Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:29, 8 June 2005

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Evidence presented by {your user name}

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Evidence presented by Petaholmes

5 February

• 01:12, 5 Feb 2005
  • Skyring makes edits to Governor-General of Australia that reflect his POV. They are reverted by User:Adam Carr. Edit waring on page between Skyring and User:Dlatimer over the inclusion and interpretation of passages of the constitution continues until the page is protected on Feburary 14. After protection is was dePOVed again following edits by Skyring by User:Lacrimosus on March 9.

27 February

• 06:01, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC),
  • Skyring tries to introduce the idea that Australia is a republic to the Government of Australia article. This is by no means a conventional opinion, Adam and User:Skyring engage in revert war on the 27th. Adam appears to win after 4 reverts, there is a discussion on the talk page about Skyring trying to introduce original research.

28 February

• 04:39, 28 Feb 2005
  • Skyring makes changes to the artilce that had he had discussed in December that were shot down at the time as a minority view. He asserts that opinion is divided on who is the Australian Head of State (HoS). Edits are reverted by User:Ta bu shi da yu

• 23:28, 2 Mar 2005
  • Adam Carr rewrites a section of the article to accomodate constititutional debate about the Australian HoS.

• 00:44, 3 Mar 2005
  • Skyring and Adam revert war over the sentence, question of who is Australia's head of state is a matter of convention, Skyring changes convention to contention 3 times.

• 13:55, 4 Mar 2005
  • Page is protected by User:Jnc, protection is removed on March 9.

11 March

• 05:11, 11 Mar 2005
  • Skyring adds the word proposals to the following sentence Some opponents of the referendum proposals argued that the goal of, he and User:Michael Snow engage in successive reverts. He claims that his change is supported by concensus on the talk page, it does not appear to be. Adam removes the section entirely.

March 29

• 23:41, 29 Mar 2005
  • Skyring asserts that the Australia has a republican government (original research) on Republic. Edits reverted by User:SimonP. Following 3 reverts the text is removed.

May 17

• 22:26, 17 May 2005
  • Skyring changes HoS to monarch, and makes significant changes to the text. He and User: El C engage in revert war. Adam later reverts to a version prior to the changes

• 00:55, 18 May 2005
  • User:Jtdirl makes an edit to artile based on fact. Skyring removes the new text and changed HoS to monarch again. More reverts ensue.

May 24

• 04:53, 24 May 2005
  • Skyring changes Queen of Austrlaia to British monarch, a poition that is incorrect. More circular discussion on the talk page, more reverts to the article, page is protected, and unprotected on the 29th.

A general comment for the ArbCom, I think it would be a good idea to go through the talk archives of government of Australia (not necessarily in any detail) to see how frustrating it is for other edits to deal with Skyrings edits against concensus.--nixie 01:56, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would echo the request to peruse Talk:Government of Australia and some the archived discussions there, particularly Archive 6. A number of experienced Misplaced Pages editors others than the ones listed (including myself) have familiarised ourself extensively with this issue. Skyring may be providing citations, but he is interpreting his sources in a way that no other editor supports, and seems to be more interested in argument than actually resolving the issue. --Robert Merkel 13:10, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I raised a court case on the talk page, which is universaly held by Constitutional lawyers and legal accademics, (except by Skyring) to once and for all recognise the separation of the Australian and Brittish Queens (even though being the same person) and Skyring somehow totally re-interpreted it and ignored everyone else. Xtra 01:27, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Skyring

General

The talk archives of Government of Australia show that I take care to present the views of authorities on this subject, not my own, and that cites are provided for my article edits. The charges of original research and POV-pushing are unfounded.

This is a case of "Misplaced Pages-rage". User:Adam Carr gives the impression that he can abuse other editors freely, he needs not provide sources, and he can whistle up help to enforce his threats and bullying. I showed a link to the Commonwealth's own hardcopy government directory describing the Governor-General as the Head of State. Adam gave a response demonstrating that he considers himself the ultimate authority. This view is unacceptable in a Misplaced Pages editor, as is the idea that truth is found by calling up shills and holding a vote.

