Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-02-04/Passport

Where is the dispute?
This discussion is being held at Talk:Passport, the articles in question are Serbian passport, Turkish passport and presumably relates to the 200 or so other passport articles.

Who is involved?

 * User:Happenstance
 * User:Avala
 * User:Ozguroot

What is the dispute?
This dispute stretches back to early in January, when I created a new section on WP:Village pump (proposals) calling for the removal of the visa-free sections from all passport articles. After an orderly discussion ongoing for a few weeks, held at Talk:Passport and advertised on WP:Centralised discussion and the Village Pump, a consensus was reached to remove them and the matter was closed by an administrator. When I enacted these changes, there was some understandable commotion, some users unaware of the discussion came to the article to discuss the changes, and one even attacked me and another user involved on our talk pages. The most vocal opposition came from, who was later blocked for an hour for continuing to edit war on the articles. A discussion was held on WP:ANI and it was suggested that Ozguroot may have been a sockpuppet, however this was not subsequently explored. Ozguroot is known to have canvassed two users to the discussion in a foreign language though. About at this time, editor came to the talk page with his unique brand of debate-free discussion and bizarre accusations of canvassing, and together with Ozguroot attempted to overturn the consensus to remove, threatening several times to resume edit warring.

then offered a compromise - visa-free sections and passport articles would be forked, and "The contentious "visa free travel" section that caused 250 edit wars will be pulled to its own page, its own category, and reviewed and sourced and improved accordingly". Edward created a demonstration of the implementation of the compromise at Turkish passport and Visa requirements for Turkish citizens. I agreed with the compromise, it unobtrusively linked to the visa-free sections without having them on the passport articles.

Soon after, Avala came up with his own unique brand of how this proposal was to be implemented, creating a completely blank section on passport articles with a see-main link and a visa-free travel map. I found this unacceptable, blank sections are not a good idea, and the map was one of the main things many of those who discussed my initial proposal wanted to see gone. Avala continued to insist that this was somehow included as a condition in the compromise. He continued to threaten that were he not appeased, the entire compromise would collapse, and at one point did a WP:POINTy revert to assert himself. At no point did Avala present a single identifiable argument for why they ought to be included, whilst I repeated my arguments several times (and was rather oddly accused of not having done so). Seeing that progress is going to be challenging, I offered a compromise: the mini see-main visa-free sections can stay, but the maps go. Rather than acceding to, or even responding to my offer, and still having presented exactly nil arguments, Avala and Ozguroot than appeared to have tried to brute force their esoteric interpretation by adding such a map to the Turkish passport article in lieu of discussion.

( I have not provided diffs for the discussion itself since it's largely on Talk:Passport in chronological order. )

How do you think we can help?
Both Avala and Ozguroot are woefully ignorant of policy, and both appear to be unable to reason or debate constructively, or at times even in any logical or coherent fashion. A mediator would be great for the dispute, since they have now seemingly transcended to a Zen-like state of ignoring any dissent to their unilateral radical reinterpretation of Edward's compromise.

Mediator notes
Is this still an active dispute? If so, I'll take it. If not, i'll close the request. The Wordsmith Communicate 04:19, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I think a closure will be fine. As I understand it Avala is now allowed to play with his WP:OWNed article ad nauseam, as long as he doesn't spread his tentacles elsewhere. Satisfactory on all sides. A slap on the wrist for Ozguroot's two instances of canvassing would be nice though, since both he and Avala still don't realise just what it was that they did wrong, despite repeatedly being pointed to WP:CANVASS (details on Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive596). I think I'm done with this dispute, Avala's proud and persistent refusal to read any policy he is directed to (usually after having freshly violated it) and failure to understand that a debate is typically composed of actual points and arguments, rather than vague and not-so-vague WP:PAs, to makes it utterly impossible to discuss anything. Quite disheartening on the grander faith-in-humanity scale, I must say. — what a crazy random happenstance 05:21, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion
I am sorry but I don't think that mediation is what we need nor that it will work. Why? Well because the issue is of pure respect for consensus and compromise. The User:Happenstance that started this is unwilling to do so. His reverts go like this "user ignoring ongoing discussion" at the same time while several users are posting pleas to him asking him "please listen to us". His summary for reverts can also be "per Talk:Passport consensus" at the same time while consensus on that talk page is obviously going against him. That is why another user recently accused him of "vandalism in disguise".

