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Tag team editing on History of the race and intelligence controversy

• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• David.Kane (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• mikemikev (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Distributivejustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Varoon Arya (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

These editors are attempting to use autobiographical writings by one of the main subjects of this article, Arthur Jensen, to write a severly biased version of a period in the 1970s. This is well recorded in secondary sources, which are published mostly by university presses. Captain Occam has given spurious reasons for removing material by Adrian Wooldridge, because it is 4 pages long and therefore too short. The views of these editors favour a minoritarian point of view and contradict what most historians of psychology, eg Franz Samelson, have written about Jensen's varying point of view over the years. Please could adminitsrators step in to sort out this tag-teaming and disruption on what was a neutral article. Captain Occam , by editng as part of a team, is attempting to impose a heavily biased and unacceptable version by force of numbers, in this case several WP:SPAs. I did suggest that they could write a separate section Jensen on "Jensenism" to include these autobiographical views, provided it was clearly labelled as such and separate from the history written relying on solid secondary sources and not written by the subject of the history himself. Captain Occam's finger was fast on the revert button. Note that he has been blocked three times before for revert warring on Race and intelligence. I would also note that the point of view of the tag-team on the sources seems similar to that of a review in The Occidental Quarterly. This looks like very agressive POV-pushing based on numbers, rather than arguments based on the readings of WP:RS. Possibly Captain Occam should be blocked. My temporary wifi link will unfortunately not permit me either to inform the above editors or to respond in the near future, Apologies about that. Mathsci (talk) 15:03, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Arbitration. The dispute is not being resolved, positions are increasingly entrenched. No way of untangling it here, I think. Guy (Help!) 15:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I think I should point out that Mathsci has another currently open AN/I complaint about this same issue here. The linked thread is a request that I be banned for tag-team editing on the same article about which he's making his current accusations. Aren't we supposed to avoid multiple simultaneous AN/I threads about the same issue? At the very least what Mathsci is doing here is forum shopping, and having two simultaneously open AN/I complaints about the same issue might be a violation of other policies also. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps "forum flooding". --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC) This editor is a block-evading sock. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• MathSci claims that books written by Jensen may not be used in an article that mentions Jensen. He claims that this is Misplaced Pages policy but fails to specifically cite any such wording. If writings by Ghandi may be used in the article about Ghandi, then writings by Jensen may be used in an article that mentions Jensen. (They do not have to be used and we need to evaluate them in the context of other sources.) Or am I missing something? David.Kane (talk) 15:59, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• History of the race and intelligence controversy is not about Jensen, it's about the history of the race and intelligence controversy. Hipocrite (talk) 16:19, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Well, obviously. The issue: Is there a general Misplaced Pages policy against using work written by person X in an article that touches on person X? MathSci asserts that there is, that in the paragraph or two in this article which discusses Jensen, we may not use work written by Jensen. But there is no such policy. MathSci is just making things up, hoping to bully people into getting his way. Could an experienced administrator at least tell us if there is anything wrong with the article on Ghandi using Ghandi's autobiography as a source? David.Kane (talk) 16:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Those sources are primary, so using them must be consistent with WP:PSTS. One could also argue that such sources are not WP:Reliable Sources, and that using them excessively is providing WP:UNDUE weighting to a particular POV, thus running afoul of WP:NPOV. Abductive (reasoning) 17:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe that all the (attempted) uses of Jensen's work has been consistent with WP:PSTS. And MathSci has not, to my knowledge, asserted otherwise. He simply claims that any use of work by Jensen is unacceptable in this article because they were written by Jensen. That is complaints about WP:UNDUE are secondary. David.Kane (talk) 18:24, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I second the vote for arbitration. Or at the very least mediation. Panyd 16:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Mediation already failed as the mediator lost buy-in from one of the parties and then, as opposed to reengaging the party by determining their problems and adressing them, instead barrelled through mediation without that parties input. Hipocrite (talk) 16:20, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Around two weeks ago, we finished a five-month-long mediation case for the main Race and intelligence article, which also covered the way we’d be describing this controversy’s history. Our mediator was user:Ludwigs2. Mathsci refused to participate in the mediation for most of the time that it was underway, despite multiple attempts from Ludwigs2 to engage him in it, instead posting multiple AN/I threads trying to get Ludwig banned for allegedly mishandling the mediation case. Mathsci also refused to accept the outcome we agreed on during mediation after the mediation case was finished, which is what’s causing the current conflict. Since he voluntarily excluded himself from the first mediation case and refused to accept its results, I don’t think a second mediation case is likely to solve this. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:29, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

  Then off to the arbitration committee! If it's been going on for that long and it's still not going away I can't see any other way to solve it. Unless Mathsci was willing to engage in some sort of talks with other editors. I'd like to see some evidence from them for the accusations of sock puppetry too, because if that is happening, that should be addressed. Panyd 16:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

It really doesn’t seem like arbitration should be necessary here. Of the seven users who are involved in the Race and intelligence history article, six of us are able to work together without any problems. (These are the six users about whom Mathsci is filing his complaint here—his complaint is against every user other than himself who’s involved in this article.) The only user involved in the article who hasn’t been able to work cooperatively on it is Mathsci. When the consensus of other users disagrees with him, rather than accepting what consensus has determined, he either edit wars over it or files complaints about it at AN/I like this one. Is it really appropriate to start an ArbCom case because of a single user who’s unwilling to accept consensus? --Captain Occam (talk) 16:58, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a democracy - and for that, you should count your lucky stars. If we did a quickpoll with only "topic ban MathSci" or "topic ban Captain Occam" as the only choices, I will personally guaranty that you would be banned from this topic. The same with every other name on the list of 7. If you care to dispute this, then I suspect that we could, in fact, host said quickpoll with your agreement. Hipocrite (talk) 18:27, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

We already have hosted a poll about this, when Mathsci tried to get me topic banned two weeks ago in the thread I linked to. Of the 15 or so people who voted in the poll, around five supported a topic ban for me, and the other ten opposed it. (We didn't vote on this in Mathsci's case.)

In any case, when I say that Mathsci has been refusing to accept consensus, I'm not just referring to what the majority opinion is. I'm also referring to the fact that when other users have addressed the arguments Mathsci was making for his preferred version of the article, Mathsci has only ever done one of three things in response: ignored us altogether (as he has towards the end of this thread and this one), made the exact same claims he's made before without addressing any of the earlier responses (as he has in this thread), or answered our rebuttals with snide comments or threats that have nothing to do with the arguments being made (as in this comment and this one). The real reason why consensus opposes Mathsci about this article isn't because the ratio of opinions is six to one (although that fact still makes some amount of difference)--it's because Mathsci apparently has very little interest in trying to justify the changes he wants to make. Not only does every other user involved in the article disagree with him about this; he also consistently evades our efforts to discuss it with him. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Disagreeing with you and your hordes of POV-pushing SPAs is not refusing to accept consensus, it's you refusing to accept that you and your hordes of POV-pusing SPAs have driven off all of the legitmate editors. Hipocrite (talk) 19:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I support arbitration. This needs to be dealt with sooner than later. Auntie E. (talk) 17:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I also support Arbitration, but then a process that looks also beyond the issues specific to this case. So, instead of just looking at editor conduct here and perhaps imposing topic bans, it is high time that it is recognized that there exist a class of topics like this, where you can just wait until editors with an agenda arrive who will edit in a tendentious way, interpeting RS in a way that suits them etc. etc.

Clearly what would help is if the policies are rewritten so that NPOV becomes SPOV. Not that we don't want NPOV, but rather that achieving NPOV is best done by sticking to SPOV. Now, there is no consensus to modify the wiki-policies in this direction. But then that's why we have an ArbCom. ArbCom can impose new policies for the benefit of Misplaced Pages, regardless of consensus. Count Iblis (talk) 17:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I request that my name be removed from the above list, as the complaint is in regards to editors allegedly "attempting to use autobiographical writings by one of the main subjects of this article, Arthur Jensen, to write a severly biased version of a period in the 1970s", which simply does not apply to me. My only involvement in this issue - which spanned all of two comments on the talkpage - was a suggestion to consider the use of a secondary source on the topic of Jensenism which was not written by Jensen. Other than that, I've decided to leave this article alone, and have done for some time now, as Mathsci's antics literally turn my stomach. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 17:40, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, crap. I’d been wondering whether Mathsci’s behavior was the reason why you’ve mostly stopped contributing to Misplaced Pages, and it looks like my suspicion was right.

I consider you to be the most neutral and talented editor we’ve had involved in these articles in at least a year, so it bothers me a lot to see Mathsci driving you off the way he’s apparently doing. Is there no way you’ll be willing to resume participating in these articles as long as his behavior doesn’t change? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:05, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Aryaman neutral, lol. Maybe an uncivil civil POV pusher. The analogy he left on Occam's page and many others clearly demonstrate a POV. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:31, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Have any of Varoon Arya’s actual contributions demonstrated non-compliance with NPOV policy? During the time since he became involved in race-related articles last fall, my observation has been that he’s adhered to NPOV policy pretty strictly. If you disagree, I’d like to see diffs to support your claim about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

So you admit that Aryaman has a POV but that his actual contributions comply with NPOV. The difference between civil POV pushers and regular POV pushers is that civil POV pushers understand wikipedia's policies well, and are thus able to avoid any blatant violations of policy. Despite the lack of blatant violations, CPPs may violate the spirit of wikipedia by cleverly advocating certain POVs. Wapondaponda (talk) 06:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow, thought crime already. mikemikev (talk) 09:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, everybody has a point of view, including you. The only thing that matters at Misplaced Pages is whether we can avoid introducing our personal biases into articles when we edit them. If Varoon Arya is able to do this—and you seem to be admitting that he is—then he hasn’t done anything wrong.

The same goes for everyone else who’s a subject of Mathsci’s complaint here. This thread is really just a content dispute, although it’s being presented as a complaint about user conduct, so the only actual conduct issue on our part is the fact that a few of you disagree with us. That’s why none of the users making these accusations against us are able to provide any diffs of objectionable conduct on our part, although I’ve been able to provide diffs and links that demonstrate stonewalling from Mathsci. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, everyone is entitled to have a point of view, and we all do. You are correct about introducing personal biases into articles. If Aryaman's edits were completely neutral, then many editors wouldn't have a problem with them. Other editors have complained about an atmosphere of resentment, undercurrents of hostility etc. regarding some race related topics. This demonstrates that some editors' POVs are spilling over into their edits. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

“Other editors have complained about an atmosphere of resentment, undercurrents of hostility etc. regarding some race related topics. This demonstrates that some editors' POVs are spilling over into their edits.”

I don’t think this is VA’s fault, or mine. If you read the talk page for the R & I history article, you’ll see that Mathsci is the one who keeps threatening other editors with bans or blocks when we disagree with him, and he’s obviously also the person who keeps complaining here at AN/I whenever he doesn’t get his way. The only example of something comparable to this from a user other than Mathsci is Mikemikev’s suggestion of starting an RFC/U about Mathsci, which was directly in response to Mathsci having continuously engaged in this antagonistic behavior for several weeks.

As I pointed out in the diffs and links above, Mathsci is also the one who’s either unwilling or unable to justify his opinion based on any policies here. When he responds to the rest of us at all, it’s either with name-calling and threats, or by repeating himself in an endless loop without acknowledging any of the earlier responses to his points. Even if you disagree with the changes we’ve been making to the article in terms of content, I don’t think you can argue with the fact that nobody has raised any coherent objections to them, least of all Mathsci. Unless you’re going to suggest that we ought to submit to him just because of how much noise he’s been making, or out of fear because of his threats, there’s nothing that the rest of us could be doing differently in order to avoid this problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:43, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• I don't know what the Jensen issue is that Mathsci is referring to. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 18:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I was involved in the mediation, so I am not an independent voice. But when ArbCom was created, it was specifically to deal with personal behavior violations and conflicts. I know its brief has been expanding a bit but we Wikipedians should resist that. For a long time I have argued that we need a separate panel or multiple panels (e.g. of experts) to mediate content disputes. This is really a content dispute and should not be handled by ArbCom (although i agree that mediation did not resolve all issues in a years-long problem article). If this does not provoke the community into creating a separate mechanism for dealing with content disputes, then I suggest some kind of task-force. Wasn't this how ethnic-conflict e.g. Israel-Palestine conflicts were handled? The core issue here of course is race and racism so I think it is analogous. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:27, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Request Could an uninvolved editor please move this thread to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Slrubenstein and leave a pointer here? Or if nobody objects, I'll do it. I'm not involved in the content dispute but I posted some outside commments to the earlier thread. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 21:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

A task force specifically for these types of articles seems like a great idea. I think this situation blurs the line a little between content disputes and behaviour conflicts, so it might be appropriate to send it to ArbCom. But something tailored to the specific situation would be a lot better. Who would be willing to sit in on that though? Panyd 22:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Why are we all "voting" on whether to take this to mediation or arbitration? If there's a conduct problem, present diffs illustrating the disruptive actions and myself or another administrator will slam a block on the guilty parties. AGK 01:44, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

(This comment by AGK went missing, pesumably after a wrongly corrected edit conflict by someone. It should be checked if more comments are missing elsewhere on this AN/I page. Count Iblis (talk) 02:01, 27 April 2010 (UTC) )

AGK: This case is far too subtle for that approach because there have been lots of researchers interested in race and intelligence, so a POV editor can find plenty of material to support their POV, and can keep pushing until all related articles "prove" their point. As far as I can tell, Mathsci is one of the few remaining editors who is attempting to keep a neutral portrayal of the science. Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps of only partial interest to this thread, but of considerable relevance to the actual issue of contention -- this is about history, not science. The NPOV issue surrounds the description of the motivations of various scholars 30+ years ago, but not their science per se. The science content is in the race and intelligence article, which is not at issue. --DJ (talk) 05:34, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

-> The Race and intelligence article has the problem that a number of largely single-purpose editors are trying to write the science themselves from primary sources. Not very much can be done about that as far as I can tell. But when it comes to history, they are now trying to play exactly the same game on the recently created History of the race and intelligence controversy. They want to write the history themselves using primary sources. They seem obsessive about their chosen subject and mostly edit very little else on wikipedia. So of course the game is to brush aside reliable secondary sources - in this case 4 pages from an account by Adrian Wooldridge, who is certainly not a Marxist historian (he lunches with conservative grandees and is Management Editor of The Economist) - and replace it with autobiographical statements by the person, Arthur Jensen, about whom the history is being written. They then spend time comparing that person to Gandhi and Winston Churchill. In this case, a fairer comparison would be to Enoch Powell, who sparked similar controversy to Jensen and produced copious amounts of primary autobiographical material, none of which is used directly in his wikipedia article. Fortunately, now that this has been reported here, several more widely experienced editors are now participating in the article and restoring some sense of normality to editing. If administrators want to look at the kind of edits I make, they can look at the carefully sourced material I added this morning on Cyril Burt and the newly created biography of Otto Klineberg, a social psychologist whose career followed a slightly different path from that of Arthur Jensen. Or then again, they can look at Handel concerti grossi Op.6 or Christopher Jencks. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 13:39, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The comparison to the bio of Enoch Powell is close, but not quite analogous. A better comparison would be to Powellism, the discussion of the controversial ideas and views attributed to Powell. That article quotes him extensively, and includes quotes taken from both primary (written by Powell himself) as well as secondary sources. I don't think the editors involved here are requesting anything other than balancing what secondary sources attribute to Jensen with what Jensen himself has said. In light of NPOV, this would seem imperative, particularly given the fact that Jensen himself has noted on several occasions that his views are more often than not misrepresented in such secondary sources.