The dispute centres on Adam's populist view that the Queen is Australia's sole head of state. There are three distinct views on this amongst constitutional scholars, with the Prime Minister and Professor George Winterton holding alternate views, and any edit stating that the Queen is the sole head of state is POV.

23 December 2004

• 00:26, 23 Dec 2004
  • Adam sums up his proposed debating stance: abuse and mindless reverts. He intends to defend the view that QE2 is the sole Australian head of state to the death.

27 February

• 16:47, 27 Feb 2005,
  • I add the fact that Australia is a republic, using the definition supplied in the Republic article, plus several respected dictionary definitions. See the discussion. Malcom Turnbull states in the 1993 Report of the Republic Advisory Committee: "Australia is a state in which sovereignty derives from the people. The hereditary office of the monarchy is the only element of the Australian system of government which is not consistent with a republican form of government." (Vol 1, p1) After some discussion, I accepted the consensus view, though the article should note that Australia has a republican form of government, as the Queen's role in Australian government has vanished.

3 March

• 17:57, 3 Mar 2005
  • Adam demands I answer his questions. I do so, honestly and completely. In the next edit he ignores the flaws I've pointed out and falls back on abuse.

8 March

• 11:50, 8 Mar 2005
  • Adam concedes that the Parliamentary Library provides arguments for both sides of the debate. His view is that the identity of the head of state is convention, but if there are two sides to the debate, then it must be "a matter of contention", as I point out in the article, before being outvoted.

9 March

• 16:54, 9 Mar 2005
  • After discussion where Adam misquotes the Constitution, I note that I am upset by his departure from academic practice and unprofessional attitude. His response: "Well I'm upset (really pissed off actually) by your deliberate obfuscation and timewasting, your dishonesty, your malicious misrepresentation of other people arguments, your rampant vanity and egotism and your general obnoxious fuckwittedness, so get used to it." At this point it is clear that Adam has departed from the accepted course of scholarly discussion.

• 17:48, 9 Mar 2005
  • Adam makes it explicit that he considers truth a matter of voting rather than verifiablility.

11 March

• 11:14, 11 Mar 2005
  • Adam agrees that my edit is correct, that Smith supported the referendum but not the proposals, but he adds abuse. Embarrassed at having to concede a point, he later deletes the section.

• 15:09, 11 Mar 2005
  • Adam refuses to provide any sources for his edits, imagining that my repeatedly asking for cites is some sort of a "game" .

• 16:14, 11 Mar 2005
  • In response to my stating that it is not in me to let an error go unchallenged, Adam says "What is in you, and indeed what you are full of, is quite evident to all of us.". Ho does not, however, provide a cite for his edits.

• 19:45, 11 Mar 2005
  • Adam injects gratuitious abuse into an otherwise civil discussion on wording. He uses the words "troll" and "masturbate" for the first time. He would be well aware of the example he is setting.

15 Mar

• 08:56, 15 Mar 2005
  • Adam claims himself as a valid source, able to to "explain" and "interpret" the statements of others. This is against Misplaced Pages policy.

• 15:33, 15 Mar 2005
  • Adam finally provides a source for his "explaining" and "interpreting" of the thoughts of the drafters of the Constitution. His verifiable source is irrelevant.

16 Mar

• 00:07, 16 Mar 2005
  • Refreshed by Adam's good humour, I summarise the position and ask that he find it in himself to work for accuracy.

• 16:04, 16 Mar 2005
  • Adam doesn't consider his comments to be personal abuse. Nothing excuses his repeated departure from the professional standards he claims to hold and his encouragement of other editors to do likewise.

30 Mar

• 17:12, 30 Mar 2005
  • Correct errors in Republic article. After some discussion, acceptable wording is found and my version remains. Stating that Australia has a republican form of government is not original research, but it was inappropriate there.

