Talk:Criticism of Human Rights Watch

Russian criticism

There's no section about Russian HRW criticism. HRW had a big blackout on Tskhinvali bombings and had a full coverage on Gori region. SkyBon^{Talk\Contributions} 08:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay

This move seems like an okay idea. There is precedent for this.Hkelkar 01:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Aye. - Francis Tyers · 12:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I would have preferred keeping this in the main article and trimming to notable criticisms, but I'm willing to work with this if it is what everyone else wanted I guess. --YoYoDa1 18:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

It was not my first preference, but too many pro-HRW editors were POV-pushing against the criticism section and so this seems like the only viable compromise, particularly in the light of precedent. Hkelkar 18:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I think that probably 70-80% of the criticism in this article is non-notable (including the 'responses'). Unfortunately since it is verifiable and people don't want to delete it, and I don't have the inclination to argue, we are stuck with it. As are stuck with it, it is better in a separate article as to have it in the main article would put undue weight on the criticism. - Francis Tyers · 20:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Summary of complaints from the main article

Trying to maintain a list for those who don't want to go through all of the content below. Feel free to debate these or add your own:

• There has been a debate about making this criticism section match that of Amnesty International
• Some editors have argued that the criticisms against HRW are partisan
  • The neutraility and reputation to some sources have also been called in to question
• There seemed to be a consensus that this information is way too long. That is why it was pushed out in to another article.
  • Not everyone wanted this, it was just viewed as the best compromise. Some/many editors would eventually like to integrate this back in to the main article.
• Some editors have pushed for sentences trying to put this section in to context, while other editors feel that this will act as a disclaimer or 'whitewash'.

This should then imply a list of goals to get the tag off. We need to establish a basic consensus on:

• A layout for the criticism section
• 'Cleaning up' the sources
• Shortening the content to notable and reputable criticisms which the average Wikipedia user wants/needs
• Establishing an introduction/summary which people can be happy with

This is just my stab at it, and everybody probably has their own take on it. So just write what you think below this. --75.46.80.104 13:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, I just added a tag to the "Allegations of Anti-Israel bias" section the main page. A lot of the sources currently being used seem to be public affairs organasations who define their purpose somewhat along the lines of putting out information which is favorable to Israel. It can be okay to use some of these sources, but we need to make sure the reader is informed of the purposes driving the different organasations.

I also question how much (some, but certainly not all) of the criticism is notable, but that is another question entirely. 75.46.88.163 16:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Selective imported POV complaints: India

Criticism from Indians

HRW has also been criticized for anti-India bias. I have re-sectioned the criticism with anti-semitism on one section and anti-India in another section.Iunderstand that a debate may be progressing regarding the neutrality of the section so I have kept the tag. If the debators wish to include these edits in the debate then please do so and I would be happy to participate.Hkelkar 06:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The criticisms of HRW are of the same type as made against Talk:Amnesty International. The POV dispute over there remains unresolved. I think that the way the criticisms have been made both here and there don't conform to NPOV requirements. Mostlyharmless 08:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's not convolute the two topics at hand. Bear in mind that AI is a large and complex org and HRW a small and shady one. I think we need to approach the matters with different attitudes.

I suggest that we incorporate the criticism by Indians debate to the criticism by Israelis debate and see where it leads us. Because of the conceptual similarities between the communal problems in the Levant and communal problems in the Indian Subcontinent I anticipate an interesting debate.Hkelkar 09:16, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Hkelkar: HRW is "a small and shady" organization? You wouldn't happen to have a non-neutral POV on these things would you? --Deodar 04:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

My POV is immaterial.My edits are sourced and in a neutral narrative. Can you demonstrate otherwise?Hkelkar 04:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Its just funny, that's all. --Deodar 14:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The Kashmiri Pandits are not laughing.Hkelkar 19:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

HRW is not laughing about this situation either.Your edits on Amnesty International and HRW so far show that you're pushing a partisan and very POV viewpoint ill-supported by the evidence you've provided, rather than writing a "neutral narrative".

And yes, HRW is a terrorist front.My opinions are my own and I certainly won't enter them into the article(s) unless I can source them in a neutral narrative, but HRW is definitely a cabal of terrorists who should be hanged from lampposts

. On the basis of that, I'd say the balance of evidence is heavily on you to prove that your edits are neutral. Mostlyharmless 21:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

My narrative is entirely neutral comrade. I have maintained neutral language in all my edits. I am also looking for sources where HRW has expressly argued against the specific charges laid out by Bahl and Bhatnagar. The narrative of my edits, as they stand, are no more or less neutral than the anti-semitism section of the article which I used as an example to write my edits.The edits do not take a position on the subject, they summarize the views of the authors and expressly state that they are the views of the personalities. The sources are notable and reliable and satisfy WP:RS, WP:V and my edits satisfy WP:NPOV. Now, YOU have made the accusation that my edits are not neutral. The burden of proof is on YOU to demonstrate that they are not. If you can cite specific sentences to which you have an objection then makeyour case here and I will debate with you. Persist in baseless tantrums and veiled ad-hominem attacks and you will not contribute anything constructive to wikipedia.Hkelkar 22:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your accusations of partisanship, all critics are partisan to some degreee. One can argue that even other non-India related criticisms in the article are from partisan sources. However, the issue is not partisanship but reliability (and hopefully not too much partisanship so as to be extremist which my sources are not).Hkelkar 22:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:NPOV:

All Wikipedia articles and other user-facing content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias.

. You've come in, after declaring hatred for HRW, and made substantial edits that only represent one controversial and disputed perspective. Baseless tantrums? After seeing the evidence produced in the request for arbitration against you, I think that claim is a bit rich. Mostlyharmless 00:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

As usual, a misinterpretation.My talk page posts are not the issue but my edits are. Try to prove that my edits to the article are not neutral or well-sourced.Hkelkar 00:24, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

You're commenting on contributor, not content,making this a personal attack.Hkelkar 00:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, your edits only reflect one controversial position, attacking the organisation in question. That is explicitly against WP policy. The burden is on contributors to place neutral information in articles, rather than putting in one side and waiting for others to balance it out. On that basis, I'm well within policy to pull out that section until it can be made neutral. Also, my comments were directly relevant. I'm commenting on your declaration of hatred for HRW, which is very relevant to this article, and alerting others to your conduct so that they can make up their own minds about how seriously to take you. Mostlyharmless 00:30, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead, we'll see what mediators have to say about this.Hkelkar 00:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Allegations of bias against India

Yatindra Bhatnagar, chief editor of "International Opinion", has criticized Human Rights Watch representatives and those of related organizations of having an anti-India bias with regards to their reports of communal riots in India between Hindus and Muslims, particularly in reference to the 2002 Gujarat violence. He writes that, instead of trying to heal the wounds of such incidents, organizations like Human Rights Watch focus disproportionately on blaming Hindus exclusively for the incident and trying to deflect attention from the violence perpetrated by Islamists in the Godhra Train Burning that precipitated the riots. In particular, he criticizes Human Rights Watch representative Smita Narula and her colleagues for providing a "blatantly one-sided" account of events and dismissing his concerns to that effect .

In addition, the reports on the Gujarat riots compiled by Human Rights Watch have been criticized by Arvin Bahl of Princeton University as "one-sided" and "biased". He claims that the reports generally "are based on half-truths, distortions and sometimes outright falsehoods". He points out that Human Rights Watch's claims about the Bharatiya Janata Party advocating a Hindu Nation as its core ideology are false. He further says that his analysis of the reports accuse the Gujarat government for planning the riots but do not provide any evidence to back those assertions. He also criticizes Human Rights Watch's labeling of the attacks on Hindus by Muslims during the riots as "retaliatory". In his analysis he states that while he does not deny that Hindu extremists were responsible for the riots, he "objectively analyze[s] the complexity of communal conflict in India and avoid[s] the generalizations associated with Human Rights Watch reports.".

Er, when you write "Soandso of Random University," it's generally taken to mean that Soandso is a faculty member at the university, not that they're an undergrad. In any case, according to a facebook search [1] he graduated from Princeton in 2005, so he's not even associated with the university any longer. (He's also not in the Princeton directory anymore). So I'm removing those three words. --Xiaopo (Talk) 00:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well he wrote for the University and it was endorsed and sanctioned by the team of reliable editors, fact checkers etc who are affiliated with the university.Hkelkar 00:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, he wrote for the South Asia Analysis Group website, which specifically mentions that the views expressed are his own. He also seems to be a writer for the Daily Princetonian, but articles in school newspapers aren't endorsed by the university. And again, people generally don't refer to undergraduates at Random University as "of Random University." --Xiaopo (Talk) 01:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The SAAG should be referenced as the place where he published. Also someone should create an article on SAAG at some point to verify their credibility and perspective. --Deodar 01:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Very well. I have done so myself.Plus, I also agree that an article should be written about SAAG at some point.I think that they satisfy the WP:RS criterion, though feel free to look at their literature and judge for yourself (also, read the Bahl article, you will find that it is not partisan).Hkelkar 01:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I agree that that's a good idea. But keep in mind that Bahl's column is specifically marked as a "Guest Column," and the Director mentions that the views expressed in it are Bahl's own (though he or she does agree that HRW's coverage of India is one-sided and biased). So we should be careful not to misrepresent Bahl's views as "SAAG's position" or something. Man, all this talk about SAAG is making me hungry. --Xiaopo (Talk) 01:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

SAAG makes you hungry?? Must be a cultural difference here. --Deodar 01:33, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Ahh... Saag. --Deodar 01:34, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Lol!Hadn't even thought about that.Hkelkar 01:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Some info on SAAG

South Asia Analysis Group is a non profit non commercial think tank that appears to be modeleld on the Middle Eastern think tanks of the US government.The objective of the group is to advance strategic analysis and contribute to the expansion of knowledge of Indian and International security and promote public understanding. In so doing, the SAAG seeks to address the decision makers, strategic planners, academics and the media in South Asia and the world at large.

reference to saag by UColumbia: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl/govt.html

The google search that shows numerous refs to the organization, none of them negative:

http://www.google.com/search?q=South+Asia+analysis+group&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a I will start discussion in 24 hrs per agreement with mostly harmless.Please peruse this information and know all you can about SAAG.Hkelkar 01:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

We're having a voluntary abstention for 24hrs to avoid an edit war Mostlyharmless 01:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

As of this post, I abstain from continuing on this matter for 24 hrs in the interests of fairness.I will, of course, monitor the article for overt vandalism or copyvios etc like what happened with that Waqvi chap.Hkelkar 01:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Selective imported POV complaints: Israel

Problems with the criticisms

Quite aside from the question of whether they belong in a separate article, there are other problems with the criticism section. Some of the same information is presented more than once.

