Saturday, November 23, 2024

Slightly Non-Wikipedia: The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

One on those all-American traditions, The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade started in 1924, was first televised in 1939 (by experimental NBC TV station W2XBS, now WNBC), and has been a national TV event since 1953, as a salve to the national psyche after the draw of the Korean War. Thanks to VCRs, some of these years were taped, and you get to see the glory first hand.



Above: The 1976 edition of the parade, hosted by "Laughing Boy" Ed McMahon and "Lt. Colonel Henry Blake" McLean Stevenson. NBC.

Below:The 1972 (!) edition, or at least a fragment of it. Chockablock with period ads. Recorded by a viewer in Los Angeles. Features material from ABC and NBC.



Below: The 1979 NBC edition of the parade. More of a highlights reel.



Below: Is it doubleplusungood* to skip the 1984 edition of the Macy's parade? 




There are endless years worth of this show, if you know where to find them on YouTube. CBS has been kicked off the Macy's train (or did they exile themselves?) this year, so you might get a kick out of looking for the CBS version of parade coverage from years past.



_____

*For those that missed English Literature: The Principles of Newspeak

Archive dot org, the anti-memory hole.


Friday, November 15, 2024

Quasi-Wikipedia: InfoWars Goes Down In Flames....or does it?

 


Above: The InfoWars site yesterday (11-14-24).

Below: The same site today (11-15-24).


What the flying fuck is going ON?

Link to above.

"On July 30, 2022, amidst a $150 million lawsuit brought against Jones and InfoWars by Sandy Hook families, Free Speech Systems filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.[58] On September 24, 2024, a Houston bankruptcy judge ordered the liquidation of InfoWars and Free Speech Systems at two auctions to be held later that year.[59][60] On November 14, it was announced that Global Tetrahedron—publishers of the news satire publication The Onion—had acquired the assets of InfoWars, with plans to temporarily shut it down and relaunch it in 2025 as a satirical website; however, the original website was restored by Jones the next day after his lawyers alleged irregularities in the auction, and the bankruptcy judge put the sale on hold." -- InfoWars Wikpedia article

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Non-Wikipedia: List of Reservations About Public Library Bookstores

 Before you donate, read this list.

1. Library Bookstores (aka the "Friends of [insert library name here]") are run by volunteers, who are mostly retired women, and so they will save the books they like.

2. Which is why if you have technical books (software guides, radio technology, auto repair, electronics, old science textbooks, etc.) DO NOT DONATE them unless it is a science-oriented library bookstore. Try to sell them on Craigslist or eBay, even if for pennies on the dollar because.....

3. Anything the Chief Volunteer does not like will get tossed either into a garbage dumpster or a recycling dumpster, depending on the site. I have personally seen entire years of binders of Trains magazine chucked in a dumpster.

4. The Chief Volunteer will say "Those books won't sell" but it's just fear of anything new to them. The staff will conduct purges of books that haven't sold in months, even though many of the new books are just different editions of the books they threw away.

5. The entire project is a weird attempt to punish books for not being popular enough with the sort of audience that goes to bi-monthly Bookstore sales, i.e., other geezers.

6. Some "Friends of" Bookstores have tiny staffs and are open to the public five days a week, others are reliant on the bi-monthly weekend sales, the Main Branch of any library will have the best store, which is run every day of the week. However, the junking of books still takes place. Some of the books wind up donated to prisons (as with the lesser Bookstores), but a lot of it winds up in a dumpster.

7. Did I mention that the staffs can be completely insane? Some places are run by people who have been there for years, and there are zillions of hidden rules. Certain staffs have gotten it down to the point where they are nearly non-verbal, and woe betide the outsider.



Above: A sample "Friends of" Bookstore in San Diego that works out of the basement of a public library near the corner of Park Ave. and El Cajon. Blvd.
Below: Perpendicular photo to the photo above. This is the entire store, minus a bathroom out of shot.



Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Non-Wikipedia: The J.D. Vance Dossier, Reddit's "Great Ape Niggy" Exposed by the Anonymous Comrades Collective

At the cost of his X/Twitter account, journalist Ken Klippenstein published the dossier the Trump campaign compiled on James David Vance. You can download it here, but the version available as of this writing has been edited:




Above: The original image on page 57.

Below: The image as it appears now, edited with black rectangles.


There is a possibility this site would be vaporized if I published the full dossier as it was originally released, even though all of this information is available for perusal by anybody with the skills to find it, so the image of the house is the only one from the original version I am willing to show at this time.


Above: A section of the table of contents pointing out just how critical Vance was of Trump dating back to the 2016 campaign.

Below: Some of the background on Vance's feelings about Trump.



From what we have read, it's utterly bizarre that Trump picked JD Vance at all; some have blamed the influence of Donald Trump, Jr., but there is the possibility that Vance swore total allegiance to Trump and he's been desperately trying to keep his part in the "bargain."


The Worst Guy on Reddit, "Great Ape Niggy"

He's bald, lives in the South, and was at the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march/riot. Great Ape Niggy (aka GreatApeNifty, a series of George Anthony accounts on Facebook, Just Anthony on Twitter/X, Real Sven Laden, and others) turns out to be a Tennessee family man named Micheal (note the spelling) Anthony George. George ran r/Coontown alongside 90-plus other subreddits on Reddit, all of them either neo-Nazi or derogatory (he ran r/AltRight, r/RaceWarPreppers, r/WhiteBeauty and a bunch of other subreddits that were just slurs.) All of them have been banned, and Micheal Anthony George was banned repeatedly from Reddit, Twitter/X, Facebook and other social media platforms, because the man is only on them to spread neo-Nazi propaganda.


Above: What the Great Ape Niggy avatar looked like on many of the sites George used. Notice it's a cartoon SS soldier combined with an odd variation "scheming Jew" cartoon created by A.Wyatt Mann (a Nick Bougas pen-name), and that he's gassing a dog. The image has been modified twice.

Below: What Micheal Anthony George actually looks like (center). This is a cropped photo of George at the tiki torch procession at the University of Virginia the night before the disastrous "Unite the Right" rally the next day in 2017.



The Anonymous Comrades Collective article treats what George did on Reddit as sort of a sideshow to his non-Reddit activites running a messageboard for the Tennessee Nationalists group and being involved with the now-failed National Justice Party, from whose data his name was found. He will show up to "protest" drag brunches in Cooksville, TN. wearing a bandana over half his face, swastika flags next to him. He hasn't killed anybody in Nazi street fighting, but the ACC found that he was a wifebeater.

A few words on the National Justice Party; this was going to be an umbrella under which a number of very well known neo-Nazis were going to congregate when it started in 2020. It was an offshoot of The Right Stuff podcast, bought a house for a headquarters in Dayton, Ohio that they later had to sell, operated as a for-profit, and imploded in acrimony. As we are now dealing with a future second Trump presidency (!!), maybe the NJP's members will find space in the regular GOP. Stay tuned.



Friday, September 27, 2024

More Wikipedia IRC Garbage: September 23, 2009

This blog is not dead.


Session Start: Wed Sep 23 13:18:10 2009

Session Ident: #Wikipedia
[13:18] * Now talking in #Wikipedia
[13:18] * Topic is 'Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Status: Up | No public logging | Guidelines: http://bit.ly/OiAr | For channel operator assistance, join #wikimedia-ops or, in emergencies, type !op followed by your request'
[13:18] * Cream|GONE is now known as Giggity
[13:18] * Giggity is now known as Cream
[13:19] * Cream is now known as Quagmire
[13:19] <unforgettableid> Quagmire:  bored?
[13:19] * iDangerMouse (n=chatzill@116.71.48.75) Quit (Read error: 54 (Connection reset by peer))
[13:19] <Quagmire> unforgettableid, nah
[13:20] <Quagmire> it's the bnc lol
[13:20] <unforgettableid> Quagmire:  what do you mean?
[13:20] * iDangerMouse (n=chatzill@116.71.33.17) has joined #wikipedia
[13:20] * Quagmire is on a psybnc
[13:22] * Yojojo (n=Yojojo@unaffiliated/barkingfish) has joined #wikipedia
[13:22] <unforgettableid> Quagmire:  why does it make you change your nick?
[13:22] <Quagmire> unforgettableid, because the config file is stupid.
[13:24] * closedmouth (n=closedmo@wikipedia/closedmouth) Quit ("I have important business to attend to.")
[13:26] * unforgettableid (n=ask_me@CPE00134609fbfb-CM0013718690da.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com) Quit ("Leaving")
[13:27] * CorpX (n=tommy@unaffiliated/corpx) has joined #wikipedia
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[13:37] * Cyrius (n=t-bone@cpe-72-191-117-195.gt.res.rr.com) Quit ("Where are we going, and what's with the handbasket?")
[13:38] * MidnightRambler (n=LoneWolf@wikia/ODST-Joshie) has joined #wikipedia
[13:43] <iDangerMouse> later
[13:44] * iDangerMouse (n=chatzill@116.71.33.17) Quit (Remote closed the connection)
[13:46] * mazer_ (n=mazer@64-71-7-198.static.wiline.com) has joined #wikipedia
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Session Close: Wed Sep 23 14:01:02 2009

Session Start: Wed Sep 23 16:46:09 2009
Session Ident: #Wikipedia
[16:46] * Now talking in #Wikipedia
[16:46] * Topic is 'Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Status: Up | No public logging | Guidelines: http://bit.ly/OiAr | For channel operator assistance, join #wikimedia-ops or, in emergencies, type !op followed by your request'
[16:46] * Set by PeterSymonds on Tue Sep 22 17:47:25
[16:46] #wikipedia url is http://wikipedia.org
[16:47] * Xzapro4 (n=kvirc@asa-eclille.ec-lille.fr) Quit ("When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion. KVIrc 3.4.2 Shiny http://www.kvirc.net")
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[16:53] * Cream|GONE is now known as Quagmire
[16:53] -ChanServ- [#defocus] Hi all, and welcome to #defocus. Please see  http://blog.freenode.net/?p=87 Please be patient and you will be voiced. Do not ask for voice, it will be given to you soon. Thanks!
Session Close: Wed Sep 23 16:53:37 2009

Session Start: Wed Sep 23 16:53:37 2009
Session Ident: #Wikipedia
[16:53] * Disconnected
Session Close: Wed Sep 23 16:53:38 2009

