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Both yourself and NJGW seem to have stopped editing for a bit, but if you have a look at WP:AN the block looks questionable and there would be no harm in the goodwill gesture of an early unblock. If you can process that in the next hour or so it would be greatly appreciated. . dave souza, talk 21:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
WP:AE#Request for injunction in Pseudoscience/Homeopathy. ScienceApologist ( talk) 02:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
The key to reducing disruption isn't to go back and right old wrongs or to deal a slew of warnings. Digging through old contributions doesn't "reduce disruption", it re-opens wounds. "Reducing disruption" isn't about righting great wrongs, it's about lowering the temperature.
Of course, if you really want to reduce disruption, it's important to approach the matter fairly. At present, you look like you're taking sides. I'm sure it isn't your intent, but your current course of action seems to be heating things up, not cooling them down. Guettarda ( talk) 16:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Logical_Premise/editorluv
Thought you might want to know about these personal attacks.
Messengerbot (
talk)
21:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
A number of people have already TRIED to resolve disputes with this user. He continually ignores ALL other editors and replaces tags without ever citing ANYTHING at all. He is VERY biased and we've attempted to send him to COI among other things, but requests are REPEATEDLY ignored and even deleted by the user himself!-- FireandFlames17 ( talk) 03:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#FireandFlames17
You'll see that I posted this user's edits for just TODAY. He's accusing me of editing too many times myself...and he edits ten times more in one day than I do in a week. This user is adding tags to the articles that the other editors have said do no belong...and yet he's the only one that thinks they do. I have PERSONALLY rewritten the entire Passage to Zarahemla article myself (and it even matches the style of the Work and The Glory article (for the movie)) and yet...that article does not have tags (nor do any other movie articles written in the same style) but this user seems to have a personal vendetta against Mr. Heimerdinger for some reason. I am simply doing nothing other than to try and maintain some sort of consistency in the article, even contributing where I can, but it doesn't matter who seems to contribute, this user seems to have a problem with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FireandFlames17 ( talk • contribs) 03:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi there. I was looking through the history and I noticed you tagged Akademie Verlag. Would you be interested in commenting here? Carcharoth ( talk) 13:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'm assuming you've read most of today's (and recent) comments on Phenom's page, the Current Days characters page, and my sockpuppet reports. I know I tend to go from friendly and helpful to businesslike and cold quicker than is probably preferred, and I was certainly relentless in this situation, but at some point I'd be interested if you thought I should've handled this differently. Feel free to not hold back any punches ;) — TAnthony Talk 22:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I have seen in the past you have made edits to the Wikipedia:Autoblock and i think something important needs to be added. You would note the page says "...The only circumstances in which a user may be associated with an IP address are certain policy violations detailed by the checkuser policy..." Yet you would know when an admin unblocks an autoblock like here, the IP of the user can be seen for everyone. Is this not correct? If so, i dont know why it does not get hidden. I think a note should be left on the page that if they dont want their IP to be revealed, to hold out until the autoblock expires. Whats your opinion? Thank You 220.239.56.131 ( talk) 11:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I added this new attack to my outstanding IP sock case here, but I'm not sure what else can be done. Even blocking Phenom forever won't stop the IP disruptions. — TAnthony Talk 19:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok w/me, but watch the page, please. NawlinWiki ( talk) 19:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I am hereby requesting that you refrain from interacting with me. In the future, if you choose to place a warning on my page, especially one as specious as the one you just did here, don't. Please ask an uninvolved admin to relay any concerns you have, and I will either endeavor to listen or ignore depending on the validity of the requests. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 23:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Did you write this?
Jehochman to point out that he has a strong COI on the Search engine optimization article, considering that he is an executive in an SEO firm, and has been involved in a lawsuit which names the Wikipedia article as part of the suit.
Lawsuit? Is that beyond a legal threat and into real legal warfare? Should this person stop editing Wikipedia entirely until the lawsuit is over? I know nothing about you or a lawsuit and am not taking sides on any matter, just inquiring.
Chergles ( talk) 00:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
How about taking this up at WP:COIN and get opinions from editors that take much more time understanding what COI is about and how it should be dealt with? -- Ronz ( talk) 18:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I am interested in fairness and kindness but also ethics and analysis. If anyone wants me to try to resolve this issue, I will. Otherwise, I don't seek involvement in it. As said above, the original post were merely an inquiry, not an accusation. I have intentionally not researched the issue to insure impartiality in the future regarding this subject. Chergles ( talk) 00:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think your comments to Jim62sch are dead on. I myself had earlier raised a similar concern on his talk page. Wikipedia would be a better place if we had more writers. Thanks, Madman ( talk) 15:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Over at Muhammad al_Durrah you suggested a name change. A month later, I did a quick count of the views expressed and read it as being "5-0 support, 1 neutral". (I was probably wrong, it's probably only 2 in favour, 3 "likely", one neutral and one unknown). The move has been reverted - is it worth taking it to "Request Move"? (This last is not actually my idea - but I've come to you because I thought you'd be more au fait with all the issues).
Editor | Change Title to "Muhammad al-Durrah affair"? | Comments made |
---|---|---|
User:Elonka | Likely | ... feel free to discuss it here. If other editors agree, we can move the page. But I'd like to ensure that there's a consensus first. 17:36, 18 September 2008 |
User:PalestineRemembered | Yes | Support re-name 18:30, 18 September 2008 |
User:6SJ7 | Likely | At least at first glance, adding "affair" would seem to be appropriate ... I will reserve my actual opinion pending further discussion. 18:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
User:IronDuke | Neutral | I could go either way as well, though I do think we have articles on people esentially famous for only one thing, eg, Leo Frank. 19:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
User:Liftarn | Unknown | I wouls support splitting out the conspiracy theories to a separate article and let this article deal with the facts. // |
User:Tarc | Yes | Call it the Muhammad al-Durrah affair 16:35, 19 September 2008 |
User:Jaakobou | Likely | I think I tend to agree about the "affair" spirit for writing the article, but I'm not so certain the move is necessary. 04:48, 22 September 2008 |
PR talk 16:39, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Elonka, a user named User:Phenomenon8980 has been repeatedly blanking my talk page. I have left several messages on his/her talk page concerning talk page guidelines. He/She is angry because I redirected a character page Melanie Layton, back to Days of Our Lives because she does not meet WP:NOTE. I told the user I had no personal grievances against him/her, but I am just trying to follow rules. I have been civil, and not posted any threatening messages. This user just continues to blank my page though. Please advise. If you are the wrong person to contact, please tell me who is. Thank you. Rm994 ( talk) 19:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Email from User:HabsMTL to User: Phenomenon8980. (email removed)
I am writing on behalf of Phenomenon8980. He has not contacted User: RM994 for any reason since they've had their conflict. Phenomenon8980 is highly upset and plans to now continue harrassing both users if he is not apologized to. It is clear that noone is interested in letting Phenomenon 8980 take the high road. 131.247.244.190 ( talk) 15:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
TAnthony keeps sending me sockpuppet violations. I don't know what this is and I havent contacted him at all for any reason for about a week. I have been blocked. He continues to have some personal vendetta against me eventhough he was already successful in having all my articles that I created deleted. If he doesnt stop harrasing me I will call the police. Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 17:05, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your fair oversight as usual, Elonka. I'll stay clear of 3RR; you have my word. I'll also be sure to take a look at Michele Renouf's article. Best, Causteau ( talk) 16:54, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Is this kind of threat an invitation for an indefinite block? I am honestly amazed that this editor persists with this. — TAnthony Talk 19:02, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I persist with this because you keep harrasing me. I have been blocked for a week and I sign on for the first time and its a sockpuppet violation from you. It's like you just can't let it go. That's a price you will have to pay then. Keep it up! Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 19:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Phenom also keeps restoring the thread you asked me to archive. Thanks. — TAnthony Talk 19:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
And I may also point out that he just violated 3RR by doing it a third time — TAnthony Talk 19:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
That article describes TAnthony to a tee. It's funny because he is not even the original person who I had an issue with. I resolved that conflict a long time ago. It' TAnthony's incessant abuse of whatever power he has to make other editor's experience on here miserable. I say he should be the one blocked for goading me into this conflict. And yet he's surprised that I persist? Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 19:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
This is exactly what I mean. Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 19:32, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Though I participated in the discussion on tense at Pauline Fowler, I know you were an active part of the FA nom. In that article, the character's storylines are pretty much presented from a real-world perspective in the context their coverage in external sources, with the more in-universe coverage filling it out. That is obviously the ideal approach, but would you say this was a natural choice based on the amount of coverage available on this particular character, or a direct result of suggestions from peer review/article class noms? I'm working on an article with a significant amount of source material and am going in this same direction, but I'm wondering in general if, for characters of slightly less notability, a reasonably-sized section that is essentially only plot summary would hinder the article (assuming there are other sourced sections asserting notability, etc. An example which comes to mind immediately is Alexis Colby in its current state. The article definitely needs work (and of course there are probably plenty of sources to expand the article a la Pauline), but pretending for a moment that is not the case, would the article's current format work? That is, a real-world-based section and a plot section, like you would find for an article about a novel. Or, do you think it would be necessary to weave the two, as in Pauline? I'm not sure how many character articles have made it to FA status. — TAnthony Talk 22:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, for what it's worth, I watch the SEO article pretty closely and I don't think either Durova or Jehochman have abused it or tried to edit it to their advantage. As for the lawsuit, Jehochman, as well as other SEOs, are suing to stop the U.S. Trademark Office's egregiously absurd grant of a trademark on the letters "SEO" to one of their competitors (who has been indefinitely blocked here.)