• Paragraph 2: The second CAMERA citation merely points to the first, which is basically a summary of the NGO monitor study described in paragraph 6. As is, it is misleading as it implies CAMERA has done a study of its own.
• Paragraph 3: likewise, based largely on NGO Monitor (para. 6) and Gerard Steinberg's material from paragraph 9.
• Paragraph 4: ADL's web site is down right now, so impossible to evaluate.
• Paragraph 5: AIJAC's criticism is found only in one sentence, which is refuted in the Wikipedia article.
• Paragraphs 6-8: these at least appear to have an actual basis and can remain.
• Paragraph 9: seems original but the link reveals that Gerard Steinberg is actually the editor of NGO Monitor, so it is not clear this can be decoupled from the preceding.
• Paragraph 10: Not sure why this is there, as Leibler is just another columnist, and the citation only mentions HRW in passing.
• Paragraph 11: Citation on ADL's web site which is down.

In fact, even paragraph 1 is quite misleading as it gives the impression of a chorus of independent criticisms, when what is actually cited is based almost entirely on two sources - NGO Monitor's studies and the allegations about the Durban conference.

I think paragraph 1 should be reworded, while 2,3,5, and 10 should be deleted entirely. If that were done I'd be willing for the section to remain in this page and not a sub-article. Tyronen 21:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Another problem:I think it should be noted that NGO Monitor belongs to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which charges itself with the purpose of "the need to present Israel's case in the wake of the renewed Palestinian violence." The wording throughout the criticisms section lists the criticisms without what seem like NPOV qualifiers. Would a correct way to address my grievances be to start a section entitled "Established Credibility", "Accomplishments", etc. and then cite numerous academics and media outlets that agree with me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.249.103.28 (talk • contribs) 23:05, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

HRW has just come out against its accusers, notably the ADL and NGOmonitor, saying that their criticism lack any attempt at factual rebuttal, and that their criticisms amount to a claim that Israel should be above the rules of war. The document can be found [ http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/30/isrlpa14094.htm here]. 125.237.74.41 23:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Criticism Section seems disproportionately large

It's about as long as the rest of the article. The criticism of HRW definitely isn't that important to a neutral conversation about the topic of the article, especially when all of the criticism is related just to the Middle East and Israel. Maybe you guys should consider making a new article about this? 15:40, 23 August 2006 68.249.103.28

Major edits, POV

I wrote the first, original criticism section for this wikipedia article. After watching Ashley Y attempt to slip in pro-HRW and anti-Israel edits for about a month, I stopped watching the article. Needless to say, it's been trashed. One example of clear POV that no one seems willing to correct is the introduction to the criticism section:

As an organization that explicitly criticizes governments and human rights abusers around the world, Human Rights Watch's reports are often condemned by governments and interested parties on all sides of a conflict. But journalists, academics and policy-makers have relied on the organization for sober, in-depth reporting for more than two decades. Human Rights Watch has been criticized as having an anti-Israel bias--but is often similarly attacked in the Arab world as having a pro-Israeli bias. The organization's research on Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority is a fraction of its global work.

This reads like a disclaimer over the criticism section. It attempts to explain away the criticism as being the result of "interested parties." It may have a place in the article, but not at the top of the criticism section. It belongs in the response to criticism section, since it's one of HRW's big excuses for why it receives so much criticism. The fact that "journalists, academics, and policy-makers" have relied upon it is another attempt to downplay the criticism. The fact is, journalists, academics, and policy-makers have also criticized it. Thats what belongs in the criticism section - it's criticism. Not excuses for it.

I also noticed that people went through and removed accusations against HRW from politicians like Ana Palacio and Shimon Peres. I don't know why people said that they "couldn't find the sources" since the sources were clearly linked to. They'll be put back in.

I'll also replace quotations and aspects of the criticism that were removed or watered-down to gloss over HRW's poor track record.

--ARoyal 04:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

If you're going to try to rebuild what you consider to be important criticism of the organazation, I'd like to point out that it is more recommended to try and integrate it throughout the article instead of in to a criticism section, since they are known to be 'troll magnets'. Those sections seem to create a lot of unnecessary conflict. --YoYoDa1 05:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC) [Edited: --YoYoDa1 19:34, 8 October 2006 (UTC)]

I'm reading some of the sources and now have a few problems with the criticisms section. I think a few edits are necessary for clarity:

1) Anne Bayefsky never "stated that there was an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agenda", rather they "still has a lot of explaining to do".

2)The linked source for Isi Liebler doesn't seem to go to the right page. I can't find any occurences of Human Rights Watch on that page.

3)The CNN article you are citing also says "Some other international human rights groups who were part of the NGO forum, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, moved to distance themselves from the declaration" and a quote: Reed Brody, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: 'Israel has committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide and to equate Zionism with racism ... it is now a matter of damage control.'"

So at this point I'd like to change the Bayefsky and Shimon Peres wording, as well as find the right Liebler source. I'm going to wait awhile (probably around a day) to edit as a matter of good faith, and I figure if we talk then maybe we can find an edit we both agree with. --YoYoDa1 21:58, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Lets see, to cover the points you made

1. The general thesis of her article does state that. She accuses Human Rights Watch of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel behavior a number of times, though the phrase "anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agenda" doesn't occur. Bayefsky's statements like, "Human Rights Watch fanned the flames of racial intolerance," "The draft included egregious statements equating Zionism with racism," "The Human Rights Watch role at Durban? To inhibit Jewish lawyers and jurists from being fairly represented or defended," "In the face of the flagrant anti-Semitism all around them the group, including HRW had decided neither to approve nor disapprove of the final declaration, and not to vote," and, "Having the courage to speak out against the tide of hate directed at Israel and the Jewish people is not one of the strengths of Human Rights Watch."

Though I am okay with rewording it, removing the offending sentence if need be, as long as her general message gets across.

2. The Liebler article link seems to be working fine for me. Here is the mention of Human Rights Watch in that link, "Finkelstein quotes extensively from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty, and the Public Committee against Torture which have long track records of bias and employing double standards in relation to Israel."

3. It's true that Human Rights Watch later moved to distance itself from the Durban conference, and that the CNN article says that. However, that isn't a part of criticism. That was one of HRW's defenses. The fact is, HRW only moved to distance itself from the Durban conference once it's rampant anti-Semitism was made public and world condemnation fell upon the conference. HRW was one of the leaders of the conference, and when Peres gave his criticism of the conference and the NGOs, the criticism applies to HRW since it was one of the leading NGOs. It didn't single out that NGO alone, but extended criticism to all of them.

A new edit I found has a problem. It's the bolded part:

Despite many Jewish financial supporters, board members and staff, Human Rights Watch has been criticized by human rights activists, non-governmental organizations, politicians, and the media as having an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias.

The fact that it has Jewish financial supporters, board members, and staff doesn't add to the criticism section nor is it relevent. It's an attempt to downplay HRW's anti-Semitism by inserting via addendum that it has Jewish members. It wouldn't matter if every single member were Jewish, it could still be a violently anti-Semitic group. There have been numerous anti-Semitic Jews throughout history, from Jews who hid their ethnicity to fight alongside Nazis in WW2 to Dan Burros, a Jew who joined the KKK and hid his Jewish ethnicity his entire life. It's not abnormal, nor is it uncommon, for people to hate their own ethnicity.

The addition of that sentence is a sneaky attempt to imply, "HRW can't be anti-Semitic, look at all of the Jews on it's staff!" Because it does that, and because it doesn't add to actual criticism or context, it needs to be removed.--ARoyal 09:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't add any wording to the beginning of the section, I've been trying to leave the controversial stuff alone for what I can. I'm not exactly sure what we agreed to, so I'm going to just take a shot in the dark:

1)The Bayefsky quotes you cite now seem to argue that they stood by while it happened, so I'll try that.

2)The Liebler link works fine for me now too, so I'm just going to leave it alone then.

