Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-10-12 Battle of Britain

Who are the involved parties?

 * as an active member of WikiProject Aviation willing to assist in the mediation process.
 * as an active member of WikiProject Aviation willing to assist in the mediation process.
 * as an active member of WikiProject Aviation willing to assist in the mediation process.
 * as an active member of WikiProject Aviation willing to assist in the mediation process.

What's going on?
Disagreements at Battle of Britain. Further disagreements spanning across Supermarine Spitfire operational history, Aircraft of the Battle of Britain, Supermarine Spitfire, Messerschmitt Bf 109. There is some concern that article quality has suffered during the course of the dispute, leaving the articles in less-than-ideal states even during periods of calm.

What would you like to change about that?

 * Find a lasting agreement.
 * Bring article quality back up to GA or better standards.

Administrative notes
Opening case file, contacting parties, asking some initial questions. Vassyana (talk) 14:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion
Some opening questions: Let's start by focusing on identifying the disputes and laying out a rough roadmap for article improvement. Vassyana (talk) 14:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * What have been the strongest points of dispute?
 * What other disagreements should be noted?
 * What are the greatest failings of the articles in their current form?
 * What needs to be done to bring the articles up to solid levels of quality (GA or better)?

Battle of Britain

 * Focusing on the latest disagreement, a sentence on German bomber losses was added to the Aftermath section:

"In losses of aircraft and experienced aircrew, the battle was a blow from which the Luftwaffe never fully recovered. It had significantly fewer bombers at the start of Operation Barbarossa, some 929 machines, because of losses sustained over Britain."

A long discussion about these facts and figures Losses and the Luftwaffe after the Battle of Britain created a lot of heat but not much light and, after a series of revisions and counter revisions, resulted in this mess: "According to one theory, losses of aircraft and experienced aircrew in the Battle may have been a blow from which the Luftwaffe never fully recovered. Supporters of this theory argue that only 929 bombers took part in Operation Barbarossa out of 1,511 level bombers available to the Luftwaffe on 21 June 1941; this latter figure was was significantly higher (1,711) on 11 May 1940., showing a drop of 200 from May 1940 Records of bomber strengths however reveal the Luftwaffe possessed 1,380 level bombers on 29 June 1940, prior to the Battle, and 1,423 level bombers on 2 November 1940, at the end of the daylight phase of the bomber offensive, which British historians traditionally identify as the end of the Battle. Just prior to Barbarossa. In a similar manner, it is also claimed that inadequate production levels in German factories also were a factor, with an average 250 single-engined and 64 twin-engined fighter aircraft produced per month during early 1941. As a result, it is claimed, that the number of German front line aircraft was declining, a problem which would not be resolved until early 1942, with a huge effort to expand production, reaching 1,200 by March/April. Conflicting reports of front line status should be noted with totals cited of 1,107 single- and 357 twin-engined fighters on strength prior to the Battle on 29 June 1940, compared to 1,440 single-engined fighters and 188 twin-engined fighters on 21 June 1941; but the existence of the new night fighter arm - which had 263 aircraft in addition - that was created from existing single-and twin-engined fighter units, should also be noted.)"

To which I have since added Original researchSynthesis, explaining my reasons for doing so on the talk page. To anyone who has a general interest in the battle this presents a bewildering array of conflicting statistics and dates and it would seem that there is some sort of theory being "debunked". It does nothing to improve the article. If no agreement can be reached as to the meaning of the statistics being used then it would be better that they were not used at all. Minorhistorian (talk) 23:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

The mess is a result of constant revisions by Kurfurst. I have the book he is using to imply a general decline took place as a result of the Battle of France, despite the fact heavier losses of German bomber units were incurred over Britain. On top of that Murray (the source) does not say that bomber losses declined as a result of the French Campaign. This particular editor has been inserting this implication into cited sentences to prove this was the case.

I have had enough of him in particular and I hereby refuse to respond to him directly on this page as it will lead to more erroneous screeching on his part.