And, for the second time, I request that my name be removed from this list. I do not plan on participating in this any further. --Aryaman (talk) 16:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Unfortunately in the case of Jensen, it is well documented that he kept changing his mind on various issues, eg the "Burt affair". In the early 1970s Jensen was one of the stauchest defenders of Burt. In 1983 he accepted that Burt's results were probably fabricated. In 1992 he reversed his decision. Plenty of neutral secondary sources give long quotations from Jensen - they are easy to find. I'm not sure what exactly is needed. Certainly no long presentations of the "science" in his paper or his replies to criticisms 30 years later. Anyway, now that Captain Occam has spuriously removed any summary of what Jensen's critics wrote (as reported by Adrian Wooldridge), it seems even less relevant to include any material directly by Jensen. By favouring Jensen over his critics, that would appear to be a move by you and the others to skew the reporting of the history in favour of the hereditarian viewpoint. That doesn't seem very neutral to me and I haven't seen it done in any of the sources. Wooldridge carefully summarises what both Jensen and his critics said. Mathsci (talk) 03:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Aryman - I've redacted your name from the list, unilaterally. If mathsci wants to raise a stink about it, he can bring it up at ANI - LMFAO --Ludwigs2 19:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

"LMFAO" - So, you find this funny in some way? Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

proposed topic ban for Mathsci

Suggestion to Captain Occam et al.

Continued tag teaming

The team mentioned at the top of this thread have now apparently decided that the following carefully footnoted historical account by Adrian Wooldridge is biased:

• Wooldridge, Adrian (1995), Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England c.1860-c.1990, Cambridge University Press, pp. 363–379, ISBN 0521395151, The revival of psychometric theory in England and America: 1969-1980

And that this 1998 two-page partisan opinion piece

• Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy#JENSEN, JENSENISM, AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF INTELLIGENCE

by Linda Gottfredson at the end of a nine-page tribute article, without footnotes and possibly unrefereed, is balanced. I would assume that most experienced editors or administrators would be able to classify Gottfredson's personal statement as a primary source and that of Wooldridge, an unbiased writer and historian, as a reliable secondary source. Probably the best way to handle this now is through WP:RSN. Mathsci (talk) 16:27, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

A section was opened at WP:RSN#Jensen_1998_writing_about_Jensen_1969 by DJ. Opinion seems to be that keeping the BLP balanced is more important than using the 'most secondary' sources. mikemikev (talk) 18:06, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

“Opinion seems to be that keeping the BLP balanced is more important than using the 'most secondary' sources.”

The important thing to understand here is that this is also the opinion of every editor involved in the article other than Mathsci. There were six of us who took this position—me, DJ, David.Kane, Mikemikev, 120 Volt Monkey, and Varoon Arya—until Varoon Arya abandoned the article out of disgust and frustration at Mathsci’s behavior, which may soon happen with some of the other editors also. The six of us tried to discuss this with Mathsci for around two weeks, and Mathsci stonewalled the entire time, as I described in more detail in this comment. Since he won’t accept consensus and he won’t engage in meaningful discussion, the only way for us to bring the article into compliance with WP:BLP has been by editing the article over his objections. The reason he now regards us as a “tag team” is because he edit wars against us whenever we try this—I previously reported this here, but the report was rejected because one of Mathsci’s ANI threads about this article was still active—so the only way to bring the article into compliance with BLP has been by having multiple users work together to enforce this policy. As Mathsci drives more and more other editors away from this article, though, complying with BLP becomes more and more difficult.

Any one of the six users whom Mathsci reported here can verify that what I’m saying here is accurate, if the diffs posted in the linked comments aren’t enough to demonstrate this. There’s no end to this problem in sight, and Ludwig’s proposal for a topical ban as a solution obviously wasn’t effective either. Is there anything else that can be done about a user who is repeatedly violating BLP, won’t accept the consensus against this, and edit wars against any effort from other users to comply with this policy? --Captain Occam (talk) 05:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Have you noticed how there has been very little support for your position expressed here? You point out how one editor (Mathsci) is interrupting the diligent work of six other editors, and yet people like me effectively say "good job Mathsci". The fundamental problem is that as well as SPA editors there are SPA researchers, and SPA editors can push their views into articles like these. Johnuniq (talk) 07:39, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

“Have you noticed how there has been very little support for your position expressed here?”

And isn’t it obvious what the reason for that is? Look at Varoon Arya’s comments again. This is at least the sixth time in the past two months that Mathsci has come to AN/I about the fact that nobody on the talk pages for these articles agrees with him, framing his content disputes as a user conduct complaint, and most of the users involved in this article are so sick of this by now that they want nothing to do with it anymore. Varoon Arya had no interest in participating in this thread except to ask that his name not be mentioned here, Mikemikev and David.Kane have barely commented, and DJ has refused to participate in this thread except for a single comment. All of Mathsci’s support in this thread has been coming from people like you, who haven’t been watching his behavior on this article, and are probably just judging Mathsci based only on his past contributions.

In order to effectively judge what’s going on here, you need to either directly observe Mathsci’s behavior on this article, or discuss it with other people who have. Mathsci’s past contributions aren’t relevant here, because at this point he’s developed an obsessive interest in this article and his viewpoint about it that surpass those of anyone else involved in it. If you look at the past week of his contributions, you’ll see that he appears to no longer have any interest in articles that aren’t directly related to race and intelligence. And if you look at the history of either the history of the race and intelligence controversy article or its talk page, you can see that for the past two weeks Mathsci has been as active there as all other users combined. Even if he wasn’t an SPA in the past, at this point he is now more of one than anyone else there.

Let me ask again: given what’s going on currently, including the fact that at this point most other editors no longer have the patience to deal with Mathsci’s continuous stonewalling and AN/I complaints about content disputes, is there anything that can be done to bring this article into compliance with BLP? In this situation, does Mathsci get to put whatever he wants about living researchers into the article, by virtue of the fact that he’s in the process of driving away most of the other users away from it, and he has enough of a history of contributions to Misplaced Pages that nobody else is willing to examine the problems with his current behavior? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:52, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. After reading this very depressing discussion and the article and talk page that provoked it my conclusion is that the problem arose because Mathsci has been editing outside his area of expertise. Like many amateurs he has become carried away with his enthusiasms and is unable to view the subject with the balanced perspective that an experienced scholar of the field would have developed. It might be helpful to give him another rap over the knuckles to remind him to avoid edit wars, personal attacks and so forth and so forth and so forth. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Everybody on wikipedia, even when editing editing close to their expertise, is an amateur. Suggesting otherwise is contrary to all wikipedia policy. Is she proposing to tag Europe because, with Hemlock Martinis (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), I was on eof the main editors to rejig and source the history section? I wish her the very best of luck! The comment above seems like an attempt to settle a personal grudge connected with fringe science. Not having elicited a reply here, Xxanthippe appears now to be disrupting wikipedia to make a WP:POINT by adding {{expert}} to the article without any justification on the talk page. Several very experienced administrators are discussing sourcing and further addition to the article. At no stage has anybody but Xxanthippe questioned my editing skills. Mathsci (talk) 07:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

UPDATE Slrubenstein has invited several outside editors familiar with wikipedia policies to comment on the talk page of the article. The comments so far have been very helpful. Mathsci (talk) 11:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be mentioned that Mathsci’s antagonistic behavior, as well as his issues with Ludwigs2, are now being discussed at WQA: Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette_alerts#Ludwigs2.27s_personal_attacks_on_WP:ANI. No progress appears to have been made there thus far, so people who have been following this thread might want to look there also, to see if they can offer any ideas about how to solve this. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Captain Occam in his haste has forgotten to mention that Ludwigs2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked by BozMo (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) for his personal attacks in the archived subthread.

• Captain Occam and his team still seem set on including as many indications as possible on wikipedia that the hereditarian view of race and intelligence - that there is incontrovertible proof that the intelligence of blacks on average is significantly less than that of whites due to inherent genetic features of race. I hope that I am not misreading his statements. Another like-minded member of his team, Distributivejustice, is now claiming that one of the sources - by William H. Tucker, a psychologist and author of a prize-winning book on the history of funding of the hereditarian research - is not a qualified historian and therefore material from his book should be removed from wikipedia. This is fairly typical of the spurious arguments on the talk page from the POV-pushing SPAs. They are attempting slowly to chip away at an article until it can be flooded with commentary from 30 years after the event of Jensen and those close to him, so that the rest of the history becomes swamped and completely unreadable: of course this is against all core wikipedia editing policies. To some extent they have had some success in tiring out neutral editors on Race and intelligence. Many have now abandoned the article. It must be a cause of concern that editors like Captain Occam, Mikemikev and Distributivejustice edit relentlessly only race-related articles and from this very particular point of view, the possible inherent superiority of one population group over another. Mathsci (talk) 07:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• The relationship between what you write and what's actually happening is tenuous to say the least. Here's the diff for my talk page suggestion that Tucker's unattributed POV is an NPOV problem; I explicitly make no suggestions about what to do with it, but my previous attempts at resolution have been to retain Tucker's POV and balance it with the view of the person he is criticizing. The implied attack on my character is offensive and I wish you would retract it. --DJ (talk) 07:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Ahem, isn't this your complete editing record? We have no way of analysing Tucker's point of view on wikipedia: his prize-winning book does satisfy WP:RS and WP:V, is published by University of Illinois Press, is meticulously documented and has been well-reviewed in the academic literature. The book was mostly used for describing William Shockley's role in the controversy and the funding of hereditarian research by the Pioneer Fund. (A recent biography of Shockley says more or less the same thing.) Leaving this aside, am I correct in understanding the point of view of your edits? In Captain Occam's edits he writes about those who "share his POV", so I'm just really wondering whether I have stated it correctly above. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 08:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't stomach your insinuations. Instead of trying to impugn my intentions, why don't you address the concrete content issue I've identified? I realize I have limited experience as an editor, but I know a biased presentation when I see it. --DJ (talk) 09:17, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci wrote: "Another like-minded member of his team, Distributivejustice, is now claiming that one of the sources - by William H. Tucker, a psychologist and author of a prize-winning book on the history of funding of the hereditarian research - is not a qualified historian and therefore material from his book should be removed from wikipedia."

This is a lie. Tucker's writing on Jensen is a severely negative misrepresentation of what Jensen actually wrote. You have used Tucker's words as unattributed fact, and insisted that what Jensen actually said be kept out of the article. Jensen is a living person, we are required represent him fairly. DJ was repeating this point, which you still refuse to accept. He said nothing about removing Tucker, as you know. When he clarified this, you replied with his editing record.

In my opinion some kind of sanctions are necessary while we clean up the article. mikemikev (talk) 12:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

“Captain Occam and his team still seem set on including as many indications as possible on wikipedia that the hereditarian view of race and intelligence - that there is incontrovertible proof that the intelligence of blacks on average is significantly less than that of whites due to inherent genetic features of race.”

Mathsci, in my comment below I posted three diffs of material I added to the race and intelligence article which favor an environmental cause of the IQ gap. In the approximately a year that I have been involved in this article, this is a greater amount of pro-environmental material than you have ever added to it. I, too, would like you redact your comment. It is a rather blatant breach of WP:NPA with its unsupported accusations of policy violations against me and DJ. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

This discussion is about tag-teaming by SPAs on History of the race and intelligence controversy. It's a red herring to bring up Race and intelligence here. Mathsci (talk) 08:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It’s relevant because it disproves your accusation that the purpose of my involvement in these articles is only to push a hereditarian point of view.

Now that I’ve pointed this out, are you going to redact your comment in which you claimed this about me, and stop claiming it in the future? Or do you intend to continue knowingly and willingly perpetuating a false accusation against me? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• This discussion about sources reminds me of a discussion with Log in, log out (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) on WP:ANI in 2008. It continued on my talk page here. There the editor was questioning the reputation of Johanna Nichols, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. The same kind of circular and repetitive arguments are now being applied to William H. Tucker. Mikemikev writes above "while we clean up the article". An interesting use of the word "we" here. It doesn't look very good at all. Mathsci (talk) 14:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Here Mathsci gives a fine example of his stonewalling. Above I wrote:

"This is a lie. Tucker's writing on Jensen is a severely negative misrepresentation of what Jensen actually wrote. You have used Tucker's words as unattributed fact, and insisted that what Jensen actually said be kept out of the article. Jensen is a living person, we are required represent him fairly...In my opinion some kind of sanctions are necessary while we clean up the article."

Did Mathsci address this, the core issue here? No: an irrelevant link to his talk page and some vague insinuations about my use of a word. Note also how I accused him of lying (which I stand by). No problems with that Mathsci? Doesn't look too good does it? mikemikev (talk) 15:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

According to wikipedia editing policy, we find good secondary sources. We then report accurately what is in them. Something I didn't include in the article is the documented evidence that (a) Shockley was instrumental in arranging for Jensen to be funded by the Pioneer Fund and (b) this funding was channelled through a special institute set up with Jensen as president and his wife as vice president. I chose not to include that material. I can't say whether it's negative or positive, but I thought it was WP:UNDUE to go into detail. What is in the article was designed to be neutral, anodyne and inoffensive. The 1969 article of Jensen is described by quotes from the article appearing in the secondary sources, mostly from Wooldridge - there doesn't seem to be any misrepresentation. Some editors have been removing material about contemporary criticisms, without convincing reasons. As I understand it a history article like that should just summarise the events as they are recounted in the sources, without distortion. Nobody comes off particularly well either in the secondary sources or in the article. I could still imagine including some mention of the Head Start Program in the USA, missing at the moment, but mentioned in some sources. I note that it's mentioned in the BLP of Arthur Jensen, a BLP which goes into detail about the aftermath of his 1969 paper - it doesn't read as something very positive, less so than the article currently under discussion. Since creating the history article, I finished the Handel grand concertos article and at present am starting to resume work on Triumphs of Caesar. Mathsci (talk) 23:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for a Topic Ban

I propose that the time has come for a topic ban on the SPA editors who have been plaguing these articles. They stated they were prepared to work elswhere voluntarily, that seems to be untrue and now I think an involuntary ban is reluctantly necessary. The time has come for AN/I to support productive editors who support the core mission statement of NPOV against SPA editors seeking to skew articles in favout of a particluar minority POV. Too often we talk too much but don't take action. Justin talk 21:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to reply with a quote from the Academy Award winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film):

Bromden spots (or he thinks he spots) one of the attendants listening at the door. He wants to warn the others, but doesn't know how.

