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Clerk note: Radek is User:Radeksz. Manning (talk) 06:56, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Preliminaries and clarifications
Yes, there is a mailing list. No it's not a cabal. No it's not "anti-Russian"
The mailing list in question does exist. However the purpose of the list is not nefarious plotting, but rather frank discussion (the kind that is impossible on Wiki) of Eastern European politics, culture and history, and how these topics are treated on Misplaced Pages. I very strongly want to stress that the list was not “anti-Russian” or that its purpose was “to make Russia look bad” – one of the members of the list is Russian, we generally agree with many, uninvolved, Russian editors and I’m pretty sure that all of us want Russia to become a strong, prosperous, peaceful country.
Rather, what probably characterizes the list members – the thing that I think we all have in common – is a general opposition to extremist ideologies and in particular the POV pushing of extremist ideology in Misplaced Pages’s Eastern European articles. This means opposition to all kinds of extremist POV; Neo-Nazism, Neo-Stalinism, and various kinds of extremist nationalism, which unfortunately often make their appearance in this general subject area.
Whistleblowing or hacking. And hey!! There's still privacy issues here.
At the moment I do not know how the supposed “archive” was obtained and distributed; whether through the hacking of one of the members computers, or if it was done by one of the members of the list (personally, I consider the first possibility more likely). I want to note however that either way, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), Pub. L. No. 99-508, 100 Stat. 1848, third parties are forbidden to read private e-mail . Obviously, this has already been ignored by many folks.
I want to restate that I believe that, per above, upon receiving the link, the people who received them had no right to read them. At most they had a right to forward the link to ArbCom. Further dissemination of the emails, as was done by Alex Bakharev and perhaps some others, was not only unethical, but in clear violation of Misplaced Pages rules on Outing . At no point has permission to read what very well may be my private emails full of personal information, been given by myself to anyone except Durova.
I also want to note that ALL members of the list signed an explicit statement that none of them was the “leak”. Of course the possibility exists that somebody’s lying. But if that is indeed the case - why should the ArbCom put faith in material which has been supplied by someone who obviously has no second thoughts about lying their ass off? Someone like that would very clearly have no moral compunction about also doctoring the emails.
Another good reason to think that this had to be an outside hacking is that the “archive” apparently contains files from Jan until September. This, combined with the verified fact that there was no real archive means, that the “archive” – based on actual emails – had to be leaked through one of the original members of the list. And these are the individuals who are THE LEAST LIKELY out of the group to have been the leak, given that they started the list in the first place and all.
As a result I believe that outside hacking is the more realistic scenario.
A copy of the supposed "archive"
I posses a copy of the supposed “archive” a link to which was sent to me by Future Perfect. I have not looked at the “archive” in any significant way (I opened up couple of the messages to see if there was anything obvious that would jump out at me). I have not studied this archive for two reasons
- The ArbCom has stated that it intends to inquire about specific episodes and conversations. Since I wish to answer these inquiries to the best of my recollection, I do not want my memory of what was discussed to be colored by the material that’s inside this potentially faked archive
- If there are some signs in the emails in the supposed “archive” that give away tampering or alterations, at this point, I would much rather that these are discovered by an outside person, like an ArbCom member, rather than by myself or a member of the list, as I think this will help establish my credibility here. I want to note that this has already happened in one way – Future Perfect figured out on her/his own that the list has no “real” archive since it was deleted in April.
I am still considering if I should carry out an analysis of the supposed “archive” myself and might do so in the future.
I also want to clarify one important point which I think a lot of people are completely not getting. No one says that the entire archive is fake. Rather it is more likely that some, perhaps a large number, of the emails were altered in ways which were designed to make the participants look bad. These alterations could’ve been small in terms of word length, but substantial in terms of content. If you’ve ever seen somebody POV a Misplaced Pages article by inserting or removing various “nots”, adding some “spice”, you should know exactly what I’m talking about.
I am led to believe that this is indeed the case, based on the description of the contents of the “archive” by Alex Bakharev and Deacon. Their descriptions are so widely inaccurate in relation to what was actually discussed on the list that I can only conclude that either they’re making stuff up or they’re looking at something that has been significantly altered.
Misconceptions
I also want to address another silly misconception(s) which I have seen bandied around, although I will deal with it further when I address specific accusations that have been made. This misconception(s) is that:
- If something was discussed on the list and something relevant happened on Wiki that proves that the “archive” is real.
- If something was discussed on the list and something relevant happened on Wiki that proves that there was conspiracy/canvassing/coordinating/etc.
Both of these notions are false. The first one is obviously false because as has already been stated, part of the purpose of the list was to discuss things which were going on Misplaced Pages. So of course there’s gonna be some connections between list discussions and Misplaced Pages happenings. That doesn’t mean that these discussions haven’t been tampered with to appear them to make something that never was said.
The second notion too is false. The members of the list, as I’ve stated before, do have some opinions in common – even though they disagree (sometimes very strongly) on many others. No one was compelled or canvassed to do anything. At most the list discussions served as a notice board for the existence of particular articles or discussions. In many cases, I recall, I’d go edit an article I found some problems with, or to a AfD and vote a particular way, and only a few days later would someone say “look, there’s a vote going on”. All members took their actions individually and are responsible for them as individuals.
The basic error here is the very common mistake of confusing ‘’’correlation’’’ with ‘’’causation’’’.
- It was NOT the case that members of the list edited in the same area, participated in the same votes, opposed the same POV pushers and edited similar articles BECAUSE they were on the mailing list.
- Rather it’s that the members of the list were on that list BECAUSE they had similar interests, had already been editing articles and topics related to one another and had already run up against various disruptive users individually.
A clear proof of the above is the fact that according to some of the evidence presented by Offliner, HistoricWarrior and PasswordUsername (not to mention Deacon) I have supposedly coordinated my edits with the members of the list before I was even on the mailing list.
In the remainder of the evidence I am going to present I will focus on answering general accusations, specific accusations made by others, as well as the disruptive behavior of some of the accusers.
Against general accusations
Will be expanded later.
Russavia
Russavia, once again, violates his topic ban while this case is ongoing, and does so in as controversial way as possible, thus illustrating that he's only interest in treating Misplaced Pages as a battleground
Response to Russavia's latest
- There's no gaming here. The article is clearly about Eastern Europe. Furthermore it is clearly about the history of the successor states of the Soviet Union - Ukraine and Belarus are mentioned directly, Lithuania indirectly and Latvia implictly (since Courland is part of present day Latvia). This is Wikilawyering or at best "testing" the ban on Russavia's part
- I provided another instance of Russavia breaking his ban
- This is not the first time that Russavia has broken his ban or block or both.
- While Russavia verified some uncontroversial DYK hooks, he also went after Piotrus' new article by proposing a very controversial POV hook to which Piotrus objected. If this isn't provocative behavior and an attempt to create a battleground I don't know what is. It's also a great disincentive to those of us who actively create new articles to continue doing so - why bother if somebody's going to hijack them with a POV hook?
- Finally, we're all under a lot of stress here. But some of us are not using that us an excuse to engage in disruptive behavior.radek (talk) 00:50, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
So Russavia has now violated his topic ban , . He actually violated it earlier but I didn't say anything, thinking it an isolated incident and not wanting to create unnecessary drama.
(for reference, here's ArbCom: remains banned from Eastern European pages under the terms of Sandstein's original ban.)
But it's pretty obvious at this point that Russavia is very much intent on violating his topic ban on purpose. And he has done this in about as controversial way as possible - by going after an article by Piotrus - somebody who's repeatedly tried to reconcile with Russavia (even though he hadn't been involved much with him previously) and the corresponding DYK hook (seriously! Now if you write a new article from scratch and try to DYK it, Russavia will show up and write his own POV hook especially for you, just to get back at you).
