Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2011-02-03/National Democratic Party (Egypt)

Where is the dispute?
The National Democratic Party (Egypt) article.

Who is involved?

 * User:Toa Nidhiki05
 * User:Nerdpenguin
 * User:Keithbob

What is the dispute?
Currently, the National Democratic Party (Egypt) page is about the current electoral state of Egypt, not actually about the party itself, and is written in an essay-like fashion, almost like a lecture, rather than in the style of an encyclopedia article. It's tone and content are almost entirely devoted to criticizing Egypt's political system, while violates NPOV in my opinion. I attempted to tag the page to address these issues, and one editor removed them, insisting the page is fine in it's current state and does not violate NPOV. Another editor responded, basically seconding my opinion, and I re-added the tags, this time to the 'Electoral system in Egypt' section, and the editor again removed it, insisting on arbitration. I normally don't ask this quick, or about such a small debate but I'd like an answer on it and I doubt the guy will relent.

nerdpenguin reply
Nerdpenguin (talk) 06:48, 5 February 2011 (UTC) First, pardon the delay in writing. Busy schedule, and I didn't know what to do as part of this arbitration. SageRoss has been very kind in assisting me after I asked him, as a wikipedia ambassador, to help me resolve this issue.

As part of the wikipedia public policy initiative, graduate students (and a few undergrads, from my understanding), are solicited to improve the quality of wikipedia by editing existing articles or creating new articles. The NDP article existed before I began work on the project, but it more-or-less a stub. There were a few details from the NDP webpage and a reference from a BBC article, I think, but it was boiler-plate and party garbage, frankly. That is to say, the NDP webpage in Arabic is full of flowery talk of democracy and social equity, but these are all roundly rejected as hallow statements. The current and violent repression of journalists covering the revolution in Tahrir Square is but one example of this kind of behavior that can be found on network news.

The dispute seems to be that the article is written in an essay-like fashion. I find this to be a trite complaint. If someone would like to go through and reword the entire article, they may do that. I simply do not have the time as a graduate student, and I wrote an article that is coherent, factually accurate, well cited (with peer reviewed materials), and relevant to the subject of the NDP.

The portion of this dispute that I take exception to, though, is that the disputer, Toa Nidhiki05, would like to correct the problem of "essay-like" formatting by simply omitting sections and/or data crucial to understanding the National Democratic Party of Egypt. Without knowing that the electoral system is nondemocratic, and that the current government has used emergency law to stifle opposition, one cannot understand what motivates the National Democratic Party.

I will give you an example. If I told you that the National Democratic Party of Egypt has no real ideology and that the party operates more as a business cabal than a political organization (all true, by the way), you would wonder why that is given that there are apparent elections in Egypt. The electoral system in Egypt section thus acts to inform the reader by giving context to the arena in which the party operates.

More generally, though, is not the purpose of Wikipedia to inform a reader? There is certainly no harm in this section being included in the NDP article; it is information that offers a hardy amount of relevant, timely. and contextual data on the subject.

The sentence, "The electoral system in Egypt where the National Democratic Party operates is not a free nor a fair system," has three peer-reviewed citations, as well as the freedom house ranking score to substantiate it. This is a fact. There is no question on the issue, so I find it odd that we should be asking ourselves how to sugar-coat the statement. I purposefully included multiple citations on that sentence so as to mitigate any concerns over biases - if someone does not know Egypt is not a democracy, I can understand that this statement might be jarring, but the citations are there for a reason. Anything less than writing "Egypt is not a democracy" would be a misstatement.

As a side note, I am not "criticizing Egypt's political system," as my disputer has asserted. The numerous peer-reviewed citations substantiate that I am merely providing well-established facts to the wikipedia community. Put differently, I am calling a spade a spade. Egypt is not a democracy (hopefully things change). The reader needs to know this and understand the mechanisms the state uses to maintain this control in order to understand the National Democratic Party in Egypt.

