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NAMBLA content on Harry Hay

Sorry for the length and subject matter.

I found the inclusion of NAMBLA content in the lead of Harry Hay surprising, and in looking at the sources used, then a look to see if there were better ones available, I found sourcing lacking. I took the one sentence off the lead and also removed Category:Pedophile activism as both seemed inappropriate. Can you guess where this is going? They were both re-added and the content in the lead expanded. (Here is a copy as of 4 July 2019. I read all the sources I could find and tried to apply NPOV. After a couple rounds of this I gave up and started a survey of all sources on this content.

NAMBLA is widely despised as child molesters by the vast majority of LGBTQ people as well as popular culture. It’s a group for pedophile advocacy. Pedophilia, is a preference for prepubescent children as old as 13. NAMBLA is possibly the most hated group imaginable to many LGBTQ people.

Any connections to NAMBLA automatically taint whoever is connected with them. The vast majority of reliable sources barely mention anything, those that do cite:

1. February 1983, Hay speaks at an event (not NAMBLA’s) and states, “...if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.” This quote follows Hay’s recounting his own positive sexual experience when he was 14 with an older man (reasoning for his going public in proposed content section); No reliable source for the quote but one good source for the overall speech.
2. June 1986, LA Pride parade bans NAMBLA, Hay wears a sign in protest on his back, one supporting Valerie Terrigno who was also banned, on his front.
3. June 1994, Stonewall 25, and ILGA bans NAMBLA, Hay and 149 others protest the action, about NAMBLA mainly (reasoning in proposed content section) and march in the Spirit of Stonewall alternative parade with 7,000.
4. sometime in 1994, spoke at a NAMBLA event where he suggested changing the group’s name. (I only see one brief mention of this.)

reliable sources found

Click for list of reliable sources on this with any usable content

"When Nancy Met Harry". The American Spectator. Retrieved 2019-06-25. - from The American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord writes as a political commentator, and has a track record of controversial writing. I suspect this is not a reliable source, the chief purpose of the article is guilt by association attempting to connect Nancy Pelosi to allegation of pro-pedophile advocacy. But they do use the quote from 1 (above) taken from NAMBLA’s website. The speech was mainly Hay sharing his own positive gay sex experience with a man when he was 14. This assessment of this source might prove helpful, “I agree that The Specator should not be cited, or more accurately Jeffrey Lord should not be cited. That's not because he's a conservative, but because he has a documented history of saying utterly ridiculous things about anything he perceives as liberal. He's a political strategist, not an academic or a journalist, and his expertise is trying to make opponents look bad. This is the only source for 1. Marc LaRocque and Cooper Moll (2014). "Finding aid to the Lesbian and Gay Academic Union records, 1973-1987; Coll2011-041" (PDF). Online Archive of California. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help) [Box 2/folder 21] Lesbian and Gay Academic Union Records, Coll2011-041, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, USC Libraries, University of Southern California., this was added to the article here but despite several requests there remains zero evidence the quote is contained there in any form, as it’s administrative records about the conference there is still the possibility a copy was included. If verified what is actually there this could be a better source for 1 if it’s not a primary source. - just added. Biographer Vern L. Bullough writes, "Getting him to agree to simply wear a sign rather than carry a banner took considerable negotiation by the parade organizers, who wanted to distance the gay and lesbian movement from pedophilia, yet wanted Harry to participate." Of interest to note is that the same organizers who didn’t want any NAMBLA recognition did want Hay himself. Also interesting is the omission of context for Hay’s wanting to wear the sign from the previous but uncited sentence, wearing the sign was ”an action he took because he remembered the pleasure of coming out as a teenager with a man who initiated him to the gay world.” This is in alignment with the few NAMBLA-documented speeches Hay gave as an invited speaker where he didn’t advocate for the group but instead talked about his own experiences. This source also helpfully points out that the 1994 Stonewall march was also protested for its commercialization and that Hay helped lead the counter-March with almost 7,000 participants. This is helpful for 2 and 3. Timmons, Stuart (1990). "Photos by Sandy Dwyer". The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement. Retrieved 2010-06-24. The sign Harry tried to wear in the 1986 L.A. Gay Pride Parade - which points out he tried to be in the parade implying he didn’t succeed in some way, This is unneeded, but does provide a photo of 2. , a reliable source that confirms the two signs were worn in the LA Pride parade. This is for 2. Bronski, Michael (2002-11-07). "The real Harry Hay". The Phoenix. - (Copied here) - In an obituary, LGBT history academic and writer Michael Bronski wrote, “He was, at times, a serious political embarrassment, as when he consistently advocated the inclusion of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in gay-pride parades. HAY’S UNEASY relationship with the gay movement — he reviled what he saw as the movement’s propensity for selling out its fringe members for easy, and often illusory, respectability — didn’t develop later in life. It was there from the start.” He helpfully contextualizes why he thinks Hay advocated for inclusion in the two parades, although he doesn’t provide anything to prove his assertions. This is unneeded but supports items 2 and 3. "Defend Harry Hay's Reputation at the National Equality March". Retrieved 2019-06-25. - This affirms Hay was never a member, and contextualizes the Stonewall 25 episode. Additionally it notes exactly what I’ve been seeing: Allegations that Hay was a supporter of pederasty was “a staple of those members of the right-wing establishment who are bent on destabilizing the Obama Adminstration and destroying the careers of members of his administration through guilt by association.” (Specifically Kevin Jennings). This is unneeded but is a helpful source for 3. "#BornThisDay: Gay Rights Pioneer, Harry Hay". The WOW Report. 2019-04-07. Retrieved 2019-06-25. - In 1994, he joined the The Spirit Of Stonewall, instead of the official pride march and controversially supported inclusion of NAMBLA. “He felt that silencing any part of the movement because it was disliked or hated by mainstream culture was a seriously mistaken political strategy. ... He saw that eliminating any “objectionable” group, like drag queens or leather enthusiasts only pandered to the idea of respectability.” This is unneeded but helpful source for 3. Simon LeVay; Elisabeth Nonas (1997). City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America. MIT Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0262621137. Although some prominent gay leaders such as Harry Hay have supported NAMBLA's right to participate in gay rights marches, the link between NAMBLA and the mainstream gay rights movement has always been tenuous. - This was Just added, although it only supports some prominent gay leaders such as Harry Hay have supported NAMBLA's right to participate in gay rights marches, it is use in the lead falsely to bolster that Hay was “an active supporter“, which no reliable source has yet to verify and the entire lead paragraph hinges upon. It’s not needed, but technically loosely confirm 2 and 3. Weir, John (August 23, 1994). The Advocate, “Mad About the Boys”. Here Publishing.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - he was speaking at a nambla event and said they should consider a name change because “boy lover” had negative connotations like “homosexual” did in the 1950’s. I’m not seeing any other mention of this. This is the only source that supports item 4, but does so trivially. Hard to believe if there was more connecting Hay it wouldn’t also be included. Hay, Harry, "Focusing on NAMBLA Obscures the Issues", Gay Community News, Fall 1994, pp. 16, 18. As cited in Jenkins, Philip (2004). Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. Yale University Press. p. 275. ISBN 978-0300109634. - Just added to the reference section. This source, likely an opinion piece by Hay, comes just after the Stonewall 25 events where both ILGA, and Stonewall 25 organizers banned pro-pedophilia groups from participating. It likely reaffirms his already reported reasoning, included in proposed content, behind supporting the group being allowed to march. This might be useful for 3, if someone can confirm what Hay actually wrote. But would likely be under primary source. gives only one quote from that Hay-authored piece right above but it’s certainly relevant, "I am not a member of NAMBLA, nor would it ever have been my inclination to be one." This has obvious contextual relevance and likely should be included. Yalzadeh, Ida (October 20, 2018). "Harry Hay | Biography, Activism, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-07-02. A champion for a diverse homosexual identity, Hay often waded into contentious debates, notably by advocating for such controversial organizations as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pro-pederasty group., this was just found and is the first to assert that Hay advocated for NAMBLA among other groups. It being the only source that offers this blanket statement lends to the point that this subject area is not yet proven to have such a weight in Hay’s life to warrant anything in the lead. The author doesn’t offer any information to corroborate the assertion. - Here is a helpful comment so far: “Beacon Press is a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association, somewhat of an advocacy publisher, but still potentially useful. ... I'd be hesitant to use the Beacon book, as both the publisher and the editor you linked have long histories of being activists rather than dispassionate scholars, but it could be useful for simple factual statements, e.g. "Hay did X in year YYYY".” This source reprints Hay’s Spirit of Stonewall speech from their press conference. - After paging through this the “two contrasting interpretations of Hay's support for NAMBLA” were a sentence each: “outspoken advocate for” vs. “alleged advocate of”; both useless as neither provided any information to affirm the statements, Here is a helpful comment so far: “Left Coast Press is an imprint of Routledge/Taylor & Francis, a globally prominent academic publisher. ... Conversely, anything coming from T&F is highly likely to be reliable both for simple statements of fact and for theoretical analysis, and I'd need to be given a solid reason to doubt them before I advised someone to be careful using it.” This source delved into Hay’s using his coming-of-age story as a 14-year-old with a man in his twenties, and why he shared it publicly.

References

Unless other reliable sources support this material and demonstrate it has a significant bearing on his life I don’t see how this should be in the lead. As well I think the category is inappropriate. Am I crazy? Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Feedback

When Hay was was alive, his constant advocacy for NAMBLA and his cruising of boys was common knowledge. Same as with Ginsberg. It's part of what made Hay a controversial figure - someone who was routinely disrupting Pride, getting kicked out of the very orgs he founded (Mattachine Society), etc. I've tried to explain this to Gleeanaon, who clearly wasn't around then, but he takes my suggestion to read the sources as a personal attack. He suggests respected gay journalists like Michael Bronski, who was part of some of the same radical collectives as Hay, are somehow orchestrating a smear campaign. I suggest anyone who wants to comment first read Bronski's article, "The real Harry Hay", all the way to the end, as Bronski points out the the New York Times and other major outlets were already leaving the NAMBLA stuff out of his obits, and immediately trying to reinvent him on death:

Neither of the long and laudatory obits in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times mentioned his unyielding support for NAMBLA or even his deeply radical credentials and vision. Harry, it turns out, was a grandfatherly figure who had an affair with Grandpa Walton. But it’s important to remember Hay — with all his contradictions, his sometimes crackpot notions, and his radiant, ecstatic, vision of the holiness of being queer — as he lived. For in his death, Harry Hay is becoming everything he would have raged against.

Gleeanon's main project right now is editing National LGBTQ Wall of Honor, and they are the one who added the list of names and are the creator and main editor of the article. Gleeanon honestly didn't seem to any know this about Hay, as he seems to not know much about any of the older community members he's copy and pasting into that list. I've told them the answer is not to rewrite history. But Gleeanon keeps deleting discussions from their talk page and misrepresenting both the sourcing and other people's edits. He has become a Tendentious editor who is wasting our time with his, I'm sorry, ignorance of this topic and, possibly, agenda to whitewash on behalf of this group. If the people working on the memorial didn't want someone this problematic, they should have asked older people, or done their research, rather than trying to whitewash the honorees after the fact. Gleeanon is now focusing rather intensely on this. I have asked if they have COI on this project and they have denied it, but I'm really not sure I believe that given this intense POV push. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 19:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It may be that Bronski had an inside view of what Hay was like, and that Bronski disliked the fact that reliable sources like the New York Times, did not consider these problematic aspects of Hay to be significant aspects of his life. It may be that some people involved in some hall of fame project have failed to consult enough older people about their choice of inclusions. But Wikipedia should reflect what the balance of reliable sources say about it, not the views of individuals with an interest or individuals disgusted or disappointed. MPS1992 (talk) 20:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Also, editors are permitted by policy to blank content from their own talk page -- especially when the content concerned is several thousand words in length. Blanking such content is generally regarded as an indication that they have read it. Anyway that's a question of editor conduct, not a question of article neutrality which is what this noticeboard covers. MPS1992 (talk) 20:56, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I have continually asked for reliable sources that verify the “constant advocacy for NAMBLA” and pedophilia. There seems to be a massive conspiracy except one lone, but respected LGBTQ journalist. Perhaps that should be also shoehorned into the lead? One of the world’s best known pioneering gay rights advocates whose had dozens of obituaries, articles, interviews, books, and documentaries about him all fail to mention this despite Wikipedia even advertising it, possibly for years. Perhaps because they saw was is plainly evident, a lack of evidence despite NAMBLA themselves posting every scrap of pro-pedophile material they can. I look forward to more people looking into this. Gleeanon409 (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Conspiracy? There is/was no conspiracy. This has been common knowledge for decades. The sources support this common knowledge. Indigenous girl (talk) 21:01, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Indeed -- but the sources do not seem to regard it as significant in the individual's biography. MPS1992 (talk) 21:05, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

MPS, it's not just Bronski, it's the Gay press in general who wanted this known about him, because he was continually raising a stink about it and people were having to kick him out of groups and events. It's in the Advocate[1], and his own group, the Radical Faeries have it on their tribute page to him:[2]. This isn't righting great wrongs, it's keeping history accurate against a POV push from a relatively new, revisionist editor. NAMBLA is ugly. Of course people would rather not see it. But those who supported and promoted the pedophile group should be kept accountable. Go look at the article, not this user's misrepresentations. I think there is a misunderstanding here about what WP:NPOV is. We write in a neutral voice. It doesn't mean we hide awful things about people to make them sound nicer. Yeah, it's hard to write neutrally about a pedophile group. So we just state the facts. But we don't bury the facts when he, after Allen Ginsberg, was probably the group's most famous advocate in the gay community. Yeah, it's gross. But it happened. So we document it. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 21:20, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. I guess you really are saying that the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were "revisionist" as well, and therefore we shouldn't consider them reliable on this topic, but instead we should only consider reliable the views of people that Hay knew personally and had had disagreements with? MPS1992 (talk) 21:33, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Or, let us look at it a different way. There are three questions. First, should Hay's protesting the exclusion of NAMBLA from events be mentioned in the article? (I would say yes.) Second, should it be mentioned in the lede of the article? And third, if it should be mentioned in the lede of the article, how should it be mentioned there? MPS1992 (talk) 21:36, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

They were incomplete. As their obits of subcultural figures have often been. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 21:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Those sources are already included in the seven(!) total(!) to be found, this one is a collection of obits with only one even touching on this content, the very sole one you helpfully quoted at length despite it already being posted above. These scraps were then woven into a grand story. It certainly feels “undue”. Gleeanon409 (talk) 21:43, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

References in the article include Hay's official bio, which was fine with Gleeanon until he realized it sourced all this, with this photo:[3], where Hay wore the sign, "NAMBLA walks with me" in LA Pride. As I said on talk: I really didn't want to link to them, but here's - https://www. nambla. org/hay2002.html NAMBLA's index on their Harry Hay materials. This page has - https://www. nambla. org/sanfrancisco1984.html photos of Harry Hay speaking on a NAMBLA panel in 1984, in San Francisco, under their banner. And again in 1986 in Los Angeles (no photo). Ick. The link is not live because, understandably, the site is on the blacklist. So the the url has spaces. You will have to copy and paste, and take out the spaces, to see it. Ick again. Gleeanon thinks all this is a conspiracy. But it's in Hay's official bio, which was written by some of his most ardent supporters. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 21:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

None of that proves anything but that he made invited speeches at some of their conferences, helpfully they provide their version of the transcripts which show ... no advocacy for the group or even anything beyond Hay recounting his own positive gay sex experiences as a kid. Gleeanon409 (talk) 21:43, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Trying to destroy Pride because they wouldn't let NAMBLA march is not being an advocate? Helping them re-brand in order to get more members, sitting under the banner for photos while the group was sending out newsletters with photos of smiling seven year olds with the caption, "Smiles mean consent." Wow. You are really reaching here. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 21:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Original research inventing narratives not supported by reliable or even NAMBLA’s own sources isn’t helpful. Zero evidence Hay had control of how his photo was used, that he was helping recruit, or even destroy Pride. All interesting ideas that I’m sure will be spun into gold by right wing bloggers. Gleeanon409 (talk) 22:08, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

OK folks, I think we need some outside input here, if anyone is willing? That's what this noticeboard is for. MPS1992 (talk) 22:20, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm quite bemused by all this discussion about whether Hay was a ardent supporter of NAMBLA. He was. Anyone who is old enough, was contemporaneous in his communities while he was alive, knows it to be true. As a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, people saw him as an elder statesman in the 1970s-90s. Gay people listened when he had opinions. Many vociferously disagreed with him on supporting NAMBLA. There were a significant number of Gay/Lesbian newspapers and newsletters during that time period. Hay did interviews with them and articles were written about him. Those papers, often with very good journalists writing for them, could be used as contemporaneous reliable sources. Unfortunately, only a fraction of them are available online. They would be secondary sources on this issue. Cheers, Mark Ironie (talk) 23:57, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

@Mark Ironie: If you know of any particular articles, post a request at Wikipedia:RX and volunteers there may get free copies. Also searching university library databases may pull up some articles. For articles prior to the 1980s or 1985 etc some of those may not be available electronically and will need to be taken from microfilms. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:30, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

If you are aware of any reliable sources, they are welcome. I just added one that was wedge into the lead just hours ago which ironically proves how weak the sourcing remains. As to your point, it seems like the only thing that we can reliably verify up to now, is that he defended their right to be in two Pride parades where they had been banned, and the reasons. Arguably this might have caused a furor at the time, although I’m not seeing any evidence of that either, but don’t we have to rely on verification through reliable sources? What we have after searching is listed at the top. Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

"I also would like to say at this point that it seems to me that in the gay community the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need." He is advocating for children to be in sexual relationships with adults. He gave this speech in 1983 at NYU and it is archived on the NAMBLA website as well as here . On the Back to Stonewall site it also states,"These events overshadowed Hay’s previous legacy so much that today he is all but forgotten and purposely left out of many LGBT historical writings." Indigenous girl (talk) 14:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

The first quote you cite is already included in the first sections of this report, sourced only to NAMBLA itself, everyone has pulled it from them.

