Revision as of 22:23, 30 May 2008 editSandyGeorgia (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, File movers, Mass message senders, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers, Template editors278,963 editsm →Evidence presented by SandyGeorgia: typo← Previous edit | Revision as of 07:37, 31 May 2008 edit undoCla68 (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers48,127 edits →Disruptive or bad faith editing: linkNext edit → | ||
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Most of the following examples appear to illustrate ] issues on policy and article pages or a pro-] POV by SV (Note: The ] which SV founded has an openly POV agenda .): | Most of the following examples appear to illustrate ] issues on policy and article pages or a pro-] POV by SV (Note: The ] which SV founded has an openly POV agenda .): | ||
# Tag team edit warring with ] at ]: . Talk page discussion for context . (May 08) | |||
# Deletes almost an entire "list" article and labels the edit as "minor" (Apr 08) | # Deletes almost an entire "list" article and labels the edit as "minor" (Apr 08) | ||
# Although SV usually insists on other editors having "consensus" before making policy or guideline changes (see below), SV does not always follow her own rule. At ], she tried to force a change to the page without consensus on the talk page, discussed at ANI (Feb 08) | # Although SV usually insists on other editors having "consensus" before making policy or guideline changes (see below), SV does not always follow her own rule. At ], she tried to force a change to the page without consensus on the talk page, discussed at ANI (Feb 08) |
Revision as of 07:37, 31 May 2008
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Evidence presented by Krimpet
Use of off-wiki communication and "secret lists"
One point that really seems to have made Cla68 sore is the existence and clandestine goings-on of private, invitation-only mailing lists last fall. One, WpCyberstalking is/was operated by SlimVirgin; the other, WpInvestigations-l, was apparently run by User:JzG at one point, though he claims there was a previous, unspecified owner.
Not having access to any of these lists, I can provide little evidence other than hearsay. What I do know is that the initial list was started by SlimVirgin for discussing legitimate, serious concerns of online harassment, but it apparently devolved into flamewars and witch-hunting for "troll enablers" (in fact she later privately apologized to me personally for what was said about me on her list.) Apparently at some point it was decided to break those discussions off into a "investigations" list instead, though I for one know little about this and who was involved in the fork. I would hope that someone more involved could come forward with some better evidence and explanation - it's known that several current and former arbitrators, as well as Foundation staff, were participants in one or both mailing lists, too.
Not long after that, Jayjg, one of the participants in the aforementioned lists, accidentally sent a canvassing request intended for friends to wikien-l, drawing widespread ire.
That off-wiki friendships form and editors will often back people up is completely natural, a consequence of human nature. What's disturbing, though, is that many of the editors involved are vocal crusaders against "meatpuppets," while often engaging in off-wiki coordination that is, essentially, equivalent to the "meatpuppetry" they are protesting.
Cla68 does seem to frequently come off as obsessive and holding a grudge when he locks horns with these folks he's come into conflict with in the past. But the more one looks into it, it seems clear he's been baited into this; many of the users he has come into conflict with have indeed been shown to be collaborating offsite, and personal attacks and allegations have been flung at him. Cla's incivility in response is the symptom; the bullying and underhanded collaboration against him and other contributors that caused it is what needs to be addressed.
A first-hand experience of bullying by FeloniousMonk
I recently had the misfortune of being targetted by FeloniousMonk's personal attacks firsthand - not a pleasant experience. The week before, I had tried to fix a coatracky BLP on a woman in the field of computer science, which focused too much on one event in her life without putting it in context, only to find I'd walked into a landmine of controversy between the WikiProject on Intelligent Design, of which FeloniousMonk was a member, with an indefinitely blocked user, User:Moulton. An ensuing edit war erupted - of which I took no part in other than my initial edit and one revert - which eventually ended in the BLP being brought to an acceptable state, though with plenty of unneeded conflict, as well as a slew off harrowing insults from WikiProject ID members.
But after this dispute had been over for a week, hoping it was now in the past I came across an MfD for the User:Moulton page - and found that FeloniousMonk had added a sentence describing me as a "Misplaced Pages Review editor" and a "meatpuppet" that had been "recruited" by him - an untrue allegation constituting a direct and insulting personal attack against myself. (He also proceeded to protect his version of the page at this time - strongly forbidden by our protection policy and community rules of thumb.) I removed the attack with a simple plea not to drag me back into the dispute, but FeloniousMonk only re-added it to a new page, even refining it to word it more sharply against me and single me out more pointedly. My attempts to remove it and ask him on his talk page to stop were rebuffed with him re-adding the attack and replying that he had "diffs" supposedly confirming I was meatpuppeting, which he didn't actually provide.
This behavior is not only against our policies forbidding personal attacks; it's baiting, drama-mongering, and hostile to collaboration. Trying to force an established user to be branded with the label of "meatpuppet" with no evidence after the dispute is over serves no purpose but to inflame things more. krimpet✽ 13:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by SlimVirgin
This is a summary of my evidence as presented in the RfAr. I'll be adding specific examples and diffs over the next week or so.
Cla68 does good work in the main namespace, but it is punctuated by prolonged attempts to make the project a toxic place for others. This involves on and offwiki harassment of his targets, wikistalking, constant niggling, exaggeration, sarcasm, efforts to humiliate them, and misleading descriptions of their actions.
I have been one of his targets for over a year. It has involved following me to articles and talk pages I edit a lot and that he has never edited, claims that I edit in bad faith, that I am a liar, that I abuse the admin tools, that I am a "formerly respected" editor, and that I am up to something and need to be investigated. He often refers to my alleged sockpuppetry, and encourages others to post links to attack sites or posts them himself.
I have stayed away from him and haven't responded for months to the taunting, but despite that, he started a user subpage about me in March, which he continues to work on. It is purportedly a draft RfC, but in my view it is just an attack page. The subheads have included at various points, "Lying or other unethical behavior," "Personal attacks, retaliation, bullying, and attempts to intimidate," "Abuse of administrator privileges," "bad faith editing," and "abusive sockpuppetry." The diffs do not bear out the claims. His edit summaries seem intended to provoke e.g. "un-freaking-believable," "you've got to be kidding me," "incredible," and "wow." He has gone through my talk page and asked 45 editors who have disagreed with me about something (going back many months or even years) to take part in constructing the subpage, although I'm glad to say that very few have joined in, and some have taken issue with him. I believe the aim of the page is to cause distress in the hope that I'll respond badly, which would allow him to kick up more fuss. SlimVirgin 18:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by JzG
I am in two minds about whether to participate here. On the one hand, common sense urges me to steer well clear, since Cla68's past actions have led me to hold him in contempt, particularly because of his dishonest use of the Register to try to have his version of the Durova fiasco accepted as the official truth despite the fact that every single person who had detailed knowledge of the actual events, told Cla68 that he was wrong. On the other hand, I think I can with care present some issues without allowing my personal feelings to prevail.
Cla68's behaviour is hard to describe,l but if a single word must be found then I think "spiteful" would do.
Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Cla68 is already referenced, I think. The excessively aggressive support of Bagley was extremely distressing to SlimVirgin, who had been deliberately targeted by Bagley, repeating the meme that Daniel Brandt seems to raise from time to time. ArbCom has, on its "zOMG secrtet" mailing list, a mail from Bagley titled "impressions on Oversight abuse of Jayjg and SlimVirgin" - I think that Cla68's furtherance of this agenda went well beyond what is acceptable, and this is noted by FloNight in the RfC.
In no particular order, and with more to come if I can stomach it, then. Some is old, apologies for that.
- , to user:Jossi, a snide and distinctly unpleasant comment.
- apparent Wikistalking
- Snide and unhelpful attack, combined with dismissal of the issue of harassment of editors
- on the matter of antisocialmedia
- links to a piece by Cade Metz (who Cla68 knows, Metz having been his outlet in the "secret"! mailing list story) to further his campaign against Jossi (incidentally, the article is characteristically inaccurate, failing to spot that Jossi !voted keep on the criticism fork afd). The irony! Cla689 creating a section on "conflict of interest" while pursuing an apparent conflict of interest...
- champions Piperdown
- , More Wikistalking
- part of a brief edit war to try to drag Jayjg into a contentious arbitration case, reverted by people including clerks and arbitrators numerous times.
- a dig at Jimbo and an indicationt hat he is on first-name terms with Metz, a long-standing sniper at Misplaced Pages
- a sockpuppet promotes Cla68's false allegations published in the Register
- trolling re Swalwell, Alberta, a part of the SV = LM meme
- , once again citing Metz.
This makes the comments here sound very hollow, and appear to be coercive in nature. But the really bad thing here is not so much the harassment and grudge-bearing, it's using the encyclopaedia to further your own agenda. Citing his friend Metz to support his own on-wiki agenda was a breathtakingly bad idea even if (and I for one have my doubts) Cla68 was not Metz's original source for the story. The fact that the subject was COI registers an easy ten on the irony meter.
Bottom line: as we see here, Cla68 appears to be completely sincere in his belief in some huge conspiracy or cabal on Misplaced Pages, and I think he has set himself the task of hounding out or "exposing" those who he perceives as being part of that group. Guy (Help!) 19:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by User:Dtobias
Cla68 has often been on the winning side of his disputes
Perhaps what has most rankled JzG about User:Cla68 is how often Cla68 has ended up on the prevailing side of the various disputes where he and JzG take opposing sides. To take a few of the items mentioned in the above evidence:
- The "Attack Sites" ArbCom case ended without any binding sanctions imposed regarding any links to so-called "attack sites", and JzG's attempt for a "clarification" imposing such sanctions later was dismissed.
- The Register article remains mentioned in the Criticisms of Misplaced Pages article, despite attempts by JzG to remove this mention.
- User:Piperdown has been unblocked, after his questionable block/ban was reexamined. (The AN discussion in which JzG's above diff was contained ended inconclusively, but a later discussion led to an unblock with surprisingly little dissent.)
- Swalwell, Alberta was kept, and ultimately unprotected, and has had a peaceful, noncontentious, non-trolling existence ever since. (Admins deleting the article in the "old days" kept saying "troll", "troll", "troll"; not being an admin I have no way of knowing the content of any of those revisions, but, as came up in AN discussion, at least one of the versions that was at first deleted in a knee-jerk reaction turned out to be a perfectly reasonable article created by a legitimate user, and was ultimately restored, kept after an AFD, and ended up being as quiet as one can expect of a small hamlet in its subsequent revision history.)
- The conflict of interest involving User:Mantanmoreland has been the subject of serious examination, and an ArbCom case, in which "trolls" are hardly the only ones who have seen problems.
FeloniousMonk has promoted a toxic, divisive mindset
User:FeloniousMonk has long been championing a very divisive, "us vs. them" mentality on Misplaced Pages, complete with "enemies lists" and guilt by association, in which he classifies people as part of "good" or "bad" crowds and tries to hound the "bad" ones off the project. A few examples:
- "This RFC has been useful only insofar as it provides us list of all the ED-aligned nogoodniks who need to be watched and dealt with. Thanks!" (in response to a user-conduct RFC) diff
- "What I've seen here is very one-sided bullying and intimidation of SV over a petty, contrived issue, and it's going to stop, Kelly included." (in response to some users expressing legitimate concerns about a copyvio image that was ultimately deleted, and then-admin Kelly Martin attempting to deal evenhandedly with the dispute) diff
- "Your little group has recently tightened the FA criteria to the point of absurdity... I'm taking a personal interest in seeing your group's vendetta against Raul654 and SlimVirgin aired out and ended for good." (in response to a disagreement over Featured Article criteria) diff
- "Given our policy on coercion, were I in your shoes I would make every effort to ensure that the article outing Misplaced Pages editors you are referring to does not come to pass." (to Cla68, regarding a hypothetical article that he has absolutely nothing to do with; in this diff, FM also linked to Misplaced Pages Review, which is hypocritical given that he's an outspoken member of a faction that insists that it is never justified to link to such "attack sites" under any circumstances) diff
- "His technique is repeatably to pretend to be upholding the scientific point of view while insisting that others justify the mainstream view to his satisfaction - which of course is never forthcoming since the fundamental problem is that he simply prefers the intelligent design point of view despite never admitting as much." (Unwarrantly imputing a set of views to somebody who denies such an implication, because that person opposes FM's edits; this comment was part of a failed user conduct RFC aimed at removing an opponent) diff
User:Mantanmoreland is now banned
Following community discussion, Mantanmoreland is now banned and indef-blocked for sockpuppetry in defiance of an ArbCom ruling. This ought to drive the final nail in the coffin of the concept that being critical of this user and believing him to be guilty of abusive sockpuppetry is a "harassment meme" from "attack sites" and banned users. Bizarrely, however, some people presenting evidence in this case still seem to be pushing that anti-meme, even though, by their own apparent standards, this itself now seems to be a "harassment meme" of a banned user. *Dan T.* (talk) 01:12, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by dave souza
Cla68 added himself to a dispute about the Rosalind Picard article
Having decided to take a self-appointed interest in the "behavior" of some editors, Cla68 inserted himself into a dispute without taking part in any on-wiki discussion or having previously edited the article in question, and added an unnecessary and inflammatory "warning" to the talk page of an editor. He discussed the issues off-Wiki with other editors, making personal attacks and presenting a distorted image of his target editors who he stereotyped as a "group of POV-pushers" using alleged "thuggery", but failed to take any alleged problems through Misplaced Pages dispute resolution procedures which he knows are available.
Moulton caused considerable difficulty at the Rosalind Picard article by a tendentious refusal to work within Misplaced Pages policies, and was indefinitely blocked. A stable version of the article agreed by all "sides" was reached on 8 December 2007, but Moulton continued his campaign for changes at Misplaced Pages Review.
On 4 May 2008 Krimpet deleted a previously agreed sentence as "overly tangential and coatracky". Moulton had objected to the sentence in earlier discussions. Krimpet contributes to Misplaced Pages Review but had not come to the article by a request from Moulton (according to Raul654 at AN/I and Moulton at WR.WR3).
When Orangemarlin reverted the edit as a "whitewash", Krimpet reverted him and asked him for an explanation on his talk page, a post which Orangemarlin deleted using Twinkle. There were successive article reversions by Krimpet, Orangemarlin, Nakon and Raul654, who then started discussions on the article talk page. At 01:57 MZMcBride opened a new section on Orangemarlin's talk page announcing the removal of Twinkle from Orangemarlin's monobook.js page. Discussion on this issue culminated in MZMcBride restoring Twinkle at 02:44, and demanding that "the personal attacks stop now".
At 02.22 Krimpet took the issue to AN/I without discussing it on the article talk page (AN/I archive) then at 04:10 advised Orangemarlin that she now saw the merits of leaving in the sentence she had deleted.
Cla68, who had made no edits to the Picard article or talk page, joined the discussions at 04:15 by issuing what he called a Twinkle mis-use: formal warning on the preexisting "Twinkle mis-use" section on Orangemarlin's talk page, "OrangeMarlin, I haven't been involved in any way with this article in question, so I think I can ojectively tell you that you're behavior in this incident, including the incivility, misuse of Twinkle, and refusal to respond to dispute resolution, is out of line and unnaceptable. Some of it has been discussed here. Please consider this a formal warning." This appeared close under MZMcBride's statement closing the issue. At 04:22 Cla68 reported this in his first edit to the AN/I discussion, saying "Hopefully, that and this thread will influence OM to correct his behavior."
A Misplaced Pages Review thread commented on these developments, and on the evening of 5 May a contributor asked if Picard had reported it to the press, suggesting it could be "another Seigenthaler scandal". At 6:28am, 6th May 2008, Cla68 posted that the Picard article was now "fairly NPOV... thanks to Krimpet and the others who intervened", saying "The anti-ID group is making a mistake with their thuggery.." At 7:40am Moulton stated that he had described it to Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press.WR3 At 11:38pm, 6th May 2008, Cla68 posted "I wonder if OrangeMarlin, Jim62sch, and their friends are aware how close they are to having their real names in the press in a story about a group of POV-pushers on Misplaced Pages? They probably aren't aware, as they appear to be amazingly myopic.", introducing the idea of outing editors' real names.WR4
Rapid discussion at the Picard article, with useful new sources and various trial drafts, culminated with Guettarda consolidating a draft at 1:10, 8 May 2008, which achieved consensus by 15.59.
At 17:33 that day Guettarda commented on Cla68's talk page that the Misplaced Pages Review post read like a threat to out people, and appeared "rather beyond the pale." At 00:40, 9 May 2008, Cla68 cross-posted the discussion on Guettarda's talk page, with his reply pointing at a "group of editors' behavior" as bringing "uninvolved editors and admins like me" in to varying degrees. (it should be noted that Cla68 is not an admin) Cla68 then "clarified his remarks" in a post on Misplaced Pages Review, denying threatening to out anyone but commenting that a journalist has been told of the "antics" of "this group of POV-pushers" and would not "find it too difficult to learn of their real names", saying "the Misplaced Pages editors who created this issue with their problematic behavior have only themselves to blame."WR6 My advice to Cla68 at 08:31 was that before throwing around accusations about "POV pushing" he should be familiar with the background and circumstances of the case, and should follow dispute resolution procedures rather than getting involved in off-wiki sniping At "6:19am" on the Misplaced Pages Review thread Cla68 made it clear that he was not fully familiar with what had happened, and had not looked at the ANI thread or the ArbCom.
Cla68 suggested outing editors in off-wiki discussions
Despite being well aware of a previous ruling about off-wiki harassment and any suggestion of exposing identities which might disrupt or harm an editor's off-Misplaced Pages life, Cla68 introduced the idea of exposing the identities of editors, specifically mentioning two against whom he had held a grudge since January 2008, and when questioned, while claiming that he had no control over what the press chooses to report on, insisted that he would continue to intervene if he perceived any "conduct problems", saying "I hope that the editors in question are willing and able to correct their behavior on their own." He claimed that he had been referring to an earlier post by Moulton, but in that post Moulton had merely said that he had tried unsuccessfully to get one journalist to run the story and others might be more interested. There was no suggestion of outing editors until Cla68 posted the idea.
Misplaced Pages Review provides a forum for discussing Misplaced Pages articles, policies and editors. It is open to indefinitely blocked former editors such as Moulton who promotes his views that core Misplaced Pages policies are dysfunctional. Discussions about one editor preceded exposure of his identity, in the case Moulton referred to on 6th May 2008, 8:00am, when stating "For the record, I had no direct contact with Krimpet, who evidently gleaned the story from postings here. When she made the edits to Picard's bio at noon on Sunday, I frankly didn't know who she was, having failed to remember that she and I had posted similar views in the NewYorkBrad thread."WR3 Misplaced Pages relies on civil co-operation between editors with differing views to reach a mutually acceptable outcome, but discussions on Misplaced Pages Review divisively characterise groups, such as the post by Sxeptomaniac on 6th May 2008 at 10:53pm, which says "the anti-ID crew" "couldn't have an absolute victory at Picard's article". It refers to Moulton having had a valid reason for being upset with the articles' condition,WR4 but the Rosalind Picard article was stable from Sxeptomaniac's edit of 00:57, 8 December 2007, until Krimpet's edit of 15:42, 4 May 2008. From what I have seen, it seems likely that Krimpet was genuinely persuaded by Moulton's posts and the gossip at Misplaced Pages Review that the Picard article was unfair, and when she looked at it deleted a sentence she thought was coatracking without first reading the talk page and realising that it was a carefully negotiated consensus version.
Cla68 has never edited the Picard article or talk page. He joined Misplaced Pages Review on 18 April 2008. To justify his raising the idea of "OrangeMarlin, Jim62sch, and their friends" having their real names in the press, he referred to his having left some comments in the Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Jim62sch case and indicated that his motive was getting these editors to change their behavior with statements such as "I hope that the editors in question are willing and able to correct their behavior on their own." The final decision in that case included the following principles –
- 3) The making of express or implied threats against another editor is a form of harassment and is prohibited. In particular, any suggestion of seeking to disrupt or harm an editor's off-Misplaced Pages life (including his or her employment) in retaliation for his or her editing on Misplaced Pages is unacceptable.
- 4) A user's conduct outside of Misplaced Pages is generally not subject to Misplaced Pages policies or sanctions. This includes actions such as sending private e-mails or commenting on Misplaced Pages and its users in other forums. However, in truly extraordinary circumstances, a user who engages in egregiously disruptive off-wiki conduct endangering the project and its participants may be subject to sanction. An example is a user whose off-wiki activities directly threaten to damage another user's real-world life or employment in retaliation for his or her editing.
On his talk page, Cla68 continued to defend his interventions regarding others' behavior up to his post of 00:14, 10 May 2008, "I'm sorry to see you trying to put lipstick on this situation. Like I said, if there aren't any more conduct problems (edit warring, canvassing, etc) related to ID articles, then I leave it alone."
Discussion continued on Cla68's talk page, but he didn't comment until 06:09, 13 May 2008, "I think I explained it already, but in case anyone reads this thread and can't find my explanation, my remarks on Misplaced Pages Review were in reference to this post , not a threat to out anyone. I apologize for not choosing my words more carefully."" The link is to Moulton's post of 7:40am, 6th May 2008, in which Moulton said that he had failed to interest Bergstein in the story, but his guess was that "Cade Metz or Seth Finkelstein would be more likely to pick this story up." There had been no further discussion of the story getting into the press until Cla68's post of 11:38pm, 6th May 2008, which introduced the idea of outing project ID editors' real names. As shown below, an early post by Moulton included a quotation from a post by Krimpet on an earlier thread which mentioned outing, but this was to express her disquiet at her process rather than to hint at it being used in a dispute over behavior.
Krimpet's evidence alleging bullying by FeloniousMonk
Krimpet describes herself as trying "to fix a coatracky BLP... which focused too much on one event in her life without putting it in context, only to find I'd walked into a landmine of controversy between the WikiProject on Intelligent Design, of which FeloniousMonk was a member, with an indefinitely blocked user, User:Moulton." She describes evidence placed on Moulton's page alleging that he had recruited her as a meatpuppet as "a direct and insulting personal attack". This has also been described in discussion as a "smear".
As shown in my earlier evidence, Moulton was indefinitely blocked due to disruption, particularly on the Rosalind Picard article which Krimpet describes as "a coatracky BLP". His campaign to change that article then moved to Misplaced Pages Review, and his article there dated April 5, 2008, “So I am disgusted with Misplaced Pages.”, gives his version of "the problems he encountered improving the Misplaced Pages biography of colleague Rosalind Picard". The Misplaced Pages Review thread cited by Cla68 includes a post by Moulton dated 5th May 2008, 5:34am, which quotes a post by Krimpet of 27th April 2008, 7:39pm, in reply to Moulton's remark earlier that day "I would be interested in working constructively with responsible and mature admins — people of the caliber of Doc Glasgow — to devise a mutually agreeable way to solve the festering problems that have produced such a long-running Kafkaesque nightmare for everyone." Krimpet's reply says "This is exactly what I'm hoping to see too - a mutually agreeable solution to the BLP disaster led by trusted, principled folks (and I'm not going to lie and pretend I'm one of them tongue.gif) who can hear concerns from all sides. What's troubling is that this combative eye-for-an-eye outing approach, which just makes much of the WP community less receptive to any reform out of spite, is constantly setting back any hope of fixing things by driving the principled folks away."WR1
When Krimpet first edited the Picard article at 15:42, 4 May 2008, she removed a sentence that had been a stable consensus since 8 December 2007, as edited by Sxeptomaniac. When Orangemarlin reverted her changes at 00:39 as Removed whitewash.using TW, she reverted his edit and opened a section on his talk page summarised as if you have a problem with my revision of the paragraph, please explain your actions in depth, which he later deleted. Had she looked at the article talk page instead of going to Orangemarlin's talk page, she would have seen that it had last been edited by Sxeptomaniac at 00:55, 8 December 2007, with the first section headed Getting a consensus showing amicable discussions between editors holding a wide range of views, clearly not just the alleged "anti-ID group", carefully considering the BLP implications, the need to assess notability and the need to avoid original research. Deletion of the article as insufficiently notable was considered. The most recent section, Undue weight, was started by Sxeptomaniac to question the sentence now under debate, and concluded with Sxeptomaniac saying "I'm not completely convinced that the summary is necessary, as the links to the Discovery Institute and Dissent from Darwinism articles offer quick access to further explanation, but that's a reasonable point to consider." The detailed answer to her question to Orangemarlin was there, but Krimpet did not explain her change on the article talk page.