3)HRW may have very well moved to distance itself from the conference only after international pressure, and Shimon Peres's quote may have actually been directed at it. However, the summarization of the source needs to reflect the source, so I'm going to modify it. If you think this is wrong, please find another source which endorses your version of events.

I will try reworking the heading to. It seems a bit redundant right now, so I'm messing with that too. --YoYoDa1 15:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

All of your edits look good to me. Nice work. --ARoyal 09:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

All of the debate in this article is around the criticism section, so I'm going to move the disputed tag there accordingly. --Nosfartu 22:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ana Palacio

In a 2005 address to the Anti-Defamation League, Ana Palacio, a former Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the centre-right People's Party (PP), asserted that Human Rights Watch ignored anti-Semitism as an issue of importance over other human rights issues, such as gay or refugee rights. In this address she stated, “Disinterested NGOs like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International pay little attention to anti-Semitism.”[10]

Was she really suggesting that anti-Semitism is more important then other human rights issues or was she suggesting that anti-Semitism received little attention as a human rights issue even though it's important? Nil Einne 01:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Scarily enough, it seems she suggesting that fighting anti-Semitism is more important. I suppose it's worse to scrawl graffiti on a synagogue, than beat a gay to death.... well, that's how I read it.

Not sure how it can be addressed, though. Perhaps I can dig around for some gay rights groups publishing their views on the matter. Might help flesh out the section. GrizzledOldMan (talk) 08:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of HRW by genociders

The article is clearly missing this section. Why haven't we addressed directly what we're all thinking but no one is saying? Human Rights watch is biased against genociders. It's also expressed a strong bias against people and governments who torture, who suppress political dissidents, and who deny rights to minority populations. Let's face it, Human Rights Watch is biased against those who violate human rights. This terrible secret agenda needs to be published for Wiki readers everywhere to learn about. Mjgilbert 15:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

They preferred to be called genocidalists--70.112.236.174 18:50, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I seriously agree. HRW's full bias needs to be exposed. --68.253.59.172 14:10, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect attributation of quotation and authorship

In 2005 Isi Leibler, author of The Case for Israel, wrote an editorial archived at Campus Watch. In his archived editorial, Leibler asserted that Human Rights Watch is among the groups that “have long track records of bias and employing double standards in relation to Israel.”[9] Isi Leibler did not write The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz did. The quoted article is an editorial by Isi Leibler, a journalist.

Human rights groups and the Middle East

To the interested: an article related to this, Human rights groups and the Middle East, is currently being considered for deletion. You may refer to the article for more information. This is intended to be neutral and a friendly notice. --Nosfartu 06:08, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:RS

WP:RS: "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." NGO Monitor, an Israeli NGO with the stated aim of stopping "certain self-declared 'humanitarian NGOs'" from promoting agendas which are perceived as anti-Israel, is a highly political website with an open agenda and does not independently meet the criteria for being a reliable source. If its material can be found in a reliable third-party publication then the material should still be used in the article though.--76.214.115.168 (talk) 23:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

It's an NGO that critically examines other NGOs, it's the ideal group for this. Wikipedia quotes the opinions of the International Solidarity Movement and currently cites the propaganda site palestineremembered.com over 80 times. NGO Monitor is head and shoulders above those sites in reliability, and more than meets Wikipedia's requirements for properly cited opinions. And, note, the opinions are all brief, and cited to NGO Monitor, not stated as fact. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

If you could provide a few links to the Wikipedia articles quoted opinions you cite, this would be helpful. Thanks..--76.214.115.168 (talk) 01:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Barqa (village) is just one example of dozens, and in that article, as in many others, the claims of that propaganda site are stated as fact. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:12, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I have no knowledge about the claims or the site but this seems to address my question.--76.214.115.168 (talk) 02:37, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

So long as the opinions of NGO Monitor are properly attributed to it, and not stated as fact, there is nothing wrong with using it. It is no more a 'self-published' source than other NGOs. NoCal100 (talk) 02:03, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Abortion

Since HRW supports reproductive rights, the topic of pro-life/pro-choice opposition should very likely come up among ideological criticisms of the institution, they already exist, I think. ADM (talk) (talk) 12:35, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:RS violations removal - "Asian Tribune" and "Hellenic News"

In this edit, I removed the section due to WP:RS violation. The Hellenic News is not a WP:RS - it's a tiny publication, and the article in question doesn't really say much substantial, aside from criticizing HRW for not covering the areas that the author wanted covered. I see nothing in the article that is really of quality or verifiability to be worth including.

In this edit, I removed the section, again on the basis of WP:RS (and others) - the Asian Tribune is not a reliable source. The Asian Tribune is a tiny online newspaper published by an expatriate living in Sweden, and NGO Monitor is an Israeli partisan group that defends Israel against its repeated run-ins with various human rights groups over Israel's human rights record. The Asian Tribune source in question is a five-paragraph editorial in the online paper that serves as an introduction to a reprint of an editorial written by NGO Monitor's Executive Director that appears in the New York Sun. This is hardly an appropriate source to be using in a Wikipedia article.

Additionally, there was a partial sentence left dangling in the section. Clearly, User:Historicist simply did a copy-and-paste of his Amnesty International edit, and stuck it here, simply changing the name of the organization being criticized. (hint: search for the sentence he left here - "as part of the latter")

I believe these are strong enough reasons to warrant their removal. GrizzledOldMan (talk) 08:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Also Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor are not, themselves, reliable source, though reliable sources that quote them are of course allowed. —Ashley Y 09:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

ADL and NGO Monitor - nor pro-Israeli?

This edit doesn't really make much sense to me. NGO Monitor and the Anti-Defamation League are quite well documented to be pro-Israeli. I see no reason why this was taken out. I'll leave it for a few days so folks can comment, before I come back and restore it. GrizzledOldMan (talk) 08:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Scholars and Venezuela

Although the source states that those who wrote the letter are "experts", from what I have seen, a large number of them do not have any direct relationship to research on Latin America or Venezuela. Although the source portrays them as experts, I am not sure that some of the signers would portray themselves that way. I like the way it's worded in the main HRW article: "scholars", who are not necessarily experts on the particular area. Awickert (talk) 02:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Lying with References

• Ref #1. Fake. Wikilinks to articles on the publishers. No actual sourcing.

  Perhaps the links to the periodical articles are not readily available? Could you possibly check around for them? I think it's a bit of a stretch to call them fake right off the bat. --Merovingian (T, C, L) 09:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Ref #2. Lie. Zmag said none of this. Source is a self-published opinion piece--a blog--hosted by Znet.

  The blog itself has 24 sources; have you checked the validity of any of them? --Merovingian (T, C, L) 09:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Please see WP:BURDEN. When tendentious material is inserted into an article, it is not the responsibility of the person removing it to dig around for reliable sources if none are provided. It's the responsibility of the person who wants to add it. *** Crotalus *** 13:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Wow, ZMAG is a source on the opinion of ZMAG and thus according to the policy a reliable source. Checking what Noloop says is here is truly a time waster as he is not even the slightest idea of how references are used in Wikipedia. Pantherskin (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. We check sources in our articles, not sources in someone's blog. A blog isn't a reliable source, according to Wikipedia policies. Noloop (talk) 16:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Ref. #3a. Lie. Aristed isn't mentioned in the source, except in a footnote (which doesn't support this text).
• Ref. #3b, #4, #5. This is mostly supported, but it uses weasel words and it's a single case.
• Ref. #6, #7. These are self-published opinion pieces in an online magazine
• Ref. #8. This entire section has one ref, Some lies, some distortions. Here's the link, which the ref doesn't provide:[2]. A government HRW criticized disagreed with the criticism. That's it.
• Ref. #9. Lies and distortions. This isn't a criticism of the South Asia Analysis Group. It is guest opinion. Here's the byline: "The writer is an undergraduate from Princeton University. The views expressed are his own."
• Ref. #10. This is an outright lie about what a living person said. He said the criticisms of Human Rights Watch were based on misunderstandings and distortions, not that HRW's criticisms were distorted.

...Well that's more than half the references, and that's enough. This article is bullshit. Noloop (talk) 02:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Lies and distortions, indeed. Problem is that not the sources are lies and distortions, but what Noloop posted here. Pantherskin (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Ref. #3a. true. Aristed isn't mentioned in the source, except in a footnote, but the overthrow of Hathis govenemrnt is mentioned in the body of the text. I think you need to check again source 6 and 7 are from either HRW quoting a newspaper or a major newspaper. I don’t know if this is due to sources being removed and thus resting the source e numbers of if the above statement is just plain wrong, it needs checking.Slatersteven (talk) 14:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Removed tendentious material

I have removed material that does not meet our standards on verifiability and sourcing or undue weight. The following material was taken out:

• "Allegations of anti-Eritrean bias" — Only sourcing was to something called the "American Chronicle". I have been unable to find any additional information on this site, and there is no reason to think it is a reliable source. I searched for the Chronicle's parent corporation, Ultio LLC, and was unable to find much about them. There is no evidence that this site has a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" or, indeed, any reputation at all. Nor was I able to determine any reliability for the author, Sophia Tesfamariam, who doesn't have a Wikipedia article and doesn't appear to be a recognized subject-matter expert.
• "Allegations of anti-India bias' — I don't know whether the South Asia Analyst Group is a reliable source or not, but the article cited is labeled as a guest column. "The writer is an undergraduate from Princeton University. The views expressed are his own." Clear violation of WP:UNDUE — this is little more than a non-notable op-ed by a non-notable writer.
• Also removed a reference to a speech by Ana Palacio which mentioned HRW once. Just the usual "any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic" garbage, and no evidence that this speech had any real notability. *** Crotalus *** 14:01, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I was also tempted to take out a bunch of stuff. But, I thought I'd wait for the results of the proposal to delete the article. I think if everything illegitimate is removed, what's left is a stub that can easily be incproproated in the article on HRW. Noloop (talk) 16:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

