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Statement of the dispute

GoRight, a user with a history of disruptive editing on global warming articles, returned 11 days ago. Since then, he has fomented numerous edit wars and harassed other users (the latter resulting in a 24 hour block)

Desired outcome

GoRight should be community banned from global warming related articles. If he continues his harassment of WMC, he should be indefinitely blocked as well.

Description

GoRight is a single purpose civil POV pusher with a history of problematic editing on Misplaced Pages. (Note that I mean single purpose is the strictest sense - his contribs contain exactly 4 edits to non-global warming related articles). He recently returned from a 6 month hiatus.

He has a history of tendentious editing on global warming related articles. In December, he went on a 6 month editing hiatus. Since his return 11 days ago, he has fomented no less than 9 simultaneous edit wars on global warming-related articles: William M. Gray‎, Global warming‎, William Connolley‎, Fred Singer‎, Lawrence Solomon‎, RealClimate‎, An Inconvenient Truth‎, and Global warming controversy‎. At the same time, he has repeatedly harassed user:William M. Connolley (for which he was blocked by R. Baley yesterday) GoRight does not understand or abide by Misplaced Pages policies regarding reliable sourcing.

I have neither the time or energy enumerate all of GoRight's misbehavior in each of the above edit wars, but I'll give a general overview. He attempted to insert claims into the global warming article that global warming is likely to cause earthquakes. (See this thread) His citation for this was an MSNBC article which he later admittedly he already knew had been withdrawn - that he was well aware that its own publisher didn't consider it reliable. This article said point blank that the earthquake hypothesis was espoused by one person and was at odds with all other known data. Count Iblis told him that his edit violated Misplaced Pages policy regarding reliable sources, to which he responded by claiming it was a legitimate edit. I pointed him to the arbitration committee's decision regarding sourcing for science related articles (Misplaced Pages:Verifiability and Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such.) but he later admitted he did not bother to read the link to the arbitration committee decision.

During the same time-frame, he made this edit to William Connelly's article, claiming that William's article, claiming that WMC "strongly pushes his POV with systematic removal of any POV which does not match his own". The source for this quote was an article by Stacy Schiff, which itself got the quote from an arbitration case on Misplaced Pages -- hardly a reliable source. After this was removed as a blatant BLP violation, he added this one sourced to an article by Lawrence Solomon (an ex-wikipedian with an axe to grind) published in a tabloid. This too was removed as a BLP violation.

While that was going on, he became embroiled in an edit war on the William M. Gray article. (Gray is a global warming denier) GoRight made a series of edits which can only be characterized as vandalism - removing Gray's offer to bet on future climates, and changing "does not subscribe to anthropogenic causes for global warming" to "does not subscribe to the currently hypothesized anthropogenic causes for global warming".

At the same time as the above, GoRight jumped into an edit war on the Global warming controversy article. BernhardMeyer inserted a link to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in the Science-related external links section. (diff) (For those of you unaware, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is a "research group" created by global warming denier Fred Singer and SEPP - his think tank - to confuse people. It's name is intentionally similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-prize winning group of climate scientists. The NIPCC, SEPP, and Fred Singer all get money directly or indirectly from ExxonMobile.) When BernhardMeyer's link was correctly reverted, GoRight immediately jumped in, attempting to restore it (diff). When it was explained to him on the talk page that a global warming denial group is not a reliable source, he bizzarely claimed that the onus was on others to prove that the NIPCC is not reliable (rather than the onus being on him to prove they are).

On the Fred Singer article, several weeks ago there was a question about a letter Singer wrote which was published in the Journal Astronautics in 1960. In it, Singer supported the idea that the Martian moon Phobos was artificial, made by Martians. Several people wanted verification of this, so I put in a request in the inter-library loan, got a pdf scan of the letter, and posted such on the talk page. Everyone agreed it was a reliable source, and the letter was quoted and cited in the article, along with a link to a google cache copy. Three weeks later, GoRight came along, claimed that a "google cache" is not a reliable source, and removed all mention of the letter. (diff) This, obviously, started an edit war. GoRight later claimed that because it was not available online, and that he was unable to find it himself (despite the fact that I had posted it on the talk page 2 weeks earlier) we should not cite it (diff). More edit warring followed.