At 01:40, the same time that Krimpet added her comment to his talk page, Orangemarlin reverted her article revert, and at 01:51 Nakon reverted to Krimpet version, reverted in turn three minutes later by Raul654. who promptly started discussion on the article talk page. Krimpet did not join the discussion on the article talk page or the continuing discussion at Orangemarlin's page, but at 02.22 opened an AN/I discussion accusing Orangemarlin of "tag-teaming" (AN/I archive) and notified Orangemarlin at 02:30. At 04:10 Krimpet joined discussion at Orangemarlin's talk page, and conceded that having discussed matters with Raul654 she now saw the merits of leaving in the sentence she had deleted. On AN/I it was questioned if Krimpet had been asked there by Moulton to make the edit, and at 04:31 Raul654 reported that she had given him an assurance on IRC, which he believed, that this was not how she came by the article. On a Misplaced Pages Review thread on 6 May Moulton said "For the record, I had no direct contact with Krimpet", though they both "posted similar views in the NewYorkBrad thread."
Thus, Krimpet had been in discussion with Moulton about BLP concerns, and is likely to have been aware of his allegations about problems on the Picard article, but does not seem to have been asked directly by him to make the edit. However, her actions reflect his preferences and showed no signs of paying heed to the consensus discussions on the article talk page. Misplaced Pages Review clearly acted as a divisive influence in overturning normal collegiate working on Misplaced Pages. Whether this means that Moulton was contravening Misplaced Pages:Sock puppetry#Meatpuppets I leave others to judge, but clearly it caused misunderstandings and disruption.
Krimpet also refers to what she calls "a slew off harrowing insults from WikiProject ID members". The link is to a thread on her tolk opened by Guettarda at 02:38, 5 May, who was the only WikiProject ID member taking part in the discussion, against a slew of Krimpet's friends. His opening query "Why not use the article's talk page before AN/I? Isn't that the way we do it here?" and later suspicions when "one WR editor shows up out of the blue and makes the edits a banned WR editor was making" appear reasonable in light of the evidence, but the part Krimpet has played on Misplaced Pages Review is not known to me. The effect of her intervention was obviously disruptive, and experienced editors should know to check any assertions made in that forum carefully before basing edits here on them, as well as explaining their edits on article talk pages.
Misrepresentations in evidence presented by User:B
The evidence presented by User:B opens with a misrepresentation of the Arbcom ruling on which the arguments it presents are based: B says "FeloniousMonk was previously admonished by arbcom not to use the administrative tools in content areas where he is involved", but the ruling says "FeloniousMonk is admonished not to use his administrative tools or give warnings in content disputes in which he is involved." It follows that B's claim that "FM's admin actions in the last year relate to the Intelligent Design topic area in some way" is irrelevant, the question is as to whether FM was involved in the specific content disputes. From a quick look, some of B's examples show misrepresentations and blatant inaccuracies:
- The article protections on 13 May to Rosalind Picard and James Tour
arepresented with the claim that not a single editor who would be affected by semi-protection had edited the articles, but both articles had just been edited to match Moulton's agenda, by new user:PlatanusOccidentalis who subsequently admitted editing for Moulton, and was later blocked indefinitely for trolling and abusing multiple accounts by Jayjg.
- "4 May 2008 - Indefinite block of an IP" fails to note that the IP had already been blocked twice for Personal attacks or harassment and disruptive editing, and that FM offered on the user talk page to unblock if a commitment was given to abide by behaviour policies.
- The Blocks of Schlafly section neglects to mention that Schlafly had a long history of COI violations while refusing to co-operate with other editors, as is obvious from a brief look at Talk:Phyllis Schlafly, and provides no evidence that FM was involved in the specific content disputes. but has chosen to dismiss warnings and has refused to co-operate with other editors. ]
- "21 September 2007 - Indefinite block of Ferrylodge (talk · contribs), a block which a previous arbitration held was inappropriate." is flatly wrong – the linked arbitration opened on 15 October 2007, and closed on 29 November 2007.
Evidence presented by User:G-Dett
"Making threats," "implied threats," "implicit threats," "menacing" statements, and so on
In the context of a dispute related to the recent Gary Weiss debacle, Felonious posted a report on me at AN/I, falsely alleging that I was “making threats.” Here was the exchanged he referred to:
OK, that constitutes a clear personal attack on Sami. This campaign has become disruptive. Knock it off. I've removed the personal attack. FeloniousMonk (talk) 03:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
- Describing my contributions as a "campaign" is unwarranted and insulting, Felonious. Sami has attacked me incessantly on this page, and I've kept my cool in the face of it. What you just deleted, moreover, was not a personal attack by any stretch of the imagination. Admin privileges or no, I suggest you back off.--G-Dett (talk) 04:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
In the face of general bafflement at his description of my post as a “threat” (as one uninvolved editor put it, “it appears to be nothing more than a request to disengage"), Felonious explained that "since the unwritten or unspoken clause is usually 'or else...' it's an implied threat in my experience." I reminded him that whatever the value of such speculations into the unsaid, the unwritten, the unknown, and the invisible, they didn't belong on the "incidents" noticeboard.
That episode (archived here in its entirety) is worth recalling as Felonious files yet another formal complaint alleging “implicit threats” on the part of a Wikipedian he’s in dispute with. Cla68 has pointed out several times that his remark on WikipediaReview – wherein he wondered if a specific group of editors “are aware how close they are to having their real names in the press in a story about a group of POV-pushers on Misplaced Pages" – was a reply to a lengthy post by another WR editor and blogger who described pursuing the story in print elsewhere. In other words, one guy says hey, people are looking into this and this is going to be a story, and Cla68 says, Wow, I wonder if these POV-pushers know about that; that's it, and there's no suggestion at all that the flow of speculated consequences is up to Cla68. None of Felonious' allegations about Cla68's "threats" have included this context, or even acknowledged Cla's repeated clarifications of same.
It's worth pointing out that this represents Cla68's consistent attitude toward the POV-pushing and team shenanigans that are the source of all this nonsense: his position is that this is an embarrassment to Misplaced Pages, a project he manifestly cares deeply about (thousands of extremely high-quality edits and FA articles), and that these embarrassments are bound to become even more chronic damaging when the media gets a hold of them. To say that he welcomes damage to a project he has done more than anyone to build and improve is perverse.
Three days ago another admin admonished Felonious for threatening a fellow editor and treating him “like a dog you need to shame.” In that case there was nothing at all “implicit” in Felonious’s threat: “This was a violation of WP:CIVIL. Keep it up and I'll take a personal interest in seeing that you are prevented from making one again." Felonious nevertheless explained that by definition this was not a threat because he, Felonious, is an admin and was in the right: "Stopping an incivil editor from being uncivil is one of the jobs of an admin. Saying that you will do so is never a threat."
The picture that begins to emerge here is that Felonious doesn't use the word "threat" in its ordinary dictionary sense – to describe, that is, a statement of the form If you don't do stop doing X I will do Y to you, and you won't like it. Statements of this kind aren't threats, according to his definition, if the person making them has authority and righteousness on his side. Statements by someone who doesn't have authority in his eyes, conversely, can properly be described as "threats" even if they include nothing whatsoever about retaliation.
"Making threats," in short, is for Felonious a kind of idiosyncratic synonym for "insubordination," basically for uppitiness. This semantic peculiarity should be borne in mind as the committee weighs his allegations against Cla68.--G-Dett (talk) 21:22, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence by User:FeloniousMonk
Cla68
Cla68 has engaged in a long-running pattern of harassment of editors he dislikes designed to drive them away from Misplaced Pages, or at least to make them feel very uncomfortable and weaken whatever esteem the community holds for them and thus render them unable to oppose him. This pattern of harassment includes wikistalking by inserting himself into content and other disputes his marks were involved in but he was not, and targeted personal attacks meant to fan the flames at these minor disputes to turn them into larger imbroglios, and recruiting others to join in. Over time his aggression has evolved to into making divisive and biased statements about fellow editors in the press and threats to out editors he opposes to the press.
His focus on editors he dislikes is sustained, obsessive and aggressive and has had the effect of threatening or intimidating not only his intended targets, but also has had a chilling effect community as a whole. Cla68's use of RFC, when viewed outside of context may appear to be reasonable and expected attempts at dispute resolution. But when viewed in the context of his long-running harassment, his use of RFC is clearly meant to be an extension of his pattern of harassment. Going beyond the simple use of non-neutral tone, his descriptions of conflicts in RFC are wholly biased against their subject. Instead of resolving disputes his RFCs have perpetuated them through polarizing and divisive rhetoric, resulting in a bunker mentality in those who are targeted while fanning whatever flames in others that suit his ends and are handy in the community. His efforts are usually supported by a small cadre of like-minded editors, Viridae, Dtobias and others, who operate in a coordinated and mutually supporting manner.
SlimVirgin
WP:Harassment
- Nov 17, 2007. Makes a gratuitous reference on Mongo's RfC to SweetBlueWater, SlimVirgin's supposed sockpuppet: "You might also want to check to see if any of the participating editors here ever used a sock puppet to vote twice in a Featured Article nomination or ever accused another editor of "living in the same state as a banned user."
- Nov 26, 2007. Attempts to add SlimVirgin to the Durova RFAR , and attempts to sign up on the cyberstalking mailing list, while admitting that he hasn't actually been cyberstalked himself, and claiming that on one other than Amorrow has ever cyberstalked anyone on Misplaced Pages. (Note also his gratuitous dig at MONGO, describing him as an "editor I don't respect.")
- Nov 27, 2007. Makes another gratuitous reference on the Durova RFAR to SweetBlueWater, SlimVirgin's supposed sockpuppet, along with the statement that she had been "taken to task and discredited".
- Nov 27, 2007. Claims that he is not harassing SlimVirgin, but rather that the issue is her "unethical behavior," and that the only thing that will stop him from continuing his behavior is if she will "apologize ... and promise not to repeat it."
- Nov 27, 2007. Makes a gratuitous reference to SlimVirgin's supposed "secret mailing list."
- Nov 29, 2007. Feigns ignorance regarding the issue around Swalwell, Alberta: "Just a question. It isn't explained here why creation of this article is considered trolling if it has benign content? What is it about this geographic location that is so sensitive?"
- Dec 17, 2007. After SlimVirgin notifies Tim Vickers that he has reverted an article 3 times, and that a further reversion would put him in violation of the 3RR rule, Cla68 responds on Tim's page that "Fortunately for Slim and Crum, tag-teaming isn't, apparently, against policy." He then opens a new section at the AN/I board falsely claiming that SlimVirgin has accused Tim of *violating* 3RR. Tim himself responds that he didn't mind the notification, and that it "wasn't any kind of emergency". Despite this Cla68 encourages other editors to place notices on SlimVirgin's Talk: page regarding this. ArbCom clerk Rlevse points out that SlimVirgin's statement was correct, that she said " if he does it again" he will be in violation. Nevertheless, Cla68 insinuates that SlimVirgin's notification was a "tactic" to try to "'win' the dispute". Tim points out that while he and she have vigorous discussions, they actually "tend to work quite productively together", Newyorkbrad notes that Tim and SlimVirgin have worked out their issues on Talk, and Viridae points out that "3RR warnings are frequently given when soeone has made a third revert." Regardless, Cla68 is not content to let this go and claims that SlimVirgin has been attempting to "bully, bait, and belittle" Tim. Tim finally tells Cla68 not to "get back into that drama", which finally seems to convince him to stop.
- Jan 2, 2008. On the IRC RFAR, he claims that SlimVirgin's "embarrassing comments or unethical edits have been admin deleted or oversighted... user talk page histories were incorrectly admin deleted... evidence of wrongful actions have been "courtesy blanked" from public discussion forums".
- Jan 2, 2008: On the Zeraeph RFAR, he makes a gratuitous reference to the deletion of SlimVirgin's talk page after it was vandalized, insisting it was "a mistake." Also encourages another editor to re-add links to Misplaced Pages Review, saying: "Just readd it. I'm sure he deleted it by mistake," and "Linking to off-site evidence for an arbcom case isn't against any policy." He subsequently insists that Misplaced Pages Review does not "routinely harass" editors. .
- Jan 26, 2008. Regarding the blocking of Piperdown by David Gerard, Cla68 states that he would like to "question" SlimVirgin about her "involvement in that whole affair," and in a later comment to another editor he gratuitously refers to SlimVirgin as a "once respected contributor". He then claims a "small clique of editors" have been involved in "protect a certain POV in the naked short selling article and protecting the bio of an obscure financial journalist," and insists that many "secrets and lies of this issue have been brought to light, there appears to be more to come until the entire, sordid episode is fully exposed" - it's clear he is referring again to SlimVirgin, as he refers back to the previous comment he made where he described SlimVirgin as a "once respected contributor" and insists she defamed him.
- Feb 7, 2008. Again regarding the Gary Weiss article, he insists that what he pejoratively refers to as "at the time, influential admins" worked "in tandem" with Mantanmoreland "to keep any non-flattering info about the subject out of the article."
- Feb 13, 2008. He continually posts aggressive challenges on SlimVirgin's talkpage, , even though SlimVirgin and others have made it clear that they do not want him posting there: He follows this by crossposting entire discussions found on other talk pages to SlimVirgin's Talk page, which is also removed as harassment. He insists he is "sking SlimVirgin to be accountable for her actions," and suggests that "she has no defense" and others are trying to "'protect' her from accountability."
- Feb 16, 2008. As part of his evidence in the Mantanmoreland case, Cla68 states that SlimVirgin alleged that Cla68 "posted conspiracy theories about the Gary Weiss article on Misplaced Pages Review." He provides the following diff as evidence: As is clear from the post, SlimVirgin actually wrote that Cla68 commented that "high administrators" were "protecting" the article "based on Wordbomb's conspiracy theories on Misplaced Pages Review" (emphasis added), and was referring to this comment that Cla68 left on the Talk: page of a WordBomb sockpuppet. It becomes apparent that Cla68 has, in part, been pursuing his vendetta based on an incorrect interpretation of a statement SlimVirgin had made a year and a half ago - that he read
Cla later posted a comment based on Wordbomb's conspiracy theories on Misplaced Pages Review that "high administrators" were "protecting" the article.
- as (the grammatically incorrect)
Cla later posted a comment (based on Wordbomb's conspiracy theories) on Misplaced Pages Review that "high administrators" were "protecting" the article.
- rather than
Cla later posted a comment (based on Wordbomb's conspiracy theories on Misplaced Pages Review) that "high administrators" were "protecting" the article.
- However, the relevant diff, this one makes it clear that SlimVirgin was referring to a comment Cla68 made on Misplaced Pages itself. Moreover, Cla68 was fully aware of where he had made the "high administrators" comment, and SlimVirgin's concern about it, since she had posted on his Talk: page questioning him about it, and he subsequently claimed to have been "joking" when he said it.
- Feb 17, 2008. States again that an admin who actively participated in his RFC and RFA "knowingly and mendaciously lied, and has never been held adequately accountable for doing so."
- Feb 19, 2008. Gives an "implied warning" to SlimVirgin and Crum375 that "this behavior of theirs needs to stop".
- Feb 28, 2008. States "I agree that SlimVirgin and several other admins handled this issue incredibly ineptly from the beginning and made things worse by trying to cover the whole thing up under layers of vitriol, censorship (BADSITES), retaliation (my RfA), and blocks (Piperdown)."
- Mar 6, 2008. Regarding the Mantanmoreland case, says "One of the administrators most involved in 2006 has presented some evidence here, but didn't address all of the issues concerning her involvement, such as issues of retaliation and suppression of discussion concerning the issue. I guess another ArbCom case could be opened on that aspect of this issue, and I'm going to consider doing that." Further clarifies that the admin in question is not Durova.
- Mar 14, 2008. Claims that "evidence was submitted in the ArbCom case that SlimVirgin inappropriately and wrongly blocked WordBomb, and she and David Gerard wrongly retaliated against and attacked editors who appeared to take WordBomb's side," states twice that David's and SlimVirgin's actions were "bad faith," and that SlimVirgin and David's "reputations" had been "destroyed."
- Mar 15, 2008. After a new editor with fewer than 90 edits complains about SlimVirgin on Jimbo's talk page, saying he had "searched on Google for her name" and "found a whole host of information about her controversial tenure as administrator on this site..." and asking "Why is this user still an administrator? " and "given the explosion of non-wikipedia commentary about her, shouldn't there be an objective page HERE about her controversial role on this site?", Cla68 posts a response saying, "I've asked some of the same questions myelf and, like you, haven't received any straight answers," and encourages him to post on SlimVirgin's talk page.
- Mar 16, 2008. Claims that "Mackan is engaging in appropriate dispute resolution with SlimVirgin and Crum," and then tries to bully Tony Sidaway to "stop harassing" Mackan79. Note, at that time SlimVirgin was not involved in any current disputes with Mackan79 - in fact, they weren't even editing the same articles. Also, at that time Crum375 had been away from Misplaced Pages for several days, and hadn't interacted with Mackan79 in months, so the claim that Mackan79 was engaged in "appropriate dispute resolution" was entirely spurious - there was no active dispute.
- Mar 17, 2008. Posts on SlimVirgin's talk page that he must post there in order to "engage in dispute resolution" with her, based on the dispute that Tony had with Mackan79. Subsequently states that SlimVirgin "may or may not have control over what other editors do."
- Mar 28, 2008. States that the original block of Wordbomb by SlimVirgin was "made in bad faith." Is reprimanded by User:Dmcdevit who states, "I find your accusation of bad faith on the part of the admin who blocked here to be quite unwarranted, and uncivil, in fact."
- Mar 21, 2008. Sets up a user subpage as an attack page/draft RFC on SlimVirgin. Section headers include "Abuse of administrator privileges", "Personal attacks, retaliation, bullying, and attempts to intimidate", "Bad faith editing", "Lying or other unethical behavior" and "Abusive sockpuppety." He uses provocative edit summaries, such as "Wow," "Unbelievable," ""incredible," and "un-freaking-believable."
- Mar 28–April 3, 2008. He canvasses 44 editors who have had a content dispute with SlimVirgin or who have disagreed with an admin action of hers, some going back years, and asks them to join him in writing the page: It is clear that many of the people contacted have not interacted with SlimVirgin in months or even years, and some state as much. Others have obviously been selected because they have posted negative or questioning comments on SlimVirgin's talk page weeks or months earlier (e.g. ). What Cla68 calls "the dispute" is, in fact, about all sorts of different topics, with no particularly coherent theme, except that any very active editor editing for three years will have disagreed with other editors, or have other editors disagree with her. Even among the carefully selected "opponents," not all agree that the RFC is a good idea. Here one specifically asks to be removed, while another states that he is not in interested in witch hunts, and another asks: "You seem to really enjoy doing these. Am I on your list?"
- April 2, 2008. Attempts to change the Harrassment guideline and Blocking policy to exempt people who "point out conflict of interest concerns about another editor". CLa68's intent is obviously to retroactively declare that WordBomb's actions regarding Mantanmoreland were not in violation of policy, and thus SlimVirgin's block was against policy. When objections are raised to his actions, his response is to specifically bring up SlimVirgin, claiming that she "actually supported the COI outing of real name". Cla68 also makes it clear his attempts to change policy were for the purpose of retroactively invalidating SlimVirgin's block of Wordbomb, stating "Another comment on the invalidity of WordBomb's original block. After researching the policies and the COI Noticeboard and other pages, it's very evident that the outing of editors is allowed in order to prove COI. This is what WordBomb was trying to do. If you'll check the COI Noticeboard, both the current page and the archives, you'll see a lot of outing going on. Again, WordBomb's original block was invalid and made in bad faith." Note again his claim that the block was "made in bad faith". Note also that the Wordbomb was blocked in July 2006, whereas the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, which Cla68 is using as proof for his claims that WordBomb's block violated existing guidelines, was not created until December 27 2006. Note also that the Conflict of Interest guideline itself did not exist as such until October 10-12 2006; before that it was a completely different "Vanity" guideline, which dealt with recognizing and dealing with non-notable or "vanity" BLPs. Another editor expresses "severe doubt" regarding Cla68's "sincerity, motives, purpose, and/or hoped-for outcomes in pursuing this solution-in-search-of-a-problem" and describes his reasoning as "weasel-worded in the extreme."
- April 2, 2008. In response to repeated suggestions from MONGO that he give up his unhealthy obsession with SlimVirgin and get back to editing articles, Cla68 states "In looking at the editor's editing history, I'm frankly stunned by the amount of condescending, rude behavior towards other editors, POV pushing, bullying, attempts to "get even", and outright lying involving this editor."
- April 17, 2008: Is convinced to take his RFC "private" for now, but insists that he wasn't out for revenge, but was trying to solve a "problem": "POV-pushing is a problem. Owning policy pages is a problem. Lying and misuse of admin privileges is a problem."
- April 24, 2008: Claims the "Gary Weiss issue" "helped destroy the reputations of several formerly prominent administrators".
- May 13, 2008: Again posts to SlimVirgin's talk page, claiming that an edit summary she used was "misleading", and then immediately re-opens the RFC, claiming that he was "hoping that the behavioral issues had stopped. Unfortunately, however, the POV-pushing still seems to be going on." He also goes and canvasses yet another editor who has been involved in a recent content dispute with SlimVirgin to comment on the RFC. Also removes Phil Sandifer's Outside view which says, among other things "Given the high level of toxicity that has surrounded accusations regarding SlimVirgin in the past, I am skeptical that an RfC is a wise forum for this dispute. To be clear, I make this comment without judgment about SV's actions detailed above, few of which are in situations I am familiar with. (Though the one I am familiar with - her allegedly bad faith tactics on BLP - strikes me as an egregious mischaracterization. While I think that SlimVirgin is dead wrong on a lot of issues surrounding sourcing and verifiability, I have never seen anything that makes me think she acts in bad faith.) Regardless of the merits of the larger complaint, however, I think that this RfC is certain to become a forest fire, and deeply unlikely to produce anything useful. As such, I think it ill-advised." "
- May 14, 2008: Discovers a dispute SlimVirgin had with an editor two years ago, and adds that as more "evidence" on his RFC, and canvasses that editor to comment as well.
WP:STALK
- Dec 17, 2007 and following. Cla68 starts editing Animal testing, an article he has never edited before and that SlimVirgin has edited frequently since January 2005, opposing her edits and posts on the talk page in support of anything SlimVirgin is arguing against. When asked to stop wikistalking SlimVirgin, he writes: "If you think I'm 'wikistalking' you (whatever that really means), I invite you to bring it up on the appropriate forum and we can exhaustively discuss each other's behavior and ethics."