An overarching problem with this page is that it confuses criticism of the organization with disagreement on specific matters. I haven't actually seen any allegations of systemic criticism here; it is just a few cases of people disagreeing with HRW's finding's on some specific situation. Noloop (talk) 16:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Which mean they disagree wtih those findings. Thus they disagree with HRW, it does not matter if its oonce or over time.Slatersteven (talk) 13:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Guiding Principles for this Article

1. It can't be a laundry list of every disagreement, second-guessing, political spat, or argument anyone has ever had with HRW. That would be an instant and massive violation of WP:WEIGHT. The "criticisms" should be systemic, about how the organization operates, or about some really extreme alleged transgression. If HRW says "The government of Sri Lanka is bombing civilians" and the government of Sri Lanka "We are not, HRW is full of crap," that's not systemic or even very interesting.
2. Given the highly politicized and borderline validity of this article, sourcing must strictly comply with policy. Blogs aren't sources of fact. All criticism must be directly attributed (no weasel words).
3. Extra effort must be made to include HRW's response to any listed criticism. Noloop (talk) 15:54, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• I agree with all 3 points. If this article isn't going to be deleted, then at least we need to make sure nothing goes in here that doesn't conform with policy. I suspect, personally, that once we start cutting down on the crap, there won't be enough for a full article, and we can request whatever is left then be merged back into the main article. *** Crotalus *** 20:00, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Point 2: it's not so much that the topic is highly politicised, it's that it is highly globalised, by the nature of HRW, so that we have a fundamentally difficult problem of documented systemic bias in the English language wikipedia. The problem is not so much trying to be especially "strict" with "policy" - it's more a case of reading WP:BIAS and thinking about it and maybe following some of the suggestions provided there. E.g. make a special effort to find reliable sources from non-Western countries, go to project pages of various countries around the world on the en.wikipedia and invite people from there - who are likely to be multilingual and familiar with local reliable sources - to help contribute to this particular page. There are other suggestions on that page too.

Point 3: Including any responses by HRW is reasonable, buy i don't see any particular reason for HRW "to have the last word". Remember, the criticism starts with HRW documenting alleged HR violations in country X. Then (sometimes) governments or academics from country X respond. And then HRW may or may not respond. And then the same sources from X may respond. Sooner or later one party will see no point continuing the argument further, but i do not understand why we should make an "extra effort" for the party with the last word to be HRW. What does that have to do with NPOV?

Incidentally, i don't think that the effort to find HRW responses will be very great - it should be quite easy to find. What would be more difficult to find is the criticisms from the population of the planet Earth, most of whom do not live in the West, are not technically oriented, and do not have internet access, in statistical contrast to the demographics of en.wikipedians. Boud (talk) 20:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Globalized is a different point from politicized. The fact that it is politicized means special-interests are spinning everything their own way. For example, quick investigation shows two of the three critics of the Saudi funding have Israeli ties. That shouldn't be hidden from readers by using weasel words like "HRW has been criticised...." The fact that the critics work for the Jerusalem Post and have received funding from Israeli foundations should be made explicit.
• We should include HRW responses because this entire article is inherently non-neutral. It is out of context, because it has been taken out of the main article. Would you support creating an article called "Praise for Human Rights Watch"? Noloop (talk) 16:53, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems that there are several points on which we agree, some on which we disagree. "Politicised" is a POV and can mean quite a few different things. "Globalised" is IMHO a simpler idea - HRW criticies HR violations all over the Earth, or at least claims to do so. This is the context in which i'm claiming that WP:BIAS is important. IMHO it's hard to dispute that HRW attempts to criticise HR violations over the whole planet (whether or not it does so in proportion to the real numbers of violations, or whether or not it exaggerates or underestimates HR violations in some regions, are questions that may be disputed, but not the fact that it at least claims to be concerned with the whole planet). IMHO it's also difficult to dispute the real, demographic WP:BIAS in the en.wikipedia - which is consistent with WP:GOODFAITH but shows that good faith alone is not sufficient to remove the systematic bias.

By "politicised", i suspect you mean that this is related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. If we as editors of this article cannot constructively work together, we could add the {{sanctions}} tag to the top of this talk page - see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles#Final_decision and Wikipedia:General_sanctions. This is not the first article related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in en.wikipedia history!

Saying who makes a criticism rather than an anonymous source is valid - i agree. For notable people, this can generally go in their wikipedia entries, and possibly the NPOV summary from the lead/introduction of their articles can be copied back here, in condensed form, if that's easy. If the people are not sufficiently notable, then RS facts that can be reasonably considered as relevant without going over the line into OR, can be included, IMHO.

Regarding "praise of X" type articles, i think that most articles are by default mostly, "praise of" articles, if you consider the type of actions of the subjects to be positive. Criticism of HR violations is probably considered by most human beings (members of governments are a tiny minority among the 6.5 billion or so of us) to be positive, so a description of an organisation that more-or-less just lists its actions that criticise HR violations is in some sense already a "praise of" article. Boud (talk) 22:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

1: Any criticism of HRW should be included, this is about what people say not how true it is.

2: Partially agree, no blogs and where we are directly using opinion then we should say who holds it.

3: Totally agree.

Because we cannot find sources from Bogotá does not mean that we cannot use western sources. You use the best sources available.Slatersteven (talk) 14:26, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Including any criticism you can find will immediately violate WP:WEIGHT. There is no point in mentioning every disagreement anyone has ever expressed with HRW over any issue. Noloop (talk) 15:04, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

that is what this page is about critisism of HRW, it is not for us to determine the value of such critisism that is POV pushing. We should just report what has been said and allow the reader to decide if its valid.Slatersteven (talk) 17:15, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Haiti, Venezuela

Given the notability discussions that have taken place here, a few important points are:

• the 2004 Haiti coup was the second coup d'etat in Latin America since the year 2000 of only three in total (so far), making it a notable event
• given that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, WP:BIAS is necessarily a strong concern, meaning that it will necessarily be difficult to find sources written by Haitians who are critical of HRW reports about Haiti. If someone can find better sources, then please do so. Have a look at WP:BIAS if you have not done so.

For both Haiti and Venezuela, as i stated above, it should be easy to find HRW responses, if they made them.

• Haiti: no response according to google nor on the internal hrw.org search engine
• Venezuela: there seem to have been letter by Grandin etal, response by HRW, and counter-response by Grandin et al, including: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/29/hrw-response-criticisms-our-venezuela-work i'll let other people do the work on this :). i'll just quickly note that HRW states, Human Rights Watch takes criticism of this nature very seriously. IMHO this confirms what many of us said in the recent deletion discussion: HRW is a serious organisation and is not upset by criticism; moreover, it takes the criticism seriously, or at least claims to. So respect for HRW, while being common sense rather than a wikipedia guideline, suggests that we should list the criticisms and responses and counter-responses etc seriously as well. Boud (talk) 22:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  • i did actually skim through the HRW response and the Grandin et al. counter-response (both the first Grandin et al letter and their counter-response are in the present ref list, but someone should write these properly with web cite tags...). Someone needs to take the time to read the original HRW report, and all three letters, in order to make a better NPOV summary of all of this. The HRW response - read alone - is quite convincing, though that's just my POV. The counter-response also looks convincing, again my POV. i haven't had enough time to make an overall personal POV/OR. Most of the claims by both are reasonably verifiable. In any case, NPOV summarising in a way that nobody will complain about is not going to be easy. It should be possible, but will require some careful reading and quoting of what the authors of the different letters judge themselves to be fair summaries. Boud (talk) 23:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

HRW soft on Israeli HR violations; stance on al-Qaeda reeducation camps

In this edit, User:GHcool removed a sourced paragraph in which HRW claims that it is accused of being "soft" in Israeli HR violations, and also inserted a section relating to HRW's stance on al-Qaeda re-education camps in Saudi Arabia.

1. i do not understand the removal of the HRW-soft-on-Israeli-HR-violations paragraph.
2. i do not understand how the stance-on-al-Qaeda-etc paragraph is a criticism of HRW. The title of the article is about HRW criticising Saudi Arabia, not the reverse.

Probably other editors had the same idea as me, which is why the edit was reverted, and a later editor explained This article is about criticism of HRW, not criticism of the [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia].

• In this revert, GHcool restored the reverted material.
• In this edit, GHcool restored the stance-against material once again.

i will now restore the sourced paragraph in which HRW claims that it is accused of being "soft" in Israeli HR violations, because i fail to see how this can be controversial - it's HRW itself that claims that a claim about it being biased exists.

i suggest we have a discussion about the stance-against paragraph, in case GHcool or someone else disagrees with "This article is about criticism of HRW, not criticism of the [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia]": Boud (talk) 23:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

stance-on-al-Qaeda-etc paragraph

See the above. Does someone see a justification for including the "stance-on" paragraph? Please let's use this as one small example of building consensus! i can see that CSM may have been hoping that readers would infer that this is a criticism of HRW. However, this is OR and not valid for the article. CSM does not say, "The Christian Science Monitor strongly condemns HRW for its criticism of the Saudi re-education camps... and is appalled that HRW is being unfaithful to the defence of the Fatherland" or something similar.

