User talk:Anonimu/Complete Works/Tom 2 (2009)

Despre ER

Salut. Deoarece am vazut ca existe discutii pe wikipedia despre proiectul ER (nu inteleg de ce ar fi?) vreau sa aduc cateva lamuriri.

1. proiectul ER e un proiect independent de wikipedia, sper ca asta e clar
2. nu ne-am propus sa fim in niciun fel, nici antinationalisti, nici nationalisti, in general nici pro nici contra la nimic - ci sa scriem dupa surse; ca uneori apar erori sau scapari e altceva
3. orice vizitator e bine venit pe ER, inclusiv voi de pe wikipedia; daca ce vedeti acolo nu e bine scris (sau chiar prost scris), daca exista erori, puteti sa dati un e-mail cu problemele observate, iar daca consideram necesar (daca exista surse etc) facem modificarile de rigoare; asta asteptam de la orice vizitator al sitului nostru; daca nu doriti sa faceti asta nu e nicio problema, pur si simplu igonarati-ne; exista atatea situri in internet, puteti consulta altele nu e nicio suparare
4. proiectul ER este un proiect particular pe banii celor care l-au infiintat (inclusiv ai mei), prin urmare nu prea avem a da seama nimanui despre ce si cum facem; din perspectiva asta nu inteleg ce cauta numele proiectului prin diverse discutii ca asta
5. nu vreau sa acuz pe nimeni de nimic, dar nu cred ca ar fi normal sa ajung la concluzia ca wikipedia este folosita de catre unii wikipedisti pentru a denigra alte situri; daca asa stau lucrurile am sa cer opinia wikimedia in acest caz;
6. despre licentierea materialului vedeti aici (spun asta pt ca a fost o neintelegere recenta, care s-a rezolvat fara prea multa zarva)
7. repet pentru a fi cat mai clar, nu vrem dispute, certuri, sicanari etc. nici cu voi romanii de pe en.wikipedia, nici cu altcineva; ER este un proiect care nu are nevoie de aprobarea nimanui sa existe (cu atat mai putin a unor anonimi); celor care considera ca articolele noastre sunt proaste le uram sanatate si putere sa scrie altele mai bune, iar pe noi sa ne ignore; va cer mult daca va rog sa ignorati ER daca nu va convine? eu cred ca sunt rezonabil. va multumesc si va urez putere/timp/resurse sa scrieti articole la fel de bune ca pe ER sau mai bune, asta in cazul le considerati pe ale noastre proaste Mihai@ER —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.25.225.51 (talk) 00:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Până acum am ignorat acel sait, singura ocazie cu care am citit câte ceva a fost atunci când conţinut de acolo a fost adus pe Wikipedia. Citind şi ceva pe lângă, am fost uimit şi mai ales profund dezamăgit de ceea ce se întâmplă acolo. O astfel de viziune asupra lumii mi se pare incompatibilă cu politica de neutralitate editorială a Wikipedie şi tocmai de aceea am fost nevoit să notez gravele carenţe ale ER atunci când conţinut de pe acel sait a fost "transbordat" aici.Anonimu (talk) 04:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

re: User:Anonimu

From my talk page  Roger Davies ^talk 08:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello. On 13 June, you announced that Anonimu's ban was being suspended on four conditions. I believe his latest violation of point 4 ("you behave at all times impeccably") is so serious as to warrant a restoration of that ban. I will say nothing of his tendentious edits that continually interfere with more productive editors' work. But I will mention this edit, because it crosses a very clear line.

First, a bit of context. There's a Romanian-language wiki (ER for short) from which I translated two articles a few weeks ago. I was completely unaware this was against their policy; I cleared up the matter with their founder; the articles were deleted; end of story. Except that Anonimu decided to show up on my talk page, unsolicited, as the "voice of conscience". The first two sentences of his message aren't really actionable, although they are condescending and smarmy (and ironic in their attempts to lecture me, since I've turned out vastly more content than he has). The third sentence begins to cross a line: I have some respect for the people at ER; they know how to write encyclopedic articles, even if not quite at our standards; and they're certainly not "the Romanian Conservapedia". And the fact that their article on the Universul newspaper doesn't mention its enthusiastic support for Romania's wartime regime doesn't imply the author meant to conceal anything; it may simply have been a function of the sources he had access to. I also resent the charge that I'd draw upon articles from a place that is as he portrays it.

Be that as it may, it's in his final sentence that Anonimu unambiguously violates his terms. He makes reference to the fact that I "used to claim" I don't let my "real-life political views" influence my editing. That's true. I still claim that; what's more, I practice it consistently. But the implication here is disgusting: it's that I'm a fascist admirer who edits in order to cover up darker aspects of Romanian history because of such views. I am emphatically not a fascist; I find much to abhor in Romania's wartime record; I have sought to detail that history fairly and fully; and I resent any charge to the contrary. These types of slanderous insinuations I find intolerable. In the four months since he was allowed back here, Anonimu has not shown himself an asset to the project, and far from being in a position to scold me about NPOV, he should not be editing here at all. This experiment has gone on long enough, I would submit. - Biruitorul ^Talk 23:11, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I've alerted Anonimu's mentor, AGK, to this discussion.  Roger Davies ^talk 08:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

It will be interesting to look through the diffs Biruitorul provided:

