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User:Seabhcan began editing Collapse of the World Trade Center in April [2], which User:TruthSeeker1234 also edited. TS1234 who has since been indefinitely blocked in June for violations of WP:POINT with sockpuppet User:EngineerEd, and for general incivility, disruption, and "exhausting community patience". When TS1234's sockpuppet was known, Seabhcan rewarded TS1234 with a barnstar [3] and regarding TS1234's block, Seabhcan remarked on TS1234's talk page [4]:
My two cent is that all the editors posting here have achieved new and extraordinary levels of incivility, rudeness and POV pushing. This includes, but is not limited to, Tom Harrison, Morton Devonshire and particularly Mongo, who once proudly stated in ANI that "I intend to insult you and others" in reply to a request to be more civil. That he wasn't then censured, but infact supported by other wikipedians, proved to me that some editors are above the law, and I lost interest in defending the wiki. I haven't edited much since. It would be a happy day to see all these editors blocked - "a plague on both your houses"! Seabhcán 11:12, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
CamperStrike has worked on the Yellowstone National Park article since early/mid November, expressing interest in adding detailed subarticles. [5] Aside from that, he has been somewhat disruptive. On Wednesday (Nov. 29), he blanked the "human history" section of the article, and [6] and introduced peculiar spelling errors (e.g. changing "National Park Service" to "Natioal Park Srvice"), with absolutely no explanation for these edits. CamperStrike has also edited from an anonymous IP [7], evading WP:3RR and edit warring over image sizes. CamperStrike's comments here were also added by an IP [8], presumably CamperStrike. The article is over-cluttered with images, and CamperStrike kept adding more and making the images smaller. I stepped in and protected the page, whilst the edit warring was going on, trying to get discussion going on the talk page and find some consensus. I exceedingly used assumed good faith towards CamperStrike. The protection was soon reduced to semi-protection, and has now been lifted. Other users (e.g. User:Vsmith, User:Geologyguy, and User:Wsiegmund) have also been involved in the discussions.
As for CamperStrike's comment "brags about small contibutions to a in a "Featured Article" that may have never been featured before. Very egotistical" I'm familiar with MONGO's work on Retreat of glaciers since 1850, and have seen the other articles (Glacier National Park (US), Shoshone National Forest, and Redwood National and State Parks). He was indeed a major contributor on these articles, bringing them to featured status. He was also tremendously helpful as I was working to get Banff National Park to featured status. He is highly familiar with relevant policies and expectations for featured articles. Yellowstone National Park is also a featured article, but has been for quite some time, and the WP:FAC have become much more stringent. Yellowstone is a potential candidate for featured article review, though MONGO has come along and started working on fixing up the article and getting to meet current featured article criteria. Experienced Wikipedians, MONGO included, are happy to have CamperStrike and other new contributors helping with the article. Though, CamperStrike has been unwilling to work with others on the article in a collaborative manner, in respect to consensus. I hope he/she keeps contributing and learning, but with disruptive edits such as blanking section and adding numerous misspellings, I am beginning to be concerned about CamperStrike.
Anyway, this RFAB is about User:Seabhcan and not MONGO or CamperStrike. There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about MONGO's handling of the situation with CamperStrike. Articles about national parks shouldn't be places of such edit warring, over rather trivial details as image sizes. --Aude (talk) 22:41, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Examples include: "...theres no point getting cross with Morton. His aims here are so hypocritical as to be laughable. He is a caricature wont unto flesh. His world view is so narrow that a cigarette paper of enlightenment could not be slipped between his prejudice and his bigotry, etc"[9], "I think you need a holiday - or a psychiatrist."[10], "...or force their employers to hire a few more goons to edit"[11], "...Wikipedia seems to be dominated by a bunch of anti-free speach fascists"[12] and the edit summary "monkeys run the zoo", "This article is his personal kitty-litter and he won't stand to see it defiled with fact or information"[13], "Mongo's insults don't bother me. I've come to realise that he's probably just a 15 year old kid using his dad's computer, laughing through his zits at what he can get away with"[14], "Another fine comment there from Professor Mongo. Keep up the fight against Junk Science Prof. Mongo!"[15], "To claim that Gladio is a hoax is laughable. I had assumed you were merely ignorant"[16], "Here's some more anti-semitic bilge from Monty"[17] with edit summary "Monty and TDC, brothers in antisemitism". More examples via comments and edit summaries can easily be found: [18], [19], [20], [21]. "I can conclude that either you didn't read these reports or you didn't understand them, either way, you are talking through your arse, and I give up. Have fun protecting this little island of ignorance you planted your flag on"[22]. Seabhcan repeatedly has referred to established editors that disagree with his edits as "trolls", a "cabal", and with other derogatory comments and was blocked on 11/25/2006 for a no personal attacks policy violation[23].
Seabhcan seems to have some bias against "Americans" who he also refers to as "nationalistic" in a derogatory manner: "...sick of talking to dumb Americans who prefer to push patriotic propaganda over history"[24] (which he slightly altered after extensive discussion), "Mo-ty needs to learn to put his fanatical nationalism to one side when he edits"[25], "They are here to push their personal nationalistic bias. History, citation, reality, take a back seat to promotion of their personal myths."[26], "I will point out that Tbeaty, Mongo, TDC, Morton Devonshire and others have been behaving as an unacceptable and trollish cabal who attempt to push their nationalist POV while punishing users who stand up to them" [27], "The problem is that Americans are uniquely defensive of what they think should be true, rather than what is true"[28], and "Hi 81.165... The answer is no. Your research will not be accepted. If anything you add is in any way objectionable to the American editors, or any one of them, they will gang up on you and bully you out of wikipedia. It doesn't matter how many references or sources you have. Wiki-reality is what the American editors say it is. If Bush says up is down and down is up, then this article will be up for deletion tomorrow (its clearly conspiracy cruft anyway)"[29], "...for many American editors the events of 9/11 have become a kind of religious dogma, and they are unwilling or unable to step back and consider them dispassionately"[30]. This kind of commentary is not conducive to an international effort to write an encyclopedia.
Seabhcan violated Wikipedia:Protection policy when he edited the article Operation Gladio several times in one 24 hour period, "rm Hoax banner. What idiot put that there?", [31], [32] and to avoid violating WP:3RR, on his next edit, he protected the page on his preferred version.[33], [34]. Seabhcan also edited the protected article Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America, [35] and there was discussion regarding this issue[36]. Very early after Seabhcan and I were in our first encounters with each other, Seabhcan threatened to block me while he was engaged with me in an editing dispute[37].
Lately, Seabhcan has been blocked twice [38] for violating the three revert rule, on 11/12 and 11/29/2006.
After I gave a bad warning to indefinitely block User:SalvNaut for what I saw as a personal attack[39], Seabhcan then came to my talkpage and stated "My dearest Mongo, I have started an AN/I on you (sic) idiotic threat to block SalvNaut"[40] He then engaged me in discussions on the matter both on my talkpage[41] and at AN/I[42], where I admitted after reviewing others sentiments on the issue, I would not be blocking SalvNaut. During the course of these discussions, in which both Seabhcan and I were already online, Seabhcan then sent me two emails challenging me to block other editors who had commented on the situation. Seabhcan admitted to sending the emails.[43] But the harassment isn't limited to me. Seabhcan has repeatedly belittled others, condescendingly talking down to various editors, making pun on their username (User:Morton devonshire) [44], [45], [46] and adding conflict where there should be none. As an administrator, Seabhcan should make better attempts to rise above such behavior, especially when dealing with non-admins.
Arbitrators should note that rather than striking out his "evidence" of my malfeasence, much of which I addressed below, he has instead simply removed his completely inaccurate assessments of my actions, after realizing he, once again, has misrepresented the evidence, in his haste to find faults where there are none.
During my recent arbcom case brought against me, rootology (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (the editor that originally brought forth the case) was indefinitely blocked after reading a proposed remedy which specified he would be banned indefinitely and then proceeding to attack a number of editors. Immediately upon seeing that Rootology had been banned, "You can email me if you like, I can help you. I have gone up against more intellegent and crafty wikipedians than you are fighting with now, and succeeded, repeatedly"[47], [48] Travb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) proceeded to my arbcom case and demanded disciplinary action be brought against me, accused Fred Bauder of having a "first-mover advantage" [49] based on an article Travb cited. Travb then requested that Rootology be given a "watered down free pass" as I had supposedly be given[50], [51] even though Travb knew that Rootology had attacked a number of editors in his final edits before being blocked, and there was conclusive proof that Rootology had engaged in editing the encyclopedia dramatica website after repeatedly lying about it, and posting vicious attacks on a number of Wikipedians who have articles there, Travb still defended Rootology.[52], [53], [54]. Travb then went on to claim that he felt that Fred Bauder was biased since he thinks Fred and I are both conservatives[55], [56], [57]. After making accusations that Fred Bauder may not be an impartial arbitrator and that he had a "first-mover advantage", Travb then solicited help from Seabhcan.[58] and then returned to the arbcom case to be disruptive[59], was blocked (one of many blocks) and later apologized to Fred and myself after he had calmed down. I discussed his behavior here.
Since then, Travb has made a series of comments indicating he is on a witch hunt of sorts. "You have to be pretty cunning and intellegent to survive so long. Will these words come back to haunt me? Maybe"[60], "For a history of bad behavior, please refer to the several RfCs and history of uncivil behavior of Mongo" [61], (when in fact, there has only been one Rfc that was properly certified) Just recently, Travb has decided to aide a disrupter like Rootology, coming to defend User:Cplot an obvious trolling account doing nothing but being disruptive.[62], [63]...even though the block was asked for review by me and there were zero who questioned the block [64], except Travb. Perhaps in his haste to find fault in my actions, Travb seems to have overlooked the fact that another editor added [65] links to attack pages commenting, "For your reading pleasure" (links, including one to an attack article about me on encyclopedia dramatica) with "00" embedded in the links and the last comment to "Remove 00 from middle of urls Bon Voyage". I reverted that edit and then Cplot reverted me, at which time I indefinitely blocked Cplot. As clearly stated in the arbcom remedy [66] "Links to Encyclopædia Dramatica may be removed wherever found on Wikipedia...". Checkuser confirms that Cplot is the only person editing in the range of the IP's that have added numerous malicious attacks to various pages.
On November 27, 2006, I protected the article Steven E. Jones (history) on the third edit made by Cplot, the same disruptive editor mentioned above.[67] I protected that article on Cplots preferred version, not mine, to actually keep that editor from violating 3RR, an offense he had already been blocked for twice in the same week for edit warring on the September 11, 2001 attacks article. I could have reverted Cplot, probably forcing him into a another potential 3RR violation since he was edit warring with two other editors already. I hadn't even edited the article since November 10 and was not involved in the editing dispute in any way. As mentioned, I protected the article on an edit I disagreed with stating clearly "protected page to head off edit war"[68] and leaving a comment on the talk page that I had protected the page "due to a disagreement regarding WP:BLP"[69]. Travb's misrepresentation of my very fair protection of that article, in support of WP:BLP and in keeping with our protection policy is to be examined.
