Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing 2/Evidence

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Previous disruption by Pigsonthewing
After being banned for a year by the committee, Pigsonthewing comes back and immediately walks straight into another revert war back in March: see. For this he is blocked yet again, after umpteen previous blocks.
 * 
 * 
 * 

More recent disruption by Pigsonthewing
Then we have a whopping great revert-war over his userpage, which starts with this version of his userpage. Discussion of this saga took place largely here: the result was PoTW being blocked for 24 hours, later extended to 72: see here.
 * See this discussion, in which the Committee was forced to clarify the details of his revert parole after yet more revert-warring. The renewed revert parole took the place of a ban from editing infoboxes: see here and here.
 * And more revert-warring.
 * Same again.
 * Offending content removed by one admin, swiftly reverted by PoTW
 * Same thing.
 * Content removed by another admin, swiftly reverted as vandalism.
 * And again, and again.
 * Content finally got rid of by another admin.
 * Bad-faith accusation immediately added (and it's still there).

Revert-warring, infoboxes

 * Revert-warring against consensus over the infoboxes
 * Same thing, following up


 * this,


 * this,


 * this,


 * and this.


 * At a new article


 * continues


 * And so on.

It's the other fellow's fault
Regrettably, a constant feature of PoTW's behaviour is accusing everyone who disagrees with him of policy/guideline violations, when they are usually guilty of no such thing, and/or he is in fact guilty himself.
 * See here
 * and here: accusation of dishonesty
 * Same thing again
 * Ditto
 * Perfect example
 * And this comment from Durin sums it all up
 * Accusation of censorship
 * This entire discussion: I ask for a second opinion on whether or not PoTW is canvassing, and am immediately accused of making personal attacks and failing to assume good faith: when told that he is obviously canvassing, he denies that he is, and those who tell him to calm himself are told that he is "perfectly calm", and that I am still in breach of No personal attacks and Assume good faith.

The infoboxes
Folantin has presented the evidence in this matter very nicely: but here are some general comments. First of all, it's worth noting that if there was no consensus to remove infoboxes on Composer and Opera articles, there would be infoboxes there now. There are, currently, very few. This rather obvious fact seems to have been ignored. Other ignored facts include that fact that infoboxes are not mandatory in any sense of the word, and that there's nothing wrong with editors who edit one subject matter deciding on matters of style within that subject matter (indeed, isn't that mostly what consensus is about?), especially when they are not substantially opposed by others.

Working constructively with Andy Mabbett is virtually impossible. This discussion shows just that. Mabbett fails to acknowledge that consensus is possible without his agreement. Consensus is purely defined in terms of a result acceptable to him: "Your - collective - refusal to discuss compromise or attempt to reach consensus is disappointing" illustrates this point: the idea that consensus may be opposed to his views has obviously not occurred. The "discuss compromise" bit is especially rich: as Folantin has shown below, at no stage did Mabbett attempt compromise of any sort, he merely shouted "no consensus", for weeks on end.

It's also worth noting that every single remedy that the Arbitration Committee has thus far applied to Mabbett has spectacularly failed to work, with the sole exception of revert parole: he has continued to disrupt despite a year-long ban, and the problems go back to 2005.

Andy Mabbett is a disruptive editor who tries to bulldoze other users into getting his way
Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) is a disruptive user who tries to bulldoze other editors into getting his way no matter what the cost. As his block log says: This user appears to be here to make nuclear war with contributers; not to write an encyclopedia. This is amply illustrated by his revert-warring over his user page, but since other editors have dealt with this here, I'll document another series of incidents in which he tried to keep a debate going for over two months, long after it had become futile, by insisting there could be "no consensus" until he got his way. (See especially, section on WP:CONSENSUS below).

