User talk:SaltyBoatr/arbcomsandbox

The reason we are here is that we have been unable to find a mutually acceptable compromise to a dispute about editing the Second Amendment article. I ask the arbitration committee to help us find that compromise. Yaf is asking the arbitration committee to ban an editor so that he will not have to make a compromise.

As you are probably aware, there is a strong division of opinion about gun rights, both in reliable sourcing and in the personal opinion of editors. Here, we see five editors who share a "pro-gun" personal POV, and myself. The question at hand is whether these six editors can set aside their personal views and edit the article according to the neutrality balance found in the reliable sourcing? The answer is no, we have failed.

Far too often we have gone with the 5:1 majority vote of personal opinion instead of the NPOV proportional weight found in the reliable sourcing.

How should five editors with a pro-gun point of view associate with one editor who does not share that point of view?

The answer for Yaf, Anastrophe and SMP0328 is to join together and 'shout down' the minority and seek to get the minority editor banned. I agree that this boils down to questions about personal conduct. I disagree that this should stop at review of the conduct of SaltyBoatr instead it should be a review of the conduct of all the involved editors.

There are dozens of instances to review, but here are just a few which are representative:


 * Anastrophe, trolling on talk pages and bitting newcomers: "i feel no constraint in responding","enjoy yanking people's chains""how's the weather in france?"''.
 * Anastrophe declaring intent to defend his personal pro-gun POV"...rather than having the gun rights POV slowly whittled away by some editors, much like the camel's nose in the tent.".
 * SMP0238 argues against negotiation with the minority: Does one person not agreeing with the edits of others mean there must be a negotiation? If so, then SaltyBoatr effectively owns this article.
 * The Second Amendment dispute revolves around the quality of Yaf's sourcing. Yet Yaf ignores and refuses to answer reasonable questions about his sourcing.  Yaf claims to have read his extremely obscure hardcopy cite, but refuses to answer questions about it or to provide any quotations from the  hardcopy.
 * Yaf, incivility "...Off your meds, obviously"
 * Yaf edit warring over and  tags.

Trying to be brief, I will not comment on all of Yaf's accusations above. Still, one of Yaf's diffs (19:31, 9 April 2008) is illustrative: Yaf objects to my edit where I removed a cite based on an essay originally written for a National Rifle Association essay contest found on a pro-gun website, and I replace it with an improved cite based on a mainstream book published by a well known scholarly publishing house. This reveals Yaf's tendency to edit the pro-gun beliefs of the National Rifle Association, drawing heavily upon pro-gun websites into Wikipedia firearms articles, and of Yaf's opposition to neutral edits using mainstream published sources.

I object to the accusation that I am 'gaming the system', as that is an accusation against my good intent. My intent is good and squarely in line with WP:Civility, WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.

Yaf's request of the arbitration committee is to get me banned to avoid needing to compromise. My request of the arbitration committee is: '''Please take this case to help us find a compromise. '''