SEFELT- Maybe he'll just show Nurse Ratched his big thing an' she'll open the door for him.

Sefelt and Frederickson smile at each other.

Bromden slides along the wall toward the door.

MCMURPHY- Yeah, maybe I will, and then maybe I'll just use that thick skull of yours and knock a hole in the wall Sefelt.

:::Bromden reaches the door and looks out. No one is there. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 05:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't quite understand the meaning of your quote in this context. I certainly hope it's not expressing the opinion that some Misplaced Pages editor's skull should be used as a battering ram? Please enlighten me, because I'm confused.

Oh, and i should say that I support a topic ban for the SPA editors on the R&I articles, which sounds like a pretty darn good idea. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:28, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I presume the reference to a film about a mental hospital is referring to my mental health problems. I have been diagnosed with PTSD, it wouldn't be the first time my contribution history has been mined for my problems to be brought up as a means to devalue my contributions. Never mind this old tom has a fairly thick skin. Justin talk 10:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

This would include Mathsci also, right? As I pointed out above, even though Mathsci didn’t used to be an SPA, it’s apparent from the past week of his contributions that he no longer has any interest in editing articles that aren’t related to race and intelligence. (His contributions to other articles have been declining for the past month, but it’s for the past week that he’s had literally no involvement in articles outside of this topic.) His interest in this topic is more obsessive than that of any other user involved in the articles at this point: on the R & I history article and its talk page, he now has as many edits as all other users combined. To ban all SPA editors on these articles, but specifically exclude him, would be a kind of obvious double standard. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

If you guys will stop opposing the topic ban in exchange for Mathsci accepting one as well, I urge Mathsci to take the deal. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 09:06, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

mathsci has been editing since 2006, with 15000 edits to a lot of articles, but he is a SPA because in the last week he has only edited one topic? This definition of SPA is not good. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment (edit conflict with Captain Occam, above) We had an ANI incident (linked upthread) a few weeks ago with the same proposal, that got support from some pretty sensible and experienced users for topic banning the SPA's, but got enough opposition to not reach consensus. A negotiated mutual exit by Mathsci and Captain Occam also seemed like a possible hope to escape heavyweight dispute resolution at that time, but it's not looking to be in the cards by now. and maybe it looks like a possibility again? Durova suggested RFCU and Guy has been suggesting arbitration.

  Maybe I'm projecting my personal experiences onto this too much but I think the basic problem is that documenting the misconduct at the level needed for an arb case takes many tedious hours of mining 100's of diffs, an intensely burnout-inducing process about as appealing as wading through chest-deep bio-waste for the same amount of time. So there's a tension between recognizing its necessity and getting started, and staying through the awfulness of actually doing it to the end. And someone wanting to avoid conflict and write neutral articles is at a huge disadvantage when the opponent is someone who actually enjoys and seeks out conflict (WP:BATTLEGROUND) (the userpage User:Captain Occam begins "I’m an artist and writer who likes to debate..." and goes on to name various traditional WP battleground subjects). (When both sides like conflict, we get madness like "Date delinking").

  Based on the above, I think I can understand why Mathsci brings complaints here and then doesn't tend to them that carefully. There's a huge sense of futility in trying to beat back crap like this. It's easy to start the process because it's necessary, but then run out of steam because it's just not worth the headache. I've done the same thing myself more than once. I figure if Mathsci wanted to go through the hassle of RFC or arbitration he'd have initiated it by now; and if not, it's just a hell of a lot to ask from a user in good standing.

  I'm fine with the idea of topic-banning the SPA's and wish good luck to those who think it's worth trying it here a second time. I'm not so hopeful that it will work. If it fails: I propose:

Race and intelligence and related articles including History of the race and intelligence controversy are under discretionary sanctions like those given in the Homeopathy arbitration.

That will decrease the threshold required for admin intervention in future incidents. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 09:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

People have brought up that phrase on my userpage enough times that I should probably say something about it. The reason I enjoy debating about topics I care about is not the same reason why I get involved in these articles. If you read any of the debates I’ve been involved in with creationists such as the one linked to on my userpage, I think it’s apparent there that the reason I enjoy this is because I enjoy educating other people about topics I’m knowledgeable about—and it’s happened a few times that I’ve convinced creationists of evolution as a result of this, which is a very gratifying experience. There’s no hope of anything like that in articles about race-related topics at Misplaced Pages, because everybody who edits them is so entrenched in their positions that the most I can ever hope for is to allowed to edit them without interference. The reason I tend to gravitate towards these sorts of articles is because they tend to be the ones that tend to have the most obvious problems in terms of bias or poor writing, so they’re the ones that I always think are the most in need of improvement.

I don’t enjoy debating with people like Mathsci at all. The reason I tolerate it is just because I know otherwise there’s no way it would be possible to improve these articles. I guess at some point I should edit the information you’re quoting on my userpage to make this clearer.

I mentioned in Mathsci’s previous thread about this why at this point, I wouldn’t be ready to agree to abandon R & I related articles if Mathsci agreed to do the same: right now we’re still in the process of implementing some of the changes to the race and intelligence article that we agreed on during the mediation for it. However, one thing I’ve been trying to do as a result of the previous AN/I thread is to edit a wider range of articles here, since I hadn’t been aware before that thread of how much this mattered to a lot of people here; this is the reason why most of my content edits over the past few days have been to the (non-controversial) William Beebe article rather than anything race-related. This apparently isn’t enough to change the attitudes of people who think of me as only being here to push my viewpoint about race topics, though. If this situation doesn’t get any better, I guess your suggestion about discretionary sanctions sounds like as good an idea as any. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You're a good writer and I hope you do switch to other subject areas regardless of how that happens. I urge you to pick reasonably uncontentious areas, e.g. not anything to do with creationism, evolution, religion, etc, and try not to get into too many arguments. I'm very glad to hear that you may be willing to accept an exit agreement with Mathsci soon, but it sounds like your compatriots may also have to sign on, and I'm not that optimistic that the stuff holding you up will ever be declared completed. And it's not just the quote on your talk page; I've had enough contact with you by now to recognize that you do like debate and conflict (by what I think of as our standards). That's not a bad thing in itself (we all have a streak of it), but WP isn't a good venue for it, so try to resist the urge when possible. (Actually I think it was me who brought up your user page quote before--I had forgotten. But it was because of a conclusion I'd reached from earlier interaction, not the other way around.) 69.228.170.24 (talk) 10:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I’m not sure if I was clear about this. What I’m saying is that I would not be ready to accept an exit agreement with Mathsci yet, because not all of the changes to race and intelligence that we agreed on during mediation have been implemented yet. I might be willing to agree to something like this after they’re finished being implemented, but that may not be for around another month (or longer, depending on how much conflict we run into while trying to implement these changes).

When and if I’m ready to agree to an exit agreement with Mathsci, I might need for it to also extend to some of the other editors who’ve often involved themselves in this article with behavior and viewpoints similar to Mathsci’s. Most of the people I’m thinking of aren’t involved in the article currently, but I worry what would happen if they were to show up again after all of the currently active contributors have agreed to leave, meaning that these people have basically free reign over the article for as long as we’re staying away from it. Another option would be that if we end up all agreeing to leave the article alone after we’ve finished making the changes we decided on during mediation, we could then lock the article for as long as that agreement is in effect, in order to make sure that these changes don’t get undone during our absence. That’s something else I would approve of, as long as we finish making these changes before it’s locked. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:40, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

OK. I refactored my post a little bit last night without realizing you were in the middle of replying to it, but I think they're consistent with each other now. I think you should be ready to be a bit more flexible if necessary. I'm not a lawyer or anything like that, but I know that's part of the nature of negotiated settlements that both sides usually end up a bit unhappy (i.e. each side thinks the other side got too much), so you should expect that and accept it. Is there a concise list somewhere of the issues that you're working on, that were agreed in the mediation? Maybe there is some streamlined way to deal with it. (Actually, something is already amiss: this current ANI thread is about a dispute in the "history" article, which means you're already working on something that can't have been in the original mediation agreement list, unless I'm confused. What's going on?)

I think the main alternative is arbitration, which has a substantial likelihood of leading to your side getting topic banned while Mathsci could keep editing the articles. The process itself would be quite burnout-inducing for everyone involved, something I don't want to see. Avoiding that level of conflict is why people enter what they see as lousy settlements in the real world, so think of this as a microcosm. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 04:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

No I don't see Mathsci as an SPA, the editors any sanction is to apply to will be determined by community discussion. I suggest that AN/I needs to do something before this ends unhappily at arbcom. Justin talk 10:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Goodness - SPA, Marxist, anti-hereditarian .... I created the history article fairly recently and over a short period while finishing the much more difficult article Handel concerti grossi Op.6 which took 4 months. A topic ban has already been suggested by Ludwigs2: it was almost unanimously voted down. The article is neutral well-sourced and carefully written. There has been some sensible discussion on sources, etc, on the talk page between administrators - Maunus, Slimvirgin and Slrubenstein - which has been very helpful. Other than that, from my long-time experience watching Europe and Ethnic groups of Europe and the periodic disruption that can occur there (usually motivated by nationalism), it is quite apparent that the history article has been besieged by a group of SPAs, whose editing is restricted to race-related articles. In these circumstances the correct remedy is to encourage participation by editors of long-standing with wider editing experience, not the opposite. When that happens, I will be quite relieved to remove the history article from my watch list. So. in summary, (a) increase the number of non-SPA editors and (b) decrease the number of SPA editors. (b) is much easier to achieve than (a). Mathsci (talk) 10:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support I support this proposal. Whether Captain Occam and the other SPAs are acting in good faith or not, it is better for the encyclopedia if a small band of editors, with no other demonstrated interests here, be not allowed to continually edit in the small, but controversial, class of articles of their only interest. Controversial subjects have strong POV advocates and these POV advocates tend to be Single Purpose Accounts. I don't think that a topic ban for mathsci is necessary because he/she is clearly not an SPA. May I also add that the use of the 'we' in Captain Occam's statement above, while I don't want to read too much into it, is concerning. --RegentsPark (talk) 13:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment If ArbCom cannot intervene here because of objects like: "It would take too much time and effort", I would say that ArbCom would need to be redesigned so that it can deal with this sort of problem in an effective way. Why do we have an ArbCom at all if it cannot be used? Count Iblis (talk) 17:07, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Count Iblis, arbcom takes complex cases that the community is unable to resolve at a less formal level (which is what we're trying to do here). We have arbcom because some cases really are that complex and/or polarizing. Your complaint about arbcom being ineffective is a bit misplaced; it's the community that should be more effective at resolving these issues without requiring arbcom involvement. Arbcom has its own problems but that's not what's going on here. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 01:34, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Commment A topic ban is not necessary here, I think, and in any case would require that a case be developed with supporting diffs. A few days ago I added strong evidence for the anti-hereditarian perspective in Nisbett's discussion of intensive education (diff). Yesterday Lowk (talk · contribs) added more supporting information in transracial adoption/genetic studies (diff). The group there has thus far not reverted these additions. The problem here isn't that you have a group with a strong POV who are being completely unreasonable. It's just that the hereditarian editor group is not going to research and add much on the anti-hereditarian perspective or critiques of it, and the smaller editor group that is anti-hereditarian (Mathsci, Slrubenstein) either lack boldness or experience in working with scientific articles, because they don't seem to be adding the relevant data. II | (t - c) 18:04, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
• Comment From what I've been able to gather, there has traditionally been a group in Misplaced Pages attempting to present the "hereditarian model" as a fringe belief and another group refusing to accept that it is fringe. The fringe advocate group tries to push discussion of the hereditarian model out of articles and also tends to promote the idea that race is only a social construct, an idea the other group also refuses to accept. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 00:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Suggestion. Race and intelligence is a field so renowned for its fraughtness, sensitivities and disputes that many angels fear to tread there. This AN/I debate appears to have developed into a full-scale fight between the classic factions of the issue, both unwilling to concede or compromise. Would it be helpful to create two articles History of the race and intelligence controversy: *** perspectives and History of the race and intelligence controversy: non-*** perspectives where *** stands for "hereditarian" or "Marxist" or some other word that delineates the distinction between the approaches in a way that is acceptable to the contenders? The factions could then edit to their hearts' content and, when finished, the articles could be merged if that were felt to be desirable or possible. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
  • Xxanthippe, you're proposing a WP:POVFORK, and we don't do those. We write neutral articles that present all viewpoints with due weight, or at least we try. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 04:17, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

That is why I was suggesting a subsequent merger. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

Oh, I see. I suspect the mediation process already went further than that, and I'm not sure how anyone could do the merge without a lot more drama, but people who were present through the mediation (maybe that includes you, I'm not sure) would know best. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 04:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Since I was present for the entire duration of the mediation process, I’ll try to summarize its results. I don’t think I can list all of what was resolved during it in a single comment, but there are two resolutions we reached that I think stand out as being especially important.

The first is that the hereditarian hypothesis does not meet Misplaced Pages’s standards of a “fringe” theory. The most important discussion that led to this conclusion can be found here. Note that the two editors who reached a compromise with Varoon Arya about this, Aprock and Slrubenstein, are editors who normally favor a purely environmental explanation for the IQ gap. And in case anyone was thinking of leveling the “POV-pushing SPA” accusation against Varoon Arya, take a look at his contributions; he obviously isn’t one.

And the second important thing we resolved is that rather than structuring the article based on various viewpoints about this topic, we ought to present all of the most-discussed data on this topic, regardless of who collected it or what hypothesis it’s most often considered to favor. (We referred to this as a “data-centric” structure.) This is why nobody has reverted ImperfectlyInformed additions—according to what we resolved in mediation, any data published in a reliable source that favors environmental causes is welcome in this article, as long as it doesn’t violate WP:UNDUE. Something else that nobody has commented on here (I wonder why not?) is that the majority of data in the current article that favors environmental causes was not added by editors like Aprock and Slrubenstein; it was added by me. Three examples of this are here, here, and here.

(Quoted from ImperfectlyInformed's comment): "The problem here isn't that you have a group with a strong POV who are being completely unreasonable. It's just that the hereditarian editor group is not going to research and add much on the anti-hereditarian perspective or critiques of it, and the smaller editor group that is anti-hereditarian (Mathsci, Slrubenstein) either lack boldness or experience in working with scientific articles, because they don't seem to be adding the relevant data."