Session Start: Wed Sep 23 17:05:38 2009
Session Ident: #Wikipedia
[17:05] * Now talking in #Wikipedia
[17:05] * Topic is 'Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Status: Up | No public logging | Guidelines: http://bit.ly/OiAr | For channel operator assistance, join #wikimedia-ops or, in emergencies, type !op followed by your request'
[17:05] <eptalon> irc is sent over an unencrypted connection, in clear text.
[17:06] <netbook> it is hosted on a server not owned by wikipedia
[17:06] <netbook> operating a channel is like editing an article on wikipedia
[17:06] * Lindberg47 (n=chatzill@0x5da34c4e.vjnqu1.dynamic.dsl.tele.dk) has joined #wikipedia
[17:07] <Yojojo> anyone can do it.
[17:07] <Yojojo> Shame we can't semi irc though...
[17:09] <netbook> meh it is alright
[17:09] * jdelanoy (n=jdelanoy@wikipedia/jdelanoy) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[17:10] <Yojojo> wait a minute... We can semiprot irc... That's what +r is for...
[17:10] <Yojojo> no unregistered users in channel.
[17:10] <Yojojo> :)
[17:10] <Dendodge> but anyone can register, and there's no autoconfirmed requirement
[17:10] <SkEmO> yush
[17:11] <eptalon> +i, invite only.
[17:11] * MidnightRambler (n=LoneWolf@wikia/ODST-Joshie) Quit ("Ramble Ramble Ramble, so much rambling to do, so little time to do it.")
[17:11] <Dendodge> that's more full-prot
[17:11] <PeterSymonds> +r is the one that restricts unregistered users.
[17:11] <PeterSymonds> Just fyi. :P
[17:11] <Yojojo> dendodge, no, but they must confirm a valid email to keep their account.
[17:12] <Yojojo> So in a way, that is a verification process.
[17:12] <Dendodge> I guess it would people off, but I don't recommend we do it
[17:12] <eptalon> Yojojo: wpsucks.5.bigtime@spamgourmet.com?
[17:13] <Yojojo> lol
[17:13] * jdelanoy (n=jdelanoy@wikipedia/jdelanoy) has joined #wikipedia
[17:14] <eptalon> Yojojo: so you see ,thats not really a protection either.
[17:14] <Yojojo> I'm still of the frame of mind to campaign places like this not to register people with throwaway emails
[17:14] <kmccoy> Yojojo, what's a "throwaway email"?
[17:14] <Yojojo> one you can just dispose of and open another one, a freebie
[17:15] <Yojojo> Hotmail, gmail, that kind.
[17:15] <eptalon> kmccoy: an email you throw away, after printing, to make sure it is environmentally-friendly?
[17:15] <Betacommand> kmccoy: www.mailinator.com
[17:15] <kmccoy> Yojojo, so a gmail account isn't acceptable?
[17:15] * Philippe|Wiki (n=Philippe@wikimedia/Philippe) has joined #wikipedia
[17:15] <Dendodge> I have an ntlworld, a hotmail, and a gmail—are they throwaways?
[17:15] * Philippe|Wiki (n=Philippe@wikimedia/Philippe) has left #wikipedia
[17:15] <kmccoy> Yojojo, I don't understand how anyone can honestly suggest to deny things like gmail or Yahoo mail accounts anymore.  For some users, that may be all they have.
[17:15] <eptalon> I od have an unused yahoo, and my main email is currently gmail.
[17:15] <Yojojo> Kmccoy: i consider gmail and hotmail throwaways, where you ignore them, they disappear if you don't log in after a month....
[17:16] <Yojojo> Well not gmail,
[17:16] <Yojojo> But hotmail ones do
[17:16] <Dendodge> do they?
[17:16] * Chzz (n=ftevans@wikipedia/Chzz) has joined #wikipedia
[17:16] <Yojojo> If you fail to login for 30 days, they suspend and stop accepting email, and all your folders get emptied
[17:17] <eptalon> yahoo ones need to be "activated" again if you like don't log in for about half a year.
[17:17] <BrewJay> I hated it when my kitchen knives kept ending up in someone's bedroom. I did not like it when one guy used the long blade for everything.
[17:17] <Dendodge> ...
[17:17] <Dendodge> o_O
[17:17] <Yojojo> I belong to a site where you can only reg if you have a paid isp email
[17:17] * jdelanoy (n=jdelanoy@wikipedia/jdelanoy) Quit (Client Quit)
[17:18] <Yojojo> Ntlworld, virginmedia.com, btinternet.com, etc
[17:18] <kmccoy> Yojojo, that's stupid.
[17:18] <Dendodge> ntlworld = virginmedia :P
[17:18] <Yojojo> dendodge, i know
[17:18] <kmccoy> Yojojo, people change ISPs, some people don't have them, some people don't use the email services provided by them.
[17:18] <Yojojo> Some people still have ntlworld.com, and not virginmedia.com though
[17:18] <Dendodge> like me, for example
[17:19] * Bungle (n=bungle@92-234-181-213.cable.ubr20.live.blueyonder.co.uk) Quit ("Pheanzis, Behold.. something about tissues..")
[17:19] <Betacommand> any admins want to go on a deletion spree?
[17:21] * zro (n=zro@wikimedia/zro) Quit ("Death")
[17:22] <Jake_Wartenberg> sure
[17:22] * gurch (n=User@unaffiliated/gurch) has joined #wikipedia
[17:23] <Betacommand> Jake_Wartenberg: Im running the query now
[17:23] <Betacommand> Jake_Wartenberg: Ive got a large list of commons dupes, that where uploaded to commons before 08
[17:23] <Jake_Wartenberg> cool
[17:23] <Jake_Wartenberg> massdelete ok for this?
[17:24] * vev (n=vev@lns-bzn-50f-62-147-238-29.adsl.proxad.net) has joined #wikipedia
[17:24] <Betacommand> Jake_Wartenberg: needs review
[17:24] <Jake_Wartenberg> ok
[17:24] <Betacommand> some are tagged as not to delete
[17:24] <Jake_Wartenberg> can you exclude those in the query?
[17:25] <Betacommand> Jake_Wartenberg: I havent had time to fiddle with the query yet
[17:25] <Betacommand> {{nocommons}} is on some of them
[17:25] <Jake_Wartenberg> right
[17:26] <Betacommand> which does not add any categories
[17:26] * pentecostes (n=pentecos@cablelink46-3.intercable.net) has joined #wikipedia
[17:26] <Jake_Wartenberg> you can grab the list of pages that template is used on, though
[17:27] <Jake_Wartenberg> that template probably should add a cat if it would make this kind of thing easier
[17:27] * eptalon (n=robert@wikipedia/Eptalon) Quit ("leaving")
[17:27] <Jake_Wartenberg> should I edit it?
[17:28] * Melos (n=Melos@wikimedia/Melos) has joined #wikipedia
[17:28] <Betacommand> Jake_Wartenberg: Im thinking of TfDing it
[17:31] * Drule (n=Drule@83.181.15.86) Quit ("Random Frasier quote: Fraaasieeeeeer! - Martin "Marty" Crane")
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[17:33] * Kaare is now known as KaareAway
[17:40] <tombom_> http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/september/california-s-real-death-panels-insurers-deny-21-of-claims.html
[17:40] <tombom_> :(
[17:41] * Pokeyourheadoff (n=Jason@c-24-13-173-242.hsd1.il.comcast.net) has joined #wikipedia
[17:41] <AngryParsley> why is aetna so nice?
[17:41] * Tsenz (i=Tsenz@79.109.68.67) has joined #wikipedia
[17:42] * Prodego (i=Prodego@wikipedia/Prodego) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[17:43] <tombom_> no idea
[17:43] <SkEmO> cos he/she got laid maybe
[17:44] * Rdsmith4 (n=Rdsmith4@wikipedia/Rdsmith4) has joined #wikipedia
[17:45] <tombom_> thanks for your contribution
[17:46] * Unironfist (n=Zack@75-172-52-212.tukw.qwest.net) has joined #wikipedia
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[17:58] * Neonexus (n=NeoNexus@89.204.195.16) has joined #Wikipedia
[17:59] * Mike_H (n=halterma@171-231.187-72.tampabay.res.rr.com) has joined #wikipedia
[17:59] <Neonexus> any experienced wikipedians about?
[17:59] * Platonides (n=Platonid@wikipedia/Platonides) Quit
[18:00] * Bob-Dole is now known as David_Addington
[18:00] <Betacommand> Neonexus: yes, whats up?
[18:00] <Yojojo> neonexus, depends on how experienced you want us. How can we help?
[18:01] * Jocke_Pirat (n=jaytheno@wikimedia/Jocke-Pirat) has left #wikipedia
[18:01] <Neonexus> how can i reference or cite local facts?
[18:02] * Jelco (n=Jelco@unaffiliated/jelco) Quit ("Laziness will prevail! In my dreams anyway...")
[18:02] <Betacommand> Neonexus: define local facts
[18:03] * David_Addington is now known as bittwist
[18:04] <Neonexus> if there is a local building and I want to talk about it, but no other information exists about that building
[18:05] * Ose (n=ose@wikia/Ose) Quit ("“Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.” - Steve Wozniak")
[18:05] * Lindberg47 (n=chatzill@87-104-62-214-dynamic-customer.profibernet.dk) has joined #wikipedia
[18:06] <Dendodge> it's probably not notale, then
[18:06] <Dendodge> *notable
[18:06] <Neonexus> how do I prevent is getting "This article needs additional citations for verification." plastered all over it?
[18:06] <Neonexus> is = it
[18:07] <Dendodge> you have to find books, newspapers, or websites to prove the facts in the article
[18:08] <Neonexus> confusing
[18:09] <Neonexus> the whole idea for writing about it is to tell people about it so its not lost in time
[18:09] <Dendodge> run a Google search for the name of the building, and see what comes up
[18:13] <Neonexus> nothing
[18:17] <mavhc> no local paper? local documents?
[18:17] * christian16 (n=Clodomir@26.Red-81-32-64.dynamicIP.rima-tde.net) has joined #wikipedia
[18:17] * rw (i=rw@p5B144546.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit
[18:17] <christian16> hola
[18:17] <christian16> kien coño habla español
[18:17] <mavhc> just make up citations for a lot of local stuff that noone'll ever check
[18:18] * christian16 said frikipedia rules
[18:18] <PeterSymonds> christian16, hola, try #wikipedia-es
[18:18] * christian16 (n=Clodomir@26.Red-81-32-64.dynamicIP.rima-tde.net) has left #wikipedia
[18:19] * bluefoxicy (n=bluefox@74-95-88-148-WashingtonDC.hfc.comcastbusiness.net) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[18:20] <Neonexus> nope, just in local people heads
[18:20] <Neonexus> and they are getting old and dying off, losing the information
[18:20] <PeterSymonds> Neonexus, unfortunately then it won't be possible to make an article on it at the present time.
[18:21] <PeterSymonds> This is because the information can only come from non-published sources, which is original research.
[18:21] <PeterSymonds> See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OR> for more info.
[18:22] * ChanServ sets mode: +o dircbot
[18:22] * dircbot sets mode: -ob dircbot %*!*@98.64.162.26
[18:25] * Chzz (n=ftevans@wikipedia/Chzz) Quit
[18:25] * Yojojo (n=Yojojo@unaffiliated/barkingfish) Quit ("Objectivum nil termine est, qui obesa cantavit")
[18:26] <mavhc> do the research, publish it on a website, then cite it
[18:26] * Vikx (n=tiggerke@94-194-29-135.zone8.bethere.co.uk) Quit ("( www.nnscript.com :: NoNameScript 4.21 :: www.esnation.com )")
[18:26] <Neonexus> be better setting up my own wiki then
[18:27] <PeterSymonds> Yeah, that's one option. It'd be good to have the info recorded somewhere. :)
[18:27] <PeterSymonds> Even if we can't provide it here.
[18:27] <Neonexus> I know thought the research could help the wikipedia project instead of page stubs
[18:31] <Neonexus> may I private message you peter?
[18:31] <PeterSymonds> Sure.
[18:35] * lucasbfr (n=lucasbfr@wikipedia/lucasbfr) Quit (No route to host)
[18:36] * KerliQ (n=chatzill@c-98-224-186-12.hsd1.mi.comcast.net) has joined #wikipedia
[18:36] <KerliQ> (o: Hellos :o)
[18:42] * Chzz (n=ftevans@wikipedia/Chzz) has joined #wikipedia
[18:42] * geniice (n=chatzill@wikipedia/geniice) has joined #wikipedia
[18:42] <geniice> The National Secular Society said it was planning demonstrations against the visit in protest at what it called Pope Benedict's "intransigence and fundamentalism".
[18:42] <geniice> he's the pope. That's pretty much his job description
[18:43] * Prodego (i=Prodego@wikipedia/Prodego) has joined #wikipedia
[18:44] <mavhc> well, last pope was better
[18:44] * Drule (n=Drule@83.181.15.86) has joined #wikipedia
[18:46] <geniice> not really
[18:46] <KerliQ> looks like OlEnglish is going to get Administrator http://is.gd/3APyy
[18:47] * Reedy (n=Reedy@wikimedia/pdpc.active.reedy) Quit ("Leaving")
[18:48] <mavhc> he did say evolution was real
[18:49] <geniice> so has the current one
[18:53] * Olipro (n=Olipro@uncyclopedia/pdpc.active.olipro) Quit (Nick collision from services.)
[18:53] * Olipro (n=Olipro@uncyclopedia/pdpc.active.olipro) has joined #wikipedia
[18:56] * Cyrius (n=t-bone@cpe-72-191-117-195.gt.res.rr.com) has joined #wikipedia
[18:57] <denelson83> Amber Alert in south Texas
[18:57] <Cyrius> so?
[19:00] * edubruell (n=quassel@p5B39B13D.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[19:01] * Keegan_ (n=chatzill@wikimedia/Keegan) Quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
[19:01] <denelson83> You're not in south Texas
[19:02] * Peter17 (n=peter@79.88.194.28) Quit (Remote closed the connection)
[19:03] -> *cary* btw are you gonna get married in canada :P
[19:04] <denelson83> You're in Beaumont
[19:05] <denelson83> near Houston
[19:05] * PeterSymonds (n=Peter@wikimedia/PeterSymonds) Quit ("Leaving")
[19:06] * Gracenotes (n=person@wikipedia/Gracenotes) Quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
[19:07] <kmccoy> omgouting
[19:09] * Melos (n=Melos@wikimedia/Melos) Quit ("...")
[19:10] * VierFuen1Zwei (n=452@p4FE4EAA8.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #wikipedia
[19:12] * MindstormsKid (n=msk@Wikipedia/MindstormsKid) has joined #wikipedia
[19:21] * Suiseiseki (n=desudesu@wikipedia/Antonio-Lopez) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[19:21] * Suiseiseki (n=desudesu@wikipedia/Antonio-Lopez) has joined #wikipedia
[19:22] * VierFuenfZwei (n=452@p4FE4E98B.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
[19:23] <Lindberg47> "I have understanding for mistakes happend." How can I say that in a better way?
[19:24] * Sheltem (i=niemand@unaffiliated/sheltem) Quit ("It was once said that a black man would be president "when pigs fly" indeed 100 days into Obama's presidency....Swine flu")
[19:27] * rainman-sr (n=rainman@cable-188-2-180-220.dynamic.sbb.rs) Quit ("Leaving")
[19:28] * PeterDarkness (n=ATX@pool-71-248-152-19.dllstx.dsl-w.verizon.net) Quit ("...Then he started throwing sea creatures.")
[19:28] <Lindberg47> can you say this: "I understand that mistakes happen. But it is always troubeling to recieve the wrong product."?
[19:29] <denelson83> Well thank you very much Mr. Gigo
[19:29] <Lindberg47> is that correct English?
[19:31] * Lady_Aleena (n=Lady_Ale@Wikipedia/Lady-Aleena) Quit ("So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye!")
[19:31] * Neonexus (n=NeoNexus@89.204.195.16) has left #Wikipedia
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[19:32] * Alkivar (i=Alkivar@wikipedia/Alkivar) Quit (Read error: 131 (Connection reset by peer))
[19:35] * Sir48 (n=Sir48@0x573be723.banqu1.dynamic.dsl.tele.dk) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[19:35] * KerliQ (n=chatzill@c-98-224-186-12.hsd1.mi.comcast.net) has left #wikipedia ("...and I'll keep walking when skies are grey, whatever happens was meant that way...")
[19:36] * Alkivar (i=Alkivar@66.231.222.76) has joined #wikipedia
[19:38] * Matthewedwards (n=chatzill@wikipedia/Matthewedwards) has joined #wikipedia
[19:40] * geniice (n=chatzill@wikipedia/geniice) Quit ("Chatzilla 0.9.75.1 [SeaMonkey 1.1.17/2009060506]")
[19:41] * Sir48 (n=Sir48@0x573be723.banqu1.dynamic.dsl.tele.dk) has joined #wikipedia
[19:41] <Chzz> Lindberg47 Two spelling errors;  "troubling" and "receive"
[19:42] <Lindberg47> yes i saw that, but otherwise?
[19:43] * quanticle (n=quanticl@wikipedia/Quanticle) has joined #wikipedia
[19:48] * Interstate_39 (n=onsons@wikimedia/Master-son) has joined #wikipedia
[19:51] * VierFuen1Zwei is now known as VierFuenfZwei
[19:53] * MindstormsKid (n=msk@Wikipedia/MindstormsKid) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[19:53] * MindstormsKid_ (n=msk@Wikipedia/MindstormsKid) has joined #wikipedia
[19:53] * MindstormsKid_ is now known as MindstormsKid
[19:54] * Interstate_39 is now known as mson|food
[19:54] * mson|food is now known as Interstate_39
[19:54] * Dendodge (n=Dendodge@Wikipedia/Dendodge) Quit ("So long, and thanks for all the fish!")
[19:57] <BrewJay> mavhc: Regarding publishing your own research on a website, then citing it on wikipedia, that is under "Avoid Self-Reference". It is okay to write it up on a website, though.
[19:59] <BrewJay> Lindberg47: I.h.u.f.m.h I tolerate mistakes.
[20:03] <Alkivar> holy fuck... as if the bugatti veyron wasnt expensive enough... Mansory has gone and made one entirely out of carbon fiber
[20:03] <BrewJay> After you do research and write it up neatly, then a local paper might edit it, publish it, get feedback, find you notable events in building that you did not know about.
[20:03] * Mm40 (n=chatzill@Wikipedia/Mm40) has joined #wikipedia
[20:04] <mavhc> find a friend to write the wp article then
[20:04] * turn-omg (n=turn_omg@119-231-136-71.eonet.ne.jp) Quit ("Leaving...")
[20:04] * kmccoy_ (n=a@67-54-132-168.cust.wildblue.net) has joined #wikipedia
[20:05] * Gigs (n=Gigs@c-71-63-105-147.hsd1.va.comcast.net) has joined #wikipedia
[20:06] <Sky2042_afk> mavhc: You may wish to view en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:COI
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[20:09] <Mparu> Is there any icelandic speaker?
[20:10] * err404 (n=err404@apijab1.apinc.org) has left #wikipedia
[20:11] <Mparu> Nobody?
[20:13] <Mparu> Is there any speaker of one of theese languages: Bulgarian, Greek, Albanian, Czech, Slovak, Irish, Welsh.
[20:14] * Mm40 (n=chatzill@Wikipedia/Mm40) Quit ("ChatZilla 0.9.85 [Firefox 3.5.3/20090824101458]")
[20:16] <BrewJay> Vejetarians eat only vejtablz. Is Jeffrey Dahmer a humanitarian?
[20:17] <Cyrius> no, because he's dead
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[20:28] <Lindberg47> BrewJay: I.h.u.f.m.h ?
[20:31] <BrewJay> "I have understanding for mistakes happened." I tolerate mistakes.
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[20:36] <BrewJay> The cops who did not check into Dahmer's probation status at the time of a kidnapping were promoted.
[20:41] * mazer_ (n=mazer@64-71-7-198.static.wiline.com) Quit
[20:41] * kmccoy_ is now known as kmccoy
Session Close: Wed Sep 23 20:48:35 2009