I left a message on User:CamperStrike's talkpage [70] for an edit he did [71] in which he removed an entire section from a featured article and deliberately mispelled a number of words in the next section. Travb then comes along and accuses me of violating NPA, stating: "Looks like MONGO is accusing other editors of vandalism again, I can't keep up with all of his WP:NPA attacks. In only examining the last 10 days I have 3 pages of evedience of his behavior" My comment to CamperStrike was not a personal attack in any way, fashion or form, and with over 1,000 edits, this editor is definitely not a newbie. Three other editors have also stated that they have found CamperStrikes's edits to be counterproductive.[72], [73], "You should read what CamperStrike wrote in my talk after I pointed out he removed the Human History section in Yellowstone. This guy is nothing but trouble. I wish he could be removed from the site completely. And the fact he doesn't always use his name doesn't help his case."[74] All editors have the right to ask other editors why they would vandalize a page. As in the case where Travb showed up at the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO case immediately after seeing that Rootology was going to be indefinitely banned, having never before edited that case, and now defending Cplot, who every other editor has openly stated is a troll who has also been using numerous IPs to post incredibly inflammatory remarks, as well as CamperStrike who numerous editors have clearly is being disruptive...I can find no good faith in Travb's efforts here, except to engage in a witch hunt. As further proof of what lies behind his motives, his comments "This is about your behavior and your abuse of admin priveleges and the free pass you were given in your first ArbCom" (again, "and the free pass you were given in your first ArbCom"[75] should be clear that Travb's motives here are retribution, revenge and at this point, harassment. CamperStrike has been confirmed by checkuser [76] to be a blocked editor evading his blocks and has now been blocked indefinitely, so again, as in the issue regarding Rootlogy, Cplot and now CamperStrike, Travb has demonstrated his massive loss of good faith by defending disruptive editors and making wildly incorrect accusations regarding my good faith intentions.
In the section that Travb has regarding talk page etiquette [77] he quotes from the "Actively erasing non-harassing personal messages without replying (if a reply would be appropriate or polite) will probably be interpreted as hostile. In the past, this kind of behavior has been viewed as uncivil, and this can become an issue in arbitration or other formal proceedings." Travb then cites a diff I already explained as not being a removal, but a move to a place at the bottom of my talk page [78]. Travb uses that as an "example" of my supposedly poor talkpage etiquette, yet almost immediately after I asked him a question regrading CamperStrike and his accusation that I violated NPA[79], without responding there, he immediately moved it from his talkpage[80] to CamperStrikes[81] and responds there. My question wasn't directed at CamperStrike...it was addressed to Travb...there was no reason to move it from his talkpage...this is a really incivil way to act and in keeping with what he himself has quoted, "In the past, this kind of behavior has been viewed as uncivil, and this can become an issue in arbitration or other formal proceedings"
"Oh Kelly Martin, RIP. Funny you should bring her up, she is an inspiration to much about what I wrote here. She had a part in getting me indefinetly booted. stubborn egotistical woman. Can I talk ill of the dead, or is this also against wikipolicy?"[82], "pushing your own POV, with wikipolicy and AfDs as a weapon is what you really want to accomplish"[83], "Notice how the "official" version adovates of 9/11 (most notably MONGO) are voting to delete this article"[84] and Travb then expanded this full comment resulting in being blocked for WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA violations [85].
On the flimsiest of "evidence", Travb will seek ways to eliminate those he has editing disputes with. After posting a request for checkuser on User:Morton devonshire which ended up having no merit, Travb comments "Can this user be booted for breaking wikipedia policy? Can he be banned from editing Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America?"[86]. Travb is told by User:Tbeatty to stop harassing Morton[87], and later responds, "Tbeatty is lying, here is the proof. If you are an admin, you need to by desysoped. If you are a regular user, you need to be booted. Because you are a liar."[88]. Travb was then told by Tbeatty that the allegation is without prrof, and Travb states again that, "User:Tbeatty is a liar, he is attempting to confuse editors, by using a section which has nothing to do with the alleged sock puppet. I am going to report this to the admin board, and if he is an admin, I am going to file a desyop claim."[89] [90]. Travb is told he is in error by a third party[91], [92] and after several editors explained why, Travb admits he was wrong and had misread the info. [93]...in his haste to find ways to eliminate his opposition, Travb is prone to making wildly inaccurate accusations.
Miltopia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (wonderful edit) and now others:[94], [95], [96] posted an incivil comment about me [97], and admits it[98] apologized, then comments about my response time [99]. A week later he states, "Ordering others around ain't the best way to be persuasive about whatever dick thing you're talking about.".[100] He then comments "MONGO, all you have to do is like, not stalk me, and you won't be bothered by me." asking me to not "stalk him", yet out of the blue, posts to a talk page discussion I am involved in here which he only would have found by looking at my contributions. He does the same thing here and shortly thereafter, shows up on an article I have started here, he misrepresents that he isn't stalking me[101], yet then, again removes brackets I had placed for an article I was going to also start almost immediately[102], he again states he isn't stalking me[103]. After I told him I was going to block him for disruption, he again claims "Trust me, it is not my goal to facilitate interaction with you."[104], which is ridiculous since about the only way he would have made alterations to three different pages is if he was tracking my contributions. Full discussion. Later, Miltopia, out of the blue shows up on the Seabhcan Rfc I am involved in[105] and having never once before voting for an admin nominee, votes "Oppose" for a candidate of mine[106]. Subtle, controlled edit stalking...yet Travb seems to think I can't see the diffs. Miltopia is an admitted encyclopedia dramatica editor[107] who uses the same username at that website and has added venomous attacks on several different articles there about Wikipedians.
I admit I am very often blunt in my rhetoric, and as a skeptic, I always question information that is not mainstream. Seabhcan and I seem to have first encountered each other in April 2006, on articles related to the events of 9/11/2001. I think my short, oftentimes dismissive responses to non-mainstream "evidence" can oftentimes be seen as rude by others, perhaps evoking a poor response. I recently stated my belief regarding my encounters with Seabhcan by commenting to him "Between us, I know not exactly who threw the first stone, though your threat to block me while we were in an editing dispute was alarming. I know I haven't been as civil as I can, but feel that while I stopped this towards you some time ago, you have persisted, and as of late, you have only gotten worse. The people who oppose your edits or references aren't a cabal or fascists or dumb Americans"[108]
User:Thomas Basboll started editing the Collapse of the World Trade Center article in July 2006. I believe he felt I had bitten him (a "newbie" editor at the time) and we discussed the situation recently here. My perspective is that Basboll was promotional of expanding the discussion related to alternative theories regarding the collapse of the World trade Center, and since almost nothing has ever been published by a reliable source that is verifiable that contradicts the known facts published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and by every major media source, I have oftentimes dismissed such information as "nonsense", "junk science" and "rubbish". I also am a strong advocate of ensuring the undue weight clause of our NPOV policy are adhered to...in other words, since there are extremely few reliable sources from which we can reference any contradictory information regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center, in keeping with our undue weight application, the hypothesis which has no basis in fact is relegated to a short mention in the main article and if necessary, expansion in a "daughter" article elsewhere. Basboll was very communicative on his thoughts regarding substantive changes to the Collapse of the World trade Center article as shown here but it should be noted that a number of other editors there were also guarded as to the changes he proposed. An engineer who had worked on that article explained to Basboll why his efforts were being questioned, "Part of the skepticisim directed at you is also because you don't have much of an edit history"[109] and was later told by User:Tom harrison, "Apparently new to Wikipedia, you jumped into a contentious article, made some improvements, and largely had your way with an extensive rewrite. Rejoice and be glad. You will be in a better position to judge Mongo's behavior after you have more experience."[110]. I even pointed out to him a comment I made alluding to his efforts in my response to a question number 6 here stating "The article Collapse of the World Trade Center is an article I had worked on, until another editor showed up and made some fundamental changes which I at first opposed, yet now see his efforts to have been generally excellent". Basboll has also been easy to spot on the Steven E. Jones (an advocate that explosives may have been used to reduce the World Trade Center) article. While I completely disagree (as do virtually every civil engineer) with Jones's arguments, I have worked hard there to accomodate Basboll and others ensuring we enforce WP:BLP [111]. As in the collapse of the WTC article, Basboll had proposed fundamental changes, not all of which I agreed with, yet I added what he wanted into the article for him while it was protected, and the discussion regarding this can be found here.
There has also been a request for comment regarding some disputed blocks I had perfomed. Though I had many persons who defended my actions, I signed most of the comments that made it clear that I should have others perform blocks when there is liklihood I am engaged in a content dispute.
User:Stone put to sky mentions a number of edits from a 2005, much of it centered around disagreements I was having with User:JamesMLane, User:Kevin Baas, User:Commodore Sloat, User:Ryan Freisling, User:Tony Sidaway, User:Kizzle, User:Derex, User:Rama regarding the issues of whether George W. Bush used cocaine, and more importantly, whether he was a "dry drunk"...a term that is used by Alcoholics Anonymous to describe a former alcoholic who hasn't been properly treated to deal with the supposed after affects of going sober. There were a number of books written by people, two of which by practicing psychologists, that I saw as having an axe to grind. In terms of the two psychologists, I argued that neither had performed a proper psychological evaluation as their opinions on Bush's behavior were being drawn form observations made for "afar", and that they hadn't in fact done a standard face to face evaulation as one would expect from persons in their positions. One of the psychologists in fact was not a member of the American Psychological Association due partly to his books and commentary...they wouldn't accredit him. Since that heated period, JamesMLane and I tried to find a way to protect harassed and now departed User:Gator1, whose real life identity had been compromised by Amorrow/Brandt. Commodore Sloat has asked me to assist on articles including Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda[112]. Ryan Freisling and have a friendship these days and she was very supportive of me when I was dealing with the encyclopedia dratmatica (ED) issues. Tony Sidaway supported my adminship in November 2005[113] and he and I spent many an hour protecting each other from various trolling attempts, Tony also being very supportive of my episodes regarding ED. Derex and I have worked on some things together and he has asked me to chime in on various issues. Rama later supported my adminship as well, stating " I appreciate his handling of the talk page of George W. Bush; clearly one who survives in this environment will be comfortable in easier situations"[114]. Kizzle supported my adminship [115], and we have worked on some issues together since as well. I don't know what more proof one can need to demonstrate that I know how to build friendships and work collaborative with editors I may have had previous disputes with. For some odd reason, Stone put to sky seems to think I have some control over editors he has disagreements with on the Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America article, an article I have edited 4x on 11/21, twice on 11/13 and only a few more times dating back before August of 2006. I did once unprotect the article on 11/13 and the only other edit I did that day was to remove the protected page template. How I could be construed to be the ringleader of those that he has been in editing conflicts with on that article is beyond me.
User:CamperStrike is a new editor that has no interest in working collaboratively. I and others have repeatedly asked him to work collaboratively and to participate in the talk pages.[116], and others have questioned him regrading his efforts to adjust the images. [117], [118], [119]. CamperStrike demanded images be reduced, primarily due to the fact that his screen resolution is set at near maximum. He has repeated demanded that the Yellowstone National Park article include images that can already be found in the link to the commons repository. He has edited using both his username and from various IP's, here claiming after much discussion "By the way, I am on a dynamic IP, so this IP address (68.207.207.137) could change at anytime. Sincerly" [120] which he mentioned after I pointed out the WP:3RR policy. I had started adding proper references to the article and when CamperStrike started to edit the article, the situation became untenable. I had to have the article semi-protected for awhile and made comments about my exasperation here. CamperStrike has also created several articles that were deleted as there was no text, just a collection of links. For no apparent reason, CamperStrike simply removed the human history section from the Yellowstone article here, and changed the wording of remaining words in the following sections from "built" to "bult", "many" to "may", "National" to "Natioal", "Service" to "Srvice" and "prescribed" to "prscribed". Looks like disruption to me, and according to what I discussed above, myself and several other editors were correct.
In response to the diffs provided in that email, my adminship passed, a a number of those that initially opposed, change to no vote, neutral or support. The second link is to the evidence page of my prior abrcom cases, in which the original filer of the case was indefinitely banned, as was another editor. That case has been setlled, so I have no idea what the arugment is there. The third link is to a conversation at AN/I, where Georgewilliamherbert is claiming I shouldn't have removing links to encyclopedia dramatica and instead had someone else do it. The fourth diff is regarding attempts by User:Badlydrawnjeff to have mediation between us performed. I have no idea what the mediation was to solve, I said the best thing for us was to create space...it's a big wiki so that should be easy. The fifth link? I haven't the foggiest what that anon is trying to say. If there is some suggestion that I have attacked anyone off wiki, I'd really like to see some proof on that issue.
