A request to remove a hold and stop a potential edit war

Question

I asked a question: How many people died at the Tulsa Race Riot?

It was then edited almost beyond recognition. It was certianly an improvment to the question, so after I realized that, I quickly got over it.

Then, I realized that part of what I wanted to know wasn't clearly asked so I added a secondary question "Were airplanes used in the manner claimed by Quanell X?"

This was edit out.

I edit it back in and asked in comments that we avoid an edit war and the response was putting the question on hold as "unclear what you're asking".

It is perfectly clear what I'm asking. The two questions are so closely related that if I split them, one would be closed as a duplicate.

Please take this question off hold and allow the two questions to remain as is.

Answer 1

At the moment of writing, the question has been reverted, with a couple of changes.

I think the original question was poorly written - hence my extensive edits. I explain the process here:

• The original title (which hasn't been preserved) asked: "What happened to Black Tulsa? (aka Black Wall Street)" Black Wallstreet is a reference to the location of the riot, but not the riot itself. Ditto black Tulsa. So, first a reference needed to be made to the Tulsa Race Riots. The title now does that.
• My next question, reading the original question, was "Where the hell is Tulsa?" (Before you laugh at my ignorance of US geography, could you point to the Gold Coast on a map of Australia? It is more populous than Tulsa.) I googled the answer, and added a mention of Oklahoma, and a united-states tag.
• Then I could find the subject of the actual question, which appeared to be the Tulsa Race Riots. Once I found that on Wikipedia, it seemed appropriate to give that context to a reader, so I linked to the Wikipedia page. (Is this answering the question in the question? No, I think if someone hasn't even glanced at the Wikipedia page, they really haven't done enough research on their question before asking.) I also extracted a quote that incorporated the phrase "Black Wall Street" and mentioned the location as Oklahoma, so I didn't need to.
• The question refers to "a video on Facebook by the Young Turks". Why should every reader have to go and find a video the OP already has a link to? I found the video on YouTube and linked to it. I gave the author of the work the respect of naming her.
• I watched the video, and, sure enough, it did not match the quoted claim - it didn't say 3,000 blacks were killed by the KKK (I had added a reference/definition for that term, too, but then deleted it because it turned out to be irrelevant.) It claimed 3,000 people (all races, all causes) died. Then, it had a correction - it was a simple error. I am not even sure why we are mentioning the 3,000 claim as it had been retracted. I considered deleting it, but instead kept it and played down its importance a bit.
• Meanwhile, Wikipedia page - the basic research before the question should have been asked, had some figures too, so I quoted those, as more appropriate than a retracted claim.

• The question referenced other "sources", but those "sources" were a single source, and that source deserved being given a name, so I explained it was the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. We prefer sources to be actually quoted, to avoid link rot (and to not require every reader to search an entire document for the relevant figure) so I quoted that too.

• The mention of the "another video" had a number of similar problems.

  • I added a timecode, so people didn't have to watch the entire brain-sapping video to hear the claim.
  • I transcribed the key sentence, so they didn't have to watch any of it. I gave the show its correct title.
  • I gave the "black commentator" the respect of a name, as well as a link to who he was/what he has achieved. Meanwhile, I dropped the reference colour of his skin as being irrelevant to his claim.
  • I also dropped the reference to the colour of the skin, or in fact any mention, of the person he was talking to, as that was irrelevant to the claim too.

• I dropped the "I'd like to know the truth." as redundant. Every question has that implied.

• Instead, I focussed on the main claim that was in controversy - whether 36, 39, 55, 300, 3,000, or 4,000 people died in Tulsa on that day.
• The question about whether airplanes was used was a side-issue and didn't seem to be in dispute. All of the sources agree that airplanes were used.

Most of these edits have now been reverted. I think the question is worse for that.

Answer 2

Thanks for opening a topic on Meta to ask about this.

Would you be able to reference/quote a single sentence e.g. the following ...

white people [...] got airplanes and bombed people and killed hundreds - and some studies say up to four thousand - African Americans

... and ask whether that claim/quote is true?

I guess that usually the site wants one question per question; but more strictly that it wants one "notable claim" per question and it's up to you to identify exactly which specific notable claim you want to question.