Session Start: Wed Sep 23 20:48:35 2009
Session Ident: #Wikipedia
[20:48] * Disconnected
Session Close: Wed Sep 23 21:01:18 2009

Session Start: Wed Sep 23 22:26:30 2009
Session Ident: #Wikipedia
[22:26] * Now talking in #Wikipedia
[22:26] * Topic is 'Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Status: Up | No public logging | Guidelines: http://bit.ly/OiAr | For channel operator assistance, join #wikimedia-ops or, in emergencies, type !op followed by your request'
[22:27] * Cream (n=cream@unaffiliated/cream) Quit ("Colloquy for iPhone - http://colloquy.mobi")
[22:27] <gwern> Cyrius: that was great as well
[22:28] <gwern> I also like the Defenestrations of Prague
[22:28] <KerliQ> brb, I have to restart my browser, new add-on :P http://is.gd/3Cegq
[22:28] <Cyrius> I was betting on you having made that one up
[22:29] <gwern> you should know I never lie! except when I do
[22:29] <Cyrius> so all your stories are true?
[22:29] * KerliQ (n=chatzill@c-98-224-186-12.hsd1.mi.comcast.net) Quit (Remote closed the connection)
[22:29] <gwern> Cyrius: sure. except the one about the noodle incident
[22:29] <Cyrius> even the lies?
[22:30] <gwern> all lies. no trutheller I, bah, I derive my truthtelling abilities! I cannot handle the truth!
[22:30] <gwern> *deride
[22:32] * jdelanoy (n=jdelanoy@wikipedia/jdelanoy) Quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
[22:32] <quanticle> There was more than one Defenstration of Prague? I only know about the one that started the 30 years war.
[22:32] * jdelanoy (n=jdelanoy@wikipedia/jdelanoy) has joined #wikipedia
[22:33] <Chzz> quanticle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague
[22:34] * Chzz (n=ftevans@wikipedia/Chzz) Quit
[22:35] <quanticle> "Philip Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title von Hohenfall (lit. meaning "of Highfall")." <-- I think the Holy Roman Emperor was having a royal joke with that one.
[22:35] <gwern> quanticle: no doubt the courtiers collectively wet themselves in joy at never lacking for jokes when Fabricius was around
[22:37] * KerliQ (n=chatzill@c-98-224-186-12.hsd1.mi.comcast.net) has joined #wikipedia
[22:37] * Olipro_ is now known as Olipro
[22:37] <KerliQ> I'm back
[22:37] <KerliQ> that add-on is fantastic!
[22:37] <gwern> I've never understood peoples' fascination with URL shortening
[22:38] <KerliQ> you just go to the page, click the button and automatically creates it and copies it to your clipboard
[22:38] * Ceiling_Cat (n=Raul654@c-76-99-183-60.hsd1.de.comcast.net) has joined #wikipedia
[22:40] <Ceiling_Cat> [[List of works by Thomas Eakins]] <--- 114 pages and counting
[22:40] <Ceiling_Cat> in a year, that is going to be the longest article on Wikipedia
[22:41] * VierFuenfZwei (n=452@p4FE4ED74.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #wikipedia
[22:42] <OverlordQ> tldr
[22:42] <Ceiling_Cat> OverlordQ - clicky the link. It's mostly pixxx
[22:42] <Ceiling_Cat> including some nekkid ppl
[22:43] <OverlordQ> too took long to load for such a low nudie pic ratio
[22:43] <OverlordQ> *took too
[22:43] <gwern> huh. with some reasonable assumptions, it would take approximately 50 hours to consume the majority of _Oh My Goddess!_
[22:43] <gwern> that's more than a working week
[22:43] <KerliQ> so you don't shorten URLs?
[22:44] <Ceiling_Cat> (on snap, it's a 4 meg download to get that page)
[22:44] <Ceiling_Cat> KerliQ - no, Wikipedia uses only canonical URLs
[22:44] <gwern> KerliQ: no. why would I?
[22:45] <KerliQ> In URL, ? = %3F%0A      + = %2B%0A%0A
[22:46] <KerliQ> and what if you want to link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Day_of_the_Dawn_of_the_Son_of_the_Bride_of_the_Return_of_the_Revenge_of_the_Terror_of_the_Attack_of_the_Evil,_Mutant,_Alien,_Flesh_Eating,_Hellbound,_Zombified_Living_Dead_Part_2:_In_Shocking_2-D
[22:46] <Ceiling_Cat> worked for me
[22:46] <Ceiling_Cat> if you don't like long URLs, don't go to articles with long titles
[22:47] <Ceiling_Cat> or use copy-paste :)
[22:47] * ChanServ sets mode: +o dircbot
[22:47] * dircbot sets mode: -ob dircbot *!*@c-71-229-132-201.hsd1.co.comcast.net
[22:47] <KerliQ> Instead of that long post I could have just clicked the button and then I have http://is.gd/3CgnE
[22:47] <gwern> KerliQ: I would use the long URL because that's part of the humor of that link
[22:47] <Ceiling_Cat> KerliQ - and what happpens with is.gd ceases to exist?
[22:47] <Ceiling_Cat> all your shortened URL links break
[22:47] <Ceiling_Cat> you have introduced a new point of failure
[22:48] <Cyrius> well
[22:48] <Cyrius> long-term availability isn't that big an issue on IRC
[22:48] * engla (n=ulrik@wikipedia/Sverdrup) Quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
[22:48] <KerliQ> http://bit.ly won't
[22:49] <KerliQ> and what about part 3? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Day_of_the_Dawn_of_the_Son_of_the_Bride_of_the_Return_of_the_Revenge_of_the_Terror_of_the_Attack_of_the_Evil,_Mutant,_Hellbound,_Flesh-Eating_Subhumanoid_Zombified_Living_Dead,_Part_3
[22:49] <gwern> 0.99 * 0.99 < 0.99...
[22:49] <gwern> KerliQ: or you could link a redirect
[22:49] <gwern> nearly as reliable as direct linking
[22:49] <gwern> more informative
[22:50] <gwern> not dependent on mayflies
[22:50] <Gracenotes> gwern: formal proof nao :o
[22:50] <gwern> Gracenotes: I WILL OFFER YOU A CONSTRUCTIVE PROOF! come with me to #haskell!
[22:50] <KerliQ> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NOTDOT
[22:50] <Gracenotes> :O
[22:51] <Gracenotes> I think it could be done with the basic rules of real arithmetic. maybe transitivity, too
[22:51] * Willking1979 is now known as Willking|Sleep
[22:51] <gwern> Gracenotes: screw your existence proofs, I demand constructions!
[22:52] <Gracenotes> I shall prove that they are equivalent
[22:52] <gwern> using - SCIENCE! ?
[22:53] <Gracenotes> proof by threat of nuclear holocaust
[22:53] <gwern> ah, argumentum ad verecundiam. excellent choice sir
[22:55] <Gracenotes> reductio ad mad
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Session Close: Wed Sep 23 23:01:21 2009

Above: A podcast on how badly screwed the United Kingdom is from a political/Big Tech perspective. Trashfuture overlaps with other podcasts Well There's Your Problem and Kill James Bond! thanks to co-host November (formerly Alice) Caldwell-Kelly.

Saturday, June 8, 2024

Update on 5505 Lindo Paseo

When last week's post was linked to the SDSU subreddit, one of the commenters pointed us to this website, which mentions no street address or ZIP code (just "San Diego, California"). Champion Real Estate of Santa Monica, which owns the site, is giving the SDSU student body a six story apartment with 26 units, into which they would love to cram  a maximum of 226 beds.



"Victory" will not have an underground parking garage; the space I photographed is actually the rough beginnings of a basement lounge area. As you can see from Project Management Associates' extremely basic rendering*, the front of the building is being moved from Lindo Paseo to 55th Street. The building is probably L-shaped, with a pool somewhere behind the building. The whole thing is supposed to go up before August of 2025. There are real doubts if this building will ever be fully used for very long, seeing as how the forthcoming drop in students will begin in 2028 if Dan Shaulis' projections are true.


* Or is this the work of Studio E Architects, the San Diego firm that designed the building in the first place?



Friday, May 31, 2024

What happened to 5505 Lindo Paseo?

If the reader remembers our article last August, the three story fratbouse at 5505 Lindo Paseo was left abandoned. In the standard practice for SDSU, the eyesore has since been vaporized and the Kappa-Sigma chapter driven under.



Above: taken from the Kappa-Sigma national website's Chapter Listing page. It was never a gigantic frat.

Below: A view from the street. The frathouse and it's underground garage have been utterly demolished. A comparison shot from late July of 2023 is below that.



Below:  What is actually behind the fence, the beginnings of a possible underground parking structure. It is impossible to find just what sort of building is going up on the site; the constructor has no mention of it on their website, and the University is mum.



As you can see, what they have built is pretty basic. It is not clear if this is a subbasement with the garage on the ground floor, or if they are abandoning having cars on the site entirely. They have had about eight months to get something done and this is all they have accomplished.


Above: As the reader can tell, I had to stick the camera over the fence. You can see more of the structure in the pit that is a possible enclosed stairwell.

Below: Who the constructor is. I was there on a workweek and nothing was going on, a sign that this project is underfunded or has reached a bottleneck or that something else undesirable is happening in back rooms.