On the surface, the “On the Back to Stonewall“ site looks great but the Hay content seems to be word for word copying from an older version of Wikipedia’s Hay page. Gleeanon409 (talk) 15:23, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I am aware that the quote has been previously linked to however I thought it best that it was out in the open. Please help me try and understand, are you insinuating that the speech at the forum, hosted by the Gay Academic Union at NYU in 1983, given by Hay, is not accurately presented? Are you insinuating that Back To Stonewall is made up of revisionists and that Will Kohler doesn't know what he's talking about? Indigenous girl (talk) 15:47, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

The quote was already out in the open, it’s point #1, in bold of this report.

That speech is only known from NAMBLA’s posting their transcript. It has to be presented that way. Additionally it’s not about NAMBLA so you have to use original research to say it is. It’s also not about pedophilia, Hay was the 14-year old and the man he had sex with thought he was an adult.

I’m saying ”Back To Stonewall” didn’t even use their own words for the NAMBLA content, they used Wikipedia’s Hay article as gospel, but as is evident here, all the NAMBLA content is generally unverified and he presents zero sources or even credit to Wikipedia. I have no problem publishing true content that is verifiably sourced, but we are currently publishing unverified, and possibly unverifiable claims. Gleeanon409 (talk) 16:26, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Actually the GSU collection at USC contains the entire transcript of his speech. He specifically mentions NAMBLA in the context of his speech and urges allies to advocate for sex with 13, 14 and 15 year old children because, "it's what they need more than anything else in the world.". Indigenous girl (talk) 20:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

@Indigenous girl:, or @CorbieVreccan:, who added it to the article here, can you share how you verified this? Any link that others can use?

I do accept the NAMBLA-posted transcript does mention the group in the summary of the speech. I still think it’s borderline original research and has to be used NPOV. His speech is a testamonial of Hay’s own positive experience as a 14-year old having gay sex with an older man, based on his own experience he thinks that parents and friends of gays “should be running interference for NAMBLA”. Only presenting this material NPOV without original interpretation is acceptable. He also does not specifically advocate for sex with teens, but says a relationship which, I think requires original research to infer he meant romance or sex rather or additionally to anything else. Gleeanon409 (talk) 06:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Are you serious? In one sentence he advocates defending NAMBLA and in the next he speaks positively about relationships between young teenagers and older men. How could you possibly read that in a way that isn't about sexual relationships? All of your comments in this thread give the impression of increasing desperate denialism. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 17:15, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Your opinion is noted. I maintain that Wikipedia should report facts that are actually verified in reliable sources. All this NAMBLA content is dependent on supposedly well-known information which few to none reliable sources documented. Compare that to the mamouth volume about this is the lead and article. Any reader would falsely believe this was central to his life. Yet the vast majority of reliable sources make no mention of it. Those that do make very little mention of it. Yet the article lead? It’s a fourth of the content. Gleeanon409 (talk) 18:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

@Gleeanon409: One way to obtain older newspaper sources is to use university library databses and type in particular phrases. Some of those may be paywalled/closed, but Wikipedia:RX is a tool one can use to get access. Some older papers are not electronically available, but articles may be available in microfilms. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I notice someone had already mentioned The Advocate - I wish to elaborate further and state that the article described Hay as being an older generation thing:

• Weir, John. "Mad about the boys." The Advocate. Here Publishing, August 23, 1994. ISSN 0001-8996. Start: p. 33. CITED: p. 37.
• "Harry Hay, 82, a founder of the Mattachine Society[...]suggests to a crowded room at the recent NAMBLA meeting that a name change for the association might help." -- "Hay's presence at the NAMBLA meeting signified that NAMBLA is more than just an advocacy group for men imprisoned[...] It has become in part the last refuge for longtime activists who feel alienated from the current mainstreaming of the lesbian and gay community."

It might help to search on Google Books for content like this. Check the publisher to ensure that it is not self-published.

WhisperToMe (talk) 22:40, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I looked around Google Books but sadly found that a lot of the newer books mentioning it tended to be hyper-religious or small publisher things... I'm looking for books from major publishers. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:53, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Found: Miller, Ben (2017-04-10). Jacobin https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/harry-hay-communist-mattachine-society-lgbtq. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) "When he died at ninety in October 2002, many remembrances focused on Hay’s late-life defense of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. While Hay never joined the group, he did defend it from being expelled from several LBGTQ conferences. His defense of NAMBLA was eccentric and troubling, rooted in his own experiences of teenaged sexual activity. But it was a small piece of Hay’s long life of writing and activism." - This source argued that it was not a significant part of Hay's activity and that he never joined... If you think Jacobin is mischaracterizing this, it would be good to find a secondary source (from a reputable publisher, of course) which says the opposite. "Gay History – October 23rd: The Almost Forgotten Gay Activist Harry Hay and Quebec’s Gay Club Raid Protests" (mentioned above by another user) seems to contradict Jacobin when it states "These events overshadowed Hay’s previous legacy so much that today he is all but forgotten and purposely left out of many LGBT historical writings." but it may be good to check the publishing status of this website to see if it counts as a Reliable Source. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:56, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe:, Thank you for the leads, the Miller one does help to anchor the content. The Back2Stonewall one though didn’t even use their own words, they copied word for word from Wikipedia’s Hay article. That does demonstrate, again, how out of step the article is compared to reliable sources. Gleeanon409 (talk) 05:14, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

@Gleeanon409: Re: back2stonewall copying from Wikipedia, remember to go through the revisions and find the earliest Wikipedia revision with the content versus the earliest copy of the back2stonewall page to establish which came first. If back2stonewall indeed copied from Wikipedia, it cannot be considered at all in regards to reliable sources. WhisperToMe (talk) 05:29, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe:, indeed. Back2Stonewall published OCTOBER 23, 2017; word for word from Wikipedia content that predates. Gleeanon409 (talk) 06:03, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

References

Notes before closing

In closing, I think the discussion here has reached consensus that this is reliably sourced as a prominent and recurring issue in Harry Hay's political work. As Gleeanon409's initial presentation did not include all the sources, mentioned "sources" that are not in the article, and simply dismissed all sources that discuss this part of Hay's life as "unreliable", I am including a list here of the actual sources that cite this well-known, unfortunate fact about Harry Hay. As others have said, NPOV means we write neutrally about the facts of someone's life, without censorship. This was a well-known fact of Hay's life.

Reliable Sources:

• The Advocate (LGBT magazine) <ref name="Advocate1994">{{cite magazine|last=Weir|first=John|title=Mad About the Boys|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KmMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37|date=23 August 1994|magazine=[[The Advocate (LGBT magazine)|The Advocate]]|page=37|issn=0001-8996}}</ref>
• Michael Bronski for The Phoenix <ref name= rhh>{{cite news|url=http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/documents/02511115.htm|archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20120302214758/http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/documents/02511115.htm |archivedate=2012-03-02|title=The real Harry Hay|date=2002-11-07|accessdate=2008-11-16|first=Michael|last=Bronski|authorlink=Michael Bronski|newspaper=[[The Phoenix (newspaper)|The Phoenix]]|quote=He was, at times, a serious political embarrassment, as when he consistently advocated the inclusion of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in gay-pride parades.|dead-url=no}}</ref>
• MIT Press <ref name=NonasLeVay>{{cite book|author1=Simon LeVay|author2=Elisabeth Nonas|title=City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cl-4yFFql8gC&pg=PA181&dq=Harry+Hay+NAMBLA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjb4enV94XjAhVnTt8KHWyVCHUQ6AEITTAH#v=onepage&q=Harry%20Hay%20NAMBLA&f=false|year=1997 |publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-0262621137|page=181|quote=Although some prominent gay leaders such as Harry Hay have supported NAMBLA's right to participate in gay rights marches, the link between NAMBLA and the mainstream gay rights movement has always been tenuous.}}</ref>
• Stuart Timmons, Hay's Official Biographer: scan of photo plate <ref name="LAPridePhoto">{{cite web|url=https://www.wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Harryhaysignnambla2.jpg|title=Photos by Sandy Dwyer |last=Timmons |first=Stuart|date=1990|work=The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement|accessdate=2010-06-24|quote=The sign Harry tried to wear in the 1986 L.A. Gay Pride Parade}}</ref>
• <ref name=Spectator>{{Cite news | last = Lord | first = Jeffrey | title = When Nancy Met Harry | work = The American Spectator | date = 2006-10-05 | url = http://spectator.org/archives/2006/10/05/when-nancy-met-harry | accessdate = 2009-04-14 | deadurl = yes | archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20090329000719/http://spectator.org/archives/2006/10/05/when-nancy-met-harry | archivedate = 2009-03-29 | quote=Said Harry: "Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world."}}</ref> Gleeanon wants to exclude this because it's "conservative". WP does not exclude sources on the basis of being liberal or conservative, and the text is the same as in the full speech below. This is included because it is an online text.
• Hay himself <ref name=LGAUfullspeech>[Box 2/folder 21] Lesbian and Gay Academic Union Records, Coll2011-041, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, USC Libraries, University of Southern California</ref>
• Timmons again {{sfn|Timmons|1990|p=310}} {{sfn|Timmons|1990|p=295}} - Official biographer
• Vern Bullough <ref name=Bullough>{{cite book|author=Vern L. Bullough|authorlink=Vern Bullough|title=Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-1560231936|page=74}}</ref> In Before Stonewall, biographer Vern L. Bullough writes, "Getting him to agree to simply wear a sign [supporting NAMBLA] rather than carry a banner took considerable negotiation by the parade organizers, who wanted to distance the gay and lesbian movement from pedophilia, yet wanted Harry to participate."
• Yale University Press / Hay again / GCN again: Hay, Harry, "Focusing on NAMBLA Obscures the Issues", Gay Community News, Fall 1994, pp. 16, 18. As cited in {{cite book |title=Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America|year=2004|last=Jenkins |first=Philip |publisher=Yale University Press|page=275|isbn=978-0300109634}} Hay writes on the issue for Gay Community paper of record.
• Hay's spiritual group: Obituary on Radical Fairy site, reproduces Bronski obituary.
• Obviously, as the NAMBLA site is blacklisted, we are not going to link to their website pages, but they have Hay's speeches, and photos of him speaking in front of their banner on their panels. These speeches and photos are in other publications that are not currently available online, but they are well-known in the community. It is inappropriate for Gleeanon409 to cast aspersions on older editors who remember these things and suggest this material is fabricated. This material is linked via broken URL's on article talk.

There are more mentions out there online, and a ton more in print, but these are the ones in the article at the moment. To include this material is in no way an endorsement of Hay's views. It is certainly not an endorsement of NAMBLA. Whenever someone invokes "trying to right great wrongs" when it's something like pedophile advocacy (dear gods...) I wonder if they think we have no responsibility as editors here at all. Hay made quite the ruckus trying to keep NAMBLA from being shunned when he was alive, so it's only fair that it stays in his article now. What's there right now is NPOV and minimal, all things considered. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 00:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Of course I remain dubious of these statements, and how “NPOV” and “minimally” the content is presented but first I’ll look at these sources to see which ones aren’t already listed at top, and include and assess what information should be added. It will take me a little while to do all this. When I’m ready I’ll post here again with a summary. Gleeanon409 (talk) 08:42, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

The Advocate article was already listed by me in the reliable sources section; so is the Bronski obit with it’s quote; so is the superfluous Timmons photo; so is the problematic Jeffrey Lord article; so is the Vern Bullough book; so is the Gay Community News; so is the link to the Radical Faeries.
I’ve added the Simon LeVay book; and the LGAU archive box.
I see little value in adding any more credibility to NAMBLA by acknowledging their online content, we can hold our collective noses and use the Spectator article that got it from them. His other two times as speaker both were Hay talking about his own positive experiences with gay sex when he was young. We already have the context for the quote to cover that, and it’s all primary sourced. Gleeanon409 (talk) 10:18, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

So we basically haven’t moved much to allay my initial concerns.
There remains zero reliable sourcing to support “Hay was an active supporter [of NAMBLA]”, you may know it to be true but no reliable source has backed it up.
Also it’s deceptive to state Hay “protested the group being banned from Pride parades” when we only have evidence for two; 1986 LA Pride, and 1994 Stonewall parades.
It’s also POV to state he spoke “about helping the group strategize a name change to help with their public image” implying he was doing something not implicated in his speech, a neutral take would be more along the lines of what I tried, he thought boy lover had negative connotations just like homosexual did in the 1950’s.
Wikipedia is broadcasting worldwide these deceptions. I can’t see how any content on NAMBLA should be wedged into the lead, and the utter lack of coverage in reliable sources presented so far suggests it should be trimmed to a NPOV minimum in the article.
Additionally there remains zero evidence to prop up the “Pedophile advocacy” category being included. Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:52, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Speaking of POV, what you are calling "gay sex when he was young" was sex between an adult man and a 14 year old boy. Then Hay went on to speak at a handful of events that we have documented to plead with the gay community to endorse adults having sex with kids as young as 13, saying this would be the best thing adult gay people could do for gay kids. This is horrible. This is why he got kicked out of Pride parades and shunned by those who cared about kids. You are minimimizing criminal activity, this man's advocacy for criminal activity, and the way he tried to implicate normal gay people in criminal activity. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 18:54, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

He “pleaded” for gay men to have sex with teens? Or did he mean mentoring them? I don’t think we can say without evidence so instead, again to be NPOV, we likely should just report neutrally what the sources support, “relationships”, and leave the leap of guilt for the reader to decide. And that “series of events”, looks to be a total of three, and it was NAMBLA that kicked out of parades, and not even NAMBLA advocated for breaking any laws. Please dial down the hysteria and actually let the reliable sources dictate what is verified instead of your own memories. Your personal facts might be the gospel truth but they don’t belong in an encyclopedia. Gleeanon409 (talk) 19:21, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

As both Red Rock Canyon:[4] and Mark Ironie:[5] have noted, watching you increasingly attempt to minimize the damage done by NAMBLA, it's really hard to believe you're serious at this point. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 20:12, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Nowhere was this more evident than in Hay’s persistent support of NAMBLA’s right to march in gay-pride parades. In 1994, he refused to march with the official parade commemorating the Stonewall riots in New York because it refused NAMBLA a place in the event. Instead, he joined a competing march, dubbed The Spirit of Stonewall, which included NAMBLA as well as many of the original Gay Liberation Front members. A source specifically states that he "persistently" protested NAMBLA's exclusion from these marches. Including that is not deceptive; it's accurately following the sources. Your personal research about which marches he protested cannot be used to counter that statement.

Harry Hay... suggests to a crowded room at the recent NAMBLA meeting that a name change might help. Maybe this isn't "strategizing", but the source does say that he offered them advice on how to improve their image. This is not "adding credibility to NAMBLA," it's presenting the facts about Harry Hay as recorded in reliable sources. That is, and should be, the sole goal of Wikipedia. Material is not censored because we fear it may lend credence to some disgusting agenda, and biographies are not white-washed because we might prefer to see our heroes presented in a better light. Oh, and even Britannica mentions his support of NAMBLA [6] Hay often waded into contentious debates, notably by advocating for such controversial organizations as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pro-pederasty group.. This isn't some smear cooked up by the right-wing media and Wikipedia.