CBDunkerson did initiate the request for comment regarding blocks I had performed on several editors, as I already openly mentioned in the My behavior section above. As mentioned, I signed most but not all of the opinions that I shouldn't block those that I could be seen as having a content dispute with. The community overall in that Rfc was split and I could have been obstinate and continued to stand my ground, as Seabhcan has argued on his Rfc, that nothing wrong had occurred. However, even though my block of the main aggrieved party (User:Pokipsy76) was supported by two other admins, one of which I had never met until she agreed with my block, I indeed made it clear that I would not block anyone again if would might appear that I am in a editing conflict with them. To my knowledge, I have adhered to this principle since. If he wants to bring up my blocks to protect myself from the harassment I received during the encyclopedia dramatica affair, it should be noted that this was already reviewed in the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO.
Lovelight mentions below that he was blocked from editing. Not sure why he would have liked to continue to keep harassing information about a number of editors on his talkpage, when we have been removing it from everywhere else.
I was never seeking a desyopping of Seabhcan and all I wanted was a NPA and civility settlement. Three of the "reasons" I am supposedly have abused my sysop tools are without merit:
The previous Wikipedia:Requests for comment/MONGO was based on what was regarded by User:CBDunkerson and others as my blocking of User:Pokipsy76 and to a lesser extent two other editors as bad blocks, since they felt I was in an editing dispute with and should have gotten someone else to perform the blocks. Repeatedly, I told CBDunkerson(CBD) that Pokipsy76 had been removing content from numerous pages and just reverting with no attempts to discuss his changes on talkpages. My block of Pokispy76 was reviewed by Tom Harrison [128] and Pschemp[129] and after reposting his unblock request, Pschemp again removed it[130]...Pokispy76 responded[131] again abusing the unblock template, resulting in Pschemp protecting his talkpage[132]. He had been warned several times about his editing and his misrepresentations about vandalism[133] and a typical response to this was "ROTFL"[134]. Regardless, on the Rfc I clearly agreed with most of those that stated I shouldn't block anyone I could be seen to be in an editing dispute with. I signed most of those comments...agreeing with those that brought forth the Rfc. My recent mistaken threat to block Salvnaut indefinitely was reviewed by the community and no one agreed with me...I didn't even agree with me as the situation progressed and I clearly stated at AN/I that I would not be blocking this editor.
I am an active administrator...and since becoming an admin in November 2005, I have used my block/unblock abilities over 400 times[135], have protected/unprotected over 100 times[136] and have deleted over 3,000 articles, most of them speedies[137]...So out of 400 blocks, there is evidence I blocked one person I shouldn't have and threatened to block one or two more that didn't deserve it (Miltopia as one that maybe didn't deserve it, at least not an indefinite block). I'll be fair and round that up to 5 questionable blocks...out of something like 430 performed, roughly one per hundred. Is there any excuse for my one or two bad blocks or my threat to block someone else that doesn't deserve it...no. But I wish there was a way to look at active admins and see what the percentage of bad calls they make regarding blocks. I'm not talking about folks like CBDunkerson who has done about 350 deletions[138], blocked about 25 people[139] and used his protection abilities less than 50 times[140] since he was adminned last spring[141]. I haven't gone and checked his admin work and assume it is excellent...but with so little activity as an admin and so little chance that he has bumped into the kind of disruption I have, it's no wonder he has little to have to explain for his actions. Who deserves to be an admin? For no pay and no reward, is the active admin who makes a few admin mistakes taken out back to have his hand cut off to spite his face? I am sure there are admins who have done five times the work I have done administratively and have s=crewed up less than I have...and that's terrific. But I am sure they are few in number. In Seabhcan's case, the guy has been an admin for more months than I, yet has done 7 protect/unprotects[142], blocked about 30 times[143] and performed about 200 deletions[144]. Seabhcan makes a couple errors with his admin tools in a year and a half...and he is crucified for it? Is there any requirement that an admin do admin work...no...but I don't remeber any kind of expectation that anyone be perfect. I am human, I make mistakes, as does anyone else. You gonna take away admin tools because I made a bad block six months ago, atoned for it on an Rfc and then threatened to block someone else I should haven't have threatened? Is arbcom going to start a new policy and demand that if a person has ever edited a page they can never protect/unprotect it? Next thing you know, we'll all be getting banned for misspellings. I listed the recent errors that Seabhcan has made with his admin tools only to show that he has been digressing, not improving in overall conduct. His Rfc was brought to arbcom because he did not want to make amends for the numerous incidents of incivility and violations of NPA and because I didn't like the fact that he sent me two provocative emails regarding the incident with Salvnaut when he and I were already in the middle of discussions on two different pages (My talk and on AN/I)...the emails weren't threatening, just attempts to provoke me and were borderline harassment. These two reasons are why we are here. Desysopping...I can't see it as an appropriate remedy for either party.
Caveat: I have told Seabhcan repeatedly to apologize for his stupid comments. Seabhcan has stubbornly refused. I believe this ArbCom is warranted against Seabhcan.
Further, I have repeatedly said that Operation Gladio and the conspiracy theories that Seabhcan and others support I personally think have little basis in fact.
I simply want the ArbCom to see the past editing behavior of both admins in this Wikipedia:Wheel war, not just Seabhcan.
In the time I have spent researching this, the below tone is consistent throughout all of MONGOs edits, from when he became an editor in Jan 2005. See also User:Stone_put_to_sky comments showing MONGOs incivility. I have researched his Jan 2005 edits, his July 2006 edits, and his most recent edits. The tone, incivility, and wikipedia violations are consistently the same.
Relevance: Many of MONGO's below edits, center around all of the same 9/11 pages which MONGO and Seabhcan have debated on "for the past 6 months".
I don't condone Rootlogy's, Cplot's, CamperStrike's or Seabhcan's bad behavior, or any other users bad behavior when dealing with MONGO. The questin to ask youself is:
As an admin, did MONGO handle all of the below situations appropriately, or did he make an edit war worse, instead of better? Should an admin call other wikiusers bigots, racists, trolls, jerks, and a chicken shit? Did MONGO ever apologize to any of these users for his outbursts?
Sysops must not block editors with whom they are currently engaged in a content dispute. If in doubt, report the problem to other admins to act on. (You may be wrong!)
MONGO Threatens to ban a user he is in an edit dispute with
Retract the comment you mentioned or I will block you...not sure how long at this point. That artricle is a hotbed, so any allusion, no matter how vague, of personal injury has to given zero tolerance. No one is threatening you...you are being told how to act...either act civiliy, or find yourself blocked.[145][146]
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive149#Is_mentioning_Occam.27s_Razor_a_threat.3F
As Seabhcan wrote: Admin User:MONGO just threatened to block User:SalvNaut indefinitely for playfully suggesting that User:Tbeatty misuse use of the logical principle Occam's razor may "cut something important."[147] Mongo left a note on SalvNaut's talk page warning against "suggesting bodily harm" and that he will block SalvNaut indefinitely." [148].
User:Tango, User:Amarkov, User:Stephan Schulz, User:Tariqabjotu, User:Samir_(The_Scope), User:Cyde, User:CBDunkerson all strongly disagreed with MONGO. One editor states MONGO is making a fool of himself.[149] The other editors voice similar criticisms.
According to User:CBDunkerson:
User talk:Pokipsy76 had less than 1000 edits.
MONGO in response, accusses User:Miltopia of stalking and harrassment:
Indefinite block of user Cplot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) based of new user (less than 1500 edits) who MONGO was in a long term dispute with, with no check user confirmation before indefinite block. Checkuser later confirms that Cplot is using anonymous IP addresses, after MONGO banned Cplot indefinetly. See #Evidence presented by CyclePat below.
Comments to Cplot:
In regards to the comments of MONGO and Nuclear, the information on Cplot is still here, it has simply been rewritten.
Full ANI: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive142#Incivility_complaint_re:_MONGO MONGO states: "my comment stands...if the ED trolls don't stay off my talk page, I will block them." [180]
Admins must not protect pages they are actively engaged in editing, except in the case of simple vandalism.
MONGO's explanation ignores that he violated Wikipedia:Protection policy. There was clearly no vandalism in this case.
Actively erasing non-harassing personal messages without replying (if a reply would be appropriate or polite) will probably be interpreted as hostile. In the past, this kind of behavior has been viewed as uncivil, and this can become an issue in arbitration or other formal proceedings.
See MONGO's treatment of User:Pokipsy76 (less than 1000 edits) above.
Tolerance of alternate views other than MONGO's own.
As per below #Evidence presented by Morton_devonshire:
In the first case against MONGO, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO although MONGO was originally the focus of the investigation, brought by other users, two users were booted indefinently. So as Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO case shows clearly, other people can be sanctioned and booted even though the arbitration doesn't have their name on the wiki link page. Travb (talk) 05:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
MONGO and I have been in a long term dispute, we are pursuing due process to address the issue at hand, I am NOT doing this for revenge. When an editor's honest attempt at dispute resolution is recast as vengeance, then it is a sad day indeed for wikipedia. Editors who follow the dispute resolution process in good faith should not be accused of "seeking revenge".
To use liberally the words of User:Geogre in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano/Workshop:
Background
I have known MONGO since when I first became a wikieditor in October 2003, on the WSI page. I saw quickly that we had a complete opposite POV. Which is great. As MONGO once wrote: "in reality, most great "truths" lie somewhere in the middle of where our own biases lay."[265]
But over time, I saw a pattern with MONGO's edit behavior, which many here will agree with: MONGO has zero tolerance for different views then his own. For evidence of this, please see: #Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias
More importantly, MONGO liberally and abusively uses his administrative powers and AfDs to threaten and remove views that do not support his own. For evidence of this, please see: #MONGO has misused his admin tools
After witnessing this behavior for months, in numerous edit wars and AfDs, I decided to make a comment on the AfD about this.[266]
JoshuaZ blocked me, I apologized in an email to JoshuaZ, and within less than 30 minutes JoshuaZ unblocked me. I removed the comment from the AfD.[267] I then apologized to MONGO.[268] I did violate WP:NPA and WP:Civil with MONGO on the AfD, because I brought up what wikipedians should not bring up: political bias. Since this time I have been very careful not to violate WP:NPA and WP:Civil, particularly among the group of people who support MONGO, who I have been "edit warring" with for the past 3 months.
Rootology and I had worked together before. User_talk:Travb/Archive_7#state_terror_mess
Other users had emailed me about Rootology, disturbed about how Rootology's case was going. One admin told me in an e-mail that they were sorry they didn't do more to help Rootology. They were basically letting Rootology get the axe, and standing by and letting it happen. I thought this was appalling to allow someone to be indefinitely banned and simply stand by and watch.
Rootology sent me a message that same day as I was blocked. User_talk:Travb/Archive_7#Hey stating that he was "done". My first comment was to Rootlogy, asking if there was anything I can do to help.[269] I started to delete the stupid WP:NPA violations by Rootology[270][271], told him to apologize, and told him to stop committing suicide. [272]
I quickly read over the workshop against MONGO, and I felt that MONGO was getting a free pass for his own violations of wikipolicy, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Seabhcan/Workshop#Need_non-political_arbitrators.
I attempted triage, knowing the chances for Rootology this late in the game were slim. I wrote my opinion on Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/MONGO/Workshop criticizing what I saw as MONGO's free pass.
In response, MONGO called my edits "trolling"[[273] as he has done to countless other editors, and called an ANI.
User:MONGO wrote: "Immediately upon seeing that Rootology had been banned, Travb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) proceeded to my arbcom case and demanded disciplinary action be brought against me"
Again in my comment on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO/Workshop I stated: At first glance, from someone who has never looked at this case[274] I had very little familiarity with the case, other than to see all of MONGOs WP:NPA violations.
