Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-03-28 Guru Gita

Who are the involved parties?

 * TheRingess
 * Ganesham

What's going on?
Ganesham has made some very serious allegations of bad faith editing on my part. They continue to suggest that my actions are motivated by a personal vendetta. Their allegations are included in their edit summaries and can be seen here: Special:Contributions/Ganesham. They have also made these allegations on their talk page.

What would you like to change about that?
I feel I can no longer be objective about these allegations and fear that without the aid of a neutral mediator I might violate WP:CIVIL while discussing the issue. I would like a neutral mediator to review my actions and the statements made by Ganesham with the objective of determining how I might have violated wikipedia's core policies. If I have, then the mediator can suggest a course of action to correct any problems I might have caused.

Ganesham has expressed on his talk page that they do not wish to participate in a discussion of this nature. If they don't change their mind, I'm hoping a fellow editor might still be willing to review my edits with the intent of addressing Ganesham's concerns.

Discussion
As part of disclosure I wish to make the following points. TheRingess (talk) 16:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) I am not in any way involved in any vendetta, personal or public against any subject of Wikipedia or any fellow editor.  I am further willing to disclose any personal details a mediator might request in order to verify my statement.
 * 2) I do not edit Wikipedia in any official capacity for any organization/company.  I am also more than willing to provide a mediator with any personal information needed to verify that statement.
 * Okay Sir:) I have taken your case. I hope I will be able to help with this. Peace:) --James, La gloria è a dio 23:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * this conflict seems to be ongoing and it seems like this case is still open. I've asked Ganesham if he will discuss his issues here.  ~a (user • talk • contribs) 17:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Question: I noticed this mediation, and am unsure how to ask the following question about it, so I will just ask it here. Can you provide links to any specific Wikipedia policies that apply to the charges of stalking?  I have not followed a case involving charges of that nature before and so look forward to learning more about the issues that apply.  The Wikipedia procedures outlined at WikiProject Spam and Recent changes patrol specifically recommend checking a user's contributions once one problem edit has been spotted.  I am a member of WikiProject Spam and also a Recent Change Patroller, so as a matter of habit I always examine the edit patterns of a user when I identify a problem edit.  Since these are standard procedures, I assume that the behavior being referred to as "stalking" must have some other defining factors.  Is that correct? Buddhipriya 18:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * All I've seen is a short one sentence description: "Wikistalking is the act of following another user around in order to harass them." (WP:STALK).  Of course, we can't jump to conclusions.  ~a (user • talk • contribs) 21:10, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I was curious and looked to find that lo and behold, TheRingess and his buddy editor Buddhipriya went into Wikipedia today and removed every link they could find to the applicable free educational resources offered by the person that TheRingess is already on record as having a vendetta against -- he and Buddhipriya participate in a spiritual group (on and off Wikipedia) that has had a vendetta against the author because she wrote an unauthorized book about their path. This author, of whom I am a fan, is the one who created a website of completely free educational spiritual resources -- she's also the author of Spirituality For Dummies. TheRingess is on record as fighting to remove her wikipedia entry that was created by another fan from England, and which survived TheRingess's deletion attempts. I've added several appropriate links to her resources in appropriate topics, and other editors have apparently added others. Today, TheRingess even deleted two very useful links to her site without signing in, showing up with his isp# at: [], and for good measure, TheRingess deceptivly welcomed himself on his own isp's welcome page: [] (I've received email from TheRingess and know that this is his ISP#). Here is one example from Buddhipriya's rampage: [], where he removes a page with the completely free and very useful text and audio of Rudram, with a note saying, "commercial linkspam selling products" -- something he knows is false if he even looked at the page. Here are a couple more attacks from Buddhipriya just today, each with an insult to the resource: [], and []. I'm back to retirement from contributing to Wikipedia. Go ahead and let these people ruin Wikipedia with personal vendettas if that is fine with you other editors and administrators. Ganesham


 * Sorry you do not agree regarding the removal of spam links. The web site spiritual-happiness.com is a commercial site that advertises books and audio products (see: ). For information on spam guidelines, please read WikiProject Spam.  As a member of Wikiproject SPAM, I routinely follow the procedures given there, which say that once spam is found, one should look for other occurances of the same spam site.  Here are the recommended procedures: "Check for similar links: ... This step involves finding all of the articles that contain a link to a particular site. If a link to www.example.com were discovered and removed in steps one and two, the next step is to use the linksearch command to find all articles that contain such links."  That search feature shows that there are probably more spam links to the same site that still need to be removed. (Current status: )


 * Here is an example of how this spam site even worked its way into a rather non-spiritual article:


 * The spam link on the Bhagavad Gita article was removed after specifically getting agreement from another regular editor there that the site should go:


 * Regarding the claims that I and User:TheRingess are members of the same spiritual community, I am not aware of what that might be. In fact my first significant editing experience with that user had to do with fact-checking an article on Siddha Yoga which I had never heard of prior to reading that article (See: ).  I subsequently found the editor to be a very balanced contributor.  Please avoid making personal attacks in the future and try to comply with WP:CIVIL while assuming good faith on the part of others. Buddhipriya 23:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I am closing this case. The other involved editor has consistently harassed me and refuses to participate in polite discussion.TheRingess (talk) 17:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)