Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Strider12/Evidence/Dated

The purpose of ArbCom remedies is to prevent future damage to the project, not to punish past bad behavior. For that reason, evidence should be recent; it should indicate an ongoing problem that is likely to continue. Most of MastCell's evidence is several months old. This page is a copy of that evidence with dates added. The strikeouts mark evidence from as far back as November, December, and January which should be irrelevant for this arbitration. Sbowers3 (talk) 22:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Strider12 is a single-purpose account dedicated to promoting a specific agenda
Virtually all of Strider12's edits, over the 6 months of her account life, deal with abortion and mental health and David Reardon, a controversial researcher/advocate on the subject. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with being a single-purpose account&mdash;some of our best articles are written by SPA's. However, an account which exists for the sole purpose of using Wikipedia to advocate a specific agenda at the expense of policy and the encyclopedia is a different kettle of fish.

Edit-warring
*(22 January) 3RR block, described by Strider12 as (23 January) "just another misleading, manufactured complaint intended to harrass me" by "a hard core of abortion defending editors who insist on censoring material that does not conform with their few sources denying a link between abortion and mental health." * Subsequently, (14 February) 5 reverts in 27 hours (no action taken as the letter of 3RR was not broken)
 * Shortly followed by 4 reverts on abortion and mental health in less than 1 hour ( (16 February), (16 February) , (16 February) , (16 February) ), not reported

More recently, the issue has been "slow" edit-warring; Strider12 pops in to reinsert the same disputed text every few days, without attempts to address concerns raised on the talk page or to seek outside input. (March 18-28) See example.

Early on, Strider12 described her understanding of WP:3RR as follows: (9 December) "I have a right to edit this article and post it -- up to three times a day if I have the stamina for it."

Canvassing
Early on, Strider12 canvassed aggressively for support from potentially like-minded editors, writing that they were needed to "jump in and help me out" in a "revert war... and bring some friends". See (7 December), (8 December) , (8 December) , (8 December) , (8 December) , (8 December). Even after being directed to WP:CANVASS, Strider12 maintained that her actions were appropriate since she issued only 7 "limited invites" ( (8 December) ). Much later, after I had opened an RfC on Strider12's conduct, she canvassed participation from (26 February) NCdave and (26 February) Ferrylodge (, (21 February) ), two editors with whom I'd had conflicts in the past.

"Purging"
Strider12 repeatedly accuses other editors of "purging" material for purely biased reasons.


 * See ( 15 December, 20 November, 26 November, 28 November, 3 December, 5 December, 11 December, 7 December, 8 December, 11 December, 7 December, 24 December, 18 February, 12 December, 6 December, 7 December, 8 December, 9 December, 23 January, 5 December, 10 March, 21 March) litany of examples from RfC

* (15 December) "Yes, it's a good study and I understand why many of you are looking for excuses to purge it."

Uncollaborative attitude
* Retitles others' talk page threads to attack them: (20 November), (29 November)
 * Turns her usertalk page into a content fork of the article, explicitly disinviting those who disagree with her POV: "I do not want any of the POV pushers who are into purging verifiable information to alter this draft. This draft is only for those who truly wish to collaborate on an objective article... I have mostly concentrated to date on inserting missing material rather than cleaning up some of the nonsensical inferences which appear to have been inserted by high school students or Planned Parenthood interns." Still up at User:Strider12/Draft.

* (20 November) "At least I give you guys credit for being unrelenting in promoting your bias... You are the antithesis of encyclopdia editors. You are candidates for George Orwell's thought police."
 * Knee-jerk and misplaced accusations of bad faith and (21 March) "disruptive blanking of relevent information", regardless of the (21 March) actual situation. Relevant talk page threads include: (16 March) 1, 2...

* Insists that "her" version is the only appropriate starting point from which to improve the article ( (6 December), (7 December) , (8 December) )
 * Describes content disputes as "vandalism" (e.g (26 December) ), compares me to a Holocaust denier deleting a list of death camps ( (24 December) ), and suggests that the consensus against her proposed edits is like a (18 February) "consensus of 400 Holocaust deniers". Her attempts at soliciting outside input have been partisan, to say the least ( (7 December) ).

