User:Grandmaster/Arbcom

Edit warring at Paytakaran
Every time I tried to edit this article my edits were removed by User:TigranTheGreat, User:Eupator and User:Fadix. These people simply deleted all the references that I provided under various pretexts, and prevented me from editing, which is a violation of WP:OWN. Please check the history of this article from the very beginning to see what was going on: The most glaring example is this revert by Eupator:, which undid all of my recent edits. Note that no explanation was provided in the edit summary for deletion of a large text, every single line of which was fully referenced. When I restored my version, it was again reverted by Fadix, who expressed his disagreement with the intro, but reverted all of my edits. Fadix himself acknowledged that he reverted my contributions without even reading. Quote: I did even not read what was added to be honest. 

I tried to resolve the dispute by discussing the issue by talk, but when extensive discussions with the above users on talk gave no results, an admin User:Khoikhoi filed a request for the official mediation with regard to the dispute on Paytakaran at Requests_for_mediation/Paytakaran, and while me and other involved editors on both sides agreed, it was User:Fadix who rejected it, and mediation never took place. After that I filed an AMA request at AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Requests/January_2007/Grandmaster, and the issue is currently being mediated, please check Talk:Paytakaran.

Edit warring at Caucasian Albania
As soon as I made edits to this article, each one of which cited its reliable third party sources such as encyclopedia Iranica, User:Azerbaijani reverted all of my edits under the false pretext that I removed referenced info, which I did not. When I restored my edits, they were removed again by an anon IP and then by a sock of banned user User:ArenM. After the revert of vandalism my edits were reverted by another sock of the same banned user, and then by User:Artaxiad without any explanation whatsoever: So you can see here very strange coordination of actions between User:Azerbaijani, banned User:Ararat arev and User:Artaxiad, who reverted in turn my edits to this article.

Incivility and personal attacks by User:Fadix
This editor makes on a regular basis personal attacks and incivil comments on other Wikipedia users, who happen to disagree with him. It is hard to find such a discussion where he did not mention the editors he is in disagreement with in a negative context. Such users can find their names even in the headers of the talk threads that Fadix starts, such as this: Talk:Nakhichevan Such behavior continued for quite some time now, and numerous incivility blocks of this user speak for themselves: I think Wikipedia admins can provide more details on why they blocked this user if required. I supported an RfC on this user’s conduct, which was also endorsed by Wikipedia admin InShaneee, please see Requests for comment/Fadix. However, as usual RfC did not generate much response and did not result in any change of this user’s behavior.

While Fadix claims that the RfC was unjustified and he never personally attacked me despite being blocked by the admin for that, it is enough to check the evidence that I provided in the RfC to see that it is not so. Just one example of the language he used: ''I haven't read every crap (as we are now, I guess with all the POV pushing you've been doing, I can from this day on consider those crap) you've been introducing. I just got interested in the article History of Azerbaijan, and the first paragraphs were already tainted by the sort of crap you've been spewing. As for your question, for now I have better things to do than chassing again some dishonest POV pushers'' … I’m also a human being and after being constantly insulted might have sometimes retorted, but I never used any foul language and I have no record of any incivility blocks, unlike Fadix, who was blocked for personal attacks on different people.

I don’t think you can find anyone listed for this arbcom case, whose name would pop up as frequently at WP:ANI board as Fadix's. Just a few examples: Here’s admin seeking an advice from colleagues about what to do with Fadix:

And complaints on Fadix by other users:       This person was warned endless amount of times that he should not insult other editors, and he was blocked for this offense numerous times, but yet here he is trying to justify his actions.

Sockpuppetry by User:Artaxiad and others
User:Artaxiad/Nareklm and his sock User:Mikara were reverting pages to support Armenian and Iranian editors. Mikara being sock of Artaxiad/Nareklm was officially proved by checkuser: Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Nareklm This was not his first sock, previously he used another sock called HayasaArmen to violate wiki policies. Moreover, banned User:Ararat arev was also reverting the contribs of Azerbaijani users to Azerbaijan-Armenia and Iran related articles using socks (for example, User:ArenM and User:Tutmoses8) and countless anonymous IPs. Of course, this led to edit wars becoming more and more intense. In addition, User:Mardavich and User:Artaxiad supported each other in reverting the articles and voting on various pages. Mardavich voted: Narek voted too: While I can understand Fadix voting here, because he contributed to discussions previously and after voting, Narek never neither edited nor discussed this article, so it cannot be considered a good faith vote. This activity was definitely coordinated outside of wiki, and reverts by User:Ararat arev strangely coincided with those of some of the aforementioned users. This was reported to WP:ANI, but no measures were taken. It is also interesting to note reappearance of another permanently banned Armenian User:Rovoam and his vandalism of the arbcom page. Somehow he instantly became aware of this arbcom case and turned up for support.

used socks, and  to make controversial edits to Azerbaijan – Armenia related articles and rv, like here: He and his socks have been permanently banned by the admins. As of now, his another suspected sock User:Zurbagan is involved in edit warring and personal attacks on Talk:Ziya_Bunyadov and the respective article.

