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Requesting feedback from Arbitrators

In DGG's recently closed amendment request, CaptainEek and Barkeep49 both said that they were going to look into the issue of editors misrepresenting sources (and the persistent inability of talk pages and noticeboards to resolve that issue), and have a discussion about how it could be addressed. However, the amendment request was closed by the clerks before that discussion could happen.

Could either of you please clarify the status of that planned discussion, and how you think this issue ought to be addressed? As I said in my last comment there, if someone is going to request another amendment or a full case, I think first there needs to be more clarity about what Arbcom considers to be within their remit in this respect, and which case (Fringe science or Race and intelligence) it should be filed under. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 14:53, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Ferahgo the Assassin I say this with the caveat that the committee might not agree with me. I think the answer needs to be either a new case request, i.e. "Race and Intelligence 2", "Fringe 2", or a better constructed ARCA. Alternatively, a community discussion of some caliber with the intent of brainstorming a solution/distilling the problem might be useful.

Part of the difficulty is that ArbCom is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. We can't intervene in individual content disputes or choose which sources are good or bad (except in a general sense). Further, the connection between the fringe principles and the issues at hand seemed tenuous at best. Part of the issue is that the topics of contentions were not made clear. I know DGG did this with noble intent, hoping not to drag us into a particular topic area. However, what we do is inherently topic specific. So if the problem is with race and intelligence and not Fringe, then it's race and intelligence we need to be amending or revisiting. If there are problematic editors who are citing things they shouldn't be, then for starters they should be taken to AE, and if that can't resolve the matter, then a new case request.

Although I have some interest in making ArbCom more of a mediator, in practice we just aren't. Thus, until an issue has been thoroughly exhausted, it is not generally within our remit. I'm not so sure that this issue has been exhausted. In fact, I think the underlying problem is the issue is unclear. There is some poor source usage, and both fringe and race and intelligence of course remain highly contentious topics. If someone thinks they can provide a concise summary of the underlying issue, we would be better suited to help fix it. But as long as the problem remains vague and nebulous, I don't see what exactly we can do.

This was a long and winding way to ask for more info and input, and to encourage some critical thought :) CaptainEek ⚓ 18:38, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll largely echo what Eek said in terms of advice. Personally my wikipedia bucket is full at the moment between WP:RFA2021, extensive writing I have been doing for the UCoC drafting committee, and my "everyday" Arb work. I will admit I simply did not have time to explore the diffs presented and hoped that another colleague of mine would have more capacity to do so. That didn't seem to be the case at that time. However, I agree with Eek that you and DGG shouldn't take this as a refusal to engage at all but that something more focused and more in line with past ArbCom practices and is more likely to at least generate discussion. For this request it became hard to recover from "please amend these old cases" for which there was no appetite on the committee. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:13, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I know this issue hasn't been discussed by the community quite as extensively as is typical before Arbcom will open a case, but that's because everyone involved is aware that any future attempts to discuss it will be futile for the same reason as all of the earlier discussions. It's also very clear that if we make any further attempts to raise the matter of misrepresented sources with the community, there will be attempts to get us topic banned (this was the main discussion about it in my own case). When I initially described this situation to Barkeep49 via email, I referred to this trend as having a "chilling effect" on discussion.

Before someone makes another arbitration request I'd like to hear from DGG, as well as from some of the other arbitrators, about what approach they think would be best. I know that DGG is very reluctant to recommend a case request. So if someone is going to request a case, first I would like to make sure Arbcom considers that the best option, and also clarify what scope it should have.

One thing I'd appreciate Arbcom clarifying about the scope: in his comment on the amendment request, Gardenofaleph raised the issue that lower-quality sources (such as newspaper and magazine articles) are being used as a basis for excluding those of higher quality, such as academic papers and textbooks, and linked to a recent RSN discussion about this issue, which failed to resolve anything. This approach to sourcing is contrary to the article's sourcing restriction, which says that only "peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers" may be used. Would this other issue of sourcing be something that Arbcom considers within their remit to address, or would any arbitration request need to be more narrowly focused on misrepresentation of sources? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

The purpose of any dispute-resolution process, including ArbCom, is to support the writing of a collaborative encyclopedia – that is, to ensure that the process of determining and implementing consensus is unencumbered. It is not the purpose of dispute resolution to give a minority viewpoint additional voice, nor to allow a few editors to manipulate a discussion or an article against the wishes of the majority. Therefore, any suggestion that there is an issue that needs resolving should be focused on how this process is being disrupted or impeded. For example, if you are being prevented from implementing an edit that you believe has consensus, that is something I would be interested in helping to address. But if the edits that you want to make are against consensus, no adjustments to rules or restrictions are going to change that. – bradv 23:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Where does this sourcing restriction actually come from? I can't find any mention of it in the cited case. – Joe (talk) 12:11, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Race and intelligence is under discretionary sanctions, and going by the history of the editnotice Ferahgo linked, Barkeep added the sourcing restriction to the article last March. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh I see, it's just the edit notice for the article race and intelligence; I mistook it for a general template. Thanks. That seems to also be a point of confusion in the linked RSN discussion. – Joe (talk) 13:14, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I also would be okay with a non-arbitration solution here, if the view of Arbcom is that there's a solution that doesn't require the involvement of the full committee. The most important thing is that there needs to be a way for the sourcing restriction to be enforced, especially the part about misrepresenting sources, however that's accomplished.

