Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive262
QuackGuru
[edit]| QuackGuru is blocked for three months. Thryduulf (talk) 12:16, 19 February 2020 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning QuackGuru[edit]
I started a section on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#QuackGuru and was informed about the arbitration case and advised that was the wrong forum and this was the correct one. The discussion there is still ongoing, so apologies if this is inappropriate duplication.
Interactions with QuackGuru appear to have contributed to the departure of User:Mfernflower from this topic. While looking into the reasons for their dissatisfaction with the resolution of previous disputes, I found a long discussion in case starting in September 2019 at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1021#QuackGuru and disruption over e-cigs and pod mods which I'll let speak for itself. The closure on that also suggests taking up the issue here. QuackGuru is clearly smart and some interactions have been constructive—it often takes experienced editors from different perspectives to polish a text to be well-referenced and neutral. But sometimes they will veer from constructive to what appears to be deliberately obstructive. I would hate to lose the useful contributions of this editor, but I also hate to lose the contributions of other editors who don't have the patience to argue past the obstructionism or rope in third editors or start dispute resolution proceedings.
Discussion concerning QuackGuru[edit]Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by QuackGuru[edit]Talk:2019–20 vaping lung illness outbreak#Removal of update section tag - I removed the tag because no new source was presented. The content Beland added "though individual cases do not provide strong evidence of causal relationships"[1] was unsupported by the source. I tagged the content and replaced it with verifiable content. Belend merged the article on 21 December 2019.[2] After the merge was undone it was merged again after the AFD close.[3] The merge was overturned.[4] Beland merged the article again on 13 January 2020[5] and deleted the entire Patients section.[6] The talk page consensus limited it to three cases.[7] I removed the tags from the Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak because I did not believe there was a serious enough issue to justify the multiple tags. FULBERT removed two of the tags.[8] Talk:Nicotine pouch#Alarming amount of Ownership and unreliable source about Kenya - The word "lobbies" is a general term and it does not specify who made the claim. Beland wrote in part: "It would be unwise to attribute claims made by "lobbies" to KTCA..."[9] The discussion at Talk:2019–20 vaping lung illness outbreak#Predicting the future in a scary way involved content cited to a 2019 review. The content is stating that the lung injuries could be more widespread and the lung injuries in various countries is not clear. It is not stating anything in a scary way. All the content from the review was deleted and the unverifiable content not vitamin E acetate was added by Beland. I started a RfC to help resolve the matter for Talk:Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak#NPOV issues and Talk:Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak#Vaping among teenagers by proposing verifiable content for the lede. The matter involving MelanieN for the e-cig lede was about updating the text. I objected to including a US-centric warning in the lede since the outbreak is not worldwide. The matter involving KristofferR at the e-cig article was mainly about misleading content. The misleading content was fixed and I added a note to clarify the outbreak content. The matter involving Sunline09 at the e-cig article was more about WP:SYNC. All previous versions were a SYNC violation. I copied content from the lede of the subarticle for the Frequency section. The matter involving Seraphimblade was resolved here. On 29 December 2019 Seraphimblade reverted to an older version. It was undone by Doc James.[10] Andy Dingley says "I've certainly avoided pod mod, QuackGuru, and their personal space of vaping articles ever since...".[11] According to talk page consensus a sentence fails verification. Andy Dingley made a comment about the pod mod article on 14:38, 6 December 2019. Soon after, Andy Dingley removed the FV tag on 14:54, 6 December 2019. The source mentions nicotine salts on pages 95-96 but it does not verify the claim. The content and the quality of sources is under dispute at the nicotine pouch article. KristofferR added commercial websites and added nettotobak.com that sells LYFT products. I tagged the unreliable source and other unreliable sources. Beland removed the unreliable tag added to the nettotobak.com commercial website and other tags were removed. Beland also added commercial websites. I requested verification for "Unlike vaping products".[12] Beland asked me "Why would that require verification?"[13] The PDF file does not verify the claim "Unlike vaping products" added by Beland. On controversial topics there are usually content disputes. Editors have different interpretations of policy. I am concerned that there may be no opportunity to examine in detail whether the content I tagged as failed verification did indeed fail verification. However, I accept that people disagree. I understand other editors' frustration and I am looking for a way to resolve the issue. Would it help if I don't add or remove tags for a year? QuackGuru (talk) 01:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC) @Barkeep49: The reason I am concerned is because I and others have submitted evidence before and the response was a resounding yawn. I am also concerned that the commercial websites at Nicotine pouch will not be thoroughly examined. For example, the 3rd citation at Nicotine pouch is this commercial website. Websites that sell these products are kind of spammy and are poor sources. I did not want to immediately fix the failed verification at Nicotine pouch because KristofferR was reverting my edits[14][15][16] (as well as Doc James[17][18]) at Electronic cigarette after the failed verification content was redacted. I did not want to get into an edit war at Nicotine pouch after what recently transpired at Electronic cigarette. KristofferR copied the discussion from my talk page over to the nicotine pouch talk page. KristofferR thought the word "lobbies" is likely inaccurate and a language error. I thought verifiability policy is applicable rather than trying to seek truth. QuackGuru (talk) 01:35, 12 February 2020 (UTC) Additional comments by QuackGuru: Unsourced content and failed verification content are continuing to be introduced to this topic area and I don't see others trying to redact the problematic content. In the edit summary Beland wrote "this variation is in fact mentioned in the body in the Construction section".[19] The Electronic cigarette article is not the Construction article. A rewrite of the content is also not a summary of Electronic cigarette and it is unsourced. A similar change to Safety of electronic cigarettes fails verification and it is not a summary of content in the body the Safety article. See discussion. @Barkeep49: The word "also" fails verification because the organisation did not "also" make the claim. They made one of the claims in the paragraph. One of the sentences was attributed to Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance when the source made a broader claim it was "lobbies". Once that would be fixed it would no longer be "also". The word "also" has since been removed from that paragraph. You believe I am right a real % of the time to challenge the text. A personal consensus requirement would not allow me to revert failed verification content. If you read the talk pages involving failed verification content or other issues the editor who added the problematic content almost always disagrees there is any problem with the content. There is still failed verification content in the nicotine pouch article such as the part "Unlike Vaping product". After verification was requested, I was asked Why would that require verification? rather than provide verification or removed the disputed content. A "personal consensus required" will not allow me to update a few numbers in an article because I reverted a citation added by another editor and changed numbers. The "personal consensus required" commentary was made before I had a chance to respond. Now that I have responded uninvolved sysops may want to review my response and additional commentary before coming to a final conclusion. QuackGuru (talk) 14:26, 12 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Levivich[edit]I clicked, at random, on the third link, to Talk:Nicotine_pouch#Alarming_amount_of_Ownership_and_unreliable_source_about_Kenya