User:Azerbaijani and User:Mardavich reverted the pages to which they were not regular contributors. In addition to edit warring on various Iran related articles, these people have been actively involved in edit wars on Armenia – Azerbaijan related articles, undoing edits by Azerbaijani users. Just a couple of examples of their rvs:

Azerbaijani:

Same for Mardavich:

In addition, these 2 have been edit warring on such articles as Atabeg, Azerbaijan, Arran (Azerbaijan), Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Musavat, Safavid dynasty, History of the name Azerbaijan, Mammed Amin Rasulzade and many others.

Please see  

You could see that while some Iranian users were reverting for Armenian ones, some Armenian users returned the favor. Some examples:

Artaxiad tried to clean up Wikipedia of images related to Azerbaijan. He tagged for deletion more than 40 Azerbaijan related images on 24 February only, and many more previously, some were deleted, while others were reverted by admins. It would not be a problem if he was so critical with regard to the images uploaded by users of other ethnic backgrounds, including Armenian, but such selectiveness makes me think that this user tried to make a certain point.

Meatpuppeting by User:Artaxiad
This message was posted at an Armenian forum during the voting for deletion of Khachkar destruction article. A person who called himself HyeFedayis is inviting Armenian users to vote for the article he created and join Wikipedia to fight “Pan-Turks” like Adil Baguirov. Khachkar destruction was written by User:Artaxiad, so it is him inviting other Armenian forum members to join edit warring. See below the text of his message in full:

Pan-turks Invading Youth Sites

Recently I have been engaged in Wikipedia it is sick what to see, all these Turks are rewriting our history online, we need more Armenians users, I also created a article for "Khachkar destruction" in which the Azeris are attempting to erase our existence in those areas, now they want it deleted as you can see here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...kar_destruction

We're currently debating whether the article should stay or not so far there winning since all who voted are Turks except for me and some other people, not to mention these Pan-Turks attack Iranian articles to.

If you know alot about Armenian history please join, the Turks are attacking Wikipedia because they know this is a resource kids use alot, there fore changing history as it goes.

''Most of whom on Wikipedia are Azeri radicals the first to mention is "Adil Baguirov" he is known in the Turkish media for writing his false theories against Armenians pure radicalism. Here's an article written by him''.

http://www.turkishweekly.net/comments.php?id=2018

All I'm saying is more Armenians get involved in that site Wikipedia, since we are being out numbered by Turks not a bad thing but when there pure ultra-nationalists it is a big one.

P.S. As I expected, this thread was immediately deleted from the Armenian forum, but I saved it and will provide to arbitrators upon request. Grandmaster 08:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Incivility and racist comments by User:TigranTheGreat
This person made nationalistic and racist remarks on a number of occasions.

At the end of this thread this user made racist comments about Azerbaijani people. 

Admin User:Francis Tyers, who mediated the dispute, removed some of them and pointed Tigran to their inappropriateness:

In the bottom of this thread he attacked the ethnic background of User:Aivazovsky, formerly known as Clevelander and made racist comments. I’m not providing diffs, I suggest the arbitrators read that thread. It is very long, so please check the comments left on 20 December.

Incivility and racist comments by User:Eupator
This person compared Muslim population of Armenia with Nazis and called them occupants. 

When I objected to such comparisons, he called my objections “degenerate outburst”. 

Edit warring by User:TigranTheGreat and User:Eupator
All Azerbaijan – Armenia related paged that got protected have one thing in common – one of the warring sides has always been represented either by User:TigranTheGreat or User:Eupator, but usually by both of them, sometimes joined by other editors, while Azerbaijani side was represented by different people. Sometimes these 2 warred even with Armenian editors, like in the article about Nakhichevan, which got protected on 19 December 2006 because of an edit war between User:TigranTheGreat and User:Aivazovsky. No diffs are necessary for these 2 users, it is enough to check the history of any article that got protected, including diffs provided by User:Fadix, to see who represented the other warring side.

