|
Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk) Case clerks: NuclearWarfare (Talk) & AlexandrDmitri (Talk) Drafting arbitrator: Kirill Lokshin (Talk) |
ArbCom will be shown evidence that Ryoung122 (talk · contribs · logs · block log), indeffed 2007-11 and restored 2008-08, both by Maxim (talk · contribs · logs · block log), has violated every policy for which he was indeffed and every condition of his restoration. ArbCom will be shown evidence that Ryoung122 (repeatedly found with significant professional COI) and his professional colleagues have significantly influenced other editors to mimic his behavior on WP, particularly in policy violation areas. The incomparable resultant semiwalled garden (per FTN 3) goes back five or more years and is not easily managed by nonbinding resolution methods due to antipolicy majoritarianism.
Specifically, following the order in the two links above and using illustrative diffs only, Ryoung122 has (A) harassed with extreme incivility and personal attack, (B) disrupted with chaotic talkpage edits and failure to discuss his reverts, (C) pushed POV (biasing GRG over other verifiers, verified cases over unverified, and various age claims over others with math-abusive criteria), (D) inserted unverified information, often attributed to his inaccessible Yahoo group or not found in cited sources (including one death report of a living supercentenarian), (E) continued to edit the same areas through IP account 76.17.118.157 (probably et al.) without clarifying it is him, (1) continued to demand 100 days' time to locate sources and failed to deliver even then, (2) continued to exert ownership over discussion aspects without respecting other ways of seeing things, (3) edited many COI articles while claiming only one or two articles are COI for him rather than a wide range, and (4) canvassed online and offline.
The influenced editors have also been uncivil and attacking, failed to discuss reverts, pushed POV, inserted unverified info, possibly used sock or meat puppets, refused to provide sources for such areas as data layout, exerted ownership and declined to see alternatives, edited COI articles, and canvassed online. Several such violations appear here. Unblocking Kitia for discussion might be useful, per Kitia's talk request for ArbCom.
Some of the many other issues were submitted to ArbCom for private guidance about mentioning publicly.
The arbitration will provide direct solutions to potential future conflicted edits and remove other barriers to policy-based consensus in the longevity topic area.
If not addressed in the subsection below, I categorically decline to confirm or deny any statements made by other editors. JJB 23:45, 18 November 2010 (UTC) anchored 02:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
I apologize if the evidence originally present of the parties' self-identifications, or of their affiliations, both noted from the "COI list" link above, constitutes an undue weighting of what should be a more neutral section. As shown at that link, I characterize the first six names above as "apparently neutral", the next five "apparently conflicted", the next seven "apparently unduly influenced", and the last four apparently conflicted but dormant. A clerk should also decide if this diff needs further action. I am unaware of a way to shorten the party list, as it appears all 22 editors listed need review. JJB 03:30, 19 November 2010 (UTC) struck 02:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Since Itsmejudith has boldly shortened the party list, I comment that the original was intended as a list of all editors that need review, whether because of interest in such a case (6) or apparent COI or undue influence (16), regardless of current status. If understood as a list of all current thus-situated editors, without prejudice against review of the other editors' behavior, Itsmejudith's adjustments will stand, but I have made other adjustments as well:
Thus, my biased grouping of the full list (including noncurrent editors) for the sake of categorization is as follows (note I have changed the word "neutral" to what I meant, "nonconflicted"; order is by intensity level, greatest to least):
JJB 01:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC) Apparently GRG has a strong blacklist: "SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: .... The message from (<address>) with the subject of (Notification of Wikipedia Arbitration) matches a profile the Internet community may consider spam. Please revise your message before resending." Any other ideas? JJB 17:18, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
I do not wish to be heavily involved in this matter, but I have observed a number of events leading up to this arbitration request, both on- and off-Wiki, so I'll briefly outline my views on this matter.
Ryoung122, aka Robert Young, is an accomplished longevity researcher and has even contributed to the Guinness Book of World Records for many years. He has shown great expertise in the field of longevity, and I personally agree with most of his viewpoints in that subject area. In fact, I've even contributed substantially to his Yahoo! group and several other forums that he owns/participates. Based on the timing of his on-Wiki edits, he evidently doesn't participate in Wikipedia full-time.
