Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:26, 25 March 2011

In order to remain listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 00:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 14:54, 26 December 2024 (UTC).

• Racepacket (talk · contribs · logs)

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

Statement of the dispute

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

Desired outcome

Preferably, that Racepacket would get along amicably with the rest of the project. However, if this is not possible, then that Racepacket would minimize disruptive interaction with the rest of the project.

Description

Racepacket appears to have a personal vendetta against the U.S. Roads WikiProject, specifically its nominations to WP:GAN. This stems from his misinterpretation of what a decent article is, and refusal to adhere to the GA standards (which refer back to the Manual of Style) as well as the project standards. This applies in both ways: his continual nomination of articles that do not meet standards, and his forcing his own standards on USRD GANs that are not part of the GA criteria.

Background which may or may not be relevant: Racepacket has been indefinitely blocked for copyright violations and is on an enforced mentorship for this. This could be relevant to his insisting on using quotes rather than paraphrasing; this use of excessive quotes is one of the issues relevant to this situation.

• There is a past RFC on Racepacket: Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Racepacket. The technical issues are unrelated, but there are some similar policies cited.

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.)

U.S. Route 223

1. —Started a second GAN review of an article after nominator withdrew and renominated the article. (WT:Good article nominations/FAQ specifically allows a nominator to withdraw a nomination so it can be reviewed by a different editor)
2. - Accusation of vandalism
3. —WP:CANVASSed an opinion related to an WP:ANI discussion related to that GAN review situation
4. —Reinserted edits to another's comments in a discussion forum after they were removed.
5. —insinuated a GAN nominator was attempting to pick his nomination's reviewer, in the absence of any evidence to support that claim
6. In both review pages, GA1 and GA2 advocated for the inclusion of information into an article that was not borne out by the sources. The requested additions violate WP:CRYSTAL as it attempted (through WP:OR) to state that Michigan or Ohio would receive money in highway funding legislation in a Congress that had not yet convened at the time. He also based his opinions on a advocacy group's membership to extrapolate the policy position of a state to the contrary of what the secondary sources actually state or don't state in the absence of media coverage over the last decade.

Virginia State Route 27

1. Talk:Virginia State Route 27 - where Racepacket nominated the same article for GAN 3 times in 2 weeks, with the second two GANs twelve hours apart, and with minimal changes after each failed GAN - WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT
2. - forum shopping (WP:CANVASS, assuming bad faith)

Maryland Route 200 and subarticles

1. - Renominated article at GAN because reviewer who failed it allegedly had issues with him - refusal to AGF
2. - Removed cleanup tags.
3. - Removed cleanup tags and claimed a "WikiProject wikiturf war".
4. - Reverted removal of excess information.
5. - Claimed USRD cannot enforce its standards on articles.
6. - Again questions USRD enforcing its standards on articles.
7. - Makes personal attacks against the members of USRD.
8. - Pleads to expand the article when there is excess information.

Questioning the choice of articles nominated for GAN

1. - Questions GAN nominator for nominating an article about a short road.
2. - Again asserts his point.
3. - Asserted point on nominator's talk page.
4. - Attacked editor who stepped in to tell him he should not question the length of the article's subject.
5. - More attacks on editors.
6. - Another attack on editor.

Inappropriate tagging of articles (potential WP:POINT)

1. - Encouraged the addition of original research to an article.
2. - Added tag because article was supposedly not comprehensive. ( puts this in context, showing how this is a borderline violation of WP:POINT).
3. - Readded tag after reverted.
4. - Added tag because article was supposedly not comprehensive.
5. - Readded tag after reverted.

Disregard of project standards, and/or possible WP:POINT violations

(This relates to WP:POINT because these follow the AFDing of the MD 200 articles on grounds of notability)

1. - Tagged a road accepted to be notable per WP:USRD/NT as being non-notable. (these may be WP:POINT violations as well)
2. - Tagged a road accepted to be notable per WP:USRD/NT as being non-notable.
3. - Tagged a road accepted to be notable per WP:USRD/NT as being non-notable.
4. - Tagged a road accepted to be notable per WP:USRD/NT as being non-notable.
5. - Tagged Google Maps as not being an independent RS.
6. - Again tagged article.
7. - Stated in red type that USRD standards do not have any weight at GAN, even when comments about the article are related to project standards and impact criteria 1b, 2b, and 3a, of the Good Article Criteria
8. - Comments about other editors on a nominator's talk page of a disparaging nature, failure to WP:AGF and making personal attacks (WP:NPA)