MONGO, please don't use my association with Rootology as Scarlet letter, I repeatedly told Rootology to stop. I am sure you have associated with editors who later were banned, you maybe even defended those editors in dispute resolution. Again: When an editor's honest attempt at dispute resolution is recast as vengeance, then it is a sad day indeed for wikipedia. Editors who follow the dispute resolution process in good faith should not be accused of "seeking revenge".
I was hardly defending Rootology's bad behavior. As I wrote to Rootology: "I can't remedy your bad behavior before, I can only suggest ways you can mediate the consequences of your poor decisions."[275] This is hardly me defending Rootlogy.
My comments to Fred and MONGO on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO/Workshop, nor did my subsequent comments later to MONGO and Fred, did not violate any wikipedia policy that I am familiar with. MONGO can state that I "attacked" Fred, but that is nothing more than his POV.
When Rootology committed suicide, despite my warnings, I apologized to Fred for accusing him of being a lawyer and a conservative.[279] Both MONGO and Fred accepted my apologies. It was a valuable lesson I learned that day, thanks MONGO. Because of WP:NPA, wikiusers are not allowed to state what appears to be obvious. I understand why the policy exists, and I support it, and I thank MONGO and Fred for teaching me this.
But I did keep the comments about MONGO was not punished for his own wikipedia violations on the Workshop page. I still feel this way. Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Seabhcan/Workshop#Need_non-political_arbitrators.
MONGO is referring to: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/MONGO/Workshop#Badlydrawnjeff MONGO had not done a checkuser at the time against Badlydrawnjeff, but he was making a lot of accusations against Badlydrawnjeff. This is familiar behavior of MONGO. MONGO refused to answer questions I posted to him, when I persisted he called an ANI and began calling my names on my user page, in violation of WP:NPA.
Calling someone "disruptive", is a favorite accusation of MONGO, right behind calling other editors trolls. As he wrote here: "I will remind you that persistant questioning about the same thing over and over is disruption and that editor was clearly being disruptive on my talk page."[281]
Signed: Travb (talk) 04:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Morton has been accused by many editors of being a sockpuppet in the past, but that in no way excuses my check user.
The Morton Check user is the second checkuser I have used. The first was in Jan 2006, I believe.
Morton and I had been in a heated dispute for weeks on Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America. The article had survived an AfD, but was systematically being deleted by other users, including Morton. To attempt a comprimise, I had asked for a moderator on that page, I had set up a straw poll and RfC. There were several ANIs revolving around this article. I misread one edit by Morton, completly misread it. I then, incorrectly, filed a Checkuser. I was completly wrong, 100%, as Zerofaults, now NuclearUmpf pointed out too me (thank you). I was quite embarrased by my checkuser against MORTON, and felt that it made me look like a food (which it did). I was doubly careful not to make the same mistake again.
I hate to bring this up, because Zer0faults and I have gotten along better lately, but I think it is vital to defend myself: I was very careful not to file another checkuser, until a new user NuclearUmpf, put one of my articles up for deletion[282], after I voted opposite him in an AfD. Sean Black closed the AfD calling it "trolling". Come to find out, after a checkuser, [Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/NuclearUmpf|NuclearUmpf was Zerofaults]. As far as "outing" other wikiusers, I did later "out" Zerofaults.
As far as Morton, I was completely wrong in MORTONs case, (similar to MONGO and his "Occam Razor threat" above). But unlike MONGO, I sincerly apologized to all parties involved.
I find it ironic that MONGO claims that I "out" my opponents, when he has accused several wikiusers he is in disputes with of being sockpuppets,[283] and often blocks users first, then waits for the evidence. As MONGO said himself to a user with less than 1000 edits:
Tbeatty's defense of MONGO paints a wide brush, and based on the above evidence is clearly unconvincing. Does Tbeatty really believe that everyone of the editors that MONGO fought with above is a ED troll?
Tbeatty ignores a really apparrent question: Why is MONGO so hated by everyone at ED? I have never seen an admin (other than the late User:Kelly Martin), who makes so many editors so angry on wikipedia. Why?
Going through thousands of MONGO's edits, a picture has emerged to explain why. IMO, I think it is because MONGO says many nasty things to editors which clearly violates WP:NPA. He threatens to use and misues his admin tools against other editors.
When MONGO calls other editors Bigots, Racists, trolls, etc, he is bound to get editors angry at his comments.
Am I justifying the behavior of all of these editors? No. I have told editors on ED to erase the MONGO page, (I used the same user name as here) and I have told MONGO that I feel it is terrible what ED is doing to him.
Tbeatty, it is absurd to imply that every editor in the past two years who MONGO has been in an argument with has been involved with ED. To claim that every editor has been would blacklist hundreds of wikieditors. McCarthy would be proud.
Remember, it does take "It Takes Two To Tango". MONGO's ED page did not spontaneously pop up overnight. Anger towards MONGO did not suddenly, magically appear, with no background history.
MONGO's robust, zealous and vigorous actions, as well as particular way in which he ends or disrupts discussions can easily cause resent, perhaps even outrage. What you'll read below is a letter of mine, it was addressed to 'unblock-en-l@wikipedia.org', you may find it a bit silly, and I had to cut a few sentences but it should serve its purpose and describe how easily encounter with MONGO throws of balance… Why would I present such unorthodox evidence? Please keep in mind that it was written by stunned newcomer, I had very little knowledge about policies or inner-works then… To keep things in perspective, this was around 911 memorial so there were lot's of tensions, there were some really ridiculous government warnings (tags) and very poor language all over 911 talk page… in other, more related words, MONGO was particularly edgy at the time, so he would huff and puff and blow things in his way… as a result every discussion (or editor) which strayed of the "path" was immediately "chocked to death". To some extent this problem persists today…
Fact is, MONGO's conduct with editors (especially with rookies) is a bit like military drill, or perhaps good old police work. Arguments as: "No." or "Move along, nothing to see here…" are occurring once to often. Such actions or conclusions would probably be understandable if they would come after decent discussion. But it's fairly easy to verify otherwise. I've checked (some of) the policies and I'd say that MONGO is breaking too many too openly, so perhaps he shouldn’t walk around and openly accuse others? Of course from my perspective, having a duel with arbitrators is far more complicated then shaking hands…
Then again, after introductions such as this one: "He's been warned. Let's see if he responds appropriately. I suppose we should leave off the boilerplate for now, especially since we already have a troll warning at top.--MONGO 07:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)" and my increased interest in boilerplates, me and MONGO learned to get along. Right MONGO? Here and there we share a few kind words of disagreement, and life goes on…
Comments of Morton's Seabhcan quotes
Well you've seen some of my favorite Mongo quotes, some of them rather witty (some not), and now Morton also presented Sebhcanquotes, which are also rather amusing and humorous… or not. imo there is nothing that much outrageous in all this, certainly some reflections are a bit poisonous, but if I've noticed anything while here, then it would be passion of some discussions… Since I can easily understand some of well chosen Sebhcan's replies I'll repeat my opinion once again… hard drawn lines and do not cross that Rubicon! warnings are usual for MONGO. It certainly isn’t OK to play fool with newcomers, or use administrative privileges to enforce "order" of facts. If such allegations against Sebhcan even exist, they certainly shouldn’t be addressed by MONGO;)… It also occurred to me that I might be biased due to nature of my MONGO experience, but I'll let you folks be the judge of that…
*note
I've seen some new perspectives and there is need to state clearly… what I did here is simple share of my personal MONGO experience. That experience is in no way related with experiences of other "MONGO users". I have little or no correspondence and have never worked with other editors who added evidence to this dispute. Looking into some of the written statements I'd say that MONGO experience may vary, but it's basically the same…
Unfortunately, it came to my attention that there is some peculiar form of humor swirling through Wikipedia, something about clowns? I honestly wouldn’t know anything about such circus, but as it happens it did land right on my talk page, causing enormous mess (and stress) there. As you may well notice, it's related to many editors involved in this case… but I'm sure that they'll provide good, valid or humorous arguments and dismiss such serious allegations. To make things crystal clear, I have no relation with this taunt message and I would definitely restrain myself from forming opinions. However, that link resulted with me being blocked, so I've decided to provide it here, for your consideration... Well, there is only hope that presenting this, yet another unorthodox evidence won't result with another block, and I would like to assure you that I have no intention to post that link anywhere else… Lovelight 21:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Reply to NuclearUmpf
I'm not sure why you've formulated your conclusion with: "I later stepped in, removing the information without incident." But I would like to state clearly, incident was avoided because of my patience, definitely not because of your "humorous" involvement which led to my block. I'm honestly surprised by your escapade. Lovelight 21:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Reply to MONGO
Harassing? To put things in perspective… anyone may verify that I have no time to take a proper care of my talk page, and I'm not really sure why would my reaction be puzzling? Several editors have rampaged over there, reverting without my knowledge forcing me to go through history just to see what I missed there? I stated clearly, I would have remove that edit myself, and I surely didn’t try to revert it more then once (correct me if I'm wrong). Of course that I find such behavior interesting if not annoying… and of course that I'm not here to be blocked over the issues which I really don't want to recognize or become familiar with… Lovelight 22:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I have been curious about the accusations raised against MONGO, et al., so I checked out the first few links TravB offered. Those edits are so obviously not problematic that I'm not inclined to read more. Specifically:
As I've said, that kind of judgment doesn't fill me with a desire to read through the rest of TravB's accusations, although I suppose someone should at least take a look at a random sampling. TheronJ 04:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I am most troubled by the fact that Seabhcan apparently believes that his personal attacks, incivility, and misuse of admin tools are justified by whatever prior conduct he accuses MONGO, Morton, et al., of., and that Seabhcan refuses to refrain from future incivility unless the other editors agree to some kind of in-kind exchange.
MONGO considers many things which are simply objective statements to be "anti-american" and I, as a patriotic U.S. citizen, am deeply offended by his abuse of the term, by his abuse of his power as an administrator when qualifying that statement, and by his insistence that because he is an American he somehow has an exclusive and privileged right to re-interpret and evaluate all statements made about the U.S.A. by people of other nationalities.
Moreover, he also wrongly considers *any* publication of viewpoints contrary to his own to be "anti-american" and "POV-pushing". Witness this, from an exchange of his back in mid-2005:
Now, please keep in mind that this is all in response to a widely publicized book by a responsible researcher. Despite the fact that this book clearly meets WP:RS, in this thread MONGO utterly ignores all entreaties to simply accept that the book meets basic standards of bibliographic reliability and instead repeatedly assails his opponents with personal attacks. All of these phrases stink of entrenched, obstinate POV-pushing; these are just a few samples of phrases and attitudes on this thread:
All of this from *one* discussion page! [298]
Check out that last statement: MONGO is asserting that he has privileged, absolutely unsourced information that flies in the face of all available evidence; from here -- and on that basis -- he goes on to assert that the interlocutor is "ignorant" and "unenlightened" and "narrow" because he doesn't accept MONGO's assertion at face value -- and then he has the gall to plead that he "doesn't want to sound rude"!!
I have seen nothing that suggests MONGO has changed his strongly POV-centric idea of what is "valid" and what isn't. Since mid-2005, MONGO has become a very shrewd editor and much less direct in his efforts to sway Wikipedia content, but there is nothing to suggest that he has any real understanding of what this place is meant to become. From MONGO's standpoint -- as this one exchange makes perfectly clear -- Wikipedia entries should by all rights be brought into accord with his own world view before they can be considered commendable.
Unfortunately, most of the world -- indeed, most of the United States, even -- don't share many of MONGO's unsubstantiated, unfounded, and in many cases unjustifiable opinions.