The infobox war
This was a long, heated argument regarding whether biographical infoboxes should be used on the pages of classical composers. The main debate was centralised at the talk pages of Wikiproject:Opera and Wikiproject:Composers, beginning at the latter on April 11, 2007 (NB: Mabbett is not a member of either project). (Links to the whole discussion are listed here ). The majority consensus was that “bioboxes” should not be used for composers because their accuracy could not be guaranteed. But the fine details of these arguments are not really relevant here because, as far as I can see, Andy Mabbett never addressed them. Mabbett first turned up at the debate here (on April 12), asking a question about the use of microformats in infoboxes, which was answered by Antandrus. After this, I'm not sure Mabbett made any further coherent argument but he took an obsessive interest in the debate, insisting it could never be finished except in favour of using infoboxes, otherwise there was "no consensus" (his next edit on the composer page debate after Antandrus's reply was on April 27, claiming exactly this ). He never made any attempt to address the problems inherent in the composer bioboxes. As will be seen, he has little or no interest in classical music or opera, which might explain why he was reluctant to engage directly in the debate or try to fix the problems regarding accuracy in the infoboxes. His real interest is in a data-gathering device called "microformats" (he is founder and leader of Wikiproject Microformats), a new and controversial gadget which has led him into conflict on many other pages (e.g. ). These microformats are inserted in infoboxes. Here, Mabbett announces his plan to force everybody to use infoboxes with microformats in them, even though there is another data-gathering device (persondata) which does not need the boxes.

Mabbett made no further valid points as far as I can see but attempted to keep the argument going for over two months by the following means:

Point violation/harassing opponents
The bulk of the argument took place at WP:Composers, where there was a 15:5 consensus against using composer bioboxes on April 28 (see section on consensus below). On April 29, WP:Opera held a quick discussion in which 5:0 disagreed with the use of the boxes. On May 1, Mabbett makes his first ever appearance at WP:Opera, suddenly declaring all musical terms should be translated into English  I make an ironic suggestion saying that opéra comique should be translated as comic opera. Anyone who knows the subject, or bothers to read the Wikipedia article, is aware they are not the same thing but Mabbett takes it literally and puts "merge" tags on both articles  I try to explain to him  but Mabbett doesn’t even bother to read the article, immediately reinstates the tags and gets shouty. Finally, I have to leave a message on his talk page to ask him to stop. The incident proves Mabbett knows little or nothing about opera, which makes his interest in this area suspect. It also shows he was quite clearly bent on disrupting the encyclopaedia to make his point.

Mabbett banned from touching infoboxes
Mabbett seems to accept that a general consensus has been reached on the Project:Composers page not to have infoboxes but now changes his tune and engages in revert warring on various composer pages, claiming consensus must be reached on each individual page. On May 15, under the terms of his previous ArbCom, Thatcher131 bans him from making any infobox-related edits for a month. Mabbett reacts angrily, argues with Thatcher131 and ends up calling him a liar.

Canvassing
On May 20 Mabbett, now banned from dealing with infoboxes himself, attempts to reignite the debate by contacting only those users who showed some degree of sympathy for composer infoboxes and not contacting any opponents of them. He is reported to ANI for canvassing and warned to stop (ANI discussion here ).

Forum-shopping
Mabbett attempts to keep the debate going by posting a general notice at WP:PERSONDATA, describing those who don’t want infoboxes as a “cabal” .

The end?
On June 20 Centurion suggests we shelve the whole debate in case we end up at WP:LAME. Mabbett still protests (though nobody else does). The next day User:Kleinzach proposes a moratorium on discussion of the issue, which is posted on the front of the Opera Project. Mabbett protests (though nobody else does). Moreschi archives the debate because "productive discussion is now at an end". Mabbett immediately accuses him of "censorship", though everybody else has agreed to drop the matter and no new points have been raised for some time. The toing and froing ends when Mabbett is banned that day for the unrelated user page fracas.

(NB: The following notices at three WikiProjects reflect the consensus on the use of "bioboxes" on composer pages: WikiProject:Composers ; WikiProject:Opera ; Wikiproject:Biography .)

WP:OWN and WP:NPA
The above shows how Mabbett uses WP:CONSENSUS to mean "I don't agree with this result". He uses WP:NPA to remove any adverse criticism of him from debates  , which is extremely ironic in the light of his revert-warring to keep his personal attack on Leonig Mig on his user page. Another favourite policy abuse is WP:OWN, and he insists that anybody who challenges his way of editing a page is trying to "own" it. A glaring example of this occurred at Joseph Priestley, where Awadewit produced an amazing, well-researched, detailed article. Mabbett made a few formatting edits to the page. He added a banner indicating it was too long and later insisted it could only be split into subarticles in his way, otherwise Awadewit was trying to "own" it. The debate that followed is worth reading in full to get an idea of Mabbett's interactions with other editors, showing his rudeness, unhelpfulness, lack of clear argument and abuse of policies such as WP:OWN and WP:AGF. This shows in a nutshell just how frustrating and futile it is to try to engage with Andy Mabbett.

