Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Evidence/Summary
Frequently asked questions (including details about the summary page)
Target dates: Opened • Evidence phase 1 closes 09 April 2023 • Evidence phase 2: 17 April 2023 - 27 April 2023 • Analysis closes 27 April 2023 • Proposed decision to be posted by 11 May 2023
Scope: Conduct of named parties in the topic areas of World War II history of Poland and the history of the Jews in Poland, broadly construed
Case clerks: Dreamy Jazz (Talk), Firefly (Talk), MJL (Talk), ToBeFree (Talk); Drafting arbitrators: Barkeep49 (Talk), Primefac (Talk), Wugapodes (Talk)
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For questions or requests by the Arbitrators please see this section on the Analysis page.
Summary of evidence involving Buidhe
Holocaust in Poland edits (Buidhe)
Buidhe removed content on 28 January 2021 from The Holocaust in Poland with the edit summary
- 11:19 28 Jan 2021, Buidhe
rm content that duplicates other parts of the article (e.g. the rescue section), or is opinion in wikivoice
.
Among the text removed was the claim "Given the severity of the German measures designed to prevent this occurrence, the survival rate among the Jewish fugitives was relatively high and by far, the individuals who circumvented deportation were the most successful." This claim was cited to Paulsson (1998) and Snyder (2012). At the time, the concern was around stating this claim in encyclopedic voice, but concerns have been raised during this case that these sources might not support that claim. On 29 January 2021 Volunteer Marek restored that claim with the edit summary ditto (though should be in different section)
, a reference to earlier restorations with the edit summaries:
- 06:17 29 Jan 2021, Volunteer Marek
ditto (though should be in different section)
- 06:16 idem
ditto - not clear why this was removed
- 06:13 idem
ditto (this seems like just removing any use of Paulsson per IJUSTDONTLIKEIT under various pretenses)
- 06:11 idem
also relevant, also removed for unclear reasons
(end of ditto chain, earlier edits omitted}}
Three hours later, Buidhe reverted Volunteer Marek's changes removing the above claim with the edit summary
- 09:55 29 Jan 2021, Buidhe
Restoration of content that fails article sourcing requirements, opinions presented in wikivoice
.
Six hours later, Volunteer Marek reverted Buidhe's removal with the edit summary
- 16:47 29 Jan 2021, Volunteer Marek
undo blind revert. If your edits are challenged you need to discuss them. If your edits are controversial you need to discuss them. Please do not use misleading edit summaries. Please don't start edit wars.
This version, with the disputed claim above, stood for a week until Buidhe reverted on 5 February 2021 with the edit summary
- 08:11 5 Feb 2021, Buidhe
Talk page consensus to work from this version
(n.b. see relevant talk page archive)
which was reverted 5 hours later by Volunteer Marek with the edit summary
- 13:38 5 Feb 2021, Volunteer Marek
there's absolutely no consensus on talk page to remove Yad Vashem as a source or Journal of Genocide Research or Yale University Press. Please don't use false edit summaries and make claims of "false consensus". This type of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT editing, while discussion is ongoing is disruptive
. - 21:47, 1 February 2021 (to K.e.coffman)
I suggest you actually follow the developments here rather than, as the superficial nature of your comment suggests, just reflexively picking a side. That's not actually helpful in terms of resolving the disagreement. The sources which were challenged have been removed for the most part (there's one or two which can be discussed). They weren't even necessary anyway. Most of the removals had nothing to do with the sources. And no, the onus is not on me here, it's on the person who's trying to remove 23k bytes of long standing material with barely any explanation
History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II
Prior to 2021, collegial editing was seen at History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II. Created in December 2019 by Buidhe, there was some brief concern about a source (discussion about Farkash) but otherwise collegial editing during the pre-GA review, GAN, and FAC.
In May 2021 an edit war started regarding the inclusion of text relating to the Home Army.
Timeline of May 2021 edits
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During the above time period there were multiple talk page discussions, in particular this discussion, over the inclusion of Zimmerman and Farkash. Two different pre-RFC discussions (#Draft text for an RfC, #Draft text for RfC (seeking final approval)) were opened on the matter, with Zimmerman (page 361) eventually agreed upon to be removed, but the text from Zimmerman (page 213) and Farkash was not restored.
On March 31, 2023 Gitz6666 restored the original content in full but was reverted by Volunteer Marek approximately two hours later. Both users cited consensus on the talk page (or lack thereof) as justification for their actions. Volunteer Marek began a discussion on the talk page titled "Restarting old disputes" linking to Gitz's 31 March edit. After discussion, Gitz and Piotrus found consensus about the disputed content. (Gitz6666 evidence, Piotrus evidence with additional background by Barkeep49)
Buidhe and Volunteer Marek
Volunteer Marek made the following comments in replies to Budihe:
- 20:55, 22 December 2020
Are you confused about which one of the many disputes you’ve currently engaged yourself in, you’re commenting on? Understandable, since you’re involved in like half a dozen of them (all of which you started)
- 00:14, 6 February 2021
(formatting in the original) ((François Robere evidence)This is not how this works. This is not how any of this works. Buidhe made big controversial changes without bothering to discuss them. Buidhe edit warred when these changes were challenged. Buidhe then tried to get their way by filing spurious AE report. Buidhe then couldn't help themselves and began edit warring again before any compromise could be worked out. Buidhe used a false edit summary which claimed WP:FALSECON. Buidhe removed multiple reliable sources from the article. Support for Buidhe has consisted of nothing more than some incivil substance free comments from you and generalities from one other editor. As an added bonus you began stalking my edits across multiple articles ... as some kind of payback or strategy or something. When I requested you stop, you doubled down on the rudeness and incivility.
In terms of following dispute resolution and pursuing the goal of collaborative editing this right here has been a textbook example from Buidhe and you of what not to do.
With all due respect.
Editing of Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance
In 2018, the Polish government passed a law amending the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance which makes it "a civil offense that is actionable before civil courts to cause harm to the reputation of Poland and its people, such as by making any accusation of complicity of Poland or Poles in the Holocaust" (European Parliament 2020, par. 47). The law was criticized contemporaneously by, for example, Amnesty International (2018), Wagner (2018), American Historical Association (2018). The English Wikipedia article on the law was created by Lembit Staan on 29 January 2018 (version as of 26 July 2018).
- March 2019
- Around 05:00 on March 14, Volunteer Marek removed content from the article. The content was sourced to Aderet (2018), Lipshiz (2018), Borschel-Dan (2016), Times of Israel Staff (2018), Reuters Staff (2018), Halon (2018), Davies & Goñi (2018), Zieve (2018), Doherty (2018), Shpigel (2018), Jewish Telegraphic Agency (2018), Rogowska (2018).
- The removal was reverted at 06:15 by Icewhiz.
- At 06:22 Volunteer Marek repeated the removal and additionally removed content sourced to Hacohen (2018), Maiberg (2018), Kaplan Sommer (2018), and Lapid (2018).
- At 16:03 François Robere reverted the removals except for the content sourced to Lapid (2018)
- At 17:50 Volunteer Marek repeated the removals.
- October and November 2019
- 21:29, 4 October 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes content sourced to Benjakob (2019).
- 00:52, 9 October 2019 François Robere restores the content after MyMoloboaccount did not respond on the talk page.
- 16:26, 17 November 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes content claiming that it was added by Icewhiz (N.B. Icewhiz was banned 1 October 2019).
- 19:09, 17 November 2019 François Robere restores the content claiming that it was worked on by others as well.
- Around 19:30, 17 November 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes and re-adds content which he claimed was added or removed by Icewhiz.
- 01:17, 18 November 2019 Levivich reverts without an edit summary.
- January 2021
- Prior to 1 January 2021, there were no edits in December 2020 and one edit in November 2020 (version as of 5 November 2020). October 2020 saw a major rewrite by Buidhe and others.
- c.23:05, 1 January 2021 Buidhe adds content to the lead and body, citing Tsesis (2020) and Belavusau (2018).
- c.23:36, 1 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts Buidhe's addition to the lead, and additionally removed content present in the 5 November 2020.
- c.23:48, 1 January 2021 Buidhe reverts Volunteer Marek saying
undiscussed major changes, removing aspects that are significantly emphasized in most scholarly sources that discuss the law
- 00:42, 2 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts saying Nooo, the ADDITION of this stuff constitutes "undiscussed major changes" since... you didn't bother discussing any of them. I've actually provided the rationale on talk for my restoration of version before YOUR "undiscussed major changes"
- c.00:49, 2 January 2021 Buidhe reverts.
- 01:09, 2 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts to the 15 October 2020 version with the edit summary Restore "stable version" per suggestion on talk so that the recent major changes can actually be discussed. Will work to reincorporate subsequent non-controversial edits
- In a series of 36 edits from 01:12 to 02:45, Volunteer Marek restores some changes implemented by Buidhe and others in October 2020.
- c.06:32, 2 January 2021 Buidhe adds content sourced to Berendt (2018), Frydel (2018), Żbikowski (2018), Jaraczewski (2018), and Bachmann (2020).
- 07:51, 2 January 2021 GizzyCatBella reverts Buidhe's addition with the edit summary @Buidhe, I have to step in here. I'm sorry, but here you seem to be connecting material from multiple sources to suggest a conclusion. This is WP:SYNTH. I will revert this edit of yours for now, but let talk about it at talk if you disagree. Okay?.
- Talk page
- Regarding the January 2021 dispute, a number of talk page discussion were started.
- In the "stuff in lede" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the edits prior to the 01:09, 2 January revert.
- Volunteer Marek says of Buidhe's 23:48 edit
BTW, I find the edit summary used here to be completely ...misleading.
- Buidhe replies You removed a lot of longstanding information from the lead, most of which has been present for months without any dispute.
- Volunteer Marek replies
No, I removed a chunk of UNDUE text which you JUST ADDED to the lede, less than THAN AN HOUR AGO! What are you talking about?
Volunteer Marek then gives links to Buidhe's 23:03 edit and Marek's 23:22 edit. - Buidhe replies The material that you deleted was not just my recent edit, which revised earlier material without significantly expanding it, but also longstanding revisions by other editors such as Nihil Novi and Lembit Stan
- Volunteer Marek replies, repeating the diffs in his previous reply.
- Buidhe replies saying This statement is false, VM also removed a sentence stating "Article 2a, which requires the Institute of National Remembrance to investigate crimes against Polish citizens by Ukrainian nationalists, also caused controversy." The resulting version of the lede did not mention Article 2a at all. and linking to Marek's 23:22 edit.
- Volunteer Marek says of Buidhe's 23:48 edit
- In the "Mass removal of well-source content" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the 01:09, 2 January edit and later.
- Buidhe says of Volunteer Marek's 1:09 edit:
I'm happy to discuss but it isn't productive to mass-remove almost half the article content as you did in this [27] edit, especially since most of it is well sourced to strong sources such as academic articles and so forth
- El_C responds Volunteer Marek you have removed tens of thousands of bytes, so now the expectation is that you explain in detail the reasoning behind that removal, not to mention touching on the origin of that which has been removed.
- Volunteer Marek replies working on restoring the part of it which can be verified. followed by an update when finished If Buidhe wishes to restore this other recently added text, they can propose it here on talk and discuss it, per the usual procedures.
- Buidhe replies
This does not assuage my objections. Relevant and well sourced content has been subject to mass removal.[...]
followed by examples of issues Buidhe saw.
- Buidhe says of Volunteer Marek's 1:09 edit:
- In the "Removal of historical background material" section, Buidhe and GizzyCatBella discuss the 07:51, 2 January revert.
- 09:59, Buidhe:
All of this is directly supported by sources (check them yourself), no OR involved
- 10:15, GCB: Please examine WP:SYNTH, and then please tell me what you think about the above combined material from multiple sources to be introduced into this article. Thanks.
- 10:17, Buidhe:
It doesn't combine material to reach a conclusion not in the sources. It just reports what the sources state about events during the Holocaust and perceptions about them.
- 10:23, GCB: Buidhe, it took you 2 minutes to reply....have you studied WP:SYNTH in 2 minutes or you were already familiar with WP:SYNTH? Well, I examined WP:SYNTH for longer than 2 minutes, and I believe you are mistaken Buidhe. Let's see what other editors think then.
- 10:30, GCB: Buidhe, when you get a chance, please read this as well [link to WP:What SYNTH is not]
- 10:34, Buidhe:
I already know what is NOT original research, and that is just reporting what the source says.
- 10:48, GCB: I still maintain you are confused here, Buidhe... What all those combined texts [internal quotes omitted] have to do with that Law other than suggesting something?
- 09:59, Buidhe:
- In the "stuff in lede" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the edits prior to the 01:09, 2 January revert.
- Buidhe opens an RfC on the talk page. 11 editors participated, and the RfC was closed a year later.
(Gitz6666 evidence with additional context and quotes by Wugapodes)
Summary of evidence involving Chapmansh
In 2018 Chapmansh edited a number of pages in the scope of this case, including at History of the Jews in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Use of Jan T. Gross as a source
See also Jedwabne pogrom
In 2018, a student participating in a class taught by Chapmansh wished to use Jan Gross's 2006 book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz as a source. A Wiki-ed expert working with the class began a Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion about the source. Chapmansh explained why they felt the source was reliable citing its publisher (Princeton University Press) and linked and quoted peer reviews of the book as well as citing statements attesting Gross' experitse as a subject matter expert in general. Piotrus agreed the source was Of course
reliable but expressed some concerns about the neutrality of the source and that Gross is not the final authority, just one of many voices in the ongoing discussion, and that some other reliable sources have criticized some of his findings (which doesn't mean he cannot be cited and considered reliable!)
. (Tryptofish evidence) Chapmansh later agreed with Piotrus and suggested the student compromise and implement Piotrus's suggestion. (Piotrus evidence)
Article and response
The article authored by Grabowski and Klein may contain factual errors or material omissions with regards to the conduct of named editors. A summary of the main points of contention as indicated by the authors can be found in evidence presented by François Robere. Piotrus generally responds to these in this essay (see also further clarifications by HaeB at the /Evidence page). Zero0000 has suggested that claiming editors promote Nazi stereotypes (see also Piotrus #26) and that Wikipedia is pushing the idea that "money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland" may be false.
Chapmansh and Volunteer Marek
Volunteer Marek pinged Chapmansh once in the Administrators Noticeboard discussion "Chapmansh" on February 10 and twice on February 12 in the Village Pump WMF discussion "Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". After each ping in that discussion Horse Eye's Back replied suggesting Volunteer Marek stop, labeling it harassment
and gratituous
. Volunteer Marek responded to Horse Eye's Back on February 13 I'm sorry but are you Chapmansh? If Chapmansh wishes to ask me not to ping them then they can do that (I've only did it a few times where it was pertinent). And can I inquire why you find it necessary to reply and comment on almost every single comment I make? This is getting extremely tiresome and is looking like WP:harassment at this point.
Subsequently on that day, Volunteer Marek pinged Chapmansh once on his user talk page and once at Arbitration/Requests/Case request for this case. (Horse Eye's Back evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Ealdgyth
Summary of Evidence involving Elinruby
Positive contributions in the topic area
Buidhe has written Featured Articles, Good Articles, and "Did you know?s" in the topic area. (Piotrus evidence)
Elinruby has contributed to Collaboration with the Axis powers extensively (over 30% of content and edits). (#Evidence presented by Piotrus) Elinruby feels they have shown colloboration on that article by Extensive referencing, recruitment, talk page discussions, structure proposals, two RSN discussions, lede rewrite.
(Evidence presented by Elinruby) TrangaBellam has created four articles (Glaukopis, Mariusz Bechta, Tomasz Greniuch and Marcin Zaremba) in this topic area. (#Evidence presented by Piotrus)
Marcelus, with input from Elinruby and Gitz6666, wrote a section at Collaboration with the Axis powers § Jewish collaboration to provide a neutral summary of the subject material. Piotrus has also provided collegial discussion on sources relating to the same article. (#Evidence presented by Elinruby)
Piotrus, Marcelus, and Gitz6666 have been collobrating since March 2023 on Antisemitism in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Ealdgyth created a list of problems in the topic area following the declined 2021 case request, and invited other users to fix some of the issues presented. However, only a half-dozen of the 41 indicated issues were ever resolved, most of them by Volunteer Marek. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
Collaboration with the Axis Powers
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust claims that Collaboration with the Axis Powers "downplays the scope and nature of Polish collaboration with the Germans" (pp. 9 - 10). On February 18, 2023 Elinruby started a Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion about Adam Hempel's Policja granatowa w okupacyjnym systemie administracyjnym Generalnego Gubernatorstwa: 1939-1945. A focus of the discussion was on whether or not Polish police officers faced the death penalty if they did not cooperate with the Nazis. GrizzlyCatBella provided translation of the wording from the source (in Polish) to English as the "severest punishments" and asked What were the severest punishments back in 1939?
(emphasis in the original). Elinruby replied writing, in part, So you think this would mean death if you don't join, then I take it? I'd still rather find a source that says that exactly.
GrizzlyCatBella replied, in part, Do you still have doubts what that source says? If you do have doubts that severest penalty doesn’t mean death threat, then maybe someone has access to that book, I also want to see it. -
(emphasis in the original). Piotrus traced the change of arrest to death to an IP editor in 2008. K.e.coffman, pinging Elinruby and Piotrus suggested the sourcing was insufficient to support the claim of the death penalty. Piotrus agreed and changed the wording in the Blue Police article. Elinruby agreed and changed the wording in the Collaboration with the Axis Powers article.
(Elinruby evidence with additional links and quotes by Barkeep49)
Summary of evidence involving François Robere
Sanctions history
François Robere has received multiple warnings since 2017 – the most recent in October 2022 for personal attacks and stalking of other editors – and has been blocked three times since 2018 for problematic editing in this topic area: edit warring (2018, 72h), personal attacks (2019, 1w), interaction ban violation (2021, 48h). Even when unofficial agreements are made to avoid another user, these agreements are not always followed. (GizzyCatBella evidence 1 and additional)
Jan Żaryn
See also #Summary of evidence involving Mhorg and #BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust wrote, in part, about Jan Żaryn After still more back and forth in July, including a five-part Request for Comment by François Robere,233 Lembit Staan and GizzyCatBella overhauled the entire article, simply removing the overwhelming majority of the journalists’ and scholars’ observations on Żaryn’s extremism.224
(footnotes in the original). According to Lembit Staan, his edits referenced in footnote 234 should not be described as simply removing
content. Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust chracterizes Zaryn as having the position that Jews were to blame for the Kielce pogrom
which it says is baseless
. The Jan Żaryn article characterizes his position as Żaryn, a co-editor of a two-volume monograph on the Kielce pogrom, has stated that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals... supported the communist authorities or... joined their ranks"; he blames those individuals for being part of Communist censorship and propaganda organs, who were "deceitfully ... silent about Soviet massacres." This, he believes, "intensified anti-Semitic attitudes" that resulted in the Kielce pogrom.
(lack of sourcing in the original). (Evidence presented by Lembit Staan)
History of the Jews in Poland
There were multiple additions and reverts to History of the Jews in Poland in February, April, and May 2019, which resulted in the page being fully protected three times.
The sequence begins February 22, 2019 16:37: Tatzref added content to History of the Jews in Poland suggesting that Jews were able to reclaim property taken during the war quickly, with the support of other Polish residents, and did so in the "thousands". According to Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust careful examination shows Tatzref plagiarized this paragraph from a Mark Paul online essay, ‘A Tangled Web: Polish–Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath
(see pp. 381 - 386).
Timeline of February edits
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- February 25 22:48: TonyBallioni fully protects the page with the edit summary
Edit warring / content dispute: AE action
(formatting removed) until 22:49, 11 March 2019 - March 12 12:23: Icewhiz rewrites the property section with the edit summary
Remove content as it failed verification vs. the cited sources, misused a primary source, and was contradicted by available English RSes. Replace with content cited to academic English-language sources available online
The content remains unchanged until April 15 2:52 - 5:50 when Piotrus makes 7 edits all under 250 bytes to the property section, which is followed by other editors making further changes.
Timeline of April and May edits
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- May 11 3:04: Oshwah fully-protects the page with the edit summary
{{{1}}}
(formatting removed) - May 13 4:20: Volunteer Marekt reverted Icewhiz with the edit summary
per talk, this version is both more neutral and well sourced. Ample, extensive, detailed, exhaustive rationale has been provided. Anything beyond this is really just WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. If you wish to ADD material based on RS that's fine but plz stop removing existing well sourced material
May 13 - 19 edits
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- May 20 3:37: El C full protects the article with the edit summary {tqq|Protected "History of the Jews in Poland": Edit warring / content dispute: This edit war has gone on for long enough ([Edit=Require administrator access] (expires 03:37, 30 May 2019 (UTC))}} (formatting removed)
- May 20 - 23: El C performs two small edits in response to edit requests
- June 3 19:03: François Robere removes content with the edit summary
Discussion concluded with a consensus to remove the MJC's book, so I'm restoring the previous, well-sourced version
- 20:26: Volunteer Marek reverts François Robere with the edit summary
'm sorry, but no such consensus was achieved. Can you please provide a link where this consensus you claim exists was formed? At RSN, the discussion tended to the opposite conclusion. Furthermore EVEN IF there are issues with one particular source that does not justify making OTHER mass deletions of sourced text or unsupported changes
- June 4 2:51: K.e. coffman removes content with the edit summary
No consensus to include this source / content -- pls see Talk:History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#Edit_break
(formatting removed)
(Gitz6666 evidence, with additional background/links by Barkeep49)
An over 185 kb discussion about this content lasted until June. Major topics of discussion included:
- Whether the sources were being accurately represented
- Whether the sources were reliable
- Whether certain sources were primary sources and if so how to use them
- Whether the content added followed a neutral point of view, particularly whether or not the level of detail was appropriate for the article topic
- Whether any of the content added as the result of synthesis or other forms of original research
- How the non-English sources policy applies or should be applied
- Whether it was appropriate to revert to a "stable" version
There were separate sub-sections of proposed additional sources, discussion of an alleged biographies of living people policy violation, on the use of Lukasz Krzyżanowski, on the use of Alina Skibińska, and on the General level article
. Much of this discussion involved non-parties to the case, particularly two editors who have since been indefinitely blocked (Icewhiz and Tatzref).
Comments by Volunteer Marek in the discussion included: 1, 2 (Gitz6666 evidence, with additional background/links by Barkeep49)
François Robere and Volunteer Marek
See also #Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017
See also #BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
Prior to this arbitration case being accepted, an interaction ban between François Robere and Volunteer Marek was being considered by Callanecc due to allegations of diff stalking from each party towards the other. (Callanecc evidence)
Four times in February 2021 Volunteer Marek said François Robere was stalking him: Bogdan Musiał, Dalej jest noc), The Holocaust in Poland, and Witold Pilecki. Evidence by Buidhe suggesting François Robere did not stalk Volunteer Marek at Bogdan Musiał. Possible explanation by K.e. coffman suggesting François Robere did not stalk Volunteer Marek at Witold Pilecki. (François Robere evidence)
In December 2020, François Robere, in response to a comment made to Buidhe, asked Volunteer Marek to Please stay on topic and avoid personal comments
and then related the current content disagreement to one the two had Several years ago
(François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
On February 14, 2021, Horse Eye's Back revived a May and June 2020 discussion on Talk:Zygmunt Krasiński writing There currently appears to be nothing about anti-semitism on the page despite as far as I can tell the consensus here being to make at least a mention of it.
The next day François Robere pings Volunteer Marek with three questions. Volunteer Marek responds We've already been over this. This does not belong in the lede since none of the major works on the guy discuss it extensively. It should be mentioned in the article text. I'm also pretty sure you're violating your interaction ban here FR
. In a subsequent reply, Volunteer Marek gives [1] and [2] as diffs of François Robere removing text written by GrizzyCatBella with whom François Robere has an interaction ban. On February 23 Volunteer Marek posts a list of administrator's comments to François Robere at a Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion about The Volunteer (book) and to User:Volunteer Marek/François Robere (deleted on March 15 by El C as an attack page). The next day François Robere collapses a comment on Talk:Zygmunt Krasiński by Volunteer Marek explaining how François Robere broken his iban; Volunteer Marek reverts this collapsing. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In March 2021 François Robere reported Volunteer Marek to Trust and Safety. Trust and Safety responded, in part, there are sufficient community governance actions available... to handle the issue", and that "it doesn't appear that you or anyone else has attempted to report ongoing personal attacks or harassment by VM to either Arbcom... or a noticeboard in the past two years... so there's no way to confirm that the community isn't willing to handle the matter
(François Robere evidence)
In July 2021 François Robere said Volunteer Marek followed him to Guerillero's user talk. Volunteer Marek explained he had Guerillero's user talk watchlisted. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In July 2021 Volunteer Marek reported a potential interaction ban violation by François Robere against GizzyCatBella at Jan Grabowski to Guerillero. François Robere replied that he had long been editing Jan Grabowski. Guerillero blocked François Robere for an interaction ban violation, after determining François Robere had not edited the article for over a year. (François Robere evidence)
In August 2021, Volunteer Marek replied to a list of proposed Arbitration Committee reforms proposed by François Robere on Barkeep49's user talk page. In this reply Volunteer Marek discussed ways he felt Icewhiz had violated conduct policies and noted François Robere had supported Icewhiz during Arbitration Committee proceedings. François Robere replied with 12 diffs. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In February 2023, in a discussion about Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust Volunteer Marek replies to François Robere with the comment Francois Robere, since you participated very extensively in the Icewhiz case, posting comments supporting him, and since you subsequently made numerous efforts to have him rehabilitated and to relitigate the case, even after you became well aware of his extensive harassment of Wikipedians, and since you also apparently provided commentary to the authors of this article, perhaps your opinion here is not particularly useful?