Slrubenstein has been fairly helpful in making sure pro-environmental data gets added; he was one of the people who favored my three revisions that I just linked to. But as for Mathsci, I think it’s been pointed out already why he isn’t being helpful with this. For the past month, he’s generally been more concerned with his personal conflicts against other users than with improving the article. His conduct during the mediation is one example of this, when he was refusing to offer any suggestions in the mediation itself, and instead repeatedly tried to get the mediation shut down via multiple AN/I threads. More recent examples of the same thing, at WQA, are here and here. The comments on Mathsci’s behavior there from Ncmvocalist, an uninvolved user, seem to be particularly pertinent:

Mathsci, when you made this ANI topic ban proposal, the community did not come to a consensus, and in doing so, gave you feedback that you need to provide diffs to justify your position. Clearly, this has not sunk into your head because since then, you've made another ANI posting about tag-team editing by a set of individuals without providing diffs - and have named Mikemikev (the subject) as one of those individuals. I'm not sure how many times or ways in which you are going to be whacked with the following fact, but here we go again: you are not being receptive to community feedback - please address that issue. Let me be unambiguously clear: you chose to bring this complaint here...and you're expected to be receptive to the feedback that you receive here (and you're expected to know this if you're an established contributor) - whether you're a subject or a filing party. JamesBWatson, Dolphin, Gerardw, and I (who have referred to every one of these opinions) have stated in no uncertain terms that your behaviour is not up to par and needs to change. In response to this, you keep battling. Each of those admins you allude to are welcome to review this situation and explain why their comments give you a license to abuse dispute resolution as a means of forumshopping for the feedback that you find most convenient for you.

I think it’s evident from the WQA threads that the current conflict over the article is not because of a lack of balance among the editors involved in it, or because of inflexibility on the part of those whose opinion during the mediation was that more space should be given to the hereditarian position. I think the most significant problem is that we have one editor (Mathsci) who’s actively seeking out conflict with other users, at the expense of dispute resolution or productive editing. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for this helpful synopsis. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

What you seek to portray as "actively seeking out conflict with other users" appears to be, in fact, an active attempt to restore the article to NPOV status, one which is actively, and, I think, disruptively, being fought against by the very SPA editors whom this topic ban is aimed at. In fact, it's the very reason for the topic ban -- since you've shown, quite impressively, that you and your compatriots are unable to work in a NPOV manner, and insist upon distorting these articles to your fringe POVs, then you should be shut-out from them so that other editors can work on the article to bring it back into compliance with our standards. That is clearly never going to happen if the SPAs are allowed continued free reign.Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to address any of what I’ve actually said in my comment? Such as the consensus that was reached during mediation, including three editors who opposed the hereditarian hypothesis (Aprock, Slrubenstein and Ludwigs2) that it does not meet Misplaced Pages’s definition of a fringe theory; or the fact that I have added more information to the race and intelligence article in favor of the environmental viewpoint than in favor of the hereditarian one, and have not interfered with any other editor’s attempts to add content to this article in favor of environmental causes such as the recent additions from ImperfectlyInformed? Just like every one of Mathsci’s other five AN/I complaints in the past month, this one is coming close to filling half of the page at AN/I without approaching any kind of resolution, and one the biggest reasons this keeps happening is because of people like you believing every one of Mathsci’s assertions despite the fact that he provides no diffs or links to support them, while ignoring anyone who provides links or diffs demonstrating the opposite. In this respect, people like you are giving him active encouragement to continue violating Misplaced Pages’s rule against forum shopping, along with the other policy violations that Ncmvocalist pointed out in the WQA thread. Is this really the effect that you want to be having? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

My criticism of Mathsci's conduct should not be isolated from my comment below. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support topic ban on race-related articles for SPAs like Distributivejustice, Captain Occam and Mikemikev. Too much time is being wasted by them, with no benefit to this encyclopedia. Here is a reminder how I make content edits : Jensen in that case was one of three secondary sources used. A neutral, well-sourced set of edits, neither anti-hereditarian nor Marxist. Mathsci (talk) 08:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support SPA topic ban There have been too many dubious researchers in the field, so it is too easy for SPA editors to inject dubious POV positions into Misplaced Pages. The enormous energy that the SPA editors are focusing on this issue is not assisting the encyclopedia. Mathsci is not an SPA and should be thanked, not restricted. Johnuniq (talk) 08:30, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose POV warriors hurling anathemas at each other. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:31, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
• Comment Here is a synopsis of what I have observed at History of the race and intelligence controversy. Mathsci wrote a good article but relied too much on Tucker (2002) and without needed attribution of Tucker's POV. Wooldridge seems to be a neutral source, however. I pointed out two NPOV problems here. One has subsequently been fixed (not by me). One remains in part, described here. User:Maunus may intend to address this issue. A number of other ostensibly experienced editors have added suggestions to the talk page. Their continued efforts would probably settle the issue. At race and intelligence it seems that everyone is burnt out. --DJ (talk) 09:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Didn't Mathsci have a topic on this just a couple weeks ago? Why is Misplaced Pages's rule against forum shopping not being honored here? It's annoying to see this issue constantly taking up so much space here. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 11:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Note that other thread originally was opened by Captain Occam as a somewhat ginned-up civility complaint against SLRubenstein, though it quickly morphed into a topic ban proposal by Mathsci. I agree that Mathsci's approach to DR has not been ideal, but it is what it is. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

section break

• Support topic ban for any accounts at those articles that an uninvolved admin judges to be single-purpose accounts. SPAs have become a huge problem on Misplaced Pages, and in my view should be removed from the topic they're attempting to influence as soon as they start to cause a problem on it. That can be done without implying that they're acting in bad faith: the issue is the single-minded focus and the lack of all-round experience of WP's culture and policies. It's particularly important to avoid that kind of editing at sensitive articles. SlimVirgin 12:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Is there any precedent for banning editors simply because they edit a narrow range of articles, if they aren’t acting in bad faith or engaging in any other policy violations? I don’t think there is. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• It's common for SPAs who are causing a problem to be topic-banned or banned completely, yes. The issue is not good faith/bad faith. It's that we have a team of editors on the one hand who edit lots of different articles and types of articles, and who come to see how the policies are applied across a broad range of articles. Reading policies is never enough; you have to see how they function within the project. And on the other hand, we have individuals with strong views on one particular issue who arrive to slant one article or set of articles toward their personal point of view. They do this with no knowledge or experience of how to apply the policies, so it's bound to cause problems. As things stand, you've made only 250 edits to articles since 2006, all or most in the same area. If you want to edit there, you might consider editing other articles for the next six or 12 months, then coming back to this one with fresh eyes. SlimVirgin 13:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

So in other words, it sounds like the idea of topic bans for the users that Mathsci reported here is based on the assumption that our edits have been contrary to NPOV. If that’s the case, it certainly hasn’t been demonstrated. Mathsci has not provided any diffs to support his accusation of POV-pushing, and I’ve provided several to demonstrate the opposite, such as that I’ve added more pro-environmental information than pro-hereditarian information to the race and intelligence article. (And certainly more pro-environmental information than Mathsci has added.) Judging by the contributions I’ve actually made to this article, if I’m slanting it in any direction at all, it’s in the direction of the cause of the IQ gap being purely environmental.

Something I think you ought to consider here is why it is that even though there are five different users involved in these articles who clearly favor the 100%-environmental explanation for the IQ gap—Mathsci, Aprock, Ludwigs2, Slrubenstein and Muntuwandi—Mathsci is the only one who keeps complaining about tag-teaming, POV-pushing and so on. (Remember, this is at least his sixth ANI thread about this since late March.) The number of editors involved in these articles who agree with Mathsci in terms of content is about equal to the number who appear to favor the hereditarian hypothesis, and with the exception of Mathsci, these two groups have not have a lot of trouble working over the past few months. Ludwigs2 is an especially good example, because even though he agrees with Mathsci in terms of content, he’s also one of the biggest critics of Mathsci’s behavior. Slrubenstein generally regards my editing as helpful (or to use his own word, “exemplary”) even though his viewpoint about this topic is different from mine. Given that everyone except Mathsci is able to work cooperatively on these articles, despite our disagreements, is it not possible that the problem with these articles is being caused by Mathsci rather than by everyone he’s complaining about?

Everyone here seems to just be assuming that the problem can’t be Mathsci’s fault, because he has a longer history of contributions than most of us. And as a result, they’re not looking at any of the specifics of this conflict, or any of the diffs being posted, and just assuming a priori that Mathsci must be right and that the solution is to ban everyone who he has a problem with. How can you know that’s the right solution, when Mathsci hasn’t provided any diffs to support his accusation that the problem here is with everyone else?

I am confident that if Mathsci were to quit his involvement in these articles, at least 75% of the conflict over them would disappear. This isn’t because the remaining editors there would all be people who favor the hereditarian hypothesis, since Aprock, Ludwigs2, Slrubenstein and Muntuwandi all oppose this hypothesis and would still be involved. The difference between them and Mathsci is that these editors are able to work cooperatively with people who they disagree with, so disagreements between them and other users never escalate into anything like what we’re dealing with in Mathsci’s case. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

While the willingness to discuss is good, the tendency to push through majority decisions is not. Consensus is not the same as majority. Someone with a minority view is even more important to engage and satisfy as without minority views we have lost a major asset in NPOV. You do not have consensus until the minority also agrees. Stephen B Streater (talk) 14:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem we’ve been having with Mathsci (well, one of the problems) is that he generally isn’t willing to engage in discussion about these issues. In the history of the race and intelligence controversy article, when other users have raised NPOV concerns on the article talk page, Mathsci often just hasn’t responded at all. When he has, it’s generally either been with personal attacks that had nothing to do with the content in question, or by repeating his earlier claims in an endless loop, without acknowledging any of what had already been said in response to them. I linked to several examples of this early on in this thread.

We tried to discuss these issues with Mathsci for several weeks, and he engaged in this stonewalling behavior the entire time. After it became clear that he had no interest in engaging in any meaningful discussion with us, we tried just editing the article to fix the problems that everyone but Mathsci was agreed needed fixing, and he responded by edit warring against us. When he was reverted by multiple users, he began complaining here at AN/I about “tag teaming”, which is where we are currently. As I said earlier, the people about whom Mathsci is complaining have made every possible effort to come to an agreement with him, and Mathsci hasn’t cooperated with it. Unless you suggest that we ought to submit to him just because of how much noise he’s been making, or out of fear because of his threats, there’s nothing that the rest of us could have done differently in order to avoid this problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:46, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: MathSci is not a SPA. It is worrying that some SPAs can't see the difference between a busy editor who concentrates on one area for a week, and an editor who has narrow interests here. I again suggest that the SPAs slow down a bit and spend their spare time on seeing how things are done more widely, to put their actions in a wider context. Stephen B Streater (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support topic ban on all editors named by MathSci, including those removed by the Ludwigs2, and on Ludwigs2. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is quite depressing. Almost nobody seems to be bothering to address, or even look at, the diffs that I and a few other people have posted about how Mathsci is misrepresenting this situation. Instead we’ve got comments like this one, assuming that Mathsci must be right, despite the fact that he’s posted no diffs to support his own assertions about this. If the majority of users end up taking Mathsci’s word for this situation (which is all he’s provided to support his claims), and all actual evidence that’s posted about it gets ignored, will that be a consensus?

If it is, and all seven of us (Me, Mikemikev, DJ, 120 Volt Monkey, David.Kane, Varoon Arya and Ludwigs2) get banned for this reason, I can pretty much guarantee that this will be the end of my contributions to Misplaced Pages, and probably also that of most of the other users who Mathsci’s behavior hasn’t driven off already. (As it has in Varoon Arya’s case.) I have no interest in contributing to a site where a single user’s past history of contributions and rhetoric are sufficient to ban seven other users, and it makes no difference what evidence is brought up to demonstrate that his allegations are inaccurate. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• I think I would be naiive if I threw an unconditional support. It's one thing to allow editors to make the article comply with site standards (by removing the problem); it's another to do so while leaving a ticking timebomb. I believe that Mathsci is advancing the right cause, but recently, has been doing so in the wrong way. That Mathsci's behavior is not staying up to par suggests that all involved editors are burning out; he did not respond well to the criticism of his conduct by strictly uninvolved users at WQA.

• The condition I want to attach to the proposal is an assurance that editors advancing the right cause are going to take a temporary break so that this "burn-out" does not affect interactions with other (uninvolved) editors. I'm not sure why this is being dismissed as if it is the plague, because even after the break, the tendentious problem would've still been removed via the proposed measure so the topic/article can be fixed quite easily. It would also mean that the ticking timebomb (a burnt out contributor) does not remain a hazard.

• If that condition is fulfilled, I will support unconditionally. The alternative unconditional support is for arbitration where all conduct will be looked into and addressed. I think the former is preferrable, and certainly not unreasonable, but that's just my view? Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Hopefully this will be construed as intended: constructive criticism. User:Captain Occam is well intentioned but a little impatient, possibly because his energy level is very high. User:Mathsci is very intelligent but prickly at least in recent interactions. If they could get along, they would complement each other very well and the articles they work on would benefit. --DJ (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Captain Occam asks: Is there any precedent for banning editors simply because they edit a narrow range of articles, if they aren’t acting in bad faith or engaging in any other policy violations? I don’t think there is. Yes there certainly is. See: WP:Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology#Single_purpose_accounts_with_agendas. As implemented in that arbitration, "agenda" didn't mean bad faith, it just meant they editing from a particular point of view in the affected articles. It was used to restrict over a dozen editors. The case was discussed in the last big ANI thread about this R&I dispute. The restriction is not a misconduct sanction and there is no misconduct allegation inherent in the proposal. It just expresses a community finding that the drama and neutrality issues associated with the SPA involvement in the topic is more unhelpful than their contributions in that topic are helpful. Whether there is precedent or not, it is certainly a remedy that the community is entitled to settle on by WP:Consensus in a discussion like this one. In any case, it has been done in the past, and Slim Virgin, a respected veteran of many wiki battles and many shifts in policy and practices toward them, is calling for it to be done more often in general, for reasons that make a lot of sense. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 20:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

“It just expresses a community finding that the drama and neutrality issues associated with the SPA involvement in the topic is more unhelpful than their contributions in that topic are helpful.”

This is the part that I don’t think is applicable. There are around ten users involved in these articles; five who tend to argue in favor of the hereditarian hypothesis and five who argue in favor of the environmental hypothesis. For the most part, we’re all able to get along, and the editors who aren’t SPAs generally find the SPAs’ contributions helpful. As I explained in more detail above, Mathsci is the only user involved in this article who has a serious problem with any of the SPAs. But a lot of people here seem to be assuming from Mathsci’s complaints that all of the people he’s reported here are a problem to the article in general, when in fact we’re only a problem to him.

