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GoRight, a user with a history of disruptive editing on global warming articles, returned 11 days ago. Since then, he has fomented numerous edit wars and harassed other users (the latter resulting in a 24 hour block)
GoRight should be community banned from global warming related articles. If he continues his harassment of WMC, he should be indefinitely blocked as well.
GoRight is a single purpose civil POV pusher with a history of problematic editing on Wikipedia. (Note that I mean single purpose is the strictest sense - his contribs contain exactly 4 edits to non-global warming related articles). He recently returned from a 6 month hiatus.
He has a history of tendentious editing on global warming related articles. In December, he went on a 6 month editing hiatus. Since his return 11 days ago, he has fomented no less than 9 simultaneous edit wars on global warming-related articles: William M. Gray, Global warming, William Connolley, Fred Singer, Lawrence Solomon, RealClimate, An Inconvenient Truth, and Global warming controversy. At the same time, he has repeatedly harassed user:William M. Connolley (for which he was blocked by R. Baley yesterday) GoRight does not understand or abide by Wikipedia policies regarding reliable sourcing.
I have neither the time or energy enumerate all of GoRight's misbehavior in each of the above edit wars, but I'll give a general overview. He attempted to insert claims into the global warming article that global warming is likely to cause earthquakes. ( See this thread) His citation for this was an MSNBC article which he later admittedly he already knew had been withdrawn - that he was well aware that its own publisher didn't consider it reliable. This article said point blank that the earthquake hypothesis was espoused by one person and was at odds with all other known data. Count Iblis told him that his edit violated Wikipedia policy regarding reliable sources, to which he responded by claiming it was a legitimate edit. I pointed him to the arbitration committee's decision regarding sourcing for science related articles (Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such.) but he later admitted he did not bother to read the link to the arbitration committee decision.
During the same time-frame, he made this edit to William Connelly's article, claiming that William's article, claiming that WMC "strongly pushes his POV with systematic removal of any POV which does not match his own". The source for this quote was an article by Stacy Schiff, which itself got the quote from an arbitration case on Wikipedia -- hardly a reliable source. After this was removed as a blatant BLP violation, he added this one sourced to an article by Lawrence Solomon (an ex-wikipedian with an axe to grind) published in a tabloid. This too was removed as a BLP violation.
While that was going on, he became embroiled in an edit war on the William M. Gray article. (Gray is a global warming denier) GoRight made a series of edits which can only be characterized as vandalism - removing Gray's offer to bet on future climates, and changing "does not subscribe to anthropogenic causes for global warming" to "does not subscribe to the currently hypothesized anthropogenic causes for global warming".
At the same time as the above, GoRight jumped into an edit war on the Global warming controversy article. BernhardMeyer inserted a link to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in the Science-related external links section. ( diff) (For those of you unaware, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is a "research group" created by global warming denier Fred Singer and SEPP - his think tank - to confuse people. It's name is intentionally similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-prize winning group of climate scientists. The NIPCC, SEPP, and Fred Singer all get money directly or indirectly from ExxonMobile.) When BernhardMeyer's link was correctly reverted, GoRight immediately jumped in, attempting to restore it ( diff). When it was explained to him on the talk page that a global warming denial group is not a reliable source, he bizzarely claimed that the onus was on others to prove that the NIPCC is not reliable (rather than the onus being on him to prove they are).
On the Fred Singer article, several weeks ago there was a question about a letter Singer wrote which was published in the Journal Astronautics in 1960. In it, Singer supported the idea that the Martian moon Phobos was artificial, made by Martians. Several people wanted verification of this, so I put in a request in the inter-library loan, got a pdf scan of the letter, and posted such on the talk page. Everyone agreed it was a reliable source, and the letter was quoted and cited in the article, along with a link to a google cache copy. Three weeks later, GoRight came along, claimed that a "google cache" is not a reliable source, and removed all mention of the letter. ( diff) This, obviously, started an edit war. GoRight later claimed that because it was not available online, and that he was unable to find it himself (despite the fact that I had posted it on the talk page 2 weeks earlier) we should not cite it ( diff). More edit warring followed.