François Robere reports this and 4 other concerns, about Volunteer Marek to Callanecc. Volunteer Marek then volunteers to strike the comment. Callanecc found one of the 5 edits in violation of Volunteer Marek's civility ban and asked both Volunteer Marek and François Robere if they would like an interaciton ban. François Robere declined the offer.
In April 2023, Volunteer Marek reported a potential interaction ban violation by François Robere against GizzyCatBella at François Robere's user talk regarding the July 2021 block to Guerillero. Guerillero deferred to the drafters of this case. Barkeep49 wrote, in part, For me it falls in the "not great but not sanctionable" bucket.
(François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
The article Property restitution in Poland was created by François Robere at 15:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC) and he linked it from the main Holocaust in Poland article at 15:49. 93 minutes later, Volunteer Marek made a series of changes starting at 17:48. At 18:16, an apparent sockpuppet reverted Volunteer Marek. The apparent sock and Volunteer Marek reverted each other at 18:17, 18:20, 18:24, 18:32, and 18:56. At 20:32, Volunteer Marek removed a different claim he had previously tagged as {{dubious}} which was cited to Gera & Federman (2021), Easton (2021), and Lis (2021). At 21:03, El_C protected the page to enforce the 30/500 restriction in the topic area. François Robere reverted Volunteer Marek at 21:30. At 21:33, Volunteer Marek reverted saying ...no sources actually support this claim...
. Following a talk page discussion, at 10:32, 16 August 2021, Francois Robere revised the line under dispute and restored content removed during the earlier dispute with the apparent sock puppet. At 6:16 17 August 2021, Volunteer Marek removed a claim François Robere had readded arguing that it was original research by synthesis; the claim was cited to Becker (2001), Charnysh (2015), and Pankowski (2018). At 10:44 François Robere restored the claim and quoted the relevant sources in the talk page discussion. (GizzyCatBella evidence; additional context by Wugapodes)
Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017
In June 2021 Volunteer Marek removed content about Poland from the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017 article with the edit summaries this is obviously an UNDUE coatrack
1, who cares what a neo Nazi thinks
2, and ditto. Someone will protest something sometime always. Doesn’t mean it’s encyclopedic info.
3. François Robere restored some of the content Volunteer Marek removed in two edits (1, 2). Volunteer Marek reverted François Robere with the edit summary Please stop following me around, please get consensus for inclusion
. François Robere then began a talk page discussion about this removal on the talk page and provided diffs of Volunteer Marek calling the article "NPOV" and "neutral", noted that they had both edited the article over the years, and asked for an explanation. Volunteer Marek replied Sure. The amount of text that was dedicated to Poland was UNDUE and served as a COATRACK. I’m bothered by the fact that you’ve shown up on several articles in the recent past solely to revert me.
and a minute later added Theres also multiple tags on the article, obviously, and my edit was intended to at least partly address these problems
. In his response to the first reply, François Robere again denied following Volunteer Marek, noted issues he had with Volunteer Marek at other articles and concluded with This reeks of WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS and WP:BATTLEGROUND and is damaging for the encyclopedia.
(formatting removed). In subsequent discussion François Robere noted Piotrus and Volunteer Marek had placed some of the content tags with the comment And who put them there, I wonder?
. After further discussion François Robere, Piotrus, and Volunteer Marek were unable to come to agreement and so François Robere eventually launched an RfC following a suggestion from Piotrus. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
François Robere and Icewhiz
Between 2019 and 2022 François Robere and Icewhiz (or the latter's sockpuppets) would agree with each other in discussions. These agreements happened in both directions (i.e. François Robere was not always the first to post, nor were they always the one to agree). Their interactions largely took place within the topic area or in discussions related to it (such as at WP:BLPN). (GizzyCatBella evidence)
Contentious claims about living people
Since 2019, François Robere has made contentious claims about living people:
- On 10 November 2019 he said
antisemitic sources, such as Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, "Mark Paul" and Gilad Atzmon
. The article on Chodakiewicz at the time contained a sourced quote to Jan T. Gross saying "he's anti-Semitic". The article on Atzmon at the time contained a section on allegations of anti-Semitism. No article or source was given for the contentious claim about Mark Paul. Robere expands on these descriptions in a later edit referencing others who make these claims but without providing specific citations to them. - In a November 2019 AfD discussion Robere stated a number of facts about Chodakiewicz followed by a description of him as
completely fucking nuts
- On 20 January 2020 Robere edited the article Krzysztof Jasiewicz with the edit summary
source
which added a reference to Tzur (2013) and also changed the article text from He has also been described as a "well-known expert on Polish-Jewish relations" through a 2013 interview statement of his has caused some controversy. toFormerly a reputable expert on Polish-Jewish relations, he has been fired from the academy after stating that "the Jews worked for centuries to bring the Holocaust about... the scale of the German crime was only possible because the Jews themselves participated in the murder of their own people."
- In a 21 January 2020 RSN post Robere described Krzysztof Jasiewicz as
discredited
but giving no citation for that claim at the time. - On 27 January 2020 Robere again changed the text of Krzysztof Jasiewicz to
Formerly a reputable expert...
, but adding a citation to Weinbaum (2016). In his edit summary, Robere describes Jasiewicz asfired in disgrace and disavowed by his university
.
(GizzyCatBella evidence; quotes and context by Wugapodes)
BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
See also #François Robere and Volunteer Marek
- Edit history
- On 19 April 2021 Mhorg adds content to the Jan Zaryn article citing Kalukin (2018), Smoleński (2018), Beczek (2019), Czuchnowski (2018), Karpiński (2018), Szukała (2016), and Polityczek (2018).
- On 26 April, Volunteer Marek removes some of the text with the edit summary
yeah this is BLP vio (at least part of it) with questionable sources
- Mhorg reverts with the summary
Please, if "part of it" is BLP vio, delete that "part" and explain why.
- Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
see talk. Please don't restore BLP vios.
- Volunteer Marek opened a talk page thread at the same time
- On 27 April V.A. Obadiah reverts with the summary
Excellent sources, removed oko.press because it is disputed on talk
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
Here we go again. BLP, new account.
- On 2 June Trasz reverts with no edit summary (N.B. Trasz was autoconfirmed in 2016)
- Volunteer Marek reverts Trasz's reverts as well as two unrelated changes with the edit summary
please engage constructively on talk rather than resorting to personal attacks
- Trasz reverts with the summary
I just did. Your edit is against the consensus, which is pretty clear to anyone who reads the talk page
- Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
no, it's actually quite the opposite - you've made no effort on talk at all, aside form one post which was a personal attack then jumped in to start an edit war. In such circumstances you really can't claim "consensus", which is in fact against this text being included
- On 3 June Nulliq reverts with the summary
whitewash of far right
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
violations of among other things, 500/30 restriction, BLP, failure to engage on talk, brand new account with few edits popping for drive by edit warring
- VikingDrummer (a now blocked sockpuppet) readds the content with modification with the summary
Copying second proposal by François Robere from draft on talk
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Piotrus reverts with the edit summary
no consensus for this version at present. This article obviously needs 500/30 anti-sock protection ASAP
- Talk page
- In the talk page discussion opened by Volunteer Marek, François Robere explains to Mhorg the need to attribute and source contentious information about living people:
- 11:48, 28 April 2021
we should be careful with terms like "antisemitic", unless they're repeated by several RS. Perhaps the best way of handling this would be to quote the sources, or Żaryn himself as quotes by by them; as long as the quotes are representative of the sources (not WP:CHERRY-picked), this should be okay.
- 14:51, 28 April 2021
...it has to be stated by the source that that's what they're doing, otherwise it's WP:OR. If it's not stated in those words exactly, or if the message is more nuanced, then you'd do better to quote instead of paraphrase
- 18:11, 28 April 2021
Mhorg is not actually wrong in perceiving these as nationalistic Polish perspectives - we have plenty of sources that establish that that we've already discussed in other venues. However, we cannot inject our own knowledge to articles without RS...
- 11:48, 28 April 2021
- In a new talk page discussion started in June:
- On 7 June 2021 François Robere compliments an editor who was later found to be a sock puppet and took issue with particular edits by Volunteer Marek, specifically:
- A 7 June removal of text at issue in the dispute above.
- Removal of a reference to Pacewicz (2018) with the summary
not RS
- Removal of critical text cited to Kalukin (2018), Newsweek Editorial Source (2018), and Dobrosz-Oracz (2018) with the edit summary
yeah, the sourcing is too weak for this to be included
- The following series of exchanges may show issues of WP:STONEWALLING or WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior in the topic area:
- 12:34 VM:
[link to the first diff Robere took issue with] (and rest) NONE OF THE SOURCES actually call him these things, which makes this a straight up BLPVIO and misrepresentation of sources
- 13:43 FR: Actually, OKO.press says he's a nationalist, GW [Gazeta Wyborcza] states that his work is "representative of Catholic nationalism", and naTemat quotes Jacek Leociak as saying that his 1968 resolution draft is "saturated with nationalism".
- Refering (presumably) to Dobrosz-Oracz (2018), Czuchnowski (2018) and Karpiński (2018). Robere also reiterated his issue with the removal of Pacewicz (2018) (claiming it is a reliable source), and arguing that Kalukin (2018), Newsweek Editorial Source (2018), and Dobrosz-Oracz (2018) are not "weak sourcing" for the associated claim.
- 13:58 VM:
as I already said, this was already discussed before. See above. WP:ONUS is on editors who want to restore text which was removed for BLP reason. This was same text that Mhorg tried to add originally and it was removed for a good reason. Why are you trying to pretend that this is something new, when it's just the same ol' same ol'?
- 14:02 VM:
And EVEN IF you could source the "nationalistic" part based on some dubious sources like oko press which is most certainly NOT reliable for a BLP, there's still the other serious allegations that are being included in that text so why are you pretending that "nationalistic" is the only one which is in dispute? Come on man!
- 14:34 FR: I'm not ignoring anything, I'm just not clear on why I should be justifying a fairly well-supported addition word-for-word when you don't even bother reading the sources
- 16:27 VM:
I’m not clear on why I should reply to a statement that consists of personal attacks and false accusations. How about you strike that part and then we’ll talk?
- 18:08 FR: Sure, after your retract your accusations of canvassing,[link] trying "to turn the article into an attack page"[link] and "cherry picking".[link]
- Thread change
- 19:31 FR: What exactly is "unsupported"?[...]You made three claims: a) that the statement isn't supported by the sources (which is at least partially false); b) that most of the sources aren't good enough (which seems ridiculous given that some are high profile publications, and others cite subject matter experts); and c) that the proportion of criticisms in the article is too high (a misreading of WP:DUE, and irrelevant now that the article has been expanded by almost ten times).
- Thread change, now 9 June
- 07:36 FR: [listing a number of claims about what the BLP subject has said] "Resentment" seems like a fair characterization of his attitude.
- This is in reply to Lembit Staan's comment So, when I see 'resents the Jews', I smell propaganda.
- 08:03 VM:
Where exactly did he say these things?
- 10:53 FR: This is all covered by the sources you deleted (usually by more than one sources), and all but one have already been mentioned or quoted elsewhere on in our discussion (see Talk:Jan Żaryn/Archive 1#Other sources and Talk:Jan Żaryn/Archive 1#Recent text deletions (topic separate from RfC)). What exactly are you unfamiliar with?
- 12:02 VM:
Well, no. The point of contention is that the sources were being misrepresented. So. Where exactly does he say this?
- 13:00 FR: Kate Korycki quotes him on Kielce - that's in the RfC you commented on - and so does Polityka (which you yourself quoted here). Both Polityka and naTemat refer to the "dark legend". naTemat quotes him on prosecuting Holocaust survivors. Polityka quotes him on the Israeli ambassador, as do many other sources, one of which was mentioned here just before you replied. You said you read the sources before you removed them seven times? [diffs omitted for space]
- alluding to a Korycki piece not previously brought up in the discussion or article as well as Kalukin (2018) and Karpiński (2018).
- 14:57 VM:
[...]None of the diffs you got up there show me removing Korycki. Natemat was NOT being used to source anything about any "dark legend" but rather was stuck at the end of a general BLP violating sentence that I removed. Polityka indeed quotes him on the ambassdador but that is also not in any of the diffs you got there. I dont think I ever removed anything about the ambassador. Now. Can you please drop this insinuation, false WP:ASPERSION, that I haven't read the sources we're discussing?[...]
- 18:05 FR: So are we clear on what the sources say and what they don't say?
- 16:48 VM:
Apparantly not since you claim "you removed text based on source A" and I say "no I didn't" and then you say "yes you did" and try to back it up by showing that I removed a completely different source and accuse me of not "readin a source". Can you strike the false aspersions? ~!~~
- 12:34 VM:
- On 7 June 2021 François Robere compliments an editor who was later found to be a sock puppet and took issue with particular edits by Volunteer Marek, specifically:
(Volunteer Marek evidence; quotes and context by Wugapodes)
During the talk page discussion, Volunteer Marek made two comments to François Robere that François Robere found to be, in Robere's words, Attacks, aspersions, hounding and general incivility
: 1 2 (François Robere evidence)
Dispute at History policy of the Law and Justice party
From 5 June 2021 until the page's protection on 20 June 2021, a dispute among multiple editors occured at History policy of the Law and Justice party regarding a quote from Harper (2010).
- 20:11, 5 June 2021 Masdafizdo (not extended confirmed) removes the quote without explanation.
- 21:32, 5 June 2021 François Robert restores:
unjustified
- 22:30, 5 June 2021 Masdafizdo reverts without explanation
- 06:35, 6 June 2021 VikingDrummer (Icewhiz sockpuppet) restores
- 06:57, 6 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts:
This isn’t about any “policy” and is outdated by a decade
- 06:58, 6 June 2021 Volunteer Marek removes a claim cited to Majewski & Jaskulowski (n.d.):
This is not actually in the source
- 11:34, 7 June 2021 François Robere restores the Harper (2010) quote:
PiS was in power 2005-2007 as well, so all we need is to qualify it by time ("writes" -> "wrote") and reorder the section chronologically
- 11:37, 7 June 2021 François Robere wikilinks terms
- 03:17, 8 June 2021 Volunteer Marek restores his 06:58, 6 June version:
as i said, this is outdated, misrepresents the source (some of this "info" is not in the sources) and is not about any "policy". WP:ONUS.
- 05:45, 8 June 2021 VikingDrummer restores:
Consensus (User:François Robere and me) against YOU. Source is on topic, and content is within source. The preceding edit summary has been fact checked on the talk page, with full quotes, and has been rated as '''pants on fire'''
- 05:47, 8 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts:
I’d appreciate it if you stopped stalking my edits, and no, that’s not consensus. And stop restoring edits by indef banned user Icewhiz Icewhiz
- 05:55, 8 June 2021 VikingDrummer restores:
I edited this article first, well first vs. the Volunteer Marek account. Your claim that this was not in the sources was fact checked as pants on fire, it is all in the source. Consensus against you.
- 19:33, 10 June 2021 IP 5.173.241.240 reverts
- 14:20, 18 June 2021 François Robere restores:
Restored source to different section, as suggested on Talk:Historical policy of the Law and Justice party#Jo Harper ten days ago without objections
- 15:20, 18 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts:
Please stop restoring edits by indef banned users (Icewhiz) particularly since your long term on wiki relationship with them raises the issue of WP:MEATPUPPETRY
- 22:04, 18 June 2021 K.e.coffman restores:
Please do not use edit summaries to accuse other editors of meat-puppetry -- there's ANI for that. Separately, the content is well cited and is relevant for the article.
- 22:12, 18 June 2021 K.e.coffman adds prose clarifying that the year of the quote
- 22:27, 20 June 2021 IP 5.173.248.213 reverts
- 22:30 to 23:31, 20 June 2021 5 different editors go revert repeated unexplained removals by the IP
- 23:33, 20 June 2021 GeneralNotability semi-protects the page for persistent sock puppetry
(François Robere evidence, additional context by Wugapodes)
Editing of Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance
In 2018, the Polish government passed a law amending the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance which makes it "a civil offense that is actionable before civil courts to cause harm to the reputation of Poland and its people, such as by making any accusation of complicity of Poland or Poles in the Holocaust" (European Parliament 2020, par. 47). The law was criticized contemporaneously by, for example, Amnesty International (2018), Wagner (2018), American Historical Association (2018). The English Wikipedia article on the law was created by Lembit Staan on 29 January 2018 (version as of 26 July 2018).
- March 2019
- Around 05:00 on March 14, Volunteer Marek removed content from the article. The content was sourced to Aderet (2018), Lipshiz (2018), Borschel-Dan (2016), Times of Israel Staff (2018), Reuters Staff (2018), Halon (2018), Davies & Goñi (2018), Zieve (2018), Doherty (2018), Shpigel (2018), Jewish Telegraphic Agency (2018), Rogowska (2018).
- The removal was reverted at 06:15 by Icewhiz.
- At 06:22 Volunteer Marek repeated the removal and additionally removed content sourced to Hacohen (2018), Maiberg (2018), Kaplan Sommer (2018), and Lapid (2018).
- At 16:03 François Robere reverted the removals except for the content sourced to Lapid (2018)
- At 17:50 Volunteer Marek repeated the removals.
- October and November 2019
- 21:29, 4 October 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes content sourced to Benjakob (2019).
- 00:52, 9 October 2019 François Robere restores the content after MyMoloboaccount did not respond on the talk page.
- 16:26, 17 November 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes content claiming that it was added by Icewhiz (N.B. Icewhiz was banned 1 October 2019).
- 19:09, 17 November 2019 François Robere restores the content claiming that it was worked on by others as well.
- Around 19:30, 17 November 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes and re-adds content which he claimed was added or removed by Icewhiz.
- 01:17, 18 November 2019 Levivich reverts without an edit summary.
- January 2021
- Prior to 1 January 2021, there were no edits in December 2020 and one edit in November 2020 (version as of 5 November 2020). October 2020 saw a major rewrite by Buidhe and others.
- c.23:05, 1 January 2021 Buidhe adds content to the lead and body, citing Tsesis (2020) and Belavusau (2018).
- c.23:36, 1 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts Buidhe's addition to the lead, and additionally removed content present in the 5 November 2020.
- c.23:48, 1 January 2021 Buidhe reverts Volunteer Marek saying
undiscussed major changes, removing aspects that are significantly emphasized in most scholarly sources that discuss the law
- 00:42, 2 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts saying Nooo, the ADDITION of this stuff constitutes "undiscussed major changes" since... you didn't bother discussing any of them. I've actually provided the rationale on talk for my restoration of version before YOUR "undiscussed major changes"
- c.00:49, 2 January 2021 Buidhe reverts.
- 01:09, 2 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts to the 15 October 2020 version with the edit summary Restore "stable version" per suggestion on talk so that the recent major changes can actually be discussed. Will work to reincorporate subsequent non-controversial edits
- In a series of 36 edits from 01:12 to 02:45, Volunteer Marek restores some changes implemented by Buidhe and others in October 2020.
- c.06:32, 2 January 2021 Buidhe adds content sourced to Berendt (2018), Frydel (2018), Żbikowski (2018), Jaraczewski (2018), and Bachmann (2020).
- 07:51, 2 January 2021 GizzyCatBella reverts Buidhe's addition with the edit summary @Buidhe, I have to step in here. I'm sorry, but here you seem to be connecting material from multiple sources to suggest a conclusion. This is WP:SYNTH. I will revert this edit of yours for now, but let talk about it at talk if you disagree. Okay?.
- Talk page
- Regarding the January 2021 dispute, a number of talk page discussion were started.
- In the "stuff in lede" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the edits prior to the 01:09, 2 January revert.
- Volunteer Marek says of Buidhe's 23:48 edit
BTW, I find the edit summary used here to be completely ...misleading.
- Buidhe replies You removed a lot of longstanding information from the lead, most of which has been present for months without any dispute.
- Volunteer Marek replies
No, I removed a chunk of UNDUE text which you JUST ADDED to the lede, less than THAN AN HOUR AGO! What are you talking about?
Volunteer Marek then gives links to Buidhe's 23:03 edit and Marek's 23:22 edit. - Buidhe replies The material that you deleted was not just my recent edit, which revised earlier material without significantly expanding it, but also longstanding revisions by other editors such as Nihil Novi and Lembit Stan
- Volunteer Marek replies, repeating the diffs in his previous reply.
- Buidhe replies saying This statement is false, VM also removed a sentence stating "Article 2a, which requires the Institute of National Remembrance to investigate crimes against Polish citizens by Ukrainian nationalists, also caused controversy." The resulting version of the lede did not mention Article 2a at all. and linking to Marek's 23:22 edit.
- Volunteer Marek says of Buidhe's 23:48 edit
- In the "Mass removal of well-source content" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the 01:09, 2 January edit and later.
- Buidhe says of Volunteer Marek's 1:09 edit:
I'm happy to discuss but it isn't productive to mass-remove almost half the article content as you did in this [27] edit, especially since most of it is well sourced to strong sources such as academic articles and so forth
- El_C responds Volunteer Marek you have removed tens of thousands of bytes, so now the expectation is that you explain in detail the reasoning behind that removal, not to mention touching on the origin of that which has been removed.
- Volunteer Marek replies working on restoring the part of it which can be verified. followed by an update when finished If Buidhe wishes to restore this other recently added text, they can propose it here on talk and discuss it, per the usual procedures.
- Buidhe replies
This does not assuage my objections. Relevant and well sourced content has been subject to mass removal.[...]
followed by examples of issues Buidhe saw.
- Buidhe says of Volunteer Marek's 1:09 edit:
- In the "Removal of historical background material" section, Buidhe and GizzyCatBella discuss the 07:51, 2 January revert.
- 09:59, Buidhe:
All of this is directly supported by sources (check them yourself), no OR involved
- 10:15, GCB: Please examine WP:SYNTH, and then please tell me what you think about the above combined material from multiple sources to be introduced into this article. Thanks.
- 10:17, Buidhe:
It doesn't combine material to reach a conclusion not in the sources. It just reports what the sources state about events during the Holocaust and perceptions about them.
- 10:23, GCB: Buidhe, it took you 2 minutes to reply....have you studied WP:SYNTH in 2 minutes or you were already familiar with WP:SYNTH? Well, I examined WP:SYNTH for longer than 2 minutes, and I believe you are mistaken Buidhe. Let's see what other editors think then.
- 10:30, GCB: Buidhe, when you get a chance, please read this as well [link to WP:What SYNTH is not]
- 10:34, Buidhe:
I already know what is NOT original research, and that is just reporting what the source says.
- 10:48, GCB: I still maintain you are confused here, Buidhe... What all those combined texts [internal quotes omitted] have to do with that Law other than suggesting something?
- 09:59, Buidhe:
- In the "stuff in lede" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the edits prior to the 01:09, 2 January revert.
- Buidhe opens an RfC on the talk page. 11 editors participated, and the RfC was closed a year later.
(Gitz6666 evidence with additional context and quotes by Wugapodes)
2021 dispute at Zygmunt Krasiński
In a June 2020 talk page discussion editors discussed whether the article Zygmunt Krasiński should mention the subject's antisemitic views. No changes were made until February 2021. Horse eye's back commented There currently appears to be nothing about anti-semitism on the page despite as far as I can tell the consensus here being to make at least a mention of it.
on 14 February 2021. In a series of edits on 15 February François Robere edited the article to include a reference in the lead to anti-Semitic views as well as an additional section in the body. 6 minutes after François Robere began making the changes, Volunteer Marek reverted saying there's obviously no consensus for this on talk
. 3 minutes later, Volunteer Marek partially restores the removed content (unified diff). François Robere then started a talk page discussion. On 19 February, François Robere restores his version citing a lack of response on the talk page. Volunteer Marek replies on the talk page (alleging, among other things, an interaction ban violation by Robere, but it's unclear what ban is being referenced, presumably the 2020 interaction ban with GizzyCatBella?) and then reverts Robere. François Robere replies on talk alleging, among other things, that Marek removed all mention of antisemitism
.
