Talk:NGO Monitor

A WP:COIN discussion about this page and others

This page of NGO Monitor is highly promotional,full of POV self generated materials while being highly meager in RS. Many other WP articles of the organizations criticized by NGO Monitor are interlaced with "responses" by that organization, which should at most belong on the organization's page. In the criticism section of this article, NGO Monitor responds to the criticism on the page rather than on the talk page. This article, together with the Gerald Steinberg article are now discussed on the WP:COIN page.רסטיניאק (talk) 07:24, 25 May 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

I would agree that there is a problem with this article and Israeli NGO articles and articles relating to individuals that have been targeted by NGO-monitor. I'm not sure if the issue is one of WP:COIN. One interesting example from this article I can put forward for discussion:-

• On March 17 2013 I added some description of NGO Monitor's activities from a published work by the scholar Joel Peters to this article
• The very next day, March 18, an open letter by Gerald Steinburg, to Joel Peters appears on the NGO-Monitor website challenging Joel Peters, and referencing this Wikipedia page's citation of Peter's work. ("We note that your false allegations in this book have been copied onto the NGO Monitor wikipedia entry, thus further falsifying the record.")
• Subsequently, the Steinburg response to Joel Peters and Wikipedia citation of the same is dutifully uploaded to our article

I guess the example highlights that NGOM are monitoring this page closely and are involved enough in developments on the page that they respond immediately to changes. I would suspect that they are monitoring the pages of organisations/people they have targeted for criticism. The general problem I see with these pages is that while NGOM are clearly a mainstream viewpoint from the Israeli perspective(see e.g. Chazan 2012), once you step out of Israel, their views outside specific individual cases are not particularly notable or mainstream (for example if you read academic scholarship on issues related to the conflict or global news media you will see that B'stelem, AI, HRW ect are much more widely cited as sources or for opinions than NGOM. NGOM positions such as restricting international funding of Israeli NGOs are widely criticised outside of Israel) If we keep dutifully uploading the copious amount of criticisms published by NGO monitor against various individuals and NGO's what you end up with is long laundry lists of criticisms by NGO monitor across various articles. It doesn't lead to serious encyclopaedic articles of topics, nor does it lead to balanced neutral articles, especially from a global perspective. Dlv999 (talk) 11:06, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Dlv999 for your enlightening paragraph. However, NGOM is considered by many of the Israeli academics and liberals as a right wing organization that is McCarthyist in its attempts to block free speech disguised as a neutral research org. I agree with you about the lack of encylopaedic value if producing long lists of attacks by NGOM, but this is clearly the main aspect of NGOM, attacking left wing, human rights and peace organizations, mainly in Israel, and must be mentioned. Most of the Israeli public never heard of either Steinberg or his right wing watchdog, and also never gets to English Wikipedia, so their focus is not Israeli, when they promote NGOM. The COI notice is about a conflict of interest with particular editors while the contents serves to identify their direct relation to Steinberg and to NGOM. רסטיניאק (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

The methods of operation of NGO Monitor on Wikipedia now exposed

See WP:COIN section 8 which includes now the exposure of Soosim as an employee of NGO Monitor headed by Gerald Steinberg and the main contributor to articles on Wikipedia about Steinberg, NGO Monitor, most human rights and peace organizations in Israel as well as quite a few of the World organizations for Human Rights. This needs to be fixed once and for all. NGO Monitor has been smearing, defaming and villifying human rights organizations under the false pretense of a "balanced" NGO Monitor which at the same time avoided monitoring all the right wing organizations (http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngo_index.php?letter=A), including itself. It is clearly a right wing, anti human rights and anti-liberal and highly politically motivated organization and its organized edits on Wikipedia should be examined, reversed if needed and blocked if needed. רסטיניאק (talk) 05:46, 27 May 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

And now this story has been covered in the press. See < ref>http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/aligning-text-to-the-right-is-a-political-organization-editing-wikipedia-to-suit-its-interests.premium-1.530285</ref>. I think this is significant, especially in light of the "wiki war" comment, and should probably be added to NGOM's list of activities. Any thoughts as to where to place this? Anybody want to take a crack at phrasing this? Perplexed566 (talk) 13:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I support adding something. As an involved (and named, even) protagonist, I won't be the one to add something, though. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

My apologies if I acted precipitously just now, before clearing this with other editors. I had no idea whatsoever of the COI discussion re Soosim, hadn't bookmarked this page, and just edited what I read on Haaretz a half an hour ago, without checking the comments here. I only noticed them, when I bookmarked the page and made that edit. I'll revert it if anyone thinks we should best discuss how to cull the material from that article on the talk page before adding it. Nishidani (talk) 15:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

No worries. Thanks for taking the first shot. Perplexed566 (talk) 13:27, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

So,

This article seems to be a load of self aggrandizing material. NGO itself is sourced to a dozen times, and I'm just thinking that if ngo's actions were worthy of inclusion that a third party would have written about them. That said I made this edit per purely self promotion and I feel like I should remove many more sections where ngo talks about itself as no one else cares to, but I don't have much time and would like help, advice on how to remove the more intertwined stuff. Sepsis II (talk) 03:11, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Clearly there is work to be done. I'll try to come back over time and make tweaks. I encourage others (and Sepsis) to follow his example.--Perplexed566 (talk) 15:25, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

