Ksenia Coffman's co-editors have called her a vandal and a McCarthyist. She just wants them to stop glorifying fascists and start citing better sources.
Noam Cohen@noamcohen)
[article originally published in Wired 07/09/2021]
When Ksenia Coffman She started editing Wikipedia, she was like a tourist in Buenos Aires in the fifties. He came to learn tango, to admire architecture and to drink mate. I didn't know there was a problem with Nazism. But Coffman, who was born in Soviet-era Russia and lives in Silicon Valley, is a highly observant traveler. As he went through the articles on World War II, one of his favorite topics, he observed what seemed like a systematic effort to look the other way in relation to the atrocities committed by Germany during the war.
Coffman doesn't remember exactly when he started worrying. Perhaps it was when he read the article about the SS, the paramilitaries of the Nazi Party, which included images that were glamorous to him: officers in action admiring maps, parading, all sorts of "visually disturbing" things. Or maybe it was when he flipped through some of the pages about German tank gunners, aviation aces and medal winners. There were hundreds of them, and the impressive death counts of the men and their juvenile exploits always seemed to exist outside the genocidal Nazi cause. What was going on here? Wikipedia was supposed to be all consensus. Wasn't there consensus on, you know, Hitler?
A normal person might have thought: Something is going wrong on the Internet again. Bad luck. Next tab». But Coffman is that kind of person who finishes a thousand-page novel about the Holocaust. Whatever she decides to devote her time to - weightlifting, fragrance collection, denazification - she faces the task as an outstanding student. You can time travel and see how it starts. Wikipedia never forgets; maintains a permanent public record of every change a publisher makes.
At the beginning of November 2015, K.e.coffman met with the Attack of July 20, 1944, an article about the failed plan of the German officers to assassinate Hitler. One sentence caught his eye. He says some of the conspirators came to see the plot as "a grand gesture, though useless" that would save "the honor of themselves, their families, the army and Germany." The claim is not supported by any source. It's a guess, a rumor. And she finds it strangely accommodating.
Coffman addresses the Wikipedia article about one of the conspirators, Arthur Nebe, Apart from his role in the plot, Nebe's main contribution is that he came up with the idea of turning vans into mobile gas chambers by channeling exhaust pipes. The article mentions both facts, along with the detail that Nebe tested his system on the mentally ill. But he also says he worked to "reduce the atrocities committed," going so far as to give his bloodthirsty superiors inflated death tolls.
Coffman will remember that she feels "totally disoriented." He cannot believe that a mass murder innovator has tried to protect the Jews and other alleged subhumans his troops rounded up. Check the article references. The claim is attributed to War of Extermination, a compendium of academic essays originally published in 1995.
Coffman knows the book is authentic because he has a copy borrowed from the library. When you go to the cited page, you find a paragraph that seems to confirm all the outlandish claims of the Wikipedia article. But then read the first sentence of the following paragraph: This is, of course, a barbarity.
The level of bad faith is striking to Coffman. She is "very dismayed." He sees that his trust in Wikipedia was "very misguided." All it takes to warp historical memory, you realize, is something this small, achievable for just about anyone with a keyboard. So few people can carry so much weight, it's a little scary., he says. Start being more critical of what you see on Wikipedia. Especially references.
In a long series of editions, Coffman improves on both articles. He goes to the "July 20, 1944 Attack" talk page, where editors discuss changes to the main article. Copy and paste the text over the useless grand gesture. "I would like to delete this part," he writes. Ideas? Objections?" Another editor expresses support. With one click, the paragraph disappears.
In Nebe's article, Coffman adds a label "[citation needed]" to the manifestly false claim. It identifies two other dubious sources: one misquoted and one potentially invented. To be sure, check out a book titled The SS: Alibi of a Nation. Time and again, he reconstructs Nebe's record: At first, it is that some historians "have a much more critical view" of him than others; then it is that "they have a less benevolent vision"; Historians have a negative view of Nebe and his motivations, despite his involvement in the July 20 bombing. Coffman begins to understand that history is a war of editions. Truth, objective and also moral, hangs in the balance.
Similar battles over how we remember the past have wreaked havoc on society. Do we let the old bronze statues remain on our boulevards, or do we put them in some museum, or melt them down? Can there be a "hero" who has fought for a morally despicable cause? Are such qualities as courage and sacrifice and tactical brilliance worthy of admiration wherever they occur, even if, for example, racial supremacy is also present? Some choose to go outside. Coffman fights on the terrain he's most familiar with, with the weapons he knows best. It's not like she says so; He doesn't like war metaphors.
