Response to Grabowski and Klein's article
For main response, see here.
This portion of my response to Grabowski and Klein’s article is a list which addresses their specific false accusations against me and provides evidence, when necessary, which shows it to be false. For background on the Wikipedia user Icewhiz who these authors rely on unquestioningly see here.
I do not address accusations made against other editors as it is not my place to do so. Unsurprisingly however, just as they lie about me, they lie about others. This list is not exhaustive.
The primary reason for why the authors make these false accusations is because they rely extensively on claims made by a former Wikipedia editor “Icewhiz”. Icewhiz has been banned from all Wikimedia Projects for harassing other editors. This harassment included making death threats and doxing, which led to threats to rape my children. Icewhiz is discussed in detail in separate section. It should be immediately obvious that relying on the word of such a person is deeply problematic and violates a number of professional codes of conduct as well as simple ethics.1
Since not every reader is familiar with Wikipedia, as an introduction, it is important to enumerate a number of relevant Wikipedia policies. Many of the edits referred to by Grabowski and Klein were simply implementations of these policies although Grabowski and Klein do their best to obscure this fact.
The relevant policies are:
WP:BLP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons)
BLPs are “Biographies of Living Persons”. These articles are subject to a much stricter standard for sourcing than regular articles, in order to prevent malicious users turning them into attack and smear pages. This is in fact exactly what Icewhiz was doing on Wikipedia, which ultimately resulted in a topic ban for him.
WP:DENY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deny_recognition) and WP:BANREVERT )https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Edits_by_and_on_behalf_of_banned_editors_). These are policies and guidelines which state that a banned user who continues to make edits with sock puppets can, and should be, reverted (have their edits undone) on sight. This is to disinentivize disruptive sock puppetry.
Additional sourcing restrictions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism_in_Poland#Specific-article_sourcing_restrictions) - This is an additional requirement imposed on the kinds of sources that can be used in articles on Poland and the Holocaust in order to prevent usage of borderline sources.
Now on to the list. Each point contains the accusation made by Grabowski & Klein (G&K) as well as an explanation of why the accusation is false. Links and context are provided as necessary.
G&K: In September 2020 and February 2021, Buidhe and a user called Jacinda01 added these facts to Muszyński’s Wikipedia biography, using the mainstream Polish newspapers OKO Press and Gazeta Wyborcza as their sources.
*Jacinda01 was a sock puppet account of indefinitely banned user Icewhiz. Icewhiz was banned for doxing, harassment and making death and rape threats against other editors and their children. This is the primary reason why their edits were reverted, per WP:DENY. Grabowski and Klein fail to mention that.2
*Gazeta Wyborcza was NOT one of the sources initially. The sources were OKO Press and a relatively unknown internet portal. The statement of Grabowski and Klein is false.3
G&K: Yet Volunteer Marek, evidently intent on clearing Muszyński’s reputation, deleted them, dismissing OKO Press and Gazeta Wyborcza as unreliable sources.
*No, this is a falsehood – I never dismissed Gazeta Wyborcza as unreliable. Grabowski and Klein provide no evidence for this assertion as it’s simply a lie.
*Once again, the account that added this info the second time, “Bob not snob”, was a sock puppet account of Icewhiz.4
G&K: Even when it was pointed out in the Reliable Sources Noticeboard that The Washington Post considered Gazeta Wyborcza ‘Poland’s most popular and respected newspaper’ and that OKO Press received a Freedom of Expression Award from the British organization Index on Censorship, Volunteer Marek and GizzyCatBella claimed both outlets were ‘hyper partisan outlets’ and ‘NOT reliable.
*No, I did not say that GW was “NOT reliable”. This is a misrepresentation. I said that GW was “not comparable to Washington Post” (it’s not) and that it has become more and more sensationalistic over time (which it has) and that it was not sufficient for a BLP article which have higher standards than regular articles.
*In the same discussion I said “if this wasn't a WP:BLP issue I'd probably be ok with using it”
*Yes, GW is a partisan outlet (Left Wing) and trying to denying this is like trying to deny that Fox News is Right Wing. Note that “partisan” does not mean necessarily unreliable.
G&K: For several months, the two kept deleting other editors’ attempts to bring Muszyński’s racist and violent pronouncements into the biography.
*A straight up shameless lie. The link provided by G&K does not show this either. I made only the two edits to the article mentioned above, both on Feb 8 2021, roughly 6 hours apart. There’s no “for several months here”. My two edits, made on a single day, were made for following reasons: 1st removal because the sourcing was weak and 2nd because the info was being added by a sock puppet of an indefinitely banned user.
G&K: It was only after the fourth attempt by other editors to include the paragraphs on Obama and Razem that GizzyCatBella and Volunteer Marek finally stood down.
