Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-08-19 White people

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Discussion now moved to Talk:White people. Singularity 05:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal from mediation

I don't see this going anywhere soon. However I am confident that this discussion has now attracted a broader base of participants to a good end. I am not an expert in this field and my only interest is in seeing a fair and accurate result, but I think that function is better provided by the mediators. --Kevin Murray 14:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your participation, Kevin. Neranei (talk) 14:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)t

It is true that there is a greater diversity of editors now involved but I do not see us moving towards any consensus. Instead, some of the conflicts have spilled over to European people. Talk pages for both articles include discussion of whether the two articles should be merged or how they might stand as separate. Many (not all) disputes on one page overlap on the other. No one has asked for mediation for the European people page, but if the mediator read the talk page (for the past two weeks) the mediator may gain some more insight into the nature of the underlying conflicts. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

That is true, looking at it just now. Before, I did not realize that there was conflict there as well. Thank you for mentioning it. Neranei (talk) 16:28, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

One thing useful about that article's talk page is, the section What is this article about? lays out distinct positions with very little acrimony. However, it does not represent all the views of disputants in White people esp. Fourdee and Phral. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me. Just for everyone's information, Phral has been blocked as a sockpuppet. Neranei (talk) 17:22, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation

This mediation seems not to be going anywhere. Should we file for official mediation?? KarenAER 18:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd say it's going somewhere and gathering some consensus. With all due respect, could it be that it's just not the direction you'd like?--Ramdrake 19:04, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, we are getting discussion, so I wouldn't say that it's going nowhere. Neranei (talk) 19:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. While there is a considerable body of literature on "Whiteness" and "White people," we have not had time for any discussion about that scholarship or how to incorporate it into the article. Instead, a hadnful of people, primarily Fourdee and MortizB, keep pushing for a racialist POV for which they have no verifiable sources. When they cite soureces by scientists, Alun (who has an MSc and extensive knowlege of the literature) or Muntuwandi (I do not know his credentialis but it is obvious to me that he has a strong grounding in science) explains to them that their sources do not say what they think they do (i.e do not support their claims). They respond by calling Alun a communist or an idiot, and Muntuwandi an Afrocentrist. It is my opinion that if you were to scrutinize the past week's discussion, you would discover a simple pattern:

10 PRINT "RACE IS BIOLOGICAL - FOURDEE"

20 PRINT "YOU MISREAD THE LITERATURE - ALUN"

30 PRINT "COMMUNIST - FOURDEE"

40 PRINT "THERE IS AS MUCH GENETIC SIMILARITY BETWEEN AFRICANS AND EUROPEANS AS THERE IS VARIATION AMONG EUROPEANS OR AFRICANS - MUNTUWANDI"

50 PRING "THAT IS NOT TRUE."

60 GOTO 10

This is not progress.

If you think i am wrong, i ask you as mediator to take a poll of people on the talk page. Simply ask each editor participating if anything one editor wrote has led the other editor to change his mind about the subject matter or how to go about writing the article. Honestly, please do this. I can put this another way: section 1 (mediation suggestion) lays out all the major player's positions. Simply ask people if at this point anyone would change what they wrote in that section - this should be very easy to do. I woulod wager that you will come up with nothing. If you really want to mediate this dispute, you should try to find out why this is so. And if I am wrong, and there has been some productive dialogue, I would urge you as mediator to seize on thoswe few areas where people are listening to one another and changing minds, and help us focus on those issues and build on them.

Also, I have another serious request for the mediatior. Please go over the past week, or even five days, of discussion, and for each participant tally how many times he or she makes an ad hominem remark/personal attack against antother. Please, do this. I would wager that you discover a real asymmetry i.le. a few people make a disproportionate number of ad hominem remarks and some people make practically none. If you are sincere in mediating this dispute, see if I am right and if I am right, do something about it, please Slrubenstein | Talk 21:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)