Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/GoRight

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Statement of the dispute

GoRight, a user with a history of disruptive editing on global warming articles, returned 11 days ago. Since then, he has fomented numerous edit wars and harassed other users (the latter resulting in a 24 hour block)

Desired outcome

GoRight should be community banned from global warming related articles. If he continues his harassment of WMC, he should be indefinitely blocked as well.

Description

GoRight is a single purpose civil POV pusher with a history of problematic editing on Misplaced Pages. (Note that I mean single purpose is the strictest sense - his contribs contain exactly 4 edits to non-global warming related articles). He recently returned from a 6 month hiatus.

He has a history of tendentious editing on global warming related articles. In December, he went on a 6 month editing hiatus. Since his return 11 days ago, he has fomented no less than 9 simultaneous edit wars on global warming-related articles: William M. Gray‎, Global warming‎, William Connolley‎, Fred Singer‎, Lawrence Solomon‎, RealClimate‎, An Inconvenient Truth‎, and Global warming controversy‎. At the same time, he has repeatedly harassed user:William M. Connolley (for which he was blocked by R. Baley yesterday) GoRight does not understand or abide by Misplaced Pages policies regarding reliable sourcing.

I have neither the time or energy enumerate all of GoRight's misbehavior in each of the above edit wars, but I'll give a general overview. He attempted to insert claims into the global warming article that global warming is likely to cause earthquakes. (See this thread) His citation for this was an MSNBC article that he knew had already been withdrawn, which said point blank that the earthquake hypothesis was espoused by one person and was at odds with all other known data. Count Iblis told him that his edit violated Misplaced Pages policy regarding reliable sources, to which he responded by claiming it was a legitimate edit. I pointed him to the arbitration committee's decision regarding sourcing for science related articles (Misplaced Pages:Verifiability and Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such.) but he later admitted he did not bother to read the link to the arbitration committee decision.

During the same time-frame, he made this edit to William Connelly's article, claiming that William's article, claiming that WMC "strongly pushes his POV with systematic removal of any POV which does not match his own". The source for this quote was an article by Stacy Schiff, which itself got the quote from an arbitration case on Misplaced Pages -- hardly a reliable source. After this was removed as a blatant BLP violation, he added this one sourced to an article by Lawrence Solomon (an ex-wikipedian with an axe to grind) published in a tabloid. This too was removed as a BLP violation.

While that was going on, he became embroiled in an edit war on the William M. Gray article. (Gray is a global warming denier) GoRight made a series of edits which can only be characterized as vandalism - removing Gray's offer to bet on future climates, and changing "does not subscribe to anthropogenic causes for global warming" to "does not subscribe to the currently hypothesized anthropogenic causes for global warming".

At the same time as the above, GoRight jumped into an edit war on the Global warming controversy article. BernhardMeyer inserted a link to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in the Science-related external links section. (diff) (For those of you unaware, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is a "research group" created by global warming denier Fred Singer and SEPP - his think tank - to confuse people. It's name is intentionally similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-prize winning group of climate scientists. The NIPCC, SEPP, and Fred Singer all get money directly or indirectly from ExxonMobile.) When BernhardMeyer's link was correctly reverted, GoRight immediately jumped in, attempting to restore it (diff). When it was explained to him on the talk page that a global warming denial group is not a reliable source, he bizzarely claimed that the onus was on others to prove that the NIPCC is not reliable (rather than the onus being on him to prove they are).

On the Fred Singer article, several weeks ago there was a question about a letter Singer wrote which was published in the Journal Astronautics in 1960. In it, Singer supported the idea that the Martian moon Phobos was artificial, made by Martians. Several people wanted verification of this, so I put in a request in the inter-library loan, got a pdf scan of the letter, and posted such on the talk page. Everyone agreed it was a reliable source, and the letter was quoted and cited in the article, along with a link to a google cache copy. Three weeks later, GoRight came along, claimed that a "google cache" is not a reliable source, and removed all mention of the letter. (diff) This, obviously, started an edit war. GoRight later claimed that because it was not available online, and that he was unable to find it himself (despite the fact that I had posted it on the talk page 2 weeks earlier) we should not cite it (diff). More edit warring followed.

