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Whoniverse

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Sandy Point, New South Wales

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Hybrid airship

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Pakistan International Airlines

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Chemtrail conspiracy theory

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Florida's 13th congressional district special election, 2014

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Odesza

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License to Kill

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Sevastopol

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Kava

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Mitsuo Fuchida

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Water fluoridation controversy

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Assassination threats against Barack Obama

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Christ myth theory

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2011 Turkish sports corruption scandal

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Lipoic acid

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Venus

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No-communication theorem

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Linux Mint

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Blue Army (Poland)

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Governorship of Chris Christie

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28 Days_Later

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Wright brothers

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Douglas Pike

– This request has been open for some time and must be reviewed.

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute

Users involved

Dispute overview

I have added first a single sentence about Pike's support for Khmer Rouge and when I got reverted [31] I re-added the matter with many more sources. It still gets reverted [32], [33]. The user TheTimesAreAChanging has made a long attempt at explaining his view [34] but most of it has absolutely nothing to do with the real dispute at hand, e.g. he's accusing left-wing figures of supporting themselves Khmer Rouge, however, though it's probably true, this has no bearing as to Pike's support for Pol Pot. The fact is, Douglas Pike (who just followed the Washington line of the time that Khmer Rouge were the lesser evil compared with the pro-Vietnamese government) has been criticized by numerous authors for Khmer Rouge apologies. My opponent is of the view that mention of this should be removed from the article. He claims everything to be undue, cherrypicked synthesis and apparently is of the opinion that Pike's views on Khmer Rouge may not be mentioned in the article at all.

RE:User:Steven Zhang - how is this exceptional? It's common knowledge. Pike never objected to such claims either. The source does not claim he was a cryptocommunist at heart - no, Pike just followed the Western line of the time that sought to downplay KR atrocities. Nothing exceptional here. Another example is the journalist Richard Dudman, author of the infamous piece "Pol Pot - brutal, but no mass murderer". Of course mentioned in the respective article, too. Lokalkosmopolit (talk) 13:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
RE:User:TheTimesAreAChanging - how is the comparison 'ludicrous'? I don't know if Pike specifically brought up figures minimizing KR guilt (but I don't claim this in the article either), the fact is he wrote

'on a statistical basis, most of them [Khmers] . . .did not experience much in the way of brutality'.

(29 November 1979) His own words. Just like pointing out he wrote of Pol Pot as a “charismatic leader” of a “bloody but successful peasant revolution”. Citing a person's own relevant statements is making RED FLAG claims?!
It's not directly related as to the dispute at hand, but I still see my comparison with Dudman as apt. Both have been criticised for downplaying KR atrocities and it obviously is the case here. Lokalkosmopolit (talk) 17:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

Discussion at talk

How do you think we can help?

A help identifying reliable sources can be offered, e.g. TheTimesAreAChanging claimed Michael Vickery is a communist unsuitable as a source (I removed Vickery but it seems he actually qualifies as RS). Some users seem to have forgotten too what WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:CENSOR are about.

Summary of dispute by TheTimesAreAChanging

Vickery's POV is irrelevant to his credentials, but citing a self-published website for criticism in a biography is pretty questionable. Pike was one of the most eminent scholars of the Second Indochina War, and he wrote a great deal. Lokalkosmopolit has failed to demonstrate that these cherry-picked quotes have any notability. Show me a biography of Pike that pays any attention to this supposed "controversy". If you can provide several sources that demonstrate the significance of this "controversy" relative to the rest of Pike's work, I will concede the point. Andreopoulos quotes Pike's claim that the People's Republic of Kampuchea was dominated by ex-Khmer Rouge (which he calls a "fantasy"), and Lokalkosmopolit in turn presents a strawman version of Pike's argument as relayed by Andreopoulos without reading the very primary source he is quoting (and making no attempt at NPOV). Since Andreopoulos delegates the matter to a footnote, he doesn't establish any notability, let alone support the claim of Pike's alleged "KR sympathies". Bellamy can be cited to support the first sentence, but the rest of the paragraph is undue synthesis that should be removed immediately, and we shouldn't be too reliant on a single fallible source for a biography. Indeed, on the very same page he accuses Pike, Bellamy claims "The CIA published researched which denied that the communists had committed mass atrocities in 1977-78." Bellamy may be an academic, but anyone can check the CIA report and see for themselves that there is no such denial. In short, Lokalkosmopolit has one source (with easily checked errors) that supports his paragraph's language, which he has combined with a bunch of other quotes and personal interpretations about an alleged "controversy" of no clear significance. Moreover, he seems to have trouble letting go of his personal POV when editing the article: Consider my summary of Pike's argument ("Pike argued that a coalition government was necessary to prevent civil war") versus Lokalkosmopolit's summary ("Pike further argued a government was necessary that would be acceptable to Khmer Rouge").TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Summary of dispute by Calton

Please keep it brief - less than 2000 characters if possible, it helps us help you quicker.

Waste of time. I reverted on the simple grounds that it was a context-free piece of undue-weighted information, one that added no real context of its own nor explained or described anything meaningful about the subject except as a form of "gotcha". It's simple clean-up work. --Calton | Talk 01:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Douglas Pike discussion

Please keep discussion to a minimum before being opened by a volunteer. Continue on article talk page if necessary.
Comment: (I'm not taking this case) Let's see if User:Calton makes an opening statement/summary. They made one edit on 3/24 and two edits today 3/26 but they haven't come here yet. It's possible the case could go forward anyway if users Calton and TimesAreAChanging (TAAC) would like to as TAAC appears to be the one making all the reverts.--KeithbobTalk 20:25, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Hi there. Looking over this one, it's pretty clear cut - this is a red flag. Exceptional claims require multiple, high quality sources, and should be given the amount of weight that they deserve in comparison to other coverage on the subject. I don't see either threshold met here, so I would agree that short of a major change to the circumstances, the removal should stick. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 11:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
    • It looks like either Steve or myself are willing to moderate this case. Any comments from the participants? If we don't hear some response soon, we may need to close the case. Best,--KeithbobTalk 20:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
Lokalkosmopolit's most recent comment barely merits a response, because it does not address Wikipedia policy at all, but I will note that his comparison of Pike with Dudman is absolutely ludicrous. Dudman accompanied KR cheerleader Malcolm Caldwell on his guided tour of "Democratic Kampuchea"; decades after the fact, Dudman continued to deflate the death toll to hundreds. Pike never said or did anything even remotely comparable, and was diametrically opposed to Dudman politically. Lokalkosmopolit's comment is otherwise comprised only of unsourced assertions about "common knowledge", desperate comparisons with other Wikipedia articles, and far-out personal interpretations of Pike's own words.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Administrative note: Steven Zhang is traveling for the next 48 hrs and has no Internet access. So please be patient, he will finish moderating this discussion as soon as he is able.--KeithbobTalk 21:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Crimean status referendum, 2014

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2014 pro-Russian_protests_in_Ukraine

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Pusher Love Girl

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Hava Nagila

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Indian general election

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God's Not Dead (film)

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Godhra train_burning

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United States

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Homeopathy

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