Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/MickMacNee/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum of 500 words and 50 diffs. Giving a short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 500 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

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Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by MickMacNee

 * (Clerk note) MickMacNee's evidence submission comprises of over 6000 words, and the link to it can therefore not be included (as it was) because of the word count restriction. AGK  [&bull; ] 20:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Incase anyone was wondering, here is what arbcom apparently expect me to be able to cover in 500 words or less:


 * The way the case came to be, the sorry story of a bitter admin and his desperate (and as we see succesful) attempt to get someone to eventually listen to him, once every single one of his peers had turned a deaf ear to his 'proposal' at a stone dead ANI report on me
 * The way another very bitter admin chose to seize on some events occuring during the case, to try and have a second go at unilaterally banning me at a Kangaroo Court of his choosing, and call that good adminship, something to be respected and admired by his peers, who he has to threaten to get any respect from
 * The whos, whys & wherefores of those events, which, although the popular narrative already appears to be that I am as ever, the Bad Man, and people like this bitter admin are the Good Guys, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Not if you value basic human decency that is
 * All the other dirty laundry that has come out of the request, all the happy stories that I now apparently have to recall and detail about why certain people like to comment on me in ways that make them sound impartial and neutral and authorative on matters of civiilty and such like but who are anything but. And all in their own 500 word allocations unbelievably, which is hardly fair if the case is to be just a general exercise in one sided target practice.
 * And those ancilliary issues, like why we still apparently have no declared scope here, and a very nebulous concept of an involved party (except of course, the intended victim, me), and why until the bitter second admin tore in, we didn't even have any parties who wanted to even offer any evidence, except of course the banned sock who filed the case, a complete nutter who thought the first step of DR with me was to file an arbitration case, before even talking to me, which is apparently no big thing, no big thing at all

There. It's taken me 345 words just to summarise what I believe I am supposed to be talking about here, in the absence of any direction at all from arbs, who are not saying much at all. I am told that arbs will refuse to even read the many words I spent detailing these things already; if so, then thanks a lot. Instead of accepting this case, you should have just passed me back into the custody of bitter admin No. 2, who is ready willing and able to do a much more efficient job of shafting me.

Evidence presented by Rd232
I do not intend to make any assertions about MickMacNee, which would encourage him to have more things to say about and/or to me. Therefore, a brief summary of events as to why I'm an "involved party":
 * 1) MickMacNee didn't agree with my involvement in a particular ANI thread as an admin (about User:Delta), plus two ANI threads relating to TreasuryTag. The latter got me two barnstars from fellow admins. He made disagreement with the former plain by interjecting a section which I hatted at WP:AN. (I'd previously attempted to move the exchange to my talk page, since it was addressed at me and not the thread topic, but Mick rejected that, leading to this exchange.)
 * 2) Some days later I noticed an ANI thread about Mick being uncivil, which chimed with my experience, and so made a brief note of the RFC/U from January. Following another's remark in that thread I made a brief clarification why I couldn't do anything else. Mick's subsequent responses in that thread then made me propose a civility restriction. This led to some exchanges not about the restriction, to the point where I attempted to reorganise the thread to avoid the proposal being buried by those exchanges . Eventually, Mick's comments combined with the lack of support from anyone else made me so distressed that I decide to withdraw in the most effective way I know how (self-block).

MickMacNee has a history of disruptive editing
Consider Requests for comment/MickMacNee and his lengthy block log including indefinite blocks in January 2010 and October 2010, the latter as a result of a community discussion.

MickMacNee has engaged in deliberately inflammatory commentary

 * "the only reason I would be updating it myself to the letter of the law now after the race, is to piss you off, and fuck your weekend up in the way you've fucked mine."
 * "Your damn right, the only way I will bother to update that article now, to the letter of the ITN requirements, is to get it onto the Main Page, and thus have a flood of editors arriving there to make piss poor edits to it and waste your time having to revert them.".

