Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Psychohistorian

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• Psychohistorian (talk · contribs · logs)

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Statement of the dispute

User:Psychohistorian has a persistent pattern of being abusive and uncivil to other users on at least four article talk pages.

Description

User:Psychohistorian has been consistently and repeatedly, despite being warned against it, and even after the latest warnings, attacking the credentials, knowledge, abilities, sanity and character of people with whom he has disputes. He admits becoming unnecessarily frustrated but has not done anything to correct his behavior or apologize for it. He holds some strong views on subjects and seems unable to accept that differing views are the result of anything except character flaws on the part of his opponents, which he feels compelled to point out. This is not a single incident or a problem with one article or person, but seems to follow Psychohistorian across wikipedia. Specifically User:Thulean and User:Fourdee have warned him about this behavior.

The spirit of WP:NPA embodies the logical fallacy and error in rhetoric known as argumentum ad hominem - personal attack. From the wiki:

"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally argument against the person), personal attack or you-too argument, involves replying to an argument or assertion by attacking the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself. It is a logical fallacy."

All of the documented statements by Psychohistorian are clearly directed at the person, and are clearly uncivil. He has a long-standing pattern of this behavior and apparently sees nothing wrong with it. Without some censure there is no reason he will not continue it indefinitely. If these are not personal attacks, what would be short of the most obvious and juvenile cases of insults? Fourdee 17:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Evidence of disputed behavior

In chronological order and not inclusive of every example:

1. "Go out and take a freshman level class in anthropology. I'm sure your local community college offers one." [1]
2. "However, as this may be too complicated for you to grasp (and an indepth discussion of textual analysis with someone like yourself would be sure to try my patience)"
3. "If this point continues to elude you, we can bring in a third party opinion who may be inclined to simplify these issues to the point where you can understand them" [2]
4. "while I grant that it might seem that way to someone who is not as knowledgable or comfortable with a subject as is the majority of people" [3]
5. Insults education and offers to "put it at your level" [4]
6. Insults editor's education and implies editor has not reached the 11th grade [5]
7. Warned by User:Thulean[6]
8. "Is there any way I can talk you into coming back to work on this article? The fewer educated people we have on it, the easier it is to lose ground due to the 3RR rule." [7]
9. Says editor has "inferiority complex" [8]
10. "Here we have yet another example of someone who, based on his written content, it is obvious never studied anthropology beyond looking at the half naked women in National Geographic, using the word "anthropology" like some sort of authority. This has gone past ludicrous and has become actually pretty humourous" [9]
11. "You claimed my comment was "silly". Oh my god, you are attacking me again! Maybe I should create an RfI! Oh, no wait, I'm an adult." [10]
12. Calls editor "paranoid" and "unreasonable" [11]
13. Insults editor's abilities and is sarcastic [12]
14. Warned by User:Fourdee[13]
15. Accuses editors of "bitching" [14]
16. Calls editors ignorant [15]
17. Restores a number of personal insults which had been deleted [16]
18. Further calls other editors ignorant, insults knowledge and credentials[17]
19. Further insults other editors' education[18]

Applicable policies and guidelines

1. WP:CIVIL
2. WP:NPA

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

1. Warned by User:Thulean[19]
2. Told he is commiting ad hominem[20]
3. Warned by User:Fourdee[21]

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

1. Fourdee 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
2. Thulean 13:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC) (Will be using User:Lukas19 from now on because I changed my nick...)

Other users who endorse this summary

If you agree with the summary's presentation of events but did not try and fail to resolve the dispute, please sign in this section.

Response

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.

{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.}

Response by Psychohistorian

{Response, if Psychohistorian desires.}

I won't be responding in any great depth on this issue. I feel that my posts which have been linked to above, when read for content, are their own defense. However, I do want to add that I appreciate those other editors who have endorsed and supported me on this issue. I'm grateful for their continuing support. I would especially like to thank you, Hu, for bringing this RfC to my attention (as you did with the earlier complaint by this user) when this user failed to notify me of this.-Psychohistorian 14:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to consolidate both this RfC and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Personal_attack_intervention_noticeboard#Psychohistorian

_.28talk_.E2.80.A2_contribs.29 is it possible that we can do this instead of having two seperate complaints covering the same material being brought up by the same people? -Psychohistorian 15:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC) Users who endorse this summary:

Response by Hu

Fourdee's claim here is weak at best and should be dismissed as baseless and hypocritical. An Admin who looked in previously wrote "These don't seem like blatant personal attacks. Incivility, perhaps, but [Psychohistorian]'s still making an effort to discuss the issue at large".[22] Psychohistorian has made conciliatory gestures to Fourdee and users have attempted to work with him, but even though Fourdee at times appears conciliatory, his actions are contrary and belligerent. I think the true source of the problem is Fourdee, not Psychohistorian. (Disclosure: I am a participant editing the Emergence article, the New Version, and the Talk:Emergence, Arch.2 and Arch.3 pages).