I hope that gives you some idea of the problem user we are dealing with -- of the 36 article edits GoRight has made since returning, 34 of them either started or were part of edit wars. While causing all of the above edit wars, he has taken to singling out and harassing William M. Connelly in particular. So much so that R. Baley blocked him yesterday. R. Baley unblocked GoRight after GoRight admitted he was out of line and promised to be more diplomatic. (See this thread)

This thread is enlightening. When confronted with his misbehavior, GoRight at denies being disruptive and also denies participating in edit warring, despite all evidence to the contrary. He later claims that his edits were properly sourced and their reversion is evidence of a conspiracy against him. When notified of this RFC, he bizarrely described it as "forum shopping"

Evidence of disputed behavior

(See above description for diffs)

Applicable policies and guidelines

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

1. Misplaced Pages:Edit war
2. Misplaced Pages:Tendentious editing
3. Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources
4. Misplaced Pages:Vandalism
5. Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience#Appropriate_sources
6. Misplaced Pages:Harassment

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

1. Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive438#Disruption_by_GoRight - the consensus was that GoRight is a disruptive user, but that I was arguably involved and should not make the block myself.

   Note that GoRight responded to the above ANI thread by opening an administrator's noticeboard thread on myself and R. Baley - Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive151#Abuse_of_adminship_by_User:R._Baley_and_User:Raul654 He was told that there was no basis for a complaint and to pursue dispute resolution.

2. re William M. Gray. GR apparently finds it unremarkable that his edits should be considered vandalism . KDP does not use the term lightly.

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

The ANI thread above was discussed from the 24th to the 26th. Since then, he has not moderated his behavior in the slightest.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

1. William M. Connolley (talk) 18:44, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
2. Raul654 (talk) 01:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

1. Count Iblis (talk) 00:42, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
2. Yilloslime (t) 00:57, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
3. Vsmith (talk) 02:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
4. Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:13, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

(1) General points:

1. Raul asserts "GoRight is a single purpose civil POV pusher ..."
   • I do tend to be a single topic contributor as my time is limited and my edits are focused in my areas of interest, namely the GW articles. I am aware of no Misplaced Pages policy that requires across the board participation in a range of unrelated topics. To suggest that this means I push a particular POV, however, is obviously a logical fallacy. The one simply does not logically imply the other. I can certainly be a neutral editor with a narrow scope of interest.
   • "Civil POV Pusher" is an oxymoron. It denotes an editor that attempts to follow Misplaced Pages rules and policies but is somehow a "POV Pusher", begging the obvious question of from who's counter POV? We all have points of view. It is the diversity of views here that is supposed to keep Misplaced Pages grounded in reality. Coining a non-official term such as this, developing an extensive page to support it, and then attempting to use it as a club against one's opponents (as we see here) is obviously an attempt to simply stifle dissenting debate. When you remove the dissenting debate the core principle behind having the diversity of opinions here collapses and the pages then become non-WP:NPOV with a tendency on the part of the regular editors to WP:OWN the status quo.
2. Raul asserts in his complaint above "His citation for this was an MSNBC article which he later admittedly he already knew had been withdrawn - that he was well aware that its own publisher didn't consider it reliable. This article said point blank that the earthquake hypothesis was espoused by one person and was at odds with all other known data." This entire statement is objectively false:
   • The MSNBC article has never been withdrawn. It is still available here .
   • Since MSNBC is still running the story, one can only conclude that the article's publisher, MSNBC, considers the material to be reliable.
   • The article cited does not say that the hypothesis was espoused by one person and was at odds with all other known data, as Raul claims.
   • The standard, as noted in WP:V, is not truth but verifiability. The MSNBC article is WP:V.
   • To make the logical leap that the MSNBC article is somehow incorrect requires WP:OR on his part and is not permitted here on Misplaced Pages.
3. Raul asserts "... he has repeatedly harassed user:William M. Connolley (for which he was blocked by R. Baley yesterday) ..."
   • I have NOT repeatedly harassed the wikipedian User:William M. Connolley. I did make an off-hand PA on a talk page for which I was appropriately blocked. My reaction was to throw my fate into the hands of the person I was purportedly attacking , who agreed my comment was out of line . After going back and reviewing the comment again, I admitted that it was out of line , apologized for having made it , the apology was then accepted , I then sought to confirm on the broader topic whether User:William M. Connolley felt that I was harassing him , but WMC declined to comment . So far as I know all participants in this incident are satisfied that the matter is now closed.
   • I, along with others, HAVE independently tried to add appropriately sourced criticism into the encyclopedic BLP for climate scientist William M. Connolley. Making such a distinction is not without precedent in this context even among WMCs close associates . The text I provided was a verbatim quote from a 3rd party source published in a reliable and verifiable media source, The New Yorker . Note that I never reverted this text even once. An alternative and obviously much more WP:NPOV text provided by another editor, but related to the same article, was introduced by User:Kendrick7 here . I later supported the alternative text here , and here , and finally here where I declared that I did not intend to revert the material again ... nor have I.
   • It should be clear that a verbatim quote indicates the sentiments being expressed by the 3rd party author and their sources, not the wikipedian. The third party author is responsible for assessing the reliability of the source that they use, not us here at Misplaced Pages. Making any sort of judgment call regarding a third party author's meaning and/or the reliability of their underlying sources requires WP:OR which is against Misplaced Pages policy and therefore should be avoided.
4. I am satisfied that my comments on WP:AN and WP:ANI can speak for themselves, although I do feel that a fair reading of both will reveal his mischaracterization of the outcomes, and most especially the one brought by him wherein I gained support from a number of uninvolved users.
5. On the charge of my being an edit warrior, I am in the process of creating a topic by topic account of these supposed edit wars () to put my participation there in the context of that with whom I am supposedly edit warring. Judge for yourself if I deserve to be singled out in these instances or not. Calling these edit wars, however, is rather reminiscent of Misplaced Pages:Lamest_edit_wars. The reality is that brief rounds of reverts among multiple participants on contentious topics seems to be completely normal operating procedure all over Misplaced Pages as we all know. Similarly there can be found many other such instances on every single GW page ... the vast majority of which don't involve me in any way. So the question is, why is Raul singling me out? Does it have something to do with his POV on the topics rather than the rationale he cites above? Is he simply mischaracterizing things to build a case for the purpose of stifling dissenting views? You judge for yourself.
6. On the charge of being a vandal, I believe that my edit history is clean of this charge except for this one incident, although I have not gone back to check. Further I do not believe that the edit in question actually constitutes vandalism, per WP:VAND. I provide my rationale here . You can judge for yourself if this is actually vandalism, or not.