How is the "consensus required" sanction different from WP:BRD? Statement by Doc James[edit]And than we have the tagging issue on the other side. User:Beland requests that an "update" tag not be removed as the that section ONLY has sources from September 2019.[20] Was tagged in this edit.[21] Seriously if you have newer sources than add them. September is only a couple of months ago. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:20, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by MelanieN[edit]I’ll chime in here to share my own experience with QuackGuru. I was also driven away from an article by his relentless ownership. Last September I went to the Electronic cigarette article, intending to see that the coverage of the vaping-related lung illness was being reported accurately. I made six edits over a three-day period, most of which were immediately reverted by QuackGuru. His resistance to anything not contributed by him was total. One battle that I lost was his insistence on retaining a lot of outmoded information in the lede; see the second paragraph in the lede, which to this to this day consists mostly of outmoded studies from years ago indicating that vaping is pretty harmless, with a single sentence at the end of the paragraph mentioning the vaping-related illness outbreak in the U.S. last summer. Another example: he totally rejected my attempts to insert the warnings issued by the CDC and AMA, insisting that warnings couldn’t be in the lede, or had to go in a different article entirely, or were non-neutral, or were silly, or were WP:NEWS, or whatever other argument he could think of. In this talk page exchange you can see my fruitless attempts to bring the article up to date and put the relevant information in the lead. I summoned Doc James to the article’s talk page, but his recommendations were also rejected. I don’t really know what can be done about this situation, because the entire article, and its multiple spinoffs, are totally QC's creation, and the articles are written in his almost unreadable style, which consists of dozens or hundreds of single sentences, each summarizing a report and sourced to that report, with no context or summarizing allowed. Trying to rewrite the article to make it more readable would be an enormous job even if it wasn’t fought by him at every turn. Trying to do any editing at all is pretty much impossible. -- MelanieN (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Seraphimblade[edit]I had considered the course of action of an AE filing myself, based upon what I've seen of QuackGuru at Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak. I will first say that I believe QG has the best of intentions in keeping the encyclopedia free of pseudoscience and woo, and I have often myself seen QG do good work in those areas. However, in this area, QG has been a problem there as well. QuackGuru has the habit of, rather than participating in discussion, continuing to repeat himself with claims like "failed verification", even after being shown the specific portion of the reference which confirms the article text, as here. QuackGuru's conduct can have the effect of driving other good-faith contributors away entirely as well [28]. While I see that Thryduulf has proposed sanctions related to tags and reverts, those are not in my view the primary issues. Rather, the core issue is ownership of articles and I didn't hear that during discussions, as well as reverts with a simple statement of "failed verification" without any explanation of what QG believes failed verification and why, which make interaction with QuackGuru, especially in this area, a phenomenally frustrating experience. 1RR and a prohibition on tag removal will not solve those problems. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:23, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Andy Dingley[edit]My experiences echo those of MelanieN. I've had little to do with QuackGuru, and that was too much. Late last year there was a backlog drive at AfC, which I took part in. QuackGuru objected strongly to the pod mod article, blanked it as a "hoax" (a farcical claim) and then was persistently disruptive afterwards, with clear behaviours beyond OWN and IDHT. Several times they deleted a claim or section made by others, only to add it back again themselves later on. Their attitude to sourcing is peculiar, seemingly regarding anything that isn't a literal text copy as then not supporting the claimed content. Yet nowhere else on WP do we seem to have a problem in avoiding close paraphrasing like that. They also relied on that old favourite MEDRS for issues, such as the aesthetic design of commercial products which are outside the MEDRS scope. A long ANI thread was the result: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1021#QuackGuru and disruption over e-cigs and pod mods I've certainly avoided pod mod, QuackGuru, and their personal space of vaping articles ever since, even to the point of avoiding AfC (which still has a backlog) altogether. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by KristofferR[edit]I deliberately took a break from Wikipedia for a few days because I found dealing with QuackGuru so exhausting. I was relieved to go back and find this discussion, and the issues I consider QuackGuru to have introduced to the articles I participated in, to be fixed. I won't beat around the bush too much, as my experiences completely echo those of others here. Suffice to say to say I found him to inherit an alarming amount of ownership to the articles in question, and fight participation by abusing sourcing requirements by adding "failed verification", "unreliable source", or similar tags, to every sentence added, despite the sources being undeniably reliable (government sources for example) or not needed at all due to WP:BLUE, and subsequently add complaints about overcitation when too many sources are added as a last ditch resort to satisfy him. The nicotine pouch article was especially egregious, he threatened a revert of all my edits to the article, to an objectively inferior version (where health statements from an anti-tobacco lobby was listed under "Research" for example), due to his abuse of sourcing tags. Thankfully this discussion happened, Beland stepped in, and fixed the real issues with the article while also leaving in the relevant content I contributed. Thanks again Beland! KristofferR (talk) 05:19, 9 February 2020 (UTC) Answer to question from Johnuniq by Beland[edit]@Johnuniq: It's a bit unfair to judge remarks taken out of context, but if it helps here are some examples. Based on two news articles that each relate stories from several patients hospitalized with vaping injuries, in this edit I combined "Teenagers who were admitted to the hospital due to vaping-induced lung illnesses are sharing their stories and telling others to quit vaping." and "People who came close to death from a vaping-induced illness are also telling their stories." into "Some patients are sharing stories of hospitalizations and life-threatening symptoms." dropping "and telling others to quit vaping" because the source didn't explicitly say they were doing so, just that they had inspired people to do so (and this did not sound neutral). Quoting from Talk:Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#NPOV_issues:
Refusing to apply the meanings of words and pretending that proposed changes resultingly cause a sourcing violation is probably the most vexing pattern of obstruction; slavish copying can also (as in this case) act as a backdoor to import the POV of a source. Slavish sourcing also results in very choppy articles with no summarizing allowed. Though strong sourcing is awesome, QuackGuru seems to have an interpretation of sourcing requirements that does not align with the consensus policy:
Comments by Beland on remedy[edit]For the benefit of administrators trying to decide on a remedy, I can provide a little perspective from having to clean up some articles which have been heavily edited by QuackGuru. I'm afraid a topic ban would simply refocus the problematic behavior on a different topic, as apparently has happened before. A general 0RR would help solve problems like removing content from other editors for bogus reasons (whether immediately or shortly after tagging), mass reverts that throw away useful contributions, excessive arguing over minor wording tweaks like consolidating sentences, and preventing other editors from chipping away at well-referenced but excessive or off-topic details. There is a major problem with "crying wolf" and sometimes nonsensical and self-contradictory arguments trying to look legitimate just to prevent other editors from restoring their own edits (whether rightly or wrongly). Currently overcoming that requires finding a third editor; with a 0RR it would just require reverting. QuackGuru would still have the opportunity to argue for restoration, but if they continue to cry wolf editors will just ignore those arguments rather than being forced to dispute them. I think in the long term this will help QuackGuru prioritize arguments that other editors find convincing. Another possible remedy is simply a ban from editing article pages but not talk pages. Some of the articles I'm cleaning up have a lot of excessive detail and choppy writing that editors are complaining is unreadable, and that wouldn't happen in the first place if it has to be filtered through other editors. To avoid being ignored, QuackGuru would have to learn what type of material is considered quality writing, and would still be able to contribute references and point out problems. This article space ban might mean more work for other editors, at least at first, to find and copy helpful improvements, but it would eliminate the need to come back and un-revert one's own edits every time one edits an article on a topic of interest to QuackGuru. I hope some remedy can be applied. After cleaning up Nicotine pouch I realized despite extensive involvement QuackGuru hadn't removed obvious legitimately spammy content, but had used spamminess as an argument to remove good citations to commercial web sites (documenting claims about what products were for sale in Norway). What QuackGuru has done to ward off commercial entities attempting to spam Wikipedia seems to have been done inconsistently, and doing that actually seems easier for other editors to do compared to cleaning up the piles of bad writing by fighting talk page disputes one sentence at a time. -- Beland (talk) 06:38, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
Question from S Marshall[edit]Is this editor ever to be given a decisive and effective sanction? You lot keep coming up with novel remedies to avoid doing something that'll actually work. He's been on his very last chance ever since 2015. It's pathetic. Your endless patience with QG's behaviour equates to a callous disregard for his victims.—S Marshall T/C 10:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by WhatamIdoing[edit]I've been thinking about this. I don't think there are good solutions. Solutions imply that an editor has a genuine capacity to become a constructive member of the community. Desirable skills in this community include:
You really only need one of these skills. A good copyeditor is always welcome, even if the person does little more than eliminate comma splices or fix idioms. We need people who know that youth are young people , but who won't call the Odds an Odds ratio. We admire editors who can say that they hate tobacco (and I do) and still not blame smoking for climate change (but let me know if you find a good source, 'kay?). We don't expect bot ops to create FAs, and we encourage the anti-spam folks to keep the spammers at bay even if that means never adding content to articles. And while we overlook a lot on the "being nice" front, in the end, if you can't understand the other people in the community, you will end up wasting everyone else's time in needless disputes, and you will screw up articles because you won't correctly understand and interpret the community's policies and guidelines. QuackGuru has none of these skills. I'm thinking it's hopeless, and that what we need in the end is to say thanks for trying, but you aren't cut out to be a good editor, and you never will be. I just replied to one of the RFCs at Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak. It's basically two lists in paragraph form. Here's one bit of the content added by QuackGuru:
Fine, right? Every single sentence is grammatically correct, and every sentence is followed by an inline citation. That's what Wikipedia wants, right? No. That's not really what we want. None of this should have ever been in Wikipedia at all. I really want to dispell the idea that QuackGuru is doing a good job, so we're going to go through this one paragraph (which was not selected for being unusual) in detail:
WP:DUE WEIGHT requires judgment. Quack, as we have proved over (and over and over) just doesn't have enough skill in the "editorial judgment" category to figure out that it's not okay to make a laundry list of every single person with EVALI that you could find via Google News. "All the news that's fit to cite" is not what an encyclopedia is for. It is occasionally okay to give an example of a historically important individual case study. A few cases, such as Patient HM, are WP:Notable; others, such as the case described in the first-ever medical description of a condition or in a novel treatment, are worth mentioning briefly inside other articles. But it's not okay for an encyclopedia to drown in trivia just because it's in this week's news. In terms of remedies, I have little hope.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 13 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by TracyMcClark[edit]How comes that the now proposed remedy is several steps down from the last one when he was topic banned for 6 month? What happened to "Enforcement of restrictions: 0) Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year."?--TMCk (talk) 21:53, 15 February 2020 (UTC) And by the way: He'll easily gets "consensus" on talk with his few but staple enablers from wp:med and and a SPA popping up whenever he needs an edit reversing hand. That's how it's been for many many years. So no, that won't do shit, as usual. Looking forward for another half decade or more of pain and suffering caused by a single editor driving away editors way more valuable than he ever was or could ever be.--TMCk (talk) 23:24, 15 February 2020 (UTC) @:Johnuniq: El_C said: "I have no immediate objection, but I have not reviewed this request since writing the above, so I may not be up to date about everything here. (my bolding). You seem to ignore this and several other comments made by several editors. Statement by SandyGeorgia[edit]I am generally aligned with WhatamIdoing, but feel that, per TracyMcClark's remark about the "enablers", it is time for the unpopular but courageous decision WAID alludes to. My anti-fringe, pro-MEDRS stance aligns with QuackGuru's, but WP:MED has for too long tolerated and enabled misbehavior for the sake of anti-woo. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:16, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by JzG[edit]I am going to do a Bad Thing and just include my general commentary without diffs, because there are bundles of diffs above that support this. There are two problems here:
That's a recipe for drama, and, unsurprisingly, drama is the result. The problem is that every area QG edits, seems to have the same issue. From his insistence on adding {{failed verification}} to every statement that doesn't meet his personal interpretation of the source, to his endless stonewalling, to his utter, utter certainty on everything. It has been my view for a long time that it is a matter of when, not if, we show QG the door. I've tried a few times in the past to get some sort of sanction that would reduce the problem and keep him onside, since he's right in so many cases and tirelessly defends against pseudoscience, but that hasn't happened. And frankly that was probably naive anyway. So I agree with Whatamidoing, with great sadness. Guy (help!) 12:24, 19 February 2020 (UTC) Result concerning QuackGuru[edit]
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RolandR
[edit]| This request is not actionable. The filer, Chess, is warned that filing groundless or vexatious enforcement requests is itself grounds for sanction. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:02, 21 February 2020 (UTC) |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning RolandR[edit]
