Revision as of 19:42, 23 August 2005

Case Opened on 21:28, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this request. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators will be working on evidence and suggesting proposed decisions at /Workshop and voting on proposed decisions at /Proposed decision.

Involved parties

Party 1

I don't know who took the liberty of writing me in as "Party 1" in this matter, but it certainly was not me. The fact is that I refuse to be a party to wasting any committee time on Banno, Ladd, and Rhobite's world-class elaborate argument _ad hominem_/personal attack/poisoning the well display here. If anything, two parties to a content dispute should, after all other avenues in the dispute-resolution process had been exhausted (and they were not so much as exhausted as skipped entirely in this case - the designated mediators were never even called in), should have agreed to JOINTLY bring a request for arbitration of the content dispute between Banno's side and my side in truth and related articles.

If this is a tribunal to test allegations that someone has committed infractions violating a code, then it should go to a TRIBUNAL, not to an ARBITRATION committee.

Arbitration and criminal trial are two entirely different things.

Arbitration is the process by which two parties to an unresolved dispute JOINTLY submit their differences to the judgment of an impartial person.

A tribunal is a court of justice before which an accused is brought for justice after being provided with a summons citing precisely what sections of the code he is charged with violating, and specifically what particular actions of his are alleged to be violations of the code.

There is a big difference, and I am sure that if you think it through, you will want to establish a separate tribunal where such “criminal” charges are brought, because you don’t want to continue having the arbitration committee contaminated by having to serve as judge, jury, and executioner in quasi-criminal matters, do you, don’t you want it kept free to serve as an impartial body to which two parties to an unresolved CONTENT DISPUTE submit their differences for arbitration? --67.182.157.6 22:03, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

(You cannot force someone to be a party to a request for arbitration, it is strictly voluntary. Arbitration is the process by which two parties to an unresolved dispute JOINTLY submit their differences to the judgment of an impartial person. If these obscurantists, Banno, Ladd and Rhobite want to bring criminal charges against an accused before a tribunal, then they are perfectly free to go ahead and create that tribunal first, then they will be free to bring whatever charges they please, provided they have a legitimate criminal case, and not just a standard content dispute, as in this case.)

Party two

• User:Banno
• User:Rhobite
• User:Nathan Ladd

Brief Summary

User:Donald R. Alford AKA ] AKA "DotSix" is a chronically disruptive troll who have violated many Wiki policies, stopped progress on several philosophical articles, and behaved obnoxiously.

Statement by party 1

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Statement by Banno

In Mid-June, DotSix commenced a campaign on a range of pages relating to epistemology. This commenced with a series of reverts , , , , , to a POV version of the page True, followed by his repeatedly attempting to re-direct that page to Wiktionary:truth, despite it being repeatedly explained to him that this was both not possible and not in accord with Wiki policy. DotSix also commenced to label those who disagree with him "obscurantist", and "vandals" and engaging in an "obscurantist Jihad"; he also removed all other comments from the talk page . This set the pattern for the way in which he has conducted himself for the entire period that he has been active on the Wiki. The page True has been protected since 8 April to prevent his vandalism.

The debate then moved to Truth, Knowledge and Epistemology. His ongoing misbehaviour is listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/DotSix. These have included modifying or deleting other users comments from talk pages, including responses to RfCs; archiving material to extinguish discussion and name-calling.

The number of edits makes it impossible to present all the evidence briefly and concisely. Here, for example, are some examples from a brief period. As at 22:26, August 6, 2005 (UTC), DotSix continued to vandalise truth by re-directing it to True, and repeatedly placed a brief POV definition there. User:Mysidia , User:Veratien, User:Asbestos, User:Ancheta Wis and user:-Ril- have attempted to discuss the issue with him on his talk page, receiving only an absurd response . See Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#User talk:67.182.157.6. User talk:67.182.157.6 has made 6 reverts on Truth with that IP, one with the IP 172.197.72.66 and two with the IP 172.199.120.111, within a nine hour period. Banno 07:45, August 7, 2005 (UTC). He continued to revert truth: , , .

The article truth was protected on 15 August and remains so, in order to prevent the compulsive reverting in which DotSix indulges.

He attempted to commence Arbitration proceedings against myself and the others who have defended the Wiki against his vandalism.

In addition he has attempted to modify Wiki policy document without discussion , , , including placing an NPOV banner on Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view. He removed a VfD banner from Misplaced Pages:Tyranny of the majority, changing the appropriate policy to suit his claim that it should be on the discussion page .

He has also been using his sock puppets to circumvent the 3RR policy: for instance, he has reverted epistemology dozens of times, using multiple different IP addresses. 172.196.117.124 (talk · contribs) is a sockpuppet for 67.182.157.6 (talk · contribs) (see Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/DotSix) and was used to circumvent the block imposed by Sasquatch .

He has attempted to confuse his identity by commencing multiple user accounts, Donald R. Alford (talk · contribs), dotsix (talk · contribs) and the Donald (talk · contribs). Each has been used to edit the others, and each has presented material in the style and tone of DotSix. I hope that ArbCom will be able to examine the IP addresses used to edit these accounts, and am confident this evidence will show that this is but another ruse on the part of the perpetrator.

He has refused to discuss the issue in the arbitration pages despite having edited on the main page page on another issue , .

