Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests

Statement by Skyring

My position is simple. The unqualified assertion that the Queen is Australia's sole head of state is one of three views on the matter, and is not uniformly representative of informed opinion. Unlike indigenous kingdoms where the monarch is a clear and undisputed head of state, Australia and other Commonwealth Realms have a powerful local head of state in the Governor-General. Kingdoms such as the UK, Norway, Netherlands etc. have no comparable figure who is given and exercises powers in his own right. I refer to a popular Australian Politics site for a summary of the three views. It should be noted that the current Governor-General supports the first view, the Prime Minister and several eminent constitutional scholars support the second, and the sizable monarchist population the third.

A Parliamentary Library Research Note contrasts the two extreme positions. It is worth pointing out that since the withdrawal of the Queen's Instructions to the Governor-General in 1984, the Queen is unable to issue instructions to the Governor-General. I make no assertions as to which of the three positions is correct, I merely point out that there are three differing positions, and that making an unqualified reference to one specific person as head of state is not an NPOV position, regardless of whether that person is the Queen or the Governor-General.

I reject the accusations of edit warring. As can be seen from the history of the article, if I make an edit and it is opposed, I will direct other editors to the discussion page, where the point is discussed. I do not attempt to sustain edits against consensus, though I am more than happy to use the discussion page for discussion.

I cannot, however, feel much confidence in the ability of some other editors. The continued use of abuse, strawman positions, and evasion when asked specific questions strikes me as very poor practice. For example, the opening discussion in Talk:Government_of_Australia/archive_5, indicates the normal practice of party 2 in this RfA. The poisonous and provocative tactics of Adam Carr strike me as particularly repugnant, especially as he has been asked several times to refrain from abuse. Pete 06:10, 26 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Replies to Arbitrators' opinions

(If I might make a comment, the issue is not primarily a content dispute, it is a dispute over Skyring's conduct. He has no support whatever for his eccentric theories, but insists on inserting them in this and other articles. I have already been blocked once for reverting his edits, but what other means exist for stopping incorrigible crank editors? This committee needs to rule that Skyring may no longer edit any articles to do with Australian constitutional matters. Adam 02:11, 27 May 2005 (UTC))[reply]

Australia is not, nor has it ever been, a republic. Skyring learned he could not so crudely insert this original theory, and now he is gaming the system with ones slightly more subtle, but nonetheless, original. Refusing proper attribution or engaging in gross misattribution, the circularity ensues seemingly endlessly, needlessly taxing everyone's time and energy. El_C 02:33, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (3/3/1/0)

• Accept. I think there's a case to be heard, and I think there's been some issues on both sides. Being Australian, I've been around the fringes of this dispute, but I don't think it's necessary to recuse - but if one party or the other feels that it is necessary, I'll seriously consider doing so. Ambi 06:49, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept, for consideration of content dispute Fred Bauder 10:26, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • Fred, you know full well that is outside our mandate. Ambi 12:03, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Reject - this is worded as a content dispute, plain and simple, and is thus outside our mandate. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 14:27, 2005 May 25 (UTC)
  • IMO as a recused arb, it's really one about a user putting in original research repeatedly and persistently over months without references - which is behavioural - David Gerard 14:39, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Recuse. I urge its acceptance on grounds of persistent original research injection - David Gerard 14:39, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Reject ; put it through an RfC first. --mav 14:42, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept, per David Gerard. →Raul654 18:50, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
• Reject, content dispute ➥the Epopt 23:28, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• User:Njyoder
• User:AlexR
• User:Bishonen
• User:Axon

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Informed Njyoder: [18]
• Confirmation that he saw it (in true style):[19]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• RfC on gender on 17. May 2005 [20]
• Njyoder refused a mediation offer from Snowspinner [21]:

• Quote: "I suggest you ask AlexR WHY he is violating wikipedia policies and bullying people out of articles instead of letting him whine and blow this out of proportion because little baby didn't get his way. Frankly, the best solution would be to simply ban him from all gender articles, since he's obviously not interested in abiding by wikipedia policies and guidelines,".

Statement by AlexR

I request arbitration against Njyoder for persistent incivility and aggressiveness which poisons the climate on the pages he edits. He has in both Bisexuality and Gender (those are the two I was involved in; see other examples below) shown the same pattern - information he dislikes is deleted, and restoring it a "violation of policy" or POV or whatever, in any case, not allowed. Disagreeing with him is inevitably followed by personal attacks. His style is highly disruptive, and while he does occasionally have a valid point, those are drowned by his habit of deleting everything he doesn't like (instead of improving it) and becoming highly insulting if anybody suggests any other solution to the problem then deleting.