I agree with Minor. I can say now no compromise will forthcoming with this editor, so the entire section might just as well be deleted. Dapi89 (talk) 15:57, 13 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd say that the difference above is a perfect illustration of what's been happening with these articles in general: concise statements that would be regarded as uncontroversial by mainstream published sources (in English anyway) are becoming morasses of conflicting information in an attempt to "debunk" these ideas through the synthesis of a variety of different sources to come up with "alternative" explanations. This is exactly why we have the NOR policy.
 * A more useful way forward would be to compare how published secondary sources summarise the aftermath of the battle; if these sources differ significantly from Bergström's summary, then the different views need to be weighed up and presented accordingly. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:49, 14 October 2008 (UTC)


 * (He)uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than illumination. comes to mind; by quoting figures from different sources almost any conclusion can be reached. I agree with Rlandmann, in this case I feel a neutral editor who has access to the cited books would be very helpful.Minorhistorian (talk) 00:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, taking a step back from that - what I'd propose is to check what other general reference works say - specifically about the aftermath of the battle. If we find broad agreement among general reference works, then nit-picking sources is simply un-necessary. For example - what does Britannica say on the subject? --Rlandmann (talk) 00:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC) PS - BTW, love that simile - where's it from?


 * Request. Could people provide a few brief quotes providing an overview of the information? Please place them at /quotes. Thanks! Vassyana (talk) 16:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If I could draw everyone's attention to one particular source: Murray's Strategy for Defeat. This is the book that this latest trouble is about. This was intitially added by me, for the simple reason of citing the fact that German bomber strength fell from 200 after 1940 - a summary of one sentence. He actually says this in black and white. Among the general histories the consensus is the same. But this was unacceptable to one particular editor, who has now embarked on a campaign of OR and POV to prove, by selective quoting, that the mighty Luftwaffe shrugged the heavy casualties off. Minor and Rland's comments selective sourcing to support particular opinions is right. Dapi89 (talk) 20:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This is getting us nowhere - Kurfürst has been asked to participate in this process and has agreed to do so: he continues to edit this already tangled mess, however, without contributing to any useful discussion. How is it possible to make any progress while this is happening? I would suggest that this entire paragraph be removed by a neutral editor until some agreement is reached. Minorhistorian (talk) 21:36, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Offering a different source: In the summer of 1940, the RAF dealt the Luftwaffe body-blow from which, as Theo Osterkamp ruefully observed, it never recovered, and it heralded a feckless decline. Despite its victories in Russia in 1941, it was never again to as strong, relative to its enemies, as it was in July 1940 by Stephen Bungay The Most Dangerous Enemy pp 372-373 2000. Dapi89 (talk) 21:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I have scanned the pages from Murrays Strategy for Defeat but Wikipedia will not let me upload them. I'll keep trying. Dapi89 (talk) 21:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. Added to quotes as directed. Dapi89 (talk) 22:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding the Battle of Britain article, the case is simply. Dapi89 was advancing long ago his own pet theory about the Luftwaffe being mortally struck in the Battle of Britain, originally expressed here. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Britain&diff=192117067&oldid=192115609 . I have accidentaly came accross this nonsense, and deleted this because of the obvious nonsense of it. Ever since Dapi89 is on the war path, seeking confrontation whereever he could, keeping to his pet theory fanatically which resulted in flooding the article with a number of falsified quotes and statistics, falsely attributed respected authors on the subject, or dismissal of authors like Murray who's figures made the claims of Dapi89 look ridiculus. It should be noted that the claims about the LW's decline of strenght is that of Dapi89's, and fall under No Original Research rule. It is noteworthy that he has been misquoting and manipulating Bergström, who do not shares his view, as he later did manipulate the work of Murray and Irving, as can be found on Bzuk's talk page. In the case of Irving in particular, to advance his own theory, he has been making up a qoute, attributed to Erhard Milch about lack of bomber production; in truth the referred sentence in Irving's work was noting single and twin engined fighter production, and not in the context Dapi89 was using it either etc. etc. If anyone takes a look on his talk page, and look at his exchange with Rlandmann about his repeated and worsening personal attacks, I am afraid everyone will realize that no realistic compromise or agreement is possible with Dapi89, he simply does not understand the meaning of these terms. He sees this as a personal crusade. I would also like to note that these articles proved stable and there was agreement amongst most editors about their content, until the unfortunate reversal of Dapi89 vow to never lower himself again to return to wikipedia; when he changed his mind, his first action was to take up his old blood feuds.
 * Earlier in this thread Minorhistorian thread he vowed not to engage in discussion with me, and now he drops crocodile tears about the "impossibility to make any progress". I bow to that level of hypocrisy. This is very much like the arguments about deleting paragraphs that accidentally happen to be the same he was pushing for as an editor to be deleted with any possible excuse - now under the the 'neutral editor'.