- Jan 4, 2008. He follows SlimVirgin to the No Original Research policy page, a page he has never edited before or since, but which SlimVirgin has edited since December 2004, and where a number of people (including SlimVirgin) are involved in vigorous debate. There he makes a gratuitous talk page reference to SlimVirgin, , then adds the "proposed" tag to the policy page as a WP:POINT.
- April 2, 2008: Follows SlimVirgin to a talk-page debate that SV had initiated. at WT:MoS, a talk page SV has edited since 2004, and that Cla68 had never edited before] (neither the project page or talk page).
- April 2, 2008: Follows SlimVirgin to The Holocaust, a page SV has edited since 2004, and that Cla68 had never edited before (neither the article nor the talk page).
Others
SlimVirgin is far from the only editor to get on Cla68's "shit list", and he attempts to make the Misplaced Pages experience extremely unpleasant for his targets, making snide comments about them and provocative comments to them, and threatening and bullying them into doing what he wants. On May 8, 2008, for example, he implicitly threatened on Misplaced Pages Review to out various editors with the press. Despite requests from several editors to repudiate his implicit threat, his initial responses were similarly menacing, e.g. "If the editors in question correct their behavior, then I'll gladly move on to other issues." "Like I said, if there aren't any more conduct problems (edit warring, canvassing, etc) related to ID articles, then I leave it alone." After five days of posts on his Talk: page from a half dozen editors indicating the inappropriateness of his comments, he finally apologized "for not choosing my words more carefully."
The following lists other examples of some of the editors he has targeted, and how he has targeted them.
User:Jossi
- Feb 6, 2008. Attempts to bully User:Jossi, based on another anti-Misplaced Pages hatchet piece in The Register, and threatens to "ask ArbCom to remove administrator privileges" if he doesn't do what Cla68 wants. Cla68 then adds Jossi to the COI Noticeboard, and further accuses Jossi (without any evidence) of being part of a "tag team" that has "push a particular POV" and "quashed criticism" on the Prem Rawat article, again threatening "formal action" if Jossi "refuse to correct behavior", without specifying which "behavior" of Jossi's needs to be "corrected". When specifically asked for diffs of the supposed violations of COI, Cla68 fails to provide any, merely asserting that "the article and article talk page and history shows some of the well-known tactics used to push POV: frequent archiving of the discussion threads, tag-team reverts, delaying tactics in discussions on the merits of sources, attacking the supposed motivations of the authors of the sources, etc." When other editors ask for actual diffs of improper behavior, Cla68 again fails to provide any, instead insisting that "If Jossi truly was a neutral edito in the Rawat and associated articles, the articles wouldn't have as much of a skewed POV as they have now because Jossi would have helped fix that. He's been editing Misplaced Pages for almost three years now (or is it longer) and should know by now how to edit a neutral article. Since it appears that he's either unable or unwilling to edit the Rawat articles neutrally, I again state a formal request that he stay away from all Rawat-related articles." In other words, regardless of the fact that Jossi does not appear to have violated any policies with his edits, he is nevertheless somehow responsible for the edits that all other parties have made to the page, which, in Cla68's opinion, have a "skewed POV".
- Feb 28, 2008. Again tries to stop Jossi from even commenting on Rawat-related talk pages, and assumes Jossi's proposal to limit edit-warring is purely self-serving.
- Mar 15, 2008. Again tries to bully Jossi into staying away from even Rawat talk pages, and discussions, stating "Umm, why is Jossi still allowed to have anything to do with the Prem Rawat articles? This is past ridiculous, please tell him to stay away from them."
- Mar 24, 2008. Presents "evidence" regarding Jossi in the Prem Rawat case. The vast majority of it has nothing to do with Jossi's behavior on Misplaced Pages, instead focusing on his actions on Citizendium. The rest states Jossi shouldn't be allowed to even comment on Rawat related Talk: pages because he made two edits to the Rawat article (one in December, one in January) and because Cla68 feels Jossi had once "selectively archived" one paragraph of the Talk: page.
- Mar 25, 2008. Proposes a number of sanctions against Jossi on the Prem Rawat workshop page, including that he be desysopped, although no one (including Cla68) has presented evidence that Jossi has abused his admin tools.
- Mar 25, 2008. States that an "an editor might hypothetically try to learn the informal rules for ingratiating themselves into the "ruling clique" of Misplaced Pages in order to hopefully allow said editor a freer hand to push POV in the subject area that interests him. Said editor might even use the connections that he develops with other influential editors to modify policies and guidelines to fit his bad-faith agenda." (then modifies "the ruling clique" to "any powerful clique" When it becomes clear his references were too oblique for some to understand, he confesses to being "too coy" in his previous comment, and states "Do they abuse functions like redirects to try to hide sourced information they don't approve of?" - referring to this evidence of Matthew Stannard, claiming that Jossi did exactly that.Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Prem_Rawat/Evidence#Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat
- Apr 2, 2008: Yet another unnecessary comment on a user talk page about Jossi and COI.
User:Jayjg
- Jan 10, 2008. Adds User:Jayjg to the Palestine-Israel case, ostensibly because of a comment Jayjg made that had nothing to do with Palestine-Israel articles, on the Talk: page of an article that had nothing to do with Palestine-Israel articles, to an editor who doesn't edit Palestine-Israel articles. Though Cla68 realizes this "evidence" has nothing whatsoever to do with the case, he insists that "more evidence of problematic behavior by Jayjg can probably be presented on the evidence page once the case formally opens." Also tries to get Jayjg removed from the ArbCom mailing list. When various admins remove Cla68's spurious addition of Jayjg to the case, Cla68 subsequently edit-wars with them to keep Jayjg as a named member of the case. When challenged to produce actual evidence or problematic behavior by Jayjg in relation to these articles, he provides nothing more specific than a link to an RFC discussion on a Talk: page.
- Feb 12, 2008. Claims Jayjg is "heavily involved" in the Gary Weiss "issue", and that he would have insight into oversighting on the article. Later says that he made the claim because he "heard somewhere" that Jayjg had oversighted material from the Gary Weiss page and talk page.
- Feb 16, 2008. Tries to turn the Mantanmoreland RFA into a case about Cla68's own failed RFA, and singles out Jayjg for no apparent reason except to pursue his personal vendetta.
- Mar 28, 2008. User:ChrisO, based on a statement from Richard Landes in the Jerusalem Post that "There's a fight going on right now at Misplaced Pages about the nature of information accuracy, truth, history, etc", posts on WP:AN/I expressing concern that there might be an organized off-wiki campaign regarding Israel-Palestine issues, and particular noting new editors that have showed up at the Pallywood article. In response Cla68 posts "ChrisO, you might consider posting your comment to Jayjg's talk page to see if he has any comment." Note: Jayjg had not edited the Pallywood article or its Talk: page in the previous 6 months.
- Apr 22, 2008. Posts a provocative note on Jayjg's page trying to implicate him into the CAMERA case.
User:JzG
- Feb 14, 2008. After JzG comments on the Mantanmoreland RFC, accuses JzG of being part of a "cabalistic mailing list" and threatens to have "ArbCom to scrutinize actions in this affair."
- Feb 17, 2008. Tries to turn the Mantanmoreland RFA into a case about Cla68's own failed RFA, and singles out JzG for no apparent reason except to pursue his personal vendetta.
- Mar 1-2, 2008. Says that Jimbo e-mailed "a select mailing list" regarding COI issues with the bio of a "certain Canadian journalist", says that "The BLP of said journalist was subsequently edited by some Wikepedia.en administrators, including JoshuaZ and JzG", and asks Jimbo to comment. Then states that had there not been "a trail of edits by assumably mailing list editors like JohuaZ and JzG then there would't be an issue here." Subsequently states that "For the record, I don't believe that JoshuaZ was asked by Jimbo to fiddle with the article" but does not similarly exclude JzG.
- Mar 2, 2008. Creates an RFC on JzG.
- Mar 27, 2008. Though he knows he is unwelcome on JzG's Talk: page, makes a provocative and paternalistic comment there.
- Apr 16, 2008. Again posts on JzG's Talk: page, spuriously claiming that JzG's removal of material from Criticism of Misplaced Pages, sourced to an anti-Misplaced Pages hatchet piece in The Register, is "an attempt at a coverup and you definitely have COI". Note, this is the piece in which Cla68 himself is liberally quoted.
Other examples: Mercury, Raymond Arritt
- Nov 22, 2007. Attempts to bully User:Mercury, spuriously claiming that he has an "obvious relationship" with Durova and that therefore his use of admin tools in relation to a Talk: page thread is "unethical", and that he will request his "immediate desysopping" if he uses them again. (Note: Durova was the admin who blocked Cla68 on October 20, 2007).
- May 21-23, 2008. User:Raymond Arritt expresses concern that he might be on Cla68's "hit list", eventually explaining at length his concerns regarding Cla68's statements. Cla68 refuses to explain further, and Raymond Arritt decides to stop editing, as he is "disillusioned with the backbiting and witch hunts that have lately taken over the project", and feels he'll "need to lay low for a while" because Cla68 has it in for him, and is "well-connected in Wikipolitics" so he'd "rather stay out of his way until things become clearer."
General bad faith
- Feb 29, 2008. Claims Mantanmoreland was given "inappropriate support from admins", and questions whether the Mantanmoreland case should be restricted in scope and thus not discuss this.
- Mar 1, 2008. Supports a lowering of the bar for bureaucratship because "We need to keep cliques of bad faith editors from being able to torpedo the RfBs of people they don't approve of."
- Mar 13, 2008. Claims he has "had to endure" "retaliation from several of administrator friends over the past two years."
Viridae
Proxying on behalf of Misplaced Pages Review and banned editors, and undoing other admin actions (particularly those of JzG)
- 1 Apr 2007: Unprotects April Fools' Day because it was "pre-emptive", after another admin protected it. A third admin had to re-protect two hours later after massive vandalism.
- 2 Apr 2007: Pre-emptively protects Misplaced Pages:Administrator intervention against vandalism against moves, after another admin had un-protected it.intervention against vandalism&action=unprotect
- 16 May 2007: Unblocks User:Heatedissuepuppet after JzG blocks it for being a sockpuppet.
- 11 Jun 2007: Unblocks User:Lizziebor, a sockpuppet of User:Lulu3.
- 16 Jun 2007: Unblocks User:Killer Poet, a disruptive WP:SPA banned by JzG.Poet
- 17 Jun 2007: Unprotects Lolcat after JzG protects it.
- 31 Jul 2007: Undeletes vanity article Liz Cohen, created by banned editor and Misplaced Pages Review regular User:thekohser/User:MyWikiBiz., and proudly reports back to Kohs on Misplaced Pages Review that he has undeleted the article. (The Misplaced Pages Review > Wikimedia Discussion > Editors > "JzG (Guy Chapman), How he helps Misplaced Pages", post #51).
- 10 Aug 2007: "Courtesy blanks" Arbitration page of WR owner and banned editor User:Internodeuser/User:Zordrac/User:Blissyu2, based on a discussion they have on Misplaced Pages Review on August 9-10 (The Misplaced Pages Review > Wikimedia Discussion > General discussion > "Courtesy blanking, Is this a new policy?", posts #24-26).
- 10 Aug 2007: Undeletes JzG's User talk: page.
- 9 Oct 2007: Unblocks banned pedophilia activist User:Dyskolos and re-blocks for 48 hours, after discussion. Dyskolos is re-banned the next day by Dmcdevit.
- 18 Oct 2007: Unblocks User:Karnoff, a disruptive sockpuppet of banned sockpuppeter User:Connell66. Karnoff's first edit was to create a user page with a giant swastika, and his second was to ask an editor how he could edit the Adolf Hitler article.
- 16 Nov 2007: JzG blocks User:Veesicle for posting a "Sockpuppet of WordBomb" template on David Gerard's user page. The incident is posted (for lulz) on Misplaced Pages Review (The Misplaced Pages Review > Wikimedia Discussion > Editors > "David Gerard, Not that there's anything wrong with that!", post #4) and within minutes Viridae unblocks.
- 17 Nov 2007: Unblocks editor blocked for a 1RR violation (as imposed by community sanction), claiming that no 1RR violation occured, despite the fact that one obviously had.
- 10 Dec 2007: Uses admin rollback to revert JzG on Criticism of Misplaced Pages:
- 13 Dec 2007: Restores comments by banned editor and Misplaced Pages Review regular Daniel Brandt on a protected page.
- 25 Jan 2008: Soon after Misplaced Pages Review notices a block of a WP:SPA sockpuppet by JzG, and comments on it, (The Misplaced Pages Review > Wikimedia Discussion > Editors > Notable editors > MONGO > "RFA/MONGO 2, vote early and often", post #62) Viridae unblocks.
- 17 Mar 2008: After prompting from Misplaced Pages Review,(The Misplaced Pages Review > Wikimedia Discussion > General Discussion > "My involvement with WP, ethics, ethos and opinions", post #21) Viridae deletes Don Murphy, then wheel-wars over its deletion, while admitting he "just decided a speedy on BLP grounds might have more of a chance of sticking than an afd." The article was previously the subject to two AfDs (both resulting in strong "Keep" decisions),Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Don Murphy, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Don Murphy (2nd nomination), is subsequently restored after a DRV, and easily passes a third AfD.Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Don Murphy (3rd nomination)
Other tool abuse
- 22 Oct 2007:Protects Misplaced Pages:No Personal Attacks after previously arguing in favor of that version.
- 13 Nov 2007: Protects Misplaced Pages:Sock puppetry after edit-warring on it.
Other
- 22 Sep 2007: Informs Misplaced Pages Review that User:Fred Bauder, then a sitting Arbitrator, "is, or is becoming, senile." (folder "Bureaucracy", thread "ARBCOM Badsites, This is what they're saying about us ...", post #110.)
- 22 Feb 2008: When a Misplaced Pages Review editor states that JzG is "an utter, utter prick and a shining example of what is wrong with the human race", responds by saying "That made me laugh. Oh and thankyou, that was an unexpected surprise - I'm glad i got made an admin again in time for this".(The Misplaced Pages Review > Wikimedia Discussion > Bureaucracy > "The 2008 WP:DICK of Distinction® Awards Pageant, More entertaining than the Oscars!", post #62).
- 1 Apr 2008: "Humorously" posts on WP:AN/I that he has blocked SlimVirgin and Crum375 as sockpuppets, linking back to a Misplaced Pages Review thread.
Evidence presented by Cla68
SlimVirgin
Background
An explanation of how I became involved with this issue is contained in this RfC I opened on myself. The RfC is especially valuable, as it presents both my side and SlimVirgin's side of the events that led to my involvement. I explained the events again in my evidence section during the Mantanmoreland ArbCom case. When I say, "involved with this issue", the issue I'm referring to is long-term, problematic behavior by SlimVirgin (SV). The evidence I and others presented in the Mantanmoreland case concerned SV's and other admins' troubling support for Mantanmoreland , a serial sockpuppeter, and apparent SV-led retaliation against editors, such as myself, who tried to look into the situation. In a related development, Mantanmoreland was just community banned for repeated violations of the sockpuppeting policy.
The RfC and evidence from the Mantanmoreland case and issue of retaliation by SV mainly center around a request for adminship (RfA) on myself, here, that occurred in April 2007. The RfA was about to close as overwhelmingly successful when SV made this request at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard, "Would it be possible for Cla68's RfA nomination to be extended? There was a serious concern a few months ago that Cla68 was either a sockpuppet of banned User:Wordbomb (a very abusive sockpuppet and stalker) or was helping him. My recollection is that there was no technical evidence that Cla was Wordbomb, but he definitely seemed to be helping him, and some of his edits indicate that they're based in the same area." . A bureaucrat, Taxman extended the RfA. SV then immediately posted an oppose vote, stating, among other things that I posted conspiracy theories about the Gary Weiss article on Misplaced Pages Review (WR) and that, "judging by some of Cla's edits, he appears to be based in the same state as Wordbomb" . A large number of previously uninvolved editors then appeared over the next few hours and opposed the RfA, which was closed a day later as unsuccessful.
I mentioned SV's WR and "same state as WordBomb" statements in the RfC I opened on myself that I linked to above. Significantly, in her response to the RfC, SV does not defend either one of those statements. The reason that she doesn't defend them and never has is because she can't, because they are lies. I now have an account on WR, but I requested it only a couple of months ago. Also, I've lived in Japan since September 2006, not in Utah which I understand is where WordBomb lives. I'm told that WordBomb stated in Episode 6 of WP:NTWW that he lives in Utah.
I would have thought that an administrator lying in order to attempt to discredit an RfA candidate would be clear grounds for immediate desysopping. I brought it to the attention of a sitting arbitrator, FloNight, who did not respond . I've since learned that management of editor behavior in Misplaced Pages is not as orderly and efficient as I used to think it was. The process for correcting editor and administrator behavior is applied unfairly and unevenly. Some editors are banned on spurious reasoning , while others commit violation after violation of our policies and guidelines without any corrective action being taken by Misplaced Pages's administration. An example of the latter is JzG, judging by the evidence in this RfC and this request for arbitration. What is essentially obvious about Misplaced Pages's often chaotic and open editing environment is that we editors are expected to try to resolve as many problems as possible ourselves using the mainly end-user driven dispute resolution process.
The issue
SV is an editor and administrator who has contributed much to en.Misplaced Pages, including several featured articles and some important work with policy, especially WP:BLP. Unfortunately, however, like JzG, SV has also consistently flouted our policies and guidelines concerning editor behavior. Compared with JzG, though, the evidence of problematic behavior by SV is even more substantial. Having become aware of the situation after my RfA, I've tried off-and-on to influence her behavior by following the dispute resolution process. The first step directs editors to raise their concerns with the editor on his/her talk page, which I've done with SV , , , , . Unfortunately, in spite of my attempts and the attempts of others, her behavior remained problematic, so I began the next step in the dispute resolution process, which is the use of a Request for Comment (RfC) to invite greater community involvement and comment on the issue. The draft RfC, which is far from complete, is here. More on this later.
Early-on in SV's editing history, she was the subject of an ArbCom finding that she had conducted personal attacks on other editors . She was warned not to repeat the behavior . As evidence which I'll list below illustrates, she has not heeded this warning. Not only has she engaged in making repeated personal attacks on other editors, but has also engaged in other examples of bad faith editing and questionable use of admin privileges, which I'll detail to some extent below. Her editing behavior has been reported to ArbCom again since the 2005 case , but the cases weren't accepted, for various reasons.
Personal attacks and incivility
SV has engaged in repeated personal attacks and incivil comments over a long period of time. The attacks have occurred on article talk pages and in project space. A common theme by SV is to accuse other editors of "stalking" her or following her around. She also often accuses other editors of bad faith or violating policy without providing any evidence or not having sufficient knowledge to be participating in that particular article or discussion. She sometimes makes vague threats to other editors about "taking this further" or warning of ArbCom intervention. A representative, but incomplete list is below, categorized by year.
2008
- "I feel almost as though I'm being wikistalked" and accuses same editor of supporting "wikistalking and trolling" and WP:POINT and "childish behavior"
- "It's rather unfortunate to see SandyGeorgia, TimVickers, and Marskell join forces yet again for another attack" and "just because you didn't get your own way doesn't mean there was a conspiracy to deprive you of it"
- "But will that apply to you too, Sandy, when you ask your friends to turn up to revert and argument and insult other people on your behalf? Or should it apply only to people who get in the way of what you want?" and "Don't start up here, Sandy. This is not a medical article. This is about animal research, and requires very specific knowledge. It certainly isn't helped by enemies arriving with insults about conspiracy theories."
- "two people who oppose me over other issues have turned up, one of whom regularly wikistalks me", "neither of whom has any specialist knowledge", and "Tim. In fact, it looks like an attempt simply to get some numbers on your side"
- Accuses editor of personal attacks, without providing evidence, saying "It has been going on, on and off, for well over a year" and "be aware that I will take this further" , "you and I are going to end up at the ArbCom over this", "stop making personal comments about me, and stop looking for excuses to get another dig in"
- "You're just looking for an excuse to remove links to a source you don't like, Tim, and that's a misuse of this board" , "Because I fought him on that, Tim became very annoyed with me, and I think resentful, and posted a large number of complaints about me in various places, accusing me of WP:OWN, and encouraging other people to oppose me" and "Tim subsequently wikistalked me to a few articles" , "Except that he's been told many times that it's inappropriate, and yet he continues. AGF doesn't involve being deaf, dumb, and blind. Either he knows what he's doing and is deliberately out to cause a problem; or he has so little idea about policy creation and maintenance that he really believes we can (and should) fundamentally undermine NPOV" , "as usual I was too busy arguing petty non-issues with you. I don't know where you find the time or energy to engage like this, Tim, I really don't. We are supposed to be writing articles" , "All that's happening at the moment is that, because I know sources are not being represented well, I don't trust your edits, so I feel I have to check everything. This leads to endless back and forth between us, poisons this page, and makes us distrust each other. It would be great if I could know I didn't have to check your edits when I see your name crop up" , and "Tim is giving us...That's OR, uninformative, and not what's wanted"
- "Marskell, you need to stop the poison. This is one of several poisonous threads you've either started about me or gleefully joined in" and "I've had nothing but the drip, drip, drip of toxicity from you" and, "Given your own tendency to follow SandyGeorgia around backing her up in disputes, including disputes of her own making, and attacking people she wants you to attack", "It sometimes feels as though you'd be happy to see certain people driven off the website" and "You are allowed to post insults about me and my friends, but I am not meant to respond, unless I want to risk even more attacks" and, "You follow her around acting as an attack dog"
- "If you want to drive me away from Misplaced Pages, you, Tim, Sandy, and your little circle of insulting friends are going the right way about it"
- "quit stalking me"
- States that editor "wikistalked" her without providing evidence
- Says that editor's edits "have clearly caused the writing to deteriorate" and that the editor "doesn't have the experience to be going around changing guidelines or policies" and concludes with "It is starting to feel as though I'm being trolled"
2007
- Accuses sitting arbitrator Jdforrester, without evidence, of leaking private ArbCom correspondence
- After an editor questions a block issued by Jayjg, SlimVirgin accuses the editor of "stalking" her and Jayjg on the talk page of an article and the editor's userpage and then threatens the editor with dispute resolution and a ban .
- Personal attack on editor with which she is involved in a content dispute, "I think you're into disruption rather than editing."
