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.
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This matter is an objective example of the ongoing debate over administrator/editor rights. Who are to be the real members of the Wikipedia society? Are administrators to be the only ones with real editing power, or shall administrator tools be used solely to preserve a level playing field for all? The outcome of this arbitration will set a precedent influencing future decisions in this pivotal area.
Four years ago, the article on terrorism conveyed information (See December 2001 edit, for example). Today, thanks in large part to User:Hipocrite and User:Stevertigo, it conveys information again. In between, however, it degraded into this: July 2005 Smyth Edit. Please take a look at the article because Smyth's version, or one very similar to it, is what Jayjg and SlimVirgin were fighting to keep so adamantly that they were willing to bad-mouth and perma-block people who proposed changes.
How could this happen? At first glance, you might suspect that this is proof of the popular admin notion that most editors are idiots and we need more top-down control, but take a closer look. The condition of this article was caused by top-down control gone very, very wrong. Two of the most powerful people in Wikipedia, Jayjg and SlimVirgin helped push the article in that direction, and protected it once it got there. Anyone who tried to edit the introduction to better convey information, while assuming good faith, became deeply frustrated. I've had good editors tell me, on their talk pages and mine, that they have lost faith in Wikipedia because of administrators like Jayjg and SlimVirgin.
What is their agenda? I can only guess. Politically, some groups would benefit from not having a definition of terrorism that conveys information. I would think that soldiers in the U.S. army, supporters of President Bush, and pro-Israeli organizations would rather that the term be undefined. People on my talk page have told me that Jayjg and SlimVirgin regularly team up to "push pro Israeli POV." As someone with Jewish blood from both parents, I always thought of Jews as just another piece of society, not as an separate entity fighting to redefine history and suppress useful definitions of words. Yet here, I had direct evidence of it. It really made me mad. How dare Jayjg come in here, declaring himself a member of Wikiproject:Judaism and represent our people this way? I don't want to be thought of as a member of a group that subverts and confuses information. I want to be thought of as a human being, part of society, working with people to uncover the truth and create definitions of words that help us more effectively convey information. Although I have Jewish blood, I consider anyone banding together to promote anything outside of the good of all society to an outside group. If they want their group to be called "Jews," and use their admin power to bias articles with Jewish POV, so be it, but the rest of Wikipedia should know that this is an outside group that has nothing to do with those of us who have Hebrew blood and refuse to adopt a bias against the rest of society.
The particular bias of the group I ran up against, however, is not what we have to solve. The bigger picture is that Wikipedia enabled and encouraged the corrupt power of that group to utterly decimate the introduction to a good article and keep it in that state against the will of all the other people in the seven archives who desperately tried to promote a definitive introduction to terrorism. You may argue that people are too stupid to rule themselves here at Wikipedia, but how then can they be smart to rule others? This little clique mentality of administration must end. --Zephram Stark 21:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Below are some of the people that Jayjg and SlimVirgin blocked for doing nothing more than expressing their opinion on the terrorism article. If you check their edit history, you will see that they did not break any rules. These people simply expressed an opinion that Jayjg and SlimVirgin didn't like and were blocked as "sockpuppets" for doing so. This is the epitome of what I have been talking out about. I unequivocally state that I do not have any sockpuppets, meatpuppets, flesh-puppets, or whatever User:Jayjg and SlimVirgin want to call them. User:Jayjg and SlimVirgin have no reason to think otherwise. They simply block anyone who even suggests something that goes against their viewpoint. --Zephram Stark 01:03, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
1 ) 21:45, 4 October 2005, SlimVirgin blocked EKBK (infinite) (contribs) (sockpuppet used to violate policy)
2 ) 01:44, 23 September 2005, SlimVirgin blocked Professor_Stevens (infinite) (contribs) (Zephram Stark sockpuppet)
3 ) 03:23, 11 September 2005, SlimVirgin blocked Go_Cowboys (infinite) (contribs) (sockpuppet created by User:Zephram Stark to violate policy)
4 ) 01:09, 12 September 2005, SlimVirgin blocked Felice_L'Angleterre (infinite) (contribs) (sockpuppet created to violate policy; probably User:Zephram Stark)
SlimVirgin claims that there are at least eleven other people she and User:Jayjg have blocked (see her comments on my user talk page) under the guise of being my sockpuppets. Although Wikipedia is supposed to be transparent, most of the people SlimVirgin blocked in relationship to the "terrorism" article had only a vague reason given similar to "sockpuppet used to violate policy," like the description of EKBK's infinite block above. On all of her blocks and "perma-blocks" in this matter, SlimVirgin failed to annotate a rule that she thinks each person broke:
Without knowing which rule each person allegedly broke, in which discussion or article he or she allegedly broke the rule, or which contribution showed evidence of that rule being broken, it is very hard to gather examples that shows the true extent that SlimVirgin has damaged this community. If the number of people she blocked without citing a rule is any indication, SlimVirgin has effectively banished dozens or even hundreds of people for no reason other than that her POV did not agree with their edits.