Since the matter on Bisexuality seems to be over, I'll concentrate on the Gender case for now; however, his behaviour is consistent and therefore references to Gender should only serve as the main example.

Gender and Talk:Gender

From Gender, Njyoder removed large parts of the content, on 15. May 2005, 16:49: [22]. Edit comment was: "removed sentences that don't make sense, removed dictionary explanations of etymology (this is not a dictionary), removed POV, made it a stub - [from last edit] gender=sex as per general consensus" Given these rather questionable reasons, the fact that there was no explanation on the talk page, and his previous behaviour, I merely reverted that as "vandalism" [23]. There were a few more reverts on both sides, currently the article rests (in the Njyoder version) because of this Arbcom request - there seems to be absolutely no point in debating the matter any further. This is confirmed by the talk page:

• 14:41, 17 May 2005 [24] " Marking them as vandalism when they're not is a violation of Wikipedia policy."
• 16:19, 17 May 2005 [25] "I just noticed that AlexR, without even consulting the talk page, tried reverting the same thing he did before." (Well, he hadn't used it, either.)
• Article went RfC on 21:15, 17 May 2005 [26]
• 18:41, 18 May 2005 [27] Claims that User:Arbor already explained his edits sufficiently on the talk page ( [28]); only, how can anybody know whether Arbor and Njyoder did indeed agree there? Also:

• "He [AlexR]] took it to RfC without even bothering to make the slightest attempt to explain why he wrongfully reverted my edits as vandalism (a violation of wikipedia policy)." and the rather odd:
• "Another POV etymological statemet: "Gender is also evolving in this usage from noun to adjective: it is increasingly being seen as an attribute (like color) rather than as a distinct entity in itself." is completely unsubstantiated. I've never heard anyone say "that color is male/female." A color being preferred by a gender doesn't make it a gender in itself. This usage is non-existant."

• 22:14, 19 May 2005 [29] Reply to User:Axon: "Are you kidding me? ... If you can't even acknowledge that, then you're ridiculously biased. ... All you're doing is reinforcing the fact that you don't want to cooperate and follow wikipedia guidelines in settling a dispute. Additionally, I don't have a history of "controversial edits." That's completely disingenuous to say. ... Please keep on making yourself look bad."
• 22:27, 19 May 2005 [30] Reply to me:

• "You're deliberately ignoring what people have already reached a general consensus on, please stop lying to make a point." and
• "One might oppose a certain analysis of gender, but I've never heard of anyone actually opposing the concept except those from exremist left-wing branches of feminism, the types oh zealously believe that we should use gender neutral terms like "zie" and "zir." Your assertion is not only wrong, it's the opposite of the way it is." (compare gender-neutral pronoun) and
• "Instead, in bad faith, you iniated an RfC against me as a hissy fit. The general consensus is AGAINST you, accept it and stop inserting your POV everywhere."

• 05:54, 24 May 2005 [31]

• "This is why I think he should just be banned from gender and sexuality articles, he refueses to conceded even the most blatantly obvious cases of POV."
• "I've tried this with him in the past, whenever I call him on absurd factual errors, he cries and whines and refuses to provide sources. He's probably the single biggest POV pusher in gender related articles." (compare [32])

Attempts by Njyoder to actually answer the questions brought up cannot be found.

Bisexuality

My initial RfC on 28. April 2005 [33] changed by Njyoder on 29. April [34]. Given that his initial removal of the Kinsey statistics [35] followed a debate with me and others on #wikipedia, I was under the misapprehension that this was a somewhat personal matter, hence the wording of my initial RfC.

At any rate, same pattern - deleted what he didn't like, became highly insulting when the deletion was reverted, and was nowhere willing to compromise. I kept out of the debate somewhat, since I still did not want to fuel it by what is maybe a personal conflict. (Although since he treats everybody who disagrees with him the same way, maybe this is less personal than I fear.)

For the complete debate, see Talk:Bisexuality#Prevalence of bisexuality and cultural practice of it and Talk:Bisexuality#Kinsey.