That being said, I agree that these statements He spoke out in support of relationships between adult men and boys as young as thirteen and helping the group strategize a name change to help with their public image are not well-sourced. They rely on analysis of primary sources and that questionable Spectator article (hard to tell if it's an opinion piece or journalism). It would be better to leave that out of the lead, and just let the quotes speak for themselves in the body of the article. I think that entire final sentence should be cut from the lead, both for issues of sourcing and to avoid lending undue weight to the issue. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Indigenous girl found the full speech about NAMBLA where Hay "urges allies to advocate for sex with 13, 14 and 15 year old children because, 'it's what they need more than anything else in the world.' in the ONE archives of Hay's speeches at USC. So, the sourcing is solid, and it should be included in the body of the article. As long as the rest of the text prior to that is in the lede, as it was before Gleeanon's disruption, I think the specific details about that speech (which he gave multiple times) can be left for further down. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 21:45, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

That's a primary source, and appears to be interpreted as such -- those are the dangers of primary sources. I understand that the topic causes emotions to run riot, but this is, after all, the neutral point of view noticeboard. MPS1992 (talk) 21:53, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

By the way, @Gleeanon409:, please do not say things like 'it’s deceptive to state Hay “protested the group being banned from Pride parades” when we only have evidence for two' -- no that is not deceptive. If he protested two of them, he protested it on an ongoing basis. Don't be silly. MPS1992 (talk) 21:59, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, as MPS1992 says, any text of the speech is a primary source, and we are not permitted to analyze primary sources and summarize them. I think it might be acceptable to quote some of the text of the speech in the article, since it's on a topic discussed by other secondary sources, and it's in the subject's own words, but we cannot put in any interpretation of what he's saying absent a secondary source that reports on his speech and what it means. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Right, as the primary source is available for comparison, we are able to see that the secondary sources are quoting Hay accurately. So that means the Spectator, Kohler, and the others cannot be ruled out just because we may not like their views on other issues. That is the sole reason I left the Spectator in - to verify the quote. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 22:42, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Are you guys totally following the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so we should be summarising what secondary sources say, not just confirming that our chosen primary sources are accurate in what they say and what our longstanding appreciation of them is? MPS1992 (talk) 23:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

The main function of the primary source is to assuage concerns that the Spectator piece was completely inventing something. Author Jeffrey Lord's opinion of Hay based on that speech would need to be attributed, though. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing this NAMBLA content and presenting it NPOV has been the main problems from the beginning. It remains that we ONLY have the primary source for this quote. Kohler copies Wikipedia word for word, I pointed this out in a previous section, and the Spectator, which is unmistakably an opinion hit piece, acknowledges they got it off NAMBLA’s website. Gleeanon409 (talk) 01:55, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Indigenous girl may have found that Archive box source but you added it to the article, I asked both of you for anything that other editors could verify the information but nothing yet has come forth. It remain unclear what if anything about Hay’s speech is in there. Please be clear about what that source actually is and how it was confirmed.
And my “disruption” has continued to prove there indeed is glaring NPOV and sourcing issues. I’m glad we’re finally getting some more eyes on the issues, as well as finding any reliable sources. Hopefully the article will improve and all this content will be adjusted with due weight. Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:37, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@MPS1992: It’s hardly silly, especially with such contested and controversial content, to be precise, NPOV, and encyclopedic when reporting this content, specifically in the number of parades he protested NAMBLA being banned from. There were two, separated by eight years. It’s deceptive not to report the facts as verified. I would say the same thing if there were eight or dozens. Let the facts speak for themselves. Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:37, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Having more time to look over sources, I can't see an NPOV version of Hay's article not mentioning NAMBLA. Now, I will say that I agree that The Specator should not be cited, or more accurately Jeffrey Lord should not be cited. That's not because he's a conservative, but because he has a documented history of saying utterly ridiculous things about anything he perceives as liberal. He's a political strategist, not an academic or a journalist, and his expertise is trying to make opponents look bad. Aside, I found what I consider two more useful sources that I don't think have been mentioned yet. Hay, Harry (1997). Roscoe, Will (ed.). Radically Gay. Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807070819. seems to me a very good reference for sourcing content on this topic. There are also two contrasting interpretations of Hay's support for NAMBLA in Hubbard, Thomas K.; Verstraete, Beert (2013). Censoring Sex Research: The Debate Over Male Intergenerational Relations. Left Coast Press. ISBN 9781611323399. One of those interpretations was penned by Bruce Rind, who has a well known agenda, but I find he does have a point. Specifically, while searching for sources, it was hard to miss the volume of relatively recent conservative hit pieces that bring up Hay and overstate his support of NAMBLA, even going so far as to say he founded the organization. I will not cite those as they are light years from RS. That is, there really are people trying to posthumously demonize him as advocating for the rights of sexual predators to rape children, and may explain counter-attempts to minimize his involvement with them. Anyway, I found original statements of Hay and other content in Radically to be quite illuminating on Hay's position toward the group (note that although Hay is listed as the author, he is not the literal author of much of the content within). Notably, at times Hay described his support NAMBLA as being a sort of counter-counter-reaction. His belief was that NAMBLA was being excluded from the gay movement to appease conservatives, and therefore the gay community was allowing outsiders/opponents to dictate who could be members of it. He also of course had a very expansive view of "consent" as described here, that included underage males seeking out older men for sexual purposes, as already mentioned. Again, I don't see how an NPOV article avoids mentioning this, but it does have to be done correctly. I would actually avoid using any sources that are just dumbing down the history here to "Hay supported NAMBLA". Those are not useful because they are far more vague than we need to be. The outline of a paragraph or two I think would be npov would go, 1. Hay was controversial for his involvement with nambla. 2. Although not a member, Hay protested in support of Nambla's rights to march, etc. 3. Accurately describe Hay's statements on man-boy relations and exclusion of groups from the movement. It's of course a tricky thing because people see 'nambla', the imagine creepy old men grooming young boys for molestation. I assume that's the goal of some of the writers who bring this up. It's also obvious that although what Hay had in mind was still a crime, it's not that particular scenario. Plenty of people will consider that a distinction without a difference, but they will be basing that opinion on an accurate statements of facts. But anyway, I think this is achievable, inevitable, and necessary. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:39, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I very much appreciate your insight and comments on this. It’s exactly what I was hoping would happen here.
No one has suggested that this content shouldn’t be presented in the article. How it’s presented, and wether any mention belongs in the lead is the main concern.
I’ll have a look at these new sources to see how they can add to the understanding of the subject. Gleeanon409 (talk) 05:55, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I’m having several issues accessing these sources mostly because I’m using Google Books. The site purposely blocks sections of pages so I’m not sure that when I’m searching I’m getting all the content on the subject, as well everything has to be hand copied rather than cut and paste. If anyone has ideas I’m open to them! Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Update (July 6, 2019)

I got feedback on the two books suggested above. Accordingly the Will Roscoe one will likely be used to note facts but not analysis.
While the Hubbard - Verstraete one, is considered of scholarly research and likely can be used to explore Hay’s motivations. I have a copy of the book on its way as I’ve been unable to fully access it online. Gleeanon409 (talk) 03:52, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for sticking with this. I think some criticisms have been valid and others have been problematic. I hope you will take others' concerns seriously, and I hope that you will recognize their concerns about the historical portrayal of Harry Hay. Equally, I hope they will understand and help in your efforts to portray Hay according to reliable sources. I think you are all trying to achieve the same aim -- more or less. I am from a different cultural milieu, so I can't really claim to understand any of it. MPS1992 (talk) 21:04, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! I’m learning plenty about sex and sexuality researchers including the prejudice and backlash they faced when they approach taboo subjects. Apparently that’s been true from the beginning. I’m almost through the first book, if I have to I’ll track down the other as well. Gleeanon409 (talk) 23:04, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

• I’ve asked for some help at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Pro-research help needed for Harry Hay. Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:56, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
• I’ve also asked for help at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request#Opinion piece? By Harry Hay In ‘94 Gay Community News. Gleeanon409 (talk) 14:43, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Possible content

Hay’s favorite story, of his coming-of-age, “which he repeatedly told to audiences in later years and refered to ironically as his ‘child molestation speech,’ in order to emphasize how sharply different gay life is from heterosexual norms,” recounted his time as an emancipated fourteen-year-old (circa 1926) pursuing sex with a man in his mid-twenties who assumed Hay was of the age of consent. He shared the story “specifically to contradict entrenched stereotypes and to caution against uncritical generalizations so common in reference to pederasty.“ The man gave Hay “tips on how ‘people like us’ should conduct themselves, which ‘inspired Harry almost as vividly as the erotic memory’.”

In 1986, Los Angeles Pride wanted Hay to march, but they had banned NAMBLA, a group synonymous in the U.S. with pro-pedophilia advocacy, and had to negotiate for him to only carry a sign, rather than a larger banner, to protest the action. Hay wanted to do so “because he remembered the pleasure of coming out as a teenager with a man who initiated him to the gay world.” He ended up wearing two posterboard signs; one for Valerie Terrigno, a recently disgraced lesbian politician also banned from the parade, on his front, “Valerie Terrigno walks with me"; and on his back, “NAMBLA walks with me.”

Eight years later, in 1994, Hay was again protesting NAMBLA being banned: ILGA (now ILGBTIA), the-then only group representing gays and lesbians at the United Nations (UN) banned them and two other groups from membership; and Stonewall 25 organizers, producing the 1994 twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the largest LGBTQ Pride event in the world as of then, banned them and similar groups from its Pride protest march, that purposely changed the route to use First Avenue going past the UN, reflecting the events’ international focus on LGBTQ issues. Hay was among the 150 “activists, scholars, artists, and writers” who signed on to support Spirit Of Stonewall (SOS), an ad hoc group that felt the banned group had free speech, and association rights. Hay delivered “Our Beloved Gay/Lesbian Movement at a Crossroads” speech, concerning the expulsion of NAMBLA, at a SOS press conference, where he stressed three organizing principles from the formation and growth of the LGBTQ movement he used since the early 1950s: we do not censor or exclude one another; if someone identifies as lesbian or gay he accepts them as such; and we cannot allow heterosexuals to dictate who is in our communities—we decide. Hay helped lead the counter-march with almost 7,000 participants.

Comments on ‘possible’ content

If any better sources are forthcoming I’m happy to check them out and add accordingly.

I’m proposing this content be used in the article instead of the current material, after this has been vetted.

Separately, and dependent if any new sources are found, decisions can be made if the category is appropriate, and what, if any, content belongs in the lead. Gleeanon409 (talk) 11:07, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this text serves as neutral. Is this intended as the lede? Or into the Later years: 1980-2002 section? It still seems like white-washing. I still have trouble understanding the resistance to the Michael Bronski obit/article. Bronski had been involved in journalism for over 30 years when it was published. The info in it is grounded in decades of gay journalism. Cheers, Mark Ironie (talk) 19:41, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

This would potentially be content for inside the article. The lead content would then be a reflection of what we think belongs in the article itself. As for Bronski, and other sources that only gave a sentence, or less, of content on this I’m following the guidance above, “I would actually avoid using any sources that are just dumbing down the history here to "Hay supported NAMBLA". Those are not useful because they are far more vague than we need to be.” Bronski had one sentence, “He was, at times, a serious political embarrassment, as when he consistently advocated the inclusion of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in gay-pride parades.” Looking at every reliable source there remains only two parades, eight years apart, so it’s hard to reconcile that with “consistently advocated”. Likewise “He was, at times, a serious political embarrassment”: Bronski was the only source to characterize this way, again we only have two parades; the 1986 one he seemingly was alone in the position, but in 1994 he was one of 150 LGBTQ activists and others that was protesting the group being banned. Gleeanon409 (talk) 22:01, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

• Maybe I need to explain some of the editing choices made, if reading through the above sections weren’t clear:
  • The Hay quote, usually misrepresented—especially by right-wing and conservative bloggers—as him advocating for sexual contact with men and young teen boys, is omitted as we only have one primary source, NAMBLA itself.
    • What is included is analysis of why Hay often shared his own story of when he was 14, where that quote was picked from, and had a positive gay sex experience with an older man.
  • No mentions of Hay advocating for the group, or pedophilia by extension, are included as no reliable sources gave any evidence he did this. Of all the sources on Hay, the majority don’t mention this subject area at all. Those that do use only the briefest of mentions with the most credible citing his protesting the banning from two Pride parades: LA in 1986; and Stonewall 25 In 1994.
    • Both parade episodes are included with explanations of why he protested their bans. Tellingly he was one of 150 LGBTQ activists on record for the 1994 protesting.

Given the reliable sources available to now, and I’m happy to look at any others that may add to or change what is known, I think Wikipedia’s present content in the lead, and article is dreadfully sourced, and misrepresents Hay’s connection to this despised group. Additionally including Hay in the category of pedophile advocacy is wholly inaccurate. If Wikipedia is indeed an encyclopedia and not a click-bait tabloid then we should update the article accordingly. Gleeanon409 (talk) 07:48, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• @MPS1992:, @Red Rock Canyon:, @Someguy1221:, I’d appreciate if you could look at the proposed content to see if the sourcing is reliable, NPOV, etc, and offer any changes, or any other sources. Gleeanon409 (talk) 07:48, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Gleenanon, what you have done above in your proposed text is simply leave out the WP:RS sources that have the well-documented content that you don't like. Your sanitized version, describing what you believe were and were not Hay's motives, is not an improvement and is not encyclopedic. Additionally, in this discussion you have consistently misrepresented the sources, claiming reliable sources are not reliable simply because you do not like them, or claiming that sources don't exist when they do. When people have pointed this out, you simply ignore the corrections and keep misrepresenting the sources. This is a serious violation of policy and wikiquette. Posting a note up top that people do not need to read the full discussion, only your bits of it, is inappropriate, and by only pinging the people who you think might agree with you, you are treading very close to violating the WP:CANVASSING policy. As a number of people have already told you, reliable sourcing and writing with a neutral tone don't mean "never critical" and "never controversial". The fact Hay supported NAMBLA, spoke on their panels, carried their signs, cruised boys, is what it is. It's sourced. It was his choice. Downplaying what that means, or what NAMBLA is, is really not the answer. As Wikipedians, it is not our place to re-interpret or decide what his statements and actions really meant. We just document it. It's on Hay, not us. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 18:41, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

This entire process was needed because the POV and poorly sourced content was included in the article. Your again inviting me to leave it as is, or otherwise waiving me off isn’t helpful.

If I had found any reliable source that did provide evidence he in any way was an advocate for NAMBLA, or by extension pedophilia, I would be obligated to include it, with due weight. I found none. Nor has anyone else thus far.

I looked, and still welcome, any usable reliable sources that actually provide evidence for your many claims against Hay. Please note, that is not an invitation for you to post a list of sources, like you’ve done in the past, that have been listed already, but are considered primary, unreliable, or too vague to be of any help.

If there is a source you think I’m misquoting, or otherwise misrepresenting, or an equally reliable source that should be used, that we haven’t already included, then please make it known here.

I’ve amended the note at the very top, it was never my intention to mislead. I encourage anyone who’s willing to read the wall of texts to do so. It’s right there. Their conclusions might easily catch something I missed.

I invited the uninvolved people in hopes they could help move the process forward. Gleeanon409 (talk) 21:02, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Hello. I am one of the "uninvolved people", also described as "the people who you think might agree with you". I am really tired of this whole dispute, but I do not promise to be coherent while I explain why. It seems to me that this Gleeanon fellow was just fixing a few things, while also being far too excited about fixing things a little too much, and then suddenly he tripped some tripwire whereby people who ever advocated that bad thing, had to be vilified, and anyone trying to prevent that had to be crushed. Well actually my grandfather was in the military, and indeed he found that if you crush something under your boot then it often does not rise up again. He gave me many wise pieces of advice. I have not read every single piece of evidence presented above about what every single reliable source said about every single thing that this Hay fellow said about anything. To do that, it is probably going to take me another few weeks, so I hope you are all very patient people. For the time being, it seems to me that this Gleeanon fellow has some legitimate concerns about the current (original) article, and that some other editors are going slightly apoplectic that he should challenge the existing article. As someone who is not any part of any of either scene, this maybe should be the time that I back off and leave you all to it. But actually I am going to ask you to do two things. (1) actually understand what each of you is saying to the other, and if you can't do that, (2) give me some time until I can finally be bothered to read the above proposal and work out what it's about and whether it's accurate or what. I would much prefer the first option. MPS1992 (talk) 21:47, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. I opened a thread at WP:RSN to address sourcing in the lead’s first sentence, while this content for the article itself moves forward. Gleeanon409 (talk) 18:08, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
• Update. I just today got a copy of: “Our Beloved Gay/Lesbian Movement at a Crossroads” Hay, Harry. Gay Community News ; Boston Vol.20,Iss.3, (Fall 1994): 16. It’s the full text of his speech detailing why he, and apparently others, objected to ILGA and Stonewall 25, expelling NAMBLA or any other group that identified as gay/lesbian. The pdf is about six pages so it will take a bit of time to digest and hopefully distill into the proposed content.

  I did omit at least one important facet in trying to express his views. He adamantly felt that queer youth worldwide were victimized by being forced into hetero identities dooming them into forms of despair. He felt this was the real molestation they faced.

  He also connects Sen Jesse Helms move to defund the United Nations by discrediting ILGA via the pedophilia groups scandal; with his similar move 30 days later “amended an education bill on its way through the Senate by denying federal funds to any public school district that teaches homosexuality is a positive lifestyle alternative through class work, textbooks, or counseling. This language is so broad that even Project 10, a nationally known counseling program for Gay high school students, would be a key target of the ban.” Gleeanon409 (talk) 22:33, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

• I’m still going over Hay’s own writing on the subject: “Our Beloved Gay/Lesbian Movement at a Crossroads” Hay, Harry. Gay Community News ; Boston, Vol. 20, Iss.3, (Fall 1994): 16. Anyone can also get a copy by requesting it at WP:RX. Gleeanon409 (talk) 05:08, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
• Update. I’ve opened a request at WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests in hopes to resolve this and the other main tagged issue of the article. I’ll work on updating User:Gleeanon409/sandbox/Hay - nambla sourcing with Hay’s published speech on the subject. Gleeanon409 (talk) 00:31, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

• • Request was auto-declined until this issue is resolved; I’m looking at adding the Hay speech and checking out the source(s) added in the last week above. Then a rewrite of proposed content. Gleeanon409 (talk) 00:30, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
• Looking into the Miller source suggested above. Gleeanon409 (talk) 04:04, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
• Adding Jacobin source. Gleeanon409 (talk) 03:34, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Proposed content

{this would replaced the content in the body of the article; after reading every reliable and non-primary source it’s apparent this was a minor aspect of Hay’s later life. Accordingly I feel anything in the lead would be WP:Undue and violate WP:RSUW.}}

When Hay died some of the obituaries like Michael Bronski’s focused on his “late-life defense” of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a group that is synonymous with pro-pedophilia activism. Initially in the late 1970s NAMBLA was accepted as one of many fledgling LGBTQ groups, at least as a fringe one, for its advocacy of gay youth, and civil rights for the teens and pedarists, who had sex with teenaged boys. Quickly though the pedarists were in the minority as the group became controlled by pedophiles—attracted to children and pre-adolescents—who insisted on abolishing all age of consent laws without compromise, eroding all mainstream LGBTQ support. Hay was never a member but did defend them from being expelled from LBGTQ events which was characterized by Bronski as politically embarrassing, and Jacobin’s Ben Miller as “eccentric and troubling,” but “a small piece of Hay’s long life of writing and activism.”

Hay’s favorite story, of his coming-of-age, “which he repeatedly told to audiences in later years and refered to ironically as his ‘child molestation speech,’ in order to emphasize how sharply different gay life is from heterosexual norms,” recounted his time as an emancipated fourteen-year-old (circa 1926) pursuing sex with a man in his mid-twenties who assumed Hay was of the age of consent. He shared the story “specifically to contradict entrenched stereotypes and to caution against uncritical generalizations so common in reference to pederasty.“ The man gave Hay “tips” as to how gay men should act, which ‘inspired Harry almost as vividly as the erotic memory’.”

In 1986, Los Angeles Pride wanted Hay to march, but they had banned NAMBLA, and negotiated for him to carry only a sign, rather than a larger banner, to protest the action. Hay wanted to do so “because he remembered the pleasure of coming out as a teenager with a man who initiated him to the gay world.” He ended up wearing two posterboard signs; one for Valerie Terrigno, a recently disgraced lesbian politician also banned from the parade, on his front, “Valerie Terrigno walks with me"; and on his back, “NAMBLA walks with me.”

