Main response to Grabowski and Klein
Most important part first
The allegations made against me in Grabowski and Klein’s article are completely false. I have not engaged in any “Holocaust distortion”, on Wikipedia or anywhere else. I am not a “right wing Polish nationalist”. I am not part of some nefarious “Polish conspiracy” on Wikipedia which seeks to manipulate content. All of these accusations are ridiculous and absurd. They are particularly disgusting and vile since they go against everything I believe in.
More details and specific aspects of the situation are provided below and in related pieces. See here, here and to skip to 2nd part, here. However, it is crucial to state at the outset what the origins of Grabowski and Klein’s claims are. These accusations originate with a former Wikipedia editor named “Icewhiz” who has been subjecting me (and several other Wikipedia editors) to real life harassment for at least the past four years.
Key background: User Icewhiz
I have been editing Wikipedia since 2004, initially under a username close to my real name, but since receiving some past harassment, under the moniker “Volunteer Marek”. Over the years I have edited a wide range of topics which spanned economics, history of various countries, politics and pop culture.
Since late 2019 I have been a target of vicious harassment by a former Wikipedia editor named “Icewhiz”. Between 2017 and 2019 I had multiple disputes with Icewhiz on Wikipedia. Icewhiz ended up being completely banned from all Wikimedia Projects for this harassment (I was the primary but not the only target), which included death and rape threats against me and my family, as well as the “usual” forms of harassment such as doxing. Icewhiz, whom Grabowski and Klein attempt to portray as some tragic hero unjustly banned by evil Wikipedians,1 is the primary source for Grabowski and Klein’s false accusations. This is immediately obvious to anyone who is familiar with the context, which I detail below, but it is something that outside readers would not know, since the authors actively downplay his activities and role in their article, and go to great lengths to try and cast him as a victim. Grabowski and Klein commit a gross violation of professional ethics (one of many) by not releasing the interview they conducted with Icewhiz2 and obscuring the fact that at the end of the day they are mostly just rehashing his previously made false allegations.
In addition to harassing me personally Icewhiz has been also attempting to circumvent his ban from Wikipedia (he is also banned from Twitter and Reddit, also for harassment) by using a large number of “sock puppets”. Some of these were throw-away accounts that made only a few edits to Wikipedia, but a few managed to establish a longer footprint before also being banned. One of his sock puppets even attempted to gain administrator status on Wikipedia before he was discovered.3
One particularly noteworthy aspect in Icewhiz’s sockpuppetry was/is his tendency to impersonate real life people. He created accounts under the names of actually existing individuals – often scholars of the Holocaust or anti-racism activists – and pretended to be them to give legitimacy to his socks. Of course, these individuals had no idea that someone was impersonating them on Wikipedia and when they were contacted and informed of the fact, were quite shocked.4
In response to his activities, in September 2021 the “Arbitration Committee” of Wikipedia passed a “500/30 restriction” in the topic of Poland and World War 2. This restriction requires that all accounts which make edits in the topic area have been on Wikipedia for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 prior edits.5 This makes sockpuppetry much more difficult, and roughly by summer of 2021 Icewhiz seemed to have exhausted all the sock puppet accounts he had previously created. Grabowski and Klein mention this 500/30 restriction in their article but dishonestly omit that the actual reason for its imposition is precisely the guy who helped them write their paper and his sock puppetry and abuse.
Things quieted down and I sincerely hoped this was the last I had heard of him.
However, it was sometime around this time apparently that he contacted Prof. Jan Grabowski. I can only speculate why he chose Grabowski in particular – most likely he was familiar with the nature of Grabowski’s publications on this topic and guessed, correctly as it turned out, that Grabowski would be amenable to serving as a vehicle for his grievances. I don’t know when and how Prof. Klein became involved in the project or why – perhaps she was just hoping to get a publication with a senior colleague.
