Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ward Churchill

View of Neutral Initiator
This is a contreversial figure, so naturally there is going to be some rancor over editing, but it appears that the contreversy has gone away from the topic and towards the individual users editing the article, primarily between Cberlet/Lulu Of the Lotus-Eaters and Keetoowah.

The article itself is now under protection, however recently portions of comments have been removed and fairly unilateral demands have been made on the talk page.

Hopefully this forum can provide a version which all sides can be content with, although I ask that there be some compromise if needed and talk about the content of the article rather than any editors involved with that content (there are other arenas for that if needed). It's better to have a stable article without a bit of what you want than a never ending edit war. karmafist 20:43, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

It is very clear that karmafist is NOT a Neutral Initiator. The following comments of verify that: If you don't want to participate in the rfc above, that's fine. But hear this. I've been very patient up this point, hoping you had learned something from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Keetoowah and would try to act constructively towards editing that article. That period is over. Any more WP:CIVIL or WP:NPA vios at the Ward Churchill talk page from here on in, and I will block you 3 days retroactively for every vio since the ruling at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Keetoowah. karmafist 04:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Keetoowah"

'''Also, I have NOT personally attacked anyone. Lulu has personally attacked me by spreading lies about me. This is just another example of Star Chamber mentality of Wikipedia editors who don't get their way.'''

'''Lulu lied when he stated that I was making up quotes of the Tribe. That is a lie.'''


 * Ok then, I counted 20(others can check if they like, or let me know about more) personal attacks towards users with views other than your own since the arbcom case against Keetoowah closed, 3 times 20 equals 60 days or two months. Hopefully by then Keetoowah will be able to interact in a civil manner with other editors. 08:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

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View of Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
I came across this page a day or two ago, more or less by chance, though I am familiar with both the imbroglio and Churchill himself, starting from decades before the general media attention. In the interest of disclosure: I attended the University of Colorado in the 1980s, and even passingly met Churchill around that time. Moreover, Churchill's academic work intersects somewhat with my own doctoral area of political philosophy, so I know his works also (at least somewhat). Actually, an additional autobiographical connection of sorts: my mom was one of the authors of Colorado's first-in-the-nation "Indian Arts and Crafts Act" (and a little bit of the Churchill Affair surrounds his artworks).

I wished to cleanup this article in several respects, once I read through it:


 * 1) Reduce the extremes of anti-Churchill POV mongering.  While most of the various accusations are indeed at least given citational support, it was quite unbalanced to simply repeat every bad thing anyone ever wrote about Churchill (even if they are in quotation marks) without any context, counterbalance, or perspective.
 * 2) Reduce the somewhat undue slant towards the 2005 imbroglio, or at least explain its national attention.  Churchill is a well-known academic, and was well-known (in certain circles) many years before 2005.  An entire article on reactions to one essay (out of hundreds or thousands he's written) isn't really a balanced bio of Churchill himself.
 * 3) Most important by far: Get the article to follow a more readable narrative flow.  As it was, it just looked like a random collection of quotes thrown at an article.  Even if each one is verifiable (which wasn't quite true anyway), an article isn't randomly ordered true facts.  To that goal, I rearranged some paragraphs, changed some section headings, added a short section to give context of the political controversy, and improved some wording and transitions.

My changes are certainly not the be-all and end-all of improving the article. But I think they were a good start. Unfortunately, as soon as I made them, Keetoowah rolled back a dozen or two edits I made (a bunch of edits in a row were all mine; I tend to save relatively often), then inserted a bunch of additional anti-Churchill ranting.

I had not initially noticed it, but after Keetoowah's rather destructive reversion, I looked through the edit history and archived talk pages, and found that the same user had a lot of history of nasty comments and POV revisions. So I think Karmafist's protection was well decided, even though doing such was not my inclination in contacting him. These past problems were largely around the "ethnicity" section of the article, but extended as well to many other parts of it. I think, basically, Keetoowah has a big chip on his shoulder, and a prior animosity towards the subject of the article, which is not productive to working on this article.

Supplement:: Karmafist thinks I may have deleted some text from the article talk page. Such was not my intention, and I do not see where that happened in a quick review. I apologize if I accidentally removed something while rearranging comments on the page for flow. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:27, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

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View of Cberlet
Excuse me, but I have not edited the page since July. All I did was post one comment on the discussion page. Here it is:

Unfair & arbitray deletions by Keetoowah

Keetoowah, you are simply deleting material with which you disagree. Your bias on this page is transparent. Please take a moment to reflect on you actions, and the spirit in which Wikipedia is supposed to be edited. How does the reader benefit from you enforcing a particular POV on this page?--Cberlet 02:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

After that, Keetoowah turned my user page into a battleground. I did not take part in any edit war. All I was suggesting to Keetoowah was that he was being unfair and arbitrary in the way he was stomping on edits with which he disagreed. He has been doing this for many months on the page. He responded with his usual aggressively nasty language and tone.

I am suggesting that Keetoowah needs to be less nasty and less of a bully. I would hope others would agree.--Cberlet 21:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Cberlet, I apologize if you're not/or no longer a party, you can move this down to "outside views" if you'd like. karmafist 21:58, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * No, it's not a big deal, I will stay put. On the surface I looked like a participant given the way the turmoil developed on the page. I am a proponent of allowing the Wiki collective process to work its way out, so I am happy to remain here in this section. Thanks for asking.--Cberlet 22:04, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

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Outside view of Elliskev
It looks like the only real point of contention is the ethnicity question. Why not name the section something like Ethnicity Controversy and have two subsections: one for each side of the issue?

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 * 1) This suggestion looks good to me.  I didn't think the bare word "ethnicity" was a good section heading, but Elliskev's idea looks fine.  There seem to be three concepts in the section; they had been randomly jumbled together, but I reorganized paragraphs so they occur sequentially: (1) Churchill has made statements about his Indian ancestry/tribal membership which are partially supported and partially disputed by the United Keetoowah Band; (2) Some newspapers published geneologies that failed to prove this ancestry (nor really disprove it, which is not possible); (3) Some media figures have speculated that Churchill gained some advantage from ethnic membership claims.  So maybe three (very short) subsections, not sure what compact titles. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

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''This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.''

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