Even six hours later, Fourdee had not had the courtesy or the sense of fairness to inform Psychohistorian of his initiation of this process against him. This is the same secretive combative behavior as when he failed to notify Psychohistorian when Fourdee lodged a complaint on the Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention noticeboard (failed), and as when he failed to post notice on the Talk:Emergence page when he demanded that the Emergence article be Page Protected (more about the mischaracterizations therein later). In all three cases, I had to discover it and do the appropriate notifying [23][24][25] that Fourdee should have done, even though plenty of time elapsed for him to do so.

Fourdee is using Wiki processes as a club against Psychohistorian (and others). Fourdee has been extremely contentious and disputatious on the Emergence article and its Talk:Emergence pages. His complaint here is actually an escalation of his argumentativeness with regard to the article, which he has latched onto with a fierceness seldom seen on Wikipedia. Editors (myself included) made edits and comments to address his concerns but found that he deleted those edits and used a take-no-prisoners attitude to attempt to gain total control so we had to write numerous and voluminous comments before he would give an inch and we had to deal with his unilateral escalations of process.

Background

Beginning 29 November, Fourdee 1) tagged the article, disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, 2) declared an edit war, 3) clobbered edits that began to address his issues, 4) unilaterally and without notice took the article to Page Protection, 5) strenuously argued and got the article frozen, 6) engaged in argumentative discussion on the talk page, 7) took exception to to some remarks by Psychohistorian and deleted them three times, 8) simul-tagged (NPA2 & 3) Psychohistorian and myself, 9) lodged a (un-notified) complaint against Psychohistorian on the Personal Attack Intervention Noticeboard, which failed, 10) lodged his (un-notified) complaint here after soliciting help from the dubious Thulean/Lukas19.

Sequence in greater detail:

1. Fourdee unilaterally without prior discussion smothered the Emergence article with 52 {{lopsided}}, {{dubious}}, and {{fact}} tags and two (2) {{TotallyDisputed}} tags.[26] He did post a notice [27] 55 minutes before tagging the article, but it was deceptive because he wrote "First I am going to tag sections, then attempt to edit for neutrality. I'll leave the bulk of the article alone for the time being".
2. 50 hours later a user attempted to use humor [28] to reason with Fourdee, unsuccessfully as Fourdee wrote "I don't understand your sarcasm".[29]
3. 58 hours after Fourdee did the heavy tagging, he had made a few minor edits [30] but had made no edits for "neutrality," so I reverted the tags.[31]
4. Psychohistorian's first edit on the Talk page was concilliatory,[32] joining with Fourdee in favor of citations ("Fourdee is challenging us to find sources. I see no reason why we can't do that."). He also asked Fourdee " to provide detailed explanations of his various {{lopsided}} tags so that we can see whether they are worth addressing", but Fourdee has not yet done this, 11 days later.
5. Psychohistorian made a referenced edit to begin to address Fourdee's concerns.[33]
6. Fourdee declared an edit war [34] and four minutes later re-reverted.[35] Because it was angrily or hastily or carelessly done, he clobbered Psychohistorian's edit and had to restore it 24 minutes later.[36]
7. I did not do a further reversion. Instead I judiciously removed a number of the tags, replacing some of them with explanations in HTML comments. Fourdee had objected to the format of citations and references,[37] so I edited the article (tags and cites) to address that issue, making them conform to current Wikipedia Manual of Style. Another editor introduced a reference.[38]
8. Fourdee did a wholesale reversion of all my edits and the other editor's,[39] and left an edit summary that incorrectly claimed it was my edit war and incorrectly asserting that I was deleting his edits wholesale. He then attempted to restore the other editor's edit, but botched it.[40]
9. Fourdee asked us to "work" with him [41], but then two hours unilaterally without any discussion or notification later places a demand to "fully protect" the article.[42] In doing so, he made a personal attack against me, falsely claiming that "Hu believes no citations are needed for a controversial topic", I suppose attempting to make me look stupid or totally opposed to Wikiipedia policy when the exact opposite is true. He also wrongly and harmfully claimed that I had engaged in an edit war, when the record shows that I had essentially only made two edits (when near simultaneous edits are lumped together) [43],[44], and my second edit was dealing with his issues and was not a reversion.
10. Then Fourdee got angry at me for watching his contributions [45] (the only way to know he was litigating behind our backs). I had made a single edit [46] moving a comment from the front to back of a talk page (where it belonged) and he called that "harrassing his edits". He used it as a false claim on the Request page [47] to try to discredit me as part of his efforts to get the article frozen.
11. The editors backed off and stopped editing the Emergence page, which then was frozen into Fourdee's reverted form.
12. Fourdee then called it "unfortunate" (after the fact) that he had got his way and got the article frozen.

