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/?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&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.
The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.
If I understand the ArbCom's comments correctly, this case focuses on the process (or lack thereof) for establishing guidelines and forming consensus. This would be a more elegant approach than focusing on accusations of misbehavior and possible grudges against editors. I hope we can keep all dialogue aimed at constructive solutions.
As I understand it, WP:NNOT has been a proposal to change the way Wikipedia presently works, specifically to prevent people from using the term "notability" as an argument for article deletion. I question the practicality of such an attempt to legislate editor behavior. The proposal has been advertised in the usual spots as well as many user pages. Reactions were not enthousiastic. As the proposal is in contradiction with several established policies and guidelines, several editors have pointed out there will not be consensus for it. Also, several people expressed disapproval of the proposal on its talk page.
According to WP:POL, a proposal which has no consensual support is "rejected", regardless of whether discussion is still ongoing. As such, this proposal was marked with {{ rejected}} a couple of times. This was met with strong opposition. Upon one editor's insistence, a straw poll was held. As expected, this showed a majority (approx 71%) opposed to the proposal. After the poll closed, it was nevertheless denied that it was rejected, and a new poll was opened on the subject. This new poll has so far been ignored by the community. The page is at present marked as "rejected", and debate has died down.
It is an old practice to discourage voting on Wikipedia. The argument that the related page on meta is not marked "guideline" is irrelevant since meta doesn't use that classification. The notion that this concept is a guideline is backed up by, among others, Dmcdevit, Doc Glasgow and Extreme unction. Most of the objection to this guideline is (1) a claim that it was "promoted out of process", (2) based on a misunderstanding of current practice, (3) based on the false assumption that the page would forbid voting entirely, or (4) based on a personal dislike of current practice.
There is a dispute over the wording of the page, which was deemed inappropriate by some, and the wording is being changed by, among others, me.
(in response to ATren's assertion below) This is simply false. Yes, I removed a straw poll. No, I never said that that action was justified by DDV.
While there is a dispute at Discuss, don't vote, Radiant (me) has taken an active role in resolving this dispute by changing the page in response to comments, and creating a new draft in order to reach compromise on the wording. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Regardless of what people now say about its status or the point of the poll, the page WP:NNOT was intended to be policy by several people, including Fresheneesz. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
In spite of my earlier request to focus on the process of guideline-making, some editors appear to think that this RFAr is better used as a merry game of whack-the-Radiant. I find this unfortunate, but in light of those remarks I feel the ArbCom should be aware that I was being harassed earlier by one of those editors. I had thought it had died down, but the remarks made in this case make it clear to me that he has no intent to stop.
This includes many spurious accusations of vandalism, and several indirect attacks using the fallacy of many questions, or using weasel clauses like "if I were suspicious I would accuse you of so-and-so; but I'm not suspicious so I didn't just say that". [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
ATren (formerly User:A Transportation Enthusiast) and Fresheneesz share an interest in transportation articles (e.g. here) and have a history of "teaming up" against others, such as in meditation, deletion, the admin noticeboard and on articles ("I'll continue to revert the deletion").
Wikipedia:Tendentious editors cites four characteristics of such problem editors. One is about citing sources and thus does not apply since this is not about articles. The other three are:
Fresh is opposed to the concept of notability. Other than through the proposal WP:NNOT, he has tried to push his opinion by
After the poll on WP:NNOT made it abundantly clear that the consensual view does not match Fresh's opinion, he nevertheless reverted the "rejected" tag on WP:NNOT [32] and started another poll on the same topic [33]
Fresh's crusade against notability appears to have started at this AFD. Not accepting the closure of the AFD, Fresh took the issue to the talk page, RFPP Deletion Review ( closing note), mediation against the closing admin, and the admin noticeboard, and made a rewrite in articlespace of the deleted article.
Fresh tends to characterise edits, from many different users, that he disagrees with as vandalism, e.g. [34], [35], [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]
Additionally, Fresh has made many personal attacks against a variety of editors; also, he tends to assume bad faith on people's motives and accuse them of intentional wrongdoing.
