Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.
When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.
As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=0&oldid=5584644] [1].
This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.
Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.
If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.
Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.
Netoholic is a constant disruption. He revert wars on multiple articles with multiple users, makes personal attacks, engages in disruption of Wikipedia to make a point, and calculated harassment and stalking. I request that the Arbitration Committee considers the mountain of evidence aganist Netoholic. Specifically, I would like the Committee to impose a broad revert limitation and personal attack parole aganist Netoholic, if not a significant ban. I'd also like a ban on using bots and editing templates, and a ban on editing the project namespace.
Clarification:Netoholic's advocate has dug up some relevent quotes from Jamesday. Again, however, one wonders why Netoholic could not be bothered to point at these quotes when asked for an actual developer citation. Perhaps Netoholic is right about these templates - that's not at issue. What is at issue is his failure to link to any of Jamesday's comments in the TfD discussion, his relisting of a template, his insistance on removing a template that survived TfD, and his refusal to have a note that his "policy" page was not accepted policy maintained. That Jamesday seems to not support Netoholic as enthusiastically as Netoholic says, as the quote above indicates, is also problematic. But it's not even the major issue (Hence the lack of a "Lying about developer comments" section). Snowspinner 16:47, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
The evidence here is too long to recount. Please instead see the page history of User:Neutrality/workshop III.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
Netoholic has abused policy proposals by implying that they are " official policy" and citing them as if they where (in edit summaries and other edits to project pages). He has done this despite being repeatedly directed to Wikipedia:How to create policy. The two specific examples of this abuse are Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful (in edit summmaries and TfD discussions) and Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship (on that page and on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.
[90], [91], [92] in which Netoholic, upon certifying an RfC against Snowspinner regarding a specific incident, hijacks it into an RfC about blocking wars and rollbacks. Note that this is in direct contradiction to his revert of Itai's addition to his RfC. Perhaps his mind has changed on the matter? It has been a few months...
At [93], Netoholic makes an astonishing change in his complaint, where, after complaining that Snowspinner blocks against policy, he criticizes him for unblocking someone when the block violated policy. Adding to the irony is the fact that, contrary to his claim, Snowspinner was discussing the problems with the block at length in IRC before removing it. This makes it difficult to believe that Netoholic's objections to Snowspinner have anything to do with Snowspinner's attitude towards policy, as Netoholic is just as quick to criticize when he does follow policy.
[101] shows the time during which KingofAllPaperboys was blocked - 4:30-4:49. [102] would have, were Snowspinner King of All Paperboys, triggered an autoblock for IP address sharing. It did not.
At [103], Netoholic objects to Snowspinner's 3RR listing of User:John Gohde for using questionable definitions of revert. Minutes later, he lists [104] against Snowspinner, with the fourth revert being of stuff that is several days old. Neither of these would be problematic on their own, but in tandem they point towards one of the major problems with Netoholic - the way in which policy only applies when he wants it to, and how he wants it to.
Netoholic has been needlessly provcative, abusive, and downright nasty on Templates for Deletion. General examples include [105] [106] [107]
He has a particular crusade against Xiong, as shown at [108] [109] [110] [111]
(because of inconsistencies in the other evidence sections, all times in this one are in UTC)
I am adding this section because I sense that most people involved may not be aware, or are unfairly not recognizing, previous efforts by me to resolve disputes. While I can't disagree that I have been involved in disputes, I do strive to resolve them in a mutually acceptable way.
Primarily, this clear case of my attempt to make a point, but one that was not disruptive to Wikipedia (see above General arguments section "Regarding Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point").
Too often, during a vote, those on the majority side seek to make the non-commenting voter say something so as to discredit that position. In this case, I intentionally tried to avoid a long debate and simply wanted to vote. When Neutrality singled my vote out by asking "Why?", I replied in part "Why ask why? And why must people ask "why?" whenever someone votes but doesn't leave an explicit reason?" What my action of replying to the supporting voters with a similar "Why?" question did, as I intended, was to humorously show that too often when someone votes and yet chooses not to leave a detailed reply, they are somewhat hounded or put on the spot to provide some comment. My intention certainly was to illustrate a point, but if Wikipedia, the RFA, or even a few users have been truly disrupted, I'd have removed them if asked to. As it happened, Michael Snow removed them and Neutrality himself saw fit to restore them ("reinstate Netoholic's edits - I want everyone to see this", an edit intentionally left out of the Neutrality/Snowspinner evidence section), so I can't see how he can accuse me of disruption. In fact, even when the vote closed and to the present, my questions remained. No harm befell this user's RFA, and indeed, a lot of people did take notice and, in my opinion, fewer "quiet voters" are pestered for detailed explanations.
I think the Arbitrators should consider that only if I had done this sort of thing over the course of several vote pages would this amount to disruption of Wikipedia. As it is, this was minor and isolated and at the time (over 3 months ago now) noone took major issue with it nor asked me to remove them. If It had been truly disruptive, someone at the time would have instituted a block or official warning.
I am not one to make personal attacks. I certainly do express my opinion and vigorously denounce actions I disagree with. This series of charges do not amount to any long-term problem regarding personal attacks coming from me.
The RFC is on the misuse of admin rights (specifically Blocking) by Snowspinner. How can my additions of further evidence in that regard be considered hijacking, and how is this remotely a violation of a policy such that it merits inclusion in this case?
Regarding User:Vacuum's submission: The fact that he is referencing a copy of a failed RFC which was deleted should be enough to discredit the assumption that I've done anything wrong in how I maintain my user page. Adding that the outside views support my rights in that regard should solidify my defense of this point.
User:Jamesday has explicitly described that meta-templates in general, and specifically this one, are to be avoided.
From Template talk:Sisterproject#Technical impact of templates like this:
"The developers are working hard to reduce the number of things which can cause long lags of this sort. Templates like this are working hard to increase the number and frequency of them. Please avoid creating a single template which is used on more than a small percentage of the pages on the site."
Every time I reverted Itai's re-inclusions of this meta-template was done purely based on this directive. I trust it, understand the technical reasons for it, and other editors should not ignore it. I am still attempting to frame this idea into a simple guideline at Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates, but the obscure nature of the problem and difficulty explaining it are large barriers.
Itai, on the other hand, does not provide any counter-reasons for his continued reversions. For -long- stretches of time, like between like the month of March 2005, mostly, Itai's only edits were to revert these templates, all the while calling out personal attacks in his edit summaries.
My intention was purely to help get out the word about the technical problems these innocent meta-templates have caused. It is very discouraging to have such good intentions turned around and described as being negative.
Netoholic deletes any comment on his talk page that he perceives as critical, in violaion of the Wikipedia:User page guideline: "Please avoid deleting discussion merely because it is critical of your actions - doing so will only make people repeat the same criticism, and will make you seem like you are ignoring criticism." For more details, see User:Vacuum/Netoholic RfC and its talk page.
Response to Netoholic: The RfC was deleted on a very minor technicality. Secondly, there are at least 6 people who thought that the complaints were non-trivial: myself, User:Ta bu shi da yu who decided to resolve matters alternately, User:Zen master who certified, endorsers User:Shane King and User:Tony Sidaway, and User:Ben James Ben, who remarked that he "found it useful" after it was archived. I would also note that almost all of the users that endorsed his view of the situation had had a valid Arbitration case against them, and are thus likely to be trolls/difficult users.
Snowspinner may have been using User:KingOfAllPaperboys as a sockpuppet. The evidence is presented at [112].-- Silverback 21:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Let me preface my comments by saying that I'm not familiar to any of the parties to this case and only became interested in it because of prior arb cases and what I perceive to be a less than optimal level of tolerance.
