peremptory rhetorical dismissals of his nonsense are diffed by the usual AE group to prove I am also a culprit there, and have bitten a newbie, thus increasing the impression to administrators I'm a danger to wikipedia with another separate sanction, . .

And since, wilfully or not the theatrical structure of intrusions not related to editing necessities here over recent times exhibits, to a readerly eye like mine, an euphuistically self-educating good cop/illiterately cheeky bad cop duet as the starring dramatis personae that, no doubt inadvertently, acts like a design to trigger my notorious hybris into some criminal admission, much like some piece of a Pinter play, I think I'd better specify that my boredom threshold has been exhausted also with User:AnkhMorpork as well. So, chaps, as the larger curtain goes down on me, it's just a minor 'curtains' for you in this little nook of wiki. Any further intrusions will be archived by me, or whoever, watching the page with a friendly regard, catches them first.Nishidani (talk) 10:20, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia madness

The current nonsense exposes Wikipedia's inability to control editing in some areas. I tried to draft a comment for the AE report to point out how idiotic it would be to sanction someone who did not restore a blatant misrepresentation of the NYT source, but I have regretfully concluded that it would not be helpful—you were caught in an ethical trap, and Wikipedia has no way of responding appropriately. Yes, someone who was here to fight a battle would have immediately reverted themselves because that would have been the correct tactic. However, someone who cares about basics such as the correct use of sources is too easily trapped by a case like this.

The previous section on this talk page should be removed because there is nothing helpful that can be said in response to that kind of blather: anything useful should be on an article talk page, and you have no good way of responding to a spray of claims. Just remove it.

I would remove the section, but that would give rise to more drama. You have to remove unhelpful posts without responding; then others can repeat the removal. Johnuniq (talk) 02:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Your call is, as almost always, the most astute, and formally impeccable. It's unfair to place the burden and boredom of rubbish-removal on others, esp. since I've shat in my own nest along with the other queer birds that are such busibuddies here. Still, I think Ohio and Scarpia did the right thing. All this reminds me that one day I really should fix the Elias Canetti and the associated Crowds and Power article. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:18, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

It bemuses me that my view of what the honourable way to have reacted would have been is the polar opposite. The purpose of the 1RR restriction is to slow editing of articles down and I think its effect has been beneficial. The legitimate course to have followed in the first place would have been to have waited for the 24-hour limit to expire before making the second edit, by which time another editor may have made it anyway. When it's pointed out to you that you've breached the restriction, the accepted ways of dealing with the situation are to explain why your edits weren't a breach or to acknowledge your breach, then rectify the situation by reverting offending edits. In the same situation, I would have thanked Shrike for her notification and then reverted myself. I wouldn't have viewed that as a tactic, but as courtesy and an obligation on myself to rectify an infringement made by me. As was pointed out, it wouldn't have mattered much that the misrepresentation persisted in the article for one more day.     ←   ZScarpia   10:41, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Honour is highly variable among and within cultures, and has no one meaning, though theorists have often distinguished between traditional honour codes, where what honour requires is calibrated by the pressure of social expectations and customary precedents, - you bow to family or community expectations of the done thing, as when in southern Italy a mother will defend her son up on rape charges by protesting the victim was asking for it, or an Iranian will murder his sister because family honour demands it since she goes out with a non-approved person - and post-Kantian honour, which, having internalized the old code into a modern individualistic conscience, is detached from what communities think you should do in any given situation. An anecdote. Caught ordering a beer when at table with 3 Arab engineers 4 decades ago, I was reproved for my Western decadence. I quipped that the Qur’an had two attitudes to alcohol, and I agreed with the earliest one, which was lenient. A bitter argument broke out with 2 of the three vehemently denying this. The silent one, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (what policy morons in powerful states would call a terrorist therefore), interrupted them after several minutes, and said ‘He’s right. The Qur’an does have two distinct views’. He was hit with a violent tirade in colloquial Arabic. He stood up, and before them said: ‘Unlike you, who drink secretly every night, I have never touched alcohol, because the Prophet reviewed his lenient opinion. Tonight however I will go and drink in public with (Nishidani)’. Walking to a pub, he told me that he had been accused by the others of besmirching the honour of Islam and their fatherland, even though they admitted what I had said was true. I happened to use the word ‘hypocrisy’, and explained its long complex history, from the Greek word for ‘stage acting’ to our day. He was stunned, and over a beer, said he must master English thoroughly if it had such ingenious words. What dictionary should be buy? ‘The Oxford’. Having had two beers, which he said were very tasty, he then told me that nonetheless he would never touch alcohol again. He had so only in protest at his fellow countrymen’s ‘hypocrisy’. His sense of honour was to an inner sense of honesty and truthfulness.

