Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander/Evidence

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk) Case clerk: Salvio giuliano (Talk)  Drafting arbitrator: Newyorkbrad (Talk)

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum of 1000 words and 100 diffs. Giving a short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to refactor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by LessHeard vanU

User:Silver seren alleged a 'Jewish conspiracy' in bringing up and supporting the topic ban of Neolander

Silver seren (talk · contribs) first brought up the issue of the ethnicity or religion of some of those proposing and supporting the topic ban proposed for Neolander here, without referring to the issues raised or the responses, and quickly defended their comment in their next post. They continued to raise this question, repeatedly, in the discussion that followed, and refused to retract the allegation despite representations that "non identified Jewish editors" had supported the ban proposal and that "Jewish identified editors" had opposed the ban. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:11, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by 75.57.242.120 (talk)

Undue weight, SYNTH, source misrepresentation

Criticism of the Talmud contained a passage mentioning an ADL report (see p. 10) documenting notorious white nationalist David Duke spreading an anti-semitic canard, a claim that "Sanhedrin 59a describes punishment by death for non-Jews that read the Talmud". Noleander in November 2010[1] upgrades this passage to a new subsection titled "Death for non-Jews that study Jewish law". The new section says

====Death for non-Jews that study Jewish law====
The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article on Gentile: Gentiles May Not Be Taught the Torah discusses a verse in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 59a) that suggests death for non-Jews that study the Jewish law, which includes the Talmud.[143] The ADL documents a modern instance of criticism of this passage made by David Duke, who claims that Sanhedrin 59a describes punishment by death for non-Jews that read the Talmud ("A heathen who studies the Torah deserves death, for it is written, Moses commanded us a law for an inheritance; it is our inheritance, not theirs").[144] However, this text is in the context of a dialectical debate between two rabbis, positing opposing, extreme views.[71]

Noleander cites this url in the Jewish Encyclopedia for the claim that Sanhedrin 59a suggests death for non-Jews that study the Jewish law, turning the David Duke analysis into follow-on commentary. The Jewish Encyclopedia actually says at that url,

R. Johanan says of one so teaching: "Such a person deserves death" (an idiom used to express indignation).

i.e. the "idiom" is not a literal call for capital punishment. Noleander leaves that part out. Another editor added some more viewpoints on the issue in February 2011[2] and fixed the Jewish Encyclopedia misstatement a day later.[3] Through the section heading and the unqualified reference to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Noleander seems to be presenting, with quite high prominence backed by the Jewish Encyclopedia's authority, an interpretation that actually came from David Duke.

I can understand that the misstatement of the Jewish Encyclopedia might have happened by accident, but leaving that issue aside, the whole approach taken has other big problems. Some more comments on this may follow in the analysis section of /Workshop.

Added: if I understand Jayen466's comment, Jayen466 is saying Noleander actually meant this Jewish Encyclopedia url instead of the one given. But I think that would have been an out-of-context quotation if the "idiom" explanation were still omitted. And the whole construction of the section is still terrible, of course (analysis in workshop TBD) 75.57.242.120 (talk) 18:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

More source misrepresentation

Note: I'm using the word "misrepresentation" to mean that the Wikipedia article contents represent the source as saying one thing, when the source says something different, thereby misleading Wikipedia's readers. I'm still not claiming Noleander is doing this on purpose, but IMO it's a natural consequence of an editing style focused on presenting preconceived conclusions and citing them to anything handy that looks related to the topic, instead of figuring out what the sources actually say and summarizing them. That is not neutral editing and Noleander should be held accountable. I don't think I should use a softer term than "misrepresentation" since permitting this kind of thing makes Wikipedia guilty of misrepresentation.

Same article as before, Criticism of the Talmud, noticed while examining this but present in the initial non-redirect version[4] of the article. The version after Noleander's 24 September 2010 edit says:

<!-- ====Withholding wages from a non-Jew==== -->
Gil Student documents a criticism that says that the Talmud permits Jews to withhold wages from non-Jews. which relies on Sanhedrin 57a "[i]t applies to the withholding of a labourer's wage. One Cuthean from another, or a Cuthean from an Israelite is forbidden, but an Israelite from a Cuthean is permitted."<ref name="Sanhedrin 57a online"/> Student describes this text as applying only to the situation where the Jew is no legal obligation to pay the wages (due to a contract oversight) - the Talmud instructs Jews to go beyond their legal obligations and pay when the laborer is a Jew, but Jews do not have to pay when the laborer is not a Jew.

Noleander cites this Angelfire page written by Gil Student. Checking Gil Student's Angelfire page, we find:

• The page says "...it is important to note that the commandments regarding not withholding a worker's wages [see below] DO NOT touch upon the issue of whether a worker is paid; they deal solely with WHEN a worker is paid." (emphasis per original including the bold font).
• It goes on to explain (my synopsis) that you're supposed to pay "righteous" laborers the same day that the work is done, which it calls "treatment beyond reasonable expectations". The page doesn't say what the normal payday is for the non-righteous, but it's quite emphatic that everyone gets paid.
• "Righteous" seems to mean "monotheistic" (which I guess includes Christians) while "Cutheans" (according to Gil Student) means "idolaters" (some of whom are apparently Jewish). The page has a quotation from Deuteronomy 24:15, prominently displayed in a box and written in both Hebrew and English, saying

  A Ger Toshav (righteous gentile) falls under the prohibition of "On that day you shall pay his wages"

  under two boxed Talmud quotations saying similar things. In other words, Student is quite emphatic that righteous non-Jews get the same expedited payment as righteous Jews. He also notes that Jewish "idolaters" don't get this extra-fast payment. He concludes,

  What we see unequivocably from the above passages is that the Talmud is not distinguishing between Jew and gentile regarding paying wages. Rather it is distinguishing between monotheist and idolater... Nowhere are gentiles discriminated against and even idolaters maintain their basic right to be paid for their labor.

Noleander's version makes it sound like Gil Student says the Talmud lets employers stiff non-Jewish labors by exploiting contract loopholes to not pay them at all, when the meaning and tone of Gil Student's page is completely the opposite. Whether other sources say something different about this issue, I have no idea, but Gil Student says what he says. If I were Gil Student, I'd be pretty annoyed by this.

(Note: the page says "copyright 2000" at the bottom, but just to make sure it hadn't changed recently, I checked the Wayback Machine snapshot from May 1, 2009.[5] It says the same thing.)

Noleander's editing pattern

Inspection and arithmetic on User talk:75.57.242.120/Noleander shows:

• At least 45% of Noleander's mainspace edits are to Judaism related articles (mostly clear from the titles)
• At least 25% are to Mormonism-related articles
• Over 80% are to articles clearly pertaining (based mainly on title) to religion or atheism one way or another
• Of the remaining 20%, based on examining a random sample (20 edits) I estimate that about half of the edits are religion- or Israel-related. Some of the edits are religion-related despite not being in religious-topic articles, like [6], in a section of Mitt Romney related to Romney's Mormonism. Others are in articles that are not obviously religious by title but turn out to be religious on closer inspection: First Vision could be about an eyeglass brand, but it's actually about the founder of Mormonism.

Going just by edit count is imprecise in figuring out how Noleander's effort is distributed, because Noleander prepares material in user space before placing it in mainspace, so a lot of work can show up in a handful of mainspace edits. User talk:75.57.242.120/Noleander/Contribution surveyor is a list of Noleander's edits adding 500 or more characters to articles. E.g. Noleander had made just 12 edits to Economic history of the Jews but one of those was the 130k edit creating the article in place of a former redirect. There's another like it for Criticism of the Book of Mormon. (A non-example is Noleander's 154k addition[7] to Christianity and violence, which turns out to be a reversion of a big deletion someone apparently did by accident, so edit sizes don't tell the whole story either.)

Examining the two lists above shows that with Cladistics as the main exception, almost all of Noleander's sizeable text contributions are to religious topics. (There are also some smaller exceptions, like the new article Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, about a theatrical play about Jackie Robinson). A significant area of interest in Noleander's non-religious editing is in articles like cladistics, clade, paraphyly. I hope that the connection of these topics to hereditary biology is not relevant to the main subject of this arbitration.

Also, the majority of the religion-related articles Noleander edits concentrate on negative or contentious aspects of the religions in question. This is obvious from viewing the edit lists, but I haven't bothered trying to make numerical statistics that I think would not be very useful.

Conclusion: in my assessment we're not quite in an SPA situation but we're pretty close to it. A broad topic ban on religious-related editing would impact around 90% of Noleander's mainspace edits, and probably an even higher proportion of the work that she puts into them.

Clarification (re Tijfo098): I'm not saying this edit pattern is sanctionable in its own right, if the edits themselves don't have bad problems. But they do, as is being shown elsewhere.

COATRACK, POV-pushing, and attack articles

Noleander has had multiple articles deleted for policy-violating unacceptable content such as POV-pushing, COATRACK, OR, SYNTH, and so forth. See the participant comments in these AfD's, cribbed from SlimVirgin's section:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversies related to prevalence of Jews in leadership roles in Hollywood
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Misuse of antisemitic accusations
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversies related to Israel and Zionism

The first deletion was endorsed at DRV by solid consensus of a lot of participants.[8] The DRV closure says "Based on consideration of the arguments in the DRV and AfD, it seems clear that policy-based arguments were weighted in an appropriate manner." I don't see DRV's for the other two but maybe I'm missing them.

More recently, Economic history of the Jews (originally called Jews and money) was deleted on similar grounds:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Economic history of the Jews

Tijfo098 raises a valid concern that these afd's are tilted by partisan commenters favoring deletion. I think arbcom should still accept this evidence. Arbcom can adjust for partisan tilt in the afd's by using its knowledge of the personalities involved. Plus of course there are also partisan "keep" !voters, both those favoring the article POV, and the AfD regular retentionists who just never want to see anything deleted if it has the thinnest pretext of notability. This religion stuff is way outside my normal editing area, but my general experience at AfD is that seeing articles with tons of on-subject references deleted is remarkable. Deletion indicates the article can't be salvaged--if only half of the article is POV crap, that's still unacceptable editing, yet afd usually closes with "keep". 75.57.242.120 (talk) 09:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

We can check verifiability of a statement by looking at its sources, but we ultimately have no mechanism other than consensus to check NPOV. AfD is intended for a different purpose (deciding if the article has even any hope of repair), they're imperfect for it (NPOVN is probably better in less blatant cases), but AfD's are legitimate consensus discussions about the suitability of article content. Repeated deletions like these really do tell us something. If people are gaming consensus discussions (AfD or anywhere else) that needs fixing too, of course.

Editors calling for analyzing "diffs" instead of whole articles should keep in mind that the diffs that introduce most of the problems in these articles look like this, i.e. they contain the whole article.

Responses

Responded to Tijfo098 re stats on evidence talk page. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 11:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Jayen466 - that sounds like Johanen uses the same idiom twice.

Tijfo098, I don't understand what you're getting at about average vs. worst case. I'd think we only care about worst case. Maybe you could clarify.

Tijfo, Hamas and the Taliban analogy is userfied, click the red link to reach the move/deletion log.

General -- my address has changed to 69.111.194.167 (talk) due to an ISP problem. 05:27, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

Evidence presented by Tijfo098

Unsolicited advice to would-be prosecutors

You guys really need to present evidence of WP:NPOV/WP:OR/WP:V violations, not merely statistics as to which articles Noleander edited. I can easily come up with "damning evidence" of that statistical sort concerning admins that edit against the interests of the Transcendental Meditation movement, and I can also come up with similar evidence concerning at least one admin that edits with a similar pattern on Scientology articles. (Never mind the scores of editors editing with anti-Israeli or anti-Palestinian slant.) Past ArbCom cases did not find such behavior by itself unbecoming of the status of an admin, let alone punishable at the plebeian editor level. 10:16, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Jews and the slave trade

Shocking title, isn't it? It is a creation of Noleander, and (1) it survived AfD so I could read it as non-admin, (2) it was heavily edited afterwards by User:Marokwitz, with whom I had interacted before. (If you want Marokvitz's calling card, have a look at Hamas and the Taliban analogy--admins only.) So, I was expecting to read diametrically opposed article versions by these two editors. I confess, the topic doesn't interest me much, so I've only read the lead of [9] and of the current version [10]. Yes, there are differences, but nothing I haven't seen before in these types of sensitive articles. This is just a sample point, but if this is average-case behavior of Noleander, then worst-case would have to be really bad, and it would have to happen a lot to justify sanctions. 22:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Replies to MathSci

Failure to use existing principal sources with due weight

In partial rejoinder to User:Mathsci: this is a new standard for banning. I propose that all editors involved in the Monty Hall problem be banned (except me, of course); they have collectively failed to use as source the two books on the topic, which arguably are principal (and one was published by OUP). Just kidding. That is actually a good reason to start a WP:FAR on the article, and hopefully improve it. But sanction editors for failing to find the best sources? The initial revision of Jews and Money [11] doesn't mention the book by Attali at all. Never mind that it's in French. Arguably the editors of the Monty Hall problem cannot claim ignorance as a defense—their article lists the principal sources, but it fails to use them with wp:due weight. 07:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Sombart

This is what Noleander actually wrote about Sombart (in the revision linked above): "Because Sombart speculated on anthropological and racial explanations, his work has been described as antisemitic and racist.[61] However, some modern scholars characterize his presentation of the topic as sympathetic and valid.[62] Sombart's work was a watershed in the scholarship of Jewish culture, because it prompted subsequent historians and economists to begin to examine the relationship between Jews and money [63]". So it doesn't seem to me that Noleander unapologetically quoted Sombart without wp:secondary analysis. Tijfo098 (talk) 08:13, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

And you want to read footnote 62 there, which has a quote from Gerald Krefetz, [12]) The modern view on Sombart is not as black and white as Mathsci describes it. (Unless you also consider Krefetz and Max Dimont antisemites or self-hating Jews). The preface to the modern edition of Sombart's book (published Transaction Publishers, a review) both rejects some of Sombart's fundamental tenets, but also analyzes the reasons for its sympathetic reception among some Jewish scholars. [13] Ironically, the current version of the article has completely lost that kind of analysis introducing a more serious POV problem! [14] Of course, bias-the-article-to-the-max-and-the-vote-delete-at-AfD-on-NPOV-grounds is a well-known tactic to anyone who has seen more than a couple of AfDs in controversial areas. But Noleander doesn't seem responsible for that. 09:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Penslar

Some chapter titles from Penslar, see toc here:

• Chapter 1. Jews, Paupers, and Other Savages: The Economic Image of the Jew in Western Europe, 1648-1848 (has sections such as: The Jew as Pauper/Savage/Master & Economic Antisemitism), pp. 11-50
• Chapter 3. The Origins of Modern Jewish Philanthropy (1789-1860) pp. 90-124
• Chapter 4. Homo economicus judaicus and the Spirit of Capitalism (1848-1914), pp. 124-174

You can find these topics as sections in Noleander's article. These comprise nearly half of the 263-page book text (without notes/bibl/index). Yes, there are some topics in Penslar which are missing from Noleander, such as those related to social policy and Zionism, and also Noleander practically ignores the economic history of Jews in Eastern Europe, which differs from that of those in the Western part. Noleander also put too much emphasis on the connection with Judaism's tenets relative to Penslar, who has only a section on that pp. 52-59. So Noleander's article is very amateurish in those respects, but the major themes of his article do come from reliable sources germane to the topic as a whole, and who treat these themes at length. 07:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Chronologically