1. I insert a template to warn the editor after an editor makes a pointy edit, trying to discredit reliable sources by attributing them an erroneous mathematical calculation. The editor who did this had no idea what the sources said, yet he went ahead just to promote his POV.
2. I reword the text about a BLP to remove an unsourced accusations (which even if attributed, would only represent a fringe view) and in the edit summary I note the author of the source used in nearby text (but not for the above fact) was fired following a RL plagiarism scandal. The editor who first added the accusation states on the talk page that he finds my rewording OK.
3. I request a source for a very spurious statement, after an editor brought the matter on the talk page. After several edits all other editors on the article agree that they can't find any source for that: [1], [2], [3] (see the summaries).
4. I request a source for a fact not presented in any source on the talk page. None is brought to date.
5. I try too reword a politically loaded phrases ("harmed the Romanian village", "peasants lost their dignity and identity", "families were wrecked by poverty" to a more encyclopaedic-looking text. Biruitorul just reverted to the strong POV version, and constantly refused to make the above remarks into a direct quotation (so that WP doesn't become a political leaflet).
6. I remove an original synthesis that suppressed the self-identification of Moldovans, and disregarded the sources just to impose a pointy opinion. I also restore the data per sources.(Note that Biruitorul several times stated on talk pages he thinks Moldovans are just Soviet-brainwashed Romanians)
7. I reverted a strongly opinionated unsourced edit. It was agreed that the History section of that article should be reduced, per other GA and FA articles on other countries (See also the summaries of two established editors when they reverted to the same version I was reverting: [4], [5]). Yet the editor I reverted decided that "reducing" means only removing anything against his POV. This resulted in severely one-sided (i.e. Romanian nationalist) view on the history of Moldova.

The more baffling thing is the way how Biruitorul interprets my reminder to respect WP:CITE an not use sources he hadn't read personally and my advice to rewrite some obviously POV articles according to WP:NPOV (thus also solving the "plagiarism" problem). Flabbergasting as it may sound, Biruitorul accuses me that by reminding him two core WP policies I am actually calling him a "fascist".
As for ER, it is a Romanian Conservapedia, and if you don't trust me, you may want to see the assessment of a truly established WP editor (60,000+ edits, 75% of them in mainspace), which incidentally is also one of Biruitorul's main WP collaborators: see the 2nd paragraph here and the second part of the last paragraph here.Anonimu (talk) 10:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• I'm afraid that I don't think I have enough expertise in this subject area to effectively evaluate whether the diffs cited do constitute evidence of disruption. What I will say, however, is that Anonimu should make a point of not editing those articles which are contentious or at which his editing is repeatedly criticised. Too many unbanned editors mess things up because they get themselves involved in complex or controversy-prone articles. AGK 12:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

You may not be aware, but both Biruitorul and the other vocal editor in all the articles whose diffs were provided above (ie. User:Dc76) are members of the secret Eastern european mailing list (WP:EEML). As it can be seen from the archive available freely on the internet, they repeatedly discussed how to "get me". I consider this just another episode of their plan to eliminate people whose POV they don't like.Anonimu (talk) 12:27, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• Hrm, that is true. For the record, I do find myself not convinced by the complaints against you; but I would nevertheless continue to emphasise the importance of being careful to not engage in any activity which might be used as evidence to support a case asking for your ban to be restored. Nothing has yet been proven with respect to the accusations presented against you, and so, insofar as I am concerned, your post-unban record remains clean. But I still ask that you don't shoot yourself in the foot. AGK 14:01, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your objective review of the accusations against me. I'm trying hard to respect all the conditions I accepted for my unban (I am currently doublechecking every source before I add it to mainspace), which is not made easier by the constant baiting going on. As hard as I am trying to stay away from certain articles, the edits there are so evidently unreasonable that I can't just ignore them (WP is after all the main mean for English-speaking people to get information about parts of the World little known to them. It's important for such topics to be accurately referenced with reliable sources, so that WP doesn't become a medium to export nationalist myths). I can only hope that more people interested in Romania-related topics will one day join WP and watch those articles for such disinformation.Anonimu (talk) 17:43, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, we already know Anonimu can talk himself out of a jam. He is too smart to edit war or otherwise engage in disruptive behavior; and we all know how difficult it is to prove a long-term campaign of insidious disruption is being carried out. I am afraid that there is no good way to deal with disruptive editors like him. Against smart POV-pushers and similar disruptive users, Wikipedia has little defense. The only way to deal with them is to create content and ensure they cannot destroy it - and hope that one day they will realize that they cannot disrupt Wikipedia.

I resent accusations that Dc76 and I collaborated on this latest request, and I state categorically that we had no prior communication regarding it. This is not a question of a "plan to eliminate people whose POV [we] don't like" (talk about a breach of WP:AGF!), but a desire to ensure core policies are abided by.

And finally, despite all the obfuscation, the fact remains that Anonimu has labelled me a fascist. He cannot get around that, and that is a violation of his terms. - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, IMHO, I think your first paragraph perfectly applies to yourself (after all they do say we can't know anything better that what we're experiencing ourselves).

WP:AGF doesn't require editors to assume good faith if there is serious evidence to the contrary... and the evidence here is simply mind blowing (i.e. the archives of WP:EEML, list which is still active according to members). As can anyone see from above, you consider that by trying to enforce WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, and most importantly WP:BLP I am disrupting the WP. If enforcing these policies are construed as disruption, I can't but wonder what are the "core policies" you're referring here.