MickMacNee expresses hostility towards his fellow editors
When an administrator dared to suggest an editing restriction, his response included aggressive and hostile commentary. When MickMacNee's hostile AFD participation was moved to the talk page, he restored it. He reverts articles on the basis of claims that explicitly reject consensus, holding his own views of a matter to be superior to everyone else's, and forcibly reverses the archiving of discussions that he has disrupted, subsequently re-archived. Chester Markel (talk) 16:14, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

More hostile comments

 * 
 * Insinuates that an editor daring to oppose him is a "moron":
 * Even when on his best behavior, while appearing before arbcom: "Chester Markel seeks to condemn me for being 'hostile' to the provocation by RD232 in his escalation of the ANI, the unfolding of which is described below. I think he is a liar and a hypocrite if he is trying to remotely suggest his reaction to finding himself in that same situation is to extend nothing but love and happiness to RD232."

MickMacNee has edit warred

 * On :
 * On :
 * On :

If this arbitration weren't currently open, MickMacNee would have been blocked indefinitely (for the third time) already
Administrative response to a recent edit warring report:

In response to his most recent blocks, MickMacNee posted more personal attacks

 * Ironically, MickMacNee states that "There is no Wikipedia rule at all, in any way shape or form, that mandates taking such as disgraceful approach to an editor's basic right not to feel attacked or publicly denigrated"

Δ / Betacommand has a history of disruptive editing
Consider Requests for comment/Betacommand, Requests for arbitration/Betacommand, Requests for arbitration/Betacommand 2, a community restriction, Δ's block log, and Betacommand's block log

More edit warring by Δ

 * On :
 * On :
 * On :
 * On :
 * On :
 * Δ might claim that, since he is purporting to enforce the NFCC, he is entitled to unlimited reverts, and the use of rollback for this purpose. But in at least three of the edit wars listed above, on "New Zealand dollar", "Ranks in Gerakan Pramuka Indonesia", and "Croatian kuna", Δ clearly was not removing "content that unquestionably violates the non-free content policy". "Overuse" of non-free content can hardly justify removing every fair use image from an article. Taking a completely unreasonable position, then edit warring over it endlessly using the rollback button isn't helpful. Moreover, most 3RR/EW exceptions concern matters that are obvious and urgent, such as the removal of blatant vandalism, libel, or copyright violations. However, since the removal of an NFCC violation isn't the sort of thing that can't wait fifteen minutes, and most good-faith editors aren't familiar with the detailed requirements for non-free content, I would expect editors to avail themselves of the "content that unquestionably violates the non-free content policy" exception in a responsible manner, by ensuring that
 * 1) The content being removed would indeed appear to unquestionably violate the NFCC, to a neutral observer.
 * 2) Editors objecting to its removal are politely educated about the complexities of the NFCC, before starting an edit war.
 * 3) Consistent with the instruction at Rollback feature, no-summary rollback is not used, as it insinuates that an NFCC violation is equivalent to scrawling obscenities on an article.
 * 4) In intractable cases, the assistance of administrators is requested.
 * Editors whose first and only tool in resolving any dispute over non-free content is the rollback button are unsuited to the task, and are certainly not complying with the intent of the edit warring policy.

Hammersoft's characterization of MickMacNee
Hammersoft made a comment which could be construed as an egregious personal attack on MickMacNee, starting the heated edit war described above.

Pre RFC evidence
I consider it water under the bridge, so won't be giving any evidence from before the end of the RFC.

MickMacNee can behave appropriately in discussions
Mick often makes good arguments, a particular example is on the ITN3.0 discussion, what was good about that is that he didn't over-reply, only making   as further points, none of which make any personal attacks, and which while especially the initial post is lengthy there is a lot of good material there. Mick this is how you should behave in every discussion.