I'm not in the SEO business myself; mostly I watch that article because it's a wonderful honeypot for drawing out spammers.
--
A. B. (
talk •
contribs)
02:11, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
PS, I thought your message for Jim62sch was very tactful. I'm sorry he took it wrong.
Since you stopped posting to my talk, but things have developed further, I figured I ought to drop you a note that there have been further discussions on AN/I. Hope that helps. ++ Lar: t/ c 16:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Hiya, Elonka. Thanks for joining me in editing Paul Mellars. I managed to find his date of birth on the archives of the British Academy. Cheers, Mathsci ( talk) 00:18, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Hey. I have (FINALLY) closed the RfC, and posted my conclusion inside it. Hopefully it's satisfactory, it was really hard to close this. Wizardman 04:44, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, just my ignorance. -- Enzuru 06:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Halp User:84.255.151.196... grr. ناهد/(Nåhed) speak! 01:22, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Elonka. Not to keep lengthening the everlasting thread on Lar's page, I feel I should reply here that you're quite right: Rm994 didn't post to ANI. It was most likely at your page that I saw the user's call for help against an aggressive editor who kept blanking their page. Not that I was consciously watching your page, but I had lazily let it remain on my watchlist after I'd posted there before. ("Monitor" your page, as you call it, is not something I've ever done. Seriously, what for?) I'm sorry I misspoke about it. I can't remember, or even imagine, why I went look up that particular post on your page when it appeared on my watchlist—it's downright odd, to my sense, since it certainly didn't have a striking edit summary (it had none) or anything, and to the best of my knowledge I'd never heard of Rm994. Anyway, I was obviously mixed up when I wrote about it on Lar's page, and I apologize for my error. When something that long ago was in question, I should have checked before saying anything at all, however clearly I thought I remembered it, and I appreciate your setting me right. That said, I still stand by my other remarks on Lar's page, I'm afraid. As far as I'm concerned, I wasn't the one who "jumped into the middle of a discussion", you were (which was fine). You offered rather superior and as I thought them (and, I'm afraid, still think them) priggish references to well-known policies to Risker and myself, who are pretty experienced admins (which was less fine, in my opinion). Anyway, I'm very sorry I misremembered about where I saw Rm994's sad plaint. You'll be pleased to hear that I've finally remembered to "unwatch" your page. I do try to keep my watchlist trimmed down to pages I'm actually interested in, as it's much more effective that way. But it's a bit of an eternal struggle between chaos and laziness. Best wishes, Bishonen | talk 18:31, 19 October 2008 (UTC).
Hi, Ok, I will post elsewhere from now. But the new incarnation of the same vandal is User talk:Maryland's isn't Disneyland and he is still vandalizing several user pages. Please look at his edit history. I have started writing a paper about him: User:History2007/Content protection. Everytime he vandalizes, I write more on that article.... Cheers History2007 ( talk) 20:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
My apologies - yes he is blocked. I was looking on his talk page, not user page. But he will be back. The poor fellow has some sort of obsessive psych problem that needs professional help. I think he was also EurovisionMan and was vandalizing other topics and was blocked. Also vandalizes Lithuanian Wikipedia, and has a chess obsession too I hear. Anyway, Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 20:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. History2007 ( talk) 21:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
By the way, the academic papers link you provided was interesting - I had no idea it was there. I will read some of those and then work more on the issue of consistency between Rivers in Europe vs Rivers in Germany type feature that I was thinking about. That is a feature I would really like to see in Wikipedia as well, and would make image searches much more flexible as well. So some good came out of that page block after all! Cheers History2007 ( talk) 21:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hiya, Elonka.
Please could you make my account vanish. I no longer wish to contribute to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Mathsci ( talk) 23:12, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
this comment [9] is in no way a violation of WP:CIVIL or WP:NPA. please read over them policies to better familiarize yourself wit' 'em. by the way, " trolling" really isn't the word for that either, as at that point I was actually taking the effort to try and be civil with people who were obviously just looking to get me banned for disagreeing with them from the start. 207.80.142.5 ( talk) 13:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
It seems that there is POV pushing in opposite directions going on at this article. You responded to the actions of one side in response to WP:AN#Synthesis, editorializing, and abuse of primary sources, while I (with the typical bias of a German) was more intrigued by the less obvious actions of the other side. Are you watching the article? It would be nice to know there is an experienced admin around. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 11:14, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Elonka. The Press TV situation I told you about earlier has since gotten out of hand. Two of its prime "participants" (though I'm not sure if that's the word) have reported me personally and not my edits over at AN/I. What's most amusing is that one of them has also brought up the conflicts from months ago that I was involved in and which you moderated over at the Al-Azhar University page and with Andrew at E1b1b as an attempt to gain some sort of leverage. I've laid out the situation in its entirety here, with some important links (such as this discussion I had with another administrator earlier) that I think you should read first. Please drop by and let folks know what really happened from someone who is actually in a position to have all the facts. Best, Causteau ( talk) 14:05, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I just got another personal attack via IP here; I'm not sure if I am supposed to report it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard or if there's a more specific place? I suppose it's classified as vandalism, right? Thx. — TAnthony Talk 01:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I do not wish the link to be clickable for obvious reasons. Kindly respect my wishes. You may give another explanation below which does not contain the link directly. Please try to act a little more thoughtfully in future. Mathsci ( talk)
The page Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī violates the Wikipedia naming convention (use of macrons...) but I can't move it to Abu Rayhan Biruni because I am not an administrator. I've dropped a {{Db-move}} on the latter, but I don't know how long it'll take to get someone's attention so I figured I'd drop you a note. <3 ناهد/(Nåhed) speak! 03:23, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, User:Pionier came back, this time with 2 Ids: User:Pioneer sets a fire and User:Pioneer tells the truth. See examples of his work today on Mother of God. Also vandalized my user page again. Can you please grant me Rollback rights so I can just roll him back. That may be one way to slow him down. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 14:03, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
I wondered if it can be done on multiple articles, and within a given date range for an IP, etc. Cheers History2007 ( talk) 07:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you again. I will read those. History2007 ( talk) 16:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello Elonka! I have a question about a small detail in Utto (disambiguation). Could you be so kind to tell me, why the phrase Utto is a German given name dropped out in your edit from 21 October? Do you think it can be considered self-explanatory from the following examples, or was there another reason? Thanks! Daranios ( talk) 15:19, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Dear Elonka, I added a my opinion to the section on using names in Hungarian and Slovak articles. Trisw ( talk) 07:56, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
You have my word that I will not be posting to it directly, but I would like to reserve the right to bring to the attention of admins postings that violate Wiki policies, although as I said, I won't edit directly on that page anymore. Good enough?-- Ramdrake ( talk) 19:12, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a victimized "good editor" who was simply provoked by "attacks from all sides", but I think we've agreed to disagree there so I won't belabor it. I will say that I see an editor determinedly promoting an agenda in violation of WP:NPOV etc, while generally remaining superficially civil. The success of this approach suggests to me an unfortunate primacy of civility over the content policies which guide the creation of a serious, respectable reference work. Good content work should not excuse incivility, but it's equally or even more problematic to allow civility to excuse poor or biased content.