(2) My behavior over time:

1. In retrospect, my first addition since my return, namely the piece concerning the relationship between GW an Earthquakes, was not my finest work. Was the evidence for it thin? Sure. My source for that, an article from MSNBC , is still active and has not been retracted as Raul falsely claims above. And obscure ArbCom rulings that no average Wikipedian should be expected to know about before being WP:BOLD aside, the fact of the matter is that neither of the official policy pages WP:RS nor WP:V supports his claim that only peer reviewed material is acceptable on science pages. Exactly the opposite is true, as lamented to here , and as I demonstrated clearly on the Talk page (actually User:Count Iblis did when he quoted the relevant text and I merely read it back to him). Raul is just upset that I won't admit I was wrong when, in fact, the relevant policies bear me out. This is because it makes it harder for him to enforce his personal POV through the intimidation of other wikipedians. Even so, I quickly agreed to drop the matter ... which the edit history demonstrates I have done ... yet two days later Raul comes along and picks a fight over my not understanding and/or ignoring the official Misplaced Pages policies (as opposed to obscure ArbCom rulings). Again, this is merely part of his smear campaign in support of his agenda here.
2. Subsequent to the notice board incidents referenced above, I would argue that the following are evidence of my having moved in a positive direction, contrary to Raul's assertion that I have not moderated my behavior:
   • Per the instructions given me by the responses at I correctly pursued the dispute resolution process by taking the open issues to the WP:BLPN board. I have subsequently done similarly for other topics as well.
   • After being blocked, and correctly so, for a specific WP:NPA violation, I worked with both User:William M. Connolley and User:R. Baley to resolve the situation. I voluntarily apologized directly for having done so and have avoided repeating the mistake. The threads at and speak for themselves on this point. I believe that all parties involved consider this matter closed at this point.
   • After having a number of interactions with User:KimDabelsteinPetersen which resulted in his accusing me of vandalism for this edit , I pro-actively sought to diffuse the tensions between KDP and myself . You can decide for yourself whether the edit in question was vandalism or merely an attempt to balance the difference between KDP and another user.
   • A review of this thread, , should yield to an objective observer a clear understanding of just who is being aggressive and creating a toxic environment here, and who is not.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. --GoRight (talk) 07:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2. I agree with the bulk of this. It seems that GoRight can do no right: edit articles directly, and he's an edit warrior; discuss on talk pages and he's tendentious; edit rudely and he's uncivil; edit nicely and he's a "civil POV pusher". The only conclusion to be drawn is that editors of a certain POV are simply not welcome here, and that is clearly unacceptable. People need to stop labelling editorial disagreement as disruption. ATren (talk) 14:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

Outside view by Count Iblis

I agree 100% with Raul's assessment of GoRight's behavior. I do think, however, that banning GoRight from the global warming related pages is not the best way to deal with this problem. I suggest we put GoRight on a 0RR restriction. That will force him to think very carefully about adding something to an article as he can't revert to his version anymore if it is removed.