I have gone through the entire block log from the time that I joined, and can find no other reference to my name (except for the times when she blocked me, of course). I only kept track of the count as each person was blocked and accused of being me in the discussion. Before I spend the hours going through the mountains of archives to find and prove each of these references, I need to know from the arbitration committee if it is going to make any difference. I have only scratched the surface of this corruption, and I'm willing to dig as deep as needs be in order to stop people like SlimVirgin and Jayjg from using their administrative powers to create article PoV, but I believe I have already given ample evidence of what is going on. Is more evidence required? If it is, will any amount of evidence against User:SlimVirgin and User:Jayjg result in their demotion and the restoration of a level playing field here at Wikipedia?
Below are the some of the IP numbers of people that User:SlimVirgin and User:Jayjg blocked under the guise of being my sockpuppets. These numbers are taken from either the block log or from discussions where an administrator with m:CheckUser power revealed them.
Please note that these are the IP numbers of editors with login accounts. For instance, the last one, 206.176.211.72, is the IP address of EKBK. They are shown for the purpose of proving that they couldn't all be one person.
David Gerard was contacted about this matter and failed to provide any evidence that there was a connection between the people who were blocked and me. He alluded to the possibility of open proxies. Based on every test I know of, none of the people that User:Jayjg and User:SlimVirgin blocked from the "terrorism" article use open proxies or anonymous IPs.
I don't really have a problem with anyone but the two administrators who block people and lock their user talk pages to keep them from expressing their opinions clearly within the rules. It kind of sucks that administrators like Carbonite are so fixated on administrative hierarchy that they unquestionable support each other, but the vast majority of editors who are here to improve articles can overcome administrative bias if they aren't afraid of getting blocked without reason.
Please look at the evidence Carbonite provides. I don't believe that it matches the conclusions he reaches. For instance:
I trust that, in all these matters, the ArbCom will consider the evidence by itself. For that reason, and in respect to the Arbitrators' time, I don't think it will be necessary to take each one of Carbonite's exaggerations and outright lies and say what really happened. The information in the links that Carbonite provides speaks for itself and has very little to do with the conclusions that Carbonite reaches.
If you want to see an example of the lengths that Carbonite is willing to go to control this situation, take a look at the edit history of this page. [2] Even though the instructions on this page explicitly and repeatedly tell people to edit within their own section, Carbonite apparently couldn't help himself. The urge to spin and falsify the evidence that I provided simply must have been too much for him. He misleadingly added links in my section from the IP numbers to the contributions of those IP numbers, not the log-ins for those IP numbers. As a result, he tried to make it appear that those editors had not made very many contributions. I, of course, changed it back. He responded by making additional unsubstantiated allegations of sockpuppets, meatpuppets, personal attacks, lies, and threats of "more to come...". While I will respect any decision of the ArbCom, I will never subjugate myself to Carbonite, Jayjg, or SlimVirgin regardless of how many threats, blockings, or rumors they throw my way. A yes-man can't possibly add anything to Wikipedia. Really good editors are being driven away from this project because the attitude here is to reduce them to yes-men. Then, we look around and wonder why the quality of edits is decreasing. I submit that yes-men cannot make good edits, which negates the entire concept of a hierarchy of power at Wikipedia. Wikipedia must be a level playing field. The members of this Arbitration Committee have the power to get the ball rolling in that direction again. --Zephram Stark 15:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I believe that Mr. Smyth's conclusions are not consistent with the links that he provides. His link to Mr. Gerard does not list any evidence of a connection. Mr. Gerard's feelings are apparently based purely on speculation which he justifies as being theoretically possible via open proxies or similar. Since there are tests for open proxies or similar, I invite Mr. Gerard to give us the results of those tests instead of abstract conjecture. --16:24, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Jeez, I hate these templates. Let me just say that I blocked Zephram twice in a row for nasty language toward other users. I think the effing Jews thing was my block: I forget, and I'm too tired to go look it up.