MickMacNee doesn't always know when to drop his argument
This arbitration request seems to have built up around the Le Mans ITNC discussion which focused on posting the race on the main page before the start, which I supported, and went too far myself, but Mick got really personal on multiple occassions:, , , , , , , and I haven't even included the comments on ANI, or the ones that looked civil and reasonable.

The number of comments here that are aggressive is unreasonable, and Mick should have recused himself at some point before he did. Posting Le Mans at the start would have been nice, but it isn't the end of the world that it wasn't done. Additionally being overly aggressive and adding a lot of drama to it makes it more difficult for other editors like myself to propose something out of the discussion so we can improve our processes, than would otherwise be the case, you risk the people who oppose the change being very closed minded about it, and that isn't conductive to moving the project forward.

In general civility matters
As a general point civility isn't taken seriously by the community and there are a small number of regular editors who seem to regularly behave in an uncivil way and essentially get away with it. While their contributions may be reasonably good there are undoubtably a significant number other editors who are driven away from the project because of it - a couple of whom have had letters published in the Economist, this isn't a good thing, and steps should be taken to make sure that continued incivility isn't considered acceptable.

HJ Mitchell and Sandstein
I think the block Sandstein made was reasonable enough - even given the timings, and I see where he is coming from. I also think that HJ Mitchell's unblock was reasonable enough as well. Both of them are good admins, both of whom make significant positive contributions to the project, and I think they should agree to disagree.

MickMacNee does not listen to the community
The community has told MickMacNee on numerous occasions that his combative style of interaction with other editors is unacceptable. Apart from numerous communications on his talk page, at AfD discussions and elsewhere, the issue was brought up by several editors in the RfC he filed on my attempts to rein in his conduct at AfD and DRV - Requests for comment/Mjroots. In November last year, an attempt was made to bring MickMacNee's conduct before the Arbitration Committee (see here, last version before it was declined), but this was ultimately turned down with a request that an RfC was filed, which was done. When commenting in the first request here, I did voice the opinion that a RFC would only delay the inevitable, and seven months later we are back here. Mjroots (talk) 03:50, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by DeCausa
My only interaction with MickMacNee was in relation to three connected threads in Talk:United Kingdom 19-21 May 2011, 23 May and 30 May. I use those threads simply as illustrations of his regular (from looking at his contribs) mode of behaviour.

MickMacNee is overly aggressive and hostile without cause or provocation
In these 8 opening posts, in a lengthy thread he began, MMN is immediately on the attack with insults and invective (e.g. in his very first post, the previous consensus is "complete garbage") and, despite being met with a restrained and polite response inexplicably continues the aggression (e.g. the request to him to use the talk page rather than revert consensus text "looks like nothing but a way of wasting my time and... boring me into submission and getting me to blow my brains out"). The extreme tone comes out of the blue (previous post there: June 2009). He continues with 2 days of 26 mainly verbose and aggressive posts. I ultimately become less than civil towards him, for which I apologize.

MickMacNee frequently uses personal attacks, insults and invective specifically directed at other editors
"He's either lying or he really is that lazy"; "I think you'd lie"; "You're talking nonsense frankly...you can see what sense I'm getting out of people here by pandering to their empty ideas of discussion...he messed me around...I'm not going to be pissed around here"; "just stop talking utter rubbish"; "You're just the sole editor who stands out to me as having consistently been the most patronising and even hypocritical...and by far the most persistent in the devious art of poisoning"; "Again with the poison...this pious and hypocritical act of yours"; "such willfull ingnorance".

MickMacNee's unnecessary aggression has a chilling effect on discussion by driving away/silencing other editors
The thread opened by MMN concerned a long-standing contentious issue, preceded and followed by threads on much the same topic. There was significantly less participation when MMN was most active in these threads (19-21 May). The Talk page became dominated by his extremely lengthy posts filled with invective. One editor commented: "i think you're putting editors off altogether leaving just you yourself argueing your point."

