Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Instantnood, et al.

Case closed on 7 June 2005

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this request. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators will be working on a proposed decision at /Proposed decision.

Involved parties

 * Instantnood
 * jguk
 * SchmuckyTheCat

Statement by SchmuckyTheCat
I am making this request for Arbitration after spending the last two months in daily edit wars with Instantnood. I previously brought it up in an RfC which did not change his behavior. Mediation in this case would be unproductive.

I've thought about whether to take this drastic step for awhile. This evening he began reverting several hours of my organizational work because it did not agree with his agenda. I'm done trying to explain or be civil when he's violating the naming conventions he usually holds up in his defense.

Initial glob of evidentiary links: /Instantnood/Evidence

POV Instantnood is a Hong Kong patriot. He is using Wikipedia as a platform for advocacy. He often expresses this as a matter of presentation rather than direct content editing. He has mostly lost arguments in "list of xxx by country" to have Hong Kong included as an equal member with the People's Republic of China. His current front is to denigrate the People's Republic of China to a regional term "mainland China", a disputed term currently under discussion. By declaring the rest of China as "mainland China" instead of the People's Republic of China it again makes Hong Kong equal, in presentation, to the entire country. There are valid uses for the term "mainland China". The term does have it's supporters. However, Instantnood is using the term in extreme ways that push his POV. He uses the (disputed) naming conventions as backup, but even the disputed language says that "mainland China" should only be used in non-political contexts. When he edits articles about elections, laws, and political parties that appear in categories BY COUNTRY, he is creating a country of "mainland China" and deleting the country called The People's Republic of China.

Edit summaries Instantnood marks major and disputed changes, and even reverts, with "minor edit" even after being reminded on multiple pages and his talk page multiple times to not do this.

Revert wars Instantnood was warned about 3RR in an edit war with Huaiwei. Since then he has taken his reverts right up to three, but not crossed it. He is gaming the 3RR rule and treating it like an entitlement. There have been literally dozens of these miniature revert wars over the last few weeks.

Edit wars Instantnood involves himself in edit wars. This came out in the RfC against him even by people who approved of his edits. This has not changed.

Content Subterfuge Instantnood has created parallel articles and categories on several occasions. He has hidden controversial changes by hiding them with other edits.

Avoiding concensus As shown in the evidence about POV pushing, Instantnood has created or populated categories that are in parallel to established categories when concensus to move to his new naming scheme has yet to be approved and unlikely to ever be approved.

The most jarring episode of concensus avoiding, however, occurred on the articles about Hong Kong and Victoria City. Around the end of February and the beginning of March, it was the concensus of everyone - except Instantnood - that was editing those articles that Victoria City was not, in fact, the capitol of Hong Kong. Instantnood repeatedly reverted the articles to reflect his opinion that it was. A matter of fact should be easy to prove, and emails to the Hong Kong government, multiple times, even, proved that Victoria City was an antique term and was never, in fact, the capitol. Instantnood continued to question this until people ignored his discussion.

User Space/Recreation of Deleted Material Though this issue is resolved, it remains as damning evidence that Instantnood games the rules and cannot be expected to be a good citizen and interpret reasonable policies if it conflicts with his attempts to push POV. After losing the edit wars over the status of Victoria City as the capitol of Hong Kong, Instantnood copied "his version" of the articles to his userspace. That kind of preservation is absolutely OK. However, he left the categories intact specifically so that his alternative articles would be seen in parallel in the main wikipedia. He had to be told, specifically, several times, that it was NOT OK to do this before he finally accepted that he could not create a parallel universe inside his user space.

Assume good faith I fully admit to losing the assumption of good faith in Instantnoods edits. It has been apparent to me for a long time that he has an agenda. Even so, I have thanked him when he has improved my edits (for instance, by adding the Chinese characters for a name of a person or city). I realized that Instantnood lost good faith in me by his most petty of reverts. I found it quite common for him to revert me regardless of why I had edited some articles. In one instance, I realized that it was petty: 99 Ranch Market. A grocery store I regularly shop at when in the United States. It is an asian grocery store, it carries products from across the globe. I changed a link from "mainland China" to "China" because China is more encompassing, and Instantnood, who lives on the other side of the planet from the nearest 99 Ranch Market, reverted my edit, TWICE, and demanded evidence that this grocery store carries products from Hong Kong, asking "how do you know?"