Even without a clear cut topic ban violation, this kind of behavior would be extremely problematic as it clearly shows that Russavia is interested in nothing but treating Misplaced Pages as a battleground.
Let's recap here:
- Russavia gets topic banned by Sandstein for 6 months due to threats to "fight you to the death on this"
- Russavia heaps tons of abuse at Sandstein, including threats to "I will fight you on that".
- Sandstein warns Russavia that any further inflammatory comments on the talk page are violation of his topic ban
- Russavia willfully violates his topic ban
- Sandstein extends the topic ban to a block since Russavia's willfully violating it.
- Russavia posts "Topic ban be damned" on his talk page
- Sandstein warns him some more
- Russavia back pedals a bit and promises to observe his topic ban
- Sandstein unblocks him, though of course the topic ban is still in place
- Russavia immediately begins editing articles in violation of his topic ban
- Sandstein warns Russavia again
- Russavia, instead, files a AN/I report under Massive problem with admin User:Sandstein (because, you see, the problem is NOT with Russavia repeatedly violating his topic ban, nevermind engaging in behavior that got him the topic ban in the first place, the problem is with somebody having the temerity to actually try and enforce this ban)
- In the course of the AN/I report Russavia makes legal threats ""I will in future ... urge them to sue the Foundation"
- He is asked to withdraw the legal threat by Sandstein, in which he is supported by Good Ol'Factory
- Russavia tries to wikilawyer it by saying "that's not a legal threat"
- Russavia is blocked for making legal threats by Good Ol'Factory
- Shit hits the fan with the mailing list just as Russavia's blocked
- Russavia is unblocked for the purposes of participating in the ArbCom case and relevant discussion only
- There's a proposal at ArbCom, to quote may freely edit other articles and pages but remains banned from Eastern European pages under the terms of Sandstein's original ban. - the proposal doesn't pass and Russavia remains blocked from general editing.
- Russavia opens up another case at AN to get his general block removed. He finally retracts the legal threat.
- I point out that Russavia has *already* managed to violate his general block , , which gets me Russavia-banned from all but these ArbCom pages (and Jehochman's). Russavia's general block is lifted by Jehochman while the original topic ban remains in place. Russavia acknowledges that "the topic ban handed down by Sandstein remains"
- After a few days of staying quiet Russavia proceeds to edit "just on the edge" of his topic ban: (about Vietnamese Embassy in Moscow - pretty straight up violation of topic ban) and (violation of Eastern European topic ban)
and now the full out topic ban violation I note above.
That's at least FIVE NINE violations of his bans or blocks that he made. Russavia is pretty clearly showing here that he can't help but to violate whatever restriction is placed on him. He is also pretty clearly illustrating that he is incapable of remaining non-disruptive for more than a week at a time. (Never mind that's he's also shown through out this case that he is incapable of avoiding personal attacks and offensive statements that compare his content opponents to "gang rapists" - the kind of behavior that got him banned in the first place)
And note that in this particular case Russavia is jumping feet first into as much controversy as he can:
- The article Colonies of Poland concerns Courland (now Latvia), Belarus and Ukraine - all successor states of the Soviet Union, never mind Eastern European topics as stated by ArbCom.
- The article was created by Piotrus, so Russavia is going straight for somebody who's involved in this case as well.
- Then Russavia proceeds to comment on the DYK nomination made by Piotrus, again in a very provocative fashion .
Seriously - this guy can't avoid violating his blocks and bans or staying out of trouble for more than a few days even as this case is ongoing!
Further response to Russavia
- I am not stalking you - you're jumping in two feet first into where I'm editing. Even though you're topic banned.
- I am not harassing you - I am pointing out that you are violating your topic ban and 'battlin
- I'm "Russavia-banned" (for pointing out previous instances of you ignoring your block) but I can still post comments on your behavior which is pertinent to this case. This instance is very obviously related to this case - it highlights the difference between those editors who want to move forward, be constructive and end this whole mess, and those who want to create battlegrounds and drama as much as possible.
- Your topic ban, as handed down by Sandstein specifically states "history of Soviet Union (broadly construed)" and that it concerns "successor states of the former Soviet Union", including their history. The article in question concerns Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus.
- Per ArbCom's wording: remains banned from Eastern European pages under the terms of Sandstein's original ban - I think it's obvious this is a Eastern European page
- Russavia says: such as doing what I can at DYK - This is golden! Doing what he can to POV other editors DYK hooks in order to get back at them is what he's doing at DYK.
- Russavia can call this "wikilawyering" or "gaming" or whatever he wants (this is the standard litany of counter accusations made when somebody's caught doing something bad) - the truth is still that he's violating his topic ban and is doing so with the intent purpose of creating battlegrounds.
Finally, I want to say that there is nothing wrong with pointing out when a user is being extremely disruptive and violating his topic ban.
Re: Russavia's evidence
Well, I'm not much in there. But let's see:
“Radeksz suggests that another member of the email list should perform a revert on this article. In 20090915-2223- We brigades__Internet operations by Russian”
Ellol had just made 3 reverts in 24 hrs. I was considering reporting him since he was clearly edit warring. But I thought the case would be stronger if he did actually violate 3RR explicitly. I don't recall asking "another member of the email list" to revert, just saying that maybe it'd be better to wait for someone to revert before filing a report.
"In 20090910-0021- Russavia got Bannned ! Radeksz funnily enough suggests that someone would try to get someone on the "Litvinenko said Putin is a paedophile" line, and that they should make sure that it is sourced the hell out of, then there is no cause for complete"
Yeah, I don't know what the problem is here. I said to take the Litvinenko line to BLP (said the same thing on talk I believe) and find sources for it. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?
Immediately after this post, Radeksz reverts making the false claim of consensus
Well, there was a consensus and yes I did revert you. This one's in the "oh no! Somebody somewhere reverted me!" category. Can I present every time I got reverted by someone as evidence?
“It should be noted that my issue is not the existence of the accusation, but that the accusation was presented as fact, rather than an allegation,”
That’s not what it appeared like you were saying at the time. You were trying to either remove sourced text, or POV it to the point where it would look ridiculous.
List members acting as sockpuppets and/or meatpuppets
This is another (purposefully?) mistitled section, as there is nothing about sockpuppets or meatpuppets in there, probably because nobody* on the list ever used sockpuppets or meatpuppets.
Rather, this is another section about the fact that list members alerted each other to the fact that there were AfDs going on. As I've already wrote to Bigtimepeace, I think that AfDs need to be publicized way more than they are now (to all kinds of users, regardless of their POV) in order to prevent the sneaky "nominate-two votes-close-delete" tactic which wastes other people's hard work.
At this point I would just like to say that I stand behind every single one of my votes, at the time I voted I checked out the issue in detail, including reading the discussion, all the comments and even looking up sources independently for each vote.
One more that has nothing to do with me
In 20090427-0647- Attack on Russavia_ Biruitorul states that they should create temporary meatpuppet accounts to harrass me onwiki, but leaving various messages on my talk page, such as "warning: Russavia is actually a team of KGB propagandists team". He also states that he would like to see myself being driven mad by unseen and unknowable forces, the same way as the hero in a Shakespearean tragedy.
So.... did anyone actually leave a message on Russavia's talk page that he's a KGB propagandist? No? Did anyone create meatpuppets? No?
See, this is what you get for reading other people's private emails. You find out that they don't like you. And you find out specific ways in which they don't like you. And you even find out that they mention completely hypothetical scenarios in which people they don't like are "driven mad by unseen and unknowable force".
But at the end of the day, where's the evidence that Biruitorul actually used his awesome magical powers and managed to summon the unseen and unknowable forces (the Erinyes? Or maybe some old school Githyanki?) which drove Russavia mad and forced him to violate all kinds of Misplaced Pages policies on civility, threats and so on. Because, you see, it's not really Russavia's fault, it's the unseen and unknowable forces, the Githyanki and stuff, under the control of the mighty wizard Biruitorul (that name does sound sort of Tolkienish, ey?), which are to blame.