Icewhiz has been one of the most abusive and vicious editors in the history of Wikipedia. He is formally banned not just by the English Wikipedia, but by the Wikimedia Foundation from all Wikimedia projects, including non-English Wikipedias, WikiCommons, Wiktionary, Wikiquotes, Wikinews, Meta-Wiki etc. This kind of all-encompassing ban is usually applied only in the worst cases of abuse, typically reserved for pedophiles and individuals who are a physical danger to others.6
This is the person that Grabowski and Klein chose to trust and whose accusations to believe, and who it seems served a central role in the article’s creation, at minimum as some kind of outside consultant. At the same time, they fail to credit this person appropriately, even though certain portions of their text are just very close paraphrases of Icewhiz’s statements and text on Wikipedia, and the links they provide were most likely provided to them by him.7
Structure of Grabowski and Klein’s paper
The article by Grabowski and Klein can be divided into three parts. The first part, roughly paragraphs 1 through 9, serve as an introduction, provide the usual boiler plate language about the importance of the work and attempt to link this article to a broader social and political context. This part does not refer to me and is mostly irrelevant to my objections. The only thing that may be worth commenting on is that by including extensive (and perhaps valid) complaints against the current conservative Polish government the authors are trying to set up a false association between the Wikipedia editors they attack and this very government. They return to insinuate a connection between this government and Wikipedia editors at the end of their article providing, of course, absolutely zero evidence, for the very simple reason that such connection does not exist. The insinuation itself is ridiculous and straight out of inane conspiracy theory mongering along the lines of blaming everything on George Soros or accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being a CIA agent. This is supposed to be a scholarly article, yet somehow the reviewers and editors of JHR allowed this to pass.8
Paragraphs 10 through 30 contain specific criticisms of Wikipedia articles. The authors provide a “black list” of supposedly evil Polish editors who are responsible or who form this nefarious “Polish conspiracy” on Wikipedia in paragraph 10 but they do not refer to anyone specifically again until paragraph 31.
The last portion of the paper, paragraphs 31 through the Conclusion, are almost pure, unadulterated Icewhiz. These are his vendettas, grievances, and disputes. Even the links of this section, which as of 2/19/2023 don’t even work and hence are hard to verify (although a person familiar with the disputes can find the relevant Wikipedia pages) are straight out of Icewhiz’s previous on-Wikipedia reports and “evidence”. There are a few instances of additional disputes which occurred after Icewhiz’s ban, but even these reflect arguments which his sock puppets initiated or with the one or two remaining supporters he has on Wikipedia.
Collective Responsibility (paragraphs 10 - 30)
Grabowski and Klein present a “black list” of nefarious Polish editors in paragraph 10. In adopting this approach, the authors fail to distinguish or indicate responsibility for supposed infractions by individual editors. Some of these editors make very few edits. Some are very prolific. Some have not edited Wikipedia in decades. Some are still active. Some may even not be Polish (strangely nowhere do the authors actually provide evidence of “Polishness” of all these editors – this is because they are simply taking Icewhiz’s word for it).9 Some may be left wing, others right wing. Some young, some old. Some may even dislike one another and have been involved in disputes with one another.10 The only thing they have in common is that the authors, following Icewhiz, believe all of them to be Polish, and hence, as part of some vast “Polish conspiracy” on Wikipedia, because, apparently “all Poles look the same”.
It should go without saying that this kind of mentality exhibited by authors in which they seek to assign “collective responsibility” on individual editors based solely on these editors’ assumed ethnic background is deeply problematic and disturbing. The authors appear to argue that if ONE Polish editor had made some edit to some article somewhere on Wikipedia at some time – maybe even more than a decade ago! – then ALL Polish editors, past and present, are responsible. Worse, in many cases found in these paragraphs (again, 10-30), many of the pieces of text they flag were not even added or made by Polish editors! It seems that not only is any given Polish editor guilty of infractions by any other Polish editor, but even if a non-Polish user makes bad edits to Wikipedia, as long as it’s to Poland related topics, it’s still these Polish editors responsible.
It’s worth pausing and asking at this point why the authors adopt this problematic approach. While latent prejudice may be a factor, the simpler but less obvious explanation (at least to people unfamiliar with Wikipedia) is that this list includes the key editors that Icewhiz was involved in disputes with. These are his “enemies”. Setting up this notion of collective responsibility allows Icewhiz – and by extension Grabowski and Klein – to blame Icewhiz’s key “enemies” for things that other people may have done, making the case against them appear much stronger than it is.