Re: "The major problem is that the article was not written chronologically, which is unusual for something that ultimately claimed to be an economic history." Economic history text usually aren't written that way, because they're not describing a series of battles. There are overlapping themes each discussed chronologically, see toc in Pesnslar discussed above. Noleander did not deviate much from this approach. 11:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Reply to SlimVirgin's analysis of Perry (mis)use

Noleander's selection from Perry appears much less odious if you consider that (1) the quote selected was for the "1.1 Rabbinic and Talmudic guidance" section, and (2) Noleander does present additional possible explanations (or counter-arguments) in the soapy-titled section "3.5 Why were Jews so influential in the rise of capitalism?" [15] citing Perry p 143-4 in footnote 118. And substantive discussion continues in the uninspiredly-titled "Culture" subsection that follows, where Perry is cited again (footnote 122), this time in more obvious contrast to Sombart [16]. So, while there is less contrast in Noleander's presentation (compared to Perry), I don't think it amounts to a misuse of the source, not if you consider that Noleander also discussed the credibility of Sombart (see section above). The fragmentary nature of the presentation by Noleander can easily confuse the reader; no doubt, this isn't WP:FA material. 20:04, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

JN466's example (Krefetz source)

That is the closest thing to a smoking gun I've seen here (besides the Radio Islam blooper). I strongly agree with Pseudo-Richard's analysis of this issue (made at 21:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC) below). 07:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Lists of Jewish <whatever>

I'd like to point out that this is a huge area of wiki strife by no means limited to Noleander, just have a look at Talk:List of Jewish Nobel laureates for AfD links (see also Talk:Ashkenazi intelligence for related WP:SOAP comments), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish American entertainers, related DRV drama, and about a dozens more such lists. Quoting from a closing admin "The headcount here is about 9354235-9354234 and is affected by a number of partisan and reflexive !votes on either side." I think it applies to the rest of these lists; see ANI drama. 06:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Griswaldo

Noleander wrote "documents involvement", followed by "the thesis was that Jews played a major role". Jayjg essentially removed the "documents involvement" part, leaving only the book's thesis. If you read Jews and the slave trade, which has seen Marokvitz's attention as well, the claim of documented involvement of Jews in the slave trade is not outlandish (of course, it was minimal). I agree that Noleander not summarizing the criticism in the lead of the book article at a certain point in time looks bad. That version of the book lacked a synopsis section as well consisting essentially of lead/synopsis criticism section. Had that stubby version contained a __NOTOC__ it wouldn't have given the impression that it was trying to hide criticism, which followed immediately after the TOC. Based on several articles that Noleander wrote, I think he has some trouble following WP:MOSINTRO.

I do share the feeling that Noleander was sugarcoating the book article with unimportant elements, even though these were properly cited from Austen. But I've seen downright WP:ADVERT book articles on controversial topics with no substantive critical reception featured on the main page via WP:DYK; YMMV as they say. 18:35, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Reply to IZAK

Yes, Wikipedia needs to be a giant Kumbayah of religious dogma with no critical views. 17:35, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Maunus

And what about all the other article authors who have had one or more of their articles deleted at AfD on NPOV grounds, some of whom had the chutzpah to present evidence here? 18:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by SlimVirgin

Just to clarify my position here: I've never edited with Noleander, so my knowledge of him comes from the four AN/I threads that were posted between 2009 and 2011 (see below).

Background

Noleander (talk · contribs · count) began editing in February 2006. He has made just over 3,800 edits to articles (c. 10,300 overall). He initially wrote about biology and software, with large gaps in his contributions: no edits Feb–Oct 2006; Oct–Dec 2006; and Dec 2006–Nov 2007. He made his first religion-related edit in Nov 2007 at Talk:Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement, alleging the article was biased and suggesting, among other things, the need for material about "Mormons baptizing jews, and the resulting controversy." [17] He proceeded to make 432 edits to the article between then and Feb 2011, and to several related articles, including Mormonism and polygamy, Black people and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Origin of the Book of Mormon.

His first edit about Jews that I can find was in August 2008 when he added a POV tag to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; tag, talk. Then he edited Israel and the apartheid analogy, and Jewish lobby, then there was another gap in his editing. In December 2008 he began posting to Talk:Bernard Madoff: [18]

Is there any article in Wikipedia that discusses the prevelance of Jews in the financial world? I dont mean in a disparaging way, or "jews control the worlds finances", but more like "Jews are very successful in the financial sector, and tho only 1% of the worlds population, hold 20% of leadership roles in financial institutions" ... that sort of thing?

It seems that a large proportion of financial crimes in the US are committed by jews (25%), but that is nothing more of a reflection of the fact that jews are so successful in the financial sector, and occupy many leading roles (e.g. Secty of Treasury, Fedl reserve, etc).

I understand that that sort of data could be construed as anti-semitic, but it is an amazing fact, and really shouldn't be obscured. Though it does have a negative aspect, it also has a very positive aspect: The Sikh religion is well-represented the Indian military, LDS in the FBI, and so on. Jews are very successful in lots of fields, like classical music, law, physics, finance.

Yet it appears to be taboo in Wikipedia to mention that. Or am I missing the web pages that discuss that?

Also in Dec 2008 he posted to Talk:List of Jewish American businesspeople, arguing that there were names missing, and questioning the need for sources demonstrating ethnicity. [19] There was another gap in his editing between Dec 2008 and May 2009, another gap until July, then another between July and Sept 2009, when he began editing Criticism of religion (109 edits in all). In Sept 2009 he created his first article about Jews, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. [20]

2009–2011: AN/I discussions

His editing from October 2009 onwards triggered four AN/I threads:

1. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive571#user:Noleander and antisemitism-related articles, opened October 18, 2009 by Slrubenstein
2. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive572#User:Noleander, opened October 22, 2009 by Peter Cohen
3. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive597#Noleander redux, opened February 12, 2010 by Jayjg
4. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Noleander, opened March 25, 2011 by Slrubenstein

Oct 18, 2009: First AN/I thread

The first thread was triggered by Noleander's creation in October 2009 of Controversies related to prevalence of Jews in leadership roles in Hollywood, moved by Equazcion to Jews and Hollywood (now a redirect), then deleted at AfD. Slrubenstein opened the thread, arguing that the article was "a thinly disguised pretext to bring out the anti-Semitic slur of Jews controlling the media." Noleander responded that he was seeking to describe an anti-Semitic canard, not promote it. [21] The thread was closed with no action.

Oct 22, 2009: Second AN/I thread, plagiarism of anti-Semitic material from Radio Islam

Shortly after the thread was closed, Peter Cohen noticed that Controversies related to prevalence of Jews in leadership roles in Hollywood contained anti-Semitic text that Noleander had cut and paste directly from Radio Islam. See this version, the section called "Michael Medved". Radio Islam's article was about an article by Michael Medved, an American radio host, in Moment magazine, an American-Jewish magazine. Noleander used the Moment article as his reference, though clearly his source was Radio Islam. So the edit violated several principles: (a) it referenced a source that had not in fact been used; (b) it plagiarized material from a website; and (c) it contained text, in Wikipedia's voice, that was clearly anti-Semitic. The white nationalist forums, Stormfront and Vanguard News Network (VNN), also copied the text from Radio Islam, [http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t98084-2/][22] so—thanks to Noleander—Wikipedia, Stormfront, VNN, and Radio Islam carried the same material.

Peter Cohen therefore opened a second AN/I thread on October 22, 2009. During the discussion, Noleander acknowledged having cut and paste the material: "Yes, I wrote that article, and yes, I cut-and-pasted some text from the RadioIslam web site." He said he had failed to proof-read, that it was a mistake, and he apologized. [23] This thread was also closed with no action.

Note the language Noleander copied: "the Jew Michael Eisner" ("the Jew X" is a common construction in anti-Semitic texts), and the reference to "Australian Jew Rupert Murdoch" (Murdoch isn't Jewish, but it's a common theme of anti-Semitic websites that he must be, because he's rich and powerful).

---

Radio Islam

Noleander

The American Moment Magazine is subtitled, "The Jewish Magazine for the '90s". Its edition of Aug. 1996 carries the startling headline "Jews Run Hollywood - So What?" The author is the Jew Michael Medved who states: "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names." The article then describes how the Jew Michael Eisner, the Head of Walt Disney studios only hires "highly paid Jewish moguls" as producers such as Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Joe Roth (former head of 20th Century Fox). Medved emphazises the point that, "The famous Disney organization, which was founded by Walt Disney, a gentile Midwesterner who allegedly harboured anti-Semitic attitudes, now features Jewish personnel in nearly all its most powerful positions." Medved continues: "Men and women of Jewish background enjoy a vastly disproportionate - if not dominate - influence in Hollywood." He adds that even studios which were bought out by the Japanese Sony Corp. and by the Australian Jew Rupert Murdoch, still had to hire, "a Yiddish team of long-time industry leaders in all the most powerful positions. When Mitsushita took over MCA-Universal, they did nothing to undermine the unquestioned authority of Universal's legendary - and all-Jewish - management triad of Lew Wasserman, Sid Scheinberg and Tom Pollack." Medved further writes that most of today's movie moguls graduated from Ivy League colleges, "where Jews are vastly over-represented - just as they are in Hollywood." He says that nepotism plays a role exemplified with Samuel Goldwyn Pictures being run by the son of founder Samuel Goldwyn and a third generation, Tony Goldwyn, is waiting in the wings to take over. He adds: "This dynastic tendency in American entertainment certainly is a factor in the continued prominence of the Jewish role."

Film critic and author Michael Medved wrote, in a 1996 article titled "Jews Run Hollywood - So What?" and in that article said: "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names." The article then describes how the Jew Michael Eisner, the Head of Walt Disney studios only hires "highly paid Jewish moguls" as producers such as Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Joe Roth (former head of 20th Century Fox). Medved emphazises the point that, "The famous Disney organization, which was founded by Walt Disney, a gentile Midwesterner who allegedly harboured anti-Semitic attitudes, now features Jewish personnel in nearly all its most powerful positions." Medved continues: "Men and women of Jewish background enjoy a vastly disproportionate - if not dominate - influence in Hollywood." He adds that even studios which were bought out by the Japanese Sony Corp. and by the Australian Jew Rupert Murdoch, still had to hire, "a Yiddish team of long-time industry leaders in all the most powerful positions. When Mitsushita took over MCA-Universal, they did nothing to undermine the unquestioned authority of Universal's legndary - and all-Jewish - management triad of Lew Wasserman, Sid Scheinberg and Tom Pollack." Medved further writes that most of today's movie moguls graduated from Ivy League colleges, "where Jews are vastly over-represented - just as they are in Hollywood." He says that nepotism plays a role exemplified with Samuel Goldwyn Pictures being run by the son of founder Samuel Goldwyn and a third generation, Tony Goldwyn, is waiting in the wings to take over. He adds: "This dynastic tendency in American entertainment certainly is a factor in the continued prominence of the Jewish role."

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Feb 12, 2010: Third AN/I thread, suggestion that he focus on religion, not ethnicity

After the second thread closed on October 24, Noleander stopped editing for several weeks. He made six edits between then and January 30, 2010, then began regular editing again. He started editing Antisemitic canard, making 23 edits to it in all. This is an example of his edits, in which on Feb 3, 2010 he adds sections called "Jews control the media," "Jews control the Hollywood motion picture industry," and "Jews control the world financial system".

Two days later he began adding 61 names to List of Jewish American businesspeople, mostly the names of Jews influential in Hollywood, the media, and finance, e.g. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] On Feb 9 he added a "Pornography" section. [43]

This triggered a third AN/I thread, opened on Feb 12, during which he insisted his interest lay in criticism of religion, not ethnicity. I therefore suggested that he focus on religion from now on, and avoid editing about ethnicity entirely. He seemed to agree to that (emphasis added):

Noleander writes above that his interest lies in adding criticism of religions, so perhaps he could put people's minds at rest by focusing on that clearly from now on—on religion, rather than ethnicity, and using good sources that offer a critique of religion. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 22:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm amenable to SlimVirgin's suggestion. My primary interest is ensuring that the "downsides" of religions are documented in this encyclopedia (in a neutral, balanced way), and I'm willing to focus on that area. Good sourcing is always a priority for me, but I can redouble my efforts in that regard. --Noleander (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that would probably resolve the issue, particularly if the criticism is spread around different religions or focuses on the general concept. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 00:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Then perhaps that's the end of this, if everyone agrees...? Equazcion ^(talk) 04:29, 16 Feb 2010 (UTC)

March 25, 2011: Fourth AN/I thread, creation of Jews and money

Despite his apparent agreement to avoid ethnicity, he continued as before. Examples of his edits about Jews as an ethnicity since the February 2010 AN/I thread:

• He continued editing Antisemitic canard. On Feb 19, 2010, he added an "expand" tag to the section on "Accusations of excessive militarism and cruelty." [44] On Feb 23 he added a section called "Kosher Tax" (that kosher certification is a con designed to make rabbis rich). [45] On Feb 25 he added a section about allegations that Israelis were harvesting organs from Palestinians. [46] Also on Feb 25 he added a section called "Jews control the music industry." [47] Other similar material was added, always in the tone of reporting the anti-Semitism, not spreading it.
• He added a link in 2010 Haiti earthquake, on Feb 25, 2010, to Antisemitic canard#Haiti, about a claim that began on YouTube that Israelis were stealing organs from Haitians, which he called "Haiti organ harvesting conspiracy theory." [48]
• He created African-American – Jewish relations on July 10, 2010, and made 105 edits.
• He continued editing List of Jewish American businesspeople, making 35 edits in all.
• He created Jews and the slave trade on Aug 14, 2010, and made 30 edits.
• He began editing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Oct 26, 2010, and made 29 edits.
• He continued editing Antisemitic canard, making 23 edits in all.
• He created Allegations of Jewish control of the media on Nov 1, 2010, and made 137 edits.
• He added a link to Jewish control of the media to Template:Antisemitism on Nov 8, 2010. [49]
• He created Jews and money on March 25, 2011, and made 12 edits.
• He added links to Jews and money to Shylock, [50] Court Jew, [51] Secular Jewish culture, [52] Usury, [53] Rothschild family, [54] Loans and interest in Judaism, [55] Paul Warburg, [56] Jacob Schiff, [57] The Dearborn Independent, [58] The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, [59] Nation of Islam and antisemitism, [60] The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, [61] Abraham Foxman, [62] Werner Sombart, [63] Antisemitic canard, [64] On the Jewish Question, [65] Grand Sanhedrin, [66] Antisemitism in Europe (Middle Ages), [67] Template:Jews and Judaism, [68] and Template:Jewish culture. [69]

He also continued to edit about religion: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Among the Judaism-related edits are Jesus in the Talmud (158 edits), Criticism of the Talmud (155 edits), Judaism and war (95 edits), Judaism and slavery (72 edits), Judaism and violence (49 edits), The Talmud Unmasked (21 edits), and Jewish religious terrorism (15 edits). Note that I haven't checked the quality of most of the edits I'm listing here, or what percentage of his overall edits are about Jews.