For the record I want to state that I never coordinated in any off-Wiki summoning of Githyanki.
Note that...
... none of the accusations made by Russavia have anything to do with what actually got him banned – incivility, vowing to evade blocks and restrictions, making threats and spewing profanity at administrators. All these things - nobody made him do it, he did it himself.
- Second response to Russavia (re my response)
- Well, if Russavia's going to bring up my "Russavia-topic ban" (thus making it a part of this case) then I'd like to emphasize that I received this "topic-ban" for pointing out that Russavia was violating the conditions of his unblock , (he was unblocked for the sole purpose of participating in his case but apparently couldn't restrain himself and began editing regular articles). So ok, maybe the way I pointed that out was a bit confrontational and so I'm 100% willing to stick by the topic ban - don't see though why Russavia should be unblocked as a reward for ignoring his original block (and that was like, what, fourth? fifth? forum he asked for an unblock in?)radek (talk) 00:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Re DonaldDuck
In response to the section beginning with "On 6-12 May 2009..."
I was not on a mailing at this time and had no off wiki contact with any of its contemporary or future members. How did I come to edit Tsarist autocracy? Simple. DD showed up at Białystok pogrom, an article I had created, and began making very POV edits, removing sources and sourced text and edit warring, against other editors as well . I did what I usually do when I have a significant interaction with an editor - I checked their contribution history to see where else s/he's causing trouble. And I saw that indeed, DD was edit warring like crazy on Tsarist autocracy.
This is a fairly trivial accusation to respond to but I choose to do so because I think it illustrates an important point. Three, actually:
1) All kinds of banned and disruptive users and notorious POV pushers are crawling out of the woodwork here to somehow claim that their bad behavior which led to their blocks and bans was not their fault at all! It was the evil cabal that made them do it! Glad to see that individual responsibility is alive and well on Misplaced Pages.
2) What a lot of people are objecting to here is not any kind of a mailing list, but simply that some users had the gall to disagree with them in regard to the their editing behavior. This is a straight up attempt to milk this ArbCom for all it's worth in order to get your way in content disputes - delete many painstakingly written articles, POV to the point of absurdity many others and incorporate fringe, extremist views all across this particular subject area (Eastern Europe)
3) Agreeing with other users, and editing the same pages as them is not "coordination" nor is it due to CANVASSING - as this example clearly illustrates. As I've said before, the people on the list were on the list because they edited the same articles, they did not edit the same articles because they were on the list.
Will be expanded later.
Re PasswordUsername
1. Supposed swamping of AfD discussions.
Internet operations by Russian secret police – the thing to note about that article is that list members actually disagreed with each other on a proposed merger and voted on the opposing sides. On the delete vote (I did not take part in it) note that Alex Bakharev also voted keep, as well as two other editors (DGG, Narking). The only people voting delete were Russavia and ellol. If anything this only shows up the common practice by Russavia and co. of making spurious AfDs out of articles they don’t like.
Neo-Stalinism Digwuren-created Neo-Stalinism (nominated 9 April 2009). Voting keep: Digwuren, Dc76, Martintg, Biophys, Miacek. (No uninvolved users participated; the semi-involved Petri Krohn – a relatively pro-Russian editor – was subsequently chased off Misplaced Pages by the same crowd.)
Oy, this statement’s so full of falsehoods its hard to know where to start. (Note that PU/Anti-Nationalist redacted his "evidence" section after I posted this reply)
- First, Digwuren did not create the article Neo-Stalinism. Rather it was created by user GCarty (no idea who that is) on September 16, 2005. . Digwuren didn’t actually get involved with the article until March 2009.
- Second, here is the link to the actual delete discussion (funny, how PU didn’t bother to actually provide links to support his claims) from March 2008. 6 users, none of whom has anything to do with this case, voting keep. Only nominator supporting deletion.
- But maybe PasswordUsername is talking about the category, not the article. The category just went up for deletion again (perhaps someone trying to milk the present situation for their own ends) . Let’s see, 4 editors, uninvolved in this case voting “keep”, only PU voting delete.
- Third, Petri Krohn wasn’t chased off by anyone. He was banned for making threats to Digwuren and refusing to take them down. (again, funny how PasswordUsername failed to provide the relevant link). He was banned for 1 year by a completely neutral admin, in fact, despite Piotrus’ advice to limit the ban to a few months.
- Previously he had also been banned for 1 yr.
- Another attempt to excuse some very serious disruptive behavior on the “the evil cabal made me do it” grounds.
Derzhava – this one might have been before I joined the list (and had no off Wiki contact with anyone). I voted keep simply after checking for sources , as I pointed out at the discussion page.
Soviet-run peace movements in the West – I was not involved in this one. But a clear example of PU making stuff up again: ‘’Most uninvolved users favored deletion’’. Yeah, right, uninvolved users like DGG and Randy2063 voted “Keep”. If it was true that “Most uninvolved users favored deletion” this would’ve been a delete or at least a no consensus. Wonder why PU didn’t link to the actual delete discussion?
2. False accusations of Stalking by mailing list members
A completely ridiculous and wholly irrelevant section, which doesn’t involve me at all. I choose to comment on it because it very clearly shows the quality of PU’s “evidence”.
PU begins by saying Various users, all part of the mailing list, appear to have stalked me at various points in the past six months.
Ok, who are these various users? It appears to be that they are … Digwuren.
And how did they "stalk" PasswordUsername?
Digwuren twice reverts my edits to Kim Jong-Il, Ilya Ehrenburg, List of Eastern Bloc defectors, Benjamin (Animal Farm) (and other characters)’’
Oh no! PasswordUsername’s disruptive edits were reverted! I think this little piece of "evidence" makes it pretty clear that PU believes that he should have carte blanche in his edits, and not be subject to the scrutiny and oversight of the larger Wiki community. Can I list every single instance where somebody reverted me as "evidence"?
Anyway. Since all of this has essentially due to with just Digwuren, how is it in any way relevant to this case? Is PasswordUsername claiming that Digwuren was a one-man cabal?
Generally what PU calls “stalking” is just one or two users disagreeing with him.
3."Members of the mailing list defend each other from sockpuppet investigations"
Uhhh… what? Molobo’s SPI was based on “secret evidence” and many people object on principle. And they were right to do so.
For the record, as far as I recall Molobo never admitted to any sock puppetry on the list. I still don’t know whether or not he is guilty of it since he was “convicted” based on ... “secret evidence” (which, strangely enough, was also made available to Deacon) so I have no idea what the actual evidence consists of.
But while we're here, note the dishonest impression that PU's heading tries to give. Members of the mailing list defend each other from sockpuppet investigations makes it sound like several members of the list were subject to SPI which is completely false. They weren't.
4. False accusations of sockpuppetry and persisting...
Again, an entire section that appears to be entirely about Digwuren and maybe Biophys. Again how is this at all relevant? And the complaint seems to be that some established users noticed a supposedly “new” account which was causing a lot of trouble and wondered aloud about his behavior. ??? As I said before, to clear up all these accusations of sock puppetry going around, everyone listed as an involved party should be subjected to CheckUser. Maybe we'll get some answers.
5. Edit warring by PasswordUsername/Anti-Nationalist and Offliner
- Anti-Russian sentiment: 8-16 May 2009
This one was before I joined the list. Note though how others are “edit warring” but PU conveniently skips all the edit warring that he and Offliner engaged in.
Offliner: May 8th May 9th May 12th , , , then he “tags” PU in order to avoid violating 3RR
And my “edit warring” is the reverting of a sock of banned user Jacob Peters! (Kupredu) So PU is just defending the edits of one of the most notorious sock puppet masters around: and then he “tags” Offliner back in: ,
This basically goes on and on. Note that my two reverts are just reverting Jacob Peters sock. Then in June, PasswordUser name and Offliner tag team again (note the pretty standardized method of operation – PU does three reverts, then Offliner takes over) PU: , , , and then Offliner takes over: , and then back to PasswordUsername, once the 24 3RR restriction expires: , (using the reverting of an IP to hide that this is a revert).