Applicable policies and guidelines

1. WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT (perhaps the key one)
2. WP:NPA
3. WP:NOR
4. WP:AGF
5. WP:POINT
6. WP:CRYSTAL
7. WP:CANVASS
8. WP:TALK (relating to editing someone else's comments)
9. WP:CIVIL
10. WP:NPOV
11. WP:RS
12. WP:CONSENSUS
13. WP:VANDAL (understanding of what vandalism is not)
14. WP:OWN
15. WP:DONTBITE
16. WP:BRD (granted, this isn't a guideline per se)

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

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

Attempts by Rschen7754

1. attempted to discuss accusations of vandalism
2. attempt to encourage Racepacket to disengage from situation

Attempts by Dough4872

1. attempted to contact Racepacket on adding tags to three articles because they supposedly did not have enough detail on the controversy.

Attempts by Imzadi1979

1. —attempted a discussion of the issues surrounding the GAN situation at WT:GAN, which was partially pre-empted by a posting by Racepacket to WP:ANI

Other attempts

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

(Provide diffs to demonstrate that the disputed behavior continued after trying to resolve the dispute. As with anywhere else on this RfC/U, links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

1. - shows no understanding of the issue

The disputed behavior continues after the diffs listed above attempting to resolve the dispute.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

1. Rschen7754 01:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
2. Imzadi 1979 → 01:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC), certifying for GAN dispute issues related to U.S. Route 223
3. Dough4872 02:08, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

1. ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ - As an outsider to these incidents who edits the same category of article who has observed this unfold, I can attest to the patronizing and bad faith assumptions made on a routine basis by this editor. Behaviour such as this only stir up thoughts of the "exclusivity" of being a GAN/FAC reviewer and creates resentment towards those venues. 02:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
2. PCB I have refrained from participating in the Maryland Route 200 debate over WP:AFD and WP:GAN but have seen the disruptiveness of this user editing within this project. I agree with this argument. 02:30, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
3. Mitch32 10:30, 22 March 2011 (UTC) – Honestly, and I won't go long-winded on this, but neither side has had perfect behavior. For the last 4-odd weeks, I've had a moratorium from going to GAN at all due to my worries of not getting a fair review or an argument that will stress my brain out, and also have many times screamed bloody hell in IRC about certain disputes. My behavior isn't exactly the smartest, but however, I have tried my hand at helping out at stuff like Orange Line (Washington Metro) with the disputed editor, since it falls in my area of focus. Personally, I've stopped attempting to get involved (stuff like MD 200), except for OH 369, where I thought the "boss-man attitude" was unneeded. If I really think there is anything to be gained out of this, its to attract some people to the blatant need for some interaction sanctions for both sides. Nothing more that we can really do.10:30, 22 March 2011 (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.

{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 views

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 LauraHale

Not involved in the current dispute. I'm having an issue with RacePacket at Talk:Netball/GA1, where on a GA review, he was very disruptive. On the short quibble points: He said red links could be in the article, added them in and then said they had to be taken away. He said that imperial had to be used because of consensus that agreed for just the opposite. He also wanted things changed from metres to centimetres and then wanted an explanation as to why the imperial measures changed. (Because the precision changed when it went from meters to centimetres.) He failed Talk:Netball in the Cook Islands/GA2, despite the points in Talk:Netball in the Cook Islands/GA1 having all been addressed. When Talk:Netball in the Cook Islands/GA3 was created, he did a transclusion of his review and the earlier one. He questioned sources, commented to say that there were no differences between American and New Zealand grammar. It was a mini version of what he was doing on Talk:Netball/GA1 with out the buffer of a large number of other contributors.

The two major issues that I had with User:Racepacket involve:

1. Unfounded accusations of plagiarism. This involved borderline harassment. The Good Article guidelines clearly state that the burden of proof for plagiarism accusations are on the accuser. He repeatedly requested this type of material on Talk:Netball/GA1. No where in Misplaced Pages's guidelines does it say that the accused needs to scan and e-mail copies of the source text, so the accuser can prove accusation of plagiarism. Things should be kept on the wiki. If he didn't have access to the source material, he should not have been reviewing the article. Despite the complete lack of proof, he has failed to retract this allegation.
2. NPOV violations. Racepacket reviewed both Netball and Netball in the Cook Islands with the clear intention of pushing a point of view that the sport was not popular in general, and specifically was not popular in the Cook Islands. This can be seen by his repeated claims of wanting more information on the popularity of the game, by his insistence in saying "X amount of countries of the Y amount of countries in Africa are affiliated with the regional federation." He wanted similar statements in every region. He wanted the total percentage of players as a representation of the country's total population. He wanted to know how many teams competed and to let people know that they were ranked X out of Y, to make the game appear less popular. He wanted to irresponsibly gender the article to highlight the fact that the game is played by women, and is thus less popular and less credible. He wanted to remove the country sections and information on statistics that showed relative popularity by country. He tried to get phrases like "most popular women's participation sport" in the country removed because they were biased, even if there were citations that supported this claim. He wanted to remove the Olympic sport part because by removing the Olympics, he makes the game appear less popular and credible as a sport. He demanded its removal even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He tried to diminish the importance of international competitions by treating international federations, similar to CONCACAF and CONMEBOL for FIFA into regional leagues that countries in the area compete in. Racepacket also kept on insisting the sport be compared to basketball. In my opinion, this was another case of trying to diminish netball's global popularity by forcing comparisons to an American sport that he feels is more popular and makes netball appear less popular. He wanted spectator numbers for netball in the Cook Islands to show that the game was not popular there because no one watched it in person. (This in a country with 23,000 or so people, with 13,000 or so total people on the most populated island.)

Edited to add on 25 March 2011: meta:Foundation_wiki_feedback#Foundation_fellow_needs_guidance was written by Racepacket. I'm not a foundation fellow. (I have participated in Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Screencast with WMF funding my airfare to attend, helped write a grant proposal, have received grant funding for proposals I submitted to my national chapter. I might have applied for a job with WMF. But I can categorically state that I am not a WMF fellow, have never been one.) He has also taken the situation to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles#Good_Article_Withdrawal in order to discuss my attempts to withdraw the article.

As an outsider, I do not want to see User:Racepacket blocked. That is not my priority. My priority is trying to guide the Netball article through the Good article process and finally through the Featured Article Review process. I think we've both had issues with our behaviour and this could have been handled better. The desired outcome from my perspective is for Racepacket to work with a mentor in choosing articles to review. The articles he would review would be limited to ones that are in American English, or where the type of English is not specified, and feature content areas he is an expert in. In the case of netball and netball in the Cook Islands, he was not familiar with British English or New Zealand English. He appeared to have zero knowledge of netball prior to reviewing the article. He also appeared to be unfamiliar with cultures inside Commonwealth countries. As citations appear to be an issue, I would also suggest the mentor work with him to select articles where he potentially has physical access to texts. (The texts being cited in article were available primarily in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. His location meant it was not possible for him to verify these, when he expressed concerns about them.)

Users who endorse this summary:

1. I haven't read enough to endorse the NPOV accusations, but I certainly agree with the broad thrust of LauraHale's complaints. When I saw Talk:Netball/GA1, I was frankly gobsmacked by it. It went completely against what I believed GA reviewing was about, which is a simple and lightweight process. It has dragged on for weeks and some of the demands made by the reviewer of the nominator made my head spin. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
2. I was thinking about doing the second GA review for Netball in the Cook Islands, but was beaten to it by Racepacket, and decided against doing the third one after the way in which the second one unfolded. While I'm not saying that any specific comment was unfounded, I do not approve of the stick-over-carrot approach to GA reviews that I have seen. Reviewers should always go to second opinions if a nominator, acting in good faith, disagrees with the reviewer on a point that might affect the final decision. —WFC— 16:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
3. Laura withdrew the netball one. Racepacket reopened it saying she can't do that when she can and continued as before. KnowIG (talk) 17:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
4. LauraHale (talk · contribs) withdrew her nomination of Netball, but Racepacket reinstated the review, saying elsewhere that "only the review can 'fail' the article", which is not the case here. Laura withdrew the nomination, which by definition in a pass/fail metric, "fails" the nomination. I endorse the issue of the GAN withdrawal/reinstatement situation only, as clarified by the evidence I've provided above. Imzadi 1979 → 18:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
5. I concur with the above. In this case we have to add WP:DONTBITE to the list of policies and guidelines above. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:34, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Outside view by Aude

It's been a while since I participated in the GA process, but think this is a goal that is/should be attainable for everyone. The criteria shouldn't be crazy stringent (save that for FAC) and the review process should be cordial. I don't think anyone (hope not) wants wikidrama. I'm saddened if things are getting so heated at GA that it discourages people from participating. The Netball GA worries and saddens me especially... I know both Racepacket and Laura, and can't/don't believe either are looking for wikidrama and think they both mean well. Please remember to assume good faith, stay calm, courteous, don't nitpick, etc., and most importantly please remember that Misplaced Pages should be fun and enjoyable, including GA. --Aude (talk) 20:48, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