I hope that gives you some idea of the problem user we are dealing with -- of the 36 article edits GoRight has made since returning, 34 of them either started or were part of edit wars. While causing all of the above edit wars, he has taken to singling out and harassing William M. Connelly in particular. So much so that R. Baley blocked him yesterday. R. Baley unblocked GoRight after GoRight admitted he was out of line and promised to be more diplomatic. (See this thread)

This thread is enlightening. When confronted with his misbehavior, GoRight at denies being disruptive and also denies participating in edit warring, despite all evidence to the contrary. He later claims that his edits were properly sourced and their reversion is evidence of a conspiracy against him. When notified of this RFC, he bizarrely described it as "forum shopping"

Evidence of disputed behavior

(See above description for diffs)

Applicable policies and guidelines

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

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive438#Disruption_by_GoRight - the consensus was that GoRight is a disruptive user, but that I was arguably involved and should not make the block myself.
Note that GoRight responded to the above ANI thread by opening an administrator's noticeboard thread on myself and R. Baley - Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive151#Abuse_of_adminship_by_User:R._Baley_and_User:Raul654 He was told that there was no basis for a complaint and to pursue dispute resolution.
re William M. Gray. GR apparently finds it unremarkable that his edits should be considered vandalism . KDP does not use the term lightly.

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

The ANI thread above was discussed from the 24th to the 26th. Since then, he has not moderated his behavior in the slightest.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

Other users who endorse this summary

Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

The verbosity of the charges is daunting so let me try to be brief and to the point:

(1) Raul's own behavior:

"Civil POV Pusher" is actually a bit of an oxymoron when you think about it. It denotes an editor that attempts to follow Misplaced Pages rules and policies but is somehow a "POV Pusher", begging the obvious question of from who's counter POV? We all have points of view. It is supposed to be that the diversity of views here is what keeps Misplaced Pages grounded in reality. Coining a non-official term such as this, developing an extensive page to support it, and then attempting to use it as a club against one's opponents (as we see here) is obviously an attempt to simply stifle dissenting debate. When you remove the dissenting debate the core principle behind having the diversity of opinions here collapses and the pages then become non-WP:NPOV as I believe is the case with all of the GW pages.
Thus, "Civil POV Pusher" is a term that Raul seems to attach to people he disagrees with in an obvious attempt to stifle dissenting debate and, ironically, pushing his own POV in the process.
Raul has a long history of engaging in what I call "drive by reverts" , which entail reverting material without leaving any edit summary or talk page comments to justify his action. These are far too numerous to list here, but here are some examples from a single article: , , , . I find this ironic in light of the fact that he is calling me an edit warrior and accusing me of not following the rules. This behavior creates a toxic environment for anyone who hold views counter to his own.
I have constructed a point by point account of my interactions with Raul since my return from my User Talk page, which can be found here . I simply invite interested parties to review as much of this as they like and judge for themselves whether Raul is being objective in his account above.
That Raul and I have been exchanging heated words should be obvious for all to see. They remain heated only because I don't bow to his tactics of intimidation. I trust that neutral parties will recognize my actions for what they are, a good faith attempt to improve the GW articles from a POV that runs counter to the majority view (on global warming). Raul declared his intent here . Subsequently I was accused of vandalism () by a user that Raul knows well and has canvassed to participate here . Likewise I have been warned (and politely so) by User:William M. Connolley here and here . Note that Raul also knows User:William M. Connolley well and he directly canvasses his participation here . You decide for yourself if these facts are significant with respect to my assertion that I am now the target of a smear campaign .
I also find the timing of this RFC to be suspect. Raul has obviously been closely monitoring my contributions, so it is no stretch of the imagination that he would take note when I began to take his harassment more seriously starting at 18:54, 1 July 2008, . He created this request for comment at 19:19, 1 July 2008, . Was he afraid that my improved behavior and obvious intention to defend myself against his harassment would undermine his campaign here? You decide if this is a coincidence or not. Either way it seems my fears regarding his intentions were well founded.
Regarding Raul's assertion that emergency action was needed to quell my alleged attacks on WMC (for text that I did not write but was advocating in support of) we find this comment from the administrator's noticeboard incident he started .
Raul has a tendency to create a toxic atmosphere which is not conducive to WP:CIV debate. He frequently labels things a "bizzare", "pseudoscience", "crackpottery", etc. even when such characterizations are unfounded. To find an example we need look no further than this very RFC. Above, he labels my charge of this RFC being an example of WP:FORUMSHOP as being "bizarre". But is it really? To quote from WP:FORUMSHOP, "This also includes bringing up the same issue on a number of forums in succession (e.g. the village pump, RFC, admin board, deletion discussions, etc.) because the debate on the first forum did not yield the result you wanted." Raul took his case against me to the WP:ANI as acknowledged above, didn't get the answer he wanted, and then ran right over here the create an RFC against me. The WP:ANI is forum #1. This WP:RFC is forum #2. You decide if my claim is "bizarre" as Raul would have you believe. And yet he still insists that he understands the rules and policies and that I don't, further contributing to the toxic environment he engenders.

