Jayjg's latest inspiration is that a newspaper columnist cannot be a journalist, and nor can someone who writes funny articles (because he's a humourist):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=132331234

Maybe he's confusing "journalist" ("a person employed to write for or edit a newspaper or journal") with "reporter". And in a rare slip, here he is soliciting a meat puppet to get the whole article deleted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=138422149

I think he's just being anal. I put back Martin Agronsky, who's Jewishness is well documented-- he was a Sammy, for crying out loud! It's impossible for me to believe that Jayjg isn't aware Agronsky was Jewish.

Even though I slammed Jayjg for removing Sammy Davis and Oona King from a Jewish list previously, I've written a reply on WikiAbuse that is in some respects a defense of SV and Jayjg on the matter of these damn lists.



That still doesn't explain why he removed Katie Couric, who is a journo by most standards.

Have they even formalized the criteria for inclusion? I'd have to assume so, but I've always studiously avoided this particular can o' worms, and they don't seem to have it in any of the obvious places...

I mean, I watch "Pardon the Interruption" almost every day, and if Tony Kornheiser says on a fairly regular basis that he's Jewish, and nobody so much as hints that this might not be true, then he's Jewish, right? I don't see why you have to provide a secondary or tertiary source for that - it falls within the realm of "common knowledge." As for whether or not he's a journalist, well yeah, he's more of a "columnist" than a "journalist" now, assuming one must insist on the distinction. But that wasn't always the case, and it seems wrong to "de-classify" someone like that... it's almost like saying that a former President, once his term in office is over, was never "a President" at all.

Of course they have. See Talk:List of British Jews


In fact, these criteria were only ever "agreed" for that article, in a highly dubious vote that was snowball closed prematurely after a flood of votes by people who had never edited the article, but SV and Jayjg pretend that they are of universal applicability. These are very restrictive; if taken literally, they debar someone "born to Russian-Jewish immigrants" or "born into the Liverpool Jewish community", say. Nevertheless, if there is a reliable source that someone is Jewish, they're Jewish. Full stop. Anything else is original research.

SV did say at one point that if someone is incorrectly labelled as Jewish it could endanger them. (Evidently, she's not worried about the safety of someone correctly labelled as Jewish!) But this doesn't explain her deletion of people long dead, or of people whom everyone already knows they're Jewish, so that's just a cover.

Anyway, that's not the issue here. Jayjg isn't pretending that there's any doubt that Art Buchwald was 100% Jewish; he's just claiming that because he wrote funny articles, he wasn't a journalist.

I think I mentioned this before, but journalist Mark Lawson's tribulations after being wrongly identified by wikipedia as Jewish tells a cautionary tale.

That's not terribly relevant. Had he been added to the List of British Jews without a reference, then Runcorn or Brownlee would probably have reverted. (The ironic thing about this mass blockage is that these lists will acquire lots of dud entries because there are now far fewer people to maintain them.) Nobody is patrolling every single article, but again if someone adds something like that without a reference it can be reverted. The only way to stop the Lawson problem completely would be to make "Jewish" a spam word so you can't add it to an article.

There's synonyms for Jewish, too. Most are racist terms, though.

I really can't see the connection between an idiot putting nonsense in one bio and well-informed editors systematically producing a sourced list.

I think the major problem is that there are multiple kinds of Judaism. Someone could be an ethnic Jew without being a religious Jew or someone could be culturally Jewish without being an ethnic Jew. Thus, trying to make a single "List of Jews" is madness. For comparison, check out the various lists of non-believers. Some people might not see much of a difference between 'nontheist' and 'atheist', but such fine distinctions are made because they matter.

Edit: Fixed links.

Maybe. I have always been perplexed by this issue. Many of the generators of lists and the contents of the articles seem in no way to bear any malice or hostility towards people who meet any definition of "Jewish." It seem to me, and I admit to not understanding it, maybe it is in part simply WP:OWNership. Slim, Jayjg & company can simply better control the content of a series of related articles if they can prevent the minimum organization of other editors that is implicit in the ability to compile a list or category.

Which kind controls the media?

That's like saying that there is a problem with making a list of chemists because there are multiple kinds of chemists. If we have a good source that someone is a chemist, nobody would query that he or she belongs in a list of chemists. Why is being Jewish different?

I think that the key problem is some people are happy to have lists of French people or African American people but not Jewish ones. Jayjg has clearly identified a kindred spirit. Don't forget - he's not just deleting names from the list, he's trying to get it deleted lock, stock and barrel.

List of chemists isn't the worst analogy you could use. Would you add everyone that received and used a chemistry set as a kid a chemist? Any sort of list of Jews has more in common with a generic 'List of Scientists'. Sure, you COULD - But why the hell would you? The concept of 'scientist' is so broad it leads to a useless list. The same goes with Jew. This discussion from the now-emptied "List of Jewish scientists and philosophers" aptly sums up what I think of this.

Wow, I had no idea about the debate going on about him until I checked out his article. It seems that when there is that much wrangling over sources and background, one should not be included in categories and lists. Anyways, maybe this should continue on his talk page and if it can be resolved either way, this page can be adjusted accordingly. Thanks, --Tom 13:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I just removed Heinrich Hertz since his father's father converted from Judaism to Lutheranism?? Again, is this a list of Jewish X or a listy of X's of Jewish descent? I would prefer to work this out on the individuals own article space and let that determine this list. Anyways --Tom 16:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

No, Hertz's father converted. Since Jews are an ethnicity as well as a religion, we make no distinction between Jews and people of Jewish descent.--Simul8 16:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
So his father was born Jewish but converted. So that makes Hertz Jewish? ok, I am done editing here for now. --Tom 16:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I'd insist that everyone listed in a standard encyclopaedia or other reference work as a chemist was a chemist - that's the correct analogy. It is original research to ask why the reliable source calls them chemists.

