In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 19:45, 16 May 2005 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 16:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC).
This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections should not edit here.
User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters made his first edit on 12 July 2004. His sixth edit was to create an article on himself ( David Mertz). He was, however, an irregular editor, On 5 April 2005, he made his 41st edit, which was to deface another WPian's userpage [1]. Soon after ( 19 April 2005) he became interested in the Pope Benedict XVI article, making many edits (see user contributions). He soon embroiled himself in the style wars (see also Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Whig and [2]).
He then made a number of personal attacks against me, accusing me of vandalism [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. This caused User:Linuxbreak to try to help [9], but as you will have seen, many of those diffs are after Linuxbreak's attempted intervention.
He has also disrupted WP trying to prove a point by adding prefixes where previously there are none (bear in mind that Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters opposes prefixes in all circumstance when reading these links), see: [10], [11]. After the vote on prefixed styles, which even using User:Whig's weird voting method, only showed 53% support for Lulu's preferred option (ie clearly no consensus for change - or, indeed, any consensus whatsoever), he, knowing full well as it had been pointed out to him often, started editing to enforce his views: [12].
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)/Survey on Style-Prefixed Honorary Titles), Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)/Survey on Style-Prefixed Honorary Titles/Ratification) and Talk:Kim Jong-il
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters is new to WP (except for his small number of edits before April 2005), and therefore is unused to WP ways - in particular about consensus-building and not being disruptive. However, at present, he has wasted a lot of time by very many users - and has made very few good constructive edits to articles in the meantime.
I ask him to leave this style issue alone for a while, and try contributing constructively in other (maybe less controversial) areas, jguk
(provide diffs and links)
{list the policies that apply to the disputed conduct}
(provide diffs and links)
(sign with ~~~~)
(sign with ~~~~)
No effort whatsoever was made to resolve this "dispute" (whatever it might be) prior to the RfC.
This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete.
{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
Incidentally, since this foolish RfC started, it appears some other users brought an unrelated
RfA against Jguk. It appears that he is following a very similar pattern of abusive edits around the usage of BCE/CE for dates as he has around the use of styles for European Christians. It is becoming ever more clear that Jguk has a very specific ideological agenda, and is willing to subvert Wikipedia's NPOV standard in many ways (and dishonestly) to push his particular POV.
These are summaries written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.
Lulu, along with Whig, has indeed shown over-eagerness in pushing their version of what the poll result means, not to mention that the badly organized poll produced a lot of bad blood (though it was well run). They got told off a bit for that, and I'll be glad if this RfC reinforces that.
But, it has to be said that the other side is misrepresenting the issue. For years, biography articles on Wikipedia had no styles. Whether it was "policy" or just status quo, is beside the question. And then, about a year ago, a group of editors started adding them to a bunch of articles. Other users immediately objected on grounds of POV and non-encyclopedicity, but got more or less shouted down. Opposition to the use of styles never ceased and finally culminated in the unfortunate poll. To cut it short, the supposed consensus for adding styles never existed.
The editors who added styles seem to have reached their conclusion that the use of styles is NPOV from the Commonwealth perspective. They may even be right. But by imposing the same policy for all biographies, they presumed that it's NPOV in the rest of the world. It's not. Calling Aleksandar Karadjordjevic "His Royal Highness Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia" is a political statement, and a very controversial one at that. To anybody familiar with Yugoslav history, this makes Wikipedia sound like a supporter of Serbian royalists and chetniks. Use of styles has strong pro-royalist connotations even in many monarchies.
What I would propose, instead of one side shutting up, is that both sides stop adding and removing styles from articles until the current poll runs out and we have had a chance to reflect on things. Also, when this poll fails and we start a fresh round of debate, I plea for moderation and civility from both sides. We know that Jguk wants styles and Lulu doesn't. We don't need to be told with dozens of vehement statements, objections to the procedure and querelous (the latest buzzword) edit summaries.
Off-topic: Plenty of editors have been with us for far longer than both of these users, but as said, that's completely off-topic. Thank you.