(2) General points:

I do tend to be a single topic contributor as my time is limited and my edits are focused in my areas of interest, namely the GW articles. I am aware of no Misplaced Pages policy that requires across the board participation in a range of unrelated topics. To suggest that this means I push a particular POV, however, is obviously a logical fallacy. The one simply does not logically imply the other. I can certainly be a neutral editor with a narrow scope of interest.
I am satisfied that my comments on WP:AN and WP:ANI can speak for themselves, although I do feel that a fair reading of both will reveal his mischaracterization of the outcomes, and most especially the one brought by him wherein I gained support from a number of uninvolved users.
On the charge of my being an edit warrior, I am in the process of creating a topic by topic account of these supposed edit wars () to put my participation there in the context of that with whom I am supposedly edit warring. Judge for yourself if I deserve to be singled out in these instances or not. Calling these edit wars, however, is rather reminiscent of Misplaced Pages:Lamest_edit_wars. The reality is that brief rounds of reverts among multiple participants on contentious topics seems to be completely normal operating procedure all over Misplaced Pages as we all know. Similarly there can be found many other such instances on every single GW page ... the vast majority of which don't involve me in any way. So the question is, why is Raul singling me out? Does it have something to do with his POV on the topics rather than the rationale he cites above? Is he simply mischaracterizing things to build a case for the purpose of stifling dissenting views? You judge for yourself.
On the charge of being a vandal, I believe that my edit history is clean of this charge except for this one incident, although I have not gone back to check. Further I do not believe that the edit in question actually constitutes vandalism, per WP:VAND. I provide my rationale here . You can judge for yourself if this is actually vandalism, or not.

(3) My behavior over time:

In retrospect, my first addition since my return, namely the piece concerning the relationship between GW an Earthquakes, was not my finest work. Was the evidence for it thin? Sure. My source for that, an article from MSNBC , is still active and has not been retracted as Raul falsely claims above. And obscure ArbCom rulings that no average Wikipedian should be expected to know about before being WP:BOLD aside, the fact of the matter is that neither of the official policy pages WP:RS nor WP:V supports his claim that only peer reviewed material is acceptable on science pages. Exactly the opposite is true, as lamented to here , and as I demonstrated clearly on the Talk page (actually User:Count Iblis did when he quoted the relevant text and I merely read it back to him). Raul is just upset that I won't admit I was wrong when, in fact, the relevant policies bear me out. This is because it makes it harder for him to enforce his personal POV through the intimidation of other wikipedians. Even so, I quickly agreed to drop the matter ... which the edit history demonstrates I have done ... yet two days later Raul comes along and picks a fight over my not understanding and/or ignoring the official Misplaced Pages policies (as opposed to obscure ArbCom rulings). Again, this is merely part of his smear campaign in support of his agenda here.
Subsequent to the notice board incidents referenced above, I would argue that the following are evidence of my having moved in a positive direction, contrary to Raul's assertion that I have not moderated my behavior:
- Per the instructions given me by the responses at I correctly pursued the dispute resolution process by taking the open issues to the WP:BLPN board. I have subsequently done similarly for other topics as well.
- After being blocked, and correctly so, for a specific WP:NPA violation, I worked with both User:William M. Connolley and User:R. Baley to resolve the situation. I voluntarily apologized directly for having done so and have avoided repeating the mistake. The threads at and speak for themselves on this point. I believe that all parties involved consider this matter closed at this point.
- After having a number of interactions with User:KimDabelsteinPetersen which resulted in his accusing me of vandalism for this edit , I pro-actively sought to diffuse the tensions between KDP and myself . You can decide for yourself whether the edit in question was vandalism or merely an attempt to balance the difference between KDP and another user.
- A review of this thread, , should yield to an objective observer a clear understanding of just who is being aggressive and creating a toxic environment here, and who is not.

Users who endorse this summary:

--GoRight (talk) 07:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the bulk of this. It seems that GoRight can do no right: edit articles directly, and he's an edit warrior; discuss on talk pages and he's tendentious; edit rudely and he's uncivil; edit nicely and he's a "civil POV pusher". The only conclusion to be drawn is that editors of a certain POV are simply not welcome here, and that is clearly unacceptable. People need to stop labelling editorial disagreement as disruption. ATren (talk) 14:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

I agree 100% with Raul's assessment of GoRight's behavior. I do think, however, that banning GoRight from the global warming related pages is not the best way to deal with this problem. I suggest we put GoRight on a 0RR restriction. That will force him to think very carefully about adding something to an article as he can't revert to his version anymore if it is removed.

Also, the 0RR restriction will mean that GoRight is not allowed to revert the article to any previous version at all, even if that is the fist editing action by him in a 24 hour period, except if he is reverting obvious vandalism. So, if GoRight makes an edit on one day, which is then reverted, he can't on the next day edit in that same edit of the previous day.

