User talk:Paul Siebert

Welcome! Hello, Paul Siebert, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Arnoutf (talk) 20:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Assistance request

Hello Paul Siebert,

May I have your opinion on Grylev, A. N. : Dnepr, Karpaty, Krym. Osvobozdenie Pravobereznoj Ukrainy i Kryma v 1944 g. 1970 which have been recently added to the article Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive?

I'm dubious of the claim made by Grylev that the harsh winter hindered the Red Army's advance, as claimed by Tai3chinirv7ana diff while still being victorious. This reminds me of German post-war apologetic historiography, see K.e.coffman excellent webpage, Brutal Winter. Also some claims of casualties and equipment losses seems highly suspect, and in stark contrast to recent studies. Regards Wildkatzen (talk) 11:16, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Wildkatzen, I see no problem with the statement about the effect of harsh winter: the Red Army was by no means immune to that factor. I also see no parallelism between the apologetic German historiography, which attributed their own defeat solely to the harsh winter, and the Soviet historiography that claim that the victory was achieved despite a harsh winter. By the way, according to modern historical data, in 1912, Kutuzov's army in Russia suffered from the cold weather at the same extent as the army of Napoleon, and it sustained comparable losses. However, it would not be apologetic to say about that (although it would be apologetic to claim Napoleon was defeated by "Gen. Frost": he lost his army primarily due to terrible logistics, and that happened long before the winter started).

With regard to the rest, I agree that the book written in 1970 during post-Khruschev's censorship conditions is hardly a good source for figures, and if more fresh data are available they should be used instead. However, I am not sure the fresh sources based on German data are good for Soviet losses.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Paul, thanks for the reply. I didn't mean to draw doubt about the Soviet victory during the harsh winter, but I do find that some of the explanation given, could've been straight coming from exculpatory narratives. My point is that the attrition and losses experienced by harsh meteorological conditions applies to both, the attacker and defender and is not limited to one side. Or was it really praticular difficult for the Soviet AF to deploy their aicraft under these conditions? By the wording used, the German AF was apparently unaffected and only the Soviet AF had these glaring issues. It seems to be an excuse for the high losses during the offensive, even though in 1944, the Soviet pilots definitively fought on equal terms. The poor maintenance and reconditioning affected the Soviet AF much more than unavailable airfields because of mud as it was claimed. And supply lines on the German sides were also generally poorer as they mostly relied upon horse-drawn for transport and movement of heavy equipment.

Well, I'm fine with using Russian sources, but Tai3chinirv7ana dismiss the use of recent studies diff based on German sources aswell. Is it possible that Grylev used Müller-Hillebrand book from 1956 for his work? That might explain the difference of the Divisions destroyed. Much of Hillebrands figures are estimates and based on memoirs and distorted German POV. Which why I don't recommend it either. Wildkatzen (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Wildkatzen, to the best of my knowledge, harsh weather has more impact on advancing forces than on retreating ones, because they are moving in the area where infrastructure is mostly destroyed. The same can be said about air forces: retreating Germans just relocated their plains to their own airfields that already had all needed supplies, whereas advancing Soviets had to use severely damaged airfields captured from Germans or to build new ones, and to deliver fuel, parts etc. That looks obvious.

With regard to German sources, please, keep in mind the following general aspect. During the Cold war era and even after that, the Western scholars had a full access to German archival materials and to ex-Wehrmach generals, so lion's share of the information about Eastern front was obtained from Germans. In contrast, due to Iron Curtain, and due to ideological and language barriers, the information from the Soviet side was almost unavailable. As a result, the whole history of the Eastern Front is written from German perspective, and that happened not because Western scholars are biased, but because the sources they have are intrinsically biased, and another point of view was unavailable to them. In addition, the German sources, where everything is meticulously recorded and documented, look much more trustworthy than Soviet ones. However, that is not always the case. Let me give you just two examples.

First, tank losses. When you read German books about tank losses, you may be surprised by the astonishing ratio of German and Soviet tank losses. Usually, it is attributed to better quality of German tanks (German "medium tank" Panther was just 2 tonnes lighter than than late Soviet IS-2 "heavy tank") and better training. However, another reason was the difference in the methods of calculation of losses. According to Germans, a tank was not considered lost if it had been evacuated into a repair facility. Even if the tank is totally destroyed and irrepairable, but the Germans had managed to transport it to a repair shop it was not considered as lost, just damaged. However, when we look at the number of operational tanks at every concrete date, we see that the number of losses was much greater. In contrast, the Soviets considered every severely damaged tank as lost, and this approach was reasonable, taking into account that their tanks were much cheaper.