Eight years later, in 1994, Hay was again defending the group: ILGA (now ILGBTIA), the-then only group representing gays and lesbians at the United Nations (UN) banned them and two other groups from membership; and Stonewall 25 organizers, producing the 1994 twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, the largest LGBTQ Pride event in the world as of then, banned the groups from the Pride protest march, that purposely re-routed to use First Avenue going past the UN, reflecting the events’ international focus on LGBTQ issues. Hay was among 150 “activists, scholars, artists, and writers” who publicly signed to support Spirit Of Stonewall (SOS), an ad hoc group that felt the banned groups had free speech, and association rights. Hay delivered “Our Beloved Gay/Lesbian Movement at a Crossroads” speech at a SOS press conference, and later reprinted in Gay Community News, where he stressed organizing principles from the formation and growth of the LGBTQ movement he used since the early 1950s:“...we wouldn't censor or exclude each other. If people self-identify themselves to me as Gay or Lesbian, I accept them as Brothers and Sisters with love. ... [We] integrate [into the mainstream] on our own terms, as we saw ourselves and with our own set of values. ...[And] we no longer permitted any heteros ... to tell us who we were, or of whom our groups should or should not consist”. Hay helped lead the counter-march with almost 7,000 participants.

Notes and References

References

Comments on ‘proposed’ content

I’m hoping others will be willing to check over the proposed content, and sourcing, and after being vetted this could be used in the article to update the content. Gleeanon409 (talk) 07:18, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Jesuit topics written by a Jesuit

Hello, it appears that user talk engagement will not be effective, so I will bring it to a wider audience. @Jzsj: I must say that your recent patterns of editing have raised some concern in my mind. I have seen a distinct bias of adding Jesuit-friendly sources such as America (magazine) and promoting Jesuit theologians and Jesuit-written articles. (Not to mention the coincidence of Pope Francis being the first Jesuit Pope.) And it's not merely promoting the Society's views, you're removing substantial contrasting views at the same time. You've drastically overhauled Sacrament of Penance — along with a proposed name change to match — and now you've removed some well-substantiated criticism of Jesuit vocations from Society of Jesus because it was in a 'conservative' periodical (and apparently because you wish parity for the removal of an unsubstantiated peek 15 years into the future?)

Regardless of whether you have an actual conflict of interest due to your membership in the Society of Jesus and an ordained representative of the Catholic Church, it would be good to see some good-faith adherence to neutrality in your selections of source material, your reflections of the myriad of perspectives on doctrine and belief in the Church, rather than gradually making Wikipedia as Jesuit as possible, which is what I see taking shape here now with your edits in the past few weeks. Elizium23 (talk) 01:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

User:Jzsj replied on my user talk page: Please be specific about which edits you think are inappropriate. It is not helpful when you refer to "reverts" that don't exist. If you don't think my additions or references are helpful then let's discuss them one-by-one, as we did here. I tried to explain why my original contribution was correct, and your criticism of it was ill-founded, and responded to your criticism by making changes, which didn't please you. But the original sources that I inserted (not my "synthesis" but The New Yorker's) might have warranted your restoral of my first version. You kept making inaccurate statements: most unhelpful! And as to my "drastically overhaul[ing]" the Sacrament of Penance, note the call for this on the talk page: "The history section of this article needs improvement to describe more clearly what was new in various centuries." I then offered to do it 17 May 2017 and no one objected. So I undertook it just now, along with shortening of the verbose lede that the talk page called for. Give me some credit! ... and be assured of my readiness to yield to your wisdom and experience where it is manifest. And shouldn't you open an Rfc if we have an honest disagreement on content matters? Jzsj (talk) 01:11, 29 September 2019 (UTC) Elizium23 (talk) 01:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

• I stand by what you've quoted in the third paragraph. Now I must mention inaccuracies in your first paragraph. I have no intention of "removing substantial contrasting views" and it has never been my practice. Please give references to where you claim to find this. My extensive improvements to Sacrament of Penance were a rare effort of mine to respond to multiple calls for work on an article that was overly verbose and very short on references. I'd invite specific criticism of my arduous effort to record the history there, simply for accuracy and backed up by very reliable sources. Your "well-substantiated criticism of Jesuit vocations" gives no facts on the number of vocations (which I have just added), 28 novices taking vows for the US and Haiti in 2019. You'd have to compare this with the religious congregations that are getting no vocations before giving an objective opinion whether there is any "Francis effect" that vocation directors can most reliably report on. Jzsj (talk) 01:58, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

There is no requirement for sources to be neutral and in fact most academic sources are not. TFD (talk) 16:15, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

• I hope this section will result in more eyes on Jzsj's editing. He is an SPA for Jesuit-related subjects and IMO a problematic user, see his block log. The latest block listed there, three months for repeated topic ban violations, expired as recently as 24 September. (For his topic ban, see this ANI thread.) It's fairly alarming to see him already brought to a noticeboard for tendentious editing a mere five days after this lengthy block expired, and I have to agree with Elizium23 that this edit to Society of Jesus is downright promotion. I have myself engaged with him on his talkpage, such as here in March this year, but it gets fairly exhausting, since I'm no kind of expert on Catholicism, let alone on the Society of Jesus. Bishonen | talk 16:38, 3 October 2019 (UTC).

There's been a lot of loose talk about "Jesuit-related" articles and "Jesuit views" etc, but most of the articles mentioned above, such as Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School (run by nuns), Sacrament of Penance and George Pell are just Catholic topics, not Jesuit ones. I don't really see that "this edit to Society of Jesus is downright promotion" at all - in a long article the trend in membership of the order (a much-discussed topic with all types of Catholic clergy) seems something that should obviously be covered. Elizium23 seems also to be a Catholic, but from the conservative wing of the church, with an anti-Jesuit bee in his bonnet, if not quite as strong a one as the duc de Saint-Simon and some other Catholic figures. Johnbod (talk) 16:47, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I also do not see promotion in this particular edit. The preceding content talked about a decline in membership and the edit in question cited an estimate that is lower than the 17,287 Jesuits, a number indicated in the section's table covering the year 2013. Darwin Naz (talk) 23:19, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

A Course in Miracles

[7] seems like WP:SOAP. Please chime in. Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:25, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I could see this as a valid edit. One would need to be rather well versed in A Course of Miracles writings to have a working understanding of what books could add to the article. It would possibly help everyone involved to discuss on talk which books could be reasonably incorporated into the prose of the article in some way, and which candidates best serve the readers in a further reading section. Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

There are about 10-20 books written by a variety of ACIM students/teachers over the last 50 years. I have tried to add these to the article. I thought it would be helpful to readers. Nirvana2013 (talk) 12:24, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

No WP:FRIND WP:SOURCES in order to WP:Verify your claims. You have given absolutely no reason for why we should have that list of books instead of any other random list of books on the subject. Perhaps you know why, but we don't, since we cannot examine your WP:RS for such information. Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:28, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Nirvana2013, the long-term quality of the article could be improved with talking about the more important books on the subject that have been penned, as noted in reliable sources. Anything in the Further Reading section is disposable, just like most external links.

Finding the connections to the best of those books through reliable sources and documenting it all in the article will actually help the readers. Gleeanon409 (talk) 12:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Agreed Gleeanon409 that would improve the article. I don't have time just now to make the necessary edits but I would propose a reading list is a good first step. All the books can be verified as being related to ACIM by a quick Google search. Nirvana2013 (talk) 16:04, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

@Nirvana2013: Readers are not expected to do any Google searches to understand why something is included. Just be aware that the listings remain disposable, anyone can just remove them as not adding much value. I suggest pruning down to a handful of the most helpful books that add to article’s information. Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:57, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Bible POV

I have recently come across several pages reflecting what I would consider a systemic POV problem, regarding Biblical authorship. For example, "Today scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting Mosaic authorship of the Torah" (Composition of the Torah), and, "It is generally accepted that the Book of Daniel is a product of the mid-2nd century bc" (Daniel 7). Surely countless Biblical scholars would disagree. Whether these scholars are correct is not the point (and not an argument I'd care to get involved in), merely that the expressed views are hardly unanimous. It baffles me that anyone would maintain otherwise.

So far, the examples I've noticed are in C-class or lower articles. The Torah article (B-class), in contrast, claims: "Rabbinic tradition's understanding is that all of the teachings found in the Torah ... were written down by Moses ... The majority of Biblical scholars believe that the written books were a product of the Babylonian captivity (c. 6th century BCE), based on earlier written sources and oral traditions, and that it was completed with final revisions during the post-Exilic period (c. 5th century BCE)." It is at least plausible (and presumably supported by sources) that this is a majority view, and therefore a reasonable statement. (Heck, it even leaves open the possibility that Moses authored some of those earlier written sources.)

I do not ask that authors change their content, merely that they respect NPOV and avoid weasel words. I have discovered, however, that some militantly disagree. I hope a consensus here might resolve this issue. See also: WP:FTN#Daniel 7. –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 19:20, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Addendum: Since my original post, I discovered another example where attribution is left out altogether, and the majority view is simply stated as fact (Book of Daniel). 15:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

The statement about Mosaic authorship of the Torah is correct unless you include WP:FRINGE sources, which we don't. Many scholars don't even believe that Moses existed. If there is a bias here it is toward academic sources. Both statements you mention are sourced as well. There is no bias problem here.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: I believe your statement of policy regarding WP:FRINGE sources is overly simplistic. According to WP:DUE, WP:FRINGE/PS, and WP:RS, non-majority (a.k.a. fringe) views should be represented, albeit without attributing equal validity, so long as they are held by a significant minority of scholars, and are within the realm of scientific discourse (my paraphrase, but accurate, I think). This is the case we are talking about here.

Just because a statement cites a source doesn't mean it's sourced, in the sense of verifiable. For the statement, "Today scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting Mosaic authorship of the Torah," its linked source states, "There is a consensus among modern biblical scholars that the present text of the Bible is the final product in a long evolution..." This is a much more modest (and plausible) statement in terms of both acceptance ("consensus" vs. "virtually unanimous") and content (it does not reject the possibility that Moses was part of that evolution). I do not have easy access to the other source, but I would wager it, too, makes a more measured claim.

To be clear, I am not challenging the reliability of the sources or their theories, nor would I have the credentials to do so. I am challenging the (understandable) tendency of Wikipedia articles to exaggerate the degree of scholarly acceptance beyond what the sources, themselves, attest; or to misrepresent the theories, themselves, as in the above case. –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 15:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Your 2 quotes says basically the same thing, since "Rabbinic tradition" is a theological position, not a scholarly one (for a certain value of "scholarly"). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:21, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: One quote says, "[Biblical] scholars are virtually unanimous...", and the other says, "The majority of Biblical scholars believe..." You maintain those are basically the same thing?

As for the definition of "scholarly", I'm assuming the criteria in WP:SCHOLAR. Do you have a different one? –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 15:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Collapsed quotes on pseudohistory and academic bias

Robert Todd Carroll has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo-historic works. He states that: "Pseudohistory is purported history which: Treats myths, legends, sagas and similar literature as literal truth — Pseudohistory Modern Bible scholarship/scholars (MBS) assumes that: • The Bible is a collection of books like any others: created and put together by normal (i.e. fallible) human beings; • The Bible is often inconsistent because it derives from sources (written and oral) that do not always agree; individual biblical books grow over time, are multilayered; • The Bible is to be interpreted in its context: ✦ Individual biblical books take shape in historical contexts; the Bible is a document of its time; ✦ Biblical verses are to be interpreted in context; ✦ The "original" or contextual meaning is to be prized above all others; • The Bible is an ideologically-driven text (collection of texts). It is not "objective" or neutral about any of the topics that it treats. Its historical books are not "historical" in our sense. ✦ "hermeneutics of suspicion"; ✦ Consequently MBS often reject the alleged "facts" of the Bible (e.g. was Abraham a real person? Did the Israelites leave Egypt in a mighty Exodus? Was Solomon the king of a mighty empire?); ✦ MBS do not assess its moral or theological truth claims, and if they do, they do so from a humanist perspective; ★ The Bible contains many ideas/laws that we moderns find offensive; • The authority of the Bible is for MBS a historical artifact; it does derive from any ontological status as the revealed word of God; — Beardsley Ruml, Shaye J.D. Cohen's Lecture Notes: INTRO TO THE HEBREW BIBLE @ Harvard (BAS website) (78 pages) Thank you for your views. Wikipedia has a strong bias in favor of academic sources for history. That is how it should be. If archaeology says Beersheba was founded 6000 years ago and the bible says it was founded 4000 years ago, archaeology wins. Zerotalk 13:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

To sum up: fideist scholars from fideist universities and seminaries, who only publish in fideist journals are WP:FRINGE. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:24, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Tgeorgescu, are you citing Wikpedia policy, or is that your personal opinion? In either case, see above discussion of WP:FRINGE. (I am curious which universities and journals you consider fideist, though. Is Oxford one of them?)

As for what you pasted above (or your more recent comment, for that matter), I don't see anything relevant to the discussion, or anything I'd particularly disagree with. Please clarify if I am missing something. (I presume you're aware that lecture notes do not meet the Wikipedia standard for reliable source.) –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 15:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

The question here is one of DUE WEIGHT for views that do not agree with scholarly consensus. For widely held (but minority) views, DUE weight can mean we mention the view, but don’t go into details. However, for extremely fringe views, DUE weight means we don’t mention the view at all. So... what we need to determine in this case is: where on the scale of “fringeness” does a particular view fall. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@Blueboar: I concur (although that's not the only question, more below). –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 20:34, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@Blue Hoopy Frood: My argument was: biblical inerrancy is WP:FRINGE in WP:MAINSTREAM Bible WP:SCHOLARSHIP. By default, the historical method does not allow for inerrant sources. If from Ivy Plus to state universities and from mainline Protestant to Catholic seminaries all scholars toe the line that the Bible is errant, it is pseudohistory to affirm that the Bible is inerrant.

Collapsed quotes on Bible scholarship

::::Ehrman, Bart (2010). "A Historical Assault on Faith". Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). HarperCollins e-books. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9780061173943. My hunch is that the majority of students coming into their first year of seminary training do not know what to expect from courses on the Bible. ... Most students expect these courses to be taught from a more or less pious perspective, showing them how, as future pastors, to take the Bible and make it applicable to people's lives in their weekly sermons. Such students are in for a rude awakening. Mainline Protestant seminaries in this country are notorious for challenging students' cherished beliefs about the Bible—even if these cherished beliefs are simply a warm and fuzzy sense that the Bible is a wonderful guide to faith and practice, to be treated with reverence and piety. These seminaries teach serious, hard-core Bible scholarship. They don't pander to piety. They are taught by scholars who are familiar with what German- and English-speaking scholarship has been saying about the Bible over the past three hundred years. ... The approach taken to the Bible in almost all Protestant (and now Catholic) mainline seminaries is what is called the "historical-critical" method. It is completely different from the "devotional" approach to the Bible one learns in church. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help) Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2002) [2001]. "Epilogue. The Future of Biblical Israel". The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and The Origin of Its Sacred Texts (First Touchstone Edition 2002 ed.). New York: Touchstone. p. 318. ISBN 978-0-684-86913-1. It was only when the Hebrew Bible began to be dissected and studied in isolation from its powerful function in community life that theologians and biblical scholars began to demand of it something that it was not. From the eighteenth century, in the Enlightenment quest for thoroughly accurate, verifiable history, the historical factuality of the Bible became — as it remains — a matter of bitter debate. Realizing that a seven-day creation and spontaneous miracles could not be satisfactorily explained by science and reason, the scholars began to pick and choose what they found to be "historical" in the Bible and what they did not. Theories arose about the various sources contained in the text of the Bible, and archaeologists argued over the evidence that proved or disproved the historical reliability of a given biblical passage. Yet the Bible's integrity and, in fact, its historicity, do not depend on dutiful historical "proof" of any of its particular events or personalities... {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

Miracles (including genuine prophecy) have been purged from history since the Enlightenment. Some editors are unaware that proclaiming that miracles do happen is pseudohistory (yes, this includes the claim that the Book of Daniel is a 6th century BCE writing). Conclusion: dating it to the 6th century BCE is WP:FRINGE/PS. Oh, yes, Shaye J.D. Cohen has been recorded on vimeo.com by Beardsley Ruml. You could check the first video of the series in order to WP:Verify the above claims. Cohen's course is here: "Free Hebrew Bible Course with Shaye Cohen". Biblical Archaeology Society. 28 February 2017. Retrieved 3 October 2019. (On the background you will see chunks of the above quote.) Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:05, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: Thank you for the detailed references. I'm still puzzled, though. How does any of this relate to the topic? I've said nothing regarding inerrancy, miracles, or the historicity of the Bible. (BTW, thank you for introducing me to {{Re}}.) –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 20:34, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

If this is about biblical inerrancy... then Tgeorgescue is correct. That is a very Fringe theory. If about something else, we would need to examine in more detail (please supply specifics). Blueboar (talk) 19:23, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@Blueboar: I introduced this topic with examples of people exaggerating claims of consensus. If someone says, "Scholars are unanimous about X" (or nearly unanimous, or split 74-26), they should be able to back the claim up with sources. If they cannot, they should limit themselves to assertions that sources do support. –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 20:34, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, of course people slip up, and I don't mean to align such authors. Corrections of such errors should be simple, painless, and expected. –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 20:42, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

IMHO, Blue Hoopy Frood conflates WP:NPOV with false balance. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:43, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: Is that a personal attack? If not, please clarify. I am, indeed, new to these terms. –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 20:34, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

The term scholar in this context refers to people whose publish articles in scholarly journals and write textbooks. They are unanimous that the Torah was not written by Moses, hence the article should mention this. we mention the fringe view that the Torah is literally true, since we are writing about religious literature, but cannot say that this view has any acceptance among scholars. I don't see why you would have a problem with that. It could be that Moses really did part the Red Sea, but historians lack the competence to accept that. But that's a discussion for religious sites, not encyclopedia articles. TFD (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: "The term scholar in this context refers to people whose publish articles in scholarly journals and write textbooks. They are unanimous that the Torah was not written by Moses..." That's a bold statement. Can you back it up? –Blue Hoopy Frood ^(talk) 20:34, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

@Blue Hoopy Frood: Wikipedia isn't a substitute for adult education. You might read WP:CIR, previously it had a sub-section for bias-based incompetence of editing according to WP:RULES. I think that your bias for biblical inerrancy turns you into a POV-pusher for WP:FRINGE WP:POV. And no, this isn't a personal attack. It is simply obvious to the rest of competent editors that you cannot edit neutrally on biblical topics, see e.g. what ජපස wrote at WP:FTN. In the future please avoid baseless claims of personal attacks. It is not a personal attack that you are a fringe POV-pusher as long as it is manifest that you push frige POVs, such as biblical inerrancy.