Fresh has made a campagin of harassment against Radiant (me), telling many different editors (including Jimbo) that Radiant is abusive, or otherwise calling his motives into question, and calling people to "fight" against him. This includes a variety of user talk pages, as well as wikipedia_talk and a process log page. [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65]
Fresh spammed many talk pages regarding this arbcom case, contacting only people who would side with him (apart from the participants in the case), and including some people (e.g. User:Ephilei) who were not involved in the dispute. The messages vary but most are non-neutral and accusatory in tone, making this part of his harassment as mentioned above. [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82] [83]
Fresh has threatened to sew this editor's eyes shut. While this arguably wasn't meant seriously, the tone of the remark is appalling, moreso in light of his earlier behavior. [84]
I like Radiant's idea that we might be able to keep all dialogue aimed at constructive solutions. However, I believe serious offenses were made by those that should be an example for others - namely administrators. I started with accusations, and I will support them. However, I do support, in full, coming to some sort of solution for all the problems I brought to the table.
Doc_glasgow has twice removed (and once striken) a talk page poll I set up at Wikipedia talk:Non-notability to gauge peoples feelings on the proposal. User:Radiant! removed it once before this. Here are the edits: [87] [88] [89] [90]. Radiant is of the opinion that "A poll is not a comment. Removing polls is common practice."
It is my feeling that we should establish that removing polls is in bad faith, and thus should not be either done, or allowed.
There has been some harrassment at Non-notability where these same editors (radiant and doc glasgow) have marked the page as rejected or historical, when there was ongoing debate on the talk page, and editing on the main page: [91] [92] [93] [94] [95]. Here doc changes a "disputed" tag to "rejected": [96]
Radiant asserts that "a majority (approx 71%) opposed .. the proposal according to Wikipedia_talk:Non-notability#Information-gathering_straw-poll the straw poll. How he comes to the number 71% is beyond baffling. The poll never asked about the proposal, and thus one can't draw a number that are opposed from such a poll. What the poll does show is people do not think notability is implied from the core policies nor from "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminant collection of information". However, Radiant seems to be vote-counting - something he is usually ademantly against. This poll was written in a way that does demonstrate the various views out there - but the way it was written (without headers for "neutral" comments) does not really allow accurate non-subjective vote counting.
Radiant is correct that WP:POL says "A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus support is not present" - but then what the hell is a proposal?? Obviously proposals begin with little or no consensus. Perhaps we should go over how a proposal becomes rejected.
Radiant and Centrx have pushed Wikipedia:Notability as guideline when there is no consensus to do so. They cite that it is "current practice" and thus doesn't need any more discussion: [97] [98] [99] [100] [101]
People have tried [102] [103] [104] to demote it back to proposal, place a "disputed status" tag, and the "factual accuracy" tag. But Radiant and Centrx have repeatedly demonstrated that they *are* a consensus of two, and that the less-than-a-month-old proposal doensn't need anything more to be a guideline - despite heavy opposition and controversy.
I myself have not involved myself in edit warring at WP:NN since I started this arbitration - but I find it appalling that Radiant is being allowed to push his proposal with a proverbial "consensus of 1".
User:Radiant!, User:Dmcdevit, and a couple others have tried to change the status of guideline pages and proposal pages, claiming that they know what consensus is (but won't show us where to verify that consensus). WP:STRAW has been guideline for a year, yet radiant has been pushing WP:VIE and WP:DDV on that page enough to be considered POV pushing. Dmcdevit has recently demoted it without consensus : [105]. A simple look at the history shows that there has been much opposition to this unconsentual change.
I'd like to add the history of Wikipedia:Spellchecking to the list of edit wars Radiant has undertaken. He seems unwilling to discuss his actions anywhere but in his edit summaries.
See talk page for my response. Fresheneesz 05:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
For the record, I am not siding with anyone against anyone. I am presenting evidence that I have directly observed (Radiant!'s editing at WP:DDV) that I believe is relevant to the assertions made in the Request.
