User:Shell Kinney/EEreportsreview

This is my in-depth look at the contributions of editors involved in the reports at WP:AE regarding Eastern European disputes, specifically Russian/Estonian related topics. I have chosen not to limit the review only to named parties since it quickly becomes evident that other parties are involved in similar behavior. When reviewing articles used as evidence, I've chosen to limit the review to edits made this year; for contribution reviews, I've limited it to going back no further than April 1. Its my hope that by using these time limits, I will be getting the full context of any disputes and involved parties while not dragging up older habits that might have been changed.

Interaction by all parties on reported articles
Following is a review of articles that were reported to AE as being a spot where edit warring by one or more of the reported parties occurred. I've collapsed the section as it was becoming prohibitively large. In summary, many participants have edit warred across various articles in the topic area. There is very little attempt to discuss the issues or resolve disputes; reverting seems to be the preferred method of interaction.

Internet operations by Russian secret police
During each of the incidents, reverts happened while the editors argued on the talk page. There does not appear to have been a consensus on any of the issues that caused the edit wars as all the usual parties showed up to take their side when consensus was polled. Another editor not named in the reports, User:ellol, was disruptive on more than one occasion by reverting and attacking other editors on the talk page.

Russian influence operations in Estonia
There is a chilling lack of discussion on the talk page despite multiple edit wars. Russavia repeatedly disrupted the article by removing the sources and see also section while only discussing their changes in the edit summary. Offliner has repeatedly requested sources for the first two sentences which are missing an inline citation. Digwuren reverted this request each time and initially called it disruption. Neither has discussed the issue or used any form of dispute resolution.

Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings
The incident on April 17th seems to be an application of WP:BRD though light on the discuss portion (which seems to be a pattern). The later incident involved no discussion except through edit summary and happened during a deletion discussion which both editors participated in. Note that this edit war managed to take place in an article with only 25 edits to its name.

List of people allegedly involved in Russian apartment bombings
This is one of several sub-articles of Russian apartment bombings which were first redirected and then put up for AfD. None of the AfDs achieved consensus and there's been little discussion of resolving the dispute otherwise. I don't see any particular disruption in this article, but included it since diffs were used in the AE reports.

Federal Security Service (Russia)
No discussion of the edit warring until April 21. Reverting continued during discussion until an apparent consensus was reached, if only by a lack of further action.

Russian apartment bombings
Things started out well at this article. Edit wars were minor until just before April 24 when the article was full protected. There was very little discussion after the protection with the usual editors taking their sides.

Larisa Arap
The majority of the edit warring on this article was over Offliner's removal of all external links; this same action has been the cause of edit wars on several articles. In some cases this removal of links appears to be due to the fact that they are duplicates of inline sources. In this case Domitori's edit restored the links. Again, reverting between Offliner and Biophys continued despite what little discussion happened on the talk page.

David Satter
As with other articles, reverting went on despite the little discussion on the talk page. Offliner appears to have made an unsourced claim that this BLP was a conspiracy theorist.

Achemez Gochiyayev
Another case in which Offliner removed a number of links. In this case the links were listed under a heading of "Sources" and it is unclear whether these are sources used in addition to the inline references or external links. No discussion on talk.

Yakov Krotov
Again about links, this time Russavia initiated the removal and Biophys reverted both he and Offliner. Biophys requested discussion on the talk page; there were no other comments.

Alexander Litvinenko
The major participants in the edit wars were Russavia, Biophys and Offliner. During the disputes there was discussion on the talk page. Russavia in particular suggested several compromises for the lead paragraph an additional compromise was contributed by Gray Fox-9589. There is considerably more discussion on this article than seen in any other example. Even though the edit warring here was not appropriate there was sincere effort by Biophys, Russavia, Offliner and Grey Fox-9589 to resolve the issue. Martintg and Colichucum were involved to a lesser extent and both contributed to the discussion.

Russian diaspora
There isn't a single word of discussion on talk about the ongoing edit war. These seem to be the majority players in articles that degenerate into edit warring. Beatle Fab Four is already under a six month topic ban.

Web brigades
The first edit war involved a question of whether it was appropriate to add a section to the article discussing the results of a particular ArbCom case. During this discussion, Russavia's comments were frequently incivil and even personal attacks. Two merge discussions from January were eventually closed as no consensus and both had very little input. Despite having been involved in at least one of those discussions, Russavia redirected the page on March 28 which was reverted by Martintg who correctly pointed out a lack of consensus for such a move.

Aleksandr Kolchak
PasswordUsername inappropriately labels these edits as vandalism. There is talk page discussion which eventually resolves the issues.

Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park)
Edit warring began over a particular section of text and we again see the entire group get involved. Russavia contended that the source did not properly verify the information; it later turned out that Martintg had not actually read the sources he used to write the section and the sources did not support the text. It is clear that many of the editors involved blindly reverted without contributing to or even looking at the discussion on talk and supported claims without first making their own verification.

Timeline of antisemitism
Discussion of the dispute didn't start on the talk page until June 4th. Despite a healthy discussion (mostly by PasswordUsername and Martintg), edit warring continued. Offliner, Biophys and Digwuren also made comments in the discussion. The discussion ended in a poll of consensus in which the only outside editor to comment felt the text should be removed. During the discussion many accusations of POV pushing and bias were thrown around, principally by Martintg and PasswordUsername.

International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
Unlike many other disputes, there was an attempt to work out issues on talk, unfortunately this doesn't seem to stop participants from edit warring.

Kaitsepolitsei
Reverting continued despite discussion on talk. Digwuren and Russavia were incivil to each other during the discussion.

Offliner regularly edit wars when involved with certain editors. When he doesn't encounter these editors, he appears to contribute productively. Recently Offliner has made a point of engaging more in discussion and resolving disputes productively , again, especially in cases where these other editors weren't involved. In the project space, Offliner spends most of his time on WP:AN3 and has been warned before about making insufficient reports. Offliner sometimes lets his POV get the best of him.,

Biophys regularly edit wars when involved with certain editors. He has contributed many new articles; outside of the Russian/Estonia topic area, they don't seem to be prone to problems. In the project space, Biophys spends most of his time on WP:AN3 and WP:ANI. He sometimes uses misleading edit summaries during content disputes or allows his POV to get the best of him. He's also shown some bad judgment for example when removing warnings from other editors talk pages.

Digwuren edit wars. Despite the case warning against accusations of nazism, Digwuren has accused other editors of being neo-Nazis,. Digwuren has also made inappropriate comments on article talk pages.

PasswordUsername edit wars.

Russavia regularly edit wars when involved with certain editors. They also have difficulty remaining civil when interacting with those same editors.

Martintg edit wars. He occasionally lets his POV get the best of him.,

Ellol edit wars and regularly (60-80%) marks his reverts and other changes as minor during edit wars.

Summary
There is no doubt that the AE reports were not optimal; many claims were overblown and many of the diffs given weren't good examples. However, after reviewing recent contribs of the participants there does appear to be a need for intervention. Its clear that the involved parties bring out the worst in each other. It is also clear that there are sides and from time to time, editors blindly support those on their "side". Its also apparent that a number of the involved editors have difficulty keeping their POV in check when writing and sometimes even in discussions with other editors.