Also, the 0RR restriction will mean that GoRight is not allowed to revert the article to any previous version at all, even if that is the fist editing action by him in a 24 hour period, except if he is reverting obvious vandalism. So, if GoRight makes an edit on one day, which is then reverted, he can't on the next day edit in that same edit of the previous day.

For talk page comments we'll restrict GoRight as follows. If GoRight raises a topic that has already been discussed or if he raises an irrelevant point that is not ging to lead to changes in the article, then we delete his comments. When his talk page comments are deleted, GoRight will not be allowed to revert that change because of the 0RR restriction. He will not be allowed to raise the same topic ever again as that is technically a revert.

All this sounds more complicated than simply banning GoRight from editing the Global Warning related pages. However, such restrictions do force GoRight to think very carefully about the topic and it may lead him to see how wrong he is about the topic. Also, he nor anyone else can't claim that he is sensored. He is allowed to edit the article. If he is reverted then it is theoretically possible for someone other than GoRight to revert the article back to GoRight's version.

Users who endorse this summary:

Count Iblis (talk) 01:23, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Outside View by ATren

Note: I do not agree with GoRight's views on global warming.

Having said that, there is only one recent edit made by GoRight that gave me any concern, and that was the attempt to add to William Connelley's bio - but even that was a well-sourced claim and not an open-and-shut example of abuse. And, by the way, GoRight accepted consensus on that and moved on, so I don't know why it's still being brought up.

Further, I am of the opinion that "civil POV pushing" is a nonsensical accusation to make about any editor, because it paradoxically implies that civility is somehow a violation of policy. Worse yet, it seems to create an environment where any disagreement is unacceptable: if GoRight disagrees uncivilly, he'll be quickly blocked; if he disagrees civilly, he'll be charged with "civil POV pushing" - so his only apparent recourse is not to disagree. In this sense, "civil POV pushing" is basically being used to squelch debate.

Basically, this is nothing more than a content dispute between editors on opposite sides of a contentious topic. There is no need to squelch one side of that debate.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. ATren (talk) 01:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2. I believe this summary is generally accurate. I don't see anything he's done that is worthy of a ban from GW. Oren0 (talk) 02:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3. Concur in full. I also disagree with GoRight's POV (that is: I think that man-made global warming is a nigh-undeniable fact), but apart from his misguided push to edit an OpEd source on a BLP (William Connolley), his actions have been well-taken, and conscientious. As ATren states, even that incident can't be called disruptive. I fear that this will turn into an unhelpful "vote off the island" RFC. Cool Hand Luke 04:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
4. Concur. Tempshill (talk) 16:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
5. GoRight (talk) 23:37, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Outside View by Abd

I'm concerned both by the charges in this RfC and the response by GoRight. I agree with Atren that "civil POV pushing" is problematic as a charge. POV pushing, done civilly, can be a problem, but NPOV is a result of the interaction between POVs, mixed with civility and avoidance of edit warring. The charges repeatedly mention edit warring, and that would seem to be the core of the complaint, and civility or POV pushing red herrings. The charges appear to be a laundry list, with plenty of redundancy, such as repeated mention of alleged harassment of Connolley. Further, the most serious charges (edit warring) are not demonstrated with diffs, which is a problem, making it far more difficult to review the evidence, and thus tending to restrict comment to those who already have an opinion. The point of an RfC is to attract wider comment.

GoRight, in return, complained about the verbosity of the charges, then used half again as much text in response. On the other hand, I'd cut a lot of slack for a user accused of misbehavior. GoRight counterattacks, accusing those who filed this RfC of misbehavior themselves. Bad Idea, as my four-year old daughter would say. It makes him look guilty. But, again, this is what users often do when charged with misbehavior. And what if he is right?

So I'm setting all this aside, and focusing on the very specific charges. This is what I have so far.