Now, we see that MONGO himself admits that *even* *now*, in November 2006, he abuses his status as an administrator to force the rhetorical direction of articles more to his liking. Witness:
And there is plenty more evidence of this sort of abuse. Even now, MONGO clearly uses his status as an administrator to target individuals he disagrees with; this is made clear in the user page archive of the contributor DickClarkMises[301]. Witness:
There are several other editors and administrators who came to DCM's defense on this; the link in question simply pointed out that he was running for office, and nothing more. As DCM pointed out, it was simply an indication of who he was and what he did, and in no way intended as a personal advertisement. Rather, it was only an indication of his specialties and potential biases. After several editors come to DCM's defense, MONGO chimed in with this:
Besides the fact that this's clearly a personal insult aimed at an editor over activity on another page, the above petulance over the use of the word "crazy" is immediately followed with this:
Could the insinuation be any clearer?
There is considerably more on the page, as well; all of these are by MONGO:
Regarding Morgan Reynolds, a political commentator / economist:
And witness this exchange lower down on the page:
There are a myriad of these examples out there, no doubt nearly as many that have been self-deleted, and there are certain to be many more with each passing day. Many are veiled threats; some (as in the case of DCM) are veiled and clearly personal in nature, as well; thus, with these few samples -- taken from two years back up to now -- we can see:
The question i want to ask is simple:
Why on earth does this person have administrative privileges?
Granted, he has contributed a lot of good material, and i respect that he has worked hard to clean up conspiracy indulgences on Wikipedia. However, these are editing skills; as an administrator, it is more than evident that MONGO indulges people and opinions with whom he agrees while abuses his privileges in order to exact penalties against those people or opinions he opposes. Obviously, good editing skills don't translate to good admin skills, and it is my considered opinion -- after witnessing MONGO's behavior on various Wikipedia pages -- that his administratorship be revoked.
These attacks against Seabhcan are clearly more of the same, and i consider them utterly contrary to the spirit of the Wikipedia community. They are indeed beyond the pale, and clearly Seabhcan has been targetted because of his advocacy for page content that MONGO considers "leftist", "liberal", "extremist", or "anti-american" -- which, from what i can tell, apparently means anything that comes from Hollywood, CBS, authors, directors, journalists or musicians with which MONGO disagrees, the UN, the International Court, anyone who served in the Clinton administration, anyone who criticizes George Bush (or thinks that he's a drunk, or thinks that he did cocaine), anyone who doesn't believe that Iraq had any WMD's, any European or Asian who doesn't support the U.S.' invasion of Iraq...or any one of a number of other things that are equally mainstream. Stone put to sky 13:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
These complaints against Seabhcan are largely made of cotton-candy; apparently, Morty thinks that by presenting us with a long list people will be intimidated and back away from dismissing the accusations as the tripe most of them actually are. The real complaints here go back to a fundamental difference between the methods of contribution favored by Seabhcan and those of MONGO:
I really think this is a simple call to make. Which administrator would you rather have disagreeing with you? And isn't there one who represents every quality you'd consider abusive and unfair? Stone put to sky 07:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
issue:[303]
| “ | Having failed to gain consensus on the talk page, you are now trying to force the language you prefer by reverting. If Mongo hadn't blocked you first, I or another would have. The block is appropriate. Tom Harrison Talk 19:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC) | ” |
Zero's charges RE: "Out of Context"
I would also like to point out one other thing:
MONGO does not really deny any of the charges made against him, here. Instead of saying that he is not biased, or that he has not really angered people, or that he does not fight for a very pro-American viewpoint, or that he edits with only an opinion about facts, their quality, and their reliability, he says:
I ask the Wikipedia Arbcom: is this the stuff of which a defense is made?
These are the excuses of a bad cop. There is nothing more here than sidestepping the problem: MONGO makes editing Wikipedia a distinctly, personally unpleasant experience, and he feels he is justified in this behavior because he has well-respected "friends" and "supporters". He feels that the power conferred by his Adminship now absolves him of any responsibility to consider the objections and worries of those who questioned its original wisdom. He apparently feels that his judgment alone is all that is required to definitively classify this or that fact as valid. He has stated quite plainly that his status as an American uniquely qualifies him to evaluate the assertions of foreign critics.
I have no doubt that MONGO is a valuable editor, who has made priceless (and i mean that literally) contributions to the National Parks sections. This is, after all, his vocation and specialty. I am very happy -- proud, even -- that his contributions stand there as the doorway through which many, many people will enter and experience our National Parks.
Yet i am equally doubtless that MONGO is inhibiting valuable and equally priceless dialogue on powerfully significant political issues. I regret that he chooses to over-reach his specialty in this fashion; but more than that, i resent and am shamed by the results his pride has worked. I have had to fight now on two pages where people of this cabal have worked to stifle content. Amongst my edits, there are perhaps five total pages. I -- who have little experience tracking bears or deer -- have no interest in quibbling over the content of the Yellowstone or Yosemite pages; similarly, i would expect the same courtesy on the State Terrorism page from someone who doesn't speak a foreign language and has no interest in travelling abroad.
MONGO, amidst his specialty, is undoubtedly a conscientious and valuable editor. Unfortunately, MONGO has chosen to force his authority onto pages whose content is the most popular political cause du jour. While i admit that he has been, in some cases, a steadying force for good, it is more than apparent -- proven by the very existence of this RfA -- that he has overstepped the bounds of responsible administration to challenge the very foundations of Wikipedia philosophy.
Seabhcan is nothing more than a young man who loses his temper. This RfA, however, is the cold calculation of a manipulative administrator, out for blood, looking to call retribution upon an imagined offense to his Patriotism.
It is disgusting. Stone put to sky 17:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I was not gonig to get involved with this because I do not believe Arbcom is effective or necessary. However some of the evidence being presented is highly slanted and taken out of context or does not show the full picture including resolution. So instead of presenting evidence against others, I do not believe in mud slinging, I will attempt to bring context to evidence I feel is lacking context. For instance:
There is much taken from the user page of DickClarkMises presented above. The complete issue is that MONGO felt as though they were violating WP:NOT by putting a link and mention of their election efforts, they were seeking a political office and mentioned this fact on their userpage. Per WP:NOT, MONGO stated this was advertising / campaigning and not how their userpage was suppose to be used.[305] MONGO then took the issue to AN/I when DCM objected to the request. [306] An admin then chimed in KillerChihuahua with his opinion backing MONGO's statement.[307] Eventually the AN/I discussion concluded it seems that the link was fine and MONGO apologized to the user.[308]
Issues from 2005? This is clearly so far off that it cannot be seriously guaged as a meter for how the user is today. MONGO was arguing that a book that alleged that Bush used cocaine should not be used because it was not based on facts but hearsay, Tony Sidaway argued that it didnt matter because it was a book, and hence useable as it passes WP:RS and WP:V, WP:V is in question actually.
Items regarding User:Pokipsy76. If you look at both dif's being given and simply click ahead slightly, you would see that another admin steps in and agree's with MONGO on the issues, that admin being Tom Harrison.
| “ | Having failed to gain consensus on the talk page, you are now trying to force the language you prefer by reverting. If Mongo hadn't blocked you first, I or another would have. The block is appropriate. Tom Harrison Talk 19:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC) | ” |
| “ | That's entirely appropriate. Having failed to gather a consensus, some are now trying to force their changes by repeated reverts. That's disruptive, whether it's one revert in twenty-four hours or four. Tom Harrison Talk 18:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC) | ” |
So it seems these issues above are taken slightly out of context as there was an ongoing issue with the user that is not framed in any context and MONGO was supported by another admin in this instance.
I want to follow up without changing the above so everyone else's sections still make sense. First it turns out by examining pokipsy76's edit history that they were taking part in revert wars with numerous people across a few different articles. [314] Examining the history from the beginning of May to the block date of June 18 shows numerous reverts with edit summaries of "revert" or "revert (name)" I believe this constant reverting is not covered by my above statement nor CBDunkerson's and shows further why the situation led to a block, the user was reverting numerous users across a number of different articles, 6 at my count: TruthSeeker1234[315], Mongo[316][317][318], Morton Devonshire[319][320][321][322][323], MMX1[324][325], Tom Harrison[326][327][328][329][330][331][332][333][334], Jersey Devil[335] & DCAnderson[336][337][338]. All the articles related to 9/11, in the majority I do not see anyone agreeing with them or their edits by supporting their versions.
I just want to simply point out that what Stone describes in the first paragraph is a user continuing in a revert war while noone else that is editing the article agree's with them.
This is clearly against the concensus now if noone takes User A's side to even defend the edit, so User A is systematically reverting even though noone agree's with them, yet this is taken as proof of a "cabal" instead of proof that what is being inserted may be flawed or not appropriate. Stone then blames WP:RS for being "vague." The truth is the situation above is a violation and clearly one should not revert 3x, simply because its the stated limit, nor should they practive WP:OWN and think thier contributions cannot be moved around.
As for the first thing, I find it disturbing that Stone would now attack me for something. I will not getting into a spitting war here and have already been accused of removing mass ammounts of information from an article only to have Stone not apologize after I point out that nothing was removed, simply moved to a matching section. I had a feeling that attempting to bring context to some of Stone's evidence would bring about such a response and am not surprised. This is what the "cabal" of editors has to deal with, that even on a RfA, some people would make headings like "MONGO is an out of control POV pusher" and call other editors evidence "Largely Nonsense"
Note: Much of the information regarding cplot was removed by Travb, so the dates and section may no longer correspond.[339]
Since noting Theron's statement above about the first issue regarding Travb's evidence I decided to look further and the next 4 incidents with times of 09:34, 29 November 2006, 09:26, 29 November 2006, 22:58, 28 November 2006, 22:52, 28 November 2006, are all related to cplot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who has since been indef blocked from the site. After the block MONGO took it to AN/I for review and recieved 4 replies in support from Ghirla, Sirex98, Alex Bakharev and Guy. For an example of what cplot was doing and continued to do by launching sockpuppets after his standard block you can see below:
One of these is particularly venomous, yet required to see what kind of editor cplot was:[348]
| “ | ... now move on to raping babies or whatever it is you do in your freetime. Ban me. How are you going to ban me? Can you ban every IP address on the planet? Just for pointing out your silly ploy? --70.8.132.79 21:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC) | ” |
As you can see cplot was in fact a troll, laid out broad accusations of Federal Agents editing Wikipedia to hide the truth, and of course of "raping babies" in their spare time. This user was attempted to work with on the talk page by numerous people including myself, which asked him to present some section that needed work, however all he ever did was attack them or insist that they were wrong.[349] The further claim that this was a case of WP:BITE is in fact wrong as cplot had been editing Wikipedia since May 2006,[350] with well over 500 edits under this belt.
It should be noted that noone on the 9/11 article actually supports Lovelight and much like cplot can sometimes understand what they are talking about reffering to. They often refuse to provide sources and simply state XYZ should be in the article without stating why. In the instance given Lovelight is arguing against ... well everyone ... that the Iraq War should have a section in the 9/11 article. Everyone, including Mongo, is attempting to explain to them that the article is on the events of the day and should stay restricted to that as their are many other articles related to 9/11 that have to do with after affects, conspiracy theories, world views on it, the war on terror, the affects on the war on terror, the iraq war and its effects, justfication, legalities etc. However Lovelight simply continues to argue that it should be included against concensus.
The truth of the matter is that people who believe in conspiracy theories regarding this day have routinely had trouble with the concept of reliable sources and verifiable ones. They believe that the events of that day are not as popularly believed and want a larger section for their views, this would be fine under most circumstances and people have been willing to oblige by this, the problem is when its crunch time to write up something for the community to look at. The sources if any are even given are often far from reliable; blogs, 9/11 truth scholars website, etc. I have ended up on the side of Lovelight only once regarding a very nice blog that just highlites the events of 9/11 and surrounding days. However the problem is the information is dated, while yes on Day X it was believed person Y was a terrorist and noted so in Paper N, there is never followups it seems to correct information at one point believed and later proven false, which is what bothers some people. While I say if its reliable sources and meets V its fine, some do not agree because it does not attempt to check itself and its not technically itself a WP:RS source, meaning it just copies and pastes from them. The issue then becomes of if the information is altered or not etc. I hope this brings some context to the issue.
