Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2011-01-04/1953 Iranian coup d'état

Where is the dispute?

 * 1953 Iranian coup d'état
 * Abadan Crisis timeline
 * Mohammad Mosaddegh
 * Hossein Fatemi

Who is involved?

 * User:Binksternet
 * User:Kurdo777

What is the dispute?
I think Darioush Bayandor, a former Iranian diplomat and a former UN humanitarian relief leader, is a reliable source, through a single book he published. User:Kurdo777 thinks he is a fringe character, an Iranian royalist who is trying to skew the historical record.

Bayandor wrote a book published in June 2010 on the Palgrave Macmillan imprint, a very respected scholarly publishing house. The book was peer-reviewed by giants in the field of Iranian history, including Mark Gasiorowski and Ervand Abrahamian, as can be seen here at the book's Amazon sales page, under Acknowledgments beginning on page xii. The book, Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited, contains very good analysis and a re-evaluation of facts related to the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, in my opinion. According to User:The Four Deuces, the Palgrave imprint ensures that the facts are accurate and complete, with a caution about giving the author's opinion undue weight.

Kurdo777 considers the book WP:FRINGE, and has removed it as a reference in articles where I have added it, including here, here and here.

I first came to the Iran 1953 coup article when SnowFire asked for help at the Content noticeboard on June 21, 2009. I worked on the lead section with warring parties but no consensus was reached over the next eight months. Kurdo777 identified me after a very short time as partisan, as siding with those who did not consider his version the best version. This impression appears to have colored every subsequent interaction. Kurdo777 consistently skews sources in favor of the current Iranian political viewpoint and with a sympathetic slant regarding Mohammad Mosaddegh. He continually diminishes or ignores evidence to the contrary coming from the same sources he uses to promote Mosaddegh. He refuses evidence from former Iranian diplomat Ardeshir Zahedi, UC Berkeley Iran scholar George Lenczowski and former Iranian diplomat Gholam Reza Afkhami, as these respected men offer a different interpretation than Kurdo777's preferred one. It was only with the greatest of effort that a single attribution to Lenczowski was worked into the 1953 Iranian coup d'état article by involved editors.

I filed a request for mediation regarding the Iran coup article on March 11, 2010, but Kurdo777 did not agree to mediation and the request was rejected. Both Kurdo777 and I were blocked in April 2010 for edit warring on this article, and since then I have submitted some Requests for Comment to help sort out the problems on the page. During one recent RfC, Kurdo777 privately solicited a re-evaluation of one of the comments, which Fifelfoo, the targeted user, considered rude, canvassing, a civility issue.

I brought up the issue of Darioush Bayandor's new book at Fringe theories/Noticeboard, and the result there was that Kurdo777 and I went back and forth about Bayandor, and other editors largely stayed away, except that User:Khoikhoi expressed the opinion that Bayandor was fringe, and User:Rocksanddirt expressed the opinion that the book was not fringe but was a minority viewpoint. There was no consensus reached on that noticeboard, but Kurdo777 understood it to be a validation of his position, writing in one edit summary "removing all citations to Bayandor, established by community consensus as a partisan fringe source on 1953 coup -related pages". This is exactly the reaction I wish to have changed in mediation. Binksternet (talk) 01:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Related discussions:
 * Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état
 * Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état/Archive 12
 * Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état/Archive 12
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive657
 * Talk:Abadan Crisis timeline
 * User talk:Xavexgoem

What would you like to change about this?
I would like to have Kurdo777 acknowledge that the book's facts are 100% worthwhile as it is from the respected Palgrave imprint, and that Bayandor's own analysis of the facts is a worthy minority viewpoint, subject to limited introduction in articles where Bayandor expresses a non-mainstream viewpoint, per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. I would like Kurdo777 to stop deleting the book on sight, stop considering it fringe. I would like to be able to use the book as a reference for articles upon which it touches, including the ones listed above.

In all of my interactions on Wikipedia, I have strived to learn how best to work within the guidelines. I have been blocked five times for edit warring, and believe me, I am done with that tiresome load. I have seen that edit warring does not work to accomplish what I wish to accomplish, and it does not make the encyclopedia better. What I want to do with this mediation request is to address the chronic problems that Kurdo777 and I have been having with each other, so that the encyclopedia (and its readership) can benefit, so that Iran topic articles can be improved, and so that edit warring can cease. Binksternet (talk) 01:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

How do you think we can help?
Kurdo777 is a valuable contributor to Wikipedia. I am a valuable contributor, too, with more than 53,000 live edits, 2 FA stars and 20 Good Articles under my belt, but Kurdo777 and I keep clashing, with lots of friction and very little benefit to the encyclopedia. Kurdo777 appears to consider my input harmful to Iran topics, a conclusion that I cannot understand. Recently, I have promised to hold to the practice of 1RR on Iran-related pages, with simultaneous talk page entries discussing my reversions. I would like to see a similar agreement from Kurdo777. I would like Kurdo777 to allow me to add reliably sourced text to Iran articles, especially from Iranians who hold a non-mainstream viewpoint, holding at all times to a neutral point of view, without undue weight given to minority viewpoints. Binksternet (talk) 01:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)