User talk:Abenyosef

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User:HIZKIAH/Welcome


I'm trying to help edit a page, but am constantly attacked by other editors on a personal level.

They don't respond to my arguments and claim that because they're in a majority, they don't have any obligation to. What can I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abenyosef (talk • contribs)

OK, I haven't looked in detail but scanned down some of the talk page discussions, I didn't see any obvious personal attacks so it might be useful if you were to highlight them when making such statements. Realistically the {{helpme}} system isn't able to get involved in disputes, we are volunteer editors just like you and have no special status. You can try looking to dispute resolution for some ideas of ways to move the problem forward. --pgk 15:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello Abenyosef,
I'm also copying a reply made by User:ais523 to another user with a similar question, as well as a summary of the dispute resolution options below.
I'd suggest that the administrator's incident noticeboard would be a good place to discuss and/or report this (it will bring the matter to the attention of administrators, who will decide what needs to be done, if anything); however, you might want to try talking to the user concerned on their Talk page some more if you think it would be constructive (it might not be, I don't know the details of the situation). --ais523
In this case, the material at Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes seems relevant. To summarize:
Hope this helps. Feel free to let me know in case you need any further assistance. —XhantarTalk 15:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents

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[edit] WP:ATT

Please don't alter policy pages. Many thanks, SlimVirgin (talk) 04:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Abenyosef, if I may chime in, let me give you my take on your concern. I see two separate issues here. First, in general it is a bad idea to directly make large or substantive changes to policy pages, as these are very critical to the functioning of WP, and most words there are carefully selected and tweaked by consensus. Of course, suggesting constructive changes in the applicable Talk pages is always welcome. Second, regarding your specific point about OR in Talk pages, it is true that we have more leeway there, but remember that WP's mission is to simply present a summary of what has been previously published. So as an example, if we have a reliable published source saying X, we should not engage in trying to show that X is 'wrong', because that would be counter-productive to our "attributability not truth" mission. Of course if we can show that a given published source is actually saying something else than what was quoted, or that a given publication is actually a personal blog with no editorial oversight, those would be relevant Talk page topics and/or arguments. Again, our goal is to present balanced summaries of existing publications in a neutral tone - not to create new knowledge, arguments or positions - innovations of any kind should be published elsewhere. I hope this helps. Thanks, Crum375 12:47, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Congrats for your adminship, a well-earned one indeed.
As you say, we must have "a 'reliable' published source saying X." But how do we decide that the source is reliable? Answer: by doing our own O.R. into the source. In disagreement with you, I think we 'should' investigate wrong claims, because they are usually related to their sources' lack of expertise -- and wp:rs does require expert sources.
But in any event, it's urgent that we clarify that the concept of O.R. applies only to materials that will be written into the article. --Abenyosef 18:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the congrats! Now regarding the OR issue. I agree with you that a 'reliable source' has to be qualified by Wikipedians prior to its use. Without knowing the specific details of your situation, I would generally follow the publication. If the publisher is a respectable newspaper, for example, I would accept any pertinent information on it, even if they quote, as SlimVirgin says, a scientist claiming the moon is made of green cheese. Of course we would not say that WP believes that, only that NYT (for example) says that, per the cited quote. Similarly for a respectable, peer-reviewed scientific journal - anything published there would generally be acceptable as source. OTOH, a blog, an advocacy site, an attack site, etc. would normally not be acceptable (except when addressing themselves). So as I see it, the focus should be on the publication or publisher, not the author. It is the job of the publisher to vet the author, not ours. If we start vetting authors on the Talk page, that would be OR and not relevant to WP. OTOH, vetting publishers and publications, i.e. qualifying sources, is very much something that belongs on the Talk page, IMO. Crum375 21:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid that's not what wp:rs says. wp:rs only endorses scholarly publications. Non-scholarly sources are to be checked on a case-by-case basis, which includes research on the authors. wp:rs is very clear that expertise is needed, and if a greengrocer called John Doe claims in the NYT that the moon is a ball of cheese, we certainly can --and should-- object to the source because he doesn't have the expertise needed to make that claim. On the other hand, if John Doe claims that the moon is made of cheese in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Dairy and Astronomy, then we can't reject that source, because it's scholarly.
Wikipedia by no means endorses the NYT, and with good reason.--Abenyosef 22:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I just carefully re-read WP:RS, and I am not sure where you see that "WP:RS only endorses scholarly publications". AFAICT, we support all potential sources assuming they meet certain criteria. Again, the focus is on the publisher, its neutrality, reputation and its editorial oversight. I don't believe that it is WP's responsibility to second-guess the editors of a publication, once that publication is deemed otherwise acceptable. We let them vet the authors and their work, while we vet the publication. IMO, for WP itself to try to research the authors' qualifications, quality or 'authenticity' of their work, assuming they were published in a reputable and otherwise acceptable publication, would be WP:OR, and is not our mandate here. And AFAIK, WP does accept the NYT as a reliable source - this does not mean that what the NYT says is gospel to us, but it means that we may cite it as a source, possibly balanced with other reliable sources, as the case may be. I invite comments from others about this issue, but this is my own understanding. Crum375 23:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia divides sources between scholarly and non-scholarly. When we consider using non-scholarly sources, we must ask questions not only about the publisher, but also about the authors --whether they are experts in the field they're writing about; whether they're explicit about the data-collection process; whether they may have a certain bias, etc. All of these are included in the wp:rs guideline. In other words, if, let's say, a jeweller claims that the moon is square, wp:rs requires us to vet him to see what expertise he may have to make his claim. The only exception is if he publishes in a scholarly journal, in which case we must accept the claim without asking questions. Scholarly journals being defined as, basically, peer-reviewed ones. Since the NYT is not peer-reviewed, it is not automatically accepted as a source; we must first see who the authors are and what they're writing about. This doesn't mean Wikipedia rejects the Times as a source. It means Wikipedia doesn't accept it blindly, like it does with Nature or the Journal of the American Chemical Society. To me that's crystal clear. --Abenyosef 03:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Well-argued