- "Sandy, please quit trying to make trouble. You turned up at an FAR insulting the editors who had written it. My suggestion is that you apologize first to FM and the other editors of that article, and that you start writing some FAs yourself instead of only reviewing other people's, because that would give you some much-needed insight into how much work is involved, and how dispiriting it is when that work is aggressively attacked"
- "The two users who want to split the category into activists v. everyone else, Viriditas and Lquilter, are not familiar with the animal rights literature" , "you make personal attacks, sarcastic comments, and keep repeating the same old claims (claims, not arguments). For once, provide some scholarly sources to back up what you say" and "you must provide a scholarly source that says something different about those terms, or else don't mention it again, please" , "You're making a huge supposition there, Safemariner (and so far as I know, false for the most part), and in any event, it's the people editing those pages who understand the issues" , "it looks as though you're happy to create a mess and leave it for others to tidy up" , "Your posts are so unpleasant that I'm not going to answer any more, and your spamming for support isn't helpful." , "I think you ought to try, because it would help you to see the wrongheadedness of the categories you were suggesting"
- "V, you wikistalked me here" , "I have the diffs. You've stalked me to animal rights pages" , "You seem to think you can act provocatively and it somehow doesn't count (it's just "improving the encyclopedia"), but when anyone else does it, they're in the wrong. That's not how the world works" , "Please keep your opinion of him to yourself from now on" , "stop attacking people, please, or I will request admin intervention" , "whenever you get involved in a disagreement, the talk page turns toxic" , "We need some sources for this one because Viriditas has been making them up" , "I just wanted to see that we were only adding real acronyms, and that we didn't include the ones you earlier made up" , "you point to a previous non-answer in another section, in order to confuse people. I've watched you do this before. All it achieves is that people get annoyed with you" , "You're deliberately creating confusion, and have been doing it for days. There's no point, because no one understands what you're saying" , "I don't think I've ever been involved in a discussion on Misplaced Pages with someone who has posted so much and has been so unhelpful" , "It's like watching someone commit wikisuicide, to be frank"
- To opposing editors during a content dispute in which she is involved at Factory farming, "the arguments of the last few days have been very damaging, very toxic" , "Nathan, the long and frequent posts from you are starting up again. They aren't helping" , "Life's too short for silliness and wikilawyering, and you can't take this talk page hostage again"
- Tells editor with which she is in a dispute over an image license, "You are being disruptive. Do not edit my user page again."
- "Nathan, you really shouldn't be editing Misplaced Pages if you have no clue what NPOV means." and "I've rarely seen such irrationality or been subjected to such sustained personal attack. NathanLee's comment that if only animal welfare issues could be left out, the article would be much easier to work on, takes the biscuit and is the final straw." , and "Both of the attacks, sarcasm, filibustering, and obfuscation on this page are from you and Nathan, as I recall. Perhaps it's time to start collecting diffs."
- "It almost has the sense of a WP:POINT to it — that, because his scholarly/non-scholarly thing was opposed, he's going to make damn sure he gets to make some changes anyway, and will scream WP:OWN if he doesn't." and "Tim Vickers's attempt to strengthen it to the point of requiring all uncited material to be removed would have been absurd, which is why it was quickly reverted, and that why he's pissed off. People arriving to edit policies who know nothing about them isn't helpful, and it's not WP:OWN to undo the damage. I probably won't comment here again because this is part of Tim's forest fire, and part of the POINT that I sense is going on"
- "Viriditas, please make sure you know what you're talking about before weighing in"
- "I will take you to the ArbCom if you try to do at the Holocaust what you've done elsewhere. You're not going to be allowed to reduce the article to the usual badly written POV claim versus POV counter-claim, then tagged when you don't get your own way." "you stalked me to the Holocaust in the first place (an article you hadn't edited recently but I had edited a lot), to the point where I had to tell you I would take you to the ArbCom if it continued; then you later stalked me to a policy page I had edited a lot and you had never edited." , and "You don't know the first thing about the Holocaust. I doubt you've read a single scholarly work on it in your life. Yet you feel you can turn up, because you want to stalk me,"
- "I won't be responding here anymore. I think you're into disruption rather than editing."
- "CJC never misses a chance to get a dig in, and I'm very surprised at you responding to his call for help, and you did with Homey when he was causing trouble"
- "I don't know whether you're deliberately stirring this up, or just not thinking straight."
- "Gurch, you need to stop your trolling and your hyperbole."
- "I don't know who you think you are, but I would like you to stop the personal attacks, the stupid accusations, and the sly innuendo against me, and don't ever remove one of my posts, or anyone else's, again. Apart from anything else, you're making a fool of yourself, if that matters to you."
2006
- "It was undone because you made a mess of it"
- Attacks an administrator during a image license/deletion debate. First, tries to tell administrator to leave the discussion , then accuses him of making an attack , then implies that he isn't acting in good faith , then attacks him as a "Misplaced Pages Review contributor and supporter and the very worst of both worlds" , and claims that the editor "has a grudge" against her and is conducting a personal attack and trolling , repeats that the administrator is "trolling" and adds that he is "out to cause trouble" , then asks of the administrator, "is there any need for you to continue to post here?" , and then adds, "No, you don't have to post here. Doing so simply deepens the impression that you are, indeed, trying to cause trouble." , then refers to the administrator as one of a group of "lunatics and trolls"
- (during content dispute) "If you continue with this kind of editing, I'll either seek administrative intervention or I'll initiate the dispute resolution process against you"
- After an uninvolved, established editor is asked to look into the content dispute issues surrounding the New anti-Semitism article , the editor offers to help (note, this edit has apparently been admin deleted). SV asks him to stay away as a "sign of your good faith" and then threatens the editor that, "If you want me to assume there is no good faith, fair enough, but understand there will be consequences" . Reported to ANI . Later accuses the editor of "simply an attempt to cause trouble."
- "you're here only because you stalked me here, not because you're familiar with the subject." and "don't stalk me, and answer the question on your talk page regarding whose sockpuppet you are" in an edit summary . (Note: Editor was later blocked by SlimVirgin as a sock puppet ).
- Starts thread on another admin's user page titled, "Your nonsense" and says, "You have no knowledge of the subject, and you're therefore not in a position to know whether it's a "propaganda piece" or not. Now, once again, you're supporting an editor who engages in personal attacks by engaging in them yourself." and "Stay away from me, don't comment on me, don't support trolls who are baiting me, don't use your sysop tools when you're involved in a content dispute, and don't launch personal attacks on other good editors. Then all will be well." . SV's comments were apparently in response to this post
- "I've never been able to make you understand our content policies, and I have no desire to try again."
- "I'm not aware of any useful edits he makes" about an editor with an extensive and established editing history
- Personal attacks mentioned in an ANI thread (diffs are apparently unavailable, see )
- Accusation made during an ArbCom request is refuted by an editor in userspace
Disruptive or bad faith editing
Most of the following examples appear to illustrate WP:OWN issues on policy and article pages or a pro-animal rights POV by SV (Note: The Animal rights WikiProject which SV founded has an openly POV agenda .):
- Tag team edit warring with Crum375 at WP:ATT: . Talk page discussion for context . (May 08)
- Deletes almost an entire "list" article and labels the edit as "minor" (Apr 08)
- Although SV usually insists on other editors having "consensus" before making policy or guideline changes (see below), SV does not always follow her own rule. At WP:LAYOUT, she tried to force a change to the page without consensus on the talk page, discussed at ANI (Feb 08)
- Reverts edit at WP:BLP, saying "silence doesn't mean assent." Editor had posted proposed wording change the day before on talk page and had been extensively discussed and accepted by other editors except for SlimVirgin (Jan 08)
- Removes another editor's comment during an ArbCom talk page discussion . (Jan 08)
- Requests mediation in a content dispute , which is accepted in spite of SV's false allegation that RfCs had already been attempted , and a mediator volunteers but then SV does not participate, without explanation, and the mediation is closed (Jan 08)
- Makes significant change to WP:NOR, including removal of entire paragraph, with misleading edit summary , discussed here and then reverts other editors' changes, stating that they must have "consensus" first before making the changes discussed here and then reverts changes made from a talk page discussion that she did not participate in (Dec 07)
- Edits WP:POLICY, stating in edit summary that, "restored this section to a pre-October 29 version" . Her version, however, was missing text from the October 29 version . When an editor attempts to restore some of the material that she deleted SV reverts him with edit summary "please seek clear consensus for the changes" (Dec 07)
- Removes cited material during content dispute at Animal testing, saying, "either find more sources that say that (preferably specialist sources) or leave it out" . After second and third confirmatory sources are added, Crum375 tries to POV massage the material including another revert and SlimVirgin helps with more POV edits (Dec 07)
- Rejects cited material in a content dispute she is involved in at Animal testing, stating that the "authors have almost certainly just made a mistake" (full discussion ) (Dec 07)
- Inserts a negative comment in the middle of someone else's response in an AfD discussion (Aug 07)
- Inserts a negative comment in the middle of someone else's response in a policy dispute talk page discussion (Aug 07)
- WP:OWN of policy page documented at WP:AN . (Jul 07)
Redirects "ALF" to Animal Liberation Front in spite of evidence that this is incorrect and against policy (WP:DAB) . Community involvement required to correct the redirect . Then, continues to try to fight community consensus by again redirecting and resurrecting the discussion (almost this entire page is her and Crum375 unsuccessfully trying to argue that their redirect opinion on "ALF" is the correct one). During this time, does nine move-over redirects of page . She still didn't give up, requiring intervention by additional editors . (Jun 07)
- Removes an editor's question from a policy talk page
- Removes someone's comment from an RfA labeling it as "idle pontification" (Jun 07)
- Deletes my post from WP:AN announcing the opening of my RfC . When I asked her on her user talk page why she deleted the post, she immediately deleted the question without responding, then archived her talk page (these diffs were subsequently admin deleted by Crum375 but the times and text are here) (Jun 07)
- Redirects Intensive farming to Factory farming and labels it as minor edit then, after being reverted redirects again, stating that "no, these terms are used interchangeably; see factory farming talk page; it is absurd to have three articles on the same topic" although there is clearly no agreement on the talk page for this redirect (almost this entire archived page is debate over having Factory farming and Intensive farming as two separate articles). More discussions on Factory farming dispute are here and here (May 07)
- Deletes editor's comment during an RfA (May 07)
- After a lengthy tag team revert war on the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals page (involving Crum375), a request for sock puppet investigation of SlimVirgin/Crum375 was deleted by SlimVirgin citing "quit it" (May 07)
- Reverts established editor's comments from a talk page discussion (May 07)
- Edits the blocking policy to provide support for the block threat made by Crum375 around the same time over the posting of the name of an off-wiki website at the center of a debate in which SlimVirgin is involved. (Apr 07)
- At Zoo, removes cited material because disagrees with the quote and because she doesn't have actual possession of the book used as a source (Feb 07)
- Deletes Category:Animal rights activists without discussion , then reverts editor who restores it , then redirects it to Category:Animal rights movement , then redirects again saying, falsely "as agreed" , and redirects again (Dec 06)
- Move redirects new article List of animal rights activists to Animal rights movement (list) 03:31, 24 December 2006) then redirects to Animal liberation movement without copying over any of the material from the original article , effectively making it disappear (Dec 06)
- Removed editor's comment from article talk page (Oct 06)
- WP:OWN of New anti-Semitism article reported to ArbCom . ArbCom declined to hear the case as it was determined to be a content dispute . (Oct 06)
- When asked to answer questions posed by the mediator concerning POV editing during mediation for New anti-Semitism, SV doesn't answer them and quickly archives the talk page discussion as "toxic" . During this mediation, which fails to progress, another editor takes it to ArbCom, which rejects it (Oct 06)
- Removes someone's comment from a policy talk page , then reverts it again . (Sep 06)
- Moves policy talk subpage which lists the policy's historical editing data points to an editor's userspace then twice deletes the redirects (Sep 06)
- Deletes comments from policy talk page and posts them on the editor's talk page while telling the editor that he is "trolling". Although this editor was later indef blocked he was under no restriction at the time he made the post. (Aug 06)
- Asks an editor as part of the "dispute resolution process" to stay away from discussion on a policy talk page (Aug 06)
- Deletes editor's comments from one of the Administrator's Noticeboards (May 06)
- Closes AfD as "speedy keep" even though consensus was to delete . Discussed at ANI (May 06)
- Removes editor's comments from an article talk page discussion (Note: SV's removal was reverted by another editor with the edit summary "Deleting talk page material = vandalism." ) Discussed at ANI . (May 06)
- Edit warring at Animal rights . (Apr 06)
Lying
In addition to the two statements during my RfA which I have already discussed, SV has made untrue statements on several other occasions:
- Requests mediation during a content dispute and states, falsely, that "several article RfCs" had occurred previously
- Redirects Category:Animal rights activists with edit summary "as agreed" . There was no discussion on the category's talk page related to redirecting the category and discussion at Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion two months prior was "no consensus"
- During dispute at WP:V claims that opposing editors are "engaged in all kinds of unpleasant tactics, including personal attacks and starting forest fires in an effort to wear people down" without providing evidence . There appears to be no evidence to support this accusation.
- During content dispute over "see also" section, accuses editor of, "moving from article to article to remove See alsos that you don't like" . Editor's user history shows no evidence of doing this .
- During dispute over deletion/restoration of an article, falsely accuses another admin of deleting the article twice
Abusive sockpuppetry
- Used a sockpuppet, Sweet Blue Water to manipulate a featured article nomination by voting twice . Discussed at ANI .
This incident happened three years ago. However, it is significant for two reasons. The first is that SV's RfA took place only two months later. SV did not reveal during the RfA that she had violated the community's trust in this way only two months before. If this had been known, the RfA may not have been successful. Interestingly, SV later suggested performing random checkusers on RfA candidates .
Second, SV has blocked other editors for sockpuppetry . The hypocrisy issue here is obvious. Note that one month before the incident SV had criticized another editor for perhaps doing something similar, "At least I don't pretend to be more than one person. Featured article status tends to be awarded based on numbers of objections, so if you're pretending to lodge more than one, you're cheating." and "They're pretending to be different users when they are almost certainly the same one. That must count as cheating" , said to another editor, "That's one of the reasons I object to sock puppets" , and supported actions taken against another abusive sockpuppet . As far as I know, SV has never explained why she did this to the community or apologized.
Questionable use of administrator privileges
- Moves editing content and history related to dispute she was involved in to the animal rights project forum of which she is the founder , edit wars over location of discussion, then admin deletes original discussion (visible to admins)
- Protects WP:V policy page during dispute in which she is involved then edits the protected page . Reported to ANI
- Protects the talk page of Carl Hewitt , stating that, "As the article is currently protected from editing, there's no need for this to be open at the moment anyway" .
- Admin deletes Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Carl Hewitt for "BLP concerns" . When asked to provide evidence of BLP concerns, does not respond and page is restored
- Reverts approximately three months of edits from an article then protects it , reason stated is "because of multiple sockpuppet edits"
- Uses admin deletion to conceal a page in her userspace used to monitor other editors without them being aware of it . More details below .
- Wheel wars with Doc glasgow over a block for an image fair use violation stating, "no basis in the blocking policy for this block." An ANI discussion later confirms Doc's block as valid and SV admits that, "I don't want to get involved in the fair-use debate, because I know nothing about it," .
- Secretive block of an editor , including protection of the blocked editor's talk page so that he couldn't post any more unblock requests
Cabalism?
SV used to be listed as the administrator for this mailing list. The existence of this list was unknown to most active Wikipedians until it was revealed during the Durova ArbCom case. The members of the list have been described as consisting of " a few admins, one or two checkusers, and a couple of arbitrators (not to mention a steward/Foundation person)."
Several established editors have stated that some of what went on on that list apparently wasn't completely above board. One stated, "SlimVirgin, one thing that you have still left unaddressed is how you are the administrator of WpCyberstalking - the Mailman page explicitly identified the sole administrator as "slimvirgin at gmail.com" until it was changed after its existence went public - and you yourself have been responsible for some of the most deplorable uses of the list, slinging mud at and defaming contributors to this project in a closed forum - I'm looking right at a post by you calling me a "troll enabler" and exhorting "Let the Krimpets block the good editors and unblock the stalkers." , "I do think people should be aware that the list's administrator not only condones the witch hunting and mud-flinging; she actively partakes in it." .
Another editor who belonged to this list said, "I was subscribed to the "Misplaced Pages and Cyberstalking" mailing list from October 10 until October 17. I joined because I believed it to be a group for those who have been stalked on Misplaced Pages. After waiting for a few days, I realized it was for none of these things, and I unsubbed never to go back there." She added in a message to the other list participants, " Y'know, this endless cycle of bitterness, anger and wikipolitics really isn't helping matters" . In a cryptic remark made on July 11, 2007 FeloniousMonk tells another editor, "A good number of we admins have watching this from the sidelines for several months now, so don't make the mistake thinking that you're going to continue on like this at FA unopposed... the cat is out of the bag." .
I asked Jimbo, who stated that he was a member of the list, if it was ever used to canvass support for issues on Misplaced Pages. In his answer he stated that the main purpose of the list was to combat cyberstalking and "the list absolutely was used to canvass support for issues under discussion in Misplaced Pages. I can't imagine that anyone could imagine that any discussion could be otherwise." .
So, did SV and other members use this list or others to facilitate imposing their will on portions of Misplaced Pages? The current evidence is circumstantial. My RfA, for example, stood at 40/0/4 after six days and just before it was scheduled to close . After SV managed to get it extended for 24 hours, it received 18 oppose votes within the next 12 hours. Some of the opposers names may be familiar to those following this case , , , , and .
A similar pattern has happened elsewhere. Notice that some of the first few oppose votes are some of the same people listed in the diffs above and are made within a few hours of each other. Note here and here also. Of course, many of the names in these lists are different, but many are the same, and their arrival at the issue is often within hours of it opening. Here's an example of the same editors all arriving to support an RfA within a few hours of each other . Here, several of the same editors quickly join with SV in advocating the banning of another editor. For right now, though, the evidence remains circumstantial. It should be pointed out that the CyberStalking mailing list did not exist yet when some of the events mentioned above occurred.
The RfC draft
On March 21, 2008, I started a draft RfC in my userspace . In order to make sure that it didn't appear that I was starting a secret attack page, I posted a notice on my talk page and notified other editors about the draft. Several responded that they didn't wish to take part , several responded with helpful edits and several responded by email. As I posted potential evidence I used some unprofessional edit summaries with some of the edits, as noted by SV above. She's right to be offended by those edit summaries, and I've apologized for them and promised not to repeat the behavior .
The RfC was, and still is, in draft form. Some of the evidence presented there probably would not make it to the final RfC that was officially posted. The same occurred with the draft for JzG's RfC. For example, the section on JzG's alternate editing account was completely excised. I soon realized after beginning the draft of SV's RfC that some of the section headings were too pejorative and I modified them. I believe, however, that the evidence supports the main gist of what those section headings currently state and, for the most part, I've used almost identical section headings in my evidence section above. Before posting the JzG RfC, I gave JzG a chance to review it and identify anything that he thought was wrong or unfair . I planned to also give SV a chance to review her RfC and voice any objections to the content it contained before I posted it.
On or around April 17, 2008 an editor suggested that I continue drafting the RfC off-wiki. I blanked the page , but I didn't continue drafting the RfC off-wiki, because I decided that if there were no more problems from SV, then the situation was resolved, and continuing with dispute resolution wasn't necessary.
In May, however, I discovered that the problematic behavior was continuing , so I restarted the RfC draft . I notice that SV calls it an "attack" page. If I never planned on posting the RfC, I would agree with her that it was an attack page. I planned, however, on posting the RfC for community discussion. Judging from the evidence, much of which is posted above, and feedback I received from other editors, I believe community comment was warranted and appropriate.
SV's "attack page" assertion
One thing puzzles me about SV's assertion that the draft RfC is an "attack page". SV has the following page in her userspace, currently admin deleted . The contents of that page are below. It appears to be a list of some sort. The last account on the list below, Marvin Diode, is currently active and has a clean block log.
- A reproduction of an admin deleted page was posted here by Cla68; I have removed it because 1) it has been admin-deleted, 2) the entire page contents are not needed as evidence. John Vandenberg 20:44, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
I asked Marvin if he knew that his editing was being monitored by SV on a page in her userspace. He replied that had not been aware of it .
Note: Most of the contents of the page have been posted off-wiki:
Interestingly, SV demanded that another editor delete a similar page that he had in his userspace (admin deleted). Discussed at ANI .
Another page, oversighted?
SV has another page in her userspace here. This page has, apparently, been oversighted. The only clue that we have as to what might be on that page is this comment to SV on her userpage from another editor (currently admin deleted):
“ | Please stop harassing me:
You accusations of sockpuppetry against me have gone way overboard. It appears that you have embarked on a mission to label every anonymous IP or single-use account that has edited any page I have ever touched to be one of my sockpuppets, as well as labelling anyone with the temerity to challenge you publically as such. You have little (in many cases no) evidence to support these claims, other than a spurious "Contributions" link. It would appear from Misplaced Pages and various other public forums that you have many enemies, but blaming me for every nasty thing that happens on Misplaced Pages is unwise and unreasonable. It is unwise as it conveniantly blames one person (me) for everything you don't like, rather than the multitude who you have offended; and it is unreasonable, as the accounts/IPs you label as sockpuppets have, in many cases, made numerous contributions to articles with which I have no history, and in most other cases have done nothing offensive whatsoever. I have no doubt that, as an administrator and immune from scrutiny, that you will change your behaviour, but I will say this:
The situation with User:Anomicene was unfortunate (and I won't explain it because you wouldn't believe me anyway), but you more than anyone, are now in danger of fostering a permanent state of ill-will, and I suggest that, as you have counselled others so often, just move on, or failing that, please apply more diligence to finding your perpetrator(s), as it is not I. -- Gnetwerker 17:00, 13 August 2006 (UTC) |
” |
I've requested more information on this page from the arbitrators , but so far they haven't responded.
FeloniousMonk
I notice that several editors have presented evidence showing a continuous and problematic pattern of behavior by FeloniousMonk (FM), most of which I wasn't aware of. The evidence that they present, however, fits what I myself have seen of his behavior. FT2 has asked us to show how the parties in this case are involved. Well, what I've found is that FM has helped enable some of SV's problematic behavior and they have both supported each other at times in attacking other editors. Supporting evidence is provided below.
The support for each other appears to have gone on for some time. Here, in 2005, FM joins SV and Jayjg in a wheel war over blocking an editor. Here, the same three wheel war over the admin deletion of an article. Furthermore, while researching for the RfC on SV, I discovered this personal attack by FM on SandyGeorgia . When Sandy politely asked him about it , SV responded instead with another personal attack . I haven't seen anything at all anywhere that supports the accusations these two leveled at Sandy in those attacks, or any apology or retraction by either one of them, so I politely but directly asked FM about it on his userpage . FM deleted the question without responding .
Later, I discovered another instance of SV and FM joining each other in personally attacking another editor. SV starts off with these: , , , , , , , , (note: these are also presented above in the SV evidence section) FM then arrives and launches a couple of his own against the same editor, and . I posted these diffs to the draft RfC at 07:23 on 14 May 2008 . Note that I mentioned FM's name in the edit summary. The same day, FM initiated this ArbCom request .
I've since noticed that FM has tried to misuse the dispute resolution procedure before against editors that he has issues with. On 18 July, 2007 FM endorsed an RfC here on Gnixon. That RfC makes for interesting reading. Most of the outside editors that responded to the RfC noted that the "evidence" was actually more incriminating against FM and the other certifiers and endorsers than it was against Gnixon .
FM's evidence during his initial arbitration request apparently contains at least one falsehood. He states that I emailed Tim Vickers about a 3RR warning on December 17, 2007 . (Note also that FM admin protected the page ). Tim has confirmed that this statement isn't true . After leaving this false assertion in the evidence for several days, FM has now removed it .
My remarks on Misplaced Pages Review about a danger of the press outing about certain editors was a reference to this post by Moulton discussing press attention. Unfortunately, FM responded to this by making an actual, thinly veiled threat on my userpage, "were I in your shoes I would make every effort to ensure that the article outing Misplaced Pages editors you are referring to does not come to pass."
FeloniousMonk's evidence
I often emphasize the importance of taking accountability for one's own actions. Of course, if I truly mean that then I should be willing and able to apply that to myself also. Looking over FeloniousMonk's (FM) evidence, I don't think that most of it holds much water. I do notice, however, that some of it does show instances where I crossed the line and acted wrongfully. Below I list those incidences in which I agree that I was wrong. I invite SlimVirgin and FM to do the same with my evidence and with the evidence presented by others on this userpage.