Two months later he knocked on my door. We were in the same lodgings. He was extremely anxious, and begged me to excuse him, but he’d ordered the dictionary, and they had billed him over a thousand pounds in those days, a huge sum. I’d forgotten to tell him to get the OED shorter I volume version. They’d despatched the huge 20 vol. hardback version. And he couldn’t meet the bill and . . ‘ ‘What’s the difference? ‘A thousand dollars’ (something like 3,000 these days). Could I advise him, or give him a loan, he’d sign a promissory note and he’d. . I cut him short, went down to the bank and gave him the money in cash, and waived away his promissory note. 30 people in his extended family depended on him, I knew. A month later, he received his wage, equal to that sum, and handed it all over to me, against my protests that he could just pay it in instalments. He had an extraordinary deep personal sense of honour in all senses, modern and ancient.

Wikipedia is that paradox, a tribal, rule-regimented closed society which is dedicated to constructing the knowledge base for a global open society. We sojourners, whatever our provenance, must allow ourselves to be enculturated to what is an authentically distinct social system. I've lived in several, happily, but am congenitally incapable of adapting my thinking to local conventions, as opposed to absorbing their customs and languages. The same goes here. I prefer to be a stranger in an anonymous world, polite, well-disposed, but not socialized to the point that my native instincts lose their quixotically individualized bent.

Here, it suffices to not infringe a rule, and keep your nose clean, and no one can touch you, even if you just sit round on your arse making a nuisance of yourself by making editing difficult for others, for that is not regulated. You can be a noxious sloth, that is not a problem to the "community" unless your otiose kibitzing breaks a rule, rather than, as it often is used to, wearing down someone by attrition. No way to measure that either. The offence is in yielding to attrition, not waging it carefully as an internet pastime. This was the practice perfected by User:NoCal100, whom many still here were happy to back up, and observable in edits under that name or his socks or students, past and present. If you do break a rule, nothing counts except a formal act of penitence before the collectivity, affirmed by automatically reverting the error. It makes those who indicted you crow maliciously at your submission to authority and it stops administrators from wasting their time trying to figure out whether to get rid of you or not, which for them is not always a simple call. It doesn’t matter that you can dodge out of an infraction by doing something you know actually restores, if momentarily, a false voice to a page. It’s only a day. The page is hit perhaps 100 times, so only 100 of a potential billion people will suffer from the disinformatsia, which can be restored after 24 hours.(Can’t you see how profoundly Orwellian that is? ) Since judgements are on behaviour as indicated in a diff or two, to be measured against the relevant law, with no regard to motivation or accidents or circumstance, or the nature of the content, its system of law is ‘Pharisaic’ in that it is insouciant of intentionality (fundamentval in modern criminal law) and devoid of mercy. It's not statistically minded, wondering how to determine the parlousness of an editor by weighing his 6 slips in 25,000 edits over 6 years against the positive signs than in the other 24,996 he has been productive, generally civil, and accommodating.

This approach is premodern, but highly functional. As long as someone ritually performs the required act of redemptive penance, he is saved, even if he curses under his breath and vows silently to exact revenge. In law, the woman caught in adultery had to be dilapidated. There was no room for attenuating circumstances. Even Christ recognized that. He knew the Law. But he subverted it by asking the eager crowd that he who had not committed adultery in his heart throw the first stone. Which of course means, we are all hypocrites if we subscribe to a law in practice, but violate it in private. Honour, on one plane, required her killing, as in many societies, where it is held that what is written is written cannot be modified or overruled by what might be thought of as casuistry, but may simply be ‘understanding’.