The user has already been warned that this image isn't constructive and has had discretionary sanctions relating to their use of inflammatory images on their userpage before which is why I'm going directly to WP:AE. I'm not sure whether or not the discretionary sanctions imposed by User:Sandstein were meant to apply to this specific image but were never enforced, or whether the discretionary sanctions were only meant to apply to crossed out flags of parties to the Israel-Palestine dispute (this being only a technical violation of that sanction as the crossing out isn't anti-Palestine), but regardless I believe it should be made clear that this image isn't appropriate or helpful to building an encyclopedia and is unnecessarily WP:POLEMIC. I've also notified the administrator who originally imposed the discretionary sanction ([36]). For what it's worth, I disagree with the image's combination with the caption and I believe the best remedy here is removing the image + caption. It contributes nothing to the project and has been brought up numerous times over the past years. The phrase "Let's say louder that we are fighting against those racist Jews who deny human rights to Palestinians, AS WELL AS racists who deny human rights to Jews" is equivocation of Jews with "racists who deny human rights to Jews", the racists being Nazis as evidenced by the image. In response to his second and third points, Sandstein has said "I am therefore formally prohibiting you, acting under the authority of WP:ARBPIA#Discretionary sanctions, from using this image or substantially similar ones (i.e., crossed-out flags of countries involved in the Israeli-Arab conflict) in your user space." I am not familiar with Wikilegalese and I'm not going to pretend that I am. However I fully believe that this image needs to be removed from this user page. Whether this is by enforcement of the existing discretionary sanctions or creating an entirely new one doesn't really matter to me; this is a useless, inflammatory, and divisive image/caption that shouldn't be placed front¢re on a user page. The ADL considers it anti-Semitic to make this type of comparison to Nazis so it's reasonable to assume many people editing would also consider this cartoon/caption combo to be anti-Semitic. Heck, I'd be fine with just removing the caption as that's the most inflammatory part at issue here. Regardless a cartoon/caption considered anti-Semitic by the ADL drawn by someone who won second place in the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest isn't appropriate here as it's an obvious WP:POLEMIC. Chess (talk) Ping when replying 15:43, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Discussion concerning RolandR[edit]Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by RolandR[edit]1 The cartoon explicitly does not equate Jews with Nazis. It is an image of a Nazi thug, who represents just that - a Nazi thug. The caption states that Palestinians do not need, and do not want, the support of Nazis and antisemites. It is not directed against Jews, Zionists or Israelis, but against a small number of vocal racists who are using pretended support for Palestinian rights as a cover for their visceral hatred of Jews. I am precluded by Wikipedia policies from naming these people, but anyone who is aware of my activity and writing on and off Wikipedia for a long time will know who I am referring to. To see this cartoon as an attack on Jews is to display a remarkable lack of analytical reading skills. 2 I have never been sanctioned, by Sandstein or anyone else, for my use of images. Another image on my user page was indeed removed by Sandstein many years ago, although it is still in use elsewhere on Wikipedia. The image now challenged was already on my userpage at the time, and was not affected by this. This was a standard admin act, and was not performed under any discretionary sanctions provision. Indeed, at the time there were no discretionary sanctions available. 3 The request does not specify which sanction I have breached. Indeed, it cannot do so as I have not breached any. Regardless of any arguments about the nature of this cartoon, it has never been the subject of any statement or ruling under any discretionary sanction. Nor, to the best of my recollection, have I. This request is out of the scope of this page, as it does not relate to any Arb Com remedy or instruction, and it does not relate to any discretionary sanction imposed by an admin under an arbitration decision. The request should therefore be struck out as invalid. RolandR (talk) 09:45, 18 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Huldra[edit]  Whaw. Just whaw. Chess are bringing out diffs from the digital stone-age..10-13 years ago.
Statement by ZScarpia[edit]Further to the points made by Huldra above: the ADL has been presented above in a way implying that it should be regarded as a neutral, disinterested party; consider the tag at the top of the webpage, "Israel advocacy and education." ← ZScarpia 13:04, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by (username)[edit]Result concerning RolandR[edit]
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Mbsyl
[edit]| Mbysl blocked one month for repeated topic ban violations. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:55, 24 February 2020 (UTC) |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning Mbsyl[edit]
The attacker was recently found guilty on all counts. The victims were never, as far as I know, credibly accused of any crime related to this attack.
Notifed at 01:00, 24 February 2020
Discussion concerning Mbsyl[edit]Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by Mbsyl[edit]Statement by (username)[edit]Result concerning Mbsyl[edit]
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- I've removed more topic ban violations on Mbsyl's talkpage subsequent to the block, along with attacks on Grayfell. If these recur, talkpage access should be revoked. Acroterion (talk) 12:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Zarcademan123456
[edit]| No action taken. EdJohnston (talk) 21:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC) |
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Request concerning Zarcademan123456[edit]
Discussion concerning Zarcademan123456[edit]Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by Zarcademan123456[edit]first of all, if this is the wrong place to post this i apologize. while i continue to disagree with the term "confiscate" Nableezy is absolutely correct...the occupation (I prefer disputed territories, but one must pick one's battles, lol) began during the war, not afterZarcademan123456 (talk) 23:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Nableezy[edit]Besides these edits, the user has introduced factual errors in a huge number of article. For example, this is just false. The occupation began during the war not after, and the reason for the change is to not include that the territory remains occupied. The user has been doing this to every article about a village or settlement in the West Bank, and cleaning up after his or her edits is becoming less of a joy, especially as he or she persists without offering even the semblance of discussion. nableezy - 23:42, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Number 57[edit]
Statement by Levivich[edit]ARIJ might use the word confiscate, but they’re not the only source, and confiscate is definitely not the word used by the consensus of sources. I would provide links and examples to back that up, but this is so obviously a content dispute and thus not appropriate for determination at AE. Levivich (Talk) 01:14, 23 February 2020 (UTC) Also worth noting that Huldra is the editor who added “confiscate” to all these articles in the first place, and if you look at the articles’ histories, you can see various attempts to change it, combined with the usual edit warring we see in almost all PIA articles. And, as always, it’s very difficult to say definitely that one side in the edit war is right or wrong (not unlike the actual war). I don’t envy admin asked to regulate in these situations. How do we get PIA editors (on all sides) to edit collaboratively instead of this constant battleground? Levivich (Talk) 04:18, 23 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Zero0000[edit]It is obvious that AE is not the right place to decide whether "confiscate" or "expropriate" is the best word in this circumstance. However, it is highly relevant to AE that Zarcademan123456 gave an explicitly political reason for going against the source on many occasions [38] [39] [40] [41]. This is disruptive editing. Zarcademan123456 must learn to seek consensus before undertaking changes to multiple articles that are likely to be disputed. Zerotalk 02:13, 23 February 2020 (UTC) Levevich wrote "Also worth noting that Huldra is the editor who added “confiscate” to all these articles in the first place". Wow, Huldra used the same word that the source uses! Multiple times even! I'm shocked to the core. Zerotalk 08:49, 23 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by ZScarpia[edit]By the look of it, the case turns upon the following behavioural issues: Statement by selfstudier[edit]I have noticed that this editor has a habit of making edits based on his own personal opinion rather than on sources; I mentioned that to him a couple times recently on his talk page. I have been nevertheless assuming good faith on his part up to now.Selfstudier (talk) 11:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by (other user)[edit]Result concerning Zarcademan123456[edit]
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Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Oldstone James
[edit]Oldstone James unblocked and topic-banned from editing or commenting on anything related to the subjects of 'race & intelligence' and 'pseudoscience', broadly construed, for a period of 12 months --RexxS (talk) 21:26, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
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Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved administrators" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action. To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).
