Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce/Atul Chitnis

Atul Chitnis
The Atul Chitnis article is too biased and seems like it was written by the person himself. The entire article is peppered with WP:WEASEL words -- unverifiable facts, opinions, and one single point-of-view. It is probably going to require fixing up / attention from someone in the Indian GNU/Linux Community. Zaatar 20:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Made a few edits to the article after it looked like a personal resume. There were quite a few unverifiable entries and edits that looked like the person himself could have made. Please verify and fix. Tazo 02:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The "Work with Governments" section is factually incorrect. He attended the initial meeting at Delhi as a representative of the BLUG with the BLUG bearing his travel bills, and the National Resource Centre for FOSS also doesn't mention anything about his involvement in the project. Knocking out the entire section for now, totally unsubstantiated claim. --TracerBullet2 05:48, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

See also this LiveJournal entry and this mailing list post and also this mailing list post for some controversy. Zaatar 07:58, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe the photo on the page may not be CC licensed, since the page it comes from does not specifically mention the CC license. I believe we may have to remove the photo. If someone else thinks otherwise, please post here. Will delete the photo tomorrow, if I don't get a valid confirmation on the usage of the photo.Tazo 09:09, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, the photo may not be free for use, at all. Zaatar 09:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the descriptions of various FOSS Activities is redundant since each one has its own entry. They should be replaced with simple references to FOSS.IN and Linux Bangalore. Sintihca 14:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Response from the Target
This will be my only response to this campaign by "Tazo", "Zaatar" and "TracerBullet2".

First, my evfidence that this is a campaign:


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Tazo
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Zaatar
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/TracerBullet2

I am not the author of the page under dispute - whoever s/he is just copied and pasted my profile from my commercial publicity website at http://atulchitnis.com - a page that was put together by professional publicists, and certainly contains "weasel words", because the text was not meant for Wikipedia, but for a publicity website.

I have been made aware of this Wikipedia page before, but because Wikipedia rules do not permit me to edit a page about myself, I have left it as it is. Subsequently, others have added to this page, or made changes.

The correct way to address the situation would have been to rewrite the text if it was felt that this text was not suitable for Wikipedia (which it was not) or nominate it for deletion. However, this would not have suited the campaigners, who appear to be looking for public forums to carry on their campaign.

The photograph was clearly taken from this page http://atulchitnis.com/photos/, which says at the top:

A selection of photographs for use by the media.

It therefore clearly falls under the "fair use" clause. I am aware of this clause because we had a recent issue with a photo related someone, and we attempted to verify the rights a photograph we used by contacting the source. The source did not have any verification information, resulting in the removal of the photo.

"Tazo", however, made no attempt at all to verify the rights of use for the photo before removing it.

Similarly, the removal of information about my work with the Government of India and the NRCFOSS project were done without attempts to verify them. I am very much part of the *Government Steering Committee* that supervises this project, as could be verified by contacting Dr.R.C.Tripathi at the MCIT (http://www.mit.gov.in/cmanager.asp), Prof.C.N.Krishnan (who heads the NRCFOSS project), and S.Ramakrishnan (who heads C-DAC).

Neutral Wikipedia editors are welcome to contact them for verification of my credentials.

It should be noted that three people directly involved in the mass edits of the page about me are also the primary promoters of a politically motivated campaign agaainst me. Plenty of evidence to this claim is available on the net. The primary "evidence" against me (a rant linked to at the bottom of the article TracerBullet2, which in itself is probably a violation of Wikipedia rules) was in fact written by one of these three people. Please note that reading the "evidence" reveals huge amount of conjecture and attribution of motives, without providing any proof. Accusations themselves do not constitute proof.

"Jackerhack" provdies as "proof" a link to his own journal entry where he attacks me in public after a private dispute between him and me, the reason for which he never made public. I am unable to find any "threats" in that journal entry, and hence can only surmise that JackerHack easily feels threatened.

Because I consider the matter childish, politically motivated, and any attempt by me to defend myself after this will simply result in an edit war and more encouragement for the campaigners, I will not make any move *here* to defend myself.

I would also like to point to the generous contributions by the campaigners to Free and Open Source, and apologise for not having contributed as much as they have.

If there are any neutral Wikipedia editors out there who can "follow the money", I encourage them to do so.

Achitnis 09:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments continued
Atul Chitnis:

Uh, before you go to all ballistic and start conjuring up non-existing theories and political motivations and whatever, please stop for a moment and analyze this carefully from a neutral point of view:


 * I lost my login/password on Wikipedia that I created several years ago, and thus had to create this shiny new account. If I wanted to remain truly anonymous, do you think I would go pepper my userinfo page with enough tidbits to tell the world who I am? I have previously edited on several Wikis including Wikipedia and WikiTravel. See this, this and this to verify this.
 * Have you spent a moment looking at the history page for the article? If not, please do so now.

