Revision as of 14:58, 14 July 2014

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Clarification request: Cold Fusion is/isn't Pseudoscience

Initiated by 84.106.11.117 (talk) at 03:47, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Pseudoscience arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

original ruling: Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley/Proposed_decision

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• 84.106.11.117 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Sandstein (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Statement by 84.106.11.117

While supported by article content at the time the pseudoscience label was dropped from the Cold Fusion article some time before October 2011.

In the wild it looks like this. Any admin may now ban the Nobel laureate? This is how it should be? It makes no sense to me. What is this doing on my talk page? What does it even mean? Is this the new welcome message?

I've posted one on User_talk:Sandstein talk page to see what happens. Surely he needs such helpful information as much as I do?

further informations

Sandstein, a remarkably productive editor I should add, just demonstrated how the sanctions are being used to ban non-skeptical editors, applicable in one direction only.

Sandstein did not read my deletion review request. My request talks about the one sided nature of these Discretionary Sanctions, he responds by posting an info box on my user talk page informing me about these same sanctions. He used imaginary guidelines and retaliates with victim blaming.

I am not the topic of this Request for clarification, is about cold fusion not being pseudoscience while still subjected to pseudoscience sanction.

If the Sanction would work both ways, Sandstein should now be topic banned. This strikes me as a completely idiotic way of doing things, typical skeptic methodology. I would argue the Sanctions themselves are not useful to the project.

My split request was disposed of by skeptical consensus, rather than edit guidelines. I ignored this consensus per Notability guidelines. Notability is the only type of guideline that skeptic teams can not kill by consensus.

Rather than so much as lift a finger to help split the article team skeptic used every possible method and every excuse other than the split criteria to troll the process while crying about the way I avoided "scrutiny". Of course I did! If we look at Sandsteins edit log he has soooooo many contributions he effectively avoids scrutiny himself. I cant possibly read all that? Or can I?

AFD is suppose to be the point where the team of anti-pseudoscience crusaders have to use edit guidelines. In stead the admin deleted by consensus. (he was trying to clean up the backlog we should add) Asking for clarification, from the closing admin (we used irc), and by means of a deletion review is entirely sensible. Not reading it and requiring an account is not. Specially not in that order.

This is not to defend myself but to illustrate the victim blaming routine. How can Sandstein, being an administrator, need further tools to dispose of IP editors? Look how his argument is that I edited fringe topics, as if this should be sufficient evidence of my wrong doings?

If this is how the sanctions are being used, then it is not worth having them in general, in this specific case, using them outside the scope of pseudoscience seems even less useful.

note: It strikes me as odd for the committee to try to rule if something is pseudoscience or not. I think, if you have some precognition about a topic you should use the article talk page and provide reliable sources that make your vision evident.

Thanks for your time.

Statement by Sandstein

84.106.11.117 is an IP address active since 16 June 2014 with few contributions, mostly relating to fringe-y topics such as alien abduction. On 11 July, they requested a deletion review of the article Fleischmann-Pons experiment, which relates to Cold fusion, which is in my layperson's understanding a fringe science topic. In the review request, 84.106.11.117 wrote that "I should note I'm not a new user, I just edit from my ip." As an administrator working at WP:DRV, I summarily closed the review request, suggesting that in discretionary sanctions topic areas where sanctions such as topic bans have been imposed, in view of WP:SCRUTINY, established editors should not make undeletion requests while logged out. I also alerted 84.106.11.117 about the discretionary sanctions applying to pseudo- and fringe science topics. In response, 84.106.11.117 copied the same alert notice onto my talk page and made this request for clarification, the point of which I don't quite see. In view of subsequent statements by 84.106.11.117 such as , it appears likely to me that we are being trolled by a returning, possibly previously sanctioned editor.  Sandstein  07:14, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually, as long as we are here already: Would it be an appropriate use of discretionary sanctions, under these circumstances, to restrict the person using the address 84.106.11.117 from editing pseudo- and fringe science topics except with their main account (if they are not banned or blocked from doing so already)?  Sandstein  07:24, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

@Roger Davies and Seraphimblade: I was probably unclear. I agree that editing only as an IP is allowed and that we shouldn't force anyone to create an account. But I understood the statement by 84.106.11.117 to mean that they already have an account. My question was whether they might legitimately be directed to use that existing account when editing in the topic area covered by sanctions. Otherwise they might be able to avoid any sanctions that might apply to them under their existing account.  Sandstein  11:44, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Johnuniq

I watch Cold fusion and there is often commentary at Talk:Cold fusion regarding a possible new development—something which in the future may validate CF as a new energy source. Wikiversity was mentioned and I had a very quick look and found recently-edited pages like these:

• v:Cold fusion/The Misplaced Pages article/Comments on edits/Naturwissenschaften review/Reaction by Abd
• v:Cold fusion/Skeptical arguments/Wikipedia talk/Shanahan

Wikiversity is nothing to do with Misplaced Pages, but the activity suggests to me that discretionary sanctions in the CF area need to continue. Whether of not CF should properly be called "pseudoscience" can be debated elsewhere as that is not relevant to whether the topic should be subject to discretionary sanctions. Any new energy source with many enthusiastic supporters but no usable power should be treated as if it were pseudoscience at Misplaced Pages. Johnuniq (talk) 09:38, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Robert McClenon

I oppose any request for the ArbCom to intervene and remove the pseudoscience discretionary sanctions from cold fusion. The article has been under semi-protection due to disruptive editing by unregistered editors for a long term. The talk page has been also disruptively edited, including personal attacks on skeptical editors, by unregistered editors. (There was also an edit war on the talk page, something unusual, where an unregistered editor began adding archived material, which was removed, and a revert war ensued.) I have also been watching the article and its talk page, and it has been more civil since editors have been templating the participants as to discretionary sanctions. The unregistered editors have been repeatedly asked if there is a reason why they choose not to create accounts. The usual response is either no response or incivility. This is to the point where the requirement to assume good faith is stretched, and there is reason to think that the unregistered editors are editing logged out either to create the appearance of greater numbers or because they are sockpuppets of a blocked or banned user. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

There is a Request for Comments at Talk:Cold fusion in process to determine consensus as to which of the four ArbCom-defined categories cold fusion should be categorized as. This request, to ask the ArbCom to intervene, may be an attempts to bypass the consensus process, which is going against the unregistered editors who are proponents of cold fusion. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I request that this clarification request be denied, because the RFC is the proper way to determine whether cold fusion is pseudoscience, but that the incoming boomerang be allowed to return, and that the filing party, who has been properly notified, be either topic-banned from cold fusion, or blocked, or both. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Statement by {other user}

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

• Comment: Hi Sandstein. There's no requirement in policy for people to create accounts to edit with. What they are not allowed to do is evade scrutiny by editing from an IP when they have an account. It is possible to be an established IP editor.  Roger Davies 07:21, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Sandstein; I don't think the IP topic-ban you suggest would be appropriate at all. As I said before, nothing in policy requires anyone to create an account before they can edit.  Roger Davies
• I agree with Roger. It's forbidden to edit anonymously to evade scrutiny on one's account, but it's allowed to just not have an account and edit anonymously. There's no precedent for forcing someone to create an account and I don't like the idea of creating such a precedent in this way. Seraphimblade 11:02, 13 July 2014 (UTC)