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Commentary moved from original request

I don't have time today to answer this properly. Not today. I note that one or two "arbitrators" are already starting to pass comment without waiting to read what I have to say. Paul Beardsell 20:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They seem to be acknowledging that there's a situation - not that you're in any way to blame. Snowspinner 20:38, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. My response may well be that there is no substantive case to answer. This arbitration request is just a resort to procedure by one who is unable to argue his points cogently in the article itself or on the article's talk page. Now, before anybody jumps into arbitration mode, I have NOT yet made my submission. So desist from commenting. Paul Beardsell 21:23, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please do not comment UNTIL I have made my submission. I am told I have a week. Is that correct? Paul Beardsell 21:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You're misinterpreting my response; I had intended to say that once the case has opened arbitrators will generally wait a week for the compilation of evidence before composing decisions. Votes on acceptance are not generally viewed to be restricted by time in any fashion. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:30, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

You are not being clear. When must I make my response by? Paul Beardsell 21:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is no set hard limit for a response; however filing a statement prior to, or during the first week of, a case opening is considered prudent. If you are going to file a statement, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:36, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

Wait for other party to go on holiday. File complaint. Paul Beardsell 22:35, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If someone could point me at the pages where the mediation to which Tkorrovi refers took place and to the findings of the mediator I would appreciate it. Thanks. Paul Beardsell 22:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe the reference is to User talk:Cimon avaro/ArtConsc mediation. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:37, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

Thanks. Paul Beardsell 22:49, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What does "accept" mean? That an arbitrator "accepts" that the case shall be dealt with here? Presumably not that the complaint is valid. So I have been reading up. The usual state of affairs is that those who performed the mediation would recommend (or not) a case for arbitration. Usually, says the docs on arbitration, not just any old case put forward by anybody is accepted. Mediation first. There was a mediation process in progress. Either it has been abandoned or a report has been made and I have not seen it. What has happened? Anyway: As you can see, my point is that there is no case for me to answer, so how can it be "accept"ed for arbitration? Paul Beardsell 01:30, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Accept" means the arbitrator has voted to open the case - four or more Accept votes by arbitrators will open the case. If, however, there is no evidence brought before the Arbitration Committee within approximately a week of the case opening, the case may summarily be closed. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 01:40, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

Important notice Paul Beardsell changed the text of this arbitration request submitted by me already second time -- the title , involved parties , previous time . I changed them back to the original . This arbitration request was submitted by me, and I change it only if the arbitrators ask me so, modification of other user's edits of Arbitration page are not allowed.Tkorrovi 23:58, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While we wait for a statement from Paul Beardsell, do the Arbitrators agree to create the Evidence page now? Maybe it would also be easier for Paul Beardsell to write his defence in such more organized form, and the Arbitrators may start to look at the evidence.Tkorrovi 19:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Someone here should be taking charge of the presentation of evidence and should be ruling on who decides the title of the case and what the title is allowed to be. Further, the template does not allow for a short, pithy title to be inserted in the list of parties; but perhaps it should. But why should the plaintiff decide it? Paul Beardsell 21:18, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have attempted to clarify what the nature of the complaint is. Tkorrovi has a little confusingly insisted the words "personal abuse" be included in the list of interested parties. If that is the nature of the complaint then how I have edited his article is not the point. Much of the original statement and of the subsequent statement commentary by him is just irrelevant - although I dispute that an examination of the underlying FACTS would show me in a bad light. Paul Beardsell 23:33, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

More commentary

My response to the comments by Paul Beardsell. Mainly, why I made an arbitration request now, and whether it is timely. The main reason why I made it now was that mediation on this case started in December, 2004, and did not produce results, I consider 3 months to be enough time to settle the dispute. That I submitted an arbitration request now, doesn't supposed to be a surprise to Paul Beardsell, because I said exactly that I shall do that when there are no other alternatives, during the mediation on the mediation page . And there clearly were no alternatives, because during the mediation Paul Beardsell not once said that he is going to change his behaviour any way, or is going to stop the personal attacks against me. Instead, he seemed to doubt in the necessity of mediation, and had no will to even start the mediation. And, in addition to that, he continued his personal attacks against me on the mediation page ("You remind me of that", with a picture of monkeys in a car, yelling to the passing pedestrians "Bastards! Homo Sapiens!", in the end of the page confirming that he meant me as a monkey "In the cartoon that is what the chatting pedestrians should do too"). This offense might been provoked by me ("I don't remember, I don't want to remember the bad things, I want to remember the good things. But now it was only as much important, that I found it necessary to archice the discussion and history, just as a precaution. But if one wants to see an offense by Paul Beardsell, now they will follow"), I did it only that time in order to find out whether Paul Beardsell's habbit to use personal attacks against me, anyhow changed, this was just the only thing I found possible to do in the condition of total unwillingness of Paul Beardsell to carry on the mediation.