And so on. Of course I don't know if this "3 reverts then you take over" was coordinated off Wiki. I also don't think that makes an ounce of difference.radek (talk) 02:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Re: Offliner
A good bit (all or most) of this "evidence" overlaps with the one presented by user MK, which is unsurprising given that the two users probably coordinated on their presentations. Hence, please see my response to MK here for more detailed response to some of the smears.
Re to Latest ... "not quite truths"
The latest round of "evidence" presented by Offliner speaks volumes more about Offliner than myself. Every piece and bit of his posting consists of essentially making stuff up or misrepresenting things - and none of it concerns any violation of Wikipolicy by myself; I was worried my DYK was gonna be messed with and expressed that fear; I said a particular user was being very incivil and was probably going to get banned; etc. etc.
Offliner's attempts to get something here is about dishonest as it gets. And it is probably motivated by the fact that recently I had the temerity to make a (single) edit on a topic related to South Ossetia/Georgia, which Offliner regards as "his territory" (see his user page ) - so I guess this latest is just "payback" for me not being cognizant enough to realize that Offliner OWNS those articles.
He's done this before with another topic he feels ... uh, "protective" about, Russian apartment bombings, where after I made a (single) edit on Sept 15, he showed up at Heinz Nawratil, an article I've been editing and made a completely pointless revert , restoring a version by another problematic user - just to mess with me. When I questioned him about it , Offliner responded with a "I'm looking for new articles to edit" - about as bad faithed response as one can get. It was a pretty clear mafia-style message; "if you dare to touch my articles I will mess up the articles you're working on".
Offliner says: On 17 July, Radeksz says on the secret list, that he used an intentionally provocative hook in order to bait editors such as Herkus and Skäpperöd.
Ahhhhhhhhh.........NO. While I said that while the hook might be "provocative" - I qualified that with "at least somewhat"; meaning that given the controversial nature the hook, like the article, may provoke some people. There's not a single thing I said about baiting Herkus and Skapperod - Offliner is lying. What I said is that there "may be trouble on the DYK page" from Herkus or Skapperod since they started trying to POV the article before I even got done half-writing it (insert extensive background history about the subject of article and its subject here).
Offliner says that I "baited" user Smith2006 - a very incivil user with a history of edit warring and ... an inability to observe his topic ban (gee... sounds sort of familiar).
This is also false. What I said is that Smith2006 kept on making uncivil remarks over and over again, despite all kinds of warnings and sanctions (gee ... sounds sort of familiar) and then I said "I think at this point a block can be arranged". So what? I was going to report him and most likely he was going to be blocked? I did not say I was gonna bait him as Offliner claims (really - doesn't the blatant lying get old?) - there isn't a dang thing about "baiting" in there. And yes, I expected Matthead to show up, do his usual spiel where he insults everybody left and right and makes personal attack on everyone within two page clicks and gets a block himself - AFAIR, he didn't (go Matt!)
And then yes, when Smith2006, despite being topic banned continued to violate his topic ban and kept on with the incivil remarks I pointed it out to the blocking admin. We're still allowed to report disruptive users, right, cuz I'm not sure anymore?
Rest of this new stuff is along the same line - Offliner completely misrepresenting what was said, and on offering completely false "interpretations" straight from his own imagination.
radek (talk) 06:54, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
All this supposedly “coordinated” editing involves the multitude of editors … named Biophys. Ok and myself, way at the end – is there an email relevant to the fact that I edited there? And if you want to know how I came to edit the article, well, I just looked at my watchlist one day and saw that Offliner had made a 4000 byte edit-warring POV revert.
Also note how Offliner refers to a single edit as “edit warring”. This is true through out this whole “evidence”. Editors who disagree with him show up to “edit war” even if they make a single edit, while those who agree with him arrive to “edit”, even if they actually made 3 reverts in 24 hrs. This is obviously a not-so-subtle attempt by Offliner to manipulate the reviewing admins here with misleading rhetoric.
First this part: Before this, Radeksz had showed no interest in the article's subject. He had only made 1 edit, which also was a revert in support of Biophys: (for this edit, Radeksz was briefly blocked: )
This is a perfect example of what I said earlier – there was no coordination, in the sense of making edits that we would not have made otherwise, we just happened to agree with each other on a lot of stuff in the first place.
The proof of that is that I wasn’t even on the list. How did I come to edit this article? Jacob Peters’ sock, User:Kupredu. I noticed suspicious activity on various articles, thought that the involved user was a JP sock, Biophys thought the same thing, neither one of us quite knew how to file a SPI report, we talked about it (this was the first conversation I ever had with Biophys AFAIR), turned out we were right.
After that, I did what I always do after a I have a non-trivial interaction with another user, whether negative or positive – I look at their contributions list. I saw the stuff at Russian apartment bombings, went there, noticed that this guy Offliner (whom I never ran across) was up to no good and undid his edit-warring POV revert.
Oh and the “for this edit, Radeksz was briefly blocked” – how honest of Offliner to tell the whole story. Ok, folks, click on my block log. There you will very obviously see the following from Nakon, the admin who briefly blocked me:
“my apologies, the previous block was placed in error”
So Offliner is trying to pull another fast one by pretending that an accidental block that was made in error was a legitimate block.
As to my other edits on that article – there was no edit warring, there was disagreement. I undid an edit by an anon IP which removed huge chunks of text from the lede and reverted Ellol who was not even willing to discuss his changes at talk.
Re:Ethnocracy
Again, a single edit presented as “edit warring”. How did I come to edit there (i.e. remove a blatant attempt to make a POV POINT by insertion of irrelevant category)? I was looking at Digwuren’s contributions list. I don’t recall there ever being an email about this article. And yes, then, a week later, I reverted another attempt to insert completely irrelevant text of the “Estonia iz teh worz place on Ert” kind.
Re:Discrimination against ethnic minorities in Estonia (article doesn't exist anymore. For a reason)
Ah yes. On this one it DOES appear that the Soviet cabal managed to bait me into making TWO reverts in one day - obviously not MY fault. On an article that was later deleted/merged because of all the nonsense and POV pushing, courtesy of Offliner and PasswordUsername (note Ezhiki’s support for deletion). And what were my edits? Why, the removal of text cited to this fine gentleman who Offliner and PasswordUsername insisted was a reliable source. Some choice beliefs of Mr. Johan Bäckman are that Russian anti-Putin journalists had arranged their own murders (to make Putin look bad), that Estonia is an “apartheid” country and that Finland attacked the Soviet Union during the Winter War in order to build a Finish empire from Karelia to the Urals.
Re:Team members use coordinated action to keep copyvio images
Eh. This one was posted about on Poland Notice board on Wiki, and there was a huge discussion about it there. Ain’t got nothing to do with the list. Making up stuff again.
Re:Coordinated provocations against Deacon of Dnapetzim
Yup, another instance where the fact that some people have the gall to agree with each other is used as evidence of “coordination”. Again I wasn’t on the list at the time and neither were other people mentioned in this thread!!!! What does this have to do with this case?
Re:Coordinated (sic) provocations against PasswordUsername
Again, doesn’t involve me, but just got to point out that once again this supposed “coordination” involves one (1), single, unique, solitary, lone, uno, editor, Vecrumba, who apparently is a genius at coordinating with himself.
Re:Members of the secret email list protect each other at admin noticeboards
First, Offliner, Colchicum wasn’t on any list. But the fact that you include it does nicely illustrate that you’re just trying to smear anyone who’s ever disagreed with you here.