The second instance listed dated, 21:15, 27 November 2006, was a case of simple vandalism. This occured because cplot insisted on readding the NPOV tag without specifying what exactly was a POV issue.[351] He would give broad statements like, "the sources", or it "hiding the truth" and then go on to accuse those who asked for more specific information of being "Federal Agents" etc as listed above. After I seen numerous editors attempting to find out something specific, I added a template to the talk page to help them outline their issues[352] and they replied accusing me of "defending blatant violations", and pretending "to be a facilitaror(sic)." This is with everyone disagreeing with them and asking them to provide proof and them never doing so. So I would call it petty vandalism to keep adding a tag that you are avoiding specifying anything about and when its based on accusations that feds are editing Wikipedia to bias the article.[353] That last dif also contains the USEBACA category issue that came up, you can clearly see them adding it to the talk page, they later played ignorant to how it got there and said it must have been a "Wikipedia software bug".[354]
This section is no longer relevant, Travb has since withdrawn this evidence. It should also be noted that CamperStrike has been indef blocked
This is another section that I believe is being taken as more then what it is on the surface. The issue was resizing images to match a specific resolution the user used, instead of leaving the default setting that allows the image to be resized according to each users own browser/Wikipedia settings. In the quote given:
"I realize he/she means well, but continued efforts to go around to articles and reduce the image sizes to accomdate high resolution setting for browsers is being disruptive."
Mongo is clearly assuming good faith by stating "I realize he/she means well", but points out the destructive nature of the edits and states those edits are disruptive. Context is important here because its obvious he is not talking about the user, as he states the user "means well" and is seeking to have the user stopped from continuing what they are doing.
It should be noted that User:Ice Cold was blocked indef as a admitted sockpuppet.[355]
It should be noted that a confirmed sockpuppet master, cplot, posted the message on Lovelight's page and accused numerous editors, myself included, of being "federal contractors" with the goal to "maintain a slanted POV for Whitehouse officials." This list included 9 editors, including 1 Arbitrator. This information was first removed from Lovelights page by an admin, Musical Linguist,[361] and later put back by Lovelight[362]. Regebro then asked then to remove this information from their talk page as it included frivolous allegations against numerous editors, including them.[363] Lovelight refused to do so.[364] I later stepped in, removing the information without incident.[365]
The first item mentioned regarding placing the page under protection for the purposes or removing the ((hoax)) tag is actually an example of a good edit. The page on Operation Gladio is actually factually supported. The events and concept of Nato "stay behind" networks is highly sourced and while one of the sources is disputed to an extent, even the US government has since admitted they existed. While generally I am against "conspiracy theories" dominating articles on Wikipedia, or being given credit to them through their appearance here, Gladio is actually a well documented event and the citations in the article are in abundance. While I would not call it vandalism, it was quite clear to me at least that protecting the page was necessary to keep the falsely placed hoax tag off. This is as much an content dispute as a hoax tag appearing on the articles of major religions, and religious figures.
I believe this section is a little out of context as well. Seabhcan believes that multiple editors work together to create some of the issues he opposes. He is being asked to apologize first to one of those editors, its not really a response to a request to stop abusing his admin tools. He is shooting down the idea of apologizing first, attempting to change first. As Seabhcan puts it in the next edit:[366]
| “ | Sorry Travb, but I just don't trust this cabal of editors will change. I see no reason to apologise to the wind when there is no-one willing to accept it. There are two sides to this dispute. ... al Seabhcán bin Baloney (Hows my driving?) 00:26, 24 November 2006 (UTC) | ” |
The issue here is that Seabhcan see's the only way to resolve the issue is to have everyone come to an agreement, or everyone apologize and actually mean it. I actually agree as I chime in, fake apologies won't change the situation, just create shock when everything goes back to the way it was. As seabhcan states, he doesn't believe the "cabal" as he calls it will accept the apology anyway. This is where it ends with my asking him not to call them a cabal. I have asked him myself he not use terms like that or politically divisive names, but point out again, everyone on both sides has: "freeper", "dems", "cons" etc. So one person should not be punished for the sins of all involved, in terms of that issue. I also want to point out that while Travb was making a sincere attempt to get Seabhcan to offer up an apology first, noone from the "opposing side" came forth to apologize or even comment.
In the other dif where Seabcan is stated by TheronJ to be refusing an attempt by Mongo, I did not see it that way, the dif specifically states Seabhcan asking for more people to be involved in this de-escalation. For example, Seabhcan asks Mongo to get everyone together to hammer out a code of conduct for "controversial topics",[367] that code of conduct included only adding material that is sourced by WP:RS, meaning having the source ready before adding the information, the more sources the better. I will not state this is fully out of context, but I believe its more of an attempt to expand the offer put forth by Mongo to include everyone and end the situation once and for all with a set of guidelines everyone can work under.[368][369][370]
The disfunctionality fo the RfC should have stopped this from ever coming to ArbCom, noone really makes an attempt to resolve the situation, though me briefly and Travb usually attempted to help people find a middle ground. It seemed not many realized that RfC's are not stepping stones to RfA's, but instead attempts to resolve the dispute. For instance the person who opened the RfC, Tom Harrison at one point states:[371]
| “ | I do not care why you call names or insult people, or what we might do to get you to stop. I care little what you say you will or will not do in the future. Do what you think is right, and so will I. Tom Harrison Talk 23:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC) | ” |
This contrary to the very point of the RfC. The RfC is not just to document evidence for use later, how can anyone claim to have made a resolution attempt when in fact, noone cared to use the talk page to resolve anything. Tom specifically stated "As far as I am concerned the only purpose of this RfC is to solicit comment on Seabhcan's behavior.",[372] which is quite a shame.
Travb is quick to point out that MONGO has violated WP:NPA [373] in that he removed text from his talk page here. Looks like MONGO did the right thing. It doesn’t look good defending users who are involved in violating WP:SOCK as per this log, and who are disruptive in my honest opinion. JungleCat Shiny!/Oohhh! 13:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Rather than rehash the same evidence provided by MONGO and Morton Devonshire, which are more than adequate to represent my view on this arbitration, I will save the arbitrators time in not giving you something you have already seen. I have only a few dealings directly with Seabhcan, one where he was harassing an editor and I asked him to stop his insults, and also where he is insulting against MONGO on the same talk page later on. This type of behavior is not without a cost - the time spent dealing with this problem could have been used instead for building this project, and building it correctly.
Several editors here are presenting evidence against MONGO, it is obvious they disagree with him and the other users they label as a cabal (even I am classified as such). Travb above admits: "MONGO and I have been in a long term dispute…"[374] and sides with Seabhcan. Users Stone put to sky, Lovelight, and a few others side with him as well, so they want to show that this arbitration was initiated by someone with malicious intent. This is not the case. After the recent RfC done for Seabhcan, it is obvious that MONGO, Tom Harrison, Morton Devonshire, myself and others involved have not been able to reason with Seabhcan in getting him to maintain an acceptable level of civility.
In addition to my appeal to Seabhcan to not belittle others (linked in paragraph above), others have asked him to stop as examples illustrate below:
"…my name is not 'Monty' -- if you wish to shorten it, call me Mort, Morty, Matt or MD Lastly, please refrain from personal characterizations such as "obsession" -- it's not appropriate on Wikipedia to make ad hominem attacks. I know you have been warned about this before -- I do not wish to bring an Rfc or Arbcom case against you…" Morton Devonshire 20:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC) [375]
Response from Seabhcan:
(later in the thread, after I warned him to stop)
"To be honest, I don't think it would make any difference. After months and years of dealing with people like morty, TDS, Mongo, and the rest, it is clear that they have no interest in wikipedia…" Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 23:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC) [376]
"I and others have asked you before on several occasions to stop this kind of thing…You actions have made it harder for all of us to work on what are already difficult pages. Please, stop now." Tom Harrison 23:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC) [377]
Response from Seabhcan:
"…I don't believe these editors are here for the betterment of wikipedia. I think they edit here to push their personal POV…I won't stop seeing the elephant in the room." Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 23:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC) [378]
In reference to the message Seabhcan left on his userpage about "dumb Americans" [379] Text from warning template: "…Comment on content, not on contributors; personal attacks damage the community and deter users…Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing…" Torturous Devastating Cudgel 20:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC) [380]
Response from Seabhcan:
"It is not personal. Does it mention you? No. Bye." Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 20:07, 31 October 2006 (UTC) [381]
and futher into thread:
"I realised that you are a poor specimen of your nation, and I shouldn't fault all your people four your personal failures." Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 20:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC) [382]
"...what I ask of you is to stop insulting myself and other editors who don't appreciate your anti-American editing patterns…" MONGO 20:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC) [383]
Response from Seabhcan:
"...I standby all my edits to articles. If you find truth to be anti-american, then I suggest you examine your self-identity and why you rely on myth for your personal satisfaction…" Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 20:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC) [384]
This is an arbitration about Seabhcan's behavior. While tangental discussion about the other editors is to be expected, the focus of this Request for Arbitration is with respect to Seabhcan's behavior and we shouldn't lose sight of that. If you want to open an Rfc/Arb on MONGO, or rehash old Encyclopedia Dramatica battles, then "fill your boots" as the Canadians say, but this Arbcom is primarily about Seabhcan.
Mongo is very possessive about any article he touches and if someone edits anything or adds a link he will go back and delete it (revert it) back to his own last version. No one according to his rules is allowed to change an article. Except for him. Any information that is added by anyone but him he feels is unnecessary. When Mongo disagreed with me he followed me around wikipedia visting articles he had not edit history with and reverted and deleted several articles that I had edited or started. . Wiki user Mongo always goes against the general consensus of the Article discussion page and takes dramatic and drastic actions on his own terms with out the consent of any of the major contributors. He is more hindrance than help to the wiki-community.
He really thinks he is hot stuff because he constantly re-sizes images and brags about small contibutions to a in a "Featured Article" that may have never been featured before. Very egotistical
I am new to wikipedia and still have a lot to learn. But I do understand that this is a community project and USER:Mongo will often go out of his way and disrupt past progressive work done by the wiki-community with out ever using the discussion pages. I feel that he has over used his administrative powers in order to shape articles the way that he wants them.
Sincerely,
CamperStike
Near the end of November, I received an e-mail message asking how one would go about submitting evidence if one wished to avoid any possible retaliation. I agreed to post such evidence here.
I am simply copying part of an e-mail message I recieved. I make no allegations regarding it in any way — it may be true or false; it may be accurate or misleading; I will take it into consideration just as I will take all other evidence into consideration. I will not recuse myself from this case because I received it before copying it here.
most of the diffs have been presented at this point and there is no need to rehash the instances a second or third or fourth or eighth time at this point. however thre is a point in time where we have to ask what the line is. that seibchan has been rude and incivil is without question and an argument that he abused the tools can be made. what of mongo? when he was promoted there were many opposes regarding his attitude[385]. examples include "he was consistently belligerent and confrontational with multiple editors (including myself). Moreover, much of his confrontation was around him pushing very POV political opinions." and "MONGO spent a lot of time arguing (and edit warring) about which usernames were allowed on its membership roster, leading eventually to the page being protected" and the evidence from mr tibbs such as "inflammatory statements in the Edit Summary like: "It looks like foreigners and leftists wish to control this page....good luck!"" the warnings were not heeded by the majority of voters and they ended up coming true. his pov pushing rudeness and oftentimes abuse of tools is well documented before the encyclopedia dramatica incident and continued during the incident. [386] following the incident he seemed to take the "excessive zeal" free pass to heart judging by his acitons criticised by georgewilliamherbert at the noticeboard [387] and coninuing where he left off in terms of anger and pushing the rules and his own pov. he even speaks in contradictory tones now claiming that he can cooperate with people he was in dispute with and follows the rules but cannot find the time or willpower to enter mediation with badlydrawnjeff going as far as lying about badlydrawnjeffs attitude and contributions which violates wikis civility policies [388] at some point something needs to be done about all administrators who abuse power not just the ones who have friends willing to back them up which mongo has and seibchan does not. it is even to the point now where myself who is a longterm editor who was not involved in conflict with mongo doesnt feel comfortable speaking out with my name for fear of retribution. wikipedia is not a battleground and mongo makes it one with his pov pushing and tool abuse. mongo is all about defending eachother but is perfectly willing to attack another admin lie about another editor and stays silent when another editor is attacked on an offwiki website because the person who attacked and the person who pasted the attack onwiki are his friends.[389] please do somehting.
