This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Byrgenwulf (talk | contribs) at 18:00, 12 October 2006 (→Asmodeus: removing name). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 18:00, 12 October 2006 by Byrgenwulf (talk | contribs) (→Asmodeus: removing name)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)In order to remain listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 16:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 18:12, 29 December 2024 (UTC).
Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.
Statement of the dispute
In brief, this user has been on a campaign of what can only be called bullying, for the past few months (since July). User:Byrgenwulf nominated an article on a "fringe theory" for deletion, and User:Asmodeus took exception to that. User:Byrgenwulf has written an account of the ensuing events, which he keeps here. User:Byrgenwulf believes that because he has over 60 references to back up what he wrote, his right to keep these notes falls under this ArbCom finding. Asmodeus, however, feels differently, as evidenced by . In particular, he has been harassing User:Anville, trying to bully them into not linking to the document. It is up to the Misplaced Pages community, however, and not any single individual, to decide whether Asmodeus' ongoing bullying is something we need to tolerate. Hence this RfC.
Description
The most comprehensive description of Asmodeus' conduct can be found here. However, because that document is rather long, I shall summarise. Asmodeus has been personally attacking myself and others for months, and it needs to stop. Particularly worrying is the manipulative and deceitful manner in which he conducts himself. No doubt this very RfC is going to be rapidly filled with his polysyllabic screeds, attacking and lying about me and anyone who disagrees with him (but in such a way as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth).
In short, there is strong evidence that he and another editor have been using Misplaced Pages as a soapbox to shill for various things (IQ clubs, fringe theories, etc.). When confronted or challenged about this, they respond by attacking the user who has questioned them, and trying their utmost to discredit that person by means of distortion, deception, misinformation, and sometimes even lies, all wrapped up in sarcasm and passing verbosity. Asmodeus' entire userpage reads like a personal attack on the members of WikiProject Pseudoscience and WikiProject Physics.
Asmodeus' most recent activities have been disrupting the Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories policy proposal, and using schoolyard bully tactics to try to suppress the record of his activities. This is a final straw, and what has motivated this RfC.
Evidence of disputed behavior
A tiny handful of hostile edits by User:Asmodeus:
And since this RFC started:
- ("official warning" to User:Anville about WP:NPA, unintentionally (?) unsigned)
- (a similar "official warning" to User:Byrgenwulf, similarly unsigned)
- (threat to instigate wikilitigation against User:Anville, well after being informed of this RFC)
- (attaching {{db-attack}} to Byrgenwulf's evidence page); this speedy delete request was denied by an admin
- Asmodeus, in his defence here, calls Byrgenwulf's initiative in nominating the Langan-related pages for deletion "terminally confused and pathologically aggressive" (the Misplaced Pages community would seem to differ, since they were all deleted), and says that Byrgenwulf is a "viable contender for worst-of-breed"
- DrL attaches another speedy delete tag to the evidence page and is similarly refused - she was already aware of this RfC at that time, and presumably that it was being used as evidence here
- DrL blanks Byrgenwulf's evidence page
- After being reverted, she does it again
- Byrgenwulf warns her about blanking pages
- She deletes the warning, but deceitfully claims to be "archiving" it (nearly half an hour later, it had still not appeared in her talk page archive); take note of the devious behaviour!
Asmodeus has been blocked before for incivility, but the block seems to have done nothing to abate his behaviour.
Asmodeus also, as looking at his contributions list reveals, has editing only articles (and AfDs, talkpages, etc.) pertaining to his favourite theory, its inventor, its inventor's IQ clubs, and has caused disruption on the Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories policy proposal.
Read the document linked to above, and find over 60 references and a description of the full extent of the bad behaviour of this user.
Applicable policies and guidelines
and possibly
- WP:VAIN (read the document)
Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute
Users certifying the basis for this 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.
Asmodeus
To begin, please note that this RfC was initiated only after I complained about an attack page recently posted by User Byrgenwulf. Thus, it is clearly designed to cover Byrgenwulf's haunches regarding that attack page, the culmination of a vendetta by User Byrgenwulf against me, DrL, Misplaced Pages bio subject Christopher Langan, and Langan's theory, the CTMU.
