User talk:Shamir1

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George Galloway

Please see my comments here so we can attempt to move on and unprotect this article. Thanks.--Jackbirdsong 00:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I will put my two cents in on any RfC - and I really only have an issue with the stuff that seems to me to be in violation of policy. I frankly have no opinion one way or the other insofar as Galloway's comments, I just wanted to try to get the article unprotected for all editor's sake.--Jackbirdsong 09:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I have responded to your revised criticism section in Galloway:Talk. There are some things that I still believe are not cool with wiki policy, but you should go ahead and file RfC to get some more outside opinions on the subject. Cheers.--Jackbirdsong 22:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Your recent vote

Hi Shamir, it appears that you voted twice on category: Anti-Smeitic People. I'm sure that it was an accidental oversight; you may wish to cross out your previous vote and comments. Thanks, Majoreditor 00:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

2006 Lebanon War

Hi Shamir1. I think this name was chosen because what is called the "First Lebanon War" colloquially in Israel is known as the 1982 Lebanon War on Wikipedia, so the "Second Lebanon War" is just following the same model. I'm not the person to consult with however, as it wasn't my page move request. Feel free to weigh in on the talk page though of course. — George Saliba ^[talk] 02:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

War article

Hi Shamir1. To answer your question, I am not now, nor have I ever been, Maronite. I generally consider myself to be an agnostic Humanist. I've heard similar emigration statistics reported, and not just for Maronites, though I've never lived in Lebanon myself. Cheers. — George Saliba ^[talk] 02:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Not off the top of my head. They're more things I've read in random articles about the war last summer, and the resulting aftermath, or personal word-of-mouth. I know some people who hire out contractors to branches of major technology companies in Lebanon, and before the conflict they had no problem finding people to fill in the roles, but after the conflict just about anyone able to leave has left. The way they put it is they would go through dozens of resumes they received before the war, and of all of them they would only hear back from one or two people still actually living in the country tops. This is one interesting read, basically saying that the study regarding Maronite emigration is flawed, as many people (not just Maronites) don't want to stay in Lebanon. I don't really blame them, given that the economy and the government are now in shambles. Another interesting read is here – it's not really related to your question, but an interesting read about modern Lebanese culture and emigration nonetheless. — George Saliba ^[talk] 02:35, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

One other thing to note. I don't personally agree with the study's assertion that the Maronites are leaving because of Islamism directly; it seems like a very narrow view. Basically the conditions in the country are quite bad, with a weakened economy, political turmoil, assassinations, and much of the civilian infrastructure destroyed. Those conditions were caused by, or at the very least exacerbated by, both Hezbollah and Israel during the summer war. These people aren't saying "I disagree with Hezbollah's ideology, and therefore I'm going to leave my homeland," but instead people saying "I hate the conditions here, and I hate Hezbollah, and I hate Israel." That's my personal view of the attitudes of people there at least. — George Saliba ^[talk] 02:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Recent change to Jerusalem

I don't believe this edit adds much to the Jerusalem article. Only the most pertinent information needs to be in the introduction and I'm not sure it's actually verifiable. Words like "vibrant" are especially subjective and I question whether the sources you note even support the statement. That's especially true in regards to the Jewish Virtual Library source, which does not relate to the sentence you added. -- tariqabjotu 23:49, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur. While it might be true (though "small town" is a bit much), it adds little to the article, and sounds like an advertisement. Tariq has worked a lot on making this article FA worthy, and I think it's better without your addition. okedem 22:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Please note Talk:Jerusalem#Recent_addition_to_the_intro. Perhaps information on the history of demographics in Jerusalem could be put in the Demographics section instead. -- tariqabjotu 23:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Al-Manar

You recently deleted a small block of sourced text on Al-Manar with an unconvincing edit description of "WP:Not"; could you explain which part of NOT you think this deletion was justified by? John Vandenberg 11:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

No worries; thanks for clarifying that. John Vandenberg 23:29, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

George Galloway

Hi Shamir1, this is an invitation to participate in the discussion at WP:ANI#George Galloway. Thanks, – Riana ^ऋ 08:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

War Article

I'll use numbers here, to try to keep this organized. First, please note that I'm only going to deal with sources that state "Israel-Hezbollah war" or similar. I do not your opinion that usage of "war between Israel and Hezbollah" means the same thing.

