Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Fanoftheworld

Appears that isolated disputes about unsourced or possibly POV material on the Steinway and Sons page have rapidly become a series of personal attacks by Fanoftheworld (or insinuations at any rate) spread over various talk pages, with some tendentious editing thrown in for good measure.


 * 1) Personal attacks on the Rachmaninoff talk page: 1, 2, 3
 * 2) On the Steinway & Sons talk page: 1, 2, and in countless other places on the page, though these are the most recent
 * 3) On Broadwood & Sons AfD page: 1, 2, 3
 * 4) User talk page: 1, 2,
 * 5) Editing to make a point: 1,
 * 6) Warning for personal attacks here; for adding promotional material on Steinway to various pages, here.

There's more, but these seemed the most salient. Alexrexpvt (talk) 22:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The following was moved from AN (duplicate conversation): Please check the Steinway & Sons talk. Improvements towards neutrality on the article have become very difficult due to one of the editors who has entered a war with other editors, making things impossible to other editors wishing to improve the article. This user has started editing oddly other articles (automobile, Sergei Rachmaninoff etc). What is the right tool for this situation? --Karljoos (talk) 22:48, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I assume one or more users has tried talking to the offender directly? Perhaps informing him/her of policy.  Assuming that does work,  dispute resolution is the way to go unless there is something particularly egregious in his/her behavior (such as blatant edit warring or personal attacks) that would require immediate admin action. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

(end of moved section)


 * I think that Alexrexpvt only wants to get me blocked, so he and 4 other users can make their changes on the Steinway article without my opinion on the talk page. I don't think this is the Wikipedia style - the Wikipedia is for everybody.
 * The administrator's are very welcome to write me, especially because some of the links above are taken out of a context. And administrators are of course also very welcome to write me to hear about the many personal attacks that some users have written to me. And to hear how they are hunting me. And to hear examples of the way these users talk to me ("Bullshit." and "Well, if you, *******..." and more). Thank you. Fanoftheworld (talk) 00:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

My 2cents: Most of those diffs don't really constitute personal attacks. bad WP:Wikiquette, sure, but not personal attacks. The possible exception being the accusation of someone being a copyright violator.

The "to make a point" edit is indeed very POINTy.

What I actually find most troubling, however, wasn't even mentioned above. It seems editor has added "(this famous artist) uses Steinway pianos" do dozens of articles, mostly without any edit summary and sometimes also using the 'minor edit' flag. That combined with his deleting of similar info from competing piano company articles makes me very strongly believe he has a conflict of interest here and is trying to promote the Steinway company. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, at least 650 of his 877 article space edits are to article directly related to Steinway. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have asked Fanoftheworld to explain his apparent COI here. Barring a reasonable explanation I would recommend a block per Conflict_of_interest and possible also for generally disruptive editing/uncivility. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:51, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment from Binksternet. I'm an involved editor and I agree with ThaddeusB that the above diffs are bad Wikiquette but not quite personal attacks. I disagree with Fanoftheworld that Alexrexpvt only wants to get FotW blocked. I think that getting FotW to realize that the wiki is not his or her personal vehicle for Steinway promotion is the ultimate goal. Getting FotW to work in a collegial fashion; that would be a fantastic result. How do we achieve this? A series of punitive blocks might do it, or not. I don't know the solution. Binksternet (talk) 02:43, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, just discovered this via the Rachmaninov (forgive my spelling, but I prefer the 'v') page. WP:BLOCK and a larger Wikipedia consensus hold that punitive blocks are not the way to go. Blocks should be preventive; if continues to add spammy material to articles in which he may have a conflict of interest, a preventive block may be necessary to stop the spam. Furthermore, a series of blocks should only be used for repeat offenders who ignore warnings. In this particular case, the former seems to be true, but the latter is not.
 * Personally, I believe that each individual addition of the Steinway information is only of marginal spamminess (if that's a word at all), but the combined edits of Fanoftheworld make me think otherwise. An explanation needs to be given for his affinity for Steinway articles; if no satisfactory response is provided, a preventive block, per Conflict_of_interest, is necessary.
 * On the issue of personal attacks, Fanoftheworld is being tenacious, but I see no grounds for a "personal attack" block. His tone certainly needs improvement, however, and he would also benefit from reading WP:POINT, WP:CONSENSUS, and WP:VERIFY. I can address specific concerns at individual talk pages if necessary in regards to these pages. ɳ OCTURNE ɳ OIR  talk //  contribs 03:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I did agonize over whether to characterize these edits as "personal attacks". WP:NPA seems to subsume every instance of commenting on a contributor, not the content, under the rubric of "personal attack", and that's why I thought it might be appropriate. At any rate, as several editors have noted, they're really just the tip of the iceberg with regards to tendentious editing. I don't especially want to see Fanoftheworld blocked, despite what he may think, just steered towards consensus-building. Alexrexpvt (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. Sorry I missed this discussion.  I was offline for the weekend.  While I agree that WP:BLOCK is warranted given Fanoftheworld's frequent unconstructive edits and uncivil behavior, (not to mention likely COI) I doubt it would do any good, as he can always re-register under another name.  Indeed, I've investigated the history of edits on the Steinway page, and the content of Fanoftheworld's edits match those of Steveshelokhonov's, who stopped editing when Fanoftheworld started.THD3 (talk) 19:25, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * User:Fanoftheworld has been blocked indefinitely by User:Sandstein (17:49, 26 March 2010 (UTC)). I don't think it's useful to block him/her since the user can create another account and continue doing the same thing.--Karljoos (talk) 21:42, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment I'd also like to point out Fanoftheworld's bad-faith attempts to delete articles on pianos of Steinway competitors (e.g., here and here). His WP:COI (whether as an actual Steinway employee or affiliate, or just an overenthusiastic fan; it makes no difference) is pretty transparent by now. In theory, a topic ban would be appropriate discipline, but given his most recent behavior, both after w one-week block and on his talk page during an indefinite block, I doubt that that would be productive.

I'm not too concerned with the possibility that he may re-register and resume activity. His behavior is so far out there that such sockpuppetry would be immediately obvious, and the new account would be blocked as a sockpuppet of a banned user. TJRC (talk) 22:26, 26 March 2010 (UTC)