Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Winter Soldier/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.

As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form:.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

=Evidence presented by User:Travb=

Intention
I hope to have the page Winter Soldier Investigation and its sister site Vietnam Veterans Against the War compiled and built without peity endless revert wars of the anon and TDC.


 * I suggest needs that both Anon and User:TDC to be booted for their behavior on the site.
 * I suggest that User:TDC needs to be booted for his behavior on other sites and abuse for the past year.
 * Further, and more important, I suggest that:
 * anon have a permanent ban from editing Winter Soldier Investigation and Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
 * that as per the suggestion of User:Stevertigo "(TDC)should be banned from editing any and all controversial topics related to U.S. military conflict."

Overview
Winter Soldier Investigation has been protected 9 times in ten months. 

User:TDC has been booted 13 times for similar revert wars  Where User:TDC contention and revert wars always follow.

The opposite of User:TDC, Anon allows very little information critical of Winter Soldier Investigation to stay on the wikipage.

March-May 2004
Requests for comment/TDC

Requests for comment/TDC-2

April 2004
mediation set up between user TDC and Tony Sidaway. 


 * "Nothing ever came of (the mediation). Mediation was a little broken at the time, I think, and no mediator came forward to address our case, which was at any rate not particularly serious at the time. I was just trying to work out what TDC was up to and how he viewed things. I've gained more experience since then and seen more of TDC's pattern of working." Tony Sidaway

20 October 2005
First revert war on Winter Soldier Investigation, User:TDC begins the revert was by erasing large sections of quotes from the article.

21 October 2005
User:TDC revert war prompts users, including another anon (209.86.1.147), to revert the information, and user User:TDC again deletes the quotes. Back and forth the revert war goes. 

Revert war continues. etc.

I (User:Travb) became involved with Winter Soldier Investigation for the first time, I erased many of the "superfluous use of direct quotations" (the reason why User:TDC erased many of the quotes) and moved them to wikiquote.

First revert war, started on 20 October 2005 ends.

22 October 2005
A day later User:TDC found a new, second revert war.

User:TDC and Duk then attempted to get the complete article Winter Soldier Investigation (along with Vietnam Veterans Against the War at the same time rewritten for a "copyright violation" for no more than a maximum of 6 isolated sentences that could be considered "copyright violations" in a 9 page article.

User:Ed_Poor began to rewrite the article from scratch.

User:Ed_Poor even complained to User:Duk that "The first 4 paragraphs, having been written largely by me, can not posibly be considered a copyright violation." 

Please keep in mind, User:TDC scours the internet looking for trivial "copyright violations" in controverisal articles, but he never actually contributes to changing these sentences, instead he uses "copyright violations" as a weapon against his opponents.

23 October 2005
Request for arbitration on Winter Soldier Investigation requested by User:Travb

I stopped this second revert war and an attempt to rewrite the entire article by User:Ed_Poor with the participation of User:Sasquatch by filing this Mediation request.

User:Sasquatch and User:Ed_Poor changed the few sentences.

Second revert war ends.

24 October 2005
Third revert war begins.

User:TDC begins a new THIRD revert war, his third in less than a week. , This time the revert war is over the word "testimony", which he did not want anywhere in the article, and other weaselwords such as "claimed", "alleged". TDC refuses to allow the word "testimony" to be in the article, and continues to revert back.

25 October 2005
User:Sasquatch protected Winter Soldier Investigation on request of User:TDC.

26 October 2005
I reported User:TDC to 3RR but there wasn't enough times to get User:TDC booted for his 14th time. The 3RR administrator, User:RobChurch wrote:


 * "...not quite a 3RR violation; however the involved editors need to get over to the talk page and sort these issues out. TDC has a history of edit warring which needs to be cut short."

29 October 2005
User:Tony_Sidaway unprotected Winter Soldier Investigation.

5 November 2005
User:TDC warned again by User:Tony Sidaway on 5 November 2005 Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

7 November 2005
To stop the endless revert war, I (User:Travb) suggested spliting the article into a pro and con section, with a commitment from both parties that the other person only edit that section, but Anon refused.

21 October 2005
User:TDC reported Anon to 3RR. .

26 October 2005
I initially supported Anon in the 3RR against him, then realized Anon was as guilty of the revert wars as TDC. I then retracted my support for Anon too on the 3RR page, under "Retracting my support and defense of 165.247.208.115".

9 November 2005
Anon deleted link critical of Winter Soldier Investigation and two paragraphs critical of Winter Soldier Investigation

17 November 2005
User:TDC reported anon for a second 3RR on Winter Soldier Investigation,

Anon erases the dispute tag on Winter Soldier Investigation several times

28 November 2005
As a temporary solution, until this arbitration is complete, I built the Criticism of the Winter Soldier Investigation page, and posted two links to the page on Winter Soldier Investigation.

