Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Dionyseus/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.

The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

DanielPi's claim that I am uncontrollable and unable to compromise is false
DanielPi is trying to make it appear as if I'm an uncontrollable and irresponsible editor that is incapable of compromising. I have shown time and again that I'm able to compromise, such as in the mediation case, and just a few days ago I was able to come to an agreement with DanielPi in the Kramnik talk page. I would be willing to include the cheating allegation if Topalov gets accused by someone who chooses not to remain anonymous, and if the allegation is widely reported. Currently the only time Topalov has been accused was at the San Luis tournament back in October of 2005, the accuser has remained anonymous, and the allegation was not widely reported despite DanielPi's claims to the contrary.

DanielPi contacted multiple users and tried to persuade them to speak against me
To make his case against me, DanielPi searched through my contributions list and tried to persuade people I've had arguments in the past to speak out against me, but they all refused to do so because they reliazed the arguments were content-based and minor, and that we were able to compromise. 

DanielPi's evidence does not demonstrate that I have violated 3RR
In DanielPi's case against me, he listed a supposed history of me violating 3RR, but careful examination of the evidence reveals that none of these are examples of 3RR.

Looking at his evidence that I violated 3RR for the Wii page, I see only 3 links, to violate 3RR you need four reverts under 24 hours. The first link is not a revert, it is me protecting the page, the user posted a Fair Use image, but a Free Image exists and according to policy if a Free Image exists it must be used. The second and third link is me protecting the page again for the same reason. 

As for his evidence that I violated 3RR for the ELO Rating System article, as you can see he only provided 3 reverts.

As for his evidence that I violated 3RR for the Kasparov article, his fourth link is dated April 26 and it is not a revert I simply was attempting to fix the box in the article, whereas the first three links are dated April 27, thus no violation of the 3RR.

As for his evidence that I violated 3RR for the Kramnik article, first of all I see only three links. The first link is not even a revert, I was fixing an anonymous editor's false claim that the Braingames World Champion didn't exist, it certainly did exist and I provided citations for this at the Kasparov talk page. Dionyseus 12:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I received two death threat emails
Someone has sent me two death threats through email. The first one was received on April 11, 2006 at 10:42am EST, the name was listed as Dan Pi, email address was structuralism@gmail.com, and the IP was 64.233.162.196. Here's the message:

Dear Alex,

Someone needs to tell you that your face looks like a cow's ass. you ara a nasty computer nerd, and therefore very likely a sweaty hairy virgin, who claims to be an "investor" yet has less personal wealth than a fucking amish. your taste in movies and music make me want to puke. dune? sci-fi? figures. that's what you're worth, i guess. i hope someone finds you and shoots you in the fucking head - for your sake. you're a fucking massachusetts shit wart who fucking likes ninja movies. lord i hope you get into a car wreck. it would make me very very happy.

love, -trogdor

Second email
The second email was received on April 11, 2006 at 4:39pm EST, the name was listed as Dan Pi, email address was structuralism@gmail.com, and the IP was 64.233.162.193. Here's the message:

Sorry you're ugly. Sorry you're poor. Sorry you have bad taste. Sorry you're still alive.

-Bruce "the nugget" Lee

I was quite disturbed by these death threats and I asked DanielPi to apologize, but he refused to admit that he sent them. I am sure that it was him, if you look at the edit history for the Topalov page, you'll see that on April 11 at 9am EST the administrator Ryan Delaney removed the cheating allegation DanielPi had insisted on including in the article, and Ryan said the allegations aren't widespread and that no one talks about them anymore. I believe this infuriated DanielPi because he is convinced that me and Ryan are partners. As for him signing this email with "Bruce Lee," he is referring to my Bruce Lee avatar photo when I used to have a subscription at the popular chess forum in which we are both members at.