Edit warring and incivility by User:ROOB323
This person has been edit warring at various articles, but History of Nagorno-Karabakh is the most glaring example of his unmotivated reverts. This article is extremely poorly written and is in desperate need of a complete rewrite. As soon as I made some edits to this article, which included new sections, removal of unsourced or improperly sourced info, links to existing articles, and additions of sourced info about Mihranid dynasty, etc and other fixes, all my edits were reverted by an anon IP. After my version was restored by another user, it was reverted by User:ROOB323:, then by an anon IP: , and when the article was semi-protected to stop anons from reverting, it was reverted by User:Artaxiad: , and again by User:ROOB323:. After repeated reversion of my edits he made some typo fixes, and now accuses me of revering them, as if it is OK to remove referenced information and other edits by other users and then make your own minor changes. On 18 February 2007 he made 3 rvs on this page, calling edits by other users “vandalism”, which resulted in page protection. . As of now, he still prevents other editors from adding the info to the article without any explanation on talk. 

Accusation of this user of me nominating the articles for deletion without any good reason is baseless. There's only 1 article that I nominated for deletion (Articles for deletion/Khachkar destruction), as I considered it to be a POV fork of existing articles.

This user made personal attacks and was blocked:

Edit warring by User:Azerbaijani
This user kept on inserting poorly sourced info into a large number of articles related to Azerbaijan and relentlessly edit warred to keep his edits in the article, ignoring objections of other editors, including third party ones. The pages that he simultaneously revert warred at include, but are not limited to: Atabeg, Azerbaijan, Arran (Azerbaijan), Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Musavat, Safavid dynasty, History of the name Azerbaijan, Mammed Amin Rasulzade and many others. It came to a point when the owner of the website milliondollarbabies.com, which User:Azerbaijani tried to use as a reference for his claim posted a message objecting to such use of his website: However, as of now milliondollarbabies.com is still included as a reference to the protected article Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, because Azerbaijani kept on restoring it to the article despite being explained on talk of this and other articles that he should not do so. I would like to ask Arbitration committee to check the activity of this user. I’m not providing diffs of his edit warring, because they are too many, instead I suggest you check the history of the above mentioned articles.

A comment on Golbez’s comment
It would be good to provide some background as to what started an edit war on that article in the first place. Nagorno-Karabakh is a very troubled article, it was protected many times even before me or Adil joined Wikipedia. So obviously one should edit such articles very cautiously, considering that it has a very delicate balance of words and any unilateral change may result in serious debates and edit wars. The intro of that article was disputed many times, and eventually the dispute was resolved when after many months of debates, RfC, etc an admin User:EI_C proposed a statement with which the involved parties more or less agreed. The article was stable for a while, until this edit by User:TigranTheGreat, who returned after the long absence:

He changed the intro, and the debate instantly resumed. This is when Golbez joined the dispute. I respect Golbez as an admin, but unfortunately he is not that good as a mediator, in my opinion he should stay out of such troubled articles as this one. Instead of restoring the status quo and inviting the parties to discuss the issues before making changes, he supported Tigran’s action. Moreover, he even reverted the admin User:EI_C, who tried to restore the compromise version.  Golbez admitted on the talk his sympathy for separatist movements, which did not increase his credibility with Azeri editors, and in general his involvement resulted in further aggravation of the situation. I asked Francis to join and help resolve the problem, and eventually by joint efforts the dispute was resolved, but it took another couple of months before the parties settled on the current version of the intro. All in all, I think that such troubled articles should be mediated by more experienced mediators such as Francis, and while I’m sure that the intentions of Golbez were good, the result of his interference into that particular article was really negative.

A comment on Fadix's statements
After reading Fadix’s evidence one might get an impression that the edit wars started only when certain Azerbaijani users started editing articles, however it is enough to check the logs for the main Azerbaijan – Armenian related pages to see that it is not so.

Nakhichevan log  Nagorno-Karabakh log  Azerbaijan log  Caucasian Albania log , Urartu log  and so on. The edit wars on these articles started before most of parties to this arbcom case joined Wikipedia and went on for years. Fadix blames pages getting protected on Adil and others, but how about Paytakaran page, to which Adil and Atabek never contributed? Interestingly, that page got protected soon after Fadix’s rv, so he cannot blame others of something he is guilty himself. All the pages mentioned by Fadix have one thing in common with Paytakaran – contribs of Azerbaijani users were reverted by the same people. Usually it were User:TigranTheGreat and User:Eupator, joined sometimes by other users.