1. Okay, for TIME, first a couple notes. It is inaccurate to call it the "most commonly used news magazine," as this is simply untrue. It is the largest circulated weekly magazine in the United States. While I know that you're probably not going to see the differences between those, they're absolutely huge. Yours says it's the most used news sources in the world in magazine form, while in reality it is the largest circulation weekly magazine in the United States. The relevance has to do with giving the source undue weight. Now, to evaluate your claims one-by-one.
   • First, you claim that the same article refers to it as the "Israel-Hezbollah conflict." This is absolutely true, but misses the point. The point is that there is no consensus for the name "Israel-Hezbollah war." I absolutely agree that it is used sometimes, but I very much disagree that it used often enough or consistently enough to constitute a consensus. My point is that the TIME articles use half a dozen different terms when referring to the war, including "war between Israel and Hizballah", "the July-August war with Israel", "last summer's 34-day war between Israel and... Hizballah", "the summer's war", "the summer's war with Israel", "war in Lebanon", and, indeed, "Lebanon's War", and I don't think there's any consensus among them. This denotes absolutely no consensus for the name.
   • Second, please don't say things like "more Times articles call it." This requires us evaluating every article to state this as a fact, and short of evaluating it as such as a fact, it's just unnecessary exaggeration to try and make a point.
2. Okay, for the BBC poll, and this is fundamental, polls are not sources. I am not ignoring your source, because you have no source. You have a poll. The fundamental difference is that while BBC articles are vetted, reviewed by editors who make edits and corrections, and written by journalists who research what they're reporting on, poll have no such editorial oversight. This is a critical aspect of being a reliable source.
3. As for the Washington Post, what about a link makes it "permanent"? Neither the article nor the link have changed since they were written, so the word "permanent" has absolutely zero meaning. Furthermore the sources are old, and may, therefore, be tainted by recentism. They support the title you support, however, again, two random links to a page with a completely different title do not show consensus among scholars in any way whatsoever.
4. I have no problem with the San Francisco chronicle article. It supports your argument. Again, one article means littles as far as consensus among scholars which doesn't exist. It's also not a very important source, being the 14th largest in America.
5. Yes, HRW calls it the "Israel-Hezbollah war" at points, and at other points it labels it differently. Just as Wikipedia article titles are important, so too are titles for documents, reports, and articles. The fact that they chose to use "Israel/Lebanon" in the title denotes to me that neither name is more or less appropriate that the other. Again, lacking consensus among all the articles and reports out there on a specific name, of course different sources will use different names. I do not dispute this; I only dispute that there is any sort of consensus for it. I disregard nothing, but I take everything into account with regard to the greater whole, and I see not definitive consensus. Also, please don't inject OR like calling it their "most researched" article, as even if it is the most recent, we have no way of knowing this to be true.
6. Regarding, Congressional Research Service, again, you're misidentifying your source. It is not the "public policy arm of the U.S. Congress." It is the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress. This is like confusing the CEO of a company with the researcher who was working on the companies latest drug; they are two extremely different things. I misspoke here: I should have said that it very often uses names other than "Israel-Hezbollah war." This varying usage of the name again illustrates that there is no consensus among scholars on a name.

Thanks for starting the RfC. Hopefully we can get some more eyes on the discussion. Cheers. — George Saliba ^[talk] 06:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then, as we don't seem to agree on any point. I don't see the term "Israel-Hezbollah war" (or similar variations) being used as a name for the conflict often enough to form a consensus (60-80% of the time), while you apparently do. Hopefully some other editors will weigh in on your RfC, or your move vote if it comes to that and you create one. — George Saliba ^[talk] 07:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

In the RFC comment, sure. In most articles I've come across, however, they use war between... which isn't a title, but a description. A quick google news search (and I'm not advocating this as an accurate method) gives 403 returns for 'Israel-Hezbollah War', 438 for 'Israel-Lebanon War', and 9074 for 'Lebanon War' (of course, this would have the most since it includes all variations of the title with 'Lebanon' in it). It is telling, however, that there are only 5166 for 'Hezbollah War', and 1267 for '2006 Lebanon War'. The point is, it's hardly clear which is the most-common-by-far title. It's also not that big an issue - the Wikipedia page is in the top two results for all of the google searches;

• Israel-Lebanon War = 1st.
• Israel-Hezbollah War = 2nd.
• 2006 Lebanon War = 1st.
• Israel-Lebanon Conflict = 1st.
• Israel-Hezbollah Conflict = 1st.
• 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War = 2nd.

Since all the pages have redirects anyway, the title is a matter of accuracy, not urgency. Anyone who wants to find the page can with ease. There is no reason why we can't wait 6 months (as I jokingly suggested) and see what is more common then. If we wanted, we could wait a year. Iorek85 03:33, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I've clarified my position on the RFC. I hope this clears it up. Iorek85 04:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

FYI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Zeq_and_Zero0000 Zeq 15:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Attempt to delete category of Jewish athletes

Well, they are trying to delete a category of Jewish athletes again. This time, figure skaters. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_April_14#Category:Jewish_figure_skaters . I pointed out to the originator of the attempt that we had addressed this general issue already with Jewish fencers, where the attempt failed (due in part to your help). Still, they insist on trying to delete this category. Any help by your weighing in on the issue would be appreciated. Thanks again. --Epeefleche 00:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)--Epeefleche 20:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)