Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates/Requests/January 2007/Aschoeff

Case Filed On: 18:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian filing request:



Other Wikipedians this pertains to:


 * (involved in the discussion)
 * (posted an opinion on the dispute, not directly involved)
 * (posted an opinion on the dispute, not directly involved)

Wikipedia pages this pertains to:



Questions:
Have you read the AMA FAQ?
 * Answer: Yes

'''How would you describe the nature of this dispute? (policy violation, content dispute, personal attack, other)'''
 * Answer: content dispute resulting in personal attack, lack of civility, and imminent threats

'''What methods of Dispute Resolution have you tried so far? If you can, please provide wikilinks so that the Advocate looking over this case can see what you have done.'''
 * Answer: Apologized for acknowledging own part in dispute, which only resulted in increased beligerence and questioning of my sanity by J_M_Rice, ending in him/her imminently threating me. My user talk page is the most complete version of the events.

What do you expect to get from Advocacy?
 * Answer: No expectations, I merely wish this dispute to be public such that J M Rice can hear from other peers that his/her replies were also wrong, and that indeed he/she did make an error in editing the page the way he/she did, and that denial of that shows a lack of ability to take criticism which speaks directly to his/her lack of necessary expertise to edit other people's work. The one thing I do expect is for his/her threats be handled seriously with a meaningful response by the community.

Summary:
For the past six months I've been watching an edit I made to the Charles_Krauthammer wiki regarding his place of birth. As we all know, CK is a very polarizing public figure, and it is significant to many people to know that he was not born or raised in America. Unfortunately, this means that there is also a group of people who are equally invested in hiding such information due to the possible undermining connotations that information brings.

Therefore, when I saw that J_M_Rice had removed the reference I had put for the claim that CK was born in Uruguay, I over-reacted and assumed he/she had an agenda behind doing so. This was unnecessary and instead of just requesting he/she be more careful, I phrased my comment in a way that presupposed he/she had purposely done so in order to hide the information. After I saw Rice's first reply I immediately realized that he/she had no agenda, and I apologized for the implication in the interest of civility and resolution, and to clearly acknowledge where I had erred.

My complaint however is based upon J_M_Rice's responses which instead of being just presumptuous like my own, were instead direct unrelated personal attacks using epithets on both my intelligence and my mental sanity. At the same time, he/she denied that he/she did anything worthy of criticism whatsoever, and even stated multiple times his/her continued belief in the validity of clearly incorrect assumptions. I will list them below:

1/6) That he/she claims and believes that my criticism of his/her actions was more offensive than his/her use of epithets and direct personal attacks, and doesn't even acknowledge that he/she did personally attack me and used epithets.

2/6) That a place of birth for a controversial figure is a statement of contention, and as such needs to be referenced in order to lend credence to whatever is being claimed.

3/6) That he/she did indeed err in removing the reference for the above reason, and should acknowledge that he/she should not have done so, and should pledge to not repeat such actions in the future.

4/6) That he/she breached the civility policies of wikipedia through the use of epithets and direct personal attacks, and needs to acknowledge he/she has done so and will pledge to not do the same in the future.

5/6) That he/she is attempting to hide the issue by deleting it from his/her Usertalk page, and

6/6) ... he/she ended the discussion by imminently threatening me if I reverted his/her page again, and needs to be immediately made aware of the seriousness of this action, and be appropriately sanctioned as per the very clear policies wikipedia has to deal with online threats.

In short, J_M_Rice is just in complete denial of his/her own behavior and conduct and needs to hear from others that this is the case. At the very least his/her threat needs to be brought to everyone's attention.

I apologize for taking everyone's time with this, but I feel this is appropriate and necessary to bring to the community's attention.

Sincerely, Aaron

UPDATE: Rice has once again deleted the entire discussion from his/her talk page, so I have consolidated the entire discussion across the involved web pages into my talk page, titled User talk:Aschoeff. Please refer to that for a complete and accurate collection of the entire dispute, and all of the comments are verifiable by looking at the revision history of each specified page that was noted above. Aschoeff 23:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion:
I'll be advocating for you. Filing an RfC, may be necessary in this case. G e  o. Talk to me 02:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

J_M_Rice seems to have fallen off the grid for whatever reason since mid-February, so I don't see any need to keep this request open. However, I do reserve the right to recall this case in the event J_M_Rice becomes an active user again under the same or a different username, and if similar behavior is observed from him/her towards myself or anyone else. Thanks again for taking the time to be an advocate, Geo. Be well. Aschoeff 19:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Followup:
When the case is finished, please take a minute to fill out the following survey:

Did you find the Advocacy process useful?
 * Answer: Absolutely!!!

Did your Advocate handle your case in an appropriate manner?
 * Answer: I believe so.

On a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (best), how polite was your Advocate?
 * Answer: 5+

On a scale of 1 to 5, how effective do you feel your Advocate was in solving the problem?
 * Answer: 5+

On a scale of 1 to 5, how effective do you feel the Advocacy process is altogether?
 * Answer: 5+

I very much wish to stress how important I think the advocacy process is for wikipedia, specifically in regards to essentially childish issues such as these, that are very detrimental if not addressed at the time. Admitting one's responsibility in a dispute where blame is to be had on both sides is made difficult, if not impossible, if the other party uses that admission to cynically claim he/she was therefore in the right all along, in effect reinforcing the bad behavior that instigated the dispute. This creates a weighty disincentive to take the high road, if the net effect is negative in doing so.

Public shaming is a very important tool to reign in bullies when necessary. Since the whole point of wikipedia is to make a topologically flat meta-community, such classical social mechanisms of keeping the peace need to be replicated as well. In this case I believe it worked very well, at least for the time being, which is all one can hope for.

I see the Advocacy process as symbolically taking the place of the "talking conch" from Lord of the Flies. Looking at any news program that has guests screaming over each other, one quickly wonders how any of them ever made it out of kindergarten. Who says a sizable chunk of us don't act as petulantly on occasion, especially when we don't even have to physically face anybody?

Another reason the advocacy process is necessary is to stop either a group or an admin from ganging up on someone. In this case an admin, [Mel Etitis], rushed in to tell me I was wrong, only to be systematically proven wrong by me for every point he/she made. If I wasn't as proactive at collecting the necessary posts, and locating and evaluating wikipedia policy, I could have mistakenly assumed the admin to be in the right. This would have directly resulted in unacceptable information being posted to a biographical wiki, aside from giving me an incorrect interpretation of wikipedia guidelines and policy. In other words, the advocacy process is an effective counter to potential abuse of admin status. Power corrupts, even illusions of power.

Aschoeff 20:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

If there were one thing that you would like to see different in the Advocacy process, what would it be?
 * Answer: I don't have enough information to have anything to say here.

If you were to deal with this dispute again, what would you do differently, if anything?
 * Answer: Probably nothing, although I would rather I hadn't bitten in the first place...

AMA Information
Case Status: closed

Advocate Status:
 * G e  o .  Talk to me  02:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Closed per user request G  e  o .  Talk to me  00:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)