Is a content dispute between a single user and several others, some of whom are SPAs (and some, like Varoon Arya, who are not) sufficient grounds to ban all SPAs from the article? And if it’s not, shouldn’t the burden of proof be on Mathsci to demonstrate that this is more than just a content dispute that he’s trying to resolve by banning the users that disagree with him? He hasn’t posted any links or diffs to demonstrate that the people he’s reporting here are causing any overall detriment to the article, and I’ve posted several that I think show the real problem here is just that Mathsci hasn’t made enough of an effort at resolving his content disputes before bringing them to AN/I. I would hope that the community would consider the evidence about this before coming to a decision, but some of the recent comments here make me worry that they’re just going to take it on Mathsci’s word that his interpretation of this situation is accurate. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support I think SlimVirgin explains why real well. I think it's time for the editors who only edit these groups of articles go to other articles to see and experience more of the project. Captain Occam, just so you know being banned from this group of articles isn't the end of the world and you actually might enjoy working on a less controversial article(s). Remember there is no dead lines here so after whatever time passes, the article will still be there. Good luck to all of you and hopefully happy editing, --CrohnieGal 21:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose I see a lot of evidence presented by Captain Occam and the others that they aren’t the ones causing a problem here, and nothing equivalent has been presented by Mathsci at all. I can't tell what the people voting "support" are basing their opinions on, but it does not appear to be based on the specifics of this situation. I don’t have much experience with Misplaced Pages, but seeing six editors get topic-banned (if that’s what happens) as a result of people literally ignoring the evidence here gives me a pretty bad impression of the site. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:24, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Note, there was an earlier thread where additional evidence was presented, though not enough to reach consensus that time around. IIRC, Ferragho the Assassin didn't participate in that thread, so s/he may have missed it. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 00:13, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• The page you linked to is blank. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Here’s an earlier version of the page, from before it was blanked:

ImperfectlyInformed and Ncmvocalist both pointed out in that thread that Mathsci didn’t provide any diffs that time around either. I can provide quotes or diffs of their comments if anyone wants, but I have a feeling that any evidence I present about this will just get ignored also. Am I right to assume that? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm not ignoring it. I think Mathsci needs to post diffs showing that the problems with these articles are the fault of the people he's trying to get banned, or his accusations shouldn't be taken seriously. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I do have to wonder how Ferahgo the Assassin found his/her way here with 17 total edits. What I think Slim Virgin is getting at is that banning someone from Misplaced Pages (so they can't edit any of our 3.2 million articles) is a drastic action that requires a lot of evidence, but restricting them to 3.19999 million articles out of the total 3.2 million is much less drastic, so we've been moving towards the idea that if someone is getting into difficulty in a disputed set of articles then we can and should require them to switch to other areas until they're more experienced—regardless of whether they're doing anything wrong or whose "fault" the problems are. In difficult areas it's just not possible to edit by our norms simply by reading the policy documents and trying to follow them. To understand the norms, you have to live in the culture for a while. Mathsci did give some diffs in the earlier thread, though not enough for traditional DR. However, he was backed up by several uninvolved users who had been watching the situation. The suggestion of topic-banning SPA's came from Guy, a very experienced admin who sees through nonsense readily. It was endorsed afterwards by Mathsci but didn't originate with him. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 05:25, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci’s complaints about these articles have been dominating AN/I for the past month. It's hard to ignore it when stuff like this is going on.

Is there actually a policy for topic-banning editors just for lack of experience, even if there’s no evidence of them causing any problems? I thought SlimVirgin was saying this only happened to inexperienced users who were doing more harm than good to articles, or advocating a specific POV. If lack of experience really is enough on its own, I think that’s an absurd policy. It means inexperienced people should never get involved in any articles about controversial topics, because no matter how well they behave, as long as they're inexperienced the same thing could happen to them. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 06:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused. Could you please explain why Captain Occam contacted you on your talk page about your edits to Race and crime when you have never edited that article? Do you have other user names at Misplaced Pages? Hipocrite (talk) 23:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Whether to restrict someone would be at the judgment of an admin not involved in the dispute. They are mostly pretty sensible about when something needs intervention and when it doesn't. If you do get restricted, don't take it personally. Just edit some uncontroversial articles for a while. If you have to edit something controversial, pick a topic that you don't have a strong view about, so you can edit neutrally. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 06:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

(Responding to your earlier comment): What I remember most of the admins who commented in the other thread saying about the diffs Mathsci posted there was that they didn’t demonstrate anything like what Mathsci was claiming. Here is what ImperfectlyInformed had to say about the evidence Mathsci was posting:

Oppose topic ban This is absurd. No diffs have been presented. You can't be banned for editing a small range of articles. End of story. Bring the evidence before the discussion starts. I will note that I looked through diffs presented by Mathsci, and they all look like this - Occam asking Ludwigs for help. That's it. Otherwise it's all rhetoric, which is really hot air. I will note that I am slightly involved in race and intelligence, but I've only added a ref to a study which found black IQs higher than whites .

Also, isn’t Guy the admin who said early on in the previous thread about this that he’d be basing his opinions on the reputations of the users involved, rather than any of the specifics of the situation, and at least five other admins responded that he wasn’t being reasonable? If you don’t remember this, please take a look at the thread again; it’s near the beginning of it. I’m sorry, but if you’re suggesting that Guy is a “neutral party” to be making a suggestion about this, I think his earlier comments about this show that this isn’t the case. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Guy wrote "I'm sorry but in any conflict between the two of you that requires weighing the relative commitment to the goals of the project or judgement of the project's mores, I'll be backing Slrubenstein". That is completely reasonable; Slrubenstein has had wide and deep participation in the project both on the content and the policy side, and has "walked the walk" much more than someone whose total involvement has been to obsessively edited a handful of related contentious articles. Of course there are other factors to consider in dispute resolution besides the participants' knowledge and commitment. However, trust me, before you started that thread I had never noticed you, yet it was obvious from the beginning that you either had poor understanding of how things are done around here, or else were being flat-out tendentious. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

And what about the comments from all of the other admins who said that Guy’s attitude about this was not acceptable? The comments from Equazcion, Epeefleche, Maurreen, Rico and Ohconfucius? I don’t have space to quote all of them, but Epeefleche’s seems to be the most detailed explanation for what’s wrong with Guy’s attitude:

Wow. I have respect for Slrubenstein. But Guy/JzG, I think your comment is way off-base, though you may well have given voice to a misapprehension that plagues other sysops as well. The mop does not by any means entitle Slrubenstein to better treatment than Occam is entitled to. Frankly -- it is precisely the opposite. The admin rules, and the bases upon which actions can be taken against admins, makes it quite clear that sysops have greater, not lesser, obligations than do non-sysop editors. Furthermore, as the oft-quoted "don't bite the newbies" guideline suggests, it is the newer editors -- not the more experienced ones -- whom we should take extra care with. Your "Slrubenstein is an admin ... I'm sorry but in any conflict between the two of you that requires weighing the relative commitment to the goals of the project or judgement of the project's mores, I'll be backing Slrubenstein" sends a terrible message. I'm hoping that was accidental, and will be redacted. It's IMHO contrary to some very important wiki guidelines, and is precisely what non-sysops say on a regular basis when they see sysops covering each others' backs in questionable circumstances.

Incidentally, Slrubenstein and I aren’t having any problems anymore, so the specifics of our past conflict isn’t relevant here. It’s Guy’s attitude about these types of conflicts that I have a problem with. Do you disagree with what Epeefleche said in her comment, as well as with the other four admins who expressed the same opinion there? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If the admin who decides this is sensible, I hope that means they'll base their decision about this on the evidence that's been provided here. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 07:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has over 3 million articles, so the fact that some editors have taken interest in only one controversial topic and nothing else for about 7 months is intellectually unhealthy and quite depressing. The typical Wikipedian edits articles because he or she is curious about a certain topic or would like to share his or her knowledge with the rest of the world. OTOH, a small minority of wikipedians edit articles because they want to advocate a certain POV. The topic of race and intelligence is a small part of a number of larger topics. The "race" part of the controversy is a sub-topic of anthropology and sociology, both of which are well established mainstream disciplines. If these SPAs were just curious about the subject of race and intelligence, then I would expect them to be curious about other topics in anthropology and sociology. Unfortunately, based on their editing history, I see little or no interest coming from these SPA in these subjects. They will only take an interest in these areas if it is somehow relevant to the Race and intelligence controversy.

The "intelligence" part of the controversy is also just a small part of the broader study of intelligence. If one were just curious about the R/I controversy, then I would expect them to be curious about other aspects of intelligence. There are subjects such as cognitive science, neurobiology, artificial intelligence or the evolution of human intelligence. One might even have an interest in animal intelligence. All these are fascinating subjects that editors can contribute to and they also have a non-confrontational nature. Unfortunately, our SPAs are not interested in these subjects, they are only interested in those aspects of intelligence that can be used to argue for race differences and nothing else.

The fact that some of these SPAs have zoomed in like a laser beam on the race and intelligence controversy, and shut their eyes to all the other interesting stuff on wikipedia, leads me to believe that they are using Misplaced Pages as vehicle to advocate certain points of view. Since they are not adding value to other articles and are draining resources by dragging out this controversy, one must question whether some or all of these SPAs are a net plus for the project. I think topic bans would definitely help determine this. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, I have a problem with you saying that I’m only here to advocate the hereditarian point of view. You’re the person who asked me to add more information to the article about environmental influences on IQ, and to change the titles of the sections in order to be less similar to the section headings used by Jensen and Rushton, and I spent quite a while at your request doing both of those things. I’ve made every effort to fix the NPOV concerns you were raising with the article, yet you’ve never acknowledged this at all, and now here you are accusing me of only being interested in advocating the point of view you disagree with. Do the efforts I’ve made to improve the article in the ways you wanted it to be improved mean nothing to you?

I guess I should also address your other point, about why I haven’t been editing the other articles you mentioned, although I’ve explained this before. Probably because of their non-controversial nature, there’s very little I can see about any of those articles that needs to be improved. The reason I’ve been attracted to the race and intelligence article, as well as (in the past) to other controversial articles such as Race and crime in the United States, is because these articles had much more blatant problems that I felt like I could improve. In the case of Race and crime in the United States, I don’t think anyone argues with the fact that I've done that—before I and Varoon Arya became involved in this article, it was just a redirect to Anthropological criminology, in contrast to what it is now.--Captain Occam (talk) 11:54, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Wapondaponda's dissatisfaction may be related to this. It should be noted that after presentation his outline was expanded and modified to become more similar to Aryaman's, especially his copying of the 'variables potentially affecting intelligence' organization. If I can be blunt, I find it disgusting that he now has the audacity to claim that the article would have been in a better condition without Aryaman, Ludwig, Occam, DJ, et al, after displaying his inability to cope with the subject. mikemikev (talk) 12:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

My posting is not about any single incident, edit to the article, or any one of the several threads that have been posted to the various talk pages. It is about the fact that a few of you editors have not been editing other articles and the only other articles that you edit are race-related, and your overall point of view in all of them is the same. It is legitimate to question, whether this is all you have to offer for the encyclopedia. What has come along with your editing, has been serial edit warring, incivility and a general hostile atmosphere. If two articles is all you have to show for it, then is it all worth it. Whatever material is present in the current article race and intelligence was at some time present in previous versions. In fact a lot of material is still from the pre-mediation version. So we have spent six months, and we still have a lot of the same old material. It is pretty clear, that some editors would have no problem going on for another six months "mentally masturbating" (to use a phrase I encountered on Misplaced Pages) over recycled race and intelligence arguments. The community will have to decide whether this time being spent is worthwhile. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Two articles isn’t all I have to show for it; I was just mentioning another one that I thought had benefited an especially large amount. Other articles that this group of editors has improved are Snyderman and Rothman (study) (Improved mostly by Varoon Arya), Race and genetics (Improved mostly by David.Kane), and J. Philippe Rushton, which I discussed with other editors at the BLP noticeboard, eventually resulting other editors removing several pieces of material that were cited to unpublished sources. One other article I’ve improved myself is the one about Rushton’s book Race, Evolution, and Behavior, based on instructions I received from an administrator at the NPOV noticeboard: “The article is a horrible quotefarm of criticism which is non-encyclopedic. Re-write the article to paraphrase the notable claims/sections of the book and then have a relatively short (certainly no longer than the summary section) section of criticism, including only the most notable critiques and maybe one or two quotes of a sentence or two each. The article as it is written looks like the authors found every quote about the book they could and included them all in the article.” As a result of my involvement in the article, I think this problem is fixed now.

There may be other articles related to these topics that we’ve improved also, and I’m just not thinking of them right now.

I know this is a kind of narrow focus, which is why I’ve never really argued with the claim that I’ve been an SPA for most of the past year. (Although I’ve been trying to become less of one in response to Mathsci’s previous AN/I thread, hence my involvement in the William Beebe article.) But the important point about all of this is that by the standards of the rest of the community, these articles are being improved. Several users have pointed out how much more stable the race and intelligence article is now than it has been at any other point since 2006; I don’t think it can seriously be argued that this isn’t a positive change. The improvements to the Race and crime article and the one about Rushton’s book are even more obvious, and have received encouragement from uninvolved users who had a problem with the states these articles were in before we became involved in them, and were glad that someone was finally doing something about the problems that had plagued these articles for months or years. In some cases, this has required disentangling unresolved conflicts that had existed over the articles for a similar amount of time, so some amount of conflict probably couldn’t have been avoided in the process of improving them. But if the overall effect has been to make the articles more encyclopedic, which I think it clearly has, I don’t think it should be difficult to answer the question of whether the time we’ve spent on them was worthwhile. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

The essential content on all these articles is pretty much the same. It is pretty clear that your favorite topics are divisive, so one would ask why an editor only focuses on divisive articles. Being an SPA is not a policy violation, so despite numerous complaints, you can continue being one. Most editors use Misplaced Pages to learn about stuff they didn't know beforehand and to share their knowledge. While every editor may have a few favorite topics and articles, the ideal editors try to get out of their comfort zone, and read or edit subjects outside of their preferred topics. There is no requirement that all editors fit the ideal model, so SPA editing isn't prohibited. Nonetheless, SPA editing isn't ideal, and more so in this case because you have chosen only to edit polarizing and emotionally charged articles. One could easily interpret this as using wikipedia as a soapbox or as a vehicle for advocacy. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I already told you why I tend to focus on articles that are divisive: it’s because these tend to be the articles that are most in need of improvement. It’s the same reason why I got involved in the William Beebe article—before I became involved in it, it was very poorly-written for an article about such an important naturalist, and it still could benefit from some additional improvement. If I find any other articles about topics I’m knowledgeable about that need a similar amount of improvement, whether they’re controversial or not, I’ll see if I can improve them also.

I think the difference between what I’ve been doing and actual soapboxing / advocacy is that rather than just trying to introduce my personal viewpoint into the articles, I’ve been working to bring them more into compliance with Misplaced Pages’s standards. And sometimes this involves writing for the opponent, as I did in the race and intelligence article at your request. I think that actual soapboxing and writing for the opponent are more or less polar opposites of one another. You seem to have very little objection to my edits themselves, and only with the selection of articles that I edit, so are you willing to acknowledge that soapboxing / advocacy is not what I’ve been doing on these articles? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Why this matters

I’m getting ready to go offline for a while (not even I can participate in these threads 24/7), but before I do there’s something else I think it’s important to explain. I want to make sure other people understand why I have such a problem with the idea of topic bans for myself and the other users they’ve been suggested for, and have been putting forth so much effort to argue against this idea. The reason isn’t because my involvement in the articles matters for its own sake. It’s because a topic ban for the users being discussed here would eliminate around two-thirds of the editors who were involved in the mediation case for the race and intelligence article. Varoon Arya, Mikemikev, David.Kane, DJ, Ludwigs2 and I were all present for either all of the mediation, or all of the second half (under Ludwig as mediator) when we reached all of our resolutions about the article. If all of these users are banned, the only remaining people currently involved in the article who were there for the mediation would be Aprock, Slrubenstein and Muntuwandi.