Basically what we had was
 * 0 - long established consensus to include visa free sections in passport articles
 * 1 Talk:Passport - consensus to remove them - however this was done without notifying anyone of the regular editors, just a few random users voted in that poll which does not "presumably relate to the 200 or so other passport articles." as User:Happenstance puts it here because you can see in his edit history that he very much edited all of these articles so there is nothing presumable about it as he is trying to cover up here but a very real thing. That is another issue, the poll was not widely publicized, just on centralized discussion but not on passport articles. One who edits Turkish passport does not have to follow Talk:Passport to see if there is something up there. In my view it was a canvassed poll and other users who might be for deletion, like User:EmilJ, called it a mishandled poll.
 * All of the regular editors who were not notified, are now showing up to show their anger and obviously they form a new consensus to revert that decision from an obscure talk page that would encompass 200 articles. Others as User:Happenstance conveniently puts it here are all these people who strongly disagreed with his actions:
 * User:Seb az86556
 * User:Tomi566
 * User:Rave92
 * User:Edward Vielmetti - who worked really hard on compromise only for it be destroyed by "my way or no way" approach by User:Happenstance
 * User:Qwerta369
 * User:El Otro
 * User:Gaston28
 * User:Philip200291
 * User:Tetromino
 * User:Pryde 01
 * User:Glenfarclas etc.
 * 2 Talk:Passport Talk:Passport Talk:Passport - consensus to put them back
 * however User:Happenstance chooses to ignore the WP:PNSD and WP:CCC rules and goes on revert campaign
 * 3 Talk:Passport Talk:Passport - compromise solution finally we make a decision to move the visa-free sections to a separate article while keeping the link for this new supplemental article through a proper template (Template:See also & Template:Main) with an image and one sentence as it can bee seen all over Wikipedia.
 * User:Happenstance does not agree and remains a sole person in a quest to remove every trace of that hard work from Wikipedia while sneakily try to charm people with these mediation requests and bogus edit summaries. I opened a discussion on this Talk:Passport but little was achieved because he refuses to discuss issues while he keeps accusing others of not wanting to discuss things with him. I warned him of the The Dog and the Shadow situation and told him that we can easily go back to the previous point if he does not respect consensus, he ignoring the rule of WP:CCC insists on the point 1 claiming that is the only valid thing because the discussion was closed by an admin, giving that discussion some sort of supreme power that cannot be changed (even though it got changed the very next day due to the fact the poll was completely mishandled).

I warn you also that there was a lot of emotion involved, some users were brought to a point where they couldn't control themselves, some rightfully so like the user User:Ozguroot who actually invested his money in these sections, to pay for the visa free notification changes so that he could instantly edit them and update them - and then User:Happenstance comes in erases it in a second and top of it calls it all crap and garbage. I tried to stay calm, and I think I managed to be calm for the duration of this mess but I can't blame those who couldn't do that by looking at what was done to their hard work over the years (I myself have been working on of these sections for three years only for it to be erased in a click by User:Happenstance).

Everyone compromised with this user so he would stop destroying our work. We let him have it by forking out that content to a subarticle but subarticles or supplemental articles need to be linked to properly and it is done consistently throughout Wikipedia in the same manner. However the ignorance of User:Happenstance to what compromise actually is - give some get some - is the source of the problem. He has an agenda on how these articles should look like (no visa free sections) and other users think that this information should be included. We made a compromise to fork the visa-free content to a separate article and link to it properly. Sounds fine? Yeah but not in reality as User:Happenstance is now going again at all these lengths, just like he did with removing the content, to destroy even links to these supplemental articles. This is the pure violation of compromise definition, while we respect our give side - the supplemental articles stay, he doesn't respect his give side and that is that these articles need to be linked to properly. The way he does this is vigorous and personal and made many users wonder why does he have such an enormous and seemingly personal problem with this content but no answer was given. So the problem is that the User:Happenstance is unwilling to let go until he gets it all, and it is becoming more and more obvious that his quest is to actually bring passport articles to such state that they would go through the AfD smoothly.

