Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/List of Republics/Evidence

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WHEELER believes that Real Men aren't Civil
Quotes from Talk:Republic 00:44, 20 June 2007:
 * In Doric Greek society, cowards are put up on display and ridiculed. On a football team---If you can't hack it, you are riduculed. On the farm---If you can't pull your weight, you are riduculed. If you are in the Militaryand you act like a coward, can't pull your weight, or you are an idiot as a leader, you are riduculed.
 * If you are a effeminate, you are riduculed. [Links to an article WHEELER wrote]
 * All those fields, Farm, football field, military, so on and so forth are all places of MEN. In manly society, ridicule is a proper way of correcting bad behavior and wrong behavior. This is how Manly society corrects its members and stresses Manliness.
 * But I digress, All those places are places of MEN. Academia has taken on the mentality and characteristics of feminity---"All play nice now". Our society is growing increasingly feminine and men are increasingly effeminate.

WHEELER does not feel bound by our effeminate civility standards. Merely censuring him is unlikely to have any effect, unless perhaps he agrees to abide by them. (Which is unlikely; he has not edited for six days, he's gone back to Wikinfo.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Nema: this isn't an accusation; I would still be equally content with leaving WHEELER alone, and accepting his recursion in another few months as being as inevitable as the weather. But if ArbCom is to affect the situation, they must, I argue, use their teeth. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Personal attack
Talk:Res publica: 8 July 02:01 WHEELER wrote:
 * And you are smoking what kind of drug? They call me a lunatic but you need to check yourself in my friend. What me edit?[....] This shoots your Republic, your Roman Republic, your Classical republic, your res publica, your politiea, your Republicanism, your Classical republicanism, your List of republics all to hell. I don't think I you want that incriminating evidence, that logic, to enter in. Your as foolish and lunatic as I am.

He writes as though responding to a similar attack, but in fact he is replying to Nema's post: 23;04 2 July:
 * The article on De re publica currently only gives the form in which the text is transmitted and presented. I see no reason why a summary of its content shouldn't be included: feel very free to include the word 'mixed' in any summary you care to write. --Nema Fakei 23:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

and no one had, as far as I can tell, called him a lunatic. The only such suggestion I can find is a similar outburst by WHEELER himself on Requests for arbitration/WHEELER/Evidence. 17:58 19 March 2005 Nema and I (and others) disagree with him on content; but that's another matter.
 * Nema did make an accidental reversion with this post; she fixed it 22 minutes later. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Quoting out of context
WHEELER's position appears to be
 * That a republic, res publica, and politeia are all the same thing. [passim; otherwise his citations of Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero are irrelevant]
 * That Sparta is a republic. Talk:List of republics 21:32 17 June 2007 and elsewhere.
 * That a democracy cannot be a republic.Talk:Classical definition of Republic 01;17 17 July
 * That the United States, not having distinctions of rank, cannot be a republic; and it has not been even a pseudorepublic since the Senate was directly elected. 01:55 18 June 2007

To support the first assertion, he cites Paul A. Rahe. Republics ancient and modern p. 184 (I cite the one-volume edition; WHEELER uses the three vol. edition from the same publisher in the same year. I, 169)'

But he omits that to get to that claim, Rahe says also that "Sparta is at the same time a closed society and a participatory democracy" (p.19) and that that no Greek city was a state, separate from society. (p.30) This is not the same position; when one has called Sparta an anarchodemocracy, calling her a republic is easy.

A claim which is supported by one modern source, which is being cited for a position with which the author clearly disagrees, comes under the "vanishing minority" section of WP:UNDUE. and I believe Nema, Simon P, and I have been acting in accordance with that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Pmanderson and WHEELER's edits
Since WHEELER has returned, I have noticed when he showed up on my watchlist; most of these articles have been there since I went through them two years ago. I have also looked at his list of edits, to see what I might have to reply to. When I saw he had created a new article, res divina; I looked at  it. It was a dictionary definition edit; it still is. I prodded it. I do not think this is stalking, but I will adjust if told otherwise. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

OED definition
WHEELER insists on the usage of "republic" he finds in Renaissance sources, where it represents res publica or politeia (or, as with Machiavelli, a foreign word which itself is equivalent to them). This the OED classifies in their def. 1:

Please note that this is marked as obsolere, and last cited from 1684.( abridges citations up to 1976) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Nema Fakei
I do not wish to make every piece of evidence I submit part of an accusation, I think that's unhelpful to the quest for a friendly atmosphere. If I believe there are findings of fact the ArbCom needs to make, I shall propose them as such. The evidence I submit here includes any and all edits I feel the ArbCom should be particularly aware of, so they can draw their own conclusions if they so wish. I may also add my own impressions of fact here even if I do not ask the ArbCom to make such findings. Contextual evidence which I feel may be of use to the ArbCom I shall place here (Added: 16:47, 29 July 2007).


 * Note: I have tagged some statements with fact tags. Where I do this, I mostly have specific diffs in mind, I just haven't had chance to find them yet. Ignore fact-tagged statements until I can cite them in case I've misremembered.

Nema Fakei's attitude on talk pages
I am prepared to apologise if I have come across as condescending or stubborn  on occasion. My intention has not been to insult or incite, but to improve WP, and I try to include constructive suggestions whenever I make criticisms of other users' approach/edits . In the same vein, I welcome criticism from the Arbitration Committee, as I don't want to have to bother you again.

Nema Fakei and attempts to mentor/mediate
It may have been a poor judgement on my behalf to try to advise WHEELER given that his viewpoints and mine are liable to clash considerably. I try to assume that everyone is approaching the truth from a different angle, and that building up from common ground is more productive than fighting over differences. I initially hoped he might be willing to consider friendly advice from a classicist, having read that this was one of the problems he had with WP (this section has since been removed  - hopefully, this is WHEELER realising that the WP policy of encouraging all interested contributors to have their say is a good thing, rather than realising that it questions his own credibility). At one point, he seemed to take my advice well, but this did not persist.

Nema Fakei and possible goading
WHEELER cites the diff I highlighted in my initial statement requesting Arbitration as an example of a hidden goad, namely in the passage: "Please try to understand that the sorts of changes you're asking for are very much disconnected from the point and context of the sources you're quoting ." (WHEELER's emphasis). ArbCom can draw their own conclusions, that's why I included the diff. But I did indeed write this knowing that he had submitted his own article to a (new and not particularly picky) online journal on Sparta. However the sources I was talking about in this instance did not include his article - if you continue reading the diff, you'll see I'm referring mainly to his use of Michael Crawford's book. I then made a general point "The vast majority of the quotations you regularly adduce are similarly taken out of context" - I took care not to say "All", as I know there is at least one source he has read correctly, namely his own writing. (As an aside, I'm quite amused that he should complain about me for pointing out his out-of-context use of sources... by taking my criticism out of context!)

PMAnderson's attitude towatds WHEELER
Although a number of accusations levelled against PMAnderson are demonstrably false from diffs I presented to WHEELER here after a complaint on his own talk page, while composing this, I set out to find evidence for my draft statement "PMAnderson does not seem to me to be stalking WHEELER [...] I suspect he merely has a great many articles on his watchlist", and found the following (I give the first edit of the second editor and the last edit of the first editor before the first edit of the second editor; entries sorted by date of PMAnderson's edit):
 * Res publica: PMAnderson on 28 June 2007 followed WHEELER's prod on 26 June 2007,
 * Res divina: PMAnderson's prod on 25 June 2007 immediately followed WHEELER on 25 June 2007. Article created by WHEELER on 25 June 2007
 * List of republics: PMAnderson on 15 December 2006 followed and partially reverted WHEELER on 12 December 2006
 * Roman Republic: PMAnderson on 27 April 2006 followed by a long way WHEELER on 16 February 2005
 * Classical republic: PMAnderson on 25 July 2005 preceded by a long way WHEELER on 14 July 2007
 * Politeia: PMAnderson on 17 May 2005 followed WHEELER on 7 April 2005; edits seem unrelated to me.
 * Republic: PMAnderson on 5 May 2005 followed WHEELER on 22 April 2004 (but note PMA's edit had nothing to do with and was much later than WHEELER's)

Despite the fact that (contrary to my recollection at the time of writing the draft) WHEELER's edits tend to precede PMAnderson's, given the contexts of most I don't think this is actually stalking - though ArbCom may find otherwise - but I do feel it would be dishonest not to give the results of my line of enquiry, which on first appearances would seem to indicate stalking.