Unless you consider breaching WP:CITE and ignoring WP:NPOV a codeword for "fascist", your accusation is simply preposterous.Anonimu (talk) 17:08, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

AGK, I hope you aren't fooled by this line of reasoning. "You used to claim you don't let you RL political views influence your (mainspace?) editing" coming right after "the Romanian Conservapedia (note how the staunch anti-Semitism of Universul is simply ignored, as is its role as Antonescu's mouthpiece during WW2)" is a clear attempt to tie me to people allegedly covering up anti-Semitism and a pro-Antonescu stance. It is a direct insinuation that my "RL political views" are fascist or sympathetic to fascism. It is intolerable. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I guess Biruitorul is going for the shock value, and not for any remotely coherent argumentation. If the Universul example had any motivation, was just to show how dangerous his intellectual dishonesty was: by accurately translating an article from ER he was, involuntarily if we were to AGF, he injected a very peculiar POV into WP, and moreover gave that article an appearance of reliability (it used some sources, but cherry picked by ER or selectively quoted by ER, and it was given the endorsement that comes with their authorship on WP by an established user, i.e. Biruitorul). Nobody is compelled to know the history of "Universul" (even if anyone interested in Romanian WW2 is likely aware of it), and Biruitorul may simply have not know about its violent anti-Semitism, but the result of the translation is just one of the reasons why WP rejects copying from volunteer-contributed projects (or as another editor put it, "plagiarism"). My next phrase was an advice for him to rewrite the article to WP standards, thus refuting any claims that he blindly believes any enormity ER asserts (Biruitorul has constantly expressed, at least on talk pages, opinions that can be characterised as right-wing Conservative, both from an US and an Eastern European POV... of course inconsiderately translating articles from the Romanian take on Conservapedia does raise some doubts). The accusation that I called someone a fascist is simply unwarranted, and moreover seems to be strategy by the EEML group (Dc76 uttered similar accusation some time ago while block shopping).Anonimu (talk) 22:25, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Just for the record: 1) I am not interested to take part in this discussion, 2) I had no idea Biruitorul would be complaining about him, 3) Anonimu did call me fascist before he was banned in 2007. As far as I know he did not call me fascist directly after the unban. He called me repeatedly POV pusher. He called repeatedly my edits POVish, he called repeatedly many reliable mainstream sources POVish, irredentist or worse. His description of Tismaneanu report is a prima face of that (there are many others, but as I said, I only want to state this for the record, I don't intend to file anything against him). 4) He refused mediation. Dc76\^talk 00:14, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

1) Yet you did. 2) Yet in the very recent past you discussed on a secret list about how to game the rules to get me banned. 3)You have been pushing a POV that contradicted reliable sources. Tismaneanu's report, at least the part about Bessarabia (the only which I fully read) is far from being the most reliable source: the repeated use of the first person pronoun (not only plural, but even singular!!!) makes it an extremely subjective, more of an opinion piece than a scientific report. There was no mediation attempt.Anonimu (talk) 12:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

All I will say is this: if Anonimu was so concerned about our readers being misled by the articles in question (which I have never claimed were perfect), he was completely free to expand them to his heart's content. He did not, and thus he has no right to play the judge with me. Moreover, before he again attempts to lump in the intellectual traditions represented by Locke, Burke, Randolph Bourne, Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Russell Kirk, Waugh, John Lukacs, Peter Hitchens, Roger Scruton and so forth, with that embodied by Mussolini, Hitler, Mosley, Dollfuss, Degrelle and their ilk, I would suggest he brush up on his political philosophy. Indeed, he can start by finding out what distinguishes Barbu Catargiu, Marghiloman, Carp, Maiorescu, GG Cantacuzino, Th. Rosetti and Lahovari from A. C. Cuza, Goga, Manoilescu and Stelescu. He may be surprised to find they are not one and the same. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I became aware of that article only when the plagiarism accusation came on your talk page (which I have watchlisted), and by then it was clear that the only way to deal with the copyright infringement was removal of the article. When someone writes an article so POV skewed, an(y) editor has not only the right, but also the duty to note its problems. What is someone supposed to fix when he knows the author hadn't read any of the sources he used in the article? Just hours ago you said you respected ER and that they write good articles... now you compare them with Mussolini, Hitler and the likes. When where you speaking your mind, now or then? Also, you may want to note that I didn't describe you as a conservatory from a Western European POV (which is far from the ideas of Polish and Romanian conservatives-PDL&PC or the Conservapedia-type Republicans).Anonimu (talk) 12:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

If I may (and this is really the main issue that I for one wish to comment on, at least for the time being): to call the ER project "conservative" and attribute its many problems to such an ideology is slanderous for conservatives everywhere. Those who do not use "conservative" as an euphemism to camouflage their far right dementia, who are cosmopolitan free-marketeers, who may value tradition but respect individual rights, and whose patriotic feeling comes with an understanding that centralism may not be a solution (all of which attributes characterize Biruitorul, who, I emphatically state, should either way not be subject to political scrutiny willy-nilly every time an allegation resurfaces), those people can't be seriously identified with the primitive jingoism which (and here I'll have to agree with Anonimul) is indeed so very often displayed by the ER project. Now, the funny thing may be that the nationalist clichés and wooden tongue widespread on the ER project may be perpetuated unintentionally by the ER project, simply because its stewards have a very narrow horizon of expectations - it may not be indicative of an agenda, but rather of the uncritical assimilation of nationalist slogans for so long perpetuated by media and the education system, maybe coupled with some parochial resentment of Western society.

Anonimu's remark is not literally slanderous, though, but metaphorically so: Anonimu was probably just trying to score points in his debate with everybody by going with that argument. That said, I for one agree that Anonimu's comments, while always tiresome, often annoying and occasionally not at all constructive, like his often pointless edits, don't actually seem to, so to speak, "violate the terms of his parole". If walking a thin line is what he is doing, I think he is still "with it" - at least, as far as my interactions with him have went. And I'm saying this after he has recently spent the better part of a day flamebating me on my talk page - since he has stopped doing it, and only gives me the occasional sharp retort (which is, after all, a right I have no intention of denying him), there's no interaction we've had outside the scope of wiki rules.

That said, I can understand why Biruitorul may find some of his persistent, circular remarks beyond the pale of what's acceptable, and I will leave that to the admins' assessment. If it were just from the bit of the above debate that involves me, I could just as well live with ignoring Anonimu's diatribes. Hoping that, with time, Anonimu himself would realize the futility of his approach, and confident that he knows better than to cross any thicker lines.

