Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/25 December 2011/Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive

Wikipedia Mediation Cabal
Article	Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
Status	Active
Request date	08:17, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Requesting party	Virago250 (talk)
Mediator(s)	Lord Roem

Request details

Where is the dispute?

Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive

Who is involved?

The list of the users involved. For example:

• User:Itsmejudith
• User:Virago250

What is the dispute?

Several articles have been written on a closely related topic: the censorship that applies to Shark Island Extermination Camp, Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive, and related articles such as Lucy Dawidowicz, Modal logic, Predicate logic, etc., as it applies to historiography. The problem has come up several times with other administrators: and Itsmejudith has reversed her changes.

Itsmejudith has confused 'continuity' as used by Lucy Dawidowicz in Shark Island Extermination Camp, and has tried to remove relevant materials. Itsmejudith has agreed in the past to properly label the subject matter and not confuse the subject of technical continuity as used by Lucy Dawidowicz with Itsmejudith's entirely different sense of continuity. Itsmejudith is now repeating the same removal of the same information with references to Lucy Dawidowicz as well as additional information supporting the censorship pointed out by several citations.

Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive is inherently difficult because it touches on a controversial topic (censorship of material dealing with the Third Reich), and involves technical information to support the view expressed in the article. It is clear that Itsmejudith continually tries to remove relevant information that she does not approve of by simplifying the subject. I'm all for simplification, but not at the cost of making it impossible to understand the subject matter. If the citations are not found acceptable or relevant, Itsmejudith should point out why.

What steps have you already taken to try and resolve the dispute?

User_talk:Virago250#Obfuscation of the Historical Record Due to Conflation and Deletion of Material User_talk:Virago250#Good faith

What issues needs to be addressed to help resolve the dispute

I think Itsmejudith does not like the fact that the materials used in the article are complicated, with Wikilinks to several subjects used to support the article. There is indeed no way to simplify the article, so Itsmejudith simplifies the article to the point where it has no meaning and is indeed in violation of the citations used, which she thus ignores.

What can we do to help resolve this issue?

Is it possible for you to ask another editor not to agree with me publicly and then go behind my back to do the very thing she just agreed not to do? Whenever I open this article and see that Itsmejudith has made changes that are the precise ones I requested she not make without consultation or justification, I feel that she is writing about something she doesn't really understand; that she is only interested in the format of the article. I'm amenable to format changes (spelling, grammar, etc.), but not wholesale, vast changes of the ideas and facts involved.

Do you realise that mediation requires an open mind, collaborating together in an environment of camaraderie and mutual respect, with the understanding that to reach a solution, compromise is required?

Absolutely.

Mediator notes

I have asked both parties to confirm their interest in mediation on their respective talk pages. -- Lord Roem (talk) 04:35, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Ground rules

• Please keep all comments focused on the mediation. Proper editing decorum must be maintained, and as such, incivility and personal attacks must not occur, and I (Lord Roem) reserve the ability to archive, refactor or remove comments of such nature.
• Try to keep an open mind in the case, and realise that sometimes, you need to give a little to get a little. Mediation is not possible without compromise as well as keeping an open mind.
• When there are multiple issues that need to be addressed in a dispute (such as this one) only one particular issue or dispute is to be discussed at a time. Discussion that veers off course of the current topic may be archived at my discretion.
• MedCab is not a formal part of the dispute resolution process, and cannot provide binding sanctions. Nevertheless, I ask that both involved agree to abide by the outcome of this case.
• You will watchlist this page so as to keep track of all conversations and discussions.

Please sign just your username below, with four tildes (~~~~) to indicate your agreement with the ground rules and your participation in the case.

)

Agreement by participants to abide by ground rules

• Itsmejudith (talk) 18:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
• Virago250 (talk) 14:18, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

After signing agreement, please post a <250 word statement below indicating (1) what are the key issues you feel are in this dispute and (2) how do you want these issues resolved?

Statement by Virago250

In Wikipedia as in life, people whose expertise is in writing and editing (as opposed to a particular subject area) can be an enormous help in improving encyclopedic articles, by applying principles of sound exposition and enforcing style standards. However, these same individuals can (inadvertently) ruin articles by "editing out" information that seems not to fit the accepted style, or seems at first glance to be 'off topic', due to their own unfamiliarity with the subject. Always, when editing any technical topic, an editor must ask: In making this material conform to accepted style, have I deleted or compromised valuable material or valuable cross-references? (For example, in an article like Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive, which deals with continuity, you simply cannot remove material on predicate functions and mathematical functions, or associated references to Lucy Dawidowicz will become incomprehensible. Modal logics is another approach which also applies.)

