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Revision as of 22:22, 21 July 2006 editJossi (talk | contribs)72,880 edits →Users certifying the basis for this dispute: ++← Previous edit Revision as of 00:03, 22 July 2006 edit undoWill Beback (talk | contribs)112,162 edits →General problems: + new instanceNext edit →
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*Disrupted Misplaced Pages to illustrate a point. *Disrupted Misplaced Pages to illustrate a point.
*Made claims of personal attacks on AN and user's talk pages. *Made claims of personal attacks on AN and user's talk pages.
*Took offense easily: *Took offense easily:
*Claimed to never revert. "I am 0RR. (religiously)" *Claimed to never revert. "I am 0RR. (religiously)"

Revision as of 00:03, 22 July 2006

In order to remain listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment, 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: 21:09, July 21, 2006), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 19:31, 30 December 2024 (UTC).

Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute

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

Description

{Add summary here, but you must use the section below to certify or endorse it. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries, other than to endorse them.}

Ste4k is an especially energetic and prolific editor, ammassing more than 3500 edits within 5 weeks. Unfortunately, her overall impact on Misplaced Pages so far has not been productive. Her edits have been strongly contested and her attitude has alienated many. She started by edit warring over material that she inserted fraudulently to settled an off-WP dispute. After that introduction, in one topic after another, she has irritated other users through edit wars and confrontational talk page postings. She has exhibited a condescending attitude towards other editors, takes offense too easily, and insists that she is always right. Much of her participation in this project can be described properly as "trolling".

To her credit she has also done some helpful maintenance work, though even that has caused controversy. She has also done a good job of editing some articles, such as Allerton High School. She is clearly intelligent and can be a good editor when she chooses. Community input could help this editor become an asset instead of a problem.

This RfC includes information on several separate disputes involving this editor: Curse, Big Brother (Australia series 6), A Course in Miracles, Greek Statue, gender, and her user talk pages. Several editing-tag revert wars are omitted for brevity, while non-topical behavior problems are covered under "General".

Evidence of disputed behavior

(Provide diffs. 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.)

Curse

Ste4k's first known edits were to add material on "Cursed newsgroups" to Curse (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), using the IP address user:72.128.30.205. The material was sourced from a single Usenet posting on June 5 by "Rrock" who uses IP 72.128.30.205 On June 16, the material was placed in the "Curse" article for the first time. Six minutes later "Rrock" boasted of the material on alt.religion.angels., and then again several times later. Those postings make it appear that the entry was created as ammunition in on off-Wiki dispute. (The same user has Google Groups profiles for various spellings and has made several hundred postings a month, since at least October 2005. Since Ste4k became involved with Misplaced Pages Rrock's activity on Usenet has either dropped off considerably, or he has a new handle. There is ample additional evidence confirming that Ste4k and Rrock are the same person, which needn't be presented here. It would not matter except that this editor has acted deceitfully.) RRock may have indicated an intent to bring Misplaced Pages into disrepute and to engage in further mischief, either on Usenet or Misplaced Pages in this posting.

In the subsequent edit war at Curse, the material and/or behavior was described by other editors as "vandalism", "crazy", "silliness", "nonsense". He reverted the material about 19 times in three days, and removed article tags as well.

Some of her comments that contradict her later editing philosophy, yet are equally preachy.:

  • Please help verify instead of simply refuting without basis, thank you.
  • Removing POV warnings and Nuetrality warnings. Neither have been justified in discussion.
  • Blanking, the removal of all or significant parts of articles is a common vandal edit.
  • Ma'am. And the requirements for both verification and NPOV have been met as discussed in the talk-page. You should yourself supply justification for your POV which declares "patent nonsense". Your reasons are opinionated and do not challenge the discussion presented. Thanks
  • Please do not remove content from Misplaced Pages; it is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

And that same first day she filed a mediation request over the newsgroup posting. Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-06-18 Cursed Newsgroup - self-published source?. (In the end, the page was protected, the mediation never occurred due to mediator drop-out, and Ste4k moved on to other topics.)

