Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Vision Thing

Case Opened on 19:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Case Closed on 00:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this case. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators, the parties, and other editors may suggest proposed principles, findings, and remedies at /Workshop. That page may also be used for general comments on the evidence. Arbitrators will then vote on a final decision in the case at /Proposed decision.

Once the case is closed, editors may add to the as needed, but closed cases should not be edited otherwise. Please raise any questions at Requests for arbitration.

Statement by Infinity0
Vision Thing has been consistently edit-warring on articles related to politics, especially those related to anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, for over a year. His usual pattern of attacks is consistent reversion to undermine attempts by other editors to make contributions to the articles. (Eg. quickly scanning through his contributions, one finds that around 1/3 of his past 100 edits have been reverts of good-faithed edits (ie. not vandalism).)

He has a habit of supporting edits made by banned users User:RJII and User:Billy Ego and their sockpuppets, and re-inserting them into articles when other editors attempt to remove them.

He has undermined attempts to change a part of Anarchism to a version reached and agreed upon by numerous editors from WP:3O.

Evidence of above will be provided if this case is accepted; or you can browse through Vision Thing's contributions and see for yourself.

P.S. If this case is accepted or rejected, please can someone email me to tell me.

Addenum 12:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC). Vision Thing is continuing to edit war even as this request is being made. He has just reverted about 8 editors on Anarchism back to his own version:. -- infinity  0  12:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

In reply to Vision Thing's comment about dispute resolution, I am bringing this case not on behalf of only myself, but the great many editors you have consistently prevented from contributing to wikipedia over the past year. -- infinity  0  12:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Addenum 19:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC) I hope still to carry on with this case but it seems the other three parties have not been online much in the past week. Etcetc says he's left wikipedia but I emailed him about this case and he said he'd join in, so please bear with him, and the others to reply. Their slowness is probably due to the summer. :p -- infinity  0  19:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Vision Thing
Although it seems to me that infinty0 hasn't tried to use other steps in resolving this dispute, I'm willing to participate in arbitration with listed involved parties. -- Vision Thing -- 11:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Full Shunyata
I, Infinity0 and others have noted Vision Thing's blatant anarcho-capitalist POV-pushing on Wikipedia for around a year now. If you check the history of his edits, there are hardly any non-biased edits and much of his edit history is composed of edit wars with certain other users (mostly editors with of social anarchist political leanings). As I noted on the evidence page, he has consistently edited many articles to push a certain POV (an anarcho-capitalist/right-wing libertarian POV) to the point of taking out verifiable sourced material. Such as deleting quotes from Tucker himself where Tucker refers to his philosophy as "socialism" or adds a footnote that the defintion of socialism has supposedly "changed" since Tucker's time to imply that Tucker didn't truly mean socialism when he said it (apparently because Victor Yarros and Wendy McElroy know what socialism is better than Tucker and know what Tucker meant better than Tucker himself). Lately he was obsessed with trying to keep out Tucker's support of anarchist socialism in late life (even though the quote is sourced and referenced) and only keep an obscure quote about "capitalism being at least tolerable" as if to imply that Tucker became an anarcho-capitalist later in life.

He has a tendency to aggressively edit and use the talk page as a war zone (in similar style to RJII and BillyEgo) and seems down and determined to keep individualist anarchism (evevn the explicitly anti-capitalist type such as Tucker's) from ever being linked with libertarian socialism. Many times his edits will add in one-sided arguments against abstract "collectivism", sometimes even taking out rebuttals from people who consider themselves collectivists or social anarchists making rebuttals against the claims of individualists.

If he isn't a sock he at least shouldn't be editing Wikipedia if he can't refrain from turning articles into an editorial to showcase his own political ideology. I at least try to stick with editing articles where I'm sure I can remain neutral on if I feel that I would be biased in other articles. Full Shunyata 00:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by EtcEtc
[taken from ]

I apologize for the long time it took me to write this, I have become frustrated with Vision Thing's trolling of various articles I used to edit to the point of no longer feeling that my presence on wikipedia can be positive. As such I am only presenting my thoughts here in the hopes that they can do some good in preventing other users to be burned out through interaction with VT as I am. VT iss extremely belligerent in his interactions with others. As can be seen from his talk page, when he first began wholesale reverting or deleting of my edits I attempted to discuss the issues with him, he never replied to those attempts.

I took a lot of time and energy in attempting to weed through unreliable sources added by now banned sockpuppet RJII to the article on anarcho-capitalism, and to add sources that can from multiple viewpoints rather than the single side being presented. Despite the fact that many of the sources from RJ were shown to be unreliable and misrepresented, VT continued to reinsert them in the article. VT continued for days to remove all the sources I added to the article under a number of different excuses, first claiming that they were original research, then insisting that they all be quoted, and finally, after finding what he believed to be an error in a single one of the sources I cited, he tagged all of them as unreliable and needing verification. This despite the fact that I provided a quote for the source upon request, which VT decided of his own accord was insufficient, and despite the fact that all of the sources added by banned user RJ remain without any such tag.

Finally, I believe that VTs history as an edit warrior is clear from his own edit history. Even a brief look at the article he has edited will show consistent patterns of deleting any material that doesn't accord with his own political viewpoints despite numerous warnings for many different parties. VT attempts to push against the spirit of cooperative wikipedia editing as much as he can while obeying technical rules to prevent him from being banned, but even then his constant attacks have put him in hostile relations with numerous positive wiki contributors.

I hope these thoughts can be useful in some way as evidence of another editor affected by Vision Thing's warpath. I would like to note that there is plenty of evidence to show that VT is in all likelihood a meatpuppet of banned user RJII, as can be seen here. However, I no longer have the time or patience to collect more evidence on this matter. Etcetc 07:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

 * Accept. Paul August &#9742; 18:02, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Accept. - SimonP 13:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Accept. Kirill 17:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Accept Fred Bauder 19:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Temporary injunction (none)
=Final decision=

Motion to dismiss
1) Motion for dismissal due to lack of evidence.


 * Passed 7 to 0 on 00:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)