Coda

I will continue looking at this property, but I don't have a good feeling that this will be completed this year. Possibly the meltdown Dahn Shaulis predicted from lack of students (because the student cohort from the economic crisis years of 2007 to 2009 is much smaller) is happening just that much faster, and that is effecting everything. Time will tell.


Thursday, May 9, 2024

Wikimedia-ops IRC, this day in 2011

 "What was going on with Wikimedia-ops on this day in 2011?" The answer below.


Session Start: Mon May 09 14:47:08 201112[18:11] -eir:#wikimedia-ops- (9REM) ban [25828] *!*@58.221.242.134 was set on #wikipedia-en by killiondude!~yes@wikimedia/Killiondude on 2011-05-08 22:00:29 and had an expiry date of 2011-05-09 22:00:29. It was removed by eir!~eir@freenode/utility-bot/eir on Mon May 9 22:11:00 2011
[18:11] -eir:#wikimedia-ops- (9REM) ban [25829] 
*!*@c114-77-191-165.hillc3.qld.optusnet.com.au was set on #wikipedia-en by killiondude!~yes@wikimedia/Killiondude on 2011-05-08 22:01:34 and had an expiry date of 2011-05-09 22:01:34. It was removed by eir!~eir@freenode/utility-bot/eir on Mon May 9 22:11:00 2011
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Session Close: Mon May 09 22:42:50 2011






Monday, March 11, 2024

Quasi-Wikipedia: Larry Sanger's Twitter/X Account

I used to think that Larry Sanger was the more rational than Jimbo Wales, but then I got to read day after day of Sanger's Twitter account (@lsanger) and that view faded into nothingness. Let us see why.


Thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter (I'm not calling it X; the only "X" I respect has Exene Cervenka and Billy Zoom in it) has become ragingly antisemitic, and Sanger is getting closer and closer to falling into the bottomless hole of Jew-hating idiocy.



And here is more of it, he doesn't think that antisemitism is a growing problem even though it grew like wildfire online during the Obama and Trump years. The growth of the Nazi/crypto-Nazi milieu definitely emerged as a response to the market implosion of 2007-08 and the Bush-Obama unwillingness to find anybody on Wall Street culpable.



Larry Sanger is still a hard-core Libertarian, and he really like Javier Milei, President of Argentina, who if you didn't know is a screaming firebrand of Libertarian policies and ideas (he wants to peg Argentina's currency to the US dollar to revive the Argentine economy, demolish social agencies in Argentina, etc.) This picture of him is a meme that came from the NBC sitcom Parks and Rec, and yes, Milei's head is 'shopped in. 


As we said, Sanger is a Libertarian, so he hates the Federal Reserve. In fact he hates the Fed so badly, he made a poll about it, and his followers agree with him.



Did I mention that he's now a vaccine-denier? Well he is.



The Protestant Christian conception of God is a huge deal with Sanger, and I did not know how truly religious he was until I read his Twitter account. In fact, you could argue that the hard-core Protestantism is co-morbid with the Libertarianism and the anti-vaccine views, and that this is extremely common within European-descended people in the United States.



I find this one funny because he's battling "Satanists" in his responses but he's also using James Randi's term "woo" (derived from Randi doing The Twilight Zone theme on stage once with his mouth and saying "woo" instead of humming), which is now an atheist thing. I've noticed that a lot of Wikipedians seem to use the term for anything paranormal they don't like, it probably stuck in Larry's brain. Notice that this is a re-post of a 2020 tweet. 




Yes, he will re-tweet known far-Right figures like Chaya Raichik (the person behind the Libs of TikTok account). So that makes him a supporter of the sort of stochastic terrorism she creates whenever she finds something and re-posts it (bomb threats, death threats, partial responsibility for the death of Nex Benedict).

****

I'm sure I could dig in deeper, to find out when Larry Sanger started going further and further online-Right. I'm guessing that (like with many conservative figures) that the Obama years deeply unsettled him after the collapse of the Bush II administration into handwringing over the market implosion and the failure of the Iraq and Afghan wars to end victoriously. It's a sad story, one replicated in many households across America. Based on his time at Wikipedia and attempts to get better online encyclopedias off the ground, you would not think this is the sort of person Larry Sanger is, but what you have seen is only a fraction of his Twitter output.



Thursday, March 7, 2024

Copypasted from the Archives: Other WMF Employees (just the quotes)

We have access to a sea of articles on Wikipedia and the WMF. Here are some tantalizing quotes from the article on Other WMF Employees, i.e., all the editors who got paid jobs with the WikiMedia Foundation before 2012 rolled around......and then things changed after Lila Tretikov left, but I have no notes on that.

Excepted from a Feb 2013 email exchange: 

 "If you could help by identifying the Wikipedia accounts of any ones I haven't mentioned, in case there are some really evil ones, that would be helpful.

 "https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors?showall=1

"Other than the usual suspects, Andrew "Werdna" Garrett, and Aaron "Voice Of All" Schulz, no one else pops out as insiders." 

"It's funny to see Luke Welling in the "platform" section. He is a well-known expert on PHP programming, and wrote a popular book on it. What is he doing on the WMF staff page? Are they going "let's try to hire some famous programmers part-time as contractors, and pretend they "do something" for Wikipedia"? Luke should have Moeller's job. In fact, Moeller should be working UNDER Luke, because I have seen little evidence Moeller actually knows much about coding."

"All these "semi-prominent" coders on the payroll, and still no visual editor?" 

"A substantial number of the "developers" listed there are coding nerds with blogs. Another one is Mark "Mtraceur" Holmquist, an FSF member and rabid free-software evangelist. And "transhumanist". Bet he needs a bath."

"I think most of the code developers are contractors, not actual employees, whether their listing says so or not. And many of them are better-known for their free-software evangelism, not for editing Wikipedia. Plus, a large number don't live in the SF bay area, so I presume they are "telecommuting", something often done with contractors, not with full-time employees." 

"Even so, this list contains a substantial number of Wikipedia's worst trolls and most obsessed insiders." 

"David Schoonover just has to be this guy. Gave up editing WP in 2007. " 

"Chad Horohoe is administrator "^demon6 ", been editing since 2008, deletionist gnome, until he cut drastically back in 2010. Probably because they hired him." 

"Terry Chay is an insider at Freenode. One of those people who helps to protect the Wikipedia IRC channels. Oh yeah, they'd want him on the payroll."

"Roan Kattouw edited en-WP back in 2002-2006. I wonder if he's an administrator on nl-WP, under a phony name. Similar for Gabriel Wicke. Erik Zachte is a bigshot on nl-WP for certain, he has been there since it was started in 2002." 

"Andre Klapper is a German developer for the GNOME project, making him another "noted" free software figure."

 "Quite a few of these guys (nearly all of them are guys) have no obvious connection to Wikipedia, making me think they might be insiders or admins who work under unidentified sockpuppet accounts. They seem to be doing a good job of covering it up. If Wikipedia is so dedicated to "openness" and "transparency", why isn't any of this openly declared somewhere?"

Something from Vigilant

"The problem is that even trials of fairly small steps have been kiboshed by the Foundation even after getting community support following reams of discussion: Autoconfirmed article creation trial. An extraordinary episode: the community actually managing to agree something, and the Foundation killing it. This episode is one of the reasons I'm pessimistic: why should anyone in future make the considerable effort to get consensus for such ideas, if the Foundation won't even trial them? (I could have lived with them insisting on making their own evaluation of the trial.)"

"Because the foundation:" 

"* is not headed by competent managers." 

"* does not know how to run a tech organization." 

"* does not understand how to build an encyclopedia." 

"* is filled with deadwood who couldn't get real jobs in the outside world." 

"Run through the staff page at WMF and check out their LinkedIn pages."

Removed employees

"Look at the block log on the foundation wiki for a list of ex-wmf employees." 

• "Legal internship is a summer thing, and is explicitly career networking. The high apparent turnover rate, along with the rest of the discussions above, all fit with my belief that the main purpose of taking a job at the WMF is to use it to career-network your way into somewhere else. Nobody (at least not with any real talent) stays at the WMF for long." 

• "Matthew Roth, former global communications manager of the foundation, left in January 2014. His foundation and enwiki user pages still claim he is a wmf employee. He is now a senior community manager at Flickr."

 • "See also "Wikimedia comms unit in flux after departures" at PR Week." 

• "Leslie Carr, former senior operations engineer, also left the foundation in January 2014. Her enwiki19 and foundation user pages also claim she is currently a foundation employee. She now works for Cumulus Networks." 

• 3 October 2014: Terry Chay was "off-boarded" without warning or reason. "His homepage is suitably unprofessional and mentions that October 3rd was his last day. http://terrychay.com/ " Indeed, the arrival of Lila Tretikov appears to be producing change in the ranks. 

• The process accelerated in early 2015. Employees "off-boarded" in March and April included Howie Fung and Maryana Pinchuk, CTCO Gayle Karen Young, Steven Walling, and most remarkably Erik Möller. 

• A Wikipediocracy thread discusses many of these issues, and lists other insiders who have shown incompetence and dishonesty and are likely to be next on the chopping block. "Let me make this easy for Lila. People who still need to go (professional assholes who've generated unbelievable levels of ill will towards the WMF):"

• "Oliver Keyes" 

• "James Forrester" 

• "Dan Garry" 

• "Marc-Andre Pelletier" 

• "Ryan Kaldari" 

• "Philippe Beaudette" 

• "Sherry Snyder"

• "Erica Litrenta" 

• "Whoever the product manager, team lead and community liaison were for Media Viewer" 

• "Anyone with architectural input on Visual Editor" 

• "All of the Flow team" 

• "Anyone who posts a mascot photo on that page" 

• "Whoever runs IRC"

• May 2015: Andrew "Werdna (T28-C29-F30-R31-B32)" Garrett, one of the principal developers of Flow, is silently removed from the WMF employee roster. He was desysopped in June 2016 for inactivity. 

Quote from Dan Murphy: 

"Began editing when 14 (10 years ago), started at WMF as a part-time developer while at university ("liquid threads/flow" was one of his triumphs), was hired on full time only in January of this year, it seems. Was obsessed with the troll/vandal "Grawp" and wrote one of the first automated abuse filters in response, wrote a bunch of their early protection and BLOCKINATION! extensions, obsessive "vandal hunter" in his time (what do you expect from someone whose handle is borrowed from an online fantasy role playing game?). In short, the type specimen of the awkward adolescent male obsessed with computers and coding who essentially grew up on Wikipedia. The sort of person who has made Wikipedia the thoughtful, loving, and mature educational project we know and respect today." 

"Also lied about his true age on Wikipedia for a long time. He's no Essjay, but it's always interesting that lying by contributors to a supposed encyclopedia project is not considered an issue in wikiworld."



                                   An episode of a podcast on a subject as borked as the WMF.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Wikipedia's "Israel-Hamas war" article

 It's been three months, but Wikipedia still calls it "Israel-Hamas war" with not even a "the".


The talk page looks like this:

Talk:Israel–Hamas war

Extended-protected page
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RfC on sexual violence in lead section

Should the lead section contain a few sentences concerning the sexual violence during the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023? ' If so, should the Hamas denial be included? Option A would be to include a few sentences with no denial. Option B include with a denial. Option C do not include. Coretheapple (talk) 04:48, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give example sources for "the Hamas denial"? I saw one interview, but I am not sure if what I saw is what you have in mind. Irtapil (talk) 08:39, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree including it as it has been a contentious topic that has received notability. Linkin Prankster (talk) 04:42, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Warning for the closer re: canvassing: ArbCom has been presented with evidence that this RfC has been canvassed by those asking for proxy edits to promote a pro-Israel point of view. While I am not personally aware of the nature or extent of the evidence, or the scale of canvassing, the closer should apply WP:NOTAVOTE with particular care. WillowCity(talk) 22:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Survey 2