At the moment, Jagz is banned (meaning he shouldn't really be contributing even on his own talk page), and he was using the slack he was given there to, as you said, poke people with a pitchfork. He's well aware of the avenues for appealing his ban, and I believe he's actively explored them. He can continue to do so, but he doesn't need access to his talk page to do that. MastCell Talk 21:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I've protected User Talk:Jagz. He's consistently abused his talk page - whether he's banned or merely an indefinitely blocked sockpuppeteer, his talk page is not a blog where he can continue to pursue old grudges (e.g. [13]). If he wishes to be unblocked, he can carry on correspondence with you, with unblock-en-l, or with ArbCom via email. All of his activity since his block, though, has been completely unproductive and antagonistic. Even when he created a block-evading sock, he didn't use it to improve the encyclopedia, but to jump back in to his old grudges, battles, and obsessions. I'm happy to submit this action to WP:AN/I for review if you feel it is in error. MastCell Talk 16:52, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
If Elonka wants to continue having a conversation with an indef-blocked editor then Elonka could continue the conversation by email. Is this about a conversation that Elonka wants to continue or is this much bigger? It seems Elonka may want to unblock Jayz. Maybe, that is what this is really about. QuackGuru 17:43, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with unprotecting the talk page because of comments like this. QuackGuru 04:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, I popped by because I'm a bit confused... I see you warned OrangeMarlin, apparently for this edit, calling it an "appalling personal attack", and threatening him with a block. I went and looked at it and although I'm a believer in WP:SPADE I agree that it might be a bit less than 100% saccharine sweet to point out that someone is a racist, even if (as is unclear to me so far) they actually are one. However I also happened to notice this diff to the same talk page where OM was speaking, in which Jagz used far stronger language. Yet I see you here, apparently arguing that you'd be willing to consider an unblock for Jagz. I'm completely confused by that. Can you let me know where you warned or counseled Jagz for that "appalling personal attack" on MastCell? Because I'm wondering if you're completely unbiased in this matter... those two things taken in context suggest a significant skewing in your viewpoint, at least apparently. Please help me out and explain what was going on here. I'll be quite interested to hear it, since you've been rather quick to find procedural fault with others. Thanks. ++ Lar: t/ c 02:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
As you have helped moderate before, I would like you to look at [this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Haplogroup_E1b1b_(Y-DNA)#Another_questionable_reference.3F specific discussion] concerning Wikipedia editing policy. I think it makes the reasons for constant problems in the E1b1b article, very clear for anyone who knows Wikipedia. It requires no opinion on the subject matter of the article. It also shows that for the time being it is inevitable that there will be more reverts and no efforts to compromise. Maybe a clear statement about the definition of edit warring from more people could help avoid the inevitable repetition of edit wars. The problem is that the person involved clearly believes that a pattern of behavior which is the definition of edit warring is actually demanded by Wikipedia "rules".-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 07:05, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
I am complying with the closing of the RFC. [18] But other editors are not complying with the closing of the RFC. I'm not sure why would you want to ban me for complying with the closing of the RFC while other editors are arguing against the consensus and closing of the RFC. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#There are problems with moving forward at chiropractic. QuackGuru 23:20, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Sure, go ahead. I've been meaning to figure out how to do it myself but have never got around to it. Thanks. -- Tocino 23:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
I know mate, i've seen a lot of vandalism today in articles i like. it's great that wiki doesn't block so easy, but i've seen good opinionated editors getting banned because an admin was their opposite POV, and i see chronic psycho vandals only full of notes and no bans. 150.140.225.175 ( talk) 00:08, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the post on my talk page. Things have moved on beyond that now. See Incidents page under Coal Mining. I think I'm about done. See also my user page. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 20:17, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that helps. I like especially what you did on the Environmental Effects page. But doesn't leave much on the Coal Mining page. Slim pickins there. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 20:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
There is so much more I could add, over time, but this is so discouraging. I think I will wait a few days and then close this account. Maybe I'll be back later, but I doubt it. Too much grief. It's like the old saw "no good deed goes unpunished." Life is short, and I don't need the aggravation of cowboy anarchy. Nobody does... Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 02:32, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
This just never stops. Have you seen the thread Mathsci on talk page of FT2? Bizarre. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 16:34, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, I have not and will not enter my personal email address on my preferences if that is what is required for me to receive email from someone. I can't do that without revealing my identity, and because there are administrators involved in this controversy who may be able to access my preferences page, I don't think that is wise.
Understand nothing I have experienced so far with Yannis or Mathsci or Slrubenstein or KT2 or Jehochman has inspired much confidence in Wikipedia. They all seem more concerned about themselves than about the Wiki harrassment policy. Only Charles Matthews and you seem to take it at all seriously.
I already have multiple email accounts and see no reason to obtain another just for this silliness. If Mathsci wishes to contact me, s/he can do so on my talk page as you have done. If that is not acceptable, then I guess Mathsci doesn't really wish to contact me on any terms but his/her own. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 23:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, a long-term problem user, abusive sockpuppeteer who has had three independent block reviews. Unless ArbCom do step in and lift the ban I don't think any admin would consider unblocking. Therefore, he's been community banned. Tim Vickers ( talk) 18:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I started calling Jagz a troll when it was evident to me that he is a troll. I waited over a year. If you want to see the evidence, you will just have read all talk concerning race and intelligence from late 2006 to mid 2008. Does this sound like a lot of work? Well, it is up to you, but that is what you need to do to see his pattern of trollish behavior. here is a very mild example: [25]. The comment by itself is irritating and does not violate any single policy. But I am not accusing Jagz of having made one two or even three edits that violated a single policy. i am accusing him of being a troll and what makes him a troll is a pattern of behavior over a more than 18 month period. What is this patten? Ignoring other people's reasoning. refusing to explain his own reasoning. Pushing for the inclusion on one fringe point of view, namely that blacks are inherently inferior to whites. No one edit is a violation of any policy. Wikipedia editors of good faith have to use their judgment. Ramdrake, Alun, myself and others participated in the talk page discussion for years and reached this conclusion. Do you doubt us? Do what we did: read through two years or so of talk. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka and others need to stop wikilawyering and understand that not all conflicts and problems at Wikipedia are caused by single or repeat violations of wikipedia policy A pattern of behavior over a year's period that has a disruptive influence on the discussion is trolling. Ludwig takes my comment out of context. the context is not what happened that day, it is what happened that whole year. Whant to understand why I wrote what I wrote? Do what jagz and others did: follow the whole discussion for over a year. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:29, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Folks, I believe the result of the appeal should in effect render the discussion moot and close it.-- Ramdrake ( talk) 20:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
(undent - edit conflict) let me be clear about what I'm doing here. I'm not defending Jagz (whom I have never encountered, and who, for all I know, might be as bad as you all say), and I'm not arguing out of ignorance. I'm arguing out of principle. I know an awful lot about the human mind, enough to know that impressions of people are horribly unreliable guides to their actual nature. an impression of someone is just a story about them, often passed back and forth between people, magnified and abridged and confabulated, until it holds little real relationship to the person in question. did you know, for instance, that 'boogieman' is a corruption of the british 'boneyman', which was originally a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte? I sincerely doubt Napolean himself ever hid under some kid's bed... worse, once a particular impression of someone gets circulated, people start acting as though it were true, and then it becomes truly difficult to see the person or interact with him/her as anything except the impression. I am simply trying to get us all past the impressions of Jagz to look at what he was actually doing.
just to give an example, let me use the edit summary Alun gave above. Jagz changed the heading on the 'history' section of the Race and Identity article to 'African American history', with the summary "predominantly about African Americans and biased because it assumes all races are equal, something never proven". now, the first part of this summary is correct: the section really was about the history of Africans in America. the second part is also correct, but logically flawed and biased (you can't ever prove that two things are equal; best you can do is demonstrate that you don't have reason to believe they are different). but what I can't tell from it is whether Jagz is actually trying to suggest that some races are unequal, or whether he's being ham-handed in an effort to say that equality is an assumption (me, I would have approached that issue by questioning whether the concept of 'race' was a real distinction or just a social construct). in the next set of diffs that Alun gave (starting here, Jagz makes an innocuous set of edits to shift a paragraph and add the clarifying terms nature and nurture, legalleft makes a very questionable deletion of an entire section [38], Alun reinserts the section [39] with an argumentative edit summary ( what is wrong with you, you really can't stand to see any neutrality here at all can you), and Jagz reverts him [40] with an equally argumentative summary. that strikes me more as a bad reaction than racism. the section itself (at that time) borders on SYN, so it probably should have been discussed rather than reverted.
and then there's this [41], which as Ramdrake said was not in the best of taste, but which seemed more of a joke based on the previous edit (which added a roman Phallic statue).
the impression I'm getting from these new diffs (thank you for supplying them, by the way) is that Jagz is (...comment removed as innappropriate) but I'm still not seeing the overt racism or trollishness being claimed for him. on user pages (like the earlier quote about MastCell and the defacing of Mathsci's page, which were uncalled for) Jagz seems to be prone to losing his cool, but in article content not so much. for instance, he could have easily used the N word instead of saying 'African American history', or he could have said somewhere outright that he thought some races were inferior (which is what I would expect from a racist - they don't tend to be soft-spoken about their beliefs), and he could have done a lot more to goad people. Mostly I see him editing more or less constructively with an irritable attitude, but that is such a normal state of affairs on highly contentious articles that I'm not certain it justifies calling him a troll. but still that's just my impression. see what I'm getting at here?-- Ludwigs2 21:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Ludwigs2, you bring up a good example with "biased because it assumes all races are equal, something never proven" that i think shows the dangers of looking at things out of context. What do I mean by context? Well, a few things, actually. This is going to be a long response to your comment but you resplied ot my last comment with a very courteous and respectful disagreement so I believe I owe you an equally respectful and more thoughtful response.
Of course I mean the context of the two or more year discussions on the race and IQ talk page that led to Jagz being indef. blocked. But I also mean the context for published debates over race and IQ, contexts that belong in the article itself. The complicated thing about the race and IQ article (so complicated that some have proposed simply deleting it and sometimes I think they are right) is that it refers to two different things: a very notable debate among the general public, politicians, and civic leaders, and a very fringe debate among scientists. It is a fringe debate - rather than non-existent debate - among scientists because as in so many things science and politics/public policy intersect. If you can imagine using venn diagrams, imagine two big circles that have a relatively small overlap. I say relatively small because most scientists are not addressing public policy questions, and most of the general public and policy makers and politicians really do not follow the science. But there is a small overlap. The two circles provide us with the two contexts that belong in this article (if indeed there should be one article).
