World War

I was initially skeptical about User:Paul_Siebert, but I'm starting to think it likely that he's one of the users out there looking to improve the project rather than enforce any particular point of view.  His scope seems to be focused on articles related to WWII in a strictly historical sense, and he doesn't appear to come into any of it with any goals other than to improve the areas that need it most.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't face heavy opposition, though.  He's had quite a long standing war going with User:Vecrumba, User:Nug, and a few other strong advocates from the Baltic States.  The main points of contention are over the extent of Soviet involvement in those countries, and over Soviet abuses related to the WWII era.  The Baltic advocates want to make sure Soviet crimes are represented 'accurately' on Wikipedia, and perceive their opposition to be Russian-based users who are just "repeating communist propaganda" (for an... interesting look at that claim, check out the mission statement on User:Vecrumba's user page).  This type of approach might help explain why so many articles on Russian/Estonian issues are tagged for not abiding to a neutral point of view (one way or the other).  Even ones that aren't are suspect.  Just look at a page like Russian influence operations in Estonia, which literally leads with "According to the Estonian Security Police, Russian influence operations in Estonia...", something akin to starting a similar topic with "According to the CIA, Iranian...". 

To be fair, many of the issues involved are very problematic.   The fallout from Soviet control over Eastern Europe is severe in places, and drastic changes have come well within the lifetimes of many of these editors.  Most participants have, on rare occasion, referenced a personal or familial story to bolster their position.  Emotions run high, even if the facade of a clear minded argument is almost always maintained. 

It's hard to pass any real judgment here.  The backlash in Eastern Europe over Soviet rule has been extreme, and in the place of that Soviet propaganda you often have a rush to the other fringe.  Freedom fighters who fought against the USSR are elevated to heroic levels in some sectors, regardless of whether or not they were fighting on the side of Nazi Germany in the process.  There is also a notable movement to equate Soviet crimes with those of the Holocaust; the gulag with the death camp.  This doesn't make the proponents of these ideas Nazis, of course - not any more than those they battle against are actually Stalinists.  But I'll say it like it is: there is a concerted effort on Wikipedia to present these type of ideas as mainstream.  From what I can tell, the majority of the time Paul has spent on the site for the past few years has been specifically combating this when trying to improve articles.  The main theatre moves from page to page (check user edit history to see), but the same editors are always there.


In fact, many of the users involved in these battles right now have been subject to significant edit bans for collaborating to 'game' Wikipedia with other members of a mailing list focused on these very issues.  I'll post more about this Eastern European 'cabal' at a later time.