How extensive is this problem in this section?
So to what extent do some Polish editors get blamed for the edits made by other (even non-Polish) editors? And what is the evidence?
The details are in the appendix and in another post, here I will summarize. In this section authors critique 7 Wikipedia articles. The critiques involve 25 pieces of text. Of these 25 pieces of text given by Grabowski and Klein as examples of Wikipedia’s distortions, only four are the responsibility of currently active Wikipedia editors on their list. The remaining 21 were made either by long inactive editors or simply by editors they don’t even name.
Of these four pieces of text, two were originally introduced by me, long time ago, back in 2008 and two were originally introduced by user Piotrus. I will only discuss my own edits.
The first one is a piece of text I added in November 2008 which states that people who rescued or helped Jews during the war were subject to persecution by Poland’s post war communist authorities. Grabowski and Klein complain that it was also the case that these rescuers were often also afraid of the anti-communist underground during the immediate aftermath of the war. Well… ok? Why not both? Grabowski and Klein appear to blame me for an edit I didn’t make rather than for an edit I did make (15 years ago!). If they wish to add information to that article about the anti-communist underground in the 1940’s and its relationship to the rescuers, no one is stopping them.
The second piece of text (out of 25 that they criticize) I added, concerns the uniqueness of the death penalty applied by Germans in occupied Poland for helping Jews. Again, this edit is from 2008. The authors’ issue is that the death penalty applied not just to ethnic Poles but also Belarusians and Ukrainians. Again, this is a weird complaint since the text I added back then does not even make the claim that Belarusians or Ukrainians were excluded (it should be noted that the article in question is titled “by Poles”)
Searching through the history of the article in question and the discussion page (Wikipedia article “Talk page”) indicates that neither of these two pieces of text were ever challenged by anyone over the span of 15 years, not even by Icewhiz. They were never controversial. If someone had challenged them, would I have objected? I don’t know, I haven’t really thought of them since 2008 until this article was published. Either way, this is a bizarre accusation that the authors make.
There are of course, 23 other pieces of text the authors criticize in this portion of their paper. Obviously I cannot address every single one of these here if for no other reason than lack of space. But these other 23 other pieces of text are responsibility of other editors, most of them not part of the “black list” that the authors present to their readers and not even of editors who were Polish to begin with.
The authors also claim that the editors listed “control” articles related to Poland and the Holocaust. To support this assertion they present a chart (Chart 2 in their paper) titled “Authorship of Wikipedia articles”. For some reason, the creator of the chart made a very strange choice of colors - very close shades of red - which makes it hard to see which editor was actually responsible for “authorship”.11 Worse, the chart lumps long gone editors and currently active ones, myself included, in a long big blurry red line. This is a manipulative sleight-of-hand to make it seem like a significant portion of these articles were "authored" by currently active Polish editors.
What happens if we separate out the active editors from those who have left Wikipedia long time ago (some of the text goes back to 2008 or earlier)? We get a completely different, and clearer, picture:
Rather than long red lines of “Polish” authorship, we can now see that most of these articles, with the possible exception of “Collaboration in German-occupied Poland” were in fact NOT written by currently active “Polish” editors.
My own contributions to these articles12 clocks in at... 3.76%. And even this is an over estimate since a good number of this contribution is simple spelling and grammar corrections.
But it gets worse. In the paper, the authors complain that authors like Richard C. Lukas are used in these articles rather than scholars they personally approve of, such as, for example, Doris Bergen. Ok. Who is it that actually added Doris Bergen (or Nechama Tec or others) to these articles? It wasn’t Icewhiz or any of his friends. It was me. In the Holocaust in Poland article, for example, my contribution is 3% and almost all of that is my addition of Doris Bergen’s “War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust”.13 The failure to mention that fact is a manipulation by omission on the part of the authors.