MickMacNee won't accept consensus he disagrees with, and will edit war
MMN was reverted for deleting consensus supported text. This was explained to him on the Talk page (with consensus diff). He rejected its validity and while that discussion was still ongoing (his view was not accepted by the other editors) he went ahead and reverted again. He was given a 3RR warning, and didn't continue reverting. Several days later, a consensus change to the text was agreed on the Talk page by 18 of the 20 participating editors. MMN nevertheless again refused to recognise that there was consensus "because it's such a giant policy violating crap bag".

MickMacNee's comments in response to my evidence

 * "[DeCausa] was more involved than most as regards my involvement at Talk:UK". The footnote suggestion (one amongst others I made), was subject to discusion by 10 other editors. I dropped out of that discussion at an early stage. It eventually had the unanimous support of all 10. I returned only to indicate my support of the final wording. IMO, I was not any more invested in that solution than any of the 10. I proposed the eventual solution (and text wording) that resulted in the footnote coming out.
 * He claims the tone in his first 8 posts (referred to above) wasn't 'out of the blue' because "by that time my arguments were overtly being ignored or brushed off, or people were feigning ignorance as to what my point was". The aggression started with his very first post. The claim is also untrue in relation to his 7 following posts (as can be seen from the responses to his posts). His explanation of his point remained very unclear and obscured by polemic, invective and poor writing (rambling, poor grammar, syntax etc) e.g..

HJ Mitchell
Withdrawn per agreement with HJ Mitchell.  Sandstein  21:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by HJ Mitchell
HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   21:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Wikidemon

 * AFAIK I have no direct involvement here.

Hammersoft has apologized to MickMacNee
Hammersoft apologized to MickMacNee over the comment left on Rd232's talk page to which MickMacNee objected and various parties edit warred. and (per the preceding diff) has advocated against sanctions against MickMacNee over that particular incident. - Wikidemon (talk) 05:08, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

This case was initiated and needlessly escalated by the sockpuppet of a banned user
was a sockpuppet of the banned user, now blocked indefinitely by Risker. His actions during the case were worrying. I had voiced my concerns about this privately to HJMitchell, who was also shocked by the unprecedented attempt by Chester Markel to broaden the case in a disproportionate way. He suggested early on that I should voice my concerns on this page. Risker should be thanked for carrying out a checkuser on Chester Markel. Mathsci (talk) 07:46, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Civility isn't taken seriously by the community
Recently I had an email conversation with an experienced editor who blanked his page and stopped editing. It turns out that he was driven away by the frustration of dealing again and again with uncivility and nonconstructive edits from another editor. The thing is, during the long history of the problem editor being reported to ANI, WQA, etc. the rationale for doing nothing was pretty much "he does some good work while being a pain in the ass." The unseen problem is that the one experienced editor he drove away was doing at least twenty times more good work than the problem editor was - and there may be more experienced editors who were driven away, as well as newbies that never got started. Now I don't know what the actual evidence is in MickMacNee's case, but if he is being as uncivil as some suggest, I would strongly encourage that such behavior be taken seriously I would also strongly agree with the comment by Eraserhead1, who wrote "As a general point civility isn't taken seriously by the community and there are a small number of regular editors who seem to regularly behave in an uncivil way and essentially get away with it. While their contributions may be reasonably good there are undoubtedly a significant number other editors who are driven away from the project because of it - a couple of whom have had letters published in the Economist, this isn't a good thing, and steps should be taken to make sure that continued incivility isn't considered acceptable." Again, I have no opinion on whether this does or does not apply in the case of MickMacNee. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:14, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Habitual incivility is an extremely serious matter - habitually incivil editors are incompatible with this project
As with some others who have commented above, I would also stress that Mick sometimes makes some great arguments. He can be very sharp and refreshing in his outlook and his contributions can be very worthwhile. The problem is his incivility. And that is a very serious matter indeed.