I hope that gives you some idea of the problem user we are dealing with -- of the 36 article edits GoRight has made since returning, 34 of them either started or were part of edit wars. While causing all of the above edit wars, he has taken to singling out and harassing William M. Connelly in particular. So much so that R. Baley blocked him yesterday. R. Baley unblocked GoRight after GoRight admitted he was out of line and promised to be more diplomatic. ( See this thread)
This thread is enlightening. When confronted with his misbehavior, GoRight at denies being disruptive and also denies participating in edit warring, despite all evidence to the contrary. He later claims that his edits were properly sourced and their reversion is evidence of a conspiracy against him. When notified of this RFC, he bizarrely described it as "forum shopping"
(See above description for diffs)
{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}
The ANI thread above was discussed from the 24th to the 26th. Since then, he has not moderated his behavior in the slightest.
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}
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. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.
NOTICE: I have been revising this section as things have evolved. The version of the response that was in effect at the time this RFC was certified and moved to approved is here [3].
(1) General points:
(2) My behavior over time:
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This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.
I agree 100% with Raul's assessment of GoRight's behavior. I do think, however, that banning GoRight from the global warming related pages is not the best way to deal with this problem. I suggest we put GoRight on a 0RR restriction. That will force him to think very carefully about adding something to an article as he can't revert to his version anymore if it is removed.
Also, the 0RR restriction will mean that GoRight is not allowed to revert the article to any previous version at all, even if that is the fist editing action by him in a 24 hour period, except if he is reverting obvious vandalism. So, if GoRight makes an edit on one day, which is then reverted, he can't on the next day edit in that same edit of the previous day.
For talk page comments we'll restrict GoRight as follows. If GoRight raises a topic that has already been discussed or if he raises an irrelevant point that is not ging to lead to changes in the article, then we delete his comments. When his talk page comments are deleted, GoRight will not be allowed to revert that change because of the 0RR restriction. He will not be allowed to raise the same topic ever again as that is technically a revert.
All this sounds more complicated than simply banning GoRight from editing the Global Warning related pages. However, such restrictions do force GoRight to think very carefully about the topic and it may lead him to see how wrong he is about the topic. Also, he nor anyone else can't claim that he is sensored. He is allowed to edit the article. If he is reverted then it is theoretically possible for someone other than GoRight to revert the article back to GoRight's version.
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Note: I do not agree with GoRight's views on global warming.
Having said that, there is only one recent edit made by GoRight that gave me any concern, and that was the attempt to add to William Connelley's bio - but even that was a well-sourced claim and not an open-and-shut example of abuse. And, by the way, GoRight accepted consensus on that and moved on, so I don't know why it's still being brought up.
Further, I am of the opinion that "civil POV pushing" is a nonsensical accusation to make about any editor, because it paradoxically implies that civility is somehow a violation of policy. Worse yet, it seems to create an environment where any disagreement is unacceptable: if GoRight disagrees uncivilly, he'll be quickly blocked; if he disagrees civilly, he'll be charged with "civil POV pushing" - so his only apparent recourse is not to disagree. In this sense, "civil POV pushing" is basically being used to squelch debate.
Basically, this is nothing more than a content dispute between editors on opposite sides of a contentious topic. There is no need to squelch one side of that debate.
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The full view has been moved to User:Abd/GoRightRFC due to length-issues. The charges repeatedly mention edit warring, and that would seem to be the core of the complaint, and civility or POV pushing red herrings. The other major charge is that of harassment. Further, the most serious charges (edit warring and harassment) are not demonstrated clearly with diffs and accurate summary, which is a problem, making it far more difficult to review the evidence. I should not have had to assume poor presentation of legitimate charges.
GoRight, in return, complained about the verbosity of the charges, then originally used half again as much text in response. On the other hand, I'd cut a lot of slack for a user accused of misbehavior. GoRight counterattacks, accusing those who filed this RfC of misbehavior themselves. Bad Idea, as my four-year old daughter would say. It makes him look guilty. But, again, this is what users often do when charged with misbehavior. He should leave that kind of effort to those who are uninvolved.
Focusing on the specific charges beyond the vague "SPA POV pusher" claims, not actionable yet at this level of impact, this what I have so far:
Comment, William Connolley BLP
Alleged harassment of William M. Connolley
Defective certification of attempt to resolve
I also examined five other articles asserted in the RfC complaint as showing problematic editing by GoRight, and found, in most of them, no problem at all, please see my extended comment page for details.
