Jump to content

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia:Arbitration

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by El C (talk | contribs) at 14:33, 18 August 2006 (→Zeq wikistalking and block count: this request's threaded dialogue is actually key). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Shortcut

A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution. Before requesting arbitration, please review other avenues you should take. If you do not follow any of these routes, it is highly likely that your request will be rejected. If all other steps have failed, and you see no reasonable chance that the matter can be resolved in another manner, you may request that it be decided by the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom).

Dispute resolution
(Requests)
Tips
Content disputes
Conduct disputes
Arbitration Committee proceedings

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

[edit]
Open cases
Case name Links Evidence due Prop. Dec. due
Palestine-Israel articles 5 (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) 21 Dec 2024 11 Jan 2025
[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Motion name Date posted
Arbitrator workflow motions 1 December 2024

The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and (exceptionally) to summarily review new evidence and update the findings and decisions of a previous case. Review is likely to be appropriate if later events indicate the original ruling on scope or enforcement was too limited and does not adequately address the situation, or if new evidence suggests the findings of fact were significantly in error.

The procedure for accepting requests is described in the Arbitration policy. If you are going to make a request here, you must be brief and cite supporting diffs. If your case is accepted for arbitration, the arbitrator or clerk will create an evidence page that you can use to provide more detail. New requests to the top, please. You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person against whom you lodge a complaint.

0/0/0/0 corresponds to Arbitrators' votes to accept/reject/recuse/other. Cases are usually opened at least 24 hours after four accept votes are cast. When a case is opened, a notice that includes a link to a newly created evidence page will be posted to each participant's talk page. See the Requests section of the arbitration policy page for details.

This is not a page for discussion, and Arbitrators or clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment. Please do not open cases; only an Arbitrator or clerk may do so.

See also



How to list cases

Under the Current requests section below:

  • Click the "[edit]" tab on the right of the screen appearing above the section break line;
  • Copy the full formatting template (text will be visible in edit mode), omitting the lines which say "BEGIN" and "END TEMPLATE";
  • Paste template text where it says "ADD CASE BELOW";
  • Follow instructions on comments (indented), and fill out the form;
  • Remove the template comments (indented).

Note: Please do not remove or alter the hidden template

Current requests

Ed Poor

Initiated by JoshuaZ at 01:31, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

[1]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ed Poor (2).

Statement by JoshuaZ

I bring this RfArb with a heavy heart. Ed has been an editor with Wikipedia far longer than I have, and has a history of many productive edits. However, on certain topics Ed has a long standing history of POV pushing and related problems. These problems were yet again addressed, this time in a recent RfC. In that RfC, multiple editors from a variety of topics, especially topics related to global warming and creationism. The RfC, painted a picture of edit warring, gross violation of 3RR. When he didn't ignore it, he attempted to game the system in a disturbingly literal fashion, comparing how he was allowed to revert to a game of Go [2]. Since then, his conduct has unfortunately not improved. Continuing his edit warring and POV pushing on climate and creationism articles[3](recently spreading to animal rights related articles), he also continued other problems, such as POV forking and POV redirecting, constructing articles which were complete OR/POV and/or copy-vio such as the now deleted Good scientific practice. In one dif he declared that he won't "abandon" NPOV, showing that even after a heavily endorsed RfC, he is undable to understand that his POV is not NPOV [4]. He has also taken to disrupting attempts to get new editors to conform to 3RR and other policies [5] and made spurious claims on WP:PAIN and WP:3RR [6]. I could continue, but the above should be sufficient to demonstrate the basic point: past attempts at mediation have failed. RfCs have failed. Intervention of the Arb Com is now necessary.

Statement by Uncle Ed

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Excuse me if I change my statement radically. This is a wiki, of course, so it's easy to make changes.

I myself wrote the definition of Wikipedia:POV pushing, and I pride myself on abiding by it scrupulously. On those rare occasions when I fail, I am quick (and eager!) to acknowledge these failures.

You need only point them out, as this contributor did. [7] I can accept correction, when a mistake is explained to me. [8]

If I've failed so many times as to constitute a "history of POV pushing", it should be easy to demonstrate this. I'd love to see some examples, especially if these show me creating and editing articles so that they show only one point of view and then laboring to preserve them in this unbalanced, biased state.