CHARGES

• WP:SPA is largely irrelevant at this point. Sometimes SPAs are held to a slightly different standard.
• "POV pusher" is likewise.
• "9 simultaneous edit wars" This is the core. The charges list eight articles, what's the ninth? I'm going to define edit war quite loosely, i.e., an "edit war edit" is any edit that repetitively asserts some position without showing a seeking of consensus. A removal of standing text isn't edit warring. A single revert of that is not edit warring. But reverting back to the removal is, etc, and analogously in the other direction (for insertion). And I am considering these edits to be edit warring regardless of the identity of the users involved, which makes tag-teaming irrelevant. No claim is made here that low-level edit warring is necessarily improper, but an overall pattern of engaging in it might be. See User:Abd/GoRight for diffs on the edit warring.
  • William M. Gray‎, BLP, focusing on two paragraphs at first, low-rate edit war involving four users.
    • Conclusion: while GoRight edit warred (low rate, 2RR in more than two days for GoRight), so did Connolley, CoolHandLuke, and Petersen. There was discussion in Talk. Currently, the major position that GoRight was "pushing," the removal of two paragraphs, stands, it has been stable since 24 June. In this period, GoRight made two edit warring edits, Connolley made two, CoolHandLuke made two, Petersen made two. This is low-level edit warring, in which four users participated. Petersen marks reversions as minor, using Twinkle, and GoRight also did so once (without using Twinkle).
  • Global warming‎
    • Massive edit warring on 6/22/08, involving Connolley, Raul654, Oren0, and Jason Patton on one side, and GoRight and Sm8900 on the other. 6RR on the Connolley side and 4RR on the other. If users had been warned, there could have been blocks from this. Experienced users, such as Raul654, an administrator, could have been blocked without warning. Individually, Sm8900 was at 2RR (two edits are consecutive, they count once), Raul654 at 2RR, GoRight at 2RR, Patton at 2RR, and Oren0 and Connolley at 1RR. There was another repetitive reversion on 6/20, and GoRight stood down at 1RR to Count Iblis at 2RR. I do not see GoRight as an out-of-context edit warrior here. If he were to be sanctioned for this, we'd need to look at the others as well. And defending proper content is not an excuse for edit warring, outside of BLP issues. I have not however, sufficiently examined what was happening in Talk at this time. Raul654 and others marked all reversions as minor. GoRight did that once.
  • William Connolley‎
    • This is an article on User:William M. Connolley. GoRight's first edit inserted quoted material from a 2006 New Yorker article on Misplaced Pages, by Stacy Schiff that gives a paragraph to Connolley. It was immediately reverted by R. Baley, with summary revert biased edit by fringe POV account. misrepresentation of article. This is gratuitously confrontational for a first edit to an article, and "misrepresentation" seems incorrect. A series of edits restored the substance of GoRight's edit, which stands today, prima facie evidence that the edit was proper. Two days later, an edit war began when Kendrick7 inserted reference to an op ed piece in the National Post by Lawrence Solomon, reverted by Petersen. GoRight joined, hitting 3RR on 6/24 before explicitly quitting. Petersen hit 2RR on 6/24 and 2RR on 6/25-26 (<24 hrs). Other editors were, supporting Petersen, Stephan Schulz, 2RR (6/24-5, <24 hrs), Vsmith, 1RR. Supporting Kendrik7, besides GoRight, there was A. B. (2RR) and 72.209.10.176. There is extensive discussion in Talk by GoRight and others, and there had been prior discussion of the Solomon article there, of which my opinion is that it reached no consensus. While GoRight pushed 3RR, he did not sustain that; Petersen avoided 3RR violation by making the same repetitive reversion over two days, and was supported by three additional reverts by other editors. I would suggest that the issue of using the Solomon material should be RfC'd, for it seems that the material is not in the article because of editor exhaustion, not because consensus was found (and there may be special BLP considerations). What I see here is a position being strongly asserted by a few editors, against multiple editors, without a seeking of consensus, which is quite dangerous. I am not concluding that those "defending" the article against material from the Solomon quotation were incorrect to do so. What I do conclude is that the position asserted by GoRight was a reasonable one, supported by two other editors plus one IP, and it was opposed by three editors. GoRight would properly be warned against using edit warring to improve articles; however, the collective behavior of the "other side" is also of concern, and some of the individual behaviors here could also justify warnings, and such would be a proper outcome of this RfC.
  • Fred Singer‎
  • Lawrence Solomon‎
  • RealClimate‎
  • An Inconvenient Truth‎
    • GoRight made only a single edit to this article, a revert in a series of reverts by other users.
  • Global warming controversy‎
• "repeatedly harassed user:William M. Connolley
  • When User:R. Baley reverted GoRight's first edit to William Connolley, with an uncivil edit summary, Baley also warned GoRight and threatened him with blocking. Note that the substance of this edit, alleged to be a personal attack, remains in the article to date. Talk page discussion ensured between GoRight and Baley. While GoRight was inappropriate in certain criticism of Connolley, Baley was massively uncivil and treated GoRight's attempt to discuss the issue with contempt. Raul654 likewise responded to GoRight uncivilly. GoRight went to AN/I with a request for protection from Baley and Raul654. Clearly, Baley and Raul654 were involved in an extended content dispute with GoRight. Yet Baley proceeded to block GoRight for harassment of Connolley. Harassment of a Misplaced Pages editor does not ordinarily involve an attempt to add sourced material to a biography of the editor; the original edit, immediately identified as a personal attack by Baley, was critical of Connolley, but not uncivil; it's a fact that Connolley was charged with misbehavior and was sanctioned by ArbComm, and, since it has been reported in independent reliable source, it is arguable that it is usable in the article. Baley's position on that content has not been sustained by consensus. But usability in the article is a separate question from whether or not it is a personal attack. It is highly problematic to consider the mere quotation of reliable source to be a "personal attack," which would have to be based on a presumed illegitimate motive. Baley, being involved in a content dispute with an editor, used his administrative tools to block the user. The block is then used by the certifiers of this RfC as evidence against GoRight. I am appalled.