Furthermore, when I presented emails from the HK government about the capitol city issue, Instantnood hounded me and insinuated that I even have made them up. I told him which website I went to and which links I clicked to get the answers, it was not like I had some inside source, yet he continued, even on the RfC page, to insinuate that I was hiding something.

Talk Pages/Rules of Engagement/Work towards a resolution/Filibuster The other large problem with Instantnood, is that he fails to give up gracefully. In a discussion, long past the point where he has exhausted his arguments, he simply turns around and repeats himself until the other side stops talking. At this point, he takes that as capitulation to his filibuster and makes the changes.

On occasions where he would be on the losing side of 3RR and there has been no talk page discussion, he simply adds various dispute templates to the articles. At first it was template:twoversions, lately it has become template:controversial. Special note: I keep changing his controversial tag to the disputed tag. In most cases where he adds the tags, he does not make a problem statement or attempt to resolve the dispute - to the frustration of other third parties who may not be aware of his overarching agenda to re-categorize anything China.
 * SchmuckyTheCat 04:18, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Instantnood
This is a content dispute, and this is not a dispute between two users. Many users are involved.

There are ongoing discussion across several discussion pages on Wikipedia, such as Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese). The issue has been put up on WP:RFC and AMA Requests for Assistance by me.

The edit wars do not actually exist. I would say the situation was rather marginal. Although my username was listed onto WP:AN/3RR by SchmuckyTheCat, I did not violate the 3RR rule. I have not reverted more than 3 times (i.e. 4 times or more) in 24 hours.

I do not agree that a content dispute could be made an arbitration on a user. Rather, this should be an arbitration of the disputed content. I am looking forward to necessary assistance from administrators. Thanks in advance. &mdash; Instantnood 04:25, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

List of ongoing discussions: (Note: this list will be updated from time to time)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)
 * Categories for deletion
 * Categories for deletion
 * Categories for deletion &mdash; Instantnood 06:05, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

See also additional information regarding ongoing discussion on the issue among many users, and recent edits by SchmuckyTheCat. &mdash; Instantnood 06:05, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by User:Jguk
I am now enjoining myself to this request for arbitration on Instantnood's behaviour. Instantnood, when he first came to WP, proposed changing almost all references to "Taiwan" to "ROC" and all references to "China" or "People's Republic of China" to "Mainland China" in article titles, categorisation schemes and templates. He, of course, had every right to do that.

His proposals did not meet community support. Since then, he has made them again and again and again. Each time he has failed to gain community support for his proposals. A number of users have asked him to stop making these proposals now it is clear what the community view is. And there has been a RfC on the issue. However, the problem persists.

By way of recent example see:, and , where he has just started no fewer than 25 votes on the issue! Read, in particular, the comments at the bottom of the second link.

Under the Arbitration policy, the ArbCom has the power to make an initial decision to order that Instantnood has failed to gain community support for his proposals, and that his persistence in continuing to re-propose them is disruptive. The order should also required Instantnood to stop arguing for changes in the naming of China and Taiwan related articles, categories and templates, etc. on sufferance of a 1 week ban, jguk 16:21, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Instantnood
Jguk does not agree with the current set of naming conventions. She/he, and some other users, did attempt to revise it, but it was not successful. Nonetheless she/he should not block the enforcement of the current set of naming conventions, and requests for arbitration for the behaviour of a user who try to help the naming conventions be truly enforced. She/he has a record of voting against retitling of articles from "..in China" to "..in the People's Republic of China", which is definitely about mainland China. (one of the examples) She/he also failed to recognise that my view is not unanimously objected.

More important, quite opposite to what she/he said, I did not propose to change all titles of "the People's Republic of China" and "China". I did mention the moves do not apply to some articles/categories (see #1 and #2). If there's anything confusing that made her/him misunderstood, I am most willing to further elaborate to her/him. &mdash; Instantnood 16:44, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Snowspinner on behalf of jguk
(I'm submitting this as the AMA advocate of User:jguk.

