Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-09-06 Ibn al-Khattab, HanzoHattori and sources

Mediation Case: 2006-09-06 Ibn al-Khattab, HanzoHattori and sources
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Request Information

 * Request made by: Moonshiner 02:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Where is the issue taking place?
 * Ibn al-Khattab


 * Who's involved?
 * Moonshiner, User:HanzoHattori


 * What's going on?
 * On July 27th, I added a reference to Ibn al-Khattab to an article in the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center Military Review about a particular event mentioned in the article (the "Ulus-Kert pocket"). On the 8th of August, User:HanzoHattori edited Ibn al-Khattab to remove a particular figure cited from the paper ("1,600 to 2,500 insurgents") followed by his rationale on the talk page, which made no reference to any other (verifiable or not) sources. On the August of 11th, I explained that the numeric figure came from a verifiable source, and that per the Wikipedia policy, all facts had to come from such, whereupon User:HanzoHattori edited the article to remove the reference to the Combined Arms Center paper entirely with the edit rationale "nah, just skip a fairytale (see: talk). based on "Red Star, the official newspaper of Ministry of Defense", "conflicting reports" - lol" and made an edit to the article's talk page that begins with the sentence "Russian official numbers are all lies, everybody know this" and provides a reference to an unrelated issue. I did not see this as I had not had time to edit Wikipedia as much in the several weeks following August 8th. On September 5th, I logged into Wikipedia and noticed User:HanzoHattori's contribution to Ibn al-Khattab's talk page. I replied, again asking for User:HanzoHattori's sources and their verifiability as a rationale for removing the Military Review article as a source. I then restored the reference to the Military Review article itself. Less than two hours later, User:HanzoHattori rolled back my edit with the rationale "no place for a fairy tales", and posted another comment to the talk page that again failed to invalidate the "1,600 to 2,500" figure and the Military Review paper.


 * ''What would you like to change about that?
 * Ideally, I would like User:HanzoHattori to follow Wikipedia guidelines on sourcing and either provide a verifiable source that directly contradicts the "1,600 to 2,500" figure, or to stop removing the figure and the reference to the paper it came from just because he disagrees with it.


 * Would you prefer we work discreetly? If so, how can we reach you?
 * I would rather this issue be handled publicly.

Mediator response
Case seems to have been abandoned by Moonshiner. Case can be reopened again in the future if necessary. Until then, this case will be closed. Jsw663 18:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Compromise offers
This section is for listing and discussing compromise offers.