It was his creation of Jews and money [70] —later moved by him to Economic history of the Jews, then deleted at AfD—that triggered the opening of the fourth AN/I thread. During this, Maunus and I proposed a topic ban. I proposed a 12-month ban on adding content or categories related to ethnicity, particularly anything to do with Jews; Maunus proposed a ban on articles related to Judaism broadly construed. It was in the course of discussing this that the RfAr was opened.

Misrepresentation of source material

March 25, 2011: In Jews and money

During the fourth AN/I discussion, Mathsci developed evidence here that, in Jews and money, Noleander misrepresented a source; Mathsci alludes to it in his evidence below, but it's worth expanding. Noleander appears to have used an academic source—Perry, Marvin and Schweitzer, Frederick M. Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 165—to support a position the authors were in fact arguing against.

Perry is a (Jewish) historian who taught at Baruch College, City University of New York, until his retirement, and Schweitzer a (Catholic) professor emeritus of history and former director of the Holocaust Resource Center at Manhattan College; see their bios. Noleander used their words to support the position that the Talmud encouraged Jews to adopt a positive view of profit. Noleander wrote in the section "Rabbinic and Talmudic guidance" (second paragraph) on March 25, 2011:

Marvin Perry states that the Talmud deviates widely from the early Christian approach to money: whereas the New Testament viewed money and profit as "filthy lucre" (1 Tim 3:3), the Talmud took a positive view of money and profit because the Talmud "was written, compiled and edited, taught and interpreted for centuries by rabbis who were merchants, artisans, and professional men, knowledgeable and accepting of business and finance, in theory and practice."

He cited Perry, p. 165 (meaning Perry and Schweitzer), and quoted more from them in his footnote 6. Perry and Schweitzer do indeed use these words, but as part of their refutation over several pages (p. 158ff) of an anti-Semitic interpretation of the Old Testament and the Talmud by Werner Sombart (1863–1941), a German economic historian who became a Nazi. Sombart was the author of Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911), which argued—according to Perry and Schweitzer—that Homo Judaeus was Homo capitalisticus, that Jews are a Händlervolk (a peddling people), then as capitalism became more popular that they were also Homo communisticus. Perry and Schweitzer regard his arguments as "fundamentally racist" (p. 158). They write:

In seeking to attribute capitalism to the villainous Jews, Sombart greatly exaggerated and oversimplified their importance (p. 160). ... Sombart simplifies matters terribly, reducing the Bible and Talmud to philistine justifications for money-grubbing. ... Many historians have demonstrated that such expositions as Sombart indulges in here are more stereotype and caricature than analysis ..." (p. 162).

Then on pp. 164–165, Perry and Schweitzer write (I've bolded in red the words Noleander quoted in Jews and money, and highlighted in yellow the words he quoted in his footnote 6):

Although Sombart makes little or no mention of them, there were, indeed, religion-based practices that may have affected Jewish economic activities in some degree. [They mention Sabbath observance, dietary laws, sobriety, family stability, the role of women, the role of language] ...

More fundamental than language and other customs in shaping Jewish attitudes and practice was the Talmud. It takes a positive stance with regard to economic activity, in sharp contrast to the New Testament and Patristic theologians who were vigilant against, as they thought it to be, filthy lucre and serving Mammon, and thus incorporated a strong, mystical, antiworldly, antieconomic strain in Christian theology and ethics. The Talmud, by contrast,was written, compiled and edited, taught and interpreted for centuries by rabbis who were merchants, artisans and professional men, knowledgeable and accepting of business and finance, in theory and practice.They were family men, and some of them earned their living as merchants and the like, so as to serve the community without pay. It may be that Judaism's affirmative outlook on the world—Weltbejabung, what Weber called being "accommodated to the world"—made Jews more rational, less mystical, and more focused on this life, and thus more likely to engage and be successful in economic activities in some degree. Also the Talmud, intricate in structure and intellectually demanding as it is, may have taught Jews to be logical, analytical, and rational in some degree. More significantly, however, in Talmud and Bible alike, getting and spending are far from being the primary or ideal purpose of life. Learning and wisdom were the jewels without price, which meant that Jews were literate and educated in civilizations where historically these assets for economic doings were rare.

In placing excessive emphasis on biblical inspiration and talmudic direction, Sombart leaves out of account the far more important factor in explaining Jewish economic performance, that the Jews were a small minority of strangers, tolerated by subject to prejudice and persecution. Jewish disabilities and minority status were dismissed out of hand by Sombart: "[T]hey were of no moment whatever for the economic growth of the Jews." This is the most radically skewed and unfounded assertion in the whole book. He thereby forfeits the possibility of any kind of plausible explanatory matrix. Sombart thus passed over the fact that Jewish economic energies and activities, thwarted by guild exclusion, monarchical policies, the attitude of the church, and the like, had to be more dynamic and acute for Jews to survive in a hostile world.

Both Noleander's addition to the article and to footnote 6 omit, among other things, Perry and Schweitzer's key argument that, "In placing excessive emphasis on biblical inspiration and talmudic direction, Sombart leaves out of account the far more important factor in explaining Jewish economic performance, that the Jews were a small minority of strangers, tolerated by subject to prejudice and persecution." And he ignored entirely the several pages Perry and Schweitzer devote to arguing against Sombart, who in his 1911 book had proposed the view Noleander was promoting. This is a clear example of lifting source material out of context to support a certain POV. Mathsci said he chose this example at random, which suggests there may be more of this in Noleander's work.

Aug 14, 2010: In Jews and the slave trade

People have asked for other examples of misrepresentation of sources, so I looked at Jews and the slave trade, which Noleander created with this version on Aug 14, 2010. Marokwitz wrote on talk on Aug 18: "This article is shocking - selective quoting and misinterpretation of sources in an extreme way, to the extent which I never encountered in Wikipedia. Some sources were completely turned on their head to prove the absolute opposite of what the author intended. ... It seems to be based to a large extent on the quotes used in the widely discredited propaganda book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. Help is needed." [71] The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a highly contentious book by the Nation of Islam; Noleander created an article on it with this version on Aug 11, three days before he created Jews and the slave trade.

Analyzing all the text-source relationships would be extremely time-consuming, so here is just one example. Noleander began the section on the Atlantic slave trade with the sentence:

Jews played significant roles in the Atlantic slave trade, particularly in Brazil and Suriname.

His source was Seymour Drescher's "Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade", in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1400-1800, 2004, p. 455. Here is what Drescher, an historian at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on the slave trade, actually wrote (I've bolded in red the sentence Noleander relied on):

Had the return of the Jews to Europe's Atlantic ports been post-poned until the 1790s instead of the 1590s, the volume of enslavement or distribution of Africans in the Atlantic system would hardly have been altered. The "Jewish presence" in the slave trade was too ephemeral, too localized, and too limited to have made an appreciable difference.

The economic, social, legal, and racial pattern of the Atlantic slave trade was in place before Jews made their way back to the Atlantic ports of northwestern Europe, to the coasts and islands of Africa, or to European colonies in the Americas. They were marginal collective actors in most places and during most periods of the Atlantic system ... [including] its distribution of coerced migrants from Europe and Africa. Only in the Americas—momentarily in Brazil, more durably in the Caribbean—can the role of Jewish traders be described as significant. If we consider the whole complex of major class actors in the transatlantic slave trade, the share of Jews in this vast network is extremely modest.

Considering the number of African captives who passed into and through the hands of captors and dealers with capture in Africa until sale in America, it is unlikely that more than a fraction of 1 percent of the twelve million enslaved and relayed Africans were purchased or sold by Jewish merchants even once. ... At no point along the continuum of the slave trade were Jews numerous enough, rich enough, and powerful enough to affect significantly the structure and flow of the slave trade or to diminish the suffering of its African victims.

Compare Noleander's and Drescher's sentences. Drescher is saying Jews did not play significant roles in the Atlantic slave trade, except in Brazil and the Caribbean. Noleander turns this into "Jews played significant roles in the Atlantic slave trade, particularly in Brazil ...." This is a very different meaning. Moreover, the overall context of Drescher's paper—even if you read only that one page of it—makes very clear that Drescher is arguing the role of Jewish traders was minimal. Noleander seems aware of this, as his first version of the lead acknowledges that Jewish involvement was minimal.

In fact, Drescher was involved in writing a resolution passed by the American Historical Association in 1995—in response to claims made by the Nation of Islam—which "condemn[ed] as false any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the exploitation of slave labor or in the Atlantic slave trade." A statement accompanying the resolution, written by Drescher and David Brion Davis—another expert on the slave trade—said the claims "so misrepresent the historical record ... that we believe them only to be part of a long anti-Semitic tradition that presents Jews as negative central actors in human history."

For comparison, here is Noleander's Aug 14 section on the Atlantic slave trade next to Marokwitz's Aug 18 version of it; and here are their leads side by side.

Sept 2009–March 2011: Articles created about Jews or Judaism

Examples of articles Noleander has created about Jews since September 2009 (see list of all articles created):

• An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, created September 25, 2009; first version, kept at AfD.
• Controversies related to prevalence of Jews in leadership roles in Hollywood, created October 5, 2009, deleted at AfD.
• Misuse of antisemitic accusations, created October 18, 2009, deleted at AfD.
• Judaism and war, created April 1, 2010; first version.
• Controversies related to Israel and Zionism, created April 15, 2010, deleted at AfD.
• Disputation of Paris, created June 9, 2010; first version.
• African-American – Jewish relations, created July 10, 2010; first version.
• The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, August 11, 2010; first version.
• Jews and the slave trade, created August 14, 2010; first version.
• Abram S. Isaacs, created September 16, 2010; first version.
• Allegations of Jewish control of the media, created November 1, 2010; first version.
• International_Jewish_Anti-Zionist_Network, created December 6, 2010; first version.
• European_Institute_for_the_Study_of_Contemporary_Antisemitism, created December 7, 2010; first version.
• Gerald Krefetz, BLP about someone who has written about the economic status of Jews, created March 18, 2011; first version, speedy deletion request, kept.
• Jews and money, created March 25, 2011, moved to Economic history of the Jews, deleted at AfD.
• Various redirects, including Antigentilism, Jews and capitalism, Capitalism and jews, Jewish stereotypes, Violence in Judaism, Judaism and peace, created as a redirect to Violence and Judaism; see list of redirects.

SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 12:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Jayen466

Rebuttal of evidence by 75.57.242.120

75.57.242.120 seems to have overlooked a passage on the cited Jewish Encyclopedia page, and thus appears to have misattributed the source of Noleander's statement.

75.57.242.120 quotes

"R. Johanan says of one so teaching: "Such a person deserves death" (an idiom used to express indignation)." from the section "Gentiles May Not Be Taught the Torah."

This refers to Jews teaching the Torah, not gentiles reading it. On the topic of gentiles reading the Torah, the same Jewish Encyclopedia page includes the following, in the section "Johanan":

"The wise among the heathen is called and must be honored as a wise man" (Meg. 16a), is one of Johanan's sayings, though he is also the author of another which holds that, as the Torah was given as a heritage to Israel, a non-Israelite deserves death if he studies it (Sanh. 59a).

This being so, the argument that "deserves death" is characterised as just an idiom in the source, and that Noleander should have noted that in his edit, lacks substance. There was no such qualification in the passage that relates to Sanh. 59a. Note.

Questionable summary of a source

Noleander wrote, in the very first version of the Jews and money article,

"Gerald Krefetz comments that Jews are particularly prone to push the boundaries of morality in law in the realm of international banking."

The source quote was given and read,

"While there is no real evidence of an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers, some Jews in banking have conspired. The money game holds a fascination for Jews And since the Diaspora scattered Jewish communities, their financial concerns have always had an international flavor. But some Jews have overstepped the bounds of morality and law in the realm of international banking."

Now the source does not say that "Jews are particularly prone to push the boundaries of morality [and] law" in international banking. It says that some Jews have conspired. It says that Jews are involved in international financial matters, and some have overstepped the bounds of morality. The statement in the article however implies to my mind that the percentage of Jewish bankers pushing the boundaries of morality is large, or at any rate greater than the percentage of bankers from different ethnic backgrounds. The cited source does not support that.

Rebuttal of SlimVirgin's points re Perry and Sombart

I don't think it's reasonable to require an editor citing a work for a statement of fact to reflect the POV of the entire work in their writing. All that is required is that the article as a whole should be a sincere attempt at a neutral presentation of the topic.

SlimVirgin's description of Werner Sombart is not helpful. She writes, "Werner Sombart (1863–1941), a German economic historian who became a Nazi". She neglects to mention that The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911) met with both positive and negative reviews from the Jewish community (see contemporary New York Times article); Rabbi D. M. Hoffman wrote in Die Jüdische Presse that it would remain the standard work for all time on Jews and Judaism. Sombart is cited as the sole source for the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Finance, and is cited again in its article on Commerce.

Evidence presented by Mathsci

Misrepresentation of sources and failure to use existing principal sources with due weight

• The original article Jews and money was not written in the standard way for a long wikipedia article. I already indicated that the article gave undue credit to Third Reich theorists, such as Adolf Hitler and Werner Sombart and analysed one specific sentence here, which I found completely misrepresented the source. In Noleander's case, he found a section in a book on "antisemitism" devoted to Werner Sombart, where the authors had explicitly identified his message and intepretation of the Talmud as antisemitic; Noleander cherry-picked phrases from a paragraph which in fact entirely misrepresented their message, stating the opposite of what the two authors were arguing.

• As a second random example I took the section on Shylock. Where available, I have reproduced material from the sources here. There is one scholarly source by Penslar which has Shylock in the title. But Shylock is only mentioned en passant twice, in the first sentence of the introduction as an antisemitic stereotype and later on, in the same way, within a very carefully argued historical discussion. Instead of cherrypicking the introductory sentence, which is not at all the topic of this book (from the University of California Press), Penslar's superbly written book, a mine of information, could have been used as a valuable source for the Economic history ofthe Jews (its subject more or less). All the other statements also concern Shylock as an antisemitic stereotype, as is made clear in the sources by their context, e.g. chapter headings. No proper historical context was made for introducing Shylock or The Merchant of Venice in the article. The book of Attali does so; and, in the long second segment from Penslar, Shylock and The Merchant of Venice are mentioned within the correct historical and religious context of usury and moneylending in medieval and Renaissance Europe. What Noleander produced was a list of one-liners concerning the antisemitic stereotype without any proper context, either in economics, in literature or in history. Noleander's first sentence on Shylock is completely unsourced and probably self-written.

• The academic book of Derek Penslar was quoted in the lede of Jews and money/Economic history of the Jews. Very little from that book can be recognized in the article. The major problem is that the article was not written chronologically, which is unusual for something that ultimately claimed to be an economic history. Noleander mixed disparate sources, serious academic books and personal accounts (airport books?), and thought it appropriate just to take isolated statements out of context to make a series of seemingly preconceived points. But the true economic history contains many periods and includes figures from the 17th, 18th and 19th century that most readers will not have heard of, yet who nevertheless played a role in that history. This is discussed in detail in Penslar where liberalism and the emancipation of the Jews is discussed at length. Noleander's account is almost disjoint from Penslar's, suggesting no serious attempt was made to come to terms with the content of his book, i.e. the economic history of the Jews. The true economic history might be a bit dull, dry and scholarly in parts, but rather that, than an endless string of potentially offensive caricatures and stereotypes.