@Barkeep49: when we discussed this issue via email, you felt that DGG's upcoming amendment request would be a reasonable way to try to resolve the problem of your restriction not being enforceable. But now that the proposed amendment has been declined, what do you think is the best solution? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Go to WP:AE and ask that it be repealed. I will explain why I levied it at the time, explain that I am neutral on it today as I have not been keeping abreast of the article, and offer if there is a consensus it should be removed to do so as an individual action (that is it wouldn't necessarily have to get the higher level of consensus necessary to overturn it). Barkeep49 (talk) 01:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I was hoping there could be a solution that actually stops sources from being misrepresented, not one that amounts to accepting this is impossible to prevent. And I think the other editors who've raised similar objections about source misrepresentation (Literaturegeek, Stonkaments, Gardenofaleph, AndewNguyen, Sesquivalent and DGG) were hoping for that, too. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 02:45, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ferahgo the Assassin: I haven't been following this dispute, but if you believe that a current AE-imposed restriction is not working and have an amendment, alternative and/or additional restriction that you think will work then propose it at AE, AN or other suitable venue. If you think it needs workshopping first, then start a discussion and workshop it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:56, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: There have already been multiple attempts to raise the issue at noticeboards, but all of them have either been shut down prematurely, or failed to reach a consensus. Ferahgo and I linked to several of these noticeboard discussions in our statements in the recent amendment request. There comes a point where it's apparent an issue can't be resolved at noticeboards, and any further attempts to raise it there will just result in accusations of forum shopping.

Also, nobody has a problem with the current sourcing restrictions themselves. I think they're what the article needs. The problem is that the current restrictions are being totally ignored, and nobody is willing to enforce them. That's what needs addressing. I don't know whether ArbCom can solve that problem, but I hope it'll be solved somehow. Gardenofaleph (talk) 02:25, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I entered the Arb request not with the realistic hope of it having any immediate successful effect--I am not quite so naive as that-- but in order to keep alive the issue of our prejudiced presentation of controvesial topics in general, our tendency to bias article content not on the basis of actual NPOV but on the bases of what we would prefer to be the POV, our biased and unreasonable manipulation of sourcing in orde to pretend to have a NPOV, and the encouragement of these unfortunate tendenccies by multiple arb com decisions going back to the initial ones in the area, and by the increased use of the inherently unfair technique of Discretionary Sanctions. I do hope for change in these areas--I do not expect it to come quickly, because I think the participants in WP, just like people in the world generally, are not actually prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads, but rather look for evidence to support their own preconceptions. There was the original hope in 2001 that the method of working here would to some extent free us from those common practices--and perhaps it has to some extent, but it breaks down on subjects where we really have strong conviction that it is we who are priviledged to understand correctly--especially when we fear that following the science or the facts more generally may have undesirable social consequences. The method by which I hope change will come is by keeping the issues alive to encourage users not bound by old prejudices, and trying as far as possible to maintain the still substantial amount of open-mindenessand flexibility in our system.

To some extent I was trying to probe the opinions of the arbitrators, but I was not really surprised to find only very few of them with even slight sympathy, almost all remaining convinced that none of these problems actually exist. I know from my own experience there for 5 years that the general predilictions of most of those attracted to serve on the committee is towards a purely formal and legalistic adherence to the technicalities of Misplaced Pages, while trying to remain oblivious to the actual effect of their decisions. As in all past years, there is the hope that next year's committee will be better. As always, it rarely changes very much.

The problem Ferahgo works on is only one example. In some sense we did work together. She encouraged me to pick this time to try to actually do something; I tried to persuade her to rely upon the slow change of attitudes and to adopt a more general perspective than her only issue. We both seem to have failed, at least in the short run. The key difference, is that I have always been much more interested in the long one, and have never been focussed on a single instance. I cannot tell from the comments above whether there is any chance of a succesful case; the best likely result would be a repetition of the platitudes about our devotion to NPOV that has very little effect on how matters work out. We might get some enlightened statements to use in argument, but this is very distant from the statements actually affecting the outcome of the arguements. As I said several times near the close of the discussion, I intend to return to what I can do best, which is to argue a few selected individual sourcing questions as they arise. DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

There is a related discussion underway at the Village Pump: I think DGG already knows about that discussion, but the arbitrators might be interested in reading it as well.

The statement there that "Editors begin to use the status of a viewpoint as mainstream or fringe as the basis for picking sources and facts to include in the article, rather than using mainstream sources and facts to determine what views are fringe" is a good summary of the issue that was raised in the recent RSN discussion linked above. A specific example I mentioned in DGG's amendment request was the decision to remove most of the material cited to Earl Hunt's textbook as "profringe", despite that book being one of the most highly regarded sources available about human intelligence. But it looks like the discussion at the Village Pump probably isn't going reach any consensus, just as the RSN discussion didn't.