Second, it is generally believed in the West, that the Soviets were the initiators of the Soviet-German rapprochement in 1939, and that belief is based on the report about the meeting of the German state secretary with a Soviet ambassador Merekalov in April 1939. According to this report, Merekalov came to the secretary and, after some unimportant introduction expressed his concern about the state of Soviet-German relationship, and after that added that the Soviet side would take needed steps to their improvement. However, the Merekalov's own report about the same meeting, which was declassified only in 1990, gives a totally different picture: Merekalov had a very concrete goal: to request that Germany, which captured Czech Skoda military plant, took all needed steps to allow Skoda to fulfill the contract they signed before Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany, because the USSR already paid money for that. That was a very hard meeting, and at the end Merekalov said few general words about the needs to improve relationships, which, obviously, was just a politeness. What was the reason for this discrepancy? Obviously, a chief of German foreign ministry, Ribbentrop, was a sincere Russophil, who wanted a full alliance with the USSR, and his subordinates wanted to show to their boss that they are making progress in that direction, and their reports were written in such a way that their boss would be pleased. In contrast, Merekalov had no need to shift accents in his report: his boss, Litvinov, requested him to figure out the state of Skoda contract (the telegram from Moscow is available), and Merekalov did that. However, Western historians didn't know about that, and during 50 years after the war his books implicitlty reflected Ribbentrop's vision.

In connection to that, due to the unintentional pro-German bias of English historical literature, it is always good to use good quality Soviet sources to somewhat dilute this bias. By saying that, I do not mean Soviet sources are better, they just biased in n opposite direction.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:59, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Kyiv vs Kiev

Hello, I am new to the realm of Wikipedia content editing, but I saw that you made a change in the post on Kyiv (Kiev) recently. In adding to the discussion, I would recommend having the main title of the page called Kyiv, with Kiev being secondary. While Russian is a major language in Ukraine, only about 8 million Ukrainians speak Russian as their mother tongue.

Furthermore, Ukrainian is the official language, and many Ukrainians, especially since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, have been trying to get western media outlets to use Kyiv instead of Kiev. However, some argue that Kyiv will confuse the readers. I think a great way to start getting Kyiv into more mainstream use is through Wikipedia, since many individuals get surface level information.

As an experienced editor, I would hope that you would consider this request.

If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer!

PK

Pkop1 (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Pkop1, please, read talk page discussions (we have had at least three during the last year). Briefly, "Kiev" should stay because it is a standard English word (like Prague, not "Praha", the "Hague", not "den Haag", Vienna, not "Wien", Rome, not "Roma"). The fact that English "Kiev" coincides with a Russian name transliterated to the Latin alphabet is misleading: "Kiev" is not just a transliteration of Russian "Киев", it is an English word.

With regard to "official", Wikipedia is based on good quality secondary sources, whereas official documents are primary sources.

And, by the way, Wikipedia's goal is not a popularisation of new trends, the goal is to adequately represent a status quo, and currently "Kiev" is an English dictionary word, whereas "Kyiv" is a transliteration of the official Ukrainian name. We do not popularise "Moskva" (instead of the English "Moscow") or "Köln" (instead of English "Cologne"), why should "Kyiv" be an exception?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:30, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt response. That makes sense about the other translations and that Kiev is an English word.

-keep up the good work! Pkop1 (talk) 04:50, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Notice of arbitration

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland/Evidence. Please add your evidence by June 23, 2019, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, – bradv🍁 15:08, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

"Jewish Welcome" Photo

In regards to your comment here, a couple of comments/observations:

1. The Polish text PB added to Commons - diff - "To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku." - "This is one of the most interesting photographs of Bialystok during the Soviet occupation. In the background, the church of Saint Roch, and around the sickle, hammers, five-pointed stars - the symbols of the new order." - which does match more or less match TVP (itself - a questionable[1][2] source) - but completely mismatches the "Jewish welcome" in English. This Polish/English mismatch probably helped this survive longer in Commons - as a Polish editor verifying just the Polish description would see something OK (and I'll note - this file isn't used on Polish wiki.... So no reason for someone to amble by, but....) - "only" the English was bad.
2. Poeticbent added the image to the English Wikipedia 10 minutes after uploading it to commons - so the intended use of this file on-wiki was rather obvious.
3. In a reverse image search - I see this appearing on wykop.pl on 24 Septmeber 2015. in this thread. One commenter (banned) describes this as "@czysta: #zydokomuna" - or "pure Żydokomuna" - however there is no description there that matches the "Jewish welcoming" text (other than extrapolating from the general Żydokomuna comment) - and obviously comments by wykop.pl users are not a reliable source. I'll note that the image on wykop.pl seems higher-resolution and fuller scene. The version of commons is also contrast adjustment + rotation + cropping (edges + bottom + alot of top) - this is trivial image manipulation (I could do it, and I'm not a photoshop/gimp wizard) - but does require some expertise. The other option is that it was cropped from a version of the musuem poster - which is rotated (but probably a slightly different version than the one in onliner) - cropping is even more trivial than rotating/contrast (close to anyone).