Also, while Fadix claims pages getting always protected because of Azerbaijani editors, it is not so. Nakhichevan article got protected on 19 December 2006 because of an edit war between two Armenian users, User:TigranTheGreat and User:Aivazovsky. The former user has been engaged in almost every edit war with Azerbaijani users as well. Urartu was protected because of an edit war between currently banned User:Ararat arev and other Armenian, as well as third party users on 17 January 2007. Certain Armenian users were edit warring not only with Azerbaijani contributors, but with each other as well. Whenever an Armenia - Azerbaijan related article got protected, you would surely find edit warring on one of the sides of the dispute either User:TigranTheGreat or User:Eupator, joined by User:Artaxiad and others. Participation of Azerbaijani users in an edit war is not a necessary condition for the pages getting protected. Fadix fails to mention that.

A comment on Picaroon's evidence
With regard to the evidence presented by Picaroon, those diffs are taken out of context and his presentation lacks any objectivity. Obviously, it takes at least two to make an edit war, and while Picaroon presents my contribution, he fails to present the contribution of the opposite party, including “ironic” edit summaries. The full picture is as follows. Our dispute with User:TigranTheGreat was mediated by Francis Tyers, but no consensus was reached after the long discussions. Tigran disappeared on 22 December, and mediation was left unfinished. When Tigran returned one month later, on 22 January 2007, he tried to insert a very dubious claim with a reference to a single dubious source, known for its bias, which contradicted all primary sources, both Azerbaijani and Armenian. This is the complete sequence of events:

03:50, 24 January 2007 TigranTheGreat (Talk | contribs) (→From origins to 1917 - restoring deleted sourced info.)

10:10, 24 January 2007 Grandmaster (Talk | contribs) (rv)

10:39, 24 January 2007 TigranTheGreat (Talk | contribs) m (rv)

10:43, 24 January 2007 Grandmaster (Talk | contribs) (stop it, and see talk)

10:44, 24 January 2007 TigranTheGreat (Talk | contribs) (But I would like not to stop.)

10:53, 24 January 2007 Grandmaster (Talk | contribs) (you'll have to, mind 3RR)

03:55, 25 January 2007 TigranTheGreat (Talk | contribs) (Now why would you warn me against 3RR? Don't you ever want to make me get caught? Just as I get you blocked every time? :))

Overall, this user made 4 rvs in 24 hrs and 5 minutes, with an obvious purpose to avoid 3RR, and ignored my calls to discuss the issue at talk. This edit war resulted in both Tigran and me getting blocked by Dcmdevit, see  So it is not like I was edit warring, and the other side was not. Same with the other evidence provided by Picaroon, I suggest he checks the other warring side, he will find familiar names. I always used dispute resolution whenever possible or even impossible due to reluctance of the other side. It should also be noted that dispute resolution has always been initiated by Azerbaijani users, while Armenian users never applied for any dispute resolution. For instance, both AMA requests were filed by Azerbaijani users, the one for Paytakaran by me: AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Requests/January_2007/Grandmaster, and the one for Urartu by Dacy69: AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Requests/December_2006/dacy69. And it was Fadix, who now accuses others of edit warring, who disrupted the attempts of the admin to have the dispute on Paytakaran officially mediated: Requests_for_mediation/Paytakaran. Also, most of the informal mediations were initiated by me,   and I initiated or supported RfCs to have the disputes resolved: So it’s not like I never tried to resolve the disputes thru dispute resolution, it just was not always possible to settle them due to certain reasons. However those who place the blame exclusively on Azerbaijani users never applied for any dispute resolution and moreover, on some occasions sabotaged the attempts to have disputes mediated. One can only guess the motives of such behavior.

Unjustified block by Dmcdevit
I would like to ask the arbitrators to check the circumstances of block that was imposed on me during this arbcom case by the admin User:Dmcdevit. Dmcdevit provided as a rationale for block my reverts to the articles Safavid dynasty and Khachkar destruction. However, Safavid dynasty is not related to Azerbaijan – Armenia scope and I simply reverted an IP vandalism. Please see:

The anon deleted words from the intro, and reverting childish vandalism does not count as a revert according to the rules. The second rv was on Khachkar destruction, where I reverted the page move by User:Artaxiad.  The page that he moved was nominated for deletion (see Articles for deletion/Khachkar destruction), and users are not allowed to move pages until RfD is complete. I provided an explanation in the edit summary. Btw, the page move was an obvious attempt by User:Artaxiad to manipulate the outcome of AfD, but for some reason I’m the only one who got punished in this case.

