Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jacrosse/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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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.

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Jacrosse has a consistent pattern of making controversial and/or disputed edits without engaging in discussion
Jacrosse seems to have repeated the pattern of reversion without discussion everywhere he has contributed in Wikipedia. Others have testified to this. Please see, , , , , , ,.

Jacrosse edit-warred and did not engage in discussion at the Animal House and toga party articles
I first encountered Jacrosse at Animal House, where he kept entering a completely irrelevant second-hand rumor about Straussians that he presented (contrary to the source he was citing&mdash;see this) as fact. He did so almost always without edit summaries. See these diffs, which are only a very few of Jacrosse's reversions (which total 39 between Nov. 28, 2005 and Jan. 31, 2006):, , , , , ,. See the article's history for the full edit war. When he did include edit summaries, the edit summaries were confrontational and contained personal attacks:,. He refused to discuss his edits on the talk page, despite attempts by editors to engage him in discussion:, ,. When he finally stopped edit-warring, he said he had "surrendered," thus showing a lack of understanding of what the Wikipedia project is about:. When I responded good-naturedly (see ), he replied in a hostile and condescending manner (see ).

Apparently while this was going on at the Animal House article, Jacrosse was adding this rumor about the Straussians, which he again presented as fact, to the toga party article, an article to which it had no relevance at all. See these diffs on the talk page, which testify to other editors' repeated good-faith attempts to discuss Jacrosse's addition and reversions:, , , , , ,. Finally, there was an attempt at mediation:, , , , , , , which failed because of Jacrosse's refusal to participate:. Jacrosse's only contributions to the discussion&mdash;contributions, I should emphasize, that only occurred pre-mediation&mdash;were these:, , and (note the tone in these two) and.

He did much the same thing at Neoconservatism
At Neoconservatism, Jacrosse continues to revert without discussion. He has reverted the article at least 68 times between Dec. 19, 2005 and Mar. 31, 2006, almost all times without including an edit summary. See. Before my arrival at the article, Jacrosse had gotten into a fight with a user named Cberlet, and had engaged in an edit war with him and a disagreement filled with unproductive personal attacks. See, , , , , , , , , and especially this:. (Cberlet, it must be admitted, was guilty of one personal attack. See .)

What I personally witnessed, however, was a refusal to discuss his edits to a section about the left-wing origins of Neoconservatism (edits that were quite tendentious, included unattributed opinions, and sometimes removed sourced information or dispute flags&mdash;e.g., ; ; ) and a concurrent refusal not to keep removing dispute flags from the article. Instead of citing diffs, I think it more illustrative to cite to sections of the talk page, so one can more easily see Jacrosse's refusal to engage in substantive discussion. See this section, about the dispute flag. See also here, here, and here.

He also seems not to understand the "no personal attacks" policy.

Other (continued violations; Harry Elmer Barnes; Anne Norton; etc.)
I should also like to point out that Jacrosse's behavior continues unabated, both at Neoconservatism and elsewhere, even after the opening of this arbitration case. Please see, , , and. (I am not the only person to have noticed this. See .)

This talk page at Harry Elmer Barnes is also instructive. In particular, see this personal attack; and compare this request for mediation and discussion with the subsequent history of the page, which has Jacrosse repeatedly reverting without discussion or even the courtesy of an edit summary.

See also this exchange at Talk:Anne Norton, which shows Jacrosse's frustrating refusal to discuss his edits:,. The same sort of refusal is evidenced by these further diffs to the article, which show a low-level edit war:, , , , ,. Yet further evidence of Jacrosse's avoidance of discussion is my comment on the article's talk page.

Jacrosse, without explanation, deleted large sections of the Alger Hiss article. See, which was immediately reverted.

At Murray Rothbard, he removed a paragraph that cited to a critical report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, saying he thought the source was "simply not credible." See. This edit was reverted with the mild admonition that Jacrosse "refute, but don't remove, criticism." Jacrosse then almost immediately reverted back, including a vehement edit summary. This was again reverted, and Jacrosse, instead of engaging in substantive discussion, again reverted back, saying the criticism "just totally clashes with the tone of the rest of the article."