I'm out of words at ARBCOM (and I have alot yet to add - the image isn't the worst of it - just perhaps the most striking - the ethnicity table you uncovered is worse IMHO) - so anyway - this is what I was able to track down of this photo online. Icewhiz (talk) 06:47, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

About that photo

This source issue is not as straightforward as I thought. At first I thought that Poeticbent most likely took it from the same website from which he copied, word to word, the misleading description: "To jedna z najciekawszych fotografii Białegostoku z czasów sowieckiej okupacji. W tle kościół Świętego Rocha, a wokół sierpy, młoty, pięcioramienne gwiazdy - symbole nowego porządku." [3], but that site indeed seems to only have a zoomed in part of the image. The original source is a mystery. The site of the Polish description, a Polish regional TVP, is reliable, through clearly, it makes mistakes (journalists are not perfect). That said, I have no clue how this mutated into the English description "Jewish welcome banner" since the Polish text does not say something like that. But note that a bit later Poeticbent linked in edit summary a new source, [4] (also roughly reliable, publication related to IPN). It has an even (larger frame, at least) better version of the photo on page 25. The document is in English and and contains a caption for it "Soviet street propaganda in front of St. Roch Church in Białystok. (From Tomasz Wiśniewski’s collection, “In Search of Poland” Society)". Personally, I don't think the caption change is malicious, never attribute malice to what can be explained as a common mistake, but I also remain puzzled re to the source of "welcoming banner". Perhaps Poeticbent saw the photo described as such at whatever site he copied it in the first place, but at the very least, failure to provide proper source is, well, a mistake. Hardly bannable, unless of course we assume he introduced a bias/falsehood on purpose. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:41, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

User:Piotrus, "Soviet street propaganda" does not contradict to the statement that it was taken during first days of German occupation, and it directly contradicts to the original Poeticbent's statement (it was directed at Jews, not at Soviet army). Moreover, I am sure that during any military occupation, the occupying administration makes posters written in local languages: thus, I believe it is easy to find photos of German occupation administration posters written in Ukrainian, Polish, etc.

However, definitely, this photo has lower resolution than the museum poster photo, so the original photo was different. And, definitely, this is an election banner (some words are possible to read).

Piotrus, unless Poeticbent provided the information on where exactly did he take the "Jews greeting Soviet Army" description, we should assume he himself invented it. Taking into account other examples of his edits, where he links Jewish ethnicity and Communism and Stalinist crimes (using the sources that either do not say so or say otherwise), the only explanation is that he was introducing a bias/falsehood on purpose, so he must be banned. You are a reasonable and intellectual person, and I really cannot understand why you do not understand that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:36, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:AGF. Two edits out of thousands are not a pattern. But I am open to reviewing more evidence, and seeing if it can indeed outweigh things like him creating articles for dozens of Jewish WWII ghettos and many other Jewish Polish topics that wouldn't exist on English Wikipedia if he didn't do it. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

AGF suggests to assume good faith unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. These two edits seem to be a very clear evidence. Note, I didn't look any evidences against Poeticbent: I just was reading this case, and I found several accusations against Icewhiz. The diffs demonstrated that he removed the mention of ethnicity from the articles about some Jewish Stalinists. And I asked myself: how the articles about Polish Stalitists are organized? I started to read, and I fount the article where the infamous table was presented. I ased myself: "interesting, who added it?" I looked through the article's history, and I found that that table was added by Poeticbent. Note, I was not looking for evidences against him, I found that table by accident. Therefore, we cannot rule out a possibility that we are dealing not with "two edits out of thousands", because I have no idea what the result of the comprehensive analysis of Poeticbent's "legacy" will be.