{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
I can see no merit in this RfC at all; indeed, it comes perilously close to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. The complaint seems to be largely that Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters was involved in a proposal and a debate with which a few users disagreed (though this didn't stop them participating in it). This simply doesn't meet the requirements of an RfC, and I'm tempted to suggest that it should be treated as an RfC on those who have brought it.
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
I have been asked to comment on this RfC and after much thought I decided to "step in it" so to speak.
My main concern about Lulu's contributions resolve around a premature change to the Honorific standards. Relying on the framing of the vote by Whig:
Lulu changed the Honorific using the vote results as precedence i.e. quoting this "There's been a vote, the MoS changed, and the POV usage has zero official WP support" (see here) and then threatened 3RR Block and RfC (see here with a 3rd revert/vandalism/mistake here). I feel that was improper Wikipedia:Wikiquette; in that it violated the principals: 1) Don't ignore questions and 2) Recognize your own biases and keep them in check, for example. In sum the question was not resolved before the changes began. (and the threat could have started this RfC since the request for me to comment on it came shortly after this comment was made and following the revert war on Pope Bendict XVi in which I had restored the leading honorific here.
Conversely, I think that an RfC for either side is too much. And the bringing of it could also be considered improper Wikipedia:Wikiquette for lack of good faith; however, I think the nominators of the RfC are just frustrated because they have been "deep in the fight," and I must assume they brought this in good faith so that it could start a resolution of their conflict.
I hope the parties will work toward resolution (prove Zocky wrong), reread Wikipedia:Wikiquette and see the good contributions that each are making and work towards a compromise that can build true consensus, such as the one that Zocky proposed.
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
All signed comments and talk not related to a vote or endorsement, should be directed to this page's discussion page.
I have honestly been trying to figure out what dispute any of the position endorsers think they are trying to resolve. Each one seems to have a distinct dispute, all of which reflect the subtext "don't disagree with us on style usage." Of course, none of these was ever subject to attempted resolution. But from Jguk's summary, I see a number of candidate disputes:
Branching out to the other stylists, I also see:
I guess all of these are more-or-less true (except my alleged lack of understanding of consensus). Few of them seem resolvable, even in principle; and the rest are, well, not exactly RfC material.
What exactly do the style supporters imagine will resolve these numerous/nebulous disputes. My summary execution? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:15, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
You list that you "briefly made a negative characterization of (banned) user NCdave." Since the use of the word "banned" may lead people to think that you had provocation, I am pointing out that User:NCdave is not banned, and has exactly the same standing on Wikipedia as you. Like you, he had an RfC filed against him. He was recently blocked for three days. You were blocked for 24 hours on 23 April [14]. You were blocked again on 16 May, this time for 48 hours [15] . The block was lifted merely to enable you to participate in this RfC [16], not because it was decided that you had not violated the 3RR rule. In fairness, I will say that I believe Gentgeen was mistaken in thinking that you intentionally disguised a link to your user page in one of your edits 18:31 15 May. I am sure that was an accident.
How "brief" was your negative characterization of NCdave? As I've pointed out, in [17] your edit summary of the reversal], you wrote, "Last edit was probably better" etc. That doesn't suggest that you were completely withdrawing your remarks. However, you did revert it yourself, and I think that should have been made clear in the original draft of the RfC.
Can you explain your edit summary from 3 May, in which you wrote in the edit summary, "That Jguk certainly is quite a vandal (time for an RFC?)" As I've mentioned above, the previous edit from Jguk was fourteen edits below, had nothing to do with the styles issue, and was not vandalism.
