User:GRuban/RFC Reliability

Count

 * 1) Keep, relevant, verifiable, significant, top Israeli sources, United States, Germany,Italy,Russian government: starship.paint (exalt)
 * 2) Keep.  prime example of Wikipedia being vulnerable to false content The Gnome
 * 3) Strong keep. ten+ sources François Robere
 * 4) Keep As this is a direct accusation, made by an RS.Slatersteven (talk) 12:45, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 5) Keep. The inclusion is being contested by people who have a vested interest —Ermenrich (talk) 13:23, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 6) Keep until it can be found (on List of Wikipedia controversies)... obviously from a reliable source and notable and would rather it stay here then disappear all together. Pabsoluterince
 * 7) Keep per nom and Slater. It's directly mentioned by multiple RS, it's WP:DUE. Levivich 00:28, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 8) Keep. If the editors who say "remove" could point to some factual inaccuracy within the fragment... Szmenderowiecki
 * 9) Keep largely per Starship.paint's well-reasoned stance. I'm not seeing the relevance of Icewhiz's ban to whether or not this statement should remain in the article. That seems to be the only substantive argument presented by those arguing to remove it. Even those assailing the credibility of the sources seem to be leaning on the Icewhiz affair to make a point. It's not germane to the discussion. AlexEng(TALK) 09:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 10) Keep - topically relevant and the length of time is the significance. Markbassett (talk) 01:23, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 11) Keep mention of the topic in some form, without commenting on appropriateness of the current wording. — Bilorv (talk) 16:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 12) Keep: The story of the article is a blot on Wikipedia's reputation, and we should not sweep it under the rug. --K.e.coffman (talk) 17:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 13) Keep. Whether it was a deliberate hoax or an honest mistake is debateable but it's indisputable that there are media sources which describe it as "Wikipedia's longest-standing hoax." Alaexis
 * 14) Keep false claim details, Remove hoax allegations ... the lengthy run of such an obtrusive claim is noteworthy and significant --GoneIn60 (talk) 08:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 15) Keep. Regardless of whether this was a "hoax" or a simple error, false information regarding the Holocaust was included in a Wikipedia article for more than a decade. Calidum 17:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * 1) Remove - dishonest narrative of a banned Wikipedian then echoed by some other newspapers, not an intentional hoax. GizzyCatBella🍁 09:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 2) Remove. when reliable source prints out a bad story, we are under no obligation or common sense requirement to cite it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus
 * 3) Remove — a fairly trivial point unless picked up by scholarly sources. — Biruitorul Talk 10:26, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 4) Remove This whole thing is here simply because a banned editor  Volunteer Marek 18:17, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 5) Remove. A banned former Wikipedia editor, Icewhiz, presents a usually reliable newspaper, Haaretz, with disinformation Nihil novi (talk) 19:09, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 6) Remove hasn't been enough critical, widespread coverage of the issue separate from people who were just writing churnalism based on the Haaretz report. the main source is a globally banned user Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:46, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 7) Remove. Having this at List of Wikipedia controversies would be sufficient. --Darwinek (talk) 02:37, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 8) Remove Primarily because it is a malicious act by long time abuser, which is more akin to a form of fraud, that what you would call a traditional hoax. scope_creepTalk 12:53, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 9) Remove, the text is misleading, Trzecińska's theory was finally debunked only in 2017 Marcelus (talk) 19:03, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 10) Remove, but really, the entire subsection should be removed, and the entire section should be drastically trimmed.  --Aquillion (talk) 08:11, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 11) Remove - A sock-master & his socks, have no credibility. GoodDay (talk) 20:43, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 12) Remove. not a hoax, but incorrect information/misiniformation. enomous waste of time, remove, simply to minimize disruption to the project. My very best wishes (talk) 01:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * 13) Remove, it was just a genuine error by amateur part-time editors who edit Wikipedia articles in their spare time, beat up by a media outlet into a conspiracy to commit a "hoax", what ever sells newspapers I guess. The period of time this incorrect information was in the article is irrelevant, until an article has achieved WP:GA status there cannot be any guarantee of reliability. --Nug (talk) 11:13, 2 January 2022 (UTC)


 * 1) Remove the Other false information section in its entirety following on the above. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * 2) Compromise I don't know how you'll want to do it, but I think it'd beat keeping or deleting. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:29, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 3) Remove and Move discussed content to less popular and less core article "List of Wikipedia controversies" per Pabsoluterince or move undue weight per what GoneIn60 said  Dawid2009 (talk) 12:22, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

So that's pretty balanced - 15 to keep, 13 to remove, 3 to do something else. More or less, because we Wikipedians have a tendency to color outside the lines. Still, hard to say that there is a majority either way.

Policies
Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a big deal. It's basically the first of the WP:TRIFECTA, the second of the WP:5PILLARS. It says it means "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." It also says "This policy is 'non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus." That's pretty definitive.

It also says "It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research". Those are, respectively, "other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source", and "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist."

On the Keep side, editors are arguing that the story is well sourced. That's basically NPOV - if we don't write it, we don't represent the significant views that have been published by the reliable sources on a topic. That's not negotiable.

On the Remove side, editors are mostly arguing two points: The problem with the first is that those are all essays and policies about how Wikipedians should behave towards each other. They're not policies about how the world should behave towards Wikipedia, and they're not policies about what should be in our articles. We can't hide behind them. The world is allowed to be mean to us, much as we don't like it, and we still have to document that, that is our mission. We can ban editors that break our policies, but we can't ban the world. The second point has a bit more to it, after all, we don't have to use exactly the same wording as our reliable sources do. But we're not saying it is a hoax, we're saying media sources dubbed it as "Wikipedia's longest-standing hoax." Which they pretty clearly have. And honestly, there is a pretty good argument that it is one - even if the editor who put it in was doing it in good faith, that just means Wikipedia fell for a hoax in the real world. In any case, that's one word, and not really a sufficient argument to exclude the whole event, this article isn't about "hoaxes in Wikipedia" just about our "reliability", and this is clearly a strike against that.
 * that this all comes from a globally banned user, and therefore should be left out per Deny recognition, Casting aspersions, Harassment, etc.
 * that this is being incorrectly reported as a hoax, while it isn't, it is a series of honest mistakes

Now there are alternatives. For example, we could decide that this whole section is too long; that's the "proportionately" part of WP:NPOV. We are not paper, but yet we can decide the length and focus of our articles. A few editors argued that, such as Aquilion and Rhododendrites. A few others argued that this information should be moved instead to List of Wikipedia controversies, though the fact that GizzyCatBella also deleted it from there is not comforting. All those could be considered, but that wasn't really the main point of this discussion.

Hoax?
Hoax A hoax is a falsehood deliberately fabricated to masquerade as the truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment,[1] rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences, and April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.[2]
 * I actually question that last part "or as jokes" - if someone puts a joke in a Wikipedia article, I think most people would still consider that a hoax. Further down in the Hoax article is an example of Belgium splitting in two - I'm pretty sure that was intended as a joke. And yet there it is. In any case, I don't think it applies here, I don't think anyone thinks this article about an extermination camp was a joke.
 * So there isn't a definite hoaxer, but on the other hand it does seem unlikely there was a complete chain of honest errors and good faith resulting in us writing that 200,000 people died that didn't. That seems rather a lot of people. "No evidence that the editor who added it knew there were any concerns have been presented." I don't think the editor has to have been the fabricator. If Wikipedians wrote that Piltdown Man was real, whether or not the editors would be in good faith, Wikipedia would have been the subject of a hoax,