However, like many other "expert" editors who have been sanctioned by the ArbCom in the past, it seems that Mr. Young has gotten so caught up with getting Wikipedia to reflect what he believes is right that he has a tendency to "monopolize" articles in his field of specialty. He also has his own idiosyncratic view of what constitutes reliable sources when it comes to longevity. He even has a tendency to be hostile toward anyone who disagrees even slightly with his viewpoint on longevity, including several people who have tried to mediate the current dispute between him and JJB. I have noticed some of his comments toward others are so hostile that even I myself would be intimidated if I were on the receiving end of those comments. Furthermore, he has, at times, called on others who participate in his groups/forums to support his views on-Wiki when he thinks other users are changing longevity-related content from his preferred versions.
Last month, I tried to warn Mr. Young on another website that his behavior would eventually land him sanctions from the ArbCom. I believe I have (to date) been the only person to stand up to his on-Wiki behavior off-Wiki, and not surprisingly, he dismissed my advice toward him.
I am saddened (but not surprised) that Mr. Young has now been dragged before the ArbCom on the basis of his behavior. Although I might defend his personal viewpoints on longevity, I regretfully cannot defend the pattern of behavior, both on-Wiki and off-Wiki, that has landed him in this situation. TML (talk) 05:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
I Initially was inclined to view this as Randy and Sword wielding skeletons theory, I am still convinced that is still a substantial factor. As i looked closer, I did see some of what TML has correctly described as "idiosyncratic" issues with Mr. Young that are counter productive . However If this case is accepted and it should be... We need scrutiny on the other editors involved here and not just focus on Ryoung122. I think he has had some buttons pushed (The inclusion of Biblical figures leaps to mind) that have invoked some behaviors that these editors have brought up. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 17:49, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure if I should even be listed as a party to this case; my involvement is quite recent (November 11th, really), rather minor, and a total accident. I am not familiar at all with any of the acrimony between other parties to this, and I have no vested interest in any of these articles beyond ensuring the walled gardens are removed. While leaving a note on another user's talkpage for an entirely unrelated matter, I happened, completely by chance, to see User:Brendanology leaving a response to this user's comments at the Jan Goossenaerts AfD on the user's talkpage. As someone who greatly respects that particular user's views on many things, I took a look over there and gave my view, in which I noted that it seemed many of the "keep" voters were writing rather vituperative responses to the "delete" voters; "kicking the heat to light ratio towards the former" were my exact words. A couple of days later, I managed to find myself at the WikiProject World's Oldest People talkpage (how I got there I don't remember), and saw people voicing concerns about a huge walled garden controlled by people with major COIs. I figured that a set of fresh eyes would help, and when I took a look through, I found that there was some substance behind the accusations of a walled garden. I'm not particularly involved in the subject, nor do I have any particular interest in it, but something didn't look quite right from just a cursory glance. Beyond my comments over at WikiProject World's Oldest People, the only thing I can add is that Ryoung122 didn't really respond to the points I brought up; instead, he viewed my comments as attempting to paint him as a wild fringe theorist. If it had happened once, and/or other people made the same assumptions, I could pass it off as a mistake; however, at the ANI thread he did the exact same thing. Despite several requests, Ryoung122 didn't seem to want to respond to our concerns, and seemed intent on stonewalling his way through. Beyond this, I don't have very much to offer, and if I should be removed as a party to this case then kindly do remove me. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
The behaviour of certain editors on longevity articles is beyond the pale, policies are ignored and our articles are treated as the official output of the GRG, and Ryoung122 is the "Senior Claims Investigator" for that organisation. Witness the behaviour of certain editors in this and this discussion where a family member of Margaret Fish (who is still alive) takes exception at her removal from lists, or in the case of this edit and this edit falsely reports she is dead. Editors insist on a news report that she is still alive, while relying on the GRG website which was apparently updated based on private information given by an anonymous government official.