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I'm currently on a lousy hotel internet connection, so this will of necessity be somewhat brief and possibly full of typos. I essentially agree with much of what Raul writes. To clarify one issue: the bad part about "civil POV pushing" is not the civil, it's the POV pushing. Civil POV pushing is a problem on Wikipedia because we have no substantial defenses against it. ArbCom does not decide content questions. Uninvolved admins often do not have the knowledge to properly evaluate different POVs with respect to WP:WEIGHT. Thus, a relentless POV pusher that remains reasonably polite can cause a lot of work and trouble without significantly improving the encyclopedia.
On the issue at hand, I would like to point out the following:
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I haven't had much time for this - as i'm on vacation.
The trouble is not editwarring - but rather what the causes for that edit-warring is, and that cause is rather (to me) clear: Its tendentious editing by GoRight. And i rather differ with abd, in that the content issue is very important, as it always will be in a tendentious editing case. The why of the edit-wars, rather than the who.
In summary - i think it comes through pretty clearly, that GoRight is on a mission. I presume that this mission is to expose a cabal which he thinks has taken over the global warming related pages. He does this by trying to "expose" WMC (as seen), and by making pointy reversions, that disrupt the articles. His entire method of operation, seems to be driving at pissing off people, so much that they will be seen as the "wrong-doers", instead of engaging in a reasonable consensus building. And as such the the label Civil POV pusher is rather apt.
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Some miscellaneous comments. Firstly, thanks to Abd for taking the time to read through this. *But* I think he has demonstrated how hard it is for an outsider to make sense of this. I'm going to look at the ~22/6/2008 edit warring on GW as my example. And [48] in particular: which is to say, my removing of from both natural and man-made sources. The addition is contentious: the rise in GHG is well known to be anthropogenic; asserting otherwise is (a) POV pushing and (b) doomed, hence tendentious. But GR, as the talk in Misleading graph demonstrates, clearly didn't have any good sources for the idea that it might be natural. Its clear from the talk there that he simply didn't have a clue, had never looked at the evidence or even followed the obvious wiki links. Yet he previously used the edit comment Let's at least be clear about where the increases are coming from. Sm8900 repeated the same invalid edit, with no reason why, in edit comment or on the talk page (where you'll find us patiently explaining, yet again, why this is wrong). This wasn't a one-sided edit war, of course, but the side that prevailed was *correct*, and justified their position; whereas the side that lost was incorrect and made no attempt to justify their postiion (which is unsurprising, because its indefensible).
And I simply lack the incentive to actually waste time fighting the Connolley gang over it was hardly helpful.
Oh, and as for 0RR, its not necessary. Experience shows that 1RR is enough.
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I find that Abd's characterization of my actions ( above) to be wholly inaccurate. So I guess I'll correct the record as best I can.
I noticed GoRight when he blatantly misrepresented a source (The New Yorker) to add an attack section based on one quote from an anonymous source (presumably a disgruntled former editor) -while said quote was entirely refuted (and and rightly so, I might add) by the article itself. At ANI GORight wrote that he, "respected his (R. Baley's) demand" -hardly. Around June 22 and the following 2 days at least, GoRight made plenty of edits, the nature of which was to attack WMC in some way (while "technically" adhering to what I asked him not to do in WMC's bio). This is the same way he approaches our policies and guidelines -just things to be gamed while deprecating our content (Global Warming article -see earthquakes mentioned previously) and attacking other editors.
To be clear, I blocked GoRight after he made this edit (be sure to scroll down) on 29 June 2008. He had been warned multiple times, and my actions had been scrutinized by other admins at ANI. If there was any fault to them, I was never informed.
I did follow GoRight's edits after I saw him add material, on June 22, that did blatently misrepresent a story in The New Yorker. These are the edits over the next 2 days, which I saw, following that WP:BLP violating edit:
To finish up, I don't know why Abd has chosen to inaccurately characterize my actions with regard to GoRight. Maybe there is just too much material too follow, regardless, I believe it casts doubt on the rest of his analysis. I was enforcing Wikipedia's policies on BLP and NPA. I have not otherwise engaged GoRight. Neither have I made any significant contribution to the William Connolley biography (3 edits in total, it's on my watchlist because I once added a source back in, in March of this year). This editor has been an example of biased POV pushing at it's finest, and at the time. . .it wasn't even civil, not even close.