For talk page comments we'll restrict GoRight as follows. If GoRight raises a topic that has already been discussed or if he raises an irrelevant point that is not ging to lead to changes in the article, then we delete his comments. When his talk page comments are deleted, GoRight will not be allowed to revert that change because of the 0RR restriction. He will not be allowed to raise the same topic ever again as that is technically a revert.

All this sounds more complicated than simply banning GoRight from editing the Global Warning related pages. However, such restrictions do force GoRight to think very carefully about the topic and it may lead him to see how wrong he is about the topic. Also, he nor anyone else can't claim that he is sensored. He is allowed to edit the article. If he is reverted then it is theoretically possible for someone other than GoRight to revert the article back to GoRight's version.

Users who endorse this summary:

Count Iblis (talk) 01:23, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Outside View by ATren

Note: I do not agree with GoRight's views on global warming.

Having said that, there is only one recent edit made by GoRight that gave me any concern, and that was the attempt to add to William Connelley's bio - but even that was a well-sourced claim and not an open-and-shut example of abuse. And, by the way, GoRight accepted consensus on that and moved on, so I don't know why it's still being brought up.

Further, I am of the opinion that "civil POV pushing" is a nonsensical accusation to make about any editor, because it paradoxically implies that civility is somehow a violation of policy. Worse yet, it seems to create an environment where any disagreement is unacceptable: if GoRight disagrees uncivilly, he'll be quickly blocked; if he disagrees civilly, he'll be charged with "civil POV pushing" - so his only apparent recourse is not to disagree. In this sense, "civil POV pushing" is basically being used to squelch debate.

Basically, this is nothing more than a content dispute between editors on opposite sides of a contentious topic. There is no need to squelch one side of that debate.

Users who endorse this summary:

ATren (talk) 01:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I believe this summary is generally accurate. I don't see anything he's done that is worthy of a ban from GW. Oren0 (talk) 02:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Concur in full. I also disagree with GoRight's POV (that is: I think that man-made global warming is a nigh-undeniable fact), but apart from his misguided push to edit an OpEd source on a BLP (William Connolley), his actions have been well-taken, and conscientious. As ATren states, even that incident can't be called disruptive. I fear that this will turn into an unhelpful "vote off the island" RFC. Cool Hand Luke 04:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Concur. Tempshill (talk) 16:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

View by Stephan Schulz

I'm currently on a lousy hotel internet connection, so this will of necessity be somewhat brief and possibly full of typos. I essentially agree with much of what Raul writes. To clarify one issue: the bad part about "civil POV pushing" is not the civil, it's the POV pushing. Civil POV pushing is a problem on Misplaced Pages because we have no substantial defenses against it. ArbCom does not decide content questions. Uninvolved admins often do not have the knowledge to properly evaluate different POVs with respect to WP:WEIGHT. Thus, a relentless POV pusher that remains reasonably polite can cause a lot of work and trouble without significantly improving the encyclopedia.

On the issue at hand, I would like to point out the following:

Looking at User: GoRight's contributions: Can anybody find an edit that substantially improves the encyclopedia? "Not egregiously bad" is a very low bar.
The earthquake episode looked and looks to me like a mixture of provocation and WP:POINT. To recap:
- Here he introduces a statement about global warming causing more severe earthquakes, referenced to a Yahoo article referencing an obvious crank article in a crackpot "journal".
- It is removed with a request for a peer-reviewed source here. Give the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the request for a peer-reviewed source seems to be entirely reasonable.
- Nevertheless, GoRight adds it back, but Count Iblis removes it again.
- Interestingly, on the corresponding talk page discussion Talk:Global_warming#Global_Warming_Causes_Earthquakes, GR admits before he re-adds the information, that "CBS News and the AP have backtracked", ergo that the report is not reliable. I suggest that all interested read the full section and decide for themselves if GR acted with an honest interest in improving the article. I'd just like to highlight the attempt to represent the "legitimate edit" as a victim of "the Connolley gang" and the use of other friendly insinuations against "the alarmists".
Immediately following the earthquake episode, he starts an edit war on the caption of the Keeling curve, repeatedly claiming that it shows an increase in CO2 "from both natural and man-made sources". This claim is not only unsourced, it is laughably wrong. While some fringe scientists disagree with the consensus explanation of global warming, no serious scientist - not even the usual sceptics - doubts that the increase in CO2 is antropgenic and only antropogenic. There are many lines of evidence for this, but the most simple argument is that the increase is actually quite a bit less than human CO2 emissions. That this had been repeatedly explained to GR does not stop him from reverting...

Users who endorse this summary:

--Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
-- I agree 100% with this account of GoRights behavior. Count Iblis (talk) 00:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Yilloslime (t) 00:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Vsmith (talk) 02:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
N p holmes (talk) 15:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:13, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Jason Patton (talk) 19:17, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.