At Wikipedia:Discuss, don't vote (the page formerly known as the essay Wikipedia:Voting is evil) Radiant! has engaged in edit warring to keep the {{ guideline}} template on the page: [106] [107] [108] [109] [110] [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] [116]
Fresheneez also engaged in edit warring early in those diffs, as have others. Nore was Radiant! the only editor replacing the guideline tag. However, Radiant! was the primary edit warrior from the beginning of the edit war up to page protection.
I don't use the term "unilaterally" lightly. I do think it's accurate, as Radiant! has expressed that their judgement is sufficient to remove polls in order to influence the discusssion. [117] [118] Note that the intention expressed is benign and to improve discussion, but is nevertheless to shape the discussion according to their own judgement.
A Man In Black rejected the entire effort as a "silly crusade", although they have been faithful in discussing their position throughout. [119]
The idea that the page is damaging, as "and it's a pretty blatant attempt to do an end-run around the long-standing consensal view that there is some information which is simply too trivial to include," [120] The idea that things cannot be developed because the current consensus seems to be one way, and hence making things concrete goes against the wiki model WP:CCC.
Although in most matter POV's are referred to in strongly anti-crusading terms. The idea that one is "either an ultra-inclusionist" or deletionist [121] [122] meta:Association of Deletionist Wikipedians, although not strictly in black and white terms, is harmful for Wikipedia and should be looked at.
Claims that wikipedia is an "encyclopedia", which has been interpreted to mean that it can only contain things that would be put in paper encyclopedia's, completely against the provision in Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia leads to people using the term "encyclopedia" both in favour or notability and against it, which inherently causes people to talk past each other. Wikipedia:Non-Notability#Non-encyclopedic
See Jimbo's statements from 2004 about the issue, and I doubt they would have changed, although that is possible. Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance#Discussion_of_Jimbo.27s_no The current consensus on wikipedia however does not reflect those points, as "the idea that we shouldn't ever worry about importance isn't very popular." User_talk:A_Man_In_Black/Archive12#Wikipedia:Non-Notability
Apparently Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia is only relevant at deletion time, and consequently we can have an entire page for the "terminally stupid" (as uncivil as that may be) [123] (Although I do not agree that is the point of Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia)
Ansell 02:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Radiant! copied WP:DDV from meta and called it a guideline here: [124]. Another editor changed it to an essay due to lack of consensus: [125]. It remained this way until Radiant! changed it back to a guideline here: [126]. Then, he edit-warred on the guideline and disputed tags, even though (at least) 6 other users reverted his edits and debate was still active on talk (see evidence presented by Saxifrage). During this time, when DDV was under dispute and several others were clearly against calling DDV a guideline, he used DDV as part of his justification for removing of Fresheneesz's straw poll here: [127]. It should also be noted that the disputed DDV, regardless of its status as guidline, essay, or whatever, contains no language that indicates or implies that removing straw polls is justified.
Above, Radiant wrote: "As expected, this showed a majority (approx 71%) opposed to the proposal...". The purpose of the straw poll was to gauge consensus, not to count votes. Radiant! himself has been quite vocal in his opposition to polls, and should not be presenting a raw vote count as evidence. He justified removing Fresheneesz's straw poll under the assumption that it would be misused to gauge consensus, and yet here he seems to be misusing it to gauge rejection. ATren 15:06, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I wish to respond to Radiant's assertion that I engaged in personal attacks on a point by point basis:
This is uncivil.
Policy is not what's written down; it's what's done. What's written down should emulate common practive as closely as possible. Policies are changed through discussion and consensus, not voting.
I will seek to provide evidence this weekend if it has not already been included above and if I am able to break away. I wanted to post this note so that all are aware that further information may be forthcoming prior to review and deliberations. If I am unable to post my evidence in a timely manner I will remove this comment and section. -- Blue Tie 12:24, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
My involvement in this issue is minimal
Freshaneesz started a straw poll process without consensus and whilst a discussion on its merits was ongoing. He is unwilling to enter into discussion, but enforces his views with threats and personal attacks.