Are there any arguments for keeping the section? Boud (talk) 23:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Side comment: there seem to be very few wikipedia entries on reeducation camps, under that name, in general - HRW has criticised reeducation camps in PRChina and there is an article on Vietnamese reeducation camps, but other reeducation camps are probably classified as prisons. Note: the former is HRW criticising PRChina reeducation camps, not PRChina criticising HRW for this criticism. Boud (talk) 23:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I've attempted to impose a reality check on this section since GHcool appears keen to include it. I think I probably went too far and turned it into HRW hasbara festival. I'm sure more sources can easily be found that have criticized HRW on this issue. Sean.hoyland - talk 07:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a section on this below. IMHO (and probably not just mine), the best (only?) critic we've found so far makes a very casual criticism in his blog. But feel free to look for more sources. Boud (talk) 22:35, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

attempting NPOV with respect to the Arab–Israeli conflict

Just for convenience for people not wishing to check through a possibly long future revision history, in this version there is an attempt to NPOV the overall structure of the Arab-Israeli conflict related criticisms of HRW section. i have not included the "Stance against teaching suspected terrorists the value of tolerance" section as a subsection, since IMHO it has no chance of being accepted by consensus (see above).

Also, for clarity, here's a repeat of my comment above: If we as editors of this article cannot constructively work together, we could add the {{sanctions}} tag to the top of this talk page - see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles#Final_decision and Wikipedia:General_sanctions. This is not the first article related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in en.wikipedia history. In the interests of minimising the need for us to be "supervised", i suggest we try to avoid this need. i am not an administrator (for anyone curious), and in any case, administrators implementing the sanctions rules would have to be non-editors of this article, and, i guess, non-editors of Arab-Israeli conflict related articles in general and would have to not have any COI's (conflicts of interest). Boud (talk) 23:43, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Lead/introduction: suggested moratorium for a few weeks

Given the editorial difficulties on this article and the two AfD's, i suggest that we wait a few weeks before attempting to summarise the content in the lead/introduction, which at present is blank. Otherwise, we will waste a lot of energy over it. At the moment, something like a geographical organisation seems to me to provide a reasonably neutral categorisation of different criticisms.

My suggested moratorium would end on 23:59, 12 August 2009 (UTC) + 14 days. After that, we can follow WP:LEAD for hints on writing the lead/introduction. Preparatory work before the end of the moratorium would be to put 'name="keywordsofreference"' type labels in the references, so that the most relevant ones can be re-used in the lead/introduction.

Any objections? Boud (talk) 23:59, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently someone did object, and inserted an original research lead rather than a recommended type of lead. Probably i will at least myself respect the moratorium (since i proposed it :). i suggest that anyone who disagrees should at least try reading WP:LEAD. Boud (talk) 22:54, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Fringe criticisms and undue weight

I've removed the following sections (again):

• "Stance against teaching suspected terrorists the value of tolerance" — off topic. This isn't even a criticism of HRW at all, by any reasonable interpretation. The article describes HRW's criticism of Saudi Arabia, not the other way around.
• "Claims of ignoring human rights violations in Europe" — violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:RS. NGO Monitor is an Israeli propaganda arm, not a reliable source. That leaves a single mention in a speech given before the Anti-Defamation League (another organization that is quite loose with charges of anti-Semitism) and that's not enough to justify an entire section.

I also have undue weight concerns about "Haiti 2004 coup d'etat." The only source in here that mentions HRW is a ZMag article. This is a rather fringey publication; it seems unreasonable to justify a whole paragraph based on it alone. I'm also not sure that Counterpunch is a good source in "Anti-Arab-League or pro-Israel bias". This is precisely why the article should have been deleted. As long as it exists, it will continue to be filled up with poorly sourced, POV crap. *** Crotalus *** 13:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

ADL is highyl repected in its field I bleive, so if it makes a claim that claim can be seen as comming from a notable source. As to NGO, it is you opinion they are not relaible, but they may not be, and if they were the only source you might have a point, but as they67 are not then they are mealry supporting the cl.aim made by ADL.Slatersteven (talk) 14:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how respected the ADL is, the ref is a passing mention in a speech given before the ADL. Noloop (talk) 16:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Thay make the statement, it does not amtter how long it is, They say that HRW is doing something wrong, and they are notable.Slatersteven (talk) 18:59, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

1. ADL does't make the statement in that source. A guest speaker makes the statement.

2. How "long it is" does matter, according to the "Guiding Principles" discussed above. This is not an endless list for every passing negative reference to HRW anyone can find.

3. ADL is not a neutral source in the matter. It is an explicitly pro-Israel organization.

4. You don't have consensus. Noloop (talk) 22:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

The speaker happens to be the former foreign minister to Spain. As such she is a notable person likely to have knowledge of European politics (which is after all what she is talking about).

Your guiding principles are not wiki rules that need to be obeyed, they have not even been agreed by all, certainly no consensus has been reached.

It does not matter if ADL is not neutral this article is about criticism of HRW not if that criticism is true.

You do not have consensus to remover statements or alter the article from what it was a month ago either.Slatersteven (talk) 14:16, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

The "guiding principles" were part of the discussion that was part of the consensus process. If you disagree say why. Give reasons. Your addition of new material is a separate topic from the previous removal of old material. If you want to object to the removal do so; don't conflate that topic with your additions. I'm not the only one who removed the old material, and at the time nobody objected (in fact, still nobody has objected). You need to get consensus for what you want to add, period. Noloop (talk) 15:01, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Nobody agreed to the "guiding principles" edoither (by the way explain how this material disobys these). If the material I added is seperate why did you undo it all, nt just my new material? Actualy people have objected, by re-inserting it (and not just me).Slatersteven (talk) 15:05, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way the page of a month ago (well the end of July) does include most of the statemts you claim I added [[3]] I just added a bit more confirmation, and a rebutal.Slatersteven (talk) 15:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

You aren't supposed to agree/disagree with them. You are supposed to discuss them, because that's how consensus works. And, you are supposed to refrain from trying to shove your preferred material into the article until some consensus is reached. Noloop (talk) 22:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

As consensus has not been reached over them then they are not in force, so they cannot be to justify tou deletions. You are also not supposed to remove material without consensus. So discuse the material you wish remo0ved and why and then wew can decide if it needs remoaval.Slatersteven (talk) 22:26, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The rule is you don't do anything against consensus--add or remove. You are adding without consensus. So, it is correct to revert to a somewhat stable version until some consensus is reached. Noloop (talk) 22:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

When and How did the former "Helsinki Watch" Switch Sides?

The organization was founded to watch human rights abuses in the former Soviet Empire. When did it start employing marxists? how did this come about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.111.71.197 (talk) 08:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

This is only the "criticism" article; the main article, Human Rights Watch has a brief history section explaining how the group grew and changed, especially between 1978 and 1988. It may not answer all your questions, but it's a better place to start looking. Good luck, Doc Tropics 16:40, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Consensus

I've reverted all this material that has been added in disregard for the concerns of User:Crotalus horridus and myself. You are expected to work toward consensus. That means when you know material is opposed, and reasons have been given for the opposition, you make a serious effort to negotiate those principles on the Talk page. You do that before continuing to pile on contentious material. You also don't take advantage of a block to shove what you want into an article. The conerns about this article have been outlined above; the additions have been reverted by myself, they've been reverted by Crotalus horridus.

Again, the article as a whole is POV-fork. It just provides a platform for bashing an organization. Several editors expressed the concern about a POV-fork in the deletion discussion, and it needs to be addressed. It's been proposed that fairest way to discuss these criticisms in the context of HRW as a whole, so we should work toward merging it back to the main article. Taking criticisms out of the main article takes them out of context. Please take the time to address Crotalus's suggestion that our goal should be a merge, and the guidelines I gave above that seem like common sense to me. Noloop (talk) 21:30, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

You should also not delete material with out consensus. Besides consensus was reached, you rasied your concersn and a majority rejected them, that is a consensus decision. 8 eds decided it should be retained as an article. by the way please note that ther is a crtisim of amnesty international page as well. Why should we work towards a desision thyat goes against a clear consensus that the article should reamain?Slatersteven (talk) 22:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

No, "the majority rejected them" is not how consensus works:

Consensus discussions should always be attempts to convince others, using reasons. When a discussion breaks down to a mere polarized shouting match, there is no possibility of consensus, and the quality of the article will suffer.

That said, consensus is not simple agreement; a handful of editors agreeing on something does not constitute a consensus, except in the thinnest sense. Consensus is a broader process where specific points of article content are considered in terms of the article as a whole.....

....In determining consensus, consider the strength and quality of the arguments, including the evolution of final positions, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace if available. Minority opinions typically reflect genuine concerns, and their (strict) logic may outweigh the "logic" (point of view) of the majority.

...you are directly acting in opposition to these principles. Noloop (talk) 22:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

You are also refusing to listen to others. Niether of your first two points say that when a minority disagress then no consensus is reached, indeed if we take your attutude to its logical conclusion consensus means unimimity. your third point is about Community discussions not Wiki articles, please stop quoting rules out of context.

