User talk:Hecht

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Barry Chamish
Barry Chamish is not a Nazi and neither is Jeff Rense. Go and read Shabtai Tzvi, Labour Zionism and the Holocaust, and stop protesting too much. --Hereward77 (talk) 18:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I didn't say Chamish was a Nazi. Rense is a publisher of Holocaust denial material. Your deletion of Pipes' criticism has no justification. He is a notable source. Hecht (talk) 06:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Rense is not a Holocaust denier, and is certainly no Nazi. The books sold on Rense.com cover Bible prophecy and the paranormal, not the likes of Irving, etc. From his website: "Neither Jeff Rense nor sightings.com necessarily adhere to, or endorse, any or all of the links, stories, articles, editorials, or products offered by sponsors found on this site, or broadcast on the Jeff Rense radio program. All of the materials and data offered on this site, and on the radio program, are for informational and educational purposes only." Although Rense is rather naive in carrying a few questionable articles on his site, Pipes has no evidence for these claims, so I will have to point this out in the article. --Hereward77 (talk) 17:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Pipes says (a) that Rense is a neo-Nazi; (b) that Chamish links to Holocaust deniers; (c) that Chamish spoke at a Holocaust denial event. Regarding (a) you say that Rense isn't a Holocaust denier; he just publishes material denying the Holocaust. IMHO that's a distinction without a difference. Regarding (b) and (c) you haven't raised any objection. If you have evidence that his allegations are false, then please add it to the entry. Hecht (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:EL
Is my objection to those sites. Nizkor might make it through - I have used it on occasion, although there has been some trenchant academic criticism of it, but its definitely a major force in refuting denialists' arguments - but Bogdanor is definitely not an option. "Left-wingers for another holocaust" is not an acceptable encyclopaedic external link. Relata refero (talk) 10:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Wasn't aware of academic criticism of Nizkor - is it online?


 * The other link was PB's list of articles by other people. PB didn't write any of the articles in that list; and I can't find anything there about "left-wingers for another holocaust." PB has an article Leftists For a Second Holocaust elsewhere on the site but I didn't link to that.


 * Hecht (talk) 02:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll try and find the discussion of Nizkor - I can't even remember where I heard it, though I use it all the time. (I suppose it should stay, given that I do use it all the time.)
 * I'm not sure that other link is mainstream enough. It has an article by Michelle Malkin, for heavens sake! A couple of Robert Conquests referenced elsewhere don't make up for that. And a lot of the issues there are frankly dubious - North Vietnamese Land Reform Genocide Denial? Relata refero (talk) 10:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Nizkor: Thanks.

LWD: Disliking one of the authors listed hardly justifies removing the whole page. In any case, Michelle Malkin's item is one of two on Ramsey Clark; the other is by a journalist from The Nation writing on Salon.com! I don't see the words "North Vietnamese Land Reform Genocide Denial," only a section on "Land Reform Apologists" with articles by prominent authors on the subject.

Hecht (talk) 14:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The point being that he implies "apologists" for land reform in Vietnam are on par with the sort of denialists discussed in the article, and I don't think that's a mainstream view at all. Relata refero (talk) 07:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't matter what either of us thinks. The articles are by prominent authors and experts.

Hecht (talk) 18:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * They aren't, not all of them; and the point is that they have been assembled to claim that all the articles are about negationism, when that is patently not the case according to the experts. Relata refero (talk) 11:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Which experts? Hecht (talk) 15:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The 'prominent authors and experts' who comprise a proportion of those in the external link. Several of their articles on various subjects have been organised by a non-RS source as about 'negationism' whether or not that is what the articles themselves claim to be about. Relata refero (talk) 19:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Glancing through the Vietnam land reform articles, they do claim to be about denials of bloodbaths. Hecht (talk) 20:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * But about systematic campaigns and political movements to rewrite history of the sort the article discusses? Do the authors imply as much? Compare it to Holocaust denial for a moment, and you'll see why its not so. Relata refero (talk) 20:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Some of those articles were used in Congressional hearings on the issue, which means it was judged pretty important. Hecht (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Which ones?
 * In any case, only a small fraction of them, right? Which is why I feel that it seems that that is a dangerous EL, as it over-extends the scope of the term...
 * I see you dropped by Talk:Holodomor. Please do consider getting involved in discussion there. Relata refero (talk) 23:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * These  were used in Congressional hearings on "The Myth of No Bloodbath" in North Vietnam (Hearings of the Subcommittee on Internal Security, Senate Judiciary Committee, January 5, 1973). See original here  . That's 2 out of 4 articles under the heading Land Reform Apologists. The others are a paper from the Rand Corporation, and the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars essay that started it all.


