User:JamesMLane/ArbCom supplement

This is a draft.

Within the section describing Kerry’s time in the Navy, there was a “Criticism” subsection. Rex renamed it “Military service and awards criticism” but, under either name, it was a subheading under “Military service” – quite properly, because it contained solely criticism about Kerry’s military service. Then, by this edit on August 12, Rex deleted one equal sign so as to elevate the discussion of the criticism of Kerry’s military service to a status equal to the service itself, i.e., a top-level section. His edit summary, at 15:29, 12 Aug 2004, read, in its entirety, “(Military service and awards criticism)”. As far as I can tell, he made no comments on Talk about this elevation of the criticism of Kerry, either before or after making the edit. He just did it.

The result of his edit was that there was a clear error in the organization, with a 2-equal-signs header followed immediately by a 4-equal-signs header, with no intervening 3-equal-signs header. In my next edit, in the course of making a smalll change in the section name to “Criticism of military service and awards”, I noticed this discrepancy in the hierarchy. I returned the section to the status it deserved and had long held, i.e., a 3= subheading under “Military service” instead of a 2= top-level heading. I discussed the name change on Talk but not the extra equal signs, because I thought the previous change must have been inadvertent -- the other headers hadn’t been moved up the ladder and, logically, this change made no sense.

Gamaliel had [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=John_Kerry&diff=5170806&oldid=5170711 corrected an accidental duplication of several sections, as he noted in his edit summary. His correction had been obliterated by Rex’s revert. This was clearly a knee-jerk revert by Rex, in that his edit summary stated, "(rv - Sections are not duplicate - please dialog before you again revert this, which is the baseline version - thank you)", but the version that resulted from Rex's revert did include duplication, with sections 3 and 4 repeating sections 1 and 2. Rex evidently reverted without even looking at the actual changes he was reverting, while inserting his ritualistic call for "dialog". Rex then returned to his campaign to promote the "Criticism" section, reverting my edit with an edit summary that merely identified the affected section (“Criticism of military service and awards”).

Gamaliel again corrected the duplication problem, in an edit that also restored the previous status of “Criticism” as a 3= subheading. Rex responded with an edit that again promoted the “Criticism” to where he wanted it, again with no discussion on Talk or in the edit summary (“Manually re-insert baseline versions to avoid duplicates”). Note here that Rex’s preferred change, though never discussed on Talk and never expressly mentioned in an edit summary, has suddenly somehow become one of the “baseline versions” in his mind, although only Rex favored it and Gamaliel and I had each in turn restored it to the version that existed before Rex went on this latest crusade.

The real insight into Rex’s editing style came after Neutrality restored the older version. Rex again promoted the “Criticism” section, in an edit in which, for the first time, he actually mentioned, in the edit summary, that there was some sort of organizational issue involved. What he wrote was: “(Fix TOC problem which was once again created my Neutrality's non-discussed reversion)”. In other words, it’s perfectly OK for Rex to reorganize the sections as he pleases, against the wishes of everyone else who’s editing the article, and without discussing it anywhere -– but when one of those other users restores the version that had long existed and that everyone else prefers, then that user, in going against Rex’s wishes, is creating a “problem” by making a “non-discussed reversion”. This is all too typical of Rex’s approach to dialog.

Neutrality, unintimidated by Rex’s characterization of his (and everyone else’s) view as a “problem”, reverted to the consensus viewpoint. Rex responded some seven minutes later with this edit, accompanied by the edit summary “(Restore TOC order by reinserting line which other keep removing in haste and error)”. So on August 12 the supposedly reformed Rex had no trouble assuming that edits reflecting the views of everyone else must have been made “in haste and error”.

A revert war ensued, with Neutrality on one side and Rex and VeryVerily on the other. The page was protected with Rex’s version in place. Soon after the page was unprotected, with the accusations of bad faith having cooled a bit, VeryVerily changed the “Criticism” heading back to where it had been before Rex began trying to promote it, 20 or so changes earlier.

The particular change Rex kept making isn't all that important, but it's pretty clearly wrong. The only reason to elevate the “Criticism” to being a separate section was that doing so was another opportunity for Rex to do everything he could to highlight and emphasize material that’s unfavorable to Kerry. Even VeryVerily, while agreeing with Rex on many points, saw that this change was unjustified. As in other such instances, notice how many users wasted how much time in trying to correct an anti-Kerry POV edit favored only by Rex.

The more important point, though, is Rex's approach to editing. I go through this history in such detail because it illustrates Rex’s fundamental problem: He is temperamentally unsuited to engage in collaborative editing, at least on a subject about which he feels so strongly. Over and over we've seen him fixated on his version of some point. His version is the “baseline.” No one should change his version without “dialoguing.”  Of course, merely explaining the change isn’t enough (he’s reverted plenty of changes that were explained on Talk) –- “dialoguing” to Rex means that we must continue to argue about the point unless and until he's persuaded, and in the meantime his version must stay in effect. In this instance, he berated Neutrality for not having discussed a change, when (1) Rex himself never discussed his own change, and (2) the other version, the one favored by everyone other than Rex, had been in place for a while before Rex decided to change it in his own undiscussed edit.

I’m certainly not arguing that a version that sits there for a while acquires some sort of squatter’s rights. Rather, my point is that, under these circumstances, Rex’s attitude shows that he fundamentally doesn’t accord respect to other users’ versions and opinions. He sees everything from the perspective of his preferred language. He doesn't genuinely consider the substance of other users' comments. He doesn't always read versions that he's reverting. Numerous other examples could be cited. I elucidate this one because it came three days after Rex told this Committee, "My inter-editor comments conduct has improved greatly in the last few days."