Collapsed quotes on POV-pushing

:::: Wikipedia is not an advertising billboard. Just because members of the MGTOW community don't like this article doesn't mean it's biased. Wikipedia is designed to be written from a neutral point of view, not a promotional point of view. In the case of fringe opinions, such as MGTOW, Flat Earth Society, etc., the proponents of such opinions are as a rule never satisfied with the consensus version of the article. That doesn't mean Wikipedia should completely avoid covering such topics. FiredanceThroughTheNight (talk) 03:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC) @Proveallthings: I did overlook Stephen Miller's reasoning, and I did it intentionally. And it's because me and you are attempting to do two different things right now. You're attempting to use evidence to find what is true. I'm attempting to survey the literature to find out what most scholars say about this particular question. That's because Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia of truth, but a service for summarizing what the scholarly community says. If we were here to discover what is true together on the Wikipedia talk pages, then you would be doing what is right (marshalling the linguistic arguments), and I would be doing something wrong (just quoting a bunch of authorities and pointing out that "your side" here consists only of people with a particular theological set of commitments). So let me be clear. I'm not saying you're wrong about "father". You, and Kenneth Kitchen, might be right. I'm just saying that, in terms of the way Wikipedia weighs sources, Kenneth Kitchen's opinion is out on the fringes in the scholarly world. Alephb (talk) 21:36, 23 August 2018 (UTC) HiLo, saying that someone has a POV or even that their editing with a POV is not a personal attack. At least not in general. Volunteer Marek 00:30, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:52, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Blue Hoopy Frood, there's no need to repeat what I wrote. I am quite able to remember what I wrote. It is quite simple to find sources that no scholars support the view that Moses wrote the Torah. But since you claim the statement is false and want to change the article, it is up to you to find a source that says otherwise. TFD (talk) 21:08, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Collapsed quotes on Daniel, dating (history), Moses and historiography

:John J. Collins stated: The history of Daniel’s influence has been chronicled by Klaus Koch, who has also noted the decline of that influence in modern times. Since the Enlightenment, scholars have increasingly come to view the book not as a reliable guide to history, past or future, but as a collection of imaginative tales and visions that reflect the fears and hopes of beleaguered Jews in the Hellenistic period. In fact, this change of academic perspective was hard won — one need only think of the Fundamentalist crisis that divided American Protestantism at the beginning of the twentieth Century. In academic circles, that crisis is generally viewed as having ended in the defeat of the Fundamentalists. Robert Dick Wilson, one of the scholars who consequently left Princeton Theological Seminary to found the more conservative Westminster Seminary, has been called “the last great defender of Daniel’s traditional authorship.” Fundamentalist readings of Daniel continue to flourish in the popular culture, as can be seen from the best-selling writings of Hal Lindsey, and conservative scholars have continued to fight rear-guard actions in defence of the reliability of the book. In mainline scholarship, however, the great issues that made Daniel the focus of controversy for centuries were laid to rest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A broad consensus on several key issues has existed since then. It is agreed that Daniel is pseudepigraphic: the stories in chapters 1-6 are legendary in character, and the visions in chapters 7-12 were composed by persons unknown in the Maccabean era. The stories are almost certainly older than the visions, but the book itself was put together shortly after the Maccabean crisis. It must be read, then, as a witness to the religiosity of that time, not as a prophecy of western political history or of the eschatological future. Bart Ehrman stated: This isn’t simply the approach of “liberal” Bible professors. It’s the way historians always date sources. If you find a letter written on paper that is obviously 300 years old or so, and the author says something about the “United States” — then you know it was written after the Revolutionary War. So too if you find an ancient document that describes the destruction of Jerusalem, then you know it was written after 70 CE. It’s not rocket science! But it’s also not “liberal.” It’s simply how history is done. If someone wants to invent other rules, they’re the ones who are begging questions! John Van Seters and Israel Finkelstein from Bible Unearthed Discoveries of Old versions of the bible) on YouTube stated: but what about Moses himself surely there must be some evidence for this most famous Old Testament hero perhaps the most famous of all Old Testament figures even if there's no evidence of the exodus they must surely be some record of a leader as important as him the name Moses is a name which is very popular from early periods right down into late periods so it's a fairly common Egyptian name that's that's all that we can say there is no text in which we can identify this Moses or that Moses as the Moses the question of the historicity of Moses is the same as the question of the historicity of Abraham that is to say maybe there was a figure maybe there was a leader I am NOT here to undermined historicity of Moses I think that it is possible but I would say it's beyond recovery Neil Asher Silberman stated: what we're doing is just continuing a struggle a scholarly struggle that's been going on for a hundred years the boundary just now happens to be in the story of the Israelites and the Israelite Kingdom and it's moving forward slowly to separate religious literature and spirituality from what we call history.

Quoted by Tgeorgescu. Oh, yes, clarify: WP:FALSEBALANCE. These being said, he is a man with a plan: he wants to make Wikipedia inerrantist-friendly, as it is manifest at User:Blue Hoopy Frood#Bible scholarship and POV. His method is casting doubt upon WP:MAINSTREAM WP:SCHOLARSHIP by giving it equal validity with the inerrantist fringe (aka Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing).

Collapsed quote on WP:SPADE
:: I'd say that your statement of [y]our demand that all content on Talk pages complies with NPOV is absurd is what's actually absurd. I would also suggest that calling what you're doing "POV pushing" is, in fact, accurate, since that's exactly what you're doing. If you don't like being called a POV-pusher, don't push a POV. ... --Calton — [[User: Talk 03:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)]]

Quoted by Tgeorgescu. I also note that here the OP replied always civil, but repeatedly failed to address the arguments of his opponents, namely that giving equal validity to mainstream academic learning and fringe fideism is prohibited by WP:PAGs. His behavior is described by WP:RGW. As Collins stated, fundamentalists lost in the academia (more than a century ago and still very much ongoing). Wikipedia sides with the mainstream academia, therefore fundamentalists lost inside Wikipedia. WP:CHOPSY don't teach fringe fideistic views as true, objective facts. So why should Wikipedia teach those as such?

Collapsed quote about inerrantist nonsense
I think we have to avoid extremes. The minimalists would make out of the Bible a pious fraud and I think that's going much, much too far. On the other hand, if we try as moderns to read the Bible literally in the way fundamentalists do, we make nonsense of it. I would try to avoid both of those extremes. — William G. Dever, Lateline. It Ain't Necessarily So

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:37, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Whatever you are doing, Tgeorgescu, it is very confusing. I have tried to clean up your quotes of other users with the {{talk quote}} template. Your formatting and overall spamming of these quotes renders the page nearly unreadable. —DIYeditor (talk) 16:50, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm honestly surprised to see this talk page tornado come from a Wikipedia user of 16 years. The way you pasted quotes of other users made it look like many more people were talking in this thread than actually were, among other formatting and indentation problems not solely attributable to you. What did you hope to accomplish by this barrage of ill-formatted quotes? Sorry to have to say something but it is some of the most ham-fisted talk page editing I have seen. —DIYeditor (talk) 17:12, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I have collapsed the quotes. The role of the quotes was proving that inerrantist dating of the Book of Daniel and Torah, and inerrantism itself are WP:FRINGE and that it is ok to WP:SPADE. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, it helps with readability. No disagreement from me on inerrantist or any similar interpretations of the bible being extreme fringe. —DIYeditor (talk) 17:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Yup, the recipe is historical method + holy book = blasphemy. Some people didn't get the memo. Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:56, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Gas van

The issued have already been discussed in June 2018 under Talk:Gas_van#Soviet_vans with and Talk:Gas van#Soviet Union section.

I am concerned with NPOV issues, WP:UNDUE and WP:PROPORTION in particular, in this version[8] of the article.

According entries in standard encyclopedias of the Holocaust like Bartrop, Paul R. (2017). "Gas Vans". In Paul R. Bartrop; Michael Dickerman (eds.). The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p. 234–235: "Gas vans were used by the Nazis to murder Jews and other prisoners through asphyxiation by carbon monoxide. As such a gas van was equipped a mobile gas chamber.” (p. 234). As other scholars have put it “the gas van is a product of the Third Reich, whose origin is traced back to 1939.” (Patrick Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, 2012, p. 199) In his standard work on the origins of the Holocaust Henry Friedlander wrote: “For this purpose [killing patients in numerous Wartheland hospitals in 1940], a kind of mobile gas chamber had been invented. We do not know the inventor, but the KTI [Kriminaltechnisches Institut] was probably involved.” (The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 1995, p. 139) None of this scholarship does make any mention of Soviet gas vans.

In 1990 the Russian journalist Evgeny Zhirnov was shown an investigative file on Isay Berg, section chief in the Moscow NKVD who had been tasked with the preparation of the Butovo firing range for the mass execution of people from greater Moscow. Berg was to ensure that these executions occurred without interruption. In this file were transcripts of an investigation against Berg from 1938 and a reopened investigation in 1956. According to some of these documents Berg devised an airtight van in which prisoners were gassed with exhaust fumes during their transport to Butova. Zhirnov published about this in the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya pravda in October 1990. Yevgenia Albats referred to that story in her book KGB (1995) drawing a direct line between Soviet and Nazi gas vans. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn picked up this story in his infamous book Two Hundred Years Together, emphasizing that Berg was Jewish and noting that Berg “created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves”.

As for the other historians being cited, Catherine Merridale and Timothy Colton, they also rely upon Zhirnov’s 1990 article, but both do not link any Soviet gas van to the Nazi gas vans. Merridale speaks about the varius methods of killing employed by the NKVD, stating: “One policeman. Isai D. Berg, gassed some of his prisoners to death...” Timothy Colton devotes one sentence in his 900+ pages book to this: “Isai D. Berg, a cutthroat section chief in the Moscow NKVD, ginned up a gas chamber (dushegubka) on wheels, an airtight lorry camouflaged as a bread van that suffocated internees with engine fumes on the drive out to Butovo.” (p. 286) Futher citations in the Wikipedia article are to Russian newspapers, including another, more recent article by Evgeny Zhirnov.

I am concerned that one minor aspect in the history of gas vans is overemphasized. In fact, based upon highly opinionated sources like Albats and Solzhenitsyn Wikipedia contradicts the whole body of scholarship on gas vans being used during WWII (cited above). Source is heaped upon source, many referring to the same 1990 article, to create the impression, that the topic of Soviet gas vans is well researched and established, which it isn’t. I put some of the sources under review at the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#An eyewitness account. I may note that the notion of gas vans being a Soviet “invention” has become a staple of Holocaust denial.

I proposed this version [9] which treats the Soviet gas vans as a separate entity and according to their overall significance in a brief section. Thereby I mainly relied upon scholarly sources.----Assayer (talk) 15:48, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• Reply. This is mostly about section "Soviet Union" here. Here is the essence of the disagreement. In this series of edits, Assayer did the following.
• First, Assayer removed claims made by the following several RS, together with RS themselves:

1. Yevgenia Albats, KGB: The State Within a State. 1995, page 101. This is a book by a well known political scientist and a notable expert of KGB/NKVD subjects
2. The man in the leather apron (Russian), by Nikita Petrov, Novaya Gazeta, an article by well known mainstream historian Nikita Petrov published in Novaya Gazeta
3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Two Hundred Years Together (Двести лет вместе), volume=2, Москва, Русский путь, 2002, ISBN 5-85887-151-8, p. 297. - Claims by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner for writing on the history of NKVD and Gulag. Note that the included information (as in this edit) is on the subject of NKVD repressions. It has absolutely nothing to do with Jews or with Berg being Jewish.
4. Александр ЛИПКОВ, "Я к вам травою прорасту…", Alexander Lipkov, Kontinent, N 123, 2005., a secondary RS published in Kontinent
5. On the way to the place of their execution, the convicts were poisoned with gas (Russian), by Yevgeniy Zhirnov, Kommersant, a secondary RS published in Kommersant

• Second, Assayer placed the events related to the usage of gas vans not in chronological order, but in such order to minimize the significance of the gas van usage in the Soviet Union.
• Third, Assayer excluded any mention of the Soviet vans from the lead [10], even though there is a section about Soviet gas vans on the page.

"According entries in standard encyclopedias of the Holocaust...". Yes, sure. The Soviet gas vans were not a part of the Holocaust. Only Nazi gas vans were.

The description/"story" in the 4th and 5th paragraphs of the statement by Assayer (staring from "In 1990 the Russian journalist Evgeny Zhirnov") is original research/synthesis by Assayer. For example, there is no any reason or sources to assume that the claims in books by Albats and Solzhenitsyn were based exclusively on a publication in the tabloid, even if they used it as one of references ([...]). None of these books directly quotes the article in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Instead, the experts tell their own views (Albats: Owning to the shortage of executioners, Chekists used trucks that were camouflaged as bread vans as mobile death chambers. Yes, the very same machinery made notorious by the Nazis - yes, these trucks were originally a Soviet invention, in use years before the ovens of the Auschwitz were built). We are not in the business of speculating how exactly experts or historians on the subject came to their conclusions. We simply say what RS (their books) say.

• The NPOV-based solution is to include all significant views published in RS, such as claims cited by Assayer in the beginning of this thread, along with RS he wants to exclude, as I suggested on talk [11]. My very best wishes (talk) 16:34, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
• "It has absolutely nothing to do with Jews or with Berg being Jewish." How can anyone say that when the entire subject of the book is Jews in Russia? GPRamirez5 (talk) 10:33, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

This is also being discussed at RSN. As I mentioned there, the story is briefly mention in at least one rs, and traces to a 1990 article in Komsomolskay Pravda, which frequently publishes anti-Semitic material. But the vast majority of literature about Stalin's murders, and all the books by the leading experts, ignore it entirely. TFD (talk) 14:50, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

"vast majority of literature about Stalin's murders" does not mention it. Yes, sure, because this is a low-significance "local" subject, i.e. something related to delivery and execution of a small (presumably) part of prisoners specifically at the Butovo firing range. We can only use sources that tell something on the subject (of the soviet vans), but can not use sources which tell nothing on the subject. You say "Komsomolskaya Pravda frequently publishes anti-Semitic material". Said who? Sources? I did not see any such materials in this newspaper. And even if it does, it was not used on the page and not among RS listed just above. My very best wishes (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Assayer wrote:
"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn picked up this story in his infamous book Two Hundred Years Together, emphasizing that Berg was Jewish and noting that Berg “created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves”. ... I am concerned that one minor aspect in the history of gas vans is overemphasized. In fact, based upon highly opinionated sources like Albats and Solzhenitsyn Wikipedia contradicts the whole body of scholarship on gas vans being used during WWII (cited above)."

1. Solzhenitsyn and his book, "Two Hundred Years Together" faced, and were defended against, accusations of antisemitism. That may be seen in the articles on those subjects, though they are slanted towards the criticisms. For examples of outside source see [12],[13], [14] and [15]. The descriptive adjectives used by Assayer, infamous and opinionated, are biased.
2. The description of the brief mention of Berg in "Two Hundred Years Ago" is inaccurate and misleading. The mention is in a passage about the reaction of Jewish emigrants: "Who would have guessed during the fiery 1920s that after the enfeeblement and downfall of that “beautiful” (i.e., Communist) regime in Russia, those Jews, who themselves had suffered much from communism, who seemingly cursed it and ran away from it, would curse and kick not communism, but Russia itself – blast her from Israel and from Europe, and from across the ocean!?" Solzhenitsyn goes on to say that ex-citizens of the Soviet Union, Russian and Jewish, both need to share contrition for what happened in the Soviet Union: "We, brothers or strangers, need to share that responsibility. It would have been cleanest and healthiest to exchange contrition for everything committed." He writes: "I will not stop calling the Russians to do that." He goes on: "And I am inviting the Jews to do the same. To repent not for Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev; they are known and anyway can be brushed aside, “they were not real Jews!” Instead, I invite Jews to look honestly into the oppressive depths of the early Soviet system, at all those “invisible” characters such as Isai Davidovich Berg, who created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves, and I call on them to look honestly on those many much more obscure bureaucrats who had pushed papers in the Soviet apparatus, and who had never appeared in light." Solzhenitsyn is calling on Jews to share in the act of contrition by not concentrating on major figures such as Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, but minor ones. As an example of a minor figure he names Berg. Berg's Jewishness is not being emphasised as Assayer claimed.
3. The history of the use of the gas van in the Soviet Union was probably unknown to historians of the Nazi Holocaust. It is not surprising that what they wrote has been contradicted.
4. Assayer writes about the "whole body of scholarship on gas vans being used during WWII." The Germans first investigated the viability of euthanasia in late 1936 or early 1937. The committee responsible was re-activated just before the start of the war, when the compulsory registration of severely malformed children was required. Within weeks of the invasion of Poland, German special task forces massacred 13,000 inmates of asylums and clinics in annexed areas there, using shooting or converted removal vans rquipped with bottled carbon monoxide. Afterwards the euthanasia programme for adults extended back into Germany itself. Poison injections were used first, then static and mobile gas chambers. So, gas vans were first used on the Nazi's original euthanasia victims, the mentally and physically handicapped.

