Wikipedia:Requests for comment/30 SW

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

To remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, 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 with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. 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: 04:22, 26 August 2014 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 04:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC).

---

• 30 SW (talk · contribs · logs)

---

Anyone is welcome to endorse any view, but do not change other people's views. Under normal circumstances, a user should not write more than one view.

Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who are concerned by this user's conduct and have previously attempted and failed to resolve the dispute. Only users who certify this request should edit the "Statement of the dispute" section. Other users may present their views in the other sections below.

Around January, I ran across 30 SW (talk · contribs)'s edits on some military pages that I was reading, and noticed that there were some issues, including the use of incredibly technical terms in order to explain the material in an article. I marked down their pages for further investigation, and have since gone through their articles and cleaned up some of the material that was there, with many more pages left to go. In the meantime, I have performed more investigation on their rather sporadic edits and started to notice with subjects that I am more familiar with that they are taking obscure sources and naming articles based on one-liners from these sources or offline texts that people are unable to see immediately.

I have no problem with editors not being able to edit at first, but when confronted by multiple editors, myself included, they have not addressed to any of our concerns. Furthermore, they have also turned off their e-mail option, so no one can ask them offline what they are doing. In addition to this, their page is littered with talk page messages, including my request to stop adding categories that don't exist to the pages, and stop adding "Who?" "When?" and other tags that negate the text that they have added in their edits. I have talked with {{User link|Buckshot

Cause of concern

{Add summary here, provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.}

What concerns me most is that this user has been potentially making things up for a number of years and introducing falsehoods into articles and presenting them as fact. One article that I have found this in was when they created Clear Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field under the name Clear Springs Air Force Base, even though there was no such installation and their only source for it came from a publication in the 1980s of questionable notability. After a discussion with Tdrss, I decided to file an Electronic Freedom of Information Act request with the Air Force to see if they would be able to help. They were able to send me a few useful links, none of which referred to the installation as Clear Springs Air Force Base. 30 SW also wrote into the article that it was open in 1983, but the source only said that there was a discussion to place some F-15 Eagles there to replace OA-37B Dragonfly aircraft that were stationed there (although, I have not seen anything stating that there was anything placed there to begin with, since it was closed sixteen years prior), but I am going to assume that that was the case. Regardless, 65.94.169.222 left a message on the MILHIST talk page a few days ago stating that the user created yet another mess when they moved some articles around, which Lineagegeek responded later on with this note which stated that there is no such thing as Fairfax Air Force Base, which 30 SW created as part of a renaming of the Fairfax Field article in this edit. Finally, Tdrss and I discussed Venice missile launch complex, which may or may not have existed as a launch complex (I suspect the name may be fake based on this press report and this one do not report on its name). I also suspect that "launch complex" has been added because the characterizations of the facility make it look more like a temporary test facility and not a permanent installation.

Another issue which I have noticed is that they have added a lot of categories to articles that are red links. This has included Category:USAF tenant facilities, which consists of one article, and Category:Formerly Used Defense Stes in Montana (which is a corruption of the correct term Category:Formerly Used Defense Sites in Montana). Granted, most of these would not be an issue, but they have never cleaned up after this or populated the categories beyond one article, which seems to show that they are careless in their edits and are unwilling to populate the relevant categories. Interestingly, they also have built categories with disambiguation pages contained within, such as Category:Former Air Force Stations of the United States, which can be a bit confusing to someone who isn't experienced, but they also left a template which instructs users to populate the category. Finally, they have also added duplicate categories to articles on occasion, including here, which was a duplicate of a category on Holloman Air Force Base.

In terms of the technical material that they add that reads very technical and might be confusing to some new users (although, there is nothing wrong with this, it tends to add up). One example with this is Thule Site J, which reads more technical than most articles, but is generally a very good. On the other hand, Ground Equipment Facility QRC has an unclear citation style, which is consistent amongst most of the citation work, which includes block quotes on many of them.

As mentioned above, they have created disambiguation pages on the categories, but they have also created disambiguation links on the top of articles that generally can be confusing and are very long-winded (although, I am willing to assume good faith on this). Another thing which I have noticed and can be seen in a cursory glance of their articles is that many of them have tags such as "Who?" "When?" "Where?", which is concerning because these are being inserted into articles by the user, and accompany text which often is incomplete and filled with internal notes that are useful to the user, but no one else. Furthermore, these are not cleaned up, which is just as concerning at the end of the day, just because the site should give some semblance of completeness, not filled with construction signs all over the article. Finally, their lack of any responses to any queries that we have sent their way are concerning, as I am going to assume good faith with them, but are concerned in their lack of competence in some of the policies on the site.

One final thing that I am going to look into further but will not present here just yet is their close paraphrasing. As I mentioned above, they often use quotes in their citations. While this is perfectly acceptable, some of the articles that they have made consist of a large portion of quotes when compared to other text. I will present more evidence as I get it, but a cursory look here concerns me.

Applicable policies and guidelines

List the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct.