I realise the sourcing for lists of this nature must be difficult. We are dealing with generally marginally notable people at best, and it is difficult to find a balance between including misleading information that people are still alive versus poorly sourced information that they are dead, but I am sure we can do better than the repeated (see the edit summaries in the page history) use of a Yahoo group as a source. O Fenian (talk) 22:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Speaking as a recused arbitrator, and picking up on Risker's comment below relating to Maxim's admin actions, it might be an idea to distinguish matters relating to the 2007 incident and block (November 2007) and unblock (in August 2008) and the current matters (2009 and 2010). I have been (briefly) reading up on some of what happened back in 2007 to remind myself of what happened then, and I remember some e-mail correspondence as well. Unfortunately, that was both before my term as an arbitrator (I think I had only just been granted the administrator tools), and before my current e-mail address (I changed e-mail to deal with arbitration matters better), and possibly even before my current computer (not everything was transferred from the old one). IIRC, I corresponded with Ryoung122 a couple of times during the nine months or so that he was blocked, and gave him advice on-wiki at the time when he was blocked (there was even talk of mentoring). It will take me a while to dig out the old stuff related to this, but if the arbitrators decide that the scope of the case warrants it, I can do so. But it really would help to have the scope discussed so the case participants have some idea of where to start, or whether to concentrate on current matters. BrownHairedGirl in particular may want to say something about the November 2007 incident, but equally may not want to revisit events from three years ago. A full analysis of what occurred back then would be difficult without her participation. Carcharoth (talk) 19:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
(moved from main case page and redacted by clerk AlexandrDmitri)
Greetings,
The statement by Itsmejudith seems a middle viewpoint, I would like to shortly respond: Ask JJ Bulten if he believes that Noah lived to 950, because the Bible says so. He'll either say "yes" or will evade the question. There has been ample evidence that he has made it a hobby of his to push POV Biblical literalism, the equivalent of forcing public schools to teach creationism while labelling evolution "just a theory." My thesis won the national award. According to wiki-policy, award-winning material is quotable even if masters theses generally are not. Not only that, it was also published in book form (2009) and is available on Amazon.com.
However, the point was NOT to promote my material...as noted, the original article was written by Louis Epstein. The point was that Wikipedia is supposed to reflect outside scientific sources. Most are in remarkable consensus (whether it be the International Database on Longevity, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, the Gerontology Research Group, the New England Supercentenarian Study, the Okinawa Centenarian Study, the Georgia Centenarian Study, the Supercentenarian Research Foundation, etc.) as to how long humans really live.
As usual, the "no sources" argument is a lie of laziness. Any checking will find that sources exist. "Experts" have had to contribute because many Wiki editors may not know where to find them.
I also note the GRG was featured in the Wall Street Journal (as the subject matter) twice, and the 2007 ArbCom discussions decided that the GRG was a reliable source. Yet we see mis-information being spouted by JJBulten in areas like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_African_supercentenarians
Please tell me how deleting articles on African supercentenarians is making Wikipedia more fair or equitable? It's not. Anyone that checks JJ's editing will see that he has launched a "war" (and he self-styled the "bolding war" as an example). The original Wikipedia was far closer to an encyclopedia than what we have now, where lowest-common-denominator seems to be the "anti-rule" of the day. There is a significant lack of discernment for what matters or not. Minor sports figures and fake TV show characters? Great! Noted historians or even the continent of Africa as a topic of longevity? Who cares? That's pathetic. The point of having various geographic articles was to show that, in fact, there was coverage (even if not great) worldwide, and that these areas of coverage reflect the state of recordkeeping and national organization 100+ years ago, and that as time goes on, more and more of the world will be covered. I predict this article will return, whether in a week, month, year, or ten years from now.76.17.118.157 (talk) 06:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Initiated by CalvinTy at 22:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
My apologizes for making this request for clarification several weeks after the fact. Only today, I came across this discussion between Amatulić and Sandstein about the ArbCom Longevity case. There was a link to the ArbCom case, and there's where I saw the Notifications section here showing that the admin EdJohnston gave me a notification on 6 March 2011. The ArbCom Longevity case closed on 17 Feb 2011, and I was not active on Wikipedia until 25 Feb 2011 and onwards.