A search of the version of the page as of 14:55 19 February 2021 for the substring "semit" returns no matches. At 17:09, Volunteer Marek replies on the talk page saying that he will add content to the article body, advising Robere to stop reverting, and repeating the interaction ban allegation. At 17:10, Volunteer Marek adds a claim to the article that some of the subject's works contain[] antisemitic motifs
. A search of the page version as of 17:10, 19 February 2021 for the substring "semit" returns 1 match. At 17:11, Volunteer Marek replies on the talk page saying And actually I DID NOT remove "all mention of antisemitism" from the body. This is just false. It's still in there.
. François Robere replies, implying that Marek had just added it back after having removed it a moment prior. Volunteer Marek replies, saying I didn't "remove all mention". It was still there. I re-add an extra sentence just to make you happy. Please stop misrepresenting my edits.
(François Robere evidence; additional context, quotes, and substring searches by Wugapodes)
Summary of evidence involving Gitz6666
Gitz6666 began editing in this topic area in February 2023, having edited elsewhere before that (xtools). One month before, Gitz6666 had been topic banned from the Russo-Ukrainian War as a single uninvolved administrator editing restriction following a discussion at ANI. When Gitz6666 begain editing in the topic area, Volunteer Marek left Gitz6666 a talk page message entitled "Welcome to the topic... I guess?" that read, in part, Let me express my primary concern right at the outset. It is definitely eye-brow raising that you would choose to appear in this topic area immediately after you were topic banned in another topic area, in good part because of the disputes between me and you...Having said that allow me to say I regard you as an smart, constructive and valuable contributor to Wikipedia. I do think there are certain parts to your approach which get you into trouble but there's no point in rehashing these. I think it's quite likely that your contributions in this new topic area will be quite valuable as well and welcome your participation.
In Gitz6666's reply to Volunteer Marek he wrote, in part,
Allow me to congratulate you on the tact and amiability with which you have framed this conversation. I appreciate it very much and it sets me up to be as cooperative and open with you as possible.
First of all, I can assure you that I don't hold any grudge or vendetta against you.
and denying that he had followed Volunteer Marek around. (Volunteer Marek evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In June 2022, Gitz posted 20kb report at ANI initially titled "Volunteer Marek's incivility and POV-pushing" and later renamed "Volunteer Marek and Gitz6666" which concluded with Gitz writing It's incredibly time-consuming and stressing to work in an environment poisoned by VM. I know they've been around for a long time, but I'm asking you to protect from them both the editors as individuals and the editorial processes taking place in an article as delicate and controversial as War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
. An example of the issues raised is On the other hand VM, who always speaks about POV and WP:UNDUE, is the most blatant and disruptive POV-pusher I've ever encountered.
The thread was never formally closed. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
On January 9, 2023 Ostalgia posted a report at ANI titled "Hounding and edit warring by Volunteer Marek". On January 10, 2023 TimothyBlue started a subsection in that discussion proposing that Gitz6666 be boomeranged. Horse Eye's Back replied suggesting a topic ban for Gitz6666 from the Ukrainian-Russian conflict broadly construed. In his reply to Horse Eye's Back, Gitz6666 denied making personal attacks towards Volunter Marek and wrote that he believed he had complied with the neutral point of view policy. In that reply, Gitz contrasted his behavior with Volunteer Marek's writing, in part, In the EE area, he is openly an anti-Russian POV-pusher and always has been (at least since 2010 at WP:EEML).
(link changed from URL to wikilink to work with the quote template). On January 11 in a reply to Volunteer Marek, Gitz6666 wrote Since you have accused everyone of being pro-Russian propagandists, and you've done it everywhere (edit summaries and talk page discussions), you won't get too upset if someone tells you here, in the appropriate place, that you are an anti-Russian POV-pusher, will you?
(Volunteer Marek evidence)
Volunteer Marek, Gitz6666, and My very best wishes have all edited 84 pages with-in a week of each other. (Elinruby evidence, with further background by Barkeep49)
Jedwabne pogrom
On March 9, 2023 Chumchum7 began a discussion about wording in the lead of Jedwabne pogrom. The discussion focused on how to summarize the work of historian Jan T. Gross. Chumchum7 was concerned about impassioned editorializing
in the lead and including the use of a "however", including a link to WP:HOWEVER. Gitz6666 replied, in part, the "however" was already there in the source, and omitting it distorts Gross's findings.
and quoted a passage from Gross. Gitz6666 also committed to not restore a bold edit they'd made without further discusison, but remove something they chracterized as contentious quotation/misrepresentation of Gross until a consensus is reached
. Gitz6666 proceeded to remove part of the lead referencing Gross. Volunteer Marek replied beginning Gitz, I'm sorry but this looks like original research on your part.
, stating that "own initiative"
were Gitz6666's words not Gross, and concluding I am going to restore this text as I don't see much beyond creative and selective reading of the source here.
. Volunteer Marek reverted Gitz6666 with the edit summary this is based on an editor's own original research and fairly inaccurate reading of the source. "Of own free will" and "on own initiative" are two different things and either are not really relevant to the text which is included
. (Gitz6666 evidence. Some additional diffs are in the evidence presented by Chumchum7 with further rebuttal by Gitz6666)
Positive contributions in the topic area
Buidhe has written Featured Articles, Good Articles, and "Did you know?s" in the topic area. (Piotrus evidence)
Elinruby has contributed to Collaboration with the Axis powers extensively (over 30% of content and edits). (#Evidence presented by Piotrus) Elinruby feels they have shown colloboration on that article by Extensive referencing, recruitment, talk page discussions, structure proposals, two RSN discussions, lede rewrite.
(Evidence presented by Elinruby) TrangaBellam has created four articles (Glaukopis, Mariusz Bechta, Tomasz Greniuch and Marcin Zaremba) in this topic area. (#Evidence presented by Piotrus)
Marcelus, with input from Elinruby and Gitz6666, wrote a section at Collaboration with the Axis powers § Jewish collaboration to provide a neutral summary of the subject material. Piotrus has also provided collegial discussion on sources relating to the same article. (#Evidence presented by Elinruby)
Piotrus, Marcelus, and Gitz6666 have been collobrating since March 2023 on Antisemitism in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Ealdgyth created a list of problems in the topic area following the declined 2021 case request, and invited other users to fix some of the issues presented. However, only a half-dozen of the 41 indicated issues were ever resolved, most of them by Volunteer Marek. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II
Prior to 2021, collegial editing was seen at History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II. Created in December 2019 by Buidhe, there was some brief concern about a source (discussion about Farkash) but otherwise collegial editing during the pre-GA review, GAN, and FAC.
In May 2021 an edit war started regarding the inclusion of text relating to the Home Army.
Timeline of May 2021 edits
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During the above time period there were multiple talk page discussions, in particular this discussion, over the inclusion of Zimmerman and Farkash. Two different pre-RFC discussions (#Draft text for an RfC, #Draft text for RfC (seeking final approval)) were opened on the matter, with Zimmerman (page 361) eventually agreed upon to be removed, but the text from Zimmerman (page 213) and Farkash was not restored.
On March 31, 2023 Gitz6666 restored the original content in full but was reverted by Volunteer Marek approximately two hours later. Both users cited consensus on the talk page (or lack thereof) as justification for their actions. Volunteer Marek began a discussion on the talk page titled "Restarting old disputes" linking to Gitz's 31 March edit. After discussion, Gitz and Piotrus found consensus about the disputed content. (Gitz6666 evidence, Piotrus evidence with additional background by Barkeep49)
Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust (Gitz6666)
In February 2023, Piotrus, Gitz, and Marcelus found consensus to address some of Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust criticsms at Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust.(Piotrus evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Lembit Staan
Lembit Staan used to be named user:Staszek Lem. (Evidence presented by Lembit Staan)
Jan Żaryn
See also #Summary of evidence involving Mhorg and #BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust wrote, in part, about Jan Żaryn After still more back and forth in July, including a five-part Request for Comment by François Robere,233 Lembit Staan and GizzyCatBella overhauled the entire article, simply removing the overwhelming majority of the journalists’ and scholars’ observations on Żaryn’s extremism.224
(footnotes in the original). According to Lembit Staan, his edits referenced in footnote 234 should not be described as simply removing
content. Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust chracterizes Zaryn as having the position that Jews were to blame for the Kielce pogrom
which it says is baseless
. The Jan Żaryn article characterizes his position as Żaryn, a co-editor of a two-volume monograph on the Kielce pogrom, has stated that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals... supported the communist authorities or... joined their ranks"; he blames those individuals for being part of Communist censorship and propaganda organs, who were "deceitfully ... silent about Soviet massacres." This, he believes, "intensified anti-Semitic attitudes" that resulted in the Kielce pogrom.
(lack of sourcing in the original). (Evidence presented by Lembit Staan)
Summary of evidence involving Levivich
The Forgotten Holocaust
On February 17, 2023 Mathglot began a discussion on the talk page of The Forgotten Holocaust quoting from Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust (Legitimizing fringe academics), mentioning the then open request for Arbitration, and writing I would be in favor of WP:TNT, starting by reducing the article to as single, uncontentious paragraph about the details of the book.
That same day Marcelus replied to Mathglot writing in part I see no reason to "reboot" the article. It seems to me that the very existence of a long section on the reception of the book indicates that it was mixed.
. On February 20 Nihil novi replied agreeing with Marcelus writing in part Poland lost not only 3,000,000 of its ethnically Jewish citizens, but also 3,000,000 of its other citizens at the hands of the Germans... The prevailing view presented in the article's Reviews section is that Lukas has contributed to a truer, more nuanced view of the German devastations visited on all of Poland's inhabitants.
. (Background by Barkeep49 to Evidence presented by LEvalyn).
On February 19, Piotrus asked on the talk page
I would like to hear why Stephen P. Hoffmann's review for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society was removed? The edit summary is "Barely known journal; barely known IR academic with no training in the topic area" JSTOR states [3]: "Published continuously since 1903, the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society is among the oldest historical journals in the United States". Stephen P. Hoffmann (often referred to with out the P.) is/was a professor of political science at Taylor University, with a PhD from Princeton University.
In the discussion that followed, Piotrus and Marcelus suggested it should be included. In the discussion which followed Piotrus suggested it was appropriate to include owing to Hoffman's academic credentials as a political scientist since Holocaust Studies is an interdisciplinary field and the journal the review was published in was a reliable source. Marcelus suggested that was overlap between the disciplines and so it was appropriat to include (example edit If someone writes about history than he is historian; and the paper is about German history. And the Forgotten Holocaust isn't part of the Holocaust studies, its scope is broader.
). Levivich, TrangaBellam, and Shibbolethink suggested it was not appropriate for inclusion. They suggested that inclusion of the paper was not supported by the Neutral Point of View policy. Levivich also had an extended discussion with Piotrus and Marcelus about Hoffman's academic credentials (example edit First, it's not true that if someone writes about history, then he is a historian. That's just silly. Second, the paper is not about history. It's about contemporary politics. It's in a journal called "Review of Politics". It's about 1980s politics and it was published in 1986; that's not a history paper. Third, the "Forgotten Holocaust" is not part of Holocaust studies? That's even sillier than the first thing!
) and the reliability of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (example comment ...Is Register of the Kentucky Historical Society an RS? Probably, for Kentucky history. Not for WWII history. Not for the Holocaust.
The discussion between these editors largely concluded after Piotrus wrote that he was going to seek additional input on the topic from the Reliable Source Noticeboard.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Also on February 19, Piotrus asked on the WikiProject Books talk page for additional additional perspectives about a comment by Levivich that The author's viewpoint about their own book is not a viewpoint that is WP:DUE in the "reviews" section of a Wikipedia article about the book.
(formatting in the original). This request was see by LEvalyn who made seven comments in the discussion on February 28 and March 1: [4][5][6][7][8][9][10].
- On February 28, LEvalyn wrote,
I think a TNT is a good idea. It is indeed very achievable with book articles (which are my primary area of expertise) to write a simple, uncontroversial article. And then we would have a clean slate to address the problem of "reception" from the ground up.
. Piotrus replied to LEvalyn suggesting that those who supported TNT should go to Articles for Deletion. - On March 1, LEvalyn replied to Nihil novi's February 20 comment writing in part
I think the impression you have formed of this book is exactly why the article is troublesome in its current state. Within the genre of academic reviews... any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE book.
to which Nihil novi replied that same day askingCould you please explain why Richard C. Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust, which has been reviewed favorably by persons knowledgeable on its subject, should be banned from Wikipedia articles on pertinent subjects?
. LEvalyn respondedCould you explain to me why you believe that is what I am suggesting?
- On March 1, LEvalyn attempted to find a recent survey of the field on the book. GizzyCatBella replied
The best way to improve an article is to add more references and particulars rather than remove content
- On March 1, Piotrus stated a belief that according to WP:BOOK
more is usually better; hence my concern that we should be careful removing content (instead, adding more is, IMHO, better).
On March 2 an IP left a threat on the talk pages of Flibbertigibbets, Gitz6666, LEvalyn, Levivich, K.e.coffman, and TrangaBellam.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Levivich and Volunteer Marek
In a November 2021 Conflict of Interest Noticeboard discussion about a Haaretz article for which Icewhiz served as a source, Volunteer Marek wrote:
quote
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I just got to say that I am deeply impressed how Levivich managed to write all that without once mentioning that this whole hullabaloo is over an article basically ghost written by a user who has been indefinitely banned for making death threats, doxxing, and harassing people. Like, gee, perhaps that pertinent? I’m also very impressed by how Levivich managed to write all that without once mentioning that it was he (and Francois Robere, another of Icewhiz’s on wiki friends) who are the ones trying to repeatedly reinstate this material into as many articles as possible. There’s a lot of “VM removes” and “Piotrus removes” in Levivich’s write up but if this stuff gets removed... who is it that keeps putting it back in. Oh, that’s right. It’s Levivich and Francois Robere. I also like Levivich’s wording here, quote: “I and others have raised this issue at the RFCs listed above”. Who are these “others”? Hmmm, let’s see. It couldn’t be a bunch of sock puppet accounts of indef banned users (not just Icewhiz, he made buddies with a few other toxic indef banned users while hanging out at Reddit’s Gamergate subreddit), could it? Levivich’s write up is a masterwork of cynical sophistry, strategic omission and manipulation. |
On 13 March 2023 Levivich and Volunteer Marek were placed under a two-way interaction ban as an AE action by ScottishFinnishRadish because The entire dynamic between you two is doing nothing but raising the temperature in the topic area
. (Volunteer Marek evidence, ScottishFinnishRadish evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Marcelus
Beginning in mid-February 2023 multiple editors contributed to the Naliboki massacre article. Edits included changes to the content about Jewish partisans and a summary of the findings of the Institute of National Remembrance. This editing led to an Arbitration Enforcement case which led to TrangaBellam and GizzyCatBella receiving logged warnings and Marcelus receiving a 0RR restriction.(/Evidence#Adoring nanny Naliboki)
The Forgotten Holocaust
On February 17, 2023 Mathglot began a discussion on the talk page of The Forgotten Holocaust quoting from Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust (Legitimizing fringe academics), mentioning the then open request for Arbitration, and writing I would be in favor of WP:TNT, starting by reducing the article to as single, uncontentious paragraph about the details of the book.
That same day Marcelus replied to Mathglot writing in part I see no reason to "reboot" the article. It seems to me that the very existence of a long section on the reception of the book indicates that it was mixed.
. On February 20 Nihil novi replied agreeing with Marcelus writing in part Poland lost not only 3,000,000 of its ethnically Jewish citizens, but also 3,000,000 of its other citizens at the hands of the Germans... The prevailing view presented in the article's Reviews section is that Lukas has contributed to a truer, more nuanced view of the German devastations visited on all of Poland's inhabitants.
. (Background by Barkeep49 to Evidence presented by LEvalyn).
On February 19, Piotrus asked on the talk page
I would like to hear why Stephen P. Hoffmann's review for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society was removed? The edit summary is "Barely known journal; barely known IR academic with no training in the topic area" JSTOR states [11]: "Published continuously since 1903, the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society is among the oldest historical journals in the United States". Stephen P. Hoffmann (often referred to with out the P.) is/was a professor of political science at Taylor University, with a PhD from Princeton University.
In the discussion that followed, Piotrus and Marcelus suggested it should be included. In the discussion which followed Piotrus suggested it was appropriate to include owing to Hoffman's academic credentials as a political scientist since Holocaust Studies is an interdisciplinary field and the journal the review was published in was a reliable source. Marcelus suggested that was overlap between the disciplines and so it was appropriat to include (example edit If someone writes about history than he is historian; and the paper is about German history. And the Forgotten Holocaust isn't part of the Holocaust studies, its scope is broader.
). Levivich, TrangaBellam, and Shibbolethink suggested it was not appropriate for inclusion. They suggested that inclusion of the paper was not supported by the Neutral Point of View policy. Levivich also had an extended discussion with Piotrus and Marcelus about Hoffman's academic credentials (example edit First, it's not true that if someone writes about history, then he is a historian. That's just silly. Second, the paper is not about history. It's about contemporary politics. It's in a journal called "Review of Politics". It's about 1980s politics and it was published in 1986; that's not a history paper. Third, the "Forgotten Holocaust" is not part of Holocaust studies? That's even sillier than the first thing!
) and the reliability of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (example comment ...Is Register of the Kentucky Historical Society an RS? Probably, for Kentucky history. Not for WWII history. Not for the Holocaust.
The discussion between these editors largely concluded after Piotrus wrote that he was going to seek additional input on the topic from the Reliable Source Noticeboard.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Also on February 19, Piotrus asked on the WikiProject Books talk page for additional additional perspectives about a comment by Levivich that The author's viewpoint about their own book is not a viewpoint that is WP:DUE in the "reviews" section of a Wikipedia article about the book.
(formatting in the original). This request was see by LEvalyn who made seven comments in the discussion on February 28 and March 1: [12][13][14][15][16][17][18].
- On February 28, LEvalyn wrote,
I think a TNT is a good idea. It is indeed very achievable with book articles (which are my primary area of expertise) to write a simple, uncontroversial article. And then we would have a clean slate to address the problem of "reception" from the ground up.
. Piotrus replied to LEvalyn suggesting that those who supported TNT should go to Articles for Deletion. - On March 1, LEvalyn replied to Nihil novi's February 20 comment writing in part
I think the impression you have formed of this book is exactly why the article is troublesome in its current state. Within the genre of academic reviews... any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE book.
to which Nihil novi replied that same day askingCould you please explain why Richard C. Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust, which has been reviewed favorably by persons knowledgeable on its subject, should be banned from Wikipedia articles on pertinent subjects?
. LEvalyn respondedCould you explain to me why you believe that is what I am suggesting?
- On March 1, LEvalyn attempted to find a recent survey of the field on the book. GizzyCatBella replied
The best way to improve an article is to add more references and particulars rather than remove content
- On March 1, Piotrus stated a belief that according to WP:BOOK
more is usually better; hence my concern that we should be careful removing content (instead, adding more is, IMHO, better).
On March 2 an IP left a threat on the talk pages of Flibbertigibbets, Gitz6666, LEvalyn, Levivich, K.e.coffman, and TrangaBellam.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Positive contributions in the topic area
Buidhe has written Featured Articles, Good Articles, and "Did you know?s" in the topic area. (Piotrus evidence)
Elinruby has contributed to Collaboration with the Axis powers extensively (over 30% of content and edits). (#Evidence presented by Piotrus) Elinruby feels they have shown colloboration on that article by Extensive referencing, recruitment, talk page discussions, structure proposals, two RSN discussions, lede rewrite.
(Evidence presented by Elinruby) TrangaBellam has created four articles (Glaukopis, Mariusz Bechta, Tomasz Greniuch and Marcin Zaremba) in this topic area. (#Evidence presented by Piotrus)
Marcelus, with input from Elinruby and Gitz6666, wrote a section at Collaboration with the Axis powers § Jewish collaboration to provide a neutral summary of the subject material. Piotrus has also provided collegial discussion on sources relating to the same article. (#Evidence presented by Elinruby)
Piotrus, Marcelus, and Gitz6666 have been collobrating since March 2023 on Antisemitism in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Ealdgyth created a list of problems in the topic area following the declined 2021 case request, and invited other users to fix some of the issues presented. However, only a half-dozen of the 41 indicated issues were ever resolved, most of them by Volunteer Marek. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust (Marcelus)
In February 2023, Piotrus, Gitz, and Marcelus found consensus to address some of Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust criticsms at Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust.(Piotrus evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Mhorg
In a February 2021 discussion started by Volunteer Marek named "BLP vio" at Talk:Jan Żaryn he accused Mhorg of canvassing François Robere to the discussion based on a message left by Mhorg on Francois Robere's user talk page. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In March 2021, shortly after Mhorg reached extended confirmed status and started editing in the topic area, Volunteer Marek implied that Mhorg may be a sock of Icewhiz due to their addition of content that Volunteer Marek felt was too obscure. (Mhorg evidence)
Jan Żaryn
See also #Summary of evidence involving Mhorg and #BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust wrote, in part, about Jan Żaryn After still more back and forth in July, including a five-part Request for Comment by François Robere,233 Lembit Staan and GizzyCatBella overhauled the entire article, simply removing the overwhelming majority of the journalists’ and scholars’ observations on Żaryn’s extremism.224
(footnotes in the original). According to Lembit Staan, his edits referenced in footnote 234 should not be described as simply removing
content. Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust chracterizes Zaryn as having the position that Jews were to blame for the Kielce pogrom
which it says is baseless
. The Jan Żaryn article characterizes his position as Żaryn, a co-editor of a two-volume monograph on the Kielce pogrom, has stated that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals... supported the communist authorities or... joined their ranks"; he blames those individuals for being part of Communist censorship and propaganda organs, who were "deceitfully ... silent about Soviet massacres." This, he believes, "intensified anti-Semitic attitudes" that resulted in the Kielce pogrom.
(lack of sourcing in the original). (Evidence presented by Lembit Staan)
BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
See also #François Robere and Volunteer Marek
- Edit history
- On 19 April 2021 Mhorg adds content to the Jan Zaryn article citing Kalukin (2018), Smoleński (2018), Beczek (2019), Czuchnowski (2018), Karpiński (2018), Szukała (2016), and Polityczek (2018).
- On 26 April, Volunteer Marek removes some of the text with the edit summary
yeah this is BLP vio (at least part of it) with questionable sources
- Mhorg reverts with the summary
Please, if "part of it" is BLP vio, delete that "part" and explain why.
- Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
see talk. Please don't restore BLP vios.
- Volunteer Marek opened a talk page thread at the same time
- On 27 April V.A. Obadiah reverts with the summary
Excellent sources, removed oko.press because it is disputed on talk
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
Here we go again. BLP, new account.
- On 2 June Trasz reverts with no edit summary (N.B. Trasz was autoconfirmed in 2016)
- Volunteer Marek reverts Trasz's reverts as well as two unrelated changes with the edit summary
please engage constructively on talk rather than resorting to personal attacks
- Trasz reverts with the summary
I just did. Your edit is against the consensus, which is pretty clear to anyone who reads the talk page
- Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
no, it's actually quite the opposite - you've made no effort on talk at all, aside form one post which was a personal attack then jumped in to start an edit war. In such circumstances you really can't claim "consensus", which is in fact against this text being included
- On 3 June Nulliq reverts with the summary
whitewash of far right
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
violations of among other things, 500/30 restriction, BLP, failure to engage on talk, brand new account with few edits popping for drive by edit warring
- VikingDrummer (a now blocked sockpuppet) readds the content with modification with the summary
Copying second proposal by François Robere from draft on talk
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Piotrus reverts with the edit summary
no consensus for this version at present. This article obviously needs 500/30 anti-sock protection ASAP
- Talk page
- In the talk page discussion opened by Volunteer Marek, François Robere explains to Mhorg the need to attribute and source contentious information about living people:
- 11:48, 28 April 2021
we should be careful with terms like "antisemitic", unless they're repeated by several RS. Perhaps the best way of handling this would be to quote the sources, or Żaryn himself as quotes by by them; as long as the quotes are representative of the sources (not WP:CHERRY-picked), this should be okay.
- 14:51, 28 April 2021
...it has to be stated by the source that that's what they're doing, otherwise it's WP:OR. If it's not stated in those words exactly, or if the message is more nuanced, then you'd do better to quote instead of paraphrase
- 18:11, 28 April 2021
Mhorg is not actually wrong in perceiving these as nationalistic Polish perspectives - we have plenty of sources that establish that that we've already discussed in other venues. However, we cannot inject our own knowledge to articles without RS...
- 11:48, 28 April 2021
- In a new talk page discussion started in June:
- On 7 June 2021 François Robere compliments an editor who was later found to be a sock puppet and took issue with particular edits by Volunteer Marek, specifically:
- A 7 June removal of text at issue in the dispute above.