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/?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&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.
The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.
If I understand the ArbCom's comments correctly, this case focuses on the process (or lack thereof) for establishing guidelines and forming consensus. This would be a more elegant approach than focusing on accusations of misbehavior and possible grudges against editors. I hope we can keep all dialogue aimed at constructive solutions.
As I understand it, WP:NNOT has been a proposal to change the way Wikipedia presently works, specifically to prevent people from using the term "notability" as an argument for article deletion. I question the practicality of such an attempt to legislate editor behavior. The proposal has been advertised in the usual spots as well as many user pages. Reactions were not enthousiastic. As the proposal is in contradiction with several established policies and guidelines, several editors have pointed out there will not be consensus for it. Also, several people expressed disapproval of the proposal on its talk page.
According to WP:POL, a proposal which has no consensual support is "rejected", regardless of whether discussion is still ongoing. As such, this proposal was marked with {{ rejected}} a couple of times. This was met with strong opposition. Upon one editor's insistence, a straw poll was held. As expected, this showed a majority (approx 71%) opposed to the proposal. After the poll closed, it was nevertheless denied that it was rejected, and a new poll was opened on the subject. This new poll has so far been ignored by the community. The page is at present marked as "rejected", and debate has died down.
It is an old practice to discourage voting on Wikipedia. The argument that the related page on meta is not marked "guideline" is irrelevant since meta doesn't use that classification. The notion that this concept is a guideline is backed up by, among others, Dmcdevit, Doc Glasgow and Extreme unction. Most of the objection to this guideline is (1) a claim that it was "promoted out of process", (2) based on a misunderstanding of current practice, (3) based on the false assumption that the page would forbid voting entirely, or (4) based on a personal dislike of current practice.
There is a dispute over the wording of the page, which was deemed inappropriate by some, and the wording is being changed by, among others, me.
(in response to ATren's assertion below) This is simply false. Yes, I removed a straw poll. No, I never said that that action was justified by DDV.
While there is a dispute at Discuss, don't vote, Radiant (me) has taken an active role in resolving this dispute by changing the page in response to comments, and creating a new draft in order to reach compromise on the wording. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Regardless of what people now say about its status or the point of the poll, the page WP:NNOT was intended to be policy by several people, including Fresheneesz. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
In spite of my earlier request to focus on the process of guideline-making, some editors appear to think that this RFAr is better used as a merry game of whack-the-Radiant. I find this unfortunate, but in light of those remarks I feel the ArbCom should be aware that I was being harassed earlier by one of those editors. I had thought it had died down, but the remarks made in this case make it clear to me that he has no intent to stop.
This includes many spurious accusations of vandalism, and several indirect attacks using the fallacy of many questions, or using weasel clauses like "if I were suspicious I would accuse you of so-and-so; but I'm not suspicious so I didn't just say that". [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
ATren (formerly User:A Transportation Enthusiast) and Fresheneesz share an interest in transportation articles (e.g. here) and have a history of "teaming up" against others, such as in meditation, deletion, the admin noticeboard and on articles ("I'll continue to revert the deletion").
Wikipedia:Tendentious editors cites four characteristics of such problem editors. One is about citing sources and thus does not apply since this is not about articles. The other three are:
Fresh is opposed to the concept of notability. Other than through the proposal WP:NNOT, he has tried to push his opinion by
After the poll on WP:NNOT made it abundantly clear that the consensual view does not match Fresh's opinion, he nevertheless reverted the "rejected" tag on WP:NNOT [32] and started another poll on the same topic [33]
Fresh's crusade against notability appears to have started at this AFD. Not accepting the closure of the AFD, Fresh took the issue to the talk page, RFPP Deletion Review ( closing note), mediation against the closing admin, and the admin noticeboard, and made a rewrite in articlespace of the deleted article.
Fresh tends to characterise edits, from many different users, that he disagrees with as vandalism, e.g. [34], [35], [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]
Additionally, Fresh has made many personal attacks against a variety of editors; also, he tends to assume bad faith on people's motives and accuse them of intentional wrongdoing.