 * As to the solution of the problem, I think since we have decided to start with the problems with the BoB page, we should first examine the validity of Dapi89 comments in this edit. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Britain&diff=192117067&oldid=192115609 Dapi89 is pushing his claim as that of Bergström. Therefore I call up Dapi89 to provide a direct quote from Bergström from the noted reference work and page number. I did half a dozen time earlier for the same, and in each case he refused to do so. I believe that starting the case from the root will reveal a good deal about the root of the problem. Kurfürst (talk) 22:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Dapi89, could you please provide the quote (typed out or scanned) from Bergström that says that "the battle was a blow from which the Luftwaffe never fully recovered"? Thanks for the Bungay quote too - it will be very useful. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Murray's Strategy for defeat can be downloaded from here legally and freely. :http://aupress.au.af.mil/catalog/books/Murray_B12.htm
 * I would like to draw the attention to true facts as opposed to the accuasations of Dapi89 about this book. Dapi89 was actively misrepresenting Murray, referencing him too as his source for his own pet theory of crippling losses over Britain. See here, in the same fashion he misused Bergström earlier. In a bizarre turn of events, after I provided the (referenced) LW strenght figures from Murray, Dapi89 removed them alltogether, and made a bizarre attempt to disprove Murray, removing cited information and adding his own nonsense rubbish about Murray. Later he tried to dismiss Murray with a set of strawmen arguements, arguing a statement Murray never made. He also added a forged quote from the 'Erhard Milch diaries' - in reality, David Irving's book on the Luftwaffe which and Milch's biography - about the lack of German fighter and bomber production, falsely attributing his own claims (German fronline strenght declining, production levels were inaduquate) to Milch at the same time(!!!). In reality, the book by Irving did not mention bomber production at all on the referenced page; the manipulations by Dapi89 were exposed to an impartial editor who later made proper changes to the article. Just to put a few more of Dapi89s statements into context:


 * "Murray's Strategy for Defeat.... This was intitially added by me, for the simple reason of citing the fact that German bomber strength fell from 200 after 1940 - a summary of one sentence. He actually says this in black and white."


 * We have already seen how hard Dapi89 was trying to dismiss Murray who's figures disproved him, deleting cites from him, falsely attributing his own thoughts to Murray, strawman arguements etc. As for Murray stating 'black and white' that bomber figures fell 200, a table in his book table actually shows a comparison between at the start of the French campaign (11 May 1940) and the start of Barbarossa (21 June 1941) on page 80. Dapi89 is misrepresenting this 11 May figure as a 'May/June' figure in an attempt to attribute the French campain losses to the RAF... For the sake of factuality, Murray lists the following frontline strenghts for LW level bombers:
 * 1,711 on 11 May 1940. - at the start of the Battle France
 * 1,380 on 29 June 1940 - at the end of the Battle France, just before the Battle of Britain
 * 1,420 on 28 September 1940
 * 1,423 level bombers on 2 November 1940,
 * 1,511 on 21 June 1941.


 * It is quite obvious that figures provided by Murray on the whole, without the selective quoting Dapi89 is doing to them, quite throughly dispove Dapi's theory. He is doing the selective, partisan and fanatical behaviour he accusses others with : "But this was unacceptable to one particular editor, who has now embarked on a campaign of OR and POV to prove, by selective quoting, that the mighty Luftwaffe shrugged the heavy casualties off." He is describing his own actions.