- . A personal attack on MONGO.
- I deleted this comment soon after I made it, but still, I was wrong to say this to MONGO.
- "once respected contributor". This is a personal attack against SlimVirgin.
- "acted in bad faith". Since I didn't provide any evidence for this assertion at the time, it amounts to a personal attack.
I formally apologize to MONGO and SlimVirgin for making those statements listed in this section above. I was wrong to say them.
Animal testing and Tim Vickers: I had Tim's user page on my watchlist because of previous interaction between us. When I saw the 3RR warning, it didn't look right to me, because Tim is one of our top editors for featured content and one of the most patient, courteous, and considerate active contributors in the project. After posting the warning for discussion at ANI, I put the Animal testing page on my watchlist to see if there were any further problems. Although I put the page on my watchlist around December 17, 2007, I didn't involve myself in the talk page discussion at that time. On January 18, 2008 after observing a month of SV and Crum375 belittling and fighting Tim's attempts to add NPOV, cited material to the article, I finally got involved. In response, SV immediately requested mediation in which she then did not participate, without providing an explanation. Since that time, the Animal testing article has progressed to Good Article status, a point to which I doubt it ever would have progressed without intervention from other editors. Although I have observed SV, often joined by Crum375, pushing POV (diffs above in my main evidence section) in other animal rights related articles such as Zoo, Factory farming, and PETA, I did not involve myself in these article disputes.
Response to Tom Harrison
The situation with the Swalwell, Alberta article has been covered already in JzG's, DanT's and FM's evidence sections. Tom didn't link to the entire AN thread for context, which is here . I openly discussed that AN thread with MONGO on my talk page shortly after it took place .
The point that I and others were trying to make is that protecting an article about some town in Canada for undisclosed (secret) reasons is misguided and counterproductive. It only serves to make people more curious about the article, because they'll wonder why it's protected for no apparent reason and so trolls will be more attracted to try to cause trouble with it. Time will tell if I and the others taking this position were right or not, but the article was unprotected on February 4, 2008 and, as DanT pointed out, the page history shows no vandalism since then .
Evidence presented by Jehochman
Cla68 has received multiple barnstars, and helped write or create featured content and new content. They were denied sysop privileges due to cliquish opposition led by SlimVirgin which snowballed to include constructive editors outside the clique, many of whom cited "per SlimVirgin". One of the main issues was Cla68's view on Wordbomb. Little more than two hours prior to the scheduled close of Cla68's RFA, voting stood at 40/1/4. Then SV requested the RFA be extended, and poisoned the well. The RFA closed 24 hours late at 41/30/8. I find this result to be highly irregular and very contrary to the principles of Misplaced Pages.
Ultimately Cla68's views were partially vindicated at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence. Any hostility by Cla68 towards other editors needs to be considered within the context of the egregious mistreatment suffered by Cla68. Jehochman 13:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by User:B
Inappropriate use of admin tools by FeloniousMonk
FeloniousMonk (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) was previously admonished by arbcom not to use the administrative tools in content disputes where he is involved. See Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/WebEx_and_Min_Zhu#FeloniousMonk_admonished.
Despite this admonition, substantially all of FM's admin actions in the last year relate to the Intelligent Design topic area in some way. Since FM himself is less than neutral here, this is obviously a problem. I have only included actions since May 1, 2007 and ignored prior things like wheel warring over blocks of Giovanni33 or Homeontherange.
- 13 May 2008 - Fully protected User:Moulton immediately after adding a litany of false claims. Nobody had edited the page in five months, so there was no disruption reason to protect it.
- 13 May 2008 - Semi-protected Rosalind Picard and semi-protected James Tour even though he is obviously an involved admin and only a single editor who would be affected by semi-protection had edited the article since prior to the recently removed full protection. Semi-protection should not be used to gain an advantage over new users in a content dispute. Even though a checkuser ultimately discovered that the user that he was trying to keep out was socking, FM had no way of knowing that at the time. In no event is it appropriate to semi-protect an article to stop an editor from editing it when that individual is otherwise free to edit Misplaced Pages (not blocked).
- 4 May 2008 - Indefinite block of an IP. While the IP's contributions contained almost nothing but trolling, IP addresses should change and should not be blocked indefinitely. I consider this to be an incorrect use, as opposed to an abuse of the administrative tools.
- 18 April 2008 and 23 April 2008 - Blocks of Schlafly (talk · contribs). At the time of the first block, on April 18, Shlafly had not edited in seven hours. FM was an involved editor both on Eagle Forum and on Phyllis Schlafly and should not have made a decision about a block here. Both of these articles are poorly sourced (when I see a source titled "Phyllis Schlafly's career as a NeoCon" I don't need to look much further). Blocking a user for attempting to remove libel about his mother is a really bad idea. Jimbo said "reverting someone who is trying to remove libel about themselves is a horribly stupid thing to do."
- 1 December 2007 - Full protection of Discovery Institute, where he is obviously an involved user.
- 21 September 2007 - Indefinite block of Ferrylodge (talk · contribs), a block which an arbitration request following the block held was inappropriate. (The "broad support" for the block that Dave Souza claims above was really just the ID Wikiproject. This case was such an extreme example of what was wrong with CSN and why CSN was done away with - a large group of users working together have the power to ban anyone they like with no time for anyone else to even weigh in on it.) FeloniousMonk himself weighed in in support of a ban so he obviously should have left it to a neutral admin. There was no emergency to close the issue other than that given time for review by neutral third parties, there might have been more opposition to the ban.
- 30 August 2007 - Three other indefinite IP blocks - 63.215.27.119, 63.215.27.117, and 4.68.248.69. We don't indef IPs because they can change. Of these, 4.68.248.69 (talk · contribs) has left a message on his talk page and would seem to be in possession of someone other than the user this block was designed to catch. (I have removed that block.) As above, I consider this to be an incorrect use, as opposed to an abuse of the administrative tools.
- 1 May 2007 - Cherry picks a 3RR report by SlimVirgin and blocks G-Dett (talk · contribs). He had previously rushed to SlimVirgin's defense in a dispute with this user . FeloniousMonk almost never makes 3RR blocks and the only WP:AN3 reports he has handled in the last two years were blocking a user reported by Jayjg, the above block of a user reported by SlimVirgin, blocking a user reported by Jayjg, blocking another user reported by Jayjg (same incident), blocking a user reported by Jayjg, blocking Homeontherange aka Homey. Cherry picking reports to handle only those submitted by your friends/allies/whatever is not a good thing.
The actions listed above represent 12 of FM's 40 logged actions since May 1, 2007. --B (talk) 03:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
- Following the above helpful suggestions from Dave souza (talk · contribs), some minor corrections were made here
Evidence presented by User:FNMF
Policy violations and misuse of tools by FeloniousMonk
When I was still very new to Misplaced Pages, I was involved in a dispute about some content included in the entry on Christopher Michael Langan, during which user FeloniousMonk ignored core policies (WP:BLP and WP:NOR) and in the course of which he made an inappropriate block.
FeloniousMonk and his associates acted in concert to try to prevent the removal of material which clearly violated policy and which FeloniousMonk had himself originally added (on January 19, 2007) as part of a campaign against someone he and his associates viewed as an advocate of intelligent design. The material had remained in the article for several months, in spite of a request by the subject of the article to remove the material on the grounds he considered it libelous. A small group of editors including FeloniousMonk had made clear their intention of retaining the material in spite of this objection and in spite of the great likelihood that inclusion of this material violated Misplaced Pages policy. This group of editors treated the objections of Mr Langan with contempt, and frequently gave spurious explanations as to why the material should be included.
I am not at all a supporter of intelligent design theory, nor am I an associate of Mr Langan, but I considered the entry to be a calumny against its subject, and therefore unsuccessfully attempted to remove the offending material, arguing on the article talk page for the necessity of doing so. Although there was concerted action by FeloniousMonk and others which amounted to an inappropriate attack on myself, the offending material was eventually removed, when user:Jimbo Wales made clear his opinion and removed the material himself. This removal was not challenged directly, although involved editors indicated they disagreed with Mr Wales (even though he was clearly quite correct in his judgment of the policy violation involved). Instead, they began another campaign against the subject of the article and against myself, eventually resulting in the inappropriate block by FeloniousMonk. The block against me made by FeloniousMonk was inappropriate: (1) because it was without grounds; (2) because he was very involved with the dispute at the time; and (3) because it was part of an attempt by him to inappropriately control an article precisely in order to retain material which violated policy.
All this occurred just over a year ago: I was unaware at the time I was blocked that FeloniousMonk had previously been admonished by ArbCom for misuse of administrative tools, and I have never previously bothered to pursue the matter in any official forum. I am confident that any impartial and thorough perusal of this evidence will confirm that the actions of FeloniousMonk were inappropriate and in violation of Misplaced Pages policy, but how relevant this is to the present Arbitration case I leave to the judgment of the Committee.
The story is somewhat complex, so I include some links to material explaining the context.
- The issue of whether to include the policy-violating material led, among other things, to contact with Mr Jimmy Wales. See here.
- As a consequence of this contact, Mr Wales made this positive intervention, which he explained clearly here.
- Further clear explanations by Mr Wales here and here.
- Timeline of events leading to my block by FeloniousMonk.
- Block discussion.
- Jimbo Wales gave his opinion of the block here. As can be seen, he disagreed with the block, and indicated he considered the matter worthy of further discussion.
- Eventually the block was overturned by another (uninvolved) administrator, who explains his reasons for overturning the block here. As can be seen, he clearly and strongly disapproved of FeloniousMonk's action.
I will add that harassment by FeloniousMonk and his fellow travellers eventually led me to quit Misplaced Pages, but that is another (related) story. FNMF (talk) 01:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by User:Random832
On Oversight
Since r22683, there is no mechanism for the arbitrators to evaluate claims about old actions taken using the oversight tool. As such, people should refrain from introducing claims either about the tool being abused or about past accusations of this being without merit.
Re: Ashton1983
Some of the diffs which led to these summaries seem quite harmless. For example this led to "you've got to be kidding me" - No. 18.
Are you reading the diff for comprehension? I see her declaring that she unilaterally has the right to - without anything supporting it but her own opinion - declare that an author has "made a mistake" and therefore shouldn't be cited for statements she personally disagrees with. It's a wholesale discarding of the verifiability policy, and IMO deserves stronger language than "you've got to be kidding me".
Evidence presented by Mackan79
Scope and summary
As an initial matter, I am not sure that ArbCom should have taken this. If SV is unhappy about the RfC page, she could ask for it to be brought or held privately without the need for arbitration. In the RfC itself of course there is much that could be heard, but the RfC remains incomplete. As such it isn't clear that ArbCom needs to address this either, rather than leaving it to the community for now. With ArbCom as a last step in dispute resolution, there are many reasons for exhausting community approaches first, that can benefit everyone involved. I imagine one reason for the RfC is that there have been virtually no such attempts to deal with these issues, despite widespread and longstanding concerns.
If it is going to hear the case, I'll attempt to summarize my concerns with some additional evidence, particularly as the case has now been brought against Cla68 for his efforts. My view is ultimately that the issues should be simple. SlimVirgin is in one sense an editor who has simply crossed many lines many times that editors should be called on to respect. The things that complicate it seem to be less her actions than those of others, which have encouraged the community to give enormous leeway (see the deletion of her talk page for one example). The Mantanmoreland case should have shown another way that can happen, but also how it can be harmful particularly with the perpetual conflict it creates, along with the effect on specific articles. This gets to a second issue, which is the extent of SlimVirgin's involvement in all areas of the project, itself presenting unique issues with her editing, and with how quickly she has accused editors of wikistalking (sometimes just stalking). Third, SV has been willing to go after editors on a personal level to an extent that has made it difficult to comment on her approach, but also hard for those who have seen it just to watch it continue. In truth the majority of this hasn't been as bad recently; it seems SV is attempting to some degree to be more reasonable with other editors. Considering the initiation of this case, however, it seems the underlying issues need to be addressed.
If that is done, and if SV's actions as illustrated by Cla68 are looked at as any other editor, I think it will be clear that her editing for some time has shown a serious disregard for other editors, combined with recurrent breaches of community trust, that need recognition. I add a few more examples (some involving myself) to Cla68's evidence below, while attempting to stay within the context of his RfC.
Personal attacks by SlimVirgin
- Accuses an editor of "plagiarism" and "intellectual dishonesty" during an AfD for having moved content from one article to another, says she will not stop.
- In contentious dispute on how ALF should feature Animal Liberation Front, tells long-term editor on other side he appears to be committing "wikisuicide," in conjunction with similar comments from Crum375.
- Accuses editor of blackmail for rejecting mediation. (Editor had apparently, though irrelevantly, retired one account to start another).
- Falsely accuses editor of wikistalking her to a page two months later, and after initially supporting a mediation in which the editor's contributions were strongly praised by the mediator SV chose, to justify excluding that and another editor from a second mediation after disappearing from the first; also associated false and incendiary statements that she refused to support or retract.
- In dispute at Holocaust, loudly accuses another long-term editor of stalking her there and elsewhere with remarkably similar comments as above, says he knows nothing about the subject.
- Recently accuses long term admin of wikistalking to several articles.
Deceptive/battleground editing by SlimVirgin
- Sockpuppetry in featured article nominations, not just in isolation, but after taking a strong stance against sockpuppetry as cheating, and noting its corrupting effect in featured article nominations. and after:
- After an involved disagreement on one page, following a new editor to another page for the first time to revert the editor several times, before reading the material, bringing in two close friends to semi-protect the page and assist in revert warring, then accusing the editor of a complex 3RR violation including an uncontested edit and claiming other IPs in nearby states could be him.
- Returning to the same page and being rebuked by several editors for doing the same thing again.
- Revert warring dozens of times along with Crum375 to keep a disputed image on Factory Farming.
- Attempting to marginalize editors through deceptive talk page edits.
- Reusing talkpage actions that drew significant ire from editors on one page with new editors shortly after.
- Following discussion about whether WordBomb posted identifying information after agreeing to hold for mediation and before he was blocked, requests from someone with oversight the specific times that WordBomb edited on his first day and presents it as evidence suggesting WordBomb violated policy at times which would have followed his agreement. When questioned extensively whether this is accurate, eventually says she does not know and fails to see what difference it makes, without explaining then why she acquired and presented specific information about oversighted edits.
- Disrupting talk page continuity, edit warring over it, saying "don't move my posts again," using archive function two minutes later, commented on by another editor.
- Pressuring an editor in a policy discussion to explain how he would feel if someone assembled enough personal information from his edits to identify him and then posted it on Misplaced Pages, then acknowledging the editor had already expressed this as a serious concern.
Use of friends to protect pages by SlimVirgin
What I have seen of SlimVirgin's editing suggests she does not violate admin guidelines herself, but that she has very often had friends come in to protect pages inappropriately. The first example of this I saw (to my personal amazement) is point 2 in the above subsection, where after SV followed me to an obscure article she had never edited and ran out of reverts, Jayjg entered also for the first time seven minutes later and semi-protected the page, before Humus sapiens then added another revert on her behalf. The series of edits, including SV and Jayjg's first edits in the page history, is seen here, and occurred three months after all three of these editors were admonished and reminded by ArbCom to seek dispute resolution earlier (see wording here).
At the same time, it is clear that Crum375 has more recently been used for this purpose, as is seen in their protection log. In fact, Crum375 said in their RfA that protecting pages was one of the primary tasks that they anticipated doing. As it turns out, the first two protections by Crum375 were unrelated to SlimVirgin. However, the third, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth, all on different days, were all pages directly related to SlimVirgin (three pages SV was editing, one related page SV would edit, and one user talk page of an account that personally attacked SV). The eighth remained protected on a reversion by SV through a protracted two and a half month dispute, where Crum375 also presented page history statistics after SV insisted that only the page's heaviest editors should participate in mediation. Crum375's next six protections came on the same day from RfP. However, about a week later came Batman, followed in four hours by WP:RS, WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:ATT, WP:ATT/P, and WP:ATT/P/header, all relating to discussions heavily involving SV. Of the next 13 pages protected by Crum375 from April through June of 2007, two are unrelated to SV (Transnistria and Scuba diving). The remaining eleven include five user talk pages, five articles or dab pages to articles SV was editing (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals x 2, Birkenau, Martin Luther, Jerusalem x 3, New antisemitism) and one article SV would later edit (Anna Svidersky).
Crum375 has since been somewhat more varied in the articles they protect, although an SSP case had already been filed a month earlier. All of this would seem relevant in showing that SV does not generally herself violate rules of adminship, but that a pattern here should nonetheless be of concern.
Evidence presented by Jacina
SV/FM et al in action
Discussion was a standard copyright issue until, completely out of the blue, SV/FM/JzG are all "under attack" and start randomly attacking everyone that comes in and agrees with the copyright issue. The attack procedure is quite visible here. Accuse, accuse until your opponent retaliates in kind and THEN jump all over them with policy.Jacina (talk) 14:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Shalom
SlimVirgin deleted User:Zordrac/Poetlister for an invalid reason
- Zordrac (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Internodeuser (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Zordrac's old account)
Starting on or shortly after December 22, 2005, User:Zordrac wrote a long report, User:Zordrac/Poetlister, to request the unblocking of User:Poetlister, User:RachelBrown, User:Londoneye, User:Taxwoman and User:Newport. Based on checkuser evidence, these users had all been blocked as sockpuppets of one another.
Zordrac explained: "Partially to try to disprove Antaeus and Lulu's lies, I made User:Zordrac/Poetlister, so as to demonstrate that it was not about them. I was not doing this to attack anyone. I was doing it to help people."
On January 7, 2007, SlimVirgin deleted User:Zordrac/Poetlister as an "attack page." This reason was invalid. At the time, CSD G10 stated:
- Attack pages. Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Q. Doe is an imbecile"). This includes a biography of a living person that is negative in tone and unsourced, where there is no NPOV version in the history to revert to.
SlimVirgin implied that User:Zordrac/Poetlister "served no other purpose but to disparage" her. This is wrong. SlimVirgin should not have deleted this page as an "attack page." (She was permitted to delete it under CSD G5: "Banned user. Pages created by banned users while they were banned." See next section.) SlimVirgin's unilateral deletion was especially problematic because she was directly involved in a content dispute with RachelBrown and Poetlister, for which Zordrac criticized SlimVirgin in his report.
SlimVirgin indef-blocked Zordrac for an invalid reason
In January 2006, Zordrac was blocked as a sockpuppet of Internodeuser, who had been banned for one year in Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Internodeuser. The ban on Internodeuser took effect on May 27, 2005, and was set to expire one year later. Since Zordrac's last edit was on January 17, 2006, his ban was reset to expire on January 17, 2007. Zordrac/Internodeuser continued to evade his ban by editing as Blissyu2 (talk · contribs) and by vandalizing the Arbitration ruling against himself.
To confirm that Zordrac was free to resume editing, administrator User:One posted to User talk:Zordrac on February 19, 2007: "Just so you know, you're no longer banned." One week later on February 26, 2007, Zordrac resumed editing. He archived his talk page, made two article edits, and created a subpage, User:Zordrac/goodbye. None of these edits can be considered problematic.
SlimVirgin indef-blocked Zordrac on February 27, 2007 "for obvious reasons." Golbez unblocked but then reblocked. See block log:
- 01:55, 27 February 2007 SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs) blocked "Zordrac (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite (for obvious reasons)
- 11:53, 27 February 2007 Golbez (Talk | contribs) unblocked Zordrac (Talk | contribs) (time has been served; you will have to show a specific reason or a community ban or arbcom decision to do this)
- 14:07, 27 February 2007 Golbez (Talk | contribs) blocked "Zordrac (Talk | contribs)" (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite (on second thought, i will not enter a wheel war, and there are other circumstances beyond the old arbcom ruling)
Although SlimVirgin's decision to indef-block Zordrac was not a wheel war against One according to the policy as of 27 February 2007, it was wrong. Golbez's unblock reason needs no explanation, and the "other circumstances beyond the old arbcom ruling" were far from "obvious" to an uninformed reader. Even though SlimVirgin's decision to indef-block Zordrac was upheld, her method of blocking Zordrac without warning or explanation, after Zordrac had been explicitly invited to return, was extremely inappropriate.
SlimVirgin protected the user talk pages of indef-blocked users without a valid reason
On March 11, 2007, in order to deny Zordrac the opportunity to request an unblock using the standard template, SlimVirgin protected User talk:Zordrac. She did not explain why this unusual action was necessary.
In a similar incident, on January 26, 2007, SlimVirgin declined an unblock request by User:Everwill, whom JzG hadblocked as a sockpuppet of User:Raspor. Then she immediately protected the user talk page and directed Everwill to appeal to her by email. Based on email correspondence, SlimVirgin agreed to give Everwill a second chance, and after Everwill violated the conditions of his second chance, SlimVirgin again blocked the user and protected his talk page. The first protection of User talk:Everwill was unwarranted. SlimVirgin could have discussed the matter on-wiki, or she could have allowed Everwill to request unblock from a second administrator.
In another similar incident, on September 1, 2006, SlimVirgin blocked User:Xosa as a sockpuppet of User:Zephram Stark. The next day, she declined Xosa's first request for unblock and protected his talk page. JzG unprotected to "Allow dialogue." After much discussion, SlimVirgin protected the page again. The first protection of User talk:Xosa was unwarranted.
On July 7, 2006, SlimVirgin blocked User:WordBomb and protected his talk page just 52 minutes later in response to an edit (later oversighted) by WordBomb. Mackan79 presented this evidence the Mantanmoreland case.
SlimVirgin falsely accused Piperdown of being a sockpuppet
- Piperdown (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive234#Some_sock_puppet_accusers_are_more_equal_than_others
- Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive250#False_accusation_of_sock_puppeting
On April 26, 2007 User:MONGO asked Piperdown if he was a sock puppet. Piperdown complained on WP:ANI.
On May 27, 2007, User:Piperdown posted to WP:ANI to complain that SlimVirgin had labeled him a sockpuppet. (admin only; SlimVirgin's edit summary was "rv sockpuppet".) I supported Piperdown's complaint. SlimVirgin has not explained her inappropriate edit summary. She has not apologized on-wiki to Piperdown for falsely accusing him of being a sockpuppet.
Crum375 deleted the history of User talk:SlimVirgin without a valid reason
- Deletion log of User talk:SlimVirgin
- Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive92#Possible_Admin_abuse_of_tools_to_erase_edit_history_without_Oversight_Privileges
On June 11, 2007, User:Crum375 deleted SlimVirgin's talk page history. On June 19, Piperdown complained on WP:AN that SlimVirgin deleted her user talk history in order to cover up the edit where she falsely accused Piperdown of being a sockpuppet. He wrote:
A query on Crum375's talk page indicated that he/she was removing vandalism from SV's page, which sounds reasonable. Why that would require a deletion/restoration of the entire page, including a 5/27/07 edit by SV on her own talk page, was not explained. ...
Checking the deletion policy I don't see where the policy allows the deletion of an edit history from a user page by circumventing a regular admin loophole to oversight edits is alllowed. Covering up your own mistakes as an admin to prevent scrutiny by making further mistakes in abusing loopholes in wikipedia admin tools should not be tolerated.
