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Requests for arbitration

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Argentine History

Initiated by Lecen (talk) at 10:00, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Lecen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Cambalachero (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Talk:Juan Manuel de Rosas (for a general view)
• Talk:Juan Manuel de Rosas#Third opinion (WP:3O)
• Talk:Juan Manuel de Rosas#RfC: Use of Nationalist/Revisionist sources on Juan Manuel de Rosas (RfC)
• Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution noticeboard
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/Juan Manuel de Rosas (failed mediation)

Statement by Lecen

I have great faith in the concept behind Misplaced Pages: a group of anonymous people, with distinct interests, acting together to create a source of knowledge at disposition of everyone and based upon verifiable sources... and available for free. I truly believe that the vast majority of Wikipedians work honestly and are motivated by good intentions. Unfortunately this is not the case for all.

I have been forced to the conclusion that, over the last three or four years, Cambalachero has taken advantage of the community's good will, lack of deep knowledge related to subjects he monitors, and seemingly in some cases, naivety. His contributions are chiefly limited to articles that touch on Argentine history. He has been systematically distorting historical facts in several articles by using as sources Argentine Fascist historians (the so-called in Argentina "Nationalists/Revisionists"), to skew articles toward that viewpoint. The result has been whitewashed takes on the subjects of several articles, e.g., the brutal dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), for example, has become in the hands of Cambalachero a democratic and liberal leader, with the mainstream view relegated to a "criticism" section (a fine example of removal of sourced content: ) In this instance, the problem has been compounded with the creation and expansion of sub-articles (e.g., Argentine nationalism, Historiography of Juan Manuel de Rosas and Repatriation of Juan Manuel de Rosas's body , among others) to reinforce the appearance of legitimacy to a minority and politically motivated viewpoint. Biographical articles about the aforementioned fascist-linked historians (Manuel Gálvez, etc.) have even been created that give the false impression that they are reliable authors with views that are respected and reflected by mainstream historians.

The historical narrative being promoted by Cambalachero has no similarity to what mainstream historiography presents. The MoS is clear: "Because this is the English Misplaced Pages, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones, assuming English sources of equal quality and relevance are available." Cambalachero has insisted on bypassing English histories that cover Rosas, since they uniformly consider Rosas a brutal dictator. Not a few, not some, not even most, but every single book published in English calls him a dictator. Cambalachero isn't even faithful to his own Fascist-linked sources, since they also portray Rosas as a brutal dictator, though they excuse this on the (predictable) basis that it was necessary for the greater good of Argentina and to maintain order and unity.

In the event that I have not communicated the seriousness of what is going on here, and in other articles, I'll offer an analogy: Imagine if a Wikipedian had written the article about Adolf Hitler using as sources Nazi or Neo-nazi authors, while excluding any mention of the Holocaust, removing any mention of the Nazi dictatorship, minimizing the cult of personality and portraying Hitler as a misunderstood liberal democrat and that only his "critics" regarded him a dictator (as if that was merely another point of view). That would not be History. It would be thinly disguised political revisionist proselytism. Such an attempt to whitewash Hitler might even be successful, were Hitler not such huge a figure in modern consciousness.

Insistence on presenting an unrepresentative view is counterproductive and harms the credibility of such articles. We are not talking about a Wikipedian who has been arguing an alternative point of view backed by legitimate authors, but rather about PoV being zealously promoted and maintained through the use of dubious (sometimes spurious) sources that often promote a political agenda. This is serious, as well as extremely wearying and discouraging to editors who would like to make genuine improvements. It's the reliability of Misplaced Pages at stake.

Thus, the question I make is: does the community need or desire editors such as Cambalachero to continue this? At this point, I cannot believe so. If this editor cannot be prohibited from working on articles related to history, more broadly banned, or some other remedy that solves the problem, I hope that at least an experienced Wikipedian could be appointed to monitor his activities. Either way, I ask the Arbitration Committee to do something to resolve this serious matter.

P.S.: For those who may be interested in learning more about mainstream historical views of Rosas and the Argentine fascist/revisionist historians, see my sandbox. --Lecen (talk) 10:20, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Statement by Cambalachero

As arbitration does not focus on article content but on user's conduct, I will skip that topic. Before any actual discussion tooks place (only an attempted change of the lead image), he requested article ownership here and here, and clarified here and here: he wants to write the article alone and without needing to find consensus for edits that he knows will be controversial. Here and here he tries to describe me as an antisemite or nazi sympathizer. He posted provocative threads here and here, that I did not answer to prevent unneeded drama, and jumped to dispute resolution here (immediately closed here). He created a huge report at the talk page, talking about details from all the myriad angles he could conceive (no single edit to link, but it’s still visible at the talk page), named "About the lack of neutrality, the biased view and arbitrary choice of facts added into this article". He said "done" here and requested third opinion here, just 8 minutes afterwards. I divided his thread in subtopics and begin to answer: he made only a pair of replies here and here and jumped to Dispute Resolution again here, closed again here. Finally, some other users began to join the discussion. However, Lecen rejected all proposals and compromises (either from me or from other editors) that were not a flat-out support to his proposal as originally conceived. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. He tried to influence the discussions by trying to convince the users joining it at their talk pages, for example here, here and here. He had an edit war with MarshalN20, who rejected any authorship on a draft I wrote (which I indeed wrote alone): see here, here and here; Lecen justified that it was his own comment and should not be modified by anyone here. He resorted to tag bombing here, here and here, and later here. This led to full article protection here. When it expired, he began to actually work in the article, rewriting sections and adding images. Then I continued his work, editing some things here and there; he reverted everything (both his and my edits) here. He said here that I had "butchered the article beyond recognition" (sic). Another edit war ensued (I did not take part in it), and the article was protected again here. For the following section, I proposed here to work on a talk page draft and and move it to article space when we were all satisfied: Lecen never made any comment. He dropped the whole discussion, almost a month ago, and restarted it when I made a comment at a FAC of another article here.