    ←   ZScarpia   21:59, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

@ZScarpia: I do not understand why did you conclude that Berg's ethnicity was not being emphasised. Honestly, if Berg's ethnicity was not emphasised, then what was the reason to mention his name? Just imagine his name was Ivan Ivanivuch Ivanov - that would have made mentioning of the gas van story absolutely pointless. In reality, as many sources correctly noted, all those ethnic Jews mentioned by Solzhenitsyn broke all connections to their Jewish ethnicity. They all self-identified themselves as Soviet citizens, and even the very pointing at their ethnic origin is a manifestation of antisemitism.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:30, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Would it help if I quoted the whole passage from Two Hundred Years Together? The context is that the necessity of everyone showing contrition is being written about. On the Jewish side, Solzhenityn says that it is not the acts of major, well-known characters who should be looked at, but those of minor characters. As an example of a minor character, he gives Berg. Assayer implies that Solzhenitsyn is writing about the vans and pointing out that its developer was Jewish, whereas it is the other way around, Solzhenitsyn picks out Berg as an example of a minor Jewish character involved in Soviet oppression and then identifies his role.     ←   ZScarpia   22:46, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

From "Two Hundred Years Together":

"Two Hundred Years Together": Quote 01

Who would have guessed during the fiery 1920s that after the enfeeblement and downfall of that “beautiful” (i.e., Communist) regime in Russia, those Jews, who themselves had suffered much from communism, who seemingly cursed it and ran away from it, would curse and kick not communism, but Russia itself – blast her from Israel and from Europe, and from across the ocean!? There are so many, such confident voices ready to judge Russia’s many crimes and failings, her inexhaustible guilt towards the Jews – and they so sincerely believe this guilt to be inexhaustible – almost all of them believe it! Meanwhile, their own people are coyly cleared of any responsibility for their participation in Cheka shootings, for sinking the barges and their doomed human cargo in the White and Caspian seas, for their role in collectivization, the Ukrainian famine and in all the abominations of the Soviet administration, for their talented zeal in brainwashing the “natives.” This is not contrition. We, brothers or strangers, need to share that responsibility. It would have been cleanest and healthiest to exchange contrition for everything committed. I will not stop calling the Russians to do that. And I am inviting the Jews to do the same. To repent not for Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev; they are known and anyway can be brushed aside, “they were not real Jews!” Instead, I invite Jews to look honestly into the oppressive depths of the early Soviet system, at all those “invisible” characters such as Isai Davidovich Berg, who created the infamous “gas wagon” which later brought so much affliction on the Jews themselves, and I call on them to look honestly on those many much more obscure bureaucrats who had pushed papers in the Soviet apparatus, and who had never appeared in light.

"Two Hundred Years Together": Quote 02

Among the major communist functionaries who perished in 1937-38, the Jews comprise an enormous percentage. ... Nowadays entire directories, containing lists of the highest officials of the Central Apparatus of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD who fell during the Ezhov’s period of executions and repressions, are published. There we see many more Jewish names. But only accidentally, thanks to the still unbridled glasnost that began in the beginning of the 1990s, we learn about several mysterious biographies formerly shrouded in secrecy. ... And from the astonishing disclosure in 1990 we learned that the famous mobile gas chambers were invented, as it turns out, not by Hitler during the World War II, but in the Soviet NKVD in 1937 by Isai Davidovich Berg, the head of the administrative and maintenance section of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast (sure, he was not alone in that enterprise, but he organized the whole business). This is why it is also important to know who occupied middle-level posts. It turns out, that I.D. Berg was entrusted with carrying out the sentences of the “troika” of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast; he dutifully performed his mission, which involved shuttling prisoners to the execution place. But when three “troikas” began to work simultaneously in the Moscow Oblast, the executioners became unable to cope with the sheer number of executions. Then they invented a time-saving method: the victims were stripped naked, tied, mouths plugged, and thrown into a closed truck, outwardly disguised as a bread truck. On the road the exhaust fumes were redirected into the prisoner-carrying compartment, and by the time the van arrived to the burial ditch, the prisoners were “ready.” (Well, Berg himself was shot in 1939, not for those evil deeds, of course, but for “the anti-Soviet conspiracy”. In 1956 he was rehabilitated without any problem, though the story of his murderous invention was kept preserved and protected in the records of his case and only recently discovered by journalists) Sources: G.V. Kostirchenko. Taynaya politika Stalina: Vlast i antisemitizm [Stalin’s Secret Policy: Power and Anti-semitism]. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnie otnosheniya [International Relations], 2001, p. 210. E. Zhirnov. “Protsedura kazni nosila omerzitelniy kharakter” [A Horrible Execution] // Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 28, 1990, p. 2.

    ←   ZScarpia   22:57, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

@ZScarpia: You are still not understanding. The very fact that Solzhenitsyn divides people on "us" (Russians) and "you" (Jews) is antisemitism. Why he is calling "Russians" and "Jews" separately? I think the analogy to this situation would be when some American writer of WASP origin would called "White Americans" to repent for something, and then addressed separately to Americans of Italian or Jewish origin.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:45, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I suspect that Russian is being used in the ethnic sense. See the Ethnic groups in Russia article, where Russian and Jewish are two of 186 designated ethnicities in Russia, with Russians forming 78% of the population. For comparison, there are articles on ethnicity and ethnic groups in the United States here and here.     ←   ZScarpia   08:29, 7 October 2019 (UTC)   [Apologies if I've sidetracked the discussion at great length to little useful purpose]

No, you by no means sidetracked it. Just imaging if some American writer proposed some American ethnic group (e.g. Italians, Jews or Chinese) to repent for something?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

"The very fact that Solzhenitsyn divides people on Russians and Jews is antisemitism". No. Subjects like History of the Jews in Russia are completely legitimate and not antisemitism. My very best wishes (talk) 15:09, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

• This is just ridiculous. Someone with a family name "Berg" can be 100% ethnic Russian or 100% ethnic Armenian or whoever. But regardless, the ethnicity of the subject is completely irrelevant because the included text does not say anything about his ethnicity: [16]. Even if we had a page about him like on ruwiki (see ru:Берг, Исай Давидович), his ethnicity would still be irrelevant and should not appear on the page per MOS:ETHNICITY. My very best wishes (talk) 23:17, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
• "Assayer implies that Solzhenitsyn is writing about the vans and pointing out that its developer was Jewish, whereas it is the other way around, Solzhenitsyn picks out Berg as an example of a minor Jewish character involved in Soviet oppression and then identifies his role" This is a distinction without a difference. Either way, Solzhenitsyn is invoking Berg because he is Jewish. The longer passage only demonstrates that Solzhenitsyn is implying collective Jewish responsibility for the gas vans.GPRamirez5 (talk) 23:19, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Are you saying that the claim of collective Jewish responsibility should be included on the page? I do not think it should be included, and it was never included on the page per WP:FRINGE. The included claim was about gas vans used by the NKVD. That one is a "majority [of sources on the the subject of soviet gas vans] view" or just a matter of fact. My very best wishes (talk) 00:12, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

That Solzhenitsyn implies Jewish responsibility for the gas vans and calls for their collective repentance, makes him WP:FRINGE even by your logic, doesn't it? Even the large majority of reaearch on the Great Purge does not mention gas vans. You cannot assess the significance of a Soviet gas van by confining yourself merely on sources on the the subject of soviet gas vans. This is not only about Soviet gas vans, and the implicit equation of Soviet and Nazi gas vans which is misleading. I am reminded of WP:FLAT, since I have been subject of personalisation and of reversed burden of proof, whereas the definition of RS is being stretched.--Assayer (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I think this specific claim is fringe. But it does not make the entire book "fringe". It can be cited as an attributed opinion by Solzenitsyn even on the subject of Jewish history, although I would rather not do it. And it is definitely an RS of the subject of NKVD repressions. Consider another famous Nobel Prize winner as an example: would the racial views by James Watson disqualify his books in Molecular Biology? Of course not. My very best wishes (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Some comments:

• Though, on the surface, the issues look fairly simple, it has swelled so enormously, with huge amounts of reading, that it's really too complicated to deal with at the NPOV noticeboard. It needs mediation if anything. I think it would be better to return this to the article's talkpage.
• From what I can make out, it looks likely that one gas van was used in the Moscow area in the late 30s, preceding their use by the Germans, in undetermined but probably small numbers, from the latter part of 1939. The question of the "invention" of gas vans was a contentious issue. I'm not sure whether it still is. "Invention" can be a fairly ambiguous term and is often used inaccurately. Things can be "invented" independently in different places and "re-invented" in time. We can say that the earliest reports of the use of what we might term a gas van were in the Soviet Union. However, the assumption in the Russian sources that the Soviet use of a gas van had any affect on their use in the German's euthanasia programmes appears extremely tenuous, with no supporting evidence. We can say that there are sources that say that the gas van was "invented" by the Nazis, but, in the sense of where they were first used, that appears incorrect.
• The original publication of details of the Soviet gas van was in an article titled "A Horrible Execution" by E. Zhirnov in the 28 October 1990 issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda. Besides Solzhenitsyn, authors who have subsequently mentioned it have been Yevgenia Albats, Robert Gellately, Catherine Merridale and Timothy J. Colton. Something I'm unsure about is whether the subsequent writings have added any extra information to what was known or whether they have just been repeating what Zhirnov wrote.
• Has consideration been given to starting child articles, one for the German use of gas vans and another for the Soviet's? Perhaps that might help to solve the current dispute?
• I think we all agree that "Two Hundred Years Together" isn't a great historical source. As far as I can see, Solzhenitsyn repeats gas van material from only one source, Zhirnov. Would it be true to say that the only reason we're referring to "Two Hundred Years Together" is because Zhirnov's Komsomolskaya Pravda article is unobtainable?
• Solzhenitsyn and "Two Hundred Years Together" have had their detractors and defenders. The way both have been described, including in the introduction, has been from a very non-neutral, negative point-of-view. The problem that stems from that for me is that I have no confidence that anything else written is fair or accurate. It's also evident that a very skewed interpretation is being put on what Solzhenitsyn wrote. Hopefully, since he appears to be merely repeating Zhirnov, we will be able to bypass referring to "Two Hundred Years Together". Editing in contentious areas means allowing "the other side" to use authors or sources you don't like in order to detail other viewpoints. I've had to put up with the use of authors I've considered liars, propagandists, charlatans, bigots, chauvinists, racists, fanatics or extremists many times, so I don't really appreciate other editors blocking the use of authors for point-of-view reasons or insisting on describing them in a non-neutral way.  (Oh ... don't forget the denialists ... there's a lot of them around! I do hope I'm not one of them.)

    ←   ZScarpia   22:39, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

• No, the issue is indeed very simple. We are on NPOVNB, so let's just follow WP:NPOV. If a book about KGB by notable expert on this subject (e.g. Albats) tell something, we include this claim to the page. If another RS claims something, we include it too. Note that all sources tell essentially the same; the differences are only in details. IMy very best wishes (talk) 23:41, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

in my previous comment, there are a number of points I've asked for clarification of or more details on. It would help me if that was provided.     ←   ZScarpia   00:07, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Sure:

1. The article by Zhirnov was published in Kommersant in 2009, not in Komsomol'skaya Pravda in 1990 (see refs above, Журнал "Коммерсантъ Власть" №44 от 09.11.2009, стр. 56). Let's forget about Komsomol'skaya Pravda, we do not need this source, I can not check it, it is not available online
2. the assumption in the Russian sources that the Soviet use of a gas van had any affect on their use in the German's euthanasia programmes appears extremely tenuous. Indeed, none of the sources claims it, and it is not claimed on the page.
3. it looks likely that one gas van was used in the Moscow area in the late 30s. No, according to Albats and Golovkova (Konyinent) those were multiple trucks.
4. I'm unsure about is whether the subsequent writings have added any extra information - Yes, they did, especially the publications by Petrov and Golovkova ("Kontinent").
5. No, the publications by Petrov and especially Golobkova (Kontinent) clearly did not use KP (Golovkova tells about her source and it is entirely different), and Albats very clearly makes her own claims. My very best wishes (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
6. I did not read this book by Solzenitsyn, we could omit it easily. However, per WR:RS we should use the book by Solzhenitsyn, rather than article in Komsomol'skaya Pravda because it is a lot more reliable source per WP:RS - a book by a Nobel Prize winner. My very best wishes (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

ad 1 Zhimov published an article in Komsomol'skaya Pravda in 1990 and in Kommersant in 1990. Did anyone actually read the piece from 1990?

ad 2 The assumption currently being made is, that gas vans are trucks reequipped as a mobile gas chambers, that these gas vans have been used by the Nazis on a large scale, but first by the Soviet secret police. This establishes a narrative which is untenable and sourced to Yevgenia Albats who claims, gas vans were a Soviet "invention", and Solzenitsyn. Other sources which make that claim are Holocaust deniers and thus obviously fringe.

ad 3 Some sources speak of one gas van (Colton, Merridale), others use plural. One historian, Robert Gellately, called for further research.

ad 4 Golovka added more details. It is being debated how reliable an interview is. She has published about it, but that source has not yet been assessed. A blog post utilizing her publication is vehemently disputed by Mvbw.

ad 5 Petrov wrote mainly about Vasily Blokhin. It’s a newspaper article. I did not see any sources given. Golovkova relates information by an unknown eyewitness. Albats very clearly did only use one source, Komsomol'skaya Pravda, but drew her own conclusions.

ad 6 Solzenitsyn makes use of just one source Komsomol'skaya Pravda It seems that Mvbw thinks that sources has been somehow vetted by a Nobel price, that was awarded some 30 years before 200 Years Together came out.

Finally, Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion.--Assayer (talk) 01:39, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

If you did not even read the original in Komsomol'skaya Pravda (I did not), let's just forget about it. "A blog post utilizing her publication is vehemently disputed by Mvbw." Are you really suggesting to use this blog for sourcing instead of multiple RS noted above? My very best wishes (talk) 01:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I may note that My very best wishes significantly edited their original contribution more than 11 hours after it was posted without indicating the changes.[17] I responded to the original version.--Assayer (talk) 14:02, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

E. Zhirnov, „Protsedura kazni nosila omerzitelniy kharakter“ (A Horrible Execution), Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 28, 1990, p. 2. This sources is cited by Albats, Colton, Solzhenitsyn, and Robert Gellately. In his comparative work Lenin, Stalin and Hitler (2007) Gellateley notes: "While Lenin and Stalin created more concentration camps, the Communists did not create killing centers. The Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka), as in Moscow during the 1930s, but how extensive that was needs further investigation.(39) They used crematoriums to dispose of thousands of bodies, but had no gas chambers." (p. 460) (i.e. direct contradiction of Albats and article lead). Note 39 is KP, Oct. 28, 1992 [sic], 2. On p. 367 he notes: "The killers sought and found a still more efficient and secretive killing process; they invented the first gas van, which began operations in the Warthegau on January 15, 1940, under Herbert Lange." Merridale cites Colton. Only a few researchers turned to the orignal files. (investigation against Berg). The vast majority of sources in the current version of the article in question, however, simply repeat one source over and over again.--Assayer (talk) 13:56, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

No, they do not simply repeat one source over and over again. In particular, Albats does not, Perov and Golovkova do not, etc. OK, let's provide direct quotation from Robert Gellately and other RS on the page. That's fine. Note however that it does not contradict the book by Albats (he tells according to you that "The Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka), as in Moscow during the 1930s, but how extensive that was needs further investigation."). My very best wishes (talk) 14:28, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Albats adds her own personal commentary, but as a source she only refers to Komsomolskaya Pravda. "mobile death chambers. Yes, the very same machinery made notorious by the Nazis" (Albats) ≠ "The Soviets ... had no gas chambers". (Gellateley) What other sources claim, that the Soviets has gas chambers?--Assayer (talk) 15:31, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, just as any other expert, Albats tells her view/interpretations based on her general knowledge of the subject, along with her sources, some of which are not cited in her book. Therefore, this is "according to Albats,...". Yes, there was no Soviet gas chambers because gas chambers are different from gas vans. Robert Gellately tells:"The Soviets sometimes used a gas van (dushegubka)...". Note that he describes Nazi gas van in the same book and same context as Soviet gas vans. Hence, his view is consistent with view by Albats ("same van(s)") My very best wishes (talk) 16:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

It's hard to tell what the exact issues are here. What I think is: (1) If there is a good source that the NKVD used a gas van in the 1930s, there is no reason it shouldn't go in the article on gas vans. (2) One should not write that the Soviets invented the gas van in a way that might lead readers to think that the Nazis copied it from the Soviets, unless a strong source is found for that (by which I mean a source that cites a Nazi document, not just a source which infers it from the chronology). Neither country invented execution by gas (see USA 1924) and it doesn't take a genius to think of doing it on wheels. (3) Solzhenitsyn might think that the (alleged) Jewishness of the Soviet inventor is significant, but we have our own criteria for significance and should not follow Solzhenitsyn's lead. It would be best to only use sources other than Solzhenitsyn. Zero^talk 03:18, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with everything here. Speaking about (2), yes, we can not state this as a matter of fact, but only as a directly cited view attributed to an academic source. My very best wishes (talk) 14:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not argue that we should not mention a Soviet gas van altogether, all the more, since this story is on the Internet and should be addressed. I argue against the way that it is currently presented. You'd have to read about Soviet gas vans first, before you will read about Nazi gas vans for simple reasons of chronology? This rather implies a continuity which did not exist. Significance is more important here. --Assayer (talk) 13:56, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Why not change it so that German vans are mentioned first then? Seems an easy solution.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:23, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I think that it would be better to stick with chronological order, but you could have a pre-amble explaining, for example, that gas vans appear to have been developed independently in the two places and that, though German gas vans had long been known and written about, information about the Soviet version only began to appear from 1990. I also see no reason not to have a separate article devoted to the development and use of gas vans by the Germans if there's a desire for that.     ←   ZScarpia   14:52, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