Third gender

On Talk:Third gender he also claimed that it had a "POV-bias" and that the article was "non-notable", although so far he has refrained from editing the article itself. The comment includes this rather ... surprising ... statement:

"Also, a quick google test shows that "third gender" only gets 19.2k hits, it's an uncommon term. This should be redirected to an merged with the Gender article, it is not worthy of its own article." [36]

(Talk page conists only of three edits, hence no use in providing diffs)

Other pages showing Njyoder's less than mature behaviour:

• Talk:Vole - completely unrelated topic, same style, see for example [37]. Also calling 10k of hits "not notable in the slightest"
• User:Njyoder/bishonen
• Talk:Circumcision; for example from Talk:Circumcision/Archive 5, [38]:

• "I suggest that he simply be banned from modifying this article (and all other circumcision related articles) as he's demonstrated nothing but his inability to remain neutral and civilized."
• "...proceeds to incorrectly call anti-circumcision people a "minority" fringe group despite the majority of the world not practicing ritual circumcision."

Statement by Bishonen

Njyoder's debating style on Talk:Gender won't come as a surprise to anybody who saw his personal attacks at my request for adminship, 1 May to 8 May 2005. Njyoder's interest in my unworthiness to be an admin subsided after the vote, so the matter wouldn't be worth bringing to the ArbCom's attention for its own sake, but I'm submitting this statement to widen the scope of the point AlexR is making about general incivility. (Although now that I've seen Njyoder's response to Snowspinner's offer of mediation, I reckon that's the entire RFAr right there.) I don't know why I was singled out, as I'd had no contact with him previously. I took him to be trolling, rather than airing any grievance against me personally, and following this perception, I didn't respond to his posts. (Anybody who did jump in to defend me got more aggression from him.) The only factual basis for animosity from Njyoder towards me that I know of is that I made fun of him on #wikipedia (briefly and, as I think, mildly) during an IRC session where his behavior got him kicked and eventually banned from the channel. OTOH, that was well after Njyoder had begun his crusade against me. (I'll be happy to quote these IRC remarks of mine, if it's proper to quote #wikipedia on Wikipedia at all). I supply a few egregious diffs below, but arbitrators can get the flavor of Njyoder's "debating" style more simply by taking a look at the talk page for my RFA, which is dominated by Njyoder and which gives a context of polite editors making reasoned appeals to him.

• 14:05, May 1, "humorous" RFA vote: Njyoder votes Strong 'Oppose to my RFA, giving as the reason: "She raped me with a series of rolled up Wikipedia print-outs :-(". [39]. Many users on #wikipedia IRC ask him to remove the sentence about rape. He refuses repeatedly, and User:Sj removes the sentence after a few minutes. [40]
• 20:43, May 3, posting #wikipedia logs: Njyoder creates the talk page for my RFA and pastes in extracts from the #wikipedia log claimed to "further incriminate her ... decides to go offline in a private medium with kim to spew vitriol so that she doesn't further incriminate herself." (I quite often often talk privately with Kim Bruning on IRC—Njyoder wasn't on that occasion, or ever, a subject between us.) [41],[42]
• 21:27, May 3, aggression: Sannse politely asks Njyoder not to post extracts from the #wikipedia log: "You probably missed my comment earlier on channel—posting logs from #wikipedia is against the channel policy" [43], and he responds: "Sannse, I suggest you take your POV, and dishonest pro-censorship behavior elsewhere... I suggest you read the Wikiquette, Wikilove and NPOV articles so you can better understand the wikipedia policies that you are violating...if you continue this ridiculous childish retaliatory behavior on both IRC and Wikipedia, I'll get a comitte to come in and review you to have your admin status revoked." [44]
• 19:08, May 7, accuses me of kissing my own ass: "Why the heck should she 'get credit' simply for her ability to garner votes? ... Somehow, I don't think kissing your ass to the top is a valid qualifier for being an admin." [45] (I deny being capable of such an acrobatic position.)

Evidence by Axon

I have found Njyoder to be a highly combative and uncivil POV pusher whose hostile attitude on talk pages does not encourage civil discourse or resolution of the various edit wars (see above) he is frequently party to. Rather than attempt to resolve issues he prefers to make threats and accusations of POV. It is particularly strange he seems to quick to attack me as I've only edited the pages infrequently, mainly keeping my contributions to the talk pages. Nyoder seems to find even the expression of a dissenting view intolerable.

Bisexuality

• May 1 2005 In one particularly ill-tempered post, Nyoder makes an unprovoked personal attack against me and threatens me with measures "beyond just an RfC" simply because I disagree with him on a talk page, even though I have not edited the actual article. He accuses me of using "ridiculous illogic" and tells me to "take my POV elsewhere", in enlarged letters (which he later reverts). He threatens me to "comply" within a week or I'll be reported to unspecified "higher authorities". He also falsy accuses me of deleting factual information from an article, despite the fact I hadn't edited the article for weeks[46] Another editor remarks on Nyoder's unprovoked hostility[47].