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I have no knowledge of the ongoing debate or the users involved. However, if you look at many of the edit summaries, you'll see that editors on both sides have made accusations of bad faith, been uncivil, directed statements at editors in the summaries, etc. This is not one problem user; it's a multi-user dispute where things have gotten out of hand. Penalizing one user will do nothing more than shift the balance in the dispute. The key to solving this is mediation or arbitration involving all parties, and leaving the administrative measures to strictly uninvolved administrators.
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The complaining party are those users who have certified and endorsed the basis of this dispute. The subject of the RFC is GoRight. I will note that I did see some problematic conduct on the part of other users, as suggested in the view by JeremyMcCracken - but that does not justify the misconduct here. Further, both parties failed to indicate if (and to what extent) any other users were involved, and if their edits were problematic and directly affected the dispute. Therefore, other users conduct will not form part of my findings – instead, my findings will be confined to the conduct of the parties here.
This has been a nightmare to go through in terms of the evidence - the conduct/misconduct was difficult to identify at times (and indeed, I can see why/how users are put off looking into such disputes that cause burn-out). Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that there are serious concerns and conduct problems brought up here and that the RFC does have merit, despite the unrealistic desired outcome for an RFC.
Certain users of the complaining party engaged in disruptive edit-warring on the Global Warming article. [As an entirely separate note, those users who are administrators are (to a much greater extent) expected to actively find better ways of resolving content disputes and to avoid edit-warring - this, I suppose, was a lapse in judgement for them, because they're clearly not unable or incapable of doing so. Asking for full-protection of the page instead of edit-warring would've been far more ideal.]
The subject of the RFC, GoRight, has engaged in disruptive edit-warring ( [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61]), over multiple articles, including William M. Gray (BLP), Global warming, William Connolley (BLP) and Fred Singer (BLP). He fails to acknowledge the problems with his conduct - I’m disturbed by his assertion that “the reality is brief rounds of reverts among multiple participants on contentious topics seems to be completely normal operating procedure all over Wikipedia” – even if this was true, it does not legitimize the conduct. The cycle is Bold, Revert, Discuss - not Bold, Revert, Revert, Revert, Revert...etc.
The subject has also edited inappropriately on biographies of living people (BLPs). I have expressed this concern at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive438#Disruption_by_GoRight over one of his edits that did so. I'm not impressed with his reply which attempts to justify his edit made in contravention of BLP policy. All editors are expected to adhere to both the letter and spirit of this policy.
I urge both parties (as well as any other users involved, who are aware of this RFC) to refrain from engaging in the conduct I've just noted. To this end, I'm asking that both parties familiarize themselves with the relevant principles below for their editorial conduct. If a party, particularly the subject, continues to act in a way that is disruptive, then I think the only way the dispute will be resolved is through individual sanctions placed by ArbCom. I really do hope it does not continue or escalate to that point as it is entirely avoidable.
Wikipedia works by building consensus. This is done through the use of polite discussion—involving the wider community, if necessary—and dispute resolution, rather than through disruptive editing. Editors are each responsible for noticing when a debate is escalating into an edit war, and for helping the debate move to better approaches by discussing their differences rationally. Edit-warring, whether by reversion or otherwise, is prohibited; this is so even when the disputed content is clearly problematic, with only a few exceptions. Revert rules should not be construed as an entitlement or inalienable right to revert, nor do they endorse reverts as an editing technique.
Wikipedia articles that present material about living people can affect their subjects' lives. Wikipedia editors who deal with these articles have a responsibility to consider the legal and ethical implications of their actions when doing so. Implicit in the policy on biographies of living people is the understanding that Wikipedia articles should respect the basic human dignity of their subjects. Wikipedia aims to be a reputable encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Our articles must not serve primarily to mock or disparage their subjects, whether directly or indirectly. This is of particularly profound importance when dealing with individuals whose notability stems largely from their being victims of another's actions. Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization. In cases where the appropriateness of material regarding a living person is questioned, the rule of thumb should be "do no harm." In practice, this means that such material should be removed until a decision to include it is reached, rather than being included until a decision to remove it is reached.
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All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.
All users involved in the dispute were advised to engage in appropriate conduct. Following further discussion and concerns concerning his conduct in particular on a certain topic, GoRight was subject to a community sanction.
A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the page.
Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.
