User:Egil/Sandbox/rktect

Background
The article Historical weights and measures, begun in February 2003, used to contain reasonably sober content, and was gradually evolving and improving as a Wikipedia article should.

A snapshot from August 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_weights_and_measures&oldid=5188805

After this point, things became more complex, and the article begun to be subject to various kinds of pseudoscience, original research and patent nonsense.

Due to is evolving size, the article was split into Ancient weights and measures and Medieval weights and measures in December 2004.

The latest incident caused so much confusion in the history and discussion pages that, in order to make the situation more managable, the Ancient article was then further split into:


 * Ancient Mesopotamian weights and measures
 * Ancient Egyptian weights and measures
 * Ancient Persian weights and measures
 * Ancient Greek weights and measures
 * Ancient Roman weights and measures
 * Ancient Hebrew weights and measures
 * Ancient Arabic weights and measures
 * Ancient Indus Valley weights and measures
 * Ancient Vedic weights and measures

The nature of the 'attacks'
Beside minor issues like bizarre and sloppy langue and markup, the same content copied to a good number of pages, most of it irrelvant to the context, the major problem is the twisting and fabrication of facts, which seems to be towards showing:
 * All ancient measures of length are directly derived from the circumference of the Earth, and that the exact size of the Earth was known throughout historic time.
 * All ancient measures are defined by each other.
 * Resistance towards Metrication. (e.g., second half)

Contributions of rktect
What is believed to be user rktect seems to operate under 5 different users:
 * 66.200.223.112
 * 66.200.223.113
 * 69.164.70.243
 * 69.164.79.243
 * rktect
 * Federal Street

Another possible candidates is 172.195.118.82, but this is an AOL address.

Articles under attack
The articles are in various states, depending on who is reverting what, and when.
 * Everything under Ancient weights and measures, see above.


 * Mile ok
 * Eratosthenes needs work
 * Gabriel Mouton ok: 22 oct 2005
 * Livio Catullo Stecchini
 * Anti-metric movement ok
 * Squaring the circle
 * Imperial unit ok: 16:48, 30 September 2005
 * Stadion ok
 * Foot (unit of length) ok
 * Comparative metrology ok: 20:31, 23 September 2005
 * Pseudoscience
 * Damascus steel
 * Proto-Indo-Europeans
 * Metrology needs work
 * Unit fraction
 * Conventional Egyptian chronology
 * Cubit ok: 02:09, 22 October 2005
 * English unit ok: 16:24, 15 October 2005
 * Systems of measurement ok: 13:22, 22 October 2005
 * Pace (measurement) ok
 * History of measurement ok: 16:37 22 oct 2005

New articles, same story
After a while, new articles were created that contained essentially the same material. Most of these articles have been or are on VfD, but as articles are deleted, essentially the same content is moved over to new articles.
 * Standards of measure in the Copper Age
 * Standards of measure in Medieval Europe
 * Standards of measure in Iron Age Europe
 * Standards of measure in the Jemdet Nasr
 * Standards of measure in the Pre Conquest Americas
 * Standards of measure in the Medieval East
 * Standards of measure in the Modern West
 * Standards of measure in the Near Eastern Bronze Age
 * Mile Standards
 * Atur
 * 100 Royal cubits
 * 21,000 royal cubits
 * River journey
 * Egyptian fields
 * 3ht
 * St3t
 * Khet
 * Pes
 * Mille Passus
 * Mille passus
 * Milliare
 * Pous
 * Eratosthenes stadia
 * Statute mile in the UK
 * Sos
 * Ptolomaic
 * Myle
 * Milion
 * Rope stretchers
 * Egyptian minute of march
 * Passus (copyright violation)
 * Aroura
 * Super Ekgdz moved to User:Rktect/Super Ekgdz
 * Knotted cords
 * Letter of Nanse
 * Unit fractions
 * Nanše
 * Sirara
 * Ištaran
 * Ningshishzida
 * List of revenues
 * Foot-pound-second system
 * The Metric System

Direct links to previous and ongoing VFD discussions
Moved to User:Egil/Sandbox/rfar

Selected claims
Moved to User:Egil/Sandbox/rfar