Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DotSix/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.

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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.

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Summary
Donald R. Alford (AKA "DotSix"), of Bellingham, WA, USA, a long-time disruptive Internet troll, has been active on Wikipedia since June 15th. During that time he has attempted to replace Wikipedia articles, or large chunks of articles, with simple dictionary-style definitions of philosophical terms "true," "truth," and "knowledge." Besides being a violation of Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy, not a single other Wiki user accepts his definitions as either accurate, appropriate for Wikipedia, or even NPOV.

Although the problems with his edits, and his behavior, have been explained to Alford many times, his only responses have been sarcasm, namecalling, reverting (often blindly), accusing others of attacking him, accusing others of committing fallacies, repeating the edits, and repeating the behavior for which he was admonished. He never, ever, tries to actually refute any points made by others. He has never accepted any compromise whatsoever. Although he claims to desire principled negotiation, he has refused all attempts by others to negotiate with him.

Alford only recently began creating accounts for himself. Until then he used anonymous IPs. Either his home IP of 67.182.157.6 or various AOL and AOL/Netscape IPs. (See Requests_for_comment/DotSix for evidence of his sockpuppetry.) He referred to himself as "DotSix" and has been called that by others. I shall refer to him here as "Alford." Since more and more of these IPs have been blocked, he has begun creating usernames. DotSix Donald R. Alford The Donald He seems to create a new one every time the preceding one is blocked.

DotSix is Donald R. Alford
In case the Arb Committee needs it, the evidence that 67.182.157.6 (called "DotSix") is Donald R. Alford comes primarily from these web pages found by User:Ancheta Wis: and  and. Note in particular that the descriptions of the troll's behavior are an exact match for the behavior 67.182.157.6 (not just the type of behavior but the details as well), that the troll's earliest username on Usenet was Donald R. Alford, that the troll's recent IP is 67.182.157.6, that this IP is owned by Comcast of Bellingham, WA, and that all the major Internet white pages identify a Donald Alford in Bellingham. Also, note that 67.182.157.6 has not denied that he is Donald R. Alford.
 * UPDATE: 67.182.157.6 now explicitly admits that he is Donald Alford. See this diff: "The allegation in WP:Arb 67.182.157.6, "DotSix is Donald R. Alford" is correct,"
 * In the remainder of the remark he goes on to deny that he created three user pages. This, of course, is not the same thing as denying that he is in real life, Donald R. Alford:
 * "both of those login accounts, user:DotSix and user:Donald R. Alford, as well as User:The Donald, were created by an impostor of user:67.182.157.6, who by all rights should now be blocked indefinitely, and these user pages speedily deleted because their creation was an offense against Wikipedia by an impostor, right?"


 * The above paragraph was reduced to incoherence by a typically inane edit by DotSix . in doing so he conclusively shows that he is aware of these proceedings, and is choosing not to participate. --Banno

I (Nate Ladd) happen to think that Alford did create the username User:Donald R. Alford mainly because no one else would have a motive for doing so. But whether or not he did is immaterial. For that matter, whether he is Donald R. Alford of Bellingham, WA, is also immaterial. But the fact that he is a notorious Internet troll who has engaged in his patented bad behavior since at least 1998 probably is material to the committee in deciding how to deal with him and in evaluating whether there is any hope that he will ever reform.


 * UPDATE: Although [User:67.182.157.6]] named himself "DotSix" on July 17th at this diff and has called himself that many times since, he is now trying to deny he is DotSix . This is a continuation of his campaign to trick the Arb Comm into not noticing the difference between:
 * A. User:67.182.157.6 is in real life, Donald R. Alford.
 * and
 * B. User:67.182.157.6 created the user account named "Donald R. Alford."
 * He has denied B, but he has never denied A. In fact, he admitted it on one occasion, see above. --Nate Ladd 20:55, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

15 June

 * 11:51, June 15, 2005:
 * Alford replaces the article True with a dictionary-style definition in violation of Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy. It is reverted by User:Meelar and Alford begins a long series of completely unexplained blind reverts. He does not contribute to any talk page until July 10th and he does not provide any edit annotation until July 11th. (See his contribution history.) As of August 20th, about 13% of all his edits (75 of 593) were attempts to either replace an article (or large part of one) with a dictionary-style definition or redirect an article to a Wiktionary page. In not a single one of these 75 cases did he attempt to discuss his edit, let alone obtain concensus, before he made it.