EdJohnston and I did discuss the necessity of the 'notification' at the time (on 6 March 2011):
That's the reason I'm here today. I hope I'm at the right place. For starters, I have learned a lot since 25 Feb 2011 and am now better educated in Wikipedia policies and guidelines. At the time, and still today, I am of strong opinion that I should not have received a notice considering that I was not engaged in any inappropriate behavior.
I thought I had not, but I see that I did tell EdJohnston here where I quoted the ArbCom case, Finding of Facts #3, "Membership in or affiliation with the Gerontology Research Group, or any other group named in the evidence to this case, does not in and of itself constitute a substantive conflict of interest with regard to the editing of articles on longevity topics."
In that RfE case against NickOrnstein, which was expanded to include The 110 Club members (of which I'm an administrator/member of) due to possible off-wiki canvassing by some forum members, I had suggested a potential compromise here. I asked any admin this: "first, what is a discretionary sanction? Of more concern, why should every member of The 110 Club forum receive one automatically regardless of their level of involvement, if any, in a possible violation of any guidelines (which, to date, is quite debatable and has not been sufficiently proven)?"
To date, I still don't feel that I along with several other forum members should have received any notice unless there were diffs to provide evidence against each one of us (as far as I know, none were supplied by any editor against me). Yes, there were several diffs providing evidence against some forum members, which were quite convincing, but EdJohnston may have acted erroneously in good faith when he came to the conclusion that "I think that everyone who is part of the '110 Club Wikipedia' ought to receive this message.".
Finally, I apologize again for my chatterbox habit, but to sum up, I just feel that a formal notice was given to me by mistake, and I want to find out how I can have this formally retracted, if possible. I just am the type of person who abides with policies and guidelines, whether on Wikipedia or elsewhere, and I still feel that formal notice is a negative connotation against me and who I really am like. Seeing my name in an ArbCom case did upset me so that's why I'm following up on whether I am able to have a notice retracted, hopefully by EdJohnston himself. Best regards, CalvinTy 22:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
@EdJohnston, that was a good analogy about "taking back a notice is like unringing a bell". @SirFozzie, I did understood that "Notification does not imply any wrongdoing"; I guess I was just taken aback when I saw my name appearing in an ArbCom case that closed before I even became active here (even if it's just a notification). By 6 March 2011, the date of the notice, I knew that Longevity articles were being watched due to the recent ArbCom case. Yet, "notification does imply something" and the notification appeared not to be sent to every The 110 Club forum member that is also a Wikipedia editor (we can see a larger list of duplicate members in the ArbCom case) -- so naturally I felt "singled out" and that it was implied that "I was engaging in inappropriate behavior solely because of my The 110 Club membership" even as EdJohnston did strike out the "further" part of "inappropriate behavior" of the notice template, which was appreciative. That notification just didn't seem to jive with the ArbCom's statement about membership affiliation, that was all.
In any case, I certainly do not want to make a big deal out of this; just wanted to see whether there was an appeal process for getting a notice. Since there isn't, so SirFozzie or any arbitrator, please feel free to close this request for clarification. Regards, CalvinTy 11:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I read some great points by everyone who commented to date. Since they have made the effort to comment, I'd like to follow-up here:
At present there is no appeal process for those who receive notices of discretionary sanctions and feel that they do not deserve them. Since notices are intended to head off future trouble, it seems unwise to make them into a major deal. The notice gives the recipient a link to policies and past decisions so they can see if they think they are OK. Taking back a notice is like unringing a bell. I am not aware that any recipient of a notice has ever been un-notified, and I don't see why we should began that now.
The major concerns raised at the AE regarding Nick Ornstein was that Nick was edit-warring against consensus, and that an offwiki group called the 110 Club was trying to manipulate the longevity articles on Wikipedia. CalvinTy made it known that he was an administrator of the 110 Club. As a result of the AE, Nick agreed to change his approach, and that issue appears resolved. It was decided not to take any action regarding the 110 Club. There were no sanctions against CalvinTy as a result of the thread; he was merely notified of the discretionary sanctions. User:SirFozzie may recall some of the details since he participated in the admin discussion at the AE. EdJohnston (talk) 23:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
I'll only comment about my understanding of the warning requirement, as the longevity-related matters are WP:TLDR.