Since I originally posted my evidence I have agreed to serve as Netoholic's Advocate. Per AMA Guidelines I am presenting evidence using my own username as a representative of the disputant, Netoholic.
Netoholic's point regarding "those on the majority side seek(ing) to make the non-commenting voter say something so as to discredit that position" is completely valid. In fact, I would take it a step further and point out that even those who oppose with reason are frequently rebutted or have their position criticized very pointedly, the autofellation IFD vote being the first to come to mind. A quick review will find that virtually every person who has voted to delete it with cause has had their position attacked.
Further, Neutrality is in clear violation of Wikipedia rules regarding Requests for adminship:
The bold emphasis above is mine. Clearly there is no requirement for comments on votes, it states may. Secondly, Neutrality's comment is not in the comments section, it was directly after Netoholic's vote [113] which is a clear violation of the rules. Michael Ward correctly removed Netoholic's and Neutrality's comments to the correct section.
The reason for the rules are clear, in this case Netoholic's vote was characterized in Snowspinner/Neutrality's evidence as "vindictive". Netoholic's vote is his right and it's his right to vote as he pleases, he shouldn't have to explain it to anyone. If Snowspinner or Neutrality want to characterize that vote or attempt to determine why Netoholic voted that way they are making that their issue and not his. I submit they likely knew why he voted that way and only asked to provoke a hostile reaction which they received in the form of what they called "spam".
Netoholic's response was obvious retaliation since no one else who voted without comment had been questioned he was agitated and responded in kind. While this certainly isn't the best outcome to say he wasn't goaded into it would be skirting the truth. Instead of just leaving Netoholic's vote as it was he was prodded and it escalated from there.
I reviewed Snowspinner's submitted evidence and found the discussion on the draft to be about 90% directly from Jguk. [114] While this doesn't necessarily indicate implementing the proposed changes wasn't warranted, it does indicate there wasn't a great deal of discussion. In fact, there appears to be only one other person who commented on it, Maurreen. This indicates that either there aren't many people with comments or the draft project was not well known, I would posit the latter is likely the case.
Be that as it may, it appears moving forward may have been a bit hasty, Jguk started the draft on 19-Feb and the incidents Snowspinner discussed as evidence took place on 10-March, just over a fortnight. This is a pretty significant process change so I think a longer period of discussion would have been in order. It takes two to tango (at least) in a revert war, one would have thought after Netoholic reverted (citing his reasons for more discussion needed) there would have been some discussion on it before it was reverted back but that was not the case and the matter escalated from there.
Here is another case of escalation that was not needed. Netoholic had a position on the template and thought it should be deleted, I'm captioning it here to demonstrate:
There's not a lot of vitriol here, he seems to have a position based on his opinions and lays out some facts, what's the point? It doesn't appear he put it on TfD haphazardly or without cause and followed the process. If that process (the inclusion of the TfD tag) creates some problems that is a fault of the process and not Netoholic. What the outcome of the vote was or what have you are not relevant to whether his request was out of line or not and I should note that Snowspinner came in with an early vote, surprise, on the opposite side of Netoholic.
The fact of the matter is Snowspinner has misrepresented Jamesday's opinion:
I think the Arbcom can agree that Jamesday is an authority on this issue and as such Netoholic has a legitimate technical point here that is not easily addressed by the community and isn't readily addressed by current community process. Netoholic took the posture of putting it through TfD again which may have been ill advised. However, again, because quick and hasty reactions (removing it from TfD) were made even after Jamesday provided support for his position, it escalated the matter as will be demonstrated further below.
This evidence is paper thin and if "fool", "drama queen", and asking if someone did something just to "fuck with" them are the worse of our personal attacks we should all be dancing a jig.
The third excerpt pointing out that Netoholic accuses Snowspinner of abusing his authority seems to be the source of this entire case -- a couple of people who don't get along.
It is important to note the degree of escalation to this point before considering the Meta Template reverts. Netoholic tried to add input on Meta Templates detailing how they were harmful to the servers and this position was supported by Jamesday. Despite this support Netoholic's position is ignored, his requests for deletion are removed in clear violation of Wikipedia process [118], he resubmits them and they are again deleted. He has tried to follow the process and has gotten nowhere. He then resorts to trying to limit the damage by restricting their use.
The rest of Snowspinner's evidence shows that, indeed, Netoholic has been involved in some pretty heavy revert warring concerning meta templates. I would suggest that instead of focusing on the behavior of people it would be far better to focus on Netoholic's gripe, supported by a developer.
He obviously feels strongly on it, the number of people who are aware of what these are and how the technical arguments play out is small, so it appears the process of TfD doesn't work very well to address these issues. In looking at some of the reverts I'm a bit amused by the inflated comments such as "community opinion will be enforced". [119] I would hardly consider 10 or 12 votes to be a good sampling of the community and that perhaps the fault here lies with the process and not the people. A better process to analyze these more technical issues to include people who would be knowledgeable on the subject would be a better solution than going to arb against a user.
Now totally exasperated, Netoholic believes that creating a policy will perhaps help deal with the Meta Template problem. [120]. Again, he gets slapped down:
Addendum/Response
In response to Snowspinner's additional statement about Jamesday not currently being an active advocate for the proposal I will let Jamesday speak for himself on the matter. [125]
The evidence is a bit difficult to follow here since the discussion has been archived. Be that as it may this is another case of Snowspinner and Netoholic butting heads:
The fact of the matter is Netoholic did not misuse a bot. He followed the process, that process includes testing the bot if there are no objections while approval is waiting. That is exactly what was done and no evidence has been submitted to indicate this bot did anything harmful. Snowspinner submitted this as evidence citing a position he had in September and October when as recently as January he supported its use. [127].
This was clearly inappropriate on Netoholic's part but, as I've tried to point out, was completely avoidable. Regardless, Netoholic reacted inappropriately. That being said, Netoholic is far from the only person that has voiced concern about Snowspinner's proposed Association of Member Investigations. [128]
Concerning the recent injunction in this case [129] and the incidents of 7 April where Netoholic was blocked:
While one should assume good faith I believe a philosophy of "trust, but verify" in regards to parties involved in arbitration is a better policy. The evidence is clear that Neutrality had no previous involvement in the article. Yet we are to assume it a coincidence when he reverts one of Netoholic's changes hours after the injunction is issued? Further, Neutrality did not demonstrate good faith when he did the revert as he was not a participant in the article's talk page nor did he add any reason for his revert on the talk page after he did it.
This is a pretty clear case of people not getting along. However, two of these people are administrators and one is not. I believe that an administrator should be held to a higher standard of promoting harmony and tolerance. While I don't condone many of Netoholic's actions I believe I can see why he reacted the way he did and I believe that if cooler heads had prevailed, particularly Snowspinner and Neutrality, this wouldn't have reached this point.
I encourage the arbcom members deciding this case to look past the vitriol on both sides and try to get to the source of the problems in order to remedy the issue. I hope that I have assisted you in doing that with further highlighting of the evidence submitted.
Netoholic edits in several places to make one point. When he does not win in one forum, he stalks opponents throughout the project, running roughshod over the spirit of the Wiki Way. At times he subverts the system, rather than violating it blatantly.
This evidence is organized first by page, then by date; I ask for notice of date coincidence across pages.
Netoholic created Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates [139]. By interfering with the collaborative process that matures one user's opinion into candidate policy, he perpetuates the article's status as opinion, yet continues to force-manage it into policy.
** 15:42: Grutness delicately links {{
Bh}} with vandalism.