22 June

 * 13:56, June 22, 2005:
 * User:Banno invites Alford to see the talk page for True in 3 consecutive contributions begining with: . Alford's only response is a blind revert . From then until the article was protected on Aug. 7th, other editors made 27 attempts to communicate with Alford in the talk page or in edit annotations. These included explanations why Alford's edits were not accepted and what Wiki policies he was violating, questions posed to him, and in one case a warning about his behavior. His responses to these 27 efforts breakdown as follows:
 * To the 10 communications that came in edit annotations, Alford responded to 6 with a blind revert, to 2 more with a revert and the annotation "revert to eliminate vandalism," to 1 with a revert and a threat to report the editor for "blanking." (the editor had not blanked), and to the last one, he responded with a revert and an annotation to "see talk." The comment he put in talk accused all of the other editors of an "obscurantist jihad" and it finished with a sarcastic remark about the Wiki policy of not allowing redirects to the Wiktionary.
 * To the 17 communications on Talk:True, Alford ignored 7. To 7 more, he accused those who disagreed with him of obscurantism. To the remaining 3, he responded with sarcasm. In many of his 10 written responses he also deleted some of his opponents' comments.
 * Surveys like this for Truth, Knowledge, Epistemology, his own talk page, and the many Wiki policy pages he has tried to change, would all show the same pattern. There have been literally hundreds of attempts to reason with Alford. I cannot find a single case where he responded positively. User:Rhobite even offered to communicate with Alford by email, but Alford has never responded to this offer, despite the dozens of times that he has claims to believe in "principled negotiation" and complained that others won't negotiate with him.

10 July

 * 07:02, 10 July 2005:
 * On his very first contribution to a talk page he begins name-calling: "theist obscurantism" . As of August 20th, Alford has included name-calling in 175 of the 593 edits he has made, about 30%. "Moron" is most common, but there are many others. Almost everyone who has disagreed with him and every admin who has blocked him or admonished has been among his targets. He has even targeted members of the Arb Committee:
 * 01:48, July 10, 2005:
 * Alford nearly blanks the talk page for "true": . This is the first of nearly 2 dozen times that he nearly blanks the "True" or "Truth" pages. It is also the first of 81 times (as of August 20th) that he has deleted other people's comments from a talk page. About 25-30% of all his edits (to talk pages) have included deleting comments of other editors. On at least one occasion he replaced the entire contents of another user's talk page..


 * 18:03, July 10, 2005:
 * Alford adds an NPOV tag to the top of Truth article with no explanation.

11 July

 * 09:25, July 11, 2005:
 * Alford's first edit annotation: he calls the person who removed his unexplained NPOV tag a vandal: . This is the first of over a dozen times (in edit annotations alone) that he calls those who disagree with him "vandals".

15 July

 * 09:21, 15 July 2005 :
 * Alford claims or implies for the first time that the editors he disagrees with are in an organized conspiracy against him, with User:Banno as the leader. He calls them Banno's "crew" or Banno's "partners," but most often he calls them a "cabal." Alford has made this allegation at least 17 times. He has identified over 25 people as being members of the cabal:.

16 July

 * 02:12, 16 July 2005 :
 * Alford is reported for a 3RR violation for the first time. . Since then he has been reported a half-a-dozen more times. But these reports only include cases where he "slips up" and does all 4 (or more) reverts with his main IP. If cases where he uses sock puppets to do some of the reverts were counted, he has violated 3RR on about half of all days from July 10th to Aug. 20th. On many of these days he has violated 3RR multiple times on multiple articles. One Admin, when blocking Alford, described his 3RR behavior as "atrocious." . In fact, 264 if Alford's 593 edits (as of August 20th), or 44%, are reverts. Keep in mind also that many of his other edits are near reverts. Moreover, a typical Alford comment on a talk page is mainly a block copy of something he (or someone else) has written before.

20 July

 * 17:08, July 20, 2005
 * Alford adds an NPOV tag to a lead paragraph that he himself wrote.


 * 23:02, July 20, 2005:
 * Alford uses sarcasm: "I will accept your apology for your misunderstanding now." . This was the first of 74 times (as of August 20th) in which he was sarcastic with other editors or admins. That's 13% of all his edits.

21 July

 * 13:03, July 21, 2005:
 * Alford accuses editors who do not agree with him of committing the fallacy of ad hominem attack and the fallacy of appeal to popularity. . This was the first of 239 edits (as of Aug. 20th) in which Alford accused others of committing fallacies. (40% of all the edits he's ever made.) It was explained to him shortly after he began how he was misusing these terms and several times since then, but he has ignored this.