You can see it all at Talk:Passport though I somehow doubt anyone would go through all that text. Thank you.--Avala (talk) 13:23, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Very illustrative of what I have to put up with, editors who believe that a monetary investment somehow supersedes acting in the interest of the encyclopaedia. It also seems to point to anonymous, or off-wiki discussions being held behind closed doors, since I can't recall Ozguroot saying he has a vested monetary interest before. If he had, his neutrality would have been irreparably compromised in my eyes, and I wouldn't have wasted time trying to reason with him; it would have obviously been fruitless. I am not going to address the rest of your post since I have already done so, several times, on Talk:Passport. I will however repeat, for the third time, that your characterisation of the consensuses reached is deeply flawed (to put it mildly). Please continue making threats in bold lettering - it is doing marvels for your credibility. — what a crazy random happenstance 14:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "It also seems to point to anonymous, or off-wiki discussions being held behind closed doors, since I can't recall Ozguroot saying he has a vested monetary interest before." - no, this is just the proof of you not reading what other people write which was stated enough times already. diff for "I even bought commercial (paid) online "VISA subscription services" only to be notified about the changes, so i could update it instantly.". So nothing happened behind closed doors, it is only that you ignore what other people write and this is the focal point of our complaints and you proved them right.--Avala (talk) 19:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I will give some examples: From Talk:Passport

User:Happenstance says:

- The visa-free map on passport articles is entirely unacceptable to me

- No. A section header + map is unacceptable

- The map is unacceptable.

''Edward, thanks for the new category. But would you agree "Visa requirements for Countries" as the new name? Sounds more official than "Visa free travel", imho. Ozguroot''

- No, that sounds clumsy, keep the visa-free cat name Happenstance

And now that category is being considered for renaming to 'Visa requirements by nationality', by an Administrator. Will you say him "No, that sounds clumsy" too?

Also from User_talk:Happenstance

''There appears an issue of WP:OWN at one of the articles. I don't think it will be resolved in the short term. Can we let it go for the moment. Passions are high. (says RasherTierney)''

The answer is similar: - The maps are unacceptable to me User:Happenstance

If EVERYTHING is UNACCEPTABLE for you, Happenstance, I am sorry but we will never find a solution it seems. You just ignore, ignore and ignore. (For sure, you also revert/undo/delete/remove) You don't only ignore Ozguroot, You don't only ignore Avala, but you ignore EVERYONE.

We spent a HUGE time of us for those articles, you simply call them "Garbage, crap, useless". That will not bring us any solution because you don't respect the editors.

The problem is not only Turkish or Serbian passport articles. Let's see who the oppose editors are:

User:Vmenkov, User:Jake_Wartenberg, User:Seb_az86556, User:Valenciano, User:Rave92, User:Qwerta369, User:Tomi566, User:El Otro, User:Pryde 01, User:Ozguroot, User:Gaston28, User:Philip200291, User:Avala User:Tetromino, User:Bonus bon, User:Edward Vielmetti, User:EmilJ, User:Nolled, User:Glenfarclas, User:Sky Harbor..and much more.

You did not let them know about the changes, about your "removal idea", they just got notified about that when their sections were gone! I was checking my article absolutely everyday, but i totally had NO IDEA about your consensus until when you deleted the sections.

These are the editors of Russian Passport (User:Tetromino), Croatian Passport (User:Tomi566), Serbian Passport (User:Avala), British Passport (User:Qwerta369), Romanian Passport (User:El Otro, User:Pryde 01), Turkish passport (User:Ozguroot), Montenegrin passport (User:Rave92), Australian Passport (User:Pryde 01), Ukrainian Passport (User:Nolled), Costa Rican and Hungarian Passport (User:Philip200291) articles. You did NOT write them at least a single short notification message on their Talkpage or on the discussion pages of those articles, so these people (including me) would be aware of your "voting" or so-called "decision", "consensus".