  • Option A, Failing to include the sexual violence in the lead would violate WP:LEADl and WP:NPOV as well as WP:NOTCENSORED.There are 45 million hits when you google "Hamas" and "rape" (without quotes), 15,300 in news. USA Today two days ago: Title: 'We know they were raped in Hamas captivity': Chilling details of what hostages faced"[1] It is very much in the forefront of news coverage in reliable sources, and the only question is whether to include the Hamas denial, which is cursory and which I believe is barred in the lead by WP:FALSEBALANCE While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view, fringe theory, or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. Note that the denial is in the body of the article, in the relevant subsection.'
One point re the denial that needs to be stressed. Every single thing in the lead that is adverse to Israel, without exception, is not followed by a response or denial from Israel, even though Israel has indeed responded to or denied every single element of the lead. Putting in the perfunctory Hamas response to the rapes, and only that response out of everything else in the lead, would be unbalanced and not neutral. Coretheapple (talk) 04:47, 23 December 2023 (UTC) second paragraph added. Coretheapple (talk) 17:49, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could you list a couple of these 'everything' please. NadVolum (talk) 00:03, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are 540,000,000 results for "flat earth" with no quotes. The claims are more credible than that, I'm just saying I don't think those figures prove much by themselves. Irtapil (talk) 00:31, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A, will accept B. I do not think the denial is helpful, per WP:MANDY, but if it will help this pass I will accept that compromise. Andre🚐 04:52, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C would accept B as well, but A is a non-starter to me. The 45 million general google hits are completely irrelevant, as we arent going to start counting random blogs and twitter accounts as reliable sources all of a sudden. The USA Today article is relevant in that it reports The Israeli military official said that, just as authorities know that many women were sexually assaulted during the Supernova music festival and at their homes on Oct. 7, "we know they were raped in Hamas captivity.", somehow presented as though the USA Today is undersigning that claim from an Israeli military official in the opening comment here, but it does not. The USA Today article also includes Despite this evidence, Hamas has consistently denied accusations it used sexual violence on Oct. 7. It has claimed the allegations are part of an attempt by Israel to distract from its mass killings of civilians in Gaza. International human rights groups waited two months before finally condemning the sexual violence. Nearly all the sources that include any accusation of rape includes the denial by Hamas as well, if it is to be included it has to include the denial per NPOV. But why should it not be included? Because the rape charges are almost entirely focused on the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and the sourcing here in relation to the overall war does not show that it is a prominent controversy for this subject and not the child article on the attack. There are 16,400 news results for "sexual assault" "hamas", 14,800 for "rape" "hamas" (many overlapping), nearly all of them in the context of coverage of the 7 October attacks It pales in comparison to say coverage of the UN Security Council and the vetoes (114k news results for "security council" "hamas" "gaza" "israel" "2023"). Or to "starvation" "hamas" "gaza" "israel" with 78,400 news results. "genocide" "gaza" "israel" "2023" gets 25,900 news results. For the overall topic, this just does not have the weight in coverage to merit inclusion in the lead. For the 7 October attacks? Yes, of course it does. But for the war that is entering its 11th week and not limited to one day in October, this is not a prominent controversy to be included in the lead. nableezy - 05:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • C. The initial reports, endlessly recycled since, were extremely confused, internally contradictory, and endlessly touted despite numerous corrections, or dropping off the radar of serious reportage, over time. We still don't appear to know if the rape incidents reported reflect a Hamas strategy, are attributable to other militant groups, or the general flux of indiscriminate groups ranging over the landscape and wreaking violence. A large number of similar, specific reports about burning, decapitating, ovening babies etc., are now viewed sceptically, and until we have specific forensic evidence of the scale or scope of these reported crimes, any statement formulated to assert, as was done from the outset in Israeli news reports, that this was a systematic aspect of the 4 hour Hamas onslaught on the border communities, will reflect a partisan claim, not an ascertained fact. Nishidani (talk) 07:00, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This dismissive rejection of overwhelming evidence and testimony comes disappointingly close to the kind of sexual violence denialism that has been deprecated and rejected worldwide over the past few decades. SPECIFICO talk 16:02, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This skepticism is warranted. Israelis have already been caught lying about the details of October 7th. The most notable example is the 40 beheaded babies story. JDiala (talk) 11:36, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C: this war inside Gaza has been going on for 2 and a half months, the 7/10 attack last several hours. Iennes (talk) 07:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC
    The duration of these events is irrelevant to our content policy. It's also false that the sexual violence occurred only on the first day.
    The nature of the initial attack and the ongoing treatment of the hostages has received ongoing coverage in RS, and the coverage is increasing as new investigations reveal the extent of the conduct. It also has been cited as enabling Netanyahu's refusal to moderate the intensity of Israel's counterattack.
    Pearl Harbor/WW2, Archduke assassinationi/WW1, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Boston Tea Party, etc. were all discrete events the significance of which is not diminished by their brevity. We are continuing to see daily coverage, testimony and forensic evidence, and no credible information to the contrary. SPECIFICO talk 15:56, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You dont need to badger people and make this an unreadable mess; if you want to discuss somebody's vote do it in the discussion section where they may ignore you at their leisure. nableezy - 16:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Pearl Harbour and Archduke were precipitators of a large conflict; the sparks which ignited a fire. They are not really comparable to a handful of alleged excesses that occurred in a military invasion, but which otherwise had no further reaching consequences. JDiala (talk) 05:47, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C. This is a WP:BALASP issue and a matter of WP:DUE. Option A (including "a few sentences") is, in addition to violating NPOV and failing to follow reliable sources (by omitting the denial), totally excessive. The Israeli captives have been a larger story in relation to the war as a whole, and they have a single sentence, which is appropriate; an (as yet unconfirmed and strenuously denied) allegation of something that happened on a single day in the course of an eleven-week war should not be given more prominence. As well, as a matter of BALASP, highlighting these allegations skews the POV of the lead. I don’t want to speculate about anyone’s intent, but I get the feeling that highlighting the events of October 7 is a way to undercut the more prominent aspects of the war as a whole, namely, Israeli atrocities and the humanitarian situation in Gaza. In effect, “well, Hamas also did bad things”. But we have a litany of articles about that: War crimes in the 2023 Israel–Hamas warSexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel; articles on individual October 7 attacks. This article is about the entire war. It is not just about October 7. The bottom line is that when news stories about the October 7 attack refer to sexual violence, they include attribution of the claims, and they include Hamas denials. Overwhelmingly, if not exclusively. We can’t independently weigh the evidence, determine it’s credible, and then depart from RS by failing to include attributions and denials. WillowCity(talk) 13:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A The nature and ferocity of the 10/7 attack was the predicate for the Netanyahu government's unprecedented response. The rapes and sexual mutilations have received broad ongoing coverage and increasing investigations and condemnation. No RS treats any denials as serious or credible, so MANDY applies. If mention is to be made of denials, as in option B, we would also need to convey that those denials are not taken seriously and are themselves widely condemned. But that would be excessive detail for the lead. Note that WP is not a newspaper and the fact that the press initially (but now much less frequently} mentions Hamas' denials does not tell us what we must convey as an encyclopedia. SPECIFICO talk 16:17, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    For Israeli atrocities, we generally mention Israeli denials even when they are not credible, eg lead of Shireen Abu Akleh.VR talk 00:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It is factually incorrect that the press currently less frequently mentions Hamas' denials. The recent NYT investigation regarding this explicitly noted Hamas' denials in the article. Furthermore, it is not unusual to include denials of crimes in the lead even when those crimes are generally accepted to be true, especially when said crimes are done by state or quasi-state actors like Hamas. The Armenian Genocide is an example of this. We explicitly discuss Turkish denial in the lead. JDiala (talk) 11:34, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C. Lacking weight for the topic of this article.Crampcomes (talk) 16:36, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. This is important to understanding how Hamas precipitated the war. Denials are not credible and not worth including. Far more important than the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which was Hamas's desired outcome resulting from the atrocities committed to provoke the war. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    While I also support option A (and indicated as much below, so I hope people don't double count), strong disagree that it would be far more important than the humanitarian situation. To say "They wanted this" as innocent bystanders are killed does not make those innocent bystanders less killed. Jikybebna (talk) 21:47, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • C. but B would be acceptable. The allegations are absolutely a huge flashpoint in coverage of the war, but every RS article I read includes the denials alongside the accusations. A just doesn't make sense from a WP:DUE standpoint. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 18:31, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. I don't think the denials should be mentioned, considering that they are given very brief treatment by RS. However I don't see much harm in mentioning them briefly (Option B). Alaexis¿question? 18:48, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • C It can be treated a major part of the 7 October attack but it is a very minor part of the war and that's what this article is about. The lead is already a bit stuffed. NadVolum (talk) 20:29, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option B currently, but am fine changing to Option A if somebody shows that a plurality of reliable sources don't include the denial. It seems like enough do for it to warrant a brief mention. I am opposed to option C; I don't find the arguments in favor of it compelling. We have an article on the topic for a reason; there's an articles worth of sources about it. Enough to warrant a mention in the lede. Polite reminder as well to assume good faith and not to speculate about the intent of editors, don't think that's going to be helpful. Chuckstablers (talk) 04:23, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would like to note that while Hamas denies allegations of sexual assault or mutilation committed by members of its armed wing, it does not deny such acts performed by others who participated in the attack. Therefore, this is not an actual denial of the fact that sexual violence has indeed taken place during the attack. Marokwitz (talk) 09:03, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. Including the denial by Hamas would be a form of WP:FALSEBALANCE. There is clear, dated, evidence of the sexual violence so mentioning the denials would create a false sense of ambiguity. If people do indeed think that there's enough uncertainty to include the denials then I would be in favor of Option C as that means that it's a he-says she-says situation that takes away from the main point of the conflict. Ergzay (talk) 05:12, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A per Hawkeye7. The war began with Hamas atrocities that shocked the world and traumatized Israel, and the Hamas denials lack credibility and inclusion would be WP:FALSEBALANCE. We don't include Israeli denials in the lead as also observed above. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 14:34, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. This has clearly received significant coverage in Western media. Recent articles in AmericanBritish and Australian reliable news outlets, for example. Sources tend to mention the Hamas denial briefly and only after the allegations have been made in full over several paragraphs, so I think we should keep the denial out of the lead. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 15:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C. The October 7 attack and kidnapping are the events that triggered the current invasion in Gaza. However, the rape accusations have no bearing on Israel's decision for this specific military operation. Including them is more likely to serve Israel's propaganda purposes (false consciousness) than an encyclopedic one. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 01:36, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    (Supplementary comment after someone cited the New York Times article "Screams Without Words" in this discussion.) The NYT paywalled "Screams Without Words" article fails to provide justification for including the rape allegations in the article's lead. Typically, such details belong in an article about the terror attack article itself, not in the article covering the military retaliation that follows. Even for proven (not alleged) systemic sexual misconduct during war, these instances are rarely highlighted in the lead, at least I can't find any instance besides this article. Moreover, the October 7 rape allegations, which happened only in 1 day instead of during this war, only surfaced in November 2023, after northern Gaza had already been heavily bombarded by the IDF. Hence, it's unlikely that the rape allegation influenced Netanyahu's decision to attack Gaza, or "completely eradicate Hamas". While I hesitate to delve into the details of the NYT's "Screams Without Words" article, a brief review indicates a lack of concrete evidence. The article lacks testimonies from the allegedly sexually assaulted survivors, and all Israelis killed in the October 7 attack were hastily buried without autopsy. The allegations heavily rely on witnesses (e.g. "Sapir") testimonies and videos which don't show the actual process of sexual assault, but its "aftermath". All in all, supporters are trying to make a precedent over something lacking hard evidence but being politicized and weaponized. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 14:07, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Sameboat: Why would you separate the first attacks? Or do you just mean that's where the detail belongs instead of the mean page? Irtapil (talk) 19:01, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Irtapil: I believe my previous comment is quite clear: The rape allegations were not the basis for Israel initiating this full-scale invasion of Gaza; rather, it was the killing and kidnapping incidents. As far as I can see, no reliable sources directly connect the rape allegations to Israel's military retaliation, not even NYT's Screams Without Words.[2] Instead, these sources primarily focus on the October 7 attack, including Hamas' denial and claim that the allegations serve as a distraction from Israel's war crimes,Guardian and that wouldn't justify option A which rejects Hamas' denial in the lead. If the rape allegations were to be proven true, that would be very disturbing. However, even if one could demonstrate systemic sexual misconduct during Israel's invasion, it would still be extraordinary to include such details in the lead of a war article, regardless of the side implicated in the alleged crime. The exclusion of sexual misconduct (e.g. comfort woman in Second Sino-Japanese War) from the lead aligns with Wikipedia's standard format for war articles. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 02:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Sameboat
    I wrote this earlier but it didn't send.
    I think the rape narrative is central to this war because of the way it is being used to justify a genocide.
    As far a I know there is stronger evidence of more widespread rapes in Ukraine? But they are less relevant to that conflict, because it hasn't become the "We must destroy them because!"
    Arguably, we shouldn't amplify the Israeli propaganda narrative, but I don't think not mentioning it helps? We definitely shouldn't call the initial attacks article "Hamas Rape spree in Israel" or such, but it is a prominent issue.
    Though I have possibly just talked myself into "not in the lead" of the main article maybe.
    Irtapil (talk) 19:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @IrtapilI think the rape narrative is central to this war because of the way it is being used to justify a genocide. I would like you to cite at least one reliable source which directly use the rape narrative to justify anything related to Gaza's humanitarian crisis. If your goal is to ridicule Israel's petty excuses to collectively punish and expel Gazan Palestinians, mentioning the rape allegations in the lead doesn't help at all, but ruins the balance of the article. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 09:38, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C as information that is currently both poorly verified and largely tangential to the narrative of the war as a whole, which is the topic. These claims are merely one subset of atrocity claim under investigation and do not require detailing in the lead. Much emphasis was placed by Israel on this material after the renewal of violence in Gaza, but this POV emphasis does not make it of overall due weight emphasis as lead detail: on the contrary, it might violate NPOV to do so. Option B would likewise be preferable to Option A in asserting a modicum of balance, but both are less preferable overall as undue in terms of overall weight considerations. Iskandar323 (talk) 01:52, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option AThose people are Islamists and in favor of forcing women to wear hijabs, because they believe that men cannot be held responsible for their behaviour when they see unveiled women. It would be very inconsistent of them to abduct unveiled women and not rape them, so the accusations are obviously true. Given the coverage, it also belongs in the lead. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:48, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Fortunately, your personal analysis is entirely irrelevant here. Zerotalk 07:43, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. Exceedingly well covered topic. And including Hamas's denial would be WP:FALSEBALANCE. As per Marokwitz below, we should try to use language similar to that of the Guardian. Dovidroth (talk) 07:51, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. Widely covered by WP:RS, Major controversies must be prominently featured in the lead section as per Wikipedia's guidelines (WP:LEDE). I oppose option B for the following reason: The denial of sexual violence in this context has become a fringe view, especially in light of substantial and reliable accounts that have surfaced. For example, according to The Guardian:

    Several incidents of sexual assault and rape from 7 October have been documented by Hamas body camera footage, CCTV, material uploaded to social media, and photographs and videos taken by civilians and first responders, according to several people involved in analysing the footage. Survivor and witness testimonies, many from the Supernova rave, describe seeing women being raped before they were shot.