*This is another shameless lie. I never removed anything about Obama from the article. There was nothing to “stand down” from. The link provided as “evidence” by Grabowski and Klein is an edit made by an entirely different user reverting a different user.5
G&K: While GizzyCatBella and Volunteer Marek guard that page, few editors are likely to attempt any major changes, or participate in discussion of sources.
*Dishonest insinuations. How does Grabowski know that “GCB and VM guard that page”? I made only two edits to it ever, long time ago. This is simply Grabowski making stuff up.
G&K: Next another editor, Yaniv, tried to remove it, explaining that to leave it in amounted to ‘antisemitic vandalism’.
The editor Yaniv has also been indefinitely banned from Wikipedia for abuse, harassment, and lying about sources.6 Yaniv, unsurprisingly, is/was one of Icewhiz’s friends and close collaborators.7 After he was banned he immediately resumed this behavior with sock puppets. Icewhiz constantly complained about his friend being banned on Wikipedia. Here Grabowski and Klein are repeating Icewhiz almost verbatim. It’s amazing how much Grabowski’s and Klein’s article celebrates toxic banned users.
G&K: Volunteer Marek reverted that deletion and claimed that to call it ‘antisemitic vandalism’ amounted to a ‘personal attack’ against the editors who supported it (administrator Tony Ballioni accepted this claim and blocked Yaniv immediately).
Yes, falsely accusing other editors of “antisemitic vandalism” without evidence is indeed a personal attack against other editors and the block in this case was not in the least bit controversial. 8
G&K: Icewhiz eventually managed to replace the paragraph with findings supported by actual scholarship, but the effort required to counter the distortionist group was monumental, a point we expand on below.
Whether Icewhiz “eventually managed” this or not is debatable. The final version of the paragraph is not to do Icewhiz (unless this is meant to refer to something written by one of his numerous sock puppets).
The “effort required” here was simply that the text included follow Wikipedia policy on reliable sources. If someone regards this as “monumental” then they really have no business editing Wikipedia. Or writing journal articles for that matter.
G&K: Referring to Christopher Browning, one of the world’s top Holocaust scholars, Volunteer Marek stated, ‘Browning does write some grade-A nonsense’. (…) Browning, continued Volunteer Marek, was ‘a pretty good example’ of someone ‘clueless about any history that doesn't involve the British or the Americans.’
Yeah. I stand by that. My full sentence however is “Yes, these are reliable (despite the fact that Browning does write some grade-A nonsense)” 9
This is how Wikipedia neutrality works. While personally I think that Browning has occasionally written some nonsense I do regard him as reliable in terms of the Wikipedia criteria of reliability. Wikipedia policy takes precedence over my own personal opinion.
This paragraph is a very clear example of lying by omission. A minimum standard of honesty would require that Grabowski and Klein at least mention that I said that Browning was a reliable source.
G&K: In May 2019, Icewhiz removed Stachura’s letter, but less than twelve hours later, Volunteer Marek, an expert at aggressive edit reverts, reinstated it. Icewhiz then took it out again, and Volunteer Marek put it back in again. Finally, he agreed to delete it, but only after Icewhiz warned him that leaving in Stachura’s remarks violated Wikipedia’s Biographies of Living Persons policy, which administrators take seriously.
This is simply a lie. Icewhiz did not “warn” me of anything. I did not remove it because I was worried about Icewhiz’s (non existent) warning. I removed the entire section as BLP violation, Stachura’s letter just being a part of that.
The issue with this article was not any criticism of Polonsky. The issue was that Icewhiz was trying to use this article to attack OTHER historians, other than Polonsky. Ones he did not like and was trying to smear (in Wikipedia speak this is known as “WP:COATRACK”). He had been unable to do that in other articles so he tried using this one as a vehicle for this purpose. Contrary to the dishonest insinuation above it was actually Icewhiz who was violating BLP here.10
My removal was not challenged and the info has stayed out of the article.
G&K: Wikipedia’s coverage of the Naliboki massacre should not even mention Jews; yet Jews occupy a third of the article. Various editors over the years tried to fix these edits, but they were brought back by Piotrus and by his like-minded colleague, Volunteer Marek.
This is another lie.
First, the reason why the article mentions Jews is simply because there was an official investigation related to the Bielsky partisans and this massacre. The article simply covers that investigation and notes, correctly, that the investigation found that the Bielskis did not participate in the massacre.
Second, the claim that “other editors” (this really means “Icewhiz”) tried to “fix” the article but were prevented by myself or Piotrus is simply false.
Over the course of SIXTEEN years, Piotrus made eleven edits to the article, ten of which were minor copy edits and uncontroversial removal of completely unsourced text. In the other single edit Piotrus summarized existing text of the article in the introduction.