I'm very peripheral to this and am only involved slightly in the article Yellowstone National Park, regarding which I simply wish to echo MONGO's observations and to support his actions there. Thanks. Geologyguy 21:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Seabhcan has a certain view of the world that he continuously tries to insert into articles. Previous examples clearly show this. He also belittles editors that do not share this view again shown above. The result is that discussions quickly devolve into personal confrontations rather than the objective of building the encyclopedia.
Complaining that participants in AfD discussion are of American heritage.[390]
No matter what articles MONGO edits, somehow ED trolls manage to wiggle in. One only has to follow the comments from the sockpuppets of User:Cplot to see the disgusting references and personal attacks previously addressed by this committee. MONGO does the project a service by banning these trolls and stops the disruption. Some editors including Seabhcan appear to employing the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" strategy and give refuge and comfort to these trolls simply because they taunt MONGO. They do this at the expense of the project.
I am an uninvolved with this case, but I noticed that User:CamperStrike was involved in an arbitration case and I thought it was my duty to inform the arbitrators that User:CamperStrike has been indefinitely banned for using sockpuppets to disrupt Wikipedia and to evade blocks. Please give [391] a read for evidence of User:CamperStrike's disruption of Wikipedia. Dionyseus 02:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I am an advocate from AMA for cplot. Mongo presents difficulty to discuss the issue of cplot[392] and finally I have found my way here after receiving an email from cplot.
and removing communication attempts from cplot on his user page [396].
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.
signed: --CyclePat 08:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I have been trying to have minimal contact with MONGO to avoid our past disagreement growing into an ongoing feud. However, I seem to be quoted/referenced repeatedly in the evidence above and some of that presented (not by MONGO) is grossly inaccurate and defamatory towards an innocent party. Ergo, a few clarifications are in order;
NuclearUmpf argues in 7.1.1 that Tom Harrison and pschemp upholding MONGO's block of Pokipsy76 (and, in pschemp's case, protecting his talk page) shows that the block was valid. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let us look at the actual incident rather than 'inferring' things based solely on the names/status of the individuals involved (a deadly poison IMO);
This was the series of edits leading up to MONGO's block on Pokpsy76;
At that point MONGO also blocked Pokipsy76 for "trolling" with a clearly abusive/far from impartial block message. MONGO also specifically stated that the block was for reverting him (calling Pokipsy76 a troll in the process), threatened to block for a week if Pokipsy76 reverted him even one more time, and later claimed that there were grounds for an indefinite block of Pokipsy76. A review of Pokipsy76's edits in the months leading up to this incident shows no 'disruption' on his part more significant than the above.
There was no justification for a block on Pokipsy76. None. This was not just a block ON someone the admin was in dispute with... it was specifically FOR daring to dispute them... which is a gross and fundamental violation of adminship. That it was 'upheld' by two admins, the first of them himself involved in the same content dispute, was a travesty. Abuse by three admins subsequently painted as 'proof' that it is 'correct' for admins to block users who disagree with them. In my view the text used by MONGO and Tom Harrison was clearly POV, but even if you accept the claim that having Wikipedia itself (not some sourced third party) dismiss individuals as "conspiracy theorists" is 'neutral' it remains clear that not everyone is going to agree with that assessment and thus reversion of such is a legitimate content dispute rather than "trolling" or "vandalism" as MONGO called it. Note that this incident pre-dates the whole 'Encyclopedia Dementica' brouhaha and is wholly unrelated to it. This was how MONGO treated a regular user with no previous blocks, no history of vandalism, no trolling behaviour, et cetera... a user blocked because they disagreed with MONGO and nothing more.
That said, MONGO did acknowledge (and notes above) that he should not have placed blocks on Pokipsy76 and two other users while he was in dispute with them. I think he should also have acknowledged that the block on Pokipsy76 was simply unwarranted, but that was unlikely with numerous admins supporting him... to his own detriment IMO.
A full analysis of the history shows that similar reversions and edit summaries were being performed BY MONGO, Tom Harrison, and others... and contrary to what you say there were several others supporting Pokipsy76's changes, both in the edit warring and extensive discussions on the talk pages. The point however is that we seldom block for this sort of 'slow motion edit warring', even when it occurs on multiple pages. Maybe after some form of dispute resolution has been attempted with a neutral mediator and specific warnings to avoid edit warring... MAYBE a 24 hour block might be issued for a '1RR violation' (which is what this was)... but a 48 hour block with zero warning issued by an admin who was every bit as guilty of the edit warring 'offense' as the person they were blocking? No. Completely and utterly unjustified. MONGO specifically stated that he blocked Pokipsy76 for reverting him... and that is something which we must never allow an admin to do. Users are ALLOWED to revert admins. Indeed, if the admin is characterizing various people as 'conspiracy theorists' on multiple pages I'd say that removing this POV language is the right thing to do... but even if you somehow think that wording is 'neutral' other users are still allowed to believe otherwise and revert it. Blocking them for that is amongst the most egregiously wrong things an admin can do. Pokipsy76 did nothing that was a blockable offense under normal circumstances. He edit warred. Just as MONGO himself was doing. Any admin so strict that they block for 1RR violation would have blocked MONGO (who also did so) as well. But that is not what happened here. MONGO used his admin powers to 'win' an edit war by blocking his opponent. And that cannot be allowed. --CBD 14:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
As noted above, MONGO was largely excused of any but minor wrongdoing by numerous admins in the Request for comment stemming from the Pokipsy76 incident. It has also been noted that the ArbCom in a previous case characterized MONGO's actions only as "excessive zeal". 'Zeal' is potentially over-determined effort along the proper path. To so describe MONGO's actions was a grave mistake on the ArbCom's part. Stating that his, 'violations of civility standards and normal administrative restraints and procedures were forgivable under the trying circumstances' would have been more reasonable. MONGO did things he should not have in the Pokipsy76 case... and the ED case. By failing to SAY so the admin community and the ArbCom have allowed these problems to continue. MONGO is a generally good admin who sometimes acts VERY improperly when he is angry... with active encouragement to do so by some admins and arbitrators. This leads to blatant mistreatment of users like the Pokipsy76 case above, great anger towards MONGO and Wikipedia building into the whole ED campaign, and ongoing disruption and conflict.
MONGO was wrong. Failing to say that because he is 'a good guy' is an even greater wrong... to all of Wikipedia and indeed MONGO himself.
I contest this. I protected a page where I had previously reverted vandalism and corrected spellings. I had never made any large edits to the page or added content. I was not protecting a favoured version - I was pausing an edit war. I believe this is permitted under the rules.
I contest this too. The rules say that an admin can correct a gross error on a protected page if he first asks for comments on the talk page. I did this as I wanted to remove 3 misleading words from one sentence. My note on the talk page encouraged a reply from the user who added the words in the first place. That user admitted he had added the words to mislead and push his POV. I removed the words. I stand by this edit.
I disagree that this was improper. Mongo had twice reverted material without discussion or a reply to request for clarification. I warned him not to do it again[401], and as this would have been a breach of 3RR, it would have been correct for him to be blocked. Luckily, the warning did get his attention and he lowered himself to the level of discussing his reverts on the talk page.
Our sole Arbitrator has just made the allegation that I "repeated insertion and mischaracterization of information from unreliable sources" [402]. However, Fred admits that he has no evidence of this and maintains that he merely thinks it to be true [403].
Unfortunately, I cannot contest Fred's secret thoughts. I have to deal with evidence.
I agree I have been uncivil. However, I put this down to "excessive zeal"[404] in dealing with uncivil editors who delete sourced material and push their personal nationalistic POV. Proof below in Context section.
This is nonsense. I am not anti-American or anti-anybody else. All the diffs above are taken out of context. In them I was expressing my frustration with editors who bring their nationality to the table when they edit. Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia and an international project. I firmly believe that any editor who offers an opinion such as "Any American citizen can recognize the phony 9/11 bull." [405] [406] is a problem. When I edit articles on my home country I don't post such, frankly, insulting and ethno-centric replies to questions from editors from other countries.
Have I forgotten something?
Yes I have been uncivil at times to users such as Morton Devonshire, Mongo, TDS, Tbeaty, and a few others. This is not because I disagree with these users. It is because these users have been consistently trollish and abusive towards me and my work. As a counter example, I often disagree with Tom Harrison, yet he is a perfectly civil user and our conversations are often productive. The same cannot be said for some of the other users. This group of editors patrol Wikipedia looking for information to which they object for nationalistic reasons, no matter how well researched or referenced. Evidence suggests that they find these articles by wikistalking certain editors. They also seem to play as an organised 'tag team', taking turns to revert so as not to break the 3RR. They communicate off-wiki by e-mail[407] [408] [409] [410] [411]. Morton maintains a list of his team, although the hard core are fewer in number. Update: Morty currently seems to be engaged in a 'get out the vote' drive that would make the republicans proud.
The article on Operation Gladio was started in November 2004. It grew gradually over the following months with contributions from many different editors. Tom Harrison made a number of very helpful contributions through 2004, 2005. [412] [413] [414]. By October 2006 the article had grown into a huge, if disorganised, article with over 60 references and external links. I was aware of the article but did not edit until recently - and then only to add sources or revert vandalism. After this[415] the following editors began attempts to strip the article down without regard to research or fact.
This cabal of editors has also made it their mission to attack the work and character of Dr. Daniele Ganser and force removal of all mention of him. This is clearly because Ganser's work is a peer-reviewed academic source from a top university. Morton Devonshire maintains a list of articles which reference Ganser in the hope of removing them all. TDC attacks Ganser's character, baselessly calling him an antisemite [416], [417]. Morton Devonshire has repeated this accusations many times on talk pages. TDC has removed reference to Ganser based on this imagined antisemitism [418]. These editors have never given a credible reason for judging Ganser's work unreliable. They first claimed it was unreliable because Ganser joined ST9/11.org two years after publication. This turned out not to be true, so they moved on to attacking his character. Many times I and other users[419] [420] [421] have politely asked them why and they refuse to answer, instead invoking their 'tag team' skills to change the subject.
Even after Ganser was removed from one article, Morton Devonshire removed vast amounts of other referenced material while leaving a misleading edit summary claiming the material was Ganser related [422]. When this is reverted, the tag team again comes in and removes it again, and again.
They have yet to give an explanation of why this peer reviewed source is unacceptable. Seeing that they have had months to provide this and have refused, my benefit-of-the-doubt assumption of good faith is wearing thin.