Civility matters. It matters greatly. Incivility reduces the possibility for reasoned discussion towards NPOV. It chases good editors away, it turns potential editors off and it saps the morale of those who remain. It contributes to and perpetuates a culture of conflict on difficult articles. It reduce the ability of editors to collaborate effectively together. Civility is one of the five pillars for no small reason. Incivility damages this project severely and insidiously.

While everyone is incivil sometimes (and anyone with common sense can ignore it when others occasionally are), persistent and habitual incivility is a grave threat to the long-term viability of the project. It is as grave as hoaxing or socking. You cannot remain here if you cannot remain civil.

That is the case with Mick. Despite the otherwise value of his contributions, his behavior, as seen persistently over the long term, means that he is incompatible with what is required of someone to contribute to this project. As with a socker or a hoaxer, he must leave.

I have very much cut down on my contributions to WP lately. A string of morale sapping encounters with Mick are very high on the reasons why. The sudden, unprovoked amount and level of abuse that is necessary to wade through encounters with him (even where is he is right), simply mean that it is not worth it.

(I will add that Mick is not alone, however. Persistent incivility seems to have taken root among some contributors to certain topic areas that I am involved in and it is unfortunately taken for granted. However, Mick's persistent incivility, in my opinion, far exceeds that of any other long-term regular contributor I frequently come across.)

--RA (talk) 12:00, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

An example of MMN's battleground attitude while this case was open
MMN's battle-ground mentality is to be seen clearly in relation to the long-running, and lame, dispute between British and Irish nationalist editors on Wikipedia. One of his targets is User:HighKing. In 2010, on a community enforcement thread, on the presently blocked User:Triton Rocker, MMN used it as an opportunity to screed about HighKIng. In particular his response to me, after I recommended opening an RFC/U was this attempt at a threat.

On July 12th, 2011 (while this case was open), MMN repeated this same tactic. In a thread about the harassment of HighKing by a British Nationalist sock-puppeteer (on and off wiki) that had concluded days ago, MMN adds a wall of assumptions of bad faith without diffs, links to policy, or any other form of evidence – a long comment on contributors rather than contributions. When I shut-down this flame-bait I also warned him not to use my talk-page as a forum his response to that warning was "don't repeat it either directly or indirectly, unless you mean to intentionally aggravate me". MMN has on a serial basis, as evidenced here by others, verbally abused, threatened and personally attacked other editors & sysops. He inserted himself into both of my examples on the basis of having a lot of opinions about editors, but of having no involvement with edits under discussion. This behaviour is in clear and obvious breach of WP:5, WP:NPA, WP:TPG, WP:TE, WP:AGF. This is a very simple matter, MMN wants to personalize disputes. Wikipedia forbids that. Until MMN brings his behaviour into line with policy his comments on, and attitudes to, others are of net disadvantage to the Wikipedia project as a whole because they are incompatible with our regulations on the use of talk-space, and our aspiration towards a consensus driven, collegial, editing environment.

Wider implications
On a wider note, the kind of attitude exemplified by MMN, but not unique to him, is damaging to Wikipedia’s credibility and its primary function as a collaborative encyclopaedia. It also hampers the ability of its interaction with, for example school and college projects (see also WP:WPCC). Such institutions cannot be responsible for exposing their students to this kind of interaction and/or environment. Such wider implications reinforce the need for sysops to take the moderation of behaviour seriously (especially in relation to unblocking). We have a responsibility to prevent behaviour designed to intimidate others - MMN's comments a) about HighKing and b) towards me are just that, deliberate and repeated, hostility in breach of WP:BATTLE, WP:TPG and WP:AGF. It's long past time that this was taken seriously-- Cailil  talk 15:39, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Addendum
MMN's response to this evidence being filed was made here. Please note the lack of diffs and unchanged behaviour. Please also note that MMN is either misrepresenting, or misreading, the above evidence in his reply-- Cailil  talk 19:32, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.