Since those two blocks, Z. has apparently been trying to swallow a sizeable chill pill, and that's to his credit!
He's also made some friendly overtures - to me at least.
This is the Wrong Place to suggest it, but maybe he should just be encouraged to get some dialogue going about his ideas on definitions of terrorism. I've created some other Definitions of... pages which have stood the test of time, e.g., definitions of Palestine and Palestinian.
Maybe a WikiProject to collaborate on defining terrorsim would be just the thing. Uncle Ed 03:36, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Such "attack page" wasn't such, it was the user page of SlimVirginJayjgJpgordon rather. And Jayjg blanked it (which is vandalism) because it was a "personal attack" when it contained criticism towards the SlimVirgin/Jayjg/Jpgordong tag team ("It only contained this phrase "SlimVirgin violates Wikipedia rules: on Civility and 3 Reverts. SlimVirgin dishonesty violates 3R with jayjg and a tag-team of other blatantly Zionist/Jewish-centric Wikipedia propagandists.").
Ryan Delaney noted this and reverted the blanking of the page. The Jayjg blanked it once again, but this time he qualified his edit as a "minor edit". I then added my rationality of why such is not a personal attack and should be kept for future reference, such as cases like these, since numerous wikipedians have affected by POV pushing by this trio. I reverted the blanking once again and for edit summary typed "see talk page". This time SlimVirgin reverted my change (as she often does after Jayjg) with no reponse to my opposition in the talk page, and also qualifying her change as a "minor edit" (again, something common for him when involved in controversial activities). I once again reverted the change and typed "take discussion to the talk page".
This was SlimVirgin's rationale to block me: "disruption: recreating an attack page".
I asked why by e-mail and she responded "We're here to write an encyclopedia, not engage in personal attacks or vendettas...But if you descend into personal attacks you'll lose everyone's sympathy". Then again, he accused me of engaging in personal attacks when I was, in contrast, defending a user page being vandalized. She also mentioned that "When an admin deletes a page, you're well within your rights to complain or to put it up for VfU, but you're not supposed to recreate it immediately, particularly not when it constitutes a personal attack".
He also mentioned that he "deleted the talk and user page more than once, and [I] re-created them".
Interesting to note, however, is that it was Jayjg who deleted it twice and then SlimVirgin once. So now I think:
--Vizcarra 05:57, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
There are several negative behaviors of Zephram Stark that have caused problems on Wkipedia: personal attacks, insertion of POV, disruption, sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry and unwillingness to compromise or accept consensus.
Zephram has not only used sockpuppets and/or meatpuppets, but he has lied about their existence multiple times. He has also lied about having knowledge of registered users' IP addresses.
More to come...
More to come...
More to come...
Much more still to be added...
Zephram claims above that "David Gerard was contacted about this matter but failed to provide any evidence that there was a connection." This is a lie [16] and in any case, Zephram is so paranoid that he does not even trust David Gerard to tell the truth [17].
Here are descriptions of the three instances where Zephram has made substantial changes to the article Terrorism, as opposed to its talk page. The fallout from these incidents explains the total distrust with which many users now view him. – Smyth\talk 09:48, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
This evidence was posted 21:35, 16 October 2005 by FuelWagon. (I forgot to sign it then)
On October 7, Vizcarra asks me to look at the RfC against Zephram Stark. I take a look, see it points to the Terrorism article, and take a look at that page. I insert a verbatim quote from a notable source with a URL to verify it's accuracy. I am reverted by a number of editors. Zaphram Stark is the only editor who proposed a compromise. It gets reverted by the same editors who reverted me. The RfC against Zaphram lays the blame for all the troubles with the Terrorism article squarely on Zaphram's shoulders. I make a comment on the Zaphram Stark RfC saying that it doesn't appear to be entirely his fault, that some of the editors who RfC'ed Zaphram appear to be contributing to the disptue. In response to my comment on the Zaphram RfC, one of those editors comes to my talk page and threatens to RfC me.
