Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Apteva

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Apteva (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.

See also Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Apteva 2.

Statement of the dispute

Apteva has been on a persistent anti-en-dash (and anti-WP:Manual of Style) campaign since September 2012. Although he has failed to gain consensus at every requested move, move review, and other venue where he has been pushing his theory that the MOS is in error about en dashes, he keeps saying that the edit warring will continue. Several of us have told him that we interpret that as a threat, but he persists. This has been a disruptive 2+ months, and shows no sign of letting up.

Desired outcome

We desire that Apteva stop the anti-en-dash and anti-MOS behaviors; no new RMs to remove en dashes from titles; no new move reviews to review RMs that close against his theories about en dashes; no new proposals at the MOS to challenge or change the consensus about en dashes; limited, as opposed to dominating, comments in RMs that others initiate about dashes, about the applicability of the MOS in styling in titles, and related topics. Generally, Apteva should learn to get the point, respect consensus, and work collaboratively instead of "my way or the highway".

Description

Since September 24, Apteva has been pushing theories that proper names never have en dashes, e.g. that airport names never have en dashes, that comet names never have en dashes, etc., and that MOS:DASH is in error encouraging usage of the en dash, e.g. in its examples of Comet Hale–Bopp and Mexican–American War, and further that the MOS has no role in styling article titles.

Evidence of disputed behavior

He started by dominating the RFC discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Airports (contributors summary) and at the WT:MOS (contributors summary), especially in his Three corrections section, in each case posting more times than the next two or three contributors combined. This was exasperating. He finally swore off posting at WT:MOS for a while, but this did not last, and he continues to post attempts at rebutting those who disagree with him.

At many points along the way, he would collapse (hide) sections that expressed the views of others, especially when they tried to tell him he was being disruptive. Here and here are examples (in the latter one, he recommended that I file an RFC/U about him, which I'm finally getting to). He changed comments of others, like my complaint about him here. It is notable that another tendentious editor was recently blocked for such "censorship by {{collapse}}" behavior during a similarly singleminded style campaign (against diacritics), at WT:Biographies of living persons#diacriticsagain.

Dicklyon had extensive discussions at Apteva's talk page version of 27 Oct. about Apteva's behavior and theories. Apteva had asserted incivility about some discussions at MOS, but never explained what he meant, which seemed to be that people were not letting him have his way. In the middle of October, he filed complaints at WP:AE about Dicklyon and Neotarf there, and then withdrew them when they got no traction. He copied one of my notices about his AE complaint to AN/I, filing a complaint against himself, essentially, and the followed it up with a complaint about JHunterJ that ended up turning around and biting him for his own hackish wiki-lawyering. Not all of this was about en dashes, but it was all bound up in his anti-MOS campaign.

On 14 November he made several controversial moves to remove en dashes from article titles; these were in airport names, some of them articles Dicklyon had previously moved to have en dashes in this, per MOS guidance, and where Apteva knew he had no support from other editors: , , , and more.

He has started and lost numerous Requested moves discussions to remove en dashes from titles; after losing, he took them to move review to try to get the closes overturned. See in particular both of the October 2012 move reviews and 4 of the November move reviews.

He has pretty much exhausted all possible forum-shopping, and has found essentially zero support among other editors for his idiosyncratic theories (with the exception of Enric Naval on Comet Hale–Bopp for the theory that the IAU should set our style). Instead of accepting the outcome, he remains defiant about the MOS being in error; see this section.

After losing the RMs and MRVs, he started a "my way or the highway" section at WT:MOS#Ending the endash/hyphen warring, and in that section has continued to assert that the MOS is in error and that edit warring over en dashes in titles will continue until it is "fixed". Several editors have told him that comes across as a threat, yet he re-asserts it here.

Late update: behavior after start of RFC/U

After this RFC/U started, Apteva displayed continuing defiant "my way or the highway" behavior. First, in his comments on this page (which were later moved to the talk page): , , , , . It is not a problem that he holds these opinions, but the fact that he continues to assert them as fact, as evidence of errors in WP that need to be fixed, even while all other editors are trying to coach him to back off, is a clear sign of the intention of continuing disruption that this RFC/U is intended to put a halt to.

Here Apteva re-inserts the old "under discussion" tags into the MOS (Apteva's of Nov. 20 and Enric Naval's of Nov. 5), even though the discussion had gone nowhere and stopped after it was clear that the consensus was in favor of the MOS as currently worded.

Then today (Dec. 1, the day after this RFC/U started), he opened yet another RM, Talk:Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9#Requested move, to change an en dash to a hyphen in a comet title. Since I had previously warned him that doing so would prompt me (Dicklyon) to file an AN/I complaint against him, I went ahead and did that: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Apteva disruption.

Applicable policies and guidelines

{List the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}

Evidence of trying and failing 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 certifier Dicklyon

Started discussion on Apteva's talk page
Started another discussion on Apteva's talk page
Started another discussion on Apteva's talk page

Attempts by certifier SMcCandlish

Raised behavior issues with Apteva's WT:MOS re-re-re-proposal against en dashes
Responding to Apteva's post on my talk page about his behavior (discussion since refactored to User talk:Apteva#MOS)
Raised behaviorial issues with Apteva again at WT:MOS in response to his allegations of being "personally attacked" whenever someone disagrees with him

Other attempts

I have tried here to help Apteva see that continuing this particular campaign about dashes in proper names has reached the level of disruption. There is overwhelming consensus for the status quo in each of the move requests and various forums, talk pages, etc that this editor has used to make the case against the current style guide's advice on this matter, itself the result of extensive discussion and overwhelming consensus a little over a year ago. The editor's response to me was a restatement of the case and an absolutely mind-blowing claim that There is absolutely no consensus to use an endash. This is one of the clearest consensuses that I have seen in my time working on this project. If this editor can not see that, I think it is long past time that this editor refrained from dealing with style issues, both on the manual of style and on style-related move requests. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:04, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

Other users who endorse this summary

JHunterJ (talk) 12:20, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Tony (talk) 13:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC) (and I see that Apteva is reverting at MOS again ... ,sigh>). Tony (talk) 09:40, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Phil Bridger (talk) 17:05, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Response

This section is reserved for the use of the user whose conduct is disputed. Users writing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section, and the person writing this section should not write a view below. Anyone is welcome to endorse this or any other view, but no one except the editor(s) named in the dispute may change the summary here.