It is clear, for a variety of reasons, that Ste4k is the same person as the Usenet poster "Rrock". Rrock wrote something on the Usenet to denigrate a supposed troll with whom he had had a long term battle. Then he came to Misplaced Pages, added it to an article, revert-warred over its inclusion, denied the fraud, lectured the editors who removed it, and trolled various talk pages about her poor treatment. Yet Ste4k never admitted that she was the original author of the underlying source and had a vested interest in its inclusion. Even recently she has complained about the "unjust" treatment that she, and her self-sourced material, have received.

A Course in Miracles

Ste4k sought to delete every single article connected to A Course in Miracles, using {db} tags, PRODs, and AfDs, using incorrect reasons in most cases to support the nominations. Yet she has repeatedly professed complete neutrality about the topic. However the Rrock profiles have posted thousands of messages to religious newsgroups, some of which include clear beliefs that at odds with the religious elements of this subject. Considered in addition to this user's strident behavior on this topic, it appears that she is acting to further a POV.

Speedy delete tags: (There may be others which were deleted and so are not evident.)

PRODs

AfDs

She has also listed images used in the articles as copyright violations (then, strangely enough, uploaded an ACIM-related photo using the same "fair use" claim that they others had ). She started an AfD at Wikiquotes for material related to ACIM.

Subsequently she wrote "My interest is not to delete all ACIM related articles."

Separately, she decided that the variations in the text of "A Course in Miracles" were sufficient that it was impossible to know which version was begin referred to. She created a disambiguation page among the verisons (only one of which has an article) and redirected many links to it. In other instances she stated that references to the book had to be deleted since it wasn't clear which version was meant, or that we were referring to the "wrong" version. In one case she implied that a subject might bring a lawsuit due to an internal link to the "wrong" version.

She insists that "ACIM" is a trademark or an "affiliated brand name" rather than a convenient abbreviation of "A Course in Miracles", and therefore any use of it is advertisement. Insted she insists that the book be referred to as the Course when a shorter version is desired. Though many editors have explained, with proof, that the trademark was cancelled by the Patent and Trademark Office and the matter is irrelevant, she remains convinced that she is right. Even while insisting that other editors should not get stuck on topics, she keep harping on this issue, and seems to have decided that her interpretation prevails.

In the case of Charles Buell Anderson and Endeavor Academy she nominated them for deletion together, which resulted in "no consensus". Then she promoted a merge with Endeavor Academy. Once the merger was completed she said she didn't think that Anderson had anything to do with the Academy, and therefore the material should be deleted. She even implied that it was libellous to mention Anderson. Similarly, she merged artices into A Course in Miracles, then deleted their contents from there.

Complains of an ACIM "advocacy group".

Beginning on Jun 19 she moved 90% of the "A Course in Miracles" article, about 5000 words, to the talk page. Other editors objected and restored the material which begain a short revert war. Then she created a strawpoll which other editors complained was poorly worded. She sought outside supporters, but after only two days she declared that the poll closed and that the outcome showed users preferred to deleted the material, which was totally unsupported by the discussion.

Dissident Voice

Big Brother (Australia series 6)

Ste4k nominated this article for deletion after engaging in much discussion on the article's talk page. The result was speedy keep. When it was suggested that this nomination was in bad faith, Ste4k responded irrationaly.

Greek Statue

The articles Greek statue and Sculpture of Ancient Greece had been marked for a merge for almost a year, but the merge templates did not describe which way the merge was required and . Ste4k (talk · contribs) then carried out the merge on the 14th July (, ) and removed double redirects, carrying the merge out properly. Then, Nscheffey (talk · contribs) reverted the merge on Sculpture of Ancient Greece , disputing the merge in his edit summary. At this stage, Ste4k (talk · contribs) should have taken her dispute to the talk page, but a slow-running revert war ensued:

The edit war stopped, leaving the article in its pre-merge form, and a discussion which had been started on the talk page by Nscheffey (talk · contribs) in response to the merges (and which had been ignored by Ste4k) was continued by Martinp23 (talk · contribs) following a WP:3O request by Nscheffey. Talk page here. Ste4k then responded , claiming that the merge was not disputed and accusing Nscheffey of distrupting WP work flow and harrassing her. Clearly, the fact that the merge was reverted even once by Nscheffey should have indicated to Ste4k that it was disputed and the edit war should not have ensued. Ste4k also accused Nscheffey of making a POV fork in reverting her merge, but when a function itself is disputed (ie the merge), then a split to revert that merge is not a POV fork.

