Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Xenophrenic: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 13:25, 28 May 2013 editNathan Johnson (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers12,381 edits →POV-pushing on other articles related to U.S. politics: remove per WP:BLP policy← Previous edit		Revision as of 13:26, 28 May 2013 edit undoNathan Johnson (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers12,381 edits remove per WP:BLP policyNext edit →
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	I was struck by the first piece of evidence provided by the certifiers above regarding "POV-pushing on other articles related to U.S. politics":		I was struck by the first piece of evidence provided by the certifiers above regarding "POV-pushing on other articles related to U.S. politics":

	* ] — Editwarred out a "however" statement in article mainspace by ], explaining the circumstances of the return to Congress of Grayson~~, who is possibly the most hated Democratic member of the House besides ]~~. The appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag. ] (]) 01:12, 27 May 2013 (UTC)		* ] — Editwarred out a "however" statement in article mainspace by ], explaining the circumstances of the return to Congress of Grayson. The appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag. ] (]) 01:12, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

	So Xenophrenic removed from a ] two incarnations of a statement which was unsourced, had a somewhat disparaging tone towards the subject, and was ]. Insofar (in over a month) none of the editors concerned with the removal of these edits have provided sources for that content. Furthermore, the same certifier berated Xenophrenic for supposedly writing with a POV in between the "] and ]". In that paradigm, the certifiers of this RfC/U seem to expect Misplaced Pages to be Written with a POV resembling ] if not ], given how they've managed to state their own views about a couple of US politicians ("most hated") in this very RfC/U... ] (]) 13:04, 28 May 2013 (UTC)		So Xenophrenic removed from a ] two incarnations of a statement which was unsourced, had a somewhat disparaging tone towards the subject, and was ]. Insofar (in over a month) none of the editors concerned with the removal of these edits have provided sources for that content. Furthermore, the same certifier berated Xenophrenic for supposedly writing with a POV in between the "] and ]". In that paradigm, the certifiers of this RfC/U seem to expect Misplaced Pages to be Written with a POV resembling ] if not ], given how they've managed to state their own views about a couple of US politicians ("most hated") in this very RfC/U... ] (]) 13:04, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Revision as of 13:26, 28 May 2013

To remain listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 07:31, 22 May 2013 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 17:14, 1 January 2025 (UTC).

This matter concerns Xenophrenic (talk · contribs · logs)

Users should not edit other people's summaries or views, except to endorse them. All signed comments other than your own view or an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page.

Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who are concerned by this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

Desired outcome

The point of this WP:RFC/U is twofold. First, to clearly define and show, with evidence, the problems that the community indicated User:Xenophrenic demonstrates in his edits and discussions on Misplaced Pages. The second propose is for Xenophrenic to acknowledge the problems of the community and indicate a willingness to change. For any problems that are not there, all other editors should also acknowledge that. The purpose of WP:RFC/U is not to provide any penalty for Xenophrenic, as that is beyond the scope of WP:RFC/U. It is merely to help define the problem, if there is a problem. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 07:32, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Description

Xenophrenic's behavior has been brought up as part of the ArbCom case for Tea Party movement. However, his behavior stretches across several years and several articles related to U.S. politics. I first encountered this behavior at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in 2009. Generally speaking, he is a POV-pusher for a progressive POV. It is as though he's trying to remake Misplaced Pages into an opposition research database for Democratic Party political operatives to use, while preventing its usefulness for that purpose to members of other parties and political groups. He adds negative material to articles about conservative political figures and organizations, no matter how trivial or irrelevant it might be, or how much it employs fallacies such as guilt by association; and he removes negative content about progressive political figures and organizations. He achieves these goals by being tendentious, and by using edit warring to a limited extent (particularly the slow edit war technique, or tag teaming). Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 07:32, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Evidence of disputed behavior

Any Editor: Please provide any evidence here. Will work on formatting the evidence as it builds.