I’m in here:
2009-05-21. Digwuren reported to AN/I. Defending Digwuren: Martintg, Colchicum, Radeksz, Vecrumba, Piotrus
Again, before I was on the list (I think). At any rate, I didn’t see crap about it on the list. I got involved in that discussion because PasswordUsername brought up the Jacob Peters sock I had reported earlier.
Obviously the fact that Offliner, PasswordUsername, Russavia and the rest always agree with each other (hey! We at least actually disagree with each other on many things) is proof that their edits, votes and comments on Misplaced Pages pagers have been coordinated.
Re:Members of the secret email list appear to be involved in stealth canvassing of votes
See my responses to PasswordUsername and Russavia. If there was a page where one could find out about ongoing Eastern European AfDs that’d be much better.
Comment on AfD for Communist Genocide – please look at how much discussion took place on that one. This very obviously wasn’t people showing up to blindly vote “Keep” (or “Delete”) but rather people who really thought about this issue and had some serious opinions, with or without any mailing list. Please also note that there was plenty of canvassing going on for the “Delete” side. Also I count 14 Keeps by users not on the mailing list and 21 Deletes by users not involved in this case which is +7 for Deletes but still pretty clear “no consensus”.
Re:Piotrus has abused his admin status
Spurious stuff. Piotrus might have said “I would’ve unblocked you” (to Biophys) but then he did no such thing. Likewise if I said to Offliner “I might give you a million dollars” that doesn’t mean that all of sudden I owe him a million bucks. Other than that it's just Piotrus having the temerity to express his opinion.
A lot of this “evidence” stuff is like that – somebody on the list says something in frustration, or it’s pulled out of context, or said in half-jest, nobody does anything wrong but boom! they’re guilty because somebody says so.
Re:Martintg
Again, has nothing to do with me but just wanted to note another instance where Offliner is bringing evidence of a single person coordinating with himself.
Re: Skapperod
calling a "living a lawyer" a Nazi (never happened) accusation - but Skap did try to hide that this living lawyer was a non RS Holocaust denier
At the moment, due to lack of time I will only respond to one aspect of the "evidence" presented by Skapperod, the piece that concerns me directly. It revolves around the use of Heinz Nawratil as a source in the Expulsions of Germans article and his credibility.
Long story short: Nawratil is a writer associated with the extreme right wing in Germany and Holocaust denial, who also publishes inflated statistics in regard to the casualties during the Expulsions. Some of these statistics have been picked up by *some* German politicians (such as Erika Steinbach) as a means of populist rabble-rousing. Skapperod - who obviously speaks German and is very much more familiar with the German political scene and, apparently, the academic literature on this topic, basically tried to pretend and "play dumb" as to the nature of Nawratil as a source. I challenged it, based on RS and Nawratil's own publications in Holocaust denial journals. Skapperod kept playing dumb on this and pretending there was nothing wrong with Nawratil and asking me for sources - knowing that most relevant sources were going to be in German and hence hard to access to non-German speakers such as myself. At that point I actually went and looked for German language sources, using Babelfish and Google translator and asking other users for help (including Molobo). And sure enough, it turns out there was plenty of information as to the fact that Nawratil is 1) associated with the extreme right wing in Germany and 2) writes for Holocaust denying journals. Of course, under any reasonable assumption of good faith, Skapperod, who has way way way more access to German language sources and way way more knowledge of the relevant German language literature than myself or any other non-German speaker, should've been upfront about this rather than cynically trying to pretend that Nawratil was non problematic.
Synopsis of the conflict; or note the blatant misrepresentation
"Molobo states (sorry to quote this again):
Concealing identity of right wing extremist writing for Holocaust Revisionism/Denial journal ?
Here Note words „A booksearch has not turned out any matches of the subject's name and right-wing exremism”
Follow up research by others revealed books and publications showing that the person in question published in Holocaust Revisionism/Denial journal, and is mentioned as far right-wing activist ."
Skapperod responds:
"# Re "Concealing identity...": calling a living lawyer a Nazi in mainspace w/o RS backing that up is a no-go, and I was not the only one who thought so "
- First compare what Molobo says to what Skapperod pretends he says. Nobody ever called Nawratil, (a living lawyer) a Nazi in mainspace. It was merely noted that Nawratil was associated with the extreme right in Germany and that he published in the major Holocaust denial journal. Whether or not that makes him a Nazi can be left up to the reader to judge.
- Second, compare what Skapperod says with what actually happened. Specifically the part where Skapperod says "in mainspace w/o RS backing" - there was a great amount of RS backing on this!!! [http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard&oldid=311225801 (last version before archiving). This is Skapperod thinking that if he lies in a different forum the lie won't get noticed because, again, reviewers and readers won't take the trouble to actually check.
- Third, note that the diff offered by Skapperod is merely an admin doing the routine work of protecting the page because there is a conflict going, NOT anyone actually agreeing with Skapperod. And Skapperod IS willfully and purposefully misrepresenting this diff as "I was not the only one who thought so".
Well here's the diffs, that Skapperod doesn't bother to provide which show pretty unequivocally that in fact, Nawratil is "associated with the extreme right wing" and that he publishes in a Holocaust denial journal:
on the talk page, take 2 - please note that the discussion from BLP/N was moved to the talk page on the advice of Rd232 who thought it was significant enough so that it shouldn't be lost to BLP archives.
and here is Nawratil's article in the Journal of Historical Review (whose "subject is primarily Holocaust denial") published by the Institute for Historical Review (Critics have accused it of being an antisemitic "pseudo-scholarly body" with links to neo-Nazi organizations, and assert that its primary focus is denying key facts of Nazism and the genocide of Jews and others. It has been described as the "world's leading Holocaust denial organization.)
Of course any of this - particularly Nawratil's article in JHR - was readily available for anyone with ten seconds to do a google search yet, we have Skapperod claiming that:
calling a living lawyer a Nazi in mainspace
- nope, didnt' happen. He was said to be associated with the extreme right wing in Germany and to have published in Holocaust denial journals.
w/o RS backing that up is a no-go
- uh, no, there was a mass of reliable sources provided for the claim. And these sources could've been found sooner and easier by Skapperod if s/he wasn't pretending here.
"and I was not the only one who thought so"
- no, you were the only one who "thought" (pretended) so. The admin who protected the page was carrying out routine work and in no way agreed with you on this. Do you want to go and ask him?
This is more of the "lie my ass off and hope the admins are too busy to follow the diffs" (and don't provide the diffs to make it easier for them) strategy that has become way way too prevalent on this case (and in general on Misplaced Pages, as unscrupulous editors have realized that the admins are under a heavy workload).
For what it's worth, I don't think that Skapperod is a Nazi him/herself. I DO think - and this is a personal opinion, not a personal attack, and I think we're at a point where we can speak honestly about how we see things - that s/he is a German nationalist, who is cynical enough to be willing to make use of Nazi and other extreme right wing sources when those support the POV s/he is trying to push. So we get this "what Holocaust denial Journal???" "what extreme right wing???" playing dumb in the face of multiple reliable sources and consensus to the contrary.
Quick note on both Skapperod and Offliner
While I'm on the subject. After I edited some article that Offliner regards as his "OWN", all of sudden he showed up at the Heinz Nawratil and made a completely spurious revert even though he has never edited that article before, nor shown any interest in the subject - specifically Offliner removed any mentioned that Nawratil has written for a Holocaust denial journal (hmmm... makes you think about this "anti-fascist" line that Offliner and PU are cloaking themselves in). Here is my inquiry to him about why he did this: . His response was about as well phrased instance of weaseling as you can get (props for eloquence):
I'm looking for new articles where to edit. However, that edit may have been a mistake. I'll look into it.
So Offliner, just keep in mind that every edit I made on some article which I hadn't previously edited was just because "I was looking for new articles where to edit".
