Talk:Ovadia Yosef

"Annihilation of Arabs"

I've reworded the context line for the two quotes from Yosef's sermon, as cited by BBC News, in an attempt to follow the source closely. BBC asserts that Yosef was speaking about Arabs, while quoting a Shas spokesman as saying Yosef meant only "Arab murderers and terrorists". But BBC News is not given to hyperbole in my experience (unlike much of the pathetic U.S. media), and the outcry appears to have come from the lack of distinction in the sermon, supporting BBC's claim. Obviously, it would really help our efforts to be accurate if we could get a more substantive, well-sourced excerpt of this sermon to get closer to the original material and see for ourselves if the BBC is unnecessarily stoking a fire. We should at least try to get some other sources that may provide slightly different parts of the sermon for illumination. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew quotes

I have moved a quote with only a Hebrew source to "Unsourced" because it is not possible for non-Hebrew readers (the vast majority of en:WQ's community) to independently verify the material. On wikis, we are all fact-checkers, and should be able to use the source to verify the quotes. Personal attestations are not valid sources, no matter how respected the attestor. (Jimbo Wales himself can't "vouch" for accuracy; we need published sources.)

Of course, there's a considerable amount of unsourced Wikiquote material not properly cited as such by this standard. But that's a problem to be fixed, not a precedent to be used. I'd also suggest that, in addition to finding a sourced translation, it'd be nice to have the original Hebrew listed first, with the translation underneath. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Is there a policy or guideline on that? If there's an online source in another language, then it's easy for anyone who speaks that language to verify it or fix it in case it's inaccurate. My guess is that misinformation in this case will be fixed faster than in the case of a sourced quote with English source that isn't online. So I think that you're wrong because we allow sources that aren't online, and therefore I can just translate into English where it's from (without adding a link), and that already qualifies as a sourced quote (an online source is a bonus, not a requirement). BTW in this particular case I added this source because it's a lengthy exerpt from a book that deals with this quote. iddo999 21:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW to make things more complicated:) If you look at the ynetnews English source you'll notice the words on the wikiquote page aren't the same as the words on ynetnews. The reason is that the English ynet whitewashed his words a little bit (maybe so that it wouldn't look too bad when Americans read it), and the Hebrew ynet article has a verbatim quote that corresponds to the audio recording (I verified it at the time), so I did a verbatim translation into English for wikiquote. iddo999 21:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as policy goes, there is the format described at Wikiquote:Templates/People for non-English quotes, which asks for but doesn't demand a translation source. This has been discussed in various places with no real attempt to derive a consensus. My argument is based on the idea that Wikimedians cannot use personal attestation to vouch for accuracy, as there is no reasonable trust infrastructure equivalent to an editorial board, so personal translations are questionable, even if we personally know they are accurate. (As with Wikipedia, what matters is verifiability, not truth, not because we don't want truth, but because wikis are inherently unreliable and must have outside sources to back up their assertions.) Wikipedia gets away with this because translation of Wikipedian-written text is still Wikipedian-written text, so it's just another form of prose editing that editors can argue about. But quotes are supposed to be exact, so translations are a major opportunity for error and even bias, just like Wikipedia sourced information is. Thus we need reliable sources for translations.

Of course, we're far, far away from being able to demand this of all our non-English text, so my effort to push this is perhaps quixotic. Still, I think we should try to set this standard to encourage an effort to source translations, especially on controversial subjects. But if you feel you should be able to call this properly sourced, I won't further oppose this classification for now. I reserve the right to revist it if the translation inspires an argument, though. ☺

By the way, online sources are very convenient, but I think we should always trust offline publications more, as they require more resources to publish and therefore put more at stake for the publisher to ensure they get it right. It is unfortunate that the online stuff is easier to verify but also easier to falsify and to break. With the advent of Google Book Search and Google News Search, as well as other research services like Thomson Gale Databases (accessible online to many with public library accounts), print materials are increasingly being made available online for research purposes, even if the publishers haven't done it themselves.

On the ynetnews stuff, by all means, make the quote match the source! I usually review the source while I'm reformatting the citation to make sure the quoted text is accurate, but I skipped over this one because I was in a hurry and wanted to address the BBC quote problems. The whole point in having a reliable source, especially a well-cited Internet one that includes enough information to track down alternative sources if it breaks, is that anyone can quickly fix the info if they find it inaccurate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeffq (talk • contribs) 23:01, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "what matters is verifiability". The person in question speaks only in Hebrew, therefore I think that a source that contains the original Hebrew text is better than a source that contains only an English translation (especially if the objective is to verify the full accuracy of a quote). Ideally, it would of course be best to have both English and Hebrew sources, and even better if they are online. You didn't respond to my point that I can just mention in English where this quote is from, and that's enough in order to have it in the sourced section, because online sources aren't a requirement. I have no particular interest in having this quote in the sourced section, but maybe Cato does, in order to give it the same weight as the 'extremist' quotes that seem to bother him. I'm more interesting in trying to reaching a consensus about a general policy with regard to translated quotes (maybe also discuss whether the text in the original language should appear next to the translated text?) iddo999 00:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Unless and until we have an agreed policy that all sources must be in English, I'd say that an online reliable source should be treated as just that, a reliable source.--Cato 21:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Vote for deletion notice

This article was preserved after a vote for its deletion. See its archived VfD entry for details.

~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It remains the fact that this article presents its subject in a very negative light, hence the NPOV tag.--Cato 20:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

In my humble opinion you abuse the word "fact". iddo999 14:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Noted, thanks.--Cato 11:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)