- Removal of a reference to Pacewicz (2018) with the summary
not RS
- Removal of critical text cited to Kalukin (2018), Newsweek Editorial Source (2018), and Dobrosz-Oracz (2018) with the edit summary
yeah, the sourcing is too weak for this to be included
- The following series of exchanges may show issues of WP:STONEWALLING or WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior in the topic area:
- 12:34 VM:
[link to the first diff Robere took issue with] (and rest) NONE OF THE SOURCES actually call him these things, which makes this a straight up BLPVIO and misrepresentation of sources
- 13:43 FR: Actually, OKO.press says he's a nationalist, GW [Gazeta Wyborcza] states that his work is "representative of Catholic nationalism", and naTemat quotes Jacek Leociak as saying that his 1968 resolution draft is "saturated with nationalism".
- Refering (presumably) to Dobrosz-Oracz (2018), Czuchnowski (2018) and Karpiński (2018). Robere also reiterated his issue with the removal of Pacewicz (2018) (claiming it is a reliable source), and arguing that Kalukin (2018), Newsweek Editorial Source (2018), and Dobrosz-Oracz (2018) are not "weak sourcing" for the associated claim.
- 13:58 VM:
as I already said, this was already discussed before. See above. WP:ONUS is on editors who want to restore text which was removed for BLP reason. This was same text that Mhorg tried to add originally and it was removed for a good reason. Why are you trying to pretend that this is something new, when it's just the same ol' same ol'?
- 14:02 VM:
And EVEN IF you could source the "nationalistic" part based on some dubious sources like oko press which is most certainly NOT reliable for a BLP, there's still the other serious allegations that are being included in that text so why are you pretending that "nationalistic" is the only one which is in dispute? Come on man!
- 14:34 FR: I'm not ignoring anything, I'm just not clear on why I should be justifying a fairly well-supported addition word-for-word when you don't even bother reading the sources
- 16:27 VM:
I’m not clear on why I should reply to a statement that consists of personal attacks and false accusations. How about you strike that part and then we’ll talk?
- 18:08 FR: Sure, after your retract your accusations of canvassing,[link] trying "to turn the article into an attack page"[link] and "cherry picking".[link]
- Thread change
- 19:31 FR: What exactly is "unsupported"?[...]You made three claims: a) that the statement isn't supported by the sources (which is at least partially false); b) that most of the sources aren't good enough (which seems ridiculous given that some are high profile publications, and others cite subject matter experts); and c) that the proportion of criticisms in the article is too high (a misreading of WP:DUE, and irrelevant now that the article has been expanded by almost ten times).
- Thread change, now 9 June
- 07:36 FR: [listing a number of claims about what the BLP subject has said] "Resentment" seems like a fair characterization of his attitude.
- This is in reply to Lembit Staan's comment So, when I see 'resents the Jews', I smell propaganda.
- 08:03 VM:
Where exactly did he say these things?
- 10:53 FR: This is all covered by the sources you deleted (usually by more than one sources), and all but one have already been mentioned or quoted elsewhere on in our discussion (see Talk:Jan Żaryn/Archive 1#Other sources and Talk:Jan Żaryn/Archive 1#Recent text deletions (topic separate from RfC)). What exactly are you unfamiliar with?
- 12:02 VM:
Well, no. The point of contention is that the sources were being misrepresented. So. Where exactly does he say this?
- 13:00 FR: Kate Korycki quotes him on Kielce - that's in the RfC you commented on - and so does Polityka (which you yourself quoted here). Both Polityka and naTemat refer to the "dark legend". naTemat quotes him on prosecuting Holocaust survivors. Polityka quotes him on the Israeli ambassador, as do many other sources, one of which was mentioned here just before you replied. You said you read the sources before you removed them seven times? [diffs omitted for space]
- alluding to a Korycki piece not previously brought up in the discussion or article as well as Kalukin (2018) and Karpiński (2018).
- 14:57 VM:
[...]None of the diffs you got up there show me removing Korycki. Natemat was NOT being used to source anything about any "dark legend" but rather was stuck at the end of a general BLP violating sentence that I removed. Polityka indeed quotes him on the ambassdador but that is also not in any of the diffs you got there. I dont think I ever removed anything about the ambassador. Now. Can you please drop this insinuation, false WP:ASPERSION, that I haven't read the sources we're discussing?[...]
- 18:05 FR: So are we clear on what the sources say and what they don't say?
- 16:48 VM:
Apparantly not since you claim "you removed text based on source A" and I say "no I didn't" and then you say "yes you did" and try to back it up by showing that I removed a completely different source and accuse me of not "readin a source". Can you strike the false aspersions? ~!~~
- 12:34 VM:
- On 7 June 2021 François Robere compliments an editor who was later found to be a sock puppet and took issue with particular edits by Volunteer Marek, specifically:
(Volunteer Marek evidence; quotes and context by Wugapodes)
During the talk page discussion, Volunteer Marek made two comments to François Robere that François Robere found to be, in Robere's words, Attacks, aspersions, hounding and general incivility
: 1 2 (François Robere evidence)
Summary of evidence involving My very best wishes
Volunteer Marek, Gitz6666, and My very best wishes have all edited 84 pages with-in a week of each other. (Elinruby evidence, with further background by Barkeep49)
In December 2019 My very best wishes hypothesised that Paul Siebert was potentially a sock or meatpuppet of Icewhiz. After a discussion on bbb23's talk page My very best wishes amended their original post to remove the implication. (Paul Siebert evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Nihil novi
The Forgotten Holocaust
On February 17, 2023 Mathglot began a discussion on the talk page of The Forgotten Holocaust quoting from Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust (Legitimizing fringe academics), mentioning the then open request for Arbitration, and writing I would be in favor of WP:TNT, starting by reducing the article to as single, uncontentious paragraph about the details of the book.
That same day Marcelus replied to Mathglot writing in part I see no reason to "reboot" the article. It seems to me that the very existence of a long section on the reception of the book indicates that it was mixed.
. On February 20 Nihil novi replied agreeing with Marcelus writing in part Poland lost not only 3,000,000 of its ethnically Jewish citizens, but also 3,000,000 of its other citizens at the hands of the Germans... The prevailing view presented in the article's Reviews section is that Lukas has contributed to a truer, more nuanced view of the German devastations visited on all of Poland's inhabitants.
. (Background by Barkeep49 to Evidence presented by LEvalyn).
On February 19, Piotrus asked on the talk page
I would like to hear why Stephen P. Hoffmann's review for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society was removed? The edit summary is "Barely known journal; barely known IR academic with no training in the topic area" JSTOR states [19]: "Published continuously since 1903, the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society is among the oldest historical journals in the United States". Stephen P. Hoffmann (often referred to with out the P.) is/was a professor of political science at Taylor University, with a PhD from Princeton University.
In the discussion that followed, Piotrus and Marcelus suggested it should be included. In the discussion which followed Piotrus suggested it was appropriate to include owing to Hoffman's academic credentials as a political scientist since Holocaust Studies is an interdisciplinary field and the journal the review was published in was a reliable source. Marcelus suggested that was overlap between the disciplines and so it was appropriat to include (example edit If someone writes about history than he is historian; and the paper is about German history. And the Forgotten Holocaust isn't part of the Holocaust studies, its scope is broader.
). Levivich, TrangaBellam, and Shibbolethink suggested it was not appropriate for inclusion. They suggested that inclusion of the paper was not supported by the Neutral Point of View policy. Levivich also had an extended discussion with Piotrus and Marcelus about Hoffman's academic credentials (example edit First, it's not true that if someone writes about history, then he is a historian. That's just silly. Second, the paper is not about history. It's about contemporary politics. It's in a journal called "Review of Politics". It's about 1980s politics and it was published in 1986; that's not a history paper. Third, the "Forgotten Holocaust" is not part of Holocaust studies? That's even sillier than the first thing!
) and the reliability of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (example comment ...Is Register of the Kentucky Historical Society an RS? Probably, for Kentucky history. Not for WWII history. Not for the Holocaust.
The discussion between these editors largely concluded after Piotrus wrote that he was going to seek additional input on the topic from the Reliable Source Noticeboard.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Also on February 19, Piotrus asked on the WikiProject Books talk page for additional additional perspectives about a comment by Levivich that The author's viewpoint about their own book is not a viewpoint that is WP:DUE in the "reviews" section of a Wikipedia article about the book.
(formatting in the original). This request was see by LEvalyn who made seven comments in the discussion on February 28 and March 1: [20][21][22][23][24][25][26].
- On February 28, LEvalyn wrote,
I think a TNT is a good idea. It is indeed very achievable with book articles (which are my primary area of expertise) to write a simple, uncontroversial article. And then we would have a clean slate to address the problem of "reception" from the ground up.
. Piotrus replied to LEvalyn suggesting that those who supported TNT should go to Articles for Deletion. - On March 1, LEvalyn replied to Nihil novi's February 20 comment writing in part
I think the impression you have formed of this book is exactly why the article is troublesome in its current state. Within the genre of academic reviews... any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE book.
to which Nihil novi replied that same day askingCould you please explain why Richard C. Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust, which has been reviewed favorably by persons knowledgeable on its subject, should be banned from Wikipedia articles on pertinent subjects?
. LEvalyn respondedCould you explain to me why you believe that is what I am suggesting?
- On March 1, LEvalyn attempted to find a recent survey of the field on the book. GizzyCatBella replied
The best way to improve an article is to add more references and particulars rather than remove content
- On March 1, Piotrus stated a belief that according to WP:BOOK
more is usually better; hence my concern that we should be careful removing content (instead, adding more is, IMHO, better).
On March 2 an IP left a threat on the talk pages of Flibbertigibbets, Gitz6666, LEvalyn, Levivich, K.e.coffman, and TrangaBellam.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Dispute at Paradisus Judaeorum
On 25 March 2020, SlimVirgin (Sarah) added {{POV}} to the article Paradisus Judaeorum and then started a talk page discussion. In this discussion, K.e.coffman raises a concern about the use of Kot (1937) as a source for the article.
- K.e.coffman quotes Biskupski (2017) which describes Kot as "aggressively antisemitic" as justification for why she believes Kot is
an unsuitable source for matters of Jewish history in Poland
. - Piotrus responds that the characterization of Kot in Biskupski (2017)
is not commonly used in other sources
and mentions Tokarska-Bakir references Kot favorably (the specific reference is not given, presumably Tokarska-Bakir (2004)). - Sarah responds, referencing Zimmerman (2015) who describes a 1941 report by Kot as "tapping into age-old stereotypes of Jews and money".
- Piotrus replies saying that Kot's potential antisemitism is immaterial to whether the 1937 source is reliable, and he points to Krzyżanowski (1958) and Tokarska-Bakir having cited the work favorably as evidence for its reliability.
- Sarah then points out a 2018 discussion on the same topic and reiterates concerns about the propriety of using Kot (1937) saying
Citing a 1937 source as an independent secondary source on Jews and arguably antisemitism is already skating on thin ice, but doing so knowing about the source's antisemitism is quite something.
- Piotrus contests the characterization of Kot as antisemitic saying
I can't find any scholarly criticism of him outside the off hand remark by Biskuprski, which is contradicted by Wasserstein. And positively reviewed by Tokarska-Bakir, a scholar whose one area of expertise is Polish antisemtism
(see Biskupski (2017), Wasserstein (1988), and presumably Tokarska-Bakir (2004)). - Sarah again quotes a 1941 report by Kot to which Piotrus responds
Right, I don't think anyone here is impressed by his views on this, to say the least. Yet this quote has nothing to do with this article. We are not talking about using his views to describe Polish-Jewish relations in the interwar period or WWII, where I'd agree we should be careful using contemporary Polish sources.
Piotrus goes on to argue that Kot isconsidered an undisputed authority
quoting Tokarska-Bakir (in Polish) and referencing Szczuki (1999). Piotrus brings the discussion back to K.e.coffman's original post, sayingI think we are all in agreement that Kot is not a great source for "matters of Jewish history". Fortunately, he is not used as such. His 1937 doesn't discuss the Polish-Jewish history in depth, and I don't see any red flags for his use here, which is concerned not with Polish-Jewish history but with the literary analysis of the poem and such.
- The discussion briefly digresses to a discussion of Kot's biography, but Piotrus returns to the original topic saying
The only relevant question here was "is Kot a RS for this article?" which I think has been answered sufficiently, given plethora of positive academic reviews of his work in related context
- Sarah responds, saying
Using a 1937 source on a sensitive issue—the analysis of a text describing the position of Jews in Poland—as an independent secondary source was never a good idea. If we then find out that the author made explicitly antisemitic statements and was described by one historian as "aggressively antisemitic", then clearly it becomes a very bad idea.
- Piotrus replies that
Kot's work is still respected and relevant today. Biskupski made a clear mistake, and he doesn't justify his assessment of Kot. No other source calls him antisemitic, and we have two that explicitly contradict such an assessment (Szczucki and Wasserstein). Kot's scholarly contributions are extremly well received, and praised by numerous scholars, such as Tokarska-Bakir, Szczucki, Soroka, Hurło, Brock, Pietrzyk, Tazbir, Fitowa, Weintraub and Wałęga. If you want, you can call Biskupski's passing comment a dissenting view, but the mainstream academic consensus is very clear that Kot is both reliable and valid.
making reference to Szczucki (1999), Wasserstein (1988), and Soroka (1976) to support his view, among other authors not previously mentioned in the discussion.
At the end of March 29, Nihil Novi starts a new thread on a related topic, pointing out three examples where a scholars other interests don't necessarily
(emphasis original) influence their scholarly work.
- Warshy replies, saying
the scholarly work of Kot and his political views and actions cannot be hermetically separated, artificially isolated, as if there is no connection whatsoever between one realm and the other. His influence in both realms have very serious consequences for one central issue: the relations between Poles and Poland and Jews since the 17th century and up to the Second World War.
- Piotrus replies, saying
Nobody has ever pointed out that any of Kot's scholarly works have issues with anti-semitism.
and again mentioning Szczucki (1999) and Wasserstein (1988). He goes on to saya number of scholars who wrote about Kot's life [note] the need to separate discussion about Kot, the renown scholar, and Kot, the mediocre politician, also noting he was pretty good at keeping his political views from affecting (being seen in) his scholarly work.
before acknowledging that Biskupski (2017) does contradict Szczucki (1999) and Wasserstein (1988). Piotrus concludes by referencing Adamczyk (2003) and Weintraub (1981) as overviews of Kot's work. - Sarah replies saying
Piotrus, what you've been doing here feels like gaslighting....You need to start engaging with the arguments, not throwing back walls of text in the hope that people get fed up and wander off.
- Piotrus replied saying
You need to start responding to arguments by others, you have repeatedly ignored almost everything I've said, such as Wasserstein's and Szczucki's clear as day comments that Kot was not an antisemite, or Tokarska-Bakir's usage of Kot as a source, and calling his 1937 work solid, in the context of her article on antisemitism in Poland. You have ignored those important rebukes time and again.
Later that same day (March 30, 2020) Chumchum7, previously uninvolved at the page, started a third thread saying:
User:Piotrus has just asked me to take a look at this for outside comment. Having scanned this discussion very briefly I am convinced by SarahSV's quotes and share K.e.coffman's perspective that Kot expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.
and then asking a series of questions about the dispute such asdoes anyone disagree with Piotrus that we are not citing him for anything that would be remotely considered controversial or such
.- Piotrus and Sarah both reply to Chumchum7, and Piotrus also replies to Sarah taking issue with her reply and again citing Szczucki (1999) and Wasserstein (1988).
- Chumchum7 replies to them both, laying out some issues and suggestions for improvement including
Setting aside Kot's antisemitism for a moment, as dated to 1937 he is also a very old source and there may be a case for him being outdated versus the other sources in this article, namely Matyjaszek (2017), Polonsky (2017) and Tokarska-Bakir (2004). I don't now why they have been relegated to a 'note' with commentary when they should have at least equal weight.
andBoth you and Piotrus could try WP:DISENGAGE for a while.
.
The discussion then turns to the article title in which Chumchum7, Nihil Novi, and Piotrus participate; Sarah ceases editing the page. (Horse Eye's Back evidence; quotes and additional information by Wugapodes)
Summary of evidence involving Paul Siebert
In December 2019 My very best wishes hypothesised that Paul Siebert was potentially a sock or meatpuppet of Icewhiz. After a discussion on bbb23's talk page My very best wishes amended their original post to remove the implication. (Paul Siebert evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Piotrus
Trust and Safety and the Arbitration Committee are aware of the harassment of Piotrus by (the Foundation banned) Icewhiz. (Piotrus evidence)
Examples of Piotrus reconsidering past actions/beliefs include Glaukopis 1 2, Polonsky, and Jedwabne pogrom.(Horse Eye's Back evidence, Piotrus evidence)
While the edit count of Piotrus in this topic area increased significantly during the time period when Icewhiz was active (accounting for ~40% of all edits), their editing has returned to a similar level compared to before Icewhiz was active (7% of edits before and 13% of edits after). Since 2017 Piotrus has written 8 GAs in this topic area and 16 GAs elsewhere. Since 2021 ~13% (23 of 183) of their new articles were in this topic space, with none being marked as controversial or non-neutral. Piotrus was banned from the topic area for a month in February 2021, the only sanction they have received and the only time they have been to AE since 2011. (Piotrus evidence)
The Forgotten Holocaust
On February 17, 2023 Mathglot began a discussion on the talk page of The Forgotten Holocaust quoting from Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust (Legitimizing fringe academics), mentioning the then open request for Arbitration, and writing I would be in favor of WP:TNT, starting by reducing the article to as single, uncontentious paragraph about the details of the book.
That same day Marcelus replied to Mathglot writing in part I see no reason to "reboot" the article. It seems to me that the very existence of a long section on the reception of the book indicates that it was mixed.
. On February 20 Nihil novi replied agreeing with Marcelus writing in part Poland lost not only 3,000,000 of its ethnically Jewish citizens, but also 3,000,000 of its other citizens at the hands of the Germans... The prevailing view presented in the article's Reviews section is that Lukas has contributed to a truer, more nuanced view of the German devastations visited on all of Poland's inhabitants.
. (Background by Barkeep49 to Evidence presented by LEvalyn).
On February 19, Piotrus asked on the talk page
I would like to hear why Stephen P. Hoffmann's review for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society was removed? The edit summary is "Barely known journal; barely known IR academic with no training in the topic area" JSTOR states [27]: "Published continuously since 1903, the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society is among the oldest historical journals in the United States". Stephen P. Hoffmann (often referred to with out the P.) is/was a professor of political science at Taylor University, with a PhD from Princeton University.
In the discussion that followed, Piotrus and Marcelus suggested it should be included. In the discussion which followed Piotrus suggested it was appropriate to include owing to Hoffman's academic credentials as a political scientist since Holocaust Studies is an interdisciplinary field and the journal the review was published in was a reliable source. Marcelus suggested that was overlap between the disciplines and so it was appropriat to include (example edit If someone writes about history than he is historian; and the paper is about German history. And the Forgotten Holocaust isn't part of the Holocaust studies, its scope is broader.
). Levivich, TrangaBellam, and Shibbolethink suggested it was not appropriate for inclusion. They suggested that inclusion of the paper was not supported by the Neutral Point of View policy. Levivich also had an extended discussion with Piotrus and Marcelus about Hoffman's academic credentials (example edit First, it's not true that if someone writes about history, then he is a historian. That's just silly. Second, the paper is not about history. It's about contemporary politics. It's in a journal called "Review of Politics". It's about 1980s politics and it was published in 1986; that's not a history paper. Third, the "Forgotten Holocaust" is not part of Holocaust studies? That's even sillier than the first thing!
) and the reliability of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (example comment ...Is Register of the Kentucky Historical Society an RS? Probably, for Kentucky history. Not for WWII history. Not for the Holocaust.
The discussion between these editors largely concluded after Piotrus wrote that he was going to seek additional input on the topic from the Reliable Source Noticeboard.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Also on February 19, Piotrus asked on the WikiProject Books talk page for additional additional perspectives about a comment by Levivich that The author's viewpoint about their own book is not a viewpoint that is WP:DUE in the "reviews" section of a Wikipedia article about the book.
(formatting in the original). This request was see by LEvalyn who made seven comments in the discussion on February 28 and March 1: [28][29][30][31][32][33][34].
- On February 28, LEvalyn wrote,
I think a TNT is a good idea. It is indeed very achievable with book articles (which are my primary area of expertise) to write a simple, uncontroversial article. And then we would have a clean slate to address the problem of "reception" from the ground up.
. Piotrus replied to LEvalyn suggesting that those who supported TNT should go to Articles for Deletion. - On March 1, LEvalyn replied to Nihil novi's February 20 comment writing in part
I think the impression you have formed of this book is exactly why the article is troublesome in its current state. Within the genre of academic reviews... any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE book.
to which Nihil novi replied that same day askingCould you please explain why Richard C. Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust, which has been reviewed favorably by persons knowledgeable on its subject, should be banned from Wikipedia articles on pertinent subjects?
. LEvalyn respondedCould you explain to me why you believe that is what I am suggesting?
- On March 1, LEvalyn attempted to find a recent survey of the field on the book. GizzyCatBella replied
The best way to improve an article is to add more references and particulars rather than remove content
- On March 1, Piotrus stated a belief that according to WP:BOOK
more is usually better; hence my concern that we should be careful removing content (instead, adding more is, IMHO, better).
On March 2 an IP left a threat on the talk pages of Flibbertigibbets, Gitz6666, LEvalyn, Levivich, K.e.coffman, and TrangaBellam.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Collaboration with the Axis Powers
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust claims that Collaboration with the Axis Powers "downplays the scope and nature of Polish collaboration with the Germans" (pp. 9 - 10). On February 18, 2023 Elinruby started a Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion about Adam Hempel's Policja granatowa w okupacyjnym systemie administracyjnym Generalnego Gubernatorstwa: 1939-1945. A focus of the discussion was on whether or not Polish police officers faced the death penalty if they did not cooperate with the Nazis. GrizzlyCatBella provided translation of the wording from the source (in Polish) to English as the "severest punishments" and asked What were the severest punishments back in 1939?
(emphasis in the original). Elinruby replied writing, in part, So you think this would mean death if you don't join, then I take it? I'd still rather find a source that says that exactly.
GrizzlyCatBella replied, in part, Do you still have doubts what that source says? If you do have doubts that severest penalty doesn’t mean death threat, then maybe someone has access to that book, I also want to see it. -
(emphasis in the original). Piotrus traced the change of arrest to death to an IP editor in 2008. K.e.coffman, pinging Elinruby and Piotrus suggested the sourcing was insufficient to support the claim of the death penalty. Piotrus agreed and changed the wording in the Blue Police article. Elinruby agreed and changed the wording in the Collaboration with the Axis Powers article.
(Elinruby evidence with additional links and quotes by Barkeep49)
Dispute at Paradisus Judaeorum
On 25 March 2020, SlimVirgin (Sarah) added {{POV}} to the article Paradisus Judaeorum and then started a talk page discussion. In this discussion, K.e.coffman raises a concern about the use of Kot (1937) as a source for the article.
- K.e.coffman quotes Biskupski (2017) which describes Kot as "aggressively antisemitic" as justification for why she believes Kot is
an unsuitable source for matters of Jewish history in Poland
. - Piotrus responds that the characterization of Kot in Biskupski (2017)
is not commonly used in other sources
and mentions Tokarska-Bakir references Kot favorably (the specific reference is not given, presumably Tokarska-Bakir (2004)). - Sarah responds, referencing Zimmerman (2015) who describes a 1941 report by Kot as "tapping into age-old stereotypes of Jews and money".
- Piotrus replies saying that Kot's potential antisemitism is immaterial to whether the 1937 source is reliable, and he points to Krzyżanowski (1958) and Tokarska-Bakir having cited the work favorably as evidence for its reliability.
- Sarah then points out a 2018 discussion on the same topic and reiterates concerns about the propriety of using Kot (1937) saying
Citing a 1937 source as an independent secondary source on Jews and arguably antisemitism is already skating on thin ice, but doing so knowing about the source's antisemitism is quite something.
- Piotrus contests the characterization of Kot as antisemitic saying
I can't find any scholarly criticism of him outside the off hand remark by Biskuprski, which is contradicted by Wasserstein. And positively reviewed by Tokarska-Bakir, a scholar whose one area of expertise is Polish antisemtism
(see Biskupski (2017), Wasserstein (1988), and presumably Tokarska-Bakir (2004)). - Sarah again quotes a 1941 report by Kot to which Piotrus responds
Right, I don't think anyone here is impressed by his views on this, to say the least. Yet this quote has nothing to do with this article. We are not talking about using his views to describe Polish-Jewish relations in the interwar period or WWII, where I'd agree we should be careful using contemporary Polish sources.
Piotrus goes on to argue that Kot isconsidered an undisputed authority
quoting Tokarska-Bakir (in Polish) and referencing Szczuki (1999). Piotrus brings the discussion back to K.e.coffman's original post, sayingI think we are all in agreement that Kot is not a great source for "matters of Jewish history". Fortunately, he is not used as such. His 1937 doesn't discuss the Polish-Jewish history in depth, and I don't see any red flags for his use here, which is concerned not with Polish-Jewish history but with the literary analysis of the poem and such.