Statement by Uninvolved User:Keithbob
I responded to a post on a noticeboard and I could see pretty quickly that there was cause for concern re: NPOV. There is also some content that may be off-topic or need to be revised so that its relevance to the subject is more direct. I'm sure Nerdpenguin is a good editor and has made valuable contributions to this article but I think he has some blind spots when it comes to NPOV as indicated by his posts here ie he doesn't see anything wrong with the article. And that's OK as long as he is willing to work with other editors and revise the article even if editor consensus is different than what he prefers. Bottom Line: If this case is accepted and identifies specific issues and content, I will participate in the discussion in those discussion as time allows.-- — Keithbob • Talk  • 17:43, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

What would you like to change about this?
The article needs to be more NPOV IMO, and also more focused on the party itself. Currently, little to nothing is stated in the article about it's ideology.

nerdpenguin reply
Nerdpenguin (talk) 06:48, 5 February 2011 (UTC) Disputer would like me to change the format of the article. I disagree that the current style is problematic. Why would writing in complete sentences, in paragraph form, be something we discourage @ wikipedia? Disputer wants me to focus more on the party itself? What does that even mean? The whole article is about the NDP, with the lead-in section contextualizing the electoral system that the party operates within. The entire article also traces the history of the NDP (before it was even the NDP) from Nasser to Mubarak.

Finally, disputer wants me to include more about the NDP ideology. In the article, I wrote:

"Since its creation in 1978, the NDP has held no less than three-quarters of the seats in the People's Assembly. The ideology of the party remains purposefully vague and open to interpretation. As a result, the President and his government can pass any legislation without appearing to compromise the Party's "official" standing.[32] For a list of official party platforms and ideology, see the external link below to the NDP's English website."

This quote only makes sense given the context of Egypt's electoral system. Given that there is no competition (i.e. egypt is not a democracy), the NDP maintains a purposefully vague ideology. At times these ideological platforms conflict - socialistic versus capitalistic. The National Democratic Party are the same members that composed the prior Arab Socialist Union and also the Liberation Rally, which I also mention in the article. I saw no reason to include a proffered list of purported ideology of the NDP, for all the reasons I wrote in the article.

How do you think we can help?
Help us decide whether this page conforms to both encyclopedic and NPOV standards.

Nerdpenguin (talk) wikipedia ambassadors, campus ambassadors, as well as the faculty at Georgetown University have already approved and commended the article. I understand that this does not give me a free pass here, but I am struck that only now after having the article posted since November, I should be flagged. That I would need to rewrite the article because of one reader's objection was frustrating, certainly. And, I would like to say, I simply do not have the time to redo this entire article, nor would I under principle as it is entirely correct and, in my opinion, of the highest academic standard. I am offering a defense of my work, and I stand by it. I am dismayed that the community would want to dismantle/redo it because of its essay-like format. It is full incredibly poignant information that is essential to understanding the current situation in Egypt. That is all, best of luck to everyone in the future.

Mediator notes
Upon Initial Review of the article and talk page, I am in agreement with the original filer, Toa Nidhiki05, that the article is in clear violation of WP:NPOV, as in the first couple of sentences it states The electoral system in Egypt where the National Democratic Party operates is not a free nor a fair system. That sentence alone is non neutral and doesn't necessarily merit encyclopaedic inclusion. Encyclopedias are factual sources. Basis and judgement on whether or not something is "fair" or not is individual opinions, which what Wikipedia is not. I've encountered mutiple other instances like this, and the article needs to be rewritten to a point that there is no discussion of NPOV or ambiguity as to whether or not something is NPOV or not.

On a further note, I am aware that this article falls under several WikiProjects, mainly (or notably) Wikiproject Public Policy. While I and the rest of the Wikipedia Community commend the efforts of these various colleagues of mines (both in the editing sense and the college student sense), no project has power over another, or can circumvent official Wikipedia policies. Only the Wikimedia Foundation is allowed to do so, and that's because they own Wikipedia, the servers (or space) that the Wiki runs on, and so they make the rules, and they are the ones allowed to whimsically disobey them at whim. I say this because I notice that nerdpenguin says that the article is within the scope and included in WikiProject:Public Policy, and appears as if the project is immune to the rules and policies of Wikipedia. I am aware that there is a Wikimedia Foundation Director for this particular WikiProject, and said director has been contacted for input, however, if the article wants to retain a NPOV, that is something that either A; If failed mediation occurs here, take it to ArbCom, or B: Something that would have to come down straight from the Wikimedia Foundation themselves, which would probably also result in Black Lock protection, and if not black lock, then at least Red Lock protection.