I was considering using Mongo's defense when he was called on incivil editing, when he said "There comes a point that some editors do indeed exhaust the communities patience" and
But I think he went too far when he said "I offer no apology and I offer no respite and intend to insult you and others" - although the real bias in Wikipedia was shown when he was not punished for this admission of an incivil mission. Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 13:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
In Mongo's explanation of his treatment of me a defense of Seabhcan's behaviour seems to me to emerge very clearly. Mongo's "skeptical" approach of "always questioning information that is not mainstream" amounts, in practice, to a suspension of civility, including the principles of WP:NPA, WP:AGF and WP:BITE. That is, once editors make (or even propose) a particular kind of edit, Mongo immediately drops the assumption of good faith and proceeds, by a variety of less than polite means, to prevent them from accomplishing their goals. In cases where this move proves to be ineffective, i.e., when the editor persists and ultimately demonstrates sound judgment, Mongo construes his own change of mind as "accomodating" and maintains the appropriateness of his original reaction. I believe Mongo's attitude in this regard is shared by a number of editors that are involved in this dispute on both sides, though certainly not all. Among these editors, as far as I can tell, a tacit "no holds barred" agreement applies, and they are reasonably good at directing their insults to editors who are party to this agreement alone. My experience with Seabhcan looks to me like an attempt to pull an editor out of the crossfire by an editor who would normally be shooting, but who here had the good sense to see that I had been mistaken for a partisan.
Mongo himself suggests that this is a general attitude when he says that his were not the only "guarded" responses to my suggestions. In fact, I would say Mongo's early remarks in my first meeting with him were "barbed", and I mean this in a very specific way that User:Toiyabe brought to my attention: "I think a lot of people are waiting to see if you crack under pressure and say something nutty." [426] Indeed, Mongo was even handing me something sufficienty nutty to say [427] -- all I had to do was take the bait. If I had, his barb would been firmly set and I would have been in for long painful reeling in, until I broke the line and swam away, or he could club me with an adminstrative action in response to my thrashing about.
My basic question here is, Given the personal and "skeptical" editing style of Mongo and others is Seabhcan's behaviour really wrong? Can we not argue that there exists, among this group of editors (again, on both sides) a particular tone, arrived at by tacit but mutual agreement, to challenge each other's point of view in strong terms? The only thing we might ask is that they (again, as a self-governing group) exercise a bit more restraint with newbies. But, as I have been arguing, it is precisely Seabhcan's way of welcoming newbies into that tone that deserves, not just approval, but, at least in my case, praise.--Thomas Basboll 09:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, here's the deal: I'm going to provide evidence showing that I'm not harassing MONGO. I will probably end up criticizing MONGO in the process, but it's only to show that there is no reason to ban me. That's all I really care about. I care nothing for MONGO and don't support or oppose any "remedies" against him including desysopping, because I edit as a hobby, don't ever lose sleep over Wikipedia, and only care about staying unbanned. That said, here goes.
MONGO has objected strongly to my edits of last night-ish. First off, some edits to my userpage. This is nonsense and only noticeable if you have my userpage watchlisted or watch my edits. Neither of those are wrong, but it does mean that anyone who complains is actually seeking out knowledge of these edits and is thus not being harassed.
I allow people to put funny things in my userpage. They're commented out so they're not visible in case anyone objects. SOurce code for my userpage is here.
MONGO also says my edit to Kelly Martin's self-filed RfC was trolling and/or harassment. This is the edit. How could anyone possibly find fault in making it easier to start a new section?
Alex and I had corresponded off-wiki, so I came around to say hi after he indicated he was feeling down. This is actually why I started editing. MONGO objects to this comment, which, as MONGO himself states, I apologized for and removed. Note that both admins who unblocked me were awre of this comment. So... all's well that ends well. It wasn't nice, but a block 3 months down the line would be pointless, and an outright ban would be excessive. The edit I referenced in the new section was this (it was a joke, okay?), which was then rollbacked and restored by the "owner" of the userpage. THIS is where MONGO and I had our first interactions. While I did comment on MONGO, MONGO found me by watching Alex's page. I didn't seek him out. I was only here to say hello to Alex. I was rude to MONGO and have since learned to "wear my Wikipedia hat" better, thought I noticed MONGO gets no flak for calling me the names I am only now discovering, thanks to Travb's evidence.
He also objected to me saying this, in which I said he shouldn't order people around. The "dick thing" I referenced was not calling MONGO a dick, but rather him ordering Alex not to reference what I've come to learn is a popular Wikipedia philosophy, or guideline, or something. This is also where I made a comment implying that Wikipedia would be helpless without me. It's embarrassing that I have to explain this, but that was supposed to be light-hearted joking to get people to chill out.
I am not stalking MONGO, as I've explained to the satisfaction of other admins. I'll go ahead and repeat myself one last time here and that'll be it.
Some notes -
First of all, I am obviously not seeking drama (and should not be penalized for saying I'm not seeking interaction, although MONGO has included diffs where I've said that as "evidence" against me). The reason I've said this with confidence is that I made one reply to MONGO's ANI report and didn't even give it another though, while others apparently stuck around to argue about semantics. MONGO, as Travb has now shown me via his evidence section, went around hassling everyone who disagreed with him, saying they supported harassment and were defending disruption. Yet a comment from Miltopia never reached those threads...
Speaking of the ANI, it seemed as though the only objection most people had to the unblock was that there was not proper discussion, not that I didn't actually deserve the unblock. So that's something to keep in mind while claiming I "harassed" MONGO. There were severa comments defending me there, and I find it interesting they're all being ignored by latecomers to the case. Well, I advise you all to consider they're judgement - clearly the consensus was that I was behaving appropriately. This comment is an especially good read, although I won't do the disrespect of paraphrasing it, since GTBacchus is the smartest person on Wikipedia and knows how to identify and deal with trolls better than anyone else (see his RfA).
That is all. This is not about ED and if it turns out to be about ED, I have actively opposed making it so.
Possibly by mistake, Musical Linguist hasn't presented the events correctly. I sitll don't see what this has to do with the case, but whatever. I'm just gonna go point by point again, that seems easiest. Please read her evidence first or this will make no sense.
Some of these are really laughable, no offense to Musical Linguist.
I almost forgot: Musical Linguist's assertion as follows:
...is merely a restatement of what I had said before - that when things with MONGO went sour, I bowed out rather than pursue conflict.
At the time of the deletion review for the Encylopaedia Dramatica talk page, MONGO mentioned an inappropriate edit made by Ribonucleic (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) at 6:46 on 5 November. He wanted it removed from the history in the event of the page being restored. I cannot supply a diff because the page is still deleted. However, I have looked in the history of deleted edits.
23:59, 7 November 2006 . MONGO (Notability - link to attack page removed...anyone repost and they will be blocked) 03:29, 7 November 2006 . Miltopia (Re: notability - - listen to GT, he is wise like owl) 03:27, 7 November 2006 . Miltopia (Notability - - had to laugh) 02:06, 7 November 2006 . GTBacchus (Re: notability - reply to Anomo - that's not accurate) 01:44, 7 November 2006 . Anomo (Re: notability) 22:43, 6 November 2006 . Wasabe3543 02:37, 6 November 2006 . Minidoxigirli 07:57, 5 November 2006 . Ashley Y (Notability) 06:46, 5 November 2006 . Ribonucleic (Notability - +link) 07:19, 4 November 2006 . Ashley Y
I clicked on the link which Ribonucleic had added, shortly after MONGO had mentioned it. Obviously, I am not reproducing it here, but it was to a particularly vile attack article on MONGO. It is inconceivable that that link could have been posted in good faith, by an editor who was not trolling. Yet it was nearly three days before it was removed — by MONGO himself. During that period, seven edits were made to the page, including one by an administrator. (One of the editors — Miltopia — openly jeered at MONGO.) [Comment added at 00:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC) — in the section above, Miltopia claims that his "LOL" was aimed at Ashley Y, not at MONGO.] Yet the link remained there until MONGO noticed and removed it himself.
I clicked on that link again a few minutes ago, and found that it either has been removed or now requires a username and password in order to access it. Arbitrators, therefore, have only my word for it (and presumably MONGO's) that it was so inappropriate. I can only say that if that link had been added to a page which wasn't a candidate for deletion, and I had seen it at the time, I would have performed a deletion and selective restoration, and would then have gone here to ask for oversighting. And I would very likely have blocked Ribonucleic.
I do not wish to imply malice or culpability on the part of the six editors who edited between Ribonucleic's addition of the link and MONGO's removal of it (with the exception of Miltopia — see below). I don't personally click on every single link that is added by other users to the talk pages that I'm active on. Nevertheless, I consider that incident to be one of several that show that we simply didn't do enough to help. In my opinion, administrators who knew that MONGO was being trolled and harassed in connection with Encyclopaedia Dramatica should have watchlisted that talk page, and have made more effort to be around to deal with such incidents. I include myself among those who failed.
My evidence for this has been posted in the section immediately above this — "Admins (and users) failed to give MONGO adequate support". There is, of course, other evidence submitted by other users, which I agree with, and which, to a limited extent (I couldn't give it full attention), I noticed at the time. It is obvious that Miltopia's early presence on Wikipedia was connected with trolling and with taunting MONGO, and wiki-stalking him to articles that he (Miltopia) had not previously edited. It seems also that when he realized he was in danger of being reblocked, and that admins were watching him, he began to make more edits that were not related to MONGO, in an effort to give the impression that he really was a genuine editor who had unwittingly become caught up in something that he didn't want any involvement in. As evidence, I submit the following from the deleted talk page of Encyclopaedia Dramatica. Obviously, I cannot give diffs, but any administrator can see the evidence. I have altered the offensive link which was posted by Ribonucleic — linking instead to something that does not exist.
I have mentioned above that some of the people who posted to that page after the link was posted may not have been aware of the content of the website. The ":-D Lol" post from Miltopia makes it clear that he at any rate, was aware of it. The image he tries to present of an innocent newbie who was not stalking, harassing, or trolling MONGO, and who just got caught up in this case by accident simply does not hold water. The existence of deleted edits is an extra reason why admins should not normally unblock a user without first checking with the blocking admin: the would-be unblocker may have missed some evidence.
Miltopia is far from being alone in the harassment of MONGO. However, it is unlikely that I'll have time to give more evidence.
Since anonymous evidence is allowed, I too would like to present anonymously, lest I be retaliated against. Obviously, I haven't taken the same extensive precautions as the anonymous user above, so it will be simple task for people to discover my identity, but I would ask they not do so unless absolutely necessary.
I'm writing because I saw the straw poll on desysoping MONGO, and I wanted to vote in support of it. I chose not to, however, because I was afraid of retaliation. Noticing that no one has picked out this specific aspect of MONGO's behavior, I wanted to present evidence showing my fears are valid.
As best I can tell, these five users were attacked without reason. Their only crime was to disagree with MONGO. Two editors were threatened with blocks, two admins were subjected to personal attacks, and one was assured that MONGO "would remember his 'support'". Backed up by admin tools, these sorts of threats carry weight that they would not otherwise have. Taken together, they represent a misuse of his status as an Admin.
There are many, many "gray" examples of this behavior presented above, but I wanted to highlight these five because seem so indefensible.
The straw poll shows overwhelming opposition desysoping MONGO, and I see some comments from the Arbiters that they may want to re-evaluate the desysoping of MONGO because of that feedback. I would encourage Arbiters not be swayed in any way. MONGO has personally shown a certain vindictive zeal. He and his closest allies are strong believers in Defending Each Other-- a good idea, but one which can sometimes inadvertantly devolve into Attack The Common Enemy. The situation is such that those who oppose desysoping have every motivation to come forwards. Those support it are much more hesistant to do so. Obviously, Voting is always evil-- but it's particularly evil in this instance.
If MONGO truly has the confidence that the straw poll indicates, then a future RFA will easily pass, and nothing will be lost. If however, there are many people more like me, people who support the desysopping but are hesistant to say so in a mere straw poll, then the RFA will fail. I urge ArbCom to let that process take place. MONGO's actions are sufficiently troubling that he should have to at least face an RFA to see if he still has the confidence of the community. That is a very low hurdle to have to achieve, given his actions. He's not being blocked or permabanned. He's not being forbidden from being an Admin-- he just has to actually ask the community if he still has their support. I suspect he does not.
Thank you. --AvoidingRetaliation 17:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.