If the Village Pump discussion is unable to reach a consensus about whether this approach to sourcing is compatible with NPOV policy, this is something I'd like to see examined in a "Fringe Science 2" case. Can Arbcom provide any clarify as to whether they would be able to address that question? To clarify the question I asked about this a few days ago, it's impossible to determine whether this approach to sourcing is supported by consensus or opposed by it. There are only a small number of editors who actively support this approach, but every attempt to discuss it with the broader community has been unable to come to any conclusion. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Ferahgo, my earnest suggestion is to drop the stick, because every bit I read from your copious messages just make me think it was a mistake to ever unban you. ArbCom doesn't "fix" discussions among the community that don't result in consensus. It exists to deal with problematic behavior. A case filing without such evidence is a case filing that is going to likely be declined. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 14:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Surely editors voting to ignore academic sources because they don't like what they're saying is problematic behavior? Bald Vegetarian (talk) 11:48, 13 November 2021 (UTC) Surely block evading trolls who have been checkuser blocked should have thier comments struck. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:48, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Saturday is laundry day. ——Serial 12:47, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Ferahgo, please pay attention to Wohltemperierte Fuchs comment above. Whether or not we agree on the underlying issues, I agree with his advice. This does not depend on the merits of your case. This does not depend on whether the separation between conduct and content is relevant or realistic. In my personal experience there, Arb com will insist on the distinction when they want to, and they will ignore it when they want to. I have tried many times to make sure you realize the extremely risky nature of deliberately bringing a case to arb com. In the interests of yourself, in the interests of those who may wish to return to the field in the future, and most essentially in the interests of those who want fair rational coverage of sensitive issues, you should be trying to find a way to honourably disengage, rather than look for an excuse for continuing. DGG ( talk ) 01:48, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I intend to let it go until the end of the year, aside from the current discussion, but I don't know about after that. It seems like a matter of principle to me that when sources are being misrepresented across multiple articles, and at least seven editors have objected to this, it shouldn't be necessary to conclude that in the long term there's nothing that can be done about it.

This case was previously referred to Arbcom by the AE admins in March of last year, and the subsequent arbitration request was declined by Arbcom, so the discussion preceding your amendment request was the second time that a community discussion about this issue concluded that arbitration was necessary. If Arbcom intends to refer it back to the community a second time, this time I think they ought to give some clearer guidance on what they think the community should do to resolve it, that's hasn't already been tried and failed. I would especially like to hear about this from CaptainEek, as he is the arbitrator who previously recommended a new case. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:43, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ferahgo the Assassin Well I wasn't inherently suggesting a new case request, merely that it might be one of the avenues. The core problem I still see is: I don't know what the issue is. There is a lot of hubbub but no one can seem to point to an actual underlying cause that ArbCom could step in and fix. So: lets say ArbCom accepts a case. What sort of scope would you want and what remedies would you request? CaptainEek ⚓ 21:56, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@CaptainEek: If a new case is in order, it should be focused on sourcing and editor behavior on topics related to race and intelligence, particularly on correct and incorrect practices of sourcing, and how sources have been misused in relation to race and intelligence and related topics. As for remedies, the best outcome would be something that addresses the problem that no admin is willing to enforce the article's sourcing restriction, along with the standard behavioral remedies. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm obviously a non-Arb, but I see some of those things as potentially within ArbCom's remit, but others not. The community, not ArbCom, determines correct and incorrect sourcing via consensus, and ArbCom should not be an end-run around a disliked community consensus. On the other hand, ArbCom can potentially act on editor conduct with respect to failing to comply with existing sourcing policies and guidelines, and administrator inability to resolve such disputes. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I’m even more obviously not an Arb but will suggest that the problem here appears to be a conflict between the two categories which Tryptofish mentions. That is, the complainants appear to feel that those of us who are working to keep the topic area in compliance with community consensus are by that very act failing to comply with sourcing policies and guidelines. This view appears to be premised on the notion that the complainants have a privileged understanding of what the sources actually say which the rest of the community is either unaware of or else is collaborating in a bad faith effort to suppress. Generalrelative (talk) 20:41, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Stop it. If you and NightHeron seriously believed that the community supports your approach to sourcing, the two of you would not have deliberately pre-empted the possibility of opening an RFC to examine it. NightHeron stated that he was opening his RFC to prevent someone else from opening the one that was being planned, which would have been about his and your use of sources:

Or here's another way of looking at it. A person who believed that his approach to sourcing had the support of the broader community would not need to regularly revert edits by various (mostly uninvolved) editors attempting to bring those parts of the articles into line with what their sources say. On the Heritability of IQ article alone you and NightHeron have done this around a dozen times. These other editors don't have your persistence and they don't coordinate with one another, and I have no intention to edit war with you myself, so you'll continue to get your way there for the time being. But for you to assert that the community supports your support to sourcing, against the background of this pattern of behavior over the past year, is truly mind-boggling. Gardenofaleph (talk) 01:42, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't intend to engage in an argument here, and will simply encourage anyone reading to consider whether NightHeron and I have the power, on our own, to pre-empted the possibility of opening an RFC. Anyone interested in the particulars of this allegation can see my comment in the previous discussion where I address them: . Generalrelative (talk) 03:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Refusing to accept consensus, Ferahgo and a small number of other civil POV-pushers have been going from forum to forum repeating their false claims and forcing countless hours of repetitive debate. At the ArbCom request that DGG made (at Ferahgo's urging ) I already refuted the allegation that I acted improperly in starting an RfC at the R&I talk-page. Another example of her false accusations is the claim that the R&I article is unfair to Earl Hunt's work. Nonsense -- he's cited five times, and three of his works are in the page's bibliography. At RSN and at article talk-pages, as Ferahgo admits, they've been unsuccessful in their attempts to convince the community that there's a problem with use of sources at R&I and related pages. Nor have they been able to make a credible case that there was misconduct by the editors who in two RfC's in 2020 and 2021 successfully argued that belief in the genetic inferiority of certain races in intelligence is outside the scientific mainstream and so should be treated in accordance with WP:FRINGE.