- The discussion briefly digresses to a discussion of Kot's biography, but Piotrus returns to the original topic saying
The only relevant question here was "is Kot a RS for this article?" which I think has been answered sufficiently, given plethora of positive academic reviews of his work in related context
- Sarah responds, saying
Using a 1937 source on a sensitive issue—the analysis of a text describing the position of Jews in Poland—as an independent secondary source was never a good idea. If we then find out that the author made explicitly antisemitic statements and was described by one historian as "aggressively antisemitic", then clearly it becomes a very bad idea.
- Piotrus replies that
Kot's work is still respected and relevant today. Biskupski made a clear mistake, and he doesn't justify his assessment of Kot. No other source calls him antisemitic, and we have two that explicitly contradict such an assessment (Szczucki and Wasserstein). Kot's scholarly contributions are extremly well received, and praised by numerous scholars, such as Tokarska-Bakir, Szczucki, Soroka, Hurło, Brock, Pietrzyk, Tazbir, Fitowa, Weintraub and Wałęga. If you want, you can call Biskupski's passing comment a dissenting view, but the mainstream academic consensus is very clear that Kot is both reliable and valid.
making reference to Szczucki (1999), Wasserstein (1988), and Soroka (1976) to support his view, among other authors not previously mentioned in the discussion.
At the end of March 29, Nihil Novi starts a new thread on a related topic, pointing out three examples where a scholars other interests don't necessarily
(emphasis original) influence their scholarly work.
- Warshy replies, saying
the scholarly work of Kot and his political views and actions cannot be hermetically separated, artificially isolated, as if there is no connection whatsoever between one realm and the other. His influence in both realms have very serious consequences for one central issue: the relations between Poles and Poland and Jews since the 17th century and up to the Second World War.
- Piotrus replies, saying
Nobody has ever pointed out that any of Kot's scholarly works have issues with anti-semitism.
and again mentioning Szczucki (1999) and Wasserstein (1988). He goes on to saya number of scholars who wrote about Kot's life [note] the need to separate discussion about Kot, the renown scholar, and Kot, the mediocre politician, also noting he was pretty good at keeping his political views from affecting (being seen in) his scholarly work.
before acknowledging that Biskupski (2017) does contradict Szczucki (1999) and Wasserstein (1988). Piotrus concludes by referencing Adamczyk (2003) and Weintraub (1981) as overviews of Kot's work. - Sarah replies saying
Piotrus, what you've been doing here feels like gaslighting....You need to start engaging with the arguments, not throwing back walls of text in the hope that people get fed up and wander off.
- Piotrus replied saying
You need to start responding to arguments by others, you have repeatedly ignored almost everything I've said, such as Wasserstein's and Szczucki's clear as day comments that Kot was not an antisemite, or Tokarska-Bakir's usage of Kot as a source, and calling his 1937 work solid, in the context of her article on antisemitism in Poland. You have ignored those important rebukes time and again.
Later that same day (March 30, 2020) Chumchum7, previously uninvolved at the page, started a third thread saying:
User:Piotrus has just asked me to take a look at this for outside comment. Having scanned this discussion very briefly I am convinced by SarahSV's quotes and share K.e.coffman's perspective that Kot expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.
and then asking a series of questions about the dispute such asdoes anyone disagree with Piotrus that we are not citing him for anything that would be remotely considered controversial or such
.- Piotrus and Sarah both reply to Chumchum7, and Piotrus also replies to Sarah taking issue with her reply and again citing Szczucki (1999) and Wasserstein (1988).
- Chumchum7 replies to them both, laying out some issues and suggestions for improvement including
Setting aside Kot's antisemitism for a moment, as dated to 1937 he is also a very old source and there may be a case for him being outdated versus the other sources in this article, namely Matyjaszek (2017), Polonsky (2017) and Tokarska-Bakir (2004). I don't now why they have been relegated to a 'note' with commentary when they should have at least equal weight.
andBoth you and Piotrus could try WP:DISENGAGE for a while.
.
The discussion then turns to the article title in which Chumchum7, Nihil Novi, and Piotrus participate; Sarah ceases editing the page. (Horse Eye's Back evidence; quotes and additional information by Wugapodes)
Piotrus and Grabowski
Piotrus acknowledged some criticism made by Grabowski in 2020 about Polish Righteous Among the Nations and began a talk page discussion with an extensive block quote of the criticism and about the need for a possible Good Article reassessment. Piotrus has also raised concerns by Grabowski at Talk:Szmalcownik#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article, Talk:Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust/Archive_4#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article, and Talk:Jedwabne_pogrom/Archive_6#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article. In February 2023, Piotrus, Gitz, and Marcelus found consensus to address some of Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust criticsms at Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust.(Piotrus evidence)
Positive contributions in the topic area
Buidhe has written Featured Articles, Good Articles, and "Did you know?s" in the topic area. (Piotrus evidence)
Elinruby has contributed to Collaboration with the Axis powers extensively (over 30% of content and edits). (#Evidence presented by Piotrus) Elinruby feels they have shown colloboration on that article by Extensive referencing, recruitment, talk page discussions, structure proposals, two RSN discussions, lede rewrite.
(Evidence presented by Elinruby) TrangaBellam has created four articles (Glaukopis, Mariusz Bechta, Tomasz Greniuch and Marcin Zaremba) in this topic area. (#Evidence presented by Piotrus)
Marcelus, with input from Elinruby and Gitz6666, wrote a section at Collaboration with the Axis powers § Jewish collaboration to provide a neutral summary of the subject material. Piotrus has also provided collegial discussion on sources relating to the same article. (#Evidence presented by Elinruby)
Piotrus, Marcelus, and Gitz6666 have been collobrating since March 2023 on Antisemitism in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Ealdgyth created a list of problems in the topic area following the declined 2021 case request, and invited other users to fix some of the issues presented. However, only a half-dozen of the 41 indicated issues were ever resolved, most of them by Volunteer Marek. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
Use of Jan T. Gross as a source
See also Jedwabne pogrom
In 2018, a student participating in a class taught by Chapmansh wished to use Jan Gross's 2006 book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz as a source. A Wiki-ed expert working with the class began a Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion about the source. Chapmansh explained why they felt the source was reliable citing its publisher (Princeton University Press) and linked and quoted peer reviews of the book as well as citing statements attesting Gross' experitse as a subject matter expert in general. Piotrus agreed the source was Of course
reliable but expressed some concerns about the neutrality of the source and that Gross is not the final authority, just one of many voices in the ongoing discussion, and that some other reliable sources have criticized some of his findings (which doesn't mean he cannot be cited and considered reliable!)
. (Tryptofish evidence) Chapmansh later agreed with Piotrus and suggested the student compromise and implement Piotrus's suggestion. (Piotrus evidence)
Article and response
The article authored by Grabowski and Klein may contain factual errors or material omissions with regards to the conduct of named editors. A summary of the main points of contention as indicated by the authors can be found in evidence presented by François Robere. Piotrus generally responds to these in this essay (see also further clarifications by HaeB at the /Evidence page). Zero0000 has suggested that claiming editors promote Nazi stereotypes (see also Piotrus #26) and that Wikipedia is pushing the idea that "money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland" may be false.
History of the Jews in Poland
There were multiple additions and reverts to History of the Jews in Poland in February, April, and May 2019, which resulted in the page being fully protected three times.
The sequence begins February 22, 2019 16:37: Tatzref added content to History of the Jews in Poland suggesting that Jews were able to reclaim property taken during the war quickly, with the support of other Polish residents, and did so in the "thousands". According to Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust careful examination shows Tatzref plagiarized this paragraph from a Mark Paul online essay, ‘A Tangled Web: Polish–Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath
(see pp. 381 - 386).
Timeline of February edits
|
|---|
|
- February 25 22:48: TonyBallioni fully protects the page with the edit summary
Edit warring / content dispute: AE action
(formatting removed) until 22:49, 11 March 2019 - March 12 12:23: Icewhiz rewrites the property section with the edit summary
Remove content as it failed verification vs. the cited sources, misused a primary source, and was contradicted by available English RSes. Replace with content cited to academic English-language sources available online
The content remains unchanged until April 15 2:52 - 5:50 when Piotrus makes 7 edits all under 250 bytes to the property section, which is followed by other editors making further changes.
Timeline of April and May edits
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- May 11 3:04: Oshwah fully-protects the page with the edit summary
{{{1}}}
(formatting removed) - May 13 4:20: Volunteer Marekt reverted Icewhiz with the edit summary
per talk, this version is both more neutral and well sourced. Ample, extensive, detailed, exhaustive rationale has been provided. Anything beyond this is really just WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. If you wish to ADD material based on RS that's fine but plz stop removing existing well sourced material
May 13 - 19 edits
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- May 20 3:37: El C full protects the article with the edit summary {tqq|Protected "History of the Jews in Poland": Edit warring / content dispute: This edit war has gone on for long enough ([Edit=Require administrator access] (expires 03:37, 30 May 2019 (UTC))}} (formatting removed)
- May 20 - 23: El C performs two small edits in response to edit requests
- June 3 19:03: François Robere removes content with the edit summary
Discussion concluded with a consensus to remove the MJC's book, so I'm restoring the previous, well-sourced version
- 20:26: Volunteer Marek reverts François Robere with the edit summary
'm sorry, but no such consensus was achieved. Can you please provide a link where this consensus you claim exists was formed? At RSN, the discussion tended to the opposite conclusion. Furthermore EVEN IF there are issues with one particular source that does not justify making OTHER mass deletions of sourced text or unsupported changes
- June 4 2:51: K.e. coffman removes content with the edit summary
No consensus to include this source / content -- pls see Talk:History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#Edit_break
(formatting removed)
(Gitz6666 evidence, with additional background/links by Barkeep49)
An over 185 kb discussion about this content lasted until June. Major topics of discussion included:
- Whether the sources were being accurately represented
- Whether the sources were reliable
- Whether certain sources were primary sources and if so how to use them
- Whether the content added followed a neutral point of view, particularly whether or not the level of detail was appropriate for the article topic
- Whether any of the content added as the result of synthesis or other forms of original research
- How the non-English sources policy applies or should be applied
- Whether it was appropriate to revert to a "stable" version
There were separate sub-sections of proposed additional sources, discussion of an alleged biographies of living people policy violation, on the use of Lukasz Krzyżanowski, on the use of Alina Skibińska, and on the General level article
. Much of this discussion involved non-parties to the case, particularly two editors who have since been indefinitely blocked (Icewhiz and Tatzref).
Comments by Volunteer Marek in the discussion included: 1, 2 (Gitz6666 evidence, with additional background/links by Barkeep49)
Glaukopis
On February 19 between 12:27 and 14:25, TrangaBellam created Glaukopis, about a Polish history journal catering to the far right.
- 14:36: Piotrus placed a {{npov}} tag.
- 14:46: TrangaBellam undid Piotrus tag. At 14:51 TrangaBellam started a talk page discussion disputing the NPOV tag.
- 14:56" TrangaBellam replied to themselves writing
Piotrus, if you find that there are reliable historians — though I doubt that you understand the term — who admire Glaukopis, feel free to add them. But otherwise, I take a dim view of your shenanigans.
- 15:02: GizzyCatBella pings TrangaBellam writing on the talk page
You removed this tag without following Template:POV#When to remove. Your personal views of Wikipedia editors or the public are irrelevant. I’m kindly asking you to restore it.
(formatting in the original) - 15:04-15:06: TrangaBellam replied in three edits
(emphasis in the original)You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true: In the absence of any discussion.
I have bold-faced the clause. You have probably missed that Piotrus did not open any t/p discussion; this entire section is drafted by me. - 15:04: GizzyCatBella placed a {{Citation needed}} tag on the lead sentence and at 15:06 restored the {{npov}} tag and replied on the talk page
Refer to edit summary of the user who inserted the tag.
- 15:07: TrangaBellam replies
You suggest that edit-summaries are a way to discuss content? Fascinating.
- 15:09: GizzyCatBella pings TrangaBellam and writes
you created an article grossly unbalanced. (verification in edit history). Just negatives only.
(emphasis in original) - 15:09: Piotrus writes an explanation for his placing of the tag and suggests the Polish wiki's version of the article is more balanced
- 15:10: TrangaBellam replies to GizzyCatBella
If you find that there are reliable historians who admire Glaukopis, feel free to add them.
(use of quote template in original) and later addingThere is nothing in policy that suggests that we shall bend over backwards and exclude reliable sources lest our article is overwhelmingly negative.
- 15:10: Piotr replies saying his attempt to start a talk page discussion was lost in an edit conflict.
- 15:12: TrangaBellam reverted both tags with the edit summary
Rv disruptive tag-teaming
and then immediately undid themselves restoring the tags. A minute later TrangaBellam removed part of the lead sentence, the citation needed tag, and inserted a section about the journal's history. - 15:13: GizzyCatBella replies to TrangaBellam
:You do not remove the tag until this issue of WP:NPOV is resolved
(formatting in the original) and replies again withThis speaks for itself
Further discussion between Piotr and TrangaBellam discussing the sources ensues. Piotr removes the NPOV tag at 15:44 and concludes the talk page discussion at 16:00 writing to TrangaBellam, in part, ... which is why I agree with the generally critical portrayal of this source. I have to say I did not realize how problematic it was. Thanks for shining some light on this.
(Barkeep49 evidence)
History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II
Prior to 2021, collegial editing was seen at History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II. Created in December 2019 by Buidhe, there was some brief concern about a source (discussion about Farkash) but otherwise collegial editing during the pre-GA review, GAN, and FAC.
In May 2021 an edit war started regarding the inclusion of text relating to the Home Army.
Timeline of May 2021 edits
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During the above time period there were multiple talk page discussions, in particular this discussion, over the inclusion of Zimmerman and Farkash. Two different pre-RFC discussions (#Draft text for an RfC, #Draft text for RfC (seeking final approval)) were opened on the matter, with Zimmerman (page 361) eventually agreed upon to be removed, but the text from Zimmerman (page 213) and Farkash was not restored.
On March 31, 2023 Gitz6666 restored the original content in full but was reverted by Volunteer Marek approximately two hours later. Both users cited consensus on the talk page (or lack thereof) as justification for their actions. Volunteer Marek began a discussion on the talk page titled "Restarting old disputes" linking to Gitz's 31 March edit. After discussion, Gitz and Piotrus found consensus about the disputed content. (Gitz6666 evidence, Piotrus evidence with additional background by Barkeep49)
Piotrus emails
In June 2017 Piotrus and in May 2018 Piotrus wrote on user's talk pages the message You may want to enable the option of other editors being able to send you email. Public discussions are of course the best, but there may be circumstances when people want to send you an 'eyes only' communique. Just a thought.
In February 2021 Piotrus received a one-month topic ban from WWII ... or anything having to do with Polish political history...
due to canvassing on Polish Wikipedia. (Francois Robere evidence, "Piotrus asking for emails" and "Axis powers")
Potential coordinated editing
Piotrus, Volunteer Marek, and GizzyCatBella have edited pages they had previously never edited before shortly following edits by one of the other editors. At Zygmunt Krasiński in May 2020 – a page heavily edited by Piotrus – Volunteer Marek reverted a new addition to the page, and GizzyCatBella reverted the same editor the next day (neither had edited the article before). In August 2021 Volunteer Marek removed Warsaw concentration camp from Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia; the edit was undone by another user but removed shortly afterward by GizzyCatBella (again, their first edit to the page); this set of actions resulted in short blocks for both editors. Later in August François Robere created Property restitution in Poland; a few hours later Volunteer Marek started editing the page, followed only a few hours later by Piotrus. (Francois Robere evidence)
Another editor who would return from a long hiatus to edit pages in this topic area for the first time was MyMoloboaccount, with little explanation for how they arrived there. (Francois Robere evidence)
According to analysis by François Robere, through July 2020 35 of the 47 AfD discussions GizzyCatBella participated in also had participation by Piotrus and in all 21 AfD discussions GizzyCatBella participated in which Piotrus began, GizzyCatbella agreed with Piotrus.(Francois Robere evidence) Piotrus has indicated that in all discussions within the topic area, totalling 10 AFDs, they were only in agreement with GizzyCatBella approximately half of the time (Piotrus evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Szmenderowiecki
Summary of evidence involving TrangaBellam
Beginning in mid-February 2023 multiple editors contributed to the Naliboki massacre article. Edits included changes to the content about Jewish partisans and a summary of the findings of the Institute of National Remembrance. This editing led to an Arbitration Enforcement case which led to TrangaBellam and GizzyCatBella receiving logged warnings and Marcelus receiving a 0RR restriction.(/Evidence#Adoring nanny Naliboki)
Positive contributions in the topic area
Buidhe has written Featured Articles, Good Articles, and "Did you know?s" in the topic area. (Piotrus evidence)
Elinruby has contributed to Collaboration with the Axis powers extensively (over 30% of content and edits). (#Evidence presented by Piotrus) Elinruby feels they have shown colloboration on that article by Extensive referencing, recruitment, talk page discussions, structure proposals, two RSN discussions, lede rewrite.
(Evidence presented by Elinruby) TrangaBellam has created four articles (Glaukopis, Mariusz Bechta, Tomasz Greniuch and Marcin Zaremba) in this topic area. (#Evidence presented by Piotrus)
Marcelus, with input from Elinruby and Gitz6666, wrote a section at Collaboration with the Axis powers § Jewish collaboration to provide a neutral summary of the subject material. Piotrus has also provided collegial discussion on sources relating to the same article. (#Evidence presented by Elinruby)
Piotrus, Marcelus, and Gitz6666 have been collobrating since March 2023 on Antisemitism in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Ealdgyth created a list of problems in the topic area following the declined 2021 case request, and invited other users to fix some of the issues presented. However, only a half-dozen of the 41 indicated issues were ever resolved, most of them by Volunteer Marek. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
The Forgotten Holocaust
On February 17, 2023 Mathglot began a discussion on the talk page of The Forgotten Holocaust quoting from Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust (Legitimizing fringe academics), mentioning the then open request for Arbitration, and writing I would be in favor of WP:TNT, starting by reducing the article to as single, uncontentious paragraph about the details of the book.
That same day Marcelus replied to Mathglot writing in part I see no reason to "reboot" the article. It seems to me that the very existence of a long section on the reception of the book indicates that it was mixed.
. On February 20 Nihil novi replied agreeing with Marcelus writing in part Poland lost not only 3,000,000 of its ethnically Jewish citizens, but also 3,000,000 of its other citizens at the hands of the Germans... The prevailing view presented in the article's Reviews section is that Lukas has contributed to a truer, more nuanced view of the German devastations visited on all of Poland's inhabitants.
. (Background by Barkeep49 to Evidence presented by LEvalyn).
On February 19, Piotrus asked on the talk page
I would like to hear why Stephen P. Hoffmann's review for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society was removed? The edit summary is "Barely known journal; barely known IR academic with no training in the topic area" JSTOR states [35]: "Published continuously since 1903, the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society is among the oldest historical journals in the United States". Stephen P. Hoffmann (often referred to with out the P.) is/was a professor of political science at Taylor University, with a PhD from Princeton University.
In the discussion that followed, Piotrus and Marcelus suggested it should be included. In the discussion which followed Piotrus suggested it was appropriate to include owing to Hoffman's academic credentials as a political scientist since Holocaust Studies is an interdisciplinary field and the journal the review was published in was a reliable source. Marcelus suggested that was overlap between the disciplines and so it was appropriat to include (example edit If someone writes about history than he is historian; and the paper is about German history. And the Forgotten Holocaust isn't part of the Holocaust studies, its scope is broader.
). Levivich, TrangaBellam, and Shibbolethink suggested it was not appropriate for inclusion. They suggested that inclusion of the paper was not supported by the Neutral Point of View policy. Levivich also had an extended discussion with Piotrus and Marcelus about Hoffman's academic credentials (example edit First, it's not true that if someone writes about history, then he is a historian. That's just silly. Second, the paper is not about history. It's about contemporary politics. It's in a journal called "Review of Politics". It's about 1980s politics and it was published in 1986; that's not a history paper. Third, the "Forgotten Holocaust" is not part of Holocaust studies? That's even sillier than the first thing!
) and the reliability of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (example comment ...Is Register of the Kentucky Historical Society an RS? Probably, for Kentucky history. Not for WWII history. Not for the Holocaust.
The discussion between these editors largely concluded after Piotrus wrote that he was going to seek additional input on the topic from the Reliable Source Noticeboard.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Also on February 19, Piotrus asked on the WikiProject Books talk page for additional additional perspectives about a comment by Levivich that The author's viewpoint about their own book is not a viewpoint that is WP:DUE in the "reviews" section of a Wikipedia article about the book.
(formatting in the original). This request was see by LEvalyn who made seven comments in the discussion on February 28 and March 1: [36][37][38][39][40][41][42].
- On February 28, LEvalyn wrote,
I think a TNT is a good idea. It is indeed very achievable with book articles (which are my primary area of expertise) to write a simple, uncontroversial article. And then we would have a clean slate to address the problem of "reception" from the ground up.
. Piotrus replied to LEvalyn suggesting that those who supported TNT should go to Articles for Deletion. - On March 1, LEvalyn replied to Nihil novi's February 20 comment writing in part
I think the impression you have formed of this book is exactly why the article is troublesome in its current state. Within the genre of academic reviews... any book that gets an openly critical review, let alone an ongoing debate in a journal, is a deeply controversial and possibly WP:FRINGE book.
to which Nihil novi replied that same day askingCould you please explain why Richard C. Lukas' The Forgotten Holocaust, which has been reviewed favorably by persons knowledgeable on its subject, should be banned from Wikipedia articles on pertinent subjects?
. LEvalyn respondedCould you explain to me why you believe that is what I am suggesting?
- On March 1, LEvalyn attempted to find a recent survey of the field on the book. GizzyCatBella replied
The best way to improve an article is to add more references and particulars rather than remove content
- On March 1, Piotrus stated a belief that according to WP:BOOK
more is usually better; hence my concern that we should be careful removing content (instead, adding more is, IMHO, better).
On March 2 an IP left a threat on the talk pages of Flibbertigibbets, Gitz6666, LEvalyn, Levivich, K.e.coffman, and TrangaBellam.(Evidence presented by LEvalyn, with additional information by Barkeep49)
Mariusz Bechta
On February 19 and 20, 2023 TrangaBellam created Mariusz Bechta, about a Polish historian and publisher, affiliated with the Institute of National Remembrance. On February 19, TrangaBellam posted three sources on the talk page. The next day GizzyCatBella replied twice first writing, So is this WP:BLP article you created written conservatively TrangaBellam?
(formatting in the original) and pinging TrangaBellam to ask This source you posted above is paywalled, do you have a subscription?
. TrangaBellam replied to the first comment If you have specific issues with my write-up, I am all ears. Else, I plan to ignore your facile comments.
and confirmed she have access to the paywalled source. On March 4, GizzyCatBella replied asking if TrangaBellam could provide her with the source. (Barkeep49 evidence)
Glaukopis
On February 19 between 12:27 and 14:25, TrangaBellam created Glaukopis, about a Polish history journal catering to the far right.
- 14:36: Piotrus placed a {{npov}} tag.
- 14:46: TrangaBellam undid Piotrus tag. At 14:51 TrangaBellam started a talk page discussion disputing the NPOV tag.
- 14:56" TrangaBellam replied to themselves writing
Piotrus, if you find that there are reliable historians — though I doubt that you understand the term — who admire Glaukopis, feel free to add them. But otherwise, I take a dim view of your shenanigans.
- 15:02: GizzyCatBella pings TrangaBellam writing on the talk page
You removed this tag without following Template:POV#When to remove. Your personal views of Wikipedia editors or the public are irrelevant. I’m kindly asking you to restore it.
(formatting in the original) - 15:04-15:06: TrangaBellam replied in three edits
(emphasis in the original)You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true: In the absence of any discussion.
I have bold-faced the clause. You have probably missed that Piotrus did not open any t/p discussion; this entire section is drafted by me. - 15:04: GizzyCatBella placed a {{Citation needed}} tag on the lead sentence and at 15:06 restored the {{npov}} tag and replied on the talk page
Refer to edit summary of the user who inserted the tag.
- 15:07: TrangaBellam replies
You suggest that edit-summaries are a way to discuss content? Fascinating.
- 15:09: GizzyCatBella pings TrangaBellam and writes
you created an article grossly unbalanced. (verification in edit history). Just negatives only.
(emphasis in original) - 15:09: Piotrus writes an explanation for his placing of the tag and suggests the Polish wiki's version of the article is more balanced
- 15:10: TrangaBellam replies to GizzyCatBella
If you find that there are reliable historians who admire Glaukopis, feel free to add them.
(use of quote template in original) and later addingThere is nothing in policy that suggests that we shall bend over backwards and exclude reliable sources lest our article is overwhelmingly negative.
- 15:10: Piotr replies saying his attempt to start a talk page discussion was lost in an edit conflict.