Comments were then left by JzG (talk · contribs), Martinp23 (talk · contribs) and JChap2007 (talk · contribs) (, and who unanimously agreed that the article be merged at Sculpture of Ancient Greece. Ste4k then responded, describing that the direction of the merge didn't concern her - but she didn't want the article to be orphaned following the revert of her merge . Following this consensus, Martinp23 completed the merge from Greek statue to Sculpture of Ancient Greece ( and ). He then left a message on Ste4k's talk page and on the article discussion page informing that the merge had been completed. ( and ). Following this, Ste4k left a comment on Martinp23's talk page informing him that he had omitted some information from the original article. When Martinp23 asked Ste4k what he had missed, he was told to look more carefully( and ). In the intervening period, Steak reverted the merge on Greek statue but not on Sculpture of Ancient Greece (orphaning Greek statue), leaving dispued merge templates on both ( and ), prompting Will Beback (talk · contribs) to ask what the problem was on the article talk page . Martinp23 then looked for what he had omitted and put a missed picture in the article and left a message on the talk page awaiting a response from Ste4K . When a response was left, it said that a sentence had been missed from the first paragraph and comlained that Martinp23 had used overly harsh words in describing her actions (the use of "accused"). . In response to this, Nscheffey, in a further attempt to defuse Ste4k's arguement, left a question on the talk page to clarify her position on the merge . Martinp23, in anticipation of a response from Ste4k, added the information he had omitted and posted an apology on the article talk page ( and ). Then he removed the disputed tags and reverted Greek statue to his previous redirect version. ( and ). No further dispute was raised by Ste4k.

The users involved felt that Ste4k's behaviour in the circumstances had been inappropriate:

  • She held an edit war with Nscheffey, refusing to go to the talk page for discussion.
  • She commenced an edit war with Nscheffey on her talk page in response to the reverts of the article merge, instead of discussing on the article talk page.
  • She put disputed tags on the articles without explaining why on the talk page
  • She over-reacted to comments left

User talk page

  • Edit warred over talk page comments.
  • Imposed a "new messages at top" posting requirement.
  • Formatted her talk page with unreadable small maroon text on a black backrogund. Complaints about it:
  • Edit warred over that formatting.
  • Deleted criticism and warnings as personal attacks or taunts.
  • Called apparently personal messages "spam."
  • Added dismissive headers.
  • Set conditions before another user can post to the page.
  • Stated that she will ignore users.
  • Placed a notice that only admins could post messages.

Gender

Rrock is referred to as a male on the Usenet and apparently has a masculine first name in real life. Ste4k has chosen to identify as a female on Misplaced Pages, and there is nothing wrong with that. However she has acted indignantly when referred to as a male. To assume a different gender and then complain when mistaken for the actual gender is drama-queen behavior. If the user truly wishes to be identified as a female there are userboxes to indicate the preferred gender pronoun. However, it seems unlikely that this is a good faith gender re-assignment. Combined with the edit warring over fraudulent material, it calls the user's good faith into question and appears to be another case of trolling.