Now, may i ask please how and with who did you reach the consensus, Happenstance? --Ozguroot (talk) 15:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

As for more recent events. The new consensus for keeping visa-free information in Wikipedia but forking it into separate articles is, from my point of view, generally a good thing — it really was silly to have a paragraph about the passport itself followed many pages of visa-free tables which had more to do with citizenship than with the actual physical passport. So in the end, User:Happenstance initiative turned out to be for the best. Finally, I do not understand what's so bad about a small visa-free map in a passport article, as long as it does not dominate over the other material in the article. As far as I can see, User:Happenstance is rigidly opposed to maps purely for aesthetic reasons; but everyone's aesthetics are different. In my mind, a small map does not look bad, presents information that is reasonably likely to be of interest to the article's readers, and it really should be up to a particular article's editors whether to include one or not. Tetromino (talk) 17:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * My two cents. First, the background. User:Happenstance organized a discussion about the complete deletion of visa-free information from Wikipedia on Talk:Passport (and for a short interval it was also visible from the village pump). It so happened that for the 16 days that the discussion was active, none of the relevant people (the ones who were actually maintaining visa-free sections for their country of interest) were aware of it and were not given a chance to voice their opinion. As a result, some of User:Happenstance's incorrect assumptions (e.g. about the unmaintainability of visa-free information) went unchallenged, and the administrator who closed the discussion drew the wrong conclusion. That is ancient history, but I am surprised that User:Happenstance still presents the result of that discussion as legitimate, even though many people since then have pointed out that the "consensus" in that discussion was an illusion caused by sampling error.
 * I am glad you agree that the compromise reached is for the best, but I see a problem with Avala's consistent attempts to undermine it, as apparent from his edit summaries and myriad of threats. The maps are just the latest demand he has unequivocally laid on the table and decreed beyond discussion. As for me, I am opposed to the maps for a variety of reasons, the most important being that they are not related to a physical passport or its properties in any way, shape or form, and are thus merely decorative. It is then against the spirit of the compromise, which was reached solely on the presumption such information would be entirely forked, to insist they be kept. Also, minor correction: the discussion began on WP:Village pump (proposals) and was only a fair bit later entirely copy-and-paste moved to Talk:Passport, with me quickly expressing disapproval of the move. I also hardly think the result of a discussion advertised on WP:Centralised discussion can be called a sampling bias, anything beyond that would have been canvassing, but since that's history I see no need to get our knickers in a knot about this, unless Avala continues to claim the discussion as a figment of my imagination. — what a crazy random happenstance 17:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "the most important being that they (maps) are not related to a physical passport or its properties.": We have Human Development Index, we DO have such a map there too, right? We wouldn't care how the report physically looks, or does the map related to the physical Human Development Index report or not. No, they are not that different than the one in Biometric_passport neither. An another similar map, there. No matter how does a physical biometric passport looks. Should we remove those maps, too? We're in 2010. Lynx_(web browser) HTTP clients are not that much in use anymore as they were in [1994]. Graphics; maps, photos, images, PNG's, SWF's, SVG's are everywhere today. And of course they are here on Wikipedia, too. Additionally, it seems you even contribute to the map on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The latest version of the map is uploaded by you. [] Following the same logic, why not to have the same thing for an "X Passport" article? Such maps are very useful for statistics and for a very quick view of the details/properties of the article in subject. --Ozguroot (talk) 18:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * But these maps document something only very tenuously linked to the passport. If Bolivia changes its visa-rules for everyone else, the Slovak passport is not directly affected in any way. Hence, the tenuous link. This is one of the reasons why I proposed the sections be removed, and the reason they have been forked to an entirely different article. Images, maps being a subset of those, are not to be used when they are simply decorative and serve no direct documentary purpose. We don't put maps of which countries drive on which side on the Toyota Prius article, despite the fact that the Prius is one of the vehicles that could be used to drive on those roads. We save that for the article which specifically deals with that issue. The road policy of each individual nation and the Prius itself are only tenuously related, much like a passport and the visa-policy of foreign nations. — what a crazy random happenstance 03:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Like it was written here, Visa-free section was removed by non-contributers of actually passport pages. A lot of effort was put in those articles, and some even paid and contacted consulates and ministries. That's not a small thing. I hope we can undo the action that was done in January, and that is to get back the "Visa-free" section on Passport page. It's silly to have it in separate article. I made separate article for Visa-free section of Montenegrin passport because I saw others passport page did it, so that Montenegrin passport will have it on separate page till we don't reach the final consensus. I hope that after this discussion, we will reach consensus to get the visa-free back on it's place (and that's on their passport pages, which is over 200 passport pages!), and to close this discussion. As well to deleted seperate "Visa-free" articles. Cheers! Rave92 (talk) 22:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I will also like to share my opinion on this subject. I think we should keep the visa-free section ON the passport page. I don't agree that this is misleading or bad-looking. Personally, I take care of both Hungarian passport and Costa Rican passport pages. I worked on them a lot of hours for it to be erased in one day. I think that User:Happenstance had good intentions, and thank you for that, but I still think that all this information is really valuable and important. I think there are enough of us in the world to take care of all the passport pages. If the consensus reached is to leave the visa-free information on a different article, then fine, I respect the decision of the majority, but I think that visa-free sections and maps look good on the passport page and should not be moved to a different article. Wikipedia is famous because it has information about EVERYTHING, so why should we take some of it away?? Thanks--Philip200291 (talk) 23:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * There were several reasons why we decided to (re)move them, as you can see on Talk:Passport, and I am glad there is someone who manages to see that my intentions were to act in the benefit of the article. The point that probably most directly pertains to yours is WP:INDISCRIMINATE (we are not an indiscriminate collection of information) and WP:NOTDIRECTORY (we are not a directory). Similar consensuses to remove were reached on the TV schedule articles being moved out of the main articles of US TV networks. I would also disagree that they look good, at the time of my nomination, quite a few of the articles I randomly surveyed had hideous JPEG maps (Israeli and Caribbean countries), one had some sort of mockery of PNG with odd anti-aliasing (Canada) and almost every single map used a completely different colour scheme to represent the same thing. The tables themselves look as hideous and broken as ever. — what a crazy random happenstance 04:02, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