- 15:12: TrangaBellam reverted both tags with the edit summary
Rv disruptive tag-teaming
and then immediately undid themselves restoring the tags. A minute later TrangaBellam removed part of the lead sentence, the citation needed tag, and inserted a section about the journal's history. - 15:13: GizzyCatBella replies to TrangaBellam
:You do not remove the tag until this issue of WP:NPOV is resolved
(formatting in the original) and replies again withThis speaks for itself
Further discussion between Piotr and TrangaBellam discussing the sources ensues. Piotr removes the NPOV tag at 15:44 and concludes the talk page discussion at 16:00 writing to TrangaBellam, in part, ... which is why I agree with the generally critical portrayal of this source. I have to say I did not realize how problematic it was. Thanks for shining some light on this.
(Barkeep49 evidence)
Summary of evidence involving Volunteer Marek
During a discussion on Gitz6666's user talk page while this case was pending, administrator El C revision deleted a comment by Volunteer Marek under the Biography of Living People policy. (El C evidence; analysis)
In 2022 Volunteer Marek only contributed ~100 edits to the topic area of World War II and/or the Holocaust in Poland, approximately 2% of their total contributions during this time period. 38 of those edits were made to Jan Karski and its talk page during a content dispute. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
In a February 2021 discussion started by Volunteer Marek named "BLP vio" at Talk:Jan Żaryn he accused Mhorg of canvassing François Robere to the discussion based on a message left by Mhorg on Francois Robere's user talk page. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In March 2021, shortly after Mhorg reached extended confirmed status and started editing in the topic area, Volunteer Marek implied that Mhorg may be a sock of Icewhiz due to their addition of content that Volunteer Marek felt was too obscure. (Mhorg evidence)
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust stated Wikipedia’s coverage of the Naliboki massacre should not even mention Jews; yet Jews occupy a third of the article. Various editors over the years tried to fix these edits, but they were brought back by Piotrus and by his like-minded colleague, Volunteer Marek92
In a Signpost discussion about Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust Volunteer Marek wrote Regarding the Naliboki massacre article, the authors falsely claim that I added “Jewish partisans” to it. This too is just another lie Icewhiz tried to peddle on Wikipedia before he got banned. I *removed* the claim that Jewish partisans were involved, not added it! Here and here and here. Please explain to me how claiming I did the opposite of what I actually did is not a lie?
. (drafter's note: links from the paper were not consistently working at the time this statement was made) (HaeB evidence)
Previous sanctions of Volunteer Marek
In March 2019, Volunteer Marek was topic banned by an administrator for six months for a comment made during an Arbitration Enforcement request about another editor. This topic ban was overturned on appeal 3 days later by a clear consensus of administrators at Arbitration Enforcement as disproportionate. (Gitz evidence)
In September 2019, Volunteer Marek was topic banned from the history of Poland during World War II, including the Holocaust in Poland
by the Arbitration Committee during the Antisemitism in Poland case. He was blocked for 72 hours for breaching this topic ban in October 2020, and the topic ban was lifted in December 2020 by the Arbitration Committee. (François Robere evidence, Buffs evidence)
In March 2021, El C twice warned Volunteer Marek about making a conduct complaint against an editor in an appropriate venue Mhorg and François Robere). (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In August 2021, Ymblanter blocked Volunteer Marek for 72 hours for edit warring. Later that day Ymblanter accepted an unblock appeal from Volunteer Marek. An Administrator's Noticeboard/Incidents discussion about the block as closed with a summary that read in part The ANI consensus is probably that there shouldn't have been a block
. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In January 2023 Volunteer Marek was given "an indefinite civility restriction in the ARBEE topic area". (Callanecc evidence)
Holocaust in Poland edits (Volunteer Marek)
Buidhe removed content on 28 January 2021 from The Holocaust in Poland with the edit summary
- 11:19 28 Jan 2021, Buidhe
rm content that duplicates other parts of the article (e.g. the rescue section), or is opinion in wikivoice
.
Among the text removed was the claim "Given the severity of the German measures designed to prevent this occurrence, the survival rate among the Jewish fugitives was relatively high and by far, the individuals who circumvented deportation were the most successful." This claim was cited to Paulsson (1998) and Snyder (2012). At the time, the concern was around stating this claim in encyclopedic voice, but concerns have been raised during this case that these sources might not support that claim. On 29 January 2021 Volunteer Marek restored that claim with the edit summary ditto (though should be in different section)
, a reference to earlier restorations with the edit summaries:
- 06:17 29 Jan 2021, Volunteer Marek
ditto (though should be in different section)
- 06:16 idem
ditto - not clear why this was removed
- 06:13 idem
ditto (this seems like just removing any use of Paulsson per IJUSTDONTLIKEIT under various pretenses)
- 06:11 idem
also relevant, also removed for unclear reasons
(end of ditto chain, earlier edits omitted}}
Three hours later, Buidhe reverted Volunteer Marek's changes removing the above claim with the edit summary
- 09:55 29 Jan 2021, Buidhe
Restoration of content that fails article sourcing requirements, opinions presented in wikivoice
.
Six hours later, Volunteer Marek reverted Buidhe's removal with the edit summary
- 16:47 29 Jan 2021, Volunteer Marek
undo blind revert. If your edits are challenged you need to discuss them. If your edits are controversial you need to discuss them. Please do not use misleading edit summaries. Please don't start edit wars.
This version, with the disputed claim above, stood for a week until Buidhe reverted on 5 February 2021 with the edit summary
- 08:11 5 Feb 2021, Buidhe
Talk page consensus to work from this version
(n.b. see relevant talk page archive)
which was reverted 5 hours later by Volunteer Marek with the edit summary
- 13:38 5 Feb 2021, Volunteer Marek
there's absolutely no consensus on talk page to remove Yad Vashem as a source or Journal of Genocide Research or Yale University Press. Please don't use false edit summaries and make claims of "false consensus". This type of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT editing, while discussion is ongoing is disruptive
. - 21:47, 1 February 2021 (to K.e.coffman)
I suggest you actually follow the developments here rather than, as the superficial nature of your comment suggests, just reflexively picking a side. That's not actually helpful in terms of resolving the disagreement. The sources which were challenged have been removed for the most part (there's one or two which can be discussed). They weren't even necessary anyway. Most of the removals had nothing to do with the sources. And no, the onus is not on me here, it's on the person who's trying to remove 23k bytes of long standing material with barely any explanation
Jedwabne pogrom
On March 9, 2023 Chumchum7 began a discussion about wording in the lead of Jedwabne pogrom. The discussion focused on how to summarize the work of historian Jan T. Gross. Chumchum7 was concerned about impassioned editorializing
in the lead and including the use of a "however", including a link to WP:HOWEVER. Gitz6666 replied, in part, the "however" was already there in the source, and omitting it distorts Gross's findings.
and quoted a passage from Gross. Gitz6666 also committed to not restore a bold edit they'd made without further discusison, but remove something they chracterized as contentious quotation/misrepresentation of Gross until a consensus is reached
. Gitz6666 proceeded to remove part of the lead referencing Gross. Volunteer Marek replied beginning Gitz, I'm sorry but this looks like original research on your part.
, stating that "own initiative"
were Gitz6666's words not Gross, and concluding I am going to restore this text as I don't see much beyond creative and selective reading of the source here.
. Volunteer Marek reverted Gitz6666 with the edit summary this is based on an editor's own original research and fairly inaccurate reading of the source. "Of own free will" and "on own initiative" are two different things and either are not really relevant to the text which is included
. (Gitz6666 evidence. Some additional diffs are in the evidence presented by Chumchum7 with further rebuttal by Gitz6666)
When Gitz6666 begain editing in the topic area, Volunteer Marek left Gitz6666 a talk page message entitled "Welcome to the topic... I guess?" that read, in part, Let me express my primary concern right at the outset. It is definitely eye-brow raising that you would choose to appear in this topic area immediately after you were topic banned in another topic area, in good part because of the disputes between me and you...Having said that allow me to say I regard you as an smart, constructive and valuable contributor to Wikipedia. I do think there are certain parts to your approach which get you into trouble but there's no point in rehashing these. I think it's quite likely that your contributions in this new topic area will be quite valuable as well and welcome your participation.
In Gitz6666's reply to Volunteer Marek he wrote, in part,
Allow me to congratulate you on the tact and amiability with which you have framed this conversation. I appreciate it very much and it sets me up to be as cooperative and open with you as possible.
First of all, I can assure you that I don't hold any grudge or vendetta against you.
and denying that he had followed Volunteer Marek around. (Volunteer Marek evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In June 2022, Gitz posted 20kb report at ANI initially titled "Volunteer Marek's incivility and POV-pushing" and later renamed "Volunteer Marek and Gitz6666" which concluded with Gitz writing It's incredibly time-consuming and stressing to work in an environment poisoned by VM. I know they've been around for a long time, but I'm asking you to protect from them both the editors as individuals and the editorial processes taking place in an article as delicate and controversial as War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
. An example of the issues raised is On the other hand VM, who always speaks about POV and WP:UNDUE, is the most blatant and disruptive POV-pusher I've ever encountered.
The thread was never formally closed. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
On January 9, 2023 Ostalgia posted a report at ANI titled "Hounding and edit warring by Volunteer Marek". On January 10, 2023 TimothyBlue started a subsection in that discussion proposing that Gitz6666 be boomeranged. Horse Eye's Back replied suggesting a topic ban for Gitz6666 from the Ukrainian-Russian conflict broadly construed. In his reply to Horse Eye's Back, Gitz6666 denied making personal attacks towards Volunter Marek and wrote that he believed he had complied with the neutral point of view policy. In that reply, Gitz contrasted his behavior with Volunteer Marek's writing, in part, In the EE area, he is openly an anti-Russian POV-pusher and always has been (at least since 2010 at WP:EEML).
(link changed from URL to wikilink to work with the quote template). On January 11 in a reply to Volunteer Marek, Gitz6666 wrote Since you have accused everyone of being pro-Russian propagandists, and you've done it everywhere (edit summaries and talk page discussions), you won't get too upset if someone tells you here, in the appropriate place, that you are an anti-Russian POV-pusher, will you?
(Volunteer Marek evidence)
Volunteer Marek, Gitz6666, and My very best wishes have all edited 84 pages with-in a week of each other. (Elinruby evidence, with further background by Barkeep49)
Chapmansh and Volunteer Marek
Volunteer Marek pinged Chapmansh once in the Administrators Noticeboard discussion "Chapmansh" on February 10 and twice on February 12 in the Village Pump WMF discussion "Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". After each ping in that discussion Horse Eye's Back replied suggesting Volunteer Marek stop, labeling it harassment
and gratituous
. Volunteer Marek responded to Horse Eye's Back on February 13 I'm sorry but are you Chapmansh? If Chapmansh wishes to ask me not to ping them then they can do that (I've only did it a few times where it was pertinent). And can I inquire why you find it necessary to reply and comment on almost every single comment I make? This is getting extremely tiresome and is looking like WP:harassment at this point.
Subsequently on that day, Volunteer Marek pinged Chapmansh once on his user talk page and once at Arbitration/Requests/Case request for this case. (Horse Eye's Back evidence)
François Robere and Volunteer Marek
See also #Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017
See also #BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
Prior to this arbitration case being accepted, an interaction ban between François Robere and Volunteer Marek was being considered by Callanecc due to allegations of diff stalking from each party towards the other. (Callanecc evidence)
Four times in February 2021 Volunteer Marek said François Robere was stalking him: Bogdan Musiał, Dalej jest noc), The Holocaust in Poland, and Witold Pilecki. Evidence by Buidhe suggesting François Robere did not stalk Volunteer Marek at Bogdan Musiał. Possible explanation by K.e. coffman suggesting François Robere did not stalk Volunteer Marek at Witold Pilecki. (François Robere evidence)
In December 2020, François Robere, in response to a comment made to Buidhe, asked Volunteer Marek to Please stay on topic and avoid personal comments
and then related the current content disagreement to one the two had Several years ago
(François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
On February 14, 2021, Horse Eye's Back revived a May and June 2020 discussion on Talk:Zygmunt Krasiński writing There currently appears to be nothing about anti-semitism on the page despite as far as I can tell the consensus here being to make at least a mention of it.
The next day François Robere pings Volunteer Marek with three questions. Volunteer Marek responds We've already been over this. This does not belong in the lede since none of the major works on the guy discuss it extensively. It should be mentioned in the article text. I'm also pretty sure you're violating your interaction ban here FR
. In a subsequent reply, Volunteer Marek gives [43] and [44] as diffs of François Robere removing text written by GrizzyCatBella with whom François Robere has an interaction ban. On February 23 Volunteer Marek posts a list of administrator's comments to François Robere at a Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion about The Volunteer (book) and to User:Volunteer Marek/François Robere (deleted on March 15 by El C as an attack page). The next day François Robere collapses a comment on Talk:Zygmunt Krasiński by Volunteer Marek explaining how François Robere broken his iban; Volunteer Marek reverts this collapsing. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In March 2021 François Robere reported Volunteer Marek to Trust and Safety. Trust and Safety responded, in part, there are sufficient community governance actions available... to handle the issue", and that "it doesn't appear that you or anyone else has attempted to report ongoing personal attacks or harassment by VM to either Arbcom... or a noticeboard in the past two years... so there's no way to confirm that the community isn't willing to handle the matter
(François Robere evidence)
In July 2021 François Robere said Volunteer Marek followed him to Guerillero's user talk. Volunteer Marek explained he had Guerillero's user talk watchlisted. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In July 2021 Volunteer Marek reported a potential interaction ban violation by François Robere against GizzyCatBella at Jan Grabowski to Guerillero. François Robere replied that he had long been editing Jan Grabowski. Guerillero blocked François Robere for an interaction ban violation, after determining François Robere had not edited the article for over a year. (François Robere evidence)
In August 2021, Volunteer Marek replied to a list of proposed Arbitration Committee reforms proposed by François Robere on Barkeep49's user talk page. In this reply Volunteer Marek discussed ways he felt Icewhiz had violated conduct policies and noted François Robere had supported Icewhiz during Arbitration Committee proceedings. François Robere replied with 12 diffs. (François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
In February 2023, in a discussion about Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust Volunteer Marek replies to François Robere with the comment Francois Robere, since you participated very extensively in the Icewhiz case, posting comments supporting him, and since you subsequently made numerous efforts to have him rehabilitated and to relitigate the case, even after you became well aware of his extensive harassment of Wikipedians, and since you also apparently provided commentary to the authors of this article, perhaps your opinion here is not particularly useful?
François Robere reports this and 4 other concerns, about Volunteer Marek to Callanecc. Volunteer Marek then volunteers to strike the comment. Callanecc found one of the 5 edits in violation of Volunteer Marek's civility ban and asked both Volunteer Marek and François Robere if they would like an interaciton ban. François Robere declined the offer.
In April 2023, Volunteer Marek reported a potential interaction ban violation by François Robere against GizzyCatBella at François Robere's user talk regarding the July 2021 block to Guerillero. Guerillero deferred to the drafters of this case. Barkeep49 wrote, in part, For me it falls in the "not great but not sanctionable" bucket.
(François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
The article Property restitution in Poland was created by François Robere at 15:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC) and he linked it from the main Holocaust in Poland article at 15:49. 93 minutes later, Volunteer Marek made a series of changes starting at 17:48. At 18:16, an apparent sockpuppet reverted Volunteer Marek. The apparent sock and Volunteer Marek reverted each other at 18:17, 18:20, 18:24, 18:32, and 18:56. At 20:32, Volunteer Marek removed a different claim he had previously tagged as {{dubious}} which was cited to Gera & Federman (2021), Easton (2021), and Lis (2021). At 21:03, El_C protected the page to enforce the 30/500 restriction in the topic area. François Robere reverted Volunteer Marek at 21:30. At 21:33, Volunteer Marek reverted saying ...no sources actually support this claim...
. Following a talk page discussion, at 10:32, 16 August 2021, Francois Robere revised the line under dispute and restored content removed during the earlier dispute with the apparent sock puppet. At 6:16 17 August 2021, Volunteer Marek removed a claim François Robere had readded arguing that it was original research by synthesis; the claim was cited to Becker (2001), Charnysh (2015), and Pankowski (2018). At 10:44 François Robere restored the claim and quoted the relevant sources in the talk page discussion. (GizzyCatBella evidence; additional context by Wugapodes)
History of the Jews in Poland
There were multiple additions and reverts to History of the Jews in Poland in February, April, and May 2019, which resulted in the page being fully protected three times.
The sequence begins February 22, 2019 16:37: Tatzref added content to History of the Jews in Poland suggesting that Jews were able to reclaim property taken during the war quickly, with the support of other Polish residents, and did so in the "thousands". According to Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust careful examination shows Tatzref plagiarized this paragraph from a Mark Paul online essay, ‘A Tangled Web: Polish–Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath
(see pp. 381 - 386).
Timeline of February edits
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- February 25 22:48: TonyBallioni fully protects the page with the edit summary
Edit warring / content dispute: AE action
(formatting removed) until 22:49, 11 March 2019 - March 12 12:23: Icewhiz rewrites the property section with the edit summary
Remove content as it failed verification vs. the cited sources, misused a primary source, and was contradicted by available English RSes. Replace with content cited to academic English-language sources available online
The content remains unchanged until April 15 2:52 - 5:50 when Piotrus makes 7 edits all under 250 bytes to the property section, which is followed by other editors making further changes.
Timeline of April and May edits
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- May 11 3:04: Oshwah fully-protects the page with the edit summary
{{{1}}}
(formatting removed) - May 13 4:20: Volunteer Marekt reverted Icewhiz with the edit summary
per talk, this version is both more neutral and well sourced. Ample, extensive, detailed, exhaustive rationale has been provided. Anything beyond this is really just WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. If you wish to ADD material based on RS that's fine but plz stop removing existing well sourced material
May 13 - 19 edits
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- May 20 3:37: El C full protects the article with the edit summary {tqq|Protected "History of the Jews in Poland": Edit warring / content dispute: This edit war has gone on for long enough ([Edit=Require administrator access] (expires 03:37, 30 May 2019 (UTC))}} (formatting removed)
- May 20 - 23: El C performs two small edits in response to edit requests
- June 3 19:03: François Robere removes content with the edit summary
Discussion concluded with a consensus to remove the MJC's book, so I'm restoring the previous, well-sourced version
- 20:26: Volunteer Marek reverts François Robere with the edit summary
'm sorry, but no such consensus was achieved. Can you please provide a link where this consensus you claim exists was formed? At RSN, the discussion tended to the opposite conclusion. Furthermore EVEN IF there are issues with one particular source that does not justify making OTHER mass deletions of sourced text or unsupported changes
- June 4 2:51: K.e. coffman removes content with the edit summary
No consensus to include this source / content -- pls see Talk:History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#Edit_break
(formatting removed)
(Gitz6666 evidence, with additional background/links by Barkeep49)
An over 185 kb discussion about this content lasted until June. Major topics of discussion included:
- Whether the sources were being accurately represented
- Whether the sources were reliable
- Whether certain sources were primary sources and if so how to use them
- Whether the content added followed a neutral point of view, particularly whether or not the level of detail was appropriate for the article topic
- Whether any of the content added as the result of synthesis or other forms of original research
- How the non-English sources policy applies or should be applied
- Whether it was appropriate to revert to a "stable" version
There were separate sub-sections of proposed additional sources, discussion of an alleged biographies of living people policy violation, on the use of Lukasz Krzyżanowski, on the use of Alina Skibińska, and on the General level article
. Much of this discussion involved non-parties to the case, particularly two editors who have since been indefinitely blocked (Icewhiz and Tatzref).
Comments by Volunteer Marek in the discussion included: 1, 2 (Gitz6666 evidence, with additional background/links by Barkeep49)
History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II
Prior to 2021, collegial editing was seen at History of the Jews in Dęblin and Irena during World War II. Created in December 2019 by Buidhe, there was some brief concern about a source (discussion about Farkash) but otherwise collegial editing during the pre-GA review, GAN, and FAC.
In May 2021 an edit war started regarding the inclusion of text relating to the Home Army.
Timeline of May 2021 edits
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During the above time period there were multiple talk page discussions, in particular this discussion, over the inclusion of Zimmerman and Farkash. Two different pre-RFC discussions (#Draft text for an RfC, #Draft text for RfC (seeking final approval)) were opened on the matter, with Zimmerman (page 361) eventually agreed upon to be removed, but the text from Zimmerman (page 213) and Farkash was not restored.
On March 31, 2023 Gitz6666 restored the original content in full but was reverted by Volunteer Marek approximately two hours later. Both users cited consensus on the talk page (or lack thereof) as justification for their actions. Volunteer Marek began a discussion on the talk page titled "Restarting old disputes" linking to Gitz's 31 March edit. After discussion, Gitz and Piotrus found consensus about the disputed content. (Gitz6666 evidence, Piotrus evidence with additional background by Barkeep49)
Buidhe and Volunteer Marek
Volunteer Marek made the following comments in replies to Budihe:
- 20:55, 22 December 2020
Are you confused about which one of the many disputes you’ve currently engaged yourself in, you’re commenting on? Understandable, since you’re involved in like half a dozen of them (all of which you started)
- 00:14, 6 February 2021
(formatting in the original) ((François Robere evidence)This is not how this works. This is not how any of this works. Buidhe made big controversial changes without bothering to discuss them. Buidhe edit warred when these changes were challenged. Buidhe then tried to get their way by filing spurious AE report. Buidhe then couldn't help themselves and began edit warring again before any compromise could be worked out. Buidhe used a false edit summary which claimed WP:FALSECON. Buidhe removed multiple reliable sources from the article. Support for Buidhe has consisted of nothing more than some incivil substance free comments from you and generalities from one other editor. As an added bonus you began stalking my edits across multiple articles ... as some kind of payback or strategy or something. When I requested you stop, you doubled down on the rudeness and incivility.
In terms of following dispute resolution and pursuing the goal of collaborative editing this right here has been a textbook example from Buidhe and you of what not to do.
With all due respect.
2021 dispute at Zygmunt Krasiński
In a June 2020 talk page discussion editors discussed whether the article Zygmunt Krasiński should mention the subject's antisemitic views. No changes were made until February 2021. Horse eye's back commented There currently appears to be nothing about anti-semitism on the page despite as far as I can tell the consensus here being to make at least a mention of it.
on 14 February 2021. In a series of edits on 15 February François Robere edited the article to include a reference in the lead to anti-Semitic views as well as an additional section in the body. 6 minutes after François Robere began making the changes, Volunteer Marek reverted saying there's obviously no consensus for this on talk
. 3 minutes later, Volunteer Marek partially restores the removed content (unified diff). François Robere then started a talk page discussion. On 19 February, François Robere restores his version citing a lack of response on the talk page. Volunteer Marek replies on the talk page (alleging, among other things, an interaction ban violation by Robere, but it's unclear what ban is being referenced, presumably the 2020 interaction ban with GizzyCatBella?) and then reverts Robere. François Robere replies on talk alleging, among other things, that Marek removed all mention of antisemitism
.
A search of the version of the page as of 14:55 19 February 2021 for the substring "semit" returns no matches. At 17:09, Volunteer Marek replies on the talk page saying that he will add content to the article body, advising Robere to stop reverting, and repeating the interaction ban allegation. At 17:10, Volunteer Marek adds a claim to the article that some of the subject's works contain[] antisemitic motifs
. A search of the page version as of 17:10, 19 February 2021 for the substring "semit" returns 1 match. At 17:11, Volunteer Marek replies on the talk page saying And actually I DID NOT remove "all mention of antisemitism" from the body. This is just false. It's still in there.
. François Robere replies, implying that Marek had just added it back after having removed it a moment prior. Volunteer Marek replies, saying I didn't "remove all mention". It was still there. I re-add an extra sentence just to make you happy. Please stop misrepresenting my edits.
(François Robere evidence; additional context, quotes, and substring searches by Wugapodes)
Accuracy of edit summaries
- At Norman Davies in 2021, Volunteer Marek removed content with the edit summary
unsourced in BLP and redundant
- The text removed contained references to Dawidowicz (1987), Brumberg (2001), Judt & Brumberg (2001), and Stanford News Service (1991)
- At Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017 in 2021, Volunteer Marek removed content with the edit summary
who cares what a neo Nazi thinks
- The text removed contained, in addition to reactions by far-Right groups, quotes from Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz
- In August 2022 AdrianHObradors left Volunteer Marek a talk page message saying
"lol" isn't an appropriate edit summary. Also the total amount of summaries you fill in is very low
- The edit summary referenced is from an edit to Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
(François Robere evidence; additional context and quotes by Wugapodes)
Volunteer Marek accusations towards others about Icewhiz
- 18:20, 18 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverted François Robere with the edit summary
"Please stop restoring edits by indef banned users (Icewhiz) particularly since your long term on wiki relationship with them raises the issue of WP:MEATPUPPETRY"
. This followed Volunteer Marek being reverted by an Icewhiz sock and that François Robere, in Volunteer Marek's words,jumped in to defend the sock.