On July 10, 2006, Byrgenwulf received a "heads-up" about Misplaced Pages's CTMU article on the website of the Brights, which is controlled and largely populated by militants of an atheist-materialist philosophical persuasion. After declaring that his interest was "piqued" by reading that "Langan is linked to ID", Byrgenwulf proceeded to make numerous disparaging but incorrect or vapid remarks about the theory, boastfully holding his own technical ability superior to Langan's. Immediately afterward - on that very same day, July 10 - he initiated a focused attack against that article on Misplaced Pages. In editing the CTMU and Langan articles, Byrgenwulf tarred the CTMU as "pseudoscience" despite the fact that it had always been clearly presented as philosophy , and Langan as a "crank" , something specifically forbidden by the head of the Wikimedia Foundation. These actions and circumstances show that Byrgenwulf's behavior in this affair is rooted in philosophical bias, personal antipathy, vanity, and braggadocio (something to bear in mind given his deceptive strategy of feigning neutrality and scholarliness, and his habit of pretending to be victimized by those forced to defend themselves from his attacks).
Dubiously presenting himself as an expert in "the philosophy of physics", Byrgenwulf also denounced what he described as "logical errors" in the CTMU. Some of these are dealt with in the protracted CTMU debate that he eventually managed to wheedle out of me on his talk page. Of course, arguments regarding the content or validity of a theory are irrelevant to the criteria for inclusion in Misplaced Pages; verifiable notability is all that really matters. In fact, the CTMU is inarguably notable by Misplaced Pages standards, having been seriously described and/or mentioned in various high-circulation mainstream periodicals (Popular Science, the London Times, etc.) and broadcasts (ABC, the BBC, etc.), and now getting between 10 and 20 thousand hits on google (under Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe). By introducing such forbidden content/validity arguments very early in the debate, Byrgenwulf quickly made it even more obvious that he had attacked the article not only because he dislikes its author, but because he disagrees with the theory.
Upon getting the worst of it in the technical discussions that he initiated on the CTMU article's discussion page, Byrgenwulf quickly nominated every article having to do with Christopher Langan (except Langan's bio itself) for deletion. The ensuing AfD/DR debate regarding the CTMU was particularly contentious. Because Byrgenwulf misrepresented the CTMU as "pseudoscience" in order to recruit support for his deletional initiatives at WikiProject Pseudoscience and WikiProject Physics the keeps were numerically overwhelmed by the deletes (see the CTMU Deletion Review, and specifically 3, 4 regarding systematic irregularities that were simply ignored by the closing administrator). Most of the votes for deletion came from people who knew nothing about the CTMU except that a paper about it had been published in the journal of an organization (ISCID) friendly to Intelligent Design, a set of ideas which many of them despise as "anti-evolution" (ironic, given that the CTMU explicitly acknowledges the reality of evolution). (Here is Arthur Rubin's frank admission that he judged the CTMU "guilty by association" with ID, following Byrgenwulf's deceptive lead.)
I admit that at several points during the CTMU AfD/DR, I became impatient and even angry, and it showed. However, I was given plenty of provocation. For example, those opposed to the article falsely accused those in favor of presenting "forged archives", using big red letters to trumpet their allegation . They also made numerous false accusations of sockpuppetry - ironic, given that they greatly outnumbered the keeps - and incivility, depite numerous examples of incivility on their own parts. They accused me of being Langan, intimating that I had authored the CTMU article and my own biography (I authored neither article). They even accused me and DrL of commercial "shilling", apparently for (1) daring to remove slurs and correct falsehoods in two Misplaced Pages articles (Christopher Langan, CTMU) in full compliance with WP, and (2) writing a couple of stubs regarding a nonprofit charitable-purpose foundation and one of its projects, with which we may or may not be affiliated. Obviously, this cannot be legitimately described as "shilling", and neither DrL nor I owes anybody an apology for it. This is a representative sample of Byrgenwulf's own comments to/about me and bio subject Christopher Langan on Misplaced Pages (please see WP:NPA, WP:CIV, and WP:LIVING, all of which are clearly and dramatically violated by this characteristic burst of hostility).
Even after Byrgenwulf had succeeded in deleting all of the Langan-related articles, he continued to complain that although he had invited me to engage him in a content-oriented debate regarding the CTMU, I had avoided doing so. Therefore, I went to his talk page and gave him the debate he desired. In the course of this debate, Byrgenwulf - self-described expert in the philosophy of physics - was caught in 70 errors, some of them fundamental in nature. (Of course, he claims not to have made even one of them, but this is unsurprising given his narrow mindset and the low level of logico-philosophical expertise he actually succeeded in demonstrating.) In all probability, his ongoing attack is at least partially a reflection of his resentment over having bungled this debate.