One more thing, as a word of caution for AGK and other users who may have trouble following Anonimu's arguments on various side issues: while Anonimu very often does do a service to the community by pointing out what are clear problems in various articles (though by no means all he touches), his further comments on various other issues are very often fashioned from partisan and marginal positions. His prime method is to repeat them at regular intervals, regardless of whether they were contradicted (debunked). I myself have grown tired of seeing him come up with the same tailored and contrived theory about the unreliability of the Tismăneanu Report, particularly since I have commented at length on this claim the first 1,000 times it was put forth (for instance, on the Talk:Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina page, where he recently tried to lure in outsiders with the exact same argument in the hope that they won't notice the long threads located higher on the page, where I evidenced the strong bias of such claims). The same goes for several other of his stances. Dahn (talk) 01:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Read my message. I accused Biruitorul of nothing. I just requested him to prove his good faith by rescuing those articles he pretended he expanded. I'm sure many US conservatives (not to talk about the EU ones) are ashamed of Conservapedia, but the fact is that project is best described by this attribute. And I have to remind Dahn that jingoism is not that uncommon in Romanian politics, from the extreme right to the centre left, thus including the Romanian version of conservatism, and that nationalist slogans (both the pre-war and Ceausescu-type) can be found every week in the Romanian Parliamentary debates (oh yes, and in the section about Bessarabia in the Tismaneanu report). About the supposed baiting on your talk page, this was just about you biting (they do sound the same though) new editors by your actions. You still haven't explained how supposedly that discussion would have been of any help to me, even if I have requested a clarification. Oh, and nothing in the above involved you until you decided to join the discussion. I just mentioned one of you edits to show that my personal attitude towards ER was no way fringe, as Biruitorul initially tried to portray it. Since I think I have not misrepresented your contributions, I see no compelling reasons for you to intervene. If you did it, you should assume all initiative. As for your accusations that I'm trying to "lure" outsiders with false info: I was just pointing out that very few in the commission were historians, that the only Western historian in the commission had a very specific research object, insignificant in comparison with the size of the report and that the commission was assembled by order of the Romanian president... all these can be found on the site of the President of Romania, so I can't see how I was spreading disinformation.Anonimu (talk) 15:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I am going to contradict my non-involvement in this discussion only to point out 2 things:

• The last 3 paragraphs Dahn wrote are a correct assessment, IMHO (including the part that Anonimu does occasionally point real existing problems in articles, but does that with a very extreme-left charged language which imho undermines the good)
• I partly disagree with the first paragraph. I believe it is not for us as WP editors to give characterizations to ER. Whatever shortcoming they may have, it is simply not fair to argue about them if we are not using that site as a source. It's better simply not to pass judgements if they serve no purpose. Dc76\^talk 02:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• To clarify the main point of why I opted to comment on ER: note that its supposed ideology had been used to insinuate a claim about Biruitorul's political bias, and I find such characterizations profoundly unfair for Biruitorul - as far as I can deduce from the ER project from my few encounters with it (and, were it not for these incidents, I would simply not care about it and its content), it collects one-sided and often jingoistic claims about Romania's past and present. This is not, from my experience, even remotely similar with: a) the standard of Biruitorul's contributions and his ability to take critical distance or recognize prejudice in sources; b) Biruitorul's political beliefs, which are certainly not parochial (I amiably disagree with him on very many points, if and when our discussions here touch on personal politics, but I don't find them either ridiculous or objectionable, as opposed to the quasi-păşunism rampant on ER). That is my opinion, and I believe I am at right to express criticism about the ER - trusting that I did not transgress the limits of civilized discourse. Not just because it is not forbidden, but also because an administrator of that project has previously used wikipedia talk pages to rant not just against wikipedia as a project, but against yours truly. Not to say that it's all fair game (I haven't insulted him, while he has unashamedly insulted me several times around), but to say that pointing to admins what issues of bias and quality are at stake here is unfair is itself no longer fair. Dahn (talk) 02:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

He just said above that he is somewhat OK with what they're doing there... and he did copy-paste+translate at least 3 articles from there... how's unfair for me to associate him with it?Anonimu (talk)

First of all, one cannot "copy-paste+translate" anything over here - any translation is an adaptation, and implies an effort on the user's part. However you choose to depict the matter, there's also no question of an "at least" - there's absolutely no reason to doubt that Biruitorul researches his work. As a side note, it would seem to me that sometimes he chooses to create small and swift articles to cover topics knowing that his version is not necessarily up to the standards, but he does so to cover the missing info and does not object to improvement on these skeletal structures (in fact, when he doesn't revisit the articles himself, he encourages others to participate in moving the texts beyond that level); this is radically different from my style of editing, but I see nothing wrong with it - and then again, I'm the idiosyncratic one, not him. There is no reason to suspect a common, let alone hidden agenda here.

With that in mind, it would have probably been better for him not to have at all used the ER text as inspiration, since he is himself aware of that project's many "sins of omission", but he probably chose to have articles instead of having red links or stubs, and before having good articles. In any case, what he chose to do in this case is by now inconsequential. But let's not waltz around pretending that we don't know Biruitorul has more often than not been editing his articles with sound research based on modern, professional, sources that they don't appear to have heard of on ER, and very many times did so to cover details or even whole subjects that your average Romanian nationalist would do his best to hide under the rug or put a spin on.