The language used in the lead could be similar to the one used by the Guardian, that is, attributing the evidence to survivors, witness testimonies and forensic staff.
This evidence has resulted in UN Women's explicit condemnation of the sexual violence that occurred. Hamas may deny that its fighters carried out sexual violence, but it is a fact that not only Hamas fighters participated in the attack, therefore this denial is meaningless and misleading.
Furthermore, it is imperative to recognize that denying or downplaying these heinous acts is not only factually incorrect but also morally reprehensible. Such denial would be a profound insult to the female victims, akin to silencing their voices and negating their traumatic experiences. Applying a WP:FALSEBALANCE between the victims and perpetrators in this context not only undermines the veracity of the reported events but also perpetuates a harmful narrative that could further victimize the victims. Marokwitz (talk) 08:51, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C - Per Nableezy and Willowcity. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:23, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C Without commenting on the sourcing: we have a separate article for the October 7th attacks. Details about the October 7th attacks go in the lead of that article, not this one. Loki (talk) 15:42, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C as these are WP:UNDUE for the lead of this article, but option B for 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel as they are WP:DUE there. Many Israeli actions have received more RS coverage, as nableezy points out, but can't be given the space they deserve because of concerns surrounding length. For example, I find that gaza starvation has 95,000 results, or 8x more than hamas rape which is 12,000 results for me. Will we give 8x more sentences to the starvation of Gazans in the lead as we give to the sexual assault claims? Various other topics not mentioned in the lead all get more news hits than the rape allegations: shifa = 17,000"indonesian hospital" gaza = 16,000cancer gaza = 119,000 (the plight of cancer patients amidst the war) etc.VR talk 00:35, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I've got only 13,000 results for Gaza starvation, which would be about the same. Not sure why the discrepancy. If you switch over to plain google results, hamas rape has about 10m more results than Gaza starvation. [00:40, 26 December 2023 (UTC)] I also have different results for your other links. Same number for Shifa, but for Indonesian hospital Gaza, only 6800. For cancer Gaza I have the same high number, but I suspect that not all of those results are about this. Andre🚐 00:41, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A sexual violence by Hamas has been condemned by dozens of leaders, senators, figures etc. A bunch of international media outlets have reported on it, and gotten testimonies. Prosecution already has collected a substantial amount of evidence over the past several months. There is footage, some of it spread by Hamas itself of women bloodied in between their legs and other things. It would be a complete wp:falsebalance to give equal weight to Hamas denial of the actions.
    I do think the body should include a denial. However the lead should be option AHomerethegreat (talk) 06:29, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. Mentioning the topic is especially important because the very extreme violence (not just sexual) of October 7 is what later on shaped the goals, length and the extent of the campaign in Gaza. It is also important in order to understand why the 2023 Gaza War was so different than the ones in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Option B might have sufficed but due to the sheer amount of WP:RS, I think this is just WP:FALSEBALANCEFoodforLLMs (talk) 12:31, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    In other words, "mentioning the topic is especially important because we need the atrocity propaganda to justify an ongoing genocide." Unfortunately for you, Wikipedia is not the propaganda arm of the Israeli government. JDiala (talk) 00:33, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:NOTAFORUMWP:AGF please argue policy rather than making personal attacks. Drsmoo (talk) 02:17, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Please tone down your sarcasm and accusations, I think it's highly uncalled for. To address the substance, We are supposed to present the facts to the reader and let them formulate a narrative. For example, just as you need to see the Palestinian casualty figure to understand condemnations of Israeli actions, you need to see details of the Oct 7 attack to understand support for Israeli actions. And I think our job is to show these facts. --FoodforLLMs (talk) 16:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A absolutely. It would be such a gross violation of WP:NPOV to not include it in the lead. EytanMelech (talk) 19:37, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C as UNDUE and unreliably sourced. I would accept Option B. The Zionist entity has engaged in a huge information war, despite that many of their wild claims have been found to be fabrications. All reliable sources have chosen to couch reports of sexual violence by attributing it to Zionist and unreliable sources like the IOF. It would be a violation of all Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to include this likely false claim in wikivoice in the lead of this article, let alone without the denial from Palestinians. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 17:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    “All reliable sources have chosen to couch reports of sexual violence by attributing it to Zionist and unreliable sources like the IOF.”
    What does attributing it to Zionist mean? Are you referring to Israeli first responders? Could you rephrase?
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181
    ”The BBC has seen and heard evidence of rape, sexual violence and mutilation of women during the 7 October Hamas attacks.”
    https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20231213-evidence-mounts-of-sexual-crimes-perpetrated-by-hamas-during-oct-7-attack-in-israel
    “Two months after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, evidence is mounting of the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas that day. Prosecutors have little doubt that women were raped, tortured and some of their dead bodies mutilated. Israeli police, who opened a probe in mid-November, say they have gathered more than 1,500 testimonies from witnesses and first responders.” Drsmoo (talk) 02:08, 28 December 2023 (UTC) Edit at 02:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The BBC is at this stage the government mouthpiece of an at least partly involved global power running reconnaissance missions over Gaza from Cyprus. As in all cases, we should be seeking reliable, secondary sources that are as independent as possible. As for the France 24 piece, that says "prosecutors" (presumably Israeli prosecutors) are confident of X - now prosecutors are specifically in the business of making a strong case rather than neutrally and impartially reflecting the facts. Their counterpart would be the defense, which isn't reflected here (if this is in reference to the ICC filing, then we may be waiting some while). In the same breath, the same source notes that the UN investigation is evidently ongoing - so we are still awaiting impartial voices on proceedings. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:32, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Those are both reliable secondary independent sources, that’s why we use them. Please don’t misrepresent sources, France24 wrote “evidence is mounting of the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas that day”. Along with the myriad of others that also report Hamas’ murderous rape spree.
    The argument by some editors that we should ignore reliable sources is ridiculous. The argument that we should ignore Israeli civilians and human rights organizations because they are Israeli is unacceptable on Wikipedia. Drsmoo (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, the way a reliable source like the BBC turns into a government mouthpiece of an at least partly involved global power because it does not toe a pro-Hamas party line is clearly motivated reasoning. No difference to Trump calling those outlets that contradict him "fake news". --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:09, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    They’re not misrepresenting anything. BBC (British state media) is saying it’s “seen evidence” which is not the same as saying that something occurred. If a source said they’d “seen evidence” that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians, would you want it included in the lead that Israel is targeting civilians? And would you agree that the statement of every Palestinian civilian or human rights organization is lead-worthy?
    I don’t think people are suggesting they be ignored outright, they belong in the body with appropriate attribution and context. But these accounts are generally filtered through Israeli government sources (prosecutors, police, the military) who have a vested interest in spin-doctoring evidence to fit the narrative of a belligerent to the conflict (one who famously lacks credibility). For example, who knows what kind of editing the video shown to BBC was subject to? How reliable was the witnesses’ perception, how much do they even remember, are they sincere? These are not issues the BBC opines on. The question is not “are Israeli civilians telling the truth”, the question is “are the reports sufficiently notable, credible and unequivocal to justify including in the lead?” The even more important question is, “do these allegations tell readers anything about the ongoing 12-week war, or would focusing extensively on a single day skew the narrative towards one POV?”
    (also, can we all try to keep the discussion to the discussion section) WillowCity(talk) 15:27, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Using pejorative slurs like Zionist entity isn't an argument and railing against Zionist control of the sources (assuming they're saying all Western sources presented here are Zionist) in this discussion isn't one either. The closer should ignore this !vote since they were asked to elaborate on what a "Zionist source" is and didn't. Chess (talk(please mention me on reply) 21:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The repeated assertion by some that Israeli witnesses, first responders, and human rights organizations are not trustworthy due to their nationality is unacceptable.

Currently on the home page of The NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html “A Times investigation uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel” “A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7”Drsmoo (talk) 17:26, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Option A, per SPECIFICO, Hawkeye7 and Marokwitz. The cruelty of the 7.10 attack, including the sexual violence, resulted the wide support in Israel to a harsh response. The credibility (or more accurately, the lack of credibility) of the denial should also be considered, as we describe the reality. The denial is indeed a fringe view. I think that option B, if it includes a clarification that the denials are not taken seriously and widely condemned, can also be good, and even give a better perspective, but it will be too long for the lead, so it's better not to write about the denials in the lead at all. פעמי-עליון (talk) 18:37, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A - (Brought here from WP:RFC/A) Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED and we should include this information (the weight in the media does give it proper DUE weight) and leave out the denial as I do also believe it is "fringe". MaximusEditor (talk) 21:06, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You're making a strawman argument, as no one has argued for censoring this, and in fact, many of the Option C !votes specifically point to other places more suitable to mention this. VR talk 04:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A as per Hawkeye7 and others. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 01:56, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A per Andre. 𝕸𝖗 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖙𝖑𝖊 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱 ☎️ 📄 02:23, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C Such details and denials about what happened on the first day of the attack belong to the lede of 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.Ghazaalch (talk) 05:28, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C I've been convinced by the argument brought up below by User:WillowCity and User:Sameboat would make Option B give undue weight to sexual violence in contrast to other conflicts. Option A is for me a nonstarter. To include it we would have to adjudicate that Israel's claims are valid, that any rebuttal is invalid, AND that including it is so factual and important that it doesn't even warrant including usual context. I think it would be a flagrant violation of NPOVAcebulf (talk | contribs) 17:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    After reading a few rather convincing arguments above from User:Marokwitz, the denial from Hamas referring only to their members, any form of option B would have to be very carefully worded. I'm not sure that option B would make much sense in that light. Acebulf (talk | contribs) 21:38, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A' or Option B per Associated Press. “Such accounts given to The Associated Press, along with first assessments by an Israeli rights group, show that sexual assault was part of an atrocities-filled rampage by Hamas and other Gaza militants who killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages that day.” Drsmoo (talk) 18:12, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: From The NY Times today: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html “A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.

Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.” Drsmoo (talk) 17:40, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Option C It should absolutely not be discussed in the lead. The Zionist state has demonstrably produced false atrocity propaganda regarding the October 7th resistance operation, like the 40 beheaded babies lie, which incidentally the uncritical Western media has parroted. We thus have reasonable suspicion that these sexual assault allegations are likewise fabricated. The lack of forensic evidence (e.g., semen) or pregnant Israeli women is also eyebrow-raising. I understand that Wikipedia does regard Western media as WP:RS, which I accept and do not contest, so it is reasonable to include the sexual violence claims somewhere in the article. However, I think it is fair for us to exclude it from the lead, given the very real reservations regarding this. JDiala (talk) 00:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Could you articulate a policy-based reason why we should ignore widespread attestation in the most reliable sources, and why we should ignore eyewitness testimony from Israelis. Your allegation that the evidence of sexual assault is fabricated because it comes from Israelis is not acceptable. Drsmoo (talk) 01:58, 28 December 2023 (UTC) Edit at 02:17, 28 December 2023 (UTC) and 02:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I never stated we should "ignore" it. I simply asserted it shouldn't be in the lead. Something being reported by a widespread number of sources is a necessary but insufficient reason to be included in a lead. It is also important to note that this legalistic focus on "policies" is contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia see e.g., WP:5P5. It is completely sensible for us, as an encyclopedia, to have a greater degree of scrutiny for an entity known for regularly producing bald-faced lies regarding the events of this war. This doesn't mean eschewing such claims altogether, but merely relegating them to the body of the article rather than the lead. JDiala (talk) 02:44, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-08/ty-article/israeli-police-collect-eyewitness-testimony-of-gang-rape-during-hamas-attack/0000018b-b025-d3c1-a39b-bee5ef400000 Which entity are you referring to, the testimony of eyewitnesses? I don't like putting words into peoples mouths, but your argument seems to be that not only should we ignore the wide array of highly reliable sources, but we should also ignore all Israeli eyewitness accounts, and first-responder accounts, because you think they're untrustworthy. That position would not be valid. Drsmoo (talk) 03:06, 28 December 2023 (UTC) Edit 9 February 2024[reply]
  • Option C. Came to that decision having read the arguments of those who have already answered. A is out of the question as it's a breach of NPOV in showing bias towards one side when neither side has any credibility as regards truth. B is a "he said she said" option, which in an article based on a broader issue (where a multitude of more widely covered events that have transpired throughout the war do not make the lede) seems excessive/undue to mention. Therefore C seems the most appropriate option as it keeps to substantiated facts without giving undue weight/balance. It's the most dispassionate option. As a side issue (given it has been used as an argument), media outlets (otherwise reputable on other issues) without verified, independent information can't be used to validate claims either, as western ones have historically had a bias one way, while middle eastern ones have had an opposing slant; what's been new about this current episode of the conflict is more of the masses are not being taken in either way, thus have a more independent/unhindered view of what is happening. Messi R9 R10 CR7 Thiago LFC (talk) 01:12, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option B I think it is pretty clear that sexual assault and rape occurred during the initial attack, which is unsurprising since that's how most wars seem to go. What is unclear is the extent of the assaults, which is why most RS still include the Hamas denial; until this is clearer, the Hamas denial of its armed forces not being responsible should also be mentioned.
  • Option A. A denial is undue weight for the lede; reliable sources, such as thus extensive NYT report only mention the denials in passing and afford no credulity to them or detailed coverage. Similarly, it would be undue to exclude the tapes from the lede; they are very widely covered and the extent of said coverage is only increasing. BilledMammal (talk) 23:51, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Option A Yes as the October 7 attack was the core event starting the war, and the brutality of it has been very widely reported so we should report what reliable sources state. The Hamas denial isn't relevant per the aforementioned WP:MANDY. It's also very important to state the course of events as a fact in wiki-voice- often in these articles editors have been adding wording such as "Israel reports that Hamas carried out sexual assaults occurred on October 7" rather than the direct factual wording of "Hamas carried out sexual assaults on October 7". Reliable sources are very clear that the mass sexual assaults did unfortunately happen and the wording needs to reflect this. Chessrat (talkcontributions14:20, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Option C. The lead is overdetailed in many places. The article does not explain whether or how the scale of the sexual violence during the October 7 attack factors into Israel's decision-making. Senorangel (talk) 03:57, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C or B, I wholly endorse arguments of Messi R9 R10 CR7 Thiago LFC and WillowCity. Sexual violence - and specifically organised, weaponised, sexual violence - was a notable feature of the Bosnian war, particularly against Bosniak women, but it isn't mentioned in the lead, nor was the scale of its occurence reliably established at the time. At the present moment, the scale and extent of sexual violence on October 7th is unknown - and largely unknowable - and information about it has been highly weaponised, despite little coming from competent forensic authorities. Editors here are tending to argue that because some 'horror stories' are probably true, then all must be true. Two sad facts are that sexual violence is a normal feature of most wars and that weaponising of atrocity stories is nearly as common. Pincrete (talk) 13:41, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Option A So many words here for the obvious thing: the evidence is very precise. Legitimizing the denial of the claims of sexual violence of women in this context is against any liberal and feminist thought. The only way to include claims of denial can be in the context of bashing those who deny - similar to mentioning Holocaust denial. Agmonsnir (talk) 18:09, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See, WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Wikipedia is not here to uphold liberal and feminist thought. (For the record, I hold both liberalism and feminism as noble causes). VR talk 04:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A per Marokwitz. The topic is widely covered by mainstream media, including the thorough examination of The New York Times published lately. It is one of the major controversies related to the attack, and as such it should be mentioned in the lead per WP:LEDE. Hamas denial, as suggested in Option B, is not helpful here, and may be considered fringe view regarding the vast coverage of the sexual violence by so many reliable sourcesNoon (talk) 22:23, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. It would be a gross failure of WP:NPOV not to include the sexual violence in. Based on the WP:RS it is very clear that the sexual violence isn't some isolated actions but it's clear that it's very related to the conflict at hand. If the RFC is made in October, there are no clear references about rapes, but at this moment we have seen multiple references about the sexual violence - and we can't ignore it. The fact that Hamas saying that "it didn't happen" shouldn't stop us from taking the information from the reliable sources - where all sources agree that it happened. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 12:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A with great obviousness. We do not need the plaintive, WP:MANDYish denials of Hamas, a terrorist organization, over what they did or did not do. A terrorist organization is not a reliable source even for itself. We go by what actual sources say about them. Zaathras (talk) 14:40, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Zaathras very good point. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 20:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaning option C, oppose option B: This article is about the whole war, and there is a different article for the events of 7 October. It is proper that the lead of the latter should include sexual violence (it does currently). It is also proper that the section of this article on 7 October includes it (it does currently). But I don't think it needs to be in the lead. If it is in the lead, however, there's no reason to create false balance by including a denial by the perpetrators (per WP:MANDY). Although I don't think it should go in the lead, many of the option C arguments above proceed from the conviction that sexual violence didn't happen, which is a deeply problematic assumption given the clear weight of evidence, and I would hope that arguments for C based on that logic be discounted by any closer. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:58, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A with a caveat. The lead has a serious problem: it omits even mentioning the atrocities by Hamas in Israel, which were the reason and the casus belli for the war. It was not merely a "surprise attack" as framed in the lead. That should be mentioned in one-two phrases, which would also include the mentioning of sexual crimes by Hamas as the key element of the atrocities. Option "B" is not viable because the denial by Hamas belongs to WP:FRINGE. My very best wishes (talk) 16:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. This is the reason the war started. Calling it a "surprise attack" is whitewashing. It was one event but without it, the war wouldn't have happened. More specifically, most news articles cover the violent rapes as one of the causative factors. The reliable sources presented here overwhelmingly consider the rapes to a) be important and b) have happened. Denying this would be like including Holocaust denial in the lede to the article on World War 2, like "millions allegedly died in genocides". Comments like Nishidani's boil down to "well reliable sources say that there were mass rapes but I don't think their standard of evidence was high enough". That's not how Wikipedia operates, we are supposed to summarize the consensus of reliable sources and not inject our own burdens of evidence to say the New York Times/BBC/The Guardian didn't do a good enough job. This argument that there's not enough evidence to make these claims would only hold if reliable sources agree that there is not enough evidence. Nableezy touches upon this by citing a single USA Today article that doesn't endorse the Israeli claims (but doesn't deny them either), but Drsmoo, Marokwitz, and Ficaia provide several other sources that do agree that Israelis were raped by Palestinians/Hamas. Nableezy also brings up various counts of news articles to try to rank the importance of various issues. This is the Wikipedia:Search engine test. We don't know how many of those news sources are reliable, the engine miscounts a lot, etc etc. It's not as useful evidence as searching reliable sources such as the NY Times or the BBC which heavily cover the rapes. Chess (talk(please mention me on reply) 21:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C: This is primarily an Israel claim with no evidence (admitted by Israeli press) like many other extraordinary claims they routinely make. It is due in the article, but it is hardly a notable enough aspect of the conflict to be included in the lede. MarioGom (talk) 13:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm, no. [3] [4] Marokwitz (talk) 19:40, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I don't have a view on the best option, partly because the lead will hopefully evolve organically overtime per MOS:LEAD, so I'm not sure an RfC matters much in practice at this stage. But I wanted to say something about the various arguments being used to exclude a Hamas denial. I don't find them very compelling. Setting aside the obligation to follow RS and the fact that many include the denial, because that is what RS do, I wonder whether the MANDY, FALSEBALANCE, UNDUE, NPOV etc arguments might be missing the point a bit. This is just an encyclopedia after all and the lead is meant to summarize and inform. If there is reporting by RS that X's actions likely included instances of Y, and we say that, the fact that X denies it rather than says nothing is in itself informative. Including it tells the reader something about X. Is this case substantially different from something like the Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal lead? Sean.hoyland - talk 07:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A per above, particularly the first reply. JM (talk) 03:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option C As pointed out by other edtiors, it was much smaller than the other atrocities and grievances. It was not fully discovered until Israeli retaliation had already started, so it cannot be a reason for the retaliation. A few sentences would be completely UNDUE for the lead. If we must mention it, at most only add the words "sexual violence" to an existing sentence. CurryCity (talk) 11:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A. Two wrongs don't make a right. There's no amount of wrongs that can make a right. Israel's bombing of al-Aqsa was not OK nor was the post Oct 7 retaliation and killing so many soldiers, civiliand, and kids. But that doesn't make what the Oct 7 attackers did right either. Jikybebna (talk) 09:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option B Both sides of the argument should be made. There are many reliable sources that cite to the sexual abuse that occurred in the opening days of the attack. It is worth including the denial because both perspectives are important and should be included. Because many of the accounts are made by a few individuals, the counterargument (denials) should also be included and appropraitely sourced. Jurisdicta (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option A There’s a lot of evidence in reliable sources that sexual assaults were an important part of the attacks that occurred on October 7 & led to the war. Including the denials seems like false balance. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion 2

Regarding the completely made up claim that the denials are not taken seriously and are themselves widely condemned and the press initially (but now much less frequently} mentions Hamas' denials, sources to this day include that Hamas denies the accusations of rape, the overwhelming majority of sources that refer to any claims of rape or sexual assault include the denial. The most recent one I am aware of is USA Today writing about the Israeli military saying they know hostages were raped includes the denial. Such a series of unsubstantiated assertions as made in that comment should have evidence provided for it or it should not be taken seriously at all. nableezy - 16:46, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and the denial is in the body of the article. No one is arguing that the denial should not be in the body of the article, only not in the lead. Every single thing in the lead that is adverse to Israel, without exception, has drawn a response from Israel or a denial. But such denials are not mentioned. Putting in the Hamas denial, and only the Hamas denial, would be unbalanced and not neutral. Coretheapple (talk) 17:54, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What accusation by Hamas against Israel is included without a response? nableezy - 17:56, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nableezy, you keep acting like Hamas and Israel deserve to be treated as 50 50 equal players on every question, and what we do for one hand we must do equally for others. It's not a good model for NPOV or life or justice. Sometimes, one side does something completely out of proportion to what ever happened before. Hamas is a small group with a small quasi-territory that launched an attack against significant odds, alone, with no support, and is basically an international pariah due to the atrocities during that attack, and we don't need to act like it's possible that they didn't happen or that they weren't terrible, or that whatever denials issued by Hamas are credible, unless some credible academic or journalistic source does so. We also shouldn't act like those events didn't precipitate this entire war.
Israel is a large, well-armed, wealthy and powerful state backed by the US, UK, France, Australia, and basically every Western and English speaking powerful country, under quite a bit of scrutiny and being accused of all manner of things from apartheid to genocide, and we should absolutely treat those as complex both-sides type issues inasmuch as there are people debating them who are reliable (though, in my view, the genocide allegation goes too far and is inaccurate). On some issues yes, there's a complex narrative and we must balance the views of Palestinians versus Israelis, each group has separate factions, such as Fatah, or the different Israeli groups that range from Meretz and Labour to Likud to Blue&White to Shas and Yisrael Beteinu. And no, there are not credible allegations that Israelis are raping Palestinians, not like there are of Hamas. So we don't need to act like these things are the same. The victims in the Hamas attack were not soldiers, they were peaceful civilians and in many cases left peace activists. So not every atrocity needs a response. We should simply cover them as the majority of sources do, and not try to both-sides every issue.
The point is to describe in the lead what the majority of yes, Western, yes, English-speaking, sources think are the most pertinent issues. Yes, there have been widespread calls for a ceasefire and widespread reports of indiscriminate civilian deaths in Gaza. We do not try to include Israeli denials of that or whatever weak PR Israeli spokespeople put out about it trying to spin or downplay those massive civilian deaths. Because that wouldn't be credible, and it's not edifying. Andre🚐 09:18, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As much Hamas is a small group with limited international support, Israel is also a small country with international pariah status by some metrics. What else would one call UN general assembly votes where all but three other countries agree with their position? Both entities have credibility that is in the dirt on the global stage due to the unacceptable aspects of their conduct, and the relative weight and/or credibility of either in any conflict scenario is of equally little weight relative to impartial and independent secondary, reliable sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 02:02, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're mostly right except for matters of perspective and a few important aspects that are distorting. Israel is a small country geographically, worldwide. But relative to Gaza, it's quite large. About 60 times as large by land area, a little under 5x as large by population. More importantly, their relative power dynamics. And the 3 other countries are pretty large in terms of that. As far as the UN votes, you're right. Most vote for a ceasefire or to condemn Israeli settlements. My point was about the relative power dynamics at play. Israel is a state and it has to abide by things that states have. Hamas, not so much. Andre🚐 02:11, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
NPOV requires that we feature all significant views; scaling said significance is a trickier matter. My point was that within the context of their globally parochial conflict, the relative weight of Israel/Hamas pales alongside their equal partiality as combatants, and the primary views of either are little more than POV commentary short of validation by independent, secondary analysis. Iskandar323 (talk) 02:23, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
'The victims in the Hamas attack were not soldiers, they were peaceful civilians and in many cases left peace activists.' Sure, so Hamas went and raped peace activists all along the border.
To repeat, we are caught up in the furor of reports from 7-8 Oct of rape, mutilation, beheadings, burning babies. rare later reports tell us forensic doctors and police are sifting through these reports meticulously and exhaustively, but that so far we have no statistical evidence other than an indication from interviews with hostages who have been returned that slightly under 10% reported experiencing some form of sexual molestation.
This is what Hadas Ziv, policy and ethics director for Physicians for Human Rights–Israel stated 10 days ago, guardedly>-

“What we know for sure is that it was more than just one case and it was widespread, in that this happened in more than one location and more than a handful of times. . .What we don’t know and what the police are investigating is whether it was ordered to be done and whether it was systematic.” Sam Mednick New signs emerge of ‘widespread’ sexual crimes by Hamas, as Netanyahu alleges global indifference Associated Press 15 December 2023