18 May

• 09:43, 18 May 2005
  • Changing the title of the Queen to Queen of Australia confirms her as Australia's monarch. That's common sense. Saying that she is head of state remains POV.

23 May

• 10:41, 23 May 2005
  • User:jtdirl makes the surprising edit that the Queen is part of parliament. This odd statement, at variance with actual practice, is only found in the Constitution, which specifies in two places that the Queen is the Queen of the UK. Though the Royal Style and Titles Act gave her the title of Queen of Australia, legislation cannot override the Constitution. Adam refused to provide a cite for his edit.

• • A general comment on jtdirl's contributions. He is in the happy position of never being in error, or at least never having to admit it. The first sections of Archives 5 and 6 demonstrate this. Jtdirl mentions many sources, but only quotes from a few - those that reinforce his POV. Other views are ignored or misrepresented, like someone "proving" that Christianity is the one true faith through biblical quotes. An example of his tactics:
    • Professor George Winterton is widely accepted as an authority. He sums up the head of state question: An objective assessment can lead to only one conclusion: Australia's legal or formal head of state is the Queen. The Governor-General is the effective or de facto head of state of the Commonwealth. Jtdirl's interpretation is thus: Winterton ... makes it clear that legally the Queen is head of state, which is the whole point of the argument here. Actually, Winterton does not say that the Queen is the head of state. He says the Queen is the "legal or formal head of state". It is that qualification which separates those who hold the "Queen as sole head of state" view from those who hold other views. Jtdirl ignores a valid alternative wording: Winterton makes it clear that effectively the Governor-General is the head of state.. The real point is that Winterton names and describes two heads of state, but jtdirl can only see one.
  • Jtdirl says in evidence that "(Winterton) explicitly says Australia has one head of state". May we see these precise words of Winterton's, please, not a POV "interpretation"?

28 May

• 21:53, 28 May 2005
  • user:Cyberjunkie, who had been shilling for Adam on the Talk:Government of Australia page, sent me an "anonymous" message. He then made some edits to an article he had created several months earlier, as can be seen here and here. While this was amusing, Cyberjunkie's action is indicative of the level of discussion actively encouraged by Adam.

Evidence of Jtdirl

General

I concur completely with Petaholmes's submission. My observation regarding Skyring's contributions is that they have been based on wholescale misrepresentations of facts. The above evidence given by him shows a clear evidence of that. Turnbull did not say that Australia is a republic, nor does his words suggest that, as any even slight acquaintence with his writings shows. What he actually means, and what he is universally interpreted to mean, is that Australia, given that Australia is a state in which sovereignty derives from the people, should not have an hereditary monarchy, as that is inconsistent with its status of popular sovereignty. Its status should be that of a republic, and abolishing the monarchy would make it a republic. He never said, and is never anywhere interpreted to say, that Australia is currently a republic. Skyring misrepresented what he said and based clearly factually wrong edits on that misrepresentation.

While one misrepresentation could be categorised as indicative of confusion on the part of the contributor. Constant continual misrepresentation of source after source after source has been the hallmark of Skyring's contributions. It is hard after reading the scale of the misrepresentations (some of them jawdropping in their audacity - as anyone with even the slighest elementary knowledge of laws, political science and constitutions knows, one simply cannot be a republic if one is a constitutional monarchy, for example. It is like saying one is a cat and a dog) to conclude that the mispresentations were just a cynical game to deface an encylopaedia article with patent nonsense just to annoy other users. Users invariably started by pointing out the errors in his writings, presuming it was a genuine mistake. However after a couple of attempts, everyone, one by one, came to conclude that the edits weren't genuine but were just a cynical game of vandalism to see if he could get away with it.

A classic example of his gross distortions of documents occurs in his evidence above, where he writes

User:jtdirl makes the rather surprising edit that the Queen is a component of the Commonwealth parliament.

It is actually written in black and white in the constitution.

