A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the page.
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This is a summary written by users who are concerned by this user's conduct and have previously attempted and failed to resolve the dispute. Only users who certify this request should edit the "Statement of the dispute" section. Other users may present their views in the other sections below.
This RfC/U grew out of this AN/I discussion from January 21 to 25, where multiple editors presented concerns about Cantaloupe2's conduct. In response to each editor's complaints, Cantaloupe2 brought up his own complaints about that editor.
User:YuMaNuMa expressed concerns regarding ABF, BATTLE and misinterpreting policies. Cantaloupe2 responded by expressing his own CIVIL, OWN and edit-warring concerns about YuMaNuMa. When User:Andy Dingley and User:174.118.142.187 supported YuMaNuMa's concerns, Cantaloupe2 responded with concerns about their conduct. When User:Nouniquenames noted Cantaloupe2's "abrasive editing style" from an earlier dispute with User:CorporateM, Cantaloupe2 defended his behavior by saying that consensus was not consistently in CorporateM's favor. When 174.118.142.187 said "It would seem that a few editors that disagreed with you all had WP:COI problems according to you," Cantaloupe2 responded with concerns about 174.118.142.187 canvassing and vote-stacking. When User:AndrewDressel proposed a temporary block, Cantaloupe2 responded with concerns about Andrew's conduct and competency. When User:M0rphzone added support for the block, Cantaloupe2 responded by pointing out an edit by M0rphzone that Cantaloupe2 considered problematic.
User:Dreamyshade asked Cantaloupe2 "Do you think the general pattern of these complaints...is unfounded? How do you think this should be resolved?" and he responded with his concerns about other editors vote-stacking the complaints, and he said "I have no further comment I would like to provide at this very moment."
As this RfCU formed, we discovered even more editors had similar experiences with Cantaloupe regarding hounding, battlegrounding, ABFing, edit-warring, baiting, being uncivil, making speculative COI accusations, forum shopping, being unwilling to make a good-faith effort to interpret and follow consensus, poor WP:RS judgements and a disruptive level of deletionism. In some cases these can be interpreted as good-faith disputes, where Cantaloupe may feel very passionate about a specific source, however in other cases (see CorporateM's comments below) there is no reasonable way to interpret his edits except as a form of bad-faith harassment. Many of the signers here have also had our own civility problems in dealing with Cantaloupe.
From what can be seen in editing patterns this behavior may have started after Cantaloupe read a story in SEO Journal[1] on how to link spam Wikipedia[2]. There are some indications[3][4][5] that Cantaloupe is removing sources, because he doesn't want to give traffic to the site being linked to. He clearly has a significant animosity towards the SEO profession,[6][7][8] an accusation he denies repeatedly,[9][10][11] which may explain his disruptive behavior on SEO articles,[12] the desire to remove sources he feels serve an SEO benefit to the source and his unfounded accusations of editors using Wikipedia for SEO.[13]
While these complaints span dozens of articles and boards, each involved editor has attempted to concisely present their issues below with links.