In the "politics and policy" circle there is a long history of people using claims about racial differences to justify social, political and economic inequalities. This is very well-documented in the United States but has been documented in many other parts of the world as well. The problem with these debates, from a scientist's point of view (and when I refer to such views, they have all been published) is that "race" is being used two ways: to identify people, and to identify a cause. And all evolutionary scientists, geneticists, and anthropologists (the disciplines or subdisciplines that study human races or human biology/genetics) agree that these two things are actually separate, completely different. When most people use "race" to identify groups of people, they are not referring to anything that can be called a biological cause (there are some scientists who have tried to redefine race so it can be used biologically, but they are a minority - a respected minority - among scientists and obviously what they mean by race is not what most non-scientists mean by race). When politicians and policy makers try to explain social, economic, or political inequalities (which they want to do if they want to promote fairer social systems) they leave the terrain of the life sciences and enter that of the social sciences and virtually all social scientists have said "race is a major site of inequality, and the causes are historical and political and economic."
In the other circle, the other context, you have scientists who study biological differences among humans, including genetic differences that cause such things like blood type or sickle-cell anemia and they are virtually unanimous in concluding that the term "race" is such a vague and blunt term that it has no value in analyzing these problems; it's like asking a surgeon to operate using a butter-knife. The butter-knife is real, it just isn't part of the surgeon's tool-kit. The very small overlap is filled by a small group of people who are not trained in, or experts in, genetics - mostly psychologists - who do claim that race is biologically real and that the social differences among races are the results of biological differences. This space exists because these are academics explicitly addressing policy concerns - they are literally speaking to politicians and civil leaders and a popular audience. Their work has been almost universally rejected by other social scientists and by life scientists. It exists because it is intelligible to and useful to some politicians (in a way that work by real geneticists is not helpful).
Now the context of the arguments on the talk page that got Jagz blocked. I and several other editors insisted that if a claim about human biology was being made in the article, for us to consider it a significant view from a reliable source it had to come from someone recognized for their expertise in biology. Moreover, we wanted to make sure that the mainstream life science and mainstream social science research was adequately represented. Now let's return to what jagz wrote: "biased because it assumes all races are equal, something never proven" This is a tendentious and misleading sentence in a number of ways. First of all, virtually all social scientists will agree that races are unequal, and a good deal of social science is aimed at explaining this inequality. Jagz would regularly argue with us that we were pushing some egalitarian POV that says all races are equal. I and others would write at length about social science research trying to explain racial inequality, and we would add that to the article, and Jagz would keep arguing that we were denying inequality. It got very tiring. Second, biologists and population geneticists and molecular geneticists simply do not use race in this way, and whenever jagz would point to biological differences we would have to take time to explain why geneticists do not mean what he means by race, or are not using the word race at all. It got tiring. Jagz was not a vandal; his incivility was not the issue. One problem was that for two years editors like myself who had done research on this and were trying to add material had to take time out to keep giving jagz the same explanations. His talk, which only ever kept repeating the same ignorant points over and over, took up space on the talk page that should have gone to improving the article. Another problem: we never wrote that all races are equal. In fact, all we ever wrote was summaries of what researchers wrote. That is because we were busy reading peer-reviewed journal articles and academic textbooks. Jagz didn't. He just kept wanting to argue that Whites are naturally superior to Blacks. We were not even arguing the opposite - we were arguing that the bulk of the article should give an account of mainstream science. Mainstream scientists do try to prove that all races are equal for reasons you elegantly explained. It is just not what mainstream scientists are debating. so Second, Jagz kept trying to redefine what the article was about in terms of his interests and away from the actual debates found in mainstream life and social science literature. That is the second way in which he was a troll. Now, sometimes people familiar with the psychology/public policy literature (that small section where the two circles overlap) came in. Clearly, they knew the literature they were citing. The problem for us - I mean, good faith editors - is that the literature they were bringing is fringe in the social sciences, and fringe in the life sciences, but notable in public-policy discussions. So we had to work out a fair NPOV way to present the material, not an easy job. Every time a couple of editors (I provided a dif above) with opposing views started reaching some agreement, started building a productive consensus, Jagz would interrupt with an inane comment, sometimes insulting one of the editors, and often created a new section and raised all sorts of questions to sidetrack the discussion. This too got wearying. Yes, you can say: ignore it. We did our best for almost two years, but there is only so long that people can make progress on a page when one troll is trying to dominate the discussion. So, third he was consistently disruptive of any attempt to reach consensus among people with opposing views or concerns. There is one last way in which he was a troll. Our policy makes it clear that someone who makes a racist statement aimed directly at another editor is violating policy. But how do we handle someone who makes blanket statements against a race, directed at no one in particular? If I am not Black, I cannot accuse jagz of violating policy because he is not directing it at me. But it gets worse; what about Black editors? Jagz is not directing his statements to any one editor personally. But he is asserting that there is a significant body of scientific evidence that Blacks are naturally less intelligent than Whites. How is a Black wikipedian to respond? Now, if you are not from the US - if you are not from a country in which (1) there is enough racial heterogeneity that racism is a serious problem and (2) people have been trying to confront racism openly - you may not understand this at first, and I can only ask you to try, but it is very hard for a member of a particular race to take racist comments as anything but personal, even if they are made generically. So here is a fourth way Jagz was a troll: he drove Black editors away from working on the page. Now, we all know Wikipedia editors are not as divers a bunch as we wish they were. And diversity is valuable not in and of itself, but because editors with different backgrounds bring different skills and bodies of knowledge. Over the past four or more years many editors have come to the R&I page and have tried to add verifiable significant views from reliable sources about the history of racist science and the racism of people like Rushton, only to be told that Rushton is a scientist (he has a PhD in psychology; he has never done original research in biology or genetics and has no training in these fields) and a respected scientist and has compelling evidence that Blacks are naturally inferior to Whites. Ludwigs2, this has driven away good editors and it frankly, as long as jagz was editing, made the page and the talk page a humiliation to Wikipedia.
My point is that Jagz knew that what he wrote was tendentious and provocative, because we had all explained to him many times that no one is claiming that races are not equal. This is what is missing from your analysis – you are analyzing his comment as if it came out of nowhere. But it didn’t, he was responding to two years of discussion in which every time he made a point we would ask "what is your source" and he would provide a source that did not back up his point (or ignore the request), and we (me, Alun, others) always provided sources for our claims. So for him to shift the discussion from "what do the sources say" to "No one can prove this" is really disruptive. Look, if I made an edit "According to Flannery, one problem with Rushton's arguments is that he does not take into account the way that the scale by which IQ exams were scored has changed over time" and you added a tag saying that I was violating NPOV and then commented "This is wrong because you cannot prove all races are equal," what would you do? No, don't tell me - just imagine what you would do. Now imagine that you did that, and six months later, twelve months later, your edits are getting the same comments or revisions from Jagz. Imagine that no matter how you respond, how much you explain the sources, or policy, or no matter how many time you ask Jagz for his sources, his responses never change, they do not change over two years. It is this pattern over more than a year that lead me to conclude he was a troll. It took me a very long time before I just realized that there is a perfect Wikipedia policy for dealing with Jagz, and I was convinced that the only way for many editors to work together on the article was to follow this most excellent Wikipedia policy: WP:DNFTT. Once I realized that this was the way to move forward, not to attack Jagz but simply to ignore him, I started encouraging my fellow editors to stop writing the same long explanations to him that they had written dozens of times before and focus on the article. I am glad i did - the article began to move forward.
You think racists are only people who say "kike" or "nigger" or "spic?" I am afraid you are wrong – racism takes many different forms; American history has revealed a wide range of them. And you are also, I say this with respect and good faith, naïve about trolls. Of course had jagz expressed his hatred explicitly he would have been banned (the second time he was blocked, he did so because he crossed the line in a spectacular way). But this is not what makes someone a troll! A troll is the person who resists doing these things, who disrupts and offends and always has an excuse that if anything forces people to waste more time dealing with him.
Now, this was a very long comment but I am summarizing two years of history for you. I am not going to go back and find all the little edit difs, especially when most of them by themselves are innocuous. This is the difference between a troll and a vandal: vandals make edits that are obvious garbage. Trolls work more innocuously, through a pattern of edits that have profound disruptive effects even if no one is a policy violation. The bottom line is simple: Jagz never added anything valuable to the page, he never gave any indication of doing real research or knowing anything about social science or life science. he hung around for two years only to disrupt work on the article and use the talk page to keep pushing his racist views. He added nothing, and took a lot (spiritually I mean) and his being blocked did no damage at all to Wikipedia but removed the principal obstacle to progress on the R&I page. This to me is a no-brainer. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | Archive 29 | Archive 30 | → | Archive 35 |
Both yourself and NJGW seem to have stopped editing for a bit, but if you have a look at WP:AN the block looks questionable and there would be no harm in the goodwill gesture of an early unblock. If you can process that in the next hour or so it would be greatly appreciated. . dave souza, talk 21:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
WP:AE#Request for injunction in Pseudoscience/Homeopathy. ScienceApologist ( talk) 02:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
The key to reducing disruption isn't to go back and right old wrongs or to deal a slew of warnings. Digging through old contributions doesn't "reduce disruption", it re-opens wounds. "Reducing disruption" isn't about righting great wrongs, it's about lowering the temperature.
