User:Egfrank/stuff

For the last 2 or 3 weeks the WikiProject Judaism has had periodic flare-ups of disputes over articles relating to Progressive Judaism. Various requests/offers to invite in mediators have been made (on my part) but none have been accepted. I'm finding the situation stressful and exhausting and disruptive of my ability to focus on improving articles.

I'm also wondering if this is the kind of behavior that Wikipedia believes should be tolerated. If so, I need better strategies for handling it. If not, what are my options for improving the situation?

I apologize for the length of this, but this has been going on for a long long time and until now I've been unclear about how even to ask for help.

WikiProject Progressive Judaism
At the time the disputes broke out, there were three editors with a special interest in and knowledge of Progressive Judaism articles:
 * User:Egfrank (myself)- US Reform, Israeli Progressive, WUPJ
 * User:A Sniper - US Reform, early German reformers
 * User:Jheald - UK Israeli Judaism

To faciliate work on articles related to Progressive Judaism, two of these users (myself and User:A Sniper started WikiProject Progressive Judaism. Within 48 hours of publishing the project, a member of WikiProject Judaism decided that WikiProject Judaism should have a debate about the desirability of the Progressive Judaism project with several making claims that the existance of the project was divisive, destructive, etc. and demanding that we shut the project down.

Attempts to calm the waters and explain that we were only trying to target a group of articles for improvement and provide a gathering point for others interested in balanced WP:NPOV coverage of the topic went unheard by any WikiProject Judaism member excepting ASniper and myself (we are members of both projects).

The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
 * the editors protesting were not active editors on the pages in question
 * nor did they become active editors after the discussion (until much later - see User:HG)
 * however, a few of the editors are in the habit of monitoring articles for vandals (including the one who proposed that we cease and desist, User:Shirahadasha.
 * the articles we wanted to develop were either missing or had all manner of problems: they were spotty, uncited, contained misleading WP:SYNTH, confused historical periods and sometimes countries, and were in general not something to write home about.
 * there is a parallel WikiProject Orthodox Judaism - inactive, but no one suggested that be disbanded while they were questioning the legitimacy of the Progressive Judaism project.

This leads me to the inevitable conclusion that the "interest" in disbanding the project came from WikiProject Judaism's desire to (a) maintain control over the articles rather than improve them (b) reduce the liklihood that editors with a threatening or suspect POV would congregate and use strength in numbers to force unbiased editing of articles.

Based on the concerns and comments on talk pages, the project is heavily weighted towards Orthodox Jews who believe their job is to insure that Wikipedia presents the orthodox view as "normative" judaism and all other views as break-away, suspect or questionable. This is their understanding of WP:NPOV.

I realize this is a hard statement to prove, but it is clearly the belief of one of the project's leading editors User:IZAK (see below). It is also reflected in the plastering of orthodox objections next to any ritual or practice that departs from orthodoxy:
 * Stub articles on Women's colleges have warnings that some orthodox think women shouldn't study..
 * An article on Bar Mitzvahs (jewish coming of age ceremony) discusses orthodox customs only in the lead paragraphs. The section dedicated to |bat mitzvah]s contains six paragraphs, about half of which explains orthodox objections.  There is no coverage of Progressive/Reform Bat Mitzvah customs and only one line about Conservative Jewish customs - despite the fact that the two largest Jewish denominations in the USA are Reform and Conservative Jews.  Even the conservative one-liner is followed immediately followed by an orthodoxy disclaimer rejecting the validity of these services.