Policies:
Guidelines:
Essays:
We would like Cantaloupe2 to:
I've long had issues with Cantaloupe2's behaviour, primarily with his tendency to assume bad faith and become hostile towards other editors if he fails to achieve what he initially aimed to do. Regardless of whether he failed, he has always maintained an attitude of assuming bad faith, which he has done since he started editing the iPhone 5 article, Cantaloupe claimed that users citing sources that he believe were unreliable have an ulterior motive and are attempting to increase traffic to their sites. This was said despite my attempts to inform him about the reliability of some of these sources, particularly iFixit1, which is widely cited by numerous reliable sources, when he still continued to refuse to acknowledge that iFixit is a reliable source, I brought the issue to RSN where another editor also concurred that the source is reliable. Afterward Cantaloupe continued to assume bad faith, accusing me of vandalising Diff (This occurred very early on in my dispute with cantaloupe) and playing a "cat and mouse game" with him search up "cat's", at that point my patience was wearing thin. I warned Cantaloupe about assuming bad faith here and unsurprisingly he ignored it. The last straw occurred when Cantaloupe moved from editing the iPhone 5 article to another article that I have significantly contributed to and focused on as a side project during when the iPhone 5 content was being disputed. This occurred 15 minutes or so after Cantaloupe posted hostile and provocative comments on my talk page about my editing, and asserted that I was deliberately adding bias information into articles, in response to an edit summary I wrote, telling him that he should take more care with his grammar in the future when editing articles, as I had to copyedit almost every edit he makes. In his response Cantaloupe also accused me of repeatedly adding bias information to articles I edit when there was no such evidence of me deliberately adding bias info of any sort - at most the content and its inclusion could be disputed but it clearly wasn't bias towards any viewpoint. Cantaloupe leaving a message on my talk page Cantaloupe making large edits to a page that was listed on my userpage Given that editors need to read articles and manually type out edits, the timing fits perfectly. As a result of his most recent behaviour, I decided to take the issue to ANI, where I encountered numerous other editors who have experienced the same issues with him. It's extremely difficult to resolve issues with this user as he may occasionally digress from the discussion without posting anything for weeks, only to come back to make more controversial edits when the article is being assessed by GA reviewers.
(During drafting, Cantaloupe added a response, and this has been moved to his own section; Dreamyshade's reply and my reply have been moved to the talk page.)
One of Cantaloupes traits I had tried to help him with was his style of editting concerning multiple section edits in one edit session.[14] Somebody isn't going to agree with part of so many changes and will revert all the changes in his edit session. After that, on many occasions he then appears to attack the editor and article using tags to ridicule article information, making the article look ridiculous to readers.
Here is another attempt to correct some of his edit behaviour and identifying this same behaviour. He responded with this labelling it as harrassment. In desparation I took the matter to ANI only to have it float off the page into the archives without any resolution or even recognition by Cantaloupe2.
He seems to be hounding me as he followed me to several other articles (despite his claim to the contrary[15]) and repeats the behaviour pattern. After this edit[16] shortened a phrase without any meaning change, Cantaloupe2 clearly attemped to harrass and WikiStalked me with this edit which was subsequently removed by an admin editor.[17]
He injects technical nonsense edits and, after being confronted and reverted, tags the article in a ridiculous appearance manner.[18][19] Of course this all appears to be within WP policies and guidelines.
Cantaloupe2 appears to edit without being WP:COMPETENT in the subject matter. I suspect his native language is not English and this may be causing much editting confusion in understanding technical article phrases.[20][21]. He has been advised of this incompetency by several editors from various articles.
Here is another nonsense tech edit that was reverted along with his relentless anti-"America-centric" numeric campaign.[22]
My interaction problems with Cantaloupe2 included 1. Overdeletion (deletion of uncontroversial cited content, deletion of RS sources, deletion of content with weak sources), 2. failure to discuss (deleting instead), 3. Misinterpretation of policy/guideline, 4. Ignoring/disrespecting reliability and notability of sources, 5. Ignoring/disrespecting results of RSN discussion, 6. Refusal to build an encyclopedia by refusing to search for or add even one source to the article, 7. Misrepresenting facts about eeggs.com website/editorial process, 8. Disrespecting the 3O DR process by jumping it (going to RSN prematurely), 9. Lying about other editor's text and finally, assigning conjectural motives to another editor's behavior (I know, pot/kettle).
At Easter egg (media), Cantaloupe2 first blanket-deleted cited content (3.9k of a 19.7k article), RS and dubious sources alike. I reverted the lot, and added 3 sources (TIME, USA Today, and NBC News), for three reasons: 1. prefer to address item sourcing individually, 2. verifiable-but-poorly-sourced content does not call for urgent deletion, and 3. to demo how article improvement is done for trivially verified content. Cantaloupe2 then reverted (4.3k, including the 3 new RS). From then on, my edit summaries and comments switched from "Hey! but AGF" to "you're acting in bad faith so stop it."