SlimVirgin responded:
Crum375 removed an edit that tried to out me (as I understand it; I've not looked at it yet), and then wasn't sure which edits to restore. Similar edits had been deleted in the past, and he was worried about inadvertently undeleting them, so he only undeleted some recent ones. At some point, I aim to go through them and check for the edits that need to stay deleted.
Cla68 argued against SlimVirgin's reason:
I would suggest that anyone, admins or "regular" editors, who desire "outing" or personal attack edits removed from a page in the project ask an oversighter to do it instead of an admin clumsily using the page deletion function. The page deletion function obviously doesn't work well for surgically removing offending edits and it appears that this is what the oversight function was created for.
In response to Piperdown's concerns, User:Prodego restored all revisions of User talk:SlimVirgin, but Crum375 deleted the page again two hours later without explanation. This was an act of wheel warring according to the policy at that time:
A wheel war is a struggle between two or more admins in which they undo another's administrative actions — specifically, ... undeleting and redeleting... . Do not repeat an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it.
Crum375 has not explained why he wheel warred against Prodego.
On August 11, 2007, ElinorD undeleted and archived SlimVirgin's talk page history, but revisions after March 2006 (User talk:SlimVirgin/Archive 26) and before August 2007 are still deleted.
SlimVirgin supported the ban on Piperdown
- User_talk:Piperdown#I.27m_not_a_sock_puppet_or_a_meat_puppet
- Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive123#Review_of_indef_block_of_Piperdown
The request for unblocking of User:Piperdown was a critical focus of the dispute between Cla68 on one side versus SlimVirgin, FeloniousMonk and Crum375 on the other side.
On September 7, 2007, User:David Gerard blocked Piperdown as a "sockpuppet/meatpuppet for overstock.com". Piperdown's request for unblock one day later was declined by Sandstein. At Piperdown's request, Cla68 posted to WP:AN on January 24, 2008 to ask the community to unban Piperdown. SlimVirgin, FeloniousMonk and Crum375 all supported the ban on Piperdown (see details below). The discussion reached an impasse, but after a second discusson on February 27, 2008, User:J-stan unblocked Piperdown. (See Dan Tobias's evidence above.)
On the same day, Cla68 commented on User talk:Piperdown: "Somebody owes you an apology for the original block. I believe there's space here for that person to leave one, if they so choose." Based on this edit immediately afterward, Cla68 was referring to David Gerard.
I have read almost the entire discussion about Piperdown's unblock request. It is extremely long. I have collected all posts by SlimVirgin, FeloniousMonk, Crum375 and Cla68—with minimally necessary context—at User:Shalom/Drafts and archives/SlimVirgin arbitration evidence/Piperdown.
Additional comments
Please see User:Shalom/Drafts and archives/SlimVirgin arbitration evidence/Additional comments. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 01:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by User:Filll
User: Cla68 has been made what could be fairly interpreted as repeated, thinly-veiled threats to reveal the true life identities of several Misplaced Pages editors-in-good-standing in the press. Specifically, Cla68 has threatened to do this to the members of the Intelligent Design Wikiproject if they do not act as Cla68 desires.
Obviously, this kind of coercion is a bannable offense, and this is written explicitly into Misplaced Pages policies.
In the case of Cla68, the threat to go to the press is not an idle threat. Cla68 has gone to the press at least twice in the last 6 months about Misplaced Pages issues. The first time was in connection with the Durova situation, and the second time was to discourage people from donating funds to the Wikimedia Foundation (further details available on request).
What happened
The current disturbing situation arose from a longtime campaign conducted by a community-banned/indefinitely blocked editor, User: Moulton, on Misplaced Pages Review. Cla68 responded by making what appeared to be a threat to out members of the ID Wikiproject to the press. When asked for clarification at least 4 times in a row, once he responded with a retraction followed by another threat, once by a vague hybrid of a retraction and a threat, and and four times he responded by repeating the threat in more explicit terms. The last time he was asked for clarification, Cla68 did not respond directly on Misplaced Pages, but followed it up with more threats at Misplaced Pages Review (see User:Filll/Cla68 sequence of events, created to avoid repetition and clutter). Finally, a few days later, Cla68 apologized for "not choosing his words more carefully" .
What this looks like
Cla68 appears to be placing himself above Misplaced Pages policy, above Arbcomm, and above Jimbo, and attempting to act as some sort of dictator, although he is not even an administrator. Cla68 seems to be threatening to arbitrarily and unilaterally attempt to topic ban or site ban Misplaced Pages editors in good standing who might be doing something (not fully specified) that Cla68 personally deems offensive (and not just in the ID area, but there appear to have also been recent threats in other areas ). Cla68 apparently reserves the right to personally mete out punishment as some form of "frontier justice".
Did Cla68 really make a threat?
I believe that if Cla68 did not intend to make a threat, he would have made that eminently clear from the start. He would not issue a half-hearted retraction, as he has done. He would not follow his retractions by even more sharply-worded repetitions of the threat, as he has done more than once. When asked why he was not addressing any disagreement by standard Misplaced Pages Dispute Resolution channels , he would not stay silent as he has done. When asked explicitly about what he considers improper behavior and what he intends to do about it , he would not stay essentially silent as he has done, except for making more vague threats off-wiki.
It is hard to know how to evaluate his final statement where he apologizes for "not choosing my words more carefully." . Given his past behaviour and reluctance to distance himself from his apparently threatening statements, it is reasonable for the targets of Cla68's statements to interpret this as a threat.
The risk
Outing Wikipedians in the press can have a number of negative consequences. It can make it harder to recruit more editors, and make it harder to retain the editors we have: . It goes against several Misplaced Pages policies. Even the threat to do so is a bannable offense: . It can lead to harassment, embarassment, stalking, damage to professional and private lives of editors, identity theft, death threats and worse. Clearly, this sort of threat in an attempt to blackmail other editors and should not be allowed or encouraged. If this sort of behavior is allowed to continue, more will adopt it and the threats will escalate.
Analysis
If Cla68 is sanctioned, what is to stop him from exacting revenge on any Wikipedian of his choosing at any time, Daniel Brandt-style, by going to the press as he previously did? His apparent threat to go to the press might have been delayed or the probability of him acting might be reduced by these proceedings. However, if he remains unsanctioned and in good standing, he will retain his credibility with the press and continue to have a platform from which to broadcast his views in the media, as he has done before. Does Misplaced Pages want to allow this behavior to continue, and therefore to encourage more of it?
Clearly Cla68 is a great asset in some areas, and has contributed a lot of featured content. However, it is imprudent to allow him to level threats with impunity, because of his propensity to repeatedly do so against those he unilaterally decides need to be "corrected". Cla68 will be defended by many who will say he has made good content contributions so any bad behavior can be excused: however past contributions can mitigate present behaviour but so far.
Cla68 has gotten away with the airing of Misplaced Pages laundry in the media twice before, and has now been threatening to do it again. Cla68 does not appear to display any contrition for any of his actions to date. In all likelihood, Cla68 will continue to engage in this sort of conduct until he is stopped. At the very minimum, his behavior seems erratic and impolitic. I am not sure what an appropriate remedy is, but perhaps one should be considered.
Evidence presented by Ashton1983
Cla68 showed enjoyment producing diffs to show SlimVirgin in a poor light
Between April 3 and April 8 Cla68 used edit summaries such as "un-freaking-believable", "good grief", "you've got to be kidding me" on 18 occasions while adding evidence to his draft RfC on SlimVirgin. (Some of the diffs which led to these summaries seem quite harmless. For example this led to "you've got to be kidding me" - No. 18.) This smacks of a vendetta.
- April 3 diffs, wow
- April 3 diff, wow
- April 3 diff incredible
- April 3 incredible
- April 3 diff unbelievable
- April 3 unbelievable
- April 3 diff OMG
- April 3 personal attack diff; unbelievable
- April 3 good grief
- April 3 diffs. unbelievable
- April 3 wow
- April 3 unbelievable
- April 3 wow
- April 4 incredible
- April 4 un-freaking-believable
- April 4 you've got to be kidding me
- April 7 unbelievable
- April 8 you've got to be kidding me
Cla68 labels statements that seem contradictory as "lies"
Cla68 has failed to Assume Good Faith in cases where he has found or has thought he has found inaccuracies in other people's statements.
Here Cla68 gives two diffs to quote SlimVirgin saying that he seems to be based in the same state as Wordbomb. "Some of his edits indicate that they're based in the same area." And "judging by some of Cla's edits, he appears to be based in the same state as Wordbomb." He also gives this diff to indicate that she said he "posted conspiracy theories about the Gary Weiss article on Misplaced Pages Review." He says he has lived in Japan since September 2006, and that Wordbomb apparently lives in Utah. He says he now has an account at Misplaced Pages Review, but did not have one when SlimVirgin said he did. He says that SlimVirgin doesn't defend these statement "because she can't, because they are lies." And he accuses her of "lying in order to attempt to discredit an RfA candidate." He tells FloNight "SV alleged that I did this in order to help in torpedoing of my RfA." He accuses SlimVirgin of "making such a bald lie without evidence in order to win an argument or sink an RfA."
Its not likely that opposers opposed him because they thought he lived in Utah. The issue was colluding with a banned user and furthering his agenda. Where a candidate lives isn't important to voters, how they behave is. SlimVirgin did not state that he lived in Utah, she said - per diffs above - that some of his edits indicate that he's in the same area, and that judging by some of his edits, he appears to be based in the same state. This doesn't mean she lied, it means she picked up an impression and gave it as an impression. It's not clear why she thought that, but the caption to the photo that he added to his user page earlier that year might be one reason - "Me snowboarding at Snowbasin, Utah on a cold day in 1997".
The claim that SlimVirgin lied about Cla68 posting at Misplaced Pages Review is even more dodgy. He says above that she said he "posted conspiracy theories about the Gary Weiss article on Misplaced Pages Review." The diff he supplies shows what she actually said.
Cla later posted a comment based on Wordbomb's conspiracy theories on Misplaced Pages Review that "high administrators" were "protecting" the article. When I asked Cla what he meant by the comment, he replied that he was being facetious
SlimVirgin seems to be saying that Cla68 posted a comment *on Misplaced Pages* and that his comment was based on conspiracy theories that Wordbomb had posted *on Misplaced Pages Review*. The link where he says he was being facetious doesn't give a link for where he had posted his comment, but his contributions around that time show that one day earlier, he made this post *on Misplaced Pages* where he says "Now that "high administrator" protection for that article has apparently ended, we can methodically work on ensuring that the article belongs on Misplaced Pages and that all information on the article's subject is fairly presented. I appreciate your support." Obviously SlimVirgin was referring to that *Misplaced Pages* post. There's no evidence she ever said he posted at Misplaced Pages Review. But her statements have been called deliberate lies and grounds for desysopping.
In his section on lying Cla68 accuses SlimVirgin of lying where she says that an editor has been "moving from article to article to remove See alsos that you don't like." He links to the editors contributions and says that the "editor's user history shows no evidence of doing this."
SlimVirgin's post was made at 19:11 UTC on 10 December. I have looked through the contributions of the editor and see that at the time of that post, and counting only December (though it goes back further), the editor had removed "see also" items from various articles 24 times. It seems to have been fifteen different articles. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
I don't have an opinion on whether the removal was good or bad. The issue is that an editor was accused of lying (and in the RfC draft, it's called lying or other unethical editing) for saying that Threeafterthree had made these removals. And the contributions are linked to as if they prove it, but the arbitrators are probably not going to search through the contributions, so such statements are very dangerous examples of harming another editor's reputation, and seem far more damaging than saying that Cla68, from his edits, seems to be based in the same state as Wordbomb. There are many other examples but I probably won't have time to add them.
Evidence presented by StC
Several of the situations and diffs in Cla86's evidence deal with my run ins with SlimVirgin, so I want to take the opportunity to expand on that.
In my limited experience interacting with SlimVirgin it has always been caustic. She edit wars, brings in cronies, and has massive amounts of time to singularly devote to her cause de jour. It has been so caustic that I actively avoid editing around her interests out of fear.
Incident, WP:LAYOUT
This is diff'd by Cla86 under disruptive editing, bullet item 2.
This issue with the layout guideline was discussed on ANI as a meatpuppet revert warring issue. Cla86 provides diffs of meatpuppeting with both Crum375, Jayjg, and others on multiple occasions. These crop up so regularly it is impossible to call them coincidences. Meatpuppeting was not the only issue here as the talk page demonstrated several other underhanded SlimVirgin techniques. The first technique is a variation of WP:BRD; for SlimVirgin it means Be bold, get reverted, revert war, then discuss. Part of that bold is claiming fact by fiat. During the revert war, the claim is made "consensus for this" , which was clearly not a fact, and there was already a talk page discussion asking about what the consensus was for this issue.
During the discussion she puts her words to other people by claiming that all people who criticized the current wording obviously support her wording . After a few days of discussion, which was not going towards drastic change, SlimVirgin moved her discussion to catty attacks on the people involved, rather than the issues (to Sandy Georgia) (and to me, that I am being "used") .
SlimVirgin is an agendra driven editor on the issue of animal rights. In pursuing this agenda, she regularly changes guidelines to support her editing. Part of this layout discussion also involved denial of POV by SlimVirgin, .
Incident, ALF
This is diff'd by Cla86 under disruptive editing, bullet item 12.
Disambiguation pages shouldn't be case sensitive. The amount of discussion to keep ALF (upper case) a dab of Alf (lower case) comprises like 300k of talk and a number of revert wars. The diffs from Cla86 tell the story succinctly. What a stupid waste of time, and it's been going on since 2005!. Things that came up were as ridiculous as requiring sourced references (ON A DAB PAGE!), to endless nitpicking about the actual text of guidelines vs the point they are trying to make, and repeated arguments about whether users type CAPS into search engines.
Making dab pages non-sensitive to case and áçcèñt marks is the kind of wiki-gnome work I've done several dozens of times. The amount of pointy lameness here was ridiculous.
On OWNership
Example: The Animal testing article was a horrible mess and constant battleground while SlimVirgin edited it. Non-involved editors made talk page comments many times about bias problems in the article, and the article itself was an unreadable disaster. She acknowledged this in December 2007 Talk:Animal_testing/archive7#Writing, and she was perfectly right that everyone involved was approaching the article with a POV. What she later says in the section tells why she was the problem. It was her intent to focus the article on the controversy around the subject and not to present the subject itself. This article never had a chance to explain the who, what, where, how, why of the subject because the issue of controversy was the most important to SlimVirgin and no additions went into the article without her approval. She stopped editing it this February, and by the middle of March it went to Good Article status.
This ownership and POV presents problems across many other articles. For instance, Animal Liberation Front presents a Sympathetic POV, while Nafovanny presents a Critical POV. OTOH, when there isn't a bias issue there doesn't appear to be a problem, Marshalsea is fair to excellent in most sections.
Evidence presented by Jeffpw
I am watching this arbitration with interest, as it seems to me another attempt by SlimVirgin and her allies here to quash any criticism of her, whether or not it is valid. I certainly hope the RfC on Slim is allowed to continue, as I would certainly add to it. This seems an abuse of the process in order to force Cla68 to bend to SlimVirgin's will, exactly as the Zeraeph arbitration was.
I was an active contributer to Misplaced Pages until the beginning of this year, when an arbitration brought about by Slim was allowed to be used as a tool to bash SandyGeorgia, an editor with a sterling reputation, but with whom Slim has had many confrontations. It was apparent to me that Slim used her administrative powers inappropriately, and not with good intent, in an effort to drive Sandy from Misplaced Pages. I felt compelled to help defend Sandy against the ridiculous accusations leveled against her, and found myself on the receiving end of Slim's anger. While not answering legitimate questions asked of her, she attempted to question my motives and smear my reputation here. By the time the arbitration ended (completely in Sandy's favor, and with the other party banned from editing), I was so disgusted at the abuse of power I saw that I had very little interest in editing here anymore. I am only here now so that it will be on the record that there are editors here, editors who contributed wholeheartedly for the betterment of the project, were driven away by the toxicity of SlimVirgin--a toxicity she routinely sees in others, but fails to see in herself. If any good comes from these proceedings it will be that SlimVirgin is forced to recognize that her actions, which many see as abuse of power, drive editors away from this project. I am happy to provide additional diffs if they are required.
Slim alleging I am part of a conspiracy to attack another editor.
Slim attacking me as some sort of rogue editor
Slim removing my post to an arbitration discussion, an abuse of her power and violation of protocol.
Evidence presented by John254
JzG has engaged in extensive incivility, abuse of administrative privileges, and other disruption
(evidence created by Viridae)
On March 2, 2008 a user-conduct RfC was posted in response to a long and continuous history of incivility, personal attacks, disruption, and abuse of administrator privileges by JzG (talk · contribs). The RfC contained over 160 examples of poor conduct from JzG, and received significant participation with, for example, 76 editors as of May 10 endorsing the statement left by Kirill calling on JzG to amend his unacceptable behaviour.
Although JzG declined to respond directly to the RfC, his behaviour did appear to improve for a short time after the RfC was posted. Unfortunately, however, he appears to have resumed the same or a very similar pattern of behaviour that is contrary to policy and creates an unacceptably hostile and counter-productive atmosphere within the project. The behaviour again includes misuse of administrator privileges. Below are some examples of JzG’s behaviour that is causing serious concern:
Incivility and personal attacks:
- In response to an attempt by Dtobias to discuss a recent deletion review says, “Troll Tobias has arrived, all possible utility has now been removed from this discussion. Dan, you are unwelcome here” and deletes Dan’s comment. He then says of Dan, “If Dan doesn't want to be called a troll, he might perhaps try not trolling me. His sensitivity to the slightest hint of insult combined with his fierce determination to allow links to offsite attacks however vile speak to me of gross hypocrisy” . Discussed at AN
- Says of editor in deletion review discussion, “If Urban Rose was not a self-admitted ED user I might be a tiny fraction more sympathetic, but ultimately ED is a festering pile of shit and an article on it inherently degrades Misplaced Pages”
- Says of another editor during a deletion review discussion, “Fuck me, yet another obsessive pro-PRT WP:SPA pushing Malewicki's fantasy.” . Discussed at ANI
- States in an edit summary about another editor as he deletes the editor’s edit, “Good God almighty, who on earth rewrote that box? It's patently absurd on so many levels that we simply can't have it” (self-reverts six minutes later )
- To editor in edit summary on his talk page, “Giovanni, I do not give a toss what you think”
- Tells established editor on his talk page, “And I am asking you, very firmly, to stop advancing your fringe POV in articles, because that (unlike my being impatient with you) actively degrades the encyclopaedia”
- Referring to other editors on his user page “These POV-pushing idiots have got to go. They insert all sorts of shit on the basis that any two people who agree with them is consensus and any number who disagree means nothing. They are monomaniacs, disruptive, the article is an embarrassment, and they have showed long-standing determination to make sure it remains that way.”
- Says in reference to Viridae, “I'm sure Viridae did something to improve the encyclopaedia in that time as well, besides shit-stirring and wheel-warring with an admin with whom he is in dispute.”
- Refers to an editor’s contribution as “twaddle”
- Confrontational remark to editor, “Already discussed, and you lost that time as well.”
- To editor during a content dispute, “Ah yes, silly of me to forget the way Misplaced Pages is set up to work is that you keep pushing the same fringe POV until everybody else has lost interest and you get your way.”
- To editor during a content dispute “You stop promoting fringe bullshit and I'll stop being sarcastic. Deal?"
- Says that DanT, “behaves like an obsessive trolling idiot” and says to Cla68, “I consider you an evil underhanded spiteful shit-stirring weasel“ . He reverted statement 3 minutes later with edit summary calling DanT and Cla68 “persona non grata” and then refused to apologize for making it when asked
Disruption:
- Premature close of article deletion review with edit summary of “no”
- Adds insulting templates User:JzG/Uninformed wingnut drivel : User:JzG/CA to talk page of article (noted on AN)
- Deletes cited content from an article concerning an issue with which he was personally involved
Misuse of administrator privileges:
- Makes substantial edit to a protected article (discussed at AN ) warned by another admin
- Blocks Proabivouac for “harassment” with rationale (in subsequent discussion) that editor, “is not a contributor at present, merely a drama whore. Were he a contributor I'd have left him be.” . ANI discussion:
The abuse of administrator privileges, are of course, of special concern. In actuality, most if not all of the incidences listed above seem to relate to JzG’s participation in project administration. JzG takes a very active role in this function. The problem, as shown by the evidence in the RfC and here, is that his behaviour consistently does not meet the minimum level of professionalism and decorum that we require and expect of administrators.
To summarize, JzG has in his time at Misplaced Pages repeatedly flaunted flouted most, if not all of the behavioural policies set down to help create a collaborative working environment on Misplaced Pages. This cannot last. Viridae 09:33, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Tony Sidaway
We've been here before
I've examined Cla68's history and he is by any standard, as a Misplaced Pages editor, one of the best. How do we reconcile that with his chosen manner of interaction, his frequent resort to bad faith accusations based on statements made on unreliable and clearly biased external websites?
Misplaced Pages isn't the place for settling personal vendettas, and when we introduce such inappropriate material, however innocently, we are enabling those external vendettas, and encouraging the impression that Misplaced Pages is powerless to stop such abuse.
One of the most powerful principles of Misplaced Pages has been the quiet diligent removal of bias from articles--something I know Cla68 would agree with me is necessary and at which, though we may have different views, I can credit him with making serious efforts. It isn't acceptable to relax our other standards in pursuit of that objective, however. Without going into distasteful detail, Cla68's tactics have become repugnant and he needs to be told this clearly so that he can take steps to modify his mode of interaction.
There must always be room on Misplaced Pages for people in whom Cla68 has not the most perfect trust. Those people should be protected from Cla68's tendency to give excessive credence to extreme and sensational accusations. He should also be discouraged from this on the grounds that bringing such unsuitable material here pollutes our discourse and prejudices legitimate discussion. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Shii
Cla68 was the only person to contact me about abusive behavior by SlimVirgin
In 2006 SlimVirgin publicly defamed and harassed me on Misplaced Pages with the assistance of FeloniousMonk and Jayjg. I have deconstructed her behavior here. While SlimVirgin reconciled with me in a later e-mail she did not apologize for this behavior. In fact, the only person who ever contacted me about it was Cla68, here.
I believe that Cla68 was making a good-faith effort to make the Misplaced Pages community a friendlier place to build an encyclopedia. Shii (tock) 22:09, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Lar
Cla68 is not here to disrupt
Cla68 is an accomplished editor with a large number of important mainspace contributions. As of this writing, he is the 6th most prolific editor here by number of featured articles, with 23 to his credit. None of them are "former" articles, demoted after a featured article review. All are still widely considered among Misplaced Pages's very best work. Only Emsworth, Hurricanehink, Piotrus, Mike Christie, and Worldtraveller have more FAs to their credit. This level of sustained and high quality contribution belies the notion that Cla68 is here solely to disrupt the project.
Working on material in user space is not in and of itself "bad"
It is a widely accepted practice to work on material in userspace. I do it, I often draft material that I transfer to other namespaces, often after considerable delay. Doing so is often more efficient and less disruptive than trying to work on something "live" when it will take considerable editing to get ready. Working on an RfC in WP space would likely be counterproductive.