References to NGO Monitor sources should be deleted

NGO Monitor is a highly unbalanced and politically motivated right wing organization which dedicates its activities to harm and to smear human rights organizations that have anything to do with Israel. However, anyone looking at the abundance of references to NGO Monitor on Wikipedia (try to google "NGO Monitor" site:en.wikipedia.org) will be amazed as this amounts in the hundreds, including in many cases references to the declarations of their self appointed "president" Gerald Steinberg, as if he was Mao. It is important to start deleting all references to NGO Monitor on Wikipedia as this is a highly non-reliable source for anything. That work is a tedious one, but I will start soon and any help on that will be appreciatedרסטיניאק (talk) 18:23, 7 September 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

This sounds like an issue you could take to WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. But they may not consider the question unless you can cite a particular case where the value of NGO Monitor as a source can be asked. EdJohnston (talk) 18:29, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks EdJohnston for the suggestion. Trouble is that there are so many cases with both NGO Monitor and CAMERA that need to be reported and blocked. Another such organization, Im Tirtzu was declared a few days ago by the court to have have elements of Fascism, thus rejecting its libel suit against a group that suggested the comparison. It is hard to find substantial differences between CAMERA, NGO Monitor and Im Tirtzu.רסטיניאק (talk) 08:25, 8 September 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

tags

The "neutrality" and "COI" tags -- do we still need them? Answering that question in the affirmative requires some identification of a problem in the text (not just a history of Soosim shenanigans). Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know but I think you might have the criteria the wrong way around for the COI template. That could have been added on the basis that the editor who made the most edits worked for NGO Monitor, without any COI impact assessment having been done, simply to indicate that the article needed checking. Has that check been completed ? I don't know, so I don't know whether the template should be removed. Sean.hoyland - talk 19:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the neutrality tag could be taken out. There is so much pro and contra on the page that, whatever Soosim did, the reader has enough information to evaluate claims and counter claims by herself. I see no harm, either, in removing the COI tag. Soosim is history, his game exposed on this page.

As a general principle I don't think we should allow tags to be stamped on articles unless the brander can come up with a decent or indecent list of identifiable problems. This hasn't been done. So, my suggestion is, remove them until evidence is posted that we indeed have these problems. It's a bad article, but mainly because poorly organized, a list of pros and cons without any encyclopedic form or structure. Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest, POV and sockpuppetry on Wikipedia by the main online communications editor of NGO Monitor

The issue of Arnie Draiman (User:Soosim) has been presented here in a manner that is not appropriate. The current title "Social Media" does not reflect the fact of the substantial COI between Wikipedia rules and NGO Monitor's policies of editing. Quoting Haaretz as the source of the story, as if Haaretz claims a fact that is not clear cut yet, was an attempt to belittle the issue of the indefinite edit ban on the main editor of hundreds of articles about rivals of NGO Monitor, practically a ban on the whole organization's editing policy (as that was clearly the directive given to Draiman by his boss Gerald Steinberg, who still keeps Draiman as one of the main five employees, see the article). I suggested to change to the following title and paragraph but was reverted by one editor on the grounds of quoting from WP:COIN and WP:AE. However, based on responses in the help desk there is no problem to use those WP sections as reliable sources as they are not articles and there is no circular referencing. Anyone wishes to suggest modifications to the following or to comment on reverting me, before I revert back ? Here is my suggestion:

Title: Conflict of Interest by NGO Monitor's Wikipedia editor

The on-line communications editor of NGO Monitor, Arnie Draiman, concealed his employment by Gerald Steinberg in NGO Monitor while editing under the username Soosim . In response to a direct question about his relation to Steinberg, Draiman wrote: "about three years ago, i came across an article that steinberg wrote, i liked it and follow him and his work closely". In addition to many WP:POV edits, Draiman also used a sockpuppet. Subsequently, this NGO Monitor employee was topic-banned indefinitely on any Wikipedia articles related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Draiman was a major editor of the articles of his employers NGO Monitor and Gerald Steinberg, and performed hundreds of edits of human rights organizations, such as B'Tselem, the New Israel Fund, Human Rights Watch and many others, to which the Monitor's president, Professor Gerald Steinberg, is opposed.רסטיניאק (talk) 05:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

One editor responded on the helpdesk that it may be a matter of WP:notability of the event. In my opinion, this is indeed Notable. That editor also suggests to continue the discussion on this talk page, so here it is.רסטיניאק (talk) 06:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)רסטיניאק

Amiram, you've edited your own article (Amiram Goldblum) extensively. Are you sure you want to be complaining about COI and violations of wikipedia policy? (And before the "outing" police jump up with knee-jerk reactions, have a look at [1] and [2] Kipa Aduma, Esq. (talk) 07:10, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I was about to say the same thing. I also notice that you were warned in May 2013 about your generally aggressive editing style, of which this outburst and public settling of accounts is yet another example.--Geewhiz (talk) 07:20, 7 November 2013 (UTC)