User:IZAK
User:IZAK is a dedicated and tireless contributor to WikiProject Judaism. User:IZAK does not edit in this conflict, but he is very vocal and has made it very clear that he has no love for Progressive Judaism. Though he has not edited articles, he has "But now that you have brought up this subject, and I know this may come as a surprize to you, but there really is only one Judaism in the absolute sense. Like there is only one United States even though there may be fifty states. That's the way it has always been with Judaism since Moses received the Torah at Mount Sinai over 3,300 (yes, that's three thousand and three hundred years ago) and Judaism has always been defined as that religion or way of life that submits to the Torah, the 613 Mitzvot as explicated in the Oral Torah and preserved in the Shulkhan Arukh and the Halakha. Whenever a movement has arisen in Jewish history that has wanted to change that status quo it is automatically defined as a breakaway movement from Judaism, regardless of how it self-describes itself, see Schisms among the Jews." Thus Judaism was always, well, err, Judaism, but at various points other breakaway movements come along and tried to confuse this historical fact and truth. Thus, some in the modern Reform movement (it only started very recently in the 1800s!) in their attempt to justify their break with normative Judaism as it was universally practiced for thousands of years, slapped the derogatory term "Orthodox" (to imply something like "Orthodox Christianity") on those who did not wish to join their rejection of Jewish law and life as it was practiced till then. There is a little about how this came about at Orthodox Judaism so that it would not be untrue to say that it is Orthodox Judaism that believes itself to be Judaism, and that it is not something that "I" made up on the spur of the moment. As for my statement that "Unfortunately, a lot of what I read on the Progressive Judaism page is nonsense (no offense) as it makes it sound that the Progressives are upholding a great Torah and rabbinic "tradition" when it is just a movement to rationalize why pork can be eaten by Jews, that God probably did not give the Torah to Mosheh and that the mitzvot do not have to be observed by Jews"-- I stand by it, but with the qualifier that it was part of a dialogue with a user in the context of debate and discussion and I was trying to make a point, and that this is not "my" critique but it's one of the oldest critiques of the entire Reform movement, that they wished to rationalize away all of Jewish observance and the rituals to free themselves of the guilt and restrictions of the Torah and its commandments so that they may eat forbidden foods, inter-mingle with gentiles in ways not sanctioned by Judaism theretofore prohibited by Jewish law, and even to open the road for mass apostasy and mass conversion to Christianity as happened in Western Europe and as is presently happening in the USA. This is not "my" view, it is sort of "Judaism 101" or should we say "Orthodox Judaism 101" see [[Heresy in Orthodox Judaism]] and [[Relationships between American Jewish religious movements]] so I hope this clarifies your misconceptions. But may I say, I do not believe it is your job to subject me to WP:LAWYERing based on the fact that I am conveying the views of some streams of Judaism that others may know little about or disagree with, and certainly I should not be subjected by you to WP:HARASS for stating those views. If you wish clarification, as you asked for here, I will answer you gladly, but please do not violate WP:NPA and of accusing Wikipedia of having an "Orthodox bias" when on the contrary, you should commend the fact that with so few editors who may seem to be Orthodox so much NPOV work gets done and that they are pretty scrupuolus with all their work.(Note: Malik has a user box claiming to be an alumni of JTS - the conservative rabbinic institute - telling such a person that it should come as a surprise shows a polite but profound disdain for Malik's training)
 * threatened to AfD a set of categories and merge the Progressive Judaism article out of existance, merely because they used the word "Progressive" rather than reform.
 * attempted to intimidate an editor (me) by accusing me with a long list of wiki crimes because I created those categories and expanded the Progressive Judaism article. Although the tone was initially polite, the more I refuted his claims, the more strident he became., [ COI diff ]
 * trivialized complaints about his behavior as "personalizing" or wiki lawyering,
 * accused an editor User:Malik Shabazz of slander for expressing sympathy and concern about orthodox bias with User:A Sniper and myself,
 * has openly expressed disdain toward the movement he wishes to "disappear":
 * about their beliefs (as documented on Progressive Judaism):"Unfortunately, a lot of what I read on the Progressive Judaism page is nonsense (no offense) as it makes it sound that the Progressives are upholding a great Torah and rabbinic "tradition" when it is just a movement to rationalize why pork can be eaten by Jews, that God probably did not give the Torah to Mosheh and that the mitzvot do not have to be observed by Jews."
 * when offered a reading list on Progressive Judaism - declared that he would provide more valuable input without one and that my well cited contributions were "preconcieved notions" from which I "need help breaking away":
 * about one of their leading theologians (Eugene Borowitz): "Honestly I don't care what he says. You have not answered my question. I know about all these grandiose rationalizers, no doubt he probably had bacon and eggs for breakfast too as he was preparing for that speech.' that speech was the prologue of a book (Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew) that literally defined postmodern US Reform theology and paved the way for its revival of tradition.
 * the name Progressive: "Sure, some people may like the Progressive label, but others do not. To the world at large the word Reform means something whereas Progressive sounds like fig-leaf for something else." - the some people are the people who happen to be Progressive Jews - namely the [ 1.7 million Jews] that are members of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.
 * Upon being confronted with his bias by Malik Shabazz: all but declares Reform/Progressive Judaism "not jewish" and that he is the one being persecuted:

IZAK claims that this bias does not affect his editing. However, it is making life very uncomfortable on talk pages which are essential to the editing process. What bothers me more than anything, is that most of these verbal assaults took place in plain view of talk pages, but none excepting Malik and 2 "progressives" (IZAK's term) have seen anything wrong with this behavior. The closest anyone came was User:HG who told IZAK he was coming on strong but otherwise agreed with his positions..