The incessant forum-shopping and bludgeoning on this topic by profringe POV-pushers is disruptive and a drain on other editors' time. NightHeron (talk) 04:12, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

It takes two to tango, though, and in my view, the folks who are fighting the POV pushing are also engaging with the POV pushing way too much. For example, at Talk:The Bell Curve, someone suggests IQ = intelligence, and that prompts walls of text rebutting it. It seems to me that happens every time across all the related pages. There's no need for the walls of text rebutting it; just ignore it. My suggestion is to limit all talk page discussions as much as possible. If someone makes an edit against policy or sources, revert it. They'll need to get consensus on the talk page. If they raise it on the talk page, treat it as an edit request, meaning insist on "Change X to Y cited to source(s) Z" as a proposal. Then !vote on the proposal. If there's consensus, it goes in; if not, then not. If the proponents of the proposal want to escalate to an RFC, let them. Trust that the "bad edits" won't make it in if we go through the usual process (insist on RS, insist on consensus). All the discussion and proving/disproving and argumentation is just a distraction (and discourages new people from engaging). The biggest problem in the topic area, in my view, is WP:NOTFORUM violations. Levivich 17:52, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

In one fish's opinion, there is no inherent reason that a few editors could really prevent other editors from opening an RfC, and an RfC (not ArbCom) is the way to resolve this dispute. (And then AE or ArbCom if anyone refuses to abide by the RfC result or demonstrably disrupts the RfC). Hold the RfC under the applicable discretionary sanctions. Word the RfC question absolutely neutrally. And then make your best case in the RfC discussion. Make the RfC widely participated in, so that there won't be a problem with too few participating editors. That means holding it at Village Pump: Policy, and listing it on WP:CENT. If possible get a watchlist notice at the beginning and end. And keep it open for 30 days. Absent disruption, that should result in a consensus. And that consensus needs to be accepted by all. Put up or shut up. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

PS: If editors who disagree with those editors who start the RfC believe that the RfC question is flawed, don't try to shut the RfC down (as tempting as that might be). Just explain in the RfC discussion what you think the problem is, and answer the RfC question in a way that reflects what you really think. Lots of other editors will see that, and so will the person who closes the RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:43, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) NightHeron, I'll ask you the same question that Generalrelative just dodged: if you seriously believe that the Misplaced Pages community supports your approach to sourcing, why is it necessary for the two of you to so tightly control every discussion and article related the topic? Aside your from preventing the previously planned RFC from being opened, the two of you also have made more edits to these articles and their talk pages than myself, Ferahgo, Stonkaments, Sesquivalent and Ekpyros put together.

Why not let the, you know, community decide what they think is best for the articles, instead of both of your patterns of dominating every talk page and noticeboard discussion, and reverting dozens of edits by various involved and uninvolved people as "against consensus"? I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but the question isn't rhetorical; I'd like to see how you explain it. Gardenofaleph (talk) 20:53, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Gardenofaleph, I don't know how to read this besides just "Why are you active editors?" Firefangledfeathers 21:36, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

No, I mean something more specific. I'll give an example of what I mean:

In June 2020, Generalrelative added content to the Heritability of IQ article that several editors feel misrepresents its sources. (See Ferahgo's summary; all of these sources use qualifiers such as "no direct evidence", and they also don't use the word "consensus" or any similar term when referring to evidence or lack of it, as required by WP:RS/AC.) In the time since then there have been several attempts by various other editors to remove the misrepresentations, or to change this part of the article to something more closely approximating what the sources say, but Generalrelative and NightHeron have consistently reverted these attempts. This is just one of four articles (I think, although there might be more) where they've added the same content, and basically the same sequence of events has played out on the other articles also.

Generalrelative and NightHeron have framed the current dispute as themselves defending the integrity of Misplaced Pages, with the backing of the broader community, from a small group of determined POV pushers. But the history of articles like that one seems to tell a different story. The people trying to change these articles to be more consistent with what the sources say have not been the so called "POV pushers". They have mostly been editors like SteveCree2, AmazingCosima, and various IP editors who have barely any other edits in this topic area. But these editors aren't really committed to the dispute and they also don't coordinate with one another, so they've never been able to make a difference.

This doesn't look like two editors defending the integrity of Misplaced Pages with the backing of the broader community. It looks more like two editors determined to prevent any modification to their preferred wording, even though a lot of otherwise uninvolved people evidently disapprove of it. Gardenofaleph (talk) 23:48, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