Of course he never "looked into it" and never "self-reverted" per my request.
It's hard to see this edit as anything but a Warning: If you disagree with me on articles that are MINE, I will mess around on articles you edit, so stay away kind of threat.
And if you think this kind of thing doesn't happen regularly because we're all AGF here then you should go and snuggle with your care bear rather then edit Wiki.
Re Skäpperöd false and irrelevant accusations of socking
Re: "Sock of Radeksz proxied for blocked Molobo at Wikimedia Commons"
1) What does what happens on Commons have to do with any of this? 2) At the time I was traveling, not checking my list email but occasionally checking Wiki. I didn’t see anything about the false inflammatory stuff Matthead put as a caption to the picture until after I had already made the change at commons. 3) I edit Commons once in a blue moon and yes, as a result I often forget to sign in. I'll be happy to address that issue - at Commons, not here.
Re: "Radeksz proxied for blocked Molobo"
Per Misplaced Pages policy Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them.
The edits I made with Molobo's advice, I confirmed independently - I checked sources, rewrote text and I certainly had independent reasons for making them; I thought you were/are engaged in a long standing campaign to twist the relevant article with German Nationalist POV.
Can you show how the changes I made are not verifiable or that I didn't have independent reasons for making them?
Quick response to MK
(Ignoring the fact that MK is violating clearly set out rules on how presentation of Evidence should be conducted)
This one's easy. So supposedly a conspiracy existed in 2007. Ok folks. Click on my user talk. Once there click on "user contributions" in the sidebar. Once there, go all the way down to "Articles created". Once on that page click "Edit summary counter" and then enter my username in the provided box. Click on "Submit Query".
Or, if you're too lazy to do all that by yourself, just see this
Then look at my contributions in 2007 and 2008. Do you see any? Ok, you might see some. Like two of them. If you really feel like doing some serious sleuthing you can go back and check my edit history. As it turns out those contributions are almost all on topics related to Economics, not Eastern Europe.
So, according to MK, I was apparently involved in coordinating my edits in 2007 and 2008 - without actually making edits on Misplaced Pages!!!
This is just another example of the insane behavior that this case has brought out in many users. MK is just another extremist POV pusher (see the edit history for Kazimieras Garšva , and Vilnija ) who was prevented from inserting inflammatory POV text based on extremist sources into some articles, developed a grudge and has now shown up to try and milk this case for all he can by making ridiculous accusations by deliberately misrepresenting and misinterpreting meaning of things which were said in private and which show nothing like what he claims.
While I'm at it I might as well relate my first ever encounter with MK. It was when he reported me for supposed edit warring (the report was eventually dismissed with admins telling him to quit wasting people's time). I never edited with him before. Never saw him before. Had no idea who he was. The only reason he reported me was simply because he realized my nationality and ... well, let's just say that MK reports *only* Polish editors, whether he knows them or not.
Full response to MK
First I want to note the background here. User MK is not really involved in this ArbCom case but has still chosen to show up and present evidence. Why? Simple. User MK doesn't edit much, but what he does a lot of is "go after" Polish editors simply because they're Polish. The back story here is that in and around January 2007 MK tried to insert highly POV text into the article on the Polish Home Army, which he attempted to back by non-reliable sources , from the extremist ultra-nationalist organization Vilnija and its president Kazimieras Garšva. Unsurprisingly, his POV text and extremist sources were rejected. He then turned to doing what extremist POV pushers usually do, since they can't win an argument based on reliable sources: he began stalking his content opponents and trying to "eliminate" them from Misplaced Pages so that there wouldn't be anyone left to oppose his editing.
As a result MK has regularly been filing AE and 3RR reports on various Polish editors and Polish editors only, most if not all of which have been dismissed for being frivolous, in an attempt to eliminate them. This in fact was how I got to "know" MK - my first ever encounter with this editor was when he filed a spurious 3RR report on me, even though I've never edited with him nor did I ever have any interaction with him. He came out of the blue and filed a report simply because he realized what my nationality was. Yes, people on Misplaced Pages do act this way all the time.
So I'm not surprised that MK has shown up at the present case and has made a pathetic attempt to link up some imagined wrongs from 2007 with the present case, as well as to try and one more time have a go at Polish editors. I wouldn't expect anything else from him.
In answer to specific charges, which may or may not concern me directly:
General nature of MK's "evidence"
Before getting down to individual smears I want to note that a quick look over the evidence should convince anyone unbiased that this "evidence" consists mostly of inflated language and false charges - but when you click on the actual diffs or links provided, or look at what was actually said, you don't see the things that MK actually alleges.
For example, MK dramatically entitles one of his section "Cabal mailing list confessions" - except there's no confessions there. There ain't much in there in fact.
Another example, MK dramatically accuses me of "harassing" certain editors - when in fact what I did was state that I was either having disagreements with some editors or that I planned on filing a report against particularly disruptive and uncivil editors. Filing reports against disruptive users is not harassment, it's how Misplaced Pages works - and I hasten to add that unlike MK's many reports (filed against only Polish editors), most reports I filed were found to be legit by the appropriate admins.
2007
MK says "Polish cabal existed in 2007 already" and offers as "evidence" the fact that Piotrus, Tymek and Darwinek occasionally edited the same articles back then.
- Darwinek wasn't even on a mailing list - he was simply another Polish editor that MK had disagreements with, tried to 'eliminate' and couldn't. So he's having a second try now.
- There's only 2 (TWO!) edits there by Tymek!!! - if that is "coordination" or cabalism then I'm a monkey's uncle. This is about as weak as evidence can get - when all you can dredge up is two isolated edits to accuse a user of conspiracy (to commit those two awful edits, right?)
Please also note that in each of these disputes, on the merits of the case and on the evidence of actual reliable sources it was Piotrus and Darwinek who was right. Later Darwinek was himself chased off by constant harassment, much as an attempt is being made now with respect to other Polish editors.
A similar compilation of diffs could be constructed which would "show" (not really, but I'm not the one making this false accusations, MK is) that User MK, along with User:Lokyz and User:Dr. Dan, User:Novickas and occasionally Deacon (sometimes in his previous incarnation as Calgacus) have also been members of some "cabal" since 2007, if not earlier.
"Confessions"? - Gimme a break
This is a simple attempt at drama mongering. There's no confessions here.
It's pretty obvious that in reference to Darwinek, Piotrus means that Darwinek used to be active in editing Polish articles but is no longer - after being chased off by a long campaign of harassment. Also I don't understand what the fact that Piotrus says he trust Darwinek is supposed to prove. Piotrus can trust or not trust whomever he wants.
As to my own "confessions"
Yes, I did state that for a first time in the long time there were more productive, neutral editors in Eastern European topics then the usual extremist POV pushers who plague the topic area.
Yes, I did say that we were "informally organized". Let me stress that word informally - which means in fact that prior to the list there was no off Wiki communication between the various people. What there was simply the fact that people with similar interest tend to edit similar articles. And when faced with the pushing of extremist POV, these people are all likely to oppose it, even if they never say a word to each other. If anything this is proof of the opposite point MK wishes to make.
Camera
Well... this one's a bit strange ... because ... it actually comes from here: , i.e. from a temp page created by Offliner.
So MK and Offliner are basically coordinating in presenting their evidence (I have no idea if this "informal" or "formal" coordination). Nice - you know, it would help if people who make accusations didn't actually commit the acts they accuse others of.
Anyway. This is another pile of junk. And I believe that "Amount of communication reviled" is a slip.