Gender

• 18 May 2005 I note that Nyoder has marked his reversions with "see talk" but has not actually properly explained his changes on the talk page. Nyoder takes offence to this and makes a personal attack by claiming I am being "disingenuous", i.e lying. Furthermore, he accuses AlexR of being a vandal for simply deleting content Alexr (and others) viewed as POV. Finally he ironically accuses me of acting in "bad faith" [48].

• 19 May 2005 Nyoder makes another unprovoked personal attack against me by accusing me of being "hopelessly biased" and lying (being "disingenuous") [49].

• 24 May 2005 Nyoder makes further unprovoked personal attacks against me claiming I am screaming "OMG POV" and that my remarks should be ignored because I am "biased" and hysterical [50].

• Multiple attempts to (politely) request Nyoder tone down his hostility and person attacks by myself and others are always ignored[51][52][53].

Statement by party 2

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (6/0/1/0)

• Accept. This is stupidly obnoxious behaviour. I'll be moving for a temp injunction against personal attacks if it's accepted as well - David Gerard 23:19, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Recuse. -- sannse (talk) 23:31, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept as DG. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 02:30, 2005 May 25 (UTC)
• Accept. Neutrality^talk 03:30, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
• Accept. Ambi 06:25, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept Fred Bauder 10:35, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
• Accept ➥the Epopt 23:28, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• User:Longhair
• User:Internodeuser / User:203.26.206.129 / User:203.26.206.130 / User:203.28.159.136 / User:203.23.22.154

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• User:Internodeuser notified via their talk page [54]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

A call for opinions on the contents of Internodeuser's user page was listed at the Administrators' notice board/Incidents by myself. User:Internodeuser has since updated their user page several times however has failed to remove accusations against myself of vandalism, lies and more. I feel mediation will not be appropriate for this dispute as this user has shown arrogance and ignored requests from others in the past when asked to modify behaviour and merely reverts to blaming others for his own actions.

Statement by Longhair

This dispute began following a post to the Australian Wikipedians' notice board by Petaholmes who noticed suspicious anonymous edits to articles relating to the Port Arthur massacre. Having spent quite a bit of time on Australian crime related articles myself, I reviewed all edits by the ip address in use and subsequently nominated all newly created articles by this ip for deletion, obviously raising the ire of User:Internodeuser (who I assume was using the anonymous ip at the time).

This has led to increasing personal attacks towards myself and other many editors who have tried to communicate in a civil manner or edit articles which Internodeuser has been working on. Internodeuser has also interfered with VfD votes in progress. I feel the unwanted attention isn't going to stop, and is considerably draining any positive resources I have to contribute to Wikipedia. I have never once nor profess to be an expert on crime. I have not engaged in personal attacks with any user whatsoever.

Evidence is being compiled at User:Longhair/Internodeuser (a work in progress) detailing diffs and offensive behaviours alerted to in this submission.

Statement by Internodeuser

To date, there are ZERO examples of vandalism by myself, per the definition of vandalism in Wikipedia. I have not on any occasion made a personal attack on any user that was unprovoked, and have only ever responded to persons who had said hateful and demeaning things to myself, most notably those by Longhair.

Furthermore, I did not vandalise Longhair's user page - I made a comment on his talk page. This does not fit the criteria for vandalism.

I have stated that Longhair has lied about me, and I believe that his above statement also constitutes a malicious lie. I have secondly referred to Longhair's argument as nonsensical, and given evidence for this. Longhair is not a crime expert, does not work in the crime field, and his only "claim to fame" is that he has made other crime reports. I'd also hope that you follow the link that is provided by longhair above, as it provides a number of examples of Longhair introducing personal attacks against me, and references his insistence to do this on a regular basis.

And if you want me to go, I tell you what. Fix up the errors that I suggested in Talk:Martin_Bryant, and that'll do me. Factual inaccuracies like that are horrific in an encyclopaedia. 203.26.206.129 09:56, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Internodeuser's statement

I have removed references to user page vandalism from my statement above. The occurence of vandalism was confused with another user vandalising my user page at the time. My apologies to Internodeuser for this incorrect assertion. The remainder of my complaint still stands. -- Longhair | Talk 11:38, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Respond to Longhair's page

In response to Longhair's page, I have the following to say:

1) In response to accusation of "personal attacks" my defence is "self defence" in that I had no other reasonable recourse to take as I had exhausted every other reasonable avenue to resolve the dispute, and had in fact been banned for Wikipedia 4 times purely for being the subject of these personal attacks.