[168]
** 19:46: Xiong restores "disappeared" comment of 10:46, verbatim. Emphasizes entire willingness to remove trivial templates (via move to user space or creator-requested speedy).
[169]
** 19:57: Xiong objects to charges of vandalism, asks for specific examples. (No takers so far). Again invites anyone with an objection to trivial templates to "just ask" for removal.
[170]
Template has been deleted, please refer to
User:Xiong/Mockup. -
Frazzydee|
✍ 11:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(Please note that I agree this template is trivial and inappropriate for main Template space. When this is all over, I'll happily move it into user space. —
Xiong
talk)
This template inserts, inline, the sentence: It's all just
zeros and ones!. If used wisely, with subst:
, it is a gentle, humorous comment. If used less wisely, via ordinary inclusion, it creates a risk that later edits to the template itself may disrupt other page content. (I am sorry to say I was careless on 2 or 3 occasions -- although here, it is a demonstration. —
Xiong
talk)
Every Wikipedian should vandalize a page -- once. Everyone should get banned for 24 hours -- once. It's good for the soul, teaches humility, and encourages one to experience the Real World for a while, or at least to answer neglected emails. Everyone should wear the black hat for a day, if only to underline the importance of the white hat -- the serious dedication to a free, open, collaborative, scholarly work.
Netoholic is troubling to me because he does not wear the black hat. He does not engage in random blanking of mainspace article pages (so far as I know); he treads the very edge of what is permitted. He is far more dangerous than a simple vandal or raucous edit warrior. Obvious black hats are what they seem, and we can deal with them, however annoying, as a matter of routine.
Gray hats, such as Netoholic, game the system; disrupt, demoralize, and ultimately destroy. Their violations are not always clear-cut; we require careful procedure to ensure we do not react too hastily or too strongly. Such deliberation is very nearly wasted; at best, we can hope only to learn something from the process. Meanwhile, all the resources that might have gone into quality content have simply disappeared into a Black Hole. —
Xiong
talk 11:55, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
Carrying the vendetta beyond templates onto a graphics tutorial, Wikipedia:How to make complex illustrations using FreeHand and Photoshop.
I accidentally deleted most of my evidence in order to add the last bit; I've now restored it. Please read; sorry for the confusion. —
Xiong
talk 04:52, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
Netoholic continues to meddle with templates, but I'm just not going to list any more right now. He has contributed to a recent dispute over the exclusion of a few specific criteria. Note that I honestly believe I am a disinterested, if not neutral party; nothing I've touched is up for speedy.
Susvolans (pigs can fly) 07:53, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I find the matter of Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship to be of particular interest.
As others have pointed out, Netoholic changed this page from a redirect to a bogus policy page in the course of several edits, with some spelling and grammar corrections and minor adjustments to text by others [220] [221] [222]. .
Netoholic was disingenuous in purporting to make the page official [223], which was not supported by the comments on the talk page at the time of the edit Note that there had been no vote on the talk page. Netoholic pursued an edit war [224] [225] [226]. in his insistence to make the page "official." Netoholic's purpose became clear when he created a subpage purporting to be a "petition" for de-adminship of User:Snowspinner [227].
Netoholic also pursued an edit war on the subpage [228] [229] [230] [231] to retain its anti-Snowspinner remarks.
I believe that Netoholic's claim that WP:RFA is not policy [232] to be particulary disingenuous, and a hallmark of a campaign rooted in bad faith.
Respectfully,
The Uninvited Co., Inc. 23:15, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
After I mentioned the existance of this conversation to him, David Gerard asked me to copy it here for the arbitrators to see. →Raul654 19:53, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
Copied from my talk page archive (warning - very large page)
Raul - I would like to request, as nicely as possible, that you please stop assuming bad faith in my edits, calling me names (like troll), and showing bias against me. Your recent attitude has done nothing but make me feel very uncomfortable working here, and I don't believe that someone in such a position of respect in this community should act so uncivil.
I spend the vast majority of my time here making very productive enhancements. At no time do I ever make any edit, or begin any discussion on IRC, with the purpose of causing strife. Unfortunately, I got off on the wrong foot with a few members here, and that has been perpetuated beyond what is called for - leading me to try and defend myself from the particularly fashionable practice of "troll-bashing". I look to you, as someone who has the respect of many users here, to help me stop this. If I make a mistake in the future, I certainly ask and welcome that it be discussed with me respectfully. I think I've shown often in the past that I am willing to make changes and come to agreement. In return for your help in stopping this, I will commit to listening more closely to those suggestions and admit fault when I don't.
I really do think that you and a number of other members here have the wrong idea about me, being perhaps jaded by previous encounters. I hope that, with this note, you will see that I am actually a pleasant and hopefully valuable member of the community here. -- Netoholic @ 15:18, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)
PLEASE please just stop. Let me put it back in as the proposed text which has been stable since Oct 4th. Even though I've asked you very nicely, you still feel the need to do things just to aggravate. Please stop. --
Netoholic
@ 06:02, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)
I have
requested mediation in an attempt to stop this "cold war". Its my hope that if you're unwilling to discuss with me directly, that having someone facilitate will help. --
Netoholic
@ 06:18, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how to reply to this for a while (I've been writing this for almost several hours; long before your previous 2 comments above), so here goes. First, I do not assume anything; I judge each edit on its own merits. And, of the edits of yours that I have seen, very many of them looked to me as if it were designed to cause as much conflict and anger as possible. Now, intention is implied by action. What are your intentions, since (many of) your actions seem designed to cause problems?
You complain that being called a troll makes you uncomfortable. If you really don't want to be called one, THEN DON'T ACT LIKE ONE. You say that you do not like someone like me to be uncivil. I am perfectly civil to people who behave properly. You have not been behaving properly.
Further, I believe there are two possible reasons you made this post:
It would not be the first time someone has tried it.
The latter is particularly believable considering shortly after you made that post you went right over to the Speedy deletion page and started an edit war with me there, along with 2 others, by trying to add a policy that doesn't have consensus. When told this, you simply stated that majority is necessary - WRONG! If you were *actually* trying to work with others, after the first time you were reverted, you would have tried discussing it; instead, you edit war with multiple members of the community.
On the other hand, I looked at your user contributions, and I did see quite a few good edits there. I concede that this is almost never the case for true trolls (I certainly cannot think of an exception). As such, I am willing to believe it is as you said - that you made some mistakes when you got here, and you didn't really mean to cause all these problems. I will wipe the slate clean, and treat you as I would treat any other user in good standing. In return, I expect you to behave as we would expect all of our editors to - to be curteous, civil, and when reverted, to DISCUSS rather than edit warring. In fact, I *strongly* suggest you do what Anthony has done and limit yourself to 1 revert per day.
Do you find this offer acceptable? →Raul654 06:26, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps that was a bit harsh. Continued on Netholic's talk page. →Raul654 21:23, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
(As per intro: "Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent.")
7) Netoholic consistently tries to push his views through, rather than working with and accepting consensus, using disruption to make a point and revert warring. He consistently assumes bad faith in those disagreeing with him or who have disagreed with him in the past, which leads to a bad working atmosphere in Wikipedia: space and some personal attacks. (See Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Netoholic_2/Evidence#Reorganised_evidence_for_FoF_7.)
[I'm about a third of the way through this evidence page in compiling this section. More to come. - David Gerard 07:56, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)]
[When reading the response from Netoholic below, do be sure to follow and read each of the diffs in this reorganised evidence and see the picture they paint - David Gerard 00:21, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)]
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BrokenSegue: disruptive comment flood [235] in response to [236]; when removed [237], revert-wars to keep comment flood: [238] [239] [240] .