Then my last hope of solving the case without arbitration was that maybe Paul Beardsell would finally change his aggressive ways of working with the article, at that time there was almost no activity on the article. Until recently, other people started to edit the article, and I found some changes necessary on definition (mainly, I didn't find it quite correct to state the AC is something which necessarily possess consciousness, it did not come clearly from the wording that it is also a study, and mentioning a myth of creating people by god immediately after it in my mind made the definition of the topic even more ambiguous). I made the changes, explaining them in the revision log . Then two days later, came Paul Beardsell, who edited the article last time in December 2, 2004, and there were more than 20 edits meanwhile. Paul Beardsell reverted my edit, mentioning only the Prometheus myth ("interesting and relevant historical point"), but made no comment on why he reverted the definition. I reverted the creation myth, asking him to explain, why the myth of God's creation of man is proper there, because it would fit there only when such myth in principle (no matter whether Greek, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Babylonian etc) fits in that place for some reason, and why this would be more proper than some examples of early fiction, or attempts to create some equivalent of conscious entity by man. Also, without having his comment, I tried to guess the reason why he reverted my change of the definition, now considering how he usually treated me, I was in difficult situation. I wanted to change the definition more in accordance with the original definition of AC by Igor Aleksander (likely the first definition of AC), so that it would then be more appropriate, when this was the reason why he reverted my change. But unfortunately the definition by Igor Aleksander was not concise enough for the purpose, the full definition also being in two sentences, but considering the reactions of Paul Beardsell before, as he criticised me earlier not only for writing in the article a sentence written by me, but even a sentence based on a scientific paper, and worded by me, in order to achieve some kind of co-operation with him in these conditions, and in order to making possible to edit the article in these conditions, I was forced to write the definition exactly how it was in the paper, though it unfortunately was not concise enough for that place, and better were re-worded. But Paul Beardsell reverted all my changes. He did not explain the necessity of including the creation myth, in spite that I asked, stating more shortly the same which he stated earlier ("ancient history"). And concerning the definition, he stated "remove non-grammatical, non-sequiter addition by Tkorrovi which is UNFIXABLE". The definition was exactly copied from the paper "Artificial Neuroconsciousness: An Update" by Igor Aleksander, Professor of Neural Systems Engineering in Imperial College, London, and a former prorector of that college . Maybe the best description of this paper is the BibTeX entry , it was submitted to "International Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks" in 1995 (IWANN '95), as it was an accepted paper of the conference , and therefore it is considered peer-reviewed (in science the papers accepted by the organizers of the conference are reviewed before the acceptance, and therefore are considered to be peer-reviewed). If Paul Beardsell thinks that what Igor Aleksander writes is non-grammatical, then either he found something which people who publish the articles by Igor Aleksander did not find, or he has some different understanding of the grammar. As usual, he did not explain again. So, I did not find his reverting anyhow substantiated, and reverted the definition, but did not revert the creation myth, not because I found it appropriate, but just because I found the definition higher in priority, and in these conditions, with Paul Beardell acting so, I did not find it possible to constructively work on more than that. Later, other editors came, made more constructive edits, didn't just blindly revert, and understood better my intentions, at least the necessity of stating "Artificial Consciousness" as a study. So after a few months, when Paul Beardsell didn't edit the article, seeing his additude, behaviour, and unwillingness to co-operate the first time he did after that, I finally found that his additude did not change, and that his aggressive behaviour, including the personal attacks, is not likely to change in the near future. So I found that thre are no ways any more to avoid the arbitration, at that point.