As Donald R. Alford (talk · contribs) DotSix placed a request for arbitration against a "Cabal" of which I am the supposed leader. As is his want, he resorted to childish name calling, and his attempt was reverted by arbitrator Rauls456 (talk · contribs)three times , , and by Dmcdevit (talk · contribs) once; that Raul resorted to a warning on his talk page

In summary, his posts are deliberately inflammatory. DotSix refuses to consider or provide evidence or citations to support his position, or to accept consensus. He is deliberately misusing Wiki policies to support his rather singular position, and when that doesn't work, he has attempted to modify policies to suit himself. He has accused those who edit his work of being a "Cabal", and repeatedly pestered those who have attempted to correct his misconceptions with unjustifiable accusations of bias or malice. He has demonstrated no willingness to enter into mediation, or even reasonable discussion, despite making demands on others to do so. He has refused to participate in these arbitration proceedings.

In fairness to DotSix, who it seems will not defend himself here, I would like to point out that I have written a rather scathing attack on his behaviour at talk:epistemology.

Although I have several times attempted to support DotSix by pointing out resources he might use, , , and had supported the idea that he might be induced to behave in a civilised fashion , all such attempts have been ignored or rebuffed. I am now of the opinion that the only way to proceed is to block this user. The behaviour he exhibits is sociopathic, and has certainly been detrimental to the editing of the articles involved. I believe that permitting him to participate on the Wiki in any form will inevitably result in further difficulties for genuine editors.

Statement by Rhobite

I've tried to suggest to DotSix that we mediate this dispute, but these requests have gone unanswered . I recently proposed a truce to DotSix: I would strike through my endorsement of his RFC and pledge to stop commenting on his behavior, if he stopped removing VfD tags and editing policy pages, among other requests . His response to my proposal was ambiguous , but just today he continued to remove the VfD tag from Misplaced Pages:Tyranny of the majority , and he rewrote a section of Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view . This indicates that he has rejected my proposed truce.

In short, DotSix believes that he is allowed to edit the NPOV policy because it exhibits some logical fallacy. I've focused on this behavior because it's the worst thing he's done, but he's also removed other users' comments, mislabeling them as personal attacks. He's broken the 3RR many times, and he declines to get a user account. Many editors on Talk:Epistemology and Talk:Truth have tried to discuss his removal of content, but his responses are superficial: He usually just names some logical fallacies, calls everyone an "obscurantist", and says things like "Comment on content, not on the contributor" over and over again. There's no way to negotiate with a user like this it's futile. Rhobite 17:32, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Nate Ladd

Donald Alford has proved himself chronically unreasonable. He began namecalling with only his 8th edit. He has not once responded constructively to any disagreement in his entire history on Misplaced Pages. His repetoire of responses is limited to (1) hurling false accusations, (2) namecalling, (3) sarcasm, (4) repeating the edits that were rejected, and (5) repeating the behavior for which he was admonished.

Dozens of times he has accused other editors of committing fallacies. It has been explained to him repeatedly how he has misunderstood the nature of these fallacies and why these accusations are not legitimate. He does not try to refute these explanations, he just ignores them.

His ego has lead him to believe he has detected a fallacy in a definition of "knowledge" that no philospher in 2500 years of Western civilization has seen. When the errors in his thinking are explained to him (over and over again), he just ignores the explanation and repeats the edit. He has been invited to cite even a single philospher who agrees with him. He has failed to do this and repeats the edit. He has repeatedly deleted long passages from philosophical articles and replaced them with simple-minded definitions of controversial philosophical terms, declaring as he does so, that there is really no philosphical problem: he has found a simple answer that has eluded all philosophers in history.

His childishness prevents him from conceding any imperfection, no matter how trivial, in any of his behavior or edits. When it was pointed out to him that his description of Wiki NPOV policy was in error, he unilaterally changed the policy page so that it would conform to his description.

Even after the RfC on his behavior was started, his primary response has been to repeat the objectionable behavior the RfC describes. I mean literally repeating: deleting the same text from the same articles and talk pages. Obviously, he has no interest in actually resolving any issues.

His hypocrisy is so great, it borders on the comical: (1) He replaced someone else’s comment from a talk page with a sentence of his own. When a admin reverted this, he complained … wait for it … that the admin had deleted his comment from a talk page. (2) He put his first response to the RfC on his conduct outside of the Response section. In other words, he edited a section that he, as the subject of the RfC, was not supposed to edit. When his response was moved to the Response section by another user, he complained … that the other user had edited a section he was not supposed to edit.

His ego, his childishness, his obnoxiousness, his ignorance, his hypocrisy, and his utter disrespect for any views in conflict with his own make him impossible to negotiate with and impossible to reason with. Virtually all progress on the philosophical topics he edits has stopped dead since he became active in early July. --Nate Ladd 21:48, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by party 2

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Preliminary decisions

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

Temporary injunction Proposed

1)As at 08:22, August 17, 2005 (UTC) DotSix continues to vandalise multiple pages. He edited Epistemology and has reverted to his edit eight times , , , , , , in a period of about 30 hours, before being blocked by BaronLarf (talk · contribs).

He has subsequently used two other IP addresses to revert the same material , .

The point being that this is DotSix's typical daily behaviour. Another instance was his he has repeatedly removed other users' comments from Talk:Truth: .

I am requesting that the ArbCom issue a temporary injunction preventing DotSix from editing outside of this RFAR and his talk page. Banno 08:22, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Nearly all of the pages that Party 1 edits (and some of the talk pages too) have been in protected status for a long time. What further proof could there be that an injunction is needed? Is it not absolutely crazy that he is allowed to be unblocked while no one can edit the main philosophy project topics? It is kind of like responding to a neighborhood burgler by putting walls around all the houses, instead of just arresting the burgler. Or responding to a school bully by requiring all students to run away when he approaches instead of standing up to him. --Nate Ladd 01:45, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Final decision (none yet)

All numbering based on /Proposed decision (vote counts and comments are there as well)

Principles

Findings of Fact

Remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Enforcement