One consequence of a topic ban for all of us is that it would probably make it impossible to implement the rest of the changes to the race and intelligence article that were agreed on during mediation, and haven’t made yet. The most significant change we still need to make is one that there was still a fair amount of dispute over when mediation ended, and a topic ban would eliminate all of the people who were trying to resolve this dispute the last time it was discussed (during mediation). That isn’t the most significant problem, though.

The most significant problem is that with most of the mediation’s participants banned, there would be very little to prevent the structure that we resolved during mediation from gradually being undone. New users who become involved in the article are not going to be familiar with what we resolved in mediation, and I don’t think the three mediation participants that would be left would be enough to make sure newcomers respect the mediation’s conclusions. The version of the article produced (or more accurately, being produced) by mediation is something that almost everyone has been able to be satisfied with, regardless of which viewpoint they take about this topic, which is a significant improvement over anything that’s been accomplished with this article in the past three years. I would hope that even those of you who support topic bans can understand why I would consider it a major loss for that accomplishment to be discarded, especially after it took six months for us to reach it, and why I would be trying my utmost to prevent something that’s likely to lead to this result. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this statement itself justifies the topic ban. Captain Occam is correctly pointing out the banning SPAs would mean that POV-pushers and highly inexperienced editors who do not understand our NPOV and NOR policies would no longer be editing the article. Captaqin Occam is right that a SPA ban would leave only a few editors - but this is because the constant POV-puhing, ignorance, and abuse of content policy pushed several other skilled editors away. Once the SPA editors are topic banned, I suspct other editors (you can see some of their names at the mediation page; they participated for a while until the mass of tendentious editing by the SPAs wore them out) will return to ork on the article. And with regards to the ban. Well, as for POV pushers, there is no hope. As for the others, well, as several people have suggested, if they work on other articls they will learn more about how to do the appropriate research for an encyclopedia, and more about how to apply our policies. If they end up demonstrating a serious commitment to the project, the ban would then be lifted and they could return to the article where hopefully they will make positive contributions. That's all we want. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If I understand your comment correctly, you’re saying that the reason why several of the users who were involved in mediation early on left midway through it is because they were “pushed away” by the editors who disagreed with them. Is that what you’re saying? Because if it is, I don’t think there’s any evidence for that. The only pro-environmental editors who were involved in the article before mediation and aren’t anymore are Ramdrake, T34CH, and Alun. Ramdrake said several times that his difficulty participating in Misplaced Pages as of early this year was due to health issues, so that clearly had nothing to do with other editors. T34CH and Alun haven’t explained the reasons for their absence, but it’s apparent from their contributions that they’ve stopped participating in Misplaced Pages entirely, rather than just avoiding race-related articles, so I think it’s more likely to be the result of real-life issues in their cases also.

The only editors who have stated specifically that they have been “driven away” are Ludwigs2 and Varoon Arya, both of whom have said that they were driven away by Mathsci’s behavior. Neither of them are SPAs, and both of them have contributed a lot to both these and other articles. So if you’re going to bring up driving away other editors as a justification for topic bans, this argument applies more to Mathsci than it does to anyone else.

I also don’t think anyone has provided any evidence, either in this thread or any of the previous threads, that I and the other editors who were a subject of Mathsci’s complaints are engaging in POV-pushing. Within the past two weeks you’ve referred to my editing as “exemplary”. Are you taking that back now? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

More disruption by Mikemikev

• Mikemikev (talk · contribs)

This editor, a single person account, has now left this threat on my talk page. This is was his 294th edit to wikipedia.Mathsci (talk) 13:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I've been involved with wikipedia since 2004 (when I created the dry distillation article). I hadn't created an account then. I have one account, I've always had one account, and my record is absolutely clean.

I'm involved here because of POV violations I've noticed in this sensitive topic, which you continue to perpetrate. Rather than address this serious issue, you just repeat "SPA!, SPA!", like a mantra, despite this not being a crime in the absence of policy violation. You can't use your editing record as an excuse for POV violations. I am saddened that administrators here seem to disagree.

And it's a warning. Maybe if you had shown me the same courtesy you wouldn't have been laughed off WQA. mikemikev (talk) 14:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It is your current editing patterns that are being looked at . That you edited in 2004 using IPs 139.184.30.19 and 139.184.30.18 is almost meaningless (these are surely public IPs at the University of Sussex, which could be used by any undergraduate there). At this stage, it might be a good idea to read carefully what administrators have been writing rather than giving the appearance of harrassing and bullying an editor like me. Thank you, Mathsci (talk) 15:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Bingo! I was an undergrad at Sussex. I had the pleasure of studying evolutionary genetics under John Maynard Smith, while pursuing my major of AI. Sadly I had to leave the beautiful Sussex countryside for postgrad study at UCL. But isn't tracing my IP and wikiliking to it's origin frowned upon? I personally have no problem with it though. mikemikev (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Tracing your IP? You've been openly advertising it to try to prove that you are not an SPA. You have now started reverting Slimvirgin's edits with strange edit summaries. If you've been editing here since 2004, surely you must realize that this is not a sensible way to proceed. Have you thought of discussing things with Slimvirgin on her talk page or the article talk page, if you disagree with her? Mathsci (talk) 19:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem. Have you ever thought about not being a dick? mikemikev (talk) 21:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Rehashing

A lot of the information being discussed in this section was already discussed on this page recently: . --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

ANI complaints about Mathsci

I have looked through the ANI archives and found some of the previous complaints about User:Mathsci: . --120 Volt monkey (talk) 18:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Just as a matter of information, a checkuser has been asked to check your account against that of Jagz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) or other banned users/sockpuppeteers. Just to let you know, in case you get too carried away with yourself. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 19:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow! Now that's what I call a questionable edit history. mikemikev (talk) 19:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it? Going back to 2007. One of those reporting me was blocked for trying to out me. Another has been banned for a year because of a recent ArbCom case. Another was found responsible for wikihounding me and continued to do this under a new account name: he has stopped doing so as a result of the off-wiki intervention of a member of ArbCom. Yet another was blocked as the returning sockpuppet of a banned user. One or two complaints from editors POV-pushing on Ethnic groups of Europe. I'm surprised I haven't been permanently banned. Mathsci (talk) 22:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Topic Ban?

Looking above it would seem my proposal for a topic ban on SPA has received some support. Is now the time to hammer out the details? Justin talk 13:32, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

You could "hammer out some details" (why not a shred of evidence to garnish), or you could wait until next week when Mathsci and his nepotistic buddies embarassingly clog up ANI with this crap again. Did it occur to you that the reason you seem to have 'support' is that all of the respectable admins no'ed this last week? What a clown show! mikemikev (talk) 14:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment I suggest a topic ban on all articles to do with Race. Perhaps Category:Race would cover it. --RegentsPark (talk) 14:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Since there has been no evidence presented that any of Misplaced Pages's policies are being broken, it's not unreasonable to believe that the topic ban supporters are engaging in POV-pushing. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 14:34, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, it is unreasonable. The mediation was and has been (since about a week in) has been improper, and a proper remedy to that is to revert the article to a stable status before the mediation started. Individual edits should then be discussed. As for MathSci; his conduct has been someone questionable, but the edits of (most of the) hereditarian editors are clear NPOV violations, including the views of an editor who claims to be an expert as an expert in determining which views are mainstream is inappropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

  My comments to that effect on the mediation page were rejected as being an attack on the editor in question. That was also clearly inappropriate; I was attacking the credentials of the expert that the editor was quoting; the fact that they seem to be the same person, according to the "mediator" and the editor in question, is irrelevant.

  However, it is too early to discuss details, as there isn't yet consensus that a topic ban is appropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

As explained here, there is a Mediation Cabal and a Mediation Committee. If the mediation that was performed under the Mediation Cabal was insufficient, you might try the Mediation Committee. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Unless I'm completely confused, there was both medcab and formal medcom mediation in the case, and both failed. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 16:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, this process is very confused. There was a lengthy medbab on race and intelligence which we had to run effectively on our own and which stopped an edit war and achieved a new stable state in the article. The current conflict is at History of the race and intelligence controversy, which has had no dispute resolution except this thread, my attempt to get policy clarification from the reliable sources noticeboard , and the work of Slrubenstein to bring experienced editors to the talk page. A quick look at the history of the talk pages of each article will give a sense of what's actually going on. --DJ (talk) 17:19, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
• I should add that I'm not the only one who as noticed that if Captain Occam and Mathsci can work together, they make great progress (from talk:race and intelligence): I appreciate Captain Occam's work, and, as he anticipated, mathSci's improvements. I think the current version (with MathSci's improvements) has a better (more inclusive, and also, I think a problem-oriented rather than place-oriented communicates the real issue more clearly) title to the section on comparative data, and I also think his improvement is to provide more context, it really shows the global dimensions and provides more information. With MathSci's improvements to Captain Occam's work, I think we are making real progress. Captain Occam, thanks for inviting people to improve on your work. That is exemplary editing. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC) --DJ (talk) 17:38, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• DJ, I don't think it makes sense to treat incidents between the same editors in the two closely related articles as being separate disputes. 120 Volt Monkey, "Since there has been no evidence presented that any of Misplaced Pages's policies are being broken" is both false (some evidence was presented, just nowhere near enough for traditional DR to sanction someone with) and not entirely relevant (a situation can become intractable and require intervention even if no policies are broken). Note that the proposed restriction is from around 0.0001% of the site. While there isn't a mathematical relationship like "restricting someone from 0.0001% of the site requires 0.0001% as much misconduct as it takes to ban them from the entire site", I hope you can understand why the two standards might not be the same. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 06:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• That would be true except the nature of the content disputes, which are temporally separated by months, appear to be quite different. At race and intelligence the issues related to WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE, which aren't a concern at History of the race and intelligence controversy. --DJ (talk) 06:33, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Looking at talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy it looks like exactly those same issues are in dispute, and anyway a lot of this is a personality conflict between editors, which are the same across both articles. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:34, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I guess I am an SPA, as I was asked to come here to provide opinions on the article, since I have done some work in the area. I personally don't feel any of the editors on this article should be banned. I believe this about both camps (the pro IQers and the environmentalists). To date, this is the best article I've seen on a reputable site that deals with the topic (this could be like being the tallest midget though as most articles on this are utter crap).

Both sides are needed or this will quickly devolve into the typical crap article on the topic. If better ground rules could be set on reverting and discussing stuff first, and not posting unless some level of consensus is reached, the article could be completed. Progress made since mediation has been immense and all of the current editors working on this should be thanked rather than banned. Time spent complaining here seems better served editing the article-Bpesta22 (talk) 19:31, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

There are not two camps as you claim. Slimvirgin, Maunus, Slrubenstein and I are not Marxists/environmentalists, even if editors like you claim so. We are simply editors editing according to wikipedia policies. However Captain Occam, Distributivejustice and Mikemikev (and possibly others) are WP:Civil POV pushing WP:SPAs. Their editing is becoming increasingly disruptive (see below). Mathsci (talk) 09:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

1-revert limit

I recommend a 1-revert limit on race-related articles. This will force dispute resolution rather than allowing editors to make a WP:POINT by reverting each other multiple times. If multiple editors are reverting one another, then lock the page. --DJ (talk) 18:55, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I approve of this suggestion. It would bring all of the same benefits that are being hoped for from topic bans, but without the cost of losing most of the editors who participated in mediation, and therefore causing the stability we achieved in mediation to risk being lost. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of there having been any recent history of actual revert warring on any significant scale in these articles, of the sort that 1RR would help with. The conflict has been of a different nature. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 21:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

POV fork created by SPA

• How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?
• Distributivejustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)<_

No administrators have so far noted any inapproriate editing or anything that breaks WP editing policy. The two SPAs above did propose a POV-fork solely on Arthur Jensen's article on the talk page of the history (diffs on request):

I suggest creating an article called How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? and refactoring the NPOV problem out of this article. If that doesn't work, I recommend moving as much as possible to Arthur_Jensen#IQ_and_academic_achievement. --DJ (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I think creating an article here about Jensen’s 1969 monograph would be a very good idea. It wouldn’t fix all of the NPOV issues I’ve raised with this article, but his monograph is definitely notable enough to deserve its own article at Misplaced Pages. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:04, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

In the meantime, and independently of these comments, I added a detailed summary of Jensen's article from a secondary soure while brushing up on my Latin skills on Triumphs of Caesar . But speaking of Latin and papal bulls, that reminds me of something I almost forgot: the Aix-St Louis wiki meetup is due to happen in the next few hours, possibly at lunchtime!! There will be a ceremonial exchange of honorary barnstars, no extra credit for parents present :) Mathsci (talk) 08:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• The POV-fork has now been created as threatened, using only material I wrote myself, summarising the meticulously annotated book of Adrian Wooldridge - without any edit history. This is probably not a bad moment to institute topic bans. Writing a separate article on one of the most controversial articles in the history of 20th century psychology simply to push a point of view is out. The article should probably be speedy deleted by an administrator. No need for these SPAs to spread their disruption elsewhere on wikipedia, which seems to be their aim at present. Please can some administrator step in to stop this disruption? Mathsci (talk) 08:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I have added a speedy delete tag because the article has been created just using material Mathsci (talk · contribs) wrote yesterday and today, copy-pasted without its editing history, by Distibutivejustice. He should probably be blocked at this point. Mathsci (talk) 09:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
    • My understanding it that copy-and-pasting such a large block of material from one article to another on Misplaced Pages is, in fact, a copyright violation, since the GFDL license requires that the material be properly attributed, and that clearly has not happened in this case. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

<- Now Captain Occam has removed the speedy deletion notice incorrectly. I have restored it. Please could some administrator try to control this editor - he and Distributivejustice are playing havoc on wikipedia at the moment. Oh well. Mathsci (talk) 10:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Article now at AfD: Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? as recommended by User:Claritas. Mathsci (talk) 11:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

cross posted from the afd page:

• Weak Keep First -- so much for WP:AGF. As far as I'm concerned creating this article was a good faith effort to fix a problem that had tacit approval from multiple editors. Second -- the body of this article was growing into a massive paragraph at History of the race and intelligence controversy. Discussion of its content was overloading the main article. The historical discussion was getting lost while at the same time it wasn't possible to really explain what this paper said. Re: Enric Naval's comment: Race and intelligence would be the most appropriate place for a full discussion of what the contemporary views on this topic are. But I believe this paper is a lot like The Bell Curve, and an article about it could be similar situated. --DJ (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment This clearly shows that it is time for this group of SPAs to be topic banned from articles on race. Regardless of whether they are approaching the subject neutrally or not, there is some admitted off wiki collaboration, a definite point of view that they bring to the table, and they provide the numbers that make it hard for well meaning admins to figure out what the 'consensus' is. --RegentsPark (talk) 19:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed ANI ban for Mathsci

• Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

• Support - mikemikev (talk) 09:41, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you get it, my friend, the current is definitely not flowing in that direction. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

At least this will give me something to talk about with Elonka and her father in a little while :( Mathsci (talk) 10:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support – For over a month, Mathsci has dominated AN/I with his efforts to win content disputes by seeking bans or blocks for the editors that he disagrees with. I can remember five examples of this, although there may be more than that. The first was started as a thread by Muntuwandi about TehnoFaye on March 23rd, and hijacked by Mathsci on March 25th; Mathsci’s complaints there lasted until March 29th. The second was started by Ludwigs2 on March 28th and hijacked by Mathsci on April 1st; Mathsci’s complaints there lasted until April 2nd. The third was started by Mathsci on April 9th, and his complaints there lasted until April 12th. The fourth was started by me on April 14th about Slrubenstein, and hijacked by Mathsci on April 15th; his complaints there lasted until April 19th. And the fifth, which is the current one, was started by Mathsci on April 26th and is still active.