Wikipedia:Requests for comment: after long discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment (draft user conduct amendments), [241] is reverted dismissively [242] [243] [244] [245] [246], [247] then another reversion [248]; expresses contempt for process [249]; when reverted [250], engages in personal abuse from assumption of bad faith [251]; continued revert warring [252] [253] [254]
Template:Sisterproject: nomination for WP:TFD: [255]; after deletion template removed (to prevent it showing on thousands of pages) [256], revert war [257] [258] [259] [260] [261]; after TFD keeps template, relists after 18 days [262]; after kept second time, redirection against community consensus [263] then revert war [264] [265] [266] [267] [268] [269] [270] rather than explaining himself; bad faith leading to personal attacks [271] [272] [273] (in ref to [274], concerning The Recycling Troll); note that in the case of Template:Sisterproject, Netoholic was arguably technically correct [275], but insisted on revert-warring and personal attacks rather than explaining himself or convincing others. Long-running revert warring against consensus rather than discussion during related TFD vote: Template:Wikispecies (history), Template:Commonscat (history), Template:Wikinews (history), Template:Wikisourcepar (history), Template:Wikisourcecat (history), Template:Wikibooks (history), Template:Wikibookspar (history), Template:Wikiquotepar (history).
Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines: revert warring [276] [277] [278] [279] [280] [281] [282] [283] [284] [285] [286] [287] [288].
Wikipedia:Three-revert rule: revert warring to preferred version against multiple objections [289] [290] [291] [292] [293] [294] [295] [296]
Wikipedia:Templates for deletion: assumption of bad faith and personal attacks [297] [298] [299] [300] [301] [302] [303] [304] [305] [306] [307] [308] ; revert warring to keep idiosyncratic changes to policy against consensus [309] [310] [311] [312] [313] [314].
See also Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Netoholic_2/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Raul654.
- David Gerard 02:04, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
David's central comment, that I fail to assume good faith, couldn't be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, I believe everyone involved in the above edits is doing what they must think is the right thing. I respectfully have disagreed with them, but that shouldn't necessarily be regarded as a bad thing.
Quite honestly, I was not going to submit any evidence, since I only had one article to talk about, and User:Xiong had already covered it partially in his comments above. I have decided, however, that since the example represents a clear miniature of some of User:Netoholic's behavior and attitudes and his relationships with other editors, it would be best to present a detailed analysis of the events. More specifically, it shows one example of Netoholic's common use of the revert as his first weapon of choice in a dispute rather than one of last resort, and his escalation to insults and snide remarks that often happens, even when he is not dealing with another "difficult" editor.
Major Principles: Revert war, No personal attacks, Assume good faith Civility, Wikipedia:Ownership of articles#Control of Wikipedia articles
Minor Principles: Wikipedia:Consensus, Wikipedia:How to create policy, Always explain your reverts, What is a troll
The following is from the
Wikipedia:Avoid_using_meta-templates
revision history and from its Talk page:
To me, Netoholic's Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful appears to be part of a pattern where he uses Wikipedia:policies and guidelines (especially WP:3RR), rewrites or attempts to rewrite policy, or attempts to create policy as part of his tactics in disputes (please also note how this matches the description at Wikipedia:What is a troll#Misuse of process). Whatever the merits of his meta-template proposal, it appears to have been mostly created as part of Netoholic's dispute with User:Itai over the SisterProject templates (and keep in mind that User:Jamesday specifically said, in reference to Template:Sisterproject, "In this case the benefits outweight the costs"). There certainly needs to be a more detailed look at all the issues involved in using templates on the Wikipedia (and not just meta-templates), but Netoholic has so muddled the issues for the momment that it will be best to just start over from scratch. Furthermore, when you look at all the issues involving templates, some of them will go directly to some of Netoholic's other behavior on the Wikipedia. For example, if edit wars are bad, then edit wars on templates are worse (since they affect so many more pages), and edit wars on infobox templates are much worse (since it is very easy to have things "break").
For another example of subverting Wikipedia policy for his own purposes, look at Netoholic's Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Old proposal where he readily admitted he had some admins in mind when he created the proposal, and made this much more obvious when he created Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Snowspinner. With his top-down, take-it-or-leave-it approach, it is no wonder that this proposal failed even though there were several people who said that they liked the idea although not the particular proposal (see the comments during voting on the [[ talk page). If Netoholic had been more willing to listen to some of the suggestions and had tried to modify the proposal to answer some of the concerns mentioned, the proposal probably wouldn't have had such an overwhelming defeat (2 to 1 against).
Another example is the way that Netoholic nominated of a large number of User:Xiong's templates for WP:TFD, etc. Although most, if not all, of Xiong's templates probably deserved to be nominated, it appears obvious to me that this was also intended as harassment of Xiong by Netoholic. Netoholic's actions are persistent enough (and still continuing) that I would classify them as a vendetta against Xiong. That conflict seems to just keep escalating (now Xiong has nominated WP:TFD at WP:VFD!), and both parties should probably be sanctioned.
I have NOT worked out any differences with Netoholic. There is clearly no consensus on the policy.
BlankVerse ∅ 06:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Personal opinion: I think that this page move crossed the line. User:Xiong's article deserves to be in the Wikipedia namespace as a Wikipedia thinktank article just as much as his Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful. It is long-winded, and it does cover things that probably don't belong in the article. On the other hand, for those who are visually oriented, it gives a good idea of how transclusion works, and it does a better job of covering the problems of using templates instead of just focusing on the problems of meta-templates. BlankVerse ∅ 01:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
9) On Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful (now called Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates), Netoholic was arguably completely technically correct — but he interacted so negatively with others that he actually convinced people he was not. His dismissiveness of concerns even when told directly he was running roughshod over others, his apparent assumption of bad faith, and his use of revert wars to insist on it being described as a guideline (when it became clear it would not become policy) are all examples of interactions that contributed to this problem.
Note: the diffs below are from Netoholic and others - read in sequence for both sides of the conversations - David Gerard 20:19, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Dismissiveness of concerns even when told directly he is running roughshod over others [321] [322] [323] [324] [325] [326] [327] [328] [329] [330] [331] [332] [333] [334] [335] [336] [337] [338] [339] [340];
A manner assuming page ownership [341] (consistent with something being drafted as a proposed policy, inconsistent with his claims in edit summaries of it actually being policy), revert-warring in a manner consistent with this [342] [343] [344] [345] [346] [347] [348] [349] (note noted lack of discussion) [350] (assuming bad faith); when clear it will not be policy, claims it is a guideline and revert-wars to keep this in [351] [352] [353] [354] [355] [356]; assumed bad faith [357] [358]
Claim or implication of no metatemplates as policy in edit summary: [359]; Asked not to do this [360]. Implied (link as edit summary): [361] Template:Wikispecies (history), Template:Commonscat (history), Template:Wikinews (history), Template:Wikisourcepar (history), Template:Wikisourcecat (history), Template:Wikibooks (history), Template:Wikibookspar (history), Template:Wikiquotepar (history)
Does this count as a reversion in the Wikipedia: namespace? See history for April 26th. Along with some other things, he removed the phrase "A request to make this a guideline failed, and no consensus has been reached yet". I replaced it, and then he removed the entire paragraph.
The notpolicy template says "References or links to this page should clearly describe it as "proposed"." Netaholic is still not presenting it as such. See here:
and here:
- Omegatron 19:30, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
He has moved the page Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits to Xiong's userspace three times, after his move was reversed twice. History of the latest move - Omegatron 15:30, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
To clarify:
In this instance he violated both the three-revert rule and his injuction for this RfA - Omegatron 19:35, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.
When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.