Hi there. Marhaba. I really appreciated your very articulate intervention on the Anti-Zionism talk page regarding the Reinhardt quote. Welcome to Wikipedia! Hope to see you around more. Tiamut 17:02, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I see many people on that (and other) pages more concerned about their own POV than they are about truth. And this I don't like.--Abenyosef 18:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes. It's quite sad actually and all too common around here when it comes to articles on Palestine, Israel, Judaism, Islam, etc., etc. By the way, would you mind taking a look at this Template:Palestinians and the talk page discussion there? I would like an outside opinion to see if I'm totally off-base or what. Thanks. Tiamut 13:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't tell. I'm participating in the Anti-Zionism article discussions because I'm an anti-Zionist Jew and I find the idea that anti-Zionism is intrinsically antisemitic outrageous. However, I don't know much about Palestinians as a people. I favor a one-satate solution in which a state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan would encompass both the Jews and the Arabs living there with equal rights, and I don't care if the name for that state is Israel, Palestine, Equalia or whatever. --Abenyosef 15:17, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


The Original Barnstar
Awarded for your tireless pursuit of truth, your levelheadedness in heated talk page discussions, and your ability to administer what in less academically strict contexts is referred to as "ownage". MeteorMaker 21:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your note about NOR

Hi Abenyosef, OR isn't really allowed on talk pages either. It's okay for someone to argue for or against a certain source so long as his arguments are based on Wikipedia's policies, but it's not okay for them to argue that a particular source, otherwise regarded as reliable, is right or wrong based on their own opinion. For example, suppose we have a New York Times article that says company X is selling faulty goods. The managing director of company X arrives at Wikipedia and starts arguing on talk pages that the NYT article shouldn't be used as a source because the reporter is someone who dislikes him in real life and the report is full of mistakes. That's OR and it's not allowed. It's not allowed in the article, obviously, and it's also not allowed to affect our decision to use the NYT, which is a reliable source for us even if it publishes that the moon is made of green cheese, and therefore there's no need for the managing director's opinion of its reliability to be posted to talk pages.

Can you show me an example of the NOR policy being used to prevent someone from making legitimate arguments on a talk page? SlimVirgin (talk) 19:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Here:

And I've answered that Muir's status as a scholar is completely irrelevant when she publishes in a non-scholarly journal. Muir's review is no more scholarly than her personal diary, her letters to her children, or the notes to her husband she sticks on the fridge door, which are also "materials written by a scholar."
Of course, ideally the sources for a Wikipedia article should be as variegated as possible; but they must be reliable in the first place. Now Muir's article is notoriously inaccurate and notoriously biased, and I'm beginning to suspect that you're more interested in the bias than in any enlargement of information. She claims that K&S's research is about anti-Zionism, when in fact it's about anti-Israel attitudes, and she doesn't prove that both concepts are equivalent. She makes judgments about the correlation between two sets of data, but doesn't have the expertise needed to evaluate it. She makes general claims about the bias of European journalists, without providing the faintest hint of evidence and without being an expert media analyst.
In short, Muir's article is not scholarly, and she's not an expert in any of the areas she makes claims on. It's absolutely safe to declare her a non-reliable source. Abenyosef 21:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Please stop filling the page with repetitive and irrelevant original research, let's stick to policy. Now, you have said something which might be relevant: "Muir's article is notoriously inaccurate and notoriously biased". If true, this is good news, as I hadn't realized there was any notoriety at all. Please provide the reliable sources which have deemed Muir's work "inaccurate and biased". Jayjg (talk) 22:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

As you can see, I was arguing against Diana Muir based on her lack of expertise -- [wp:rs] requires expertise. In particular, I argued against her conclusions about the correlation between two sets of data, because she's not an expert in statistics. How did I learn this? Because, thanks to my original research, I learned that she's a historian, not a statistician.

Now the answer was "stop filling the page with repetitive and irrelevant original research." Does doing research about an author and showing she's not an expert in the areas she makes claims on amount to irrelevant original research?--Abenyosef 20:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NAS

Please stop adding more Finkelstein. He already has a section devoted to his views; he is not at all notable in relation to the British enquiry; he is not a specialist in this area; and you're using his personal website as the source. There's no justification for using more of his views, or for giving him two sections. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

The Inquiry has been criticized by several sources, and that's a fact that should, in my view, be reported in the article, with examples of the criticism. Finkelstein's looks quite solid to me, but if you can suggest a better example, please do so, by all means.--Abenyosef 06:52, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
It contained its own criticism. It might more sense to use the sources the inquiry used, as they're the experts. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
This is disingenuous, since the Inquiry's sources are lopsided, and one can't expect members of an inquiry committee to criticize their own findings.--Abenyosef 01:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wo!

I'm impressed! A freelance journalist, AND a translator? That's something wonderful! I want to be an interpreter, which is translating but in spoken words not written ones. Just check out my user page and if you want to watch it. This will also put a watch on my talk page. I'm learning Portuguese very slowly. learnportuguese 21:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] dropping a line to you

Olá. I was just dropping a message because I haven't see any posts from you on my talk page for awhile. Be assured that my talk page is a friendly and dynamic environment with discussion on many aspects of the beautiful and fascinating Portuguese language. Just scroll to any section or the end of anyone's comments and type away. :-) learnportuguese (talk) 21:35, 29 December 2007 (UTC)