DanielPi has personally attacked me several times, and he deleted an administrator's warning
I have never personally attacked DanielPi, but he certainly has attacked me several times. DanielPi deleted the administrator's warning on his talk page to stop personally attacking me. Dionyseus 12:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Just the other day DanielPi personally attacked me again and assumed bad faith. Dionyseus 11:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

First assertion: Dionyseus's Conduct
I have had a several conflicts with Dionyseus on chess related topics. I have found his behavior inflexible, duplicitous, and biased in the extreme. I will provide evidence with brief commentary on the incidents. I have compiled and organized sufficient evidence to present (what I consider to be) a solid demonstration of Dionyseus's poor conduct. I could easily produce more diffs to support my claims, and there are surely more claims to make. However, in an effort to be concise, I tried to find a balance between providing ample evidence and remaining readably brief.

Please note: I am currently a student pursuing a triple major (Film, Math, Philosophy) while TA-ing. As a result, I don't have a lot of time to come back and continually revise my evidence section. In past encounters, I've noticed that Dionyseus is able to respond far faster than me. Furthermore, he has a habit of responding to my evidence by revising his statements. I see nothing inherently wrong about that (I have done it myself), but I may consequently be unable to quickly reply to arguments that he may pose. I'd merely like to point out that my failure to respond to everything he may say should not be taken to mean that I have no response. Furthermore, I believe Dionyseus habitually argues the straw man, and I would appreciate critical scrutiny when reading Dionyseus's arguments (I realize this goes both ways, of course).

Inflexibility

 * Early on, Dionyseus insisted on RV-ing corrections to a Comma splice error. Despite agreement on the talk page that he was wrong, Dionyseus continued to insist that the comma splice was grammatically correct. Here are his five RV's: 12345.
 * Instances of 3RR violation:
 * Wii [][][]
 * Elo Rating System [][][]
 * Garry Kasparov [][][][]
 * Vladimir Kramnik [][][]


 * Unilaterally deletes sentence, which Dionyseus was aware was the subject of controversy, without consensus or discussion: [].
 * Dionyseus declares that he has "evidence" of chess grandmaster and NY Post columnist Andrew Soltis's unreliability on talk page, and one minute later, unilaterally violates mediation compromise without discussion: [].
 * More edit warring: [][]
 * Lastly, the edit war that provoked me to request arbitration: [][][][][][]

Misrepresentation and Misleading Arguments
Dionyseus has a history of using underhanded rhetorical tactics, glossing over details, arguing the straw man, omitting inconvenient details, exaggerating, and feigning memory loss to push his arguments.
 * When I listed the grammar 3RR in my arbitration request, Dionyseus replied that an admin ruled that we were "both wrong". This is extremely misleading. The admin stated that we had both violated 3RR. Admin did not state that we were "both wrong" about grammar rule. []. Rather it is a fact that Dionyseus was incorrect about the grammar, and refused to admit it, RV-ing five times on that matter (see diffs above).
 * Dionyseus stated that he had "won" mediation []. Having been a mediator, I know that mediation is about compromise, and it is simply bluster to make such a claim.
 * Dionyseus claims to have "disproven in mediation" my claims about the extent of reportage on allegations against Topalov []. Dionyseus claimed that my sources do not adhere to Wiki standards. This is false. He did not cite a single criterion that my (many) sources failed to satisfy. Rather, Dionyseus rejected my citation as a compromise option, which is hardly "disproof" of anything.
 * Dionyseus often claims to enjoy the support of wiki community (there is very little for his side of the argument), when there is a clear majority supporting my edit, as I will document below.
 * Dionyseus claims in his evidence section that he compromised with me in mediation, demonstrating his ability to compromise. This is the same mediation compromise that he decided to violate, which precipitated my request for arbitration. In the same sentence, he also claims to have "compromised" with me on the Kramnik page, when in fact he ceased RV-ing after I requested this arbitration, at which point he seems to have decided to give up on the matter altogether. At no point did he actually concede that his RV's were improper. He simply disappeared after the arbitration request was posted.
 * In his evidence section, Dionyseus also lists as documented support for his ability to compromise [this user's talk page], wherein Wolfkeeper explicitly describes Dionyseus's inability to compromise.
 * This one is a little complicated: when I started editing on Wiki, I found the Vladimir Kramnik article full of POV edits. For instance, the article began by listing this chess player's losses. Rather than unilaterally deleting this "negative" information, I decided to put it all into a new section entitled, "Controversies". When I pointed out that Kramnik's article contained a section devoted to controversy, while Dionyseus had deleted anything negative (no matter how factual) on Topalov's article, he balked, claiming that I had created the Kramnik "Controversy" section myself. This is, of course, true, however, he deliberately misrepresented my motives for doing so. Having ostensibly read the talk page there [], which he claims to have done, he should have been aware of my motives (i.e. containing the semi-vandalism), however he deliberately misled other editors, who were not aware of the history of that page, casting me as a hypocrit.
 * Dionyseus, in his evidence section, points out how my listed instances of his 3RR violations are not de jure 3RR violations. I can think of no clearer example of wiki-lawyering than skating dangerously close to 3RR and then claiming to have never actually crossed the line.