"He just said above that he is somewhat OK with what they're doing there" - so have I, I guess. I too have "some respect" for the ER editors in general (even if I have very little respect for the ideas and style of at least one of them, who sparked this entire debate and who appears to be among those running the show). As suggested by the IP who addressed you in Romanian in the section below (and whose claims, might I add, are themselves evidence for what's flawed with that project), I could live with ignoring the entire ER, and I think we all have reason to from now on. That said, merely admitting that the articles those people write are not illegible (which is basically what Biruitorul said), is certainly not proof of endorsement. Not that even endorsing that project, as problematic as it is in general, would disqualify Biruitorul from anything, or would make him one of their "ilk" (however you define that "ilk"). Are we clear on this? Dahn (talk) 13:57, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Taking "Universul" as an example (Gigurtu doesn't count due to your massive contributions), the text was copied word-by-word from ER (unfortunately I couldn't find the pre-deletion version anywhere), which is frowned upon by WP, and even the references were just pasted, with no indication whatsoever that they were actually read by him (until now he never disputed this matter regarding "Universul", moreover in his conversation with the ER representative he acknowledged that he had just done that... copy-paste+translate diff, his only problem being license, not content.

I think you are trying to get too much from a simple advice to rewrite ER-copied content according to NPOV. Please read the original message that generated the complaint and see how Biruitorul chose to represent it as an accusation of fascism.

Now wait a moment. You just re-stubbed two articles on which a newbie had worked for a week because they didn't have inline references, but you find it is excusable to expand articles with extremely dubious content, where the references are just copied without being verified? I have no idea what is you relation with Biruitorul... but come on....Anonimu (talk) 14:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

"Translated" is the key word, and the rest (including the belief that the content is not copyrighted) was explained at length in Biruitorul's rationale - this is not a case of copy-pasting. For the refs: while it is a better idea not to add them in the text or at least to place them under a "Further reading" header, it's ultimately not that big a deal - a big deal was one when one guy I won't name here created faux citations (let me emphasize that: citations) from a source that was not cited in the text he had copied. That is manipulative; what Biruitorul did is merely mistaken. And, given that these are two among hundreds of thousand of uncited articles and they actually made no objectionable claim (no, not "made by not making"), we have long since blown this out of proportions.

I am not replying to that original message, I am replying to the mistaken, exaggerated and/or misleading claims you made above.

One of the reasons I restubbed those articles did indeed refer to sourcing, but not for the reasons at hand: it's because they were filled with unretrievable direct quotes that even the translated intermediary source (Romanian wikipedia) did not cite, and also because both the model and the result were way below standards. Among the other reasons were I restubbed the articles were: their incoherence (which Romanian wikipedia apparently doesn't take an issue with, but which is frankly hilarious - particularly when the errors of grammar and translation are added to the mix), their inconsistency (the sourcing as can be deduced was hodgepodge) and the fact that the user in question was using mainspace as a sandbox. To this was added the exercise's futility: spending weeks, months or years on writing a sub-mediocre and uncited text is not grounds for wrapping one's arms around it and rocking oneself to sleep; it's grounds for reverts and serious research. Now, there isn't anything in your analogy that would address the case of what Biruitorul did or didn't do.

One more thing: I haven't noticed if anyone actually complained about the Gigurtu article or it was just restubbed on a hunch, but let me tell you that, if they did complain, they were lying and manipulating admins. It's not "because of my edits" that the article was validated, and it's not because of them that it was restored: it is because reality itself invalidates the supposed claim made by the ER people. I suggest you take that back, if you haven't already. Dahn (talk) 17:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Since I've already covered the serious inappropriateness of Biruitorul's action below, I'm not going to do it again here. And please, no more references to third users (that is if that "one guy" is not me or Biruitorul) when they are not present in the discussion. I know you didn't like when Dc76 was talking about you behind your back on this very page.

Yet you had nothing to say about tendentious accusations of fascist-calling.

To paraphrase Biruitorul, why didn't you fix them if they were wrong?Anonimu (talk) 21:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned that third user because his example fits with the problem as you outline it, and because Biruitorul's doesn't. I will strongly and usually immediately act against editors who manipulate citations, but I don't view uncited bland articles as much of a problem (and wikipedia appears to be with me on this one). For the record, I don't object to nor imagine I can prevent my own username from being mentioned in various discussions, nor will I ever try to prevent it (incidentally why I find the "ignore us" appeals by ER people to be ridiculous); I did not object to Dc having discussed me on your talk page, but to the fact that he misrepresented my action - and not even to that especially, but to the fact that my earlier explanations had slipped him by.

That what? That they're tendentious? They are (in the sense that they have a tendency), but so what? Since when are we expected to remain neutral on matters directly involving our lives as individuals? It's like saying someone should prevent people from filing legal complaints because they may be biased. Now, Biruitorul has read something more in the accusations you brought against him, and, to be honest, he did find a risky comment beginning with claims made about quasi-fascist discourse and ending with something about his own political discourse. That's clearly a fact, and he chose to read in it an intentional personal attack. For the sake of argument, it probably is, and if you get away with it, it's because the comment was not explicit, not because it was unintentional. I for one think that is reason enough for you to get away with it (for the sake of a larger truth), but it doesn't make Biruitorul's complaint baseless. There's no valid analogy between, on one hand, attempting to place doubt on all of his edits for some exceptionally weak reason and, on the other, drawing attention to what may have been a veiled personal attack.

In addition to the answers to that question that can be discerned from what I've stated above and below (which you should have already known, given your understandable familiarity with my editing style), I think you know full well that I already had full plates to deal with. I quickly evaluated the "sin of omission" (which, again, wasn't that great a sin - given that the missing issue was already mentioned on other pages, most of which had been expanded by me), and I thought, as I'm thinking right now, that I myself would rather deal with filling in the gaps later. Whether or not it owed its inspiration to the ER is ultimately indifferent to me as an editor, since the articles were separated by a language, and since the article over here appeared to feature no "sins of commission" (only natural, given that I know Biruitorul to be both well-intentioned and competent). Dahn (talk) 22:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, no matter what you think about third user, Biruitorul's case is still relevant. Granted, electric-chair execution is not as appalling as lynching, but it's still something very very wrong. (of course, Biruitorul did neither, but to WP policy scale, the relation is comparable).