(see also #Dispute at History policy of the Law and Justice party) - 08:00, 7 July 2021 in a discussion at Talk:Jan Żaryn about whether or not to include information about Żaryn and a historian Volunteer Marek replied to François Robere
If we’re “recounting” then let’s recount how your wiki-collaborator Icewhiz was topic banned for BLP violations, specifically (as in the ArbCom provided the diffs in their decision) with regard to the same Ewa Kurek who you just compared to a Holocaust denier. And who really is irrelevant to this article here. BLP applies to talk pages so I suggest you strike that BLP vio)
- 02:00, 22 November 2021 In a discussion about whether to include an article from Haaretz that was critical of Piotrus and Volunteer Marek and for which Icewhiz was a source, Volunteer Marek wrote
The flip side of that is that it seems that the only reason some editors are so adamant on including this source - which is not even needed - is simply because they want to “stick it to Piotrus”. I think it’s very clear that insistence on this particular, very flawed and unnecessary source, is to both grief Piotrus (and some other editors) and at the same time “protect Icewhiz’s legacy” or something like that. Frankly, both the source and the whole story of how it came to be a huge freakin’ embarrassment.
- 27 November 2021 In a Conflict of Interest Noticeboard discussion about whether Piotrus and Volunteer Marek had a COI to the Haaretz article, Volunteer Marek began a reply to someone noting a
bad taste
about Icewhiz's involvement in the article withThis isn't COI I'm sorry but all of this is a whole bunch of bad faithed ridiculous HOOEY pushed by Icewhiz's friends and meatpuppets on Wikipedia (since he can't do that himself, seeing as he's indefinetly banned for, among other things, making death threats agains editors' families). These friends - let's put all our cards on the table here - are Levivich and Francois Robere (usually supported in these endeavors by various sock puppets of Icewhiz or other indef banned users).
(formating in the original)
In a November 2021 Conflict of Interest Noticeboard discussion about a Haaretz article for which Icewhiz served as a source, Volunteer Marek wrote:
quote
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I just got to say that I am deeply impressed how Levivich managed to write all that without once mentioning that this whole hullabaloo is over an article basically ghost written by a user who has been indefinitely banned for making death threats, doxxing, and harassing people. Like, gee, perhaps that pertinent? I’m also very impressed by how Levivich managed to write all that without once mentioning that it was he (and Francois Robere, another of Icewhiz’s on wiki friends) who are the ones trying to repeatedly reinstate this material into as many articles as possible. There’s a lot of “VM removes” and “Piotrus removes” in Levivich’s write up but if this stuff gets removed... who is it that keeps putting it back in. Oh, that’s right. It’s Levivich and Francois Robere. I also like Levivich’s wording here, quote: “I and others have raised this issue at the RFCs listed above”. Who are these “others”? Hmmm, let’s see. It couldn’t be a bunch of sock puppet accounts of indef banned users (not just Icewhiz, he made buddies with a few other toxic indef banned users while hanging out at Reddit’s Gamergate subreddit), could it? Levivich’s write up is a masterwork of cynical sophistry, strategic omission and manipulation. |
Volunteer Marek wrote at two places (1, 2) that Icewhiz was a co-author
of Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust.
(François Robere evidence, with additional background by Barkeep49)
Levivich and Volunteer Marek
In a November 2021 Conflict of Interest Noticeboard discussion about a Haaretz article for which Icewhiz served as a source, Volunteer Marek wrote:
quote
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I just got to say that I am deeply impressed how Levivich managed to write all that without once mentioning that this whole hullabaloo is over an article basically ghost written by a user who has been indefinitely banned for making death threats, doxxing, and harassing people. Like, gee, perhaps that pertinent? I’m also very impressed by how Levivich managed to write all that without once mentioning that it was he (and Francois Robere, another of Icewhiz’s on wiki friends) who are the ones trying to repeatedly reinstate this material into as many articles as possible. There’s a lot of “VM removes” and “Piotrus removes” in Levivich’s write up but if this stuff gets removed... who is it that keeps putting it back in. Oh, that’s right. It’s Levivich and Francois Robere. I also like Levivich’s wording here, quote: “I and others have raised this issue at the RFCs listed above”. Who are these “others”? Hmmm, let’s see. It couldn’t be a bunch of sock puppet accounts of indef banned users (not just Icewhiz, he made buddies with a few other toxic indef banned users while hanging out at Reddit’s Gamergate subreddit), could it? Levivich’s write up is a masterwork of cynical sophistry, strategic omission and manipulation. |
On 13 March 2023 Levivich and Volunteer Marek were placed under a two-way interaction ban as an AE action by ScottishFinnishRadish because The entire dynamic between you two is doing nothing but raising the temperature in the topic area
. (Volunteer Marek evidence, ScottishFinnishRadish evidence)
BLP-related dispute at Jan Zaryn
See also #François Robere and Volunteer Marek
- Edit history
- On 19 April 2021 Mhorg adds content to the Jan Zaryn article citing Kalukin (2018), Smoleński (2018), Beczek (2019), Czuchnowski (2018), Karpiński (2018), Szukała (2016), and Polityczek (2018).
- On 26 April, Volunteer Marek removes some of the text with the edit summary
yeah this is BLP vio (at least part of it) with questionable sources
- Mhorg reverts with the summary
Please, if "part of it" is BLP vio, delete that "part" and explain why.
- Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
see talk. Please don't restore BLP vios.
- Volunteer Marek opened a talk page thread at the same time
- On 27 April V.A. Obadiah reverts with the summary
Excellent sources, removed oko.press because it is disputed on talk
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
Here we go again. BLP, new account.
- On 2 June Trasz reverts with no edit summary (N.B. Trasz was autoconfirmed in 2016)
- Volunteer Marek reverts Trasz's reverts as well as two unrelated changes with the edit summary
please engage constructively on talk rather than resorting to personal attacks
- Trasz reverts with the summary
I just did. Your edit is against the consensus, which is pretty clear to anyone who reads the talk page
- Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
no, it's actually quite the opposite - you've made no effort on talk at all, aside form one post which was a personal attack then jumped in to start an edit war. In such circumstances you really can't claim "consensus", which is in fact against this text being included
- On 3 June Nulliq reverts with the summary
whitewash of far right
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Volunteer Marek reverts with the summary
violations of among other things, 500/30 restriction, BLP, failure to engage on talk, brand new account with few edits popping for drive by edit warring
- VikingDrummer (a now blocked sockpuppet) readds the content with modification with the summary
Copying second proposal by François Robere from draft on talk
in violation of the extended confirmed restriction on the topic area - Piotrus reverts with the edit summary
no consensus for this version at present. This article obviously needs 500/30 anti-sock protection ASAP
- Talk page
- In the talk page discussion opened by Volunteer Marek, François Robere explains to Mhorg the need to attribute and source contentious information about living people:
- 11:48, 28 April 2021
we should be careful with terms like "antisemitic", unless they're repeated by several RS. Perhaps the best way of handling this would be to quote the sources, or Żaryn himself as quotes by by them; as long as the quotes are representative of the sources (not WP:CHERRY-picked), this should be okay.
- 14:51, 28 April 2021
...it has to be stated by the source that that's what they're doing, otherwise it's WP:OR. If it's not stated in those words exactly, or if the message is more nuanced, then you'd do better to quote instead of paraphrase
- 18:11, 28 April 2021
Mhorg is not actually wrong in perceiving these as nationalistic Polish perspectives - we have plenty of sources that establish that that we've already discussed in other venues. However, we cannot inject our own knowledge to articles without RS...
- 11:48, 28 April 2021
- In a new talk page discussion started in June:
- On 7 June 2021 François Robere compliments an editor who was later found to be a sock puppet and took issue with particular edits by Volunteer Marek, specifically:
- A 7 June removal of text at issue in the dispute above.
- Removal of a reference to Pacewicz (2018) with the summary
not RS
- Removal of critical text cited to Kalukin (2018), Newsweek Editorial Source (2018), and Dobrosz-Oracz (2018) with the edit summary
yeah, the sourcing is too weak for this to be included
- The following series of exchanges may show issues of WP:STONEWALLING or WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior in the topic area:
- 12:34 VM:
[link to the first diff Robere took issue with] (and rest) NONE OF THE SOURCES actually call him these things, which makes this a straight up BLPVIO and misrepresentation of sources
- 13:43 FR: Actually, OKO.press says he's a nationalist, GW [Gazeta Wyborcza] states that his work is "representative of Catholic nationalism", and naTemat quotes Jacek Leociak as saying that his 1968 resolution draft is "saturated with nationalism".
- Refering (presumably) to Dobrosz-Oracz (2018), Czuchnowski (2018) and Karpiński (2018). Robere also reiterated his issue with the removal of Pacewicz (2018) (claiming it is a reliable source), and arguing that Kalukin (2018), Newsweek Editorial Source (2018), and Dobrosz-Oracz (2018) are not "weak sourcing" for the associated claim.
- 13:58 VM:
as I already said, this was already discussed before. See above. WP:ONUS is on editors who want to restore text which was removed for BLP reason. This was same text that Mhorg tried to add originally and it was removed for a good reason. Why are you trying to pretend that this is something new, when it's just the same ol' same ol'?
- 14:02 VM:
And EVEN IF you could source the "nationalistic" part based on some dubious sources like oko press which is most certainly NOT reliable for a BLP, there's still the other serious allegations that are being included in that text so why are you pretending that "nationalistic" is the only one which is in dispute? Come on man!
- 14:34 FR: I'm not ignoring anything, I'm just not clear on why I should be justifying a fairly well-supported addition word-for-word when you don't even bother reading the sources
- 16:27 VM:
I’m not clear on why I should reply to a statement that consists of personal attacks and false accusations. How about you strike that part and then we’ll talk?
- 18:08 FR: Sure, after your retract your accusations of canvassing,[link] trying "to turn the article into an attack page"[link] and "cherry picking".[link]
- Thread change
- 19:31 FR: What exactly is "unsupported"?[...]You made three claims: a) that the statement isn't supported by the sources (which is at least partially false); b) that most of the sources aren't good enough (which seems ridiculous given that some are high profile publications, and others cite subject matter experts); and c) that the proportion of criticisms in the article is too high (a misreading of WP:DUE, and irrelevant now that the article has been expanded by almost ten times).
- Thread change, now 9 June
- 07:36 FR: [listing a number of claims about what the BLP subject has said] "Resentment" seems like a fair characterization of his attitude.
- This is in reply to Lembit Staan's comment So, when I see 'resents the Jews', I smell propaganda.
- 08:03 VM:
Where exactly did he say these things?
- 10:53 FR: This is all covered by the sources you deleted (usually by more than one sources), and all but one have already been mentioned or quoted elsewhere on in our discussion (see Talk:Jan Żaryn/Archive 1#Other sources and Talk:Jan Żaryn/Archive 1#Recent text deletions (topic separate from RfC)). What exactly are you unfamiliar with?
- 12:02 VM:
Well, no. The point of contention is that the sources were being misrepresented. So. Where exactly does he say this?
- 13:00 FR: Kate Korycki quotes him on Kielce - that's in the RfC you commented on - and so does Polityka (which you yourself quoted here). Both Polityka and naTemat refer to the "dark legend". naTemat quotes him on prosecuting Holocaust survivors. Polityka quotes him on the Israeli ambassador, as do many other sources, one of which was mentioned here just before you replied. You said you read the sources before you removed them seven times? [diffs omitted for space]
- alluding to a Korycki piece not previously brought up in the discussion or article as well as Kalukin (2018) and Karpiński (2018).
- 14:57 VM:
[...]None of the diffs you got up there show me removing Korycki. Natemat was NOT being used to source anything about any "dark legend" but rather was stuck at the end of a general BLP violating sentence that I removed. Polityka indeed quotes him on the ambassdador but that is also not in any of the diffs you got there. I dont think I ever removed anything about the ambassador. Now. Can you please drop this insinuation, false WP:ASPERSION, that I haven't read the sources we're discussing?[...]
- 18:05 FR: So are we clear on what the sources say and what they don't say?
- 16:48 VM:
Apparantly not since you claim "you removed text based on source A" and I say "no I didn't" and then you say "yes you did" and try to back it up by showing that I removed a completely different source and accuse me of not "readin a source". Can you strike the false aspersions? ~!~~
- 12:34 VM:
- On 7 June 2021 François Robere compliments an editor who was later found to be a sock puppet and took issue with particular edits by Volunteer Marek, specifically:
(Volunteer Marek evidence; quotes and context by Wugapodes)
During the talk page discussion, Volunteer Marek made two comments to François Robere that François Robere found to be, in Robere's words, Attacks, aspersions, hounding and general incivility
: 1 2 (François Robere evidence)
Editing of Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance
In 2018, the Polish government passed a law amending the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance which makes it "a civil offense that is actionable before civil courts to cause harm to the reputation of Poland and its people, such as by making any accusation of complicity of Poland or Poles in the Holocaust" (European Parliament 2020, par. 47). The law was criticized contemporaneously by, for example, Amnesty International (2018), Wagner (2018), American Historical Association (2018). The English Wikipedia article on the law was created by Lembit Staan on 29 January 2018 (version as of 26 July 2018).
- March 2019
- Around 05:00 on March 14, Volunteer Marek removed content from the article. The content was sourced to Aderet (2018), Lipshiz (2018), Borschel-Dan (2016), Times of Israel Staff (2018), Reuters Staff (2018), Halon (2018), Davies & Goñi (2018), Zieve (2018), Doherty (2018), Shpigel (2018), Jewish Telegraphic Agency (2018), Rogowska (2018).
- The removal was reverted at 06:15 by Icewhiz.
- At 06:22 Volunteer Marek repeated the removal and additionally removed content sourced to Hacohen (2018), Maiberg (2018), Kaplan Sommer (2018), and Lapid (2018).
- At 16:03 François Robere reverted the removals except for the content sourced to Lapid (2018)
- At 17:50 Volunteer Marek repeated the removals.
- October and November 2019
- 21:29, 4 October 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes content sourced to Benjakob (2019).
- 00:52, 9 October 2019 François Robere restores the content after MyMoloboaccount did not respond on the talk page.
- 16:26, 17 November 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes content claiming that it was added by Icewhiz (N.B. Icewhiz was banned 1 October 2019).
- 19:09, 17 November 2019 François Robere restores the content claiming that it was worked on by others as well.
- Around 19:30, 17 November 2019 MyMoloboaccount removes and re-adds content which he claimed was added or removed by Icewhiz.
- 01:17, 18 November 2019 Levivich reverts without an edit summary.
- January 2021
- Prior to 1 January 2021, there were no edits in December 2020 and one edit in November 2020 (version as of 5 November 2020). October 2020 saw a major rewrite by Buidhe and others.
- c.23:05, 1 January 2021 Buidhe adds content to the lead and body, citing Tsesis (2020) and Belavusau (2018).
- c.23:36, 1 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts Buidhe's addition to the lead, and additionally removed content present in the 5 November 2020.
- c.23:48, 1 January 2021 Buidhe reverts Volunteer Marek saying
undiscussed major changes, removing aspects that are significantly emphasized in most scholarly sources that discuss the law
- 00:42, 2 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts saying Nooo, the ADDITION of this stuff constitutes "undiscussed major changes" since... you didn't bother discussing any of them. I've actually provided the rationale on talk for my restoration of version before YOUR "undiscussed major changes"
- c.00:49, 2 January 2021 Buidhe reverts.
- 01:09, 2 January 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts to the 15 October 2020 version with the edit summary Restore "stable version" per suggestion on talk so that the recent major changes can actually be discussed. Will work to reincorporate subsequent non-controversial edits
- In a series of 36 edits from 01:12 to 02:45, Volunteer Marek restores some changes implemented by Buidhe and others in October 2020.
- c.06:32, 2 January 2021 Buidhe adds content sourced to Berendt (2018), Frydel (2018), Żbikowski (2018), Jaraczewski (2018), and Bachmann (2020).
- 07:51, 2 January 2021 GizzyCatBella reverts Buidhe's addition with the edit summary @Buidhe, I have to step in here. I'm sorry, but here you seem to be connecting material from multiple sources to suggest a conclusion. This is WP:SYNTH. I will revert this edit of yours for now, but let talk about it at talk if you disagree. Okay?.
- Talk page
- Regarding the January 2021 dispute, a number of talk page discussion were started.
- In the "stuff in lede" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the edits prior to the 01:09, 2 January revert.
- Volunteer Marek says of Buidhe's 23:48 edit
BTW, I find the edit summary used here to be completely ...misleading.
- Buidhe replies You removed a lot of longstanding information from the lead, most of which has been present for months without any dispute.
- Volunteer Marek replies
No, I removed a chunk of UNDUE text which you JUST ADDED to the lede, less than THAN AN HOUR AGO! What are you talking about?
Volunteer Marek then gives links to Buidhe's 23:03 edit and Marek's 23:22 edit. - Buidhe replies The material that you deleted was not just my recent edit, which revised earlier material without significantly expanding it, but also longstanding revisions by other editors such as Nihil Novi and Lembit Stan
- Volunteer Marek replies, repeating the diffs in his previous reply.
- Buidhe replies saying This statement is false, VM also removed a sentence stating "Article 2a, which requires the Institute of National Remembrance to investigate crimes against Polish citizens by Ukrainian nationalists, also caused controversy." The resulting version of the lede did not mention Article 2a at all. and linking to Marek's 23:22 edit.
- Volunteer Marek says of Buidhe's 23:48 edit
- In the "Mass removal of well-source content" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the 01:09, 2 January edit and later.
- Buidhe says of Volunteer Marek's 1:09 edit:
I'm happy to discuss but it isn't productive to mass-remove almost half the article content as you did in this [27] edit, especially since most of it is well sourced to strong sources such as academic articles and so forth
- El_C responds Volunteer Marek you have removed tens of thousands of bytes, so now the expectation is that you explain in detail the reasoning behind that removal, not to mention touching on the origin of that which has been removed.
- Volunteer Marek replies working on restoring the part of it which can be verified. followed by an update when finished If Buidhe wishes to restore this other recently added text, they can propose it here on talk and discuss it, per the usual procedures.
- Buidhe replies
This does not assuage my objections. Relevant and well sourced content has been subject to mass removal.[...]
followed by examples of issues Buidhe saw.
- Buidhe says of Volunteer Marek's 1:09 edit:
- In the "Removal of historical background material" section, Buidhe and GizzyCatBella discuss the 07:51, 2 January revert.
- 09:59, Buidhe:
All of this is directly supported by sources (check them yourself), no OR involved
- 10:15, GCB: Please examine WP:SYNTH, and then please tell me what you think about the above combined material from multiple sources to be introduced into this article. Thanks.
- 10:17, Buidhe:
It doesn't combine material to reach a conclusion not in the sources. It just reports what the sources state about events during the Holocaust and perceptions about them.
- 10:23, GCB: Buidhe, it took you 2 minutes to reply....have you studied WP:SYNTH in 2 minutes or you were already familiar with WP:SYNTH? Well, I examined WP:SYNTH for longer than 2 minutes, and I believe you are mistaken Buidhe. Let's see what other editors think then.
- 10:30, GCB: Buidhe, when you get a chance, please read this as well [link to WP:What SYNTH is not]
- 10:34, Buidhe:
I already know what is NOT original research, and that is just reporting what the source says.
- 10:48, GCB: I still maintain you are confused here, Buidhe... What all those combined texts [internal quotes omitted] have to do with that Law other than suggesting something?
- 09:59, Buidhe:
- In the "stuff in lede" section, Volunteer Marek and Buidhe discuss the edits prior to the 01:09, 2 January revert.
- Buidhe opens an RfC on the talk page. 11 editors participated, and the RfC was closed a year later.
(Gitz6666 evidence with additional context and quotes by Wugapodes)
Positive contributions in the topic area
Buidhe has written Featured Articles, Good Articles, and "Did you know?s" in the topic area. (Piotrus evidence)
Elinruby has contributed to Collaboration with the Axis powers extensively (over 30% of content and edits). (#Evidence presented by Piotrus) Elinruby feels they have shown colloboration on that article by Extensive referencing, recruitment, talk page discussions, structure proposals, two RSN discussions, lede rewrite.
(Evidence presented by Elinruby) TrangaBellam has created four articles (Glaukopis, Mariusz Bechta, Tomasz Greniuch and Marcin Zaremba) in this topic area. (#Evidence presented by Piotrus)
Marcelus, with input from Elinruby and Gitz6666, wrote a section at Collaboration with the Axis powers § Jewish collaboration to provide a neutral summary of the subject material. Piotrus has also provided collegial discussion on sources relating to the same article. (#Evidence presented by Elinruby)
Piotrus, Marcelus, and Gitz6666 have been collobrating since March 2023 on Antisemitism in Poland. (Piotrus evidence)
Ealdgyth created a list of problems in the topic area following the declined 2021 case request, and invited other users to fix some of the issues presented. However, only a half-dozen of the 41 indicated issues were ever resolved, most of them by Volunteer Marek. (Volunteer Marek evidence)
Dispute at History policy of the Law and Justice party
From 5 June 2021 until the page's protection on 20 June 2021, a dispute among multiple editors occured at History policy of the Law and Justice party regarding a quote from Harper (2010).
- 20:11, 5 June 2021 Masdafizdo (not extended confirmed) removes the quote without explanation.
- 21:32, 5 June 2021 François Robert restores:
unjustified
- 22:30, 5 June 2021 Masdafizdo reverts without explanation
- 06:35, 6 June 2021 VikingDrummer (Icewhiz sockpuppet) restores
- 06:57, 6 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts:
This isn’t about any “policy” and is outdated by a decade
- 06:58, 6 June 2021 Volunteer Marek removes a claim cited to Majewski & Jaskulowski (n.d.):
This is not actually in the source
- 11:34, 7 June 2021 François Robere restores the Harper (2010) quote:
PiS was in power 2005-2007 as well, so all we need is to qualify it by time ("writes" -> "wrote") and reorder the section chronologically
- 11:37, 7 June 2021 François Robere wikilinks terms
- 03:17, 8 June 2021 Volunteer Marek restores his 06:58, 6 June version:
as i said, this is outdated, misrepresents the source (some of this "info" is not in the sources) and is not about any "policy". WP:ONUS.
- 05:45, 8 June 2021 VikingDrummer restores:
Consensus (User:François Robere and me) against YOU. Source is on topic, and content is within source. The preceding edit summary has been fact checked on the talk page, with full quotes, and has been rated as '''pants on fire'''
- 05:47, 8 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts:
I’d appreciate it if you stopped stalking my edits, and no, that’s not consensus. And stop restoring edits by indef banned user Icewhiz Icewhiz
- 05:55, 8 June 2021 VikingDrummer restores:
I edited this article first, well first vs. the Volunteer Marek account. Your claim that this was not in the sources was fact checked as pants on fire, it is all in the source. Consensus against you.
- 19:33, 10 June 2021 IP 5.173.241.240 reverts
- 14:20, 18 June 2021 François Robere restores:
Restored source to different section, as suggested on Talk:Historical policy of the Law and Justice party#Jo Harper ten days ago without objections
- 15:20, 18 June 2021 Volunteer Marek reverts:
Please stop restoring edits by indef banned users (Icewhiz) particularly since your long term on wiki relationship with them raises the issue of WP:MEATPUPPETRY
- 22:04, 18 June 2021 K.e.coffman restores:
Please do not use edit summaries to accuse other editors of meat-puppetry -- there's ANI for that. Separately, the content is well cited and is relevant for the article.