Brief History
Shortly after the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005, an anonymous participant in the eight player tournament accused the winner, Veselin Topalov, of computer-assisted cheating. News of the allegation was widely reported, with several well-respected chess publications mentioned it. As this is common chess knowledge, I feel that it should be mentioned in the relevant articles.

Statement in Question
The statement, which I originally included in the article, was this: "Furthermore, allegations and rumors of computer assistance and cheating during the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 have become widespread, although no evidence has yet been produced to support the claim that Topalov had cheated."

Arguments For Inclusion

 * Since the article is about Veselin Topalov, it seems to me that the information is certainly relevant.
 * The sentence in question does not claim that Topalov actually did cheat, merely that he was accused of it.
 * There is ample precedent for mentioning unproven accusations on wikipedia (insofar as they are presented as such): [Lance Armstrong Doping], [Mary-Kate Olsen's Drug Abuse], [Michael Jackson's Plastic Surgery].
 * The following editors (a large majority) have expressed support for including the cheating allegations in the article: Subseven, LinuxDude, 70.23.236.205,  SWAT Jester   [[Image:Flag_of_Iceland.svg|18px|]]  Ready    Aim, Supinejsupine, Smallguy314, Thatcher131
 * While it is difficult to prove conclusively that something is "widespread", the following (well respected) sources have mentioned the allegations: [The official Chess Olympiad site], [], [], [] as well as Grandmaster Andrew Soltis's article in the NY Post, which mentioned the cheating allegations (Nov. 20, pp. 101).
 * The first link is the official website for the Chess Olympiad 2006, excerpting from Alexander Baburin's Chess Today, which counts Garry Kasparov (World Chess Champion for 20 years) as a contributor and boasts numerous elite players as subscribers.
 * Andrew Soltis is a grandmaster (the highest title other than "champion") and easily one of the most respected writers in the chess world. He wrote an article for Chess Life Magazine for many years, as well as a weekly chess column in the NY Post.
 * While chess blogs and user forums are certainly not credible Wiki sources (and I have never used them as citation), one can look on [a popular chess forum] and "search kibitzes" with the keywords "Topalov" and "Cheating", which yields 12 pages of hits, from as recently as June 11, 2006. This can at least establish (informally) that chatter about the cheating allegations is indeed widespread and current.