Attempting to get this RfC/U deleted

Editwarring on the UserList page at WP:RfC/U, trying to move his own RfC/U from "Certified" to "Candidates": — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Repeated efforts to get this RfC/U deleted by others, because it allegedly does not state a case against him with sufficient evidence: — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

POV-pushing on Tea Party movement and related pages

I note that below, User:Casprings has cited an ANI thread in which "there was no community support or much problem seen with Xenophrenic's editing." That ANI thread was limited to Tea Party movement and was dated February 26, 2013. Also, Casprings has claimed that Xenophrenic is a party to the ArbCom proceeding. That is a false statement, since Xenophrenic is not listed among the named parties. I will focus on Xenophrenic's efforts on Tea Party movement (a conservative political organization) and related pages since February 26, 2013 as well as his efforts on unrelated articles under the U.S. politics umbrella. The latter inquiry may go back a lot farther than February 26, 2013 since those articles were beyond the scope of the ANI thread. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 23:11, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Xenophrenic was editwarring in a derogatory comment on the Talk:Tea Party movement page, above my pre-existing post. (In the first of these four diffs, he also interleaved a false accusation against me, claiming that I was "misinterpreting" policy.) This comment was posted in boldface, in an effort to "prove" that the section of WP:RS he was quoting was more important than the one I was quoting. I moved his comment to the bottom of the thread per WP:TALK and asked him politely, on his User Talk page, to add any remarks at the bottom of the thread or immediately below the post he was responding to, and cited the WP:TALK policy. He removed the request, and restored the derogatory comments at the top of the thread. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 00:48, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Xenophrenic went so far as to editwar in a sandbox-type subpage of the moderated discussion page, then entitled, "Allegations of bigotry in the Tea Party." Here we see three identical reverts within 10 hours and 10 minutes: Collect and I felt that we had consensus for a rearrangement of the article based on WP:WEIGHT, placing anecdotal evidence at the bottom of the article, and professional analysis from neutral secondary sources (regarding media coverage of those incidents) at the top of the article. Xenophrenic attempted to restore the original arrangement with anecdotal evidence at the top. Xenophrenic was also trying to editwar in a much longer quote from the Washington Post ombudsman, and other negative content, to put a more negative spin on three of the incidents. Xenophrenic was later identified by SilkTork (an ArbCom member) as one of four editors who were editwarring on that page, but he was not blocked for it. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 12:09, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Just a few days later, SilkTork placed a warning in red print below one of Xenophrenic's posts on the moderated discussion page, warning him that his comments were straying into editors' conduct rather than suggested article content. This came a few days after SilkTork had admonished everyone on the page that comments had to focus on suggested article content, and avoid any discussion of editors' conduct; violators of this new rule would be warned, then blocked. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 12:09, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

POV-pushing on other articles related to U.S. politics

Xenophrenic has been editwarring and POV-pushing in favor of a progressive POV on a broad range of articles related to U.S. politics, beyond his involvement in Tea Party movement and related articles. This involved removing negative content and terminology about progressive organizations and public figures, while adding negative content and terminology about conservative organizations and public figures:

Alan Grayson — Editwarred out a "however" statement in article mainspace by User:HangingCurve, explaining the circumstances of the return to Congress of Grayson. The appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 01:12, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Anthony Weiner and Anthony Weiner sexting scandal — removing sourced material from articles about a former Democratic congressman who resigned in disgrace. He removed a reliably sourced quotation of Weiner's own explanation of his behavior: — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy, James O'Keefe and Talk:James O'Keefe — editwarring to restore the unsourced word "deceptively," or "deceptive," in multiple mainspace locations as a descriptive term to describe the video productions of a living person. This living person posted videos on the Internet that apparently showed volunteers for a progressive organization telling a pimp and a prostitute how to conceal prostitution activities and avoid paying taxes. These videos triggered a cutoff of federal funding for ACORN and a sharp decrease in private donations, eventually leading to its bankruptcy. The word "deceptively," to the best of my knowledge is completely unsourced with regard to the ACORN videos. That word was used only in an opinion column by Michael Gerson of The Washington Post, and in an article on a small website called "The Blaze," discussing a completely unrelated undercover video by O'Keefe, involving Ron Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation. Xenophrenic, in the article mainspace, characterized ALL of O'Keefe's videos as "deceptive" without citing any sources, and claimed on the article Talk page that this "deceptive" nature was a "proven fact" rather than just what two sources (one an opinion column, the other a small website) had said about one video. In this large, detailed edit to the James O'Keefe mainspace, Xenophrenic sought to minimize the huge impact O'Keefe's videos have had on ACORN, NPR and other subjects of his undercover investigations, removing a huge amount of very well-sourced material, as well as removing a "citation needed" tag after the word "deceptive" (see above). In this edit, Xenophrenic carefully removed an indication of the ideologies and political affiliations of O'Keefe's detractors. In this edit, Xenophrenic redundantly identified the videos as "selectively edited." — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