The mailing list was nothing like CAMERA. The first obvious difference is that in our cases, we had 17 (SEVENTEEN!) established, constructive, independent editors with about a quarter of a million in edits all together, as well as countless created articles, DYKs, and many GAs and FAs, and a long history of commitment to the project and its goals. Somehow nobody has bothered to ask why 17 well established editors felt it necessary to form an off-Wiki list where they could say what they really think and express themselves frankly. Gee, it couldn't be because of people like MK who populate Eastern European topics and who will seize on any word or innocent revert to file a case against you at AE? Or it couldn't be because when a well respected editor is confronted with obvious POV pushing based on extremist unreliable sources (including but not limited to genuine Nazi sources) and asks for help from admins or for a 3O or a RfC that help isn't provided and the request itself may get the editor in trouble? Nah. That's crazy. (Not going to bother pointing out the multinational nature of the list - again, this isn't a "nationalist dispute", it's a dispute between editors who agree with the goals of the Misplaced Pages projects and those who want to push extremist ideology and POV)
In contrast the purpose of CAMERA, AFAIK was to recruit new editors to really push POV.
Other than that the table just repeats the false accusations made elsewhere.
In the "Goals" section:
- No, our purpose was to enforce NPOV and keep extremism from the relevant articles. Look at our opponents and the sources they try to use.
- Ok - I'll admit there was some coordinated reverting done in order to try and get at #1. Most of it was due to a simple factor: a lot of us, myself included, tried to follow 1RR in our editing whereas our opponents had no such compunction. Unfortunately, the way that 3RR is set up, a person who follows 1RR is defenseless in the face of a persistent and unscrupulous POV pusher. This is as bad as it gets.
- Nobody was "harassed" or "driven out". Yes, some members of the list filed some reports on particularly disruptive users - users who violated 3RR or civility standards. Most of these reports were judged - on their merits - to be legit by the closing administrator. There's nothing wrong with this and in fact this kind of action is needed. Other than that this probably refers to the fact that someone somewhere got reverted (i.e. "harassed"). I'm sorry but if you're making unsourced POV edits or ones backed by unreliable sources, then as Jimbo himself said, your ass should be reverted. That ain't harassment, that's Misplaced Pages.
- "meat puppetry and sock puppetry in order to win content battles" - quite simply, didn't happen. There was some talk of how a hypothetical sock puppetting would work but this was done precisely to understand how other users may be sockpuppeting (which they are - I repeat my previous suggestion, Check User everybody involved in this case and everybody who felt it appropriate to present evidence. You'll find some socks. Not on our side though).
- "gaining CheckUser status" - again, simple nonsense. I would like to proudly report the total number of list members who acquired CheckUser status: 0. Ok, let's try this again. I would likely to proudly report the total number of list members who just applied for CheckUser status: 0. Hmmm. Interesting. Could it be that this charge is completely spurious? There was some idle talk along the lines of "wouldn't it be nice if I had me some CU and could catch all these socks that I'm 100% are out there causing trouble". And that's about it, and come on, you know every editor thinks something like that at some point.
The "Used methods" section merely repeats the false accusations that are mis-documented elsewhere. It's another attempt to make things look bad simply by repeating the same lies many times. Because you know what happens when lies are repeated enough times.
My "Editorial profile"
- I have a single block on my record (the other two are admin mistakes as is easily seen from the summaries) for an argument I had with User:Malik Shabazz (and there was no incivility involved). It was a mistake on my part, I lost my cool and reverted one too many times: here is the report and note that I didn't even defend myself. Since then I've had no further arguments with Malik and in fact we've been on friendly terms. If anything this shows that, unlike MK, I don't hold grudges. And neither does Malik, who has commented on the present case here and against Piotrus' proposed topic ban.
Now, if MK was being at all honest, he'd present my "Editorial profile" with something like "A single block for edit warring one year ago". But rather he tries to create the false impression that my block record is full of edit warring violations and incivility. This kind of attempts at manipulating the ArbCom say more about MK's character then anything about me.
- "Placed on discretionary sanctions" - I'm on discretionary sanctions simply because all of Eastern European Topics is on discretionary sanctions, including MK (whether he knows it or not).
Again, if MK was being at all honest he'd point out that fact.
- And yes, I was "Russavia-topic-banned" (not "Russia") because I pointed out that Russavia was once again violating his block and topic ban.
My "stealth"
- Yes, I did propose a merger on "Prussian estates" . And yes, I might have even said something about it on the list, mostly because after 3 months hardly anyone commented. And yes, the Preußischer Landtag article is a straight up POV fork created by Matthead. But whoa! What's this - the Preußischer Landtag article still exists and has not been merged into Prussian Estates. How can this be?!? Didn't the cabal take care of it??? Could it... could it... could it... be that I was still hoping that other, uninvolved editors would finally comment on this proposed merger? Insane.
This kind of frivolous "evidence" is basically all that MK's (and a few others) section consists of.
- "Piotrus stealth canvassing for support on ... Battle of Vilnius (1655) (20090404-0611 and 20090406-1831) ... Result: Radeksz arrives to support Piotrus" I wasn't even on no freakin' list at the time!!!!. I "arrived" at the article because it was on my freakin' watchlist, like almost all articles having to do with Polish and Lithuanian history. Every single Polish editor as well as every single Lithuanian editor + a couple of "allies" (alliance based on shared extremism, not nationality) was there as well. It would be more suspicious had I NOT been there.
Typical attempt at smearing and pleas for "ban my content opponents because they disagree with me!"
- "Discrimination of ethnic minorities in Estonia" - I've already addressed this in my section on PasswordUsername/Anti-Nationalist . The article was deleted for a good reason. Such notorious Cabal members like User:Ezhiki voted for deletion. In fact, the only ones voting keep were pretty much the "regulars": Offliner and PasswordUsername.
I've likewise already addressed the rest of PasswordUsername's "evidence".
- And then MK gives us this "After Radek was placed on editing restriction, Radek used cabal mailing list to prepare an "appeal" questioning Thatcher's verdict"
Oh noes!!!! Radek wrote an appeal!!! How dare he??? And then he asked others for advice??? Horrible.
Ok. At this point some strong language might be in order. So what??? I wrote an appeal. I asked others about my wording. They gave some advice. I ignored it and posted it pretty much as I had written it. (I decided against the strong language in the end)
Now, we're allowed to appeal rulings we feel are unjust or unfair. We're also allowed to ask for advice in how to file an appeal and how to word it. In fact, in addition to asking list members for advice, I also asked several administrators, like MBisanz for advice as well.
What exactly is MK's problem here? Or is this just more "throw anything you can think of at them and hopefully something will stick" tactic.
Re: "Harassing"
- Deacon. Deacon has been going around talking about mud-hut dwelling Poles (Calgacus is Deacon's previous incarnation), referring to edits by Polish editors as "Polish nationalist masturbation" (scroll down)(again, pre-Deacon Calgacus - no wonder he changed his account before going up for adminship) or making comments about Polish editors like ""...and the rest of the bee-swarm that buzz in whenever a fellow "patriotic" tendie is in trouble." or hurling other insults (here he makes a direct personal attack by calling me "a one-purpose nationalist account" (at bottom) which under the most charitable interpretation, means that Deacon simply hasn't bothered to look at my contributions ) based on their nationality for years and crap has been done about it.Probably - in all honesty - because Deacon has his adminship to protect him. If it was a regular user who made such comments for so long, they would've been blocked or at least topic banned eons ago. But Deacon got away with it. Ok but that's not even the worst of it. The worst of it is, that while going around and making highly offensive ethnic attacks, Deacon also has tried to portray himself as "uninvolved" in Eastern European disputes! Seriously. That takes some gall. That is why I filed this report after Deacon commenced with "harassment" (hey, everybody's using that word) of yet another Polish editor. And again, the report was judged to have merit by completely competent and uninvolved administrators.
Having said all that, I admit that trying to irritate him on purpose was a stupid idea and I'm actually ready to apologize for that one to Deacon personally. Deacon, I apologize. But that doesn't change the context here - Deacon's actions in regard to Polish editors as a group - in which I conceived this stupid idea.