 * 19:03 July 21, 2005:
 * Alford begins to push an idea of his own about the relation of knowledge and belief that he has been advocating on various web and Usenet groups for years. Specifically, he deletes a long passage in Knowledge that is incompatible with his doctrine.. His usual way of expressing his doctrine is to accuse anyone who doesn't agree with it of committing something he calls the "fallacy of conflation of knowledge and belief." It was pointed out to him that his doctrine is "original research" and, thus, not eligible for inclusion in the Wikipedia and that the passages he is trying to delete express a consensus of every philosopher in Western Civilization since approximately 500 BCE. He has ignored this and deleted passages in conflict with his doctrine from Knowledge, Epistemology, and Belief a total of 41 times (as of August 20th).


 * 19:18, July 21, 2005:
 * Alford begins adding an NPOV tag to ... Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view!!! He also begins unilaterally deleting a long passage in the policy, calling it a "fallacy". Examples:  and.

22 July

 * 23:33, July 22, 2005:
 * Alford begins using sock puppets. Not surpisingly he usually uses them to evade the blocks on his main IP. As of August 20th he has used 47 sock puppets, but there are 2 or 3 more pretty much every day.

27 July

 * 20:55, July 27, 2005:
 * Alford begins sabotaging the RfC about him. He deletes the Outside View of User:Robert McClenon. . He inserts remarks in other editor's sections of the RfC. (But, with typical hypocrisy, he complains when he thinks someone has edited his section.) He also begins a campaign of deleting the comments of others in the RfC that he was still continuing as late as August 13th. See  and  for examples.

2 August

 * 18:18, 2 August 2005:
 * Alford is blocked for the first time. As of August 20th he has been blocked 7 times. Three of those blocks were extended because he was caught evading them with sock puppets. The reasons for the blocks are 3RR, WP.POINT, WP.NPA, repeatedly removing a VfD tag, "disruption," "gaming the system," "disrespectful," and "continuing bad behavior." The block log of his main IP is here: . In addition, most of the pages in the main namespace, and many of the talk pages, that he edits frequently have had to be protected from him and are still in a protected state as of August 21st.

4 August

 * 15:45, 5 August 2005:
 * Alford explicitly calls another user a liar. He has said this, usually explicitly but sometimes by implication, several other times and with increasing frequency and increasing hysteria. Among this targets are Banno, Rhobite, Nate Ladd, and Robert McClenon.

6 August

 * 17:45, Aug. 6th, 2005:
 * Alford declares that WP:3RR applies not to individuals, but to each "side" in a dispute. . Although it was pointed out to him that the policy explicitly applies to individuals, not groups, he has repeated his imaginary version of 3RR 51 times (as of August 20th), about 9% of all the edits he has made. In all 51 cases, he makes the claim in an edit annotation for an otherwise unexplained revert.

12 August

 * 10:53, August 12, 2005
 * Deletes admin warning and admin explanation of block from his talk page, calling them personal attacks.

21 August

 * 00:29, August 21, 2005:
 * Since this Evidence page was begun, Alford has twice 6  8  19 21 times (so far) edited the evidence section of another user, in violation of the rules stated at the top of the page. Example:  In every case, he called the editor presenting evidence a liar. Alford thinks he's above ALL the rules.

30 August

 * 15:06, August 30, 2005:
 * Using a sock puppet, Alford tries to deceive the Arb Comm by referring to himself in the third person; but in the content of his edit he reveals something that only User:67.182.157.6 (AKA Donald Alford) could know: that the IP 67.182.157.6 is completely blocked. The diff is here:

For You Folks at Home Who are Keeping Score
Here is a summary of the percentages cited above. Percentages sum to more than 100 because Alford usually violates more than one policy in each edit.


 * 44% of his edits are reverts
 * 40% of his edits accuse others of committing fallacies
 * 30% of his edits include namecalling
 * 15% of his edits include deleting the comments of others from talk pages
 * 13% of his edits include sarcasm
 * 13% of his edits violate "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy
 * 9% of his edits allege that the 3RR policy applies to groups not individuals

How many good edits has Alford had? If "good edit" is defined as an addition of at least a sentence that enjoys the concensus approval of other editors, then the answer is Not a single one. In fact, none of his edits has been supported by even a single other editor, let alone a concensus.

--Nate Ladd 01:38, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Evidence presented by
The header of the request for comments that preceded this RfAr contains a list of the 25 anonymous IP addresses created by this user before he created an account.