WP:CONSENSUS (the clincher)
Andy Mabbett has a completely inconsistent attitude towards consensus. He wanted a template on Nick Drake, so there was consensus, even though another user strongly disagreed: full discussion and here. Note Mabbett reimposing the template on the basis of a simple majority vote ("clearly, you are in the minority (2-1)") and  ("That would be the "circular argument" where you claimed we were a minority, despite outnumbering you 2:1?"). This took place in early April 2007; by the end of the month Mabbett's views on consensus were diametrically opposite. On April 28, Mak summed up the opinions on infoboxes at Project:Composers, noting it was 15:5 (or 13:2 if you use her adjustments) against their use on composer bios. Yet Mabbett immediately declared there was no consensus (see following discussion . Apparently 2:1 equals consensus but 3:1 doesn't. Odd. Virtually every comment Mabbett made to the infobox debate after that point (until June 21) hinged on there being "no consensus" . Mabbett offered no further intellectual arguments himself on the merits of infoboxes, he simply asserted there was no consensus- or claimed there must be a wider consensus involving other projects or a narrower consensus on each individual talk page - and tried to guarantee this via the canvassing, forum-shopping and harassment documented above. A (probably non-exhaustive) list of "no consensus" claims:, , , ,, , , , , , , ,  , June 16- final comment at Wikiproject:Composers, , , , , , , June 21 - Project Opera Yet more: , , , , ,

(Note, this isn't intended to raise the issue of the rights and wrongs of majority voting on Wikipedia - my objections to composer bioboxes were always based on policy in any case. It's intended to demonstrate how Mabbett interprets policy to mean whatever he feels like and how he completely changes his view of what constitutes "consensus" in order to get his way. The alternative to majority voting, i.e. discussion, wasn't an available option anyway, since Mabbett didn't offer any arguments to discuss).

Hypocrisy over user pages
In the light of his insistence on retaining inflammatory material on his own user page, it's worth noting that Andy Mabbett has twice complained to ANI this year about what he deems inappropriate or bad faith material on other editors' user pages and had it successfully removed by admins ( and ).

Andy is insistent on keeping inflammatory messages on his userpage
Initially, Andy placed this on his userpage. That is the diff of him reverting the first removal, long before I got involved. It was subsequently removed by Leonig Ming, who bore a similar message on his own page, and then Vox Humana 8' stepped in, removing the message from both Andy and Leonig's userpages, as well as contacting Andy. Andy did not respond, and simply reverted without explanation. This continued for a short while, but Andy refused to budge, never explaining his edits to Vox, even when Vox threatened to request protection of Andy's userpage. Vox did not request this, and instead contacted me- as became relevant later on a slightly different matter, we know one another off-Wiki, but not personally. Anyway, he contacted me, I looked into the matter and I removed the comment, thinking Andy would see sense if there were multiple other editors removing the comment. I also explained my position on his talk page, and he responded to this by simply dismissing it, refusing to accept that, regardless of whether he was linking to real diffs and making a fair assertion (I am not saying he was or he wasn't) that having the paragraph on his page was unacceptable. On his userpage, he continued to revert in the usual manner. We continued to discuss the matter, with Andy continuing to be dismissive, and an anonymous IP also got involved, whom Andy also reverted without explanation. This continued for a while, and got no where in particular, as I gave up when he started removing my comments. I ran out of reverts, and decided it would be best to call in more help. I asked on the admins IRC channel, and they said it would be best if I raised the issue on the noticeboard, which I did. Andy continued to be confrontational, arguing on the thread, and despite many others going against him- Newyorkbrad, Folantin, One Night In Hackney (who has since evoked the right to vanish because of an unrelated issue) Durin and others- he continued to refuse to remove the message from his talk page. Also, he continued to cite AGF as his reason for not removing the message, saying that he did not have to assume good faith if there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and failing to see that this really didn't matter. (Sorry, I don't have a diff, but it is in the ANI thread a few times, in bold letters).

