Several editors have had interactions with Racepacket that have been less than wonderful since last fall. I first encountered him doing the GAN review for Grand Valley State University, where he told a nominator to pipe a link from [[M-45 (Michigan highway)|M-45]] to [[M-45 (Michigan highway)|Michigan Route 45]]. Now, perhaps my phrasing was off, but I did tell the two of them to change link back. Why? Michigan's highways have been numbered M-# since they were signed in 1919, and the "M-" is not an abbreviation, so Racepacket's suggestion was introducing an inaccuracy that bordered on original research to the article.
Personal GAN interactions
Since that time, he's taken an interest in various state highway articles that have been nominated at GAN. I've had several. Yes, there is a contest to get a unique highway article listed as a GA for every county of a state in which I have participated. I've been working on that since the end of September 2008. Even if there weren't such a contest, however, Michigan's state highway articles are all at C-Class or above, so naturally my editing goals would be to improve what's left to GA-Class or higher now. (There are currently 6 FAs, 6 As, 86 GAs 68 Bs and 52 Cs for the project.) In either case, I have had dozen's of GANs lately, and I will continue to have dozens more in the future as a natural consequence of state of the WP:MSHP subproject and my participation in it.
Now, I don't care who reviews my nominations. I nominate them into the same queue as any other editor. I deal with the feedback that's offered at every review. However, back in November and December, I was starting to move my opinion of Racepacket's reviews from "appreciated" to "tolerated" over a few issues that popped up. Had any one of these been isolated incidents, none would have been a big deal. Between September 27, 2010, and January 6, 2011, I nominated 15 separate articles at GAN, all of which were listed. Of these, six were reviewed by Racepacket. In the review for M-152 (Michigan highway), I was asked to change something, which I did. After further explanation, I was asked to change it back. A minor annoyance, but nothing criminal. For M-20 (Michigan highway), I was asked if I could reinsert some information removed from the article before I revised it to nominate it. The problem is that information comes from Michigan Highways, a self-published source, and I could not find a reliable source to support the information. In the review for M-6 (Michigan highway), I was told that the article was wrong, that of the 16 possible movements between US 131, M-6 and 68th St. in that interchange, that it was possible to connect from westbound M-6 to 68th St. Sadly, that's not true, and I was surprised to be told otherwise, given that I live not far from the interchange in question. When M-66 (Michigan highway) was reviewed, I was told that a suggested change was "NOT DONE" when the sentence in question was reworded differently than Racepacket suggested. IMHO, the end result was better than both what was there before and what was suggested.
That's four of the six reviews he's given me. If each were taken in isolation, none of them would matter. The articles all got listed and life moved on. They represent a span of time from September into November though, during which three other reviewers looked over articles I nominated without anything annoying about the reviews. The review for M-71 (Michigan highway) was quite smooth, so don't let it be inferred that he and I can't have a positive interaction at all. The biggest problem came with the review on U.S. Route 223 at the end of December. I won't go into much detail here, but Racepacket was insisting on adding and changing content in that article related to one possible, but currently unlikely, future chain of events where US 223 is converted to a freeway and renumbered as part of Interstate 73. Both Michigan and Ohio have cancelled any studies on such a possibility over a decade ago. News stories out of the Carolinas and Virginia continue to quote Michigan as the northern end of the Interstate because federal law still says that I-73 is supposed to terminate here. However, until something changes in West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan, I-73 will never be built here. WV is not building their sections of the highway as a full freeway, meaning that the I-73 numbering will stop somewhere in Virginia, and the other two states haven't studied the idea in years. When it appeared that Racepacket would not move on from insisting on requiring misleading changes to the article, I withdrew the article and renominated it for another reviewer. When he signed up for the second review, claiming that I couldn't do that, I withdrew it a second time and attempted to move on.
Other GAN interactions
Since that time, he's no longer reviewed any of my nominations. I've seen him have less than positive interactions in other highway articles' reviews. Some members of our project have voluntarily stopped nominating articles to GAN to avoid him. I've also seen him refuse to disengage with another editor in the dramas surrounding the Netball articles. He refused to allow LauraHale to withdraw her nomination. He pursued a second review of the Olympics-related netball article. He's pursued her articles at WP:PR. He even attempted to inflict actual, real-world consequences on her by attempting to get her reprimanded by the organization he thought employed her. (I know that she doesn't work for the Wikimedia Foundation, but he thought she did when he posted publicly on meta.) He has yet to realize that his actions have had harm. I am not claiming that I'm a saint through all of this, but the record speaks for itself. Racepacket has had bulldog determination in pursing someone he has turned into an opponent instead of a colleague.
