Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Undue weight and original research in the Causes of the War of the Pacific

Undue weight and original research in the Causes of the War of the Pacific

The filing party (the editor who opened this request) will add the basic details for this dispute below.

Editors involved in this dispute

1. Keysanger (talk · contribs) – filing party
2. Dentren (talk · contribs)
3. MarshalN20 (talk · contribs)
4. Neil P. Quinn (talk · contribs)
5. Robert McClenon (talk · contribs)

Articles affected by this dispute

1. War of the Pacific (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Other attempts at resolving this dispute that you have attempted

• Talk:War of the Pacific#Original synthesis issues
• Talk:War of the Pacific#Third Opinion: Original synthesis issues
• Talk:War of the Pacific#Third Opinion: Original synthesis issues (2. attempt)
• Talk:War of the Pacific#A fourth opinion
• Talk:War of the Pacific#Tags

Issues to be mediated

What is this dispute about? What sections, sentences, or issues in the article(s) can you not agree on? If you are the editor who opened this request, list these issues to be mediated under "Primary issues". If you did not open this request, you can add additional issues to be mediated under "Additional issues". The issues to be mediated would be properly agreed upon later, if this request for mediation is accepted.

Primary issues (added by the filing party)

1. whether the section "Causes of the war" sufficiently represents the opinion of the authors according to their importance in the English historical literature about the War of the Pacific.
2. whether the section "Causes of the war" contains any original research not included in the sources.
3. whether wikipedia authors can contrast the arguments of different authors when they do not explicitly mention each other as did in the section "Causes of the war".

Additional issues (added by other parties)

• Additional issue 1
• Additional issue 2

Parties' agreement to mediation

If you are a named party, please sign below and indicate whether you agree or refuse to participate in mediation. Remember that all editors are obliged to resolve disputes about content through discussion, mediation, or other similar means. If you do not wish to participate in mediation, you must arrange another form of dispute resolution. Comments and questions should be made underneath the numbered list below, to avoid confusion.

1. Agree. Keysanger (talk) 16:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

We deal sources according to Wikipedia's WP:RSUE. We deal time according to Dentren and we reset the passage of the article to the status before Dentren's tags until the Mediation is finished. --Keysanger (talk) 09:12, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

1. Neutral. I haven't been involved in editing the article except to try to provide Third Opinions. I am willing to take part in the mediation, but I don't think that should be necessary because the mediator will have full control. I strongly encourage User:Dentren to agree to take part in the mediation. This has been going on too long. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:48, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
2. Decline. The article on the "War of the Pacific" does not require mediation. It requires an entire re-write by an editor who not only knows the history of the conflict, but who is also aware that the historiography of the War of the Pacific has conflicting versions from each of the involved countries. Keysanger has been arduously spreading the Chilean perspective of the war both here and in the Spanish Wikipedia, while also deleting all information that contradicts this version of the history. Most recently, he moved the page on the "Treaty of Defensive Alliance (1873)" between Peru and Bolivia to the wrongly titled Secret treaty of Alliance between Peru and Bolivia(1873) (see [1]). You can check that Keysanger's move is incorrect simply by taking a brief look at Douglas M. Giber's International Military Alliances, 1648-2008 (see [2]); the alliance text clearly names this document as the "Treaty of Defensive Alliance." Therefore, I reiterate that any sort of mediation with Keysanger is not going to be productive in any stretch of the imagination. The article requires fresh eyes and someone without an axe to grind to present a more complete perspective of this highly controversial nineteenth century conflict. Good luck on that!--MarshalN20 ^Talk 22:09, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

• I can't believe that I missed this one: Keysanger deletes from the introduction that Bolivia was left as a landlocked country as a result of the conflict (see [3]). That's one of the conflict's most important results; it has shaped the twentieth-century foreign policy of Bolivia and its international relations with Chile and other neighboring countries (in part leading to the later Chaco War). How exactly is Keysanger still allowed to edit this article?--MarshalN20 ^Talk 23:26, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

1. Comment. Issue 1 by Keysanger aims to limit the debate to "English historical literature" which compromises the divisity of views in the article and favour English-language authors like William Sater which Keysanger try to present as the foremost authority in this article. If this point is amended and a time schedule is made (I cannot write every day) I will participate. Dentren | ^Talk 01:42, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Decision of the Mediation Committee

This section should only be edited by a mediator. The Mediation Committee's representative will indicate in due course whether the request is accepted (meaning a mediator will be assigned) or rejected (meaning you will have to try a different type of dispute resolution). If the mediator asks you a question in this section, you may edit here.

• Reject. Fails to satisfy prerequisite to mediation #5 that a "majority of the parties to the dispute consent to mediation." For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:34, 7 March 2016 (UTC) (Chairperson)