As I understand NPOV policy, the the following points are crucial:

  • Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view (NPOV) policy contemplates inclusion of all significant points of view regarding any subject on which there is division of opinion.
  • It is inappropriate to remove blocks of well-referenced information which is germane to the subject from articles on the grounds that the information advances a point of view.
Agreement that 3RR is not an entitlement

As for the "game of go" remark, JoshuaZ has perhaps overlooked my use of this metaphor as something I realize I should not do, the opposite of how he construed my remark.

  • I got confused about "partial reverts"
  • You simply can't bring the article back to its previous state - like repeating a board position.

Since then, I have drastically reduced the frequency of reverting unexplained reverts on the article Joshua mentions and increased my attempts to get discussions going.

I also advised user:Schlafly as follows:

  • Carefully avoid making more than 3 reverts per 24-hour period to any article (2 is better, and 1 is ideal).
  • invite other contributors to look at edits that have been unfairly reverted.

I fail to see how this is "disrupting" an attempts to counsel him on 3RR adherence. I specifically requested that he cut down on reverts and engage others in discussion, and He hasn't been blocked since.

Attempts to describe both sides of global warming controversy fairly
  • The global warming controversy is an ongoing dispute about how much of the modern global warming is caused by human beings. [9]

I don't see how it is "pov pushing" to write an article intro like this. If I've failed with this edit, then Joshua is right and I need to be restrained somehow - because to me this looks like a model of neutrality.

Restoring balance to controversial articles

Much of what interests me at Wikipedia is the opportunity to add information which explains the opposing point of view to articles on controversial topics which are dominated by a single POV. Far too many articles are unbalanced, emphasizing a mainstream point of view and neglecting minority viewpoints.

If edits which "advance" a POV are in violation of web site policy, then I guess I'll have to stop doing this. I didn't know this was wrong. --Uncle Ed 18:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Cyde Weys

I've seen Ed Poor's work for awhile now and I've often seen him as pushing a pro-fundamentalist, anti-science POV, whether it's on evolution, intelligent design, global warming, et al. Ed will vehemently deny this, of course, and he will try to Wikilawyer his way out of it. He's pretty good at wikilawyering, especially because he's been around for so long, but the edits will speak for themselves. Ed has a long history of POV problems, whether it was forking off a POV version of an evolution-related article so he could make it more anti-evolution, or creating non-encyclopedic articles on "evolution polls" to try to use the populist argument to "refute" evolution, or constantly over the period of months trying to bend the wording on Intelligent design. Ed is editing on his faith rather than the facts; for a neutral encyclopedia, this is untenable. I urge the ArbCom to accept this case so that we can write out a full evidence section detailing all of Ed's history of POV-pushing. --Cyde Weys 14:28, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by user:Ladlergo

When I first started looking at this group of articles, I didn't know of Ed's history with the community of editors and attempted to mediate. Right now, my feeling is that he's attempting to game the system. In my opinion, Ed's main problem is that he attempts to give WP:NPOV#Undue_weight to ideas that are properly discussed on other pages. In addition, when he makes edits, he fails to concretely address why his edits are better than the previous version. Ladlergo 15:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Karwynn (talk)

I'm involved in one article with these two editors. My limited experience wth JoshuaZ has shown me that he seems to think that he need only declare an edit NPOV and that's that. Afterwards, further discussion from him is generally in the form of "It's NPOV, why can't you respect policy?" Sometimes I feel like he's not considering "I may be wrong about this" enough. Not in a sinister "I AM THE LAW" manner, just kind of a lack of enthusiasm for disagreement. So I think very careful evaluation of JoshuaZ's claims on Ed Poor's inability/refusal to grasp NPOV is necessary. All in all, Ed Poor seems to be acting in good faith, cautioning me on edit warring over an article where we disagreed with JoshuaZ (Godless:_The_Church_of_Liberalism) and being very open to discussion and rational on the talk page, where JoshuaZ's comments were at times notably absent until we I guess made enough fuss to encourage him to reply. Ed Poor's comments specifically related to NPOV and verifiability issues on that article, and seemed very oriented towards achieving a fair, objective and relevant-to-the-specific-subject article. His motives, to me anyway, seemed geared towards neutrality, not a pro-creationism agenda. Poor judgement of NPOV and non-neutral motives are not the same thing. It seems like this is more a wide-scale content dispute than a conduct dispute, and further discussion would be a more productive venue for this I think. Perhaps a content-based RfC or something?