I think this is descending to a level of pettiness at this stage, and I would be happy to withdraw my support for the RfC, but would like an answer about your edit summaries. Ann Heneghan 01:59, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
This RfC is not validly certified. While there are a number of complaints that people have made about User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters in the comments, none of them have certified the statement being made above by User:Jguk. I believe this RfC should be closed, and those having valid complaints about Lulu can try to work them out directly with him, only resorting to an RfC if discussion fails and a valid, properly certified complaint can then be made. Whig 23:06, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I support the move to close. Trödel| talk 23:38, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
There has been no acknowledgment whatsoever by Lulu about the issues underlying this RfC. Indeed, he seems really just to restress his view that he has been right all along and that his behaviour is entirely appropriate. There is no acceptance that, in retrospect, the way he conducted himself on the style issue was inappropriate to WP. Nor is there any recognition that it is best for him (and for me as well) to leave this style issue alone for a while. Until there is some acknowledgment that something went wrong, the RfC should not close because the dispute remains unresolved. Kind regards, jguk 08:04, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Here's what need to happen for this "dispute" to resolve, BTW:
Oh, and on Lulu's side:
It would also be nice for Jtdirl to discontinue abuse of Wikipedia (spurious VfDs, etc.), but I recognize that he did not write this RfC, so it is not really a question for this page.
Fair enough? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 15:47, 2005 May 21 (UTC)
This is ridiculous. Someone ( Susvolans) certified the dispute approximately one week after the RfC was opened. That does not seem like "within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page." He gave no evidence of trying to resolve anything or of even having involvement in the supposed dispute. This is a complete waste of everyone's time. Whig 07:10, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
According to our protection page, users should "place [a] request [for] protection; use when your involvement in editing a page precludes protecting it yourself. Also used by non-administrators who wish for a page to be protected.
According to the edit history, contrary to policy Lulu added in Vprotected on his talk page. (cur) (last) 19:06, 23 May 2005 Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (vprotected)
As well as placing it himself, he never registered it on the protected page.
He installed the protection to include the following personal attack on Jguk.
A boorish user named Jguk wrote a silly RfC about me
A number of users, including Jguk, Whig and Smoddy removed the personal attack. As the evidence shows, Lulu attempted to stop the removal by setting up the phoney Vprotected.
This behaviour is highly questionable. I was going to support the closure of this rfc page. After the above, I cannot support the closure. It seems Lulu has learnt absolutely nothing as to the problems he causes or the rules he breaks all over the place. FearÉIREANN (talk) 19:51, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I have now created Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 2
In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 19:45, 16 May 2005 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 16:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC).
This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections should not edit here.
User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters made his first edit on 12 July 2004. His sixth edit was to create an article on himself ( David Mertz). He was, however, an irregular editor, On 5 April 2005, he made his 41st edit, which was to deface another WPian's userpage [1]. Soon after ( 19 April 2005) he became interested in the Pope Benedict XVI article, making many edits (see user contributions). He soon embroiled himself in the style wars (see also Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Whig and [2]).
He then made a number of personal attacks against me, accusing me of vandalism [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. This caused User:Linuxbreak to try to help [9], but as you will have seen, many of those diffs are after Linuxbreak's attempted intervention.
He has also disrupted WP trying to prove a point by adding prefixes where previously there are none (bear in mind that Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters opposes prefixes in all circumstance when reading these links), see: [10], [11]. After the vote on prefixed styles, which even using User:Whig's weird voting method, only showed 53% support for Lulu's preferred option (ie clearly no consensus for change - or, indeed, any consensus whatsoever), he, knowing full well as it had been pointed out to him often, started editing to enforce his views: [12].
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)/Survey on Style-Prefixed Honorary Titles), Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)/Survey on Style-Prefixed Honorary Titles/Ratification) and Talk:Kim Jong-il
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters is new to WP (except for his small number of edits before April 2005), and therefore is unused to WP ways - in particular about consensus-building and not being disruptive. However, at present, he has wasted a lot of time by very many users - and has made very few good constructive edits to articles in the meantime.
I ask him to leave this style issue alone for a while, and try contributing constructively in other (maybe less controversial) areas, jguk
(provide diffs and links)
{list the policies that apply to the disputed conduct}
(provide diffs and links)
(sign with ~~~~)
(sign with ~~~~)
No effort whatsoever was made to resolve this "dispute" (whatever it might be) prior to the RfC.
This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete.
