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https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment

User:SPECIFICO claims to be an American economist, businessman, and on the faculty of a university, a Ph.D., and been published in academic journals, but his writing style and attention to detail seem incompatible with that.

lack of editorial balance

As a wiki, our article space grows over time (ie, there is no net loss of word count). Misplaced Pages is fundamentally built on contribution. Of course, a good deal of work can be done by simple modification, which doesn't change the word count of an article very much. But SPECIFICO's driving focus seems to be reliable sourcing on WP. It would be expected then, that in addition to removing unsourced information (a net character loss) but also find adequate sources (a net gain in character count). An editor with a balanced approach would spend time doing both, but one who says he is concerned with sourcing should especially be one that adds sources. SPECIFICO also claims to be a peer-reviewed journal author, so finding fresh sources should come second-nature. Also, if he is faculty on a university, he should have free and easy access to materials that the vast majority of WP editors do not.

Looking just at the month of May 2014 (which comes after his ArbCom decision), he made 77 article edits from May 1-30. Looking at that the red in that list of edits should make it apparent that he is major deleter of information, and that indicates an unbalanced approach to editing. His edits to articles come to a net loss of 5365 characters.

In none of these edits did he locate an original reliable source and add the citation to Misplaced Pages. For someone who seems deeply concerned about reliable sources, his edit history shows he does not do the work to find them.

Hounding

  • May 15 "tag notability" - Tags an article I added a category to the previous night. He's never edited it before.
  • May 24 "ce. Conform to cited reference" - He makes an edit on a page I just edited about 20 minutes earlier. He's never edited it before.
  • May 26 "Stefan Molyneux edit warring: new section" - He goes shopping around for an admin to block me for "edit warring". His complaint was logged 2014-05-26T03:45:20, 7 hours after my last edit at 2014-05-25T20:38:35‎, which was 21 hours after the last edit by anyone else at 2014-05-24T23:40:10‎.
  • May 30 - After I made an observation on my sandbox page that SPECIFICO doesn't add new sources, his very next edit (20 minutes later) is to add a citation to an article. This proves that he is monitoring my every edit.
  • May 30 - A completely bogus warning accusing me of "4RR" which is completely off-base. Clear WP:HUSH violation.
  • June 6 "Removing unsourced content. There is no general agreement as to all the figures depicted in the painting" - My "content" was an image of a painting, with a link and description directly taken from The School of Athens. This revert was done within just 4 minutes, and over 4 hours after SPECIFICOs last edit. The version he went back to is zoomed in detail from the same painting of a figure that has no expert confirmation of, per the article footnote "The interpretation of this figure as Hypatia seems to have originated from the Internet. Serious sources don't mention it at all. H. J. Mozans (=John Augustine Zahm) specifically regrets that Hypatia doesn't appear in the painting in his book Women in Science p. 141".
    • Immediately after I post the above item to my sandbox page describing his error, he revisits the page and removes his mistake.
  • June 6 "Remove off-topic definition of EMIS. The topic of this article is environmental management, not environmental information management. This article relates to the physical management of the physical environment." - Removes a sourced and relevant item I added to an obscure page. He's never edited it before.

= CMDC

Check for no prior edits (ie not watchlisted)

  • ~2 hrs
  • 122 minutes
  • 7 minutes
  • 8 minutes


Abuse of policy tags

  • May 22 - adds "citation needed" tags when the paragraph has ample and obvious citations for TV and radio appearances.
  • June 1 "Primary source removal was undone without discussion. I am restoring the tag removed by David Gerard when he cleaned up the primary sourced text." - Here he again puts back misleading issue tags. The article is not "based on primary sources", but rather uses them as supplemental information and could stand alone without them. The article does not need "additional citations for verification", because there are no {{citation needed}} tags used at all. All passages are sourced (which SPECIFICO knows).