The bickering here is increasingly off-topic for this talk page, and is becoming increasingly annoying for... well, at least, me. As I said in my previous comment advising an RfC, put up or shut up. If some editors would rather snipe at one another (believing wrongly that this will convince ArbCom to step in), that probably means that they are not really confident in their position. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:57, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd be fine with having a RFC about how sources are being used in this topic, under the condition that I can know ahead of time that the editors on the other side will allow it to happen. When Ferahgo's and AndewNguyen's RFCs were shut down, those editors also were threatened with discretionary sanctions for having opened them. I've been expecting the same thing to happen if I try to start one about this issue myself. But if this time NightHeron and Generalrelative can agree to let someone open a RFC about sourcing and let it proceed unimpeded, it's worth a try. Gardenofaleph (talk) 02:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Definitely not interested in bickering, here or anywhere, but I should probably add for those who didn’t read the diff in my previous comment: It was Mackensen, a widely respected admin from what I understand and OG of the project, who told AndewNguyen that there is a clear consensus of the community that no underlying issue with sourcing exists in the R&I topic area. That seemed pretty definitive to me. However, no one is standing in the way of a new RfC, nor could they. Generalrelative (talk) 03:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I looked at that link. I would suggest that a future RfC be carefully written to make clear what is new, as opposed to just checking whether consensus has suddenly changed. And given the strongly-held views of editors who have concerns about the current consensus, I also suggest that those editors who see no problems with the current consensus should nonetheless try to be generous with letting a new RfC go forward. That way, any legitimate concerns will be able to get a proper hearing and those editors with concerns will not feel like they were shut-out, and the community will be able to reaffirm the current consensus if that should end up as the result. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:30, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Generalrelative (talk) 16:53, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

(ec) Sure. But being "generous" does not include ignoring blatant violation of the Misplaced Pages policy that says that RfC's must be neutrally worded, short and simple. Also, it would be good if any new RfC were opened on a page that has EC-protection, so as to avoid socks, SPAs, and off-wiki canvassing that have been a problem in R&I discussions in the past. NightHeron (talk) 17:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

If you can get an admin to agree to setting up a dedicated RfC page with EC-protection, as a discretionary sanction, that would certainly be one approach. Otherwise, it is perfectly acceptable to tag drive-by RfC comments with Template:spa. In the event that you feel that the new RfC question blatantly violates neutral language, the best approach at this time would be to let the RfC go ahead, and explain clearly what your concerns are in your RfC comments. As I said earlier, uninvolved editors and whoever closes the RfC will see what you said and be able to evaluate it for themselves. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:25, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

EC protection would be a blatant exclusion of well qualified commenters who in the past have contributed sources and other pertinent content to these discussions. If some IP2600 SPA's mysteriously appear and produce convincing citations to academic literature that happens to settle important aspects of the RfC, that is good, and nothing stops anyone from putting SPA templates on their posts. Pre-empting that, and the participation of lower edit count users such as (if I am remembering the counts at the time correctly) GardenofAleph and myself as happened the last round, as well as trying to restrict what can be said in the RfC after the liberties taken in the ridiculous first one, would be the same game as before of trying to tilt the field in advance. I did not vote in the first R&I RfC as I considered it improper, would not (IIRC) have been able to post in the second which was perhaps worse, and in my opinion the only reasonable response to setting it up again to rig the participation in an "approved" direction would be for those who can to post a !vote saying "BOYCOTT". As I just posted, I oppose any RfC until the literature is surveyed first, because past experience shows it will not and maybe cannot happen during the RfC itself with all the distractions that may arise. Sesquivalent (talk) 08:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

There are good reasons for the Misplaced Pages policies that require a brief and neutral statement of an RfC and that disallow off-wiki canvassing to bring in SPA's. A lengthy and tendentiously worded RfC, such as Ferahgo's a few months ago, discourages participation and leads to debates not about the issue but about the poor formulation of the RfC. It's a waste of time and a cause for acrimony by the POV-pushers when the RfC is closed early, as happened in Ferahgo's case. If socks and SPA's play a major role, that also introduces the extraneous issue of how much they affected the perceived division of opinion, that is, whether or not there would have been a different outcome without them. That's a counterfactual question that is hard for a closer to determine and is likely to be another matter of dispute (this was an issue in an AfD for R&I two years ago). I think it would be a bad idea to deviate from these two Misplaced Pages policies in an area that's as contentious as R&I, where the POV-pushers seem inclined toward endless debate on procedural as well as substantive matters. Most likely the racial hereditarians realize that they're in a small minority among Misplaced Pages editors, and the ones in ISIR realize that they're in a small minority among scientists, so their only chance of success is if they resort to such tactics as misleading RfC's and off-wiki canvassing. NightHeron (talk) 11:50, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

If we're going to talk about tendentiously worded RFCs, let's remember that NightHeron's RFC question literally referred to the sources he didn't like as "white supremacist sources", and said that the editors trying to include these sources were "promoting scientific racism and white supremacist views". After having done this (and then having the RFC remain open for a full month, and then having rewritten the article based on the resulting consensus) there was a lot of hypocrisy in his subsequent request for Ferahgo's RFC to be shut down as not neutrally worded.

It's very difficult to assume good faith about someone who applies this blatant of a double standard to others' behaviors compared to their own. There also is another reason it's difficult for me to assume good faith in this case, that I mentioned in my first few comments here, but this probably is not the correct place to give a detailed explanation about that. Gardenofaleph (talk) 15:17, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Please desist from accusing other editors of bad faith, per WP:NPA. The words you quote are not from the statement of the RfC, but rather from my explanation of my yes vote as OP. In that explanation of my vote it was certainly reasonable to characterize the racial pseudoscience of Jensen, Piffer, etc. as white supremacist. The statement of the RfC, on the other hand, was neutrally worded and brief. NightHeron (talk) 21:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

No, you're misremembering. As originally formulated, that entire post (around 7 KB of text) was your RFC question. A few days later, in response to a complaint from the 2600 IP in his user talk, Barkeep49 moved your statements accusing other editors of supporting white supremacism into a separate section. By moving those statements into another section instead of shutting down the RFC entirely, Barkeep49 was showing a lot of patience towards you, but you haven't shown the same to other editors.