{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
Incidentally, since this foolish RfC started, it appears some other users brought an unrelated
RfA against Jguk. It appears that he is following a very similar pattern of abusive edits around the usage of BCE/CE for dates as he has around the use of styles for European Christians. It is becoming ever more clear that Jguk has a very specific ideological agenda, and is willing to subvert Wikipedia's NPOV standard in many ways (and dishonestly) to push his particular POV.
These are summaries written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.
Lulu, along with Whig, has indeed shown over-eagerness in pushing their version of what the poll result means, not to mention that the badly organized poll produced a lot of bad blood (though it was well run). They got told off a bit for that, and I'll be glad if this RfC reinforces that.
But, it has to be said that the other side is misrepresenting the issue. For years, biography articles on Wikipedia had no styles. Whether it was "policy" or just status quo, is beside the question. And then, about a year ago, a group of editors started adding them to a bunch of articles. Other users immediately objected on grounds of POV and non-encyclopedicity, but got more or less shouted down. Opposition to the use of styles never ceased and finally culminated in the unfortunate poll. To cut it short, the supposed consensus for adding styles never existed.
The editors who added styles seem to have reached their conclusion that the use of styles is NPOV from the Commonwealth perspective. They may even be right. But by imposing the same policy for all biographies, they presumed that it's NPOV in the rest of the world. It's not. Calling Aleksandar Karadjordjevic "His Royal Highness Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia" is a political statement, and a very controversial one at that. To anybody familiar with Yugoslav history, this makes Wikipedia sound like a supporter of Serbian royalists and chetniks. Use of styles has strong pro-royalist connotations even in many monarchies.
What I would propose, instead of one side shutting up, is that both sides stop adding and removing styles from articles until the current poll runs out and we have had a chance to reflect on things. Also, when this poll fails and we start a fresh round of debate, I plea for moderation and civility from both sides. We know that Jguk wants styles and Lulu doesn't. We don't need to be told with dozens of vehement statements, objections to the procedure and querelous (the latest buzzword) edit summaries.
Off-topic: Plenty of editors have been with us for far longer than both of these users, but as said, that's completely off-topic. Thank you.
{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
I can see no merit in this RfC at all; indeed, it comes perilously close to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. The complaint seems to be largely that Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters was involved in a proposal and a debate with which a few users disagreed (though this didn't stop them participating in it). This simply doesn't meet the requirements of an RfC, and I'm tempted to suggest that it should be treated as an RfC on those who have brought it.
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
I have been asked to comment on this RfC and after much thought I decided to "step in it" so to speak.
My main concern about Lulu's contributions resolve around a premature change to the Honorific standards. Relying on the framing of the vote by Whig:
Lulu changed the Honorific using the vote results as precedence i.e. quoting this "There's been a vote, the MoS changed, and the POV usage has zero official WP support" (see here) and then threatened 3RR Block and RfC (see here with a 3rd revert/vandalism/mistake here). I feel that was improper Wikipedia:Wikiquette; in that it violated the principals: 1) Don't ignore questions and 2) Recognize your own biases and keep them in check, for example. In sum the question was not resolved before the changes began. (and the threat could have started this RfC since the request for me to comment on it came shortly after this comment was made and following the revert war on Pope Bendict XVi in which I had restored the leading honorific here.
Conversely, I think that an RfC for either side is too much. And the bringing of it could also be considered improper Wikipedia:Wikiquette for lack of good faith; however, I think the nominators of the RfC are just frustrated because they have been "deep in the fight," and I must assume they brought this in good faith so that it could start a resolution of their conflict.
I hope the parties will work toward resolution (prove Zocky wrong), reread Wikipedia:Wikiquette and see the good contributions that each are making and work towards a compromise that can build true consensus, such as the one that Zocky proposed.
Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
All signed comments and talk not related to a vote or endorsement, should be directed to this page's discussion page.
I have honestly been trying to figure out what dispute any of the position endorsers think they are trying to resolve. Each one seems to have a distinct dispute, all of which reflect the subtext "don't disagree with us on style usage." Of course, none of these was ever subject to attempted resolution. But from Jguk's summary, I see a number of candidate disputes:
Branching out to the other stylists, I also see:
I guess all of these are more-or-less true (except my alleged lack of understanding of consensus). Few of them seem resolvable, even in principle; and the rest are, well, not exactly RfC material.