These recent events were not the reason why I submitted the request for arbitration, but it was when I finally found that there are no other alternatives. The reason was that all other means to solve the conflict and to stop Paul Beardsell from using personal attacks against me over a period of time almost a year, were exhausted. Almost all the possibilities to resolve the conflict were tried, like vandalism in progress, request for comment etc, it's maybe the best to see that on "what links here" page of the article . I tried to use all other possibilities first, and hoped that acting in the most civil way, and not reacting to his attacks, would change his mind and solve the dispute, but it had no effect on him at all, rather I noticed that the frequency of his attacks increased with the time past. The reason why it took so long time, as much as I am concerned, is that such measures as arbitration are not the means I like, submitting this request was extremely unpleasant for me, but unfortunately finally necessary. If you notice, in science forums, and in irc chatrooms for scientific topics, where other than intelligent people never go, almost no banning happens (as it is very frequent in other topics, in some channels in irc you may get kicked out even if you say only hello), with intelligent people who can solve the disputes by other means, things never go that far. But in this case, unfortunately banning or other extreme measures may be necessary, as unfortunate and sad as it is.

(Concerning me, just to shortly introduce myself, I'm an Automatic Control engineer, and I maintain several Open Source projects in SourceForge (yes I made my real name public here, as well as Paul Beardsell did). In fact, the only thing which I know thoroughly about programming, is c89 ("ansi c"), I can do programming in c++, but I'm convinced that everything can be done in c89, while using right programming methods, and languages which become too complicated, like c++, may have the same faith as IBM's PL/I had, which was abandoned just because it was too complex.)

PS The title of this arbitration request was changed from "Paul Beardsell" to "Tkorrovi" by Paul Beardsell. I changed it back to the original , to be the same as it was when I submitted the request. Is changing the original initial text of the request for arbitration, which was submitted by another person, allowed by the person against who the request was made? And I re-confirm, that I made this arbitration request only against Paul Beardsell concerning his personal attacks and offensive behaviour. Arbitrators, please say if you consider that there must be any other title, otherwise I don't accept any other title.Tkorrovi 10:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As I remember from previous interesting and sometimes amusing discussions with User:Tkorrovi, who works as a customs officer in Estonia, one of the most difficult issues was his own grasp of the English language. A subject like artificial consciousness needs careful and concise treatment, which it was not getting until Paul Beardsell came along to contribute to the article. Paul's pedantry no doubt got up User:Tkorrovi's nose, but in the interests of quality Paul persisted, and this led to the peception by some that Tkorrovi was a troll and the perception by User:Tkorrovi that others who enjoined in Paul's support were sock puppets. I can confirm that it was I, not Paul, who used the example of Christopher Nolan in order to falsify Tkorrovi's notion that consciousness had to be tested against the attributes of what he dubbed "the average human". It was my contention that Christopher Nolan, by being different from the average and unable to interact with humans in the usual way because he suffered from cerebral palsy was nevertheless a prize-winning author and therefore should be deemed conscious. At no time has Paul as far as I am aware resorted to the use of sock puppets and, knowing him to be a man of integrity as I do, I very much doubt he would do such a thing in this circumstance - surely being sufficiently confident of his contributions in his own name without the need of such an expedient. User:Tkorrovi claims that Igor Aleksander has some special place in the history and development of Artificial Consciousness. There is certainly no consensus in academic fields that Aleksander is the leading proponent. He is, however, much admired by User:Tkorrovi. I think it would be a waste of time for this to go to arbitration. Matt Stan 13:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Matthew Stannard, you are a friend of Paul Beardsell (I think so, Paul admitted that, and I think you don't deny that either), and you were the other one who used personal attacks against me, together and in co-operation with Paul Beardsell. But this case is not against you, I sincerely hope that you improve your additude, and arbitration case against you would not be necessary.