2) In response to reference to "other users I have attacked", I firstly state that they are not directly relevant to the case, but secondly state that they only prove that longhair's slanderous abusive statements have encouraged others to attack me, and use the same defence - that in each and every occasion they were "self defence".

3) In response to the various other things, they are irrelevant, misleading, and dangerously deceitful.

I have made a request on my user page for what I would desire to happen - that is, for Longhair to cease his personal attacks, and for all others to do the same. This "arbitration" as you call it has only caused to justify his malicious activities.

I shall provide a full response in the next week or so, when I have more time to wade through all of the evidence. I will also need to research why the talk page on Martin Bryant was deleted (which included a number of attacks by Longhair and others) and similarly what happened to talk pages for pages that were deleted due to prejudice.

Unfortunately, I do not expect to win in this "court" due to the already proven corruption and incompetence of Wikipedia administrators, who banned me 4 times in spite of no act against Wikipedia rules, and blatantly lied about what they were accusing me of doing.

If this dispute does not end in a positive outcome (Which is that Longhair and others cease their abusive behaviours) then I shall be forced to take legal action, either against Longhair or against Wikipedia.

Internodeuser 08:55, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Statement from User:Rama

I hope this is not way too much misplaced a comment, but I would like to point to this edit [55] where User:203.26.206.129 reports User:Tannin on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. Rama 13:20, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Statement from User:Thebainer

On 26 May 2005, 203.26.206.129 listed Martin Bryant, the article at the heart of this issue, on VfD: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Martin Bryant. The actual VfD notice on the article was placed there by Special:Contributions/203.23.22.154, which appears to be another alias IP: see this edit to the admin noticeboard. --bainer (talk) 09:11, 26 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (6/0/1/0)

• Recuse, but strongly suggest acceptance. Ambi 10:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• I see a lot of heated accusations being thrown around here but very little hard evidence. I'm leaning towards acceptance but would like to see a little bit of hard evidence before making an actual vote. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 14:23, 2005 May 24 (UTC) Accept after seeing this. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 19:12, 2005 May 24 (UTC)
• Accept, and will be moving for a personal attack temp inj - David Gerard 23:27, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept, and will be voting for David's inj -- sannse (talk) 23:34, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept, and will vote for a personal attack temp inj --mav 02:15, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept Fred Bauder 12:30, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
• Accept ➥the Epopt 23:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

JonGwynne

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

[56]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

This is a continuation of an earlier case, and I see no indication that JG has moderated his behaviour since then.

This is not a continuation of another case, but simply another attempt by WMC to silence those who would challenge his extreme POV which undermines the credibility of the wikipedia articles on climate-change. Instead of being an objective discussion of the facts, they are simply IPCC propaganda. --JonGwynne 18:49, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by William M. Connolley

User:JonGwynne already has an arbcomm judgement against him, limiting him to one revert per day. This is helpful, but I'd like to ask for it to be tightened up, based on his totally unhelpful editing pattern. As per Mavs comment [57] I request that this be folded into the case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/William M. Connolley and Cortonin.

Since his most recent ban (he gets lots of 3RR bans, since he can never accept them [58]), he has:

You're not one to lecture others on 3RR bans... how many have you had yourself? Or should I ask how many dozen have you had? --JonGwynne 08:07, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• deleted useful text from Medieval warm period [59] (nb this *after* SEW and I had settled our differences there)

• re-inserted POV language into LobbyWatch [60]

• re-inserted POV language into Union of Concerned Scientists [61]

• made biased deletions of material from Ross McKitrick [62] on spurious grounds (the ref he leaves to techrev is not peer-rev either)

and thats just recently. I've reverted these, but its a waste of productive time. Despite his earlier arbcomm judgement, he shows no interest in reforming and becoming a NPOV editor: he just keeps pushing POV, which accordingly gets reverted. I believe that he deserves a ban, with some sort of extension clause if he returns after to his POV-pushing again.

