Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-01-24 Afshar Experiment

Mediation Case: 2007-01-24 Afshar Experiment
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=Update= As you mention yourself below, you ( Dmz5' ) are not qualified'' to asses the scientific merits of Afshar's research. FYI, Georgiev was banned from Wikipedia by an admin. Afshar did not write the article, but he insists on correcting errors attributed to him, through other editors on talk page of the article. This is well within his rights as a living notable scientist. The article is NOT about Afshar, but his well-known experiment. Besides, the mediation process was put to rest a long time ago by banning Georgiev from editing the article.'''

Request Information

 * Request made by: Dmz5  *Edits**Talk* 03:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC) (I am a total newcomer to the article in question and am just posting this because I would like to resolve the conflicts I'm seeing there)


 * Where is the issue taking place?
 * ... Afshar experiment, particularly on the talk page but also via edit warring; also on the below-named users' talk pages.


 * Who's involved?
 * ... Primarily User:Afshar and User:Danko_Georgiev_MD, but lots of other people are also chiming in with partisan comments


 * What's going on?
 * ...This article is about an optical experiment devised by one Professor Afshar (which I don't understand). Afshar edits wikipedia as User:Afshar and is heavily involved in this article about, essentially, himself.  I don't understand the scientific crux of the content dispute, but whatever it was, it has now devolved into a number of users, lead by Danko Georgiev, accusing Afshar of self-promition and all kinds of other nasty things, while Afshar and his supporters call everyone else idiots and tell them they are unqualified to edit this page, etc.  The dispute is extraordinarily uncivil.  The various editors post ENORMOUS essays about why they are right and everyone else is wrong, and they maddeningly repeat their arguments over and over again with absolutely no attempt at mutual understanding, let alone resolution.  I opened a RfC but it was immediately commandeered on the talk page by the two sides, who changed the section heading and began reiterating all of their twice-told arguments yet again (including cutting and pasting long blocks of fighting from other places on the talk page.)  So, I count that RfC as a failure.  And this is the next step, right?


 * ''What would you like to change about that?
 * ...This may sound partisan of me, but I would frankly like to see Afshar stop editing this article, as he clearly takes it extremely personally. But in a larger sense, I want the edit war to stop and I want these completely intractable editors to start talking to rather than at one another.  I don't want this to become arbitration.  I also want to see uninvolved third parties commenting, because so far everyone who posts to the talk page is explicitly on one guy's "side."  (For example, after I posted a link to the RfC on WikiProject:Physics, an uninvolved editor posted on my talk page essentially saying "thanks for your attempts to solve this conflict, but please realize that Afshar is right and Danko Georgiev is unqualified to edit this article.")  Also, they are all self-proclaimed scientists and doctors and they are all extremely verbose, which exacerbates the sense that they aren't really making headway toward compromise.


 * Would you prefer we work discreetly? If so, how can we reach you?
 * ...I don't really have a preference. I fear that if new users, particularly under this aegis, arrive at the page, other editors will attempt to hijack this process like they basically hijacked the RfC.  You can post on my talk page, I don't mind.

Administrative notes
Closing. Leave a note on my talk page if it needs to be reopened. --McClerk 05:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)