Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-01-08/Shakespeare authorship question

Where is the dispute?
The dispute is in the Shakespeare authorship article where one editor Smatprt in particular, who is a declared Oxfordian, one of the alternative authorship candidates (he regularly edits the Oxfordian theory article), is using the article to promote his preferred candidate.

Who is involved?
Just a list of the users involved. For example:


 * User:WellStanley
 * User:Smatprt

What is the dispute?
User:Smatprt edits the Shakespeare authorship article, which surveys several candidates, with a view to promoting his own candidate the Earl of Oxford and he reverts edits by those who try to restore the balance.


 * (1) He has placed a book graphic "The Shakespeare Controversy" (revision here) in the article, a book which is clearly Oxfordian biased (see amazon review) and appears to be an advertisement. When User:WellStanley deleted this graphic User:Smatprt immediately restored it.
 * (2) He has added a list of authorship doubters revision here where he contrives for Oxford to be mentioned 5 times by Welles, Blackmun and Scalia.
 * (3) He advertises the Oxfordian case in particular by adding "has gained many notable followers" which received an objection from one editor here as "Prejudicial".
 * (4) User:Tom Reedy comments on the need for balance by changing User:Smatprt's reference to Oxford as "the leading nominee". This editor also shows his concern about the Oxfordian slant here.

What would you like to change about this?
User:Smatprt has a history of abusing these forums going back several years. For example, violation of the three revert rule, and. I particularly recommend examining the complaints by User:Bishonen, User:Paul_Barlow, and User:Old_Moonraker against User:Smatprt here.

I would like him to edit in a balanced way but I doubt he is capable.

How do you think we can help?
There is no point warning User:Smatprt because he will persist as he has for several years. A ban is the only solution.

Mediator notes
I'm declining this case. It appears that you don't actually want mediation, you want a user banned. Th correct venue for that is the Admin Noticeboard. If you have questions about why I declined this case, please read [[WP:MEDCABNOT. If that does not adequately answer your question, contact me on my Talkpage.

On behalf of the Mediation Cabal, The Wordsmith Communicate 03:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I just want to post a thank you for this response. The User filing the complaint is the problem, not Smarprt, who has contributed over the years to the civil development of this resource, despite provocation from users such as WellStanley, who has shown repeatedly over the past few days that he does not respect or follow the standards of discussion that Smarprt and others have employed to improve this page since its inception. He fails to understand the basic notion, which was stated by the Encyclopedia Britannica as long ago as 1975, that the primary alternative to the traditional view of Shakespearean authorship is the Oxfordian one.--BenJonson (talk) 21:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)