I'm informing the users directly involved and any other relevantly involved users of this attempt of mediation, and I hope that we can agree on a solution before this has to go to arbitration.
 * Articles in WikiProject United States Public Policy, or articles worked on by students working with the Wikipedia Ambassador Program, get no special treatment. They are subject to the same ground rules as anything else on Wikipedia.  In fact, the Wikimedia Foundation explicitly keeps out of editorial decisions.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Sage, I'm aware of this already, hence my reference to Black Locked pages, where the Foundation does get involved in articlespace content. I wanted to have that stated on the record. LTC b2412 Troops  Talk 01:45, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Discussion
My impression of the situation (and this should carry no special weight beyond my opinion as a fellow Wikipedian) is that most of the NPOV problems could be fixed pretty easily, by attributing the strong viewpoints to the people who have expressed them, rather than just asserting them. The article is based on high quality sources; most of the seemingly non-neutral claims would appear to be pretty widely accepted among scholars of the politics of the region. Nevertheless, with something like this, where scholars portray it very differently from how the ruling party does, it's important to be explicit about who is making any given claim.

As for the electoral system section, I'd say it's pretty important to the topic. Yeah, it might make sense in a separate article, but it makes just about as much sense in this one, and would require most of that content as background for this article even if a separate article existed. Again, these are just my opinions, and should carry no extra weight because of the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm just writing in my capacity as an Online Ambassador who worked some with Nerdpenguin.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * User:sross (Public Policy) I hope you don't mind if I call you Sage for the sake of discussion, I agree with most of the points you have made, I do agree that if a NPOV is unavoidable, as appears to possibly be the case with this article. I feel that I'm torn between choosing to invoke WP:IAR for the purposes of this article, or to simply re-write the article to be brought up to Wikipedia standards. If the article is re-written, I would consider it bold to simply state who is making the NPOV statements/claims. I'd also like to thank you for your prompt and continued response in this matter. As further discussion continues, I'll be able to hear from all parties I believe are involved based thru my research and those users provided to this cabal. LTC b2412 Troops  Talk 01:42, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

making changes
I am making changes in the phrasing of the article to ensure NPOV. Currently, I am focused on the Electoral System in Egypt system. Nerdpenguin (talk) 00:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

As the mediator, I would ask you refrain from editing the article until mediation has taken it's course. Editing the article now could cause mediation to worsen. I strongly ask you to revert your edits and furthermore refrain from editing until such time an agreement between all parties is reached. This applies to all involved parties. Please note, I cannot stop you or revert your edits unless they are in clear violation of Wikipedia policy, however, I would appreciate it if the parties would refrain from doing so. Thank you. LTC b2412 Troops Talk MedCab Talk? 04:47, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I would like to second ltcb2412's opinion. We should refrain from editing the page aside from reverting vandalism and the like IMO.  Toa   Nidhiki  05  22:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * He's trying to move the article toward something everyone can agree on. I don't see the point of refraining from editing, especially since the topic is so important to have as good as possible an article on right now while it's part of a major current event.  The point of mediation is to find consensus on a good way forward; figuring out how to edit the article to bring it closer to that point is the whole point of mediation, and if Nerdpenguin now agrees about some changes that would address the concerns, what's the point in holding off?--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * But we are working towards a consensus page. To get that, we need to agree on how the page will develop, and one editor making changes can change the whole thing.  Toa   Nidhiki  05  00:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Usually in mediation ground rules are set in stone, however i've been waiting for ToaNidhiki to come and leave his/her initial statement for me to review before hand. This did not seem to be a dispute in which ground rules needed to be set before I even got the story from the involved parties. I'm still waiting for Toa's input and side of the story on this before I can move further. LTC b2412 Troops Talk MedCab Talk? 02:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, I didn't realize I need to do that; I thought the content I created the page with would be enough. I'll get working on it. :)  Toa   Nidhiki  05  19:34, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree to participate in the mediation and also agree not to make any edits until consensus is reached here, first.-- — Keithbob • Talk  • 17:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)