"Developing consensus requires special attention to neutrality and verifiability in an effort to reach a compromise that everyone can agree on." the material is verifiable. You shgould not delete material wiht out forst achiving consensus, now I am willing to reset the page back to the state it was in on 26 July and then discuse each subject you object to in turn, but please refrain from just mass deletion of material that is sourced.Slatersteven (talk) 22:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

<-This article has been retained following a deletion nomination so why not accept that and move on ? Repeating arguments used in that nomination won't acheive anything. Many of the criticisms here are well sourced and made by notable people who are prominent in their field (their field often being the field of relentlessly criticisng HRW). If the information complies with WP:V it should not be removed without a good reason and after discussions. If there are concerns about undue weight/npov coming from sources with extreme views then criticism must be balanced by presenting the opposing views. Working towards merging it back to the main article is impractical because the criticism of HRW won't stop. It's okay to have an article about fringe pseudoscience subjects like Intelligent Design and describe the sunject in detail. It wouldn't make sense to merge that into the Evolution article. Sean.hoyland - talk 02:15, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Very well put! If we have to have articles like this (and it seems necessary in this case), then it might as well be thorough and well written. Doc Tropics 02:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Stance against reeducation of unconvicted detainees

Sean.hoyland, I have two concerns:

1. Does the blog post meet W:RS?
2. The title of HRW reports is:

This 144-page report documents the arbitrary arrest and detention of individuals for vaguely defined crimes or behavior that is not inherently criminal. Once arrested, suspects often face prolonged solitary confinement, ill-treatment, forced confessions, and are denied a lawyer at crucial stages of interrogation and trial.

whereas the blogs title is "HRW Sez: Don't Teach Terrorists Tolerance". Isn't this twisting of facts? Imad marie (talk) 07:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Imad, I put a short comment in a section higher up about this issue. Okay, let me set out my position on this first. This criticism from the usual suspects like Goldberg is utterly worthless non-encyclopedic nonsense that grossly misrepresents information to advance a partisan agenda. In that sense it is consistent with the majority of the other criticisms in this article. Now, having said that I respect GHcool's desire to include something and I expect many other editors out there would regard this as worthy of mention so essentially I am just accepting it's inclusion as inevitable. Is the blog an RS ? No, but it's a reliable source for Goldberg's opinion (which I think he probably just gets from NGO Monitor) and he is notable as a critic of HRW. Is it twisting of facts ? Yes but if the inclusion criteria for opinions critical of HRW is factual accuracy then this article is in serious trouble. Sean.hoyland - talk 07:43, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

..if it's removed again I won't revert the removal. I'm okay with consensus efforts to take place with or without that section being present in the article while the discussions are ongoing. Sean.hoyland - talk 08:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I have my doubts about it, but having said that I am not sure that (as this is a pagew about opinions) Goldbergs are not relevant. But we should also make efforts to inclide HRW's response (i9f there is none then that starts to raise questions as to just how inportant his views are).Slatersteven (talk) 12:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

To the extent that we assumed good faith on the part of GHCool, we need to find a section for the Saudi reeducation camp section. Given the content of the Jeffrey Goldberg article, i think that it would be OR (maybe a reasonable speculation, but still OR) to conclude that Goldberg is criticising HRW in the case of the Saudi reeducation camps because of his role as a US-Israeli journalist commenting on the century-long Arab–Israeli conflict. So trying to take his blog comment as the best thing we have to a serious source, his criticism seems to be that HRW "fails to see the bigger picture". However, that's a bit too vague for a section title, and given that quotes HRW regarding human rights law, the only reasonable description of his complaint is that it is part of the class of criticisms that HRW takes HR law too strictly, instead of "seeing the bigger picture". IMHO this seems to be a reasonably objective class of bias. We can in fact expect HRW to be biased towards HR law. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on one's POV. In any case, maybe someone can see a more NPOV description. Please remember, anyone who has not seen my comments above, this is not the USA nor Israeli wikipedia, and HRW is an organisation that claims to be concerned with HR violations all over the world. For this reason, a reasonably objective way to structure the article is according to geography, where possible. In this case, this doesn't seem (overtly) to be directly related to the Arab–Israeli conflict, so it seems to me we need a separate section. Boud (talk) 22:32, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that the suggestion to organize the article geographically is a good one. Not only is it a very logical way to structure the layout, it might let us rewrite some of the section headers so as to seem a bit less convoluted. Since this article has seen a lot of turmoil recently, I'd suggest discussing the details of the organiztion in their own section of this talkpage before implementing though. Doc Tropics 22:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I would agree to the nidea of regional (or geographical) organisation. I bleive that hte cesction on reeducation camps is not sufficiantly large (or well soourced) enough for its own section. I would susgest creating a Saudi section and moving both this anf the funding issue there.Slatersteven (talk) 12:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It's ironic that the user who is pushing for the paragraph, GHCool, has not made a single post to the talk page, just reverting back the paragraph.

There is no such thing as "reliable source for Goldberg's opinion", it's either RS or not, and it's not. I will remove the section now until there is consensus to insert it. Imad marie (talk) 16:36, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. Do you not agree that Jeffrey Goldberg is an RS? Do you not agree that The Atlantic is an RS? I'm restoring it. --GHcool (talk) 17:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Some comments. The Atlantic is an RS, Goldberg is an award winning journalist and see Wikipedia:Rs#Statements_of_opinion for "reliable source for Goldberg's opinion". Meanwhile I'll read WP:BEANS. GHcool, unconvicted is a word. Rights groups use it frequently in their reports about the teatment of unconvicted detainees around the world. It's the word used in the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment (Body of Principles) which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1988. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:25, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the issue is whether this qualifies as well sourced patent nonsense. It's a throwaway one line quip by Goldberg rather than a serious analysis of the issue. On that basis I don't think it merits inclusion. Talk is cheap in the blogosphere and it would be unfortunate if we set the inclusion threshold so low that material like this makes it into articles. I'm just off to add "It's too hot" to the Saudi article. I'm sure I can find an RS with a blog by an award winning travel writer to provide WP:V compliance. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

..and if I'm not convincing you GHcool try imagining the sentence as "Goldberg has criticised HRW for telling the Saudi Government that they should comply with UN General Assembly Resolution 43/173". Sean.hoyland - talk 18:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I accept that "unconvicted" is a word, but "prior to conviction" is more accurate since that's how the article refers to it. I am unconvinced that Goldberg's opinion is "patent nonsense," but that's neither here nor there since Sean admits that it is "well sourced" (i.e. complying with WP:V and WP:RS). On Sean's lame counterargument, I imagine that if such an unlikely stance was taken by an RS such as Goldberg, I would accept its inclusion into this article. --GHcool (talk) 22:04, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, so the most pragmatic way for you to gain consensus is to find more sources that have brought this issue up, preferably sources that know the difference between serious journalism and twittering. I'll have a look too (since I've already said I would). Sean.hoyland - talk 01:14, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. Is one reliable source not enough? Since Goldberg wasn't "twittering," but rather, writing on his blog sponsored by The Atlantic, I fail to see how Sean's argument above is anything but a false analogy. --GHcool (talk) 03:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The false analogy that a sentence in a blog by X sponsored by Y is equivalent to a sentence in a tweet by X sponsored by Y. Yes, I can see that someone could argue that the words blog and tweet have different spellings but then if they had the same spelling it wouldn't even be an analogy. :) Would you acknowledge that the encyclopedic quality of the proposed content would be increased by finding better sources and that this would increase the likelihood of you getting consensus ? After all Goldberg is essentially criticising HRW for not changing their stance on human rights despite there being a 'war on terrorism' bigger picture. It would better in my view if a source could be found that explicitly spells out this line of argument e.g. the US/UK govs perhaps. Sean.hoyland - talk 03:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC)\

I hadn't commented on this issue yet because I see valid points on boths sides and was very ambivalent about it. I kept revisiting though, and I think there is a lot of weight to the fact that was pointed out by Sean.hoyland: "It's a throwaway one line quip by Goldberg rather than a serious analysis of the issue." Since the article deals with serious and complex issues, it's incumbent on us to give it serious treatment. At this point I don't see that Goldberg's comment qualifies as such, and think the article would be stronger without it. Having said that, I would change stance and favor including it, if there were additional sources with stronger arguments. Doc Tropics 22:30, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Anti-Arab-League or pro-Israel bias

i have restored the subsection title Anti-Arab-League or pro-Israel bias because as most of us should surely know, the Arab–Israeli conflict is a major source of conflict in the world and in wikipedia, so we need to be very careful to NPOV things. The restored section includes: Jonathan Cook's criticism of HRW, HRW's response, and Cook's counter-response. If HRW has a further counter-response, then someone please add it.

i'll again repeat my above comment: If we as editors of this article cannot constructively work together, we could add the {{sanctions}} tag to the top of this talk page - see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles#Final_decision and Wikipedia:General_sanctions. This is not the first article related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in en.wikipedia history. People interested in having the sanctions tag should probably read the links and see what it involves. i suggest we try to work things out step by step and avoid needing any form of "external" mediation. Boud (talk) 22:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC), Boud (talk) 23:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I would fully support this article being within scope of the discretionary sanctions. It would be entirely appropriate in my view. Sean.hoyland - talk 01:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Im HRW and i'll cry if I want to