 * Also "Among the general histories the consensus is the same." - if that is so, why were you not quoting these allegedly existing legion of authors instead of being busy of falsifying, manipulating, cherry picking, deleting and dismissing the works of respected authors on the subject, like Murray, or put your own pet theories into their mouth, like in the case of Bergström...? Kurfürst (talk) 23:45, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem here is that all this analysis is largely irrelevant to the question at hand. Instead of providing screeds of data which need to be synthesised, what we need is a succinct statement from some secondary source stating that the BoB was nothing more than a minor setback for the Luftwaffe (or whatever it is that you're actually arguing). Is there some source that you can point to that provides a concise statement of the outcome of the battle that you would agree with? --Rlandmann (talk) 23:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you misunderstand my point. To clarify, my point is that - and which has been demonstrated with the edit history above - Dapi89 was adding a claim in which he argued that the great and almighty RAF struck such a blow to the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940 that it never recovered from it. This is his own idea, and as such it is in violation of Wikipedia principle 'No original researh/thoughts'. Later, to give credibility to his own theory, he referenced it to Bergström and later Murray, neither of which however express this view. Therefore it also violates Wikipedia's principle of verifiability. He then also attempted to remove any and all referenced information from Murray, and tried to discredit Murray with strawman arguements, which violates Wikipedia's principle of NPOV. Then he kept arguing, spamming the article with falsified and/or unrelated statistics from a number of authors, therefore violating Wikipedia:DBF, Wikipedia:Verifiability and Synthesis. Later on, after a series of personal attack by Dapi89 on my person, he has been repeatadly blocked as a result, and he threatened to leave editing wikipedia. This was so for the duration of a month, during which, in Dapi89's fortunate absance, consensus was reached with the other editors, and the 'problematic' articles were in a stable form. Unfortunately Dapi89 did not kept true to his word, and returned to editing, or rather, to edit warring those same questions in the same articles, with an outspoken refusal of any discussion on the articles. The current sad detoriation of the situation is a result of this.
 * Since all this, proved with examples above, severely violates many of Wikipedia's standards, and also the POV pushing of Dapi89's theory being completely false to start with, I strongly object the inclusion of Dapi89's own theory into the article. This is my actual argument, rather than the strawmen argument Dapi89 is trying to put into my mouth.
 * Regarding the question of the articles (wheter the LW strenght declined as a result of BoB, or not), this has been disproved by Murray who's records of LW strenght returns conclusively prove that there has been no decrease at all in the LW's bomber strenght, to the contrary, a slight increase of available bombers occured during the Battle of Britain. To recap:


 * 1,711 on 11 May 1940. - at the start of the Battle France
 * 1,380 on 29 June 1940 - at the end of the Battle France, just before the Battle of Britain
 * 1,420 on 28 September 1940
 * 1,423 level bombers on 2 November 1940,
 * 1,511 on 21 June 1941.


 * Quoting the figures put forward by Murray is not Synthesis : Synthesis occurs when an editor puts together multiple sources to reach a conclusion. Murray is one single source, and not multiple, and therefore not a sythesis or original research. Quite the contrary, it's good editing: ' Summarizing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis; it is good editing. ' Dapi89's position, which puzzled together (and to add, in questionable way!) pieces from Irving, Bergström, de Zeng etc, especially as none of them express the POV Dapi89 is attributing to them, is Synthesis on the other hand. To quote wikipedia: If the sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion, or if the sources cited are not directly related to the subject of the article, then the editor is engaged in original research.


 * To suggest a viable and practical compromise, if there's actual disagreement between reliable authors and sources about the effects of the Battle of Britain on the Luftwaffe, then, to satisfy Wikipedia's requirement of NPOV, we should briefly summerize the arguements of each author, and list them accordingly, so that the reader can verify if there's a valid arguement behind them, and decide which arguement has the greatest merit. IMHO, Murray's bare and pure listing of the Luftwaffe's slowly increasing bomber strenght from the start of the Battle of Britain is a very convincing argument that the strength was not considerably effected. At the same time, synthesis of unrelated and largely irrelevelant information - how many bombers participated in Barbarossa, how many fighters were produced in 1942 can be removed if the respective authors do not explicitely relate that to the BoB. I think this would be an acceptable compromise, provided we do not deal with fanatics here, refusing any compromise, which sadly appears to be the case. Both Minorhistorian and Dapi89 expressed their lack of interest in any kind of discussion on this and other pages. Kurfürst (talk) 11:53, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

"Earlier in this thread Minorhistorian thread he vowed not to engage in discussion with me, and now he drops crocodile tears about the "impossibility to make any progress". I bow to that level of hypocrisy"


 * This is a wild, erroneous and offensive accusation for which I expect an apology. This is how Kurfürst repeatedly chooses to "discuss" issues and is one reason why he is held in low regard as an editor. Minorhistorian (talk) 00:31, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I stopped by a bookshop today to see if I could locate any sources that would be useful to this discussion. Fighter Boys: Saving Britain 1940 by Patrick Bishop has a section starting at the bottom of p 404 and continuing over the next page that supports the idea that the BoB was a setback from which the Luftwaffe never recovered. The Time Life book The Battle of Britain by Leonard Mosley also had some useful material, including a section dealing with German denials that there had even been a "Battle of Britain" let alone that Germany lost it. If anyone owns copies or has access to these works, they may be useful to this discussion. --Rlandmann (talk) 04:53, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Touching base
What's the current status of the disagreement? Are there further source quotes available to add to Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-10-12 Battle of Britain/quotes? Vassyana (talk) 02:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)