I am, however, concerned PMAnderson may be dismissing WHEELER's contributions prejudicially, rather than on their own merits, based on this comment on my talk page.

WHEELER and use of source material
I find WHEELER's use of sources incautious at best. While his enthusiasm to provide references is commendable, the addition of material to Wikipedia with attributions that do not support the text constitutes a disruption that is considerably more difficult to root out than that of many vandals. His unreliability as a referencer may well be innocent, but it is still a weakness that needs to be accounted for, in the same way as an editor unable to spell or punctuate ought to avoid 'correcting' spelling and grammar.
 * WHEELER frequently quotes works written in Latin or Greek, despite admitting no knowledge of the former ; that he relies heavily on translations from both has led to severe misunderstandings (as was pointed out here and here).
 * WHEELER is also liable to misinterpret authors writing in English in a way which happens to suit his POV.
 * WHEELER's misinterpretation of sources is played out on WP itself ; I also give an example in "#Nema Fakei and possible goading"

WHEELER's talk page habits
I would also like to take this opportunity to bring up a number of WHEELER's talk page habits: Although I hope WHEELER will take note of these problems as I point them out and ArbCom remedies will not be needed, I notice that he has continued pretty much unabated despite previous warnings from ArbCom on some of these issues never mind anyone else, so am very concerned by his intractability.
 * Crossposting   where links/diffs are more than enough
 * Quotation overkill (also posted  here, here, here) (granted, I understand his reasoning in this case, though he did not clear it up when corrected )
 * Excessive use of bold text, exclamation marks, underlines, and caps
 * Aribitrary use of section headers  which (whatever their true intention) seem to have the convenient effect of him ignoring (and so cutting off) prior and relevant discussion.
 * Complaints of the number of days that content with which he disgrees ("childish explosion of User:Pmanderson") has remained , which have a similar effect to the above and also create a bitter atmosphere.

WHEELER and the Assumption of Good Faith
I think this deserves its own section.
 * Accusations of lying
 * Refusal to contribute based on perceived trap(?) (edit summary), bizarre accusations of insidious tactics,.
 * Reference to a cabal or clique of socialist teachers and Marxists with whom no upstanding Monarchist can have consensus who run WP and permit but one POV! - while criticism of WP should not be held against WHEELER, I fear WHEELER's view of those who disagree with him as conspirators may render him incapable of engaging constructively with them.

Some curious anon editors
Shortly after the RFAR was filed, a number of anonymous comments were posted to Talk:List of republics. I have since decided to query them on WHOIS to try to work out which is which. A number of things struck me about these edits at the time, particularly: I did not want to denounce them as meatpuppets, for fear of biting newcomers, and indeed I do not wish make such an assertion now, for lack of direct evidence. However, I believe the edits are strange enough to warrant inspection by ArbCom.
 * Telewest IP from UK,
 * IP from Greece,
 * Avatar IP from UK,
 * IP from Greece.
 * The time of their appearance.
 * The lack of any similar recent edits. (In retrospect, I notice on 23 June 2007, IP from New York, which seems to be a separate person)
 * Their apparent strong sympathy for WHEELER
 * The claim that an editor (presumably WHEELER) may be banned, which suggests knowledge of the RFAR as well as the possible outcomes.

