Wikipedia Wars on Pashtun Topics

[Admin Khan]

can't you have a section on here, admin, for all the pashtun information?

That is a good idea. You mean similar to our Kitabtoon?

[faye]

have you ever seen this website, admin? maybe something like this.
History Commons

[Aryob]

Aryob, you are making a clown out of yourself.

1)I am not from Pashtunkhwa, but from Kandahar.
2)Your Urdu attack, in which you assume I am from Pashtunkhwa is childish. We should love all languages. This nationalistic approach of yours is wrong, especially by attacking me and making baseless assumptions.

If you read my post, the point I was tryin to make is we should make users believe what they are reading is NOT biased. The same way you would feel that Iranpedia might be biased.

Rather than going off at with a tantrum, you could've realized that I was even offering you my support.

A perfect example as to why Afghans just don't get it. I mean, first try to understand what is written before you go off with a rant. I know what you were thinking, you thought I'm some Pashtun from Peshawar who is allergic to the name Afghan. Even if the aforementioned was true, your approach is just flat out wrong.

Malgaria whether you are from pekhawar or kandahar doesn't make a difference. I appreciate your support and suggestions but unfortunately we've passed the stage of picking a name and getting technical support for the website. So it's useless getting into that discussion. I found an opportunity here to bring awareness about Afghan wiki to the users here and that's why I posted here. You are welcome to be a content contributor as everyone else is.

As far as my nationalistic approach is concerned, I don't think it's wrong and no I don't need to love all languages for any reason. I respect all languages but love my own language and I work for it. However I have no enmity towards any other language or ethnicity. Ne pohegam che te nan pa koom lat ra jag shawai ye kho ka lag pe ehteram khabare wake no khwand ba waki, kane dase bekhwanda, bemantiqa, aw be-wazna khabaro ta me hets tabia neshta.

[Admin Khan]

Malgara ka ta pa awal sar pa akhlaq oh pa adab sara zma sara khabarey karey wai, nu ma ba hum sta sara pa dagha lahja khabarey karey wai. Da Urdu ragadawal, da wayal che za yaw problem larama che zan ta Afghan wawayama, sta da khwa sa jahalat oh beaqaltob dey? Ka da ta nationalism waye no pa nationalism jhi nalat si.

Think before you talk, try to understand what I meant before you talk, if it was too complex for you to comprehend, you couldve asked me. There was no need for your baseless assumptions, and to drag Urdu and Pashtunkhwa into it. I would've served as an editor since the whole point behind my post was to show how can I support your cause, and then I offered my opinion about another domain that we can create that does not look biased to potential guests reading it. Ka ta wus zma sara pa dagha rakam baidabi khabarey kaya, I can only imagine how you would treat me if I'm an editor. Assumptions is the exact reason why your province, along with my province, serves a nest for bombardment. Think about that. If our educated people are committing the same grave mistakes, how can I blame a Pashtun in Waziristan when he tells me schools for females are haram?

Pa makha di da baagh daq guluna. Thank for your response, I'll leave it at this.

[Admin Khan]

Guys, stop derailing the thread. Focus on the issue, don't side-track away. The question here is what can we do to tackle the constant editing of Afghan/Pashtun figures on Wikipedia by non-Pashtuns. When you Google 'Syed Jamuledeen Afghani', the first source that pops up is wikipedia, and that is what people will read. No one will visit the 15th page to find an Afghan source. If they can do it, so can we. We can create 50 different sites named, Afghan this, or Afghan that, but the issue here is outsiders being mislead about OUR figures. I personally do not like it when someone tells me Jamuladeen Afghani is Iranian.

Focus on the thread.

[Ghorzang]

I see a ton of 'we do need to fix it' but no execution methods. Ghorzang, I know you are a web junkie just like myself and Aryob, what can we do to prevent this?

There are a number of small issues that we can solve ourself (continuing the war), but the most important issue was pointed out in that article, access to credible and verifiable sources. Based on experience, when you are in an edit war, our Pashto sources are not very credible and at the same time they are not verifiable either. They don't consider Afghan sources as credible either, even if they are in English - they would claim that they are biased. Therefore for certain topics, it is much better if your sources are foreign.

Aryob's AfghanWiki project would be very beneficial in the long run if he can somehow make it look a little less-biased. If we look at Iranica, most of it's articles are written by non-Iranians. There is no doubt that it is fully pro Iran and Persians, but it is hard to argue as the articles published by them are written by foreigners.

Google Books has been very helpful lately. If one looks around, there is a possibility of finding some relevant sources.

Like I said, we can still continue to edit Wikipedia and bring some positive changes. We need more than one person to do the job. Almost every other Pashtun has been banned by Wikipedia because they don't edit properly. Even though I haven't opened Wikipedia in months now, I was one of the few Pashtun editors with a clean record (never received a warning or got banned). If we get a few more editors to participate, we will be able to clean up some articles. Whenever we have time, we should log in and go through the articles and make corrections.