16 August 2005
Repeatedly posting a frivolous RfAr (in which he uses insulting nicknames for the signers of this RfAr) against the signers of this RfAr:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=21110669&oldid=21097043
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=21110979&oldid=21110793
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=21111119&oldid=21111051
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=21111440&oldid=21111203
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=21111480&oldid=21111470
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=21151154&oldid=21147394

18 August

 * , blocked by {User|Baron Larf} from editing epistemology for vandalism, has returned using multiple IP addresses, from his 172.19*.* block of IP addresses.

16 August

 * 5:31
 * reverted Epistemology to his own version from 5 August. He subsequently reverted to this version on multiple occasions, , , , , ,  in a period of about 30 hours, before being blocked by


 * 11:51
 * created


 * 12:30
 * As DotSix placed a request for arbitration against a "Cabal" of which I was the supposed leader. Note that he has not engaged in discussion in the present arbitration proceedings;that he resorted to childish name calling; that his attempt was reverted by arbitrator three times, ,  and by  once; that Raul resorted to a warning on his talk page

15 August

 * 15:31
 * Created a user account ; details added match thse later added for . Began a strange series of claims about his identity.

29 August
He has been blocked under his IP 67.182.157.6, under 3RR but has made six edits since then using 172.198.185.228. He is taking ArbCom for a ride.

30 August
After the injunction against him was carried, I requested that several pages be unprotected. He immediately began to edit using his sockpuppets:


 * Truth: ,
 * Talk:Truth:, ,
 * True: ,
 * Talk:true:, ,.
 * Knowledge:
 * talk:Knowledge:, ,
 * Talk:Epistemology:, , , ,

These edits occurred over a period of about three hours and were all reversions to his earlier edits.

he has also committed what I think to be his first vandalism of a user page, making absurd allegations on my talk page, then reverting to these three times, ,, resulting in my page having to be protected. The same allegations and consequences occurred on User:CesarB,,.

He has also made the usual inane remarks at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents,.

That is two dozen edits within a few hours of his being banned from editing outside the RfArb and his talk pages. It is clear that he intends to avoid ArbCom decisions using sock puppetry. Banno 21:38, August 29, 2005 (UTC) updated Banno 10:10, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

31 August
DotSix continues to edit against the injunction, using a range of sockpuppets.

DotSix created a new article, True statement, in order to propound his own peculiar POV. The article is listed in VfD:Votes for deletion/True statement.

DotSix makes an abortive attempt,  to list Image:KnowlTruth.png, used in epistemology, for deletion. He then uses a sock puppet to vote for his own proposal.  Banno 20:55, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

14 August 2005
Andrew pmk | Talk 06:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC) Andrew pmk | Talk 06:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 23:26 UTC
 * User:Func protects Truth as a result of vandalism by User:DotSix.
 * 22:23 UTC
 * User:Func protects Talk:Truth page as a result of vandalism by User:DotSix and adds a comment, saying that that is very unusual.
 * Neither protection has been lifted as of 06:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC). Andrew pmk | Talk 06:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

30 August

 * 19:55, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * Dot Six, using another IP posts a comment asking for assistance against Banno's conspiracy at the Villiage Pump, violating the injunction issued against him. I post a comment pointing users to the arbitration case and the injunction (in order to prevent a protracted discussion from starting in the villiage pump).  Dot Six responds by striking out my comment and engaging in namecalling.

20 October

 * Continuing to edit in violation of injunction: 8 edits to Agnosticism between 16:49 and 22:17 using 6 different IP addresses:


 * 172.190.163.230
 * 172.195.186.106
 * 172.185.255.223
 * 66.42.43.91
 * 172.199.93.84
 * 172.190.210.25