WP:AC/DS#Warning says: "Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to the decision authorizing sanctions; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines."
The wording of this provision does not require that the editor being warned has already done anything objectionable, or even (as some remedies do) that the warning needs to be given by an uninvolved administrator. With this wording, my understanding of the warning is that it is simply a procedural requirement to ensure that people who edit troublesome topics are aware that higher conduct standards apply to editing in these areas than elsewhere in Wikipedia. As such, I see no need to question, appeal or undo a warning under any circumstances. But evidently, editors who are not editing problematically should be warned (if at all) without using the ((uw-sanctions)) template, which assumes that misconduct has already taken place. Sandstein 15:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Looking at the AE section to refresh my memory. I think there was a valid concern that there was canvassing happening there, that the blanket notification of possible sanctions for issues in this area. In fact, Ed went so far to say in the formal closing of the AE request: Notification does not imply any wrongdoing, but it is official notice that their behavior may be looked at if they seem to be editing so as to favor the use of a specific set of off-wiki sources. It's good that we haven't had any further issues after the warning was issued, but I don't see any reason to say that means the blanket warning wasn't necessary and/or a good idea. SirFozzie (talk) 07:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Ricky81682 at 09:25, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
I think we need to reconsider and allow for discretionary sanctions in regards to longevity articles, including in particular problems we continue to have with longevity articles and at Wikipedia:WikiProject World's Oldest People (WOP). With the absence of User:DerbyCountyinNZ, none of the other parties from the original case have been active in this area to my knowledge so I wasn't sure who to add a party here. I've added recent participants at the WOP talk page (and Jytdog due to a reference to him below). Regardless of Remedy 4 from before, in my mind, the project has largely moved along with little actual involvement from outside the insular community that exists at WOP articles.
The comment of Waenceslaus (since topic banned so not included as a party) that "Yet, before any change in the WOP guideline can be done, a user is to become a member of Wikipedia WOP group" reflects a long-held belief that the WikiProject can create its own guidelines that trump the rest of the Wikipedia. The WikiProject's need for guidance and insistence on them actually listening is required. Even today, most of the "real" editing from the project takes place at the project's personal pages such as Wikipedia:WikiProject World's Oldest People/Future supercentenarians and not within the larger encyclopedia itself (article, talk, project, none of it absent AFD discussions and even then a subset).
In July until August 2015, a discussion was held at WP:RSN regarding the inclusion of claims based on tables produced on the website of the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), in particular the inclusion on Wikipedia of people's names and alleged birth (and for the non-living, possible death dates) based on the so-called Table EE ("Table EE PENDING GRG CASES"). The discussion closed confirming that tables E and I (of verified supercentarians) was a reliable source, of which there was little dispute, but that Table EE was not. Since then, the WOP project talk page has engaged in what can be considered a long-winded repetitive discussion that basically asserts that the RSN discussion should be ignored and repeated argues based on the same reasoning. This discussion is repeated on numerous edit summaries and across a number of talk pages, resulting in a number of articles being protected.
As an clearly WP:INVOLVED admin, I'd be asking for the reinstatement of sanctions so that other admins would be able to assist. Discretionary sanctions are required because the editors involved are largely WP:SPA who do not discuss their beliefs but edit war voraciously and without any regard to policy. The attempts to remove the "pending" and "unverified" have been going on for close to a decade. For why ANI is not a remedy, User:Ca2james attempted to update the project's self-description of the notability guidelines. This edit was reverted by User:Waenceslaus [7] amongst others. Waenceslaus's edit warring continued (including said "membership required comment") and was ultimately brought to ANI in a discussion with two counter-topic ban arguments and two nonsense desysop arguments but ultimately resulted in a topic ban against Waenceslaus. There must be a way to prevent disruption as these editors can essentially stay in the shadows for months if not years and all suddenly appear to re-engage in repetitive arguments.
This is starting to get more ugly as the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Koto Okubo (2nd nomination) shows wherein User:Jytdog is creating lists of WOP and non-WOP members which reflect a divide between the insular views of the project and the broader actual consensus. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 2:25, August 25, 2015 (UTC)
I'm relatively new to Wikipedia (joined in December 2013), as are some other editors involved in the World's Oldest People (WOP) Project. I joined because longevity is a subject I'm interested in, and since Wikipedia is the first place many people turn to to find out about any given subject, I feel it's important that the articles in the scope of the project are as accurate and informative as possible for readers.