Of course, if you really want to reduce disruption, it's important to approach the matter fairly. At present, you look like you're taking sides. I'm sure it isn't your intent, but your current course of action seems to be heating things up, not cooling them down. Guettarda ( talk) 16:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Logical_Premise/editorluv
Thought you might want to know about these personal attacks.
Messengerbot (
talk)
21:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
A number of people have already TRIED to resolve disputes with this user. He continually ignores ALL other editors and replaces tags without ever citing ANYTHING at all. He is VERY biased and we've attempted to send him to COI among other things, but requests are REPEATEDLY ignored and even deleted by the user himself!-- FireandFlames17 ( talk) 03:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#FireandFlames17
You'll see that I posted this user's edits for just TODAY. He's accusing me of editing too many times myself...and he edits ten times more in one day than I do in a week. This user is adding tags to the articles that the other editors have said do no belong...and yet he's the only one that thinks they do. I have PERSONALLY rewritten the entire Passage to Zarahemla article myself (and it even matches the style of the Work and The Glory article (for the movie)) and yet...that article does not have tags (nor do any other movie articles written in the same style) but this user seems to have a personal vendetta against Mr. Heimerdinger for some reason. I am simply doing nothing other than to try and maintain some sort of consistency in the article, even contributing where I can, but it doesn't matter who seems to contribute, this user seems to have a problem with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FireandFlames17 ( talk • contribs) 03:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi there. I was looking through the history and I noticed you tagged Akademie Verlag. Would you be interested in commenting here? Carcharoth ( talk) 13:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'm assuming you've read most of today's (and recent) comments on Phenom's page, the Current Days characters page, and my sockpuppet reports. I know I tend to go from friendly and helpful to businesslike and cold quicker than is probably preferred, and I was certainly relentless in this situation, but at some point I'd be interested if you thought I should've handled this differently. Feel free to not hold back any punches ;) — TAnthony Talk 22:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I have seen in the past you have made edits to the Wikipedia:Autoblock and i think something important needs to be added. You would note the page says "...The only circumstances in which a user may be associated with an IP address are certain policy violations detailed by the checkuser policy..." Yet you would know when an admin unblocks an autoblock like here, the IP of the user can be seen for everyone. Is this not correct? If so, i dont know why it does not get hidden. I think a note should be left on the page that if they dont want their IP to be revealed, to hold out until the autoblock expires. Whats your opinion? Thank You 220.239.56.131 ( talk) 11:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I added this new attack to my outstanding IP sock case here, but I'm not sure what else can be done. Even blocking Phenom forever won't stop the IP disruptions. — TAnthony Talk 19:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok w/me, but watch the page, please. NawlinWiki ( talk) 19:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I am hereby requesting that you refrain from interacting with me. In the future, if you choose to place a warning on my page, especially one as specious as the one you just did here, don't. Please ask an uninvolved admin to relay any concerns you have, and I will either endeavor to listen or ignore depending on the validity of the requests. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 23:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Did you write this?
Jehochman to point out that he has a strong COI on the Search engine optimization article, considering that he is an executive in an SEO firm, and has been involved in a lawsuit which names the Wikipedia article as part of the suit.
Lawsuit? Is that beyond a legal threat and into real legal warfare? Should this person stop editing Wikipedia entirely until the lawsuit is over? I know nothing about you or a lawsuit and am not taking sides on any matter, just inquiring.
Chergles ( talk) 00:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
How about taking this up at WP:COIN and get opinions from editors that take much more time understanding what COI is about and how it should be dealt with? -- Ronz ( talk) 18:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I am interested in fairness and kindness but also ethics and analysis. If anyone wants me to try to resolve this issue, I will. Otherwise, I don't seek involvement in it. As said above, the original post were merely an inquiry, not an accusation. I have intentionally not researched the issue to insure impartiality in the future regarding this subject. Chergles ( talk) 00:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think your comments to Jim62sch are dead on. I myself had earlier raised a similar concern on his talk page. Wikipedia would be a better place if we had more writers. Thanks, Madman ( talk) 15:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Over at Muhammad al_Durrah you suggested a name change. A month later, I did a quick count of the views expressed and read it as being "5-0 support, 1 neutral". (I was probably wrong, it's probably only 2 in favour, 3 "likely", one neutral and one unknown). The move has been reverted - is it worth taking it to "Request Move"? (This last is not actually my idea - but I've come to you because I thought you'd be more au fait with all the issues).
Editor | Change Title to "Muhammad al-Durrah affair"? | Comments made |
---|---|---|
User:Elonka | Likely | ... feel free to discuss it here. If other editors agree, we can move the page. But I'd like to ensure that there's a consensus first. 17:36, 18 September 2008 |
User:PalestineRemembered | Yes | Support re-name 18:30, 18 September 2008 |
User:6SJ7 | Likely | At least at first glance, adding "affair" would seem to be appropriate ... I will reserve my actual opinion pending further discussion. 18:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
User:IronDuke | Neutral | I could go either way as well, though I do think we have articles on people esentially famous for only one thing, eg, Leo Frank. 19:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
User:Liftarn | Unknown | I wouls support splitting out the conspiracy theories to a separate article and let this article deal with the facts. // |
User:Tarc | Yes | Call it the Muhammad al-Durrah affair 16:35, 19 September 2008 |
User:Jaakobou | Likely | I think I tend to agree about the "affair" spirit for writing the article, but I'm not so certain the move is necessary. 04:48, 22 September 2008 |
PR talk 16:39, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Elonka, a user named User:Phenomenon8980 has been repeatedly blanking my talk page. I have left several messages on his/her talk page concerning talk page guidelines. He/She is angry because I redirected a character page Melanie Layton, back to Days of Our Lives because she does not meet WP:NOTE. I told the user I had no personal grievances against him/her, but I am just trying to follow rules. I have been civil, and not posted any threatening messages. This user just continues to blank my page though. Please advise. If you are the wrong person to contact, please tell me who is. Thank you. Rm994 ( talk) 19:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Email from User:HabsMTL to User: Phenomenon8980. (email removed)
I am writing on behalf of Phenomenon8980. He has not contacted User: RM994 for any reason since they've had their conflict. Phenomenon8980 is highly upset and plans to now continue harrassing both users if he is not apologized to. It is clear that noone is interested in letting Phenomenon 8980 take the high road. 131.247.244.190 ( talk) 15:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
TAnthony keeps sending me sockpuppet violations. I don't know what this is and I havent contacted him at all for any reason for about a week. I have been blocked. He continues to have some personal vendetta against me eventhough he was already successful in having all my articles that I created deleted. If he doesnt stop harrasing me I will call the police. Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 17:05, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your fair oversight as usual, Elonka. I'll stay clear of 3RR; you have my word. I'll also be sure to take a look at Michele Renouf's article. Best, Causteau ( talk) 16:54, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Is this kind of threat an invitation for an indefinite block? I am honestly amazed that this editor persists with this. — TAnthony Talk 19:02, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I persist with this because you keep harrasing me. I have been blocked for a week and I sign on for the first time and its a sockpuppet violation from you. It's like you just can't let it go. That's a price you will have to pay then. Keep it up! Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 19:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Phenom also keeps restoring the thread you asked me to archive. Thanks. — TAnthony Talk 19:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
And I may also point out that he just violated 3RR by doing it a third time — TAnthony Talk 19:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
That article describes TAnthony to a tee. It's funny because he is not even the original person who I had an issue with. I resolved that conflict a long time ago. It' TAnthony's incessant abuse of whatever power he has to make other editor's experience on here miserable. I say he should be the one blocked for goading me into this conflict. And yet he's surprised that I persist? Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 19:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
This is exactly what I mean. Phenomenon8980 ( talk) 19:32, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Though I participated in the discussion on tense at Pauline Fowler, I know you were an active part of the FA nom. In that article, the character's storylines are pretty much presented from a real-world perspective in the context their coverage in external sources, with the more in-universe coverage filling it out. That is obviously the ideal approach, but would you say this was a natural choice based on the amount of coverage available on this particular character, or a direct result of suggestions from peer review/article class noms? I'm working on an article with a significant amount of source material and am going in this same direction, but I'm wondering in general if, for characters of slightly less notability, a reasonably-sized section that is essentially only plot summary would hinder the article (assuming there are other sourced sections asserting notability, etc. An example which comes to mind immediately is Alexis Colby in its current state. The article definitely needs work (and of course there are probably plenty of sources to expand the article a la Pauline), but pretending for a moment that is not the case, would the article's current format work? That is, a real-world-based section and a plot section, like you would find for an article about a novel. Or, do you think it would be necessary to weave the two, as in Pauline? I'm not sure how many character articles have made it to FA status. — TAnthony Talk 22:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, for what it's worth, I watch the SEO article pretty closely and I don't think either Durova or Jehochman have abused it or tried to edit it to their advantage. As for the lawsuit, Jehochman, as well as other SEOs, are suing to stop the U.S. Trademark Office's egregiously absurd grant of a trademark on the letters "SEO" to one of their competitors (who has been indefinitely blocked here.)