 * Thanks for invitation. It seems we have exactly the same interests and exactly the opposite opinions :-)


 * Hecht (talk) 13:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Sourcing Court Statements
Guy has already been told not to reinsert that statement without offering an independent source for the information. If you insert the material again I will have to consider blocking you for violating our policy on biographies of living people. Spartaz Humbug! 20:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Specifically please read the following excerpt from BLP.


 * ''Reliable sources


 * Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully. Without reliable third-party sources, it will violate the No original research and Verifiability policies, and could lead to libel claims.


 * Material about living persons available solely in questionable sources or sources of dubious value should not be used, either as a source or as an external link (see above).


 * Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see below). "Self-published blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed (e.g., "Jane Smith has suggested..."). Posts left by readers may never be used as sources.[4]


 * Editors should avoid repeating gossip. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to an encyclopedia article about the subject. When less-than-reliable publications print material they suspect is untrue, they often include weasel phrases. Look out for these. If the original publication doesn't believe its own story, why should we?


 * Editors should also be careful of a feedback loop in which an unsourced and speculative contention in a Wikipedia article gets picked up, with or without attribution, in an otherwise-reliable newspaper or other media story, and that story is then cited in the Wikipedia article to support the original speculative contention.'''


 * Failing to provide an independant source for the information means that the content is original research and fails the requirement to meet reliable sourcing. If you insert it again without an independant source I will impose a sanction under recent arbcom special sanctions to prevent breaches of BLP. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Footnoted_quotes/Proposed_decision#Special_enforcement_on_biographies_of_living_persons . Spartaz Humbug! 20:36, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Where's the ban on using court proceedings as a source? Can you explain? Please quote the relevant sentence(s). Thanks. Hecht (talk) 20:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Spartaz Humbug! 20:50, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I followed the links to here: "When discussing legal texts, it is more reliable to quote from the text, appropriately qualified jurists or textbooks than from newspaper reporting." I.e. use the court judgment - not a second-hand source - which is what I'm doing! Hecht (talk) 20:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That presupposes that the court judgement is sufficiently relevant to have already been reported on. In this case, no-one seems to have thought the ruling sufficiently notable to write about. For us to thereby report it means that we have promoted something to prominence that no-one else has seen fit to. That would be a breach of our reliable sourcing because we would be using a primary source to judge something notable when we always use independent sources to support the position that a fact or data is relevent enough to be included. This is automatically against our position on a neutral point of view because we then promote a fringe view. Finally, because Wikipedia reports on what other people say we are protected from libel and slander laws because we are not the originators of the thought. In this case we are and this is not acceptable. Finally, when we look at this in the context of a biography of a living person the effect is to report something unverifiable from secondary sources that can clearly be construed as being out of context and therefore unfair. We don't do that which is why the information must be excluded from the article. If you have sources to show that the data has been externally reported then by all means provide them. Thank you for prodding me to more fully explain my reasoning as this has been a useful exercise for me. Sometimes it can be very hard to externalise something that you know instinctively and this has been useful. Do you mind my asking why you have so much interest in trying to ensure that this information is contained in the article? Spartaz Humbug! 21:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time for a detailed explanation. Comments: (1) If the libel action is relevant to the entry, I don't understand how the outcome can be irrelevant. (2) Quoting a court judgment can't be libellous. (3) Neil Clark confirmed the outcome on his own blog. (4) My concern is that mentioning the libel action, but not the outcome, leaves it an open question whether Oliver Kamm is a libeller. Doesn't that also raise WP:BLP issues? Hecht (talk) 01:44, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Your last point is a valid one. The whole thing is only notable because itsa first. I don't see why the Kamn's name can't be removed either. Spartaz Humbug! 06:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

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