Also, let's be clear about something. As I said in Stonkaments' user talk, I was present for one of the off-Wiki discussions about your actual reason for becoming involved involved in this topic at both RationalWiki and Misplaced Pages, and for your repeated accusations of white supremacism. I am showing you a lot of goodwill by still treating you as a good-faith editor despite knowing about that. Gardenofaleph (talk) 22:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The RFC statement is the text between the RFC tag and the first signature. In the RFC in question, the entirety of the RFC statement was 'Is the claim that there are genetic differences in intelligence along racial lines a fringe viewpoint?' You can see that's what the bot listed here - MrOllie (talk) 03:53, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

In response to Gardenofaleph's second paragraph, I'd like to ask Gardenofaleph and like-minded editors to please stop the innuendos, personal attacks, and the conspiracy theory directed against me. I was the OP on both RfC's that concluded that the racial hereditarian belief about intelligence is a fringe POV, and this apparently explains the anger directed against me. The theory about my supposed "actual reason for becoming involved" in R&I that Gardenofaleph refers to was first advanced by an IP editor during AndewNguyen's appeal to ArbCom following the first RfC (see Section 26 Amendment request: Race and intelligence (June 2020)#Statement by IP editor 2600:1004:b100::/40 at ). The IP was later sanctioned for that. I next heard of the theory when an IP editor (possibly the same one) came to Stonkaments' user talk-page to tell Stonkaments about it and initiate a discussion of tactics (see ). Let me state for the record that I have never edited RationalWiki, I do not have an account there, and I have no connection with the efforts described by the IP editor to discredit RationalWiki. Nor am I a right-winger disguised as a left-winger in order to discredit Misplaced Pages. My contribution history is here for anyone to examine. These attempts by the racial hereditarian POV-pushers to portray me as part of a conspiracy against Misplaced Pages are disruptive. NightHeron (talk) 10:44, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

If some of the other individuals who were present for these off-Wiki discussions, who have not been parties to the current dispute, eventually come forward to confirm what I and the IP have said, will that be enough for you to stop accusing us of making this up to support our viewpoint on the articles? Gardenofaleph (talk) 02:30, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

It's astounding that this level of conspiracy theorizing is allowed to happen anywhere on Misplaced Pages, let alone on the ArbCom talk page. --JBL (talk) 12:11, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Gardenofaleph, I just want to be completely clear as to what you're confessing to here (and this is, if I understand right, a confession; I'm baffled as to why you think it implicates NightHeron.) According to what you and the IP said here, you, that editor, and a few other editors who you and the IP consider broadly sympathetic to your cause participated in, or were at least aware of, a coordinated effort to add false information and hoaxes to RationalWiki, intending for the additions to be a parody of left-wing views introduced across multiple articles there with the intention of discrediting the site; the IP confessed their part in this hoax, and you roughly agreed with their account, in order to... accuse other people, who you disagree with, of off-wiki coordination as well? It seems like the things you are revealing and the points you are making discredit you more than anything else; while a history of posting coordinated hoaxes on RationalWiki with the goal of lampooning your ideological enemies is not, obviously, something that is sanctionable on Misplaced Pages, it is hardly the kind of thing that you want to reveal when trying to argue that you have approached the subject in a neutral fashion or when trying to accuse other editors of off-wiki coordination. --Aquillion (talk) 06:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

I was aware of the hoax material because I was present in the RationalWiki Discord (a.k.a. "The Treehouse") when it was discussed there. I mostly just kept quiet and listened to what others were saying. Also, this was a discussion about similar material at both RationalWiki and Misplaced Pages, and how both sites could be undermined by exploiting their users' opposition to anything they perceived as racist.

One of the individuals on Discord bragged about how he was rewriting Misplaced Pages's Race and intelligence article to turn it into a subtle parody. This discussion happened around the end of April or the beginning of May 2020. IIRC he did not mention a specific Misplaced Pages username, but this was the point in time when a large portion of that article was being rewritten by NightHeron, and the Discord user's description of his edits to that article also matched, so it was evident from the context what Misplaced Pages account he was using (or wanted the other people there to believe he was using).

I'm not clear on what you think I should have done differently. Surely being present in a Discord server when a topic was discussed there is not enough to implicate me in off-Wiki coordination. If your suggestion is that I should have spoken up about this sooner than I did, I spoke up when I felt it was safe for me to do so, but I was in no hurry to support the IP user about this after he was topic banned for bringing it up.

Before this case goes to arbitration (which I predict it eventually will), I thought it was important for me to try to confront NightHeron about it directly. I've fulfilled that obligation now, and we aren't accomplishing anything by continuing to talk about this here. I'm only replying again because you asked me a question, and now that I've answered it I'd like to drop this now, at least until there's an arbitration case. It's evident that other editors would like me to drop it also. So please, let's not keep prolonging this discussion further. Gardenofaleph (talk) 14:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

The notion that the work that I and other editors did to bring R&I into compliance with WP:FRINGE and WP:FALSEBALANCE would somehow discredit Misplaced Pages is absurd and doesn't need a response.