You may notice that Jackerhack vouched for you as being a developer, and Tracerbullet vouched for you being a singer and re-inserted those clauses. The history is available for view/comparison -- do you want to show me any one edit made by me which is unfair? I'll eat my words if you do. If this was some hate-article/personal-vendetta/hidden-agenda, would we be going out of our way to verify facts and get the most objective content possible? While on this topic, let me point at the Wikipedia guide to Verifiability. Once (if) you take a few minutes to read that, we could resume this discussion. It is pointless to continue this if you choose to not read it and try for a second to understand what Wikipedia is all about.

You have said in no uncertain terms that I am part of a "politically motivated campaign" for which there is "plenty of evidence" available on the net. I'd love to hear more on this -- what campaign? what evidence? If there's plenty out there, please show us all atleast one piece of which I am a part? Regardless of whether or not I am part of whatever political campaigns, how does this have anything to do with my edits here? Rather than liberally hand-waving, can you point me with one single edit I have made thus far on this article which you consider unfair, and demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that I have been non-neutral? If not, you owe me an apology for hurling random unsupported accusations and maligning my name needlessly. Please, let's be mature and adult-like in this discussion avoiding silly below-the-belt shots.

I don't care whether or not you pilot planes or sing songs -- I'd like for the article to carry some grain of truth to it, and the first avatar of the page sounded like a personal resume, not like an article entry in an encyclopedia. By your own admission, it was indeed exactly that (which btw is again in a grey area w.r.t. copyright) ... we're here trying to fix that and make this a little more objective, that's all. I cannot speak for the others, but speaking for only myself, let me assure you that I have no hidden agendas or political motivations here. I'd like to continue to think of Wikipedia as a neutral encyclopedia with the right facts, and I'm very happy to have my contributions/edits reviewed and inspected for fairness by anyone, including Wikipedia Editors :-) Thanks. Zaatar 10:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Atul Chitnis, you present the contributions of the editors as evidence that this is a "campaign" against you. There are two sides to a coin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ravix. Sintihca 12:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Response to Atul Chitnis
Apart from what Sintihca has mentioned about the user Ravix, I would like to mention that if anyone feels that my edits have been politically motivated or are wrong, I request neutral Wikipedia members to correct the same.

And regarding your photo, there is no mention anywhere that it is CC licensed and neither did the user Ravix mention anywhere in the edits and neither have you mentioned above that your photo is CC licensed. You merely mention, that it is available for Media. In which case, one begs the question, why does user Ravix assume it is CC licensed ?

If you agree that it is CC licensed as per this, then do mention the same on your web page and the photo can be replaced by anyone. Tazo 13:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

More Campaign Proof
This is just for the reference of neutral Wikipedia editors who (hopefully) will look into this at some point in time.


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Zaatar&action=history
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tazo&action=history
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:TracerBullet2&action=history

Every account created on the same day (some within minutes of each other), all focussing on only one page (and a some related pages).

Addditional Campaign Proof
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ravix

Task force assignments
Added to User:Canderson7/Desk RJFJR 21:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I know nothing about the subject of the article, but am certainly willing to help as best I can. Assistance would be appreciated. Canderson7 (talk) 02:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Have De-POV-ed the article to the extent possible. Subject's request for Government Steering Committe verification falls under original research and hence cannot be included. -- Thenothing 20:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I am the target of this campaign. I don't know if it is fair for me to offer assistance, but since you asked, I offer it, including verification for any of the items that were deleted (government association, photo, etc).
 * Please note, however, that I would be in favour of deletion and letting someone write a real article if one is warranted. Despite what it is being made out to be, I am *not* the person who created that page - I am a professional writer and a longtime Wikipedia user, and well aware of the rules, and if I wanted to create a page for myself, I wouldn't have created a clone of a well known publicity site.
 * The timing of creation of the page (31-Jul-2005) also coincides with other personal attacks on me by the very people who are involved in this campaign, so I am personally convinced that this article creation was deliberate. Even more so if you take into account that every "proof" offered by the campaigners points to messages/pages written verifiably by themselves. If it is deemed feasible, please delete the page, which is really the only acceptable "cleanup". If I am "notable" enough, I am sure someone will create a real article in the future.
 * Achitnis 13:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * To maintain neutrality, it would only be appropriate for the subject not to discuss defenses. -- Thenothing 20:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * It doesn't look as though the page will be deleted, so we should work now to make it as good an article as possible. Its POV issues seem to have been largely corrected (thanks, Thenothing), and I think our current goal for the article should be to expand it while making sure that each and every fact is verified by external sources.  Achitnis, you're right not to edit the article yourself, but it would be a great help if you can participate on talk pages and keep an eye on the article for inaccuracies or other problems. Canderson7 (talk) 03:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

(from assignment page:) Very many WP:WEASEL words in use, needs clean-up. Almost every section could use some fixing up.