I'm not in the SEO business myself; mostly I watch that article because it's a wonderful honeypot for drawing out spammers.
--
A. B. (
talk •
contribs)
02:11, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
PS, I thought your message for Jim62sch was very tactful. I'm sorry he took it wrong.
Since you stopped posting to my talk, but things have developed further, I figured I ought to drop you a note that there have been further discussions on AN/I. Hope that helps. ++ Lar: t/ c 16:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Hiya, Elonka. Thanks for joining me in editing Paul Mellars. I managed to find his date of birth on the archives of the British Academy. Cheers, Mathsci ( talk) 00:18, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Hey. I have (FINALLY) closed the RfC, and posted my conclusion inside it. Hopefully it's satisfactory, it was really hard to close this. Wizardman 04:44, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, just my ignorance. -- Enzuru 06:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Halp User:84.255.151.196... grr. ناهد/(Nåhed) speak! 01:22, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Elonka. Not to keep lengthening the everlasting thread on Lar's page, I feel I should reply here that you're quite right: Rm994 didn't post to ANI. It was most likely at your page that I saw the user's call for help against an aggressive editor who kept blanking their page. Not that I was consciously watching your page, but I had lazily let it remain on my watchlist after I'd posted there before. ("Monitor" your page, as you call it, is not something I've ever done. Seriously, what for?) I'm sorry I misspoke about it. I can't remember, or even imagine, why I went look up that particular post on your page when it appeared on my watchlist—it's downright odd, to my sense, since it certainly didn't have a striking edit summary (it had none) or anything, and to the best of my knowledge I'd never heard of Rm994. Anyway, I was obviously mixed up when I wrote about it on Lar's page, and I apologize for my error. When something that long ago was in question, I should have checked before saying anything at all, however clearly I thought I remembered it, and I appreciate your setting me right. That said, I still stand by my other remarks on Lar's page, I'm afraid. As far as I'm concerned, I wasn't the one who "jumped into the middle of a discussion", you were (which was fine). You offered rather superior and as I thought them (and, I'm afraid, still think them) priggish references to well-known policies to Risker and myself, who are pretty experienced admins (which was less fine, in my opinion). Anyway, I'm very sorry I misremembered about where I saw Rm994's sad plaint. You'll be pleased to hear that I've finally remembered to "unwatch" your page. I do try to keep my watchlist trimmed down to pages I'm actually interested in, as it's much more effective that way. But it's a bit of an eternal struggle between chaos and laziness. Best wishes, Bishonen | talk 18:31, 19 October 2008 (UTC).
Hi, Ok, I will post elsewhere from now. But the new incarnation of the same vandal is User talk:Maryland's isn't Disneyland and he is still vandalizing several user pages. Please look at his edit history. I have started writing a paper about him: User:History2007/Content protection. Everytime he vandalizes, I write more on that article.... Cheers History2007 ( talk) 20:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
My apologies - yes he is blocked. I was looking on his talk page, not user page. But he will be back. The poor fellow has some sort of obsessive psych problem that needs professional help. I think he was also EurovisionMan and was vandalizing other topics and was blocked. Also vandalizes Lithuanian Wikipedia, and has a chess obsession too I hear. Anyway, Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 20:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. History2007 ( talk) 21:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
By the way, the academic papers link you provided was interesting - I had no idea it was there. I will read some of those and then work more on the issue of consistency between Rivers in Europe vs Rivers in Germany type feature that I was thinking about. That is a feature I would really like to see in Wikipedia as well, and would make image searches much more flexible as well. So some good came out of that page block after all! Cheers History2007 ( talk) 21:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hiya, Elonka.
Please could you make my account vanish. I no longer wish to contribute to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Mathsci ( talk) 23:12, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
this comment [9] is in no way a violation of WP:CIVIL or WP:NPA. please read over them policies to better familiarize yourself wit' 'em. by the way, " trolling" really isn't the word for that either, as at that point I was actually taking the effort to try and be civil with people who were obviously just looking to get me banned for disagreeing with them from the start. 207.80.142.5 ( talk) 13:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
It seems that there is POV pushing in opposite directions going on at this article. You responded to the actions of one side in response to WP:AN#Synthesis, editorializing, and abuse of primary sources, while I (with the typical bias of a German) was more intrigued by the less obvious actions of the other side. Are you watching the article? It would be nice to know there is an experienced admin around. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 11:14, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Elonka. The Press TV situation I told you about earlier has since gotten out of hand. Two of its prime "participants" (though I'm not sure if that's the word) have reported me personally and not my edits over at AN/I. What's most amusing is that one of them has also brought up the conflicts from months ago that I was involved in and which you moderated over at the Al-Azhar University page and with Andrew at E1b1b as an attempt to gain some sort of leverage. I've laid out the situation in its entirety here, with some important links (such as this discussion I had with another administrator earlier) that I think you should read first. Please drop by and let folks know what really happened from someone who is actually in a position to have all the facts. Best, Causteau ( talk) 14:05, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I just got another personal attack via IP here; I'm not sure if I am supposed to report it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard or if there's a more specific place? I suppose it's classified as vandalism, right? Thx. — TAnthony Talk 01:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I do not wish the link to be clickable for obvious reasons. Kindly respect my wishes. You may give another explanation below which does not contain the link directly. Please try to act a little more thoughtfully in future. Mathsci ( talk)
The page Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī violates the Wikipedia naming convention (use of macrons...) but I can't move it to Abu Rayhan Biruni because I am not an administrator. I've dropped a {{Db-move}} on the latter, but I don't know how long it'll take to get someone's attention so I figured I'd drop you a note. <3 ناهد/(Nåhed) speak! 03:23, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, User:Pionier came back, this time with 2 Ids: User:Pioneer sets a fire and User:Pioneer tells the truth. See examples of his work today on Mother of God. Also vandalized my user page again. Can you please grant me Rollback rights so I can just roll him back. That may be one way to slow him down. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 14:03, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
I wondered if it can be done on multiple articles, and within a given date range for an IP, etc. Cheers History2007 ( talk) 07:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you again. I will read those. History2007 ( talk) 16:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello Elonka! I have a question about a small detail in Utto (disambiguation). Could you be so kind to tell me, why the phrase Utto is a German given name dropped out in your edit from 21 October? Do you think it can be considered self-explanatory from the following examples, or was there another reason? Thanks! Daranios ( talk) 15:19, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Dear Elonka, I added a my opinion to the section on using names in Hungarian and Slovak articles. Trisw ( talk) 07:56, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
You have my word that I will not be posting to it directly, but I would like to reserve the right to bring to the attention of admins postings that violate Wiki policies, although as I said, I won't edit directly on that page anymore. Good enough?-- Ramdrake ( talk) 19:12, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a victimized "good editor" who was simply provoked by "attacks from all sides", but I think we've agreed to disagree there so I won't belabor it. I will say that I see an editor determinedly promoting an agenda in violation of WP:NPOV etc, while generally remaining superficially civil. The success of this approach suggests to me an unfortunate primacy of civility over the content policies which guide the creation of a serious, respectable reference work. Good content work should not excuse incivility, but it's equally or even more problematic to allow civility to excuse poor or biased content.
