Talk:Dov Forman

Notable person?

Forman is not a notable person, and this article is seemingly part of a much larger campaign to try and establish him as such. It should be removed. 86.7.82.143 (talk) 23:48, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree, this seems like it is personally written by Forman as a way to boost his personal profile. 194.60.38.230 (talk) 13:21, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I am thirding this. TheGreenfields (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

Article conflict of interest

For some reason this hasn't been tagged with a conflict of interest despite the discussion above and how blatantly the editing is on this page.

Over 90% of the current article authorship is done by 3 IPs:

• 194.75.55.52 (51.9% of the article): Edits a few Jewish related topics but the biggest edits and majority done on the IP are either about Dov Forman or his great-grandmother, originally creating the first instance of it (the framing is very promotional on the original and is virtually the same as the current version).

• 82.30.255.227 (27.2%): Solely edits on Dov Forman, calling him a "bestselling author, international spokesperson and viral social media creator"

• 86.1.49.74 (13.8%): Again solely edits on either Dov Forman or his great-grandmother

Maybe this is just a coincidence of three very interested parties who particularly like editing about Dov but if you look at specifically 86.1.49.74 and 194.75.55.52, you can see that 86.1.49.74 virtually takes over as the editing IP from late March 2022 onwards, creating the Dov Forman page again, with 194.75.55.52 ceasing to make any edits on the topic later on.

I think atm there needs to be a general clean up of this article, the content is heavily skewed in sounding like a promotional piece of what he's done in a listicle (as the others above said, see the Activism section in particular) rather than something which demonstrates his notablity and a check of whether the sources as they are currently contribute enough for its own article or whether it should just be merged back into Lily Ebert's article. I've added what I think is the conflict of interest tag for the time being. Tweedle (talk) 13:39, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

@Abed Kative are you Dov Forman as well? How do you know you have copyright permission to upload his infobox photo? Tweedle (talk) 09:49, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

The COI designation of this article is a serious accusation, and the current designation is based on mere conjecture; all evidence for COI presented is highly circumstancial.

When I removed the COI designation, I addressed all of the concerns sketched out here. I gave the article a general cleanup, improving phrasing in a number of sections, and supplemented secondary sources in sections that relied on primary sources, which was the main weakness of the article. I gave the article a thorough review, and found the claims made in the article to be reasonable, given the notability of the subject. The article conforms to the requirements of neutral point of view given that the subject is notable and has indeed made major contributions to the remembrance of the Holocaust.

As per condition 5 of when to remove a COI designation, consensus was reached on how to address the flagged issue. I reasonably implemented the changes and addressed the concerns, and removed it after providing the general cleanup and improvements that you suggested.

The notion that some of the claims in the article are skewed or promotional may stem from a lack of understanding of the notability of the subject (concerns raised by other editors), who has been featured in numerous secondary sources including but not limited to the following:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/08/08/holocaust-auschwitz-dov-forman-bela/

https://time.com/collections/time100-creators-2025/7299117/dov-forman/

https://www.jpost.com/judaism/article-861429

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/lily-ebert-holocaust-promise-book-zmqdhp0h8

https://nypost.com/2024/12/24/lifestyle/amid-rising-antisemitism-people-are-turning-to-heartfelt-stories-to-find-light-in-the-darkness/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20m8lv8xkeo

To reiterate: There is no evidence to support the claim that the subject of the article has a close connection to any of the editors. The editing patterns for this biography do not suggest COI and the evidence provided simply does not support the claims which you are making about the subject of the article and their relation to editors.

There is also no evidence to support the claim that the article does not conform to NPOV at this point, especially after the cleanup.

To answer your last question: No, I am not the subject of the article.

If you have further issue and insist that there is some conflict of interest and that this article does not conform to NPOV, then I do encourage you to start a dispute resolution at the following link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_requests/ANI

Otherwise, I do not see any aspects of the consensus here that have not yet been addressed. The COI tag is no longer relevant to the article--and never was.

I will also note: The excessive accusations of COI and lack of NPOV on the biography of a figure who is famous for raising awareness about the Holocaust raises questions about the objectivity of those who level those accusations. Abed Kative (talk) 17:14, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

@Abed Kative This response is confusing. Objects to accusations of being a WP:DUCK, responds back with an accusation... of bad faith? OK, well let's go through this in detail.