As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=0&oldid=5584644] [1].
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Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.
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Netoholic is a constant disruption. He revert wars on multiple articles with multiple users, makes personal attacks, engages in disruption of Wikipedia to make a point, and calculated harassment and stalking. I request that the Arbitration Committee considers the mountain of evidence aganist Netoholic. Specifically, I would like the Committee to impose a broad revert limitation and personal attack parole aganist Netoholic, if not a significant ban. I'd also like a ban on using bots and editing templates, and a ban on editing the project namespace.
Clarification:Netoholic's advocate has dug up some relevent quotes from Jamesday. Again, however, one wonders why Netoholic could not be bothered to point at these quotes when asked for an actual developer citation. Perhaps Netoholic is right about these templates - that's not at issue. What is at issue is his failure to link to any of Jamesday's comments in the TfD discussion, his relisting of a template, his insistance on removing a template that survived TfD, and his refusal to have a note that his "policy" page was not accepted policy maintained. That Jamesday seems to not support Netoholic as enthusiastically as Netoholic says, as the quote above indicates, is also problematic. But it's not even the major issue (Hence the lack of a "Lying about developer comments" section). Snowspinner 16:47, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
The evidence here is too long to recount. Please instead see the page history of User:Neutrality/workshop III.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
The evidence here is too large to recount. Please instead see the page history.
Netoholic has abused policy proposals by implying that they are " official policy" and citing them as if they where (in edit summaries and other edits to project pages). He has done this despite being repeatedly directed to Wikipedia:How to create policy. The two specific examples of this abuse are Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful (in edit summmaries and TfD discussions) and Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship (on that page and on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.
[90], [91], [92] in which Netoholic, upon certifying an RfC against Snowspinner regarding a specific incident, hijacks it into an RfC about blocking wars and rollbacks. Note that this is in direct contradiction to his revert of Itai's addition to his RfC. Perhaps his mind has changed on the matter? It has been a few months...
At [93], Netoholic makes an astonishing change in his complaint, where, after complaining that Snowspinner blocks against policy, he criticizes him for unblocking someone when the block violated policy. Adding to the irony is the fact that, contrary to his claim, Snowspinner was discussing the problems with the block at length in IRC before removing it. This makes it difficult to believe that Netoholic's objections to Snowspinner have anything to do with Snowspinner's attitude towards policy, as Netoholic is just as quick to criticize when he does follow policy.
[101] shows the time during which KingofAllPaperboys was blocked - 4:30-4:49. [102] would have, were Snowspinner King of All Paperboys, triggered an autoblock for IP address sharing. It did not.
At [103], Netoholic objects to Snowspinner's 3RR listing of User:John Gohde for using questionable definitions of revert. Minutes later, he lists [104] against Snowspinner, with the fourth revert being of stuff that is several days old. Neither of these would be problematic on their own, but in tandem they point towards one of the major problems with Netoholic - the way in which policy only applies when he wants it to, and how he wants it to.
Netoholic has been needlessly provcative, abusive, and downright nasty on Templates for Deletion. General examples include [105] [106] [107]
He has a particular crusade against Xiong, as shown at [108] [109] [110] [111]
(because of inconsistencies in the other evidence sections, all times in this one are in UTC)
I am adding this section because I sense that most people involved may not be aware, or are unfairly not recognizing, previous efforts by me to resolve disputes. While I can't disagree that I have been involved in disputes, I do strive to resolve them in a mutually acceptable way.
Primarily, this clear case of my attempt to make a point, but one that was not disruptive to Wikipedia (see above General arguments section "Regarding Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point").
Too often, during a vote, those on the majority side seek to make the non-commenting voter say something so as to discredit that position. In this case, I intentionally tried to avoid a long debate and simply wanted to vote. When Neutrality singled my vote out by asking "Why?", I replied in part "Why ask why? And why must people ask "why?" whenever someone votes but doesn't leave an explicit reason?" What my action of replying to the supporting voters with a similar "Why?" question did, as I intended, was to humorously show that too often when someone votes and yet chooses not to leave a detailed reply, they are somewhat hounded or put on the spot to provide some comment. My intention certainly was to illustrate a point, but if Wikipedia, the RFA, or even a few users have been truly disrupted, I'd have removed them if asked to. As it happened, Michael Snow removed them and Neutrality himself saw fit to restore them ("reinstate Netoholic's edits - I want everyone to see this", an edit intentionally left out of the Neutrality/Snowspinner evidence section), so I can't see how he can accuse me of disruption. In fact, even when the vote closed and to the present, my questions remained. No harm befell this user's RFA, and indeed, a lot of people did take notice and, in my opinion, fewer "quiet voters" are pestered for detailed explanations.
I think the Arbitrators should consider that only if I had done this sort of thing over the course of several vote pages would this amount to disruption of Wikipedia. As it is, this was minor and isolated and at the time (over 3 months ago now) noone took major issue with it nor asked me to remove them. If It had been truly disruptive, someone at the time would have instituted a block or official warning.
I am not one to make personal attacks. I certainly do express my opinion and vigorously denounce actions I disagree with. This series of charges do not amount to any long-term problem regarding personal attacks coming from me.
The RFC is on the misuse of admin rights (specifically Blocking) by Snowspinner. How can my additions of further evidence in that regard be considered hijacking, and how is this remotely a violation of a policy such that it merits inclusion in this case?
Regarding User:Vacuum's submission: The fact that he is referencing a copy of a failed RFC which was deleted should be enough to discredit the assumption that I've done anything wrong in how I maintain my user page. Adding that the outside views support my rights in that regard should solidify my defense of this point.
User:Jamesday has explicitly described that meta-templates in general, and specifically this one, are to be avoided.
From Template talk:Sisterproject#Technical impact of templates like this:
"The developers are working hard to reduce the number of things which can cause long lags of this sort. Templates like this are working hard to increase the number and frequency of them. Please avoid creating a single template which is used on more than a small percentage of the pages on the site."
Every time I reverted Itai's re-inclusions of this meta-template was done purely based on this directive. I trust it, understand the technical reasons for it, and other editors should not ignore it. I am still attempting to frame this idea into a simple guideline at Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates, but the obscure nature of the problem and difficulty explaining it are large barriers.
Itai, on the other hand, does not provide any counter-reasons for his continued reversions. For -long- stretches of time, like between like the month of March 2005, mostly, Itai's only edits were to revert these templates, all the while calling out personal attacks in his edit summaries.
My intention was purely to help get out the word about the technical problems these innocent meta-templates have caused. It is very discouraging to have such good intentions turned around and described as being negative.
Netoholic deletes any comment on his talk page that he perceives as critical, in violaion of the Wikipedia:User page guideline: "Please avoid deleting discussion merely because it is critical of your actions - doing so will only make people repeat the same criticism, and will make you seem like you are ignoring criticism." For more details, see User:Vacuum/Netoholic RfC and its talk page.
Response to Netoholic: The RfC was deleted on a very minor technicality. Secondly, there are at least 6 people who thought that the complaints were non-trivial: myself, User:Ta bu shi da yu who decided to resolve matters alternately, User:Zen master who certified, endorsers User:Shane King and User:Tony Sidaway, and User:Ben James Ben, who remarked that he "found it useful" after it was archived. I would also note that almost all of the users that endorsed his view of the situation had had a valid Arbitration case against them, and are thus likely to be trolls/difficult users.
Snowspinner may have been using User:KingOfAllPaperboys as a sockpuppet. The evidence is presented at [112].-- Silverback 21:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Let me preface my comments by saying that I'm not familiar to any of the parties to this case and only became interested in it because of prior arb cases and what I perceive to be a less than optimal level of tolerance.
