User:IZAK/Deleting lists and categories of Jews

Wikipedia is not Jew Watch

" Wikipedia is NOT 'Jew Watch' "! -- IZAK, inspired by What Wikipedia is not: Wikipedia is not a directory:

Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics such as (but not limited to)...persons (real or fictional)...Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contribute to the list topic (for example, Nixon's Enemies List)...(See Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists#Appropriate topics for lists for clarification.)
Genealogical entries. Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of fame, achievement, or perhaps notoriety. One measure of these is whether someone has been featured in several external sources (on or off-line)...See m:Wikipeople for a proposed genealogical/biographical dictionary project.
The White or Yellow Pages. Contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses are not encyclopedic.
Directories, directory entries, electronic program guide, or a resource for conducting business....
Sales catalogs...
Non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations, such as "People from ethnic/cultural/religious group X employed by organization Y"...Cross-categories like these are not considered sufficient basis to create an article, unless the intersection of those categories is in some way a culturally significant phenomenon. See also Wikipedia:Overcategorization for this issue in categories.
A complete exposition of all possible details. Rather, an article is a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rex071404. Treat verifiable and sourced statements with appropriate weight."

In the news

Italian police shut down blog listing 162 Jewish University professors (European Jewish Press, 08/Feb/2008)

Rationale

Significant votes have resulted in deletion of so-called "Jewish" categories and lists essentially in violation of:

Many lists violate:

Wikipedia:Listcruft (WP:LC).
WP:NOTDIRECTORY (WP:NOTDIR).

In addition:

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information (WP:INDISCRIMINATE).
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day (WP:MADEUP).
Wikipedia:Libel is a strong possibility in instances when subjects deny, hide, dislike or oppose any mention, in spite of verified information, of themselves as being "Jews" or "Jewish" or having any connections with Judaism in any way, in ways that such people were opposed to the Nuremberg Laws that were applied even to mischlings. This is a highly sensitive topic that is unfortunately not treated seriously enough.
Wikipedia is NOT Jew Watch

Hopefully this trend will continue. See:

Deleted categories

Category names and nomination dates:

Chronologically, by date of deletion:

Deleted lists

Names of lists and deletion dates:

Chronologically, by date of deletion:

Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews: Sixteen reasons why this should become a fixed Wikipedia policy

The following is the result of discussions between User:IZAK and User:SlimVirgin:

At the present time, 99% of ALL "Lists" AND "Categories" of Jews should NOT be allowed on Wikipedia for the reasons that will be stated very clearly below so that we can move to have the problem resolved on Wikipedia once and for all IZAK 12:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC):

1) There's no clear definition of "Jew" in use, so that people with one great-great grandparent are being called Jewish. There is NO universally agreed upon definition of who or what is a Jew. For a serious review of this subject see the key article: Who is a Jew? at [1]. This thus means that it is ludicrous, presumptuous and decidedly un-scientific for there to be lists and categories of Jews or of people of Jewish descent drawn up by anonymous editors on Wikipedia who reveal by their placing of people on the lists and categories of Jews a COLLECTIVE ignorance of the CONFLICTING definitions of who is a Jew and that they have no knowledge of the conventional scholarship or legal issues that formulate the definitions of and what a Jew is.

2) The argument that is used by some Wikipedians that if the lists and categories of Jews were to be deleted than all the other lists and categories of ethnicities such as Italian-Americans, and people by religion, should also be removed is actually a "red herring" argument because who is to say that the lists of "Italian-Americans" is accurate, or that the people themselves view themselves as such or that the world has either an interest or has always known this "fact" about them? Furthermore, Jews and people identified as being of Jewish origin have historically been the victims of crimes against humanity committed against the Jewish people by using such lists and "categories" (i.e. "non-Aryans"), the Holocaust being the strongest example of this. So that it may well be that by drawing up massive lists and categories of Jews, Wikipedia may God forbid be setting itself up as an accessory to a crimes against humanity by setting up enhanced data-bases of human beings who may or may not be connected to the Jewish people. Does Wikipedia want to be a de facto venue for online APARTHEID because, unfortunate as it may sound, in millions of people's eyes, to be classed as a Jew means to be somehow an "inferior" person?

3) These are the kinds of lists the Nazis used to keep. Lists or Categories of Jews or people of Jewish descent should be stopped and removed from Wikipedia because they unfortunately have the stench of being associated with the Nazis who used such lists to seek out and murder Jews as part of the Final Solution in the Holocaust (1939-1945) during World war II.

4) When the defense of such lists or categories about Jews is made by certain Wikipedians that there are other lists and categories of ethnic groups, it must be understood that in the case of the Jewish people, Jews cannot be compared to other ethnicities or religious groups because being identified as being Jewish has been proven to result in horrendous discrimination against the people identified as Jews such as in the former Soviet Union when people suppressed their Jewish identity since being identified as Jew often meant denial of access to higher education, the loss of one's job, and expulsion from governmental and military positions. Or, if one is known to be Jewish then that person is FORBIDDEN by present well-known Saudi government laws from entering Saudi Arabia or being present in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. There is also the threat of identifying potential Jewish targets for Islamic terrorists or suicide bombers, God forbid, among those Jews on Wikipedia lists who are alive, and may wish to stay so !!!

5) There are at the present time anti-Semitic websites on the Internet that prove that the collecting of Jews' names and having them published on the Internet is not an innocent undertaking and is meant as some kind of "warning" to the people identified as Jews and to the Jewish people as a whole no matter where they may find themselves. The most notorious of these sites is "Jewwatch" which is the top site that pops up when doing a search for the word "Jew" on Google (and only Wikipedia's article on Jew serves as a serious counterweight.) Somehow or other there are people on Wikipedia who are in effect aping the notorious anti-Semitic "jewwatch . com" website (and there are others) that is a frightening example of "trouble -- and even tragedy -- waiting to happen". See the Wikipedia article on Jew Watch at [2].