If that's what you think please go ahead and write on WP:CIVIL "If you ever request someone to edit according to the neural point of view an article he created about something known for its anti-Semitism, but never mentions the anti-Semitism part, , you are actually calling that user a fascist".

You have already expressed your desire to expand a lot of articles. You may only come to the articles the newbie after 6 months or even more. During all this time any user English speaking user will be deprived of relevant information about the subjects. Maybe the newbie should have added some random sources about the subject, without bothering to consult them. Judging by your arguments here, that would have been OK to you. Proper English seems more relevant to you than cheating readers.Anonimu (talk) 20:02, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

For the record, there were two articles involved (and, yes, I made efforts to change them a little from the original; I also indicated they were provisional texts where I would welcome wholesale rewrites), not three -- three is the number of articles Anonimu has written in his 936-day Wikipedia career (and yes, that excludes the time he was banned). His self-righteous claims that the two articles in question were "so POV skewed" that he could do nothing to repair them are laughable. We currently have 141,076 articles lacking sources - why isn't he up in arms about them? (Stelian Popescu, for instance, now merely identifies him as a "liberal".) Perhaps because they don't involve me, and he can't score points there by attacking me? - Biruitorul ^Talk 14:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The ER representative said there are three of them, but since those edits were deleted I have no mean to verify now. And please don't try character assassination here: I have started 7 new articles on WP (excluding redirects), but I have contributed to a large number of articles. And nobody accused me of plagiarism. On the other hand, now I have to wonder how many of you articles were actually researched by you, and not just copied from other sources where someone else did it.(I'm not saying you did... but a 50,000+ edits editor suddenly lacking inspiration and plagiarising another volunteer-contributed project... it's natural it raises some questions). As for what I could have done for these articles: not much... the only thing I know about "Universul" was its anti-Semitism and and virulent pro-Antonescu propaganda. I have to wonder, since Biruitorul quickly reverted an attempt to reword unencyclopaedic language (see diff #5 in his original post), what chances I would have had to introduce that well-established fact in his pet article? (As a side note, Stelian Popescu was a member of a party called "National Liberal", which happened to be the most anti-Semitic and xenophobic in pre-WW1 Romania, only to be outranked in the interwar by the Iron Guard) What points? There's a game we're playing and I'm not aware of it?!?Anonimu (talk) 15:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

If you complain about supposed character assassination, Anonimu, you should consider not using arguments such as "now I have to wonder how many of you articles were actually researched by you, and not just copied from other sources where someone else did it." For one, I have explained above what I think happened here, so let's not obscure that. Secondly, it's unnatural, unreasonable and inflammatory to accuse someone of Biruitorul's standing of faking citations - when he was not ever accused of faking citations, and when his exceptionally long record in respect to citing sources is admittedly impeccable. If any non-frivolous doubt is ever seriously cast on that issue, I'm for one can attest and will prove that there is absolutely no reason to doubt it. I have personally verified and expanded on literally thousands of references cited by Biruitorul in texts he authored, and found him to be an honest, careful and intelligent citer of outstanding sources.

As for Stelian Popescu, let me clarify the matter here (before considering doing so in the article).

1. Before WW1, the National Liberal Party was indeed antisemitic (like, alas, a large segment of Romanian society) - however, by 1910, this policy was more often than not tolerated rater than endorsed by the party's leadership, because it was popular with the riffraff and also supported by a nationalist wing within the party. The word liberal in this context (and even afterward) was a misnomer: the group as a whole may have stood for continental, "Jacobin", radicalism, which was still labeled "liberalism" in Latin cultures, but had little to do with what the Anglo-Saxons call classical liberalism: it was etatist, populist and arguably corrupt to the core - all of these things which anyone who has been reading Caragiale's works of satire should by now be familiar with. After WW1, largely as a result of a pragmatic faction taking hold of the party, it not only turned more capitalist (though monopolistic rather than free enterprise), but it also became very ambiguous on the antisemitic platform - while the idiocy was still popping up in the 1920s, it was largely extirpated from the party doctrines by the 1930s. By that stage, the National Liberals were not only condemning antisemitic excesses, but were also closely allied with some representatives of the Jewish communities (even if it's easy to see to assume opportunism on both sides was fueling this latter move). The riffraff (especially in Moldavia) and some of the unreformed antisemites who survived WW1 largely left the party and joined other groups - the cancer that became the Iron Guard was indeed ultimately caused by the National Liberal policies of the late 1800s, but it's hard to see how that could've been avoided, given the context Romanians chose to create for themselves from as early as 1850.

2. Stelian Popescu was indeed an antisemite (or, at least, a patron of antisemites working for his press venues), but not because he was a National Liberal - this part of his career came after his split with the party. The link between the two stages of his career is fragile, and him being one does not imply anything about him being the other. Biruitorul is right to imply that, while the deleted version erred by omitting a detail, the current one errs by stating a half-truth, and he is on principle right to ask why that doesn't bother Anonimu as much (or more). Note that the current citation for this is poorly interpreted from a source that predates Stelian Popescu's actual change in policy - the revelation of his extreme nationalism, arguably as a development of a milder National Liberal populism. Particularly so since it translates the text as saying that he was "a liberal" - let alone the ambiguity of this term, none of its definitions does the job of accurately describing a Romanian National Liberal of the period. Dahn (talk) 18:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

That's precisely because Biruitorul's "standing". If it were an editor who register 3 or 6 months ago there would be an excuse that he wasn't aware of all WP policies (WP "law"book is much more thick that it used to be some years ago), but Biruitorul is an old member of the project and has enough experience (including 2 failed RfAs) to know what is OK and what is not. By doing what he did, i.e. use references he hadn't personally verified, he has most likely intentionally broken a WP rule that was established before I was forced to take a vacation. Allow me to not trust your expertise on Biruitorul's citing habits... after all you did miss these articles, and it would be simply not possible to believe you checked the majority of his citations (also because this would mean you constantly failed to AGF). To make it clear, I don't say he did regularly cite references he hadn't read, just that I wouldn't be surprised if another editor would come at his talk page and make another such denunciation.