Even after he was eventually blocked for 3RR violation (which he easily breached several times over a few days before over the userpage situation, made worse by the rulings [sorry if that is the wrong word] of the previous ArbCom case) he appealed in a rather inflammatory manner, and even reposted the paragraph on his userpage. See here. Even after his block was auto-lifted, he insisted upon writing on his userpage about how he was being censored.

There are other, linked issues- first of all, Vox was blocked, unblocked and subsequently blocked again, and secondly, there was some support for Andy, notably from Tagishsimon, who believed myself and Newyorkbrad to be behaving unreasonably. However, neither of these are directly relevant, so I will not expand upon them now, although I will be happy to do so should anyone want to hear about them. J Milburn 16:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

AM and revert-warring
AM continues to revert war (15 July 07) using a month's supply of reverts (1RR per week) in a few minutes: ,  and arguably, causing his adversary User:XAndreWx to be blocked for 3RR (a particularly trivial dispute over a risible page: 'Birmingham is better than Manchester' 'No it's not' ...). The same text is now (18 July) being added and removed from Second city of the United Kingdom – diff – by User:XAndreWx and various others inc AM.

During the process of establishing the status of the ruling of 1RR per week (confirmed on 28 May 07), and afterwards, AM continued to revert war slowly: eg Meersbrook - 13 May, 22 May, 4 June, 11 June, despite a disputed (of course) consensus of 3:1 against on the talk page, as feared by Fred Bauder in the Dec 2005 arbcom case (here, comment on Pigsonthewing revert limitation). (What became of 5) Pigsonthewing is prohibited from reverting any article for one year, which appeared to pass?)

Eg similar slow reverting (same coord edit) with Ranmoor House, Sheffield Central Library, Hicks Building, Sheffield Town Hall, with similar discussions on each talk page (all within the Sheffield Wikiproject, spinning off from the battle of Tinsley Viaduct, below). -- roundhouse0 11:56, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Disruption within the Sheffield Wikiproject
AM (in connection with his microformatting project, and coordinates in particular) inserted a large table of coordinates into Tinsley Viaduct during 13 April 2007, which led to revert wars, fast and slow. There is also a long and exhausting discussion on the talk page about this table and also the template coord, amply demonstrating the AM techniques of remorseless quibbling coupled with refusal to recognise a clear consensus, eventually leading to a poll (9 to 1 against). (Talk:Tinsley Viaduct/coordinates continued at Talk:Tinsley Viaduct.) -- roundhouse0 14:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

AM has continued to harass User:Leonig Mig in 2007
In Dec 2005 Arbcom accepted 8-0 that AM had been harassing LM (see here).

In 2005 both had paragraphs on their user pages about the other. LM removed his on 10 Dec 2005. There is no further mention of pigsonthewing on LM's page until 13 June 2007, reverted immediately by AM (this is easy to verify or indeed disprove as LM's user page has a brief history).

AM's user page had a 'Stalker Paragraph' relating to events in July 2005 (also Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? perhaps aimed at Arbcom). These remained on his page until he was blocked for 12 months on 25 Jan 2006: see, ; and were immediately restored on his return on 27 Jan 07.

The stalker paragraph remained in place until June 07 despite a polite request by LM for its removal on 30 Jan 07, a request repeated on 11 March 07.