For the record, I have never participated in any discussion on Discord, ever.

@Gardenofaleph: Your false accusation that I have made edits for the purpose of discrediting Misplaced Pages is an insulting personal attack. Please retract it immediately. NightHeron (talk) 20:12, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

One thing that might help is to have R&I be covered by 30/500. Levivich 15:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

To RfC or not to RfC

I'll belatedly weigh in here, as it was my objections to the draft R&I talk FAQ that lit the fuse on all this, the powder having been accumulating for the past 2 years.

I think RfC(s) or other talk or administrative activity would eventually, under some conditions yet to be satisfied, be useful. But an RfC now on anything closely tied to the running R&I disputes on fringe/sourcing/NPOV/verifiability would be a total disaster that exacerbates the problems and forms (or intensifies existing) enmities between camps and editors for no net benefit to the encyclopedia. I predict that fallout would include a lot of serious and expert contributors dropping out in disgust, whatever the outcome; again, for no benefit.

There are real problems with the handling of FRINGE and NPOV especially in areas such as DGG mentioned. There are also behavioral problems specific to R&I, as people have started to elaborate here, including the formulation and conduct of the two RfCs and the use to which those RfCs have been put since then. If I have time and it's relevant here I can post more about that, there are various things that should be done that may or (more likely) may not be ArbCom relevant that would mitigate those problems, but I actually think that for the R&I associated issues that are bubbling, those matters are all secondary to a different question that is not itself ready for an RfC but can inform one later.

The core problem here is that despite 2 RfCs ostensibly about the subject, the question of the "is it fringe" RfC on R&I hereditarianism was never substantively "litigated" in the first place. Through vagueness, heroic BLUDGEONing, endless digressions and confusions, emotionally charged histrionics and the accidental or strategic chaos resulting from all of that, the first RfC somehow passed, without any attempt to survey what is the expert academic literature and what does it say on this in works establishing current consensus (i.e., postgraduate textbooks up to the present date, review articles considered to consolidate the mainstream view by demonstrating its empirical correctness, by systematically refuting other views, or judging rival theories against each other). Sources presented in favor of the RfC were few, discredited, ancient, irrelevant, nonexpert, or cursory. The relentless BLUDGEON stopped discussion of much else besides accusations of racism and the like.

The second RfC was cursory, excluded (even by threats if I remember their timing correctly) a number of knowledgeable editors who could have contributed, did not inform many interested parties from earlier discussions, and in any case again did not survey the literature. The result was to take a subset of the previous voters who were more strongly disposed toward the first RfC, who predictably reaffirmed it, again circumventing analysis of the actual state of things.

I believe that Ferahgo, the 2600 IP or IPs, other users expert in the topic, or searches of library catalogs could quickly generate a relatively complete list of graduate textbooks on intelligence (as psychometric or neuro science, not philosophy/humanities or something without equations) since 1970 that discuss these questions in depth. There have not been many serious reviews of this topic so finding and adding those should not be so difficult. I have gathered maybe 20 (did not count) such sources of either kind from my own research. I would gladly contribute to the next step, taking a census of what these experts say. Also their scientific orientation (hereditarian, antihereditarian, unknown) should be identified. Seeing a list of a few dozen quotations from the sources would do wonders for bringing closure to this matter. At that point, it will be clear what to do in an RfC, and RfCs on related questions such as sourcing, verifiability concerns, NPOV etc will have a highly relevant and convincing case study to work with.

That is my suggestion and request to Ferahgo et al. To not push an RfC right now but post a list of as many sources as you consider relevant at some editable location where people can contribute their own sources (of the consensus establishng type) and collaboratively add quotations giving the position of all the sources thus found. Until that picture of the literature is clear, and I think it will support the direction you are trying to go, it is premature to go forward, and any problems you are trying to solve will be made worse on many dimensions, including the ability to fix them for areas other than R&I. Or maybe the literature search will confirm the current status quo, but with better sources for the articles, which is also fine if that's what the experts really say. Either way the core problem is to untangle the real or perceived dissonance between Wiki world and the expert literature. Sesquivalent (talk) 07:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the proposed course of action above makes good sense; I agree that another RfC at this point about R&I would not be as helpful as more general discussion . Argumentation is a poor substitute for examination of sources and evidence But some of the problem, as is frequently the case at WP, comes from our desire for sharp classification such as reliable/not reliable, and fringe/not fringe. There are degrees of fringiness even in science. Further, I'm not sure the entire concept of fringe as we use it makes sense in any field where human emotions are a factor, because once they are, we are likely to decide questions by what we want to be true. DGG ( talk ) 07:57, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Sesquivalent: I agree with DGG that this proposal sounds like a good idea. Where do you think this list of sources ought to be compiled? The Arbcom talk page presumably is not the best location for that.

I would advise against hosting the list in the userspace of any of the major parties to the dispute, as that could lead to accusations that the list is "owned" by one particular person. The goal of creating such a list would be to more accurately analyze the balance of viewpoints that exists in the source literature, not to advance the viewpoint of any individual editor. My suggestion would be to create the list of sources as a subpage of Talk:Race and intelligence, but I'm open to other ideas.