Dionyseus's Arguments Against Inclusion
It should be noted (again) that Dionyseus has a tendency to argue the straw man. He will also change arguments when refuted, only to return to old arguments when 1) he has forgotten why they were refuted, or 2) he encounters a new audience unaware of the refutation. The only thing that hasn't changed in his argument is his assertion that the cheating allegations should not be mentioned. The following are arguments that he has used in the past:
 * The cheating information is negative. Dionyseus apparently believed (or believes) that negative information, no matter how factual, should be excluded, which he states: [Here]. Even if this were true, he himself insisted on including "negative" information on articles about chess players he doesn't like [this].
 * The cheating allegations are not widespread. Dionyseus has claimed that my sources "do not meet Wiki standards," without ever explaining what standards they fail []. He has also claimed that my sources were tabloid websites [], when in fact they are the most well established sources of chess journalism available. In fact, he himself even uses one of the same sources in his own citations: [].
 * The cheating allegations are false. He has repeatedly attempted to turn the discussion into a debate about whether Topalov actually did cheat, ignoring the fact that the statement I wrote does not claim Topalov cheated. He frequently returns to this argument when it is shown that the reports of allegations are indeed widespread.
 * The accuser is anonymous, therefore the accusation should not be reported. In fact, the "anonymity" is not entirely true. We know that the accuser is one of the participants from the championship tournament, although it is true that we do not know which of the seven players made the claim. Whoever it is, the accuser is certainly a world class grandmaster and a championship contender. An accusation from such a person surely merits mention. However, Dionyseus repeatedly mentions the "anonymous" part while failing to mention that it was an "anonymous participant from the championship." [E.g. Here]
 * The cheating allegations are yesterday's news. Apparently, Dionyseus believes that the cheating allegations should be dropped because they are no longer "news." It seems to me that an encyclopedia like wiki should include history as well as news, particularly when it is NPOV, factual, and relevant.
 * The cheating allegations are POV. I hope I've shown that it is true that the allegations were made and widely reported. It is also relevant to the article. I leave it to ArbCom to read the sentence that Dionyseus censored to determine whether it was in fact POV.
 * The citation lacks POV. Oddly enough, Dionyseus has repeatedly criticized [this source] for being too short (he seems to fail to realize it's an excerpt) and for failing to include the opinion of the writer (Alexander Baburin). Apparently, this is another attempt to argue about whether Topalov did cheat, skirting the question of whether it was widely reported (which is what this is about, after all), when this is plainly evidence of reportage.
 * Dionyseus apparently feels that due to a quote he posted [here] from John Watson (another respected chess writer), Soltis is an untrustworthy source. Once again, he omits the full truth. In the very same book review, Watson compliments the rigor of Soltis's research, as I quoted [here (see line 188)].

Death Threats?
I had absolutely nothing to do with the so-called "death threats". I have used (and continue to use) one email address during the past two years (not the one he lists), and it is easy to verify that my email address is the one I've provided to wiki. Feel free to check my IP as well. I would also note that the emails that Dionyseus has quoted seem more insulting than threatening. Actually, I am offended that he would claim that I could produce such poor grammar. Incidentally, I'm a fan of classical music, which I see Dionyseus has listed as his preferred genre on his user page. So it seems extremely unlikely that I would write an email disparaging his "taste in music," which is in fact identical to my taste in music (and indeed, I wrote no such thing). I do not believe it would be inconsistent with Dionyseus's past behavior if he himself wrote those emails.

Ryan Delaney
The message that Ryan Delaney posted can be found here: []. He posted this in response to my "insulting" post here: []. I admit that my post was perhaps a touch uncivil, but (in my opinion) hardly grounds for a "warning". This was written after a protracted debate about a very rudimentary grammatical rule (previously mentioned Comma splice incident). Having read Ryan Delaney's message, and furthermore believing Ryan Delaney's warning to be spurious, I deleted the message from my talk page. If this is a violation of Wiki policy, I'm happy to restore it, but I was under the impression that what I did with my talk page was (within reason) my prerogative.

As for Mr. Delaney's involvement, I'm not entirely convinced he is a neutral party. He was one of the disputants in the (second) mediation we had on the Topalov allegations, on Dionyseus's side of the argument (I hasten to add that he was Dionyseus's lone supporter throughout the dispute). He has himself made inflammatory edits: for example, deleting any reference to the other claimant to the championship [] in the midst of mediation, further fanning the flames of conflict by deleting relevant information from the article. He has also made unilateral deletions [] commanding that, "Nobody talks about these allegations anymore..."

Suffice it to say, with all due respect to his status as an admin, I don't believe Ryan Delaney is a disinterested party, and his special status as an admin should not confer the authority that Dionyseus implies (i.e. the right to silence other editors or decide controversies unilaterally). However, this case is not about Ryan Delaney, and I'm not particularly interested in rehashing this irritating but minor incident.