1. Wikipedia:Copyright violations
2. Wikipedia:No original research
3. Wikipedia:Plagiarism
4. Wikipedia:Reliable sources
5. Wikipedia:Verifiability

Desired outcome

This summary of the dispute is written by the users who have initiated the request for comment. It should spell out exactly what the changes they'd like to see in the user, or what questions of behavior should be the focus. Other users may present their views of the dispute in the other sections below.

My goal is that they will be able to change their behavior and make it so that users don't have to clean up after them as often. While 30 SW does a lot of beneficial work for this site and their contributions cannot be overstated, I am concerned that they are sloppy in their work and they might become a net drag on the project in the end.

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

1. Maury Markowitz Left a message concerning their confusing edits, which was not responded to.
2. I left a message concerning their use of categories and broken citation templates, the former of which was not corrected.
3. I left another message concerning their recent sloppy edit patterns, which has not been responded to, although they edit weekly here and haven't edited since, although I am also not expecting a response.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute.

1. I would mention that 30SW has also used misleading summaries for major edits His 24 April 2014 edit to Ground Equipment Facility QRC was described as "expanded with GE 477L Nuclear Detection and Reporting System, Ground Equipment Facility, tbd AN/FPS-8 tbd, Benton Air Force Communications Annex, Burroughs AN/FST-2 Coordinate Data Transmitting Set, and other info" In fact, entire sections of the article were removed, including information on Air Force units stationed there and several references. [1]

In connection with 30SW's reluctance to discuss issues on their Talk Page, the only time 30SW ever edited their Talk Page was this spring when they removed all but one previous entry on the page. They have never responded to any comment there.

30SW has also exhibited WP:OWN as indicated by the invective used in responding to comments in Talk:99th Range Group. In this article and in 1st Combat Evaluation Group and 30SW supports entries with citations to irrelevent or unreliable sources even when faced with reliable sources.

I have tried to resolve similar disputes with 30SW in the past. As for the current dispute, I have provided links and comments on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history to assist in resolving the current issue. I comment here rather than in certification because I am uncertain whether this is sufficient for certification. If it is, an admin is free to move these comments to the proper section. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and moved this, as you have tried to work with them before, directly. I will not object if anyone reverts this, though. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Additional users endorsing this cause for concern.
RFC/U does not accept "opposes" or "anti-endorsements"; the fact that you do not endorse a view indicates that you do not entirely agree with it.

Agree with dispute. As one who created many templates on United States Air Force related history pages, I do see the value in 30 SW's edits. However, most of the pages are inundated with specific jargon and/or generic statements taken from third-party sources (i.e. newspaper clippings with erroneous statements). The cleanup process that Ktr101 has initiated has been a step in the right direction; however, 30 SW not creating the content like a scientific journal entry would be more effective. TDRSS (talk) 05:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Questions to certifiers

Any users may post questions in this section.  Answers should be reserved for those certifying the dispute.

Q.

A.

Q.

A.

Response

{This section is reserved for the opinions and views of the user whose conduct is disputed. Anyone is welcome to endorse this or any other view, but only the person named in the dispute should change or edit the view in this section. RFC/U does not accept "opposes" or "anti-endorsements"; the fact that you do not endorse a view indicates that you do not entirely agree with it.}

Response to concerns

{Add summary here.}

Applicable policies and guidelines

List the policies and guidelines that apply to the response.

Users endorsing this response

RFC/U does not accept "opposes" or "anti-endorsements"; the fact that you do not endorse a view indicates that you do not entirely agree with it.

Questions to named user

Any users may post questions in this section.  Answers should be reserved for the user named in the dispute.

Q.

A.

Q.

A.

Additional views

This section is for summaries and opinions written by users who are not directly involved with the dispute, but who would like to share their views of the dispute. Anyone is welcome to endorse any view on this page, but you should not change other people's views.

Outside view by Rich Farmbrough

30 SW has been contributing since 2012 and has added a significant amount of content.

It is not clear whether 30 SW has responded to any of the user:talk messages left him, either by addressing specific issues, or by changing his methods of writing. It is certain he is aware of his talk page, because he cleared it down.

He has edited in article talk pages only 21 timeslist, of these 9 were requested moves, adding archive boxes or banners.

Therefore this editor is not engaging in discussion, much. If he is, however, responding to concerns as above it not a problem.

It might, for example, be useful to supply him with a link to Duplication Detector, to help with avoiding close paraphrasing.

Otherwise the questions are

• Can they be engaged in discussion?
• Will this actually be more productive than just allowing them to edit?
• If not, what is the best way forward?

There are also people who would rather not engage in direct discussions, but might have an RL advocate.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 14:33, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
2. Bladesmulti (talk) 10:35, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Proposed solutions

This section is for all users to propose solutions to resolve this dispute.  This section is not a vote and resolutions are not binding except as agreed to by involved parties.  

Mentorship

1) 30 SW works with experienced editors in order to ensure that their pages are free of errors before publication and are built in the draft or user space before they are moved to the mainspace. This includes fixing the errors mentioned above, as well as making sure that they know where to improve in the future, with the eventual goal of being able to work on their own without supervision.

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Reminder to use the talk page for discussion

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.