Fresh has made a campagin of harassment against Radiant (me), telling many different editors (including Jimbo) that Radiant is abusive, or otherwise calling his motives into question, and calling people to "fight" against him. This includes a variety of user talk pages, as well as wikipedia_talk and a process log page. [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65]
Fresh spammed many talk pages regarding this arbcom case, contacting only people who would side with him (apart from the participants in the case), and including some people (e.g. User:Ephilei) who were not involved in the dispute. The messages vary but most are non-neutral and accusatory in tone, making this part of his harassment as mentioned above. [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82] [83]
Fresh has threatened to sew this editor's eyes shut. While this arguably wasn't meant seriously, the tone of the remark is appalling, moreso in light of his earlier behavior. [84]
I like Radiant's idea that we might be able to keep all dialogue aimed at constructive solutions. However, I believe serious offenses were made by those that should be an example for others - namely administrators. I started with accusations, and I will support them. However, I do support, in full, coming to some sort of solution for all the problems I brought to the table.
Doc_glasgow has twice removed (and once striken) a talk page poll I set up at Wikipedia talk:Non-notability to gauge peoples feelings on the proposal. User:Radiant! removed it once before this. Here are the edits: [87] [88] [89] [90]. Radiant is of the opinion that "A poll is not a comment. Removing polls is common practice."
It is my feeling that we should establish that removing polls is in bad faith, and thus should not be either done, or allowed.
There has been some harrassment at Non-notability where these same editors (radiant and doc glasgow) have marked the page as rejected or historical, when there was ongoing debate on the talk page, and editing on the main page: [91] [92] [93] [94] [95]. Here doc changes a "disputed" tag to "rejected": [96]
Radiant asserts that "a majority (approx 71%) opposed .. the proposal according to Wikipedia_talk:Non-notability#Information-gathering_straw-poll the straw poll. How he comes to the number 71% is beyond baffling. The poll never asked about the proposal, and thus one can't draw a number that are opposed from such a poll. What the poll does show is people do not think notability is implied from the core policies nor from "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminant collection of information". However, Radiant seems to be vote-counting - something he is usually ademantly against. This poll was written in a way that does demonstrate the various views out there - but the way it was written (without headers for "neutral" comments) does not really allow accurate non-subjective vote counting.
Radiant is correct that WP:POL says "A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus support is not present" - but then what the hell is a proposal?? Obviously proposals begin with little or no consensus. Perhaps we should go over how a proposal becomes rejected.
Radiant and Centrx have pushed Wikipedia:Notability as guideline when there is no consensus to do so. They cite that it is "current practice" and thus doesn't need any more discussion: [97] [98] [99] [100] [101]
People have tried [102] [103] [104] to demote it back to proposal, place a "disputed status" tag, and the "factual accuracy" tag. But Radiant and Centrx have repeatedly demonstrated that they *are* a consensus of two, and that the less-than-a-month-old proposal doensn't need anything more to be a guideline - despite heavy opposition and controversy.
I myself have not involved myself in edit warring at WP:NN since I started this arbitration - but I find it appalling that Radiant is being allowed to push his proposal with a proverbial "consensus of 1".
User:Radiant!, User:Dmcdevit, and a couple others have tried to change the status of guideline pages and proposal pages, claiming that they know what consensus is (but won't show us where to verify that consensus). WP:STRAW has been guideline for a year, yet radiant has been pushing WP:VIE and WP:DDV on that page enough to be considered POV pushing. Dmcdevit has recently demoted it without consensus : [105]. A simple look at the history shows that there has been much opposition to this unconsentual change.
I'd like to add the history of Wikipedia:Spellchecking to the list of edit wars Radiant has undertaken. He seems unwilling to discuss his actions anywhere but in his edit summaries.
See talk page for my response. Fresheneesz 05:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
For the record, I am not siding with anyone against anyone. I am presenting evidence that I have directly observed (Radiant!'s editing at WP:DDV) that I believe is relevant to the assertions made in the Request.