From this point there ensued much discussion on the Arch.2 and Arch.3 pages in which a number of editors attempted to pin him down on various issues but were unsucessful. He wrote two essays on "fallacies" that were his own ideas (with no discernable academic merit) and have little or no application to editing the article.

The Nub of Fourdee's Complaint

1. At a certain point, Fourdee took exception to some day old remarks of Psychohistorian and chose to delete them,[48] claiming that they were personal attacks. In the same edit he made a small rebuttal to one of them.
2. Fourdee placed a message on Psychohistorian's Talk page with not one NPA warning but two in a single message, both an NPA2 and an NPA3.[49]
3. I reverted the deletions [50] with the summary message "You may not edit other people's remarks. It is not for you to play censor." In the process, his rebuttal was also reverted (I didn't see it).
4. Fourdee again deleted the remarks [51] with the summary "hu, you are again mistaken about the usual practice on wikipedia, which is to delete ad hominem attacks" (note the use of the word "again").
5. I made a second reversion with a message that pointed to the pertinent page that shows that he was mistaken not me: "Wikipedia:Remove_personal_attacks is guideline not policy. Further, it "should be used sparingly"." [52]
6. Fourdee deleted them a third time, taunting me and daring me with "care to go for 3?".[53]
7. Fourdee placed not one NPA warning, but two in a single message on my Talk page, both an NPA2 and an NPA3 (same pattern as he did with Psychohistorian).[54]
8. Psychohistorian restored his own [55] comments with the message "please do not edit other peoples comments in the discussion page, it is considered a form of vandalism". (three edits to restore)
9. Ten minutes later Fourdee lodged his complaint against Psychohistorian on the Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention noticeboard.[56]
10. Three hours later Fourdee had still not notified Psychohistorian of his complaint, so I did so, making a refutation at the same time,[57] noting that Fourdee had violated 8 of the guideline's provisions, especially that when such removals are contested, "it's best to let the disputed comment stand, allowing other editors to judge for themselves".WP:RPA.
11. Fourdee's complaint was denied by two editors, one of them an Admin,[58] and the other who refuted each of the claims and finds that Fourdee is "pretty aggressive".[59]

Fourdee's Pattern

• Makes unnotified litigation.
• Takes heavy-handed unilateral actions and then only afterward writes a conciliatory note on the talk page, once his actions are entrenched or frozen in.
• Puts a double warning in a single edit and claims that is multiple warnings.
• Alternatively uses a discredited abuser of NPA warnings (Lukas19/Thulean) as evidence of "multiple" warnings, even after [60] being told this was foolish.[61]
• Attempts to impose conditions on editing the article that no other article in Wikipedia has to endure. (Ph.D. references only, narrow definition of acceptable fields, constraining source writers strictly with narrow fields, even though this topic is inherently cross-disciplinary.)
• Attempts to declare some topics (philosophy) off-limits [62] in the article and then denies having done so.[63]
• Refuses to make a detailed explanation of his tagging, as requested,[64] but issues a blanket assertion [65] which is not quite correct since he has tags on things that are common knowledge like "individual neurons don't think".
• On the other hand makes detailed arguments on philosophical points against Psychohistorian that he admits have nothing to do with editing the article.[66]
• Has only made one small rewrite [67] to the New Version of the article, despite the fact that others (Kyle and myself) have done substantial detailed work.[68],[69]
• Is not interested in adding content to the article,[70] but is ready to disrupt Wikipedia a second time with massive deletions to the article in order to make his point ("my first action will be to delete all [52] uncited and improperly cited statements"), [71], claiming it is policy when it directly counter to policy (Major changes).
• Seeks to deny input from Psychohistorian and others with comments like "Your (incomplete) (non-)credentials".[72]

Psychohistorian's Conciliatory Responses

Mainly on the Talk:Emergence page:

• [73], [74], [75], [76], [77], [78], [79].
• Gives the last word on a thread [80] to Fourdee who jumps at it [81] and then archives the page.

Psychohistorian makes numerous other conciliatory and cooperative statements in other places.

Conclusion

Fourdee is the prime initiator of the problem right from the beginning with the disruptive tagging and Psychohistorian has been drawn into a vortex that has frustrated all of us and consumed too much time dealing with Fourdee and not enough time editing the article. Psychohistorian has also been under pressure dealing with Thulean/Lukas19.

This complaint against Psychohistorian should be denied.

-- Hu 16:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

1. Hu 10:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
2. Agree. Possibly advise that you should'nt feed the trolls. But that's about it. Addhoc 12:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Outside view by FeloniousMonk

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.

This RFC strikes me as another misuse of WP:DR to cow an opponent in a content dispute. I see no evidence of serial policy violations that warrant an RFC; but I do see a pattern of vexatious litigation on the part of Fourdee here and at WP:PAIN. I urge Fourdee find another way to resolve his content disputes other than with baseless WP:PAIN and WP:RFC filings. FeloniousMonk 21:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

Discussion

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