Honour, in this probably apocryphal tale, could be read otherwise: as going beyond lipservice to rules. Christ’s parable shames (the intimate affective corollary of honour) the punitive community by saying that their duty to perform an honour killing has a dishonourable motivation. They all admitted silently, since no one cast a stone, that they regularly googled up mentally the Palestinian porn-sites of their day while vigorously running to the public square to join in the lynching of anyone who had the courage, or folly, to enact what they only thought secretly. Socrates likewise ruined Greek honour, and yet refined it. Those who got him convicted knew that he could easily slip away, and thus wear the shame of his punishment doubly, in cowardly exile. He thought, to the contrary, (the precedent is seminal for modern contract theories of society) that he had a contract to honour with his city, and if it decreed, however wrongly, a punishment, he was duty bound to accept it. So he drank the poison. I think the tragedy of Richard Goldstone consists of the riven tensions between the demand to honour the truth as he originally saw it, and the accusation that he had dishonoured his community by sacrificing its interests to some abstract notion of the facts that would only serve their enemies.

In Italy and the Mediterranean generally there is not dishonour attached in cheating the tax inspectors. Every house's sale price is radically understated to avoid taxes. I , being a foreigner, insisted on my own country's norms, and declared the real sale price. I thought it dishonourable to cheat. By chance, I was hit two years later by an injunction to pay taxes on double the declared price, as happens to 1 in 10,000 randomly. The system is to underdeclare, the authorities overestimate, and if you're unlucky to be summoned, to negotiate payment of taxes on a negotiated difference. On a matter of principle, as much as principal, I fought this in court for 10 years, and won, but it cost me more than I would have paid had I settled like all insiders do.

There are very good reasons why Wikipedia has adopted the rule-system it has, because managing anything this great discretionally and circumstantially would require 50 times more arbitrators, and lend itself to a different series of abuses. It is extremely democratic in its premise that, if someone, whatever his merits or lack of them, falls foul of the rules, one can just get rid of them because someone else will pop up to replace him. No one is irreplaceable. No single person makes a difference (they may not here in all likelihood. In social history, arguably they do. This is a collective organism, paradoxically founded by a Randian, whose theories all mock the masses as the destroyers of that individualism on which modern capitalist systems thrive!). Speaking of which, I once read Iris Murdoch’s ‘’A fairly Honourable Defeat,” and since I’ll be idle this month, may just be tempted to reread it. Thanks for the question, Scarpy. It's nice to have an intelligent challenge posted in here after the sheer barnum's circus of tomfoolery these last days! Must go out and do some gardening, as Voltaire advised.Nishidani (talk) 14:13, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Let's take a more everyday problem. Say you inadvertently did something antisocial like queue-jumping and somebody pointed it out, how would you respond? I suppose that the scenario would have to be set somewhere where queue-jumping was seen as antisocial, or would local cultural values not affect your response?     ←   ZScarpia   16:39, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. It made me think of the clash between Chomsky and Skinner in the late 50s: totally different methodologies. I tried to clarify that the rules governing wiki and its culture require a kind of socialization (Randian objectivism) to a distinctive system whose concept of what is significant in interaction has no analogy with many other real as opposed to virtual socities, and you, by the choice of analogy, are suggesting we can make analogies between what occurs in human societies, and what occurs in wikipedia. We look at the issue from diametrically opposed perspectives: I see contrast with most anthropological norms governing rules, you think analogies pertain. I suspect it's because I'm much older, and now less flexible, perhaps 'maladapted' to the emergent logic of the web's social network and its innovative norms. Your analogy says, for me, nothing because it is like a wiki diff, which constitutes evidence for the application of a rule, and ignores that in human interactions, whatever the society, dozens of norms can intervene, and circumstances and context count. In everyday life and its problems I know no society where judgements of behaviour exclude everything pertinent except the instantaneous snapshot of one moment among a fluid sequence of events where one of several 'actors' is caught doing something. Everything out of the snippet is outside the frame, which is why it's easy to frame folks here.