Then he writes This odd statement, quite at variance with actual practice . . .

Every Australian law starts off with the line "BE IT THEREFORE enacted by the Queen, the Senate and the House of Representatives of Australia . . ."

I could go on (we all could go on and on) pointing out the fundamental errors of fact, interpretation, analysis, context, relevance, etc in his contributions. Users have filled six archives pointing out his errors. Even here he gets elementary facts wrong (how can someone so convinced that he is a constitutional expert not even know what the opening line of every Australian law is?) His response invariably is to mispresent sources, quote comments out of context and demand evidence to prove things that have been repeatedly proven, while refusing to offer evidence in return, and when finally he offers some evidence, it turns out to mean the exact opposite of what it says it means, or that the source is not compatable to other sources given in terms of credibility, eg, while others could quote primary documents, legal documents, letters patent, statements by Attorneys-General, his "evidence" in one instance was something written somewhere by some junior lawyer.

And, though users have been queuing to point it out to him, in legal terminology de facto does not mean is, it means in general terms acts in reality as. So he continually misrepresents a careful phrase by Professor George Winterton about how the Queen is the head of state and the Governor-General is de facto head of state (ie, acts as, not is) as meaning George is saying Australia that Australia has two heads of state. Nobody familiar with George's writings, with what he has said, and with the way he said it, interprets George's words that way. He explicitly says Australia has one head of state, not two. Every major academic, every major lawyer, every constitutional expert, everyone with a grasp of elementary use of english constitutional law, and everyone on Misplaced Pages but Skyring says he is completely misunderstanding at best, deliberately mispresenting at worst, George's words. (BTW I know George and know for a fact that his views are the opposite of what Skyring says.)

To see the full story, as Robert says above, you need to read the archives of the debate, in particular Archive 6. Quite frankly accepting Skyring's edits, on the basis of flimsy evidence and dubious interpretations, when all the convincing evidence points in the other direction, would have been the equivalent of giving Emperor Norton I equal billing as Abraham Lincoln in pages on who was the US head of state in the 1860s, on the basis that a few people (tongue-in-cheek) called Norton His Imperial Majesty and that the word Emperor is on his tombstone!!!

Evidence

(The evidence will be added in tomorrow. I am out of time tonight.)

Evidence presented by {Wingbearer}

GENERAL

I have been asked to cast an eye over this matter. The material is in a format reminiscent of “hypertext” with its forest of links. It is hard to follow, although the “signatures” aid in understanding the flow of discussion. It would be extremely difficult to present this in court in a raw form.

The “Misplaced Pages” looks to be competently done in the main, however it is riddled with errors and inconsistencies when examined in detail. Top marks for a good idea, but a FAIL if the intention is to produce a reliable reference work.

PARTIES TO THE DISPUTE

On reading this copious material I wish that I was being paid to do so and that I could examine the parties in court where they could be compelled to answer questions. It would be preferable for these people to sit together around a table and discuss their issues face to face. By debating from behind a shield of Internet anonymity, they say things they would not say in real life.

“PETE”

One of the quickest ways to antagonise an impartial audience is to be snide, sarcastic and “smart”. When used with hostile listeners, it is a strategy of failure, regardless of whether the evidence is reliable and factual. Nitpicking and triumphantly exposing errors are not going to win over the good will of those who do not relish admitting error. A tick for failing to respond to abuse and provocation. Good research, poorly presented.

“ADAM”

This witness would be in contempt of court in short order. Open hostility, threatening behaviour, inability to recognise higher authority, inability to present cites, partisan encouragement of other parties etc. The charge of “Misplaced Pages-rage” as an analogy to “road-rage” is apposite.