- 22:12, 18 June 2021 K.e.coffman adds prose clarifying that the year of the quote
- 22:27, 20 June 2021 IP 5.173.248.213 reverts
- 22:30 to 23:31, 20 June 2021 5 different editors go revert repeated unexplained removals by the IP
- 23:33, 20 June 2021 GeneralNotability semi-protects the page for persistent sock puppetry
(François Robere evidence, additional context by Wugapodes)
Potential coordinated editing
Piotrus, Volunteer Marek, and GizzyCatBella have edited pages they had previously never edited before shortly following edits by one of the other editors. At Zygmunt Krasiński in May 2020 – a page heavily edited by Piotrus – Volunteer Marek reverted a new addition to the page, and GizzyCatBella reverted the same editor the next day (neither had edited the article before). In August 2021 Volunteer Marek removed Warsaw concentration camp from Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia; the edit was undone by another user but removed shortly afterward by GizzyCatBella (again, their first edit to the page); this set of actions resulted in short blocks for both editors. Later in August François Robere created Property restitution in Poland; a few hours later Volunteer Marek started editing the page, followed only a few hours later by Piotrus. (Francois Robere evidence)
Another editor who would return from a long hiatus to edit pages in this topic area for the first time was MyMoloboaccount, with little explanation for how they arrived there. (Francois Robere evidence)
According to analysis by François Robere, through July 2020 35 of the 47 AfD discussions GizzyCatBella participated in also had participation by Piotrus and in all 21 AfD discussions GizzyCatBella participated in which Piotrus began, GizzyCatbella agreed with Piotrus.(Francois Robere evidence) Piotrus has indicated that in all discussions within the topic area, totalling 10 AFDs, they were only in agreement with GizzyCatBella approximately half of the time (Piotrus evidence)
Summary of other in scope evidence
Beginning in mid-February 2023 multiple editors contributed to the Naliboki massacre article. Edits included changes to the content about Jewish partisans and a summary of the findings of the Institute of National Remembrance. This editing led to an Arbitration Enforcement case which led to TrangaBellam and GizzyCatBella receiving logged warnings and Marcelus receiving a 0RR restriction.(/Evidence#Adoring nanny Naliboki)
Disruption in the topic area over time
There was a high of 14 AE reports in 2018 dropping to 1 report in 2022. In May 2020 the Arbitration Committee imposed a 500/30 restriction in the topic area of history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II and changed it to an extended confirmed restriction in September 2021. (Volunteer Marek evidence, François Robere evidence)
A search of the Administrator's Noticeboard/Incidents archive by Volunteer Marek revealed 1 thread in 2022 that mentioned the topic area and 2 about Poland more generally (about Kvass and a small town in Poland) ignoring reports which are just dealing with routine vandalism or where Poland is mentioned only in passing
. A search of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring by Volunteer Marek showed 0 mentions of Poland in 2022. The only 2022 mention of Poland on the Administrator's Noticeboard found by Volunteer Marek was about a declined Arbitration Committee case request. Link to data compiled by Volunteer Marek (Volunteer Marek evidence)
At least 45 sockpuppets, most of them sockpuppets of Icewhiz, have been blocked since June 2020. These sockpuppets have disrupted the topic area and other Wikipedia process through harassment, misrepresentation, and at one point an attempt to gain administrator privileges in 2021. (GizzyCatBella evidence)
In 2022, the Arbitration Committee received a private request for action against an editor for harassment in this topic area. The Arbitration Committee declined to consider the matter privately and advised the requester to file a request publicly. Subsequently a submission was made to Trust and Safety alleging harassment, which was deferred to ArbCom per policy for handling under their existing ArbCom procedures. Committee statement on private request received in 2022
Previous noticeboard discussions
Note from Barkeep49: Not every noticeboard discussion in this topic area needs to be entered into evidence. In particular, old noticeboard discussions are not useful. Instead recentish (and I am intentionally not defining that right now but letting interested editors show their judgement) discussions that shed light into the conduct of named parties can certainly be submitted.
Reliable Sources Noticeboard
From Horse Eye's Back evidence unless otherwise indicated
- Encyklopedia II wojny światowej March 2020
- Glaukopis_journal February 2021
- The_Volunteer_(book) February 2021
- Gazeta_Wyborcza_and_OKO.press February 2021
- Mass removal of criticisms from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance March 2021
- RfC:_Polish_sources September 2021
- Encyclopedia_of_Ukraine November 2022
- Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust February 2023
- Blue Police in Poland February 2023
- Jewish collaboration in the Holocaust February 2023
- Hoffman and The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society February 2023
- volunteermarek.substack.com March 2023
- Glaukopis (ongoing permalink as of 18:54, 24 March 2023 (UTC) ) March 2023
Fringe Theory Noticeboard
From Horse Eye's Back evidence unless otherwise indicated
- Maria Trzcińska as a source for her own claims to provide context for later refutation December 2021
- Święciany massacre and others (ongoing permalink as of 19:01, 24 March 2023 (UTC) ) March 2023
NPOVN
From Horse Eye's Back evidence unless otherwise indicated
- More eyes on Institute of National Remembrance January 2020
- Jewish collaboration February 2023
- Dueness of a book review March 2023
Personal information in Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust
Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust contains personal information about Wikipedia editors. (Jayen466 evidence)
Prior disputes between Wikipedians and Grabowski
Grabowski & Klein (2023) is not the first article written by Grabowski that alleges biased editing by Wikipedians in this topic area. Grabowski (2020) is an opinion piece in Gazeta Wyborcza where Grabowski indicates that some of the named parties to this case – specifically Piotrus, Volunteer Marek, Poeticbent, and Nihil Novi – as pushing their particular point of view. A response shortly followed by Konieczny (2020), rebutting the claims made by Grabowski and opining that if experts were more willing ot be involved in editing Wikipedia directly there might be fewer issues. In the year following Grabowski (2020) editors named in the opinion piece edited Grabowski's article multiple times each. (Wugapodes evidence)
Bibliography
- ArbCom access key
Publisher's version is freely available on the internet.
An arbitrator has independent access to publisher's version. Ask for access.
Arbitrators have independent access, but the source is in a language which no arbitrator speaks.
No arbitrator has independent access. If an arbitrator discovers they do have access, please change to blue.
- Regarding The Holocaust in Poland
- Relating to information removed 28 Jan 2021 and restored 29 Jan 2021
- Paulsson, Gunnar (1998). "The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland". Journal of Holocaust Education. 7. doi:10.1080/17504902.1998.11087056.
- Lukas, Richard, ed. (1989). Out of the inferno : Poles remember the Holocaust (1 ed.). Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
- Article cites 2013 edition, WorldCat lists the 2013 edition as being an eBook publication.
- Snyder, Timothy (December 20, 2012). "Hitler's Logical Holocaust". New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on December 7, 2012.
- Relating to information added in 2018 (is it still there? --Wug, 22:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC))
- Smith, David (2000). Moral geographies: ethics in a world of difference. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. OCLC 44435516.
- Lukas (supra)
- Mirriam-Goldberg, Caryn (2012). Needle in the bone: how a Holocaust survivor and a Polish resistance fighter beat the odds and found each other. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books. OCLC 821177968.
- Other editions on WorldCat
- Kwiatkowski, Richard (2016). The Country That Refused to Die: The Story of the People of Poland. Xlibris. OCLC 1124501951.
- Relating to information added in 2019 (is it still there? --Wug, 22:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC))
- Yahad - in unum (n.d.). "Execution of Jews in Koło". Holocaust by bullets. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
- United States Holocaust Museum (n.d.). "Holocaust Encyclopedia". Retrieved 18 March 2023.
- Idem. "Nazi camps". In United States Holocaust Museum (n.d.).
- Idem. "Einsatzgruppen". In United States Holocaust Museum (n.d.).
- Megargee, Geoffrey; Dean, Martin; Hecker, Mel, eds. (2018). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Vol. 2. Indiana University Press. OCLC 809381664.
- Ziółkowska, Anna; Reichelt, Katrin. "Koło". In Megargee, Dean & Hecker (2018), pp. 62-3.
- Relating to information added in 2017 (is it still there? --Wug, 22:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC))
- Cherry, Robert; Orla-Bukowska, Annamaria, eds. (2007). Rethinking Poles and Jews: troubled past, brighter future. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. OCLC 85862099.
- United States Holocaust Museum. "Belzec (rev. Dec. 7, 2020)". In United States Holocaust Museum (n.d.).
- Ealdgyth's nota bene: Belzec/Sobibor/Treblinka are collectively known as the Reinhard camps - for Operation Reinhard which operated those three death camps
- Regarding Judenrat
- Aderet, Ofer (August 24, 2019). "The crime: Collaborating with the Nazis. The punishment: Excommunication from Judaism". Haaretz. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
- Schwarz, Jan (2015). Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-8143-3906-0. OCLC 910650494.
- Gilliatt, Stephen (2000). An Exploration of the Dynamics of Collaboration and Non-resistance. Symposium series. Vol. 63. Edwin Mellen Press. p. 95, 99. ISBN 978-0-7734-7770-4. OCLC 43757521.
- Regarding Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- Rozett, Robert; Spector, Schmuel, eds. (2000). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Facts on File library of world history. New York: Facts on File. OCLC 44016317.
- Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews (English ed.). Oxford UP. OCLC 649831350.
- Cesarani, David (2016). Final solution: the fate of the Jews 1933-49. London: Macmillan. OCLC 936302830.
- Krakowski, Schmuel (1984). The war of the doomed: Jewish armed resistance in Poland, 1942-1944. Translated by Blaustein, Orah (English ed.). New York: Holmes and Meyer. OCLC 9970421.
- Regarding General Government
- United States Holocaust Museum. "Defining the Enemy". In United States Holocaust Museum (n.d.).
- Grabowski, Jan (2010). "Propaganda antyżydowska w Generalnej Guberni, 1939–1945" [Anti-Jewish propaganda in the General Government, 1939–1945]. Holocaust. Studies and Materials (in Polish). 6. doi:10.32927/zzsim.711.
- From K.e.coffman's evidence
- Regarding Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust discussion
- Paul, Mark (2017). Neighbours on the eve of the Holocaust: the Polish minority and Jewish collaboration in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, 1939-1941 (PDF). Toronto: Polish Education Foundation in North America. OCLC 1038021450.
- Worldcat lists a 2001 abridged print version, but only held by two libraries.
- The Associated Press (April 14, 2016). "Holocaust scholar questioned on claim Poles killed more Jews than Germans in war". The Guardian.
- Paul, Mark (2010). "Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy. The Testimony of Survivors" (PDF). Polish Educational Foundation in North America. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 May 2015.
- Paul, Mark (2008). "A Tangled Web: Polish-Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath" (PDF). Polish Education Foundation in North America. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 1, 2016.
- As cited in the article. Only version found online is: Paul, Mark (2016). "A Tangled Web: Polish-Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath" (PDF) (Rev. 2016 ed.). Polish Education Foundation in North America.
- Regarding Lazar Berenzon
- Байчорова, Ф.Х. (2018). "Негативное-агрессивное поведение жертвы преступления" [Negative-aggressive behavior of a crime victim]. Trends in the Development of Science and Education (in Russian). doi:10.18411/lj-28-02-2018-14. Assisted by Google Translate
- Саламатова, Марина Сергеевна (2019). "НКВД и ВЦИК: роль в организации избирательных кампаний в РСФСР (1917 – 1924 гг.)" [The NKVD and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee: the role in organizing election campaigns in the RSFSR (1917 - 1924)]. Genesis: Historical Research (in Russian). 5 (5): 46–60. doi:10.25136/2409-868x.2019.5.29857. Assisted by Google Translate
- Глущенко, В.В.; Глущенко, И.И.; Козырев, В.А.; Глущенко, И.И. (2019). "Сервисология как научная основа развития сферы сервиса" [Servisology as a scientific basis for the development of the service sector]. Trends and management (in Russian). 1 (1): 13–26. doi:10.7256/2454-0730.2019.1.20595. Assisted by Google Translate
- Regarding Prosto z mostu
- Urbanowski, Maciej (June 30, 2016). "Paradoksy żydożerców II RP" [Paradoxes of the Jews of the Second Republic of Poland]. Rzeczpospolita (in Polish). Assisted by Google Translate
- Regarding Naliboki massacre
- Harrison, David (January 10, 2009). "Bielski brothers were heroes, says survivor". The Telegraph.
- Wexler, Martha (December 27, 2008). "Jewish Brothers' Resistance Inspired 'Defiance'". All Things Considered. National Public Radio.
- Bogdan Musiał (January 31, 2009). "Bielski w puszczy niedomówień" [Bielski in the forest of understatements]. Rzeczpospolita (in Polish). Assisted by Google Translate
- Regarding Rajgród
- Crago, Laura; Tomkiewicz, Monika. "Rajgród". In Megargee, Dean & Hecker (2018), pp. 944-6.
- Regarding RSN thread on Blue Police in Poland
- Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm (October 30, 1939). Odezwa obligująca urzędników Policji Polskiej do zgłoszenia się okupantowi [A proclamation obliging Polish Police officials to report to the occupier] (Poster) (in Polish).
- Regarding Polish Operation of the NKVD
- Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan (15 January 2011). "Nieopłakane ludobójstwo" [Genocide Not Mourned]. Rzeczpospolita (in Polish). Archived from the original on 4 October 2012.
- Sommer, Tomasz (2010). "Execute the Poles: The Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union, 1937–1938. Documents from Headquarters". The Polish Review. 55 (4): 417–436. JSTOR 27920673.
- Sommer, Tomasz (2011). "The Polish Operation Stalin's First Genocide of Poles 1937–1938". Sarmatian Review. 31 (3): 1618–1625.
- Polska Agencja Prasowa (24 June 2010). "Publikacja na temat eksterminacji Polaków w ZSRR w latach 30" [Publication on the Subject of Extermination of Poles in the Soviet Union during the 1930s)]. Portal Wiara.pl.
- Regarding Paradisus Judaeorum
- Kot, Stanisław (1937). Polska rajem dla Żydów, piekłem dla chłopów, niebem dla szlachty [Poland as Paradise for the Jews, Hell for the Peasants, and Heaven for the Nobles] (in Polish). Warszawa. OCLC 29553714.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Biskupski, Mieczysław (2017). War and diplomacy in East and West: a biography of Józef Retinger. Routledge studies in modern history. Routledge. OCLC 971462460.
- Zimmerman, Joshua (2015). The Polish underground and the Jews, 1939-1945. New York: Cambridge UP. OCLC 910935082.
- Krzyżanowski, Julian (1958). Madrej głowie dość dwie słowie: trzy centurie przysłów polskich [Word to the Wise: Three centuries of Polish proverbs] (in Polish) (1st ed.). Warsawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. OCLC 2272434.
- Wasserstein, Bernard (1988). Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (1988 ed.). Institute of Jewish Affairs. OCLC 781471209.
- Stola, Dariusz (2015). "The Polish Government-in-exile: National Unity and Weakness". Holocaust Studies. 18 (2–3). doi:10.1080/17504902.2012.11087314.
- Soroka, Wacła (1976). "Professor Stanisław Kot: Scholar". The Polish Review. 21 (1/2): 93–112. JSTOR 25777374.
- Szczuki, Lech (1999). "Stanisław Kot" (PDF). Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce (in Polish). 43.
- Flemming, Michael (2014). Auschwitz, the allies and censorship of the Holocaust. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. OCLC 863127574.
- Adamczyk, Arkadiusz (2003). ""Stanisław Kot 1885-1975: biografia polityczna", Tadeusz Paweł Rutkowski, Warszawa 2000 [recenzja]" ["Stanisław Kot 1885-1975: political biography", Tadeusz Paweł Rutkowski, Warsaw 2000 [review]] (PDF). Piotrkowskie Zeszyty Historyczne (in Polish). 5: 423–430.
- Weintraub, Wiktor (1981). "Charting new ways for Polish cultural history: Stanisław Kot" (PDF). Organon. 16/17: 267–281.
- Tokarska-Bakir, Joanna (2004). Rzeczy mgliste: eseje i studia [Hazy Things: Essays and Studies] (in Polish). Fundacja Pogranicze. ISBN 978-83-86872-60-2. OCLC 57565782.
- Regarding Property restitution in Poland
- Gera, Vanessa; Federman, Josef (15 August 2021). "Israel condemns Poland restitution law, recalls top diplomat". The Associated Press. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
- Easton, Adam (14 August 2021). "Polish law on property stolen by Nazis angers Israel". BBC News. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
- Lis, Jonathan (14 August 2021). "In protest over Polish restitution law, Lapid recalls Israel's top diplomat to Warsaw". Haaretz. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
- Becker, Avi, ed. (2001). The plunder of Jewish property during the Holocaust: confronting European history. Palgrave. OCLC 46831172.
- Charnysh, Volha (2015). "Historical Legacies of Interethnic Competition: Anti-Semitism and the EU Referendum in Poland". Comparative Political Studies. 48 (13). doi:10.1177/0010414015598921.
- Pankowski, Rafał (2018). "The Resurgence of Antisemitic Discourse in Poland". Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. 12 (1). doi:10.1080/23739770.2018.1492781.
- Regarding Jan Żaryn
- Kalukin, Rafał (20 March 2018). "Senator Żaryn i jego „pozytywne mity" na temat polskości" [Senator Żaryn and his "positive myths" about Polishness]. Polityka (in Polish). Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Smoleński, Paweł (31 October 2018). "Jana Żaryna słowa o ukraińskiej nikczemności i polskiej misji cywilizacyjnej to skarlenie moralne" [Jan Żaryn's words about the Ukrainian wickedness and the Polish civilizing mission are moral stunts]. Oko Press (in Polish). Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Beczek, Wiktoria (24 April 2019). "Jan Żaryn w oblężonej twierdzy. Senator ma pretensje do Żydów, że zobaczyli antysemityzm" [Jan Żaryn in the besieged fortress. Senator blames Jews for seeing anti-Semitism]. Gazeta (in Polish). Agora Spółka Akcyjna. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Czuchnowski, Wojciech (27 February 2018). "Zrozumieć Jana Żaryna" [Understanding Jan Żaryn]. Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish). Agora Spółka Akcyjna. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Karpiński, Jarosław (27 February 2018). "Pada "przepraszam", ale dalej jest dużo gorzej. Ta uchwała PiS w Senacie może wywołać kolejną aferę" [It says "I'm sorry", but it still gets much worse. This PiS resolution in the Senate may cause another scandal]. NaTemat (in Polish). Retrieved 14 April 2018.
- Szukała, Michał (15 September 2016). "Prof. Jan Żaryn: Niemcy byli "reżyserami" pogromów takich jak w Jedwabnem" [Prof. Jan Żaryn: The Germans were the "directors" of pogroms such as those in Jedwabne]. Dzieje (in Polish). Polska Agencja Prasowa. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- "Żaryn o ONR: Wspaniała polska prawica i inteligencja" [Żaryn about ONR: The great Polish right and intelligentsia]. Polityczek (in Polish). 16 August 2018. Archived from the original on 12 October 2019.
- Cohen, Ben (March 2018). "The Dark Return of Polish Anti-Semitism". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Newsweek Editorial Source (27 February 2018). "Senator Żaryn autorem uchwały, która ma zostać przyjęta w rocznicę Marca'68. Czeka nas kolejny skandal?" [Senator Żaryn authored a resolution that may help on the anniversary of March '68. Another scandal ahead?]. Newsweek (in Polish). Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Dobrosz-Oracz, Justyna (2 March 2018). "Jan Żaryn o swojej kontrowersyjnej uchwale. W 68' nie istniało państwo polskie?" [Jan Żaryn about his controversial resolution. There was no Polish state in 1968?]. Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish). Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Pacewicz, Piotr (1 March 2018). "Jak się Żydów przeprasza, to po co ich obrażać - o uchwale senatora Żaryna (PiS) mówi prof. Osęka. Prawda o Marcu 1968" [If you apologize to the Jews, why insult them - prof. Osęka. The Truth About March 1968]. Oko Press (in Polish). Retrieved 14 April 2023.
- Determination of a clear risk of a serious breach by Poland of the rule of law (PDF) (Resolution). European Parliament. 17 September 2020.
- American Historical Association (9 February 2018). "AHA Condemns Polish Law Criminalizing Public Discussion of Polish Complicity in Nazi War Crimes".
- Amnesty International (8 February 2018). "Poland: The Law on the Institute of National Remembrance contravenes the right to freedom of expression".
- Wagner, David (1 February 2018). "New law on World War II crimes in Poland can threaten freedom of expression, says OSCE Representative Désir". Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency (18 March 2018). "Israeli Mayor Cancels Speech In Poland After Being Censored Under Holocaust Law". The Forward.
- Shpigel, Noa (19 March 2018). "Polish Town Cancels Ceremony With Israeli Mayor Over Mention of Poles Murdering Jews". Haaretz.
- Doherty, Rosa (20 March 2018). "Mayor cancels speech over Polish Holocaust law". Jewish Chronicle.
- Rogowska, Blanka (20 March 2018). "Prezydent Radomska cenzuruje burmistrza z Izraela. Pierwsze efekty ustawy o IPN?" [The mayor of Radomska censors the mayor from Israel. The first effects of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance?]. Wyborcza Łódź (in Polish).
- Zieve, Tamara (20 March 2018). "Holocaust memorial ceremony canceled after Poland censors Israeli speech". Jerusalem Post.
- Davies, Christian; Goñi, Uki (5 March 2018). "Poland: group sues Argentinian newspaper under new Holocaust law". Guardian.
- Halon, Eytan (4 March 2018). "Argentina newspaper first target of controversial Polish Holocaust law". Jerusalem Post.
- Reuters Staff (3 March 2018). "Polish group sues Argentine paper under new Holocaust law". Reuters.
- Times of Israel Staff (28 January 2018). "Bennett orders more Holocaust study in schools, including Polish role in WWII". Times of Israel.
- Borschel-Dan, Amanda (18 August 2016). "Is new Polish law an attempt to whitewash its citizens' roles in the Holocaust?". Times of Israel.
- Lipshiz, Cnaan (27 January 2018). "Poland wants to ban the term 'Polish death camps.' There are historical inaccuracies on both sides of the debate". Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
- Aderet, Ofer (28 January 2018). "Poland Needs to Leave the Holocaust History Writing to Actual Historians". Haaretz.
- Hacohen, Hagay (12 February 2018). "Why is the Polish government targeting Israeli web users?". Jerusalem Post.
- Maiberg, Emanuel (13 February 2018). "YouTube Keeps Serving Me Ads for Poland's 'Holocaust Law'". Motherboard. Vice.
- Kaplan Sommer, Allison (7 February 2018). "From #GermanDeathCamps to #PolishRighteous: Poland Launches Social Media Campaign to Defend Its Controversial Holocaust Law". Haaretz.
- Lapid, Yair [@yairlapid] (27 January 2018). "I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link) - Benjakob, Omer (4 October 2019). "The Fake Nazi Death Camp: Wikipedia's Longest Hoax, Exposed". Haaretz.
- Tsesis, Alexander (2020). "Genocide Censorship and Genocide Denial". In Grzebyk, Patricia (ed.). Responsibility for negation of international crimes. Warsawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wymiaru Sprawiedliwości. OCLC 1318993956.
- Belavusau, Uladzislau (2018). "The Rise of Memory Laws in Poland". Security and Human Rights. 29. doi:10.1163/18750230-02901011.
- Polonsky, Antony; Węgrzynek, Hanna; Żbikowski, Andrzej, eds. (2018). New directions in the history of the Jews in the Polish lands. Jews of Poland. Boston: Academic Studies Press. OCLC 1005199886.
- Berendt, Grzegorz. "Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47: The State of Research and its Presentation". In Polonsky, Węgrzynek & Żbikowski (2018).
- Żbikowski, Andrzej. "The Dispute over the Status of a Witness to the Holocaust: Some Observations on How Research into the Destruction of the Polish Jews and into Polish–Jewish Relations during the Years of Nazi Occupation Has Changed since 1989". In Polonsky, Węgrzynek & Żbikowski (2018).
- Frydel, Tomasz (2018). "Judenjagd : Reassessing the role of ordinary Poles as perpetrators in the Holocaust". In Williams, Timothy; Buckley-Zistel, Susanne (eds.). Perpetrators and perpetration of mass violence: action, motivations and dynamics. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-17586-9. OCLC 1032726339.
- Miscellaneous
- Tzur, Nissan (June 2, 2013). "Polish prof. to be axed for anti-Semitic views". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
- Weinbaum, Laurence (2016). "Amnesia and Antisemitism in the Second Jagiellonian Age". In Wistrich, Robert (ed.). Anti-Judaism, antisemitism, and delegitimizing Israel. Studies in antisemitism. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. OCLC 946906390.
- Harper, Jo (2010). "Negating Negation: Civic Platform, Law and Justice, and the Struggle over "Polishness"". Problems of Post-Communism. 57 (4). doi:10.2753/PPC1075-8216570402.
- Majewski, Piotr; Jaskulowski, Krzysztof (n.d.). "Comments on the article by Piotr Żuk (2018): "Nation, National Remembrance, and Education – Polish Schools as Factories of Nationalism and Prejudice," Nationalities Papers". Unpublished manuscript. Academia.edu.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link) - Dawidowicz, Lucy (March 1987). "The Curious Case of Marek Edelman". Commentary.
- Brumberg, Abraham (2 March 2001). "Murder Most Foul: Polish Responsibility for the Massacre at Jedwabne". Times Literary Supplement. No. 5109. London.
- Judt, Tony; Brumberg, Abraham (6 April 2001). "Murder Most Foul: Polish Responsibility for the Massacre at Jedwabne". Times Literary Supplement. London.
- Stanford News Service (5 September 1991). "State appellate court upholds Stanford in Davies case". Stanford University. Archived from the original on 10 March 2022.
- Grabowski, Jan (28 February 2020). "Wrzuć brednię na Wikipedię. Polscy nacjonaliści wciskają kit zagranicznym czytelnikom" [Put your bullshit on Wikipedia. Polish nationalists are screwing foreign readers.]. Ale Historia. Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
- Konieczny, Piotr (12 March 2020). "Mamy taką Wikipedię, na jaką zasłużyliśmy. Eksperci nie chcą tworzyć dobra publicznego" [We got the Wikipedia we deserve. Experts do not want to create a public good.]. Ale Historia. Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
- Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (2023). "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939.