Icewhiz section
The third section of the paper is a long list of Icewhiz’s grievances and disputes on Wikipedia. There are also a few instances of disputes that occurred after Icewhiz was banned, most of them involving his sock puppets or on-wiki supporters. I will extensively comment on this final “Icewhiz section” - which comprises a huge 49% of the paper - in the second part of this reply. For now I direct the reader to my point by point refutation of Grabowski and Klein’s specific accusations against me (here) and to my description of Icewhiz’s ban (here).
I have also included a table which compares this section of the paper (paragraphs 30 through 60) to Icewhiz’s activity on Wikipedia. Not only are these HIS disputes, but the authors even use non-Wikipedia sources which he used first and in many cases even copy his wording or at best closely paraphrase it. These accusations are Icewhiz’s manipulations and fabrications - they have been examined numerous times by a diverse group of Wikipedia editors (including administrators and arbitrators, no, not “Polish” ones) and they have found to be just that: manipulations and fabrications.
Grabowski and Klein at one point refer to him as one of the “defenders of historical accuracy”. The authors also falsely credit Icewhiz with “discovering” false information on the Warsaw Concentration camp article - it was User K.e.coffman, not Icewhiz. The authors use strange laudatory language and voice when referring to Icewhiz. For example:
“Icewhiz not only pointed out that it was self-published but informed the community…” “Icewhiz asked other editors for their thoughts”
”Icewhiz eventually managed to replace the paragraph with findings supported by actual scholarship”
”Icewhiz tried to correct the false text, rightly pointing out”
”the administrators accused Icewhiz himself of distortion”
”Icewhiz made important edits on Holocaust-related topics and exposed the falsifications”
The rhetorical style in which this is written reminds one of the way that little kids like to tell heroic stories about themselves, to themselves, using third person tense.
Several other Wikipedia editors have stated that they were interviewed by Klein. She told at least one of them that she was also interviewing Icewhiz. These interviews have not been released by the authors as part of making their data available. Icewhiz himself has suggested on an external forum that he was in contact with Grabowski.
See announcement and account block.
Just two (out of many) examples of Icewhiz impersonating real people include the account JolantaAJ and the account Purski. Icewhiz tried to buttress the impersonation of these accounts via his commentary on the Wikipedia-criticism site Wikipediocracy. I am avoiding including other accounts for obvious privacy reasons.
Some examples of close text used by both Icewhiz on Wikipedia and Grabowski and Klein include the article on the historian Richard C. Lukas (compare Icewhiz addition made in November 2018, to the first paragraph in the Legitimizing fringe academics section of the paper).
In previous interview quoted by Haaretz, Prof. Grabowski claimed that there are “hundreds” of “Polish nationalist” volunteers on English wikipedia who “flocked” there to commit distortion. This claim is particularly ridiculous - and reveals the depths of Grabowski’s ignorance of how Wikipedia functions - since at any given time there may be 3 or 4, maybe 5, Polish editors active on Wikipedia. Not “hundreds”. (Haaretz 10/4/2019, “The fake nazi death camp wikipedias longest hoax exposed”, Benjakob, Omer)
As far as I can tell, only four or five of the eleven editors listed by the authors ever self identified as Polish. At least two self identified as of a different nationality though they may have Polish ancestry. One editor appears to have been included simply because they are a fan of the Polish science-fiction write Stanislaw Lem. Another because at one point they edited an article on “famous Poles” and had an associated image on their user page.
One example of one of the “Polish” users reporting another to administrator’s board is here. There are further examples of disputes among the “Polish” editors. One of them even made it into Grabowski and Klein’s paper, although there the authors try to spin it as something villianous, writing “The distortionists turn on one another only in the rarest of cases, when they realize they have a losing hand.”
Note on this notion of “authorship” - the Wikipedia tools that were used by the authors to create this chart don’t actually show “authorship”. They show who edited the text last. Since most Wikipedia edits are actually grammar and spelling corrections of others’ edits, this chart, even putting aside other problems, does not show who added the text to the article.
I’ve excluded the Home Army article from this analysis because that article covers a far broader topic than Holocaust in Poland and seems to have only been included in the authors’ chart to inflate the numbers, particularly for user Piotrus.