“JTDIRL”

Any competent lawyer would give this witness an extremely uncomfortable time in cross-examination. His ignorance of the very material in which he presents himself as an expert is plain. For example he is unfamiliar with the leaders of the Australian monarchists and their public statements made during the 1999 referendum debate. His material on Irish affairs is colourful but irrelevant. He refers to cites which are not provided. Some statements are gobbledygook: “George quite normally draws the distinction between the de jure and de facto roles, as would any professional lawyer. However he goes further and qualifies even the de facto claim, lest anyone misunderstand him as claiming there are two heads of states, when he makes it clear that there aren't, by saying that even the de facto role is restricted internally within the Commonwealth, by speaking of the Commonwealth, but not of Australia. In other words, the Governor-General acts as, not is, the head of state, but only within the constitutional and legal framework as defined by constitutional and statute law, as well as Letters Patent, within the structures of the Commonwealth. He does only what legally he can do internally. But in no sense, even de facto is he the embodiment of Australia, merely of the governmental structures internally of the Commonwealth.”

OTHER PARTICIPANTS

No other parties are as prolific and prolix as these three. Several positions are exhibited, ranging from those strident in their declarations, reminiscent of those who stand at the back of crowds to call out in support of their champion, to those who seek calm and rational consensus.

THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL AS HEAD OF STATE

Nobody who saw Sir William Deane at the service for the victims of the Swiss Canyoning tragedy, or officiating at the opening of the 2000 Olympic Games, would claim that he was not the embodiment of Australia and Australian values, merely of “internal governmental structures”. Speaking as a professional lawyer, I can say that the question has never been asked of the High Court as to who is the Australian head of state. I think that if the question was ever put, then the answer would depend on the context of the case, for example if the 1975 dismissal of the Prime Minister had ever engaged the attention of the High Court, it might have been found that Sir John Kerr did not act as the delegate or agent or representative of any office other than his own. But I cannot speak for the High Court, who change their opinions with each new appointment.

It is commonplace to see the Governor-General described as the Head of State in the media through headlines and editorials. Letters columns debated the issue during the referendum campaign and my own local paper continues to run correspondence on the question. Politicians routinely describe the Governor-General as the Head of State. The Opposition Leader during the Peter Hollingworth affair said this: “SIMON CREAN: Of course I do because I've known him over many years and he has done important work for the community. I also have sympathy for the circumstances of his wife and I expressed those to the Governor-General at ANZAC Day. But, you know, there's a whole lot emotions going here. But the truth of it is we're dealing with the Head of State and the Head of State cannot be a person who has covered up for child sex abusers.” http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2003/s863541.htm John Stubbs, another figure of impeccable Labor credentials said in his 1989 biography of Bill Hayden: “On 16 February 1989, Bill Hayden, who was a month old when his parents were married, was sworn in as Australia’s Head of State.” (John Stubbs, “Hayden”, William Heinemann, Melbourne, p3).

The matter became political during the referendum campaign, with those advocating a Yes vote saying that this would give us an Australian as Head of State, and the monarchists asking for a No vote saying that we already had the Governor-General as Head of State and he was an Australian.

It is typical of Australia that the government itself is unsure of the answer. The official Commonwealth Government Directory alternates between describing the Queen as Head of State and the Governor-General as Head of State. Both have had “runs” of several years!

The best that can be said is that opinion is divided, and that though either side can marshal up a range of arguments, it is a nonsense to dismiss the arguments of their opponents. A Parliamentary Library Research Brief summarises the positions. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/1995-96/96rn44.htm

There is also a middle ground of the opinion that the Queen and the Governor-General are both Heads of State, usually stating the Queen is the symbolic figurehead while the Governor-General does the job. Supporters of this view do not say that one or the other is the head of state. They use terms such as “formal” or “notional” or “effective” or “symbolic”. I have seen this last term used to describe both the Queen and the Governor-General, which is indicative of the diversity of opinion on this matter.

CONCLUSION

I am glad that my job is not to provide a final definitive wording! I would direct that all parties come to an agreement and that they do so with politeness and respect for each other, and that if they cannot do this then they are not fit to edit a kindergarten newsletter, much less an encyclopaedia.