GA criteria
Racepacket keeps stating that members of the USRD project are attempting to substitute project standards for GA Criteria. I believe there's a miscommunication at work there. Interstate 376 does not meet project standards for structure and content. That's actually not as big of a deal. Brockway Mountain Drive has a non-standard article section ("Awards and recognition") and yet it has been rated as a GA and as A-Class. The problem with I-376 isn't that it doesn't meet standards; it is that by failing to meet those standards, it also fails to meet the GA Criteria. The highway has a toll section, yet it doesn't have any content on how the tolls are collected or assessed (required by the project) which means that a "major aspect" (GA Criteria) of it is missing. A wikiproject's standards and expectations are only persuasive, and the GA Criteria are controlling, but there are times when the former helps the latter. The other deficiency in the article I noted is that the History section has six subsections with 16 total paragraphs; the lead had a single sentence of summary for the history. In contrast, the "route description section has seven paragraphs and the business loop section has two more. The lead itself is three good-sized paragraphs summarizing those nine paragraphs and some information in the exit list table, but ignoring the bulk of the history section. The article is also using six footnotes to self-published sources and one to a Wikipedia article. I'm sorry, but several of these points were mentioned on the article's talk page before Racepacket took the review, and were restated on the review page to make sure he was aware of them so they could be discussed, not dismissed.
Reviewing articles
Reviewing articles is a slightly adversarial process at its core. An editor nominates an article for promotion by having it reviewed against a set of criteria. The implicit statement is that he feels the article meets or comes close to those criteria. The reviewer has to evaluate that article and provide feedback on how it doesn't meet the criteria, or list it if it does. When the interactions are not good (US 223, Netball), the reviewer can and should be mature enough to walk away and trust in the community to get the situation right in the end. Let another person review the article. If it truly does or does not meet the criteria, then the article will or won't be listed. If it's listed in error, there are reassessment options to improve or delist the article.
Recent allegations made
I can provide the diffs if requested, but recently there have been insinuations that border on outright accusations. Racepacket has been smart to make statements in so many words, but the effect is still clear. Among these has been the plagiarism accusations against LauraHale. While it is true that Racepacket has never overtly stated that she plagiarized, he did state that she's too closely paraphrasing source material. The net effect to an academic is the same: co-opting the work of others as their own. Back during the US 223 drama, he accused me of trying to "pick" my reviewer. He's implied that USRD members pick their reviewers again recently. If he wishes to pursue those allegations, the burden is on him to show that they happened, but he can't because they didn't. At most, I have asked others to participate in review of the articles nominated at the project's A-Class Review, a process that requires four separate reviewers to support promotion against what is basically the FA criteria. Now to clarify, that does not mean that I have asked anyone to support any specific article, just that when an article has been sitting at ACR for a while with only three reviewers it needs a fourth review before it can be closed. The goal is to have reviews run 14 days, but sometimes they have run months to get the fourth review.
Canvassing
Racepacket has continued to review articles nominated at GAN through the course of the RfC/U, even though his reviewing has been questioned. He has contacted several editors after he's passed their articles and asked them explicitly to comment on the RfC/U. Of course these editor's comments have been glowing endorsements of his reviews, because those interactions have been positive. The problem isn't his reviews in general, its been several of them in specific, and more, the tactics and behavior displayed surrounding them. This canvassing is distorting the issue, because the canvassed opinions have nothing to do with the reviews and behavior at issue.
Personal goal
Ok, now that I've written an essay here, I'll summarize what my personal goal through this RfCU has been. It has been my hope that Racepacket would realize that he can, and has, taken matters too far. He needs to realize that sometimes a swift mea culpa and disengagement does wonders. Instead his answer has been to fling mud. That he reviews so much is a great thing, honestly. Some people are good writers and creators of content but don't like to review. Some people are good at reviewing and great at providing feedback. We need more reviewers, but we also need reviewers that understand the impact of their actions in and around the review.
