Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-12/Bates method

Where's the dispute?
Talk:Bates_method/Archive_5

What's the dispute?
Since February 2008 the article has been tagged for a neutrality dispute, by Ronz. An original research tag has also since been added. I have spent a lot of time working to resolve these issues. In October I requested feedback on the article to see whether the cleanup banner should be removed (with an eye toward getting it to GA status, to which the tags are an impediment.) I and an editor who responded to the RFF both felt that the tags were at best uninformative, and through discussion we came up with a custom template which better expressed Ronz's remaining concerns as he articulated them. These discussions are at Talk:Bates_method and Talk:Bates_method/Archive_5, though they are only background to the current dispute. While this new template was far more informative than the previous one, placed at the top of the article it was still very broad. I indicated that it would still be helpful if we could identify the specific sections those concerns applied to, with no response.

Last week I moved this custom template down to the only section to which it seemed that it could still remotely apply, at least as far as the part about primary sources was concerned (I wasn't sure about the first part.) Ronz then moved the template back up to the top, because it was not just about primary sources. Then, he replaced the custom template with the old warning banner, claiming that the former was causing too much confusion. I then pointed out to him in talk that the custom template could be split up and each new template placed on the relevant section(s), and in fact provided text for such templates. I then removed the old warning banner, repeating my suggestion in the edit summary. Ronz then reverted me, with the edit summary "please don't edit war over tags - silly", and then left a message on my user talk page clarifying that he meant it was silly to edit war over the tags, which I thought was the obvious meaning anyway. I explained there that I felt those particular tags did nothing to articulate the actual concerns and mainly functioned as a mark on the article. I then removed the tags again, repeating my suggestion to place tags which were issue-specific and section-specific, if any. Once again he restored the old template, with the edit summary "restored tags - being used properly - don't edit war over them". I left a message on his talk page (eventually deleted) trying to make myself very clear. Hours later I showed questionable judgment and brought up to Ronz some past actions of his in an attempt to give him some perspective on this. Things degenerated from there. PSWG1920 (talk) 19:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * made reasonable comments (especially the second one) in response to the discussion in question.  Ronz characterized these as personal attacks in warning messages on his user talk page.   While Ronz did not specify what edits the warnings were in response to, the timeframe makes it very clear, especially when you look at SamuelTheGhost's total edits in that interval. PSWG1920 (talk) 18:45, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

This case can be closed. I think (hope) that we are working toward a solution. PSWG1920 (talk) 04:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)