Removal of substantive content

  • May 22 "Remove content sourced to non-RS blog per BLP and remove primary sourced statement concerning book. Please find secondary RS for discussion of Molyneux work."
  • Misrepresents source by calling it a "blog" when in fact it is a very popular libertarian site that publishes independent articles. The article in question that he removed cite's Molyneux original article, and so is very relevant as a secondary source.
  • Removes a cited source that points to one of the subjects books, which contains a reprint of the original article. This falls under WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:PSTS as "straightforward, descriptive statements of fact" written by the subject about himself in that he cites his own work and expands upon it in book form.
  • May 22 "Remove non-RS and primary sourced content concerning speaking engagements. Tag cn" - He removes a large number of sourced speaking appearances, and in the same edit tags the section for "citation needed".
  • May 22 "ce. Remove unsourced statement. Remove easter egg link.Remove SYNTH" - Removes a relevant statement and wikilink to health care in Canada#Criticisms. Cited source is an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zdqp22G_K4. At 00:40 the subject expresses criticisms of the Canadian health care systems as the reason he went to this private surgery center in the US for treatment.
  • May 22 "Remove undue content. Unencyclopedic tone and the statements are redundant -- repeated elsewhere in the section." - Removal of background info about acting and playwriting that adds context to other information further down. No reason for it to be removed.
  • May 22 "ref" - Duplicates a reference from another section that has no relevance to the place he moved it. Perhaps just careless, but it was never corrected by him later.
  • May 22 "ce per sources" - Pure POV edit. Implies that Molyneux work is only on the website, whereas his focus extends across many media - the show, essays, books, speeches, videos, podcasts. He also ruins the intent of "publicly spoken" to indicate someone making a speech on a stage, by weakening the sentence to make it seem like he was a mere participant in a discussion.
  • May 22 - "ce. Remove non-RS statistical profile of Freedomain. Remove other non-RS statement and replace with Molyneux' "about self" quote, which is RS for his view that Freedomain is most popular in the world."
  • removes highly relevant viewership statistics about the show published by reliable a secondary source.
  • misrepresents the cited sources by re-phrasing it as "Molyneux calls it 'the most popular philosophy site in the world'" when in fact none of the cited sources attribute that phrase to a Molyneux himself. The sources use that phrase (or very similar) independently. Again, this is inappropriate and unsupported, and insertion of the editor's belief and POV.
  • May 22 - removes "Divorce Corp director Joseph Sorge" with edit summary "ce. Move guest list to paragraph which describes Freedomain. Remove non-Notable guest. Remove undue credentials of guests, whose details can be seen in links." - Yes, the guest was not notable, but the movie is (because we have a page for it and not him). Perfectly adequate for inclusion.
  • May 23 - Repeats the same removal of health care in Canada#Criticisms from May 22
  • May 29 - poor grammar: "He has presented his views on television, radio, and podcasts and at various public conferences."
  • May 29 "ce remove undue detail" - This level of detail is appropriate, and found in many articles with GA or FA status - no reason to remove it. He broke a helpful wikilink.
  • June 1 - Adds a "Reception" clearly contentious section consisting of one sentence of opinion about Molyneux from a non-notable philosopher. Cites 4 sources, but 1 is Molyneux's own podcast, the libertarianism.org article does not mention Molyneux by name, and the other 2 are from "Bleeding Heart Libertarians" group blog and unreliable source per WP:BLPSPS. There is presently no context about feminism in the Molyneux article, so citing an offhand comment on a blog saying "And it’s a shame because we still live in a world in which people like Stefan Molyneux dismiss feminism as “socialism with panties,”" is unencyclopedic. "Molyneuxveau Arguments for the NAP" might OK for a minimal mention at some future point (since its a response to Molyneux's response), but only in context and with due weight - not as a standalone statement without context.
  • June 1 "rv text which again falsely attributes a statement to Molyneux. Fails verification. This is a BLP violation and should not be reinserted in any form." - Here he reverts a phrase that has been rephrased based on talk page discussion to the version which he and another user objected to. Since he reverted this within moments, I think it is likely he didn't even read the change or evaluate the difference, but rather snap-reverted hastily.
  • June 3 "ce. Conform to source. Tag independent secondary RS reference needed for extraordinary, highly improbable assertion that a Jewish family moved freely around Germany during Nazi rule, World War II, & through 1944." - Molyneux is qualified to make this statement both based on his knowledge of his own family history, but also he has a Masters in History. The statement by the editor is his own guess, and based on what seems like very simplistic knowledge of history.

Just plain wrong

One of the unfortunate aspects is related to his incompetence with regards to research. Not only is his style confrontational, and his edits contentious and based on personal opinion without reliable sourcing, but even when sources are provided, he inserts errors into the articles. Its very hard to tell whether a lot of this is POV insertion/disparagement or good faith incompetence - I suspect its more a combination. Either way, its is dangerous with regards to BLPs especially.

