Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-07-31 Forridean

Who are the involved parties?
,

What's going on?
I will try to lay this out neutrally from my perspective.

Briefly, some background. I am a semi-active user, but I do not often log in to my account. I've had this account for about a year, I've had other accounts as my interest in Wikipedia waxes and wanes. I've been around long enough to know how to behave myself, but I am not a major editor. I read, and occasionally make revisions to grammar or punctuation, I rarely log in to do so.

On to the current situation. As a inclusionist, I have an interest in defending articles from 'Delete and Salt' deletionists, but I am sensible about it - there has to be notability to warrant the article. Beyond that, the content can be fixed. It is with this motivation that I commented on an AfD, Articles for deletion/Astro empires‎. I stated my opinion, and moved on.

Returning to the page, I noticed that tagged me as an WP:SPA. I removed the SPA tag and left this as an edit summary: "Accused of being a single purpose account... I must have ESP, to have made the account over a year ago for this purpose." To me, that should have been the end of it. It was not. replaced the tag, so I undid it again, with this edit summary: "Removed the groundless accusations once again. We are not here to discuss me or my user history. Stop being a troll."

At this point, I am growing aggravated, but trying to keep my cool. That is when left a threat to "have me blocked" on my talk page. In my opinion, he was assuming that I was too new to Wikipedia to understand the process, and so he sought to bully me off the debate by threatening to have me blocked.

Editor assistance was called in by a third party (who has also been accused of SPA by deletionists) as continued the argument against my credibility in the body of the AfD discussion. I tried to resolve this issue on his talk page, but yet another deletionist stepped in and began leaving what I perceive to be provocative comments on both my and 's talk page. These statements are couched as 'friendly help', but are not helping the situation in any way. When threatened to go to admin, I came here. This is the second threat I have received in as many days. For what? A comment on my opinion on an AfD. This is ridiculous.

I may not be a super-experienced contributer, but I know my way around Wiki, and I don't feel this is proper treatment. I don't believe contrib counts give anyone the right to threaten and be rude. I read back over everything that I have said throughout this situation, and I cannot see where I have been in any way disrespectful, rude, violated Wiki policy, or in any way justified being treated in this manner. I hope this informal mediation will help cool the tensions.

Continued abuse The user EricV89 has continued to engage in edit wars, and has been vandalizing my user talk page. This is getting absurd! -- Forridean  (T/C) 22:41, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

What would you like to change about that?
I would like to know, for one, that there are not any administrative processes being filed against me. As I mentioned, I do know of these processes, but I am not familiar enough with them to be certain that either of these two editors are not levying charges against me in some other forum that I am unaware of.

Second, I would like an apology. I believe my integrity and veracity is being insulted, and I don't feel I have done anything to deserve this. We should all just walk away, but ought to be made aware that stepping in to an already volatile situation and being so brusque is not helpful. ought to be made aware that throwing around personal attacks in a debate is not appropriate. And I, well, I'm open for critical commentary on my behavior as well. I am always willing and open to improve myself.

Discussion
I'm not a MedCab memnber, and know little to nothing about how this particular process works, so I won't be "taking the case" in any kind of "official" sense. Just a note that: a) at least one of the parties has indicated they aren't interested in pursuing this via MedCab, and b) I've made some hopefully helpful comments on the three affected talk pages, and c) MedCab possibly a bit premature anyway. --barneca (talk) 13:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)