- Sciurinæ. Well, I'm not surprised that MK brings up Sciurinæ since Sciurinæ pretty much does what MK does. File spurious reports on Polish editors only (basically, if you want to know what real stalking and harassment looks like check out all the past reports filed by these two users). MK's specific allegation false, er, falls, in the "FOLLOW THE PROVIDED DIFF FOLKS!" category. I.e. what he pretends is in there, ain't in there.
Specifically, if you look at the actual comments I made at the relevant report you'll see that I didn't actually present any "dirt" (from the list or off of it). I commented on the particulars of that particular case and that's it. Basically Sciurinæ was trying to game the report by filing false information and I just pointed that out.
At some point I was in fact considering filing an RfC on Sciurinæ - since he really doesn't do anything on EE topics except file spurious reports on Polish editors and I just got completely disgusted and fed up with this kind of racist behavior. So that's why I asked for "dirt" - i.e. past diffs which I might not be aware of, in additions to the ones I already found. In any event, I never got around to filing that RfC due to lack of time in real life. It wouldn't be a bad idea though.
- Skäpperöd. Nope, no "harassment" here either. Here is the full story: Skäpperöd was edit warring on the article on the Polish city of Szczecin, inserting stuff from untraceable German sources about how it was a "German town" (note that prior to this the article had been stable for almost a year). I filed a 3RR report on him after he made his 4th revert. His buddies showed up and made a lot of drama and Skapperod promised to stay away from the article "until Friday" (like two days) - as a result WMC closed the case with the commentary "Bored". As soon as Friday was over Skapperod resumed the edit warring almost immediately , , , , and here for the relevant history and the sheer number of edits made by Skapperod . Hence my comment that Skapperod weaseled out of a 3RR block and quickly resumed edit warring. What I said in the message is to follow 1RR and that Skapperod would probably break 3RR again (he didn't, he came close) and to discuss edits on talk page. Again, no "harassment" or coordination. Just standing up to a disruptive POV pusher.
- Smith2005 and Matthead. Already replied to some of this in my reply to Offliner (where MK seems to have gotten his "evidence" from).
This is MK complaining about folks reporting two extremely uncivil users and making stuff up as he goes along.
User:Smith2006 was previously warned for incivility and for edit warring. In May or so he began making edits at several articles with very offensive edit summaries and talk page discussion. This led to this AE report: . Gee, I wonder why MK didn't provide a link to the actual report? Maybe because then it'd become obvious how incivil the user he's defending actually was? Like using edit summaries which describe other editor's edits as "Stalinist Polish annexationist propaganda" or "Polish spelling in fact=Polish POV chauvinism".
There were 3 (THREE!) uninvolved admins who agreed with the report and as a result Smith2005 was placed on notice (since he might not have been aware of discretionary sanctions). At that point User:Matthead showed up and began trolling the already closed case, which earned him a stiff rebuke from Sandstein. Matthead has a (real - not imagined) history of edit warring (including 6 reverts in under 10 hours) and incivility . He also has a tendency to show up on various cases and hurl abuse, profanity and insults at Polish editors which tends to land him into trouble.
Anyway, after being placed on notice, Smith didn't slow down. He kept making insults, and ethnically motivated personal attack. If anything these got worse and worse. It's at this point that I said that a "block can be arranged" - meaning simply, that I was going to file a report on him for his continued incivility. Which I did, here (again, MK fails to provide a link to the report - since it might actually make it seem like this was a completely legit complaint).
Yes, I also said that I hoped Matthead was gonna show up and do his usual shtick of throwing insults at editors and admins and pick up a well deserved block, since that's what he usually does. He didn't and I commend him for not doing so. Anyway, that's really irrelevant.
Ok, so then Smith, after being put on notice, amplifies his incivility and as a result gets topic banned. He immediately violates his topic ban which gets him a 48 hour block . After the 48 hours expire, he goes right back to violating his topic ban, offensive edit summary and all. So, Jacurek points it out to Sandstein who then blocks Smith until December.
Ok. 1000$ question - who's the villain here? The guy who made offensive, ethnically motivated personal attacks, who then got warned, didn't heed the warning, got topic banned, violated the topic ban, got blocked for a short period, returned, and continued to violate his topic ban, offensive comments and all and as a result got a 6 month block... or the people who found this behavior objectionable? Apparently, MK thinks he knows the answer.
Matthead "If the Nazis were so bad...."
Oy, this one's hard to respond to because there's so many different lies piled up on top of each other.
Ok, it has to do with this little comment made by Matthead at Expulsion of Germans after World War II
What the hey, I'll quote the relevant part: If the Nazis were so bad, why did they destroy the relatively young Warsaw after the Uprising of 1944, but not other, much older cities and buildings with cultural importance to Poles? Why are Wawel Castle and the cathedrals in Posen and Gnesen still standing, after 6 years of German occupation? Systematically destroying cities is what Allies have done with their bombing to all German cities, well before 1944, and to non-German cities, too. Besides, in 1945, the Poles had already over 600 years of experience with expulsion of Germans, by open violence, or by more subtle methods. And well before WW2 or Hitler, Poles have clearly expressed their desire to get rid of Germans within their reach, and to "recover" German and Czech lands, simply because these areas had temporarily been occupied by one of their ancestors almost a millennium earlier.
So, first of all, whenever somebody starts their rant with "If the Nazis were so bad..." (as in "they weren't all that bad) you know you're going to get trouble. Matthead point(s) appear to be that 1) Poles should be thankful that the Nazis destroyed only Warsaw and not other Polish cities, that 2) Allied bombing of German cities was way worse then what the Nazis did and 3) It's really the Poles that've been oppressing the Germans for the past 600 years, things like World War II or the Partitions of Poland not withstanding.
Well, call me crazy but it just seems possible to me that somebody, particularly those of us who think that 'yes, the Nazis were that bad', might take offense at these remarks.
Now - as to MK's accusations. The comment was made at the "Expulsions of Germans" article which I had been editing for like the previous 3 months. I didn't need anyone to point it out to me. So it wasn't "Molobo's evidence", as MK lies, it was a publicly available comment made by Matthead for all to see.
I'm not sure how Piotrus' suggestion to avoid AE and ask Sandstein about is in any way evidence of wrong doing or plotting. He's just making a suggestion.
Anyway. I brought it up on Sandstein's page. At this point MK tries to get in more kicks at Polish editors, by calling Loosemark, who is uninvolved in this case and wasn't ever on the list, my "associate". Basically, another lie by MK to try and smear people he disagrees with. What probably happened was ... the strangest thing of all - Loosmark saw Matthead's comment at the article he had also been editing, was also offended by it and decided to comment. That's what offensive comments do, they make people take offense.
Now, the other lie by MK. What Sandstein actually said was something different - if considered as a whole. Yes, he did say what MK quotes him with (for my part, I understand that the comments made by Matthead about Nazis being not so bad may come of as "trivial" to some but personally I still find them very offensive) but that's taken out of context. Sandstein also said "Matthead, your comment about "if the Nazis were so bad" was ill-phrased at best; you should understand that it can cause offence and apologize for it." (Matthead, AFAIK, never apologized).
In the end nothing happened to Matthead. Actually, not much happened at all, except a discussion at an administrator's page. What is this evidence supposed to show? "Harassment"? Sure, if complaining about an editor saying "If the Nazis were so bad..." etc. is harassment. But it's not. Like the rest, this is another piece of junk evidence based on lies and misrepresentations from MK.
Summary wrt to MK
The scary thing is that this "evidence" can actually easily be seen for what it is - junk. But MK is hoping that the people looking at it will be too busy too check every diff and every mail and so will take his word as truth (hey, I just wasted a good seven hours+ just responding to it - and I knew where to look). It's an attempt to cynically exploit the time intensive nature of the investigation.
(and grrrrr... after seeing how late it is - that's seven hours that I planned on using to get work done, including reffing some new DYKable articles I just created)