Whether or not he carries out his threats, this kind of behavior and the defcreates a hostile editing environment into which few sane people who disagree with User:IZAK are likely to stay for long.

Opening Salvos
In October, 2007 I began expanding the content of Progressive Judaism using cited material.


 * 1) Enter User:HG: User:HG has been an editor since May, 2005 but never expressed an interest in  anything related to progressive or reform Judaism until at 5:17 Oct 26, 2007 he posted a complaint about a category that used the word "Progressive".
 * 2) Two hours later User:IZAK turned that complaint into a politely phrased but clear accusation of biased editing, distortion, and possible OR that "that creates a false impression that "Progressive Judaism" somehow has nothing to do with Reform Judaism. You are creating articles and categories that is artificially distancing the notions of "Reform" from "Progressivism" from each other which may violate WP:NOR, when they are essentially one and the same thing"..
 * The alleged POV pushing edits consisted of the following changes #:
 * replacing an uncited definition in the lead paragraph with a heavily cited definition taken from the webpage of the World Union for Progressive Judaism
 * a description of a notable dispute about the origins marked with a to remind myself to look up the citation (Meyer, Response to Modernity, 4-5).
 * a set of statements about progressive judaism changing over time, also marked to remind myself to look up the citation. (Meyer, Response to Modernity, ix-x)
 * a list of communal organizations associated with Progressive Judaism - along with weblinks
 * increased the number of footnotes from 1 to 17
 * 1) I don't discuss articles on user pages, so I originally moved the complaint to WikiProject Progressive Judaism with the intent of placing a notice on WikiProject Judaism.
 * 2) Before I had a chance to do this, User:IZAK deleted the entire posting (rather than placing a discussion continued... comment) the entire complaint to WikiProject Judaism without discussion and placed renewed complaints about the existance of a progressive judaism project on the Judaism project talk page. In the course of the next few days he reposted his original complaint in a large bordered box at least two additional times.
 * 3) I lodged a complaint on the WikiProject Judaism page about the deletion.
 * 1) Before I had a chance to do this, User:IZAK deleted the entire posting (rather than placing a discussion continued... comment) the entire complaint to WikiProject Judaism without discussion and placed renewed complaints about the existance of a progressive judaism project on the Judaism project talk page. In the course of the next few days he reposted his original complaint in a large bordered box at least two additional times.
 * 2) I lodged a complaint on the WikiProject Judaism page about the deletion.

There are two things I find disturbing about the above:
 * a disrespect for others reputations: POV pushing is a pretty serious charge (akin to vandalism) and yet IZAK and HG had no problem throwing around accusations without a shred of evidence. More disturbing is that noone even complained, except one of the "progressive" editors (User:Jheald).
 * a disrepect for project boundaries: changing the venue of a discussion is not a problem; deleting discussions that materially affect a project from the project's talk page is. Considering IZAK was proposing a merger of two articles of great importance to the Progressive Judaism project, a modicum of respect was in order.  Yet of the two users who responded to the complaint: User:Tshilo12 trivialized it as a gripe and User:HG (the original objector to "Progressive") basically said anything IZAK did on the Progressive Judaism project because he was a long time dedicated leader in the Judaism project and so should be trusted.

HG
User:Egfrank/stuff/Tobefair

HG seems motivated to be a peace maker, and appears to be favorably regarded by other editors (see his editor review page). However, his behavior vis a vis the editing of the articles on Progressive Judaism has been disruptive and unbending with respect to the consensus of other editors.