Several weeks after starting his new obsession, Coffman realizes that he has to complete his user page, the equivalent of a Wikipedia profile, in which editors expose their opinions, complaints, achievements and manias. On a Saturday night he updates it for the first time. I'm a new Wikipedia editor, write. I like to contribute and interact with other editors.
An hour later, after midnight, he adds: My editing style tends to be daring.
Coffman was raised by engineers in the last days of the Soviet Union. She had what she describes as a ‘culturally privileged education’ in Moscow. He went to galleries, museums and the theater. In his neighborhood, he remembers fondly, there was a recycling kiosk that rewarded you with literature. For this number of kilos of paper you could get these books., he says. ‘Classics: Pushkin, Tolstoy. Reading was encouraged’.
He wasn't taught to romanticize war. The martial qualities of veterans were never celebrated., says Coffman. It was not about the glorious victories, the fighters that fell on enemy ships.. His grandfather, a soil scientist, served in the Red Army as a combat engineer and survived the assault on Leningrad. But, as usual, she heard almost nothing about her experiences as a child (for the first time, in response to the questions in this article, Coffman asked her father what he knew. He replied that at one point his grandfather had thought about committing suicide. The only thing that prevented him from doing so was the idea that he had to go back to his wife and children., he wrote).
In college, Coffman majored in computational linguistics, a field that combined his interests in language and science. She was one of the best students and won a scholarship to a business school in the Bay Area. It came during the dotcom boom and never left. When I moved to America, I didn't have that idea of the luminous beacon of democracy., he says. But at least she could feel safe. I was on the street and the police did not assault me or ask for a bribe.
Coffman, who has broad shoulders under a blonde mane, thinks and speaks slowly. He lives in a townhouse in an urbanization in San Jose, California. Now it's harder to go to museums and galleries (I have to drive to San Francisco and find parking.), but stays motivated with books, hobbies and books about her hobbies. When I visited her at her house earlier this year, she accompanied me to the ground floor to do weights (for this she had read Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training. Approve the book because it is "as a science manual"). Upstairs, I recognized the tall, narrow bookshelf that appears behind her during Zoom's calls. It contains dozens of titles that wouldn't clash in a history graduate student's apartment: Hitler’s Generals on Trial. Kiev: 1941. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. A few others, such as Company of Women, make a nod to an entrepreneurial career.
World War II is where Coffman feels most comfortable, but in 2015, she says she became interested in the U.S. Civil War. That summer, a young white supremacist murdered nine parishioners at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. He explains that the shooting made him realize that "there was all that other America" that was beyond his experience, a place deeply marked by a past that he barely understood.
So Coffman did what he'd always done: read. And since he had no job, he was able to immerse himself in the story for a long time. He learned about the Civil War, the conflict behind much of the turbulence in the United States. He read about the "lost cause" ideology, which claims that the Confederacy actually fought to preserve high Southern ideals, not specifically the institution of slavery. He reviewed his knowledge of World War II, a struggle that was more familiar to him.
Perhaps the lack of a job, of people to collaborate with, is also what made Wikipedia seem like an attractive hobby. That's what it should be: one more hobby. At first, Coffman limited himself to making shy and sporadic suggestions. But then, I edited almost every day; There was a lot to fix. He liked the complicated structure of the site: guidelines on etiquette and reliable sources, policies on conflict resolution and removal of articles, academic essays and discussion pages that editors cite as jurisprudence. Wikipedia is highly regulated, he says. I'm good at instructions..
"Good morning," he begins. Peacemaker67 his message to K.e.coffman. We are at the end of 2015 and you are concerned about the recent changes in a Wikipedia article ("WP", for short) about an SS tank division made up of Nordic Nazi volunteers. I'm sorry, but there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding about what needs to be eliminated in WP, and I just want to clear it up before this gets too far..
Coffman recognizes this editor's alias. He is Australian, and his user page says he served as a peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia. It's the same person who invited her to join the WikiProject:Military History, a space where editors can chat, learn, win prizes and work together on articles.
It's not the first time Coffman has removed material from the article about tank division. He believes it is full of unreferenced falsehoods, using flattering and overly detailed descriptions that appeal to a small niche of readers, in this case, those who get excited about war stories. The article tells how "the division defended itself well" even against "increasingly tough resistance," how it "kept the line" and earned the "reluctant respect" of skeptical commanders. One collaborator has used the surprising expression "baptism of fire." It's as if the editors don't see the bottom of the page where a soldier uses the phrase "and then we clean a Jewish hole."