I think that any response from HRW to allagations should be put after the accusation.Slatersteven (talk) 12:06, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Without doubt, substantive responses from HRW should be included, and you've described the proper format. However, the second section currently ends with the phrase: "However it has been suggested that this is motivated by politics rather then genuine concern" which is absolutely atrocious. The assertion is not attributed to anyone, and the sentence contains no substance whatsoever. It amounts to nothing more than speculations about motive, no factual response at all. Despite being sourced, text like that needs to be either removed, or revised so that it says something useful. Not every criticism requires us to list a response; if no direct, meaningful response is available, it's better to do without. Doc Tropics 12:20, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Stork's response to accusations

Stork has written a rebuttal to the Ma’Ariv article if anyone wants to incorporate it. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:37, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Good find Sean.hoyland, and very interesting. As an FYI, about 2 days ago user:joestork deleted references to Joe Stork from both this article and Human Rights Watch. I reverted both deletions and another editor warned him. I reviewed the article that contains his recent "rebuttal", but can't really see that it merits inclusion here. Stork's major defense seems to be that he was young when he made such profoundly hateful, anti-semitic statements, and he no longer recalls everything he said. He makes much reference to the social value of his more recent works without ever actually recanting or denying his previous positions. Furthermore, the sourcing is problematic as the essay doesn't come through any of the "official" channels which would be at Stork's disposal, but is relayed second-hand through an outside party, without the original statement being available for review. Still, thanks again for pointing this out and providing the link, it made for very interesting reading. Doc Tropics 19:24, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that user:joestork account. I thought the vandalism warning by User:D climacus was a bit harsh. Telling the user to submit requests for changes on the talk page would have been better given the WP:COI-potential of the user name. I'll have a look for better sourcing. I didn't see any anti-semitic statements in the Ma’Ariv article or the original material that was posted by CAMERA->NGO Monitor when Stork started issuing reports about Cast Lead. I'm not sure whether anyone has ever accused Stork personally of hating Jews because they are Jews. If they have then I suppose that should be in the article if it's well sourced. I saw allegations of him being anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian in the past but conflating that with anti-semitism is to take the New antisemitism view which isn't the norm for the definition of anti-semitism. Sean.hoyland - talk 02:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Um, yeah, let me clarify: the phrase "...hateful, anti-semitic statements..." was both a personal opinion (mine), and intentionally heavy-handed prose to highlight the extremity of what's been attributed to him. I would never suggest adding any of those actual words into the article; it was written entirely in the vein of rhetorical debate. Sorry if there was any confusion about that....Doc Tropics 21:53, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey, no problem, understood. Many people would share your view. In contrast probably no one shares my personal opinion that HRW would have a lot less problems if all of their senior staff officially changed their names to Marvel superhero style names like "The Investigator", "Justice Woman" etc. They didn't even reply to my email. Typical. On a more serious note I do think we need to do something with this Ma’Ariv material to balance it. It's ironic that in an article mainly about alleged selection/ideological bias we are struggling to avoid selection/ideological bias ourselves. I did come across an opinion piece by the editor of the Middle East Institute which I think qualifies as a suitable source if we wanted to use it.[4] Sean.hoyland - talk 04:03, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like he is the editor of the Middle East Journal at the Middle East Institute, and yes, we can definitely agree that his credentials make him an RS. Very nice. And it seems the points that should be highlighted are the age of the events (mostly the 1970s), and that the "Munich morale" statements attributed to him were apparently unsigned and possibly not his? Does that sound about right? Doc Tropics 05:41, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Anti-India bias

I've removed the section for now until someone has established that Arvin Bahl is a reliable and notable source on these issues. Perhaps that has already been done but it wasn't immediately obvious from previous discussions. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:36, 22 August 2009 (UTC) Sorry, I reverted you again Slatersteven until WP:V compliance has been established. I'm assuming South Asia Analysis Group are considered to be an RS but since they don't endorse Bahl's article and it's a opinion piece, WP:V compliance relies on establishing that Bahl himself is considered to be an RS. Has he been published in academic journals, media RS's etc ?

"Arvin Bahl is an investment banker based in New York City. He studied at Princeton University and received his A.B. from the University s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He graduated with highest honors (Summa Cum Laude), was elected to the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa Society and was awarded the Richard Ullman Prize for best thesis on American foreign policy in the Woodrow Wilson School. Bahl has written extensively on South Asian matters."from here...don't know if it's accurate.

Not a porblom, my aim was to reinsert a section ts pesent beorre the atte,mpt to delete this page and the subsquent mass deletions. I had my doudts but felt it should at least be discused again (as I bleive all of the material in the 26 july version should be).Slatersteven (talk) 18:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The fact that he apparently wrote it as an undergrad rules it out for me but that's just my view. He sometimes writes a blog for the Huffington Post. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:13, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

This is very interesting and delightfully convoluted. I needed four hands to keep track of all the points:

1. The material originates from the website of South Asia Analysis Group, definitely a reliable source for this purpose, and it's furthermore associated with a ".org" address which is always preferable to the academically lower class ".com" addresses (<--humor).
2. On the other hand, Arvin Bahl is clearly identified as a "guest columnist" and the SAAG Director specifically distances the organization from the opinions, even as he lauds Bahl's writing. Also, Bahl is by profession a banker, not a professor of Indian Culture, Political Science, or anything even vaguely related. Those points all count against using the source.
3. Yet again, on the third hand, this Google search indicates that Bahl has indeed written rather extensively and seems to have been received as a serious author on the topic. Despite lacking professional credentials, his publication history argues in his favor as a reliable source.
4. Finally, the specific criticisms that he makes about HRW's refusal to consider mitigating circumstances or reversed positions (like Hindu's being the targets of religous violence), appear to be a common theme that is echoed in other sections of the article.

In the end I would favor including the material (and HRW's response, if any), but don't see it as absolutely necessary, and can certainly understand other editors having stronger reservations. Doc Tropics 21:07, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

title of latin america section

i've dropped the "pro-US" part of the Latin America section title, putting Allegations of bias concerning Latin America instead. It does seem to me that most of the criticisms (Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras) are inferring that HRW seems to have recently (last 5 years) been too closely aligned with US foreign policy than it should be as an independent, non-governmental organisation, but at least in the sourced information we have in the text of the section at the moment, we don't have pro-US bias stated overtly in all cases. E.g. for Honduras, the authors of the criticism of HRW and appeal to HRW don't overtly say "You seem to be supporting US foreign policy". That does seem to be implied, but not stated outright. We do have a direct statement by Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy regarding pro-US-govt bias, which is relevant in the intro to the section, but i don't think it's strong enough to keep "pro-US" bias in the section title. Boud (talk) 21:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I remember reading a paper a while ago by Columbian human rights reseachers who attempted to do quite a rigorous statistical analysis of HRW (and AI) reports covering many years of the civil war with the benefit of hindsight. They had all sorts of interesting results and if I could remember where I read it this comment might actually be useful. I'll try to find it again. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:12, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

stability of constructive work on page

Having just reviewed the last dozen-or-so changes made by different editors, I definitely feel that they were largely positive contributions and the article is improving incrementally but steadily. Productive talkpage dialogue helps a lot and the improvements seem to be evidence of that. Well done :) Doc Tropics 20:49, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Apart from this recent edit that removed sourced material and was reverted by another editor, we do seem to have approached something resembling NPOV+RS+NOR that seems to be stable. Congratulations to everyone participating, but presumably this page will still require regular watching. Boud (talk) 00:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Lead/introduction

i removed the old lead/introduction, since it had almost nothing to do with the content of the article. HRW's own summary of criticism against it cannot be expected to be a particularly good NPOV summary of that part of knowledge. We do not have any discussion of selection bias in the article, nor ideological bias. Geography is not ideology. i did suggest above that we wait a few weeks before trying to write a lead/introduction that summarises the content in line with the suggestions at WP:LEAD, since i didn't see much point trying to summarise it before it had stabilised.

Anyway, i've mostly picked out the refs that have name= tags. i suggest we avoid putting any refs in the lead/intro that are not already present in the main sections of the text, i.e. we only use repeat references. This seems to be consistent with the recommendations in WP:LEAD. i also think it's safer to err on the side of more (repeat) references in the lead/intro rather than too few, though we shouldn't include all of them.

i started with a 2-paragraph structure. One with a list of the criticisms based on the geographical structure of the main body of the article, and a second with HRW's responses, for those geographical areas where it did respond. The Arab–Israeli conflict occupies a lot of ink and bytes, so in the 1st paragraph that got split into a sentence of its own, for clarity.

An interesting side effect here is that it becomes clear that either HRW did not respond to the bias claims for Africa, or we have not found its responses yet. Boud (talk) 01:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Nazi paraphernalia and the HRW staff

Lets have an RS for this claim, and if possible one that links it to his views on Israle.Slatersteven (talk) 16:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC) Extra, is this even the same person?Slatersteven (talk) 17:24, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I doubt that it matters. Historicist needs to stop and explain how this complies with WP:DUE for a start and why he is using partisan unreliable sources rather than RS. I hear an axe grinding. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

See Marc Garlasco.Slatersteven (talk) 17:39, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

NGO Monitor and CAMERA are as reliable as Human Rights Watch. Actually, more reliable. You may not like their politics, but, unlike HRW, they do not make frequent errors of fact.Historicist (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

NGO monitor (i will not comment on Camera) is reliable for what they say, just as HRW is. As such qany claikm they make should be attirbuted.Slatersteven (talk) 17:55, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Historicist, are you aware of the discretionary sanctions in place on all Israel-Palestine related issues ? Can I draw your attention to the "Editors counseled" section that says

"Editors who find it difficult to edit a particular article or topic from a neutral point of view and adhere to other Wikipedia policies are counseled that they may sometimes need or wish to step away temporarily from that article or subject area."