Comment by User:ScienceApologist

Ed has a problem in believing that he is a paragon of neutrality here at Wikipedia. He prides himself on being able to "balance" articles he perceives to be unbalanced. He does this not through research, verifiable citations, or making factual additions, but rather by changing the wording, introducing equivocation, and occasionally majorly disrupting articles in order so that his version of the NPOV policy is realized. When people dispute his behavior, he usually balks. He has claimed that there is a de facto cabal of Wikipedians who are surpressing what he has termed a "conservative political view" in science controversy articles. The big problem is that Ed doesn't engage in the normal activities of consensus building, occasionally acts spitefully against individuals and seems to hold personal grudges, and instead of appealing to research or literature cited by his fellow Wikipedians, Ed prefers to fall-back on a prefunctory "Uncle Ed knows neutrality" attitude that implicitly accuses everyone but himself of being biased. Ed does not think that there has ever been any evidence presented that he is biased in his approach to editting despite the growing list on his RfC. I have tried to discuss these issues with him to limited success. Ed's a valuable member of the Wikipedia community, having been here for quite some time, but he is doing a great disservice to his years here by being so tendentious in so-called "science controversy" articles. --ScienceApologist 21:20, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to user:Ed Poor

You said: Far too many articles are unbalanced, emphasizing a mainstream point of view and neglecting minority viewpoints.

WP:NPOV#Undue_weight says:: NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each.

and

We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views.

and

Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties.

Ed, can you please explain why you believe your edits to create "balanced" articles are not directly in opposition to WP policy? Ladlergo 20:55, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by User:Schlafly

I don't know about Ed Poor, but I've battled JoshuaZ on the Kansas evolution hearings page. He repeatedly insists on name-calling witnesses as creationists and other epithets, even tho many of the witnesses deny being creationists. I say that a NPOV requires that a Wikipedia article on the hearings first describe what actually happened at the hearings in a fair and neutral way. Criticism can come afterward.

JoshuaZ's complaint is surprising weak. He fails to give an example of one of Ed's edits that shows a biased POV. Given JoshuaZ's history of an anti-creationist POV, I think that it is odd for him to complain. Roger 21:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by CBD

I would just point out that while this RfAr is ostensibly about POV pushing there has been exactly one diff link purporting to show such... but which really doesn't seem to. The only possible 'POV bias' I can detect there is that Ed changed it from saying that the 'global warming controversy is about whether humans have an impact on the climate' to 'about how much human action is responsible for the existence of global warming'. The original suggested the possibility of climate change and that there might be some human contribution to it... the latter states flat out that global warming exists and humans have been part of it, with only the degree of such in question. Clearly Ed's version might be less palatable to opponents of 'global warming' who don't believe it exists at all or that humans have any impact on it, but it does match my understanding of the current scope of the debate... even scientists who oppose the theory now acknowledge that warming has occured and that people inevitably contribute to it, but hold that what we are seeing is primarily a natural cycle with minimal human impact. Very few now argue that there has been no increase in average temperature. All of which is covered in the article and unaffected by Ed's changes. If this is the best available example of his 'POV pushing'... it seems to me extremely weak. Likewise, the link on 'edit warring' and the 'game of Go' clearly appears to be an apology for misunderstanding the policy on partial reverts (which I see admins interpret differently all the time) and a promise not to do so again. This is evidence against him? For the record, my only significant interaction with Ed was when we more or less simultaneously came up with a series of date computing templates using completely different naming structures and methodologies. I found him very reaonable and flexible in working out those differences for consistency. --CBD 22:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Doc

I really think I agree with the above. Ed notoriously has some unpopular beliefs - no-doubt they influence his editing. Mine do me. No doubt they'll get his into heated debates. People with minority perspectives often throw up questions about what NPOV really means in an article. But NPOV =! 'what most liberal wikipedians believe, so to hell with the pseudo-scientists'. Ed has an 'anti-Science' POV (what the hell is that?)? Perhaps. But should wikipedia have a 'pro-science POV' (whatever that might be). As long as Ed is being civil, explains his perspective, and isn't edit waring - there should be no major problem. Some of the diffs above arn't great - but they are hardly a matter for arbcom. Where is the evidence of disruption? --Doc 23:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Schlafly, CBD, and Doc