(William M. Connolley 17:27, 22 May 2005 (UTC))[reply]

Statement by party 2

(in response to WMC's absurd statements about 3RR bans (and hypocritical as it turns out since he's just been nominated for another one himself)

Actually a handful of the 3RR bans I've gotten have been legitimate and I accepted those without protest. The majority have not - many of which have been the result of outright deception practiced by those whose extreme POVs I challenge here. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(in response to WMC's absurd complaints about the redundant and useless text I removed from the MWP article)

I was simply attempting to remove WMC's persistent efforts to inject long discussions of the IPCC into everything. In this case, the information is not only discussed in detail elsewhere, there is an entire article devoted to the subject (MWP and LIA in IPCC reports) which is referenced the MWP article. Therefore, a massive and unwieldy paragraph in the summary of the article is not only inappropriate but completely redundant. It is simply an attempt by WMC to push his POV. Of course he objects to it and gets hostile in doing so because he cannot support his position with rational argument. WMC's actions are not unusual for a propagandist. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(in reponse to WMC's unsupported and obviously untrue claim about applying the label of "leftist" to leftist organizations like UCS and LobbyWatch being "POV")

It isn't POV - it is an accurate and objective description of the organization. They are a far-left group. They take only those positions consistent with far-left idealogy and actively oppose those identified as right-wing. You had the opportunity to demonstrate a single example of them supporting a right-wing cause but failed to do so. As an example, the article on The Nation describes it as a leftist publication. So, not only have you failed to support your position, I have fact and precedent to support mine - which you might have learned if you'd bothered to investigate the issue instead of engaging in your typical knee-jerk reversions. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See above example. The UCS is also a leftist organization. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(in response to WMC's baseless accusation that I removed information on "spurious grounds")

The same could be said of you. You removed material on the grounds that it isn't published and then objected to the removal of your POV material on the same grounds. Why the double-standard? --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(in response to WMCs oft-repeated demand that I be banned for having the temerity to stand up to his OTT POV)

Why? You haven't been banned for your repeated and unapologetically incivil behavior? --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See comments above. --JonGwynne 18:50, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by auxiliary party

As I initially brought the RfA against William M. Connolley, I object to the merging of that case with this one. Since the start of the first case, WMC has been systematically trying to throw unrelated smoke into the air saying, "Look at that, that guy is worse than me or the same as me." This is serving only as a distraction, and has so far kept the arbitrators from focusing on WMC's negative behavior and violation of numerous Wikipedia policies. I object to adding further distraction, and encourage the arbitrators to focus on the evidence which has already been brought in the case, most of which has not yet been addressed. If the arbitrators decide to hear this case, I recommend it be considered as a separate case for the sake of reasonable focus on both cases. — Cortonin | Talk 19:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. It becomes all the more confusing when WMC engages in exactly the sort of behavior he is protesting in this RfA. Perhaps he should consider filing an RfA against himself. --JonGwynne 20:01, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (5/0/0/0)

• Accept. Ambi 08:56, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept Fred Bauder 11:30, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
• Accept and merge with related open case. --mav 13:21, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept to merge - David Gerard 21:14, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept and merge ➥the Epopt 23:30, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• Cantus
• Netoholic

Netoholic is bringing this case against Cantus, on charges that he's failed repeatedly to abide by a previous ruling against him, continues to revert war, fails to gain consensus before making widespread changes, has performed vandalism, has misused anonymous proxies to bypass restrictions placed on him, fails to input edit summaries (particularly when his edits represent major changes), and is generally a persistent disruption to this project.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Cantus - notified on Talk page
• Netoholic - I am aware. -- Netoholic @ 08:05, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

• I'll notify netoholic's mentors too. Kim Bruning 09:26, 14 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• I've seen it. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 14:54, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cantus (Aug 2004 case)
  • How is this qualified as a step in a resolution to this "dispute"? —Cantus…☎ 08:15, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cantus vs. Guanaco#Remedies (Nov 2004 case)
  • How is this qualified as a step in a resolution to this "dispute"? —Cantus…☎ 08:15, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
• request on his talk to use edit summaries (which Cantus blanked immediately)
  • I was blanking all messages, not just yours, because I was leaving the project. —Cantus…☎ 08:15, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Netoholic

While I don't look forward to or enjoy bringing this case, I feel it is necessary in the best interests of the project's editors. I would say "the project", but frankly it is the constant stress and rework required where Cantus is concerned which is the most damaging aspect. This user has learned nothing since his previous Arbitration involvement.