[Ghorzang]

I am not a historian and neither am I a good writer. Therefore I have tried my best not to waste my time on history related articles.

[Manzareh]

I remember reading a page on wikipedia that spoke of a time when Pashtun tribal men captured British soldiers and had Pashtun women squat over the tied bodies and urinate in their mouths as a punishment, sounded outrageous to me and blatently false, never the less it was portrayed to be the truth, i think its better to have the pages of this 'wiki war' removed completlely than to have false information - perhapse we can get together and report the pages/articles? atleast the ones that have been edited so much and will now stay in the false state.

On a side note, what is the deal with these Tajiks anyway what is their problem with Pashtuns?

[Khostai]

I remember reading a page on wikipedia that spoke of a time when Pashtun tribal men captured British soldiers and had Pashtun women squat over the tied bodies and urinate in their mouths as a punishment, sounded outrageous to me and blatently false, never the less it was portrayed to be the truth, i think its better to have the pages of this 'wiki war' removed completlely than to have false information - perhapse we can get together and report the pages/articles? atleast the ones that have been edited so much and will now stay in the false state.

On a side note, what is the deal with these Tajiks anyway what is their problem with Pashtuns?

They want to rule Afghanistan, but they can't becuase Pashtuns have been the rulers for centuries and that they can't handel....

[torkham]

For a while i taught in few colleges (aviation/physics) and one thing that was made clear to students was the lack of reliability of wikipedia sources; as a consequence these sources would be rejected by staff assessing student's research.

So these guys can bit** about pan iranian hegemony over khorasan, bakhtar (bactria) or current afghanistan, and the fruits of their academic pursuit will be nothing short of pathetic, simply because wikipedia knowledge requires circumspection at least, and academic prudence for more debatable topics.

So any serious researcher will naturally be cautious, and if he makes the error of quoting wikipedia, will have his assertion cast with doubt and in worse case be ridiculed out. On the other hand the ignorant, who form the many, will always pick any scrap of information to defame and defile the truth, these are the haters, racists, the prejudiced, . . . the losers.

It would e very nice if our internet wizards can do something, like having untested, uncontested, unrecognised, assertion be highlighted. If the assertions/ knowledge claims are considered tested and proven, the there should a clear reference to author/organisation, instead of the word 'edit' next to it, as it currently appears next to so many wikipedia assertions. At least that way readers would know immediately if its CNN or PressTV or Haaretz etc making the claim.

[Admin Khan]

There are a number of small issues that we can solve ourself (continuing the war), but the most important issue was pointed out in that article, access to credible and verifiable sources. Based on experience, when you are in an edit war, our Pashto sources are not very credible and at the same time they are not verifiable either. They don't consider Afghan sources as credible either, even if they are in English - they would claim that they are biased. Therefore for certain topics, it is much better if your sources are foreign.

Aryob's AfghanWiki project would be very beneficial in the long run if he can somehow make it look a little less-biased. If we look at Iranica, most of it's articles are written by non-Iranians. There is no doubt that it is fully pro Iran and Persians, but it is hard to argue as the articles published by them are written by foreigners.

Google Books has been very helpful lately. If one looks around, there is a possibility of finding some relevant sources.

Like I said, we can still continue to edit Wikipedia and bring some positive changes. We need more than one person to do the job. Almost every other Pashtun has been banned by Wikipedia because they don't edit properly. Even though I haven't opened Wikipedia in months now, I was one of the few Pashtun editors with a clean record (never received a warning or got banned). If we get a few more editors to participate, we will be able to clean up some articles. Whenever we have time, we should log in and go through the articles and make corrections.

We can organize an intellectual lashkar to do this. You have my support, and I am down. I am sure many others who are reading this, who are sensible, would participate as well.

I fully agree with your message.

[Kushan Prince]

I made a Wikipedia account recently to clear up the junk on there about Pashtuns and Afghanistan. I recently saw an edit on Kabul city reading that there are only 2% Pashtuns as opposed to 45% Tajik. Seriously, who would believe that crap. When I edited it, my edit was deleted as I needed sources to back up my claims. I think more pashtuns need to join in on this and work together to get rid of these Tajik parasites who think they are Persian.

[Khyber Pass]

I made a Wikipedia account recently to clear up the junk on there about Pashtuns and Afghanistan. I recently saw an edit on Kabul city reading that there are only 2% Pashtuns as opposed to 45% Tajik. Seriously, who would believe that crap. When I edited it, my edit was deleted as I needed sources to back up my claims. I think more pashtuns need to join in on this and work together to get rid of these Tajik parasites who think they are Persian.

I read that too and went LOOL, and also read that in Wardak it is 100% Hazara and I'm sitting there going wtf...