Cantaloupe2 then slowed slightly, deleted one uncontroversially weak source, and tagged 'cn', without trashing the content. But then he pivoted and deleted all citations of eeggs.com, and tagged the cited items ((original research inline)) (tagspam as noted by others). Eeggs.com had been deemed RS at RSN in 2011, a year after a shallow, ill-informed 2010 3-party assessment as non-RS. Cantaloupe2 sticks doggedly to the 2010 RSN, ignoring the published status of the site author and the earned R (and N) of being cited by dozens of RS (news, scholarly). He then tagged the article ((Primary sources)); I consider this tagspam too.
Then he requested 3O - I advised "I'm a big fan of 3O" but they might not engage where 3 editors are discussing (true, though an editor advised of differing preferences on User talk:Lexein). Then 3O requested statements of the dispute. But without waiting for 3O to complete, Cantaloupe2 relisted eeggs.com at RSN. I struckthrough the relisting as premature, because 3O had not completed. Then he reverted that. His relisting denigrates the website owners, interprets SPS wrongly, insists that 2010 RSN discussion somehow supercedes the 2011, and he falsely alleges that I had not wanted 3O, and alleged that I had some bad motive for supporting eeggs.com as a source, twice.
My responses to Cantaloupe2 in comments and edit summaries became, bluntly, uncivil, due to my intolerance of deletionism, and really bad previous experiences with it and with misinterpretation of policy. However, I don't think that changes the dispute timeline as I've described.
(During drafting, Cantaloupe added a response, and this has been moved to his own section.)
Cantaloupe2 has made a lot of bold edits to articles I watch where I have a potential COI (articles related to my work that I contribute to as a volunteer - which I'd directly edited sometimes, which I now acknowledge wasn't a good idea) - he seemed to consider them full of spam that needed immediate fixing, although they'd been stable for a long time before that, at what I'd considered definitely-could-be-improved but not-terrible quality for articles on niche software topics. These are the main discussions: Talk:Cydia#Addressing recent changes, Talk:IOS jailbreaking#Default to talk page discussion, Talk:SHSH blob, and Talk:Greenpois0n. I've been trying to politely dispute his edits that I believe added problems or removed appropriate content, and I try to make this easy by providing suggested improvements with reliable sources ([23] [24] [25] [26]), but this has been a frustrating process (although with some amount of successful collaboration mixed in).
Issues have included him speculating about me having bad faith ([27] [28]), applying a more stringent standard for notability and sourcing than other editors do ([29]), removing content that seemed promotional to him but was acceptable according to other editors ([30]), removing poorly-sourced but verifiable material without adding a warning first or looking for sources ([31]), and occasional incivil language ("litter", "mumbo jumbo", "fabrication", calling jailbreaking "tampering" which implies harmfulness/criminality instead of using a neutral word like "modification", etc), and overtagging [32]. I've also been frustrated sometimes by problematic edits by Cantaloupe2 lingering in articles when I've disputed them on talk pages with referenced suggestions waiting for responses for weeks, but I know, WP:NORUSH.
Cantaloupe2 is obviously passionate about NPOV and verifiability, which is great. I'd just like to encourage him to prioritize civility and consensus-building just as much, since good conduct is just as important as good content to Wikipedia's long-term quality. Dreamyshade (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this edit-warring post was the last IBAN request I made. The result was "both warned" (I for edit-warring over a personal blog post being added) with "Cantaloupe2 seems to me to be behaving worse." The closing admin told Cantaloupe to read HOUND and BATTLE carefully and warned of admin action if he continues to focus on articles I have edited. Cant continued to follow me to astroturfing and PRSA anyway. After 1-2 months of dealing with this, I was pretty rude at this point. Considering Cantaloupe's editing behavior for contesting sources, the fact that he insisted on adding a negative personal blog where I had a disclosed COI was pretty compelling evidence of baiting and bad-faith editing in my opinion. Cantaloupe2 can't credibly argue that he didn't know better. Insisting that the Controversy section goes near the top on the PRSA article was pretty silly as well. What possible motive would he have for wanting these edits enough to edit-war over them besides a desire to bait and battleground? It's very odd for him to accuse me of having a COI with PRSA, considering I added a substantial amount of contentious content and undid the edits of a prior COI editor from PRSA.