GoRight, a user with a history of disruptive editing on global warming articles, returned 11 days ago. Since then, he has fomented numerous edit wars and harassed other users (the latter resulting in a 24 hour block)
GoRight should be community banned from global warming related articles. If he continues his harassment of WMC, he should be indefinitely blocked as well.
GoRight is a single purpose civil POV pusher with a history of problematic editing on Wikipedia. (Note that I mean single purpose is the strictest sense - his contribs contain exactly 4 edits to non-global warming related articles). He recently returned from a 6 month hiatus.
He has a history of tendentious editing on global warming related articles. In December, he went on a 6 month editing hiatus. Since his return 11 days ago, he has fomented no less than 9 simultaneous edit wars on global warming-related articles: William M. Gray, Global warming, William Connolley, Fred Singer, Lawrence Solomon, RealClimate, An Inconvenient Truth, and Global warming controversy. At the same time, he has repeatedly harassed user:William M. Connolley (for which he was blocked by R. Baley yesterday) GoRight does not understand or abide by Wikipedia policies regarding reliable sourcing.
I have neither the time or energy enumerate all of GoRight's misbehavior in each of the above edit wars, but I'll give a general overview. He attempted to insert claims into the global warming article that global warming is likely to cause earthquakes. ( See this thread) His citation for this was an MSNBC article which he later admittedly he already knew had been withdrawn - that he was well aware that its own publisher didn't consider it reliable. This article said point blank that the earthquake hypothesis was espoused by one person and was at odds with all other known data. Count Iblis told him that his edit violated Wikipedia policy regarding reliable sources, to which he responded by claiming it was a legitimate edit. I pointed him to the arbitration committee's decision regarding sourcing for science related articles (Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such.) but he later admitted he did not bother to read the link to the arbitration committee decision.
During the same time-frame, he made this edit to William Connelly's article, claiming that William's article, claiming that WMC "strongly pushes his POV with systematic removal of any POV which does not match his own". The source for this quote was an article by Stacy Schiff, which itself got the quote from an arbitration case on Wikipedia -- hardly a reliable source. After this was removed as a blatant BLP violation, he added this one sourced to an article by Lawrence Solomon (an ex-wikipedian with an axe to grind) published in a tabloid. This too was removed as a BLP violation.
While that was going on, he became embroiled in an edit war on the William M. Gray article. (Gray is a global warming denier) GoRight made a series of edits which can only be characterized as vandalism - removing Gray's offer to bet on future climates, and changing "does not subscribe to anthropogenic causes for global warming" to "does not subscribe to the currently hypothesized anthropogenic causes for global warming".
At the same time as the above, GoRight jumped into an edit war on the Global warming controversy article. BernhardMeyer inserted a link to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in the Science-related external links section. ( diff) (For those of you unaware, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is a "research group" created by global warming denier Fred Singer and SEPP - his think tank - to confuse people. It's name is intentionally similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-prize winning group of climate scientists. The NIPCC, SEPP, and Fred Singer all get money directly or indirectly from ExxonMobile.) When BernhardMeyer's link was correctly reverted, GoRight immediately jumped in, attempting to restore it ( diff). When it was explained to him on the talk page that a global warming denial group is not a reliable source, he bizzarely claimed that the onus was on others to prove that the NIPCC is not reliable (rather than the onus being on him to prove they are).
On the Fred Singer article, several weeks ago there was a question about a letter Singer wrote which was published in the Journal Astronautics in 1960. In it, Singer supported the idea that the Martian moon Phobos was artificial, made by Martians. Several people wanted verification of this, so I put in a request in the inter-library loan, got a pdf scan of the letter, and posted such on the talk page. Everyone agreed it was a reliable source, and the letter was quoted and cited in the article, along with a link to a google cache copy. Three weeks later, GoRight came along, claimed that a "google cache" is not a reliable source, and removed all mention of the letter. ( diff) This, obviously, started an edit war. GoRight later claimed that because it was not available online, and that he was unable to find it himself (despite the fact that I had posted it on the talk page 2 weeks earlier) we should not cite it ( diff). More edit warring followed.