ATF gunwalking scandal — in one of the biggest scandals of the Obama Administration, Xenophrenic slow-motion editwarred the description of ATF "gunwalking" operations from "2009 to 2011," making the time frame "2006 to 2011" to include three years under the previous Republican President , without any explanatory information. This is in the lede sentence of the article. Under Bush, the ATF tried three very small, limited operations with several safeguards in place, such as placing RF transmitters (radio tracking devices) inside the guns. One of these three operations did not actually involve gunwalking per se but instead used more conventional law enforcement methods. When things started going wrong, the ATF wisely shut down all three of these operations despite the fact that they had resulted in some arrests; one of the three operations lasted just two weeks. Under Obama, the decision was made to start a new, and enormously larger gunwalking operation without those safeguards. The operations during the Bush years were questionable. During the Obama years, resurrecting the idea of gunwalking from its well-deserved grave, enlarging it exponentially and taking away the safeguards — after all that had gone wrong previously — was a lot worse than questionable. It was reckless, and notable, neutral commentators have said so. The result was that three times as many automatic and semi-automatic weapons were acquired by criminal cartels under the Obama Administration than under the Bush Administration. Furthermore, the weapons acquired by the cartels during the Obama years tended to be a lot more deadly, including .50-caliber sniper rifles. Xenophrenic's edit effectively concealed these important distinctions. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

David Stannard — Editwarred out some negative material about an author whose principal work, American Holocaust, accuses the U.S. government of committing genocide against Native Americans. The same revert three times in 8 hours, 17 minutes. Xenophrenic claims it's unsourced, but another editor on the Talk page, User:TheTimesAreAChanging, arguing in favor of its inclusion, provided some fairly convincing proof: Here's Xenophrenic, being tendentious with said editor on the article's Talk page: Said editor's response: "You are a POV-pushing vandal." It's entirely academic because the whole passage was removed shortly thereafter as a WP:SYNTH violation, but it highlights the Xenophrenic philosophy. Rather than revert the whole mess as a SYNTH violation, he kept the positive SYNTH, and removed the negative SYNTH. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 15:32, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

D. L. Hughley — Editwarring to remove information about a stand-up comic, who frequently relies on social and political commentary from a left-wing perspective as part of his comedy routine. The information was that Hughley was eliminated in Week 5 of Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 16), and the excuse used in the edit summary was that it was unsourced. (Is this really negative information? Wouldn't a "citation needed" tag have been sufficient?) — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 04:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting — Extended, slow-motion editwarring in the article lede sentence to ensure FAIR is self-described as "progressive," rather than using the less complimentary term "left-leaning" applied by an outside reliable source, or even the more neutral "liberal." Doing the same thing earlier, and removing the citation of that reliable source. Generally being tendentious on the Talk page with User:Arzel and User:Papajohnin. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 23:54, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Farenheit 9/11 and Fahrenheit 9/11 controversy — Removing a source citation to an article that criticized an anti-war documentary, and slow-motion editwarring the article content to first identify "Bush supporters" or "Bush defenders" as sources of the criticism: Also reducing "many disputes" about the accuracy of the film to "a dispute": — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Guenter Lewy — Reverted the removal of the word "controversial" to describe the author's works in the lede paragraph. In several of his works, Lewy has generally been critical of anti-war activists and authors, describing some opponents to the Vietnam War as a "war crime industry." This is a very small example of adding negative content to articles about persons and organizations he perceives as conservative. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 04:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