  • May 22 "ce conform to cited source" - Removes a key word "philosophies" using edit summary, which misrepresents the source at http://freedomainradio.com/about which reads "...my Master's Thesis analyzing the political implications of the philosophies of Immanuel Kant...".
  • May 22 - rephrases sentence with edit summary "conform to Molyneux' statement in cited source" - Full source is here. SPECIFICO changes the POV by removing the key word "quality" as the reason he takes donations. What the source said: "I get instant feedback. I know right away if it was good or not based on how many donations come in for that material."
  • May 23 - removes the phrase "focusing on the history of philosophy" with edit summary "ce. Remove statement.not contained in cited source" - The cited source is at http://freedomainradio.com/about which reads in part "earned a graduate degree from the University of Toronto, focusing on the history of philosophy."
  • May 23 "ce" - mistakenly restates this, probably because the source link doesn't show the entire article. It reads "Molyneux is an Irish-born author who grew up in England and Africa before coming to Canada 25 years ago". He shouldn't be making edits to content without accessing the full source because because it can lead to these kinds of tiny mistakes.
  • May 23 "ce. Conform to statements in cited sources" - He breaks the cited source material up in a careless way and ends up incorrectly stating a timeline that isn't true (how can Molyneux pursue acting after he got out of the Glendon where he was in theatre?).
  • May 24 "ce. Conform to cited reference" - He misrepresents the source of the data as being the APA, in reality it reads "According to the National Research Council data for 1993, reporting on responses from 7,900 holders of the Ph.D. in philosophy..."
  • May 29 "ce" - removes specific details about the types of conferences. removes "guest", making the sentence imply he may have been host.
  • May 29 "ce remove synth of unrelated facts" - there is no SYNTH, this timeline of events is given in this form in the sources.
  • June 2 "Conform to language used in cited source". The source uses the word "addicted", not "enjoyed". "Engrossed" is a neutral and accurate term (someone who is "addicted" may not actually "enjoy" it)
  • June 2 "ce conform to cited source" - Addition of confusing and extraneous detail. Careless change to "Molyneux" because he makes it unclear which Molyneux brother was CTO (heavily changes the implication to Hugh, since in the previous line we refer to article subject as "Stefan" exactly to avoid this confusion).
  • June 3 "Conform to statements in cited source. "headquarters" misrepresents the source statement "small office" Use talk. The source describes database software." -The word "database" is not used in the entire full text of the source. "Small office" is non-neutral and inaccurate because its tied to a specific time (the article source was printed shortly after its founding). The extraneous detail implies a level of accuracy that is unfounded, and unnecessary to this article.
  • June 3 "ce" - Misleading edit and misleading edit summary. Changes the tone completely, the videos/podcasts are part of the Freedomain Radio show, but he changes the tone to say he produced them "on his own".
  • June 3 "Remove redundancy. Voluntaryism is based on NAP." - Per the voluntaryism article "The principle most frequently used to support voluntaryism is the non-aggression principle (NAP)". Per Voluntaryism#History :"Variations of it can be found in many different political, religious, and philosophical ideologies."
  • June 3 "ce" - Removes a comma, turning two independent clauses into a run-on sentence.
  • June 3 "Clarify source." - Erroneously calls the source a "webcast" (which is a streamed directly to the web), but the source is actually a public speech in front of an audience, which was video-recorded and put on YouTube some time later.
  • June 2 " Molyneux doesn't exactly state that the family was Jewish. It would be extraordinary for them to have moved freely around Germany from 1937 to 1944. Better sourcing is needed."
also June 3 " ce. Conform to source. Tag independent secondary RS reference needed for extraordinary, highly improbable assertion that a Jewish family moved freely around Germany during Nazi rule, World War II, & through 1944."
also June 5 "Conform to statements in cited source. This extraordinarily unlikely narrative of a Jewish family moving freely around Nazi Germany needs an independent secondary RS for verification.rv Firestorm and Tragic, SM's narrative."
This section is sourced to a speech given by Molyneux about his own family history. SPECIFICO repeatedly has challenged the account, since it is his believe that it is "extraordinarily unlikely"/"highly improbable" that a Jewish family could move freely around Nazi Germany. His belief is wrong, and easily investigated if he had tried See this section with some details I found within 5 minutes during a simple Google search that shows evidence that thousands of Jews escaped capture due to the bombing.
  • June 5 "Removing off-topic comments not about Molyneux and undue detail concerning Boghossian's general views." - POV insertion/inaccuracy. Peter Boghossian is a philosophy instructor - a fact that is indisputable and pertinent to the article section.

NPOV

  • July 13 - inserts a section using "scare quotes" which repeats the information later in the same paragraph.