Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.

As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&oldid=5584644] [1].

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Evidence presented by User:Tony Sidaway[edit]

This section is now ready for use.

The story of how interactions between Maoririder and the community deteriorated is a detailed one. I'll focus very closely on the first couple of days, and also on the circumstances surrounding the first two blocks.

I think that after August 3rd the rot had set in. Maoririder had been blocked twice at that point. There was a general perception that he was a disruptive editor.

I am providing edit-by-edit detail for the relevant periods so that it can be clearly seen that his edits were not disruptive at all, and that he was responsive and learned as he went along, often very quickly indeed. The articles he was creating around the time of the second block, while still stubs, were much more sophisticated than the earlier ones, and adopted our house style. It simply isn't true that Maoririder didn't take good advice and didn't make an effort to improve. The effort is visible by the excellent results.

He is also very polite, even when he is being browbeaten. Only after an RfC and an Arbitration nomination did he show anger, lashing out in an unacceptable manner (this is in the evidence provided by other editors).

First tranche: Maoririder's first day

My main observations here are that:

User talk page events

Edits of articles

Deleted stubs

Second tranche: Maoririder's second day

User talk page events

Edits of articles

Deleted stubs

Third tranche: Blocks applied to Maoririder

This tranche contains a list of all blocks applied to Maoririder's account, and to all suspected Maoririder sock puppets/second and third accounts.

There is a detailed analysis of the first two blocks. As well as analyzing the circumstances of the blocks, this section also can be used as a reference to show how Maoririder's editing style had matured greatly over the course of the week he had spent on Wikipedia. He had by this time more or less fully mastered our house style, and his stubs tended to contain more useful information. The "it is a type of dog"-style stubs are now rare.

Main account blocks

  1. 19:26, 2 August 2005 Ike9898 (talk · contribs) blocked "User:Maoririder" with an expiry time of 8 hours (Very large volume of very low quality contributions - many benevolent users have tried to help Mao learn Wikipedia conventions with little apparent effect; user welcome back after a short break; hopefully he will become a valuable contributor in near futu)
  2. 19:25, 3 August 2005 Ike9898 blocked "User:Maoririder" with an expiry time of 16 hours (2nd short block of a disruptive user; twice as long as last time; hopefully during this break he will re-read some of the helpful advice that has been posted on his user:talk page)
  3. 06:18, 21 August 2005 Lucky 6.9 (talk · contribs) blocked "User:Maoririder" with an expiry time of 48 hours (Strongly suspected of creating sockpuppet named "Inquisitor911.")
  4. 19:04, 21 August 2005 Lucky 6.9 unblocked User:Maoririder (Unblocked possible sockpuppet; figured it's only fair to unblock this one too)
  5. 20:06, 7 October 2005 Lucky 6.9 blocked "User:Maoririder" with an expiry time of 2 months (Vicious personal attack, incredibly disruptive sockpuppets, continued poor behavior even during the course of ArbCom proceedings.)
  6. 20:08, 7 October 2005 Lucky 6.9 unblocked User:Maoririder (Increasing block to three months)
  7. 20:09, 7 October 2005 Lucky 6.9 blocked "User:Maoririder" with an expiry time of 3 months (Continued rants, personal attacks.)
  8. 20:47, 7 October 2005 Lucky 6.9 unblocked User:Maoririder (An ArbCom hearing is currently underway for this user.)
The first block: 2 Aug, 2005
The second block: 3 Aug, 2005

Suspected sock puppet account blocks

Fourth tranche: Validity of stubs

I want to address this issue head-on. Is Maorider producing work deleterious to Wikipedia? Is his output disruptive?

Wikipedia:Stub says a stub "is an article which is clearly too short, but not so short as to be useless. In general, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title."

I have my reservations about the sentence that follows: "This generally means 3 to 10 short sentences." This is patently false. A stub that said "Ford Cortina was the English name for a car produced by Ford from about 1962-1982" isn't anywhere near three sentences but is still reasonably useful. It would be nice to add that its German equivalent was the Taunus, it was a mid-range saloon with an estate car variant, and sold in absolutely stupid quantities. But defining the subject is the hard part.

So here are the latest stubs created 13 October, 2005 by Bluejays2006 (talk · contribs)

The above are the initial drafts. In some cases, the author went back and fixed errors, in other cases some other editor did so.

At least two of them, two of the school articles, I can say are quite high quality compared to many school stubs that get listed for deletion. These articles are routinely expanded and, these days, seldom get deleted.

The Castle of Mesen article contains some unencyclopedic detail (Maoririder apparently saw the website on the net that shows an unfortunate pigeon that had been tortured and killed by humans). Nevertheless the stub does identity the location of the castle (Lede, Belgium).

Mail Order Wife actually came out in March and, showing in only five theaters, took about $60,000. But it's on imdb and boxofficemojo and even on rottentomatoes.com (where it just squeaked a "fresh" 61% on the tomatometer, an aggregation of all reviews).

The ghost town articles are intriguing. I was curious to see if I could expand Bradburn. It was easy enough to find a reference and expand it adequately. Possibly these stubs would be better off in a table in a larger article, as often there's nothing much known about their history.

But I don't think any of the above could be described as disruptive or damaging in any way. Welcome additions, only hope he'll get back to fixing the style problems.

Response to Comment Above[edit]

Can be found here. Karmafist 21:48, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by User:Scimitar[edit]

I would like to note that evidence here presented is only about articles that have survived in some form, and doesn't include the many that were deleted.

October 13

And from suspected sockpuppet Bluejays2006:

October 7

Possibly because of this:

Also, from possible sockpuppet Sandove89:

October 6

More micro-stubs from sockpuppet Sandove89

October 5

August 19

August 16

August 9

Evidence presented by User:Satori[edit]

15 Nov

19 Aug

16 Aug

Riverofdreams (possible sockpuppet)

  1. Evidence that Riverofdreams is Maoririder:
    • [70] - creates stub article with similar style to some of Maoririder's.
    • [71] - edits article created by Maoririder.
    • [72] - Maoririder actively editing from 16:18-16:38 (UTC) on 19 Aug.
    • [73] - 3 minutes later, at 16:41 UTC, Riverofdreams takes over.
  2. Unusual edits to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous by Riverofdreams:
    • [74] - adds a new topic, with just an ((expand)) tag.
    • [75] - asks for the "sickest picture on earth"
    • [76] - places a ((disputed)) tag in response to odd question by anonymous editor 130.111.96.164. (Note: this IP address resolves to Portland, Maine, which is an area of interest of Maoririder, so he may well be replying to his own edits).

Cursa (possible sockpuppet)

  1. Evidence that Cursa is Maoririder:
    • [77] - Maoririder says so.
  2. Unusual edits to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous by Riverofdreams:
    • [78] - asks several questions, including "as many meanings as I can get" of "mad apple".
    • [79] - demands "more specific" information after Cvaneg identifies the "man in the picture" asked about here [80] (which seems to indicate that user:Ineedhelp is another sockpuppet, as well).


More