Glorifying language, Coffman thinks, is a clear sign that this is historical fiction for followers. Eliminate the horrors of war. If publishers want those details to remain on the page, they should at a minimum use a better source than Axis History, a blog whose motto is "Unshared information is lost."
The interaction begins quite politely. IMHO (in my humble opinion), it's good that you delete quotes from unreliable sources from the blog, says Peacemaker67. But just because the material comes from them doesn't mean I'm wrong..
K.e.coffman responds in less than an hour. Thank you for your message, write. Yes, I was surprised at how little I was able to save while editing the article.. It lists 17 examples of skewed language, Nazi glorification, and unreliable claims. Wouldn't Wikipedia be better without that content?, he wonders.
Well, people are on WP for different reasons., replies Peacemaker67. I don't go around deleting things because I think they might be unreliable.. He cites a page that advises staggering in editing, because Wikipedia is a work in progress. Articles have a long history, and there is no WP:DATE (no delivery date)’, he says.
Coffman takes a different view in his response. “I am of the opinion that there is a deadline: Wikipedia: The deadline is now., write. Why perpetuate disinformation when it can be removed, or give legitimacy to glorification when there are already many sites that do? I think Wikipedia's standards are higher..
Peacemaker67's final answer, nine minutes later, is sharp: If you take this kind of action on the items on my watch list, expect to be reversed and asked to provide reliable sources that contradict what's in the item..
Like other editors Coffman will encounter, Peacemaker67 sees something pernicious in his work. In a recent email, he told me that he considers Coffman's approach to be very little encyclopedic and an excellent example of what Wikipedia is not (see WP:NOCENSURADA)’. And he continued: Shall we apply the same censorship to military history articles about Khmer Rouge units? The Turkish military units involved in the Armenian Genocide? The Rwandan military units involved in the genocide in that country? The American cavalry units that massacred the Native Americans? The Arkan Tigers? Where does all this end?.
Coffman finds his next target in the article's references to tank division. This one is called Franz Kurowski, and it appears everywhere. Kurowski served in the Luftwaffe. After the war, he devoted himself to all kinds of popular literature, often under a pseudonym: Jason Meeker and Slade Cassidy for their crime novels and westerns, Johanna Schulz and Gloria Mellina for their women's literature. But his accounts of World War II made him famous under his own name. Kurowski's stories were not subtle. As the German historian Roman Töppel writes in a critical essay: They represent war as a test of fate and partly as an adventure. German war crimes are sidelined, unlike Allied war crimes..
To better understand this dubious chronicler, Coffman turns to Google, where he finds a book titled The Myth of the Eastern Front. It describes how, immediately after the war, characters like Kurowski worked to rehabilitate the image of the German army, arguing that a few genocidal apples had spoiled the barrel. With a guy like Hitler to blame, the rest was easy. The Call Myth of the Innocent Wehrmacht It took root on both sides of the Atlantic: German society needed to believe that not everyone wearing a gray uniform was evil, and Americans persecuted every anti-communist ally they could find. Then, in the mid-1990s, an exhibition at a museum documenting the crimes of the Nazi-era military traveled throughout Germany. There was a strange situation: Germans began to speak more sincerely about the Wehrmacht than non-Germans.
When Coffman reads this, something clicks. She's dealing with a poisonous tree. It should not remove specific parts. I should nip it in the bud. It begins to move from history (the facts themselves) to historiography (the way they are collected). He starts using Wikipedia to document the false historical narrative, and its proponents, and then makes the fight over dubious sources rather than specific articles.
On Christmas Eve, he returns to Arthur Nebe's page and adds a single word: Historians have a vision uniformly Nebe's Negative and His Intentions.
In the spring In 2016, Coffman reviews hundreds of articles about the winners of various Nazi medals, including a so-called Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Remove biased sources and any information based on them. When it's over, there's usually nothing left in the article - nothing to say about the person - other than the fact that he won a prize. He then insists that an award is not reason enough for an independent article on Wikipedia. Without a reliable source telling your life story, you can't be remarkable. Oh, wow. Another Nazi legend bites the dust.
A particularly revered medal winner, or one of high rank, could survive Coffman's purge. But the results are not pleasant. When he comes to Kurt Knispel's page, he says it was One of the greatest experts, if not the greatest, on tanks of all time.. His photo shows a young gunner with shaggy blonde hair and a knob. He smiles, not knowing he's doomed.