My experiences and observations of Cantaloupe's behavior suggest that his editing is made in bad-faith. He creates a hostile environment here and diminishes the quality of articles, then justifies his poor editing by pointing out imperfections in other editors or in articles. CorporateM (Talk) 00:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I became aware of this issue through my dispute resolution work and my work with COI issues. From what I saw back then Cantaloupe2 engaged in baiting, stalking, lawyering, and edit warring in order to attempt to get his way. He does not seem to be interested in working together to resolve differences, instead falling back to trying to trick or bait the other party into breaking some rule. Such tactics might work elsewhere, but they rarely succeed here. Gigs (talk) 19:16, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Dispute with another editor I tried to head off (COIN thread with Cantaloupe2, 3RR and request by the other editor for an IBAN, toward the end of a past discussion from my talk page, I tried using stronger language to bluntly get the message across - obviously unsuccessful). --Nouniquenames 17:13, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While not portraying me as the most civil editor, I don't think that my talk-page comments and edit summaries have strayed very far from being calm and reasonable, and I think the discussions pointed to by the following links illustrate the futility of trying to iron out differences with Cantaloupe2: his gain ratio is significant standing alone and Unreliable sources. Arguments tend to go in circles. For example: he accuses me of deleted a tag he inserted, I show that the tag is still there after my edits, he posts a diff that shows I deleted some other tags, I reply that neither tag I deleted was the one in question, he accuses me of deleted a tag he inserted, and we've come full circle. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:10, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I might write a statement, but in case I don't get around to it (busy with school atm) my issues stem from the Pi Kappa Alpha article and WP:UNDUE concerns there. Sycamore (talk) 04:37, 28 January 2013 (UTC) <-- I copied this from the Talk page as a placeholder. CorporateM (Talk) 20:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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(In response to Lexein's comment at "attempts to resolve dispute"; moved here by another editor.) I think that RSNs we've had on this aren't conclusive enough to declare "had been deemed". "shallow ill informed" is an opinion stated as fact. Reviewing the two historical RSNs, I disagree with your claim of fact that "it was considered reliable". I am trying to work our disagreements by debating it on RSN for the third time, but the opposing user does not appear to be perceptive of consensus building by the expression "I'll be reverting every single removal of eeggs.com as a source, because it was considered RS at RSN." It is also my opinion that your statement that was provided to user McGeddon shows assumption of bad faith and personal attack. "Whatever, but don't pretend you haven't heard of WP:DUCK and WP:SPADE, and don't pretend that Cantaloupe2 has been acting in any kind of good faith, with each and every deliberate misrepresentation made about the easily checkable eeggs.com".
(In response to YuMaNuMa's comment at "attempts to resolve dispute"; moved here by another editor.) Followup In my opinion, YuMaNuMa is not innocent . I think that we should take reporter non-immunity section of WP:BOOMERANG into consideration. *[assuming bad faith and personal attack]*hostile and provocative commentCantaloupe2 (talk) 07:22, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "tampering", it is a word used by media sources along with "altering" to reference jail breaking. example 1 It was not meant as an attack. As for allegation of bad faith, in some of the talk page comments, I agree there were things I shouldn't have said and I struck some out. I'll work on keeping gratuitous comments like "mumbo jumbo" out. I agree, that was unnecessary. Cantaloupe2 (talk) 21:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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This editor is not here to further the WP project but rather to damage it as much as possible without being caught. To do this he is very well versed in the policies and guidelines and attempts to stay within to right on the edge of them to delete or destroy as much maerial as possible for as long as he can. This appears to be the same complaint from all editors, here.