Grabowski and Klein’s lie is even more shameless when it concerns myself. Rather than preventing other editors from removing “mention of Jews”, I was actually busy REMOVING the alleged participation of Jewish partisans in the massacre myself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naliboki_massacre&diff=prev&oldid=313014152
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naliboki_massacre&diff=prev&oldid=829979580
Grabowski and Klein falsely accuse me of exactly the opposite of what I was actually doing. In fact I *removed* the very photograph they complain about in their article.
The real dispute between Icewhiz and myself in this case was actually over a different issue – whether the Soviets (not Jewish partisans!) committed a massacre at all or not. Icewhiz was denying this event’s very occurrence despite its thorough documentation in mainstream sources. To that effect he inserted a lot of sketchy Russian sources and propaganda into the article which I removed. So much for Icewhiz, or Grabowski for that matter, being a champion of “reliable mainstream sources”
G&K: Volunteer Marek deleted them wholesale, citing in his edit summaries (a brief explanation editors need to give for changes they make) ‘this article [is] full of BLP vios [violations]’ and ‘stop trying to turn Wikipedia articles into attack pages on authors whom you disagree with
This is accurate but it’s also exactly what Wikipedia policy requires. Biographies of Living Persons have much stricter sourcing requirements and removing badly sourced text constitutes good editing.
Note the hypocrisy in this accusation. Elsewhere in the article, the authors complain, following Icewhiz, that supposedly Polish editors were violating BLP sourcing requirements (on Polonsky article). Yet here they celebrate Icewhiz violating these very same requirements. Somewhat humorously, when Icewhiz removes text under the heading of “BLP violation” he is “warning” Volunteer Marek. Yet when VM removes text under the heading of “BLP violation” then this is supposed to be bad.
G&K: Volunteer Marek described Kurek as a ‘mainstream scholar,’
This is simply repeating a lie, almost verbatim, that Icewhiz made in an Arbitration Enforcement report. I *never* described Kurek as a mainstream scholar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive236#Volunteer_Marek
My exact words were that Icewhiz was attacking “multiple mainstream scholars (Polish, Swedish, British) whom he decided should be attacked because what they wrote doesn't let him push his POV”. Claiming that this was referring to Kurek was a Icewhiz invention. Icewhiz was lying, which is why his statements were dismissed by administrators. Now Grabowski and Klein are repeating this lie. They do provide a link to where the discussion took place but are apparently hoping that readers will not bother actually clicking it and verifying the Icewhiz-Grabowski-Klein claim. In the same discussion I explicitly said “regarding Ewa Kurek I believe I've expressed the opinion (before that) though she should not be used as a source”11
G&K: Volunteer Marek agreed that ‘this [journal] shouldn’t be a concern,’
This is another lie. The “journal” in the statement refers to Glaukopis, a Polish publication with a right wing bias. I did not say the journal was “not a concern”. The fact that the sentence as written by Grabowski and Klein doesn’t even make grammatical sense should be an immediate red flag that they’re misrepresenting something. What I said was that what mattered was who was on the editorial board of the journal, rather than who the publisher was. The fact that Grabowski and Klein falsely present this as if it was a direct quote is especially dishonest.
In the same discussion I stated explicitly that the journal shouldn’t be used as a source. Grabowski and Klein fail to report that, again engaging in lie by omission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_328#Glaukopis_journal
It’s worth pointing out that Icewhiz’s close supporter, “Francois Robere”, who is also cited approvingly by Grabowski and Klein, had tried using this very journal as a reliable source on previous occasions. Francois Robere is mentioned by Grabowski and Klein in a positive light but their attempts to use this very journal as source is omitted by them.
#9. G&K: El_C agreed to redact Krzyżanowski’s name to prevent a Biographies of Living Persons policy violation but left in the false statement on most property being returned to Jews, saying, ‘Sorry, I don’t see the problem.’ François Robere corrected the false claim, Volunteer Marek reverted once again, and K.e.coffman corrected it once more
This was a convoluted disagreement which involved much more than just Krzyżanowski as a source. My revert concerned a much broader range of edits made without consensus by Francois Robere. The fact that an outside administrator disagreed with Icewhiz and friends here should be telling.
#10. G&K: In their most active year (…) Volunteer Marek (made) (9,450) edits
Yes. And in his most active year, Icewhiz, the hero of Grabowski and Klein’s story made 14,923 edits and in his other major year, 14,789 edits. To an outsider this may seem like a very high number of edits, and in some sense it is, but it is important to note that this is not unusual for active Wikipedians, especially since many of these edits would be minor spelling corrections and such.
