Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Kenneth Alan/Evidence

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Evidence from Hephaestos:
Previous discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Kenneth_Alan -Hephaestos|&#167; 22:09, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Evidence from Fedor:
I encountered Kenneth Allan on the rare occasions that I edit english wikipedia pages, as most of my time is spend on the Danish wikipedia. In the article on Vikings I noticed a bizarre etymological explanation for 'Viking' that I just knew was wrong based on a brief consultation of a Danish dictionary. I immediately raised the issue on the talk page and Kenneth's initial reply was fairly civilized yet somewhat patronizing, as he declared to be an expert on these issues. When I refused to accept his self-proclaimed 'expertise' in reference to commonly accepted expert knowledge he turned to enraged, personal attacks and increasing abusiveness with each reply. All this is documented on Talk:Viking/archive.

An excerpt: ''Bah, just listen to yourself 'Mr. Big Boss Man, gotta take control of what thoughts people are limited to'. Nice job, tattle-tale. I'm sure you loooove sucking up to sysops for favors. Not everybody loves a hardass like you. [...] You are obviously too limited minded to contribute anything of meaning here at Wikipedia. If John Geoghan was still alive, I bet you'd be his choir boy, and go pour over his dogmatic entrapment so you could impress him with all that you know about the Bible, and you'd end up like Matthew Shepard.''

I contacted an administrator (Nohat) to help resolve the issue and he added some commments underlining that Wikipedia does not accept original theories and that Kenneth Allan should provide evidence that his theories are widely accepted. Shortly hereafter he, Nohat, archived the Viking:Talk discussions.

I then discovered that Kenneth Allan had been bullying other users as well and I contributed to the request for comments page. To all of our frustration Kenneth Allan try to supress the evidence against him by removing all his previous comments from discussion pages. What's worse, he has recently been trying to remove the contents of his request for comments page, which repeatedly had to be reverted by others, as clearly can be seen here: In my view, Kenneth Allan is a typical crackpot. He apparantly considers himself a total genius and expert all matters that interest him. He has a wide range of bizarre, pseudoscientific theories that he wishes to push through on wikipedia at the cost of sensible, commonly accepted theories. Now all this would not matter if he would not become so extremely abusive and potentially scare off any valuable contributors. This way Kenneth Allan is clearly damaging the wikipedia project.

Evidence from Mintguy:
A large amount of evidence can be found on Requests for comment/Kenneth Alan, but here is my personal experiences of contact with Kenneth Alan.

Kenneth Alan's main interest appears to be in matters connected to the Vikings and Scandinavian issues and many of Kenneth Alan's edits are in subjects relating to them. I have little ability to judge the accuracy of many of these edits but Kenneth Alan frequently edits other articles and inserts "information" that is of "questionable validity". A number of users including myself have found ourselves having to revert these additions and modifications. IIRC I first encountered problems with Kenneth Alan in the Nobility article in April of this year. The evidence is still in the talk page at Talk:Nobility. The following two comments by other users were added after Kenneth Alan had edited the article.


 * This business of suggesting comparisons between feudal nobility and the United States is beyond ludicrous, it offends me both as an American and as a historian. America does not have a tiered system. I suppose it can look that way, but to suggest a feudal organization belies a great ignorance. User:Mackensen 14:50, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * This material is total nonsense. Gentry is part of the lower class? By any reasonable standard, all of these as low as Gentry are part of the upper class. And the definition of gentry and yeomanry is totally bogus and anachronistic. This is like a role-playing game definition of social classes. john 17:33, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC) 

Among a whole host of bizarre and ludicrous assertions made by Kenneth Alan the highlight, in my opinion, was his description of a Grand Duke:


 * Grand Duke, ruling a grand duchy, akin to U.S. military commanders ruling military installations and vehicles overseas and in foreign, friendly or hostile territory, especially in times of war when martial law is proclaimed and/or invasion of another state results in toppling the native regime. It can also result from Nuclear-Biological-Chemical violence in war.

My attempts to redress the article to its former more sensible state, met with abuse from Kenneth Alan. At this point I discovered that Kenneth Alan had already been the upsetting other users and had been reported on the Vandalism in progress page and that User:Decumanus had created Requests for comment/Kenneth Alan.

Kenneth Alan disappeared for a while shortly after this. I believe he resurfaced in May. I came into conflict with him again on the Richard Amerike page. Kenneth Alan had made the following edit.


 * Ap Meryk means, "son of of the seaman", ap obviously the Welsh style of patrynomic and Meryk related to the words "maritime" and "marine", certainly within Richard's profession

Ap Meryk is actually Welsh for "Son of Meryk" and Meryk is a variation on Maurice or Morris. Maurice derives the same root as "Moorish" and means dark skinned. So I reverted this edit.

Recently Kenneth Alan surfaced once more. I found that he had made a number of questionable edits, such as the following addition to Forest of Bowland.


 * It has been speculated that Robin Hood may have visited here as one of his stomping grounds.

Robin Hood is an apocryphal/legendary figure, I viewed that the above addition suggested that he was a real figure and so I reverted it. I viewed several other questionable edits by him. Among them I discovered that Kenneth Alan had been trying to remove references to James I of England's homosexuality. See Talk:James I of England. I found that he had edited the following pages in the attempt.
 * Francis Stewart Hepburn, 1st Earl of Bothwell (User:Mackensen reverted his edits here)
 * George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (I reverted his edits here)
 * Anne of Denmark (I reverted his edits here)

In a similar vein Mackensen reverted edits by Kenneth Alan relating to the alleged homosexuality of Richard I of England.