Specific outcomes
I'd like to see the following:
- Racepacket needs to personally apologize to LauraHale. This apology needs to acknowledge that he has made accusations, overtly or not, that implied that she committed "academic dishonestly", "plagiarism" to "too close paraphrasing" that he could not support. The apology also needs to acknowledge the harm he caused by taking the matter over to meta, whether or not she is employed by or directly benefits from the Wikimedia Foundation. The net effect was still the same.
- Racepacket should understand that while the majority of his reviews are good, and appreciated, that a disturbing minority of them are not. In the future, he should learn to walk away when interactions in a review get too heated. This could be as simple as stating, "Look, this discussion isn't getting either of us anywhere. How about we table this for a few days and come back with clear heads and re-evaluate it?" or even "Look, I'm going to withdraw here. Feel free to renominate this for another reviewer."
- Racepacket should understand that nominators have the option to withdraw their nomination. After that point, he can continue to offer feedback, but the formal review process has ended. His participation is no longer required. He should respect the desire of the nominator to end the review.
- Racepacket should acknowledge that if an article is renominated, even under a different title, it may not be beneficial to the community to pursue issues from the previous reviews he's given.
- Racepacket should know that editors will work on the articles that interest them. Some articles may be perceived as "more important" and left alone, but ultimately, it is not his decision what articles editors edit or nominate.
- Racepacket should understand that there is a fine balance between the standards a wikiproject sets and the review criteria the community as a whole has set. Wikiprojects deal in the specifics, and their opinions and standards should be reasonably accommodated where they don't explicitly conflict with review criteria. There will always be exceptions, which is why we have WP:IAR, or even just plain common sense. Where the two ideas don't conflict and can be shown to enhance each other, both should be followed on a reasonable basis.
- Finally, Racepacket should voluntarily abstain from working on articles in subject areas that have been the source of past conflicts. The other parties are willing to avoid him if he is willing to do the same. I suggest that this agreement from both sides be honored for one year. Additional subject matters beyond US highways and Netball may be added should contentious review occur in the future. (Racepacket can voluntarily expand the first area to all highway and roadway articles if he wishes, however no similar articles outside of the US were the subject of the RfC/U although a WP:CRWP member has participated in the discussions.)
Several editors have had interactions with Racepacket that have been less than wonderful since last fall. I first encountered him doing the GAN review for Grand Valley State University, where he told a nominator to pipe a link from [[M-45 (Michigan highway)|M-45]] to [[M-45 (Michigan highway)|Michigan Route 45]]. Now, perhaps my phrasing was off, but I did tell the two of them to change link back. Why? Michigan's highways have been numbered M-# since they were signed in 1919, and the "M-" is not an abbreviation, so Racepacket's suggestion was introducing an inaccuracy that bordered on original research to the article.
Personal GAN interactions
Since that time, he's taken an interest in various state highway articles that have been nominated at GAN. I've had several. Yes, there is a contest to get a unique highway article listed as a GA for every county of a state in which I have participated. I've been working on that since the end of September 2008. Even if there weren't such a contest, however, Michigan's state highway articles are all at C-Class or above, so naturally my editing goals would be to improve what's left to GA-Class or higher now. (There are currently 6 FAs, 6 As, 86 GAs 68 Bs and 52 Cs for the project.) In either case, I have had dozen's of GANs lately, and I will continue to have dozens more in the future as a natural consequence of state of the WP:MSHP subproject and my participation in it.
Now, I don't care who reviews my nominations. I nominate them into the same queue as any other editor. I deal with the feedback that's offered at every review. However, back in November and December, I was starting to move my opinion of Racepacket's reviews from "appreciated" to "tolerated" over a few issues that popped up. Had any one of these been isolated incidents, none would have been a big deal. Between September 27, 2010, and January 6, 2011, I nominated 15 separate articles at GAN, all of which were listed. Of these, six were reviewed by Racepacket. In the review for M-152 (Michigan highway), I was asked to change something, which I did. After further explanation, I was asked to change it back. A minor annoyance, but nothing criminal. For M-20 (Michigan highway), I was asked if I could reinsert some information removed from the article before I revised it to nominate it. The problem is that information comes from Michigan Highways, a self-published source, and I could not find a reliable source to support the information. In the review for M-6 (Michigan highway), I was told that the article was wrong, that of the 16 possible movements between US 131, M-6 and 68th St. in that interchange, that it was possible to connect from westbound M-6 to 68th St. Sadly, that's not true, and I was surprised to be told otherwise, given that I live not far from the interchange in question. When M-66 (Michigan highway) was reviewed, I was told that a suggested change was "NOT DONE" when the sentence in question was reworded differently than Racepacket suggested. IMHO, the end result was better than both what was there before and what was suggested.