About Stelian Popescu, please add whatever reliable information you may have to that article (and maybe to PNL?)Anonimu (talk) 18:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

What I was discussing is citation, as in referencing specific information with an exact note in a source. Anything below that level is really not important to the measure where it does not feature defamatory, absurd or idiotic claims, since: a) it is in any way not up to present citation standards, so its no biggie (and it will have to be modified or "revolutionized" to move further; b) it can generally reference or paraphrase anything it likes that fits within the RS and ELNO standards (as long as it doesn't lead to producing false citations). Biruitorul didn't manipulate anything, he simply mentioned, perhaps not in the most logical manner, that the text could be verified against the references in question. And granted, it doesn't contradict them. This is a question of editing philosophy, not one of deceiving readers or fellow editors. That said, I hadn't "missed" those articles - having edited several articles which link to those two (and were the far right issue is incidentally raised and referenced), I did notice the links being/turning blue, and did check the articles long before this controversy here. For the reason I mentioned, I found no pressing issue with them - nothing that couldn't wait. And, for the record, I'm not saying that I checked all of Biruitorul's edits (or intended to); I'm saying there's no reason why I or anyone should, since in all cases I've encountered of him citing sources his record is spotless. Unless we start suspecting that he knows exactly what articles I will never read (as if) and does something with them citation-wise that he won't do with any others - which is beyond the expectations of regular logic, and needlessly speculative. Sure, feel free to disagree with me (I'm sure you will no matter what), but know that repeating unsubstantiated allegations over and over again projects more poorly on the one who alleges - so, if this is your "defense tactic", you may wish to reconsider it.

Expanding the PNL article is an old dream of mine, and I would sure like to work on both articles we've discussed here - but this is not something I can do over night, and you may know that I'd rather do things good better than fast (plus, I'm all tangled in separate projects). But I certainly will consider this proposal as my encore. As a side note: I didn't yet research the Popescu article, but I'm yet to read (or even find) a reliable source on the sheer biographical details, and I would think that is a must. Dahn (talk) 19:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

You miss the really relevant part: he mentioned those references without knowing whether they support or not the text, thus giving the article a false appearance of reliability. Now it wasn't a very serious matter (even if lie by omission is still a lie, and a violation of NPOV), but what if this was a serious BLP issue? Anonimu (talk) 21:26, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Now, you're missing the relevant issue: he did not fabricate citations from those sources, and did not artificially advance the article to seem that it is fully backed by those references. What if this were a serious BLP issue? But it isn't. And I'm sure you know that if it were, the matter of a claim would still not have been solved by "references" section, but by a "references" section and a direct citation. So adding the ref section in such a case would neither have improved nor bastardized the article; it would have been inconsequential. Dahn (talk) 21:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

If Anonimu is so concerned about my record, he is welcome to try and start an RfC on me. I invite him to pore over every nook and cranny of my record, a great deal of which brings me no regrets. Regarding this particular issue (which is only an issue for Anonimu), I refer him to the first sentence here. I've been fully exonerated of any wrongdoing. I also think it's rather better to have "2 failed RfAs" (whatever that has to with this, I can't quite see) than a 564-day ban from the project. - Biruitorul ^Talk 19:39, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

If I would have wanted to somehow "act" against you, I could have easily provided some input in the current arbitration, but I didn't. And nobody exonerated you of nothing (unless you consideration deletion of your edits such).Anonimu (talk) 21:26, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Anonimu requires English assistance as well; I will be more than happy to oblige. To "exonerate" means "to clear from accusation or blame". I was cleared from accusation. I was cleared from blame. Indeed, I was neither accused nor blamed. I was not blocked; I was not even warned. I remain in good standing. Unlike Anonimu, I remain without a mentor, without 1RR revert parole, without civility parole and without an express obligation that I "behave at all times impeccably" (which I do regardless). Perhaps he has forgotten what it's like to be without such restrictions: after all, it's been 687 days since he was in as good standing as I am now. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I think you're missing the point here. Acknowledgement that you did something in good faith doesn't mean exoneration. Manslaughter can also be committed in good faith, yet you're still guilty for doing it. Yeah, that was probably of result of me not being a member of a secret mailing list, acting as a tag team to impose its POV and eliminate perceived adversaries, and also me not being hypocrite enough to support one thing in e-mails and then say the opposite on WP. Better a martyr than someone afraid to openly affirm its beliefs.Anonimu (talk) 20:02, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• What an absurdly lengthy discussion. Even as Anonimu's mentor, I really don't have the will to attempt to follow this. Tl;dr, in short. AGK 10:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Universul and Stelian Popescu

