Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Prussian Holocaust

VfD closed

Moved from closed VfD:

Go vote again at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_deletion#April_10. Jesusfreund 21:14, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

By Charles Stewart 07:53, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, don't vote again. We don't just keep on re-creating deletion requests without a pause until the thing gets deleted. — Helpful Dave 08:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• The existence of the page shames wikipedia. I personally don't think the RfD should be used in this manner, but there is a case to be discussed. This page will be put forward again for VfD in the not-so-distant future; no good arguments for the keep vote were made in this VfD. Why am I reminded of the filibuster & nuclear option stories I keep seeing...?--- Charles Stewart 08:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is no page. It's just a harmless redirect. We even have redirects from misspellings. — Helpful Dave 09:42, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is no consensus for this page to be a redirect, and a redirect would be very far from harmless. --- Charles Stewart 10:40, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• "Keep. I closed the deletion process and determined that there was no consensus to delete. My criterion is that something clearly over 80% is definitely deletable, over 75% I'm looking hard at individual votes, 75% or less I usually determine to be no consensus. And it does not seem right to me that a redirect should be subject to two deletion processes, but if we're going to rerun I will exert my vote on principle to keep, because that seemed to me to to be the result of the earlier process and I think this should be reflected somehow in the votes on this much more exclusive venue. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:19, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)" --Chammy Koala 11:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Do you really think 75% of editors voting delete represents a consensus for a redirect? If not, what point are you trying to make? --- Charles Stewart 11:56, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • • There was not a consensus to keep the redirect, but as there was no consensus to delete, the vote is over and WP policy should be respected by all.--Chammy Koala 12:06, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Chammy Koala's last post in VfD

I missed this at the time. It's the only keep argument in the VfD thread that did not receive an individual refutation:

You can't show that they are syndicates, particularly since the article in WP is called Evacuation of East Prussia, and the wording used in the article is not the same as the wording used in the sites I found by googling. The point is, that people do use the term, you have no real evidence to suggest the term isn't suitable, other than the fact that you feel it's a nazi term and you hate nazis. I'm Australian and I've never heard the term Aboriginal Holocaust (and we all study the history in school), but I wouldn't vote to delete that redirect which is used on WP. Book on Prussia (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786416157/ref=wl_it_dp/102-5519304-8348911?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I1FKX8HXEX6CLK&v=glance&colid=OW3SNIX6O7JB) --Chammy Koala 11:52, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

1. They are syndicates, Wikipedia keeps track of them. Variances with WPs text are explained by the fact that syndicates can reflect past states of WP.
2. Not one usage of the term outside WP has been documented. Cite your sources applies here, I think.
3. I don't know that the editors who put it on here are actually neo-nazis, but they are in the business of propaganda, and its propaganda in a cause that is driven principally by right-extremists here in Germany and their sympathisers elsewhere.
4. In fact I don't hate neonazis en masse (though I do hate some in particular). They are mostly stupid, confused people for whom right extremism gives them a sense of purpose that they would have little chance of finding elsewhere. I do think it is extremely important to counteract neo-naziism. To take a small but personal example: I have Turkish and Kurdish friends who dare not go for a walk with me in the beautiful countryside we have outside Berlin because of the high chance that they will get beaten up by right-extremists.
5. I don't know anything about the political context of the political epithet Aboriginal Holocaust, and so would defer to experts on that phenomenon on what the facts were on such a VfD. I do know a few things about right-extremism here in Germany and the editors who have pushed this term on WP. You do not, hence you deserve, like User:Helpful Dave to be called a useful idiot of neo-nazis.
6. Nobody says that the Russian ethnic cleansing that is the content of this term is anything other than ghastly. It was not comparable to the Shoah, and the people who push this term are trying to make that parallel. It is a violation of neutrality to let them use WP for this purpose. --- Charles Stewart 09:10, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Charles, stop your personal attacks right now. — Helpful Dave 09:40, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am maintaining as much civility as I am capable of, given how angry this abuse of WP makes me. If you think I am out of order, let's go to RfC. --- Charles Stewart 10:38, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As the person who closed the VfD I've avoided looking at the redirect or the article it's pointing at. However we do document POV terms and even make redirects on them (Great Patriotic War->Eastern Front (World War II) for instance, and Bloodless revolution -> Glorious Revolution which should arguably really be called something like the British Coup of 1688). This is useful because people who have seen an event described only from a certain slant can find our article and read, hopefully, a version that has no such slant. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Possibly you missed the fact that the defenders of the redirect could document no usages of the term outside wikipedia and its syndicates. The term is useful only in pushing the political agendas of certain editors operating here in Wikipedia; unlike, say, inherently POV terms like Islamofascism there is no independent body of usage that one could argue is worth documenting in an encyclopedia. --- Charles Stewart 22:56, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see the following Google hits that aren't Wikipedia-related:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] (in German) [7] (Google cache of no longer available page)

Not many, but hardly none.