By my calculation, Mathsci has been complaining here about the users he disagrees with in these articles on 24 of the past 40 days. Whenever one of his threads has been closed, he has never waited more than a week before posting or hijacking another, even if his new complaint was about the exact same topic as his previous one. In addition to being a blatant example of forum shopping, this behavior is interfering with the overall functionality of AN/I by filling up space that should be kept for more important complaints. In order to not interfere with other users’ ability to use AN/I, if for no other reason, I think it’s necessary that something be done about this problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that the last such big discussion was opened by Captain Occam, not by Mathsci,, though Mathsci joined in afterwards and asked for a topic ban against Captain Occam (an idea which has gotten a fair amount of uninvolved support and is still being discussed). 69.228.170.24 (talk) 22:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support - Mathsci has been causing a lot of disruption by relentlessly posting to ANI every time they are unhappy with something. I suggest that they be banned from posting initiating a complaint on ANI for one year and thereafter not be allowed to post initiate a complaint more often than once every six months. They can utilize other methods of resolving disputes as discussed at WP:DR. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 12:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this team acting a little repetitively at the moment? It must be quite hard to work out whose turn it is. Mikemikev, Distributivejustice, Ludwigs2, 120 Volt Monkey, Captain Occam. So many permutations. Mathsci (talk) 12:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support I'm tired of seeing Mathsci's nonsense clogging up AN/I. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 13:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Not a great idea to identify yourself on your user page as having off-wiki links with Captain Occam (both of you have deviantart links, his points here where you own deviantart account is clearly visible). That's called meatpuppetry. But I shouldn't really have spoilt your fun. Both of you should remove the links on your user pages which reveal your RL identities and close relationship, (announced clearly on Captain Occam's user page). Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 13:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

You're digging yourself into a deeper hole. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, you may be engaging in WP:OUTING here, so I recommend that you be careful what you say. I’ve mentioned before that I know a few users involved in these articles outside of Misplaced Pages, namely Bpesta22 (whom I invited to participate in Misplaced Pages via AIM, because he is a cognitive psychologist and the race and intelligence article was tagged as needing attention from an expert), and Ferahgo the Assassin, so for you to say that much is fine. It’s also all that should be relevant here: they know me off-wiki, so it’s reasonable to assume that I occasionally discuss issues like these with them elsewhere, but it isn’t as though I can control what their opinions are about them. Anything you say beyond this will be based on information you’ve gathered from pages at other websites, which is not admissible to bring up here.

Incidentally, in light of Dougweller's comment below, I should probably mention that I do not know 120 Volt Monkey at all. The only editors involved in these articles with whom I have interacted outside Misplaced Pages are Bpesta22, Ferahgo the Assassin, and David.Kane (briefly, when he requested on my user talk page that I e-mail him).

I would appreciate it if an administrator could look closely at Mathsci’s comments about this, and make sure that he does not engage in outing, if he isn’t engaging in it already. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, isn't it time you took a little responsibility for own actions? It's not really on to ask a friend to back you up. If there's one, there could be several. Mathsci (talk) 14:34, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Who are these people Ferahgo is tired of seeing Mathsci? Let's see -- Ferahgo first edited in June 2008, a grand total of 5 edits that year, all correctly marked minor. In 2009 6 edits, and for the first time 3 of them involve Race & Intelligence, one to the talk page, two to the NPOV board. In March another dinosaur edit (one of his favorite topics he says), and then 3 days ago he starts editing in this thread. With all due respect, that isn't enough experience to call for a ban of any sort.

120 Volt monkey is clearly a WP:SPA. First post was the 13th of last month. Maybe this is all just a coincidence, but there's clearly some off-Wiki linkage - at what looks like a great site, but that doesn't affect this discussion.

Oppose And thus clearly I'm going to oppose the suggestion of an ANI ban, which I think should never have been brought here. Dougweller (talk) 13:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Would you have supported the ban if Ferahgo and I had not commented on it? --120 Volt monkey (talk) 13:54, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

As I said "which I think should never have been brought here", of course not. Dougweller (talk) 14:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If there’s a serious suspicion of meatpuppetry here (not that I think there should be one, but just in case there is), I think the guidelines in the page Mathsci linked to ought to be kept in mind, particularly the first one: “Consensus in many debates and discussions should ideally not be based upon number of votes, but upon policy-related points made by editors.” The points I’ve made are based on the policy regarding forum shopping, and the fact that Mathsci’s dominance of AN/I over the past month has diminished the availability of this noticeboard for other users. I suspect that the other users who support an AN/I ban have similar reasons for supporting it. If the question of a AN/I ban can be decided based on the validity or non-validity of these points, rather than on the number of users who agree or disagree with them, I would be fine with that. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

According to your user page if I click on the deviantart link, I find that a close personal friend of yours has all of a sudden started editing in support of you since Saturday. Do you realize just how terrible that looks? Anyway I'm now seated at my local bistro awaiting Elonka and her father for our wiki meetup. If you'll excuse me, I'd far rather rely on her or other administartors for interpreting wikipedia editing policies. Mathsci (talk) 15:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, I need to remember that including external links on a user page is apparently viewed by some editors as an invitation to engage in WP:OUTING. I learn something new here every day. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I share Dougweller's concern. This is AN/I - how many of the people participating in this discussion are administrators? How many of the people who voted for a ban against MathSci are administrators? Sure, we should week the views of any editors, but isn't this a place for administrators to discuss administrative actions? It seems to me that some non-admins have an agnda of disrupting any discusssion among admins. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm going to stop contributing money to Misplaced Pages as long as Mathsci's behavior on Misplaced Pages is allowed to persist. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

  Do you have any idea how extremely petulant that sounds? My god, keep your piggy bank to yourself then, if you think that the project is obligated to decide issues one way or another depending on donor whim. Tarc (talk) 15:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Your reply has done nothing to change my mind. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's good, because it was not intended to. The intent was to remark on the ridiculousness of your position, and how it should not have a bit of impact on the discussion at hand. Tarc (talk) 15:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

You can keep on remarking and I'll keep on not donating. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm planning on not urinating into the Pacific Ocean this morning. Do you think that will affect the water level any? Tarc (talk) 16:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I have taken this into consideration: . --120 Volt monkey (talk) 16:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Monkey, this is the administrators' noticeboard. You are not an administrator. You are adding nothing at all to this discussion. This is not for discussion about fundraising. What we do care about is contributing good content to the encyclopedia. Why don't you leave this page and actually go edit some articles? Or, if Misplaced Pages really is the joke you seem to think it is, just go away. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Someone left this notice on my talk page. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - If after several hours no supporters of the motion to ban other than those directly involved in the acrimony have shown up, I think it is a fair assumption that said motion is failing to set AN/I on fire. Airing concerns and defending oneself is not disruption; you need to really get into ChildofMidnight territory to begin discussing AN/I bans. Tarc (talk) 15:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - For the obvious reasons: SPA accounts should not be suggesting AN/I bans for an editor who brings their SPA activities to light on AN/I. To allow such frippery would be harmful to the project. I suggest that this merely strengthens the case, brought above, for an R&I topic ban for those SPA accounts. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with the ANI ban proposal as long as it was made in good faith. Further, making a good faith proposal or supporting one should not lead to retaliation. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 20:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment – Just out of curiosity, if this thread ends up filling the entire AN/I page, will it be possible for other users to post new threads here without them being archived immediately? This thread is already taking up more than half of the page, so it’s not very far from reaching that point. Even if it gets closed before it fills the whole page, I think it’s likely that there will be one that reaches this point sometime within the next month. Mathsci’s AN/I complaint threads have been getting progressively longer and longer, so if he’s going to be allowed to keep making new complaints like this here around once per week, this is a question worth asking. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

  Long and ongoing topics are usually moved to their own subpage when appropriate. may be a good idea now for this one. Tarc (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - I propose that Mathsci should only be allowed to initiate complaints on ANI if they back the allegations up with evidence such as diffs at the time the complaint is posted. I believe it is disruptive to repeatedly post complaints on ANI without providing evidence such as diffs because editors feel compelled to come to this page to defend themselves against flimsy allegations when they could be working on articles instead. I suggest changing the header of the above discussion to Proposed ANI ban or restrictions for Mathsci. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

  What right do you have to dictate administrative actions? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I moved my proposal from the thread below and didn't rewrite it properly in the process. I have modified it by adding the words shown in italics. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 21:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Mathsci is clearly getting support on these threads so there is no reason for him/her to stop bringing the matter up at ANI. Unless a thread is resolved against his/her view, I don't see a problem here. --RegentsPark (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

So editors should be allowed to repeatedly bring up the same issue on ANI over and over again? Perhaps they can continue to bring the same issue up until those that oppose them get worn down or stop replying. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 20:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Clearly, you recognize your own tactic. Are you assuming you will wear us down? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If it was my tactic, then clearly it hasn't been effective. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 22:08, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Your (and Captain Occam's) participation here is reaching the edge of legitimate debate and headed across the line into disruption.

You two have both been extended a significant amount of AGF regarding both your behavior and whether your edits are fringe or undue emphasis on minority viewpoints. The "unless proven otherwise" clause in AGF only goes so far. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Please give the diffs for the article edits of mine that are the source of concern for you. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 22:23, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support a temporary ban. As a non-administrator and interested non-expert observer of the race/intelligence debates I humbly suggest to the administrators who frequent this site that the complaints being made so frequently by Mathsci on this notice board are causing disruption. I am particularly disturbed by attempts at outing. A one-month ban would enable him to cool his head and focus attention of all participants back to the race/intelligence articles. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC).

"I am particularly disturbed by attempts at outing." Really? We last met on this AfD. One of the other editors there is now subject to an indefinite editing restriction for pursuing a grudge under an alternative account. Your own edits at the moment seem unhelpful: they do not appear to be in good faith and show no awareness of policies like WP:MEAT and WP:SOCK. Mathsci (talk) 05:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support Enough with this persistent drama-monger. Ban him from this board and hopefully he'll find something more useful to do with his time instead of wasting ours. Jtrainor (talk) 00:24, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, with 30% of your time spent on noticeboards and a total of 620 content edits, you might perhaps think of following your own advice. Mathsci (talk) 05:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed ANI restrictions for Mathsci

A possible way forward

It's a pity to court unpopularity just as I was starting to make friends, but of the many ways out of this, I think the most productive includes the following bitter pills:

• a reduction in the pace of fixing these articles, to give editors more balance in their lives;
• a slowing of changes to these articles to (largely) consensus changes to allow more volunteer editors a chance to keep up with the debates;
• Captain Occam and other SPAs to broaden their experience of how policies normally work out here by each choosing a handful of high profile articles in unrelated areas - on WIkipedia, reason is no substitute for experience;
• Captain Occam's new "meatpuppets" move to other areas while this is played out to keep things under control;
• no new articles in this area until the NPOV is established;
• Mathsci to continue to increase his ratio of communication to edits on the articles;
• no bans or blocks for now - working together is delivering progress, and slowing down the process will automatically lead to less angst and a higher ratio of independent third party input;
• Mathsci and Captain Occam to work together with the other more established editors: Captain Occam is willing to engage, and these two definitely do not cancel each other out;
• more experienced editors to take part until consensus is reached - ie all "sides" agree that the article content is reasonable, minimising the chance of unresolved issues blowing up later;
• editors to address their personal complaints to a neutral third party rather than to each other;
• the way Misplaced Pages works, the onus of proof is on the SPAs.

FWIW, I can see the consequences of continuing as we are would be a SPA topic ban. Misplaced Pages looks for disinterested editors, not those who are emotionally involved in their topic. Wider experience would increase sensitivity to this issue and maybe allow the SPAs to side step it by behaving less like SPAs. And gaining the perspective may also give them some fun here. Think of it as an investment. Stephen B Streater (talk) 20:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you give a definitive distinction between SPA and expert? mikemikev (talk) 20:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Most experts here are not SPAs - they edit on a wide range of articles. But more importantly, Misplaced Pages values neutrality above expertise. So on controversial subjects, disinterested editors are preferable to experts. This means that many experts cannot contribute directly on the areas they know most about - their contributions have to be via reliable sources available to neutral editors. Misplaced Pages is not a primary source or even usually a secondary source so not the natural place for experts to publish. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we understand 'definitive' differently. Basically your saying that if I spend a month editing snickers and kylie, regardless of my actual points at R&I, I'll have more weight? mikemikev (talk) 21:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If you spend a year editing those articles, and many more, you'll come across all the normal issues and how they are resolved. Then you'll have more weight here. But the person who would benefit the most is Captain Occam, because he is relying too much on reason, when experience is what is missing from his argument. When he understand's Guy's comments, for example, he'll be ready. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Give an example of my inappropriate attempt to resolve an issue. mikemikev (talk) 22:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

“This means that many experts cannot contribute directly on the areas they know most about - their contributions have to be via reliable sources available to neutral editors. Misplaced Pages is not a primary source or even usually a secondary source so not the natural place for experts to publish.”

I don’t think this is a problem. As far as I know, none of Bpesta22’s published research is being cited in the article, and we certainly wouldn’t be including any of his views that haven’t been published in reliable sources. The reason he’s particularly valuable as an editor is mostly because as someone who consistently reads the academic literature about this topic, he can determine more accurately how prominent various views and ideas are in the source literature about it, and he can also help us find sources for statements in the article that need them. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I approve of almost all of these suggestions, with the reservation that the “no new articles” criteria not apply to existing but recently-created articles such as How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? The one suggestion I don’t really approve of is the one involving my “meatpuppets”. I’m not even sure who fits the criteria of a meatpuppet in this case. Does David.Kane qualify because he’s e-mailed me a few times, even though he and I were both separately involved in these articles for a long time before we had any off-wiki contact with one another? Does Bpesta22 qualify because he became involved here at my suggestion, as a result of me searching for someone who could meet the article’s “attention from an expert” requirement? (And if so, would any expert found by another editor in order to satisfy this criteria be considered a meatpuppet also?) And does Ferahgo the Assassin knowing me outside of Misplaced Pages preclude them participating here, if I’m completely open about this fact?