This is a pathetic attempt at tar and feathering that serves no purpose on Misplaced Pages. I see errors, and I fix them, plain and simple. If anyone disagrees, there are two possibilities. One, it does not matter, as both answers are right. Two, there is only one right answer, and only by open discussion can that right answer be found. There are other possibilities as well, but they are not relevant. The notion that there could be a right answer, but Misplaced Pages, an encyclopedia, rejects it, is of course laughable.

Users who endorse this summary:

Views

This section is for statements or opinions written by users not directly involved with this dispute, but who would like to add a view of the dispute. 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. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" or "Response") should not normally edit this section, except to endorse another person's view.

Outside view by JHunterJ

Note also the previous AN/I discussion which approached a topic ban for MOS and/or RMs for Apteva, which Apteva then voluntarily took on as a 30-day topic ban. The thirty days ended and Apteva's disruptive editing immediately resumed. Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive773#Apteva.

Users who endorse this summary:

JHunterJ (talk) 22:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
An indefinite topic ban is appropriate now. Binksternet (talk) 02:02, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Outside view by Kurtis

Coming here via Apteva's talk page after giving him some advice about his recently closed RfA, I initially felt disheartened to see that an RfC had been filed against him — at the time, I was under the impression that this step was premature. But then I actually read through the details provided, and I am now convinced that there is a serious and longstanding problem here.

Speaking only for myself, I don't put that much energy into following the Manuel of Style right down to the letter every time I edit an article. That's not to say it should just be ignored, but that it's unproductive to spend a copius amount of time arguing over style conventions rather than focusing on the really important things (i.e. factual accuracy, citing reliable sources, the scope of the article, etc). Minor stylistic issues should be resolved in short order by being aware of the academically accepted standards. With hyphens and dashes, it is as simple as knowing the conventional usage for each one.

I'll just focus on the standards that apply in this case. En dashes are almost always used for separating compounds which are not singular entities in themselves, such as the Roman–Persian Wars, the Paris–Montpellier route, and various other examples listed under the second category of MOS:ENDASH. There are some exceptions to this: specifically, attributive compound names which exist as a single entity are also separated using an en dash, not a hyphen; the Manuel of Style even lists Comet Hale–Bopp as an example of this.

Apteva is quite firm in his conviction that hyphens should be used instead of en dashes in the aforementioned circumstances. Not only does the Manuel of Style contradict his view, but so does every other source I could find. I'm not sure if he realizes that his campaign against the use of en dashes comes across as willful ignorance to everyone else observing his comments and behaviours, but there is no other term I could use to describe it.

As I see it, he now has two choices:

Acknowledge that his views are not widely accepted by the community, that they do not reflect standard English conventions involving the usage of dashes and hyphens, and that further pursuance of this matter is a complete waste of time and energy for all involved. In other words, he can just drop it.
He can keep at it, wind up being sanctioned, and any limitations applied to him will continue to escalate so long as he continues his pattern of tendentious editing.

Users who endorse this summary:

Outside view by Andy Dingley

If I'm writing for outside WP, I use hyphens rather than endashes. If I'm writing for WP, I use hyphens (I don't have an endash key). Others change it later, I don't mind. I understand that WP favours the endash in a way that I don't understand or particularly care about. If asked to choose, I'd even side with Apteva and would think personally that the hyphen is more appropriate.

However I also recognise that WP has chosen the endash, that consistency has some small virtue to it, but most of all that disruptive behaviour about the issue becomes its own problem. If hyphen vs. endash was a big deal, then the answer would be obvious and there'd be no disagreement. It's trivia. If you care, then I'm happy for you (but I'm not going to start worrying about this sort of typographic detail myself). I do care very much though about any editor who can grab onto this sort of, "The whole world is wrong and only I am right" attitude. That's plain old disruptive and it has gone on for far too long already. Nor does it seem at odds with Apteva's behaviour on other issues. An editor who can nominate themselves for RfA during such a dispute is seriously lacking in insight into their own behaviour.

I would thus support a formal and strong, but narrow, topic ban against dash or hyphen changes.

Disclaimer: I noticed this because of a recent personal dispute with Apteva acting in a way that I saw as "playing at being an admin" (see my talk:). It didn't impress me, but nor did it bias me against him, or have any relevance to this issue.

Users who endorse this summary:

Andy Dingley (talk) 00:12, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
The proposed topic ban might be reasonable. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Good idea for a narrow topic ban. Binksternet (talk) 01:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
--Andreas JN466 11:23, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Outside view by Mike Cline

I have always been uncomfortable with Apteva and the apparent motivations for participating in Misplaced Pages Title discussions, rather it be at WP:Title, WP:RM or WP:MRV. Our titling policy is a minefield of complex policy, conflicting guidelines, naming conventions and MOS. No one editor has the right answer. Yet Apteva thinks and acts as if his position is always the right position. Within the WP editor community, consensus and the willingness to achieve consensus is a paramount objective. I don’t think Apteva understands that. --Mike Cline (talk) 03:00, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

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