I hope that gives you some idea of the problem user we are dealing with -- of the 36 article edits GoRight has made since returning, 34 of them either started or were part of edit wars. While causing all of the above edit wars, he has taken to singling out and harassing William M. Connelly in particular. So much so that R. Baley blocked him yesterday. R. Baley unblocked GoRight after GoRight admitted he was out of line and promised to be more diplomatic. ( See this thread)
This thread is enlightening. When confronted with his misbehavior, GoRight at denies being disruptive and also denies participating in edit warring, despite all evidence to the contrary. He later claims that his edits were properly sourced and their reversion is evidence of a conspiracy against him. When notified of this RFC, he bizarrely described it as "forum shopping"
(See above description for diffs)
{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}
The ANI thread above was discussed from the 24th to the 26th. Since then, he has not moderated his behavior in the slightest.
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}
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. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.
NOTICE: I have been revising this section as things have evolved. The version of the response that was in effect at the time this RFC was certified and moved to approved is here [3].
(1) General points:
(2) My behavior over time:
Users who endorse this summary:
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.
I agree 100% with Raul's assessment of GoRight's behavior. I do think, however, that banning GoRight from the global warming related pages is not the best way to deal with this problem. I suggest we put GoRight on a 0RR restriction. That will force him to think very carefully about adding something to an article as he can't revert to his version anymore if it is removed.
Also, the 0RR restriction will mean that GoRight is not allowed to revert the article to any previous version at all, even if that is the fist editing action by him in a 24 hour period, except if he is reverting obvious vandalism. So, if GoRight makes an edit on one day, which is then reverted, he can't on the next day edit in that same edit of the previous day.
For talk page comments we'll restrict GoRight as follows. If GoRight raises a topic that has already been discussed or if he raises an irrelevant point that is not ging to lead to changes in the article, then we delete his comments. When his talk page comments are deleted, GoRight will not be allowed to revert that change because of the 0RR restriction. He will not be allowed to raise the same topic ever again as that is technically a revert.
All this sounds more complicated than simply banning GoRight from editing the Global Warning related pages. However, such restrictions do force GoRight to think very carefully about the topic and it may lead him to see how wrong he is about the topic. Also, he nor anyone else can't claim that he is sensored. He is allowed to edit the article. If he is reverted then it is theoretically possible for someone other than GoRight to revert the article back to GoRight's version.
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Note: I do not agree with GoRight's views on global warming.
Having said that, there is only one recent edit made by GoRight that gave me any concern, and that was the attempt to add to William Connelley's bio - but even that was a well-sourced claim and not an open-and-shut example of abuse. And, by the way, GoRight accepted consensus on that and moved on, so I don't know why it's still being brought up.
Further, I am of the opinion that "civil POV pushing" is a nonsensical accusation to make about any editor, because it paradoxically implies that civility is somehow a violation of policy. Worse yet, it seems to create an environment where any disagreement is unacceptable: if GoRight disagrees uncivilly, he'll be quickly blocked; if he disagrees civilly, he'll be charged with "civil POV pushing" - so his only apparent recourse is not to disagree. In this sense, "civil POV pushing" is basically being used to squelch debate.
Basically, this is nothing more than a content dispute between editors on opposite sides of a contentious topic. There is no need to squelch one side of that debate.
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The full view has been moved to User:Abd/GoRightRFC due to length-issues. The charges repeatedly mention edit warring, and that would seem to be the core of the complaint, and civility or POV pushing red herrings. The other major charge is that of harassment. Further, the most serious charges (edit warring and harassment) are not demonstrated clearly with diffs and accurate summary, which is a problem, making it far more difficult to review the evidence. I should not have had to assume poor presentation of legitimate charges.
GoRight, in return, complained about the verbosity of the charges, then originally used half again as much text in response. On the other hand, I'd cut a lot of slack for a user accused of misbehavior. GoRight counterattacks, accusing those who filed this RfC of misbehavior themselves. Bad Idea, as my four-year old daughter would say. It makes him look guilty. But, again, this is what users often do when charged with misbehavior. He should leave that kind of effort to those who are uninvolved.
Focusing on the specific charges beyond the vague "SPA POV pusher" claims, not actionable yet at this level of impact, this what I have so far:
Comment, William Connolley BLP
Alleged harassment of William M. Connolley
Defective certification of attempt to resolve
I also examined five other articles asserted in the RfC complaint as showing problematic editing by GoRight, and found, in most of them, no problem at all, please see my extended comment page for details.