Yes, specifically though, I would apologize. I live in a country where, like Russia, jumping the queue was considered bad breeding, but universal. The Japanese have an adage: 郷に入っては郷に従え: 'follow (the uses) of the country you go to'. We would say, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do', which, contextually doesn't mean what the sober Japanese proverb suggest (adapt your manners to what local custom requires), since were it applied, I would avoid taxes, and jump queues, which I don't, and not following that social norm is not evidence of being antisocial, since in every other regard I eat their food, speak their language, and obey their laws to the letter. At funerals I may be antisocial in staying outside churches, which I only visit for aesthetic reasons, or because I've been invited to lunch at one. No one is offended.

One never jumps a queue inadvertently, since it is the nature of queues that to join them, you consciously make the right choice, and go to the tail, or consciously ignore others, and elbow your way in before others. People who 'jump queues' , as the word's usage shows, know quite clearly that they are breaking an order.

Let me provide a concrete example which came immediately to mind, and I hope no one kicks up a fuss and makes absurd accusations. I was in Austria some decades ago on vacation, and I observed the following scene among newcomers. One morning a family came down, and the women fussed over a smiling patriarch at breakfast. Evidently this was a special holiday for the old gent, he beamed delight. Two kids from the family, once he was seated, jumped the queue to order before others, mostly Germans, who'd been patiently waiting their turn. I happened afterwards to hear him speak Yiddish, and put two and two together. The next morning, I happened to be in line, as they came down. Having settled grandpa down, they came to the buffet, and I and my wife got elbowed, rather than nudged, aside, with some others, by the two youths who wanted to go straight to the buffet to serve grandpa. I didn't make a scene. I simply took each by the elbow, said "boker tov" and drew them back two places behind me and a woman, indicating they wait their turn. The Germans seemed to accept this without a word. It contradicted the rules I grew up with, and without kicking up a fuss, I intervened so that everybody kept the proper order.

Only a decade later, on reading Norman Finkelstein's memoir of his mother did I twig, with a sense of embarrassment and regret, that out of contextual ignorance I'd missed what the German residents had intuited, and, intuiting rightly, had made an exception though disliking the practice. Finkelstein's mother would embarrass him as a child in the streets from time to time because she would jump the queue or elbow her way to counters, which the child knew went against American norms. Only as an adult, did he understand that it was an unfortunate, but completely understandable reflex developed after years in Auschwitz and other circles of that Nazi hell, where survival often meant ignoring the social niceties when a scrap of food was up for grabs. It was an excuse for her, though not to be imitated by those who have never suffered as she, and millions like her had. I immediately recalled the Austrian incident, and understood, namely, that the old fellow must have been a Holocaust survivor , and that his children, out of sheer habit, in this case and not in Finkelstein's, had unconsciously caught the reflex from their grandparents, and would make special efforts to see he (and collaterally all the family) got in first. Had I known this, I would have altered my behaviour, which was a rigorous application of a universally fair norm, and simply told the two to ask politely if they could pass up the queue to get their grandpa his breakfast, and, for myself, allow them to take my place in the line. Whatever, they behaved impeccably at breakfast the next day, and as we left, after brakfast,nodded my way as I walked to the reception, and we exchanged a salutation in Hebrew.

But it is a nice thing to explore in the manner of R. M. Hare, who devoted his life to analysing such ethical cruxes after surviving Chiangi and the Burmese Railway. I'd like to challenge your analogy analytically, but it would mean creating my own (already done mentally) and writing a wall of text worse than this. It looks like blogging, and probably violates rules of what pages are for.