Unfortunately for Knispel, his reputation is based almost entirely on the stories told by Kurowski, as well as on a story published in the Wehrmachtbericht, the publication of Nazi propaganda. Coffman strips away apocryphal stories of action and adventure, such as the one that says Knispel was prevented from promotions because he assaulted a superior. When it ends, the article is reduced to four paragraphs, three of which refer to his death, at the age of 23, when he was hit by a Soviet tank. Later, someone will leave a brief and sad comment on the article talk page: Here was a lot of information about his military career, his unconventional attitude to military discipline, etc. ... Why has it been erased?.
Coffman's editions have gone from 1,400 a month to 5,000. It is entering its most prolific period. He's been filling his user page with study and research guides, but now his tone becomes bolder, sharper. The section names go from being arid ("Waffen-SS Revisionism") to cheerfully derogatory ("High Moral Fibre Subdepartment"). The page is becoming an extensive ironic taxonomy of his obsession, and the parapet from which he mocks his adversaries.
Good morning, he says in a comment in the summer of 2016. It's Peacemaker67 again, with a last warning. I've noticed that you've been nominating articles about the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross laureates for removal, having deleted significant amounts of text and possible sources from them., write. That kind of behavior is deplorable, and it's not appropriate in WP.. (Coffman's detractors often hint that she doesn't fit in.)in WP", or English Wikipedia. They often assume she's a visitor to the German Wikipedia,from WP", for his insistence on holding the Wehrmacht to account). I suggest you stop, concludes Peacemaker67. ‘Health’.
They go back and forth. Finally, Coffman appeals to the general Wikipedia community to decide who is right about the relevance of these medal winners. The issue seems to be complex, so I would appreciate more input., write. The debate revolves around certain political formulations, along with the question of how to compare the military decorations of France, the United States, Britain and Germany. Members of WikiProject:Military History are well represented, but Coffman garners crucial support. A user named MaxRavenclaw opposes the claim that purging Iron Cross winners is a form of "winners' justice": You should know that history is written by the connoisseurs, not the victors. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously when you make those claims..
The struggle stretches across the pages for months. In autumn, Peacemaker67 write that is "Frankly fed up" of the ‘continuous propaganda’ by K.e.coffman. It is "reducing fun to the volunteer editors who really contribute to this encyclopedia", write. An attentive reader of your cri de coeur You will notice that he assumes that Coffman is a man ("The rules of the community govern in in WP, not your personal opinions). This is a common misconception among the Military History gang. Coffman never tries to correct it.
After six months of debate, on January 22, 2017, Coffman is validated. A Librarian (admin in English Wikipedia) leaves a reasoned message: In the case of the Knight's Cross the community has established a consensus, concludes. Sufficient reliable sources are lacking for many laureates. In other words, it should not be presumed that winning a Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross makes you relevant enough for a Wikipedia article. The only thing guaranteed is a one-line spot on a long list of winners.
Coffman is aware of the allegations against him: "make propaganda", "go to forums", "do not let go of the stick".
Once the case is resolved, Coffman and his louder opponents retreat to separate corners. But a bitter one, LargelyRecyclable, shows up to create a troll account and keep objecting to his changes. Finally, he takes the user to the Arbitration Committee, the English-language Wikipedia version of the Supreme Court.
The expert group does not go into detail, explicitly writing that It is not the role of the Arbitration Committee to resolve bona fide content disputes between publishers.. But what he dictates gives Coffman a sense of support, he says. LargelyRecyclable is banned indefinitely from editing the English Wikipedia. The ArbCom also notes that groups like WikiProject:Military History have no authority over the content of the articles or the conduct of the editors, or any other special power. You can charge Coffman with anything you want: Vandalism, McCarthyism, "Draft Jealousy". She has as much right to edit the story as they do.
And few can match their output: 97,000 editions, 3,200 pages created, countless debates argued and won. Today, K.e.coffman is a solid member of the English Wikipedia editorial elite, numbering 734 out of 121,000, at the time of writing. It maintains a watch list of about 2,000 items. Every time someone tries to make a change, a notification appears next to the list. That's what happens with editing wars: They never end.
But Coffman, of course, avoids martial language. Wikipedia is not a battlefield; is a real estate property. You have to keep your house, he says. You have to have a security system.
In your user page Now, there are sections called "Nazi fantasy" and "apocryphal nicknames." There are lists of apologetic sources and right-wing publishers. There's a whole derivative page called "My Allegedly Problematic Behavior," in which he tracks the accusations made against him: "make propaganda", "go to forums", "do not let go of the stick". She has even given herself a prize for all her heroic work: Vandal's Iron Cross with Swords and Diamonds.
English (UK)