There are other charges which boil down to disagreements over reliable sourcing, etc., which are not, in themselves, evidence of user misbehavior, whether the user is right or wrong. We have a right to be wrong, provided we don't edit war. (In fact, we have a right to be right, as long as we don't edit war.) Violating sourcing guidelines, unless done on a scale far larger than represented here, is not an offense if not accompanied by edit warring.

As I have reviewed the record in this case, and have begun to examine more closely and verify claims made in the charges, I discovered a blatant defect in this RfC. In the section Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute, reference is made to Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive438#Disruption_by_GoRight, and the author notes - the consensus was that GoRight is a disruptive user, but that I was arguably involved and should not make the block myself.

When I first read this, I was disturbed by the comment about COI. That this admin was even considering blocking would be worrisome, as he was involved in edit warring with the subject. However, that's a detail. When I looked at the AN/I report, there was no such claimed consensus. There was, instead, repeated suggestion to pursue dispute resolution, and AN/I is not dispute resolution, though occasionally disputes get resolved there. If we look at WP:DR, going to AN/I isn't even mentioned, though WP:AN is mentioned for emergencies. No emergencies have been alleged, beyond some isolated BLP issues that were quickly resolved. RfC is also not an early stage in DR, it is often the last stop before ArbComm. DR is designed to avoid matters coming to that length. So, before proceeding with more analysis of the alleged edit warring, I must also examine the rest of that certification. The next point in it is an utterly irrelevant mention of an AN/I report filed by GoRight. GoRight went to AN/I over a fear that he would be improperly blocked, and that is exactly what he should have done. He was directed to dispute resolution; and he was civil and apparently responsive to suggestions. That this would be tacked into a section which supposedly is about attempts to resolve the issue is outrageous. So, then, as the second evidence of "trying to resolve the dispute," we have , which is a warning, not an attempt to resolve a dispute. From the warning: Your edits are now being reverted as "vandalism" . This isn't good, even if you perhaps disagree. Wiki isn't here for playing games and tweaking people - that will get you blocked William M. Connolley (talk) 06:39, 1 July 2008 (UTC). This is an uncivil warning, unworthy of an administrator. That diff points to an abusive Twinkle "vandalism" edit summary by an endorser of this RfC, Petersen, who had cooperated with Connolley with regard to reverting GoRight's edits to William M. Gray, see my evidence page.

I am concluding that this RfC was abusively filed. Many other editors are involved, from what I've seen so far (on both sides). There is problematic behavior on the part of GoRight, to be sure, but nothing so out of the ordinary and so sustained as to have warranted an RfC so rapidly, as far as I've seen, and when problematic behavior has been civilly pointed out to GoRight, he seems to have been responsive. I expect to take this to AN/I for comment, because an RfC can consume large amounts of time, it has already taken quite a few hours of mine, and the misleading certification is, in my view, a fatal flaw and, if this RfC is not withdrawn or quickly settled, cause for closer examination of the behavior of the administrators involved, and possibly other users. I've seen many problematic edits, more, in fact, from other users than from GoRight, but I have not attempted --yet-- to compile these since this is not an RfC on those other users. I see no sign of actual abuse of tools, so far, nor can I conclude, yet, that the admins have been seriously intimidating, but there is some level of worry about that. Please, if friends of these administrators -- whom I do not know and with whom I have had no prior contact -- read this, give them some advice. This RfC could be suicidal for them. AN/I strongly suggested to them that they pursue DR; but they do not seem to have done that at all. Warning users is also not a step in Dispute Resolution.

I have opinions about the underlying content issues, but if I were to consider those, I'd probably be an adversary to GoRight. I care more about NPOV, because I believe that this is part of what we need in order to solve the major problems involved in the topic GoRight has focused on. His participation, and that of others like him, with proper restraint, is crucial to the development and maintenance of true NPOV. If he edit wars, in a sustained way, he can be blocked. But so can the other users involved, including those who filed this RfC. Once we look at groups of editors acting in concert -- which is proper for 3RR --, I see 3RR violations in Global warming. If the users had been warned, a 3RR report on that incident could have been filed, (there is 6RR on the Connolley/Oren0/Patton/Raul654 side and 4RR on the GoRight/Sm8900 side). GoRight is no more of an offender than at least some of the others.