(ps.Your point above in reaction to my remark to Johnuniq, misconstrued it. I applauded his suggestion that it was my duty to first revert what I dislike here, and set a precedent which then others could follow if the same disturbance was repasted. It was a nicety of responsibility, which implied I was delegating to others what should have been my chief responsibility. I didn't mean to imply that your earlier suggestions weren't equally appreciated. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 20:49, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

TLDR

I'd just like to say, that despite what some editors have said, I always enjoy reading your long and thoughtful posts. Your eloquence, insightfulness and good humour is a refreshing change from some of the vacuous nonsense that we have to deal with every day in this space.

Obviously based on my own experience at AE I empathise personally with many of the points you raised at your AE. Based on reading between the lines of some of the admin comments, it feels to me that the wider wikipedia community may be beginning to recognise the underlying issues you identified. Maybe I am looking at the proverbial glass half full, but I think wikipedia will find a way to evolve to counteract the "coordination tactics" in time. Oncenawhile (talk) 19:53, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the problem in the I/P area is summed up by WP:TLDR. That is almost always directed at windbags like myself who chirp on like the senescent Nestor in the Iliad, because old age is anecdotage. 'Wasting bandwidth'? Fuck, I'm wasting a few hours each day taking this place seriously, as an unpaid volunteer like everyone, and to make that charge reflects a very odd idea of whose resources are being wasted, those of the chaps who own the servers, or the intelligence and time of those who try to ensure that what sticks in the electronic memory is of a high order of reliability and quality.

Those who find this distressing can of course ignore the ramble. They are not obliged to read it. But it should be understood that TLDR is a the dismissive wave of a mind raised in a different technical culture than my generation was. It wasn't rare in my day for students to read 100pages a day. Academics worth their salt double that all their lives. The internet privileges speed, googling for key words or themes; sound bites reduce complex political positions to a 15 second cliché pared to the bone while maximalizing for detonative impact on mass mood rather than denotative precision on individual minds. With Twitter, I'm told, we've rasped thought back to 142 characters. Fine. But writing an encyclopedic article from RS, if undertaken seriously, means for each article anything from 50 newspaper, journal or technical reports to a dozen books have to be read closely. Tom Reedy, Paul Barlow and myself, while releasing the endlessly conflicted Shakespeare Authorship Question article from its chronic quagmire probably over a year read a couple of thousand pages each on various aspects of that topic. The person holding that article, edit by edit, hostage, didn't appear to read anything more than our edits, and the specific paragraphs or sections of paragraphs we cited from our reading. It was immensely more time-taking to handle that approach, than to simply turn page over page of excellent books throughout the summer to get the necessary scholarship right. If we'd had a WP:TLDR mentality, as most of the troublemakers here have - their powers of concentration seem only to focus with deadly intensity on arguing in AE disputes or talk pages - we'd never have written that or many other pages. And we're no exception. An extraordinary number of people do this here. We could've just lounged about enjoying the otiose experience of making life difficult for anyone who did have an informed grasp of the relevant scholarship, and this is the norm in the I/P area. Most edit challenges go to the lead, without even checking the body of the text beforehand to see what the rest of the article says. I assume this is because POV warriors think that in our twitterish Götterdämmerung that's as far as most readers will go for their gem over dinner, or their letter to the editor. It's not so much the 'coordination tactics', which are a fact of life, as much as the refusal to actually inform oneself of the subject being edited, the refusal to use, in evaluating edits, anything other than a hackneyed litmus test of its political consequence for one's country, and the habit of never reverting bad edits made by someone you identify as sharing your POV, but incompetently.

I don't share your optimism, and perhaps it's not necessary. Overall the admins have a terrible job, and I don't think we ought to expect anything from them. They have to put up with more bullshit than us peons. This joint's a lemon that would drive anyone in the driving seat insane, let alone the traffic cops who see it careering their way every other hour. But driver and cop know that, rather than get it off the road, a little patience and it gets to its destination, and, in another sense, cranks out a remarkably enjoyable drop of juice.