 * (cur) (last) 22:20, 20 October 2005 Rhobite (protected due to repeated edits by DotSix. see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DotSix/Proposed decision#DotSix edit restrictions)
 * (cur) (last) 22:17, 20 October 2005 172.190.163.230 (Is this all you know how to do, revert battle?)
 * (cur) (last) 22:13, 20 October 2005 Rhobite m (Reverted edits by 172.195.186.106 to last version by Rhobite)
 * (cur) (last) 22:12, 20 October 2005 172.195.186.106 (I like this edition better.)
 * (cur) (last) 21:54, 20 October 2005 Rhobite m (Reverted edits by 172.185.255.223 to last version by Rhobite)
 * (cur) (last) 21:52, 20 October 2005 172.185.255.223 (Please don't start a revert battle. Please take any issues you have to discussion.)
 * (cur) (last) 21:00, 20 October 2005 Rhobite m (Reverted edits by 66.42.43.91 to last version by 204.108.8.5)
 * (cur) (last) 20:59, 20 October 2005 66.42.43.91 (Articles in Wikipedia are always open for revision. You know that. See talk.)
 * (cur) (last) 20:09, 20 October 2005 204.108.8.5 (rv to Jules version - major change to initial definition is unwelcome in a 2+ year article. See talk for further disc.)
 * (cur) (last) 19:44, 20 October 2005 172.199.93.84 (Policy is discuss content, not the contributor. You know that, don't you?)
 * (cur) (last) 19:37, 20 October 2005 Jules.lt m (rv injoined user - I'm looking forward to "rv banned user" you, dotsix)
 * (cur) (last) 19:34, 20 October 2005 172.199.93.84 (Who is DotSix?)
 * (cur) (last) 17:20, 20 October 2005 Rhobite (revert. DotSix is banned from editing outside of his arbitration case)
 * (cur) (last) 17:18, 20 October 2005 172.190.210.25 (What?)
 * (cur) (last) 16:58, 20 October 2005 Jules.lt m (rv injoined user)
 * (cur) (last) 16:49, 20 October 2005 172.190.210.25 (Your version still evades the issue raised by JimWae. Make your case in talk, if you can.)

--4.157.92.13 20:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Also 3 edits in violation in Talk:Agnosticism:
 * (cur) (last) 22:20, 20 October 2005 Rhobite (→No settled issues - protected)
 * (cur) (last) 22:11, 20 October 2005 172.195.186.106 (→No settled issues)
 * (cur) (last) 21:02, 20 October 2005 Rhobite (→No settled issues - blocked)
 * (cur) (last) 20:56, 20 October 2005 66.42.43.91
 * (cur) (last) 20:22, 20 October 2005 Miketwo m (oopsie... minor edit)
 * (cur) (last) 20:21, 20 October 2005 Miketwo (revert war rationale)
 * (cur) (last) 17:31, 20 October 2005 Miketwo (→"Various meanings" top section)
 * (cur) (last) 17:14, 20 October 2005 172.190.210.25 (→"Various meanings" top section)


 * Also 5 edits in violation in Gettier_Problem:
 * (cur) (last) 22:21, 20 October 2005 172.190.163.230 (So you do not understand disproof by counterexample?)
 * (cur) (last) 20:27, 20 October 2005 66.42.43.91 (You didn't answer the question.)
 * (cur) (last) 19:51, 20 October 2005 172.199.93.84 (Do you understand how counterexample is a legitimate means of ruling something out? Please answer in talk.)
 * (cur) (last) 17:07, 20 October 2005 172.190.210.25
 * (cur) (last) 15:43, 19 October 2005 172.192.152.197

23 October

 * 6 edits in violation in Talk:Agnosticism:
 * (cur) (last) 19:40, 23 October 2005 172.198.43.212 (You don't want to discuss the content of this article on agnosticism?)
 * (cur) (last) 19:09, 23 October 2005 172.195.80.130 (You don't want to discuss the content of this article on agnosticism? Why not?)
 * (cur) (last) 16:49, 23 October 2005 172.198.40.40
 * (cur) (last) 16:47, 23 October 2005 172.198.40.40 (→Beliefs as possibilities)
 * (cur) (last) 16:38, 23 October 2005 172.198.40.40
 * (cur) (last) 15:48, 23 October 2005 172.199.63.235 (rv edits by Ladd to last edit by Clawson. Do not delete the comments of others, moron, it's not polite!)

21 October

 * 9 edits in violation in Talk:Agnosticism:
 * (cur) (last) 22:40, 21 October 2005 172.190.120.70 (revert theist)
 * (cur) (last) 21:47, 21 October 2005 172.199.60.222 (Policy says comment on content, not on the contributor.)
 * (cur) (last) 21:34, 21 October 2005 172.199.60.222 (Please start following policy, comment on content, not on the contributor.)
 * (cur) (last) 18:59, 21 October 2005 172.192.78.130 (Please do not delete the comments of others.)
 * (cur) (last) 17:45, 21 October 2005 172.199.145.92 (Do not delete the comments of others!)
 * (cur) (last) 17:01, 21 October 2005 172.185.51.121 (Do not delete the comments of others!)
 * (cur) (last) 16:03, 21 October 2005 172.193.242.202 (Do not delete the comments of others.)
 * (cur) (last) 14:25, 21 October 2005 172.193.242.202 (Consensus as to what the lead section should say (October, 2005))
 * (cur) (last) 14:04, 21 October 2005 172.193.242.202 (Policy: "Comment on content, not on the contributor.")

--207.69.139.145 18:06, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


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