There's no doubt that there have been some issues with this project in the past, but that's largely down to the editors involved not properly understanding how Wikipedia works or Wikipedia's core policies, and longevity "fans" wanting to create as many trivial lists of supercentenarians as possible, often which were unsourced and in violation of WP:OR. But the problem is that these "fans" usually know that the information they are putting in is correct, but don't understand that WP:VERIFIABILITY requires the lists to have references. So, when people make what they believe to be a constructive edit, but a more experienced user, say, reverts it with good reason, they may view that as some kind of "attack".
And I know that's how I felt when my user page was nominated for deletion because it was in violation of WP:WEBHOST, but looking back (now that I have a better understanding of Wikipedia's policies) I realise that the reasons for nominating it for deletion were justified. Other members of the WOP project also had their user pages deleted for similar reasons. But this issue has been dealt with and has now gone by.
I also think we can all agree that the 166 IP user needs to be topic banned, as he/she is NOT a positive contributor. Note that, while this user is pretending to be as such, they have engaged in vandalism in the past. Likewise, Waenceslaus has been topic banned, so the issue with that particular user has been resolved.
So, the issues surrounding the project are being resolved and I personally am trying to work towards a solution. The RSN discussion found Table EE and I have accepted this decision (contrary to what Ricky claims) and have made some changes to articles accordingly. The reason I have been having discussions on the WOP project talk page is because some users are trying to argue that if a longevity claimant is reported on by a newspaper, that they should be added in to Wikipedia without any mention of the fact that their age has not been validated by any internationally recognised body (such as the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), The International Database on Longevity (IDL), or Guinness World Records). I think it's very important that Wikipedia makes the distinction between "validated" and "unvalidated" cases, for two reasons:
1. The need for the validation of exceptional longevity is a scientific concept accepted for 140+ years, with William Thoms establishing the basic premise of the need for age verification in the 1870s. Wikipedia needs to reflect scientific consensus in line with WP:VERIFIABILITY
2. 65% of claims to age 110 are false, and 98% of claims to 115 are false (see here).
But instead of reasoned discussion, I'm being faced with straw man arguments. THAT is why the discussion is long-winded and repetitive, not because I'm saying that "the RSN discussion should be ignored" or because I'm being disruptive.
And one of the biggest reasons why things are getting "ugly" is not because the wider community are stepping in and the WOP project members are reacting, it's because there's a certain few editors who get themselves involved in the project who hold views which aren't necessarily representative of the whole community.
Let me focus in particular in the last part of Ricky81682's post, where he says there is a "divide between the insular views of the project and the broader actual consensus" ---> No, that's totally misleading. Some of these people in the so-called "broader" community are the likes of CommanderLinx, whose sole purpose on Wikipedia seems to be to effectively police longevity-related articles, and DerbyCountyinNZ, who also makes a lot of edits in longevity-related articles. What about the views of people who have NOT been previously involved?
And in fact, the AfD nomination of List of the verified oldest people (which was closed as "snow keep") shows that the wider community are not necessarily in agreement with some of those who are "policing" the WOP project. Note the comment from an editor uninvolved with the project: "For pity's sake, snippily suggesting that the article is suspect because the GRG is the source is like saying an article about soccer "verified" by FIFA is suspect. The GRG is the outfit generally held to be the worldwide authority in such matters".
This whole business of creating lists of WOP and non-WOP members to show the difference in views is quite frankly ridiculous. Shock horror, different people hold different views. What does segregating Wikipedia editors achieve? All it does is turn Wikipedia in to a WP:BATTLEGROUND.
I am trying my best to compromise with editors with whom I hold disagreements with, but I'm not sure if I'm getting anywhere. Little attempt has been made to establish wider community consensus, which means people outside of the WOP project and those who are regular contributors to longevity-related articles. This is what needs to be done moving forward.