Statement by Oldstone James[edit]
Statement by Guerillero[edit]There was a discussion open for 3 days where the only suggestion was an indef block. Several people in the discussion above brought up bludgeoning on the talk page in addition to the edit warring. There was a general sense that Oldstone James was pushing a POV within the topic area of R&I. I see more introspection in this appeal than the previous draft on their talk page, and that is a positive sign. I would suggest that any unblock come with a topic ban from R&I. --In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 15:57, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Guy Macon[edit]I have had previous disputes with Oldstone James, and am quite familiar with the circumstances that led up to the block. In my considered opinion all sanctions should be lifted. I think that we are going to look back a year from now and be glad that we did. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:00, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Grayfell[edit]
Statement by ජපස[edit]I think there are a few things we need to take into consideration.
So what do we do here? I think we need to encourage OJ to work in a more collaborative fashion outside of the places he is attracted to. Wikicommons, wikisource, even en.simple would, perhaps, be possibilities for him to work within a community and establish some experience to retrain his approach to work better here at en.wp. jps (talk) 16:13, 21 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by PaleoNeonate[edit]There seems to be an offer by Guy Macon to mentor and a good reception by Oldstone James of the initiative. If Guy makes it a little more official and James engages to retract from a situation when Guy recommends it (versus debating with endless justifications including with Guy), I think that an unblock could be promising. That said, another topic ban may also be difficult to avoid, but that is a reasonable alternative to not being able to edit at all for a year... —PaleoNeonate – 07:21, 22 February 2020 (UTC) Adding: I wasn't sure where to comment, I don't consider myself directly involved but am also active in the topic area and have edited on Race and Intelligence and its talk page recently. —PaleoNeonate – 07:26, 22 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by JzG[edit]My starting point is always the edit counter: [46]. 3789 edits as of right now, an average of less than two per day. I'm not convinced that is enough to earn a pass for the quantity of disruption and argumentation, and Guerillero's block is clearly defensible and proportionate. A large chunk of OJ's edits are to Answers in Genesis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and consist of often WP:MANDY-level apologia for creationist pseudoscience, leading to a topic ban. And a lot of the rest appear to promote racist pseudoscience. But let's be charitable. A dual topic ban from creationism and race / intelligence would be OK by me, and see if he can work productively with others outside his hot-button areas. On the other hand, I don't think he's a loss to the project if that doesn't happen. He needs to learn, and quickly, why his edits have been considered problematic. Mandruss is right to note the illusory competence issue here. Guy (help!) 17:03, 22 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Dlthewave[edit]I still have concerns about OJ's characterization of the situation.
Oldstone seems to be working towards a better understanding of BRD but I don't think this is sufficient to continue editing at R&I. This editor needs a topic ban at the very least. –dlthewave ☎ 17:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by (involved editor 5)[edit]Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Oldstone James[edit]I was involved in none of the article activity that led to the indef, so take my comments with a small grain of salt. What I see is a guy who perhaps has failed to grasp the extent of what he has yet to learn about Wikipedia editing, and so has overestimated his competence level. This, in turn, resulted in an overly-aggressive approach to the editing process. This is a fairly common failing, and he is only 20 years old if his UP is to be believed. We have to be prepared to show some tolerance for this in 20-year-olds or institute a 30-year age minimum (which would reduce the problem but not eliminate it). This points to the serious flaw in the current culture, which tolerates a large degree of aggressiveness, even abusiveness, when one is in the right, while we always believe we're in the right. OJ was very cooperative when I approached him about his signature, and this was in stark contrast to the hostile, entitled, and self-occupied reactions I have received from many editors. Taking his comments here at face value, he gives every indication that he gets it and is willing to learn. His appeal lacks the defensiveness, persecution complex, and accusations of corruption that are so common in appeals (those are core-personality indicators that tell me an editor is probably beyond help). If we dismiss that because of the context, I don't know how an appeal could ever be successful, and we might as well get rid of that due process as a waste of time. He does have some history of behavior issues, but that's true in all cases of appealed indefs. I generally feel we are too tolerant of chronic disrupters, but this may be a case where we have erred in the opposite direction. Maybe I'm too late, but a temporary topic ban would've seemed more appropriate to me. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:19, 21 February 2020 (UTC) Call for close[edit]Pretty much everyone has said what they wanted to say, and we shouldn't leave OJ hanging. Could someone uninvolved please evaluate the consensus make a decision, and close this? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:31, 29 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Mr Ernie[edit]I reviewed the circumstances leading up the block, as well as what took place shortly after, and find the block to be absurdly strict. Additionally, Guerillero has made no attempt to provide any sort of meaningful feedback about the block when requested. I would overturn the block. Mr Ernie (talk) 08:01, 21 February 2020 (UTC) Result of the appeal by Oldstone James[edit]
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PainMan
[edit]| PainMan is indefinitely topic-banned from making edits relating to The Troubles, broadly construed. --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:19, 1 March 2020 (UTC) |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning PainMan[edit]
Alerted here at 10:27, 23 February 2020
The editor was also pinged at 10:33, 23 February 2020 of the discussion I started at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles#Use of Taoiseach. They ignored this and proceeded to make the edit in diff#10 to Ulster Special Constabulary. It stands to reason if a particular change has been reverted on multiple Troubles related articles already that you don't just carry on making the same edit on more articles, especially when you've been directed to the discussion. I further notified them at 08:23, 24 February 2020 on their talk page, they ignored this and carried on making the constantly reverted changes at another article. They did eventually reply on their talk page at 11:33, 25 February 2020, described as patronizing, belligerent by @Elizium23:. The editors claims that nobody outside Ireland uses the terms Taoiseach or Dáil Éireann is totally false as has been demonstrated in the discussion, they are commonly used in English language media outlets across the words. There's a reason Dáil Éireann is actually at that location while many other European (and presumably others worldwide, I haven't checked everywhere) parliaments are located at "Parliament of x", because it's the commonly used name in English, with the same applying to Taoiseach. Regarding the fifth diff, this was subsequently corrected here by myself with two of many available references confirming that the UDA's English translation of their motto was "Law before violence". When there are multiple possible translations of a Latin phrase, it stands to reason you have to choose the one that references say is correct, there are zero references that say the UDA's motto was ever "let military power give way to civil power".