I'd also like to discuss some possible criteria for sources to be included on the list, but first I think we should make a decision about the location. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:25, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there is so much risk either way, since all that would happen is crowdsourced accumulation of data that can be used by different people in different ways, rather than construction of a Unique Official Version. Anyone interested can archive or fork the collection as they wish. A non user page such as a specially created subpage of Talk has its own risk, e.g. if admins on their own or under pressure from interested parties freeze or delete the page, or artificially impose a deadline or other restriction.

Criteria for sources is a matter of clarifying what "consensus establishing (or consensus revealing) source" can mean. For a decades old and extremely contentious academic debate, in any field the size of psychology or its implicated subdisciplines, it is inconceivable that the debate was settled without a specific type of paper trail having been deposited in the academic literature. In science, consensus is pretty much always created and consolidated by:

1. what is widely taught to doctoral students specializing in the subdiscipline, usually recorded in postgraduate level textbooks or treatises rather than the potted summaries provided to undergrads;

2. review articles, rebuttable by replies, affirmatively demonstrating with data and arguments that one position is correct, or that data/arguments for competing positions are invalid, or that the weight of evidence (if not yet proof) for one position is much stronger than for others

3. multiple later citations of the reviews or treatises, by independent (i.e., not associated with any side of the controversy) expert third parties, stating that the current consensus is the position argued in those sources.

Absence of this type of evidence is in fact evidence of absence of a consensus. For instance, people here have cited blog posts for a popular audience, and advocacy pieces in mass media, as supposed indication of a scientific consensus. But those pieces are mysteriously lacking in citations to books and reviews that give those arguments in depth to an audience of peers in a position to debate and rebut, much less independent corroborations. Finally,

4. Material published for a general audience does count as negative evidence when it is an admission against interest by a partisan in the debate. If a leading proponent of position X says on TV that current evidence for X is insufficient to draw conclusions, that tells you there is no consensus in favor of X.

The other issue is, in which disciplines are we interested in determining the state of opinion. Hereditarianism has been argued on the basis of data from psychometrics, behavior genetics (which is not really genetics in the biologists' sense despite the name), and to a lesser extent brain/neuro science. The opinions of anthropologists, lawyers, historians, real geneticists, gender studies specialists, etc are relevant only to the extent they can affirm or refute the empirical data and arguments provided by hereditarians (or their opponents), and are published in places where relevant experts can evaluate and debate them. The mere existence of professors with an opinion is not surprising or pertinent unless they directly impinge on the empirical science debate. It is great to collect and utilize those outside opinions, to whatever extent people are interested in doing so, as long as that is clearly distinguished from anything to do with the empirical scientific debate and not used to obfuscate the "scientific consensus". Sesquivalent (talk) 14:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Several years ago, another editor who was active on these articles created his own list of sources in his userspace. But most other users understood this was his own personal list of sources that had been cherry-picked to support his point of view, and I don't think that list was used by anyone else. If we're going to create a list of sources, it should be a communal list of sources that anyone can contribute to. As such, I think it should be a subpage of the article talk page, not in someone's userspace.

This also means we should make the list as exhaustive as possible, and try to include all sources that satisfy our criteria for inclusion, regardless of their viewpoint, so as to best avoid the sort of cherry-picking that was done on the earlier list.

I mostly agree with the criteria you've proposed for what sources to include, but I have a few others to suggest:

1. I suggest that we limit the list sources that satisfy the requirements of the article's sourcing restriction: "peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers". As you said, this means no newspaper articles, blog posts, or books from non-academic publishers. It also means no papers from non-reputable journals such as Mankind Quarterly.
2. We should make it explicit that when adding sources to the list, there won't be any of this business of declaring sources unreliable or inadmissible because they present "fringe" views or because the author has published other, separate papers in unreliable journals. The entire point of the list is to more rigorously evaluate what is or isn't fringe or NPOV, so the only a priori assumptions about what sources are admissible on the list should be the article's sourcing restriction, and the criteria for reliability that are explicitly stated by RS policy.
3. I agree that we should limit it to empirically-oriented sources, and I think it would be good to develop a very clear set of criteria for inclusion. Here’s one suggestion: during the 2010 R&I mediation, a decision was made to mostly limit the Race and intelligence article to discussion of the contemporary scientific debate, while the historical and political aspects of the topic were split into the History of the race and intelligence controversy article. In accordance with that decision, I suggest that the list be limited to sources that are primarily about the current scientific (rather than historical and political) aspects of the controversy.
4. Trying to list every major secondary source about the scientific aspect of this topic published since the 1970s may prove to be an impossible task. I can think of at least a dozen such sources published in the past decade alone, and older sources also tend to be less valuable in terms of establishing the current consensus. I would suggest choosing a more recent cutoff date, preferably something within the past twenty years. Since the advent of genetic technology represents a major paradigm shift in psychology, perhaps 2003--the date that the Human Genome Project was completed--would make a good hardline cutoff.
5. Finally, whatever criteria we decide on should be mentioned on the source list itself. Otherwise they're likely to be ignored in the same way that the sourcing restriction for the article itself has been ignored, with editors adding citations to newspapers and blogs even though the restriction prohibits that (examples: , ).

Everyone else, feel free to chime in about what Sesquivalent and I have proposed here. I would particularly like to hear from Stonkaments, as he is the only major party to the dispute on these articles who hasn't commented in this discussion yet. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 00:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

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