Since I originally posted my evidence I have agreed to serve as Netoholic's Advocate. Per AMA Guidelines I am presenting evidence using my own username as a representative of the disputant, Netoholic.
Netoholic's point regarding "those on the majority side seek(ing) to make the non-commenting voter say something so as to discredit that position" is completely valid. In fact, I would take it a step further and point out that even those who oppose with reason are frequently rebutted or have their position criticized very pointedly, the autofellation IFD vote being the first to come to mind. A quick review will find that virtually every person who has voted to delete it with cause has had their position attacked.
Further, Neutrality is in clear violation of Wikipedia rules regarding Requests for adminship:
The bold emphasis above is mine. Clearly there is no requirement for comments on votes, it states may. Secondly, Neutrality's comment is not in the comments section, it was directly after Netoholic's vote [113] which is a clear violation of the rules. Michael Ward correctly removed Netoholic's and Neutrality's comments to the correct section.
The reason for the rules are clear, in this case Netoholic's vote was characterized in Snowspinner/Neutrality's evidence as "vindictive". Netoholic's vote is his right and it's his right to vote as he pleases, he shouldn't have to explain it to anyone. If Snowspinner or Neutrality want to characterize that vote or attempt to determine why Netoholic voted that way they are making that their issue and not his. I submit they likely knew why he voted that way and only asked to provoke a hostile reaction which they received in the form of what they called "spam".
Netoholic's response was obvious retaliation since no one else who voted without comment had been questioned he was agitated and responded in kind. While this certainly isn't the best outcome to say he wasn't goaded into it would be skirting the truth. Instead of just leaving Netoholic's vote as it was he was prodded and it escalated from there.
I reviewed Snowspinner's submitted evidence and found the discussion on the draft to be about 90% directly from Jguk. [114] While this doesn't necessarily indicate implementing the proposed changes wasn't warranted, it does indicate there wasn't a great deal of discussion. In fact, there appears to be only one other person who commented on it, Maurreen. This indicates that either there aren't many people with comments or the draft project was not well known, I would posit the latter is likely the case.
Be that as it may, it appears moving forward may have been a bit hasty, Jguk started the draft on 19-Feb and the incidents Snowspinner discussed as evidence took place on 10-March, just over a fortnight. This is a pretty significant process change so I think a longer period of discussion would have been in order. It takes two to tango (at least) in a revert war, one would have thought after Netoholic reverted (citing his reasons for more discussion needed) there would have been some discussion on it before it was reverted back but that was not the case and the matter escalated from there.
Here is another case of escalation that was not needed. Netoholic had a position on the template and thought it should be deleted, I'm captioning it here to demonstrate:
There's not a lot of vitriol here, he seems to have a position based on his opinions and lays out some facts, what's the point? It doesn't appear he put it on TfD haphazardly or without cause and followed the process. If that process (the inclusion of the TfD tag) creates some problems that is a fault of the process and not Netoholic. What the outcome of the vote was or what have you are not relevant to whether his request was out of line or not and I should note that Snowspinner came in with an early vote, surprise, on the opposite side of Netoholic.
The fact of the matter is Snowspinner has misrepresented Jamesday's opinion:
I think the Arbcom can agree that Jamesday is an authority on this issue and as such Netoholic has a legitimate technical point here that is not easily addressed by the community and isn't readily addressed by current community process. Netoholic took the posture of putting it through TfD again which may have been ill advised. However, again, because quick and hasty reactions (removing it from TfD) were made even after Jamesday provided support for his position, it escalated the matter as will be demonstrated further below.
This evidence is paper thin and if "fool", "drama queen", and asking if someone did something just to "fuck with" them are the worse of our personal attacks we should all be dancing a jig.
The third excerpt pointing out that Netoholic accuses Snowspinner of abusing his authority seems to be the source of this entire case -- a couple of people who don't get along.
It is important to note the degree of escalation to this point before considering the Meta Template reverts. Netoholic tried to add input on Meta Templates detailing how they were harmful to the servers and this position was supported by Jamesday. Despite this support Netoholic's position is ignored, his requests for deletion are removed in clear violation of Wikipedia process [118], he resubmits them and they are again deleted. He has tried to follow the process and has gotten nowhere. He then resorts to trying to limit the damage by restricting their use.
The rest of Snowspinner's evidence shows that, indeed, Netoholic has been involved in some pretty heavy revert warring concerning meta templates. I would suggest that instead of focusing on the behavior of people it would be far better to focus on Netoholic's gripe, supported by a developer.
He obviously feels strongly on it, the number of people who are aware of what these are and how the technical arguments play out is small, so it appears the process of TfD doesn't work very well to address these issues. In looking at some of the reverts I'm a bit amused by the inflated comments such as "community opinion will be enforced". [119] I would hardly consider 10 or 12 votes to be a good sampling of the community and that perhaps the fault here lies with the process and not the people. A better process to analyze these more technical issues to include people who would be knowledgeable on the subject would be a better solution than going to arb against a user.
Now totally exasperated, Netoholic believes that creating a policy will perhaps help deal with the Meta Template problem. [120]. Again, he gets slapped down:
Addendum/Response
In response to Snowspinner's additional statement about Jamesday not currently being an active advocate for the proposal I will let Jamesday speak for himself on the matter. [125]
The evidence is a bit difficult to follow here since the discussion has been archived. Be that as it may this is another case of Snowspinner and Netoholic butting heads:
The fact of the matter is Netoholic did not misuse a bot. He followed the process, that process includes testing the bot if there are no objections while approval is waiting. That is exactly what was done and no evidence has been submitted to indicate this bot did anything harmful. Snowspinner submitted this as evidence citing a position he had in September and October when as recently as January he supported its use. [127].
This was clearly inappropriate on Netoholic's part but, as I've tried to point out, was completely avoidable. Regardless, Netoholic reacted inappropriately. That being said, Netoholic is far from the only person that has voiced concern about Snowspinner's proposed Association of Member Investigations. [128]
Concerning the recent injunction in this case [129] and the incidents of 7 April where Netoholic was blocked:
While one should assume good faith I believe a philosophy of "trust, but verify" in regards to parties involved in arbitration is a better policy. The evidence is clear that Neutrality had no previous involvement in the article. Yet we are to assume it a coincidence when he reverts one of Netoholic's changes hours after the injunction is issued? Further, Neutrality did not demonstrate good faith when he did the revert as he was not a participant in the article's talk page nor did he add any reason for his revert on the talk page after he did it.
This is a pretty clear case of people not getting along. However, two of these people are administrators and one is not. I believe that an administrator should be held to a higher standard of promoting harmony and tolerance. While I don't condone many of Netoholic's actions I believe I can see why he reacted the way he did and I believe that if cooler heads had prevailed, particularly Snowspinner and Neutrality, this wouldn't have reached this point.
I encourage the arbcom members deciding this case to look past the vitriol on both sides and try to get to the source of the problems in order to remedy the issue. I hope that I have assisted you in doing that with further highlighting of the evidence submitted.
Netoholic edits in several places to make one point. When he does not win in one forum, he stalks opponents throughout the project, running roughshod over the spirit of the Wiki Way. At times he subverts the system, rather than violating it blatantly.
This evidence is organized first by page, then by date; I ask for notice of date coincidence across pages.
Netoholic created Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates [139]. By interfering with the collaborative process that matures one user's opinion into candidate policy, he perpetuates the article's status as opinion, yet continues to force-manage it into policy.
** 15:42: Grutness delicately links {{
Bh}} with vandalism.