We can not say they have been developed independently because none of the sources say it or even implicitly assume it. A cited academic sources (Albats) simply tells the vans were "the same", without any further explanations. The best we can do is to directly quote this source and provide the events simply in chronological order. Whatever a reader can infer from reading a page is none of our business as long as we provided an NPOV-compliant version. My very best wishes (talk) 15:07, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

simply tells the vans were "the same", without any further explanations - that should raise a red flag concerning reliability in the first place.--Assayer (talk) 15:31, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Of course, we have to stick with what we can verify, but correct me if I'm wrong, we do have sources which say that gas vans were a German development, implying the absence of knowledge of any outside influence. I suspect that we could also point out that particular detailed sources on German gas vans do not mention any influence. And although Albats may say that the vans were "the same", we can point out that, although the Soviet vans used engine exhaust gases, the first German gas vans used bottled carbon monoxide.     ←   ZScarpia   15:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

This is not clear. According to discussion on talk, one of sources tells: For this purpose [killing patients in numerous Wartheland hospitals in 1940], a kind of mobile gas chamber had been invented. We do not know the inventor, but the KTI was probably involved. (The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 1995, p. 139). Hence it tells We do not know the inventor (in Germany). My very best wishes (talk) 17:23, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I suggested this version, which does not delve into the issue of "invention" nor the question, who used it first. I also omitted mention of Soviet gas vans in the lead, because if true it was merely an isolated incident and I omitted Albats and Solzenitsyn, because they merely add opinion, but no new evidence. I will also proceed to expand the section on Nazi Germany and the lead, but that work takes time.--Assayer (talk) 16:40, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

In my opinion, this version correctly describes a Soviet gas van story. I would say, it might be possible to rename a section to "Controversy", because the Kontinent article contains memoirs that cast a doubt on a trustworthiness of Berg's interrogation protocol (I quoted this passage either here or in the RSN discussion). Taking into account that that protocol was the only source used by Zhirnov (according to his article in Kommersant), that makes the whole body of sources that cite KP questionable. In addition, the same article says that the primary goal was to suppress the ability of the victims to resist, which, although was even more brutal, still does not makes Soviet gas van a killing machine per se.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:20, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

If there were any specific technical differences between the Soviet and Nazi gas vans (and this can be sourced), such differences must be noted on the page, but I did not see anything on this so far; only claim(s) they were the same. Of course the stationary death chambers were different, but they were used only in Nazi Germany. The bottled carbon monoxide was used only in stationary death chambers. My very best wishes (talk) 20:43, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

The key issue here is the use of poison gas for mass murder, regardless if the death/gas chambers were stationary or mobile. Albats explicitly speaks broadly of "machinery" and alludes to Auschwitz, where gas chambers were built. The first German gas vans used pure CO from steel cylinders for killing like in the gas chambers of German euthanasia killing centers. --Assayer (talk) 01:32, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. That answers my question about the differences between Soviet and Nazi gas vans. This needs to be reflected on the page. My very best wishes (talk) 01:45, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

While the first Nazi gas vans did indeed use bottled carbon monoxide, this proved to be not practical (they had to wait to replenish new cylinders from Germany, etc), so KTI went on to develop gas vans using exhaust fumes to replace them, see this source on pages 199-200. So in fact Albats was right, both the Soviet and final Nazi version of the gas vans were the same. —Nug (talk) 03:32, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Interesting detail about how the Germans settled on the use of gas vans using engine exhaust which is currently not in the article. I think that consideration should be given to listing the book in the Bibliography (the book's Appendix is cited as a reference). "The idea of using exhaust gases had already been discussed by Nebe and Heess. Nebe had come up with the idea after almost killing himself when returning home drunk from a party and falling asleep in his garage with the engine running. The concept circulated around the halls of the KTI, but no specific steps were taken at the time. Dr. Albert Widmann, a toxicology expert and head of KTI's chemical section, was summoned to Minsk to conduct experiments in order to find the most practical killing method." A pity that it's unknown whether poisoning by engine exhaust was among the experiments conducted by Widmann because of Nebe's suggestion. I've got hold of a copy of the full text so that I can read the pages not available on Google Books.     ←   ZScarpia   12:38, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

That clarifies things. Both details (by you and Nug) should be included on the page. The problems are with Nazi Germany sections. What is the source here, exactly? My very best wishes (talk) 13:36, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Chelmno and the Holocaust, A History of Hitler’s First Death Camp (2012) - Patrick Montague. For details about the use of bottled carbon monoxide I mentioned in earlier comments I was using David Cesarani's "Final Solution, the Fate of the Jews 1933-49".     ←   ZScarpia   13:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Poisoning by engine exhaust fumes was among the experiments conducted by Widmann. Together with Nebe he devised of a sort of gas chamber in the mental asylum of Mogilev in September 1941. Sources are multiple. Some say, that next Nebe came up with the idea of constructing a car for the gassing. As I said, I will work on the article.--Assayer (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

BBC News: China and Taiwan clash over Wikipedia edits

Quote from BBC News:

"Ask Google or Siri: 'What is Taiwan'? 'A state', they will answer, 'in East Asia'."

"But earlier in September, it would have been a 'province in the People's Republic of China'."

"For questions of fact, many search engines, digital assistants and phones all point to one place: Wikipedia. And Wikipedia had suddenly changed."

"The edit was reversed, but soon made again. And again. It became an editorial tug of war that - as far as the encyclopedia was concerned - caused the state of Taiwan to constantly blink in and out of existence over the course of a single day."

Source: BBC News: China and Taiwan clash over Wikipedia edits

--Guy Macon (talk) 17:20, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Criticism of Swaminarayan sect

Four or more editors have been pressuring at the Talk:Criticism of Swaminarayan sect want to include all of the justification from the sect. They tried to give it so by giving more weight to apology and justification. As WP:Criticism states criticism article is for negative viewpoints of the particular philosophy and religion then why justification from the sect can be included in the article? Like, Criticism of Marxism exists and there is no such balancing and inclusion of the arguments regarding justification from marxists. Same with Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Buddhism and Criticism of Religion. If the article will go for balancing the thoughts and inclusion of justification from apologetic then how it will serve the purpose of the criticism as per heading? I tried to let them understand that this is sub POV of Swaminarayana sect in which negative points are included by keeping NPOV in mind but none of them is agreeing on the issue and most of them are not even extended confirmed and pressurising to include positive viewpoints. I had made the page by looking at the pages stated above and if all the things will be added in this article then how it will be different from original POV article i.e. Swaminarayan sect. I am looking for the comments of more experienced editors and administrators regarding this page. -- Harshil ^{want to talk?} 18:55, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

That one should go to AfD I think. This is not anything notable. My very best wishes (talk) 00:21, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

@Harshil169: posted this article on the NPOV noticeboard and has ignored the other editors @Ms Sarah Welch, Nizil Shah, Gazal world, Apollo1203, and Sacredsea: and myself who are striving to maintain NPOV and balance on this article. Harshil insists it doesn't apply, which has led to some disagreement, and Harshil has responded with some incivility in his talk and actions (see diffs below).

1. Harshil never honored Apollo’s request for exact quotes from the non-English sources he initially cited in the article, even after I followed up. (See Talk Page)
2. Harshil quoted a statement verbatim from a source he initially referenced and then changed this reference twice without changing the words (non-English source, English book). No explanation was offered to me when I asked for one. (See Talk Page)
3. He reverted three edits made by me, Apollo, and Sacredsea in trying to make the article adhere to NPOV.

Ms Sarah Welch has graciously stepped in and is offering feedback to help maintain NPOV. Several editors in good faith are attempting to achieve this balance, and it would be good if it can happen with civility. I have notified the other users mentioned in this article should they wish to weigh in on the neutrality of this article. Moksha88 (talk) 04:24, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

You folks, which includes both of you, need to discuss this further on the talk page before seeking help on this board. For reasons mentioned in the next thread, I am not a fan of separate articles on criticism and prefer that criticism + apologetics be integrated into the main article. There are exceptions, of course, where the main article is too big and the criticism is big and notable too in peer-reviewed sources. I am not persuaded that Swaminarayan-related articles belong to that group of select articles. But, at this point, you all need to first resolve your content disputes by respectful discussion and collaboration. Once a consensus version emerges, we can decide the best place for that version: a separate article or a section in an appropriate article. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 12:18, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the views expressed in this and the below discussions that there have to be relevant and extensive secondary sources on the whole subject otherwise such criticism pages become WP:POVFORKs or WP:COATRACKs. For the Swaminarayan criticism page in particular, I think that the substantive topics on this page which have ample secondary sources supporting them are better incorporated into the main articles on this topics and this page should be a candidate for AfD.Sacredsea (talk) 17:35, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

"Criticism of..." pages in general

According to [18]. we have pages on

• Criticism of Swaminarayan sect (but no Criticism of Aum Shinrikyo)
• Criticism of Mother Teresa (but no Criticism of Dalai Lama)
• Criticism of Muhammad (but no Criticism of Gautama Buddha)
• Criticism of the Israeli government (but no Criticism of the Chinese government)
• Criticism of Amazon (but no Criticism of Alibaba Group)
• Criticism of Facebook (but no Criticism of Twitter)
• Criticism of The Walt Disney Company (but no Criticism of Monsanto)
• Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt (but no Criticism of Herbert Hoover)
• Criticism of Family Guy (but no Criticism of the Simpsons)

We also have a bunch of redirects like

• Criticism of Jay Leno (but no Criticism of David Letterman)
• Criticism of the C programming language (but no Criticism of BASIC)

To me, it looks like most (but not all) of the "Criticism of" pages are WP:POVFORKs or WP:COATRACKs for criticism that wasn't allowed into the main article.

I think that most of them should be merged into the corresponding main pages and that all of the "Criticism of" redirects should be deleted as being unlikely search terms.

Before I post an RfC proposing that, does anyone agree or disagree with my take on this?

Are there any opinions on particular "Criticism of" pages that should be kept? I am thinking that...

• Criticism of Christianity
• Criticism of Islam
• Criticisms of Marxism
• Criticism of capitalism

...might be worth keeping. Or maybe not. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:55, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I think it is wrong to say "We have criticism of X as a page but not critical of parallel topic y". Two questions better asked: 1) If we have "criticism of X" as a standalone, do we also have "criticism of parallel topic y" in the article about y itself, and 2) if we have "criticism of X", is there a SIZE issue to explain why it was moved out, and was there a better split of content less contestable that could have been split out first per Summary Style. And there are other factors to keep in mind. For example, Facebook has been a LOT more hot water than Twitter and so I would expect a rather lengthy bit on criticism of Facebook. Enough for its own page, after taking out all the minutee of the coverage? Not sure, but I would not be surprised to see enough for a standalone. --Masem (t) 00:22, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

• I do not think that "criticism" pages are inherently problematic because the criticism of something or someone can be a well-defined, notable and perfectly legitimate subject. Not having pages about something is not a policy-based argument. Some of these page, however, (like Criticism of Swaminarayan sect) should go to AfD on a case by case basis. My very best wishes (talk) 00:26, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
• Agree with above, “criticism of” pages justified where body of criticism is well defined. Not a problem that some exist and some don’t if existing ones meet that test and non-existing ones don’t, or if non-existing could be made. Nothing prevents creation of criticism of Monsanto page for example — doubtless justifies and welcome to add. Hyperbolick (talk) 00:39, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree that a lack of a criticism article for a related topic it not, one its own, enough to justify deletion since there are several other possible reasons for this. It could be, there is enough criticism for an article but no one got around to making it, the other subject is simply less controversial, the other subject has a shorter article so the it wasn't necessary to split criticism for size purposes, ect. This clearly needs to be decided on a case by case basis.--67.68.29.177 (talk) 03:11, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• I've long been of the opinion that criticism sections, let alone articles, are inherently coatracks for editors to include their own personal gripes. The vast majority of them should definitely be deprecated and their content merged into the articles. Sceptre (talk) 22:57, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I readily agree that criticism sections (but not limited to them) have become the type of laundry lists for any mention of any potential "bad thing" against that topic. It is moreso a problem over on BLPs, but it extends across the board. A poorly established criticism section in an article is a honeypot for anyone to come by with a weak source to say "this must be added!" But this doesn't mean criticism sections - or standalones - are bad in of themselves, as long as editors keep out the single-source, RECENTISM stuff, and instead focus on long-term criticism towards the topic, or criticism that has had a significant effect for the topic. It is similar to trivia sections, they can grow out of line if editors do not scrub out those entries that do not have proper sourcing. Now, in some cases, that can be merged throughout the article, but this is not always possible without disrupting narrative flow. For example, if we are discussing a company like Facebook, the only logical place to put its controversies is within the history of the company, but narratively would be jarring, and a separate section makes more sense - as long as it properly kept. --Masem (t) 23:07, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Looking over some of the criticism articles listed above, you can see a striking difference between two types of articles. Some are literally about the criticism, citing secondary sources that are explicitly analyzing the subject "criticism of X". Other articles appear utterly disjointed, lurching from section to section without transition, and many of the sources are literally criticisms of X. Far from a laundry list, I would say that many of these appear to be trash bins. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:15, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

To create a good page of this nature, one must have some secondary sources (preferably books or reviews) on the whole subject, for example a book entitled "Criticism of X". Otherwise, this is going to be a "coat rack" or essentially a list. My very best wishes (talk) 23:32, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• I would wager that most "Criticism of X" pages should be merged into the main, "X", articles. But some, like Criticism of Christianity are quite big because of the long history of the relevant phenomena, so I guess they should be kept intact? Notrium (talk) 09:31, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

How about Criticism of Wikipedia? Probably should stay. There doesn't seem to be a consensus for a policy change barring "Criticism of X" pages; rather, it seems that this needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. NightHeron (talk) 11:21, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon, Masem, Hyperbolick, My very best wishes, Sceptre, Someguy1221, and NightHeron:, relevant: Wikipedia:Content forking, Wikipedia:Merging, Wikipedia:WikiProject Merge Notrium (talk) 17:55, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

IMO "Criticism of" sections and articles should all get deleted. Sections distort the coverage in the article, and the articles are distorted coverage. But IMO moving it from a separate article (an obscure "garbage can") into a section of the main article makes the problem even worse.North8000 (talk) 18:50, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree that keeping criticism pages separately helps to organize the content much better. Yes, such sections can distort the coverage of a subject, but this is not necessarily the case. Having a "controversies" section for a company is fine. Also, subjects like criticism of Marxism or Islam are notable and deserve large separate pages. This is not distortion. Some others, like Criticism of the Israeli government are indeed basically attack pages. My very best wishes (talk) 19:42, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Assertion that "peer-reviewed journals" means an absent of POV in an article

As seen at Talk:Cultural impact of Michael Jackson#Article recreated again (permalink here), editors have expressed a concern that the newly-created article Cultural impact of Michael Jackson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has a lot of POV and WP:Puffery language and/or reads like a fansite. In that discussion, SNUGGUMS and Popcornduff took the time to detail issues with the article.

In the Talk:Cultural impact of Michael Jackson#Peer-reviewed journals means POV? section (permalink here), the article's creator, Partytemple, has asserted that contested text in the article that is supported by peer-reviewed journals means that the contested text does not violate WP:POV. This is despite what WP:YESPOV, WP:WIKIVOICE and WP:INTEXT state. Popcornduff has tried to enlighten Partytemple to the fact that a source being peer-reviewed does not mean that what the source is saying cannot be an opinion. It certainly doesn't mean that how a Wikipedia editor decides to word something based on whatever source is not an opinion and therefore should be stated in Wikipedia's voice. The discussion continued in the following section as well: Talk:Cultural impact of Michael Jackson#One example of subjective POV (permalink here).