Then I insist, you must add my name to the ticket for this arbitration, so that I can show that I too am unaware of what you construe as personal attacks. There have been attacks, sure, as there are in any argument and some games, but to claim correctly that there have been personal attacks, you must give an example, together with its context, unequivocally to show that there has been a derogatory statement about you, as distinct from what you do in wikipedia. I thought, incidentally, that the cartoon with the chimps in the car cursing humans was quite funny, and topical in the context of our discussions about artificial consciousness. I didn't interpret it as a slur on you, though I daresay I might have anticipated that you would not get a rather unsophisticated joke. I would say in your mitigation that your lack of comprehension of some of the subtler points made in argument has been cause of some mirth. But to laugh at someone (because they are funny without necessarily intending to be so) is not a personal attack either, just indicative that two people have different senses of humour. I have however always aimed to correct rather than castigate, but to have someone claim, using the authority of an English Grammar, that he was right when in fact he was wrong on some simple point of English usage did make me laugh. Matt Stan 23:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First, during our discussion on Artificial consciousness article's talk page, I said you repeatedly, that my nationality is not relevant concerning editing that article, this concerns science, and some even state that scientists have no nationality, at least it is in no way relevant to science, especially the field we talked about. But in spite I, and even other users who came along, asked not to talk about my nationality, you continued to repeatedly emphasize it. Why you had to do that agains other person's will, if I don't want it to be mentioned, then I must have my reasons. I don't want my nationality to be mentioned because many problems are related to that nationality, like many Russians don't like Estonians, because Estonia broke away from their evil empire called Soviet Union, and did never want to belong together with Russia. Some Russians are deeply grieved because a loss of a part of their empire, and sea ports on the Baltic sea. Then, if some Russians with no good intentions happen to know that I'm Estonian, this may mean a trouble for me. You are probably not aware of all these problems, but you still should understand that mentioning a nation of people of certain nationality may cause problems to these people, and not to do that against that person's will, especially not in inappropriate for that places. And no, I don't work as a Customs officer in Estonia.

The next you say is a lie.

Concerning Christopher Nolan, this was an idea of both of you and Paul Beardsell, you both talked about it. Yes I don't deny that Christopher Nolan was a good writer, and therefore likely had some attributes of his mind even more developed than average human has, but including such very unrelated issues in the article, makes the article very obscure and out of topic, as I considered then, and what is reasonably understandable for any person who thinks seriously about the article. We may then as well talk about the pope John Paul II in the article, also undeniably a wonderful person, also suffering from disabilities, but you certainly understand that information about him should be in the other articles.

The point was simply to know how you defined "average human", a point about which I am still no wiser. Matt Stan 23:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Concerning different wordings which were discussed, it is a process of discussing the possibilities, which always happens, nobody can put everything right in the first attempt. "Average human" is probably not the best term, but yes I mentioned it then, there is nothing wrong in discussing things like that.

Igor Aleksander wrote probably the first definition of Artificial consciousness in my knowledge, he was the one who was at the beginning of Artificial Consciousness and Machine Consciousness. There are not so many scientists involved in Artificial consciousness, there are only a few dozen mentioned in Owen Holland's website, with only a dozen who wrote articles in Journal of Consciousness Studies, or other peer-reviewed journals. Igor Aleksander is one of the most prominent of these, though certainly not the only one. Yes he has some "special place" due to the issues he wrote about, but he is not exactly "much admired" by me, I talked about him when I found it relevant. Neither did I, or no one else claim that he is any leader in Artificial consciousness study, there simply are no leaders. But, please don't make this arbitration request a discussion about the article, it was frequently the habbit of both you and Paul Beardsell to initiate a long discussion, to hide a topic in some way unpleasant for you. I don't think that you necessarily plan to do it now, I just say that it is not desirable here because when it will happen, it shall become obvious. Please try to restrict your comments only to matters directly relevant to this arbitration request.Tkorrovi 15:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Matthew Stannard, please don't write your comments in the middle of other people's comments, you cause confusion with that, so that it would be difficult to see who wrote what. You would be included if arbitrators decide so, I made request against Paul Beardsell. "The point was simply to know how you defined "average human", a point about which I am still no wiser." I think that we shall not talk about that point here, again, the comments here should only be about the matters directly relevant to this arbitration request.Tkorrovi 01:00, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Paul Beardsell, please stop messing with this page, and move other people's comments to other places . Concerning titles etc, as I said, only Arbitrators have a right here to change that which was submitted by other users. And now my comment again, which you moved from here: While we wait for a statement from Paul Beardsell, do the Arbitrators agree to create the Evidence page now? Maybe it would also be easier for Paul Beardsell to write his defence in such more organized form, and the Arbitrators may start to look at the evidence.Tkorrovi 19:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A message from Paul Beardsell to me :