[168]
** 19:46: Xiong restores "disappeared" comment of 10:46, verbatim. Emphasizes entire willingness to remove trivial templates (via move to user space or creator-requested speedy).
[169]
** 19:57: Xiong objects to charges of vandalism, asks for specific examples. (No takers so far). Again invites anyone with an objection to trivial templates to "just ask" for removal.
[170]
Template has been deleted, please refer to
User:Xiong/Mockup. -
Frazzydee|
✍ 11:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(Please note that I agree this template is trivial and inappropriate for main Template space. When this is all over, I'll happily move it into user space. —
Xiong
talk)
This template inserts, inline, the sentence: It's all just
zeros and ones!. If used wisely, with subst:
, it is a gentle, humorous comment. If used less wisely, via ordinary inclusion, it creates a risk that later edits to the template itself may disrupt other page content. (I am sorry to say I was careless on 2 or 3 occasions -- although here, it is a demonstration. —
Xiong
talk)
Every Wikipedian should vandalize a page -- once. Everyone should get banned for 24 hours -- once. It's good for the soul, teaches humility, and encourages one to experience the Real World for a while, or at least to answer neglected emails. Everyone should wear the black hat for a day, if only to underline the importance of the white hat -- the serious dedication to a free, open, collaborative, scholarly work.
Netoholic is troubling to me because he does not wear the black hat. He does not engage in random blanking of mainspace article pages (so far as I know); he treads the very edge of what is permitted. He is far more dangerous than a simple vandal or raucous edit warrior. Obvious black hats are what they seem, and we can deal with them, however annoying, as a matter of routine.
Gray hats, such as Netoholic, game the system; disrupt, demoralize, and ultimately destroy. Their violations are not always clear-cut; we require careful procedure to ensure we do not react too hastily or too strongly. Such deliberation is very nearly wasted; at best, we can hope only to learn something from the process. Meanwhile, all the resources that might have gone into quality content have simply disappeared into a Black Hole. —
Xiong
talk 11:55, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
Carrying the vendetta beyond templates onto a graphics tutorial, Wikipedia:How to make complex illustrations using FreeHand and Photoshop.
I accidentally deleted most of my evidence in order to add the last bit; I've now restored it. Please read; sorry for the confusion. —
Xiong
talk 04:52, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
Netoholic continues to meddle with templates, but I'm just not going to list any more right now. He has contributed to a recent dispute over the exclusion of a few specific criteria. Note that I honestly believe I am a disinterested, if not neutral party; nothing I've touched is up for speedy.
Susvolans (pigs can fly) 07:53, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I find the matter of Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship to be of particular interest.
As others have pointed out, Netoholic changed this page from a redirect to a bogus policy page in the course of several edits, with some spelling and grammar corrections and minor adjustments to text by others [220] [221] [222]. .
Netoholic was disingenuous in purporting to make the page official [223], which was not supported by the comments on the talk page at the time of the edit Note that there had been no vote on the talk page. Netoholic pursued an edit war [224] [225] [226]. in his insistence to make the page "official." Netoholic's purpose became clear when he created a subpage purporting to be a "petition" for de-adminship of User:Snowspinner [227].
Netoholic also pursued an edit war on the subpage [228] [229] [230] [231] to retain its anti-Snowspinner remarks.
I believe that Netoholic's claim that WP:RFA is not policy [232] to be particulary disingenuous, and a hallmark of a campaign rooted in bad faith.
Respectfully,
The Uninvited Co., Inc. 23:15, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
After I mentioned the existance of this conversation to him, David Gerard asked me to copy it here for the arbitrators to see. →Raul654 19:53, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
Copied from my talk page archive (warning - very large page)
Raul - I would like to request, as nicely as possible, that you please stop assuming bad faith in my edits, calling me names (like troll), and showing bias against me. Your recent attitude has done nothing but make me feel very uncomfortable working here, and I don't believe that someone in such a position of respect in this community should act so uncivil.
I spend the vast majority of my time here making very productive enhancements. At no time do I ever make any edit, or begin any discussion on IRC, with the purpose of causing strife. Unfortunately, I got off on the wrong foot with a few members here, and that has been perpetuated beyond what is called for - leading me to try and defend myself from the particularly fashionable practice of "troll-bashing". I look to you, as someone who has the respect of many users here, to help me stop this. If I make a mistake in the future, I certainly ask and welcome that it be discussed with me respectfully. I think I've shown often in the past that I am willing to make changes and come to agreement. In return for your help in stopping this, I will commit to listening more closely to those suggestions and admit fault when I don't.
I really do think that you and a number of other members here have the wrong idea about me, being perhaps jaded by previous encounters. I hope that, with this note, you will see that I am actually a pleasant and hopefully valuable member of the community here. -- Netoholic @ 15:18, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)
PLEASE please just stop. Let me put it back in as the proposed text which has been stable since Oct 4th. Even though I've asked you very nicely, you still feel the need to do things just to aggravate. Please stop. --
Netoholic
@ 06:02, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)
I have
requested mediation in an attempt to stop this "cold war". Its my hope that if you're unwilling to discuss with me directly, that having someone facilitate will help. --
Netoholic
@ 06:18, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how to reply to this for a while (I've been writing this for almost several hours; long before your previous 2 comments above), so here goes. First, I do not assume anything; I judge each edit on its own merits. And, of the edits of yours that I have seen, very many of them looked to me as if it were designed to cause as much conflict and anger as possible. Now, intention is implied by action. What are your intentions, since (many of) your actions seem designed to cause problems?
You complain that being called a troll makes you uncomfortable. If you really don't want to be called one, THEN DON'T ACT LIKE ONE. You say that you do not like someone like me to be uncivil. I am perfectly civil to people who behave properly. You have not been behaving properly.
Further, I believe there are two possible reasons you made this post:
It would not be the first time someone has tried it.
The latter is particularly believable considering shortly after you made that post you went right over to the Speedy deletion page and started an edit war with me there, along with 2 others, by trying to add a policy that doesn't have consensus. When told this, you simply stated that majority is necessary - WRONG! If you were *actually* trying to work with others, after the first time you were reverted, you would have tried discussing it; instead, you edit war with multiple members of the community.
On the other hand, I looked at your user contributions, and I did see quite a few good edits there. I concede that this is almost never the case for true trolls (I certainly cannot think of an exception). As such, I am willing to believe it is as you said - that you made some mistakes when you got here, and you didn't really mean to cause all these problems. I will wipe the slate clean, and treat you as I would treat any other user in good standing. In return, I expect you to behave as we would expect all of our editors to - to be curteous, civil, and when reverted, to DISCUSS rather than edit warring. In fact, I *strongly* suggest you do what Anthony has done and limit yourself to 1 revert per day.
Do you find this offer acceptable? →Raul654 06:26, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps that was a bit harsh. Continued on Netholic's talk page. →Raul654 21:23, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
(As per intro: "Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent.")
7) Netoholic consistently tries to push his views through, rather than working with and accepting consensus, using disruption to make a point and revert warring. He consistently assumes bad faith in those disagreeing with him or who have disagreed with him in the past, which leads to a bad working atmosphere in Wikipedia: space and some personal attacks. (See Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Netoholic_2/Evidence#Reorganised_evidence_for_FoF_7.)
[I'm about a third of the way through this evidence page in compiling this section. More to come. - David Gerard 07:56, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)]
[When reading the response from Netoholic below, do be sure to follow and read each of the diffs in this reorganised evidence and see the picture they paint - David Gerard 00:21, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)]
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BrokenSegue: disruptive comment flood [235] in response to [236]; when removed [237], revert-wars to keep comment flood: [238] [239] [240] .