Because of subsequent comment by Oren0, I should emphasize that the mention of Oren0 was due to his participating in a series of reverts (by making a single revert) that I've defined as edit warring. "Sides" in this sense are defined by the content, i.e., is it this way or that way. It does not imply participation in a conspiracy. Further, no implication is necessarily made that those who edit warred were acting improperly, particularly if they only contributed one revert to a war, as was the case with Oren0.

This section is not complete, editors who respond to it should recognize that. In a prior version of this comment, I called the charges -- if the rest of the evidence turns out to be like the first article --, a "steaming pile." I regret that, though, though it does represent a tentative conclusion under the condition stated, i.e. from a fraction of the evidence available. It could be that the charges were clumsily compiled, with weak evidence given first. I have, as yet, made no overall conclusion. I will continue to update this comment as additional articles or assertions are reviewed at User:Abd/GoRight. Other editors are invited to contribute to that page, but it should remain NPOV and sourced. The charges here should have been sourced in the first place, so that all editors would have to do is to review it. If you endorse this summary prior to completion, I will notify you when it is complete so that you may reconsider your endorsement--Abd (talk) 22:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

1. I would like to stress one line of Abd's excellent analysis: There is problematic behavior on the part of GoRight, to be sure, but nothing so out of the ordinary and so sustained as to have warranted an RfC so rapidly, as far as I've seen, and when problematic behavior has been civilly pointed out to GoRight, he seems to have been responsive. If GoRight went on a vandalism spree on these 8 articles and replaced the entire text with hate speech, he'd get a 1-week block for vandalism and nothing beyond. Here we have a productive contributor (no doubting that - look at Singer and Gray) who made a few mistakes, and people want an indefinite topic ban. That's completely out of line. Not to mention that he wasn't even the worst transgressor in this conflict: the person who brought this RFC actually threatened to block GoRight during a dispute with him, which is a clearcut violation of WP:BLOCK and much more serious than anything GoRight did. The double standard is alive and well here. ATren (talk) 13:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
2. Endorse, but less strongly than ATren's summary above. I wouldn't go so far as to say abuse, though I do feel that this whole process is unnecessary as GoRight hasn't done anything blockable or content bannable. I'd also like to note in response to one thing above that nobody that follows GW pages (and certainly not GoRight) would consider me in any sort of "side" or "cabal" with Connolley and company (User:Oren0/GWSkeptic), even if I did revert some BS about global warming and earthquakes. Oren0 (talk) 00:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

View by Stephan Schulz

I'm currently on a lousy hotel internet connection, so this will of necessity be somewhat brief and possibly full of typos. I essentially agree with much of what Raul writes. To clarify one issue: the bad part about "civil POV pushing" is not the civil, it's the POV pushing. Civil POV pushing is a problem on Misplaced Pages because we have no substantial defenses against it. ArbCom does not decide content questions. Uninvolved admins often do not have the knowledge to properly evaluate different POVs with respect to WP:WEIGHT. Thus, a relentless POV pusher that remains reasonably polite can cause a lot of work and trouble without significantly improving the encyclopedia.

On the issue at hand, I would like to point out the following:

• Looking at User: GoRight's contributions: Can anybody find an edit that substantially improves the encyclopedia? "Not egregiously bad" is a very low bar.
• The earthquake episode looked and looks to me like a mixture of provocation and WP:POINT. To recap:
  • Here he introduces a statement about global warming causing more severe earthquakes, referenced to a Yahoo article referencing an obvious crank article in a crackpot "journal".
  • It is removed with a request for a peer-reviewed source here. Give the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the request for a peer-reviewed source seems to be entirely reasonable.
  • Nevertheless, GoRight adds it back, but Count Iblis removes it again.
  • Interestingly, on the corresponding talk page discussion Talk:Global_warming#Global_Warming_Causes_Earthquakes, GR admits before he re-adds the information, that "CBS News and the AP have backtracked", ergo that the report is not reliable. I suggest that all interested read the full section and decide for themselves if GR acted with an honest interest in improving the article. I'd just like to highlight the attempt to represent the "legitimate edit" as a victim of "the Connolley gang" and the use of other friendly insinuations against "the alarmists".
• Immediately following the earthquake episode, he starts an edit war on the caption of the Keeling curve, repeatedly claiming that it shows an increase in CO2 "from both natural and man-made sources". This claim is not only unsourced, it is laughably wrong. While some fringe scientists disagree with the consensus explanation of global warming, no serious scientist - not even the usual sceptics - doubts that the increase in CO2 is anthropgenic and only anthropogenic. There are many lines of evidence for this, but the most simple argument is that the increase is actually quite a bit less than human CO2 emissions. That this had been repeatedly explained to GR does not stop him from reverting...