General problems

  • Disrupted Misplaced Pages to illustrate a point.
  • Made claims of personal attacks on AN and user's talk pages.
  • Took offense easily:
  • Claimed to never revert. "I am 0RR. (religiously)"
  • Implied that a subject will sue if we include a link.
  • Inappropriate 3RR reports:
    • User:Bhouston reported by User:Ste4k (Result:No block)]]
    • User:JD_UK reported by User:Ste4k
  • Used templates in a condescending, uncommunicative manner.
  • Discounted sources for flimsy reasons: "seven years old", "there is no book cited yet", "will need to have been written in the public by other professional editors",
  • Denigrated external links to official websites: "self-serving websites", "the self-advertising link, as well as the unsourced anti-advertising link", "Spam", questioned their "relevence", "WP cannot ever determine whom is official"
  • Edited articles that by self-admission she knows nothing about. "I haven't read any of these versions . ... The first time I had ever heard of the Course was about three weeks ago.
  • Made unusual interpretations of policies.
  • Drawn irrational conclusions. "Poll complete The results were that people believe that deleting material is better than moving it to discussion."
  • Plastered tags on articles and then had edit wars over them:
  • Doing massive edits on material she knows nothing about. See "Start with what you know" Misplaced Pages:Contributing_to_Wikipedia#Start_with_what_you_know
  • Edits for the destruction of WP articles.
  • Overly compulsive and anal.
  • Raising the same issues over and over again.
  • Removing sources then complaining about lack of sources.
  • Removes long standing external links arbitrarily.
  • Seems impossible to reason with.
  • Refuses to work by consensus.
  • Ignores administrative requests.
  • Hostile personality.
  • Engages in personal attacks.
  • Although the user appears new to WP she is very knowledable about WP policies and procedures and is becoming worse with time.

Negative personal comments

  • "I'm not originally from the U.S. I was born in Kharkov. In our country, we beat liars, and if one wants to eat, they work. The only POV in that article I wrote was that I wanted to find out the truth, did research, marked it with citations for verifiability, refused to consider any source that came from some primary provider, and all I found out for my trouble was that this encyclopedia isn't even worth quoting. You should be ashamed to have your familiy member's name on this medium. "
  • "You still haven't apologized for pretending to be a n00b then turning around to slap a POV "delete" on the article. Do you think I am stupid, too? I already told you that insults don't make enemies, but if you want an enemy, then you should reconsider your choice, imho."
  • "the environment here is not conducive for editors like me to put any effort on this. Happy editing."
  • "Maybe you should speak to the other side. I tried myself, and found him to be less than a troll, imho."
  • "I am very tired of his bickering, and trolling. He is uncooperative and anti-productive."
  • "I recently had a "bout" with a "owner" of a group of pages. By actually reading the citations on the page, I could see that the person or persons who owned the page were basically lying. This was even to the extent that they had a trademarked brand name that they insist on using as an acronym. "
  • That's two articles, now Will, that you and your boy have successfully run me off of. later."

Applicable policies and guidelines

  1. WP:HOAX
  2. WP:DICK
  3. WP:CON
  4. WP:POINT
  5. WP:TPG
  6. WP:AGF
  7. WP:CIV
  8. WP:OWN
  9. WP:3RR

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

Other comments from editors

  • "Now I wake up and I find that you've spent hours during the night sarcastically mutilating your own article. It appears that one word, "cult", and my good faith editing of its usage may have been your tipping point to go into a frenzy. "
  • "...my point is that "you" should realise that there are some places where you are just not qualified - or, it appears, able - to judge notability."
  • "If you are capable of bringing this article to AfD, you should be capable of the basic research that everyone else put in. If not, dont bring articles to AfD and waste our time and energy."
  • "So, is that basically all you do on Misplaced Pages, memorize the rules and then try to remind others that they are not following them? If you have any personal friends, they most likely think you're very anal."
  • "Please don't just copy and paste "CSD A3" onto nominations on AfD. I have yet to see an article you've done that on that actually fell under CSD."

Input requests involving Ste4k

Remedy

This editor is a very smart person with experience in cyber communities and computer systems. We request that she stop the problematic behaviors listed above and instead contribute Misplaced Pages in a more positive, less confrontational manner.


Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

  1. Will Beback 21:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. Who123 21:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Martinp23 22:17, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 22:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

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.

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Users who endorse this summary:

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.

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Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.