That's four of the six reviews he's given me. If each were taken in isolation, none of them would matter. The articles all got listed and life moved on. They represent a span of time from September into November though, during which three other reviewers looked over articles I nominated without anything annoying about the reviews. The review for M-71 (Michigan highway) was quite smooth, so don't let it be inferred that he and I can't have a positive interaction at all. The biggest problem came with the review on U.S. Route 223 at the end of December. I won't go into much detail here, but Racepacket was insisting on adding and changing content in that article related to one possible, but currently unlikely, future chain of events where US 223 is converted to a freeway and renumbered as part of Interstate 73. Both Michigan and Ohio have cancelled any studies on such a possibility over a decade ago. News stories out of the Carolinas and Virginia continue to quote Michigan as the northern end of the Interstate because federal law still says that I-73 is supposed to terminate here. However, until something changes in West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan, I-73 will never be built here. WV is not building their sections of the highway as a full freeway, meaning that the I-73 numbering will stop somewhere in Virginia, and the other two states haven't studied the idea in years. When it appeared that Racepacket would not move on from insisting on requiring misleading changes to the article, I withdrew the article and renominated it for another reviewer. When he signed up for the second review, claiming that I couldn't do that, I withdrew it a second time and attempted to move on.
Other GAN interactions
Since that time, he's no longer reviewed any of my nominations. I've seen him have less than positive interactions in other highway articles' reviews. Some members of our project have voluntarily stopped nominating articles to GAN to avoid him. I've also seen him refuse to disengage with another editor in the dramas surrounding the Netball articles. He refused to allow LauraHale to withdraw her nomination. He pursued a second review of the Olympics-related netball article. He's pursued her articles at WP:PR. He even attempted to inflict actual, real-world consequences on her by attempting to get her reprimanded by the organization he thought employed her. (I know that she doesn't work for the Wikimedia Foundation, but he thought she did when he posted publicly on meta.) He has yet to realize that his actions have had harm. I am not claiming that I'm a saint through all of this, but the record speaks for itself. Racepacket has had bulldog determination in pursing someone he has turned into an opponent instead of a colleague.
GA criteria
Racepacket keeps stating that members of the USRD project are attempting to substitute project standards for GA Criteria. I believe there's a miscommunication at work there. Interstate 376 does not meet project standards for structure and content. That's actually not as big of a deal. Brockway Mountain Drive has a non-standard article section ("Awards and recognition") and yet it has been rated as a GA and as A-Class. The problem with I-376 isn't that it doesn't meet standards; it is that by failing to meet those standards, it also fails to meet the GA Criteria. The highway has a toll section, yet it doesn't have any content on how the tolls are collected or assessed (required by the project) which means that a "major aspect" (GA Criteria) of it is missing. A wikiproject's standards and expectations are only persuasive, and the GA Criteria are controlling, but there are times when the former helps the latter. The other deficiency in the article I noted is that the History section has six subsections with 16 total paragraphs; the lead had a single sentence of summary for the history. In contrast, the "route description section has seven paragraphs and the business loop section has two more. The lead itself is three good-sized paragraphs summarizing those nine paragraphs and some information in the exit list table, but ignoring the bulk of the history section. The article is also using six footnotes to self-published sources and one to a Wikipedia article. I'm sorry, but several of these points were mentioned on the article's talk page before Racepacket took the review, and were restated on the review page to make sure he was aware of them so they could be discussed, not dismissed.
Reviewing articles
Reviewing articles is a slightly adversarial process at its core. An editor nominates an article for promotion by having it reviewed against a set of criteria. The implicit statement is that he feels the article meets or comes close to those criteria. The reviewer has to evaluate that article and provide feedback on how it doesn't meet the criteria, or list it if it does. When the interactions are not good (US 223, Netball), the reviewer can and should be mature enough to walk away and trust in the community to get the situation right in the end. Let another person review the article. If it truly does or does not meet the criteria, then the article will or won't be listed. If it's listed in error, there are reassessment options to improve or delist the article.