At the moment, Jagz is banned (meaning he shouldn't really be contributing even on his own talk page), and he was using the slack he was given there to, as you said, poke people with a pitchfork. He's well aware of the avenues for appealing his ban, and I believe he's actively explored them. He can continue to do so, but he doesn't need access to his talk page to do that. MastCell Talk 21:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I've protected User Talk:Jagz. He's consistently abused his talk page - whether he's banned or merely an indefinitely blocked sockpuppeteer, his talk page is not a blog where he can continue to pursue old grudges (e.g. [13]). If he wishes to be unblocked, he can carry on correspondence with you, with unblock-en-l, or with ArbCom via email. All of his activity since his block, though, has been completely unproductive and antagonistic. Even when he created a block-evading sock, he didn't use it to improve the encyclopedia, but to jump back in to his old grudges, battles, and obsessions. I'm happy to submit this action to WP:AN/I for review if you feel it is in error. MastCell Talk 16:52, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
If Elonka wants to continue having a conversation with an indef-blocked editor then Elonka could continue the conversation by email. Is this about a conversation that Elonka wants to continue or is this much bigger? It seems Elonka may want to unblock Jayz. Maybe, that is what this is really about. QuackGuru 17:43, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with unprotecting the talk page because of comments like this. QuackGuru 04:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, I popped by because I'm a bit confused... I see you warned OrangeMarlin, apparently for this edit, calling it an "appalling personal attack", and threatening him with a block. I went and looked at it and although I'm a believer in WP:SPADE I agree that it might be a bit less than 100% saccharine sweet to point out that someone is a racist, even if (as is unclear to me so far) they actually are one. However I also happened to notice this diff to the same talk page where OM was speaking, in which Jagz used far stronger language. Yet I see you here, apparently arguing that you'd be willing to consider an unblock for Jagz. I'm completely confused by that. Can you let me know where you warned or counseled Jagz for that "appalling personal attack" on MastCell? Because I'm wondering if you're completely unbiased in this matter... those two things taken in context suggest a significant skewing in your viewpoint, at least apparently. Please help me out and explain what was going on here. I'll be quite interested to hear it, since you've been rather quick to find procedural fault with others. Thanks. ++ Lar: t/ c 02:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
As you have helped moderate before, I would like you to look at [this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Haplogroup_E1b1b_(Y-DNA)#Another_questionable_reference.3F specific discussion] concerning Wikipedia editing policy. I think it makes the reasons for constant problems in the E1b1b article, very clear for anyone who knows Wikipedia. It requires no opinion on the subject matter of the article. It also shows that for the time being it is inevitable that there will be more reverts and no efforts to compromise. Maybe a clear statement about the definition of edit warring from more people could help avoid the inevitable repetition of edit wars. The problem is that the person involved clearly believes that a pattern of behavior which is the definition of edit warring is actually demanded by Wikipedia "rules".-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 07:05, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
I am complying with the closing of the RFC. [18] But other editors are not complying with the closing of the RFC. I'm not sure why would you want to ban me for complying with the closing of the RFC while other editors are arguing against the consensus and closing of the RFC. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#There are problems with moving forward at chiropractic. QuackGuru 23:20, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Sure, go ahead. I've been meaning to figure out how to do it myself but have never got around to it. Thanks. -- Tocino 23:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
I know mate, i've seen a lot of vandalism today in articles i like. it's great that wiki doesn't block so easy, but i've seen good opinionated editors getting banned because an admin was their opposite POV, and i see chronic psycho vandals only full of notes and no bans. 150.140.225.175 ( talk) 00:08, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the post on my talk page. Things have moved on beyond that now. See Incidents page under Coal Mining. I think I'm about done. See also my user page. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 20:17, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that helps. I like especially what you did on the Environmental Effects page. But doesn't leave much on the Coal Mining page. Slim pickins there. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 20:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
There is so much more I could add, over time, but this is so discouraging. I think I will wait a few days and then close this account. Maybe I'll be back later, but I doubt it. Too much grief. It's like the old saw "no good deed goes unpunished." Life is short, and I don't need the aggravation of cowboy anarchy. Nobody does... Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 02:32, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
This just never stops. Have you seen the thread Mathsci on talk page of FT2? Bizarre. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 16:34, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, I have not and will not enter my personal email address on my preferences if that is what is required for me to receive email from someone. I can't do that without revealing my identity, and because there are administrators involved in this controversy who may be able to access my preferences page, I don't think that is wise.
Understand nothing I have experienced so far with Yannis or Mathsci or Slrubenstein or KT2 or Jehochman has inspired much confidence in Wikipedia. They all seem more concerned about themselves than about the Wiki harrassment policy. Only Charles Matthews and you seem to take it at all seriously.
I already have multiple email accounts and see no reason to obtain another just for this silliness. If Mathsci wishes to contact me, s/he can do so on my talk page as you have done. If that is not acceptable, then I guess Mathsci doesn't really wish to contact me on any terms but his/her own. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 23:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, a long-term problem user, abusive sockpuppeteer who has had three independent block reviews. Unless ArbCom do step in and lift the ban I don't think any admin would consider unblocking. Therefore, he's been community banned. Tim Vickers ( talk) 18:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I started calling Jagz a troll when it was evident to me that he is a troll. I waited over a year. If you want to see the evidence, you will just have read all talk concerning race and intelligence from late 2006 to mid 2008. Does this sound like a lot of work? Well, it is up to you, but that is what you need to do to see his pattern of trollish behavior. here is a very mild example: [25]. The comment by itself is irritating and does not violate any single policy. But I am not accusing Jagz of having made one two or even three edits that violated a single policy. i am accusing him of being a troll and what makes him a troll is a pattern of behavior over a more than 18 month period. What is this patten? Ignoring other people's reasoning. refusing to explain his own reasoning. Pushing for the inclusion on one fringe point of view, namely that blacks are inherently inferior to whites. No one edit is a violation of any policy. Wikipedia editors of good faith have to use their judgment. Ramdrake, Alun, myself and others participated in the talk page discussion for years and reached this conclusion. Do you doubt us? Do what we did: read through two years or so of talk. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Elonka and others need to stop wikilawyering and understand that not all conflicts and problems at Wikipedia are caused by single or repeat violations of wikipedia policy A pattern of behavior over a year's period that has a disruptive influence on the discussion is trolling. Ludwig takes my comment out of context. the context is not what happened that day, it is what happened that whole year. Whant to understand why I wrote what I wrote? Do what jagz and others did: follow the whole discussion for over a year. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:29, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Folks, I believe the result of the appeal should in effect render the discussion moot and close it.-- Ramdrake ( talk) 20:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
(undent - edit conflict) let me be clear about what I'm doing here. I'm not defending Jagz (whom I have never encountered, and who, for all I know, might be as bad as you all say), and I'm not arguing out of ignorance. I'm arguing out of principle. I know an awful lot about the human mind, enough to know that impressions of people are horribly unreliable guides to their actual nature. an impression of someone is just a story about them, often passed back and forth between people, magnified and abridged and confabulated, until it holds little real relationship to the person in question. did you know, for instance, that 'boogieman' is a corruption of the british 'boneyman', which was originally a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte? I sincerely doubt Napolean himself ever hid under some kid's bed... worse, once a particular impression of someone gets circulated, people start acting as though it were true, and then it becomes truly difficult to see the person or interact with him/her as anything except the impression. I am simply trying to get us all past the impressions of Jagz to look at what he was actually doing.
just to give an example, let me use the edit summary Alun gave above. Jagz changed the heading on the 'history' section of the Race and Identity article to 'African American history', with the summary "predominantly about African Americans and biased because it assumes all races are equal, something never proven". now, the first part of this summary is correct: the section really was about the history of Africans in America. the second part is also correct, but logically flawed and biased (you can't ever prove that two things are equal; best you can do is demonstrate that you don't have reason to believe they are different). but what I can't tell from it is whether Jagz is actually trying to suggest that some races are unequal, or whether he's being ham-handed in an effort to say that equality is an assumption (me, I would have approached that issue by questioning whether the concept of 'race' was a real distinction or just a social construct). in the next set of diffs that Alun gave (starting here, Jagz makes an innocuous set of edits to shift a paragraph and add the clarifying terms nature and nurture, legalleft makes a very questionable deletion of an entire section [38], Alun reinserts the section [39] with an argumentative edit summary ( what is wrong with you, you really can't stand to see any neutrality here at all can you), and Jagz reverts him [40] with an equally argumentative summary. that strikes me more as a bad reaction than racism. the section itself (at that time) borders on SYN, so it probably should have been discussed rather than reverted.
and then there's this [41], which as Ramdrake said was not in the best of taste, but which seemed more of a joke based on the previous edit (which added a roman Phallic statue).
the impression I'm getting from these new diffs (thank you for supplying them, by the way) is that Jagz is (...comment removed as innappropriate) but I'm still not seeing the overt racism or trollishness being claimed for him. on user pages (like the earlier quote about MastCell and the defacing of Mathsci's page, which were uncalled for) Jagz seems to be prone to losing his cool, but in article content not so much. for instance, he could have easily used the N word instead of saying 'African American history', or he could have said somewhere outright that he thought some races were inferior (which is what I would expect from a racist - they don't tend to be soft-spoken about their beliefs), and he could have done a lot more to goad people. Mostly I see him editing more or less constructively with an irritable attitude, but that is such a normal state of affairs on highly contentious articles that I'm not certain it justifies calling him a troll. but still that's just my impression. see what I'm getting at here?-- Ludwigs2 21:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Ludwigs2, you bring up a good example with "biased because it assumes all races are equal, something never proven" that i think shows the dangers of looking at things out of context. What do I mean by context? Well, a few things, actually. This is going to be a long response to your comment but you resplied ot my last comment with a very courteous and respectful disagreement so I believe I owe you an equally respectful and more thoughtful response.
Of course I mean the context of the two or more year discussions on the race and IQ talk page that led to Jagz being indef. blocked. But I also mean the context for published debates over race and IQ, contexts that belong in the article itself. The complicated thing about the race and IQ article (so complicated that some have proposed simply deleting it and sometimes I think they are right) is that it refers to two different things: a very notable debate among the general public, politicians, and civic leaders, and a very fringe debate among scientists. It is a fringe debate - rather than non-existent debate - among scientists because as in so many things science and politics/public policy intersect. If you can imagine using venn diagrams, imagine two big circles that have a relatively small overlap. I say relatively small because most scientists are not addressing public policy questions, and most of the general public and policy makers and politicians really do not follow the science. But there is a small overlap. The two circles provide us with the two contexts that belong in this article (if indeed there should be one article).
