User:Figs Might Ply/RFCU

RfC/U Requests_for_comment/Minphie

A statement of the dispute, including an evidence section with diffs, and evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute.
User in question -

Background & Parties
Minphie started editing various articles relating to drug policies about 6 months ago. He strongly opposes the harm reduction approach to dealing with drug use, Talk:Harm reduction‎ and Talk:Safe injection site have been the main disputes.

Recently it has degenerated into an edit war between Minphie and a coalition mostly comprised of myself and user:Steinberger

Minor editors

 * User:WhatamIdoing and User:Caitifty have also been involved in making a small number of relevant edits.
 * User:rakkar was involved earlier on but has ceased contributing due to an apparent wikibreak/Retiring.

Observers & SysOps

 * User:JohnCD is a SysOp who commented on the matter in its early days.
 * User:WhatamIdoing made a sarcastic remark towards Minphie and urged him to use RS for his edits.
 * User:Literaturegeek is a user who made a comment on the nature of the dispute
 * User:Gerardw is a user who commented after a posting to wikiquette
 * User:SheffieldSteel is a user who provided feedback on the Wikiquette alert.


 * User:SteveMcCluskey is a user who explained to minphie on the Original Research Notice Board that his ideas about WP:OR were wrong


 * User:FT2 as a user who explained to minphie on the Original Research Notice Board that his ideas about WP:OR were wrong

Relevant policies & guidelines

 * WP:Neutral point of view
 * WP:Undue weight
 * WP:Reliable sources
 * WP:MEDRS
 * WP:SELFPUBLISH
 * WP:No original research
 * WP:SYNTH
 * WP:Verifiability
 * WP:Attribution


 * WP:CONSENSUS
 * WP:UNCIVIL
 * WP:GAMING

User Conduct
In short, I content that Minphie has constantly either disregarded multiple wikipedia policies and has ignored a number of requests, suggestions and directions from other users. The main problem has been with WP:Consensus - assume we skip past the first few instances as per don't bite the newbies, Minphie has a history of refusing to cooperate with the rest of us. I contend that Minphie assumes that he is right, and that in his mind this belief excuses him from having to seek consensus with the rest of us because we are ipso facto wrong in light of his rightness. It has been explained to him multiple times that he needs to slow down, stop reverting edits and at least work out an interim compromise so that we can all work out a way forward.

January-April
Mild reverts between Rakkar and Minphie, see User_talk:Rakkar and User_talk:Minphie.

Early April
SysOp Appeal - Minphie tried to complain about Rakkar to SysOp User:JohnCD and was quickly dismissed,  "This is a content dispute, not vandalism". Rakkar left the article as minphie's last edit and offered Minphie a reasonable proposal to move beyond content dispute. Minphie made no reply, Rakkar made the changes a week later. Minphie returned 2 weeks later and reverted them and made no interaction with Rakkar's plan, instead claimed rakkar was wrong because governments have a God Given Right to do what ever they want..? 

April-May
From there the article quickly lapsed into Rakkar/Steinberger/Figs Might Ply/Minphie revert war. Obviously it's a contentious issue and the intense reverting was evidence of this, however a look over Talk:Harm reduction‎ and Talk:Safe injection site shows everyone but Minphie making some effort to reach a consensus. He said the rest of us were wrong and would revert our edits, sometimes with a justification, sometimes without.

Early May

 * Wikiquette Alert - Over a month later and the problems were the same . I reported Minphie to the Wikiquette alerts for non-cooperation. Other editors told him his view of how to resolve the matter was wrong and that he would need to cooperate w/ us, see above. This has not happened. Also was told to be WP:Civil and stop referring to edits he didn't like as Vandalism, something Rakkar had been requesting for months . Following this, Minphie chose to ignore the requests to cooperate from Wikiquette alert contributors. Continuing to revert without explanations, little explanation or irrelevant explanation - although other contributors urged him to conform to the policies and the norm to seek consensus, eg:


 * Revision history of Safe injection site- 14:30, 14 May 2010 Figs Might Ply (talk | contribs) (6,864 bytes) (Undid revision 362013371 by Minphie (talk)What exactly are you reverting for? no reasons given on any of pages u mentioned in edit summary.)


 * Revision history of Safe injection site-(10:27, 17 May 2010 Figs Might Ply (talk | contribs) (6,179 bytes) (Undid revision 362521800 by Minphie (talk) Dispute is around consensus on evidence, not simply the presence of Minphie's evidence. Please do not revert this without agreeing to consensus)


 * Revision history of Safe injection site-(17:28, 20 May 2010 Steinberger (talk | contribs) (6,179 bytes) (Undid revision 362714296 by Minphie (talk);don't revert without giving a rationale; there are grave issues with the text such as policy breaches))

Minphie obviously had his reasons for the reverts, however, they mostly stemmed from the above mentioned unimpeachable sense of being correct. He would sometimes engage us in discussion around his edit rationale, but always the basis was that he had the best evidence and we were too blind to see it. MULTIPLE users explained that consensus was the key, not a sense of being correct, see above.

Late May
On the 18th of May Steinberger reported Minphie to the Wikipedia:No original research/noticeboard - where Minphie was told again very clearly that he needs to cease his current line of argument by SteveMcCluskey and FT2 and further informed of this by Steinberger. He has chosen to ignore this and again he has since made multiple reverts to Harm Min & SIF articles (simply look at their respective histories and ) with little or no justification other then being right, representing the political "majority view" and not engaging in WP:NOR. . Users at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts suggested we take the matter to RfC/U as the next step. And here we are.