Notified at 11:53, 25 February 2020
Discussion concerning PainMan[edit]Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by PainMan[edit]Statement by (username)[edit]Result concerning PainMan[edit]
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Peregrine Fisher
[edit]| Peregrine Fisher is indefinitely topic-banned from making any edits related to Race and intelligence, broadly construed. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:57, 2 March 2020 (UTC) |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning Peregrine Fisher[edit]
These diffs demonstrate a pattern of disruptive editing at Race and intelligence that mimics WP:BRD, but no valid arguments for reversion are ever given: 8 February:
14 February:
23 February:
26 February:
Series of ANI posts attempting to canvass support and making vague accusations: 8 February: [56] 11 February: [57] 13 February: [58] Accusing admins of bias at DRV: 13 February: [59] (Barkeep49) 14 February: [60] (Jo-Jo Emerus)
Peregrine Fisher's editing pattern at Race and intelligence appears to be a type of "civil POV pushing" designed to keep hereditarian content in the article. Although their edits superficially resemble the BRD process, a valid reason for removal is never given and the discussion usually consists of "I like/don't like it" or "I removed this, what do other people think?" In a recent talk page discussion mentioned above ("I reverted" permalink), Peregrine Fisher asks Other concerning patterns of conduct include repeated canvassing at ANI and accusing admins of having biases that would preclude them from closing a DRV discussion. Multiple attempts have been made to address this behavior: [61] [62] [63] [64] -Dlthewave 26 February 2020
Discussion concerning Peregrine Fisher[edit]Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by Peregrine Fisher[edit]I think what Doug Weller said about how Mankind Quarterly shouldn't be used despite our policies is informative. People do not agree with how our policies treat this subject. Jo Jo was in the middle of writing an elaborate SUPERVOTE, when Spartaz wrote a short SUPERVOTE and closed it. That's some good evidence that this article is not being looked at through the lens of policy, but something else. Looks like I'm about to get topic banned even though I've only defended our policies, against people who ignore our policies. And AE voters seem to think that's the legit way to go. I don't see the AE voters listing a lot of policies that I've broken either. I bet if I had broken a bunch of policies, it wouldn't take 10 of you hemming and hawing before you ban me. The first AE voter would have said "they've been breaking policy X, so permanent topic ban. Done." Whatever. I'm frustrated. Finally, I think people will read this and say "he likes Mankind Quarteryly". This is not true. Don't know barely anything about. It's peer reviewed, and people don't think it's reliable? I guess. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 21:10, 2 March 2020 (UTC) @Black Kite: not sure how I'm being pointy. It's not a fork, so I think that rules out POVFORK entirely. Maybe I'm missing something. @Liz: I don't think the article is evil, or that an article can be evil. But I feel that editors on the other side think it shouldn't be covered on wiki becuase it's an inherently bad (is that a better word?) subject to cover. That basically it shouldn't be covered regardless of our policies. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 19:17, 2 March 2020 (UTC) I want to reiterate that when JzG said I've been adding racist SYN, that's not true. Because I haven't added anything to the article. Just reverted giant against consensus deletions. I'm not that good of an advocate for myself, but if I were, I might say something like this on my talk page. 20:53, 29 February 2020 (UTC) Looks like I may get banned either way, but if you guys do something to protect this article, I'll ban myself. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:25, 29 February 2020 (UTC) This was written later than what I wrote below.
There's a group of editors who are trying to delete all the well referenced information in the article that's on one side of the argument. They delete 2000kb here, 5000kb there. Kind of an ISCENSORED. You can probably imagine on an article on this topic. I sometimes revert those giant removals. We talk about it on the talk page. They do not have policy and guideline based reasons for these deletions. They do have about 50 percent of the people on the talk page though. And they are dedicated. This is all info from peer reviewed journals. I don't feel like doing a bunch of diffs, but you can read all this on the talk page and the last couple archives. Also, it's been taken to the RS noticeboard and impartial editors have deemed this stuff reliable. There's a contentious DrV on the subject now. If they don' delete, they may give us some guidance on whether info from highly regarded peer reviewed journals and university presses should be treated differently on this article than the rest of the wiki. We'll see. Anyways, editors keep coming along and taking a chainsaw to the article. I revert them when I can. We go to the talk page. There's certainly no consensus to remove the info. Frequently there's consensus to keep it. They delete a huge chunk of the article again...Rinse, repeat. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 19:20, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't really want to be talking back to each person. But Guy said I've been adding racist stuff to the article. I haven't added anything. Unless you count reverts to non consensus giant blankings. Again this is a well refed article that's sat well refed, NPOV, everything good for 5-10 years without a problem. All of a sudden people think peer reviewed journals and books written by scientists are fringe. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:26, 28 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Pudeo[edit]Apparently the filer, Dlthewave does not understand what WP:PRIMARY sources are (based on the edit summaries of the 9 February and 24 February reverts). The source that is claimed to be a primary source is:
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law is reputable peer-reviewed journal published by the American Psychological Association. A scientific review article released in such a journal, even if authored by controversial authors, isn't a primary source. This was explained on the talk page, yet the content was removed anyway. And in fact, among the passages removed in the February 24 reversion was an article by the environmentalist James R. Flynn released in Nature. Peregrine Fisher reverted and opened a thread on the talkpage. That isn't disruptive. Your WP:PRIMARY argument was false, so what kind of a
Statement by IP editor[edit]Dlthewave's pattern of editing on this article has been to repeatedly remove large chunks of content with no prior discussion, and to demand a consensus for its inclusion before it can be restored. This has included blanking three entire sections, that had been in the article for something like a decade ("Spearman's hypothesis", "Global variation in IQ scores", and "Policy relevance and ethics"). Because of the rapid-fire nature of these removals, it has been nearly impossible to have a coherent discussion about any of them. When we begin discussing any one of his removals, before the discussion can progress very far he removes something else. Here are diffs of some of his large removals:
I'd like to call attention to Dlthewave's blanking of the "Policy relevance and ethics" section in particular, in the diff on February 25. Dlthewave's edit summary for this removal falsely asserted that I had suggested on the talk page this section should be removed. It's well known that the ethics of research in this area has been a major topic of the race and intelligence debate. It was, for example, the subject of an exchange between Ceci & Williams and Steven Rose in the journal Nature, and the article's section about ethics included citations to both these papers. How could any reasonable person think that it was appropriate to remove this entire section of the article? Peregrine Fisher has not been the only editor objecting to these removals. Most significantly, they were undone in this edit by user:Snowded, an uninvolved admin who has had no other participation in the article or its talk page. (Snowded's edit undid removals by both Dlthewave and one other editor who's been making similar removals.) However, aside from Peregrine Fisher, none of the editors opposing these removals have been as active and determined as Dlthewave has been. The person whose behavior is the main problem here is Dlthewave, not Peregrine Fisher. Dlthewave has already voted Delete in the AFD for this article, so as per Snowded's edit summary, he should await the outcome of the AFD instead of trying to delete the article one section at a time. Dlthewave was notified of the Discretionary sanctions here: [77]. 2600:1004:B107:64A3:ED2C:F2BD:D1B5:7B42 (talk) 00:19, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Admins, please note that Dlthewave's section blanking has continued while this report is open. He is being evasive about his reason for the removals, such as arguing that nobody has provided a source showing the section is relevant to the article's topic, after I had provided five such sources in this discussion. 2600:1004:B12D:741A:C15B:1789:8738:CD03 (talk) 14:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC) Statement by Jweiss11[edit]There's been a long history of contentious editing at the "Race and intelligence" article because of fundamentally conflicting viewpoints on the subject. And I wouldn't expect the conflict around this article to cease anytime soon, provided it survives deletion. Dlthewave's efforts to either delete the article outright or gut it of well-sourced substantive content so that it has no reason to stand alone have been stalemated more or less by Peregrine Fisher and others, so he's turned here to eliminate a key opponent, so that his view can prevail. That's what this report is about. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:14, 27 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Grayfell[edit]Race and intelligence is a broken article which fails to summarize even its own sources. The AFD shows that the community wants it to change dramatically. Every single edit spawns interminable discussion, and the end result is that nothing can change. It's impossible not to see Peregrine Fisher's overall behavior as tactical. Peregrine Fisher uses superficially neutral language to request other people's attention, or he asks leading questions when the answer is obvious. As a few of examples, we have [78], [79], [80], and plenty more available. Judging by his user page, he seems to take pride in being antagonistic and lacking self-reflection. Grayfell (talk) 03:18, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by JzG[edit]To my reading, Peregrine Fisher is adding material that is basically WP:SYN, in support of a fringe (and racist) idea. A topic ban would be a good idea. A better idea would be to nuke the entire article from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Guy (help!) 21:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Ferahgo the Assassin[edit]@In actu: If the goal is to improve the stability of the article, then topic banning Peregrine Fisher but not Dlthewave won’t accomplish that. Instead of topic bans, I would suggest a new restriction to be applied to the article: that significant changes should not be made to a stable version of the article without first achieving consensus on the talk. The Donald Trump article is currently under a similar restriction that appears to have been helpful.
I suggest that something along the same lines should be applied to the R&I article. - Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:16, 28 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Mr rnddude[edit]This is evidently a tactical attempt to remove opposition from the topic area. This is not the first time that Dlthewave has attempted this either, they have done the same thing to editors who hold an opposing viewpoint on "gun rights". Specifically, the incident that comes to mind is this which led to a sort of boomerang sanctioning of Dlthewave resulting in a userpage being deleted for polemics, as well as a warning to all parties involved. For this specific incident, the article history shows three editors removing material (Dlthewave, Grey fell, and Horse Eye Jack) and another three editors reinstating those removals (Peregrine Fisher, Pudeo and AndrewNguyen). This is a multi-party editwar. I think Ferahgo's solution may be useful in that it addresses the underlying conduct issue which is edit-warring, and not opinion-having. In actu - It's unclear to me what PF's !vote on a RfB has to do with their editing in this topic area (and yes, I am aware that PF is referring to the AfD for the article "Race and Intelligence"). There are several others opposing the RfB for the same reason, including one specifically citing PF's rationale as a reason to oppose. Mr rnddude (talk) 12:32, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Statement by SMcCandlish[edit]I've taken a long break from that article and entire topic area, after watchdogging it for a while for trolls and vandalism and PoV pushing and such. Though a techie and civil liberties activist by profession for most of my working life (kind of by accident, really), I'm a cultural anthropologist by most of my educational background, and am in particular a critic of IQ tests and similar artifices as culturally biased. I'm more than well aware that "our" (especially everyday Americans' and to a slightly lesser extent Europeans') ideas of "race" are a social construct that don't align with genetic reality; I wrote WP:Race and ethnicity. So, I'm obviously not going to come at this from a "Let's suggest, or by shitty writing allow the reader to infer, that race X is more intelligent than racy Y" angle. Yet I have to generally agree with Jweiss11 and Mr_rnddude. There's obviously an attempt here to gut any attempts to have WP cover the topic at all, and this AE is part of a strategy of opposition-elimination. This is an "unclean hands" AE report. If anything, I would reverse the T-ban suggestion, or at bare minimum have it cover both parties, if we were really going to T-ban land. I can agree with the generalized concern (not methods) of Dlthewave that we have a bit of a "he said, she said" article structure problem that is leading to a WP:WEIGHT issue, but that is WP:SURMOUNTABLE. The ongoing "censor this article at all costs" multi-pronged approach to trying to delete nearly all of it without consensus from within, while trying to delete the page itself (with an obvious WP:SUPERVOTE, no less – and never mind that we have another article, at History of the race and intelligence controversy that covers the same stuff (with a viewpoint divergence and some missing information but some additional information, and presumably would be the next target) is just not how we do things. WP has an actual responsibility to cover this topic, and to do it well. That the article is not yet doing it as well as we'd like does not mean "Hide the topic! Hide it now!" I means do it better. If that means banning people who insert racist bullshit, so be it. If that means banning people who cite predatory journals and far-right "news" and century-old pseudo-science as so-called sources, so be it. If that means banning people who intentionally skew things in an undue manner using reasonable sources manipulatively, so be it. But it does not mean banning people who revert mass-deletion of properly sourced content when all that is actually needed is some DUE massaging to put the material into perspective. Even getting to where the article is now has been a long and nearly constant consensus struggle, and we're not done yet by a long shot. Honestly, I would prefer it if neither of these editors were T-banned, but just put on notice to dial it down and to stop revert-warring. I think the behavioral issues on both sides are remediable. Do not make massive changes to the article without consensus. But do not stonewall incremental improvements. If you want to add something, the onus is on you to source it properly and without OR (and to drop the stick if you can't do the real work). If you want to remove something, the onus is on you to demonstrate that the sourcing is inadequate or being misused (and to try to fix that before just nuking it, especially if it's just a DUE matter that has to do with wording, focus, attribution, position in the article, relation to other sources, etc.) Most of all – this is really obvious, folks – focus on fixing the overall UNDUE problem of giving equal "A says X, B says Y" time, and also on merging the content fork (possibly even PoV fork) at the "History of..." article. We absolutely do not need that as a separate page, and having it be one just doubles the difficulty of policing this topic area for PoV warring. PS: No, a literature review, especially a systematic review, in a reputable journal is not a primary source. If someone doesn't already understand that, they are not yet competent to be editing in a controversial science topic. PPS: Ferhago's idea could be workable, if it really comes to that. Maybe it has. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:40, 29 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by K.e.coffman[edit]The issue at hand is not a particular content dispute, but a pattern of tendentious editing by Peregrine Fisher (PF for short). This includes treating Wikipedia as a battleground and an us vs them mentality. Here's a response to me, for example: "Coffman spoke the truth for you guys. There are no policy reasons to remove a secondary source, but you don't like the authors."[81]. (This statement also shows apparent confusion about the WP:UNDUE policy). Here are more examples from PF's Talk page: "To put it bluntly, we probably need some edit warring to take to AE." [82], and "that's basically saying 'fine, we'll let the 4 win, then see if they will discuss things reasonably'. They wont."[83]. It's worth noting that these two diffs are taken from a discussion with the dynamic IP who is commenting above; in one such post, the IP offers his assistance to PF and notes that he's helped another editor to file an AE report pertaining to Grayfell: [84]. --K.e.coffman (talk) 23:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC) Statement by Paul Siebert[edit]I am not an expert in this topic, so I've just analyze a couple of randomly picked arguments. First, I analyzed the edits made on 23th of February. This revert restored the text removed under an od pretext ( rm off topic section, see talk page discussion): how can the section "Global variation of IQ scores" be irrelevant to the "Race and Intelligence" topic? The removed section is focused mostly on a comparison of IQ in sub-Sacharian Africa and Western countries, so it hard to see why it is "off-topic". Furthermore, the section was properly sourced, and the sources are of a very good quality. A couple "citation needed" tags are actually not needed, because the tagged sentences provide a brief summary of the subsequent text, which is properly sourced. Therefore, irrespective to the arguments presented on the article's talk page, restoration of the removed text was per se not a violation of our policy. Second, I agree with Pudeo that dlthewave's vision of what primary sources are contradicts to our policy and guidelines. Our policy clearly says that peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources. The sources that provide author's own thinking based on primary sources are secondary sources. An exceptions are editorial and op-ed materials published in newspapers or magazines. They Third. I frequently see that many edit wars are the result of usage of poor sources by one party, or by an opposition to inclusion of good sources by another party. In connection to that, I am puzzled by the fact that admins are too reluctantly applying sourcing restrictions similar to the ones proposed by Barkeep49. In my opinion, that is the first thing that should be done when a conflict starts in a serious topic where many good quality reliable sources are available, and "Race and Intelligence" belongs to that category. Indeed, if we prohibit usage of non-peer-reviewed journals, obscure newspapers, or popular magazines, the "Race and Intelligence" article will only benefit from that. In my opinion, that step alone will be sufficient to stop the conflict.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:41, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Guettarda[edit]
I feel like a simple solution would be to impose a MEDRS-type standard for sourcing in this article. Purely historical information could be sourced by older material, but scientific content should be based on recent sources, preferably systematic reviews. That would eliminate a lot of the back-and-forth and the desire of editors to add their own interpretations to sources that are now decades old. While it's impractical to require a total re-write of what's there, we could impose a requirement on new additions. Guettarda (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC) Statement by My very best wishes[edit]I do not think WP:MEDRS applies automatically to the page because the subject does not belong to medicine. However, making MEDRS-type sourcing restrictions, specifically for this page, is entirely within the discretion by the admins. Personally, I think it would be a bad idea, precisely because human races have been considered a "social construct" in many sources and the discourse here resulted in letters by scientists sent to NYT, discussions in popular science and journalistic sources, etc., all of which should be included if we want to have a complete coverage and comply with WP:NPOV. As about user Peregrine Fisher, some of their comments are clearly not good, however I do not think they rise to the level of a topic ban. My very best wishes (talk) 02:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
Statement by Springee[edit]I am not involved with this topic and I don't recall interacting with PF but I have interacted with other editors here. This looks like a case where both sides are being problematic. I read this as PF is getting frustrated with editors who are trying to change long standing material without following BRD. Take this section blanking by Dlthewave earlier today [[85]]. Look at the history of the interaction. Dlthewave blanks the section here (26 Feb) [[86]]. PF restores (next edit) and starts a discussion [[87]]. Horse Eye Jack immediately reverts the restore. I'm not sure how anyone can reasonably claim that talk page consensus was established for that restoration. Several days later Jweiss11 restores the content to the previous stable state (2 March) [[88]]. This looks like a reasonable NOCON restoration. The discussion certainly has not resulted in a new consensus. Dlthewave places several tags in the newly restored section the decides to redeletes the whole thing [[89]] a few hours later. As part of this they also left a questionable warning on Jweiss11's talk page [[90]]. I absolutely see how an editor would be frustrated with interactions like this. Dlthewave's preferred version of the article may be correct but that doesn't mean they can ignore BRD and NOCON to in the face of opposition. Dlthewave may legitimately feel that PF's comments are problematic and may not mean this report to be a way to strategically remove someone who is opposing their desired changes. Regardless the optics are there and the effect would be the same. Dlthewave's second removal of long standing material in absence of consensus makes all editor interactions here worse, not better. What's the solution? I'm not sure but it isn't to punish PF for their bad behavior and ignore the bad behavior of others. I'm not sure that PF's comments should warrant anything more than a warning to avoid personalizing, don't ascribe motives to others etc. Basically focus on content. They should not face a topic ban. Dlthewave, and others, needs to remember that CONSENSUS is policy. If they can't get consensus to make a change then they need to accept it and move on. Based on what I'm seeing as an outsider to this article, I think a consensus required structure for changes is needed here. I wouldn't want to see topic bans start first since I think both sides have legitimate complaints in the form of content policies (DUE, RS etc), how editors are making changes (following or ignoring BRD, NOCON) and to a lesser extent CIVIL/editor interaction issues that seem to have resulted from people ignoring BRD, NOCON etc. Springee (talk) 14:34, 2 March 2020 (UTC) Statement by DoubleCross[edit]I'm not involved with this article/topic, but I agree with Jweiss11, Mr rnddude etc. that this AE was filed in an attempt to take out the opposition. Also Liz, I believe Peregrine Fisher is saying that it's the "other side" that believes the article is "evil" (due to the controversial material in question). - DoubleCross (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2020 (UTC) Result concerning Peregrine Fisher[edit]
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