User:IronDuke/West Bank – Judea and Samaria good article project page

West Bank – Judea and Samaria good article project page

Proposal for compromise
So… I had an idea (or rather, cribbed an idea from Nishidani). What if, instead of topic-banning some of the most useful, articulate, and involved editors in the IP area (on both sides) for a year, you all got together and worked on Judea, Samaria, and Judea and Samaria with the goal of promoting them to GA status in two months’ time? That way (and given the relatively public nature of the arb case), there would hopefully be wide-ranging and neutral community input – sort of an RfC on steroids. If you all did not succeed, it would be back to the arb case (which would be placed on hiatus pending the outcome). The arbs (some of them anyway) seem to be saying you all can’t work together. I don’t think that’s true, and I also think that to the extent it is true, the possibility of avoiding more unpleasantness in this arb case might lead to extra flexibility and reasonableness. In the interest of full disclosure: I don’t particularly care at all how the ultimate content issue falls out: Judea, Samaria, West Bank, Elbonia, whatever -- I’d just like to avoid a mass-banning that would have a seriously deleterious effect on IP articles. What say? IronDuke 02:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh -- and one more point: the result of the (succesful) GA nomination would serve as a WP-wide Manual of Style for similar or related articles, that is for example, "the term 'Judea' should be used in situations x and y, but not in situations z and a." IronDuke 04:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I would like to participate in this

 * NoCal100 (talk) 03:14, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Jayjg (talk) 00:11, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 20:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC) (within constraints on available spare time. Good idea!)

Yes, I would like to participate in this, but I have some reservations

 * An interesting idea. I wouldn't mind joining the project - if there was bi-partisan support for it. Canadian Monkey (talk) 16:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

No thanks, and here’s why

 * I think it's a good idea in general, but for me personally none of these three articles are a priority, and I have a lot of other commitments on Wikipedia (the case encompasses hundreds of articles, by the way, and those three are for me some of the least important). Maybe I'll contribute to Judea and Samaria if this gets going. Also, I never wanted to get involved in the case anyway. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 11:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Improving any article can only be a good thing, especially these ones. Having said that I'm not sure I will get involved. It's never my intention to do that much in the way of substantive editing, not least because the process of making even the smallest corrections and edits to I-P pages is difficult enough as it is. Also if the history of this issue to date is anything to go by, I don't hold out much hope I'm afraid for effective collaboration or genuinely open-minded discussion - let alone any any likelihood of anyone admitting they've got something wrong and changing their minds once clear evidence is presented. Note I did raise some questions on the Samaria talk page a while ago which I think are key to having an accurate and fair treatment of the issue, here. I suspect that will be the limit of my contribution. --Nickhh (talk) 11:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Mostly per what Ynhockey said above. I didn't get involved here whatsoever for a reason (and because I have many other articles and groups of articles that I'm currently concentrating on), but I think IronDuke's suggestion is a very noble one. It would be a shame if all these editors are banned from the entire I-P topic, but if it's just Judea and Samaria and all of the subarticles, it could give other neutral editors the chance to work on the subject. If I see things are going smoothly, I might dip into the topic, but I don't have too much knowledge on it anyhow. --Al Ameer son (talk) 00:20, 2 April 2009 (UTC)