P.S. Can someone explain why some arbitrators have begun with their discussions before everyone has had a chance to comment? -- Ollie231213 (talk) 20:00, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
While my account is almost ten years old I am not an experienced user of the English Wikipedia website. I do however have an interest in longevity so that is why I have been posting in these areas. I have never been involved in any discussions before this one so I might not be absolutely the best person to comment, but I guess that this is a learning process and that I am just starting out here. I was not aware that my sandbox wasn't in compliance with the Wikipedia policies until recently because I had never looked into it. This is however not an issue any longer.
Interest in human longevity has existed for several millennia (as we can see with Biblical claims such as Methuselah). The book of Guinness World Records began listing the World's Oldest People in its early editions. Age validation research itself began in the 1870s with the pioneer demographer William Thoms who laid out some rules for age validation in his 1873 book on Human Longevity, with one of them being that there should be evidence of birth for the longevity claimant. [1]
What modern-day unverified claimants do not have is exactly that, no early evidence of birth. Validated supercentenarians do have early evidence of birth as it is a requirement for validation by most age validation groups.[2]
Here are what I believe are the real reasons behind the entire debate on longevity articles here on Wikipedia:
The purpose of the WOP-project is to present reliable information that is available to the public, which shows how long the oldest people live and how the average ages for the absolutely oldest people are increasing. The way that people in the project have done this is to have written articles about some of the oldest supercentenarians, where they've tried to illustrate how the life of the person was and what they themselves might have thought was the reason that they lived so long. They have also created lists of supercentenarians where they've listed them based on where they lived and so on. These lists and articles shows verified data, where there is original proof of birth and not claimants for extreme ages where the only evidence they have of their claims are documents issued late in their lives. This means that if verified and unverified data is mixed the data is no longer reliable.
The members of the WOP-project are people who are interested in longevity and usually an interest means that they have more knowledge in the subject than the average user. Some of the members are however not experienced Wikipedia users and have acted in good faith while editing articles, which later have been reverted due to lack of sources etc. While some of this interest might be a bit trivial, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which means that the main focus in this topic area needs to be changed from updating lists to writing material about this field from a scientific perspective.
There has been talk in the discussions on Wikipedia that longevity does not warrant notability. Cases such as Jeanne Calment do however show that you can be notable because of your longevity. I believe that Wikipedia should have policy guidelines on the "notability" of supercentenarians due to longevity and that those who have been internationally recognized as the World's Oldest Man, World's Oldest Woman and World's Oldest Person should be considered notable enough to have separate articles, along with the people who are ranked in the Top 100 Oldest of all-time list. The ones who are noted for things such as having been the oldest Jewish person ever might or might not be notable enough to have their own articles. The ones who were only known within their region or state are likely not notable enough for them to have separate articles.
These levels of regulation would limit the growth of articles in this area to a minimum and would actually be a clarification of the guidelines for the WOP project that were written in 2010.
In other words, let's have a slowdown in deleting long-standing material and have a review of why this may or may not be important. Just a month ago, things seemed to be calm and workable, everyone here would like a return to that. That's not to say that we haven't all learned lessons: Wikipedia is not a webhost and the trivial material needs to be cut down. But there's no reason to be cutting the scientific material on the subject matter too.
While we, the members of the WOP-project give ground and re-learn we ask for the admins to do the same thing. I think CA2james is on the right trail by being able to admit that he was wrong.
Finally here is an article about longevity written by Alexander Graham Bell and published in National Geographic in 1919: [8] 930310 (talk) 08:55, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
References
It's all the same, only the names have changed. There is an issue with distinguishing between the fanboys and scientists, but the problem is on the other end; the fanboys are working in concert with the scientists, and as we know one of the scientists was the biggest promotional editor of all in the area. One thing I think we really need is a name change, because the very name is the same as the Yahoo group where absolutely massive canvassing occurs when anyone attempts to do anything in this topic area, and having the DS in place will make it much easier to have that discussion. The trick then will be finding people willing to enforce them, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:25, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
It looks to me like the discretionary sanctions were lifted because they had been in place for five years and hadn't been used. However, the reason they weren't used is that outside editors had not been looking at the articles associated with WP:WOP. As soon as outside editors come in, members of this project as well as members of their forums (the 110 club and the yahoo group) engage in disruptive reversions and behaviour. The ANI case involving Waenceslaus linked above shows the battleground mentality some of these editors have and how disruptive they can be. Reinstating the discretionary sanctions is needed to prevent the disruption.