• Cantus has broken his revert parole on numberous occasions and has been given blocks of various lengths (Block log). These do absolutely noting to help him avoid the problems leading up to revert wars. After a block, his usual first actions are to re-revert each and every change. Please note this recent report where hs is shown to have broken the parole four times in one day [63]

• Wherever Cantus is in disagreement over a page, "slow revert wars" often start. No meaningful dialogue is happening, but Cantus persists in reverting at the rate of about once a day.
  • Terri Schiavo - May 9 to 14 - insertion of a particular template and bit of text. [64], [65], [66], [67]
  • Template:Europe - Mar 10 to May 11 - over a seemingly minor bit of formatting. [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73], [74], [75]

• When blocked, or to avoid breaking his parole, Cantus has employed anonymous proxies to evade detection. For example, the histories of "Developed country" and "Template:Europe" show IP addresses which are reverting to Cantus' preferred version. In Jan 2005, Cantus employed anon proxies to edit war with Gzornenplatz [76].
  • 200.83.181.18 (talk · contribs) and 220.110.164.82 (talk · contribs) have recently been used to perform edits which revert directly to Cantus' prefered versions.

• Cantus fails frequently to submit edit summaries (contribs). Many of these represent reverts or major changes which were not noted.

• On May 8/9, Cantus made a change to a very commonly used template (see Template talk:Infobox Biography#Death information). Before gathering further opinion, he implemented that change. At first, the change was made just to the template, but that broke all the articles. After User:PRiis fixed the template back, Cantus reverted the template to his version, and proceeded to make an alteration to about 250 articles without leaving edit summaries. This was all done before even 24 hours had passed since he first made his proposal.

• Cantus vandalized User:Netoholic's user page [77]

• Cantus' user page (as of today) has a misleading message indicating he is no longer with the project [78], but this is far from the truth.

I ask the Arbitrators to accept this case so that his status can be corrected as necessary. I also ask that an immediate injunction be placed, banning Cantus from editing any pages except his user space and pages related to this case. -- Netoholic @ 08:05, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

To Ambi

I'm intentionally limiting my evidence to occurences after the last Arbitration case involving him. The patterns are the same as noted twice before in Arb cases, so I'm not sure what sort of further dispute resolution is recommended by you. -- Netoholic @ 09:19, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Statement by party 2

Ok, so now that you've been blocked from editing the Wikipedia and Template namespace, you feel so shitty that you want everybody else to suffer from your same punishment? I mean, bringing stuff from four months ago as evidence and declaring previous ArbCom rulings as steps in dispute resolution? This is all really sad, and I await for the arbitrators' quick dismissal of this baseless request. —Cantus…☎ 08:33, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (2/3/1/1)

• Reject. Please pursue other avenues of dispute resolution first - most of these are either not recent (and thus have been dealt with by prior cases) or are too minor to stand on their own. Ambi 08:16, 14 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• This could be a dispute of substance. Before accepting or rejecting, I'd like to hear the opinion of Netoholic's mentors on whether it seems not a bad idea. Cantus should also note that Netoholic is not presently restricted in the manner described - David Gerard 11:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. Note that Cantus has violated his revert parole again and is currently on a 24 hour block (username and IP) - David Gerard 08:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Recuse for obvious reasons. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 14:51, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
• Accept. -- sannse (talk) 20:18, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Recuse, due to my current involvement as Netoholic's mentor. →Raul654 22:42, May 22, 2005 (UTC)
• Reject - A clarification request seems more appropriate. If such a request were made, then I'd suggest that admins be more willing to impose week long blocks for serial episodes of one-revert-per-day behavior. --mav
• Reject ➥the Epopt 23:30, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you need to clarify the precise meaning of a previous decision of the Arbitration Committee, your request should go here.

Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful

In Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Netoholic 2#Meta-templates issue referred to developers, it was decided that the page would be referred to the developer committee, who woould presumably decide if we need a guideline to this effect. Please tell me what steps have been taken by the ArbCom to satisfy this ruling. A link to a Meta page or mailing list post would be appreciated. -- Netoholic @ 03:19, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