Recent allegations made
I can provide the diffs if requested, but recently there have been insinuations that border on outright accusations. Racepacket has been smart to make statements in so many words, but the effect is still clear. Among these has been the plagiarism accusations against LauraHale. While it is true that Racepacket has never overtly stated that she plagiarized, he did state that she's too closely paraphrasing source material. The net effect to an academic is the same: co-opting the work of others as their own. Back during the US 223 drama, he accused me of trying to "pick" my reviewer. He's implied that USRD members pick their reviewers again recently. If he wishes to pursue those allegations, the burden is on him to show that they happened, but he can't because they didn't. At most, I have asked others to participate in review of the articles nominated at the project's A-Class Review, a process that requires four separate reviewers to support promotion against what is basically the FA criteria. Now to clarify, that does not mean that I have asked anyone to support any specific article, just that when an article has been sitting at ACR for a while with only three reviewers it needs a fourth review before it can be closed. The goal is to have reviews run 14 days, but sometimes they have run months to get the fourth review.
Canvassing
Racepacket has continued to review articles nominated at GAN through the course of the RfC/U, even though his reviewing has been questioned. He has contacted several editors after he's passed their articles and asked them explicitly to comment on the RfC/U. Of course these editor's comments have been glowing endorsements of his reviews, because those interactions have been positive. The problem isn't his reviews in general, its been several of them in specific, and more, the tactics and behavior displayed surrounding them. This canvassing is distorting the issue, because the canvassed opinions have nothing to do with the reviews and behavior at issue.
Personal goal
Ok, now that I've written an essay here, I'll summarize what my personal goal through this RfCU has been. It has been my hope that Racepacket would realize that he can, and has, taken matters too far. He needs to realize that sometimes a swift mea culpa and disengagement does wonders. Instead his answer has been to fling mud. That he reviews so much is a great thing, honestly. Some people are good writers and creators of content but don't like to review. Some people are good at reviewing and great at providing feedback. We need more reviewers, but we also need reviewers that understand the impact of their actions in and around the review.
Specific outcomes
I'd like to see the following:
- Racepacket needs to personally apologize to LauraHale. This apology needs to acknowledge that he has made accusations, overtly or not, that implied that she committed "academic dishonestly", "plagiarism" to "too close paraphrasing" that he could not support. The apology also needs to acknowledge the harm he caused by taking the matter over to meta, whether or not she is employed by or directly benefits from the Wikimedia Foundation. The net effect was still the same.
- Racepacket should understand that while the majority of his reviews are good, and appreciated, that a disturbing minority of them are not. In the future, he should learn to walk away when interactions in a review get too heated. This could be as simple as stating, "Look, this discussion isn't getting either of us anywhere. How about we table this for a few days and come back with clear heads and re-evaluate it?" or even "Look, I'm going to withdraw here. Feel free to renominate this for another reviewer."
- Racepacket should understand that nominators have the option to withdraw their nomination. After that point, he can continue to offer feedback, but the formal review process has ended. His participation is no longer required. He should respect the desire of the nominator to end the review.
- Racepacket should acknowledge that if an article is renominated, even under a different title, it may not be beneficial to the community to pursue issues from the previous reviews he's given.
- Racepacket should know that editors will work on the articles that interest them. Some articles may be perceived as "more important" and left alone, but ultimately, it is not his decision what articles editors edit or nominate.
- Racepacket should understand that there is a fine balance between the standards a wikiproject sets and the review criteria the community as a whole has set. Wikiprojects deal in the specifics, and their opinions and standards should be reasonably accommodated where they don't explicitly conflict with review criteria. There will always be exceptions, which is why we have WP:IAR, or even just plain common sense. Where the two ideas don't conflict and can be shown to enhance each other, both should be followed on a reasonable basis.
- Finally, Racepacket should voluntarily abstain from working on articles in subject areas that have been the source of past conflicts. The other parties are willing to avoid him if he is willing to do the same. I suggest that this agreement from both sides be honored for one year. Additional subject matters beyond US highways and Netball may be added should contentious review occur in the future. (Racepacket can voluntarily expand the first area to all highway and roadway articles if he wishes, however no similar articles outside of the US were the subject of the RfC/U although a WP:CRWP member has participated in the discussions.)