Needless to state, we need other opinions on this matter. I will also alert Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view to this section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:45, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, I would think there is something to be said that if peer-reviewed sources said, today, "Mozart was one of the greatest composers of all time." we would be stating that factually, as there's been more than enough time for broad public and academic opinion to be established in a case like this. For Michael Jackson, we may be too close to his death for that opinion to have gelled to be treated as fact. But this should only start when multiple peer-reviewed sources make the assertion as fact, not just one. --Masem (t) 02:01, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Something to keep in mind is that peer review is not the same thing as literature review. We prefer secondary and tertiary sources to primary sources for reasons noted at WP:PSTS and WP:SCHOLARSHIP. I haven't yet checked to see what, if any, sources in the article are peer-reviewed journals, but the opinion of an author of a peer-reviewed journal is still that author's opinion. And regardless, we have wording and presentation standards. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Popcornduff and I seem to have different interpretations of WP policy. My position is not that the article is entirely absent of POV, but that the issues addressed are not violating POV. Flyer22 please do not misinterpret my words. If you have questions about what I mean, ask first. I also would like more editors outside of the MJ articles to offer an opinion on this matter, as I do not think this issue is limited to the Jackson articles. It would help a lot to clarify some understandings of policy. There are many statements in question. I prefer that these issues should be asked to me directly, instead of accusing me editorial bias. I did not distort or exaggerate any of the claims. If they sound egregious, it's because I cited the author. —Partytemple (talk) 02:18, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

No misinterpretation at all. I read your flawed arguments, just like I read your flawed and deeply troubling understanding of our BLP policy. Nowhere did I state or imply that your position is that the article is entirely absent of POV. But if you think that all or most of the POV issues highlighted at Talk:Cultural impact of Michael Jackson#Article recreated again are not POV issues, I fail to see how that is not you thinking that the article is mostly or completely absent of POV. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:26, 7 October 2019 (UTC) Updated post. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:31, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I think anyone can see that the article does not comprise of peer-reviewed journals only, which is the material being addressed. And the main statement in dispute was the "child prodigy" statement that was cited with a journal. It would be extremely unfair to me if my words were distorted. —Partytemple (talk) 02:30, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Without any distortions or misinterpretation, let me make this clear: peer-reviewed journals can and have contained personal thoughts of authors. Same goes for just about any other type of reference one can think of. However, that doesn't mean it's impossible for them or us to neutrally discuss such opinions. Per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, we can say things like "Critics overall felt _____" or "Scholars believe that _______" when sharing stances people have. Now, the Cultural Impact article being discussed above could be vastly improved by attributing some opinions to the authors. I fully realize that not every reference used is a peer-reviewed journal. Regardless of citation type, it is fully possible to insert biased text even when referencing something that supports the opinion conveyed within an article. We're supposed to describe what others have written and their views, but shouldn't make it sound like Wikipedia's own stance. While I fully realize that much of what I've typed here was already written before with different phrasing, I felt it had to be said anyway. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 03:18, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

SNUGGUMS, I read your comments but I did not know how to respond since there were so many and some of them sound like you weren't sure. We can go through every single one, if you'd like. I can provide the source text, but I cannot reproduce them entirely (because of copyright). And as far as I know, of the many academic literature I read, there are certain statements that have multiple scholars saying relatively the same thing, hence an academic consensus. —Partytemple (talk) 03:26, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I admittedly was iffy on certain parts, though discussion of all my individual points is better for that article's talk page. In cases of academic consensus, see my above comments on WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. In other words, we attribute the shared opinion to the scholars (i.e. "Most/Multiple scholars felt that Jackson ___________"). Hopefully that makes sense. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 03:37, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I will echo what Masem said. There is a policy that says "Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested." Attaching attributions would make the statement sound like its contested by reliable sources, hence no academic consensus. But I don't know any reliable sources that say Michael Jackson was not a child prodigy (or other variants of this). Wouldn't using attributions so broadly also be WP:WEASEL? And what about this: "When a statement is a fact (e.g. information that is accepted as true and about which there is no serious dispute), it should be asserted using Wikipedia's own voice without in-text attribution."—Partytemple (talk) 03:51, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Partytemple does not seem able or willing to understand the POV problems even though several of us have tried to explain them. They either misinterpret policy (taking us on strange rambling philosophical debates about how Wikipedia defines opinions and facts, for example) or claim not to understand the problem. They have reverted attempts to make the article more neutral, and repeatedly removed the puffery template despite the consensus on the talk page. They seem unwilling to work with the numerous editors who now have identified POV problems with the article and I am pessimistic about improvement. As far as I am concerned this is now disruptive behaviour as per WP:NOTGETTINGIT. Popcornduff (talk) 12:57, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Oh, and let's not get bogged down arguing about any one bit of puffery in the article, such as the specific debate about how OK it is say that Michael Jackson was talented. Scan the article and you'll see there are dozens of WP:POV-violating claims. Popcornduff (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Self-coup

Self-coup (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There's currently a request for comment over the inclusion of Boris Johnson in the article. At the moment, I think most of the contributors — including myself — are British, so we might all have tinted glasses over it and evaluations from editors in different countries would be appreciated. Sceptre (talk) 21:57, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I can't say "Self-coup" is the right term for the events that took place concerning Johnson. What do reliable sources say about it? Have they used the term "self-coup" very often? Aman.kumar.goel (talk) 04:00, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Tag at James D. Zirin

Hello, I'm Jim, the subject of the James D. Zirin article. In the past, I've made some missteps attempting to update the article, but I've since learned how to work with editors to make changes on my behalf. If you review Talk:James D. Zirin, you'll see I now understand how the edit request process works, and you'll also notice I've tried in earnest to work with editors to remove the 'close connection' tag at the top of the article.

My most recent post to the talk page outlines how I've attempted to resolve the tag by asking both uninvolved and involved editors to identify any non-neutral or otherwise problematic text. If the editor who added the tag is not willing to discuss, the tag is not meant to be a "scarlet letter", and no other editors can point out problematic content, then I'm lost as to why the tag is still needed. I've tried to seek assistance on the article's talk page, at this noticeboard (almost 2 months ago), a WikiProject, and at user talk pages, but no one seems available to help.

I'm hoping someone who reads this page can take a look at the article's text and either remove the tag if there are no major concerns, or share which text is problematic so I can take steps to address. Please, I'm running out of ideas. Thanks. Jim Zirin (talk) 23:39, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

The tag has been removed, and thanks to User:Gleeanon409 for helping. Jim Zirin (talk) 20:05, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Confused about references!

Hi there,

I am fairly new and haven't difficulty getting a page published. It is with regards to a AAA Game writer who has worked on some of the biggest games in the past few years and I didn't think it would be difficult to publish. I've referenced multiple articles noting their work across games, moves to different project, BBC interviews and so on but I'm being told that they are only passing mentions and I'd need more to show their impact in their field? Comparing this to other articles I've seen, I'm just not sure where I'm going wrong? I don't think they have done lots of interviews or have won any awards specifically as they write for various companies but they are well known in the industry as the Senior Scriptwriter for quite a few multi-million dollar games. Any advice would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mousemouse10 (talk Mousemouse10 (talk) 09:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)mousemouse10

Can you give an example of someone who has garnered no more attention and yet has an article?Slatersteven (talk) 09:21, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Edwards_(producer) I was comparing it to this one. I can't quite see the difference in references? Again, any advice would be great - thank you. Mousemouse10 (talk) 09:40, 10 October 2019 (UTC)mousemouse10

From who?Slatersteven (talk) 09:46, 10 October 2019 (UTC) Sorry, I don't quite understand the question (and again, very new!). I was just confused as I saw this article and it didn't seem like this person had more references of notability in comparison to the person in my article. Kim MacAskill is the AAA Game writer I'm trying to put on following her move from the Arkham Batman series to the new AAA Playground game. It doesn't seem Edwards has more to offer? How could I do this better to avoid rejection? Again, thank you! Mousemouse10 (talk) 09:52, 10 October 2019 (UTC)mousemouse10

OK so has she been appointed to any managerial position at a major broadcaster?Slatersteven (talk) 09:58, 10 October 2019 (UTC) - She was a producer for BBC Comedy, Senior Scriptwriter for Warner Bros Rocksteady (Batman Arkham Series) and now Senior Scriptwriter for Playground (game is rumoured t be Fable 4 which is pretty significant given its one of the most famous games). Most of the articles I am finding are on her games career (admittedly the better one) with one BBC Comedy Article with her giving advice to new writers. I'm not sure why the references aren't enough? Mousemouse10 (talk) 10:04, 10 October 2019 (UTC) Mousemouse10

So no then she was not.Slatersteven (talk) 10:06, 10 October 2019 (UTC) This is where I'm confused. The other person was simply a producer and writer for the same broadcaster. I can't see how this is different? Mousemouse10 (talk) 10:09, 10 October 2019 (UTC)Mousemouse10

""BBC appoint Edwards acting head of radio comedy".Slatersteven (talk) 10:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Bill Clinton allegations at Epstein article

WP:FORUMSHOPPING and insufficient prior discussion on article talk page. If no consensus is reached after extensive talk page discussion, suggest WP:RfC.

It seems there is pro-Clinton editing at the Epstein article in a serious violation of NPOV. Virginia Guiffre is the most well known of the Epstein accusers, and her testimony and various claims have been fodder for the Epstein story in media and WP's Jeffrey Epstein article. One of the well documented claims she made was that she saw Bill Clinton at 'Epstein's Island'. The claim has been in the Epstein article since the court documents were released August 9. The NYT stated that in these documents, "an earlier claim" about Bill and the Island made by Guiffre was untrue. Editors at the Epstein article immediately restated this as "the earlier claim" that Clinton was seen by Guiffre on the Island, was untrue. They have insisted that we cannot mention the claim from Guiffre unless we include a rebuttal (the misrepresentation of the NYT article is the only rebuttal in media). The folks at RS/N noted that indeed, within the cited documents there is no mention of the statement WP editors have attributed to the NYT. Guiffre makes minor corrections to reporting from the Daily Mail; a few of the statements weren't true, and she clarified them. But she never said Clinton was not on the Island. A request for a correction at the NYT was made by Newslinger. We await their response, but there is no correction as yet. Editors have insisted we should wait to hear from the NYT before adding back the material, which to me sounds ludicrous and not supported by any or the PAGs. Here are the sources which back up Guiffre's claim: Law and Crime, FORBES, TIME, AP, VICE, NY Mag, The Cut, Chicago Tribune, and Fox8 Editors at Epstein are insisting that the NYT's "an earlier claim" is actually not ambiguous, clearly means "the earlier claim", and that regardless of the numerous sources supporting Guiffre's statement that she saw Clinton on the Island, editors are saying it is a BLP violation to mention it unless we add a rebuttal. There is no rebuttal in RS (otherwise I would add it happily). I would appreciate your help in making sure we're following guidelines and common sense. For now, it seems like the goal is censorship in favor of a politician rather than building an encyclopedia. petrarchan47คุก 00:37, 16 October 2019 (UTC) Petrarchan47, why do you refuse to discuss these matters on the article Talk page where interested editors may participate, rather than seek assistance here to advance your cause where interested editors don't see it, then proceed to engage in edit warring on the article as though you have achieved consensus? Rather than "pro-Clinton editing at the Epstein article," a persuasive argument could be made that an effort is being made to smear Clinton with an accusation made years ago that was accepted as established fact, then recently shown to be false, and some may be unable to accept this reality because they are members of the Clinton Conspiracy Theory Industrial Complex. soibangla (talk) 00:50, 16 October 2019 (UTC) How could interested editors not see this? I posted a link and a clearly marked new section announcing this thread. Thank you though for illustrating for others your mindset. petrarchan47คุก 01:00, 16 October 2019 (UTC) You have engaged in extensive backchannel discussions that belong on the Talk page. Thank you though for illustrating for others your mindset. soibangla (talk) 01:04, 16 October 2019 (UTC) (edit conflict) I agree it seems highly premature to escalate to a noticeboard when no discussion has occurred on the article's talk page, but the article is actively edited by registered users. It is calling for a third opinion before the second opinion has even been given. After EC: The crossposting at RSN is similarly problematic, and the combination even more so. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:19, 16 October 2019 (UTC) This is forumshopping. There's already an extensive discussion about this at rsn.Fyddlestix (talk) 01:16, 16 October 2019 (UTC) It's at BLPN too. Fyddlestix (talk) 01:53, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment on Talk:Jeffrey Epstein

There is a request for comment regarding the neutrality and weight of claims in the Jeffrey Epstein article. If you are interested, please participate at Talk:Jeffrey Epstein § RfC: Virginia Giuffre and Bill Clinton. — Newslinger talk 13:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

"Pinehouse Photography Club" Page request edit/help

Pinehouse Photography Club Good day. Im am asking for anyone to help with this page. It seems I need more neutral opinions and edits, although I believe its well cited. Any talk or constructive thoughts welcome :) ----Dreerwin (talk) 14:24, 16 October 2019 (UTC) Even maybe re wording:

The Pinehouse Photography Club was established in 2017 by a primary care RN(AAP) in Pinehouse Lake. It is a nonprofit organization in northern Saskatchewan whose goal is to help heal and transform lives in its remote community through the use of therapeutic photography.[1] 350 kilometers north of Saskatoon, it’s a place where people, especially youth, can feel isolated and alone, often choosing to make unhealthy choices as a way to cope with the loneliness.[2] The club was created to help youth through the use of therapeutic photography who are at risk for mental health problems and addictions. It has been shown that using photography as a form of therapy helps start the conversation about mental health, without even saying a word.[3]

The nonprofit organization has a studio, a full-time employee who acts as the director of operations, a board of directors, and a van for the youth.[4][5][6] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dreerwin (talk • contribs) 14:31, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

RfC about applying the "pro-Maduro" label to Venezuela's institutions (eg., the Supreme Tribunal of Justice)

Please take a look at the following RfC, wherein we discuss whether applying the label "pro-Maduro" to certain Venezela's institutions/branches of government is neutral: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Responses_to_the_2019_Venezuelan_presidential_crisis#RfC:_Should_Venezuelan_crisis-related_articles_use_terms_like_'pro-Maduro',_and,_if_not,_what_alternatives_can_be_used? Notrium (talk) 09:13, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Mathura Art

Mathura Art needs eyes who are familiar with art history and willing to deal with nationalist revisionism. Simonm223 (talk) 12:38, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Popishness in Maryland lead

See talk:Maryland#Popishness. There is currently a dispute over whether using the word “Popishness” to describe Catholicism in the lead of Maryland is appropriate. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:10, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Systemic problem on Wikipedia: Dictators are not being described as such

I've noticed a systemic problem across Wikipedia: Leaders who are universally described as "dictators" or "authoritarian" in peer-reviewed academic research are not being described as such on Wikipedia pages. Check Kim Jong-un's lede and you'd never know that he happens to rule a non-democracy, never mind one of the most repressive dictatorships in existence. Same goes for the Bashar al-Assad page before I fixed it (the page even brazenly suggested that he was a democratically elected leader). I noticed that similar problems plagued the pages of Putin (whose regime is typically characterized as a hybrid regime or competitive authoritarian regime) and Viktor Orban (who is universally described as having overseen democratic backsliding in Hungary) before I fixed those pages.

There's a humongous literature out there, which is peer-reviewed and written by recognized experts - in many cases, political scientists explicitly list regimes which are democratic, hybrid regimes, authoritarian. Furthermore, there are measures of democracy (Polity, Freedom House) that can inform our language. Use it, people! Snooganssnoogans (talk) 21:03, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans: Just because a source says something does not mean you can repeat it in Wikipedia's voice. Quoting is a more sure way to do things, unless the quoted source would be given undue weight, of course. Remeber that (almost?) all sources are biased. Notrium (talk) 22:10, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

This is not a question of one source saying something. This is a question of universal agreement among the best available sources (there is an enormous peer-reviewed academic literature on democracy and authoritarianism) that a particular regime is not democratic. That Wikipedia systemically fails to stick to the sources on this particular topic is a horrendous NPOV violation. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:15, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Actually there's a substantial peer-reviewed literature on how blurred the lines are between authoritarianism and democracy. See The Rise of Authoritarian Liberal Democracy and Authoritarianism and The Elite Origins of Democracy.GPRamirez5 (talk) 22:54, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Cambridge Scholars Publishing is a predatory scam press, and the author is a nobody who just publishes weird monographs for non-academic scammy publishers. The second book, which is by actual recognized experts and published in a top tier academic press, does not at all say that there is no distinction between democracy and authoritarianism. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:03, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I didn't say "no distinction" either. I said blurred lines. From the second book: "...cracks have begun to emerge in the consensus that democracies are actually forged by the people and that their policies are intended to benefit the people...In short, democracies might not be all that different than their authoritarian predecessors in terms of material consequences." GPRamirez5 (talk) 00:07, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Christ almighty - what a brazen distortion of the book. The book is about the causes of democracy, and the authors argue that the onset of the democratization process is elite-driven. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 01:13, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm comfortable calling many regimes "authoritarian", less so "dictatorial". The former is broader, "milder" and more inclusive, so the risk of error is low and we shouldn't have qualms using it where appropriate; the latter, in addition to being rarer and more "extreme", sees frequent use in common parlance (talk shows, etc.), so we should limit it to scholarly or high quality sources, to avoid error. François Robere (talk) 23:16, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans, François Robere, and GPRamirez5: Wikipedia is not perfect, and many articles stay non-neutral and even non-encyclopedic for far too long; I wish you good understanding and recall of Wikipedia's guidelines in your efforts (and luck). Maybe you should start a WikiProject (maybe called "Authoritarianism")? That could help in efforts on specific persons like Orban. On the other hand, I do not like the way those "Democracy indices" try to aggregate data that does not seem like it should be aggregated ("measuring democracy" and "conceptualizing democracy" seem like productive search terms on libgen). I prefer specific examples of governmental misdeeds of all kinds (crimes, corruption, just immoral) and criticism of policy and laws to simplistic labeling of governmental leaders. Notrium (talk) 23:35, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Using a term like "dictator" should only be in Wikivoice well after the regime that would be called that is over (like, on the order of decades) and the presence of strong academic views, or if there is overwhelming academic evidence to call it such while the regime is active. It's a label, and definitely BLP applies. --Masem (t) 23:56, 21 October 2019 (UTC) (ETA to apologize to @MPS1992:, though the H3 was accidental). --Masem (t) 00:09, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Why this time gap? François Robere (talk) 11:15, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree this should be the case, contempory sources are always going to be far more subjective then those written with the benefit of hindsight.Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Bashar al-Assad

Why has the OP felt it necessary to "fix" the Bashar al-Assad page? Did not that fellow work as an eye surgeon in a UK hospital, before fate called him back to do something that he did not wish to do? MPS1992 (talk) 23:46, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

What bearing does that have on whether his rule is a dictatorship or not? AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 05:49, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Russia investigation origins counter-narrative

• Russia investigation origins counter-narrative (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This has been nominated for deletion and some suggest WP:TNT. That's a bit of a problem as it's spun out of sections in other articles, so may indicate NPOV problems at William Barr, for example. I believe the topic to be notable (several sources addressing it directly) and separate from the Ukraine shakedown. Can people please help by reviewing the sourcing and tone? I am by now in the "marking your own homework" zone so I need assistance. Thanks. Guy (help!) 11:01, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

United Nations page map

Fellow wikipedians,

For some time now there has been a dispute on which map to include on the introduction of the United Nations wikipedia page. It involves the following two:

1) United Nations Members (green–grey scheme) (the established map)

2) United Nations members de facto borders (the new map)

The green-scheme map broadly follows the norms of the UN and international diplomacy by keeping it to internationally recognized member-states.[19] It has also been used for several years on the page until recent edits brought up the issue. Lastly, it is used in over twenty languages across wikipedia.

The blue-scheme map highlights various de facto (unrecognized) states who are not members of the UN and is highly contentious as 'new' de facto states come and go every now and then and who is to say what a de facto state is? There is no broadly agreed upon standard. Moreover, it is only used one page and only on the English wikipedia.

I wish to receive the feedback on this issue from neutral wikipedians who are are not politically invested in this topic.Wadaad (talk) 12:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)