By the way, you yourself do not seem to be totally innocent. When I was analyzing accusations against Icewhiz, I found that the edit he reverted was done by you. Do you realize that to start the section about antisemitism of Poles as one of the factors of the Holocaust with the words "Rescue of Jews..." creates a totally wrong impression that a significant fraction of Poles was engaged in rescue of Jews (especially, taking into account that the previous section tells about saving of Jews by Warsaw Poles)? However, majority of non-Polish sources say that the Poles who were saving Jews were more an exception than a rule, and a general attitude was deeply hostile. I perfectly understand that currently Poland is inventing its brilliant past (which is quite normal, every nation during some period of its history does that), however, that is definitely a local, and deeply mangled version of history. It is impossible to study the history of Great Patrioic War using predominantly Russian sources, it is impossible to write a history of OUN based on writing of Ukrainian scholars, and it would be equally wrong to write a history of Poland during WWII based on predominantly Polish sources. You know English, you seem to have a full access to good articles of Western scholars - please, look at the works of your compatriots through a prism of Western scholars: they have no reason to be biased, and they will help you to identify a bias in Polish sources. --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:52, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Paul, I'm guessing that Poeticbent got it from this sentence in the article itself: "Na zdjęciach z lat tysiąc dziewięćset trzydzieści dziewięć - czterdzieści jeden Białystok jest miastem, które radośnie wita wojska sowieckie i czeka na nową władzę.". Translation: "On the photos from the years 1939-1941 we see Bialystok as a city which joyously welcomes the Soviet Army and awaits the new authorities". The plural, "photos", is in the source. I assume, that Poeticbent assumed that this was one of these photos, although carefully reading the source there is no indication that this particular photo is one of these. The article is about an exhibition of wartime photos at the University of Bialystok library. Presumably, judging by the description of the exhibition, there were some other photos in the exhibition which had signs welcoming the Red Army. Whether these were written in Polish or Russian or Yiddish or whatever is unknown. This is definitely a mistake. A very sloppy mistake. But there's no indication of malice or any intent to misrepresent the photo purposefully. I presume (reasonably I think) that Poeticbent does not read Yiddish.

The issue as it relates to this ArbCom case, is that Icewhiz has been parading this photo around so he can scream and wail about the collapse of Wikipedia, play himself as some kind of martyr, and try to smear OTHERS by association. He keeps referring to this as a WP:HOAX in fits of hyperbolic, but calculated, faux-outrage. It's not a hoax. WP:HOAX states: "It is considered a hoax if it was a clear or blatant attempt to make up something, as opposed to libel or a factual error". This was a factual error based on a confusingly written source. Icewhiz, on his user page after proclaiming bombastically that the existence of this photo proves that Wikipedia has entered the "post-truth era" (sic), then proceeds to award himself multiple accolades and salutations for having corrected the caption. Great, good for him. On the case request page he tried to not-so-subtly associate me with it. But here is a thing: when he fixed the caption nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody disagreed with him, or challenged him or reverted him. Hell, I've never even edited the Bialystok Ghetto article. And of course by the time he fixed the caption Poeticbent has been long gone from Wikipedia. But he's pretending like this was some odious dispute he was part of. There was no dispute. There was an error. He fixed it. Good for him. Nobody disagreed. That's it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:06, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Actually, while I'm here I got a favor to ask. We've had plenty of disagreements (and I'm about to disagree with you on something else right above) in the past and I'm sure we will disagree again. But I've always appreciated your knowledge of these topics, as well as your honest approach to editing (unlike some editors *cough*Icewhiz*cough*, you don't misrepresent what they say to win disputes or go running around lying about them, trying to get them sanctioned, and I've never seen you misrepresent a source). So here is the thing - Icewhiz is making A LOT of accusations against me. Obviously I got to respond to at least some of them. You know, "rebuttal". But we're limited in how much we can write (1000 words apparently). Equally obviously I can't respond to all of them. Most of them are total bullshit where he is either lying about what's in them or taking a minor disagreement and pretending like it is some super horrible thing, or insinuating stuff by linking to irrelevant sources and notions I've never used or presented. But nobody's perfect, so maybe I did make some mistakes. I'd like to have some way to separate out the wheat from the chaff and equally equally obviously I may not be the best judge of which of MY OWN edits are "bad". And I don't mean the silly stuff like "you should've been more diplomatic on the talk page", I mean the real content, substance stuff. So I'm asking you to audit me. Can you look through his evidence and see if there's anything there that I should take seriously? I genuinely am interested, and your opinion does carry weight with me (though again, I might very well disagree). Like I said, don't pay attention to the "Volunteer Marek was uncivil" crap, just the actual content related stuff. And if you don't have time, or don't want to get too involved, I totally understand. Thanks either way.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)