Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cantus 3/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.

As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form:.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

Violations of previous parole

 * Cantus has broken his revert parole on numberous occasions and has been given blocks of various lengths (Block log). These do absolutely noting to help him avoid the problems leading up to revert wars. After a block, his usual first actions are to re-revert each and every change.  Please note this recent report where hs is shown to have broken the parole four times in one day

Improper use of sockpuppets/anonymous proxies
When blocked, or to violate his editing parole, Cantus has employed anonymous proxies and sock puppet accounts to evade detection. For example, the histories of "Developed country" and "Template:Europe" show IP addresses which are reverting to Cantus' preferred version. In Jan 2005, Cantus employed anon proxies to edit war with Gzornenplatz.

Likely users which have recently been used to perform edits which revert directly to Cantus' prefered versions:

Revert warring
Wherever Cantus is in disagreement over a page, "slow revert wars" often start. No meaningful dialogue is happening, but Cantus persists in reverting at the rate of about once a day.

Intensive revert war over country infobox
Around January 6-8 2005, Cantus and Gzornenplatz/Wik, along with other editors, became involved in a massive edit war over that nature of the infoboxes used in the various country articles. At the heart of this was whether the long, and somewhat incomprehensible, wiki-code belonged in the article text itself. Cantus pushed for an idea that created a new "Template:countryname infobox" for each article, where the complex code was moved to and then inserted as a typical template. Gzornenplatz pushed for leaving the code in the articles, so that they could be more easily edited.

In the end, an alternate solution (reviving use if Template:Infobox Country) which accommodated both desires. Unfortunately, these two parties primarily reverted each other ad nauseum rather than try on their own to reach a compromise.

I will point out that Cantus didn't originate this idea -- it seems to have been done slowly over the prior couple of months. The problem is that Cantus was responsible for dozens of reverts during January and escalated the conflict by actually creating more of these individual infoboxes where they had not been before, inserting them, and unsurprisingly reverting when they were removed. Cantus also used various sockpuppets during this war, even after he was blocked for parole violations.


 * An example of what sort of change was being made.
 * Here is a link to Cantus' edits from near that timeframe.


 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive2 - David Gerard describes blocking Cantus for one week, and also noting a "pile of sockpuppets" and anon IP edits which came after the block.
 * Special:Contributions/TimComm
 * Special:Contributions/80.237.206.93
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive2 - A complaint made about more block evasion, this section includes posts made by Cantus even while he was blocked as User:213.21.136.4.

Developed country
Cantus has been revert-warring on this article since mid-2004. Various wars have been fought, mostly over the list of developed countries presented in the article.

A complete list of reverts would be impractical to produce because they number in the dozens. I invite the Arbitrators to view the history of the page, specifically from May 2005. Reverts by Cantus proceed on a daily basis. When those changes are reverted, he employs, , , and  to revert to his version.

Template:Europe
Mar 10 to present - over a seemingly minor bit of formatting involving the inclusion of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the visible appearance of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in the template.


 * 08:39, 2005 Mar 10 by Cantus
 * 23:05, 2005 Mar 17 by Cantus
 * 03:14, 2005 Apr 24 by Cantus
 * 02:45, 2005 May 2 by Cantus
 * 02:50, 2005 May 6 by Cantus
 * 07:22, 2005 May 7 by Cantus
 * 01:12, 2005 May 8 by Cantus
 * 23:26, 2005 May 11 by Cantus
 * 09:11, 2005 May 15 by
 * 13:04, 2005 May 15 by
 * 00:44, 2005 May 16 by
 * 03:41, 2005 May 16 by
 * 04:26, 2005 May 16 by
 * 06:18, 2005 May 16 by
 * 06:35, 2005 May 16 by
 * 05:38, 2005 May 17 by
 * 06:05, 2005 May 17 by
 * 11:07, 2005 May 17 by
 * 00:24, 2005 May 18 by
 * 05:27, 2005 May 19 by Cantus
 * 07:00, 2005 May 26 by Cantus
 * 22:16, 2005 May 26 by
 * 23:11, 2005 May 26 by
 * 23:16, 2005 May 26 by
 * 01:33, 2005 May 27 by  (note edit summary which threatens "Revert. Respect the poll results or you will be blocked."
 * 04:35, 2005 May 27 by
 * 05:38, 2005 May 28 by Cantus
 * 03:29, 2005 May 30 by
 * 06:01, 2005 Jun 1] by Cantus
 * 18:46, 2005 Jun 3 by Cantus

Terri Schiavo
Insertion of a particular Infobox template and bit of text. Slow revert war started with Cantus, but then progressed to using anonymous proxies.


 * 00:22, 2005 May 8 by Cantus' initial posting of the infobox and text from intro
 * 05:19, 2005 May 9 by Cantus
 * 23:39, 2005 May 11 by Cantus
 * 05:32, 2005 May 12 by Cantus
 * 07:17, 2005 May 14 by Cantus
 * 07:58, 2005 May 15 by Cantus
 * 00:44, 2005 May 16 by
 * 03:41, 2005 May 16 by
 * 04:26, 2005 May 16 by
 * 06:18, 2005 May 16 by
 * 06:35, 2005 May 16 by
 * 06:47, 2005 May 16 by

Others
Similar repeated reversion (ownership behavior) can be found in the following article histories:

Bad editing practices

 * Cantus fails frequently to submit edit summaries (contribs). Many of these represent reverts or major changes which were not noted.


 * On May 8/9, Cantus made a change to a very commonly used template (see Template talk:Infobox Biography). Before gathering further opinion, he implemented that change. At first, the change was made just to the template, but that broke all the articles.  After User:PRiis fixed the template back, Cantus reverted the template to his version, and proceeded to make an alteration to about 250 articles without leaving edit summaries. This was all done before even 24 hours had passed since he first made his proposal.

Improper behavior

 * Cantus vandalized User:Netoholic's user page


 * Cantus' user page (as of today) has a misleading message indicating he is no longer with the project, but this is far from the truth.

Evidence presented by Talrias

 * On 4:43am, 24 June, Cantus provided a false edit summary when he reverted Talrias' edits to current with the edit reason "a wee bit larger image". The image stayed the same size as in the previous version of the template. As Netoholic mentions above, he has previously reverted changes to this template at a rate of once per day to avoid 3RR. I've requested he provide reasoning twice on his talk page, he has ignored it and provided either no edit summaries, false edit summaries or confrontational ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACurrent&diff=15740889&oldid=15729226


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