Egfrank 03:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) (Oct 29-Nov 4) Over the course of a week he argued agressively that "Progressive Judaism" was a marginal term and prefernce in category names and selection of main article name should be given to "Reform Judaism".It is not clear why he felt so strongly about this, but his generally agreement with the views of user:IZAK can be presupposed, based on this diff
 * 2) During the course of the week, he refused to listen to the consensus of three other editors claiming personal experience with Progressive Judaism, and providing multiple citations. Even arguments that the choice of name was the official collective name chosen by this group of Jews (their world wide organization is called the World Union for Progressive Judaism) and a careful contextual study of movement terminology in the classic text on the history of the Reform movement, Response to Moderity by Michael Meyers, failed to convince.  HG continued to insist that the only thing that mattered was that "Reform" had more raw google hits than "Progressive".  When it was pointed out that raw counts do not say anything about bias.
 * 3) (Nov 4-Nov10)At the end of that week (Nov 4) editors active in progressive Judiasm articles began refactoring the material in Reform Judaism into regional articles. This was a move that had been repeatedly discussed.  user:HG had even agreed that it might be a good idea.
 * 4) However, when users started implementing the refactoring, User:HG percieved this as a way of reducing the importance of Reform Judaism and prejudging a dispute he felt was not resolved. He then countered by putting two of the refactored articles up for AfD.  He only retracted his position when user:IZAK pointed out that AfD's weren't the most effective way to solve a dispute and user:ShiraHadasha pointed out that the articles had WP:V and WP:N behind them.
 * 5) His next move was to reopen the issue of names and claim that the official name of the movement didn't matter because the movement was internally conflicted. To support this point, User:HG used a letter written by the WUPJ to complain about a former chief rabbi of israel who blamed the holocaust on "Reform Judaism" on Israeli public radio.  Since the accusation was specifically against "Reform" Jews, the WUPJ letter stressed the its solidarity with the leaders of the Reform movement.  User:HG however omitted all context except the use of the word reform, essentially trying to turn a letter of solidarity in a moment of pain into "proof" that the name the group uses to identify itself isn't really the name it wants to be known by.  This IMHO is insensitive in the extreme.  There can hardly be a more hurtful accusation than for one Jew to blame another for the holocaust.  To then use their reaction as an excuse to deny their chosen identity ("Progressive") is adding injury to injury.
 * 6) The argument only stopped when he claimed that "our standard" was the most prevelant word and User:Egfrank countered with a list of wiki policies that state that a geographically neutral self-chosen and notable name is a valid article title.
 * 7) While this proves that User:HG does care about policy, it didn't stop him from destructive edits. Knowing that he couldn't get rid of the article Progressive Judaism he proceded to unilaterally denude it of significant content by removing the entire beliefs and practices section to a sub article named...."Jewish beliefs and practices in the reform movement".
 * 8) While there may be plenty of argument for a future article on Beliefs and practices in Progressive Judaism, there was no functional need *yet* for a split - e.g. WP:LENGTH, independent notability, or other claim. In fact two editors had expressly asked him to leave material in place and not create such an article.  The sole reason for this move appears to be the desire to create an article with the name "Reform" so that the beliefs of Progressive Jews appeared in an article named reform.
 * 9) To create this article User:HG not only denuded the Progressive Judaism article. He also merged the information in Progressive Judaism with a large amount of text that had been marked as uncited synthesis.  The material in this new article was arranged in a manner that was highly biased towards Orthodox perceptions of Progressive Jews and inconsistent with the way Progressive Jews see themselves.   Historical information was also merged in with descriptions of current beliefs in a manner that left a distorted impression of what history was really essential for understanding the present.  A detailed list of complaints is available Talk:Jewish_beliefs_and_practices_in_the_reform_movement.
 * 10) Although HG does seem motivated to improve the article, the article *needs* a lot of work and his editorial behavior is not conducive to collaboration. Thus User:HG is basically working on this article alone even though by his own admission this is not an area with which he has lots of experience.

User:Egfrank (Myself)
Through all of this I have tried to keep my cool and even "made nice" with both User:IZAK and User:HG. I'm not perfect, but I don't believe I have ever disparaged the beliefs of either user.

I think I am good careful editor. I footnote almost everything I write. Time permitting, I add references from multiple sources to cross check the information I add. Because I am aware that the structure of an article can create subtle biases, I even try to research (and footnote) the structure of articles I have been involved in.

I bring to wikipedia a degree from Princeton University (Psychology/Religion-Cum Laude) and a MSc. (Sloan Masters Fellow) from London Business School - for which I would be happy to provide verification. In addition I have two years of full time study of Rabbinic literature. I think I have something to offer to wikipedia. Or at least, I once thought this. Now I'm not so sure.

What I have described above makes me wonder whether Wikipedia is really serious about wanting to compete with Encyclopedia Britannica or gain academic respectibility. In my years at Princeton and London Business School, I have seen fierce debates, but always with respect for another person's research skills. I have never seen such blatant prejudice tolerated without comment.

I really don't know what my options are here:
 * 1) Quit - if I do that now, I'm going to have to conclude that wikipedia is a failed system
 * 2) Take a break - amounts to the same thing - I'm not going to come back
 * 3) Figure out how to change things -- well, I'm feeling stuck and need help
 * 4) Other???