Look, this is going to get messy. You know that as I point out the history, event by event, you will end up looking very silly, and already in the arbitration request you are looking ridiculous. Why not just withdraw your request for arbitration? Paul Beardsell 23:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Legal threat + personal attack. When does it stop...Tkorrovi 23:28, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I rest my case, m'lud. Paul Beardsell 23:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I advise you to think twice about that.Tkorrovi 00:04, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request for Summary Judgement

Without prejudice. I suggest that arb com immediately rule that neither Tkorrovi nor Psb777 be allowed to edit the article "artificial consciousness" for a period of one year. Paul Beardsell 22:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Why Paul Beardsell wanted to go ahead with the conflict, and didn't want to settle it? Just that this is a problem now already almost a year, I had no alternatives other than submitting this arbitration request. As I, and other editors of the "Artificial consciousness" article want to work and edit the article without conflicts, I suggest to ban Paul Beardsell.Tkorrovi 14:30, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request that Advocate for Plaintiff be appointed

I request that an advocate for the plaintiff be appointed so that the case can be made cogently thus allowing the court to decide if there is indeed a case to hear and allowing the defendant the reasonable possibility of making a defense. Paul Beardsell 00:09, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comments from a disinterested party (User:Chinasaur)

I ran into the debate over the AC article about a year ago and had some initial impressions that I'll try to restate here. I should warn that I've only briefly skimmed more recent developments. And I should say that generally I have scrutinized Tkorrovi's behavior more carefully than Paul's.

Both parties seem to be at fault. From what I can tell, Paul is indeed unnecessarily abusive towards Tkorrovi and should probably know better. Further, in dealing with this case, his attempts (as I see it) to have the arbitration dismissed on technical, nit-picking grounds do him no credit.

However, I continue to be inclined towards Paul's side. My observation (but not direct participation) at the AC article leads me to conclude that Tkorrovi is difficult to deal with reasonably. He consistently adopts the position of a victim, usually complaining about personal attacks even when no real offense is meant. Meanwhile, he is just as serious an offender in terms of revert wars and uncooperative behavior.

Tkorrovi's participation in WP is essentially limited to this one article. He has also fought, in the past, to include links to his personal online forum and articles on AC in the WP article. And he tends to be extremely proprietary about "his article" article (as many of us, but to an uncommon level). My past conclusion was that Tkorrovi considers WP simply an additional forum to push his own expert opinion on this topic. This is only my impression. I can't be sure whether more recent developments agree.

Finally there is the minor point that Tkorrovi's English is not good enough to be left alone. This is not meant as a putdown. Tkorrovi's English is miles ahead of my own ability in any second language. But the fact is that Tkorrovi does not always express himself clearly, so that copy edits are necessary. Occasionally, Tkorrovi's point will be distorted or destroyed by these copy edits, no matter how well meaning the editor. Sometimes, the editor may even have to revert Tkorrovi's changes, asking for more clarification on what he intended to say. This is something Tkorrovi must accept.

I would support the measure suggested by Paul (!) that both editors be banned from the article for a year. As punishment, banning is Paul's desert for abusing Tkorrovi when he knows better and letting his frustration get the better of him. As rehabilitation, banning from his pet project will perhaps give Tkorrovi a chance to explore the rest of WP and learn that his management of the AC article is not the way that things are supposed to work. He will also perhaps come to accept that his current way of dealing with people frustrates more than just Paul, Matt, and myself.

--Chinasaur 22:54, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

These comments triggered a lengthy discussion between Chinasaur and Tkorrovi, and then argument between Tkorrovi and Paul Beardsell that can be found here: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Tkorrovi_vs._Paul_Beardsell/Tangents

One point that Tkorrovi made that I think is important is that contrary to what I wrote above, he never tried to link to his own AC articles, only to other peoples articles and the forums at his site on AC.

Tkorrovi, if you want to summarize some of your other points that you think are important as far as they bear on my comments above, please do so below, but try to be concise. --Chinasaur 02:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)