At Wikipedia:Discuss, don't vote (the page formerly known as the essay Wikipedia:Voting is evil) Radiant! has engaged in edit warring to keep the {{ guideline}} template on the page: [106] [107] [108] [109] [110] [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] [116]
Fresheneez also engaged in edit warring early in those diffs, as have others. Nore was Radiant! the only editor replacing the guideline tag. However, Radiant! was the primary edit warrior from the beginning of the edit war up to page protection.
I don't use the term "unilaterally" lightly. I do think it's accurate, as Radiant! has expressed that their judgement is sufficient to remove polls in order to influence the discusssion. [117] [118] Note that the intention expressed is benign and to improve discussion, but is nevertheless to shape the discussion according to their own judgement.
A Man In Black rejected the entire effort as a "silly crusade", although they have been faithful in discussing their position throughout. [119]
The idea that the page is damaging, as "and it's a pretty blatant attempt to do an end-run around the long-standing consensal view that there is some information which is simply too trivial to include," [120] The idea that things cannot be developed because the current consensus seems to be one way, and hence making things concrete goes against the wiki model WP:CCC.
Although in most matter POV's are referred to in strongly anti-crusading terms. The idea that one is "either an ultra-inclusionist" or deletionist [121] [122] meta:Association of Deletionist Wikipedians, although not strictly in black and white terms, is harmful for Wikipedia and should be looked at.
Claims that wikipedia is an "encyclopedia", which has been interpreted to mean that it can only contain things that would be put in paper encyclopedia's, completely against the provision in Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia leads to people using the term "encyclopedia" both in favour or notability and against it, which inherently causes people to talk past each other. Wikipedia:Non-Notability#Non-encyclopedic
See Jimbo's statements from 2004 about the issue, and I doubt they would have changed, although that is possible. Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance#Discussion_of_Jimbo.27s_no The current consensus on wikipedia however does not reflect those points, as "the idea that we shouldn't ever worry about importance isn't very popular." User_talk:A_Man_In_Black/Archive12#Wikipedia:Non-Notability
Apparently Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia is only relevant at deletion time, and consequently we can have an entire page for the "terminally stupid" (as uncivil as that may be) [123] (Although I do not agree that is the point of Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia)
Ansell 02:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Radiant! copied WP:DDV from meta and called it a guideline here: [124]. Another editor changed it to an essay due to lack of consensus: [125]. It remained this way until Radiant! changed it back to a guideline here: [126]. Then, he edit-warred on the guideline and disputed tags, even though (at least) 6 other users reverted his edits and debate was still active on talk (see evidence presented by Saxifrage). During this time, when DDV was under dispute and several others were clearly against calling DDV a guideline, he used DDV as part of his justification for removing of Fresheneesz's straw poll here: [127]. It should also be noted that the disputed DDV, regardless of its status as guidline, essay, or whatever, contains no language that indicates or implies that removing straw polls is justified.
Above, Radiant wrote: "As expected, this showed a majority (approx 71%) opposed to the proposal...". The purpose of the straw poll was to gauge consensus, not to count votes. Radiant! himself has been quite vocal in his opposition to polls, and should not be presenting a raw vote count as evidence. He justified removing Fresheneesz's straw poll under the assumption that it would be misused to gauge consensus, and yet here he seems to be misusing it to gauge rejection. ATren 15:06, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I wish to respond to Radiant's assertion that I engaged in personal attacks on a point by point basis:
This is uncivil.
Policy is not what's written down; it's what's done. What's written down should emulate common practive as closely as possible. Policies are changed through discussion and consensus, not voting.
I will seek to provide evidence this weekend if it has not already been included above and if I am able to break away. I wanted to post this note so that all are aware that further information may be forthcoming prior to review and deliberations. If I am unable to post my evidence in a timely manner I will remove this comment and section. -- Blue Tie 12:24, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
My involvement in this issue is minimal
Freshaneesz started a straw poll process without consensus and whilst a discussion on its merits was ongoing. He is unwilling to enter into discussion, but enforces his views with threats and personal attacks.