#11. G&K: François Robere added three sentences in the article’s postwar section, concerning a Polish restitution law passed that same month which hampered Holocaust survivors’ ability to reclaim lost property. Volunteer Marek promptly reverted the addition. In the talk-page discussion that ensued, François Robere created a Request for Comment, asking editors to weigh in on his proposed edit. Of the eighteen editors who showed up to voice an opinion, eleven voted no (…)
FR’s addition were reverted per Wikipedia policy of WP:NOTNEWS since high level articles such as Holocaust in Poland are supposed to be based on established reliable sources rather than “breaking news”. The fact that majority of editors agreed with this in a formal Request for Comment should immediately alert the reader that Grabowski and Klein are misrepresenting the situation here. And contrary to Grabowski & Klein’s insinuation, no, the editors who voted against FR’s edits were not exclusively Polish.
#12. G&K: The distortionists turn on one another only in the rarest of cases, when they realize they have a losing hand. (…) Within less than 30 min, Volunteer Marek had deleted Nihil novi’s mention of Kurek. ‘I don’t think [Kurek] can be considered an RS [reliable source],’
This is an extremely dishonest way that the authors have of acknowledging that Polish editors don’t actually always agree with each other and that they do not in fact support the use of such sources as Ewa Kurek on Wikipedia (see above). There was no “losing hand” here. I simply didn’t think that Kurek should be used and had said that on several occasions previously (of course Grabowski and Klein fail to mention these instances). The authors make a pathetic attempt here at reframing opposition to unreliable sources as something dark and sinister.
#13. G&K: Volunteer Marek deleted the entire paragraph (on Jan Zaryn article) (…) Szmenderowiecki took Volunteer Marek’s mass reversions to the Administrators’ Noticeboard/Incidents, a page where editors can post urgent matters, but nobody took any action. After still more back and forth in July, including a five-part Request for Comment by François Robere, Lembit Staan and GizzyCatBella overhauled the entire article
The paragraph was deleted because it contained what’s known as “original research” - claims which are not found in the sources but rather are being made by a Wikipedia editor. Once again the fact that this was discussed in multiple venues, with multiple outside editors and yet ended up supporting the removal shows that the removal was justified and the authors are misrepresenting the situation.
#14. G&K: Icewhiz asked for sanctions against Volunteer Marek, who had both restored the Jewish militia story in the ‘Radziłów’ article, and defended content borrowed from Mark Paul in the ‘History of the Jews in Poland’ article.
This is yet another one of Icewhiz’s lies, actively repeated by Grabowski and Klein.
On Radzilow article, Icewhiz removed a source by the Israeli historian Dev Levin, and he did so with a false edit summary. This is why I initially reverted him. However, it was true that this particular source was not about the town in question, which is why minutes later I undid my own edit. The time between my restoration of Levin and me undoing my own edit was literally 8 minutes. Omitting the fact that I undid my own edit in this context is extremely dishonest.
I have never defended content borrowed from Mark Paul and it’s not even clear what this is suppose to refer to as the only link provided by the authors as evidence is to Icewhiz’s statements during an Arbitration Case, which were thoroughly rejected by uninvolved outside administrators.
As stated above this is a non-exhaustive list and only addresses accusations against myself. However, even a single falsehood or two made in a publication such as this should raise immediate concerns about the methodology and professional ethics of the authors. Here we already have a dozen.
Icewhiz, using a twitter account, among many other forms of harassment, posted detailed information on a Wikipedia user’s children, including their names, schools, and birthdays. Shortly thereafter several accounts were created on Wikipedia which proceeded to make rape threats against that user’s children. Those accounts were obviously banned and the threats expunged though a record of them being made does exist.
Wikimedia Foundation "Foundation Global Ban" of User Icewhiz
An administrator “blocked Jacinda01 talk contribs with an expiration time of indefinite (account creation blocked) (Please see: w:en:Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Icewhiz)”
The revert is here. G&K’s footnote says “Trasz reverts Volunteer Marek in December 2021, Wikipedia article, “Wojciech Muszyński,” but even the edit summary explicitly states that it is not me who is being reverted.
Here “this user is banned from editing the English Wikipedia because CheckUser evidence confirms that they have repeatedly abused multiple accounts.”
Editor interactions between Icewhiz and Yanniv on over 400 pages. This is a particularly high number given that both have been banned for at least three years.
It’s true that Yanniv challenged the block but the subsequent block review supports the block.
The authors do provide a link to the discussion but it’s broken and they probably just expect that readers won’t check it anyway
My edit summary in this edit clearly states “actually whole thing is one big BLP vio” and it’s obvious that the section I’m removing is entitled “Criticism of other academics”. This has nothing to do with Polonsky but was about BLP violations of these “other academics”
Full statement was clipped by an admin because it exceeded word limit
Gotta love that phony gas chamber, probably the weakest link in the atrocity propaganda