In the "politics and policy" circle there is a long history of people using claims about racial differences to justify social, political and economic inequalities. This is very well-documented in the United States but has been documented in many other parts of the world as well. The problem with these debates, from a scientist's point of view (and when I refer to such views, they have all been published) is that "race" is being used two ways: to identify people, and to identify a cause. And all evolutionary scientists, geneticists, and anthropologists (the disciplines or subdisciplines that study human races or human biology/genetics) agree that these two things are actually separate, completely different. When most people use "race" to identify groups of people, they are not referring to anything that can be called a biological cause (there are some scientists who have tried to redefine race so it can be used biologically, but they are a minority - a respected minority - among scientists and obviously what they mean by race is not what most non-scientists mean by race). When politicians and policy makers try to explain social, economic, or political inequalities (which they want to do if they want to promote fairer social systems) they leave the terrain of the life sciences and enter that of the social sciences and virtually all social scientists have said "race is a major site of inequality, and the causes are historical and political and economic."
In the other circle, the other context, you have scientists who study biological differences among humans, including genetic differences that cause such things like blood type or sickle-cell anemia and they are virtually unanimous in concluding that the term "race" is such a vague and blunt term that it has no value in analyzing these problems; it's like asking a surgeon to operate using a butter-knife. The butter-knife is real, it just isn't part of the surgeon's tool-kit. The very small overlap is filled by a small group of people who are not trained in, or experts in, genetics - mostly psychologists - who do claim that race is biologically real and that the social differences among races are the results of biological differences. This space exists because these are academics explicitly addressing policy concerns - they are literally speaking to politicians and civil leaders and a popular audience. Their work has been almost universally rejected by other social scientists and by life scientists. It exists because it is intelligible to and useful to some politicians (in a way that work by real geneticists is not helpful).
Now the context of the arguments on the talk page that got Jagz blocked. I and several other editors insisted that if a claim about human biology was being made in the article, for us to consider it a significant view from a reliable source it had to come from someone recognized for their expertise in biology. Moreover, we wanted to make sure that the mainstream life science and mainstream social science research was adequately represented. Now let's return to what jagz wrote: "biased because it assumes all races are equal, something never proven" This is a tendentious and misleading sentence in a number of ways. First of all, virtually all social scientists will agree that races are unequal, and a good deal of social science is aimed at explaining this inequality. Jagz would regularly argue with us that we were pushing some egalitarian POV that says all races are equal. I and others would write at length about social science research trying to explain racial inequality, and we would add that to the article, and Jagz would keep arguing that we were denying inequality. It got very tiring. Second, biologists and population geneticists and molecular geneticists simply do not use race in this way, and whenever jagz would point to biological differences we would have to take time to explain why geneticists do not mean what he means by race, or are not using the word race at all. It got tiring. Jagz was not a vandal; his incivility was not the issue. One problem was that for two years editors like myself who had done research on this and were trying to add material had to take time out to keep giving jagz the same explanations. His talk, which only ever kept repeating the same ignorant points over and over, took up space on the talk page that should have gone to improving the article. Another problem: we never wrote that all races are equal. In fact, all we ever wrote was summaries of what researchers wrote. That is because we were busy reading peer-reviewed journal articles and academic textbooks. Jagz didn't. He just kept wanting to argue that Whites are naturally superior to Blacks. We were not even arguing the opposite - we were arguing that the bulk of the article should give an account of mainstream science. Mainstream scientists do try to prove that all races are equal for reasons you elegantly explained. It is just not what mainstream scientists are debating. so Second, Jagz kept trying to redefine what the article was about in terms of his interests and away from the actual debates found in mainstream life and social science literature. That is the second way in which he was a troll. Now, sometimes people familiar with the psychology/public policy literature (that small section where the two circles overlap) came in. Clearly, they knew the literature they were citing. The problem for us - I mean, good faith editors - is that the literature they were bringing is fringe in the social sciences, and fringe in the life sciences, but notable in public-policy discussions. So we had to work out a fair NPOV way to present the material, not an easy job. Every time a couple of editors (I provided a dif above) with opposing views started reaching some agreement, started building a productive consensus, Jagz would interrupt with an inane comment, sometimes insulting one of the editors, and often created a new section and raised all sorts of questions to sidetrack the discussion. This too got wearying. Yes, you can say: ignore it. We did our best for almost two years, but there is only so long that people can make progress on a page when one troll is trying to dominate the discussion. So, third he was consistently disruptive of any attempt to reach consensus among people with opposing views or concerns. There is one last way in which he was a troll. Our policy makes it clear that someone who makes a racist statement aimed directly at another editor is violating policy. But how do we handle someone who makes blanket statements against a race, directed at no one in particular? If I am not Black, I cannot accuse jagz of violating policy because he is not directing it at me. But it gets worse; what about Black editors? Jagz is not directing his statements to any one editor personally. But he is asserting that there is a significant body of scientific evidence that Blacks are naturally less intelligent than Whites. How is a Black wikipedian to respond? Now, if you are not from the US - if you are not from a country in which (1) there is enough racial heterogeneity that racism is a serious problem and (2) people have been trying to confront racism openly - you may not understand this at first, and I can only ask you to try, but it is very hard for a member of a particular race to take racist comments as anything but personal, even if they are made generically. So here is a fourth way Jagz was a troll: he drove Black editors away from working on the page. Now, we all know Wikipedia editors are not as divers a bunch as we wish they were. And diversity is valuable not in and of itself, but because editors with different backgrounds bring different skills and bodies of knowledge. Over the past four or more years many editors have come to the R&I page and have tried to add verifiable significant views from reliable sources about the history of racist science and the racism of people like Rushton, only to be told that Rushton is a scientist (he has a PhD in psychology; he has never done original research in biology or genetics and has no training in these fields) and a respected scientist and has compelling evidence that Blacks are naturally inferior to Whites. Ludwigs2, this has driven away good editors and it frankly, as long as jagz was editing, made the page and the talk page a humiliation to Wikipedia.
My point is that Jagz knew that what he wrote was tendentious and provocative, because we had all explained to him many times that no one is claiming that races are not equal. This is what is missing from your analysis – you are analyzing his comment as if it came out of nowhere. But it didn’t, he was responding to two years of discussion in which every time he made a point we would ask "what is your source" and he would provide a source that did not back up his point (or ignore the request), and we (me, Alun, others) always provided sources for our claims. So for him to shift the discussion from "what do the sources say" to "No one can prove this" is really disruptive. Look, if I made an edit "According to Flannery, one problem with Rushton's arguments is that he does not take into account the way that the scale by which IQ exams were scored has changed over time" and you added a tag saying that I was violating NPOV and then commented "This is wrong because you cannot prove all races are equal," what would you do? No, don't tell me - just imagine what you would do. Now imagine that you did that, and six months later, twelve months later, your edits are getting the same comments or revisions from Jagz. Imagine that no matter how you respond, how much you explain the sources, or policy, or no matter how many time you ask Jagz for his sources, his responses never change, they do not change over two years. It is this pattern over more than a year that lead me to conclude he was a troll. It took me a very long time before I just realized that there is a perfect Wikipedia policy for dealing with Jagz, and I was convinced that the only way for many editors to work together on the article was to follow this most excellent Wikipedia policy: WP:DNFTT. Once I realized that this was the way to move forward, not to attack Jagz but simply to ignore him, I started encouraging my fellow editors to stop writing the same long explanations to him that they had written dozens of times before and focus on the article. I am glad i did - the article began to move forward.
You think racists are only people who say "kike" or "nigger" or "spic?" I am afraid you are wrong – racism takes many different forms; American history has revealed a wide range of them. And you are also, I say this with respect and good faith, naïve about trolls. Of course had jagz expressed his hatred explicitly he would have been banned (the second time he was blocked, he did so because he crossed the line in a spectacular way). But this is not what makes someone a troll! A troll is the person who resists doing these things, who disrupts and offends and always has an excuse that if anything forces people to waste more time dealing with him.
Now, this was a very long comment but I am summarizing two years of history for you. I am not going to go back and find all the little edit difs, especially when most of them by themselves are innocuous. This is the difference between a troll and a vandal: vandals make edits that are obvious garbage. Trolls work more innocuously, through a pattern of edits that have profound disruptive effects even if no one is a policy violation. The bottom line is simple: Jagz never added anything valuable to the page, he never gave any indication of doing real research or knowing anything about social science or life science. he hung around for two years only to disrupt work on the article and use the talk page to keep pushing his racist views. He added nothing, and took a lot (spiritually I mean) and his being blocked did no damage at all to Wikipedia but removed the principal obstacle to progress on the R&I page. This to me is a no-brainer. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)