Nickptar 23:24, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's simply untrue to say the only Wikipedia and "its syndicates" refer to "The Prussian Holocaust". I don't know where you got that nonsense from. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:27, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• For a start: [8] gets only one hit, and this for a different incident (Leuven, WWI). Compare with the already unusual term "gay holocaust", which gets 13 citations in scholarly usage: [9].
• Now to plain Google search, which in this second gives 168 hits over all. Please subtract Wikipedia and mirrors, than subtract the WWI incident in Leuven, look what is left: About a dozen hits, on or referring to http://www.nicholas.haase.com (now offline) or http://www.nccg.org/ezion_geber/preussen2.html

So, in effect, this is not term actually used, but a term which a single digit number of websites try to introduce into usage with the help of the Wikipedia. Please compare Nehruvian-Stalinism, the invention of a single blogger and commentator.

Pjacobi 08:18, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

Well, hello, you only get 191 hits on google for "Evacuation of East Prussia", and that is the title of the article! Prussian Holocaust is only a redirect!! we have redirects for misspellings and worse eg. Dubya for G.W.Bush. If it wasn't offensive to your POVs then you wouldn't be making such an issue about it.--Chammy Koala 09:26, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Of course it is offensive to try to bring a propaganda term into usage with the help of the Wikipedia. So, what's your opinion on Nehruvian-Stalinism? --Pjacobi 10:07, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

• • • "Nehruvian-Stalinism" is an article, "Prussian Holocaust" is a redirect. We are not debating the issue of "Evacuation of East Prussia" here. We are debating a redirect, which will only be used - or come accross - by people who use the term. Your POV does not matter, what matters is that Wikipedia maintains Neutrality and is accessible to ALL not just those who agree with you. --Chammy Koala 11:41, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So, in your opinion, every neologism, even if used by a single person on earth, deserves at least a redirect on Wikipedia? Interesting spin. --Pjacobi 12:06, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

Well, if it was only used by one person then it wouldn't be on wikipedia unless that one person happened to create the redirect. :p My main point isn't that we should put in all possible redirects for everything, but that we shouldn't discriminate based on POV.--Chammy Koala 12:42, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, hmm. Maybe we agree, maybe not. IMHO not all terms for a topic are equally valid, some may have been introduced for propaganda purposes, or are even the result of misunderstandings. Turning all these into redirects would in some cases require clarificationm in the article, or the unwary reader will assume all these terms are of equal validity. So, for Syriac Orthodox Church there exists the redirect Jacobite Church but in the article it is clarified that "Jacobite" is a misleading and somewhat derogatory term. --Pjacobi 13:06, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

Moving forward

Those editors who believe that there is encyclopedic content for documenting Prussian Holocaust as a term whose content is that documented on the page Evacuation of East Prussia should document the usage of the term on this page, just as is done on the page Islamofascism. It is an unacceptable violation of the principle of neutrality to turn this page into a redirect, given that 75% of participants in the VfD voted that the redirect should be deleted.

A place to start is by locating the locus solum of the term Prussian Holocaust (that is, the places the term were first used that influenced all subsequent usages). When I started the VfD, I was under the impression that the page was a recent neologism used by German right extremists that first saw the light of day here on Wikipedia. I realise now that that was mistaken (thanks to User:Nickptar), and I think it would be constructive for us all to try and chart the earliest usages of the term:

1. Ezion Geber's Preussen Gloria (2 of Nickptar's links-- site dates from Nov 2003 but some content is older, obscure religious motives, IIRC "Preussen Gloria" is a phrase used by Greater Germany enthusiasts, a brand of German right extremism. It's not clear that the Ezion Geber character is one, though;
2. The user "Hapsburg" who used the term at the sciforum site described him/herself as an American Monarchist. All posts are from March 2005 on, so not at early user. --- Charles Stewart 22:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
3. The German page only links to the page at the Nicholas Haase site which was pulled, and didn't carry a creation date. Hard to conclude much about the motives for the page from what is written, though it exaggerates much
4. The other links that Nickptar gave are recent (from March and April this year), use the term tangentially and in a manner that I think might easily be derived from Wikipedia content.

I think the synonymy is insufficiently encyclopedic to require inclusion, and in view of its propoganda usage we'd be better of without it, but since the VfD failed, a short article documenting what we find might be grounds for consensus. --- Charles Stewart 22:10, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Don't forget Sir Arthur Evans, in The Times, using the term 1914 for something quite different, if this online source is reliable:

'Sir, may I be allowed to voice the horror and profound indignation at the Prussian holocaust of Louvain. (…) The holocaust of Louvain should at least have the effect of electrifying all the more intellectual elements of our country with a new vigour of determination to overthrow the ruthless regime of blood and iron imposed by Prussian arrogance on 20th century Europe.' (The Times, september 1st , 1914).

Pjacobi 22:29, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)