John Kerry — Putting some positive spin, and removing sourced negative content, in the biography of the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee and current secretary of state. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 15:32, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Organizing for Action — Another example of removing negative information about a progressive organization. The article cited Politico.com to link OFA, the progressive organization arising from Barack Obama's re-election campaign, to big-money Obama donors such as George Soros and several multi-billion-dollar corporations. This link belies OFA's claim to being a grass-roots movement. However, Politico only said "linked to"; the Misplaced Pages article said "donations from" ... the appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag, or simply editing those two little words to correctly reflect exactly what the source says. Instead, Xenophrenic deleted the entire sentence as well as the source citation. In this diff, Xenophrenic removed negative, perfectly well-sourced information about OFA and replaced it with information that had a more positive spin, by cherry-picking which portion of the source (a government watchdog group called Sunlight Foundation) would be used. And in this diff, Xenophrenic toned down an accusation by Republican Mitch McConnell (well sourced in another government watchdog group, Public Integrity), and inserted a lengthy positive-spin quote by OFA chairman Jim Messina in front of the McConnell material, sourcing it to an op-ed column by Messina on the CNN website. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 04:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Tom Smith (Pennsylvania politician) — Editwarring with an IP editor, 96.245.12.5, to ensure that the neutral term "then clarified" was replaced by the more negative "attempted to walk back," in the biography about a pro-life Democratic politician who switched to the Republican Party. The "attempted to walk back" terminology was only used by one source: a left-leaning, local Pennsylvania website called "Politics PA." — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 01:12, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Zero Dark Thirty — altered content to state that "some Republicans charged that the filmmakers were given access to classified materials" Original content was "other critics charged ..." A far more accurate representation of what the source said would be just one Republican (Rep. Peter King), after a very similar charge that was first being made by a non-partisan military man: "Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said earlier this year that it was 'time to stop talking' after remarkably accurate accounts appeared in US newspapers in the days immediately following the operation. 'We have gotten to a point where we are close to jeopardising the precision capability that we have,' he warned." Xenophrenic's version cherry-picked what the source said, to make it sound like a politically-motivated attack that had no foundation in facts. Also, Xeno removed source citations for opinion columns by notable writers, such as Naomi Wolf and Glenn Greenwald, who were critical of the film. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Evidence offered at ArbCom re: Tea Party movement

Malke 2010: "Arguments over petty, silly 'news' items such as an incident in Maryland where a man claimed his outdoor barbecue grill was sabotaged by tea party members because he was an Obama supporter. Xenophrenic fought like crazy for that and anytime it got deleted, he put it right back. ... Goethean's and Xenophrenic's arguments and edit wars today are the same ones they had back in 2010. Goethean violates WP:PA and exhibits tendency towards WP:OWN. Xenophrenic violates WP:TE. The same sections, the same edits. Over and over. In the meantime, the article has not improved ..."

North8000: "The inevitable proximate finding will be that Xenophrenic primarily and Geothean secondarilyy have dominated the article via TE and prevented its Wikification. ... In each case the end result was that stayed in, and the result was determined by not by a decision but by whichever editor or set of editors was most relentless. And two editors (Xenophrenic and Goethean) have been controlling the result of the above and many other areas in the article via this method. ... Xenophrenic's large number of edits (#2 on the list) with a high proportion of those being reversals in disputes, they have more than anyone determined what is or isn't in the article. ... a look at the disputes and how they have ended up clearly shows that the dominant editing force in determining the article content on these has been Xenophrenic, backed up by Goethean at key moments."

North8000's ANI thread regarding Xenophrenic's tendentious editing:

Darkstar1st:

Xenophrenic is the 2nd most active editor on the article with 388 edits and 449 in talk
Xenophrenic's primary contribution to the Tea Party movement article is as a "revert-only" account. many edits are labeled as "Undo", scores more are full or partial reverts. There are a few minor content contributions, exclusively material critical of the Tea Party.
Xenophrenic has been blocked several times for edit warring:

Evidence of tendentious editing, edit-warring, and disruption

Xenophrenic is attempting to insert "anti-immigration" into the Tea Party movement article as well as the term "nativism." Part of that discussion then lead to the following exchange:

North8000 comments on Xenophrenic’s use of “anti-immigration” instead of the relevant “anti-illegal immigration.”