After Byrgenwulf stopped arguing and archived the debate, things died down. Gratefully, I turned to other (off-wiki) pursuits. But just when everything seemed to have returned to normal, Byrgenwulf suddenly attempted to renew the conflagration by publishing his attack page, prompting one of his confederates in the CTMU AfD/DR debacle (Anville) to link it to the talk pages of people more or less involved in certain related negotiations. My recent contributions to this site consist almost exclusively of trying to get him to remove it, and his confederate to remove his/her links, in compliance with WP:NPA and other core elements of WP. The timing of this RfC strongly indicates that it was conceived and initiated to ward off these attempts (7,8 ; 9, 10, 11).
The problems with Byrgenwulf's self-justificative attack screed include the following:
(1) The page contains numerous examples of blatant incivility and character assassination. DrL and I are called "nasty", "liars", etc. (largely because we dared to call attention to Byrgenwulf's own numerous departures from WP).
(2) The page contains rank speculation on the motives and mental states of DrL and me at various junctures. All of these speculations are counterfactual and transparently designed to slant things against us. These pejorative speculations violate NPOV and fail to reflect the assumption of good faith.
(3) The page contains numerous misrepresentations of other kinds. For example, it labels a certain nonprofit publishing house, which does not accept unsolicited manuscripts and does not charge to publish, a "vanity press". This highlights the author's generally disparaging intent.
(4) Many of the references are given in a misleading way, without sufficient attention to the falsehoods and/or provocations which preceeded them.
(5) Commenting on an unattributed quotation about Langan, Byrgenwulf frankly admits that he is incapable of assuming good faith on my own part (not only a non sequitur, but another blatant violation of Misplaced Pages guidelines).
(6) The page contains remarks which threaten to disrupt certain negotiations now in progress. Similarly, the page contains certain remarks regarding other personal interactions which do not involve Byrgenwulf himself, and these too could easily turn disruptive. Disruptive behavior is against Misplaced Pages Policy.
(Et cetera; see this exchange)
I have no interest in engaging in a point-by-point refutation of Byrgenwulf's offensive screed, which he posted under the pretext of creating a "record" of his own terminally confused but pathologically aggressive initiatives and their various sequelae. That would be a time sink; since all of the administrative intervention regarding Byrgenwulf's activities has thus far seemed to favor Byrgenwulf and his comrades-in-arms, I am no longer willing to bank large amounts of time and effort on the prospects for administrative understanding and fair treatment here at Misplaced Pages (with all due respect, of course). I now regard Misplaced Pages as seriously "broken" in this respect, the victim of systemic bias, collective naivete, and random purgative frenzies of an intensity sometimes approaching mob psychosis. However, that does not mean that I will sit quietly by and countenance the serial abuse of this highly public site by people who insist on using it to prosecute their defamatory vendettas and absurdly bloated claims of "expertise". In this respect, User Byrgenwulf is a viable contender for worst-of-breed, and the less interaction I am forced to suffer with such people, the happier I will be.
As I've observed elsewhere, Misplaced Pages has a serious problem, and the users who initiated this RfC are at the very center of it . This problem does not arise from the removal of slurs and falsehoods by the subjects of Misplaced Pages biographies, or the correction by theorists of misleading remarks about their notable theories, or the writing of innocuous stubs about nonprofit, charitable-purpose foundations by those who know them best, or even the use of pseudonyms by celebrities trying to avoid the sort of harassment, stalking behavior, and open hostility to which I have been subjected by users like Byrgenwulf and Anville. It involves the determination of content through the deliberate pressing of philosophical "hot buttons" by militant users who engage in calculated misrepresentation while feigning expertise and speciously claiming to be in conformance with NPOV, and administrators who allow them to do so. As I and many others understand the Misplaced Pages Project, this is not what it is supposed to be about. When this kind of travesty can be committed with total impunity under the noses of multiple administrators who at times appear to be running interference for the perpetrators, despite the revelation of serious improprieties , against an initially accurate and well-written article about a notable theory which has appeared in numerous mainstream publications and currently receives 15,000 specific hits on google, and when the travesty in question can be followed with months of harassment by an instigator who vindictively festoons his main user page with personal attacks against those he has wronged , the end would almost seem to be nigh. It is my sincere hope that Misplaced Pages can do something about this problem before it grows worse, and thus continue to serve the public as it was intended to do.
I'll come back and add links and further information as time permits. Thank you, Asmodeus 18:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Users who endorse this summary:
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.
User Byrgenwulf seems to be intent on dragging me into this RfC. I would ask that mention of "DrL" be removed from this page as each RfC is supposed to address a single user. In an RfC regarding Asmodeus, the behavior of DrL is quite beside the point. Instead, it speaks to a pattern of harassment and stalking by user Bergenwulf.
Users who endorse this summary:
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. has ongoing problems with incivility and bullying 16:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)