Why don't you try to find reliable sources ? If the information is notable it will be easy to find in a reliable, neutral source. If it is an extraordinary claim like HRW, a highly respected organization are run by nazis and confusingly marxists as well then you better get some decent sources. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:10, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

i haven't looked at all the edits involved here, but it seems to me the main problem is just a lack of work and care in proper referencing and choice of NPOV language. For example, it's quite easy to find online evidence that Garlasco wrote a 430 page book costing over 100 dollars about Nazi "flak badges". Whether or not he is qualified for certain military judgments, the idea of employing anyone with many years of military experience in a human rights organisation seems to me rather obviously notable. Relatively neutral evidence of the lethality and legality of different weapons comes from non-military organisations. We can't really expect military organisations to be honest about who/how they kill, unless they are genuinely defensive organisations. On the other hand, the only evidence that seems to be around is that HRW has one employee/consultant with a lot of military experience (but the type of military experience seems to be disputed), and that he has written a huge book on nazi paraphernalia. This is not a claim that HRW is "run by" nazis. Anyway, i'm not going to try to sort out this particular dispute, but i think that if this is written and referenced carefully, it should return/stay in the article. Maybe editors involved - including Historicist - could make a proposal here on the talk page, consense here in details, and then put it on the article page. Boud (talk) 21:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

There is a slight problom. The only evidance that he wrote the book comes from websites quoting wikipedia for his date of birth, a date of birth that has no referance on the wikipedia page. As such there is no real evidance he wrote the book, the only two biagraphical pages wwe have (HRW aqnd the gaurdian) fail to mention any publication of this book.Slatersteven (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC).

The evidence that he wrote it is that you can buy a copy from Amazon.com. The Flak Badges of the Luftwaffe and Heer by Marc E. Garlasco. What - you think that there is another Marc Gerlasco with the same birthdate?Historicist (talk) 22:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• There are already reliable academics and journalists blogging on this, including David Bernstein and Noah PollakHistoricist (talk) 22:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

What evidance is there that his birthdate is the one given?Slatersteven (talk) 22:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

<- Boud, with respect the main problem is Historicist behaving like a POV warrior. There's a time and a place for assume good faith and this isn't it. It's patently obvious what is going on here to anyone who has worked in the I-P conflict area and the discretionary sanctions are quite clear that this kind of activity needs to stop. The policies are crystal clear about edits that potentially affect the reputation of living people and organizations. High quality sources and full WP:V compliance are mandatory. Historicist, must slow down and engage in gaining consensus. If he does not, admin involvement is entirely appropriate. Yes, this is a claim that HRW are run by Nazis (I'm exaggerating for comic effect obviously) and it should be treated with the caution that it deserves. There shoud be red flags waving all over the place in cases like this. Obviously Wikipedia isn't an outlet for anything that appears on partisan/fringe/extremist sites and blogs by people with an axe to grind. If the criticism is notable it will appear in high quality sources that are accepted as RS and we can discuss those. Sean.hoyland - talk 04:01, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

• Maariv is now covering the story. However, David Bernstein and Noah Pollak are WP reliable sources when their blogs are cited for their own opinions.Historicist (talk) 16:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes they are, but the standards are a bit higher for a WP:BLP. Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs or tweets as sources for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material. and Material from third-party primary sources should not be used unless it has first been published by a reliable secondary source. nableezy - 16:53, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

White phosphorous

• User:Sean.Hoyland continues to censor reliably sourced material critical of HRW.Historicist (talk) 19:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Historicist continues to use unreliable sources and needs to watch his 1RR restriction. nableezy - 19:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

In this matter I would question NGO Monitor, they seem to be in part relying on information that stems from a wikipedia page, that renders it a bit dodgey.Slatersteven (talk) 19:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Historicist, take your pick, comply with mandatory policies or I will ask an admin to talk to you about the discretionary sanctions. Don't bring your personal battles with HRW to Wikipedia. Go work on another article if you are unable to follow policy on this issue. Sean.hoyland - talk 19:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Historicist is a aware of the discretionary sanctions and is currently under a 1RR sanction in the topic area. nableezy - 19:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

sanctions tag

There don't seem to have been any objections to the sanctions tag, and in any case, part of the article Criticism of HRW necessarily relates to the Arab–Israeli conflict, so we automatically come under the sanctions structure, it would seem to me. So i've put the tag up the top.

As i said in a comment a few sections above, my impression is that the information that Historicist wishes to include in the article probably is relevant, notable and source-able, but editors will not reach a consensus on that through excessive reverts. Discussion on the talk page would (should) have more chance of achieving consensus. i thought i saw somewhere that "uninvolved administrators" could impose a WP:1RR rule on difficult editors, but i can't find the specific place in the arbitration texts. In any case, here is a description of the sanctions, which you can find by following the links in the box anyway. Just for the record, i'm not an administrator, and i have made some edits to the article, so both facts disqualify me from the set of people who can "meta-intervene" here. Boud (talk) 22:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

"fringe" rebuttals

Somebody consistently published in the JPost and US News and World Report cannot be described as fringe and you cannot remove responses that you do not like. Take a look at WP:NPOV. This is not a personal playground to attack whoever you want without any response. nableezy - 04:53, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

What's the reason for the Derfner piece self-revert ? Sean.hoyland - talk 05:11, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I am trying to control my tendency to say "fuck that" and revert. nableezy - 05:13, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

oh noes, you used the forbidden word 'that' which is regarded as offensive in many cultures where assignment of words to either a male or female is required. okay, fair enough but i'm going to revert because each section ideally needs to have local npov compliance volume/weight-wise me thinks. Sean.hoyland - talk 05:30, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I shall make a sugestion. Lets keep the section on qulifications (and allow both Camera and NGO Monitor to be used as long as thier quotes are attributed). But the sectio on collecting and book writing a left out untill a neutral third party biographical source can be found to back up the claim.Slatersteven (talk) 13:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Like any source it depends what they are talking about. If CAMERA and NGO Monitor have opinions about the best way to do a Voronoi deformation density calculation then we wouldn't include them. Do they have necessary expertise to provide a reliable and meaningful statement about qualifications required by military analyst in a human rights organization that adds value to an encyclopedia ? Are they qualified to talk about weapons systems in any technical sense in a way that ads informational value ? Are they within scope of Wikipedia:Rs#Extremist_and_fringe_sources which says "Organizations and individuals that express views that are widely acknowledged by reliable sources as fringe, pseudo-academic,[3] or extremist may only be used as sources of information about those organisations or individuals." ? I don't know but if they are to be used then my view is that their views should only be included via reliable secondary sources. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Bernstein

Someone quoted an IPS article as saying that David Bernstein apologized for saying that HRW didn't raise Saudi abuses on its fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia. That's inaccurate. No one from IPS ever spoke to David Bernstein (me). IPS instead butchered an original blog post that I wrote: "For my part, if Ms. Whitson did indeed criticize Saudi human rights abuses during her trip, I apologize for suggesting otherwise." http://www.volokh.com/posts/1247622550.shtml

NOTE THE "IF"

Given that Whitson has refused to release any transcript, video, or audio of her remarks, I have no idea what she raised or didn't raise, other than her anti-Israel quotes noted in the Arab News. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.172.198 (talk) 14:46, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

As you do not know what she said what you claim she did not say can hardley be regarded as relaible.Slatersteven (talk) 14:54, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Has Whitson refused ? Is that what she said ? "I refuse to release any transcript, video, or audio of my remarks". Where did she say that ? Or has she not responded to a request ? Those would be two quite different things to me. Not that it will make any difference but it seems reasonable to assume that Saudi nationals with interests in human rights attending a HRW presentation would be aware of the "comprehensive, detailed, and thorough body of work on Saudi Arabian human rights issues in recent years" published by Human Rights Watch. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:41, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Material recently deleted form article

• The pro-Israel organization NGO Monitor has asserted that HRW military analyst Marc Garlasco lacks the knowledge and training that would qualify him to work as a military analyst, arguing that he has no military experience or training and that his Pentagon job did not deal with "the details of weapons systems."

• On her Blog Helena Cobban has said that " also share some of the concerns his critics have voiced about the actual military expertise Garlasco brought to the job at HRW," and that "made some serious-- and very basic-- mistakes during the Russian-Georgian war".

I think that criticism of HRW by member of HRW board of directors Helena Cobban is significant, as is ceiticism by an NGO like [NGO Monitor. If you agree, do put the material back in.Historicist (talk) 21:25, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Err the Cobban quote is still there. And has not been removed since its insertion.Slatersteven (talk) 21:35, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Allegations of methodological inadequacies and errors

I started a new section. there are allegations of bias from the partisans of several nations. However, there are also allegations of methodological inadequacies and errors, which ought to be separated from the allegations of bias.Historicist (talk) 14:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, there is a section for bias in the Palestien conflict, this should be there. Rename the section if need be.Slatersteven (talk) 15:22, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's get others to weigh in. I believe that allegaions of bias are not the same as criticisms of research methods.Historicist (talk) 17:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)