A comment on Fadix's justification of his actions on Paytakaran
User:Fadix justifies removal of a large text with references and quotes by enforcing a certain guideline on names (!), which by the way does not apply to that article for the reasons I explained on talk in much detail. However his objection concerns only the name of the province, which in his opinion should not be written in Azerbaijani language despite the area being located in the territory of Azerbaijan. Even if we assume that he was right with regards to the name, it gives him no right to remove all edits by another editor without even reading them. It is a rude violation of Wikipedia rules that resulted in further aggravation of the situation. The article got protected after he joined the revert war that was waged by User:TigranTheGreat and User:Eupator. He says that he refused the mediation because he was not aware what the dispute was about. Why then he reverted my contributions without trying to discuss the problems on talk or just amend the line to which he objected? It is clear that his behavior on this article was disruptive. He reverted the article without any good reason and sabotaged mediation attempt under a very flimsy pretext. I must add that Fadix will not be able to demonstrate that he ever initiated any dispute resolution procedure to resolve the conflicts on Azerbaijan – Armenia related articles, if I’m wrong let him correct me.

P.S. Even Fadix’s choice of the words shows his attitude towards other editors: I did not waste my time into reading everything he changed in the article, etc. So reading contributions of other editors is a waste of time, according to him.

Also, the guideline which Fadix cites as a legitimate basis for undoing my edits, actually says:


 * Avoid revert wars: If there is a dispute regarding the naming convention in the contents of the article, to prevent revert wars the name from the title of the relevant article should be used in all occurrences until a consensus is reached on the relevant talk page(s).

Please see Naming_conventions_%28geographic_names%29. However Fadix simply removed from the article without discussion not only the name of the province in Azerbaijani language, but also all my other edits, despite each line being properly referenced.

Response to Fadix’s accusations of edit warring
Fadix provided some strange figures for the search results with the word rv in my edit history, but no links to those search results, which makes it an unverifiable claim. To prove his claims he needs to provide search results from a reliable engine, which he failed to do. If he indeed did such search, it would be nice to make exactly the same search for User:TigranTheGreat and User:Eupator. At the same time, even if we assume that those search results are true, one must note that the amount of daily vandalism on Azerbaijan related articles is enormous, and someone has to do clean up work. The results, if they are true, are not a proof of anything.

Wikipedia exists because of people who actually edit articles. I wrote a number of articles, and contributed to almost every article about Azerbaijan, and also created and maintain Portal:Azerbaijan. I made more than 7300 edits to Wikipedia, this is one of the highest figures, of them more than 3000 on talk of various articles to discuss the problems. I did not use talk to attack other contributors, and I’m the one who initiated most of the dispute resolutions on Armenia - Azerbaijan related issues. I would like to ask Fadix, if I’m just an edit warrior, why would I do that, and if you, Tigran and Eupator are not, why you never ever applied for any dispute resolution, as required by the rules to resolve the disputes?

A comment on statement by User:Vartanm
The statement to arbcom by this user is a good example of battleground approach to editing articles in Wikipedia. 

A comment on statement by MarshallBagramyan
The statement by this user provides inaccurate information and misrepresents the facts. He places blame for edit wars exclusively on 3 Azerbaijani users he mentioned. For example, he says: “Not a single effort is made to mediate the differences since they automatically ratchet up the charge that Armenians are stonewalling/covering up information or pushing their POV to not reveal the "truth"”. It is simply not true. User:Dacy69 was the one who filed an AMA request (see AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Requests/December_2006/dacy69). And he was simply trying to add accurate and verifiable info to the article, while User:Eupator, User:TigranTheGreat and others were trying to prevent him from doing so. I refer to the mediator SilkTork, who helped resolve the dispute by Dacy69’s request: “''Dacy69 has provided appropriate evidence in support of his edits. I have made a comment on the talk page of Urartu explaining that Dacy69 is making appropriate edits and inviting editors to talk to me if they have concerns''”. Also, Dacy69 was so nice as to drop incivility complaints against those who attacked him. So clearly, it is not Dacy69 to blame for edit wars on that page, but those who blindly reverted his contributions. Therefore the claims by User:MarshallBagramyan such as this: "Adil and the other users engage in blind reverts and never work to compromise. They never offer a solution to the problem and speak only in absolutes" are very far from truth. In fact, not a single effort for dispute resolution was made by those users, who tried to prevent Dacy69 and the other 2 users from editing certain articles, while those 3 users acted in good faith and simply tried to add balanced information to the articles, written according to a certain POV. I think the admins can contact SilkTork for more detailed information if required.