• "The COI designation of this article is a serious accusation, and the current designation is based on mere conjecture; all evidence for COI presented is highly circumstancial."

Well obviously it's circumstancial, I'm not an admin who can look at your IP on this account here. But a DUCK is a DUCK, and if somebodies overall editing history is like something, and their editing history time points match, I can rightly assume that yes, that person is likely the same person, in addition to the issues surrounding that this page sounds like a promotional piece. Any other person could do this and come to the same conclusion as me. You'll find on the dispute page that this would be the same case.

Even the IP that reverted here before your revert is from the Houses of Parliament, where Forman works as an aide to Robert Jenrick. This does not really help your case at all that somebody behind the article is extensively 1: watching it and 2: editing it.

You still have not answered my question on how you know whether or not you have *copyright permission* to upload the infobox photo. Where have you gotten copyright permission from to upload the picture? Please answer this question.

--

• "I gave the article a thorough review, and found the claims made in the article to be reasonable, given the notability of the subject. The article conforms to the requirements of neutral point of view given that the subject is notable and has indeed made major contributions to the remembrance of the Holocaust.

No you didn't, you mostly just tweaked the links so the ones that were broken worked again. Rightly as the below comment says the page still reads like a copy of a LinkedIn page. Let's copy out what you changed:

• You removed the COI tag (importantly).
• You changed the link here.
• You made a minor grammer change to this: "Forman was invited to speak about 'Social Media and Holocaust Commemoration' to the CEO of Google, and at Oxford University and Cambridge University. He has also spoken to more than 200 news outlets - including on live television and radio - in over 20 countries.".
• A slight grammer change to this with a minor link change: "Forman co-authored the memoir Lily's Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live,".
• You then finally changed the link to the TED talk as it was broken.

I am not sure why you would bother about lying about this. Do you think we can't see what is changed by each edit?

--

• "As per condition 5 of when to remove a COI designation, consensus was reached on how to address the flagged issue. I reasonably implemented the changes and addressed the concerns, and removed it after providing the general cleanup and improvements that you suggested." '''

No, a consensus was not reached, you just removed it arbitrarily without even coming onto the talk page at all! I had an active talk page section here which makes it worse!

--

• "The notion that some of the claims in the article are skewed or promotional may stem from a lack of understanding of the notability of the subject (concerns raised by other editors), who has been featured in numerous secondary sources including but not limited to the following:"

Spamming secondary sources is not an argument for what I was saying. Two points:

• 1 - Secondary sources do not contradict that this piece reads as promotional work for Forman.
• 2 - As I had hinted on the original post above, all of these are about primarily Lily Ebert as the subject relating to her experiences, not specifically about Forman himself and what makes him notable outside of that. You are making your own argument for merging with Lily Ecbert.

If it goes further than this, I will start a dispute resolution on ANI, as per your wishes. Thanks, Tweedle (talk) 10:02, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

As the edits I've made to try and get this article into shape show, the tag is entirely justified. Seemingly every sentence needs checking, as much of it fails verification, even when a reliable secondary source is cited. SmartSE (talk) 13:33, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

I think implying that the people pointing out that this page is self-written self-aggrandisement are Holocaust deniers are pretty low. TheGreenfields (talk) 16:20, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

Student using Wikipedia as his LinkedIn?

"Forman is currently undertaking his undergraduate studies in History and Religious Studies at University College London.[8][9] He is employed by Conservative MP Robert Jenrick as a Senior Parliamentary researcher.. At age 16, during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid a rise of antisemitism, Forman wanted to raise awareness of the Holocaust and anti-Jewish racism. He used Twitter to share his great-grandmother's story of surviving the Holocaust; his Tweets reaching over 70 million Twitter users in 2020 and 2021."

The vast majority of this Wikipedia is near identical to the subject's Linkedin Page.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dovforman/

"To answer your last question: No, I am not the subject of the article."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Abed_Kative

In the politest possible way, this trend seems to be quite common of the top editors of this page. Abed Kative joins the ranks of 194.75.55.52, 82.30.255.227, 86.1.49.74, as the 4th most significant author to the page by character. Like the other three, their primary expertise appears to be the subject Dov Forman. This account also appears to takes over from 82.30.255.227.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/82.30.255.227 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A0A:EF40:224:FA01:E96C:344C:8B32:6736 (talk) 07:12, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Dov Forman.jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:52, 13 August 2025 (UTC)