That means that we have some sparse facts of sexual violence befalling a number of the several hundred civilians, and extensive allegations that this was systematic and specific to Hamas policy. Not enough for the lead, as yet.Nishidani (talk) 11:54, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes, one side does something completely out of proportion to what ever happened before. you mean like displace 2 million people, kill 20,000 in 10 weeks, starve a civilian population? And when you think something goes to far and is innaccurate that means we shouldn’t include it? Genocide accusations have a ton more coverage than rape accusations, but you think one of those should be included unanswered and the other just brushed aside? Oh, thanks for that bit of wisdom then. nableezy - 12:27, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no. That's happened before, and worse things have happened before. In fact actual genocide has happened before, with 6 million Jews exterminated by Nazis, many LGBT and Romani, etc., or other documented genocides such as the Armenians. As far as the genocide accusations they certainly don't have more coverage or at least not by much, and I haven't seen that source survey. There's also a legal definition of genocide not to mention it's a crime, and we have special treatment for crimes of living people. So, no, it's not the same, it's a false equivalency. The rapes have documentary and photographic evidence. Andre🚐 18:41, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That happened in Gaza? Was it Hamas? As far as source survey: 25k results for "genocide" "gaza" "israel" "2023" vs 14,800 for "rape" "hamas". Do you hear yourself on not to mention it's a crime, and we have special treatment for crimes of living people. You are saying we cannot accuse Israel of a crime (genocide) because of living people and special rules, but we can accuse Hamas of a crime (rape) because reasons? nableezy - 19:52, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Because that event has been proven shown more likely true than not"[added as "proven" was inexact/incorrect legallyAndre🚐] by eyewitnesses, documentary evidence, video footage, photographs, and testimony from the witnesses, showing that the event occurred. So to act like it's still in doubt or deny it happened or downplay it is problematic. Whereas genocide has a number of legal elements that haven't been shown. Apartheid, as I said, is defensible, and arguable, and I might agree that it exists in Israel. The West Bank settlers are also violating international law and have been guilty of several illegal and atrocious things. We don't need to dance around them. If there's clear evidence and nobody can really dispute it except for a basic denial, it should be treated as more likely than not if that's what the sources support. Of course, WP:BLPCRIME and WP:NPOV demand balance, but balance isn't, "include the denial of everything that someone/group is accused of." Balance means reading all the sources, balance them out, and distill the mainstream positions in a proportionately accurate way. If 75% or 95% of sources agree and you discount the remaining 5 or 25% for some reason (such as WP:MANDY or a contradiction or the fact that the claimant is a terrorist group with poor credibility on that particular point), that's how I balance it out. WP:FRINGE and WP:BALASP exist to avoid giving too much platforming to ideas that are not mainstream. The idea that the rapes didn't occur is exactly that kind of flat-eartherism in my view. Whether genocide is occurring is debatable at best, but I'd say that the elements aren't there. We don't need to debate that though, because it's a larger topic and doesn't belong on this page. Andre🚐 20:35, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Im sorry, but youre just making things upexaggerating the evidence and the certainty of the sources. There is no video footage or photographs or documentary evidence, there are eyewitness accounts and there are denials. You can believe the same organizations that made up a baby in the oven or 40 beheaded babies if you want, but please dont misrepresent what the evidence is here. There are no videos, that is not true. And 75-95% of sources do not agree that this happened. Because they dont say it in their own words that it happened, they say who has said it happened and what evidence they have presented for it. They also say who has said it did not happen. You can and others can misrepresent what the sources actually say, but Ive read them and I dont need to just pretend that this misrepresentation is accurate at all. You can say Hamas is a terrorist group with poor credibility, and my response is Israel as a state is an established liar, over decades and in this conflict, and if you want to believe everything they say you can do that, but I dont think that is appropriate for a serious source to accept as fact the claims of a party engaged in active armed conflict and who has provably lied over and over again. And neither do the sources who relay Israeli accusations as Israeli accusations. nableezy - 23:02, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've not misrepresented sources. In one photo, a burned body appears to project anguish. In another, a woman lies naked from the waist down, her underwear hanging from her leg. In interviews, first responders haltingly describe finding naked female corpses tied to beds and survivors recount witnessing a gang rape at the music festival...Over the last several weeks, NBC News has reviewed five interrogations of captured Hamas fighters, an Arabic-language document that instructed Hamas how to pronounce “Take off your pants” in Hebrew, six images of naked or partially naked deceased female bodies, seven eyewitness accounts of sexual violence including both rape and mutilation, 11 testimonies of first responders, and two accounts from workers in morgues who handled the bodies of women after they were recovered from the massacre.[5] Andre🚐 23:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, ZAKA, an organization that has been repeatedly found to have manufactured acts of barbarism like burning a baby to death in an oven, has made these reports. Yes, there are eyewitnesses saying they saw rapes. There are no videos of sexual assault or rape, and no photographs of sexual assault or rape. Your own source repeatedly attributes the accusations to Israeli military and government sources. nableezy - 23:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They're photos which are evidence of rape. They're videos of young women being kidnapped, and videos showing the aftermath of rape. Arabic documents telling Hamas how to say "take off my pants." You can argue whether this evidence was "made up" or "manufactured" but the fact remains that you claimed the evidence didn't exist, and that I made it up, which is incivil. No, I read it in NBC News, an apparently reliable source that is not reliable enough for you. Andre🚐 23:12, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Im going to believe the military that presented a calendar as a terrorist schedule on what they found. Yes you absolutely made up that there has been proven by eyewitnesses, documentary evidence, video footage, photographs, and testimony from the witnesses, showing that the event occurred. and despite your asking an admin to chastise me for it I have no problem repeating that. There is no video or photographic evidence that has proven rape occured. And no reliable source makes such a claim. They have said that there is a body of evidence that increasingly suggests that it did happen. You are the one claiming that this has been proven by video, and that is false. nableezy - 23:16, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Fine, substitute the word proven with "substantiated to show it is more likely than not," it's still incivil to say I made it up. You can quibble on the semantics but that's not going to take away the civility violation. You can believe it was all made up. That's your prerogative. But you can't tell me that I am making it up. Andre🚐 23:19, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you have to substitute something that completely transforms your statement to resemble the truth then your original statement was not true. If you feel I’ve been uncivil you can discuss that on my talk page or report it. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the article so why don’t we focus on the article here? nableezy - 23:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"There is no video or photographic evidence that has proven rape occured. And no reliable source makes such a claim" - Nableezy
Andre provided you a reliable source saying that they directly saw and reviewed photographic evidence that rape occurred. NBC News is on the reliable source list, so it's a reliable source. They said they saw photographs of naked bodies strongly implying sexual violence happened. They did in fact make such a claim. Unless you're going to try to say that NBC is not a reliable source then what you've said here is obviously false.
"Over the last several weeks, NBC News has reviewed five interrogations of captured Hamas fighters, an Arabic-language document that instructed Hamas how to pronounce “Take off your pants” in Hebrew, six images of naked or partially naked deceased female bodies, seven eyewitness accounts of sexual violence including both rape and mutilation, 11 testimonies of first responders, and two accounts from workers in morgues who handled the bodies of women after they were recovered from the massacre." - NBC news.
I'd just like to hear some type of policy based justification as to why we should ignore this. Do you have an argument from WP:RS or WP:NPOV? If you're going to say that 75-90% of sources conclude that rape did not occur (or more weakly, that they don't conclude that it did occur), then where is your list of sources that you looked at to come to that conclusion? I'm just kind of hesitant to take that at face value given the quote I started this post with. Chuckstablers (talk) 23:55, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What they say is that this suggests rapes occured, not that it proved it. And there is no video. And no, I have not said sources conclude rapes did not occur, I say they have not yet concluded rapes did occur. And the sources are those like NBC who are still reporting it as an accusation, not a proven fact. nableezy - 23:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is video evidence; to be clear there is not video evidence of an in-action rape. There is video of young women being kidnapped, such as kidnapping of Noa Argamani. There is video of the interviews as well. See the BBC[6] Video testimony of an eyewitness at the Nova music festival, shown to journalists by Israeli police, detailed the gang rape, mutilation and execution of one victim. Videos of naked and bloodied women filmed by Hamas on the day of the attack, and photographs of bodies taken at the sites afterwards, suggest that women were sexually targeted by their attackers. Videos filmed by Hamas include footage of one woman, handcuffed and taken hostage with cuts to her arms and a large patch of blood staining the seat of her trousers. In others, women carried away by the fighters appear to be naked or semi-clothed. Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs. Andre🚐 00:02, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, there are videos of violence against women, and there are videos of testimonies. That is not video proving rape. This is getting in to the weeds a bit, suffice it to say I do not think there is no evidence, I objected to the claim that the sources say the evidence proves anything, or that there are videos proving it. As far as the interrogations, what NBC says is NBC News could not independently verify the authenticity of the interrogation videos released by Israeli officials. Officials declined to provide unedited versions of the interrogations. nableezy - 00:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"There is no video or photographic evidence that has proven rape occured" is what you said, not "There is no video evidence that has proven rape occured". Do you consider photos of naked bodies of Israeli's killed by Hamas militants proof that they were raped? I'm not sure why Hamas would be undressing women them after killing them without sexually assaulting them, but if you have some theory on that I'd be happy to hear it.
If you could, just let me know what your standard of proof for inclusion here would be. What exactly would you need to see, specifically, from a reliable source before you'd be fine including a brief mention in the lede of what seems to be a prominent topic in the reliable sources about this war? Chuckstablers (talk) 00:40, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reliable sources saying such and such video proves rape occurred. The same standard for all statements of fact on Wikipedia. nableezy - 01:15, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If it's enough evidence to convict somebody in most Western countries, we can mention it in the lead. Of course Hamas's denial should be mentioned in the body of the article, but it is undue in the lead. Dovidroth (talk) 08:32, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reliable sources concluding something occurred is the bare minimum requirement for saying something occurred. If you think that it's enough evidence to convict somebody in most Western countries removes that requirement then you should re-read WP:Vnableezy - 14:35, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are conflicting reports of videos existing. The one report that I personally somewhat trust (wouldn't count for wiki, just someone who claims they saw the early videos) describes "a German woman" at the music event. It described something disrespectful, but not a rape. A lot of videos have been described but never surfaced, and the stories have been distorted in repeated retellings, because most people do not want to watch that stuff. If Israel know of any video evidence they need to give it to an expert third party who investigates war crimes, not just describe it in the media. Irtapil (talk) 00:31, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As has been mentioned, there are reliable sources stating that these rapes occurred. 14:37, 25 December 2023 (UTC) Dovidroth (talk) 14:37, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give them as specific citations please, ping me? Like is being being said below I've mostly heard it as "Israel says". The day became a violent mess, so all types of violence seem possible, but all the specific evidence I've seen is weak or biased. Irtapil (talk) 00:31, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, they report that Israel has said this and that eyewitness accounts have said this. They have not concluded that they have occurred. Attributing accusations and denials is not concluding the veracity of either. nableezy - 14:50, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And to add to the above, weighing the evidence for yourself and then engaging in independent fact-finding is WP:SYNTHWillowCity(talk) 15:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@WillowCity: That is not what is meant by WP:SYNTH. Please review the policy detail at that link. Also, as stated on WP:TPGThere is reasonable allowance for speculation, suggestion, and personal knowledge on talk pages, with a view to prompting further investigation P.S. I love your user name. SPECIFICO talk 16:19, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have reviewed the policy on several occasions, and I would refer to the second sentence: do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. In this case, combining summaries of Israel's evidence from The Guardian (and/or other sources) to reach the definitive conclusion, and state in wikivoice, that sexual violence occurred. According to Dovidroth, RS are stating that these rapes occurred; but the sources, to my knowledge, have not said so definitively; they attribute the evidence to sources within Israel and note that the claim is denied by Hamas.
As well, I certainly do not dispute that users are allowed to state their belief regarding what occurred, but our individual beliefs (as legitimately expressed on a talk page) do not satisfy WP:V and WP:RS such that they should be included in a given article. (Also: thank you for the compliment!!) WillowCity(talk) 16:32, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is absolutely not what SYNTH is. First of all, it doesn't apply to talk page arguments. Secondly, see WP:SYNTHNOT. Synth is not any synthesis, it's only an original novel synthesis that doesn't appear explicitly. Andre🚐 22:02, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(1) SYNTHNOT is an essay, not a core policy; (2) I’m saying that it would be SYNTH if it appeared in the article, which is the issue here and why it’s being discussed on a talk page at all; (3) see above, using an article’s discussion of the evidence to state, in wikivoice, that sexual assault did occur is absolutely synth, because it’s an original novel synthesis that doesn’t appear explicitly. It would be like if I cited a source that said “experts allege that Israel’s prosecution of the war satisfies the legal definition of genocide” based on XYZ evidence, to state, in wikivoice, that Israel is committing genocide. That would be taking the source’s content a step further than the source itself is willing to go, i.e., original research/synthesis. WillowCity(talk) 23:01, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's not the topic of the RFC. The RFC is should there be a few sentences, with or without denial, explaining the sexual violence. The exact language should hew closely to the sources, not synthetically, but exactly as framed in the reliable sources, with attribution as attribute. Andre🚐 23:04, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If we're hewing closely to RS, and discussing the issue exactly as framed by them, then Option A should be written off, because RS overwhelmingly if not exclusively refer to the denial. It is also unclear from the wording of the RfC whether Option A would mean stating the allegations as fact; some !voters seem to be suggesting we should, and I am explaining why that would be synthesis. WillowCity(talk) 23:25, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]


 .....I would post more of this, but you get the idea.