• There is a long discussion of Henry Ford in Perry & Schweitzer. In the article Noleander has not presented their critical analysis but just a simple uninterpreted set of his utterances and activities, together with a partial description of the known influence on Hitler. On the face of it, apart from being one of the most well known and influential anti-Semitic figures in the United States, the material on Henry Ford has nothing to do with the Economic history of the Jewish people. It would be appropriate for an article on anti-Semitism. There is no mention of the honours he was granted by the Third Reich, etc. Other figures known for their anti-Semitism are also mentioned (Ezra Pound and Charles Coughlin en passant), but again their relation to economic history is tenuous. The material on Hitler is again uninterpreted with no proper context, a lengthy quote from Mein Kampf accompanied by an image of the book. If reliable sources had been used properly, the material would have been introduced with the commentary and context provided there. The presentation of the Ford-Hitler material by Noleander is a textbook example of how not to write wikipedia articles.

• The source article "Economic History" by Baron and Kahan, 44 pages long, from the Encyclopedia Judaica is available online here (see also [72] if this link is unavailable). I have prepared a brief summary of the economic history prior to the early modern period here (it is not written according to wikipedia rules!) in order to make a comparison with Noleander's treatent of the same period. Having prepared the summary, there appear to be major deficiencies in Noleander's account. There is no discussion of agriculture which was a mainstay of the Jewish economy for a long period. Nor is the medieval period under Muslim rule with comparitive freedom mentioned at all. Periodic expulsions under Christian rule are not mentioned; nor is there any explanation of why medieval kings relied heavily on Jews as creditors, while barons objected. The rich and detailed economic history in Baron's account in the EJ can hardly be traced in Noleander's article. There is no historical context nor any attempt at a vaguely chronological account. There is no mention of the oft-repeated statement in Baron that pronouncements in the OT, the Talmud and Maimonides were idealistic and did not reflect common practice. Indeed Baron states that rabbinical scholars were adept in interpreting bibilical and talmudic material to reflect the changing times and circumstances. Perhaps the omission of the fact that from the thirteenth century onwards Jews were periodically expelled from England, France, Germany and Spain is one of the most serious. In Baron that explains why, under Christian rule, Jews could not rely on landholdings, so had to abandon agriculture, and why in the money trade moneylending was the only possibility left for making a livelihood. Noleander's concatenation of statements by largely non-academic authors shares little common ground with the content of Baron's article, which gives a fairly detailed account in 20 pages of Jewish economic history up to 1500. Almost all of Baron's carefully written historical account, including trade, crafts and agriculture, has been ignored.

Before returning to France on Monday 28 March, I had ordered "les Juifs, le Mondee et l'Argent; histoire économique du peuple juif" by Jacques Attali from amazon.fr (for about 5 €). It is just under 800 pages long, a personal account by an expert in economics, going through the whole history. As he writes in the preface, "Voici l'histoire des rapports du peuple juif avec le monde et l'argent. Je sais que ce sujet a de sulfureux. [...] Il est aussi essentiel pour le peuple juif lui-même d'affronter cette partie de son histoire qu'il n'aime pas et dont, pourtant, il aurait tout lieu d'être fier." An English translation of the book was published a year ago with the title, "Economic history of the Jewish people". There is no doubt it could have been used as a source for a wikipedia article with the same title. Normally lengthy wikipedia articles on a particular topic rely on locating a few good references which cover large chunks of the subject. Other references can be used in addition, to add further detail. That does not appear to be the way Noleander wrote Jews and money. It seems to have been glued together from disparate sources and, as the above example shows, might have misrepresented a large number of those sources by quoting completely out of context, Authors like Attali make very clear statements: "Thus Sombart's book—riddled with factual errors and anachronisms—is more or less an involuntary collection of antisemitic caricatures." (my translation from page 479) There are other prior references to English accounts of the economic history of the Jews, but I have not had an opportunity to see them. (I have no personal view on Sombart.)

I was reluctant to enter any evidence, because it is evident that editors have become so polarised and factionalised that personalised remarks are replacing dispassionate analysis. I believe that a good article entitled "The economic hisory of the Jewish people" can be written. Noleander's article fell far short of any serious attempt to write such an article (expecially considering its original title): his article was offensive and unbalanced.

This case is not related in any way to ARBPIA or ARBPIA 2

I have no idea where this confusion has come from. Here is one example of this misnomer. [73] Since the same sentiment has been expressed in several places already by multiple users, it seems related to the polarisation and factionalisation which threatens to plague this case.

Evidence presented by Richardshusr

Disclaimer: My experience with Noleander has been mostly limited to articles related to Religion X and violence (e.g. Christianity and violence). My argument below is that my experience prior to the ANI report had not been such as to lead me to conclude that Noleander was an antiSemite. I believe that Noleander is being criticized for specific errors which are not representative of his overall work on Wikipedia. My contribution here is to call attention to other areas where Noleander has made valuable contributions.

Noleander's interaction style can be prickly and less than collegial

I have recently had negative interaction with Noleander and two other editors over the article Christianity and violence. This negative interaction can be found at Talk:Christianity and violence/Archive 1 and Talk:Christianity and violence/Archive 1. This is not the appropriate place dispute whether I was right or wrong in the interaction. My only point here is that Noleander's interaction style was something less than collegial and collaborative but, IMO, this is only grounds for a Wikiquette alert not for an ANI report and certainly not rising to the level of an RFARB.

Noleander has worked on articles related to various religions

I am not able to list all the articles that Noleander has worked on but they include Christianity and violence, Judaism and violence and (I believe) Islam and violence. There is not, IMO, a clear agenda of antisemitism in the articles that he chooses to edit or in the edits that he makes to Judaism-related articles. The only way to get a feeling for this is to review the entire corpus of his edits to a number of articles. I have scanned his edits to Judaism and violence and I don't see such an agenda. I would recommend that ARBCOM consider not just the edits on which the allegations are based but the other edits as well in order to develop a complete picture of Noleander's contributions to Wikipedia.

Noleander has been willing to discuss POV issues with other editors

Well... for reasons that are not totally clear to me, he was less than collegial in discussing the POV issues related to Christianity and violence. However, his interactions with other editors don't exhibit the same hostility and unwillingness to discuss. In fact, his responses to allegations of POV have generally invited editors to discuss their concerns. This thread is an example.

Noleander's early version of Jews and money was not uniformly antisemitic

ARBCOM should consider this revision of the article (this is the revision that was nominated for deletion). While it is true that there are issues of sourcing and issues of POV, my reading of that revision concludes that Noleander made a sincere effort to provide a balanced NPOV view. The fact that he did not achieve an NPOV article is not reason, IMO, to tar and feather him as an antisemite. The article that he wrote might have been canted in favor of the antisemitic view but the article does not, IMO, have a clear antisemitic POV or agenda. I do believe that the article could be better organized and provide a better overall summary of the topic but that is a criticism of writing style not of latent antisemitism on Noleander's part. It is also true that there are a number of places where Noleander's text states opinions and theories as if they were fact. However, these sorts of things can be fixed and Noleander has shown a general willingness to discuss issues raised by other editors. Noleander's initial version of the article may have given undue weight to facts used to support the antisemitic canard of Jewish domination of international finance. In a number of places, he stated an assertion as fact rather than characterizing it as the opinion of a particular author. However, assuming good faith might suggest that these issues could be fixed by rewording the sentences in question to attribute the opinion to the source rather than asserting it as factually true. At the end of the day, I am inclined to view these as correctable errors that should be resolved on the article's Talk Page rather than dragging the editor before ARBCOM and accusing him of incorrigible antisemitism.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 05:59, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The Krefetz source

I still maintain my position that what is appropriate here is a warning to Noleander to be more careful with his use of sources and to strive harder to maintain an NPOV stance especially when editing controversial articles.

However, it is worth pointing out that his defense of his paraphrase of the "Krefetz source" (as presented in his evidence section below) exhibits a certain tone-deafness to NPOV. He argues that his wording is softer than the original source:

the original source positively stated that "some Jews haveoverstepped the bounds of morality …" and my paraphrase is the softer "[some] Jews are particularly prone to push the boundaries of morality". If I were attempting to portray Jews in a poor light, I would have retained (or exaggerated) the source's stronger wording "have overstepped", but instead I softened it. Furthermore, I included the original quote from the source in a footnote: - if my goal was to distort the source I would not have provided the quote. Clearly this is an example of a good-faith oversight, not a deliberate display of bigotry.

I still assume good faith on his part that he was not trying to be antisemitic but I think his defense exhibits a certain blindness to what may be perceived as antisemitic assertions. In this particular case, I read Noleander's text to be stronger and more antisemitic than the original source and I think others do as well which is why this text has become a point of contention.

Look at it this way... if I assert that "Noleander has (at times) overstepped the bounds of NPOV and made (some) antisemitic edits", is that assertion stronger or weaker than "Noleander is particularly prone to making antisemitic edits"? Now, if we assume good faith, this atrocity with the Krefetz source is just an egregiously poor choice of words. However, Noleander needs to understand what the result of that choice of words was and concede that the result was likely to be read as antisemitic even if it was not intended that way.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 21:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Noleander

Overview

I have not violated Wikipedia policies

Early in my editing career, I made some policy mistakes, but in the past 7,000 edits, I have strictly adhered to Verifiability and Neutrality policies. I maintain that the evidence against me is a simple case of I don't like it.

There is no pattern of bad editing

I've made over 10,000 edits. The evidence identifies only a handful of edits that are allegedly problematic, most of them made early in my editing career. If I were a problem editor, the evidence would include more recent edits, and a clear pattern of policy violation would emerge. There is no pattern.

I work hard for compromise and consensus

I'm a strong believer in compromise and consensus. I listen carefully to other editors and work hard to resolve any issues or concerns. I have never treated another editor rudely, or disregarded issues brought to my attention. Any time any editor has challenged my contributions as flawed, I work with them to resolve the issue. I urge the arbitrators to take note of the fact that not a single diff in evidence illustrates uncivil behavior on my part.

My only motive is to improve the quality of Wikipedia

One of the missions of Wikipedia is to provide complete, balanced coverage - warts and all - of topics. Sometimes that means adding material that may be perceived as offensive. Yet incorporating potentially offensive material is necessary to help Wikipedia fulfill its goals.

Focusing on one topic area does not violate policy

My time is limited so I, like many editors, choose to focus in a few topic areas. Focusing on a few topics does not violate policy.

Some religion articles omit controversial information

Some religion articles lack balance because they omit controversial or sensitive information. Contributing material to fill in those gaps does not violate WP policy.

Editors should not be equated with their sources

If I add material which covers the Tanner's view of Mormonism, their views should not be imputed to me. If I add material that covers Israel Shahak's views of Judaism, his views should not be imputed to me. Many of the comments in the ANIs imply that I, by mentioning such persons, share the same personal viewpoints as them. To the contrary, I find many of these people repugnant. However, achieving balance in religion articles sometimes requires referring to odious material.

I contribute in a variety of areas

Although the majority of my contributions relate to religion, I also contribute in the field of art (Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, Bobby Holcomb) and in WP policy discussions (WP:BLP, WP:CLN, WP:STANDALONE, WP:LISTPEOPLE, and WP:SOCK).

Responses to evidence from other users

I made a stupid mistake (RadioIsam) 7,000 edits ago

In 2009, while writing the article An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (about the book by Neal Gabler) I noticed that WP had no article that summarized those sources which discussed the role of Jews in the motion picture industry. I created an article on the topic, but I was hasty and I made some mistakes, and the article was very poor quality (the article has since been deleted). For example, while attempting to obtain some text of an article by Michael Medved, I copied text from radioIslam.com. The text was antisemitic, and also a violation of WP:Say where you got it. As a result, an ANI was initiated. I immediately admitted I had violated policy, and I sincerely apologized. I deserved to be chastised, and I was. I learned my lesson and since then I've scrupulously followed WP policies. Yet this old mistake is cited in evidence as if it is a recent event, or a recurring behavior. I ask the arbitrators to recognize that it happened over 18 months ago, and since then I've made over 7,000 edits.

Articles in 2009 were not Synth/OR

75.57.242.120 alleges that two articles I wrote in 2009 violated WP Syntn, Coatrack, POV, and OR policies. I deny that allegation with respect to Synth, Coatrack, and OR, but concur that the articles had POV problems. One article covered sources that asserted that claims of antisemitism are sometimes deliberately made for intimidation purposes (e.g. to silence critics of Israel) - sources included Ralph Nader and Desmond Tutu. The other article covered sources that address the role of Jews in Hollywood, specifically the controversies that has entailed (antisemitic canards, etc). Both articles were deleted in AfD processes: here and here. Were the articles poorly written? Yes. Did they deserve to be deleted? Yes. Did the articles violate Synth or OR policies? No. I did not fabricate the topics of the article: numerous notable sources already discussed the topics in major publications. The articles were very poor quality, but they did not violate Synth or Verifiability policies. In fact, during the course of the AfDs, many "delete" voters suggested merging the content into other existing articles, such as Antisemitic canard and New antisemitism. I ask the arbitrators to recognize that it happened over 18 months ago, and since then I've made over 7,000 edits.

I did not disregard an agreement

User SlimVirgin alleges that I agreed, in April 2010, to avoid ethnicity-related articles. I deny that allegation. During the course of an ANI, a user proposed a resolution, and I told them I was "amenable" to the idea, but then the ANI went off on a tangent, and then petered out. The ANI was never closed or resolved. The excerpt of the ANI provided by SlimVirgin in her evidence is missing some important quotes (a good faith mistake) which I supply here (in boldface):

Noleander writes above that his interest lies in adding criticism of religions, so perhaps he could put people's minds at rest by focusing on that clearly from now on—on religion, rather than ethnicity, and using good sources that offer a critique of religion. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 22:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm amenable to SlimVirgin's suggestion. My primary interest is ensuring that the "downsides" of religions are documented in this encyclopedia (in a neutral, balanced way), and I'm willing to focus on that area. Good sourcing is always a priority for me, but I can redouble my efforts in that regard. --Noleander (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that would probably resolve the issue, particularly if the criticism is spread around different religions or focuses on the general concept. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 00:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Then perhaps that's the end of this, if everyone agrees...? Equazcion ^(talk) 04:29, 16 Feb 2010 (UTC)

[comments omitted here]

Part of SlimVirgin's proposed resolution included ensuring "the criticism is spread around different religions or focuses on the general concept". Noleander hasn't agreed to that, has he? And, of course, if 90% of his criticisms were focused on Judaism, 5 percent on Mormonism, and 1 percent each on Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism, you'd still be defending him in the inevitable next AN/I thread, wouldn't you? Jayjg ^(talk) 05:41, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

[comments omitted here]

For the record I don't think this discussion shows any sort of consensus on the issue. There are some pretty well-respected editors and admins further up who don't see a problem here. I respect your view, but this warning seems rather unilateral; which isn't to say you weren't allowed to make it anyway, but still, this is just for the record. Equazcion ^(talk) 07:17, 16 Feb 2010 (UTC)

List of Jewish-American businesspeople

User SlimVirgin provided evidence about my contributions to List of Jewish American businesspeople, and suggests that my edits violated some unspecified WP policy. I deny that allegation. In early 2007, that list contained about 200 persons. In April 2007, an editor blanked the entire list, and rightfully so, since WP:Verifiability requires a source to establish ethnicity/religion. At the time, I was entirely unaware of the list. When I created an article about the book An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, I wanted to make sure that the pioneers of Hollywood were in the appropriate list, so I found the list, and added the pioneers. The Talk page indicated that lots of persons needed citations, so I spent some time hunting down citations. Eventually, I added about 50 persons to the list, focusing mostly on persons in the entertainment industry but also including many other figures such as Levi Strauss, Jacob H. Schiff, and Ralph Lauren. All of my contributions were based on reliable sources, listed here and here. There is no violation of policy.