None of the following wikipedia policies are being followed
Wikipedia polices are not being followed in regard to all the articles that relate to republic.
 * " The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth," in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one. "
 * Read the talk pages. Only the POPULAR opinion is presented. Only ONE view is allowed; the British Republican viewpoint!
 * Here is the evidence: "We are not here to recover Forgotten Truths; we are here to express the illusions which presently possess mankind. Hire a blog.: Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:53, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * " Improve pages wherever you can, and don't worry about leaving them imperfect. Avoid making large deletions without discussing on the talk page first. "
 * No, I am told to make edits elsewhere in the Classical section and "forget" "esoteric" political definitions.
 * "Even if you can't win the big battles on esoteric political categorisation, fleshing out the more concrete details of the ancient world might at least do them some service." -Nema Fakei 02:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * " Wikipedia does not judge or advocate specific views. Rather, it judges the value to users of neutrally representing different views. "
 * Wikipedia states that it is NOT its position to JUDGE OR ADVOCATE specific views! The ONLY view that User:Pmanderson, User:SimonP, and User:Nema Fakei allow is the popular view.  This is NOT Wikipedia policy.  There is no room to be made for my factual evidence. The idea that "consensus" trumps NPOV. These people ARE advocating ONE specific viewpoint.  They will NOT allow either the word "republic" appear on the Mixed Government page NOR allow the word "mixed government" appear on the "Classical page".  NOR allow Classical republics to appear on the "List of republics".
 * " We cannot check the accuracy of claims, but we can check whether the claims have been published by a reputable publication. Articles should therefore cite sources whenever possible. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed. "
 * I cite sources, all my sources are disallowed. Check talk pages. Look at the talk pages and you will see that information on the talk pages are NOT allowed or are in the article itself.  I have multiple sources that agree with each other and they are NOT allowed.  Only One viewpoint. I cite Wikipedia itself and it gets reverted.
 * As to a particular user following me around and deleting or always editing after I edit check out the History page of Thomas Smith (diplomat). I read his bloody book, added a large paragraph and it was slimmed down to nothing!
 * ALL your articles dealing with "republic" are seriously compromised, shoddy, and missing tons of information. Why?  I read Cicero's De re publica, all he talks about is Mixed government and that mixed government is the Fourth type of government and that is all missing from the article! Cicero mentions kings and their positions in a republic repeatedly. And you mean to tell me that people that have written about Republics know nothing about a book written about Republics by a Roman political scientist! But I am NOT allowed to say that Mixed governments are Classical republics!

Remedy--How about someone enforcing Wikipedia policy around here and truly allow for NPOV!

WHEELER needs a break

 * He is very frustrated, feels that he has better things to do in life than edit Wikipedia, yet also feels compelled to edit here, as if out of duty.
 * He is very angry.

WHEELER does (did?) not understand the process of reaching consensus

 * This might not be the case any longer, but it was at the time of my interaction with WHEELER.

WHEELER can be civil, but only with a very measured approach from all other editors around

 * I split of a fresh section at the article talk page to try to separate new discussion from previous discussion that was full of criticism of process and not about content.
 * WHEELER replied with a very acceptable post . (He did add a strange addendum after the fact, though: . These little "extras" litter WHEELER's comments and make him difficult to work with. Other editors are drawn to comment on the "extras" and seem to draw opinions on the entire argument based on these extras. They distract from the discussion on content. I don't know a good word to describe them, but they can be found throughout WHEELER's talk page behaviour.)
 * These were followed by a replies by Pmanderson and SimonP  that wrote off the profit of discussion with WHEELER and characterizing WHEELER as a source abuser.
 * Those two responses were enough to distract WHEELER back to underlining, long paragraphs , and returning to anger, exclamations, and characterization of the other editors.
 * From this point forward, the discussion degraded.

WHEELER is hard to work with

 * Use of caps and unnecessary repetition as emphasis. ,
 * I think WHEELER's "extras" in talk page comments are behaviour that is at heart of the problem. WHEELER either finds it extremely difficult, or just chooses not to, keep comments focussed on content and focussed on a single topic at a time. He either adds extras, like at here, or begins long criticisms of Wikipedia and other editors, like at . If WHEELER could just keep comments short, focussed on a single problem at a time (the wording of one sentence, the appropriateness of a single source) and only on content, he would be much easier to work with. I have no evidence for this last prediction, it's just what I feel.

Evidence presented by uninvolved User:Semperf
Given that the case will turn at least partially on the issue of WP:NOR, admins might find the following useful.

Assertion 1: the Latin term res publica has a range of meanings
The Oxford Latin Dictionary gives the following definitions of res publica (pp. 1635-6):

Assertion 2: the Greek term πολιτεία has a slightly different range of meanings
Liddel-Scott-Jones, Greek-English Lexicon (which is the authoritative Greek dictionary) gives this definition of πολιτεία (p. 1434):

Assertion 3: the term republic in English
The Oxford English dictionary offers several meanings for "republic", but especially notable is this:

Evidence presented by {your user name}
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