The purpose of this stage of the request is merely to, as it says, request arbitration. This is not the evidentiary phase -- that occurs once the case is accepted and the clerk begins the project page for the RfAr proper. (see comments by CydeWeys) At that point I would assume that Doc's and CBD's concerns regarding civility, POV-pushing, edit-warring, etc., will be satisfactorilly addressed by the evidence. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 10:38, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Davril2020

My experience of Ed's habits on the Evolution and Intelligent Design pages have been quite disturbing. The tendency to pov-push is worrying, particularly since he has a tendency to repeatedly come back to the exact same issue, re-presenting the same evidence again and again against the consensus version, despite repeated requests for documented evidence to support his proposed changes. He has a tendency to react to collective criticism as though there were a cabal and typically responds to the failure of his changes to be implemented not with agreement to the community consensus, or even a decision to agree to disagree, but often with a good deal of frustration. In particular, he seems to believe his changes fail to succeed because his edits are blocked by pov-pushers, and does not accept that the community consensus is deserving as respect. Indeed, where this consensus exists and is in opposition to him he typically dismisses it altogether, showing a disappointing level of disrespect to his fellow editors. --Davril2020 04:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by i kan reed

I think ed has gotten the short end of the stick here. He probably was in violation of 3RR on a few occasions, but I have seen instances where his changes were reverted simply because he made them. And edits that change multiple things being reverted for one of the parts changed containing POV. Reverting simply because a change contains POV is not a policy favored by most users, and I beleive meaningful content has been removed in this fashion occasionally, and while Mr. Poor does have a strong Point of View that he may overdefend, I beleive there have been violations of WP:AGF against him. None of this excuses edit warring, but I think Ed has been slightly abused here. i kan reed 14:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (3/0/0/0)

Requests for clarification

Requests for clarification from the Committee on matters related to the Arbitration process.


Internal spamming/campaigning

There's an ongoing discussion at WP:SPAM about what constitutes acceptable talk page contact between users regarding discussions, votes, polls, etc. Prior rulings that have been pointed to are this prior ruling and this one. Could you offer any more specific information about what is and is not allowed/discouraged, for example: is it the use of mass userbox messaging that is disallowed (if it is), or is internal spamming/campaigning disallowed only if disruptive? Thanks. IronDuke 17:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Briefly, I think a reasonable amount of communication about issues is fine. Aggressive propaganda campaigns are not. The difference lies in the disruption involved. If what is happening is getting everyone upset then it is a problem. Often the dividing line is crossed when you are contacting a number of people who do not ordinarily edit the disputed article. Fred Bauder 16:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Zeq wikistalking and block count

I've been having a difficult time applying arbitration enforcement for Zeq and feel I have since been targetted by him. For example, after I blocked Kelly Martin for her B-list attack page, Zeq just happens to come along so as to caution me from blocking a user with whom you have a dispute" (what dispute? he fails to mention). Or, after removing and protecting the attack page by Sarasto777, Zeq just happens to come along, again. These are not isolated examples. Then today, Zeq questions my administrative compotence and speaks of an "edit[orial] conflict" after I delete his copyvio entry, twice. Many blocks later, how should I proceed with the tendencious edits by the user? Should I implement Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Zeq#Enforcement_by_block next time — it will be the 6th block. Or will it? I am inclined to count article bans as blocks, and am seeking clarification as to this approach, and Zeq's conduct overall as illustrated above. Thanks in advance. El_C 13:26, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please do take the time to examine this request's threaded dialogue (it was removed without an accompanying diff being cited). Thanks. El_C 14:33, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Motions in prior cases

(Only Arbitrators may make such motions)


Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Zeq

Motion to ban Zeq for a week for creating an attack article regarding User:Homeontherange (article has been deleted) diff will be available to Arbitration Committee members. Fred Bauder 21:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Enacted (6-0) at 13:18, 18 August 2006 (UTC) (Tony Sidaway, clerk)

Archives

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests&oldid=70427725"