• The developers have made it clear to my satisfaction that template:sisterproject is harmful. Move the contents to the other templates and delete template:sisterproject. →Raul654 21:08, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Could you show the rest of us this so we can make informed decisions? The only examples I have seen deal with editing popular templates. So it was my understanding that preventing editing on popular templates (meta or not - it makes little difference) would solve the major issue (flushing the cache of every page the template is used on). The only remaining issue is the per template query each time a page those templates are displayed on (again, meta or not) is saved. That is not a big issue, as far as I can tell, and the same issue applies to any page that has multiple templates (once again, meta or not). --mav 18:35, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I expect that's why it says "avoid" rather than "verboten" - David Gerard 14:42, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• It does appear Netoholic was 100% technically correct. Jamesday's opinion on metatemplates was pretty clear: at least in MediaWiki 1.4, they create noticeable server load all by themselves. WP:VFD was recently switched from templates-in-templates format because that page alone, generating one and a half megabytes of uncacheable HTML every time the page was accessed by a logged-in user, was creating noticeable load on the server. See Tim Starling's mailing list post on the subject, and most of Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/May 2005 Part One. The real technical solution, of course, is to stop templates in templates from working at all; I'm now asking if there's any reason not to make this so - David Gerard 19:20, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Granted, this will make some templates stop working, but really, calling templates within templates was always a kludge and more "clever" than helpful. Most instances are easily solved by creating one or more additional similar templates and splitting the workload. It's usually trivial to keep "look and feel" from drifting after a split. -- Netoholic @ 19:32, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
    • Discussion appears to be in progress on wikitech-l; see thread asking about this on wikitech-l - David Gerard 20:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• If Tim and Jamesday are agreed, then that's close enough to "the developer committee" for me. -- sannse (talk) 21:16, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yep. I mean, this isn't something the arbcom can actually rule on per se - it's one of those things where if the devs say it's a serious problem, sensible people should act accordingly and minimise the use of templates-in-templates. We can't really declare it's now policy, because it's really in the class of good sense. Perhaps a rewrite of Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates emphasising their statements on the matter. And noting that if people really love their metatemplates (which they do), then the really effective course of action would be to hack on MediaWiki so as to make them less of a horrible performance hit. I can see why they're a really neat idea, but ... - David Gerard 22:33, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've now amended Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates to emphasise the technical angle, and added a note on the talk page to the effect that technical realities aren't really amenable to votes. But they might be amenable to thought, design and MediaWiki coding - David Gerard 23:15, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've added a link from WP:TFD, since it would be relevant there. Radiant_* 10:05, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

CheeseDreams

It has been suggested [79], [80] that User:The Rev of Bru is yet another sockpuppet of User:CheeseDreams which seems to have reactivated (they both have the same POV and act in similar ways). Would it be possible for this to be confirmed please? --G Rutter 14:40, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd already received email on this from someone whose judgement I basically trust, and if they can substantiate it enough that a third party would go "yup" I'll block the offender myself. CheckUser doesn't show anything positive - they use the same ISP, but it's one of the largest broadband ISPs in Britain and changes people's IPs regularly, so that really says nothing at all. But we're aware of this one and keeping an eye on it - David Gerard 19:55, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whilst they share some points of view, there are some subtle differences. I do not think they are the same person. See also the comments CheeseDreams left on User talk:The Rev of Bru. There are also areas where there have been differences, which I would not expect of sockpuppets (such as The Rev of Bru's insistence on the CE/BCE notation system compared with CheeseDreams having to explain it - even to the extent of putting at the top of a page what CE/BCE notation was for those unfamiliar with it). I'm afraid Mr Rubenstein edits in a controversial area, and sorry that he has to put up with a rump of editors who are not prepared to discuss points in a proper academic way - The Rev of Bru and CheeseDreams are two such editors. Kind regards, jguk 19:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Look to yourself before you judge others. Vanity is a sin. - 81.156.177.21 (presumably the user under discussion, last few edits spell "Cheese" "Dreams" "Signing" "Off")

For what it's worth, here is a page I started, explaining why I felt they were the same people: User:Jayjg/Rev of Bru - CheeseDreams My enthusiasm for the project waned when I realized Rev of Bru was gone, and I found it very time consuming trying to comb through links of the various sockpuppets, especially when the User contributions button was rarely willing to go back more than 500 edits. In any event, the fact that one talked to the other on a Talk: page means little in my opinion; any reasonably intelligent person trying to maintain two sockpuppets would do the same. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that the inactive user Dr Zen is (was) also a sockpuppet of CheeseDreams; similarly to 81.156.177.21's "Cheese" "Dreams" "Signing" "Off" edits, Dr Zen's last few edits were Fuck Off Cunt Bye. ral315 17:33, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Dr Zen was quite definitely not CheeseDreams; CD is Swedish living in the UK, Dr Zen is Australian; and they write completely differently. - David Gerard 20:21, 15 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I concur; Zen and Cheese are completely different - different interests, different writing styles, etc. Cheese might have learned that trick from Zen, but that doesn't make them the same person. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:37, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Completed requests
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rejected requests (unofficial)