Talmud synthesis

75.57.242.120 alleges that I misrepresented a source regarding study of the Talmud. I deny that allegation. As pointed out by User Jayen466 here it appears that the IP made an honest mistake and misread the sources (ADL and Jewish Encyclopedia).

Undue credit

Mathsci alleges that I gave "undue credit" to Adolph Hitler and Werner Sombart in the article Economic history of the Jews (early version). I deny that allegation. The section on the Nazis is very small relative to the entire article. Furthermore, the Nazi material is an accurate reflection of the sources, which frequently use the Hitler's Mein Kampf as an example of money-related antisemitism. Werner Sombart is also represented appropriately in the article: he wrote the seminal work on the relationship of Jews and capitalism. Virtually every source on the topic refers to Sombart, often as their jumping-off point, and the article accurately reflects that prominence. The article makes it clear that Sombart's work is a century old, and the article explicitly states: "Because Sombart speculated on anthropological and racial explanations, his work has been described as antisemitic and racist."

Economic History of the Jews

Mathsci alleges that a recent article I contributed, Economic history of the Jews (early version), was "offensive and unbalanced" and "might have misrepresented a large number of those sources". I deny that allegation. User Mathsci failed to provide any diffs, but since similar vague accusations were repeatedly made in the ANI, a general response is warranted:

The topic of the article is highly notable: the Encyclopedia Judaica has a 60 page article titled "Economic history of the Jews", and there are three (!) books titled "Jews and money", one of them by ADL director Abraham Foxman. Dozens of other secondary sources are listed in the article's reference list. The material in that article accurately reflects the sources in a balanced, neutral manner. The article is supported with over 300 footnotes using reliable secondary sources. The article includes a vast amount of material that positively reflects on Jews, such as a section on philanthropy. Where antisemitic canards related to money are mentioned in the article, they are clearly identified as such. The article was nominated for deletion, and deleted as a result. Even if the article were flawed, isn't the better solution to work together to remedy the shortcomings? The closing admin concluded there was consensus that the topic was notable, but that the original version of the article was "deficient" (and no specifics were provided). Except for a couple of minor issues discussed elsewhere in this evidence, I see no diffs that illustrate how that article violates policy. I maintain that the material I contributed is an accurate representation of the reliable secondary sources.

Quote taken out of context

SlimVirgin alleges that I took a quote out of context in the article Economic history of the Jews (early version). She is correct, and my interpretation was indeed wrong. I urge the arbitration committee to consider as an honest mistake, rather than a deliberate POV edit. The Perry quote was in the context of a larger discussion which I failed to apprehend. Looking at the problematic sentence in context within the article reveals that the thoughts of several sources (Dimont, Penslar, Neusner) are provided to give a variety of perspectives on the complex subject.

I also draw the arbitrators' attention to a similar paragraph I wrote which describes Perry criticizing Sombart:

Perry writes that Deut 23:19–20 ("you may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite") played an important role in the history of moneylending in Jewish culture, because it gives permission to Jews to charge interest to non-Jews. Perry claims that Max Weber and Werner Sombart interpreted this verse to mean that the Jewish bible gave permission to treat non-Jews in an unethical manner in the context of financial issues, but Perry rejects their conclusions, writing that they "generalized far too much on the basis of this one out of the 613 commandments."

If, as alleged, my goal was to deliberately portray Perry as a supporter of Sombart, why would I include this paragraph?

The Economic history article is a very large article, on a very complex, very controversial topic. It has over 300 citations. The evidence has only identified a couple of problematic edits - and those errors have innocent explanations. Two out of 300 does not suggest a pattern of POV editing, but instead suggests an occasional lapse in concentration.

I also object to SlimVirgin's statement "Mathsci said he chose this example at random, which suggests there may be more of this in Noleander's work". That insinuates too much. A pattern of POV editing has not been established.

Accuracy of a paraphrase of Krefetz source

User Jayen466 alleges that my paraphrase of a source is not accurate. They are correct: the wording should read "some Jews", and it should be corrected. But note that, in another respect, my wording is softer than the original source: the original source positively stated that "some Jews have overstepped the bounds of morality …" and my paraphrase is the softer "[some] Jews are particularly prone to push the boundaries of morality". If I were attempting to portray Jews in a poor light, I would have retained (or exaggerated) the source's stronger wording "have overstepped", but instead I softened it. Furthermore, I included the original quote from the source in a footnote: - if my goal was to distort the source I would not have provided the quote. Clearly this is an example of a good-faith oversight, not a deliberate display of bigotry.

Perry source

User Slrubenstein alleges here that I misrepresented a quote from Perry. I deny that allegation. They claim that "page 124 … does not mention Weber or Sombart" but my contribution was based on two passages from Perry, pages 124 and 163. The latter passage reads:

"Sombart's accusation of a double moral standard, that Jews behave in one way toward fellow Jews and in another, less ethical way, toward gentiles, rests on Deuteronomy 23:20: 'You may charge interest to a foreigner but not on a loan to a fellow-countryman.' But Sombart and others who argued this way, including Max Weber, who in this case agreed with Sombart, generalized far too much on the basis of this one out of the 613 commandments." - Perry, p 163.

My contribution is entirely consistent with that passage. I believe that the confusion arose because the footnote only mentioned page 124, so Slrubenstein was not aware of the page 163 passage. Separately, Slrubenstein suggests that additional detail and context from the sources would help readers get a broader view, and I agree completely him with them on that point: it is a very complex topic, and more detail is always better.

Undue weight in list

User JayJG alleges here that I violated the WP:Undue weight policy by by selective additions to the List of Jewish American businesspeople. I deny that allegation. The list had hundreds of persons in it (without citations), and JayJG deleted them all in 2007. I've been gradually going through sources trying to build the list up in a well-sourced fashion. Sources are not easy to come by, and as I find businesspeople, I add them in. I found quite a few entertainment-related persons because of my work on the book An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, and subsequent searches for "entertainment industry". JayJG suggests that professions in the List should correspond roughly to the real-world proportions (for instance, if 10% of real world persons are in retail, then the list should have 10% retail). However, due to the citation requirement, the proportions in the list will reflect what the sources focus on. For example, sources frequently discuss ethnicity in relation to Hollywood, but rarely in relation to retail, therefore the list contains a high proportion of Hollywood figures. Likewise for persons that are prominently mentioned in news stories. (By the way, I ask the arbitrators to note that virtually no other editor contributes to this List article. I'm not sure why that is, but additional editors would help improve it). The List is far from complete, but is a rough reflection of what is available from the sources.

Nation of Islam book

User Griswaldo alleges here that the initial version of the article The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (about the book published by the Nation of Islam) was imbalanced. I deny that allegation. The article clearly states that the book is considered antisemitic, and it clearly states that all subsequent analysis of the book by scholars found it to be irresponsible and flawed. The lead section of the first version of the article contains the statement: "The book was heavily criticized for being antisemitic, and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. Common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes, made "crude use of statistics", and was purposefully trying to exaggerate the role of Jews." This was not buried in the article. The article has undergone many revisions since then, but if I were deliberately trying to hide the fact that the book were antisemitic, I would not have included that sentence, nor listed the half-dozen scholars that refute the book. Griswaldo also discusses the use of the word "documented" which I agree could be improved. Griswaldo also objects to the emphasis placed on historian Ralph A. Austen's comments, but Austen is an reliable source that provides a unique and insightful analysis of the book by considering it in the larger context of Jewish-African-American relations: Austen's review of the book (which is online here) provides a contextual overview not present in the other works critical of the book. Griswaldo asks why the article mentions that the book utilized Jewish sources: the reason is that multiple critics of the book stated that the book attempted to appear credible by quoting (accurately but selectively) from specifically Jewish scholars. The article fairly represents that point. I conceded that the initial versions of the article were not perfect, but it is not easy to write an article on such a charged subject. Other editors have also worked on the article and helped remedy shortcomings of my initial version.

Paying wages

IP 75.57.242.120 alleges here that I misrepresented a source in the article Criticism of the Talmud. IP is correct, and my paraphrase of the source was not correct: I wrote " .... the Talmud instructs Jews to go beyond their legal obligations and pay when the laborer is a Jew, but Jews do not have to pay when the laborer is not a Jew." when I should have written ".. the Talmud instructs Jews to go beyond their legal obligations and pay immediately when the laborer is a Jew, but Jews do not have to pay immediately when the laborer is not a Jew." That was an innocent mistake. That is a huge article with 225 footnotes, and I ask the arbitrators to consider the fact that good faith editors do occasionally make mistakes. I also draw the arbitrators attention that the only source quoted in that paragraph is a source that refutes the criticism of the Talmud (that is, the critics themselves are not mentioned): If I were attempting to introduce a POV there, the critics would have been mentioned rather than the refutation.

Slavery

User Griswaldo alleges here that my work on the article Jews and the slave trade violates some unspecified WP policy. I deny that allegation. There is an older article Judaism and slavery (which I did not create) which was missing material from sources which describe how religious texts were employed in the modern era to justify the continuation of slavery (NB: that is what some source say, it is not my personal opinion). I worked on it in June/July 2010, adding material based on reliable sources. Other editors (e.g. JayJG on July 14-15) suggested that a WP:Content fork be done, not so much because of the size, but because the article was mixing religious topics with non-religious topics. So the article was split, and Jews and the slave trade was created to hold the material not related to religion .. see the productive and civil split/merge discussions here and here. Griswaldo asserts that the article Jews and the slave trade is not related to religion, but I'm not sure what his point is. Griswaldo also suggests that I failed to participate in Talk page discussions, and he cites Talk:Jews and the slave trade which he says "remains completely unused". I deny that allegation: it appears that he may have made a mistake in his link because that Talk page indeed is used, and I did participate in those conversations.

Evidence presented by Griswaldo

Noleander's focus, when it comes to Jews, has been mostly ethnic and not religious

I don’t doubt that Noleander is a critic of religion(s), but his activities on articles related to Jews do not seem to focus on Judaism the religion as much as the activities of ethnic Jews. It might be that Noleander is incapable of sorting through the ambiguity involved in trying to distinguish between Jews, Jewishness and Judaism as he earnestly tries to criticize the religion, or it might be that he is ethnically prejudiced. I’m unsure of Noleander’s intentions in this area but it results in what seems to be a sustained effort to push a POV critical of Jews, as an ethnic group. Here are some examples that trouble me.

The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews

• Here he creates an entry for the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, published by the Nation of Islam, and widely considered to be antisemitic. The original lede, and indeed even the current lede, includes the claim that it supports its thesis, “with numerous quotations from scholarly works, many of which were written by Jewish scholars, such as Arnold Wiznitzer and Marc Lee Raphael.” Is it really a notable aspect of the work that it includes quotations from Jews? So notable that it needs to be in the second sentence of the lede? This sounds like apologetics. When User:Jayjg removed this claim about the use of Jewish sources Noleander promptly added it back in with the edit summary – “include sentence about how the book relied on data & quotes from scholarly works (that is an essential attribute that sources make note of.” Sources, plural? The cited source for this claim is Ralph A. Austin, the reviewer who seems to have found even an ounce of merit in the book. Yet Austin also wrote that “distortions [in the book] are produced almost entirely by selective citation.” Others have also criticized the work explicitly for selective quotes.
• Another problem with the original lede was the claim that the book “documented involvement of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade.” User:Jayjg rightly altered that claim to one that the book “alleges that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade.”
• The original lede also included a paragraph that stated clearly that the book was “heavily criticized.” However, shortly after creating the article Noleander made the decision to move this critical reception material out of the lede, only leaving the uncritical, perhaps even apologetic summary of the book discussed above – see [74]. In the original, as well as the paired down versions of the entry the critical reception section was unduly weighted towards the positive, at least in volume. After summarizing two critiques and listing two prominent critics, most of the section was spent teasing out the positive aspects of one particular review, and then suggesting that the publication of the book contributed positively to scholarship on the topic by spurring it on. Compare this to the current version, edited heavily by User:Marokwitz, which has filled the entry out nicely with what is clearly the majority view – that it is a work that perpetuates an anti-Semitic canard.
• What troubles me about this example is that the extent of the critical context that this work exists in was not evident in the entry Noleander wrote, nor did he accurately reflect his sources. It is simply irresponsible to add apologetic claims about the book’s use of Jewish sources into the lead without acknowledging the fact that every reviewer has noted the problematic use of those very sources. It is also irresponsible to use words like “document” to describe allegations which are commonly understood to be without merit. As I noted before, the former problem persists to this day in the entry, and it probably does so because it’s too subtle for most people to notice.

Jews and the slave trade

• Three days after creating the afore mentioned The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Noleander created Jews in the slave trade, another entry that had nothing to do with Judaism, the religion. The only section in the current entry that has anything to do with religion, was created and expanded by User:Marokwitz. Ironically perhaps, given Noleander's critical view of religion and claim to be editing critically of Judaism, this is the section on Jewish involvement in the abolitionist movement - Jews_and_the_slave_trade#Abolition_debate.
• User:Marokwitz also removed the out of place reference to Werner Sombart's book, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, which had been part of Noleander's original entry, and added the "cherry picked" tag to the entry. Marokwitz appears to have balanced this entry quite a bit since Noleander created it. It is worth comparing Noleander's original lead and the one currently in the entry, which is the result of this balancing work by Marokwitz and others. The differences are rather glaring.
• This entry, which also has nothing to do with Judaism, shows a pattern of editing that is troubling when I think about it, not because it is tendentious, but exactly because it is not. Noleander creates an entry that is unflattering to Jews, and other editors tag the entry with a series of problems, and then edit it heavily based on those perceived problems. Meanwhile there is not a peep or a revert out of Noleander. Talk:Jews and the slave trade remains completely unused, for instance. How can it be that he had no objections to any of these edits? It isn't normal. I can't say why he behaved like this but it sure seems like very measured and purposeful constraint. But to what purpose?

• I'm unsure what I clicked on when I saw a blank discussion page. I apologize for that claim and have stricken it. I really did see blank page but I must have been switching between articles and clicked the discussion page of the wrong one.