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I'm currently on a lousy hotel internet connection, so this will of necessity be somewhat brief and possibly full of typos. I essentially agree with much of what Raul writes. To clarify one issue: the bad part about "civil POV pushing" is not the civil, it's the POV pushing. Civil POV pushing is a problem on Wikipedia because we have no substantial defenses against it. ArbCom does not decide content questions. Uninvolved admins often do not have the knowledge to properly evaluate different POVs with respect to WP:WEIGHT. Thus, a relentless POV pusher that remains reasonably polite can cause a lot of work and trouble without significantly improving the encyclopedia.
On the issue at hand, I would like to point out the following:
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I haven't had much time for this - as i'm on vacation.
The trouble is not editwarring - but rather what the causes for that edit-warring is, and that cause is rather (to me) clear: Its tendentious editing by GoRight. And i rather differ with abd, in that the content issue is very important, as it always will be in a tendentious editing case. The why of the edit-wars, rather than the who.
In summary - i think it comes through pretty clearly, that GoRight is on a mission. I presume that this mission is to expose a cabal which he thinks has taken over the global warming related pages. He does this by trying to "expose" WMC (as seen), and by making pointy reversions, that disrupt the articles. His entire method of operation, seems to be driving at pissing off people, so much that they will be seen as the "wrong-doers", instead of engaging in a reasonable consensus building. And as such the the label Civil POV pusher is rather apt.
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Some miscellaneous comments. Firstly, thanks to Abd for taking the time to read through this. *But* I think he has demonstrated how hard it is for an outsider to make sense of this. I'm going to look at the ~22/6/2008 edit warring on GW as my example. And [48] in particular: which is to say, my removing of from both natural and man-made sources. The addition is contentious: the rise in GHG is well known to be anthropogenic; asserting otherwise is (a) POV pushing and (b) doomed, hence tendentious. But GR, as the talk in Misleading graph demonstrates, clearly didn't have any good sources for the idea that it might be natural. Its clear from the talk there that he simply didn't have a clue, had never looked at the evidence or even followed the obvious wiki links. Yet he previously used the edit comment Let's at least be clear about where the increases are coming from. Sm8900 repeated the same invalid edit, with no reason why, in edit comment or on the talk page (where you'll find us patiently explaining, yet again, why this is wrong). This wasn't a one-sided edit war, of course, but the side that prevailed was *correct*, and justified their position; whereas the side that lost was incorrect and made no attempt to justify their postiion (which is unsurprising, because its indefensible).
And I simply lack the incentive to actually waste time fighting the Connolley gang over it was hardly helpful.
Oh, and as for 0RR, its not necessary. Experience shows that 1RR is enough.
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I find that Abd's characterization of my actions ( above) to be wholly inaccurate. So I guess I'll correct the record as best I can.
I noticed GoRight when he blatantly misrepresented a source (The New Yorker) to add an attack section based on one quote from an anonymous source (presumably a disgruntled former editor) -while said quote was entirely refuted (and and rightly so, I might add) by the article itself. At ANI GORight wrote that he, "respected his (R. Baley's) demand" -hardly. Around June 22 and the following 2 days at least, GoRight made plenty of edits, the nature of which was to attack WMC in some way (while "technically" adhering to what I asked him not to do in WMC's bio). This is the same way he approaches our policies and guidelines -just things to be gamed while deprecating our content (Global Warming article -see earthquakes mentioned previously) and attacking other editors.
To be clear, I blocked GoRight after he made this edit (be sure to scroll down) on 29 June 2008. He had been warned multiple times, and my actions had been scrutinized by other admins at ANI. If there was any fault to them, I was never informed.
I did follow GoRight's edits after I saw him add material, on June 22, that did blatently misrepresent a story in The New Yorker. These are the edits over the next 2 days, which I saw, following that WP:BLP violating edit:
To finish up, I don't know why Abd has chosen to inaccurately characterize my actions with regard to GoRight. Maybe there is just too much material too follow, regardless, I believe it casts doubt on the rest of his analysis. I was enforcing Wikipedia's policies on BLP and NPA. I have not otherwise engaged GoRight. Neither have I made any significant contribution to the William Connolley biography (3 edits in total, it's on my watchlist because I once added a source back in, in March of this year). This editor has been an example of biased POV pushing at it's finest, and at the time. . .it wasn't even civil, not even close.