Users who endorse this summary:

1. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
2. -- I agree 100% with this account of GoRights behavior. Count Iblis (talk) 00:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
3. Yilloslime (t) 00:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
4. Vsmith (talk) 02:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
5. N p holmes (talk) 15:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
6. Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:13, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
7. Jason Patton (talk) 19:17, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
8. Raul654 (talk) 05:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
9. Allemandtando (talk) 23:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
10. William M. Connolley (talk) 18:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

View by Kim D. Petersen

I haven't had much time for this - as i'm on vacation.

The trouble is not editwarring - but rather what the causes for that edit-warring is, and that cause is rather (to me) clear: Its tendentious editing by GoRight. And i rather differ with abd, in that the content issue is very important, as it always will be in a tendentious editing case. The why of the edit-wars, rather than the who.

• It starts with the Global warming article. Here GoRight inserts what can be adequately described as non-sense (or very extreme fringe), and as he later admits, it wasn't serious - but instead as a provocation to the "alarmists" as he apparently sees his fellow editors. Thats a clearcut case of WP:POINT. Read the complete discussion on Talk, its rather revealing.

• Next comes a direct violation of WP:BLP, quite clearly to slight the Misplaced Pages user Connolley, as his comment says directly (as does his response to the admin who warns him ). Btw. take a minute and check the reference for the context of the quote that GoRight had inserted to the article, to see a rather blatant cherry-pick.

• Continuing in the same vein, GoRight now starts another campaign against WMC, now on Fred Singers biography.

• Eventually getting two warnings from two admins , and taking a complaint to AN/I, where he gets a clear message that his edits where violations., and that his complaint was invalid.

• In the end getting blocked for this on his 9th day of editing.

• Strange reversion - does it really add any information to a movie that was released in 2006? Or is he just making a point?

• Inviting L. Solomon to use blogs to circumvent Misplaced Pages rules., apparently so he can get more meat for his POV.

• Really setting the mood , by baiting.

• Then of course there is this revert , where GoRight quite apparently is trying to annoy. He knows that theory is a word to avoid - not because its the wrong word in context, but because it means a different thing in a scientific context and a "normal" context. He doesn't revert back to the anonymous editors version - but instead waters the text even further down by exchanging theory with hypothesis. His explanation quite clearly shows his thoughts behind. (of course noone considers the man controversial, and the text didn't say so).

In summary - i think it comes through pretty clearly, that GoRight is on a mission. I presume that this mission is to expose a cabal which he thinks has taken over the global warming related pages. He does this by trying to "expose" WMC (as seen), and by making pointy reversions, that disrupt the articles. His entire method of operation, seems to be driving at pissing off people, so much that they will be seen as the "wrong-doers", instead of engaging in a reasonable consensus building. And as such the the label Civil POV pusher is rather apt.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Wurble by William M. Connolley (talk)

Some miscellaneous comments. Firstly, thanks to Abd for taking the time to read through this. *But* I think he has demonstrated how hard it is for an outsider to make sense of this. I'm going to look at the ~22/6/2008 edit warring on GW as my example. And in particular: which is to say, my removing of from both natural and man-made sources. The addition is contentious: the rise in GHG is well known to be anthropogenic; asserting otherwise is (a) POV pushing and (b) doomed, hence tendentious. But GR, as the talk in Misleading graph demonstrates, clearly didn't have any good sources for the idea that it might be natural. Its clear from the talk there that he simply didn't have a clue, had never looked at the evidence or even followed the obvious wiki links. Yet he previously used the edit comment Let's at least be clear about where the increases are coming from. Sm8900 repeated the same invalid edit, with no reason why, in edit comment or on the talk page (where you'll find us patiently explaining, yet again, why this is wrong). This wasn't a one-sided edit war, of course, but the side that prevailed was *correct*, and justified their position; whereas the side that lost was incorrect and made no attempt to justify their postiion (which is unsurprising, because its indefensible).

And I simply lack the incentive to actually waste time fighting the Connolley gang over it was hardly helpful.

Oh, and as for 0RR, its not necessary. Experience shows that 1RR is enough.

William M. Connolley (talk) 14:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Users endorsing this wurble

1. I would be support a 1RR, and suggest that user voluntarily abode to 1RR no matter the resolution of this RfC. I believe user's contributions have been productive (except for the attacks on User:William M. Connolley), so topic bans or even 0RR are excessive. Cool Hand Luke 04:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

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