1. - Off2riorob (talk) 14:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Outside view by Bill william compton

LauraHale, this is not a mandatory for reviewer to have access on all of your off-line references and its pretty much clear instead of you no one has access to all of these sources, which implies only you've a genuine right to review this article (?). The way you've presented these accusations, it would be better if you could provide differences where these alleged things happened, so that things become clear.Bill william compton 21:00, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

LauraHale's failure to respond to my last posting with "diff links" highlights the lack of a factual basis for her comments. I was the first reviewer of Netball and she treated me very poorly. It was my first review and jumped on it because of her request and tried my best, but I feel that she was trying to bully me into passing the article regardless of its obvious deficiencies. When she asked me to step aside as reviewer and recruit a replacement, Racepacket was the first to volunteer and I turned the review over to him, without ever having met him before. I believe that he did an excellent job maintaining a calm demeanor in the face of a continuation of her bullying. It is unfortunate that all of the hours of time that a number of volunteers have invested was lost by her insistence on shutting down the review prior to its completion. I believe that GA reviews should be a friendly process, and I don't understand why she treats her reviewers as if they were her bitter enemies. Bill william compton 08:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

1. Smallman12q (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
2. There are two sides to every story. IMO a RFC user for this spat is unnecessary. Off2riorob (talk) 14:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Outside view by Moabdave

It seems to me that a lot of this controversy would go away if both parties were a bit more reasonable. Of all the sample articles listed above, the one I studied to formulate this reply was Maryland Route 200. The issues with Maryland Route 200 could have been avoided had the litigants of this case compromised to use Racepacket's research and contributions to expand existing stub articles instead of creating new articles that go against WP:USRD's notability guidelines. For example, Washington Outer Beltway, the origin for Maryland Route 200 and a current stub article, is an ideal place to put most of the content that instead went into the controversial daughter articles. That way, Racepacket's research could have been put to good use to expand an article that is within WP:USRD's scope and guidelines and we wouldn't have had to fight about creating articles deemed by WP:USRD to be undue weight, un-notable, etc.

Adendum: I was asked by one of the initiators of this RfC to review Racepacket's actions involving GA nominations, stating that I chose one of the less important issues to examine in the paragraph above. So, I reviewed some of the alleged mis-tagging of articles and GA review issues. I was not-so-much concerned about the tagging of articles. While those articles may indeed have met notability guidelines, one would never know it from reading the articles in their current state. Most were very short stub articles, and would have been similarly tagged by any number of editors. However, I definitely agree the activity in regards to GAC nominations and reviews is concerning. I saw some unnecessarily snide comments, and the same stubbornness that led to the situation mentioned above with Maryland Route 200. The GAC issues of the Netball article were them most concerning. I'm not sure if what I saw was disrupting wikipedia to make a point, as claimed, or a simple case of tit-for-tat article critiquing, a "my-way-or-the-highway" attitude, or something else. But certainly this isn't a healthy situation for anybody and I would recommend that racepacket take a breather from GAC nominations and reviews for a while. If for no other reason, so everybody involved can breath a little and remember the larger purpose of us working together on this encyclopedia. Dave (talk) 06:29, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

1. Dave (talk) 03:23, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
2. Certainly would allow everyone to move on and to destress. KnowIG (talk) 08:54, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
3. I don't believe that racepacket intentionally committed any wrongdoing...but rather that people are just getting stressed out. For what its worth, I found his review of the article iLoo to be a pleasant experience...Smallman12q (talk) 12:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Outside view by User North8000

We asked for a very thorough GA review of SS Edmund Fitzgerald by Racepacket and were thankful for receiving that. (it's going back up for FAC in 1-2 weeks. ) We have also received substantial expert help and advice on it from Imzadi 1979. These folks appear to partially be on opposite sides in this discussion here. I hope that this can be resolved amicably.

I don't see specific "charges" of wp:substance in this whole thing. It looks more like a collection of negative sounding things regarding Racepacket. Bringing up old blocks on a completely unrelated issue made lights go off for me regarding this. The least-vague complaint was that he had a vendetta against the road project, but every one of diffs I clicked on seemed to be just civilly making arguably good points. The other specific complaint is for not following a non-existent rule, i.e. not following road project standards. I saw a few things that I would have disagreed with Racepacket on. North8000 (talk) 13:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Outside view by ExampleUsername

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