Good will, but above all, patient study of the relevant material, intervening only when you are sure of the edit, or catch sight of a patent piece of jugglery, is the best model. If you are casting about for an exemplary model, look past me, and learn from Zero: punctiliously informed, brief in talk, spot-on in editing from the best sources. Unfortunately, I'm too old to change ways. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 21:48, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

ps. Though Mearsheimer and Walt's remarks apply also to the editorial pressures in wikipedia, it should be noted that, precisely because of its complex, weird and unwieldy protocols, it is the only venue in the world of contemporary communications technology I know of that guarantees its audience, its composers and its subjects, theoretically, equal time, and the right to balance, and the kind of contextualized, detailed reportage based on the best research available which clarifies what all other public and private forms of communication fail to: TV, blogs, twitter, political discourse, can't do this: careers are at stake if you press for public awareness of the whole picture by furnishing details. Look at the NYTs. It's daily print version is tendentiously, if subtly skewed to an ostensible 'centrism', to ignore the fundamental issues (Uri Avnery wrote the other day of another related subject:'faced with serious problems or serious arguments, they don’t get to grips with the matter itself, but select some minor detail and belabor it endlessly.'). If you subscribe to the NYRB, the reportage is totally informed, and leans 'left', because only intellectuals read it, a small audience.

It's for this reason that we owe the place loyalty and are under some obligation to do our best to get things right, and written here. You don't need a POV. All you need is thorough coverage of RS, because facts speak for themselves (a buen entendedor pocas palabras (bastan).).Nishidani (talk) 11:00, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Aha, so you are optimistic after all! I fully agree - with time, thorough coverage of RS always manages to outweigh tendentiousness and tactics.

That Uri Avnery quote also acts a perfect summary of the wikipedia editing habits of certain Pro-I editors - there are two editors in particular who take it to the extreme. I believe it's called ignoratio elenchi. I only know of one way of counteracting that technique, and that is "patience and perseverance". If they are willing to waste their own time with vacuous tangential comments, that's fine with me. I am happy to discover every single possible branch of argument, until the whole tree has been explored.

On your last point, it amazes me when some new IP or editor turns up with outrageously extremist views - in the age of the internet you would think extremism would be harder to find. I am sure it is not unrelated to the fact that some of the most popular books on the I/P subject are of wholly spurious scholarship. Wikipedia seems to me to be the only place where we can really help bring history's double helixes closer together - and for that, everyone on all sides should treat it with the upmost respect.

Oncenawhile (talk) 13:29, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, best to focus on text and not texters! Sidestepping TLDR temptations, reading this customarily trenchant review by Garry Wills of Robert Caro's 4th volume of his great LBJ biography, I couldn't help keep smiling wryly at the analogies between the respective tempers of LBJ and Bobby Kennedy and wiki's POV hotheads at AE and elsewhere. In his last paragraphs, he wonders what it would have been like that this temperamental problem been resolved by intelligent compromise. That's what we all a lot of us wonder about here! (of course the NYRB review is longer than a tweet, so it will require humongous efforts to read that far!)Nishidani (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I too used to enjoy reading N's long and eloquent prose, despite our various diagreements. Yes they may give a feel of an escape from a soundbyte world. But I have come to believe that Wikipedia is a wrong (and wasteful) medium for those writings. They are more appropriate for a forum or a blog, or perhaps for a personal email exchange. Wikipedia has a different purpose and that is where the focus should be. Of course, user talk pages are exempt from this and may serve as a refuge for a bit of fun, but for the rest, we should all strive to be as concise as we can, be it article talk pages or various dispute resolution forums. OTOH I am a very bad wikipedian, so my opinion isn't important. Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 17:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Boris, and your opinion is as important as anyone else's. If you look at my record recently, the essays coincide with periods where I have extreme difficulties with other editors who do not appear to understand that we are here to write articles, or with defending myself on AE against their complaints about my presence. Most of the last year I have been writing or rewriting articles. This is a problematical area: few seem intent on writing articles, and every edit provokes endless talk page jousting. I think Slim virgin sees the world at a different angle than myself, but if I see her coming to an article to work it top to bottom, I don't even trouble to check her work, edit by edit. I let her go through it like a dose of salutary salts, and, when she is finished, examine it. It's called trust,- you know you would probably see a lot of things that your own sense of NPOV would challenge or fine tune, but you don't get in the way. Trust doesn't exist here. I've nowhere her record or standing, but I do spend more time going right through articles rather than ignoring everything but the wording of the lead, which is what 90% of editors here are doing. As to email exchange, well, we did that but generally, and I often lock my email off for this reason, I think it salutary not to discuss wikipedia or its doings in emails, particularly if one is writing to an editor sharing one's POV. That can quickly lead to a tagteaming culture. What one says there, is best said before the community, or better left unsaid. Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I understand you rationale, but I doubt that even in those cases your essays have the desired effect. I think the longer they are, the less likely they are to be read. Sure you need to get your points across. But if you do it concisely, you may have a better chance to convey your thoughts to the reader... It all sounds way to patronising, sorry... But I think I understand the urge to write these esseys. In my view they are less to do with the aim to convince someone, and more to do with what Russians call self expression. Like Fidel's speaches:). Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 17:49, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Let's cut a deal. I'll shut up in exchange for evidence that those who find my cuban-communist blague here an abuse begin to consistently edit the articles they edit from top to bottom, overturn bad edits from all sides, dedicate themselves to comprehensive improvement towards WP:NPOV, and write informed balanced articles on Palestinian villages, identities or culture, as I have with their culture.Nishidani (talk) 17:56, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

