The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Wikipedia gets back to me...

Wikipedia gets back to me...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, May 6 2012, 4:16:48 (UTC)
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...they keep handing me around to new editors, or "Wikipals"....they turned down my request to get rid of the nonsense about modern assyrians and put Joseph's work up there...but, they said that did not mean I was wrong, only that we need to thrash it out first...so I sent this to my new "handler"...


==For the life of me I can't figure out what purpose Wikipedia is supposed to serve. There are free online encyclopedias, I mean the real kind where information is vetted BEFORE being offered to the public, who are then asked, as volunteers and non-professionals, to "seek consensus" among other non-professional volunteers, before changes can be made...after the horse has left the barn. In particular I find it unnerving that a Christian sect, I have nothing against Christians, but it happens to BE a Christian sect, has taken over the "Assyrian" page....at least the last half, where they have placed their claims that they, and they alone, are descended from the ancient Assyrians. This is such a preposterous bit of tomfoolery and has no basis in fact whatsoever. I tried to alert the editors that truckloads-full of uncited, unsourced, outrageous claims were being made...I offered an actual history book on the subject, it is admittedly little known and has few qualified researchers, but there is one, a Ph.D in modern Middle Eastern history who has written a book, first published by Princeton University Press and again by Brill, academic publishing house in business for 400 years...this book, by Dr. John Joseph, retired Luis Audenreid professor, Emeritus, is well researched and documented, unlike the material presented on Wikipedia about the existence of modern-day Assyrians. Dr Joseph was born in Iraq, into a family that believed itself descended as well...as was I, both of us born in Iraq and both of us raised on this claim....Dr Joseph studied the matter, getting his doctorate from Princeton University...in addition he has been honored by his college, Franklin and Marshal, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania , where a new International Studies Building was named after him.

When I introduced actual quotes and sources, from Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee and even Herodotus, to name a few, I was told, by the amateur editor of the Talk section, that Dr. Joseph was "amateurish" and had "made mistakes"...in most cases on Wikipedia, you can find at least the same topic discussed in the Britannica, or any well-known encyclopedia or history book, but on Wikipedia is the ONLY place on earth you will find it stated as fact that direct, lineal, descendants of the ancient Assyrians are walking the earth today.

That page has been hijacked by partisans who have a political agenda; to force Iraq to hand over to them a northern section of the country, rich in oil, because they are the "indigenous Assyrian people", whose lands were "usurped" by the Arabs. It would be like Wikipedia running an article by members of the "Sons of the Confederacy" in which they claim Abraham Lincoln made money off the Civil War, and that is why he led the nation to war.

But who has time to check...or investigate? Everyone here is a volunteer who presumably has more important things to do, like earn a living...and the page looks so "nice" and "orderly"...why spoil it?

Seeing this on Wikipedia I now look at everything here as suspect...if you can allow this preposterous claim to exist, then what WOULD you reject? Someone at Wikipedia needs to actually read a book, a real one, on this topic.



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