I'm not sure if this arbitration case is an extension of teh RfC against Zaphram or if it is a different take on the dispute between teh editors. The RfC against Zaphram says in its "Statement of Dispute":
And it has been my experience that of the editors involved with the Terrorism article from October 12 to present, Zaphram Stark didn't show stubbornness, low-quality edits, or single-handedly holding the article hostage. Some of the other editors involved did show themselves to work in concert with one another to oppose a single verbatim quote from a notable source with a URL to verify it that I tried to insert. i.e. a number of long-term editors traveled in packs to resist what should be a legimate edit.
06:05, 7 October 2005 Vizcarra posts on my talk page, telling me of RfC against Zephram Stark. I take a look, see that it says Terrorism is article of concern, and I take a look at the Terrorism article. (I mention this because Carbonite will later question how I came to the Terrorism article and hint at charging me with harrassment.)
03:53, 12 October 2005 I quote Noam Chomsky and providing URL.
16:15, 12 October 2005 completely reverted by Texture as "flimsy".
14:33, 13 October 2005 on talk page, Carbonite describes Noam Chomsky as a political activist equivalent to Sean Penn, and unworthy of being quoted.
15:24, 13 October 2005 Carbonite changes article describing him as a "linguistics professor".
16:42, 13 October 2005 I explain Chomsky's relevance as an expert, why his pov is notable, adds quote from "Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers" (DoMAP) calling Chomsky "one of the most influential left-wing critics of American foreign policy".
18:21, 14 October 2005 I remove reference to Chomsky as being a "linguistics professor", since that isn't why he is notable here.
18:28, 14 October 2005 Carbonite does a complete revert, removing quote from DoMAP and calling him a "political activist" instead, saying "no need to describe how great Chomsky is"
20:10, 14 October 2005 I revert to DoMAP quote.
20:15, 14 October 2005 Jayjg reverts, calling sourced quotation calling Chomsky influential critic of foreign policy to be "gratuitous flattery".
21:31, 14 October 2005 Zaphram Stark proposes a compromise.
01:33, 15 October 2005 SlimVirgin undoes compromise, calling it a "tweak".
16:25, 16 October 2005 I change "politial activist" to "senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies".
18:32, 16 October 2005 I post an outside comment on the Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Zephram Stark.
19:36, 16 October 2005 Carbonite questions my outside comment on the RfC against Zaphram Stark, calls the entire comment essentially a rant against him and several other editors, accuses me of being disruptive, hostile, and uncivil, and indicates he is thinking of RfC'ing me.
19:51, 16 October 2005 I inform Carbonite that on 06:05, 7 October 2005, Vizcarra told me about the RfC against Zephram Stark, I checked it out, followed it to the Terrorism article, tried to insert a verbatim quotation from a notable source and a URL to verify it, got reverted by the same people filing the RfC against Zaphram, and that I decided the RfC needed an outside comment.
21:35, 16 October 2005 Previously, Carbonite had told me that Zephram RfC had moved to arbitration, therefore I reformat my RfC comment and submit it as evidence to Arbitration.
23:36, 16 October 2005, Carbonite creates an RfC against me. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/FuelWagon 2
I don't have any interest in Zephram's complaints in the Terrorism article. However, I do have evidence that he is not working in good faith. In fact, he is purposely trolling.
I have not had, nor will I likely have in the next few days, time to investigate all of the above. I have however protected the Declaration of Independence (United States) article, based on the edit history and user:JW1805's comments about reverting. I have not otherwise been involved with this article, and do not intend to become so. Thryduulf 11:19, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
For a while now, I have observed user:Zephram Stark's behavior, mostly on the following articles:
From what I've seen, this user has violated almost all of the important Wikipedia policies, including NPOV, No Personal Attacks, No sockpuppets, Consensus, Assume good faith, 3RR, Soapbox. He is a constant source of disruption, and makes no attempt to work with other editors, refuses to accept it when a consensus is against him, clutters up talk pages with paragraphs of paragraphs of the same argument over and over again (even though no one agrees with him), and is in general one of the worst Wikipedia editors I have ever come across. Actually, from what I've seen, he does very little actual editing, and is mainly engaged in a series of rants on various talk pages. I will add some specific evidence in the section below: --JW1805 18:50, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
To get a general overview, I would encourage you to read the discussion at the various talk pages (Talk:Inalienable rights, Talk:Inalienable rights/Archive01, Talk:Declaration of Independence (United States)) to get an idea about how this user doesn't accept it when a consensus is against him.
...more to be added later...
...more later...