User:John254/Lerner Arbcom


 * With regard to the statement by Daniel, lack of formal article-specific dispute resolution would be a valid objection to this request only if we regarded the situation here as a content dispute, which I claim that it is not. Outright non-content dispute policy violations may be reasonably be brought to the attention of the committee when the users responsible for them have extensive histories of prior disruption as to which there has been prior dispute resolution, and when such violations persistently recur despite extensive talk-page discussion concerning them.  The remainder of the statement amounts to a claim that "John254 is a jerk", which, even if established, has no bearing on the merits of this request, but only relates to what sanction (if any) would be imposed if the request had already been found to be without merit. John254 04:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to statement by SirFozzie: the insinuation that my involvement in this issue somehow derives from a desire to get JzG desysopped is just silly. Prior to my first edit on, JzG had never edited the article.  JzG clearly involved himself in a dispute with me by supporting ScienceApologist's WP:BLP violations.  Had ScienceApologist never made an edit so obviously improper as , I likely would never have researched the issues concerning this article any further.  Furthermore, despite SirFozzie's claims, I have personally participated in prior dispute resolution, both in the extensive discussion of the WP:BLP violations on Talk:Eric Lerner and by posting the notice on WP:BLP/N.  Article RFC and mediation are used to deal with content disputes, not clear WP:BLP violations. John254 05:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to statement by Bigtimepeace: if we were considering the reliability of the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science for general articles such as physical cosmology or for the purpose of criticism in our article concerning the big bang theory, then we would have a content dispute. Even if we considered its reliability as a source for research by Eric Lerner in an article about him, we might still have a content dispute.  However, to assert that our article about Eric Lerner can't describe research by him because a peer-reviewed journal published by the IEEE isn't a reliable source, but self-published materials do constitute reliable sources for the article, Biographies_of_living_persons be darned, isn't a content dispute -- it's a WP:BLP violation. John254 06:34, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to statement by Stephan Schulz: per Biographies_of_living_persons, self-published sources not authored by the subjects of articles may not be used in biographies of living persons at all, not even if they are written by experts, not even if there is a consensus to do so. That much is an issue of policy, not a content dispute.  While the personal faculty webpage might be a somewhat reliable source outside of a WP:BLP context, the only other purpose for which the reliability of the faculty webpage has been raised is in comparison to articles appearing in a peer-reviewed journal published by the IEEE, to show that ScienceApologist's editing doesn't even begin to comply with Verifiability, and thereby constitutes a WP:BLP violation. John254 07:04, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to statement by JzG: the claim that Lerner's book isn't discussed in sources by respected publishers, so we need to use self-published material for criticism is quite simply false, as the book was criticized heavily by well-known scientists in the New York Times and the Skeptical Inquirer -- indeed, the article includes extensive quotations of this criticism in Eric_Lerner. It is also irrelevant, as the asserted need to say something bad about material alleged to be fringe does not override the plain language of Biographies_of_living_persons, which expressly prohibits the use of any self-published material not by Eric Lerner in our biography of him for any purpose whatsoever.  JzG's concerns that"living authors of pseudoscientific or fringe works would be able, simply by virtue of being alive, to claim special dispensation not to have their work rebutted in Wikipedia other than by the kind of sources that typically do not dignify such material with any kind of comment."should be withheld until such issues are actually presented, since a great deal of criticism of Eric Lerner's theories has been included in works printed by respected publishers. Furthermore, JzG's suggestion that the article be moved to the title of the book to permit the inclusion of self-published criticism appears to concede that the use of this material in a biography of a living person is unacceptable.  JzG's claim that, because he is an OTRS member, none of his edits could possibly constitute WP:BLP violations is also false: OTRS membership implies enforcement of WP:BLP as it currently stands, not redefinition of the policy by automatically deeming any edits made by an OTRS member to be WP:BLP compliant.  Indeed, the fact that an OTRS member is willing to engage in such blatant WP:BLP violations weighs in favor of the acceptance of the case, since filing a complaint with OTRS obviously won't resolve this issue.  JzG's assertion of no prior dispute resolution is without merit: Requests_for_comment/JzG2 expressly discusses prior WP:BLP violations by JzG.  Furthermore, there has been extensive discussion of this issue on the article talk page, in which I have participated significantly, as well as an attempt to remedy the current WP:BLP violations via the ordinary channel of a posting to WP:BLP/N which appears to have simply been ignored.  Dealing with blatant WP:BLP violations as a "content dispute" would defeat the purpose of the policy, since content disputes can drag on for years -- surely, in consideration of the harm to living people that can be caused by obvious WP:BLP violations, they should be handled as a policy enforcement matter, which this committee has done in the prior cases described above. John254 John254 21:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)