Misrepresentation of sources
(9-11 January) A canonical example (a bit long, but useful reading). Also:

* Dismisses PBS as a partisan "pro-choice" source: (11 January) * Dismisses New York Times Magazine as a partisan "pro-choice" source: (16 January), (14 February) * Dismisses review article from Annals of Internal Medicine as the "biased" work of (4 December) "an aging abortionist trying to encourage other doctors to join the club."
 * Dismisses pieces from PBS, Boston Globe, and New York Times Magazine on David Reardon as unreliable sources because the correspondents did not interview Reardon: (3 December) . (Reardon actually refused requests for an interview, as Strider12 was aware).
 * Dismisses Boston Globe piece on David Reardon as an unreliable source: (11 December) "It is not as if the author had researched and written a 300 page biography or Reardon. For all we know it was written in a day, and there is no evidence he ever even interviewed Reardon, much less friends and associates. So really, the only reliable information we have are the works or Reardon himself."

Possible conflict of interest
Moved to subpage.

Rewriting Foundation-level policy
Proposes to amend WP:NPOV to further her position in content disputes (17 December)

Wikipedia as a battleground
* (8 January) "Don't expect me to limp away quietly when there is a 'vigilient' campaign as 131 described it to 'purge' information that runs counter to the DENIAL GROUP's 'politically correct' effort to prevent Wikipedia readers from seeing all the evidence." * Her ArbCom evidence descibres a battle between "DENIERS" and "Believers" and notes that "For four months I was nearly the only editor trying to include material related to the Believer's position."
 * Editors who disagree with Strider12's edits constitute the "DENIAL CAMP": (8 January)
 * (10 January) "So far those in the denial camp continue to refuse to bring forward any fresh evidence..."
 * To Ferrylodge (among others): (8 January) "Though I have lots of expertise in the area, the 'abortion is benign and anyone who disagrees is untrustworthy' crowd are in a revert war with me. I need more voices in there... I'd appreciate you adding post-abortion syndrome to your watch page and some periodic comments of support."
 * (8 January) "I will not accept or yield to purgers...or those who empathize with them."

Refusal to "get the point"
The talk pages bear witness to 6 months of the same arguments, which fail to convince other editors and then are repeated a few days later without modification per WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. The most recent example: (4 April).

Other editors notice the problem:
 * (7 December), (7 December)
 * (10 January)
 * (15 December)
 * (5 January)
 * (10 January)
 * (29 December)
 * (10 January)

Wikilawyering and abuse of policies/guidelines
Strider12 claims that anyone disputing her edits is "disrupting" Wikipedia ( (28 January), (28 January) , (24 January) , (23 January) , (28 January) ). She cites a prior ArbCom principle: "It is disruptive to remove statements that are sourced reliably, written in a neutral narrative, and pertain to the subject at hand." In Strider12's hands, the principle applies thus: (28 January) "If you feel any of these materials should be moved to another section, I am quite open to your recommendations. But any deletion is, according to ArbCom standards, disruption." Of course, the very dispute is over the lack of neutrality in Strider12's narrative. Typical sequence: As of 20:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC), Strider12 continues to maintain a "disruption log" in her userspace: User:Strider12/Disruption. I asked that this log be deleted as a violation of WP:UP, after it became evident that Strider12 was not interested in pursuing dispute resolution. She responded by copying it to her usertalk page.
 * Strider12 makes a contentious edit without talk-page discussion, claiming that the ArbCom principle means that everyone else is being disruptive: (28 January)
 * The edit is reverted based on prior discussion/consensus: (28 January)
 * Strider12 reverts back ( (29 January) ) and adds the offending editor to her "disruption log" ( (29 January) )

Summary
Wikipedia is not a venue for advocacy, nor a battleground for "DENIERS" and "Believers". Strider12 is an account devoted solely to advocating as forcefully as possible for a single agenda on a single controversial article, violating policy along the way.

Should anyone be brave enough, wade through the talk pages and archives at Talk:Abortion and mental health and Talk:David Reardon. The above is an incomplete summary of the problems. These articles have been rendered largely uneditable as a result of this advocacy, which is a shame because there's a good article in there trying desperately to get out. MastCell Talk 21:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)