I’m afraid that this suspicion of meatpuppetry is going to result in editors who could otherwise make valuable contributions here being prevented from doing so. As a cognitive psychologist who has published peer-reviewed research on the topic of race and intelligence, Bpesta22 probably knows more about this topic than anyone else involved in the article, so for him to be prevented from participating here because I’m who suggested his involvement seems like it would be much larger loss than the reason warrants. I approve of the general trend of your suggestions, but I think it would help if you clarified and refined them a little. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane is not a meatpuppet. Having a single expert in a controversial area is a mixed blessing, particularly when editors defer to him. This is not because of any issue with the competence of the gentleman involved, but as explained above, to do with neutrality and representing his views with due weight. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If Mathsci is interested in this proposal, I can sort out the details. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

But I might add that it doesn't look like you are in a strong position to negotiate. Your inexperience at Misplaced Pages practices (indirectly resulting from your SPA activity) is something which you need to address pretty quickly now, I'd say. Stephen B Streater (talk) 07:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: Mathsci is attempting to repeatedly add a WP:OUTING personal attack here. What he's attempting to say here is not appropriate on any talk page at Misplaced Pages. What can I do to stop this? I don’t want to have to edit war over it. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Sorry, I can't do that. Not while Captain Occam is getting his girlfriend to edit on his behalf. He has revealed the other user is his girlfriend on his user page. If he reverts this once more he should be blocked for edit warring. Mathsci (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:OUTING, you outed yourself on your talk page - "If an editor has previously posted their own personal information but later redacted it, their wishes should be respected, though reference to self-disclosed information is not outing." The link to your girlfriends online-moniker was placed on your user page by you. It is inappropriate to recruit meatpuppets, like your girlfriend, to support you on wikipedia. Perhaps a good long read at WP:SOCK is in order. Hipocrite (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Captain Occam is acting like a small child. How many times has he reverted my response? Mathsci (talk) 22:23, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Nowhere on Misplaced Pages have I said that Ferahgo the Assassin is my girlfriend. I've linked to a DeviantArt community that I said belonged to me and my girlfriend, without saying anything about who my girlfriend was or whether she was a Misplaced Pages user. Since the information about who my girlfriend is is not anywhere on Misplaced Pages, determining this requires browsing through multiple DeviantArt pages, and for Mathsci to attempt to look it up and state it here is outing. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Um, I clicked on this link from your user page and instantly knew who your girlfriend was. Hipocrite (talk) 22:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Ditto. And there is the link on Ferahgo's page which links to Ferahgo on Deviantart. Mathsci (talk) 22:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

And, um, how do you know the account at DeviantArt that Ferahgo’s userpage links to belongs to my girlfriend? I haven’t stated her DA username or linked to her account there anywhere on Misplaced Pages. The only account I’ve linked to other than my personal one is the Domain of Darwin one, which I said my girlfriend was involved in without providing any other identifying information about her. If you think you can figure out for yourselves who she is by snooping around this DA community, then good for you, but if you conclude something from DeviantArt that I haven’t stated explicitly here, then that isn’t something I’ve disclosed.

Don’t reply to this. If you aren’t willing to let me remove this information, then I guess we just have to leave this for the admins to deal with. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

You wrote "Domain of Darwin, My and my girlfriend's DeviantArt evolution community" There are two listed members of the community - you, and Ferahgo. Hipocrite (talk) 00:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

You apparently aren’t very familiar with how DeviantArt is set up. Domain of Darwin has over 100 members, which are listed here. If all you know is that my girlfriend is a member of this community, she could be any one of those people.

As per the rules about how to deal with WP:OUTING I won’t comment as to whether there is evidence in that community of my girlfriend being Ferahgo, but anything you figure out from looking around at DeviantArt is not something I’ve disclosed. Got it? --Captain Occam (talk) 03:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I have played a tiny part in this debate. Because accusations of outing are flying around, I wish to deny, just for the record, in case it gets asked, that I am Captain Occam's girlfriend. Nor, for that matter, am I Mathsci's mother-in-law. Either of those persons is, of course, entitled to edit Misplaced Pages. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:10, 4 May 2010 (UTC).

You're evidently not the other user. Occam's user page listed the cofounder of the "Domain od Darwin" as his girlfriend - Domain of Darwin, My and my girlfriend's DeviantArt evolution community - so I'm not sure what he's trying to argue now. That user Ferahgo the Assassin (talk · contribs) has been acting as a WP:MEATPUPPET, backing Captain Occam's point of view out of the blue in a vote to ban a user on WP:ANI. That is not permitted on wikipedia. As for 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs) and his shenanigans, see below. Mathsci (talk) 07:18, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

So Captain Occam has potentially accidentally outed his girlfriend? Irony indeed. Stephen B Streater (talk) 08:06, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, but I’ll explain it again:

I didn’t say what position my girlfriend held in this group, nor did I say on Misplaced Pages what her DevianrtArt username was. Anything you’ve concluded about her identity is something you’ve concluded by browsing DeviantArt, and comparing the information on the DeviantArt page linked from Ferahgo’s userpage to the information in the community that used to be linked from mine. This is not the same as an actual disclosure from me.

For that matter, whether Ferahgo the Assassin is my girlfriend or not is irrelevant to the discussion here. As soon as this user became involved in the article several months ago, I stated that they knew me well outside of Misplaced Pages, to make sure that nobody could accuse me of trying to influence consensus in a subversive way. As I said above, there would not have been anything wrong with Mathsci reminding other users of what I’ve said about this, in order to make sure nobody gets an inaccurate idea of the level of consensus for anything that this user and I have both commented on. But for Mathsci to try and dig up the personal details of how this user and I know each other, and then post them publicly, is nothing but a malicious personal attack. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying that. People may still think it un-Wikipedian that out of 3 million articles here, your friends have chosen to edit the same controversial article as you. My advice is to listen to the messages here and avoid Arbcom if possible. You are getting a taste of the cards which may be played there. Stephen B Streater (talk) 11:28, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, my friends have many of the same interests and opinions that I do. (This is probably often the case among friends.) I don’t feel that it would be any of my business to stop them from participating in these articles if they want to, any more than it would be my business to demand that they support me in areas where they disagree with me, which is something that I never do either.

In any case, I do not want Mathsci’s speculations about my personal life being aired in public, and I think it’s completely within my rights to demand this. Since Mathsci adds this information back when I attempt to remove it, I would like advice about how to have it removed from this thread. Should I be filing a request for oversight? --Captain Occam (talk) 11:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

That's funny because my friends have different opinions from me. No one has ever tried to out me, and I'm not that familiar with the process. Have a look at some past discussions on the subject in the archives to see what is acceptable and how things are done. Stephen B Streater (talk) 16:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is in the real world. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: While this is not a bad proposal, it does not adequately address this situation. What we have here is several SPAs, somewhat lead by one, Captain Occam, who has actively recruited other SPAs with a similar bent of mind to join in editing articles on race. This is an untenable situation. Misplaced Pages thrives on a diversity of opinion and having a band of SPAs dominating a bunch of articles on race is an extremely bad idea. The only real solution is to ban all the SPAs, including Captain Occam, from these articles for a reasonable length of time (I suggest at least one year). --RegentsPark (talk) 01:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to clarify my role here. I guess I am the epitome of SPA, in that I have no interest in editing wiki articles in general. It would be nice to see a reputable site somewhere post a balanced, evidence-based article on this topic. To the extent I can help you do that, I don't mind providing commentary. If my presence violates some fundamental Wiki rule, let me know and I can go back to my ivory tower.

I am not POV pushing the genetics view. It's not a view I hold myself. The ideal article is one that describes the data neutrally and then gets into the evidence for and against each explanation for the data. The problem is, the data show clearly that no *simple* environmental explanation works (despite how popular these simple explanations are for people out of field). So, just accurately describing the data makes it seem like it's pushing a genetics view. That creates issues for many.

My motivation for following this article is to help insure that popular but flawed explanations and dismissals of the data are not featured here. I think the issue is important enough that we need to go beyond Gouldian wisdoms and discuss this stuff with a scholarly / skeptical lens.

The key is defining what's considered mainstream versus fringe. If we accept that Gould is mainstream, we end up with a very different article versus if we accept that regular contributors to the journal, Intelligence are mainstream.

Perhaps agreeing on what is mainstream (one way or the other) would help all editors, not so much in providing a balanced view, but an accurate one. There's much to criticize on the genetics end. Bringing up some dude's racist dissertation in 1912 (e.g.) is not particularly helpful in this regard. -Bpesta22 (talk) 04:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is criticising you or your behaviour here. The question is whether the enthusiastic focus of some editors is skewing the article. As Misplaced Pages is run by volunteers, it slightly relies on a balance of editors on each topic, and this means no editors should get involved enough to dominate any subject. Stephen B Streater (talk) 06:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with Regents Park that three SPAs should be topic banned for at least a year. All administrators so far seem to favour such a ban, so some method of finalising this should be found. So far threads on WP:ANI tend to get swamped by tangential comments by SPAs, their meatpuppets, their enablers or sockpuppets of banned users: this has the effect of divert attention from any kind of reasoned discussion. I don't know what procedure could be used to formalise the ban. It might be best if such a topic ban could be imposed as some form of ArbCom enforcement, but that does not seem to be possible at the moment.
• Bpesta22 is not a problem at all. As above, he does occasionally make the mistake of trying to argue from a position of authority ("some dude's racist dissertation in 1912") instead of discussing the sources directly as an editor. There also might be a slight conflict of interest because, as he himself has disclosed on wikipedia, he researches into R&I and has unsuccessfully applied for support from the Pioneer Fund. At the moment, however, he does not seem to be acting as an advocate.
• I agree with Stephen B Streater that balance and normal editing behaviour - not the kind of extreme statements that can be read on the talk page, like "foetid sewers" - are what is required. The article does not seem to be the problem at present, just its talk page, where a number of SPAs are attempting to edit outside core wikipedia editing policies to push a point of view by force of numbers. Mathsci (talk) 08:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

"The article does not seem to be the problem at present, just its talk page, where a number of SPAs are attempting to edit outside core wikipedia editing policies to push a point of view by force of numbers."

Pure Mathsci BS. Notice how he never provides any evidence for POV pushing allegations, just repeats "POV pushing SPA!...POV pushing SPA!", ad nauseam. As has been demonstrated with evidence, Mathsci is pushing a POV. That's why so many editors are opposed to him. It's completely disgusting that after DJ, Occam and others worked so hard for six months to stabilize R&I in the face of incompetent PC POV pushers, that admins are even listening to this poltroon, while he repeats his mantra with zero evidence. Are you taken by him constantly blowing his own trumpet about editing unrelated articles? Does that give him the right to own an article on a sensitive topic? This is ridiculous! Are no admins going to look at the evidence? Most of the people who are suporting him here are in no way involved, just seem to be Mathsci's buddies, and are taking up his chant of "POV pushing SPA". Mathsci may have some scant evidence for the SPA part, but it sets a dangerous precedent if you do not investigate the POV part, which is the only real crime here, a crime we are not guilty of. I recommend topic and AN/I bans for Mathsci, this kind of arrogant disrespect for community editing cannot be allowed. mikemikev (talk) 09:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

@mikemikev: Your comments are not constructive. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:30, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you trying to win a prize for hypocrisy here? mikemikev (talk) 09:43, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Prizes! Geez, no one told me there were prizes! Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:50, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

“All administrators so far seem to favour such a ban”

Around three administrators are currently expressing favor for it. Other administrators have expressed opposition to it earlier in the thread, or in the previous thread about this, but at this point the three administrators who support it are the only admins who are continuing to comment here. Multiple comments from a small handful of admins should not be mistaken for consensus in an AN/I thread, any more than agreement among the six users that Mathsci originally reported here should be. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev: Occam and others worked so hard for six months to stabilize R&I in the face of incompetent PC POV pushers Sounds like you think you have the WP:TRUTH, always a bad sign, especially when the side you're opposing is taking what mediation agreed was the mainstream view. Calling someone a "poltroon" is a personal attack. And your repetition of "evidence! evidence!" is getting pretty tedious too. We seem to be coming around to the idea that this situation needs a remedy even if no policies are being broken. If no misconduct is being alleged, what exactly are you asking for "evidence" of? The issue of Captain Occam has its complexities but Mikemikev doesn't seem to be adding anything useful. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 01:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

120 Volt monkey

After a private CU request, Nishkid64 has blocked 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) as a returning sockpuppet of banned user Jagz (talk · contribs). It is interesting how indistinguishable Jagz's trolling and general disruption was from some other accounts. Mathsci (talk) 06:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It was quite obvious he was a sock, but I couldn't put my finger on whose. I;m amazed he was allowed to go this far without being blocked. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It was classic Jagz for the connoisseurs amongst us, particularly his little contretemps with Slrubenstein. I'm not usually much good at spotting sockpuppets. In this case I made an off-wiki request to Nishkid64 on Saturday as I stated above. But I already had suspected this for over a week.Mathsci (talk) 08:32, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

“It is interesting how indistinguishable Jagz's trolling and general disruption was from some other accounts.”

I think I made it clear in this discussion that I found some of 120’s behavior a little off-putting. Please don’t equate him with all the rest of us. If this account is truly a sockpuppet of a blocked user, then as far as I’m concerned blocking it is appropriate. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Don't be wound up by Mathsci. He only had check user on one account, AKAIK, which shows that he could tell the difference in practice. Stephen B Streater (talk) 11:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

These were not the only sockpuppets of Jagz blocked by Nishkid64. The others were:

• Cryptofish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Horse wiz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Note these accounts have been active around these articles. Horse wiz was involved in mediation. He even attempted to WP:OUT me by linking to a photograph of me on wikipedia. This led to a discussion on Ludwigs2's talk page. (Ludwigs2 noticed he was a sockpuppet.) Here is my own reaction to Cryptofish on WP:ANI: (The second diff is quite amusing in retrospect.) Immediately prior to Cryptofish's first edit on ANI was a complaint by Rhomb (talk · contribs), another blocked sockpuppet that was pestering me on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 14:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I have to also wonder about mikemikev. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 22:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Interesting contribution history, very similar to what a bad-hand account (used whenever an established editor wants to do some stuff that would be frowned on, without sullying his or her own reputation) might look like: spurts of editings interspaced with long periods of no activity. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Withdrawn. A closer look at the contents of the early edits doesn't really support that supposition. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

You did well to strike your comments out. Conspiracy theory mongering by anonymous IPs does nothing to reduce the level of hysteria on this page. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC).

My strikeout was simply about withdrawing a specific theory about User:mikemikev. His contribution history is still quite odd, and worthy of further investigation. Were I you, I would not hitch my wagons to him. At the very least, it supports the allegation of being an editor with a POV to push. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:56, 5 May 2010 (UTC)