Wikipedia:Requests for comment: after long discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment (draft user conduct amendments), [241] is reverted dismissively [242] [243] [244] [245] [246], [247] then another reversion [248]; expresses contempt for process [249]; when reverted [250], engages in personal abuse from assumption of bad faith [251]; continued revert warring [252] [253] [254]
Template:Sisterproject: nomination for WP:TFD: [255]; after deletion template removed (to prevent it showing on thousands of pages) [256], revert war [257] [258] [259] [260] [261]; after TFD keeps template, relists after 18 days [262]; after kept second time, redirection against community consensus [263] then revert war [264] [265] [266] [267] [268] [269] [270] rather than explaining himself; bad faith leading to personal attacks [271] [272] [273] (in ref to [274], concerning The Recycling Troll); note that in the case of Template:Sisterproject, Netoholic was arguably technically correct [275], but insisted on revert-warring and personal attacks rather than explaining himself or convincing others. Long-running revert warring against consensus rather than discussion during related TFD vote: Template:Wikispecies (history), Template:Commonscat (history), Template:Wikinews (history), Template:Wikisourcepar (history), Template:Wikisourcecat (history), Template:Wikibooks (history), Template:Wikibookspar (history), Template:Wikiquotepar (history).
Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines: revert warring [276] [277] [278] [279] [280] [281] [282] [283] [284] [285] [286] [287] [288].
Wikipedia:Three-revert rule: revert warring to preferred version against multiple objections [289] [290] [291] [292] [293] [294] [295] [296]
Wikipedia:Templates for deletion: assumption of bad faith and personal attacks [297] [298] [299] [300] [301] [302] [303] [304] [305] [306] [307] [308] ; revert warring to keep idiosyncratic changes to policy against consensus [309] [310] [311] [312] [313] [314].
See also Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Netoholic_2/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Raul654.
- David Gerard 02:04, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
David's central comment, that I fail to assume good faith, couldn't be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, I believe everyone involved in the above edits is doing what they must think is the right thing. I respectfully have disagreed with them, but that shouldn't necessarily be regarded as a bad thing.
Quite honestly, I was not going to submit any evidence, since I only had one article to talk about, and User:Xiong had already covered it partially in his comments above. I have decided, however, that since the example represents a clear miniature of some of User:Netoholic's behavior and attitudes and his relationships with other editors, it would be best to present a detailed analysis of the events. More specifically, it shows one example of Netoholic's common use of the revert as his first weapon of choice in a dispute rather than one of last resort, and his escalation to insults and snide remarks that often happens, even when he is not dealing with another "difficult" editor.
Major Principles: Revert war, No personal attacks, Assume good faith Civility, Wikipedia:Ownership of articles#Control of Wikipedia articles
Minor Principles: Wikipedia:Consensus, Wikipedia:How to create policy, Always explain your reverts, What is a troll
The following is from the
Wikipedia:Avoid_using_meta-templates
revision history and from its Talk page:
To me, Netoholic's Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful appears to be part of a pattern where he uses Wikipedia:policies and guidelines (especially WP:3RR), rewrites or attempts to rewrite policy, or attempts to create policy as part of his tactics in disputes (please also note how this matches the description at Wikipedia:What is a troll#Misuse of process). Whatever the merits of his meta-template proposal, it appears to have been mostly created as part of Netoholic's dispute with User:Itai over the SisterProject templates (and keep in mind that User:Jamesday specifically said, in reference to Template:Sisterproject, "In this case the benefits outweight the costs"). There certainly needs to be a more detailed look at all the issues involved in using templates on the Wikipedia (and not just meta-templates), but Netoholic has so muddled the issues for the momment that it will be best to just start over from scratch. Furthermore, when you look at all the issues involving templates, some of them will go directly to some of Netoholic's other behavior on the Wikipedia. For example, if edit wars are bad, then edit wars on templates are worse (since they affect so many more pages), and edit wars on infobox templates are much worse (since it is very easy to have things "break").
For another example of subverting Wikipedia policy for his own purposes, look at Netoholic's Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Old proposal where he readily admitted he had some admins in mind when he created the proposal, and made this much more obvious when he created Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Snowspinner. With his top-down, take-it-or-leave-it approach, it is no wonder that this proposal failed even though there were several people who said that they liked the idea although not the particular proposal (see the comments during voting on the [[ talk page). If Netoholic had been more willing to listen to some of the suggestions and had tried to modify the proposal to answer some of the concerns mentioned, the proposal probably wouldn't have had such an overwhelming defeat (2 to 1 against).
Another example is the way that Netoholic nominated of a large number of User:Xiong's templates for WP:TFD, etc. Although most, if not all, of Xiong's templates probably deserved to be nominated, it appears obvious to me that this was also intended as harassment of Xiong by Netoholic. Netoholic's actions are persistent enough (and still continuing) that I would classify them as a vendetta against Xiong. That conflict seems to just keep escalating (now Xiong has nominated WP:TFD at WP:VFD!), and both parties should probably be sanctioned.
I have NOT worked out any differences with Netoholic. There is clearly no consensus on the policy.
BlankVerse ∅ 06:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Personal opinion: I think that this page move crossed the line. User:Xiong's article deserves to be in the Wikipedia namespace as a Wikipedia thinktank article just as much as his Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful. It is long-winded, and it does cover things that probably don't belong in the article. On the other hand, for those who are visually oriented, it gives a good idea of how transclusion works, and it does a better job of covering the problems of using templates instead of just focusing on the problems of meta-templates. BlankVerse ∅ 01:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
9) On Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful (now called Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates), Netoholic was arguably completely technically correct — but he interacted so negatively with others that he actually convinced people he was not. His dismissiveness of concerns even when told directly he was running roughshod over others, his apparent assumption of bad faith, and his use of revert wars to insist on it being described as a guideline (when it became clear it would not become policy) are all examples of interactions that contributed to this problem.
Note: the diffs below are from Netoholic and others - read in sequence for both sides of the conversations - David Gerard 20:19, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Dismissiveness of concerns even when told directly he is running roughshod over others [321] [322] [323] [324] [325] [326] [327] [328] [329] [330] [331] [332] [333] [334] [335] [336] [337] [338] [339] [340];
A manner assuming page ownership [341] (consistent with something being drafted as a proposed policy, inconsistent with his claims in edit summaries of it actually being policy), revert-warring in a manner consistent with this [342] [343] [344] [345] [346] [347] [348] [349] (note noted lack of discussion) [350] (assuming bad faith); when clear it will not be policy, claims it is a guideline and revert-wars to keep this in [351] [352] [353] [354] [355] [356]; assumed bad faith [357] [358]
Claim or implication of no metatemplates as policy in edit summary: [359]; Asked not to do this [360]. Implied (link as edit summary): [361] Template:Wikispecies (history), Template:Commonscat (history), Template:Wikinews (history), Template:Wikisourcepar (history), Template:Wikisourcecat (history), Template:Wikibooks (history), Template:Wikibookspar (history), Template:Wikiquotepar (history)
Does this count as a reversion in the Wikipedia: namespace? See history for April 26th. Along with some other things, he removed the phrase "A request to make this a guideline failed, and no consensus has been reached yet". I replaced it, and then he removed the entire paragraph.
The notpolicy template says "References or links to this page should clearly describe it as "proposed"." Netaholic is still not presenting it as such. See here:
and here:
- Omegatron 19:30, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
He has moved the page Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits to Xiong's userspace three times, after his move was reversed twice. History of the latest move - Omegatron 15:30, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
To clarify:
In this instance he violated both the three-revert rule and his injuction for this RfA - Omegatron 19:35, May 4, 2005 (UTC)