Frustration got the better of me at this point. I ended up in a revert war with Kenneth Alan. Which I ended with what may have been abuse of my admin powers. I blocked him for 24 hours. At this point I left a message on User talk:Maveric149 asking what should be done about the situation as the RFC page didn't seem to be going anywhere. I have not been through this arbitration procedure before and was ignorant of the process.

Kenneth Alan came back after the 24 hours and in response to a message he left on my talk page I left the following on his talk page. I will publicly state that I regret this message. It was left in frustration and I probably over-stepped the mark. I said:


 * I will continue to revert everything you contribute, for reasons which do not need to be explained. If you revert any article more than three times, like you did on Friday. I will impose a block on you again, because this is the correct procedure. Mintguy (T) 16:44, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Kenneth Alan then left the following message for me on his talk page:


 * I have worked on increasing quality and depth to articles of my particular interest. I do not agree with your specific standards. I do not agree with your lack of reasons. I will fight you every step of the way. Who gives a fuck whether you have certain privileges to abuse or not? FUCK YOU AND YOUR MOTHER TOO! There, ya see, you turned me into a Michael!

I then blocked him for 48 hours. I have to admit that I do not know whether I actually have the right to do this. I have never felt it necessary to use this power with any other user. If I have over-stepped the mark then I apologise.


 * (I've since been reminded that I blocked another user for 10 minutes)

After I received a response from Maveric149 I discovered that the correct course of action was for me to call for arbitration.

Since starting this process I have received a personal email from another user who wished to remain out of the spotlight but who asked me to revert another page that had been edited by Kenneth Alan, which I have done.

This is where we now stand.

Evidence from Decumanus
From my observations, the theme of Kenneth's edits in Wikipedia center on asserting the following thesis: "the cultural and religious divisions among Germanic tribes in northern Europe that existed in the time of the Roman Empire are a primary, and perhaps the principal, determing factor in the cultural and historical patterns not just of England in the subsequent centuries (up through the Norman Conquest, for example) but also through the Age of Discovery and the settlement of the New World. In particular, the cultural differences among tribes of the Scandanavian peninsula and present-day Germany are reflected, and are perhaps the critical determining factor, in the cultural differences of present-day regions of the United States. This includes the cultural differences of the American Civil War."

Thus recent U.S. history must be interpreted, in his view, as a continuation of the themes of the wars and explorations the late Roman Empire and Viking Era (5th through the 9th centuries).

His support of this thesis usually relies on a oversimiplication of facts, in my opinion. That is, the facts themselves are often not incorrect, but his interpretation of their significance is often viewed as dubious as by other editors. His most controversial contributions seem to involve his assertion of unorthodox etymology of words having to do with place names in Scandanavia, Great Britain, and the northeastern United States, as well as cultural terms having to do with the era of Norse expansion.

The fact that this thesis is far outside of accepted historical scholarship is not of concern to him. In fact, he has stated his belief that his view of history is one that has been supressed. Furthermore--and this is the key here--he believes that Wikipedia is a forum in which creative interpretations of history should be allowed and encouraged. This last fact is probably, in my view, what keeps getting him into trouble. Namely, he makes edits that cause others to say "WtF?" Sometimes it goes nicely, sometimes not. The edit wars in which he finds hiself always, as far as I know, consist of other editor's insistence on the removal of material he has contributed, never vice versa.

Likewise he seems not to be concerned that this etymological assertions are not backed up by accepted scholarship. Rather, he seems to view himself as an authority on par with standard sources. This seems to have been particular frustrating to other contributors who maintain the view that Wikipedia should mirror standard accepted scholarship.

The emotional situation of his edits is probably exacerbated by his personal conviction of being a modern-day heir or descendant of Vikings. Thus the assertion of this history is for him a personal crusade.

In my experience, he is not fixated on one particular version of this theis, only its overall theme. When rebuffed in one particular line of historical reasoning or etymology, he retools with a new version, often elaborated on his his user page.

Ironically, I do not see him much as a danger to Wikipedia at this point. There is such a critical mass of editors who are familiar with him now and now how he works that he has little chance of pushing his agenda. What often happens, however, is that some hapless editor who does not know who he is crosses his path, engages him in earnest discussion unaware of his background, and comes away frustrated. This is the perhaps the danger of tolerating him--that he will drive otherwise good and earnest contributors from Wikipedia out of frustration of having to deal with him. This will hardly be the last time we have such a page about him, or have this discussion. User:Mintguy was simply the latest of many who have encountered him. As I said, the danger is that by letting him stay, we will lose other good editors. -- Decumanus 04:35, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Evidence from Mats Halldin
I'm a sysop on the Swedish Wikipedia and I've had a few encounters with Kenneth Alan. He don't speak Swedish very well wich considerably diminshed the extent of his vandalism there. However, he's been around on the Swedish Wikipedia as well. As I assume that you don't speak Swedish I won't list his contributions there on this page. Instead I'll limit myself by quoting a few of the emails he's been sending me:
 * 1) You are a piece of fucking shit! You are the stain your mother left on the hospital bed after they removed her tumor!
 * 2) Go get hit by a parked car! Get raped by a jackalope!  Suck your Dad's cock you fag!  Slice your own throat and bleed on your dinner!
 * 3) I hope you get hacked to pieces by a haymaker! I hope an elephant stomps your ass!  I hope you get shoved in a coffin and dumped in a furnace still alive and screaming!  I hope your entire family gets wiped out in a "scorched earth" policy!

Kenneth Alan is nothing but a troll! Basically all his contributions on the Swedish Wikipedia have been reverted or erased. Please bann him on the spot and permanently!

I hope you forgive me my shortcomings in English (what is a "jackalope" anyway) :). Please contact me on my Swedish talk page.

/ Mats 23:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)