6) Wikipedia should NOT lend itself in any way, even unwittingly, to the furtherance of anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred. Unfortunately the uncontrolled growth of lists and categories about Jews is surely playing into the hands of the world's anti-Semites. We're inadvertently aiding and abetting anti-Semites who will find a way to use these lists against the names on them. For example, in the UK, the politicians loyal to Tony Blair are called the "Jewish mafia" and opponents are always interested to work out who is, and who isn't, a Jew among his supporters.

7) The obsession with the ethnic and religious origins of peoples' ethnic and religious roots and background is a phenomenon inspired predominantly by cultural trends in the United States where pride in one's ethnicity religious or non-religious attitudes is of interest to only a small minority of people. It is time for Wikipedia to formulate a formal policy regarding "Lists" and "Categories" of private citizens in the United States as being un-encyclopedic and a misrepresentation of how the people concerned would wish to be viewed and named. Are the living "Jews" in those lists and categories being Emailed for permission to list them as Jews? We worry about the copyright status of photos and maps on Wikipedia, but surely one should worry a lot more about the rights people have to their own personal information being published on so prominent a site as Wikipedia (one of the Internet's top twenty sites!), especially in this day and age of identity theft.

8) See: Wikipedia:Citing sources!!!: A lot of the names are added without SOURCES (a violation of Wikipedia protocol), so there are accuracy problems. Often, the sources are very dubious. This means the lists are a violation of Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research, both of which are policy.

9) Wikipedia is probably "outing" many people who don't see themselves as Jews, and almost certainly want to keep it to themselves, because there's a lot of anti-Semitism in some countries. This then means that Wikipedia is violating people's rights to PRIVACY in acting more like a snooping "paparazzi tabloid reporter" on the lookout for sensationalism and a desire to "create news" and not merely to "report" it.

10) There is a growing concern about Wikipidia editors and users familiar with the topics of Jews and Judaism about the motivation of some of the people who've been working on the lists and categories. This concern is re-enforced when he/she/they steadfastly refuse to produce sources, and become very rude about anyone who tries to get them to do so. The tracing of alleged or supposed Jewish ancestry on Wikipedia is beginning to appear to many editors as more like a worldwide "digging up dirt" or even a "witch hunt" for Jews very similar to form of McCarthyism see [3] when the search for Communists was a rage. And often, the articles attract the WRONG kind of attention from vandals and sockpuppets who want to attack these lists more than anything else. So it's ultimately going to be a lose-lose proposition for Wikipedia to allow them in the first place.

11) In the majority of instances references and citations are not given by contributing editors, but then when NPOV editors attempt to do the work of researching and searching for information about the "Jewish-ness" of the people listed, they feel as if they are doing not just editorial work, but truly DIRTY WORK, because it's a frustrating and questionable task that induces shame and horror in many editors who feel they are essentially being hoodwinked into "doing the Devil's work" by pinning the label "Jew" to people AND PERSONALITIES who have had no connection to Jews, a process which has, in effect, the connotation of being tagged with and becoming the victim of the hated Yellow badge [4].

12) The fact is that for a few of the names, the only online sources for them being Jews are extreme blatant anti-Semitic sites such as Stormfront, Islamist sites, and Wikipedia and its mirrors. This is something we should NOT be doing on Wikipedia.

13) Wikipedia should NOT exceed the conventional very LIMITED norms of common ACCEPTABLE and RESPECTABLE and RELIABLE secular and TRULY SCHOLARLY and ACADEMIC usage when it comes to identifying people as being Jews. Thus, for example, there has always been an honest historical and cultural interest in NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS of Jewish descent, as well as listing ONLY very SMALL numbers of EXAMPLES here and there of some famous secular Jews that traditionally get noticed by scholars such as Freud, Einstein, Marx (although his father converted the family to Christianity), as well not more than a sprinkling of some PROVEN Jews in other fields.

14) See: Wikipedia:No original research !!!: In Wikipedia parlance, it is "ORIGINAL RESEARCH" writ large when lists and categories of Jews are invented and created that would not meet the standard criteria of the known scholars and scholarship in these fields. Historically, as far as Jews themselves are concerned, it has been ONLY proven and reliable universally accepted Jewish scholars of Jewish law itself who at the end of the day have always been the ones to determine and apply the definitions. It should be noted, that because there are so many conflicting and contradictory opinions, in an any case, it is very often an act of pseudo-scholarship for the editors behind the lists and categories of Jews to create and add names to these lists creating the FALSE IMPRESSION that Wikipedia "knows" who belongs on a list or category of Jews, when in actual fact there is DEFINITELY no such consensus in the real world.

15) See: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not !!!: It is also a violation of the rule that WIKIPEDIA IS NOT SOAPBOX or a tool for possibly nefarious PROPAGANDA which is the net result of identifying growing numbers of people as being Jews or somehow partially Jewish, when it is common knowledge that this is a matter of great concern and sensitivity (both positive and negative) to many people.

16) Obviously, lists of famous Jewish religious figures, well-known religious Israelis or those from other countries and of course famous rabbis are not included in these concerns because they are KNOWN and identifiable VERY famous people, scholars and leaders, often through their books, achievements and reliable conventional known sources, and are openly part of Judaism, and who thereby clearly qualify per Wikipedia:Notability.

Thank you. IZAK 12:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Discussions

Discussion has been moved to the Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession talk page: