Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-03-04 Possible bad faith in use of citations involved in the move of Juozas Lukoševičius to Józef Łukaszewicz

First of all, there was not bad faith involved in the move and - contrary to what Novickas suggests - it was not Piotrus to move the article, but yours truly. The move was done in good faith and in accordance with WP:NAME. Apparently some WP:NCON problems arose, but these are handled on the talk page and I don't see a need to mediate. In particular I asked for any source that would back up the claim that Łukaszewicz (who himself stated he's a Pole) is also considered Lithuanian by Lithuanians (not considered himself a Lithuanian, mind you, which could be quite hard to source). However, the plea for sources has not been satisfied as of now.

However, the issue is not of naming but of mentioning the Lithuanized form of his name (which is mentioned even without the sources requested, solely not to raise too much bad blood in the Lithuanian wikicommunity that seems to be a tad touchy when it comes to Polish-Lithuanian relations and people born in Vilna in the times when the town was not yet a part of Lithuania) and the arguments against the move were not raised so far. When counting simple google clicks Łukaszewicz beats Lukosevicius 23:1 (1310:57), with a large number of links in both searches being irrelevant (i.e. other people named the same way or simple errors). Note that the search excludes all wikipedia sites and its mirrors, so that part of Novickas' reasoning is also false. Same goes for Google books where Łukaszewicz beats Lukosevicius 10:1 (-). We have Łukaszewicz's own memoirs in which he explicitly states he was a Pole and uses his Polish and Russian names interchangeably (Lithuanized form is not mentioned even once). We have lots and lots of publications calling him a Pole and so far not a single one calling him a Lithuanian (even though we asked for such).

Having said that, I believe this matter is pretty much a lost case for Novickas. I believe he/she realized that and decided to take the matter to some external mediation instead of providing sources and taking part in a normal naming dispute. Wrong way to go if you asked me. Not that I had anything against such wikilawyering... Anyway, I find it strange that Novickas decided to spread his/hers accusations of bad faith here and there without even questioning the move at the respective talk page.  // Halibutt 19:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)