Instantnood has been a disruptive presence on articles relating to China and Taiwan. Specifically, he advocates a name change where by the People's Republic of China would be referred to as "mainland China" whereas Taiwan would be called "ROC." The problem is that he seems immune to consensus, and continues demanding increasingly complicated votes and discussions on the matter. This is aggravated by his tendency to claim that the votes of people who have not perfectly followed the discussion (A more or less impossible task) be discounted, as "this is not a vote about the naming conventions." The result is a completely unfollowable discussion that goes on forever due to Instantnood's refusal to accept consensus. The end point of this madness is Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/NPOV/Taiwan vs. ROC and [], a breathtaking 35 separate votes on this issue. Previous discussions of the matter can be found at   and probably some other places that I can find once my head has cleared from trying to wrap my head around this.

Let me make clear some things that this is not a request about. This is not a request to arbitrate the naming conventions. It is not a request for a ban. It is a request for some form of injunction that would stop the edit war and disruption associated with Instantnood's advocacy for the renaming of many articles.

A final plea: The last RFAr request against Instantnood became an utter circus. If you have other aspects of the request that you feel need to be added, PLEASE send them to User talk:Snowspinner and I'll get them in. I'm nice that way. :) Snowspinner 19:06, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Wgfinley and Wally on behalf of Instantnood
Wgfinley and Wally will both be serving as advocates on behalf of disputant Instantnood and file this response as such.

While we concur that arbitration is likely the best forum for this dispute we do not agree to limit the scope of the case. Instantnood (and his supporters) has (have) been engaged in a project to bring articles, categories, and lists into compliance with the NPOV China Naming conventions, as well as the acknowledged 'real-world' system of categorization (which, likewise, is designed to avoid the pitfalls of the China political and legal disputes). Instantnood has simply sought to bring many items into compliance with that policy by use of the votes cited in Jguk's filing; this was specifically designed to be on a case-by-case basis, as cursory reading of the poll results show.

Jguk and his supporters have been unsuccessful in modifying the NPOV China Naming convention and are systematically opposing Instantnood's changes to bring compliance had had the effect of undermining the convention.          Jguk's position, and that of his supporters, is based on the Common Names Naming convention.

This matter goes straight to the heart of two Wikipedia policies that are in direct conflict with each other. We are of the belief, based on Jimmy Wales' position that NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable", that the NPOV China Naming convention should trump the Common Names Naming convention and therefore Instantnood's proposed changes should go forward.

Therefore, we welcome arbitration of this case as we believe some direction from the arbcom is needed in such a matter. This case is not about a user being disruptive, taking actions that are not supported by Wikipedia policy, content or previous discussion -- the opposite is true. This case is about major policies, such as the NPOV policy, not being enforced and becoming victims of other minor polling policy based actions (VfD, CfD, RfC, etc). The result is a debate strewn across many articles, categories and topics as opposed to centered on the matter at hand, the NPOV China Naming convention. This convention has been disputed, debated, and (for the moment) is settled -- that carefully crafted policy should not be undermined by carrying the debate to individual items.

Members wishing to enjoin with Instantnood in this case are encouraged to contact his advocates, Wgfinley or Wally so that we can best present the evidence and argument. --Wgfinley 05:05, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing SchmuckyTheCat's request (4/0/0/1)

 * Please provide direct evidence (i.e. diff links) of your claims. Ambi 11:13, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a case to take, but please provide diffs to support the claims - David Gerard 13:48, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC) Accept. David Gerard 18:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC) - Merge to above case on the same topic - David Gerard 20:58, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * /Instantnood/Evidence was created with the filing.
 * Abstain pending response to allegations that this is a content dispute. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 04:45, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC) Continued abstain; I attribute the general apathy of arbitrators in this vote to being excessively verbose in statement. If you can possibly be more concise in your statements please do. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:37, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC) Accept and merge with the other case. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:49, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
 * Accept, based on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/NPOV/China or PRC vs. mainland China Fred Bauder 19:21, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Accept &#10149;the Epopt 17:03, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing jguk's request (4/0/0/0)

 * Accept and merge, based on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/NPOV/China or PRC vs. mainland China Fred Bauder 19:22, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Accept. Merge the other case into this one (not the other way around). It was those thirty-five simultaneous polls that convinced me - David Gerard 20:58, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * By the way, it's not the content issue I'm concerned about. Check Principle 7 in /WHEELER/Proposed decision. - David Gerard 15:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Accept and merge with the other case. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:49, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
 * Accept and merge one way or the other &#10149;the Epopt 16:41, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Temporary injunction (none)
=Final decision =
 * Dispute ended without need for intervention. No action taken.