The List of Jewish scientists and philosophers is indeed a good example of the problems on lists of Jews. The "debate" refers to Georg Cantor. He is described as Jewish in his only full-length biography in English (written by a non-Jew, E T Bell, before you ask), the Jewish Encyclopedia (published in his lifetime), the Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd edition 2007), the Jewish Chronicle (both during his lifetime and decades after his death) and the Jewish Year Book (both during his lifetime and decades after his death). So he was Jewish, right? No - someone's dug up an article from the 1970s that says he wasn't! Therefore some editors insist that he wasn't, despite the many references that he was, and indeed an article from the 1990s that rebuts the one from the 1970s. Can you imagine such a dispute about any other fact? It would be laughed out.

And the list wasn't emptied; it was primarily a list of cross-references to the scientist sections of the national lists but for some reason duplicated a few names; these duplicates have now been tidied up.

That's the thing though isn't it. Being identified as French is a different prospect to being identified as Jewish. Being identified as Jewish or Catholic for that matter is, as Mark Lawson's article describes, a more complex matter containing ambiguities and difficult political issues. "African American" has its own complexities as Barack Obama has discovered. But I believe that few identifiers are more historically problematic than the labelling of Jews. That said, Slim and co were removing people like Nigella Lawson from the British list when a two second google search could locate enough reliable sources.

I still don't understand. If you have a reliable source that someone is French, they're French. Same with Jewish. Are you saying that the real world consequences are different and therefore we shouldn't identify people as Jewish even if they themselves don't hide it? Nigella Lawson is a good example of someone who is undoubtedly and unashamedly Jewish. The absurdity came when editors were deleting people partly notable because they are Jewish, like Eric Moonman.

Yes, removing Eric Moonman is ridiculous. And here is where Jayjg removes our Nigella - as does Slim Virgin. Curiously - and topically - Jayjg removes the controversial Jewish philanthropist Michael Levy, accused of cash for honors, and then tinkers with the entry for Levy's successor Ronald Cohen, also Jewish, also accused of cash for honors, and the latest "middle east envoy" for the Labour government. In this case it seems their zeal has simply pissed off a whole load of people for no reason. A common occurrence it seems.

I think this zeal is in part due to ignorance, which illustrates another problem aspect of all wikipedia; people editing articles on subjects they are largely ignorant about. SV and Jayjg are clearly unaware of who most of these people are. Hence, by rights they should leave the article to the people who do., or at least show some grace towards those more knowledgeable.

But Guy, as the Mark Lawson article illustrates, listing people by religion is far more problematic than listing people by nationality. Nationals have legal citizenship. According to reliable sources, Mark Lawson is not Jewish as claimed but Catholic. In reality he is neither.

If there are no reliable sources that he's Jewish, he shouldn't be listed as Jewish. Simple. "In reality" is a concept alien to Wikipedia - it includes what is verifiable, not what is true.

Oh dear, I'm turning into a Wikipedian.

There are "reliable" sources that list him as Catholic. He isn't. In contrast, you'd be hard pushed to find someone listed as French by mistake. By the way, if you were compiling a list of notable Ulster persons by religion, would you simply treat it as another article? No different to a list of Chemists or a list of French people?

I don't think that Jayjg or SV were for a moment unaware that Lord Levy is almost certainly Jewish. If nothing else, it was easy enough for me to turn up this, not that every faintly anti-semitic site on the net doesn't count him. My impression is that they just went through and checked the sources given, and didn't go to any effort to replace bad sources with good ones, though they were reasonable enough about accepting some good sources provided as replacements. There seems to have been (and maybe still is) a standing dispute about what sources are acceptable.

Keep in mind that the edits to the list are over a year old. Someone anonymous is presently working diligently to pump the list back up again.

In Ulster, everyone knows everyone's religion - no danger of outing.



Only almost certainly?!?

"Almost certainly" in the same sense that a fellow in So. Maryland started a shul by calling every Jewish-sounding name in the local phonebook. (See today's Wash. Post)

Yes, but Lord Levy is so well-known to be Jewish (and indeed an observant Jew) that there are endless good refs. I don't see how there can be any doubt.

Well, that's kind of the point. All that was needed was the slight effort to find a good cite. They were taking the "if it ain't cited, you can delete it" rather than the "if it ain't cited, you can help out by finding one" approach. I mean, I'm not the citing fanatic that some people are, and my feeling is that I'm not going to challenge stuff simply because it isn't cited (though I will if it seems wrong on a casual glance). If I were active in this area (which I'm not crazy enough to be) I'd probably be somewhat fanatical about citing too, at least for someone like Ben Kingsley whose ethnic origins are not obviously suggested as such. But their approach is that they'd rather not see someone listed than take the trouble to do the research. It tends to incline one to believe that they'd just as soon have nobody listed, but they can't win the AfD/notability battle. I agree with a lot of their removals on the level that people were being listed who weren't really British, or who were "half" Jewish, or whose connection to Jewish ethnicity/religion was otherwise tenuous.

It's interesting to look through because there was at least one person who was working against them. And to a degree they were reasonably well-behaved about it, in that where this person found good cites, they let things stand.

By George, he's got it.