Replies to Noleander

• Regarding the relevance of the Jews and the slave trade example, which Noleander questions, it has to do with the claim that others have made about Noleander's interest in Jewish topics coming from an interest in the criticism of religion. Whatever his intentions, the end result has been more of a focus on an ethnic group than a religion, and this is simply another example of that.
• Regarding the claim that The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews "fairly represents" the point that "multiple critics of the book stated that the book attempted to appear credible by quoting (accurately but selectively) from specifically Jewish scholars," I clearly do not agree. If this is the relevance that secondary sources find with the extensive quoting, then this is how it should be presented upfront. Instead Noleander chose to present it simply as a fact that the book quotes heavily from Jewish sources, and then in the next paragraph of the lead state more vaguely that, "common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes ..." thus obscuring the point that Noleander claims was "fairly represented". Indeed presenting as a plain fact that the book quotes heavily from Jewish sources, is in my view, boarding on perpetuating exactly the kind of false credibility that reviewers were criticizing. If Noleander had presented this issue in the entry with the clarity he has here this would not have been an issue.

LessHeard vanU's evidence: allegations of bias don't equate to allegations of conspiracy

This issue was raised on the talk page, and has also been raised on the Workshop page but never rebutted or otherwise dealt with on the evidence page. User:LessHeard vanU supplies two diffs showing User:Silver seren unfairly suggesting that Jewish commentators at the most recent AN/I thread were "biased" against Noleander - here and here. These diffs clearly show an allegation of bias, but what they do not show at all is an allegation of "conspiracy". LHU, however claims that "User:Silver seren alleged a 'Jewish conspiracy'", and has created three workshop proposals based on that premise. The very premise is clearly false. I hope that in their final decision the arbs address the actual situation with Silver seren and not the phantom one.

Evidence presented by Slrubenstein

Some editors think that evidence must consist of edit-differences that reveal clear violations of personal behaviour policy. What follows is evidence in a broader sense, “A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment;” and specifically my testimony concerning this case. I did not bring a complaint to ArbCom but was named as a party to the conflict and I have an obligation to testify and a right to be heard, whatever the committee decides to make of it. When ArbCom was first established, it was to arbitrate conflicts between editors, generally over behavior. I have not been involved in any conflict with Noleander, so I really cannot provide evidence about his misconduct regarding me, personally.

The pattern of behavior

Nevertheless, I think many others e.g. SlimVirgin and MathSci have provided an overwhelming amount of evidence of a pattern of behavior. The recent decision to delete Economic history of the Jews[75], né Jews and money, epitomizes the problem. I want to emphasize that virtually everyone agrees that "economic history of the Jews" is a notable topic worth an encyclopaedia article. Sometimes articles on notable topics are nominated for deletion because of problems with content, but in such cases the article concerned is almost never deleted. This article was deleted because the problems went far beyond content.

Evidence presented by SlimVirgin, MathSci and others indicate a consistent pattern: Noleander compiles a bunch of books with "Jews" in the title - some are by just the major and well-respected scholars we would want to use as reliable sources for significant views. Some are works by people who were respected historians fifty or a hundred years ago but who are now insignificant. Some are by journalists or popularizers. In the case of this particular article, many were not by historians and were not on economic history. Noleander then takes selected sentences and presents them out of context and out of chronological order - two problems in any article on history. In the case of this article, there was no acknowledgment that the Tanakh and the Talmud and Medieval commentaries by rabbis like Maimonides are primary sources written at very different times under very different conditions. There is no acknowledgment that the general conditions of the lives of Jews changed from the Biblical times, during which at times Jews had economic and political sovereignty, to the Middle Ages, when Jews had neither autonomy nor equal rights with non-Jews, to the post-Emancipation period when Jews increasingly enjoyed the same rights as non-Jews. What is really funny (funny strange not funny ha-ha, except perhaps to antisemitic readers) is that the best books Noleander claims to be using (and which defenders of the article used as examples of the notable sources that "prove" that the article is scholarly) like Derek Penslar's Shylock's Children actually are very attentive to the different contexts of the sources, to changes over time, to the influence of the Emancipation and Modernity, and so on. So Noleander is not ignorant. He is using material from this book, and therefore is aware of Penslar's analysis, his presentation of context, his attention to chronology, and his attention to the different sources. He knows this, but disregards it.

One more example

I know that this is a crucial matter in this case. Ellen of the Roads recently wrote, “for example, misusing sources - as you allege above - is something that will definitely get one run out of town, if you have evidence of it.” [76] Okey-dokey. Let’s look at something that Noleander posted to this page:

I also draw the arbitrators' attention to a similar paragraph I wrote which describes Perry criticizing Sombart:

Perry writes that Deut 23:19–20 ("you may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite") played an important role in the history of moneylending in Jewish culture, because it gives permission to Jews to charge interest to non-Jews. Perry claims that Max Weber and Werner Sombart interpreted this verse to mean that the Jewish bible gave permission to treat non-Jews in an unethical manner in the context of financial issues, but Perry rejects their conclusions, writing that they "generalized far too much on the basis of this one out of the 613 commandments."

If, as alleged, my goal was to deliberately portray Perry as a supporter of Sombart, why would I include this paragraph?

Indeed. Noleander provides a citation to Perry’s book, too, to make it look all scientific, it is note 14 (in the linked version) which directs the reader to Perry page 124. But how many people have checked? Are we to assume good faith? Not to assume good faith would require us to check every source. Well, I will check just this source. Page 124 does quote Deuteronomy 19-20, but it does not mention Weber or Sombart. What Perry ‘’does’’ talk about, on page 124, what Noleander does not share with us, is that the Rabbis interpreted this verse to mean that "Israelites may pay [to] or exact interest from Gentiles." Please note the actual quote.

But there is more: Perry’s main argument is that this verse was the one loop-hole in a much larger argument of the rabbis, expressed in a multitude of laws, that any attempt to profit from any commercial venture, was considered usury and wrong. This is Perry’s main point on page 124. But his argument is developed on the following page, where he explains that in the late middle ages Rabbis continued to seek to prohibit Jews from lending at interest to non-Jews, but that the views of the rabbis were overshadowed by the conflict between kings and the pope – the conflict that dominated European history during the Middle Ages – in which the pope supported the Lombard bankers (and profited from their usuries) and that kings often granted Jewish money-lenders a royal monopoly, from which kings benefited, at the expense of the pope. Note what is missing from Noleander’s account:

• According to Perry, the verse from Deuteronomy also meant that Jews could pay interest to non-Jews
• Perry claims that Rabbis discouraged Jews from any money-lending at all, in other words, the verse is presented as an exception to the pattern in Jewish legal discourse Perry is concerned with
• Christian monarchs supported Jewish money-lenders as part of a power-play against popes

Now, I think this is pretty interesting information on the “economic history of the Jews” and I cannot help but wonder why Noleander cites a page, fabricates what it says, and ignores what it actually does say which is all relevant to the so-called article. But what remains from Perry’s account when we leave this out?

• Deuteronomy says that Israelites may charge foreigner’s interest (nothing about paying them interest)

Nothing about "the Pope’s usurers" (the Lombards, a quote from page 125), nothing about the Rabbi’s campaign against lending money at interest to non-Jews. Why? I hasten to add that Perry does talk about Weber and Sombart, but it is on page 164 and this is what he writes:

If Sombart or Weber had troubled to acquire a firsthand acquaintance with five hundred years of Rabbinical commentary and legal interpretation, both certainly would have found that dealing with strangers was certainly not a matter of ethical indifference to Jews and that strangers had long ceased to be synonymous with enemies

The reason why Perry makes this point twenty pages after he quotes from Deuteronomy is that by the time he addresses Weber and Sombart he is making a much larger point about Jewish-non-Jewish relations, and Jewish values. This is not merely a matter of generalizing based on one out of 613 commandments; it is also

• misrepresenting how Rabbis actually did interpret the verse in question
• collapsing the distance between whenever Deuteronomy was written (the latest dates are around 400-500 BCE, quite a long time before the middle ages)
• misrepresenting the actual economic situation of Jews in the late Middle Ages as described by Perry

Noleander asks why he would include Perry's rejection of Weber and Sombart. Well, what antisemite would not expect a Jew do defend Jews? What is more important is the sum of what is conveyed by the quote Noleaner provides in his defense: first, Israelites are allowed to extract interest from non-Jews. Second, two non-Jewish scholars interpret this to mean that jews have an unethical attitude towards non-Jews. Third, a Jewish critic of antisemitism does not agree. Indeed.

why this problem is a problem for all of us

During its first ten years Wikipedia has fought a continuing battle to gain some respect as an encyclopaedia that people turn to not because it is convenient but because it is reliable and informative. During our first few years everyone understood that many articles were new and based on incomplete information. Now we boast of the number of articles and the number of editors and we ask readers to take us seriously. One part of this struggle has been the push to use multiple sources and provide citations. That Noleander's work does this is not a virtue, it is a vice - it is precisely what makes his work dangerous, because innocent people will come upon his articles and believe that they are scholarly and reliable.

This indiscriminate use of qualitatively different sources - cutting edge academic history next to work that is almost a hundred years out of date next to the personal opinion of a politician or advocate, as if all were equally scholarly; this cherry-picking of quotes taken out of context and used to forward views contrary to that of the author of the source, is intolerable. It is why university professors still discourage students from using Wikipedia as a source. It is why many experienced and respected scholars have no interest in giving their time to Wikipedia.

But if this were all Noleander did he would just be a disruptive editor, leaving his trail of deleted articles in his wake. But this is not all that Noleander does. His misuse of sources and of quotes taken from sources is not haphazard and indiscriminate. On the contrary, they make a consistent point. As MathSci demonstrated, Noleander cherry-picks quotes and presents them out of context in order to present anti-Semitic canards as facts.

For example, the "Economic history of the Jews" put the section on the Talmud before the section on the Tanakh, even though the Talmud was redacted several hundred years after the Tanakh. He then cherry-picked a quote suggesting that one whole volume of the Talmud was devoted to money-lending. Later sections cherry-picked quotes to suggest that there has been a continuous and widespread attraction of Jews to money-lending up to the present time. Noleander drew on scholarly sources that discussed the extent to which the historical source reflected an individual opinion or widespread practices, scholarly sources that discuss other economic roles of Jews, scholarly sources that contrasted the relative roles of Jews and non-Jews in the economy, but he did not quote any of them on these matters. He just stuck to money-lending.

Now, some of you readers may be moneylenders and let me just say right now I am not attacking you. Wherever you have a market economy, you have moneylenders. But money-lending, which makes money off of other people's toil, is sometimes an object of derision. And historically, there has been a double-standard, where Jewish moneylenders are despised and non-Jewish moneylenders are admired for being enterprising. As Jean-Paul Sartre noted in Anti-Semite and Jew, facts are irrelevant - the antisemite does not care how many Jews are moneylenders compared to how many non-Jews, or how much wealth is controlled by Jewish moneylenders compared to non-Jewish moneylenders. What matters is the idea that Jews are avaricious and rapacious.

Now, I actually have no idea what Noleander actually believes. I can judge only his behavior at Wikipedia, and specifically what he has written. There is no question that Wikipedia does not accept slurs against ethnic groups. When these are made on talk pages, they are classified as personal attacks. Noleander has simply focused his energies on the mainspace of the article. His slurs are not against me or SlimVirgin or MathSci or any other editor, they are just against "Jews." But the NPA polic begins by noting that "attacks do not help make a point; they only hurt the Wikipedia community and deter users from helping to create a good encyclopedia." This is not just true about attacks against me. A fortiori, this is true when it is against all Jews. That it is accomplished by a quote makes no difference. If someone quotes Mein Kampf as if it were fact, the quote is removed. Well, historians and even Jews writing against anti-Semitism quote antisemites ... they just put the quotes in context, and provide an analysis. When Noleander quotes the slur out of context, it is just the same as if he were quoting an antisemite as fact.

A number of editors have supported Noleander. Some appear to be indifferent to antisemitism. I ask the members of ArbCom and ask them to read our NPA policy and ask themselves how we can take have a policy that prohibits slurs against ethnic groups that are directed against an editor, but allow slurs against ethnic groups that are directed against the whole ethnic group - that is to say, a portion of our readers (if we really wish Wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia for all people). Some question whether the evidence is representative. Notably, after MathSci went to considerable effort to show how profoundly Noleander misrepresented a major source in one quote, some editors felt MathSci was obliged to spend more time analyzing more of Noleanders use of sources. I argue that this proves my point: until someone takes the time to check all of Noleander's sources, people will accept his use of them as proper. Indeed, the AGF principle implores us to. This is precisely why this kind of behavior calls for a ban.

Finally, some support Noleander by providing quotes that support his edits. But this kind of support should be discounted out of hand. Such people are simply doing exactly what Noleander is doing; cherry-picking quotes and presenting them out of context.

Evidence presented by Tryptofish

Some of the actions taken against Noleander have been punitive, rather than preventative.

• NW recently blocked Noleander for a week: [77]. This block occurred while a ban discussion (ultimately inconclusive) was in progress at AN/I: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Noleander#Blocked. It is difficult to conceive what was being "prevented" by this block, which was, fortunately, quickly self-reverted: [78].

• Peter cohen started the second AN/I case here: [79]. Previously, Noleander had already apologized for and described his efforts to correct the same matter: [80]. Please note the timestamps carefully. The AN/I was initiated after Noleander had already acknowledged his error, apologized for it, and took action to correct it. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Contrary to the caricature presented in some of the evidence, Noleander has advocated for the addition of material that is sympathetic to the Jewish people.

• At Talk:Criticism of Judaism, Noleander has repeatedly argued for balancing criticisms with rebuttals to those criticisms, basing his arguments on policy and sourcing, and has tried to help other editors come to consensus: [81], [82], [83], [84], [85], [86], [87], [88], [89], [90], [91], and [92]. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Noleander makes positive content contributions.

• As an example, Noleander made extensive edits to Criticism of religion in the fall of 2009. Here is a version of the page before those edits: [93], and here is a version after most of them: [94]. Taken as a whole, the page became considerably more comprehensive and encyclopedic. Overall, these edits did not focus on a particular religion or small group of religions, and, on a closely watched and contentious page, have not been particularly controversial amongst other editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There has been a battlefield atmosphere at the articles involved in this case.

No surprise.

• At Criticism of Judaism: [95], [96], [97], [98], [99], [100], [101], and [102].
• At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Economic history of the Jews: [103], [104], [105], [106], [107], [108], and [109].

--Tryptofish (talk) 17:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

It occurs to me that I should explain that I think that the significance of this evidence is that there are numerous editors other than Noleander who contribute to this atmosphere, some of whom are incivil in ways that Noleander is not. Although this combativeness occurs on both sides of the debate, there are particularly many such editors among those who have criticized Noleander and his edits. It is possible that some of these editors should become parties to this case; at present, I'm ambivalent about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

In particular, repeating some of the same diffs shown above:

AzureFury has engaged in incivil battlefield conduct:

[110] and [111].

Camelbinky has denigrated other editors in a manner contrary to WP:OWN:

[112].

IZAK has made WP:POINTy and disruptive edits:

[113], and evidence elsewhere.

Jayjg has cast aspersions on other editors based on having fewer edits and not being administrators:

[114].

Mbz1 has been incivil and made WP:POINTy edits:

[115] and [116].