• I see you virtually everyone seem to know lots about these two subjects, but nevertheless little or nothing was written on Wikipedia's article before Birutorul's unfortunate initiative. Although the only matter that arose here was the misunederstanding about the licence we use - which I then clearify with Biruitorul (as for Ion Gigurtu that was a first look impression and I did not claim anything further) - I see there is now debate and lots of strong words on the two subjects and unfortunately some really unfair labeling, going to straight slander about our project. I will clarify that only for the sake of you wanting to know the truth, otherwise slander cannot be stopped with arguments whatsoever. On ER, my writing of Universul came after reading Petcu's work on "The history of journalism and publicity in Romania". There I found a brief description of Universul, of which I barely heard about, and it was described from a tehnical journalistic approach. Petcu emphasy goes on the practices Universul introduced in order to become a mass-newspaer. He also makes an analysis of its original content - entertainment, pop culture, etc. He does not go into much detail about the content, just talks about the newspaper as such. The fact that the newspaper had different political orientations, in its 67 years of life, in Petcu's work seconds the fact it was the biggest newspaper in Romania, because that was the scope of his book. He does mention that under Stelian Popescu's management, it went on to be a right-wing newspaper, but that's about it. I wrote that as well. I also think it turned to be left-oriented after 1948, but I can only suppose that, so I don't write that because that's not what my source said. I also quote Giurescu, who only mentions a phrase about Universul. That's it. Yesterday it didn't even exist on the internet, it was a virtually forgotten newspaper, today it is possibly a small subject of debate and maybe the object of further research: that itself I consider an achievemnt from our project and I will gladly add more about it as soon as I find more sources. I wish I knew more, but finding the right books is not that easy and consumes a lot of resources. But you seem to know more than me, you say it was "Antonescu's mouthpiece" so why not, for the sake of knowledge, add that statement about it? or send us at ER some feedback? We openly ask our visitors to do so and we can even quote Wikipedia if you come up with new text. Why didn't you write it in the Wikipedia article? It could have passed by for years just as such, nobody even knowing what you know!
• As for Stelian Popescu, the same as above applies. He is described on Wikipedia as a "liberal Romanian journalist", but it seems everyone here knows he was strongly anti-semite. Why not add that to the article if that was the case? Wikipedia doesn't say that about him, how can then Wikipedia be judged? That's a strange position: because we wrote about it, we're in bad faith because we must have conciously omitted details about the person's political views. The subject is clearly hard to find and you have to look a lot to find a biography of such a person that was completly erased from history books. I tried finding more about him and came up with only few things. I cannot say about him he was anti-semite or leftist, or whatever, if the two sources I found did not mention that. What I did find was concise info about his political role and a chronology of its activity. Much of it is drawn from the short biography of Stelian Popescu that Lazăr delivers in "Mişcarea antirevizionistă din Transilvania în perioada interbelică". Please check that book, and Predescu's book, and point me to some more sources. Thend I'll do my best to find those sources and add some more info on Stelian Popescu - and I'm quite interested and willing to find out more -, and then go onto judging what were my intentions when I wrote that article. So don't come upt with the, "oh, but WE know" attitude - it doesn't stick together. And please do have some deceny and stop your anonymous slandering of a project where people of flesh and blood, with name and surname put their own reputation and resources into a project that never pretended to offer more than Wikipedia, but is open to any suggestions and debate, from wikipedians or Wikipedia as well. You can also quote and source as if you wish, that's not a problem, we just ask you to respect our copyright. Otherwise, please do ignore it. --Radufan (talk) 18:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Harta Bugeac

Salutare, As dori sa stiu daca pentru harta Bugeacului ai avut cumva acces la datele amanuntite ale recensamantului sovietic din 1989. Mi-ar fi de mare ajutor pt harta asta http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fi%C5%9Fier:Harta_etnica_a_Republicii_Moldova_-_2004.jpg pe care mi-as dori sa o completez si cu Bugeacul si Regiunea Cernauti. Multumesc.Colinspancev (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Re

That matter is between me and Dahn so i would appreciate if you would stay out of it. Mario1987 17:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

What are you suggesting? Sounds very familiar to a threat, or what you said mobtalk. Mario1987 17:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Monica Macovei

I found some dubious use of sources in that article, and looking at the article's history I see that you found some too before me. So, I've put a {{POV check}} at the top of the article. If you have some time please take have a closer look; I'll do what I can, but I'm not going to have a lot of time on my hands in the upcoming days. Pcap ping 06:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Re : Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list

This arbitration case has been closed, and the final decision may be viewed at the link above.

• User:Piotrus resigned the administrator tools during the case proceedings and may only seek to regain adminship by a new request for adminship or by request to the Arbitration Committee.
• User:Piotrus is banned for three months. At the conclusion of his ban, a one year topic ban on articles about Eastern Europe, their talk pages, and any related process discussion, widely construed, shall take effect.
• User:Digwuren is banned for one year. He is directed to edit Wikipedia from only a single user account, and advise the Arbitration Committee of the name of the account that he will use. Should he not advise the committee by the end of the one year ban, he will remain indefinitely banned until a single account is chosen.
• User:Digwuren is placed on a one year topic ban on articles about Eastern Europe, their talk pages, and any related process discussion, widely construed. This shall take effect following the expiration of both above mentioned bans.
• The following users are topic banned from articles about Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about same, widely construed, for one year:

• User:Biruitorul, User:Dc76, User:Martintg, User:Miacek, User:Radeksz, User:Vecrumba, User:Tymek

• User:Jacurek is topic banned from articles about Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about same, widely construed, for six months.
• User:Tymek is strongly admonished for having shared his account password. He is directed to keep his account for his own exclusive use, and not to allow any other person to use it under any circumstance.
• The editors sanctioned above (Piotrus, Digwuren, Martintg, Tymek, Jacurek, Radeksz, Dc76, Vecrumba, Biruitorul, Miacek) are prohibited from commenting on or unnecessarily interacting with Russavia on any page of Wikipedia, except for purposes of legitimate and necessary dispute resolution.
• All the participants to the mailing list are strongly admonished against coordinating on-wiki behavior off-wiki and directed to keep discussion of editing and dispute resolution strictly on wiki and in public. All editors are reminded that the editorial process and dispute resolution must take place on Wikipedia itself, using the article talk pages and project space for this purpose. No discussion held off-wiki can lead to a valid consensus, the basis of our editorial process. Off-wiki coordination is likely to lead to echo chambers where there is a false appearance of neutrality and consensus.

For the Arbitration Committee, Mailer Diablo 17:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC) - Discuss this

• • "Rejoice! Rejoice!" Ironic, too, coming as it does on December 22. - Biruitorul ^Talk 19:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)