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  • For the record:
    • I see no purpose in responding to such outlandish claims as those being made about me in the guise of a Wikipedia Request for Arbitration filed by someone else whom I regard as so obviously engaged in a personal vendetta, as I have already formally stated.
    • The whole process is unnecessarily upsetting, I have more important work of my own to do, I am still engaged in making research and travel plans, as well as in doing my own research projects, and I simply do not want to spend any more of my own time responding to what I regard as petty, mean-spirited, and unwarranted accusations.
    • To reply to them would, in my own view, be absolutely a further waste of my time.
    • I have generously taken the little spare time that I had as occasional breaks from my other obligations to try to improve citations in articles, and even those efforts has been maligned by these mean-spirited people.
    • Clearly, the arbitration process has gotten out of control, and I see absolutely no value in my participating further in it.
    • Please consult my "Statement" on the RFA page [1] (last updated May 17) and the links that I have already provided [and updated as needed there], the talk pages [inc. archives] of the articles in dispute (Talk:Lewis Libby and Temple Rodef Shalom), and my own talk page archives (see archive box).
    • N.B.: My own professional work schedule must and does indeed take precedence over this ill-conceived and small-minded dispute in Wikipedia. It is more important to me and to my colleagues depending on my work than petty personal squabbles instigated by anonymous users in Wikipedia.

--NYScholar 18:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC) [Updated. --NYScholar 20:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)]

  • Some related thoughts for further consideration:
    • In evaluating Wikipedia, it appears that many other academic scholars have perceived and/or experienced firsthand some of the same problems of weak credibility, inaccuracy, lack of adequate verifiability, lack of adequate attributions of sources (plagiarism), and "cliques" of POV editors and administrators that I have been finding affecting the articles that I have seen in Wikipedia (since I first started examining it more closely as an editor on June 30, 2005).
    • Such academic critics of Wikipedia refer to some of the same sorts of personal attacks on academic scholars and other expert editors by non-expert Wikipedia anonymous IP users, other (anonymous) editors, and (anonymous) administrators such as those that I myself have been experiencing in Wikipedia.
    • At times it appears to other academic scholars too that these people whom we perceive as inexperienced and/or non-expert readers and inexperienced and/or non-expert users and editors are more engaged (more "invested") in making irresponsible and unsubstantiated complaints about other "contributors" in talk and administrative pages and filing irresponsible and unsubstantiated administrative requests reflecting their own personal and political issues and their own personal and political points of view than they are engaged in doing any truly substantive "neutral point of view" editing (W:NPOV)––hard editorial work.
    • But it requires such "hard editorial work" actually to improve the quality of articles in Wikipedia.
    • Reliable verifiable sources providing full documentation following academic scholarly conventions could enhance the project's overall credibility (reputation) with professional academic scholars, college and university professors, other post-secondary education teachers, and other commensurately well-educated readers with advanced academic credentials.
    • Informed evaluation of such sources and their accurate documentation require expert editorial knowledge and experience of advanced academic scholars. Such experts could be engaged by Wikipedia to review its articles and to evaluate them for the benefit of readers. The lack of such academic scholarly peer review procedures underlies the lack of academic credibility in Wikipedia.
    • It is a problem without a current solution.
    • Instead of addressing this ongoing problem of unreliability and lack of credibility in this "open source" encyclopedia project, many Wikipedians are wasting their time and energy by engaging in draconian administrative procedures distracting them from actually improving the content of the encyclopedia articles. (Notice the editorial problems that currently exist in the very Wikipedia articles linked in this bulleted item and earlier, including violations of W:Reliable sources, W:Citing sources, WP:Attribution, and W:NPOV.)

[Updated archive. --NYScholar 21:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)]