The JzG RfC was of benefit to the project
Some have stated that Cla68 acted with malice or spite, or should have spent his time differently, in developing the second RfC on JzG, work which was done over a period of months. The RfC went live on March 2 with this version, which was over 30,000 characters long. It had over 220 prior edits to develop it, over a period of some 3 weeks: (admin only)
It is not easy to judge intent, which is why we have the WP:AGF policy; we should assume good intent, and we should judge the outcome of the RfC on the basis of whether it was useful to the project rather than what we suppose Cla68's intent to be. And the outcome of the JzG RfC seems to have been clearly beneficial to the project, as the following paragraphs will demonstrate.
Make no mistake, I think JzG is a very valuable editor, as do many of the folk who commented, but a number of these people felt there are issues that needed highlighting. Consider that 45 people endorsed the summary that Cla68 presented, and there were a large number of outside views presented. Among the outside views was that of arbitrator Kirill Lokshin. This view, in part, said "JzG has, unfortunately, fallen far short of what I would consider to be minimally acceptable conduct in this regard; the habitual, pointless profanity, threats, and insults which he levels at other editors are, to put it simply, utterly unacceptable." and was endorsed by 82 editors (as of this writing... the number continues to climb). Another view was that of User:MONGO, who said in part "JzG, you can do even more good by being nice.". This view received 48 endorsements. I think it is clear that Cla68 presented a compelling case in that RfC that there was an issue and that wide sections of the community, by endorsing the RfC itself or outside views (there are many more views that I do not cite) agreed that the RfC had merit. There were some comments that dismissed the problems but none of these got nearly as much support as the original RfC endorsement. (by my count the highest one got 12)
JzG received counsel from many parties through various channels (IRC, email, talk pages, and possibly other ways) that he should take the matter seriously, that there were aspects of his behavior that needed addressing, and that some sort of response would be beneficial. While JzG chose not to respond directly (as is his right), he himself surely recognized that there was something that needed to be said, and he did so. He lwrote a response, and asked me directly to review a draft, and then post a link to a final version it for him on the RfC page, which I did: .
The response itself produced discussion on the RFC talk page: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/JzG2#FYI and significant comment on the RfC page: Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/JzG2#Response, with 19 responders. In particular more than one responder took note of the fixing the problem section. Although most responders only endorsed, this comment by User:Jaysweet seems telling: "The response covers most (not all, but most) of the issues raised in the RfC in a thoughtful and productive manner. That's about all one could ask for." People perceived that JzG was admitting some of the items raised were issues, and that he was endeavouring to do better.
The matter, even over 2 months after responses were given by JzG, is still apparently of interest to the community. Note that people are still adding to it at this time, showing continued interest.
The SlimVirgin RfC may have been beneficial to the project as well
I think the above analysis shows that there was a net benefit to the encyclopedia from the RfC. JzG improved his behavior, and there is a concrete record of matters that are of concern, as well as of the views of dozens of editors.
The time that Cla68 spent doing this (and there was considerable prep time before it went live) seems to have been well spent. Since the outcome was beneficial to the project, it is not really relevant what Cla68's motive was, although my personal interactions with him do not show him to be someone who holds grudges, or acts out of spite, or who gets revenge later. We should nevertheless judge outcomes. Those who charge malice or ill intent miss the mark, as one can note they are by and large not denying the beneficial outcome of the RfC.
Given that the JzG RfC was of benefit to the project, it is likely that the SlimVirgin RfC that Cla68 was drafting, with a similar meticulous attention to detail and presentation of multiple diffs in support of claims, would have been of benefit to the project if allowed to proceed. Instead, it was short circuited by this RfAr. Given that the RfAr is underway, we may never know for sure how beneficial it would have been.
Evidence presented by Viridae
JzG:Incivility, personal attacks, and general rudeness
- Use of aggressive language to make a point ( and subsequent admin noticeboard complaint ), described as "uncivil", "pointy", and "unjustified" by Arbitrators (, , ), which sparked off a premature Arbitration committee (ArbCom) request
- Uses obscene language in response to questions from another admin (Viridae) in edit summaries ,
- 24 hour block for incivility (per the above "fuck off" comments to Viridae) ()
- Another use of obscene language in edit comments when dismissively removing others' comments from his user talk page.
- Still more severe incivility and personal attacks
- When evidence of JzG's chronic incivility and personal attacks was presented at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff, JzG responded, in part, with the following dismissive explanation:
: told Jeff to fuck right off and would cheerfully have said the same to his face. He said "No, Guy wants it escalated and wants to be a dick about it, so we'll do it. Can't fault a guy for trying." I was outraged by that remark, absolutely outraged. And that is exactly how that comment would be understood side of the pond, ask David Gerrard.
- In edit summaries, calls editor (Cla68) "trolling" and "troll"
- Labels an admin as "WR's pet admin" to ascribe to him guilt by association. ,
- Removes comments querying an AFD from his talk page by three established users (AnonEMouse, Joe, and Viridae) with edit summary that says, "remove thread using Troll-B-Gon Professional 1.0" .
- Responds to comment from Rfwoolf on his talk page with "edit some articles or shut the fuck up you whining twat". , and calls him a "tossblanket" (), and an "arsehole" ()
- Deletes Sports trainer with the deletion summary "Fuck off, Bradles01"
- Calls a user a "cunt" -
- Another "fuck off" ()
- Attacks editors' judgment and accuses them of being exploited by associating them with banned users ()
- Accuses editor of being a "trolling sockpuppet" ()
- Calls an editor an "idiot" in the edit summary of a lengthy talk-page rant in which he criticizes the other editor for being "impolite".
- States on user page that editors who add fringe theories, and gives several examples, to articles are "idiots" and should be told to "Fuck off" .
- JzG to another editor on the Gary Weiss talk page: "You're sure doing a lot to give the impression that you prefer your friend Mr. Bagley to my friend Mr. Wales".
- Deletes other editors' comments in a dismissive and uncivil manner. , , , , , , and
- Describes another editor as a troll when asked to refactor the attacks/BLP violations made on the Matanmoreland arbitration case pages.
- Admonishes editor to "shut the fuck up you whiny little twat" . Discussed in ANI thread here
- Tells users "I want you to fuck off"
- Tells user "You are not welcome here. Now fuck off" ( (admin only, page now deleted)), then used rollback to reinsert the abuse ( (admin only))
- Dismissive of attempts by an editor to resolve a charged situation peacefully:
- Twice calls another editor an idiot in both the text and the edit summary "Fys is an idiot. And you can quote me on that.", " Fys, you are an idiot. And that's official.": ,
- A "fuck off" again:
- Calls another editor a "worthless twat"
- Warns editor about 3RR violation in a condescending and confrontational manner .
- Removes request from another admin to review a deletion JzG closed with the dismissive "not interested in your little digs" , then when the admin queries this , JzG misuses rollback to again remove the query .
- Posts "JzG's Terms of Service rules on his user talk page that warn, "If you act like a troll, I will probably ignore you and may tell you to fuck off. If you want something from me, your best bet is not to demand it on pain of shopping me to ArbCom, because that way is pretty much guaranteed to piss me off to the extent that I will do whatever I can to thwart your plans." (more)
- Removes comments by Viridae from his talk page with edit summaries, "Viridae is not welcome here" , "Go away and stay away" , and "Viridae's input is *remarkably* unwelcome" .
- Insults editor and creator of an article in AfD nomination
- Threatens editor in shouty and abusive edit summaries over "editorializing" (adding a comment in small text) ,
- Removes a warning with abusive edit summary
- "Shut the fuck up" on wikien-l, reprimanded
- Sarcastic and personal language used in announcing the block of a sockpuppet account
- Tells an editor "And another of the fringe pushers crawls out of the woodwork" and then tries to out the editor . Discussed at ANI .
- Protects his talk page with the edit summary "Tedious anon twat"
JzG: Personal attacks on living persons
- Ridicules another user's mental health and discusses confidential OTRS requests in a public forum
- JzG calls Judd Bagley an "obsessive troll" , a "net.kook", "absolutely not above forgery", a "vicious, agenda-driven troll" , "Bagley's lunacy" , "his (Bagley's) vile smear campaigns" , "harassment meme inventor" , "long history of abuse by Bagley" , "paranoid fantasies of banned abusers" , "targets of his harassment" , "Bagley uses disinformation and harassment against anyone who does not uncritically support his company" , "Bagley is a vicious hatemonger" , "Bagley's idiocy" , "People like Bagley. We've heard what he has to say, we've debated it, it's baseless - a tissue of lies from beginning to end" , "Posting links to Bagley's blog is simply wrong. Not because of BADSITES but because it is enabling a banned troll. We should not link to the ravings of a rebuffed POV-pusher" , "the delusional outpourings of sociopaths" , and "this malicious piece of shit-stirring by Bagley" .
- Describes a living person as a "vile agenda-driven troll" in the middle of an arbitration case , in the full knowledge that such characterisation is wholly inappropriate (used similar language , redacted it after being urged to do so)
- Outed a blocked user's real life identity on a publicly available mailing list
- Runs a personal Wiki website, advertised on his talk page, which contains, much like the sites he rails against, personal attacks (, ) and outing of Misplaced Pages editors (, ).
JzG: Abuse of admin privileges
General abuse
- Threatens editor (DanT) with a block for questioning another block, detailed here .
- Misuse of rollback to remove a complaint made by an editor (TlatoSMD - blocked now but in good standing at the time) against himself ()
- Self-blocks his own account during a "wikibreak" despite policy not permitting this.
- Makes two significant edits to a fully-protected article and
- Another significant edit to a fully protected article and then extends full protection for a month
- Is blocked for wheel warring with another admin in spite of warnings to stop
- Deleted Talk:Short and distort (a redirect) as a G5 when it was mentioned as evidence in the Matanmoreland/Sami Harris sockpuppetry investigation despite G5 not applying when there is significant contribution from other users.
- Admin deleted an article then said the recreation was written by him, although the two were almost identical . Adamantly asserted that the recreated version was written ab initio , but then back-pedalled on that assertion when faced with abundant evidence that it was an act of plagiarism. Note - this became a controversy due to JzG taking a deletion action 15 months after the article had been peaceably resolved.
- Reverted non-vandalism edits to an article then immediately fully protected it
- Speedy deleted 3 articles as "vanity" (not a criteria for speedy deletion) simultaneously outing the contributor's identity in 2 of the 3 deletion logs (, , )
- Speedy deleted article for "having the wrong tone" ()
- Indefinitely blocks Zibiki Wym with the edit summary "Claims to be a banned user. Banned means banned" . The user was not banned at that time. His previous account, MyWikiBiz, had been unblocked by Jimbo six days earlier .
- Blocked Privatemusings while engaged in dispute with same editor and may have breached confidence by forwarding personal information about Privatemusings . Discussed more here .
- Wheel-warring over the blocking of Fairchoice
- Misuse of rollback tool to remove comments he didn't agree with , & (admin only),
- Edits a protected policy page to remove content he doesn't agree with in a dispute over the policy content in which he is involved
- Speedy deleted Image:Larry Craig mugshot.jpg, and after it was undeleted by DRV consensus, speedy deleted it again. The image was again undeleted through DRV and later moved to Commons.
Biting newbies
- Makes indiscriminate blocks without warning of people editing a controversial article on Oxford Round Table and its AFD discussion, mislabelling at least two good faith users as "disruptive single purpose accounts" after failing to check editing history. Several of these blocks were soon reversed as unwarranted. See AN/I discussion, where JzG admits to an "itchy trigger finger", and User talk:JzG Please review the following block. When certain of these accounts were unblocked by admin Viridae, after being exonerated by checkuser and community consensus, JzG complained to ANI accusing Viridae of "having an agenda against me" ().
- Blocked a new user, Timjowers, indefinitely for adding links to articles, with no warnings or attempt to explain policy . Castigated by numerous users (, ), yet still refused to undo his actions or apologise. Eventually unblocked over a day later with discourteous block log summary .
- Posted abusive message to a new user's talk page () after blocking the user () and deleting their dictionary definition article - not a valid CSD, see ), then threatened the user with further blocks if the article was reposted . User never edited again.
JzG: Disruption
- Redirects "Turd burglar" to Gay and protected the redirect ( - admin only). Redirect deleted by another admin as "inappropriately mocking and derisive"
- Treats Misplaced Pages like a battleground and tries to bait the user whose attribution rights JzG violated into taking legal action
- Vandalises another users userpage multiple times, adding the word "infantile" to their list of interests (page temp restored to userspace): ,
- Removes links to Misplaced Pages Review even though most are linked in the appropriate context (raised on JzG's talk:), diffs , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
JzG: Behaviour following the RfC
To be filled in.
Evidence presented by Neil
Cla68 has made significant and unique contributions to Misplaced Pages
Cla68 is one of the most valuable editors Misplaced Pages has, having produced 23 Featured Articles - see Misplaced Pages:List_of_Wikipedians_by_featured_article_nominations. Only five other editors have produced more than this. For comparison, of the other named parties in this case, SlimVirgin has produced 5, for which she should be lauded, and JzG, Viridae, FeloniousMonk and Tony Sidaway have all produced exactly zero in their many years on Misplaced Pages. I believe this needs to be stated clearly, in evidence, in case any value judgments are made by arbitrators as to whether Cla68 is "more expendable" than SlimVirgin, FeloniousMonk, JzG et al. From a utilitarian point of view, Misplaced Pages could stand to lose 3 of 848 administrators (no matter how active or inactive) far more than it can to lose one of our top ten editors. Of course, this is a very simplistic way of looking at things, but the point I want to make is if "value to Misplaced Pages" were the sole determinant, Cla68 would be miles ahead. Neıl 龱 18:58, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Urban Rose concerning JzG
First off, I'm going to admit that while Guy's behavior towards me and and his behavior concerning the recreation of the article Encyclopedia Dramatica has appeared uncivil and POV-pushing, I personally have overreacted and caused more drama by it than the situations merited. Nevertheless, his behavior is completely out of place for an admin (or for any user for that matter).
Inappropriate closure of a DRV/Accuses Urban Rose of being involved with Grawp
In particular, I am concerned with a statement he made in which he basically admitted to closing an ED deletion review because of personal feelings he has for ED, saying "They viciously attacked members of the Misplaced Pages community for failing to allow them a self-aggrandising article in the past, and the fact that they have now scraped together a few mentions does not go anywhere near balancing that out." , as well as a comment he made in which he implied that I am involved in the "Grawp" vandalism, saying, "Oh, and I just visited the shithole to find out of Urban Rose has more edits htere than here, but their popups crashed Firefox. So: not only is it a cesspit of boring sophomoric nonsense, it's an ad'-riddled one at that. On the plus side, Rose does have fewer edits there than here (remarkable given her few edits here), but I did rapidly find out that she is active in the discussions about Grawp, who appears to originate at ED (I guess everybody else already knew this and I am just slow catching on)." When I questioned him about this implication on his talk page, he used rollback to remove my comment (though I also accused him in said comment of using Misplaced Pages to further his own personal agendas, which I admit wasn't called for). These two statements in particular combined with his long record of disruptive behavior as revealed on the RfC make me wonder if Guy is someone I should trust as an admin.--Urban Rose 02:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Tom Harrison
Cla68 tried to draw more attention to SlimVirgin's personal information by pretending to be ignorant
Clas68's RfA closed as unsuccessful on 6 April 2007, after SlimVirgin drew attention to his support for a banned user, to his posting of sensitive information, and to his revert of editor who had removed a warning from his own talk page. Following his failed RfA, Cla68 began following SlimVirgin to disputes and pages where Cla68 had been uninvolved, for example: SlimVirgin's RcC of 16 April 07 (deleted), Noticeboard, 21 April 07, Noticeboard, 21 April 07, and Noticeboard, 21 April 07, where he continued to stir the pot about a sockpuppet block which had been endorsed by several admins and checkusers.
FeloniousMonk's evidence above under WP:STALK above shows him appearing at animal rights and other articles where SlimVirgin was active and where Cla68 had never edited before. A certain amount of showing up like this is coincidenal, but Cla68's, at pages edited by someone he had a dispute with, is more than a reasonable man would expect.
A particularly nasty example was when Cla68 pretended ignorance in a discussion about admin attempts to deal discreetly with harassment of SlimVirgin about her supposed location. It's well known that SlimVirgin has been stalked and harassed on other websites by banned users. This harassment has included speculation about her real name and where she lives. One of the guesses about her location is Swalwell, Alberta.
Between April 20 and November 12 last year, single-purpose accounts repeatedly crecreated a stub on Swalwell, Alberta while admins deleted it as soon as they spotted the trolling: not real hard to do, since the troll's usernames were based on SlimVirgin's (Fat Bachelor, Nigri V. Mils), or on guesses about her real name, and once on Phaedriel's username. Admins can check the deletion log for Swalwell, Alberta.
Even without the blatantly trolling usernames it was obvious from the content or edit summary that the user was here to harass. He might make other contributions minutes later (some later deleted or oversighted) that showed he was trolling, even when the actual content of the stub was harmless, and admins deleted and blocked.
On 13 November WR contributor "yow" admitted on WR that he had created the Swalwell, Alberta article to troll, and there was a brief discussion. (WR > "Editors" > "On the matter of Crum375, ....and previous speculation" if you want to go there). Piperdown at WR started a thread on Swalwell, Alberta on 20 November, with Daniel Brandt and others noting the article was constantly being deleted, and speculating on whether or not SlimVirgin lived there. (WR > "Articles" > "Swalwell, Alberta").
Then Cla68 appeared at the noticeboard where the deletion was being discussed, and "innocently" asked:
- Just a question. It isn't explained here why creation of this article is considered trolling if it has benign content? What is it about this geographic location that is so sensitive? Noticeboard, 29 November 07
At the time that he asked his question, he was very familiar with WR, and it is hard to believe he was unaware of the theory about where SlimVirgin lives. Also, the noticeboard section where he added his question had already made that obvious to anyone with minimal background. At that time the noticeboard looked like this, so he could see a text url to the WR thread that discussed it, and he could see the noticeboard itself said that:
- WR believed that one of their pet targets lives in Swalwell (JzG)
- the article had been created by accounts impersonating the editor in question or "LOOOOOOOOL <redacted>! <redacted> LIVES THERE!!!!!" (East718)
- there was a suspected danger of trolls putting "OMGWTFBBQ SHE LIVES THERE!!!!!" in the talk page of the stub. (East718)
Cla68's has a history with SlimVirgin; he shows up at disputes about her; he did not have a habit of showing up with such questions with editors he was not in a dispute with; he is familiar with WR's speculation; he could see what had already been said in that noticeboard thread. Cla68 pretended to ask an innocent question so he could draw attention to speculation about SlimVirgin's real name and where she lives. Tom Harrison 19:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Huldra
Blocks done by FeloniousMonk after requests on WP
I have reviewed all the blocks that I have found which were made by FeloniousMonk (during the last 2 years) after requests on WP:AN3, WP:CSN, WP:AN and WP:AN/I. The diffs are here: User:Huldra/FM. My conclusions:
- of a total of 15 blocks, 10 were done on the request of User:Jayjg, 2 on request by User:SlimVirgin, 1 by User:Zeq and 1 by User:KillerChihuahua (+1 unknown?)
- Many blocks were done very shortly after the request; at least 5 blocks were done in 20 minutes or less after the request was first posted, the shortest was done after only 8 minutes.
- Several of his blocks have been disputed; and two of his "indef" blocks have been overturned by arb.com. (User:PalestineRemembered and User:Ferrylodge)
I am drawn to the conclusion that FeloniousMonk, firstly: have a long established history of cherry-picking reports, secondly that he can very quickly block at the request of those he are familiar with without proper review of the evidence.
Evidence presented by SandyGeorgia
I offer a timeline of one example in response to FT2’s request for background on "how it reached where it is now", and "the extent (if any) to which the problematic conduct(s) are also driven by the playing out of some kind of underlying issue, dispute or division, such as groups, cliques, historic conflicts, or opposing agendas/viewpoints". I hope this timeline will weave some pieces together, demonstrate the need to consider older evidence because of the fear of retaliation from these "groups and cliques", and encourage remedies to counteract the detrimental effect that these groups have on other editors, while allowing that some of the editors make excellent contributions to the encyclopedia. I would also extend a comment made by Tony Sidaway to state that "... the events surrounding the case are part of an increasingly effective pattern" by groups of Wikipedians, on Misplaced Pages "which shows some evidence of possible organisation or coordination, of hounding, harassment, isolation and bullying directed against Wikipedians" who are uninvolved with drama from "external (off-site) groups".
I intentionally omitted some of the evidence discussed below from the Zeraeph ArbCom to avoid extending a sensitive case and creating a distraction where fragile and vulnerable victims of harassment and stalking were involved. In that proceeding and this one, evidence presented by others mentions that I was targeted by a group—including SlimVirgin, FeloniousMonk and others—after I stood up for strong sourcing policies and quality of writing and opposed the ATTribution merger (which I believed diluted Misplaced Pages’s core policies). My evidence will tie together practices that combine to assure the silence of editors who may be afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation when dispute resolution processes are abused and fail to serve the "regular" editor.
None of my evidence or statements pertains to JzG: I have not encountered similar editing patterns from him or involving him, I don't see the similarity in the cases, and I am concerned that the combination of his case with the SV/FM case will only obscure the issues surrounding SlimVirgin's and FeloniousMonk's editing. I believe that any remedies to help JzG manage the frustration of dealing with trolls and vandals must be different than the remedies to address FeloniousMonk's treatment of productive editors and fellow admins, and SlimVirgin's less-than-desirable editing habits and attacks on other editors. I also see certain accusations surrounding anyone supporting Cla68 in this ArbCom; I hope my record speaks for itself, and it's obvious that my evidence isn't generated from off-site rumor, so that the noise level on these generalizations about the origin of the complaints about SlimVirgin and support of Cla68 can be minimized.
SG: Cla68 has not been deterred from contributing top content
Through my participation at Featured article candidates, I am familiar with Cla68 as a top contributor of Misplaced Pages’s very best work, with 23 featured articles. To my knowledge, I have only crossed paths editing with Cla68 once outside of FAC, after SlimVirgin accused TimVickers (another admin and top FA contributor) of a 3RR violation (see Timeline). A few editors have described Cla68 in their evidence as an "obsessive", "aggressive" editor who makes the "project a toxic place" for others. For context (and to clarify some numbers that others have stated), only two active editors have more current featured articles than Cla8: Cla68 has 23, Mike Christie has 24, and Hurricanehink has 39. For comparison, other editors known to ArbCom or whose names will come up in my evidence include Giano with 13, and editors Marskell and TimVickers with 12 each (among Wiki’s top 25 featured article contributors).
Not only is Cla68 one of Wiki's top three active featured article contributors and top six contributors ever; his production of featured articles has been steady at about one per month for almost two years, and there is no evidence that WikiDrama has decreased his commitment to providing top Wiki content or his commitment to Wiki processes and policies (also discussed by Amerique) . Checking the dates of his Featured article candidacies reveals that Cla68’s contributions have not declined over the two years he has been writing featured articles, or in the one year since SlimVirgin intervened to extend and derail his Request for adminship with incorrect allegations (according to evidence presented by others). In fact, so undeterred is he by drama that, even though I know of Cla68 from FAC, I wasn't aware of the RfA situation with SlimVirgin until reading the evidence here, and I try to keep pretty close tabs on FA participants. I do not see indications of an editor "obsessed" with making the "Project a toxic place for others", rather of an editor who steadily contributes top content at a pace equaled by few others, who has not been derailed or deterred from content contributions by WikiDrama, and who follows Wiki’s dispute resolution procedures.