--Tryptofish (talk) 19:39, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Noleander's problematic edits

In evaluating all of the evidence on this page, arbitrators will need to differentiate:

• between resolving conduct issues, and intervening in content disputes,
• between old behaviors, and ongoing conduct, and
• between deliberate misrepresentation of sources, and failure to examine sources according to our best practices.

It seems to me that there are currently two major ongoing issues about Noleander's editing which are relevant to this case:

• Noleander sometimes displays a "tin ear" when writing content that touches on areas where readers are understandably sensitive. In particular, I note the use of the word "documented", which Griswaldo also discusses in his evidence, above. Similar constructions occur in this edit to Antisemitic canard: [117], and at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander/Evidence/Early version of Economic History article#Stock exchanges and joint-stock banks in the early version of the deleted page. Does "documented" simply mean this source documents the content in this article? Or that it documents that a canard existed? Or that it documents that the canard was true? Having a tin ear, per se, should not be grounds for sanctions, but it is reasonable to expect that Wikipedia content will be well enough written that it will not leave our readers wondering about things like this.
• Noleander continues to create new content that triggers the same dramas that were triggered by the creation of similar content in the past. (No need for diffs; it's self-evident from this case.) It's like repeating the same action over and over, but expecting the outcome to be different. This appears to me to be the nub of the matter. Of course, there wouldn't be so much drama if other editors did not respond dramatically to the content, but it is reasonable to ask that such drama, predictable as it is, should not continue to be repeated, just so long as that is done in a way that does not allow one side of a content dispute to use it to advantage. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by ResidentAnthropologist

Rebutal to Tijfo098

No need for it now after Elen's removal

It appears you seem to be holding Noleandr responsible for the actions of two users who created extremely biased articles (Economic history of the Christians & Muslims) . I can find no collaboration Nolenader and guilt by association of others who have created disruptive articles. Your implication of pattern Noleander some how WP:GAMING is simply not valid here. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 17:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Pattern of efforts in particular topic areas

Noleander's efforts segmented into "periods of interest" in that he finds a topic he finds interesting and focuses it with near WP:SPA focus. The Judaism being the most recent "periods of interest." When Nolender edit these areas often in multiday sprees improvement are to the articles enhance coverage.

Clades in Biology

In november 2007 Noleander made an effort to improve the over all trend of his effort can be found here

Mormonism (In progress)

I can not locate anything to indicate the shift in topic area to LDS issue but overall improvement there have been positive

Criticism of LDS movement

Nolender spent quite a period of time editing articles related to Mormonism again the over all trend of improvement in coverage all decently sourced at Criticism of LDS movement in Nov-Dec 2007.

Blacks and LDS

Again an over all improvement of the article Dec 2007 For an interesting discussion see Talk:Black people and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/Archive 6#Term needed for the policy as fine e

Criticism of Religion

Drastic alteration in a 3 day editing spree with Tryptofish, and Cybercobra creating a better article. 6-8 September 2009

Evidence presented by User:JoshuaZ

Noleander said in his evidence that his only motivation is to improve the quality of Wikipedia: "Sometimes that means adding material that may be perceived as offensive. Yet incorporating potentially offensive material is necessary to help Wikipedia fulfill its goals." [118] Similarly, Noleander claims "The only thing I'm guilty of is having the audacity to edit in controversial areas."[119] JoshuaZ (talk) 19:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

(Evidence relating to the Washington Post website removed - see talkpage)

Evidence presented by Ohiostandard

Awareness of historical context is needed to judge Noleander's assertions

I recall having interacted with Noleander just once before, when we butted heads a bit over the lead of an article. So I'm not qualified to comment on his broad edit history, but since this began over his Jews and Money article, I'd like to add something that I am qualified to comment on. I don't mind using only a Jewish source to do so, either: Erich Fromm writes that as late as the 17th and 18th centuries the norms of medieval Christianity still had considerable influence on economic standards among Christians:

Thus it was supposed to be un-Christian and unethical for one merchant to try to lure customers from another by force of lower prices or any other inducements. In The Complete English Tradesman (1745), it is stated that since the death of the author, Defoe, in 1731, "this underselling practice has grown to such a shameful height, that particular persons publicly advertise that they undersell the rest of the trade." The guide also cites a concrete case in which an "overgrown tradesman" as the guide puts it, who had more money than his competitors, and was thus not forced to use credit, bought his wares directly from the producer, transported them himself, instead of through a middleman, and sold them directly to the retailer, thus enabling the latter to sell the material for one penny cheaper per yard. The comment of The Complete English Tradesman is that the result of this whole method is only to enrich this "covetous man," and to enable another man to buy his cloth a little cheaper, "a very small advantage" which is in no relation to the damage done the other businessmen. We find similar prohibitions against underselling in ordinances in Germany and France throughout the whole eighteenth century.^source

The idea in medieval Christian culture (and lingering into later periods) was that everyone's place was assigned by God and indicated by his birth into a certain family. This is the same idea that St. Paul expressed when he said that if a person is a slave he shouldn't really go out of his way to become free, and that gave us "the divine right of kings" that everyone is familiar with. There was no notion of social mobility at all, and to try to affect one's social position by economic competition would have been seen as an attempt to rebel against God's will and cheat other practitioners of the same trade.

Noleander has tried to contrast these historical Christian norms with the fundamentally different view of economic life that derives from Jewish tradition. Not being a Jew himself, he appears to have done so somewhat clumsily, and even insensitively in a few instances. But the topic is a wholly legitimate one, and unlike certain editors who've made the contrary assertion, I don't see his attempt as having evidenced any sort of racism. He does appear to disapprove of religion's influence on culture, but there are great huge hordes of editors on Wikipedia who do the same, and I've not seen anything so far to convince me that he's any more biased than a typical editor who contributes to I/P or religion articles. Further, his willingness to calmly discuss and admit any mistakes in either sourcing or weight seems to me to be something that many other editors in those areas would do well to emulate.  – OhioStandard (talk) 04:51, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Jayjg

Noleander has violated WP:UNDUE

Other editors have discussed various articles Noleander created that were deleted, and the distortions and misrepresentations of sources he put into these and other articles, so I'll focus on a more mathematical/statistical analysis of one article in particular. I created an AN/I section about Noleander on February 12, 2010. At the time, he had been on a 3 month break, which began during another AN/I section about him, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive572#User:Noleander in which he stated "My perception is that Wikipedia is censored in regards to some topics that reflect negatively on Jews, and I'm attempting to reverse that censorship." This was a clear indication that his editing focus was on adding material that "reflect[s] negatively on Jews".

As I pointed out at that time, after his return to regular editing, his first actions were to add three new antisemitic conspiracy theories to the Antisemitic canards article, that Jews control the media, Hollywood, and global finance:[120] While this may seem innocuous enough, he then focused on adding to the List of Jewish American businesspeople any Jews who were senior members of financial firms, media owners, or heads of Hollywood studios, an eye-winking way of saying "we don't believe this canard that a Jewish cabal controls all this stuff, it's just that there happen to be so many Jews in senior roles here". In the week before I opened the thread, he added 47 names,[121] consisting of:

• 32 Jews in senior roles in the media/Hollywood (in support of the "Jews control the media/Hollywood" canard), including 4 Jews added because they produced "Pornography" (2 of whom had served prison time).
• 12 Jews in senior roles in the finance industry (in support of the "Jews control international Finance" canard), including 6 Jews who had been convicted of serious crimes, and a 7th who had paid a $53 million fine as part of settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice.
• 1 Jew in fashion, 1 billionaire casino owner, and 1 billionaire real estate developer (the latter from a book called "The Vulture Investors").

68% of the names he added were in media/Hollywood, 26% in finance, for a total of 94%. In addition, 17% had served time in prison (not including the individual who paid a $53 million fine), and 8% were "pornographers". The names didn't come from a single source, and were not in any way random, but had to be searched for specifically, from a dozen or so books on Google. And I may perhaps be naive, but I'd never even heard of the "pornographers", and doubt many here have either.

While the AN/I thread was on-going and soon after, Noleander added two relatively innocuous names to the list, retail magnates.[122][123] A month later he returned to the list, ostensibly to add the names of two fashion designers (one a billionaire), but in fact to restore the names of the "pornographers" (now under "Adult Entertainment") that had been removed from the list during the furor two months earlier.[124] The following month he added a billionaire casino owner who was at one time the third richest American.[125] I had actually mentioned that last name as a possible addition when I opened the AN/I thread, along with 5 other names. Of the 6, Noleander only managed to add the guy who owned casinos.

For the next 10 months, Noleander was apparently unable to find the name of a single American Jewish businessperson worth adding to the list, despite the fact that he was well aware that the list had once had over 200 names (albeit uncited), and had argued that they should be cited and added.[126] Then, last month, he added 3 names, two in finance, and one a convicted criminal.[127] The convicted criminal was given extra visibility by being put in a special section, "Kosher food suppliers", despite the fact that Noleander had previously merged food retailers into the general "Retail" subsection.[128] A couple of hours later he returned to the list, and added 2 retailers.[129]

In total, Noleander has added 57 names to this list. Of these, 32 (56%) are/were media moguls, 14 (25%) have/had senior roles in the finance industry, 9 (16%) had served time in prison, and 4 (7%) were in "Adult Entertainment". These numbers in no way reflect the actual breakdown of professions of Jewish American businesspeople (even those with Wikipedia articles). Fifty-six percent are not media moguls; 16 percent have not been in jail; seven percent are not pornographers.

This kind of fairly subtle agenda pushing is often hard to see, which may be why some have insisted this all was innocuous. It's easy enough to say about any individual addition "well, that one was accurate", but the cumulative effect produces a serious distortion. WP:UNDUE states "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject." Deliberately skewing membership in lists in order to support canards or negative stereotypes about ethnicities is a violation of this policy. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:37, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Maunus

I would like to note that one of the most fundamental policies of wikipedia is NPOV. This policy lays the responsibility of preserving neutrality on the shoulders of each and every individual editor. No editor has a right to decide only to provide a specific viewpoint on any fact and leave it for others to provide the opposing viewpoints. An editor writing articles have the responsibility of making sure that all and every piece of information is neutrally included and that the article as a whole gives a fair and balanced viewpoint on its topic. Repeated failure to comply with WP:NPOV is not something that we can afford to say "he has a right to edit from that viewpoint as long as his edits are sourced - others can add the opposing views" because it basically undercuts the NPOV policy and no one will have a reason to edit neutrally anymore but will be able to say others can add those pieces of information that I am not interested in. A wikipedia editor has to be a researcher, acquiring a broad understanding of the topics she writes about - not just the parts they agree with. Noleander has stated publicly that he focuses on providing criticism of religions (and has been shown also on ethnic groups) in order to balance a perceived lack of criticism. A focus on providing criticism is not compatible with the goals of wikipedia, which is not to provide criticisms of anything, but to provide balanced descriptions of notable topics. Furthermore, there has been a general consensus when Noleander's articles have reacherd AfD that they are not neutral, and that they err quite a bit to the critical side. If Noleander were merely balancing articles that were slanted towards being laudatory, this should not have been the case. If there is a legitimate imbalance editors are of course in the right to provide the balancing evidence, but the fact that Noleander's edits have not provided balance do not seem to be generally questioned. Unless Noleander completely restates his goals in editing to something that conforms with WP:NPOV and with the task of writing an encyclopedia I do not see how wikipedia can continue to allow him to edit in the area where he has proclaimed to be dedicating himself to providing only a specific POV. It must be shown conclusively that Noleander understands that it is not permissible to provide specific view points only, and it must be shown that that understanding manifests in articles that are in fact in compliance with NPOV - unless this is shown Noleander can not be considered to have sufficient WP:COMPETENCE for continued editing. As for whether it has been shown that his articles did not conform to NPOV - this has been shown to be the general consensus at the AfD's of several of the articles that he has written including Jews and Money[130] which was not deleted because it was not a notable topic, but because there was a general consensus that the article was so far from neutral that deleting it was the only remedy.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:08, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Silver seren

Response to LessHeardvanU

I'm going to try and keep this short, since i've already explained myself thoroughly elsewhere and i'll just be linking to those places. I'll just be focusing on the evidence presented by LessHeardvanU, since that is the only evidence on this page that applies to me. If the Arbitration Committee wishes me to respond to other issues or areas, please let me know and I will expand this section.

Mainly, I will be focusing on what I said in the Wikiquette report, since I had summarized everything there and my main conversations are there. My response to the report has both my apology, my explanation that I never meant anything I said to be a personal attack against anyone, and also some of my reasons for previous comments I had made. The diffs I refer to in that response are the ones raised by Maunus at the beginning of the report.

Then, after some discussion amongst other users, some who agreed with me and others who did not, Slrubenstein presented his interpretation of my responses that had been given in the topic ban proposal at ANI. In my response, I explained that one of the diffs he was using was misrepresented and didn't apply to the discussion. I then explained my reasoning (and confusion) to him.

Slrubenstein then asked me a series of 4 questions, to which I responded.There were no further responses from Slrubenstein after this.

I believe my responses to those are sufficient to explain that I neither meant nor intended for my question to be taken in the manner in which it was. When I asked it, I innocently believed that I would either get people saying yes, there was such a possibility, perhaps something should be considered in regards to that or people saying no, there doesn't appear to be such a bias present, you are mistaken. Instead, I was almost immediately accused of making personal attacks and being anti-semitic. This, clearly, upset me and my responses became increasingly more flustered as matters went on at ANI. However, I then disengaged from the discussion and calmed myself down. It was then that the Wikiquette report was submitted by Maunus and my responses, as already linked to in my evidence above, were much more calm. After my last response to Wikiquette, I disengaged from the matter entirely and haven't been involved for the past week. Silverseren^C 04:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Proper Dispute Resolution Process

Since it has been suggested that I bring up certain evidence here about the case at hand specifically (and not about myself), I shall do so based on my prior observations. Clearly, it is impossible for me to refer to any specifics about the Economic history of the Jews article, since it has been deleted, i'll just speak in generalities.

When the issue was first brought up at ANI, I looked into the article in question. Since I am not overly informed about specific literature in such a department, I instead looked to the article talk page and Noleander and Slrubenstein's talk pages in order to determine the exterior extent of the dispute. What I found was...nothing. The only response that Slrubenstein ever gave to Noleander in order to discuss the issues with the article was to notify him of the ANI discussion here. The article talk page was also devoid of such responses, though I did see other users commenting on the talk page with issues about the article and Noleander then congenially fixing the issues that were raised.

After the fact, I might also say that this discussion on Slrubenstein's talk page is concerning to me, especially Mbz1's comment of "My feelings are the same. I totally agree with "if the community cannot recognize anti-Semitism in action, I am more worried about the community than about Noleander." noleander is the user who floods wikipedia with antisemitic articles under indifferent and sometimes even supporting watch of the community. It is what's making me sick." Such a comment makes me concerned that this is being made more into a personal issue than one that is about Wikipedia and article editing.