One sentence - 62 words and no obvious relationship with the previous discussion. I give up. Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 16:45, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure, as a Russian, you're familiar with this court case. It is a marvel of judicial concision. Is this the model?

Судья: Ваш трудовой стаж?

Бродский: Примерно…

Судья: Нас не интересует «примерно»!

Бродский: Пять лет.

Судья: Где вы работали?

Бродский: На заводе. В геологических партиях…

Судья: Сколько вы работали на заводе?

Бродский: Год.

Судья: Кем?

Бродский: Фрезеровщиком.

Судья: А вообще какая ваша специальность?

Бродский: Поэт, поэт-переводчик.

Судья: А кто это признал, что вы поэт? Кто причислил вас к поэтам?

Бродский: Никто. (Без вызова). А кто причислил меня к роду человеческому?

Судья: А вы учились этому?

Бродский: Чему?

Судья: Чтобы быть поэтом? Не пытались кончить вуз, где готовят… где учат…

Бродский: Я не думал… я не думал, что это даётся образованием.

Судья: А чем же?

Бродский: Я думаю, это… (растерянно) от Бога…

Судья: У вас есть ходатайства к суду?

Бродский: Я хотел бы знать: за что меня арестовали?

Судья: Это вопрос, а не ходатайство.

Бродский: Тогда у меня нет ходатайства.

As you can observe as soon as the indicted Brodsky (yes as a minor hack I shouldn't make analogies) tried to defend himself, the judge cut him off (Нас не интересует «примерно»!).No need to reply, and drag this out. Best Nishidani (talk) 17:54, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

What the hell?

I'm going to tell you what my father told me many years ago: لو أنت عارف إلى أحسن لك، اخرس nableezy - 20:58, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I'll take that in exactly the same way you did! Best Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I proved him right over and over. But youre much smarter than me. You know there are people whose only role is to rile you up, those that hope that the aggravation over those creases in the rules that allows for 90% of the bullshit will be enough to make you say something that a single admin, uninformed, canvassed, whatever, make the hoped for judgment. Please, please, please, I beg you, do not let them. nableezy - 01:50, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Advice taken. I'm probably older than your old man, but less wise. This is the last note in here as well, until my self-ban expires. (Though I must add that, I wasn't wound up or riled by all this: but bemused. If I give that impression, there's some defect in the tonal colour of my prose style, a serious matter, and I'll work on that off-wiki).Nishidani (talk) 07:15, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding this, it was my impression that it extended until 13 June. Ankh.Morpork 18:21, 13 May 2012 (UTC)