I first saw this WP:WOP project in December 2014 when I became involved in nominating user pages for deletion that were associated with the project.[9] There was much arguing and reverting and talking because these editors strongly objected to having these pages deleted. I recognized at that time that there were issues with this project's articles - in particular sourcing and the use of colour on these pages - but after bringing them up and discussing them (see this archive, this discussion, and this discussion), I stayed away for a while after that because the experience deleting those user pages and the subsequent discussion was exhausting.
I've recently returned to this project to try to bring these pages into compliance with WP policies and guidelines. There was some question about whether the GRG was a reliable source so I took that question to RSN[10] to get the community's opinion. When the community decided that Table EE was not reliable,[11] I attempted to edit the project page[12] to reflect this information and was reverted.[13] Several editors attempted to reinstate the material but were also reverted until the page was protected.[14] Since then, I've tried to update some of the articles[15][16][17] and have encountered reverts[18][19][20][21] (that's all from List of supercentenarians who died in 2015; this has happened on other articles) and along with lots and lots of discussion.[22][23][24][25] Much of the discussion has been a repeat of the discussions I linked to above. I've attempted to explain why things are being changed because I do recognize that having their articles changed is difficult.
There is much more to be done. In addition to the work to bring the articles up to snuff, I think that there may be some articles that duplicate information or could be merged. Doing that work is very difficult because of the disruption. The discretionary sanctions are needed. Ca2james (talk) 15:39, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Adding: I did list List of the verified oldest people for deletion, which was quickly closed as snow keep. I definitely made a mistake and I've been very careful since then not to nominate anything for deletion without much more careful analysis; similarly, I've been quite careful to discuss my edits and changes on WT:WOP. Ca2james (talk) 23:31, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
My involvement in WOP is recent and minimal, and mostly I have expressed concern.
In early August, I commented in the RSN thread about GRG tables, agreeing that table E (claims of age verified by GRG) is reliable and table EE (unverified claims of age) is unreliable, for example here.
On August 14 I commented in the ANI Ricky mentions here, noting, "I have been reading within WP about WikiProjects that went off the rails and were disbanded through MfD. It may well be time to see if the community is ready to disband that project and start an MfD on that.... The attitude of project members posting here makes it seem that that they have lost their way. "
Also on August 21 I !voted at the AfD, as follows: "Merge to List of Japanese supercentenarians The GRG project is getting step-by-step closer to being disbanded by the community for exactly the kind of activity going on in this AfD."
On August 24 I posted the list of WOP members or WOP-SPAs, at the AfD. I posted that list with some uncertainty as to whether it was a good thing or not. We tag SPA comments in AfDs to provide context for the closers; I intended this to function along the same lines, but again was uncertain as to whether it would be helpful or disruptive. Out of an abundance of caution, I just struck the list. I am sorry for making things uglier.
I do think the time may be ripe for the community to disband the WOP project. I am not sure it is, but WOP members/followers do seem to be acting in a GANG/OWN fashion on content that interests them, and seem to be making their own guidelines about WP content and ignoring CONSENSUS of the broader community.
I do support re-instatement of DS for longevity content, per the proposal. Jytdog (talk) 14:24, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
There are still persistent issues, not only as mentioned above, but also with IP editing. See current ANI section here where I have suggested a topic ban for the IP-hopping editor. Black Kite (talk) 11:12, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages related to longevity, broadly construed.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Remedy 1 of Longevity ("Contentious topic designation") is rescinded. Any actions previously taken in accordance with the contentious topic authorization remain in force and are governed by the procedures.
For this motion there are 10 active arbitrators. With 1 arbitrator abstaining, 5 support or oppose votes are a majority.
Support:
Oppose:
Abstain:
Wasn't this CTOP issued because of issues with a specific WikiProject? If the WikiProject has reformed or gone inactive, I can see a good argument for lifting the CTOP. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v Source assessment notes 06:03, 15 October 2023 (UTC)