When confronted with his massive removals and resistance, Canataloupe2 then switches to attacking the opposing editor, attempting to hound him/her with Wikistalking, provocative or insulting edit summaries, ridiculous tagging, claims of COI, claims of too much previous technical expertise bias, and other methods all designed to be within the rules and policies known so well to him.
He avoids any real discussion of the content dispute. Various techniques have been used to avoid conclusion into a consensus by him. One technique I have witnessed is strawman arguments posting some weird unrelated subject matter for a response. Another is English language incompetency. Suddenly an editor with years of experience begins dropping all his articles and using verb and adverb tenses incorrectly. This has caused me to raise his English proficiency several times to which he never answers, classic of the next technique to be mentioned, silence. This is one of his most common techniques in a content discussion with Cantaloupe2. Suddenly he just disappears and isn't interested anymore. Usually by that time he is hot into dispute with another editor, at another article, so maybe he is too busy.
I always thought some compassion for this editor was in order to produce another good seasoned editor but in view of the same natured complaints here from so many editors, and my consequent conclusions I find this editor just needs to be gone permanently, with a caveat... being able to apply for reinstatement of his account would force him to recognize, and admit, some of his editing behaviour faults and be the first step in a cure for this possible contributor. This would be a good first step toward healing of this problem and a workable solution. A warning of attitude would need to be placed for future admins to review before allowing this reinstatement of account. This is based on his trolling behaviour, intentional destructive attitude towards the WP project, and successful avoidance of any behaviour modification by more of his evasive techniques. I see no attempt by Cantaloupe2 to even consider any input, anywhere. This is not an editor I want hounding me or any other reasonable editor. It shuns future editors from WP and injures the project. Look at the accumulated time spent on so many ANI and other attempts to correct his behaviour.
This endeavour needs to continue to completion. 174.118.142.187 (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Now, that edit is from 2011 and that and other commentary (some of it of a technical nature) was effectively countered by Jehochman with Johnuniq (talk · contribs) speaking out against Cantaloupe2 as well, but I find no indication that their behavior has changed: in January 2013 they were still at it, tagging the page as inaccurate because it contained "outdated" references. The general tendency, of editing against consensus and refusing to listen, is signaled by many of the participants here, and this very RfC/U proves this attitude: there is no substantial engagement with the problems; the only thing they seem to acknowledge is that their choice of words may have been unfortunate once or twice, and their lack of interest in this RfC/U is notable. Cantaloupe2 has been much more active on the talk page of this RfC/U, where their tit-for-tat, borderline personal-attack style of communication comes to the fore (note, for instance, a specious accusation of canvassing. The talk page also bears out that Cantaloupe2 (perhaps understandably but unproductively) does not acknowledge much that others signal, and I am reminded of my two daughters whose first response when confronted with one of their evil acts is to point at their sister. In fact, Cantaloupe2 refers to the infamous boomerang, quite easily, when what's notable about the talk page is that the other editors are more than willing to own up to their own occasional less-than-perfect responses. The more I look at that talk page, the more convinced I become that Cantaloupe2 mistakes some of the basic principles of our cooperative project.
This being an RfC/U, a somewhat toothless venue, I can take no action though various actions come to mind. A topic ban, construed widely or narrowly, is one option; WP:AN is the appropriate place for such a discussion. An indefinite block seems not warranted to me at this time, but bear in mind that I have not been perusing Cantaloupe2's recent history, which is hardly within the scope of this means of dispute resolution. CorporateM, who mentioned to this RfC/U to me in passing a while ago, suggested that they may seek arbitration: things being the way they are, that may be a good way to proceed. Drmies (talk) 16:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]