From reading the evidence, it appears that this ArbCom came about because Cla68 was preparing a Request for comment on Slim Virgin's user conduct—a process in accordance with Wiki’s dispute resolution procedures—and because he replied to another person’s off-Wiki statement about press coverage of Wiki editors (see diffs in dave souza’s evidence) . That Wiki’s normal dispute resolution procedures (Request for Comment/User before ArbCom) were short-circuited in this case suggests that a misplaced backlash or a rush to judgment may be factors in the jump straight to ArbCom. In light of the evidence about Cla68’s RfA, it is encouraging to see that he was not chased from the Project and remains committed to producing top quality articles and to addressing—via appropriate dispute resolution procedures—issues that many others (myself included) have at times been unwilling to address for fear of the kind of group retaliation evidenced in the Timeline I present.
SG: Timeline showing FeloniousMonk and SlimVirgin actions
Per FT2’s request, I am providing a timeline to demonstrate one example of "how it reached where it is now".
Date | Event |
---|---|
Mar to Apr 2007 | Attribution Poll: I opposed the Attribution merger, a proposal SlimVirgin supported, because IMO it weakened our sourcing policies and was being rushed through without the broad consensus that a major policy change warrants. (Supporters claimed it didn’t change policy, merely combined them: many disagreed.)
After SlimVirgin invited me to participate in a Working party to develop a compromise proposal, I expressed reservations about the way talk page discussions were proceeding. This resulted in talk page messages and e-mails rebuking me for appearing to question SlimVirgin. I got the distinct impression that my role on the Working party was not to question the process or SlimVirgin, so I unwatched the Working party page and mostly forgot about the issue; I had been invited to help reach a compromise, but compromise didn’t appear likely. The consequences of this interaction did not cross my mind at the time, but it surfaced in the FeloniousMonk "good number of we admins" watching others "trying to force unduly tightened sourcing policies" post to my talk page later. |
Jun 2007 | By June 2007, only eight months after his first featured article (Enzyme), TimVickers was a top producer of featured articles, writing 10 featured articles, restoring several others to featured status at Featured article review (FAR), and restoring a controversial article, Evolution, to featured status only four months after it was defeatured. The restoration of the Evolution article reinforced my belief that controversial topics could become featured with the participation of civil and professional editors like TimVickers who were fair, collaborative, and relied on solid sourcing. |
9 Jul 2007 | WP:V dispute: A dispute erupted at WP:V when TimVickers edited the policy to correct an earlier edit by SlimVirgin, restoring sourcing requirements based on talk page consensus. SlimVirgin's earlier edit had changed the WP:V page with an edit summary that said only "tightening". Tim's additions were reverted by SV who subsequently edit warred with other editors, protected the page, and accused others of personal attacks without supplying diffs and where none had occurred. In the AN/I thread, MastCell observed that "the unpleasant tactics being employed to beat down TimVickers are disheartening and lame". (Numerous diffs of the kinds of attacks SlimVirgin has made on TimVickers have already been given by others; I'm adding the context. SlimVirgin has a tendency towards edit warring on policy pages and accusing others of wikistalking or attacking her when there was no attack and without providing diffs evidencing said attacks.) |
6 to 24 Jul 2007 | Intelligent Design FAR: (further detail in Intelligent design FAR section below). This FAR is another factor in SlimVirgin's apparent animosity towards me, preceding the "a good number of we admins are watching you" attack on my talk page from FeloniousMonk. |
11 to 23 Jul 2007 | FeloniousMonk talk page attack: (further detail in FeloniousMonk section below) FeloniousMonk posted the "a good number of we admins are watching" talk page attack on me and his fellow admins, Marskell and TimVickers, while under ArbCom sanction to cooperate with fellow admins in a collegial way. His wording, "I'll also note that both Marskell and Tim Vickers (another from your group) have recently turned up at NOR, V, and RS trying to force unduly tightened sourcing policies as well," was never explained, but appears to reference the earlier Attribution Poll, the dispute between SlimVirgin and TimVickers at WP:V and previous differences between SlimVirgin and Marskell over sourcing of pop culture articles during the ATT proposal. The attack was aimed at me, ostensibly related to Raul, but it appears to have more to do with Marskell's and TimVickers' disagreements with SlimVirgin in their participation in policy pages. Although I enjoy good relations today with other Intelligent Design FAR participants or have worked with them on other FACs and FARs, my efforts to resolve this with FeloniousMonk were rebuffed, including an accusation by SlimVirgin that I was "trying to make trouble" when I attempted to discuss with FeloniousMonk. |
20 Jul 2007 | Gnixon: Almost immediately after the FeloniousMonk attack on my talk page, I encountered an RfC/U that showed how dispute resolution could be gamed to get a user banned. I don’t know Gnixon, but the diffs presented in the RfC/U didn’t support the allegations against him, and the suggested remedy was disproportionate to the evidence in the diffs. The RfC/U was signed by FeloniousMonk and some of the same editors who show up in all of these disputes (Gnixon, Moulton, Ferrylodge, Cla68, Intelligent design FAR, and more) or had made personal attacks during the Intelligent Design FAC and FAR. Combined with other issues like the evidence about Cla68's RfA, the Ferrylodge ban, the Dihydrogen Minoxide RfA, and the escalation of the SlimVirgin RfC/U to ArbCom without a Request for Comment first, these cases don't inspire confidence in Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution procedures. When I encountered the Gnixon RfC/U, I understood how DR could be used to get an editor banned, and what the potential consequences to me of having been targeted by this "group" meant. I had also been told to "fuck off" by another editor in full view of several ArbCom members, with no warning issued to that editor. So adding this to the fact that FeloniousMonk was able to lodge a strong personal attack on my talk page with no rebuke, I was forced to rethink Misplaced Pages’s code of conduct and consider that I would be best to forget what had happened, steer clear of abusive admins, and recognize that justice on Misplaced Pages is proportionate to group connections. |
Sep 2007 | Ferrylodge (further detail in Ferrylodge section below). When I encountered the Ferrylodge thread at the now-defunct Community sanction noticeboard, I wanted to take time to investigate the charges and diffs further; while several editors I highly respect had weighed in on the thread and I was concerned about their statements, my experience with Ferrylodge at FAR had only been of him as a helpful and collaborative editor, and some of the evidence presented was at variance with what I thought to be the case. Based on previous ban discussions I had participated in and my understanding of banning policy at the time, I expected it to be a lengthy and carefully deliberated discussion. Before I could investigate and present diffs, FeloniousMonk prematurely closed the thread, less than 24 hours after opening, and pronounced Ferrylodge indef blocked with at least three editors opposed to a ban and ongoing discussion of banning policy. I did not present my evidence in the Ferrylodge ArbCom because I feared that my participation would only make things worse for Ferrylodge, because of the previous threats from FeloniousMonk about his "group of admins watching me". By the time of the Ferrylodge ArbCom, I had also become aware of the September 11, 2007 Moulton block involving many of the same editors. I raise this case as an example of the effects of intimidation and harassment that may prevent a fair hearing in Wiki dispute resolution when other editors are fearful of retaliation. |
Nov 2007 | FAC delegate: FeloniousMonk's attack on me, and the Intelligent design FAR, seems to have had little to do with how Raul views my participation in featured processes; shortly thereafter he nominated me as his delegate to FAC, announced in December 2007. |
beginning 12 Dec 2007 | Zeraeph on WikipediaReview: I found out about this after the fact, but Zeraeph attacked me on WikipediaReview.com on December 12. The previous FeloniousMonk talk page attack on me was revealed in that thread. On December 24, I pointed out Zeraeph's misstatements on Wiki, and someone at WikipediaReview redacted Zeraeph's posts to remove some parts of her attack (thank you: Misplaced Pages did not do the same). On December 28, after I and others had endured more than a year of on- and off-Wiki harassment by Zeraeph, SlimVirgin prematurely unblocked Zeraeph in spite of standing attacks on me and others in plain sight on her talk page (no diff, because Zeraeph exercised her Right to Vanish, and then returned). On December 29, the day after SlimVirgin's premature unblock, Zeraeph edited her posts at WikipediaReview to delete negative information she had posted about SlimVirgin. After Zeraeph’s Wiki ban, her on and off-Wiki buddy, CeilingCrash, continued the crusade against me on WikipediaReview. During the Zeraeph ArbCom, SlimVirgin never explained how she came to be involved in unblocking someone who had attacked me on WikipediaReview, who had a year-long history of harassing me and others and canvassing against Wiki articles, and who was unblocked with standing attacks on me and others on her talk page. Other than the WikipediaReview thread, the Zeraeph ArbCom revealed no previous interaction between SlimVirgin and Zeraeph, any overlap in their editing, or any reason for SlimVirgin to suddenly use her admin tools to unblock an editor who had harassed me for a year. Questions to SlimVirgin about her premature and unwise unblock of an editor with a long pattern of harassing me remained unanswered on the Zeraeph ArbCom. |
17 Dec 2007 | Animal testing: I've had TimVickers' talk page watchlisted since our FAC/FAR work in 2006. In December 2007, SlimVirgin accused TimVickers of a 3RR violation at Animal testing. SlimVirgin’s attacks on Tim—a conscientious, civil, productive, well-respected and collaborative FA writer and admin—were again discussed at AN/I (diffs already given in other evidence). TimVickers encouraged more eyes on the article, and I watchlisted the article in mid-December. I have a long history of digging in to help any of the bio/medical editors anywhere to clean up MoS and citation issues. The entire Animal testing incident warrants investigation by ArbCom, as it relates to SlimVirgin's work on policy pages and agenda-based editing. My comments on the Animal testing page about pruning the External link farm resulted in the usual charges from SlimVirgin (many diffs are already given on this page, I'm just providing the context), so I unwatched, but in the meantime, I observed the unfair treatment and attacks on TimVickers, and a mediation which involved what can be most favorably expressed as SlimVirgin misrepresenting the truth and yet another example of misuse of Wiki’s dispute resolution processes to possibly avoid broad community input.
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28 Dec 2007 | Zeraeph unblock: SlimVirgin prematurely unblocked Zeraeph, who had a long history of harassing me and others on and off-Wiki, and with long-standing attacks on me and others in plain view on her talk page, leading to the Zeraeph ArbCom Case, Zeraeph's ban, and:
The following points are relevant to this case:
Until reading the evidence here, I wasn't aware that SlimVirgin had asked that Cla68's RfA be extended. She also asked that a FAC related to an animal rights issue be re-opened for further comment (even though she acknowledged the article wasn't at standard), and that the Zeraeph ArbCom be extended. and FAC query
I submitted confidential evidence to ArbCom—all information that anyone can obtain online, based on Zeraeph’s own Wiki posts, but also all confirming information sent to me in e-mails from parties she had dealt with and who were emotionally fragile, vulnerable and afraid. I had additional evidence that I chose not to submit because of other delicate and unsavory issues in the case and to protect the confidentially of involved parties. Because I knew vulnerable parties would be exposed, unsavory information could be revealed, and fragile people might be harmed, a priority in the ArbCom was to prevent further harassment of Zeraeph’s victims, even if that meant all the issues wouldn’t be fully examined. This had two consequences, relevant to the issues in the current case: 1) I didn’t press for ArbCom to examine SlimVirgin's unblock or history with me, that rendered her an involved admin who wouldn't step aside when asked, and 2) although it was in plain sight to arbitrators examining the evidence, I specifically omitted discussion of the previous FeloniousMonk attack (see my Evidence statement, "I have been on the receiving end of abusive comments on Wiki by admins several times ... " ). Marskell observed that: "Introducing SlimVirgin's history with SandyGeorgia would create too much of a tangent."
For the same reasons (above), I advocated at AN for a settlement that would avoid ArbCom, and even offered to put myself on almost equal footing with Zeraeph (in spite of my clean block record and her significant block record) to avoid an ArbCom. Throughout the AN discussion, and afterwards, SlimVirgin misrepresented me, made false statements about me, and pushed for the case to be escalated to ArbCom rather than settled at AN, where many other editors supported my position. When asked to put up a compromise agreement with Zeraeph, I did so, and announced that I would be busy for a few hours. Within two hours of me announcing I'd be busy for a while, SlimVirgin pronounced the case should go to ArbCom, Zeraeph incorrectly stated the ArbCom had been accepted, Crum375 appeared for the first time in the discussion to support escalation to ArbCom, and Jossi closed the AN thread minutes later, all before I could come back to discuss a compromise.
Throughout the ArbCom and after, SlimVirgin stated that I sought Zeraeph's ban, when in fact, I sought to avoid her ban, which was caused, IMO, by SlimVirgin's poor handling of an unblock without due diligence of a volatile editor.
The accusations continue: Although I didn’t opine on the JzG RfC, someone raised the issue there that civil editing didn’t work on controversial articles, and asked for an example where it had. I presented the Asperger syndrome article as an example of why I believe civil editing works with controversial articles , and Slim appeared for the first time to lodge unrelated claims that I was uncivil and had exacerbated the Zeraeph situation. (Several times I have had to ask SlimVirgin to please let go and move on..) And, when I participated in the AN/I discussion about a page I have *always* watched because of my work at FAC, she again accused me of personal attacks, no diffs. This furthers my impression that any participation by me on any form of dispute resoltuion on Wiki will result in further harassment and intimidation by "we admins", reinforcing that I was correct not to weigh in on the Ferrylodge ArbCom, and raising concerns that by presenting evidence here, yet another FA writer (Cla68) will be negatively affected simply because I spoke up in dispute resolution, just as TimVickers was attacked after I spoke up regarding his edits. |
17 Feb 2008 | AN/I Discussion of SlimVirgin/Crum375 meatpuppeting/tag-teaming and connection to Animal testing case, again resulting in accusations of personal attacks. |
SG: FeloniousMonk
SG: Intelligent design FAR
When an article is listed at Featured article review, the first few weeks are a review phase where issues like citations, prose, MoS and other items are reviewed against the featured criteria. Any issues identified are hopefully addressed in the first few weeks; if issues aren’t addressed in the first phase, the article moves to the second phase, again for a period of at least several weeks, where Keep or Delist can be declared. From the time it was listed, the Intelligent design FAR could not proceed as every FAR before it had because participants didn't/wouldn't engage the process for the review phase, and instead began entering premature declarations of Keep or Delist. (See FAR instructions at the time; although they clearly specified the two phases, Dave souza and Purples later encouraged and helped with a rewrite, and the instructions today are more clear.)
Further, although notifications of involved editors and relevant WikiProjects had been a standard part of FAR that I had done for at least a year, I was accused by Jim62sch of "slither about behind the scenes" and "canvassing POV pushers", and by Guettarda of "recruiting" because I did the routine (and open) notifications.
Three and a half days into the FAR, I read the article's FAC—which I hadn't participated in—for the first time. I saw on the FAR that Jim62sch could address another editor with "horse's ass" and on the FAC, that he had referred to Phillip J. Rayment as "Rain Man" (an apparent reference to autism), and that these personal attacks went unaddressed in plain sight. Having worked on many neurological articles (autism, Asperger syndrome, Tourette syndrome and many others), the tone I read on the ID FAC and FAR offended me to the core, and at the time, I still held the belief that such personal attacks weren’t allowed on Wiki. At the time I read these comments, I mistakenly faulted Raul for allowing an environment of personal attacks on a FAC; later, I understood that it's best for someone other than the director to deal with civility issues so the director can avoid conflict and remain neutral, and I’ve encouraged other FAC regulars to address civility issues when they occur. But ... after reading the FAC and viewing the "Rainman" comment and the environment on the FAC, and misunderstanding Raul’s role in that environment, I made impertinent comments about the article, adding that "Raul has expressed sentiments in this area that may reflect a conflict of interest." I have since apologized to Raul for my comments.
SlimVirgin (who almost never appears at FAR), referenced the separate dispute she was engaged in with TimVickers at WP:V (see Timeline), with another false claim of personal attack: "SandyGeorgia posted a personal attack on me on AN/I about my editing of the sourcing policies", and AnonEMouse reminded her (referring to TimVickers) that: "With respect to one of the most respected admins in this place, this requires a bit of a stretch to be called a personal attack. It's a support of User:Tim Vickers in a dispute with lots of administrators, but it's rather mild to be called an attack, and I don't see any singling out of Slim Virgin, so it's hardly personal." Later, the FAR was prematurely and incorrectly closed and I re-opened it, Raul clarified, the editors involved in the incorrect close apologized, and dave souza thanked me for my work. The FAR instructions were rewritten to ratify and clarify what was already in place (FARs are closed by Raul, Marskell or Joelr31) and make the process more clear to non-FAR regulars.
SG: FeloniousMonk harassment and intimidation tactics
On 11 July 2007, FeloniousMonk posted to my talk page:
Sandy, yes we know all about your campaign against Raul645 that you, Marskell, and Tony1 have been conducting, trying to undermine him at FA for some time, over a year now it appears. The entire project does, or soon will. Viewed in the light of your vendetta against Raul your comments are utterly transparent, part of that campaign. Your little group has recently tightened the FA criteria to the point of absurdity, without substantive community input I'll add, with all kinds of new ridiculous rules about how citations should be written, and quality of writing and sources, which you guys simply ignore when when it suits you. Your new rules go way, way too far. It's clear to observers that your little group tries to maintain the FA review process to give you more control over FA content and guidelines, and you frequently use it as a weapon, either against Raul or against individual editors; both being the case here. A good number of we admins have (sic) watching this from the sidelines for several months now, so don't make the mistake thinking that you're going to continue on like this at FA unopposed... the cat is out of the bag. ... I'll also note that both Marksell and Tim Vickers (another from your group) have recently turned up at NOR, V, and RS trying to force unduly tightened sourcing policies as well. This constitutes a pattern by a group, and that pattern shows that the group's aims are not the betterment of the project, but undermining and marginalizing fellow volunteers like Raul654 and SlimVirgin. Until you stop trying to impose the inane new FA criteria and cease engaging in selective enforcement of same, I'm taking a personal interest in seeing your group's vendetta against Raul654 and SlimVirgin aired out and ended for good. Either announce a ceasefire with these editors and stop disrupting FA with needlessly rigid criteria and its selective enforcement or I'll take this DR on their behalf... your call.
— User:FeloniousMonk 04:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
In the December 2006 ScienceApologist Arbcom, FeloniousMonk was "counseled to consult with other administrators with respect to disruptive users and to cooperate with them in a collegial way". Seven months later, while under ArbCom sanction regarding his interaction with fellow admins, he accused respected fellow admins and top content producers, Marskell and Tim Vickers, of engaging in "a pattern by a group, and that pattern shows that the group's aims are not the betterment of the project, but undermining and marginalizing fellow volunteers like Raul654 and SlimVirgin". Accounting for Cla68, TimVickers and Marskell, FeloniousMonk has attacked and disparaged not only fellow admins, but the authors of 47 featured articles between them. This is FeloniousMonk’s behavior towards well-respected and productive admins when under advisement to interact collegially with fellow admins.
Raul responded to FM's charges on July 19, and directed FeloniousMonk to his response. In accordance with dispute resolution procedures, I attempted at least twice to discuss and resolve this with FeloniousMonk. My posts to FeloniousMonk on July 20, and again on July 23, were first responded to on FM's talk page by SlimVirgin, saying that my requests for a response to this matter were "trying to make trouble".
Another editor offered an explanation of the working of these groups: "These two groups most of the time do excellent work but are well known for winning their battles by less than policy supported means." I am aware of other admins who may be in this "group" and may have been a factor in the premature escalation of the Zeraeph case from AN to ArbCom, but several instances of showing up to support SlimVirgin when she takes issue with me provides thin evidence. I've worked well subsequently with several of the Intelligent design FAR participants, I’ve worked with Jossi on a number of FACs and Spanish-language issues, and believe I have a good and collegial working relationship with all of these editors. I believe I get on fine with JzG.
SG: Ferrylodge
Ferrylodge: FeloniousMonk closed the thread and pronounced Ferrylodge banned less than 24 hours after the discussion started. When the thread was closed, there were at least three editors opposed to a ban and ongoing discussion of banning policy.
I had previously encountered Ferrylodge on the Roe v. Wade FAR, where I found him to be a helpful and cooperative editor in a difficult task. The FAR nominator (Severa, an editor who according to Kate’s Wannabe tool edited mostly only abortion topics) had nominated the article at FAR, didn’t return to help work on the article, and clearly stated at the time that she had health issues. I saw in the CSN thread that she said she left Wiki because of Ferrylodge, but her talk page history shows that long before she encountered Ferrylodge (and to this day, even with Ferrylodge’s editing restrictions), she regularly grew frustrated and took Wikibreaks (for example, at least in Mar 2006, August 2006, November 2006, January 2007, July 2007, and her current break since Dec 2007.) Although she claimed large problems on the Roe v. Wade article, and notified numerous editors about the FAR, (sample) not a single other editor presented to help restore this article to featured status. I was pretty hard on Ferrylodge in terms of the work needed, and I wasn’t happy to be stuck working on a legal topic I knew little about, but Ferrylodge complied with everything I asked with good humor and diligence. During the work, I could not discern if he had a POV, and the article retained featured status. Today, I sometimes encounter Ferrylodge reviewing at FAC, and he contributed to Ima Hogg, featured on April Fools.
(I should add that I also thought Ferrylodge did a poor job of defending himself at ArbCom, giving the appearance of combative Wiki-lawyering as pointed out often by Bishonen, and that a mentor might have helped. ArbCom might consider that facing arbitration alone, particularly when confronted with a group, is daunting for anyone.)
SG: Summary
- While under ArbCom sanction to interact collegially with fellow admins, FeloniousMonk attacked and disparaged respected fellow admins and top content contributors, accusing them of "a pattern by a group, and that pattern shows that the group's aims are not the betterment of the project, but undermining and marginalizing fellow volunteers like Raul654 and SlimVirgin", apparently because they had disagreed with SlimVirgin on policy pages. There is no evidence that Raul supported those comments. If FM treats fellow respected admins and top contributors this way, the lowly regular editor might not fare well when faced with FM's use of admin tools; it is surprising that his attack on Marskell, TimVickers, Tony1 and me received no rebuke, and that he still has sysop tools.
- SlimVirgin frequently edit wars on policy pages, tag teams, routinely accuses others of attacking or stalking her, and it stretches credibility to believe she happened across Zeraeph to prematurely unblock her, without seeing the attacks on me and others in plain sight on Zeraeph's talk page. She backed FM’s attack on me and prevented me from discussing with FM; I have been able to develop good working relationships with other ID editors, but was prevented from discussing with FM. It would be helpful if she were admonished to back her frequent charges with diffs, refrain from intervening as an admin in conflicts in which she is involved, and 1RR restrictions might solve some of the edit warring and tag teaming frequently mentioned among SlimVirgin’s collaborators. SlimVirgin makes valuable contributions to the encyclopedia; I hope she can be encouraged to move on from issues she appears to have with me over long-ago differences.
- Cla68 is one of our most productive content writers and appears to have been targeted by groups, possibly overreacting to information on external sites, because he followed dispute resolution procedures to address some of these issues, as I and others were targeted because of differences on policy pages.
Attacks such as the "group of we admins" have a chilling effect on Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution processes. I have finally decided I cannot sit by with my arms crossed while productive FA writers like Cla68 and TimVickers are impacted or accused. If presenting evidence here means that I will again be targeted, so be it. I want to be part of a Project that recognizes and promotes our best work, not one that is dominated by "groups of we admins" harassing our top content contributors.
Because I am traveling, if any diffs are missing, or adjustments needed, I will tend to them next week. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:14, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
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