Malke responds here: and here:

Xenophrenic replies:

Malke responds:

Xenophrenic replies:

Malke responds: Xeno

Malke responds and corrects part of her edit

Xenophrenic misinterprets Malke’s correction

Malke explains

Xenophrenic insists

Arthur Rubin then commented that the exchange was an example of Xenophrenic’s tendentious editing: “. . . I should add that now there is strong evidence toward Xenophrenic's tendentious editing in intentionally disregarding the obvious meaning of Malke's comments (in the "anti-immigration" section) in favor of an absurd interpretation. . .Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Xenophrenic then edit warred in response: and again and again .

Xenophrenic then went to Arthur Rubin’s talk page: Not satisfied, he went to ANI:

Applicable policies and guidelines

{List the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(Provide diffs of the comments. As with anywhere else on this RfC/U, links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

Attempts by Phoenix and Winslow

This contains an extended conversation between Xenophrenic and me on the Talk:Tea Party movement page on April 17-25.

This contains an extended conversation between Xenophrenic and me on the Talk:Tea Party movement/Moderated discussion page on May 12-13. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 07:32, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Attempts by certifier Malke 2010

This is a conversation with Xenophrenic on Tea Party movement talk page:
This discussion on Xenophrenic's talk page regarding his behaviours on Arthur Rubin's talk page:
Xenophrenic deleted part of the above conversation:

Malke 2010 (talk) 21:20, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Other attempts

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

Other users who endorse this summary

{Anyone is welcome to endorse this or any other view, but do not change other people's views. RFC/U does not accept "opposes" or "anti-endorsements"; the fact that you do not endorse a view indicates that you do not entirely agree with it. Discussion of this view or other people's endorsements belongs on the talk page, not in this section.}

Response by Xenophrenic

Thank you for providing diffs and evidence to support your concerns. I can see you've put a lot of time and effort into it. I'll review it and then replace this message with a more comprehensive response. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 11:45, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

RFC/U does not accept "opposes" or "anti-endorsements"; the fact that you do not endorse a view indicates that you do not entirely agree with it. Discussion of this view or comments made by people endorsing this view belong on the talk page, not in this section

Views

This section is for statements or opinions written by users not directly involved with this dispute, but who would like to add a view of the dispute. Users should not edit other people's summaries or views, except to endorse them. RFC/U does not accept "opposes" or "anti-endorsements"; the fact that you do not endorse a view indicates that you do not entirely agree with it. All signed comments other than your own view or an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" or "Response") should not normally edit this section, except to endorse another person's view.

view by Collect

There is neither doubt nor disagreement that User:Xenophrenic is an inveterate POV-pusher with tenacious editing habits. He seeks to make sure that people know how evil the Tea Party movement is, that it is racist, bigoted, homophobic etc. Unfortunately, this runs into WP:NPOV head-on. However, he has the right to delete warnings etc. from his user talk page under Misplaced Pages policy and guildelines, and that complaint does not really belong in an RfC/U.

Xenophrenic shows his POV in such other articles as Fahrenheit 9/11 , on Talk:Tea Party movement where he berates Arthur Rubin with a silly post , in the section "Interim remedy expected" which appears to be a bit of a noticeboard rant (Xeno appears to be a dramaboard regular complainant).

Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Tea_Party_movement;_looking_for_community_input shows my utter lack of animus here.

The proper result should be for Xenophrenic to acknowledge his problem with following WP:NPOV when making edits on political pages, for him to read up on Dale Carnegie and not to act like Misplaced Pages is, or ought to be, a battleground of any sort, to understand that we need to look at entire articles, and not seek to add material based on any personal point of view about the topic. And lastly to recognize that WP:CONSENSUS does not mean we end up with perfect articles - it means we end up with collegial agreement to accept stuff we may not really be in love with. Collect (talk) 14:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)