Anyways, as I stated before, I found no evidence of proper dispute resolution process being followed on the part of Slrubenstein, the concerned party. There was no attempt to discuss issues with the article either on the article talk page or on Noleander's talk page. As we all know, ANI should be taken as a last resort and not a first action. The action of not even attempting to discuss with Noleander is concerning to me, since it gives the appearance of the ANI report being an attempt to give punishment to Noleander than to be an attempt to correct his editing. Silverseren^C 01:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by IZAK

For the record, I have never interacted with Noleander in the past, but because some individuals have seen fit to drag me into this case of late by the back door, I decided to take a look and see for myself what it is about Noleander that causes so much controversy to surround him and his editing. What I discovered reveals that he has his own agenda when it comes to all religions, not just Judaism or all things Jewish. My review of Noleander's editing diffs covers a period of four years, from the time he began editing in February 2006 until February 2010 when the controversies over the Genesis creation narrative erupted to which others can attest. IZAK (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Noleander's personal crusade against various religions

1. Opens a barrage of controversial criticisms against the Mormons [131], makes accusations of a cabal [132], keeps on tangling with Mormon topics bound to raise the heat [133], keeps on making accusations and baiting them [134], hundreds of edits in this area that are on the one hand improvements but also bound to antagonize.
2. Gets into the field of criticism of the Catholics [135], attacks their religious doctrines [136]
3. Creates article about "new" religious doctrines [137] citing atheist philosopher Richard Dawkins, without offering the same or any level "Criticism" of it that he dishes out to the Mormons and Catholics.
4. Enters into controversy with Scientology articles [138] bound to cause more friction [139].
5. Moves to tangle with the Jehovah's Witnesses: [140]
6. At this point he's ready to take on almost all religions: Let's list some religous behaviors:..Mormon fundamentalists rape young girls..Kosher slaughter of cows: ripping out esophagus and letting the animal stumble around..Israel zionists think they deserve all land from Nile to Euphrates: nuclear war ensues..Scientologists ridicule mentally ill people for taking medications does this guy want to set off WW III or what?
7. Takes on Unification Church [141].
8. He loves a book that attacks religion Chapter Eleven: Religion's Corrupt Beginnings In chapter sixteen, Hutchins documents how religions has been used to cause harm to children. He cites examples such as genital mutilation, circumcision, and imposition of fear of healthy sexual activities such as masturbation. He also criticizes the way that adults use religion to terrorize children and adds copiously to that article. No "Criticisms" of that POV either, it's reserved for Israel and Madoff, and the Mormons and Catholics.
9. Naturally he loves the Criticism of religion article and adds to it [142], [143], adds section about Blood Sacrifice to Jerusalem syndrome section why is that? etc etc, but no Criticism from him on the Criticism of religion either.
10. Again refers to Dawkins that "Religion is a Mental illness".

Sincerely, IZAK (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Noleander courts controversy effecting the Jewish people

1. Gets involved in questioning the controversy over the guilt over the Rosenberg nuclear spies [144] always a volatile topic.
2. Adds controversial Summary of Apartheid-like Conditions in Israel and the Occupied Territories, adds citation that Israel gives poor medical care to Palestinians [145], Israel does not educate the Palestinians enough [146], that "Orthodox Jews" get better treatement than Palestinians Military service exemption for ultra-orthodox Jew is also "Apartheid", and offers NO "Criticism" of the Palestinians to counter-balance his one sided support for them. Dozens more entries that prove where he is coming from and it is not to "Criticize the Palestinians" like he does to the Mormons and Catholics.
3. Obsessed with and ties together the Jewish lobby [147] [148] [149] and Israel lobby in the United States [150] and American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the conspiracy theorizing "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" [151].
4. Adds conspiracy theory book defaming Israel Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee....
5. Creates Palestine Monitor article advocates for the Palestinian people, and publicizes conditions in the Gaza and West Bank. Topics featured by the Palestine Monitor include poverty, torture, the apartheid wall, checkpoints, refugees, and East Jerusalem that at least reflects his own POV.
6. He spreads the canard that it's because of Israel that the US was attacked on 9/11 analysts cite the United States' support of Israel as one of the motivations for the attacks [152]. Of course nowhere does he offer "Criticism" of the 9/11 terrorists, he only finds time to attack Israel, Judaism and major religions, especially the Mormons and their beliefs. Although Islam and Hinduism get off very lightly with hardly any efforts to "Criticize" them as he does to the Mormons and Judaism. Oh well.
7. And then finally the issues over the Genesis creation narrative start there is no reason for a Judeo-Christian slant to dominate the article -- hullo, what is this article about in the first place...?

Sincerely, IZAK (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Noleander veers into Antisemitism (for lack of a better word) consciously or unconsciously

1. This becomes blatant with his edits and comments at the Bernard Madoff article: It seems that a large proportion of financial crimes in the US are committed by jews (25% and much worse, jews are so successful in the financial sector, and occupy many leading roles (e.g. Secty of Treasury, Fedl reserve, Wall Street firms, Investment Banking, etc)., and here he starts itching to create an article about Jews in finance and then into this hot potato stuff: Jews have achieved far, far greater representation in leading roles in the financial industry. I suppose the same could be said for their success in Hollywood., wants to add Madoff to list of successful Jews [153]
2. Creates a controversial article about An Empire Of Their Own [154] "An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood", read on and see how much stealth antisemitism he brings in on and on about how the Jews did everything in Hollywood and it came from troubling sources.
3. Attacks circumcision, one of Judaism's holiest rites Christopher Hitchens critcizes Judaism for encouraging circumcision, calling it "grotesque" and a "mutilation" and claiming that it is painful, unnecessary, and decreases sexual pleasure in adulthood. Cites weird connections between killings and circumcision [155]. Drags in sources even about non-existent female circumcision in Judaism [156], but he obviously hates circumcision, what can you do.
4. Adds segments about Shylock and Fagin to Stereotypes of Jews [157].
5. He wants to have his cake and eat it too [158] [159] loves the Misuse of antisemitic accusations [160], [161] article that was deleted: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Misuse of antisemitic accusations and where at the AfD his arguments reveal his bent of mind, and of course he likes good ol' Norman Finkelstein [162] [163].
6. His defenses at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversies related to prevalence of Jews in leadership roles in Hollywood, too bad for him it was deleted, reveal how far he will go with all sorts of twisted arguments to cover up his direct attacks against Jews but he won a reprieve at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/An Empire Of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood because it's about a so-called "book" -- can't keep a good man down, can you now. One thing you can say, he never gives up.
7. And then it had to happen he was finally called on the carpet for his antisemitism in articles at ANI where he remains in total denial. He has been at ANI many times: i Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive571#user:Noleander and antisemitism-related articles; ii Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive572#User:Noleander; iii Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive597#Noleander redux; iv Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive683#I suspect Noleander of anti-Semitic editing etc. Makes for very revealing reading as he runs rings around everyone with all sorts of mind and verbal games and tricks that are classics of WP:LAWYERING.
8. Moves on to introduce "Jewish canard" topics Add canards "Jews control Hollywood" and "Jews control Fed. Reserve"?: There are a couple of canards missing from this article, and - as far as I can tell - from the entire encylopedia. They are: Jews control Hollywood and Jews control the U. S. Federal reserve too clever, and very scary, by half.
9. Provokes and baits other Judaic editors with his own canards: BTW: I read on the internet that you used to communicate with other editors via email to "watch your back" when you were starting to do some controversial editing. Was that true, or was that just made up?
10. Finally gets in a mention of the Elders of Zion book one way or the other: [164]
11. Sure, the Rothschilds need to have antisemitism thrust at them Needs some (appropriate, small, and neutral) mention of antisemitism. Gets in his wish about Allegations of control of world's banking system.
12. Revisionism that antisemitism is not just about Jews, yeah right, Lead section says that the term is "exclusively" applied to Jews. Yet there are many examples where it is not. Notes the notorious Durban meet-up At the Durban NGO forum, anti-Israel advocates arranged to have inserted into the final Declaration and Program of Action the words 'anti-Arab racism is another form of antisemitism', sure, and the moon is made of cheese.
13. Removes classical explanation of antisemitism [165].
14. Orthodox Judaism can never win with him Judaism, particularly the Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox formulation, has been criticized for treating women unfairly, and it's never Islam or mainstream Christianity that gets the heat from him about this, wonder why? Well, he does think Islam should be criticized for something at least, defacement of art Has "impact to public art" been discussed in Talk pages? How noble and high-minded indeed.

Sincerely, IZAK (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion

Based on his ongoing contributions and his own words, some of which I have pointed out above, I can safely state that it is correct to assume that User Noleander (talk · contribs) has:

1. A strong antipathy towards almost all religions.
2. He spends huge amounts of his time on articles that are critical of Mormonism, Judaism and Jews who are depicted as part of a vast conspiracy that controls Hollywood and the world of high finance, on focusing proverbial unrelenting fire on "bad" Israel that "occupies" the poor little "good" Palestinians and "Israel" is the reasons why "innocent" Arab terrorist madmen committed the crimes against humanity on 9/11 in the USA and other such "helpful" contributions to WP that just could not live without all this amazing information that Noleander manages to dig up from his never-ending stream of his-own-POV-sources.
3. He is very tepid in the amount of time he spends on articles critical of Islam, Hinduism, or of non-Catholic Christianity.
4. Let's see him write some criticisms of Christian Protestantism or of the Eastern Orthodox Church, if anyone knows where he has done so, please let me know!
5. It always comes back to "Criticisms" of the Mormons, the Jews, the Catholics, the Zionists and the Scientologists who he never tires of "researching" and finding endless "sources" to attack their beliefs, values, texts, actions, rituals and ideas.
6. He respects and idolizes many secular atheistic topics and thinkers such as Dawkins and Finkelstein -- NEVER criticizing them but will defend them to the hilt.
7. He is a master of, albeit very obviously tendentious, yet very patient stealthy almost ingenious skillful discussions and editing to try to get his way and will use WP's rules against itself to destroy the credibility of Mormonism, Judaism, and the others in his very focused almost obsessive cross-hairs.
8. He would really win some credibility if he focused equally and proportionately on criticizing (with all the great sources he manages to find): Fascism, Hitler, Nazism, Communism, Atheism, Secularism, Scientism and a host of other eclectic topics that he is surely aware of, but forget it, for him it's obviously much more fun taking constant editorial pot-shots at Mormonism, Judaism, the Catholics and the Zionists and a few others like the Scientologists, Jehova's Witnesses and nationalistic or religious Israelis that he obviously hates based on his own editing history that anyone is free to see for themselves.
9. His very controversial views almost always ignite controversy and WP:WAR wherever he shows up.

Sincerely, IZAK (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Solution

User Noleander should be topic-banned from editing articles relating to any religion as well as to all topics relating to Jews and Israel because he edits only to "Criticize" those religions, beliefs and people simply because he does not like them, never offering anything POSITIVE and HELPFUL to say in those topics revealing that he is inherently incapable of functioning in a WP:NPOV manner in these domains where his presence provokes controversy and smashes the fabric of WP:CIVILITY as other editors try to reason with him to no avail, based on his own comments and edits to date. Sincerely, IZAK (talk) 06:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by CasualObserver'48

Keep both eyes on the ball

This arbitration case was recognized from the start as a ball of worms with wide, cross-cutting implications for Wikipedia, concerning both administration and content, and also cutting arcoss established norms to do so; nonetheless it was specifically accepted as such, despite those complications, based on my reading of it. Given that, I do believe that the arbs also must consider other issues in that same wide, cross-cutting light. One assertion is that this case should be viewed with one eye toward DR-decisions to be made concerning an individual, as well as with one eye toward the general content that was added so that a neutral presentation of N, V'd and RS'd material is possible. This assertion assumes that questions of what, how or why, and the perceived damage it might cause may be separated from the valid content that either was added or could be, and a proper relevant neutral context for it.

Look at it broadly

Another assertion is that the Significance of Judaism in History, along with parallel articles for its two younger siblings, might be a good avenue to consider. The neutral notable words are there, the chronology is known, set and RS'able, and periods of sibling cohabitation, brotherhood and rivalry fall into place within the broad monotheistic Western world context, in which this arb must grapple. But the recent triple decisions to delete possible subsidiary content wholesale, and to make valid access to it impossible, bodes not well for helping establish that proper relevant neutral context, especially so early in this arbitration.

Balance it

I assert that both sides have valid points behind them, but additionally assert that support for the addition of content should not be seen as support for the previous locations, types and phrasings provided for the content in contention. Similar notable content, neutrally presented in context, has absolute five-pillar support for being on our pages. There must exist some consensual RS'd middle ground between the two and, I believe the arbs are attempting to define where that should be, and may you do so well.

I assert, beyond the specific grounds and technicalities being asserted here, that this is a simple but important tug-of-war between the addition of valid content and displeasure at seeing that content because it has led to antisemitism in the past. That it may lead there in the future however, is prognostication based only on the past; the world and history itself has changed the tennor and the basic conditions themselves. While this concern is of great import, what must be equally weighed is the relevant and notable content that the many RSs provide without such assertions, just history. These various premises must by considered, and then accepted, rejected or balanced as Wiki-appropriate, but valid RS'd content can not be kept off a page based on concern or fear, regardless of its historic precedence. The history was there first and flowed from it.

There are reasons with astonishing and consistent gaffs

I assert and reference things that also should be weighed: That similar assertions have been organized and used over significant time (p.91), widely orchestrated, (p.191) and with changed political considerations,[166] as the circumstances of the times themselves changed. These reliable sources point to both a notable historic example of missing content, as well as the difficulty of adding such content even where it is appropriate to do so, as the latter subject's edit history will attest. Taking the opposite tack, I assert that there are astonishing lapses of basic significance and notability in our coverage. Taking another example of Wikipedia's existing three-sibling coverage of a different important subject, I find it astonishing that within the eldest sibling's article there does not exist a mention that escape from slavery is enshrined in Exodus and motivated all that followed. Is the term "Let my people go" so insignificant to the subject that it need not be included? It certainly set precedent for the two younger siblings over history, as well as in its more recent internal uses for the term. Is it really referring, as we say, to something else. Another far-reaching example of uneven neutral context and gaff-evidence, can be found at this basic history article concerning mankind's totality; it does NOT mention any Jewish history specifically, yet they lived through and documented it. This gap exists despite the sheer span of Jewish history and law readily available, from Abraham to the present; together these covers nearly four millennia, and more than three-quarters of the entire history of civilized humanity. Why have related projects not already done so, should they not, who should? In prologue, a knowledgeable and relevant author notes: "I am a historian who believes in long continuities and delights in tracing them. The Jews created a separate and specific identity earlier than almost any other people which still survives. They have maintained it, amid appalling adversities, right up to the present. Whence came this extraordinary endurance? What was the particular strength of the all-consuming idea which made the Jews different and kept them homogeneous? Did its continuing power lie in its essential immutability, or its capacity to adapt, or both? These are sinewy themes with which to grapple." I believe this arbitration must grapple similarly; if done so in a cross-cutting light, it may help both determine the specifics of this arb, but also arb toward a future neutral context under which the inevitable editing may continue more collaboratively. This article suffered from a similar non-inclusion gaff, but was noted, temporarily, but we shall see.

I wish all the wisdom of Solomon. Respectfully, CasualObserver'48 (talk) 04:51, 12 April 2011 (UTC), 04:33, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.