Based on the evidence I have presented, the policies and guidelines that Jacrosse has disregarded or broken include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following: talking to other editors in order to resolve disputes; resolving disputes through mediation; consensus building; assuming good faith; no personal attacks; NPOV.

Others know more about Jacrosse's original research than I do, so I shall leave that topic to them.

Evidence presented by Thames
Jacrosse has been frustrating from day one. Despite appeals to civility, Wikipedia policy, and common sense, Jacrosse has engaged in naked revert warring, with nearly complete disregard for talk page consensus and the concerns of fellow editors. My experience is principally with the Neoconservatism article, which is what I will now address.

Jacrosse began with a large number of edits, adding a significant piece of quoted text to Neoconservatism. I reverted part of this change (preserving changes to categories) explaining that it was inappropriate to excerpt so much text. Without edit summary or talk page explanation, Jacrosse re-inserted the large block of text.

The revert war would go on for nearly a month. My basis for reverting Jacrosse's four-paragraph insertions was Copyrights and Fair use. Here are the diffs from that month:


 * I revert
 * He reverts and leaves a message on the talk page that doesn't address fair use concerns
 * Hippo43 reverts
 * Jacrosse reverts and leaves a talk message
 * TDC reverts
 * Jacrosse reverts
 * Hippo reverts
 * Jacrosse reverts w/o edit summary or talk page note
 * I revert jacrosse leaving talk page explanation of my concerns
 * jacross reverts back
 * I revert
 * jacrosse reverts with talk page note and my response
 * I revert
 * Jacrosse reverts
 * I roll back Jacrosse's revert and protected the page for 8 days.

I thought that by protecting the page, the discussion could actually carry on and a consensus could be achieved. Of course, I was wrong. Jacrosse made no attempt to engage other editors who had repeatedly asked him to come to the talk page. The 8 day cooling period had no effect.


 * Less than an hour after unprotected, Jacrosse reinserts the entire disputed text
 * I revert
 * jacrosse reverts
 * I revert
 * Jacrosse reverts
 * Cberlet tries a compromise edit
 * Jacrosse reverts, calling Cberlet a "stalinist"
 * Cberlet reverts and I blocked Jacrosse with an expiry time of 24 hours (Persistent insertion of copyvio material, see Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Fair_use_violation.3F)

Following the block, Jacrosse no longer persisted in reinserting the large blocks of text which constituted a fair use violation, and thus a legal liability to Wikipedia. He did, however, at this point engage in a viotriolic and uncivil dispute with Cberlet. Here are some choice diffs:    revert w/o edit summary and again and again and again and again and again amd again and again and again and again and again (this time with an ad hominem thrown in) again and again and again and again and again. It goes on.

Some more personal attacks:           this one is my favorite

The result of Jacrosse's involvement on the Neoconservatism page has been one continuous edit war between Jacrosse and all the other editors since 16 December 2005 to the present day--four months straight. Jacrosse has been extremely persistent and aggressive in pushing his POV into the article, despite the concerns of more than half a dozen other editors. Coupled with his total disregard for edit summaries (11% for major edits) and penchant for personal attacks despite repeated warnings, it is not a stretch to conclude that Jacrosse is a wholly dysfunctional editor.

In my experience, Jacrosse has violated 3 of the 4 Key Wikipedia policies: NPOV, Copyright, and Civility. Of the Simple rules, jacrosse has trampled: civility, NPOV, Verifiability, "take it to the talk page", respecting copyright, decent edit summaries, assume good faith, no personal attacks, be graceful, and no original research. &mdash;thames 01:43, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by DuncanBCS

 * I will be adding evidence concering Max Shachtman over the Easter weekend. Please accept apologies for my tardiness.--Duncan 11:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry for the delay. Things have been mad at work. I will do this this week, for certain. --Duncan 16:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

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

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