A frightening amount of people are under the impression that paid work equals encyclopaedic value. Or that hard work does. Hard work is admirable, but as I have said before, that isn't a valid rationale for keeping them. I could say that my deletion of all visa-free sections took me a long time, therefore it's valid and should be kept. This is naturally a non-argument. I would like to point out to all editors who have come to comment that it is significantly unlikely that the precariously reached compromise will be overturned, and that this is not a forum for doing so. A significant number of editors agreed with their removal, though I do not have the ego issues required for me to list their names as a badge of honour (they are quite readily visible on Talk:Passport). This was a forum for solving the image dispute. — what a crazy random happenstance 03:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Ozguroot canvassing again
It has been brought to my attention that Ozguroot has canvassed every single Oppose vote from the discussion on Talk:Passport and I have reported him here. I am sure any objective observer, no matter his stance on the issue, will realise just how deeply inappropriate his actions were. — what a crazy random happenstance 04:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Happenstance, Ozguroot did what you were supposed to do. This is not canvassing, but notifying regular editors, something that you failed to do and caused all the mess regarding passports. He also did it in neutral manner, something that you also probably wouldn't be able to do. So this is what we wanted you to do in the first place but you didn't do it. And this is what we asked you to do in the future but you failed again - probably because you once again failed to read anything that we write to you, as proven in the mediation discussion above where you accused us that something that is on the passport talk page was discussed "behind closed doors" and of course didn't apologize after you were proven wrong...--Avala (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2010 (UTC)