I have spotted him lying at least two times, here (providing a quotation with a removed part, which completely changes the meaning) and here (concealing information about a historian). Lecen did not read the book in Google books, he owns the physical book, as he had scanned the front page at File:El maldito de la historia oficial.jpg. In both cases I provided scans from the book to prove its acual content. Requires Spanish, but it’s there, visible, you don’t have to "trust" me. There are several other examples within Misplaced Pages: note one right here, he blames me for the expansion of the article on Manuel Gálvez, when if you check the edits you will notice that my edits are minor and the actual writer of most of the article was User:Keresaspa.

He also pointed here that neither of us was willing to "give up on each other's view". That's not my case, I would have no problem in working with him as adults and rational people (but if he thinks that I would be "butchering" his work, it's his problem, not mine), but the message actually points his own motivation: he said that he will not give up his point of view. In other words, battleground mentality.

As for the main discussion: Lecen claims time and again the existence of a certain academic consensus, that would require us to ignore the authors that do not follow it. I pointed at Talk:Juan Manuel de Rosas#Arbitrary break 2 that, according to policies and guidelines, the existence of such a consensus must have a specific source that says so clearly and directly, it can not be decided by assesment of Misplaced Pages users. If there is no such academic consensus then WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV ensues. Lecen tried to derail the discussion, but I insisted time and again that he pointed sources with the alleged consensus he claims. He never did, and dropped from the discussion, until today, until I pointed some flaws of an article he nominated for FAC.

In short: Lecen refuses to work collaboratively, misrepresents sources and even lies about their content, heads discussions with a battleground mentality, only discusses actual article content as an excuse for forum-shopping to receive unconditional ownership of the article (and once in the discussions, he refuses all attempts to negotiate or find a compromise). And I have been really patient with his constant personal attacks. It is him who constantly escalates the discussions and caused two full article protections in a matter of days. It is him who goes around starting discussions everywhere and then rejects to build consensus, making the discussions fail. It is him who claims the existence of an academic consensus and requests a mass banning of authors, and then fails to give at least a single source mentioning clearly and directly this alleged consensus. It is him who holds grudges for old discussions and can’t drop the stick. It is him who disrupts any rational attempt of talking by accusing both editors and authors he does not like of having secret and evil agendas. Cambalachero (talk) 17:09, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Note about the name: I don't know the rules for naming cases, but I would prefer to avoid "X vs. Y" names. Such names reinforce the sense of battleground, of "winners" and "losers", and I would prefer to avoid that path. If we can solve this with some agreement that is satisfactory for all parties involved, that would be for the better. Cambalachero (talk) 00:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Statement by Doncram

If this case is accepted, I strongly believe it should be not given name "Cambalachero" suggested by editor Lecen, but rather should be given a neutral name, rather than one suggested by the first combatant to get to Arbitration. A natural candidate would be "Lecen vs. Cambalachero", I suppose, or perhaps something neutral and topical about "Negotiations between 2 editors" or some other description.

I submit that it is 100% absurd to believe that an arbitration proceeding is not affected by its name. Obviously persons having grudges against a named person will be more likely to show up and introduce evidence, is just one way that the naming has an effect.

I have no familiarity with either of these parties and am 100% uninvolved. --doncram 00:24, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Comment from The ed17

This appears to me to be a long-term dispute between two prolific editors. At its heart, I believe this dispute revolves around Lecen's assertions that Cambalachero is misrepresenting or omitting sources that have negative views of the leaders of Argentina. That would mean that this could be narrowly accepted as a user conduct case, though it will be extremely difficult to separate user conduct from content, as you will have to decide whether Cambalachero's content misrepresents the mainstream historiographic views of individuals like Juan Manuel de Rosas. If so, that is actionable through a topic ban or mentor. If not, the case will probably require some sort of interaction ban. Both outcomes are within the committee's remit and would solve the dispute at hand, but the committee will need to decide whether this is too close to its content borderline. Please note that I have collaborated with Lecen on several Brazil-related articles, but have had almost no part in this dispute. With regards to NYB's comment, while I have done some work in Latin American history, I wouldn't consider myself a subject matter expert on its nineteenth century. Ed  07:12, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

• Adversarial (X v. Y) names are not used for modern (post-2006) arbcom cases. I pinged the arbs about this request. --Guerillero | My Talk 03:10, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
• It could easily be called Argentine History, of course. - Penwhale | 05:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Argentine History: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/0/0/1>-Argentine_History-2013-03-19T03:19:00.000Z">

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• Content disagreements are not addressed by this Committee; user misconduct, which may include disruptive editing and misrepresentation of sources, is addressed, when other dispute methods have failed. We could use some input here from previously uninvolved editors with subject-matter expertise as to which side of the line this dispute falls on. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)"> ">