What exactly do the style supporters imagine will resolve these numerous/nebulous disputes. My summary execution? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:15, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
You list that you "briefly made a negative characterization of (banned) user NCdave." Since the use of the word "banned" may lead people to think that you had provocation, I am pointing out that User:NCdave is not banned, and has exactly the same standing on Wikipedia as you. Like you, he had an RfC filed against him. He was recently blocked for three days. You were blocked for 24 hours on 23 April [14]. You were blocked again on 16 May, this time for 48 hours [15] . The block was lifted merely to enable you to participate in this RfC [16], not because it was decided that you had not violated the 3RR rule. In fairness, I will say that I believe Gentgeen was mistaken in thinking that you intentionally disguised a link to your user page in one of your edits 18:31 15 May. I am sure that was an accident.
How "brief" was your negative characterization of NCdave? As I've pointed out, in [17] your edit summary of the reversal], you wrote, "Last edit was probably better" etc. That doesn't suggest that you were completely withdrawing your remarks. However, you did revert it yourself, and I think that should have been made clear in the original draft of the RfC.
Can you explain your edit summary from 3 May, in which you wrote in the edit summary, "That Jguk certainly is quite a vandal (time for an RFC?)" As I've mentioned above, the previous edit from Jguk was fourteen edits below, had nothing to do with the styles issue, and was not vandalism.
I think this is descending to a level of pettiness at this stage, and I would be happy to withdraw my support for the RfC, but would like an answer about your edit summaries. Ann Heneghan 01:59, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
This RfC is not validly certified. While there are a number of complaints that people have made about User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters in the comments, none of them have certified the statement being made above by User:Jguk. I believe this RfC should be closed, and those having valid complaints about Lulu can try to work them out directly with him, only resorting to an RfC if discussion fails and a valid, properly certified complaint can then be made. Whig 23:06, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I support the move to close. Trödel| talk 23:38, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
There has been no acknowledgment whatsoever by Lulu about the issues underlying this RfC. Indeed, he seems really just to restress his view that he has been right all along and that his behaviour is entirely appropriate. There is no acceptance that, in retrospect, the way he conducted himself on the style issue was inappropriate to WP. Nor is there any recognition that it is best for him (and for me as well) to leave this style issue alone for a while. Until there is some acknowledgment that something went wrong, the RfC should not close because the dispute remains unresolved. Kind regards, jguk 08:04, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Here's what need to happen for this "dispute" to resolve, BTW:
Oh, and on Lulu's side:
It would also be nice for Jtdirl to discontinue abuse of Wikipedia (spurious VfDs, etc.), but I recognize that he did not write this RfC, so it is not really a question for this page.
Fair enough? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 15:47, 2005 May 21 (UTC)
This is ridiculous. Someone ( Susvolans) certified the dispute approximately one week after the RfC was opened. That does not seem like "within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page." He gave no evidence of trying to resolve anything or of even having involvement in the supposed dispute. This is a complete waste of everyone's time. Whig 07:10, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
According to our protection page, users should "place [a] request [for] protection; use when your involvement in editing a page precludes protecting it yourself. Also used by non-administrators who wish for a page to be protected.
According to the edit history, contrary to policy Lulu added in Vprotected on his talk page. (cur) (last) 19:06, 23 May 2005 Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (vprotected)
As well as placing it himself, he never registered it on the protected page.
He installed the protection to include the following personal attack on Jguk.
A boorish user named Jguk wrote a silly RfC about me
A number of users, including Jguk, Whig and Smoddy removed the personal attack. As the evidence shows, Lulu attempted to stop the removal by setting up the phoney Vprotected.
This behaviour is highly questionable. I was going to support the closure of this rfc page. After the above, I cannot support the closure. It seems Lulu has learnt absolutely nothing as to the problems he causes or the rules he breaks all over the place. FearÉIREANN (talk) 19:51, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I have now created Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 2