If a Wikipedia editor feels information in an article is not relevant, they should explain why such information is irrelevant or incorrect, supporting their explanation with specific facts, citations and Wikilinks, just as anyone else would have to do, who was writing such an article. Lacking specific facts and citations, they should consult the author whose work she is about to edit, before removing or relocating material so that it conforms to accepted style -- at the expense of the article's content.

Virago250, your statement is a bit unclear. Can you clarify what exactly you think was incorrectly edited out? Lord Roem (talk) 15:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

If you're willing to let me go over the 250 word limit, I'll create a bulleted list this weekend, and make it as crisp as possible.Virago250 (talk) 22:14, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

For this case, I think such a bulleted list would be of great use. Thank you. Lord Roem (talk) 01:33, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for allowing me the extra space to create a response. Here's a bulleted list of problems initiated by Itsmejudith in Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive:

• Removal of "off-topic" information, including Wikilinks and citations (which breaks other Wikilinks that return to "Research Materials" from other Wiki articles). This includes:

- All references to predicate logics

- All references to modal logics (modal logics simpliciter, chronological logics, temporal logics, tense logics, position or topological logics, etc.)

- All references to Lucy Dawidowicz and her idea of continuity in historiography. Dawidowicz's claim is that for historiography to be scientific it must be founded upon continuity; this is not 'continuity' as it is commonly used in writing or discussion, but mathematical continuity

- All references to continuity (see above)

- All references to Jan Gross

• Itsmejudith has suggested that this article be merged with the general article on the Max Planck Society. Since she has already edited this article several times, the suggestion shocks me. This article uses the difficulty in obtaining censored material from the Max Planck Society Archive to illustrate what happens when key historical materials are censored, and how historiography can bring this to light. The material being censored documents activities that happened during the Third Reich, at the KWI-A (then run by the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft) and other institutions. Although the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft was renamed the Max Planck Society in 1945, Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive has almost nothing to do with the Max Planck Society of today. The only link is that Max Planck Society Archive personnel are censoring the material.(It's not just material about the KWI-A that's being censored; information about German OST is also being censored. Who knows what other material the archivists may also be censoring? For example, former German colonies whose policies may be linked to the behavior of the Third Reich, as noted by Hannah Arendt, Benjamin Maddley, Jeremy Sarkin and others.)
• When erroneously correcting a reference to "synchronic/diachronic" in this article, Itsmejudith linked to Synchronic and Diachronic. Unfortunately, these are disambiguation pages, not topic pages! I would hope that an experienced editor like Itsmejudith would have checked her links before leaving the page.

I recognize the difficulty of this material. I spent a lot of time trying to make this material as simple and accessible as possible, including adding a number of examples. Unfortunately, the article is as simple as I can make it, and still say something useful.

Statement by Itsmejudith

I really appreciate Virago's contributions, but s/he is still getting used to Wikipedia policies and usages. Anything I removed was in the spirit of the bold-discuss-revert cycle. Nothing is ever gone for good. I can always be convinced by argument, but we also have to remember that we work with consensus, and edits have to be justified in the eyes of all sorts of editors, expert and non-expert. As I have said, everything that is verifiable from good sources, and is notable, can go in somewhere. Virago has drawn our attention to a number of excellent sources. They really need to be used to good effect.

The nub of the misunderstanding seems to be about what theory we need to describe in order to explain that access is restricted to some archives containing information about Nazi science. Lucy Davidowicz is the theorist Virago finds particularly pertinent, and that may be right, but we need a reliable source that tells us that Davidowicz is relevant. We can't just assume it. And the connection with forms of logic, again we would need a source that makes the connection. Otherwise, we would be doing original research.

I would also remind Virago that Wikipedia is not the place for "righting great wrongs". The content discussed here includes some really great wrongs, evils, but still it is important to remember that Wikipedia editors have to follow behind the historians that are uncovering those evils. We can't lead the way. Also, it is worth thinking all the time of readers, who come from a range of different backgrounds. What, for example, about a young student from southern Africa, who needs to study the history of colonialism in his/her own region, but only has a vague idea about European history? Itsmejudith (talk) 21:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Next steps

Let me thank both editors involved for posting their statements. I will await Virago's bulleted list before moving to our next stage. As Virago is the editor who wishes to include certain content, he/she should be ready to list sources in order to help everyone here discuss the reliability of any sources involved. This is an interesting case, certainly an interesting article in question, and I think both users want to get this behind them. My job will be to guide you two to a resolution that you can both be satisfied with. Keep in mind the idea of compromise as we move forward - it is of vital importance to the process.

Please keep this page watchlisted for updates. Regards, Lord Roem (talk) 01:39, 7 January 2012 (UTC)