My Attempts at Compromise/Resolution
I have repeatedly attempted to resolve this issue peacably. After the first round of edit warring (of which we were both admittedly guilty), I began pursuing resolution. I requested mediation, to which Dionyseus never responded. During the time we were waiting for Dionyseus's reply in mediation, I allowed his version of the Topalov article to remain online. Afterwards, the mediator Cyde Weys instructed me to revert the article, which I did. At this point, Dionyseus reappeared, again RV-ing my changes. I requested mediation once again. And again, I allowed Dionyseus's version of the article to remain online, pending mediation. The result of the mediation was that the cheating allegations should be mentioned and sourced as a footnote. A month later, Dionyseus removed the footnote, claiming that Topalov's good results in subsequent tournaments "proved" he didn't cheat after all. After objecting strenuously, he reinstated the phrase. After further "research" however, he unilaterally decided that the source was no longer legitimate and removed the compromise edit. That is when I requested this arbitration. You can see for yourself that the phrase in question is not currently in the article. I have, once again, refrained from RV-ing pending the results of this arbitration as a gesture of good faith. Dionyseus has never reciprocated such gestures, and indeed he has not offered any gestures of genuine compromise whatsoever, with the exception of the mediation compromise that he subsequently chose to violate.

A similar incident occurred on the Vladimir Kramnik article, wherein I removed a sentence stating that Kramnik was the "only champion ever to finish last place in a tournament," when cleaning up the article. Dionyseus reinserted the sentence, claiming that it was relevant. Rather than delete this information, I moved it to a more appropriate paragraph [], as I did not feel it was right to censor information that I, personally, considered defamatory. Dionyseus has on no occasion returned the courtesy.

My Wiki History
Outside of these conflicts with Dionyseus, I have never had a single conflict on Wikipedia. I created the articles for the poet Howard Nemerov and the Unsolved problems in philosophy, and I have contributed to numerous others. I have also acted as a mediator for the mediation cabal on two occasions, during which time I was never accused of bias. While I have disagreed with other editors (as we all do), not a single one of these disagreements has ever escalated to the level of a conflict. Indeed, my encounters with Dionyseus have been the only negative experience I have ever had on Wiki thus far.

By contrast, Dionyseus has been involved in numerous disputes, engaged in multiple RV wars, and has a noticable tendency to mix fact and POV, as I have documented in the previous section. His counterclaims against me, in my opinion, are merely a retaliatory tactic.

Evidence presented by Thatcher131
Daniel Pi's comment above that I supported the inclusion of the cheating allegation is incomplete. My support was conditioned on finding multiple reliable sources. My interest in the article was piqued by the RFAR, and I performed a Lexis/Nexis search for the cheating allegations. Using a variety of search terms, I could only find the NY Post chess column commenting on the rumor and a chess column in a Filipino magazine, which turned out to be irrelevant. I stated if it is "widely suspected" in the chess community but not reported anywhere else, I would think one anonymous rumor is not enough to tar someone's reputation.. My final suggestion was Include the cheating allegations if you can cite two sources that an average wikipedian could find by walking into a big-city library.  (I note that two "reliable sources" cited by Daniel are a chess column in the NY Post and a chess column in the Guardian, and the Guardian's columnist goes out of his way to state that he is not making an allegation, although it could be read as an allegation by someone predisposed to see it that way.  I suspect that columinsts in general are not held to the same standard of accuracy and fact-checking as reporters.)

It would be useful for some other articles I have been involved with to have an opinion from the arbitration committee on how to deal with rumors and allegations that are reported in newspapers and other "reliable" sources. Specifically, if an article reports John Smith's allegation that Joe Blow has been having an affair with Smith's wife (an allegation which both deny and which can not be proven or disproven by the reporter), can the allegation be included in an article about Blow. Going even further, if a columnist makes the allegation, does the fact that the columnist is widely read overcome the problem that it is an unproven and unproveable rumor, and that columnists and their opinion pieces are often held to a lesser standard of factual accuracy than reporters and their reporting.

However, I suspect the committee will rightly consider these to be content questions and outside their scope.

First assertion
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion, for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring". Here you would list specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring

Second assertion
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion, for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks". Here you would list specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.