In summary, in 2007 LM has had remarks about AM on his page for a few hours whereas AM's stalker paragraph had been there for over 4 months despite polite requests from LM (and others, eg J Milburn) to remove it. The parity in this dispute is that of the wolf to the lamb. -- roundhouse0 16:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by XAndreWx
Just one thing to say. This user seems to throw a strop if they do not get their own way on wikipedia. If I ever make an edit he does not like i.e. it does not adhere to his POV then he reverts it straight away and tells me to "watch my tone". Here are the edits he made to my talk page telling me to "watch my tone" which I do not appreciate:. Instead of just reverting my edits and demanding I "watch my tone" I would have preferred a small debate on my talk page as to why I made my edits as the rest of wikipedia users do. His edits are completely biased and he is an aggressive, rude and snappy user. I believe him to be a POV pusher and if I highlight my concerns on his talk page he will promptly delete them and tell me to watch my tone or call me childish. I hope something is done about this user as he is what frustrates users when trying to edit to find they are being reverted. It would not surprise me in the slightest if he deletes all of this. XAndreWx 19:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Also just after I added this he again told me to "watch my tone" here: . He was poking his nose into something which is none of his business and accusing me of vandalism which it wasn't. It was just another edit he did not agree with. I do not dare to disagree with him on his talk page as it will just make him add more malicious comments to my talk page. He also told me I will be blocked which I know I won't as for a start he is not using the proper warnings which are supplied by Wikipedia and is using his own rules to govern himself here. XAndreWx 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Refutation by Andy Mabbett
Life's too short to list and explain all the distortions, untruths and deceits in the supposed evidence put up against me. It would be very troubling if the "ArbCom" were to take it at face value, but past experience suggests that they'll do just that.

However, are just a few examples; not least to illustrate the flaws in this ludicrous process, and the dishonesty of my attackers:


 * Moreschi describes my accusation of his censorship as "accusing everyone who disagrees with him of policy/guideline violations, when they are usually guilty of no such thing, and/or he is in fact guilty himself", when in fact, he moved my talk-page comments to an archive two minutes after I made them; thereby justifying the accusation of censorship. Such behaviour typifies the ownership of the WP:Composers project with regard to infoboxes, and eth poor experiences reported by others who have had the temerity to edit "their" pages.


 * Folantin claims "Mabbett announces his plan to force everybody to use infoboxes with microformats in them". the links associated with that dishonest claim show no such thing.


 * He also claims "On May 1, Mabbett makes his first ever appearance at WP:Opera, suddenly declaring all musical terms should be translated into English" - again, not supported by the supposed evidential link.


 * He alleges that I "later insisted it could only be split into subarticles in his way" - again not supported by the cited diff.


 * He says "there was a 15:5 consensus - since when was 15:5 a consensus? I have, several times, posted evidence that no consensus exists, only for it to be archived by Kleinzach, within a few hours. Others have agreed with the case for infoboxes on the articles concerned, ; similar attempts to stifle debate have also occurred.


 * He says "Note Mabbett reimposing the template on the basis of a simple majority vote [44] ("clearly, you are in the minority (2-1)")" - I did not such thing; the comment about the majority was a point of fact; made solely in response to another editor claiming that he was in the majority, when that was not the case, I made no edits based on any "majority".


 * J Milburn claims that "Andy is insistent on keeping inflammatory messages on his userpage" - Far from it, I think that anyone called a cunt and a prick by another editor, and when that second editor admits to stalking the first, is entitled to say that they assume no good faith on the part of the second editor. Many other editors, including admin, have supported my rights to do so. Over a dozen edited my page, while my comment was on it, but left it in situ.


 * Roundhouse0 claims that I caused User:XAndreWx to be blocked for 3RR; I was under the impression that User:XAndreWx, not I, was resonsible for his edits.


 * Roundhouse0 alleges that "AM has continued to harass User:Leonig Mig" - I have done no such thing (indeed, I could not "continue" to do so, since I never harassed him in the first place). How could I, when it's been officialy found by the "ArbCom" that he has left Wikipedia?

Were this a court of law, a half-decent lawyer (hell, the janitor) would have such nonsense laughed away by a jury.

Their complaints here are vexatious. On any other page, they'd earn their posters a block for breaching WP:NPA.

I have no faith in the "ArbCom" or this process, or that any sort of justice will prevail.

[In passing, I note that Kirill said "this can't properly be considered a direct continuation of the old one, considering the other parties involved there"; I would like clarification of his meaning, please.


 * Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing has violated WP:POINT and WP:LAWYER
Pigsonthewing is a disruptive editor, who does often not violate the letter of a rule, but rather the spirit.

CSD
For example, someone marked a redirect POTW created for deletion because it redirected to a non-existent page; POTW reacted by creating the non-existent page with the text "Template talk:Infobox Library/doc redirects here.", and placing a hangon tag on the marked page.

NPA
See also this conversation for an actual example of him WikiLawyering to provoke other editors.