Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-12-10/Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident

Where is the dispute?
Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident

Talk:Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident

Who is involved?

 * A_Quest_For_Knowledge
 * ChrisO
 * Drolz09
 * Gigs
 * Guettarda
 * Jheiv
 * Marknau
 * Matt_Crypto
 * Phoenix_and_Winslow
 * Scjessey
 * Tony_Sidaway
 * Viriditas

There well may be others of interest.

What is the dispute?
After much discussion, the core dispute seems to be over what the proper scope and focus of the Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident article should be. There are two ways of looking at the article:
 * The article should cover the CRU hacking incident as a notable example of harassment of climate scientists, and hostility toward their conduct of legitimate science by people who don't like the conclusions.
 * The article should cover the CRU hacking incident as the dissemination of information by an apparently outside party, and what the information means as pertains to how CRU was conducting their research and publishing their findings.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It could be, for example, that the proper scope and focus of the article is to give both aspects of the topic equal prominence.

There seem to be a lot of content disputes that are reflections of a fundamental disagreement as to what the proper "mission statement" of the article should be. If there was a way to get many of the involved parties to agree to, and abide by, a statement as to what the article is properly "about," then I think many of the content disputes would be easier to resolve.

What would you like to change about this?
I think the conversation needs a better venue, and a respected 3rd party to help people to understand what each other are trying to say. I think the mere presence of a respected 3rd party would also have the effect of making the conversation more civil.

How do you think we can help?

 * By finding out if my characterization of the core contention is correct
 * If not, determining the underlying cause of the ongoing content disputes
 * To see what other pertinent major contentions are hampering consensus
 * Structure a conversation so that one important topic at a time is being discussed and analyzed
 * Help keep conversations civil and focussed on finding the best solution for the quality of the article

Discussion
I think I can provide a quick summary for everyone who's not familiar with the situation. Basically, we have three groups of editors here. One group wants to maximize the damage of this controversy as much as possible. The second group wants to minimize it as much as possible. The third group just wants to write a good article in accordance with WP:NPOV and WP:RS. We've been able to deal with the first group though various forms of blocking. However, we have not be able to address the issue of the second group. Thus far, repeated reminders about policy (particularly WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE) have not worked. The issue was brought up at WP:NPOVN, and an uninvolved editor has agreed that the article does not follow WP:NPOV. You can read the uninvolved editor's opinion here. However, the 'minimizer' WP:CABAL of editors are still refusing to write the article in accordance with our WP:NPOV policy. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC) --K10wnsta (talk) 06:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So everyone's basically vying for who gets to whitewash what? Xavexgoem (talk) 00:02, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's likely the case. It seems to be a long-held tradition with articles relating to global warming.
 * Having recently educated myself on the subject (the subject matter, not the state of this article), I would offer to mediate the situation, but I fear it may be a task too great for one person. It seems to be such a sensitive subject that it warrants an incredible amount of effort in getting up to speed on what has and hasn't been addressed in arriving at the article's current state (as I learned in assessing a related article a couple weeks ago).  Furthermore, after all that, I'm not sure what a lone mediator might hope to accomplish beyond issuing another opinion.
 * Just out of curiousity, if the method for handling group 1 was effective, is there some reason it would not be effective in handling group 2?
 * Xavexgoem: Yes.
 * K10wnsta: I agree that this will be very difficult case. Although this particular article is new, from what I can gather, this is a battle that's been going on across Wikipedia's climate change related articles for quite some time.  Also this has come to the attention of ArbCom albeit on a tangent issue.  (Basically, an admin blocked an editor and another admin challenged the block.)  ArbCom declined to hear the case, but it's listed here under "Jehochman's block of Drolz09".
 * A couple reasons. First, the editors of the second group are experienced editors so they know the policies and guidelines very well.  They typically don't make rookie mistakes such as violating 3RR or making personal attacks.  Also, when they do, nobody reports them.  (I'm not experienced enough to feel comfortable enough to report editors to the admin notice board.)  It also appears that some of the neutral editors have stopped working on the article entirely.  I have pretty much given up editing the article itself other than to make extremely minor changes like fixing punctuation and adding WikiLinks.  I still weigh in (when I have time) on the talk page.  A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:06, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you guys should take the case. The 'minimizer' group is so far out of control, they are now refusing to even admit that there's a WP:NPOV problem and have managed to remove the {POV} template from the article.  The article was subsequently locked down so nobody can fix it.  I've never seen such blatant POV pushing.  A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Update: Prodego has just restored the {POV} tag. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:28, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I have an ugly, brutal, but effective approach to this: unprotect the page and strictly enforce 3RR. This is still developing, and I think it'll be a while before things settle down to a point where an agreement can actually be made.

The article will be POV in various directions, editors will become more frustrated than they are already, but I'm hoping for a sort of slow attrition. Short of arbitration, I believe that fully protecting, mediating, or otherwise trying to solve this dispute is doomed to fail this early in.

--Xavexgoem (talk) 00:31, 29 December 2009 (UTC) Addendum: Keep the POV tag -- some readers are going to read it as POV no matter how this is handled. We sould at least acknowledge that