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I have no knowledge of the ongoing debate or the users involved. However, if you look at many of the edit summaries, you'll see that editors on both sides have made accusations of bad faith, been uncivil, directed statements at editors in the summaries, etc. This is not one problem user; it's a multi-user dispute where things have gotten out of hand. Penalizing one user will do nothing more than shift the balance in the dispute. The key to solving this is mediation or arbitration involving all parties, and leaving the administrative measures to strictly uninvolved administrators.
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The complaining party are those users who have certified and endorsed the basis of this dispute. The subject of the RFC is GoRight. I will note that I did see some problematic conduct on the part of other users, as suggested in the view by JeremyMcCracken - but that does not justify the misconduct here. Further, both parties failed to indicate if (and to what extent) any other users were involved, and if their edits were problematic and directly affected the dispute. Therefore, other users conduct will not form part of my findings – instead, my findings will be confined to the conduct of the parties here.
This has been a nightmare to go through in terms of the evidence - the conduct/misconduct was difficult to identify at times (and indeed, I can see why/how users are put off looking into such disputes that cause burn-out). Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that there are serious concerns and conduct problems brought up here and that the RFC does have merit, despite the unrealistic desired outcome for an RFC.
Certain users of the complaining party engaged in disruptive edit-warring on the Global Warming article. [As an entirely separate note, those users who are administrators are (to a much greater extent) expected to actively find better ways of resolving content disputes and to avoid edit-warring - this, I suppose, was a lapse in judgement for them, because they're clearly not unable or incapable of doing so. Asking for full-protection of the page instead of edit-warring would've been far more ideal.]
The subject of the RFC, GoRight, has engaged in disruptive edit-warring ( [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61]), over multiple articles, including William M. Gray (BLP), Global warming, William Connolley (BLP) and Fred Singer (BLP). He fails to acknowledge the problems with his conduct - I’m disturbed by his assertion that “the reality is brief rounds of reverts among multiple participants on contentious topics seems to be completely normal operating procedure all over Wikipedia” – even if this was true, it does not legitimize the conduct. The cycle is Bold, Revert, Discuss - not Bold, Revert, Revert, Revert, Revert...etc.
The subject has also edited inappropriately on biographies of living people (BLPs). I have expressed this concern at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive438#Disruption_by_GoRight over one of his edits that did so. I'm not impressed with his reply which attempts to justify his edit made in contravention of BLP policy. All editors are expected to adhere to both the letter and spirit of this policy.
I urge both parties (as well as any other users involved, who are aware of this RFC) to refrain from engaging in the conduct I've just noted. To this end, I'm asking that both parties familiarize themselves with the relevant principles below for their editorial conduct. If a party, particularly the subject, continues to act in a way that is disruptive, then I think the only way the dispute will be resolved is through individual sanctions placed by ArbCom. I really do hope it does not continue or escalate to that point as it is entirely avoidable.
Wikipedia works by building consensus. This is done through the use of polite discussion—involving the wider community, if necessary—and dispute resolution, rather than through disruptive editing. Editors are each responsible for noticing when a debate is escalating into an edit war, and for helping the debate move to better approaches by discussing their differences rationally. Edit-warring, whether by reversion or otherwise, is prohibited; this is so even when the disputed content is clearly problematic, with only a few exceptions. Revert rules should not be construed as an entitlement or inalienable right to revert, nor do they endorse reverts as an editing technique.
Wikipedia articles that present material about living people can affect their subjects' lives. Wikipedia editors who deal with these articles have a responsibility to consider the legal and ethical implications of their actions when doing so. Implicit in the policy on biographies of living people is the understanding that Wikipedia articles should respect the basic human dignity of their subjects. Wikipedia aims to be a reputable encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Our articles must not serve primarily to mock or disparage their subjects, whether directly or indirectly. This is of particularly profound importance when dealing with individuals whose notability stems largely from their being victims of another's actions. Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization. In cases where the appropriateness of material regarding a living person is questioned, the rule of thumb should be "do no harm." In practice, this means that such material should be removed until a decision to include it is reached, rather than being included until a decision to remove it is reached.
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All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.
All users involved in the dispute were advised to engage in appropriate conduct. Following further discussion and concerns concerning his conduct in particular on a certain topic, GoRight was subject to a community sanction.