(See also Criticism of the Winter Soldier Investigation)

Anon continues to erase these links, despite my admonision not to erase the link on the talk page, causing a new revert war between the anon, myself, and TDC.

A new revert war seems to now be brewing at Criticism of the Winter Soldier Investigation between TDC and anon.

30 November 2005
Anon found User:TDC own alledged "copyright violations". I move the argument to  Talk:Winter Soldier Investigation. User:TDC vigourously defends his alleged copyright violations. Should I start a new arbitration with Duk about what is a copyright violation?

I personally feel that both anon's and TDC's sentences are protected under the fair use doctorine, but TDC, as a "POV warrior" employed Duk, who I feel overreach their administrative authority, and rewrite the entire Winter Soldier Investigation and VVAW article for 6 sentences of copyright violations. TDC uses the rules as a weapon and applies different rules for himself. Travb 00:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Conclusion regarding User:TDC
Incredibly all three of these revert wars perpetuated by User:TDC were in the space of 3 days (21 October 2005, 1st; 22 October 2005, 2nd; 24 October 2005, 3rd). User Tony Sidaway, who has been involved with User:TDC for at least a year, and even attempted an arbitration with User:TDC. wrote:


 * "Although others are involved, when TDC stops the warring stops. Past experience leads me to the expectation that he will simply wait until my attention is elsewhere and resume."

Other past comments written by others:


 * "I've never really seen him do any of the basic work of building an article: instead, he's always trying to score political points, slant articles his way, etc."--20 April 2005 Requests for comment/TDC-2, Outside view by User:Jmabel


 * "TDC stands out as an tenacious POV warrior, more interested in slanting texts to suit his particular political ideology than in building good articles. For him, the collaborative editing process serves as a weapon rather than as a matter of facilitation. It is virtually impossible to find an edit among his contributions which is not intended to score political points. He frequently gets into edit wars, yet makes minimal effort to enter into dialog and look for compromise on Talk pages. He blatantly tries to game the 3RR rule by disguising reverts as new edits, something he freely admits in edit summaries and on Talk pages. He rarely cites sources for his edits, and when he does the sources often turn out not to say what they claim he does or they turn out to be irrelevant and not mention the subject of his edits at all."--20 April 2005 Requests_for_comment/TDC-2 by User:Viajero

TDC argues that "this RfA is about the Winter Soldier Article, not about my or my conduct on other articles". If necessary I can start another arbitration with TDC alone. As TDC acknowleges: "my prior actions will weigh on the decision of the arbiters" I am trying to show a pattern of abuse and inability to work with others by TDC. A pattern of abuse which did not start nor end with Winter Soldier Investigation and still continues today. Although this Arbitration is about Winter Soldier Investigation, it secondarily is about the behavior of TDC and the anon. That is why I have actively attempted to find out the identity of the anon. (This is a reponse from TDC, the original appears deleted)

Conclusion regarding anon
Anon refuses to allow critisism of Winter Soldier Investigation, depsite repeated attempts of myself and others to add critism, Anon refuses to allow this information in, causing revert wars.

Contacted other wikipedians
User:Fred Bauder contacted all parties that this arbitration had been accepted. I wrote User:Fred Bauder if it was okay to solicit people, but he did not respond. 

On November 25, 2005 I sent notices out to dozens of people, soliciting them to comment on this arbitration.

I hope this is OK and not a violation of some wikipedia rule I am not aware of. I mentioned this before TDC brought it up in his evidence section. Travb 04:08, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

=Evidence presented by User:Jmabel=

Since I am quoted above... I am quoted above, not misleadingly but out of context. The context can be found at Requests_for_comment/TDC-2. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:45, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

=Evidence presented by User:Tony Sidaway=

From my block log

 * 00:04, 14 December 2005 Tony Sidaway blocked "User:TDC" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Back in "revert everything" mode)
 * 09:59, 15 September 2005 Tony Sidaway blocked "User:TDC" with an expiry time of 48 hours (Must learn to let other people revert if it's necessary at all)
 * 15:09, 12 September 2005 Tony Sidaway blocked "User:TDC" with an expiry time of 48 hours (Egregious disruption. Revert warring on multiple articles, 3RR, personal attacks)
 * 15:04, 14 July 2005 Tony Sidaway unblocked User:TDC (Unblocking)
 * 00:52, 27 April 2005 Tony Sidaway unblocked User:#21234 (TDC expired)
 * 00:51, 27 April 2005 Tony Sidaway unblocked User:#21206 (TDC expired)
 * 12:23, 22 March 2005 Admin log: |Personal notes about adjusting RefDoc's 3RR block
 * 12:15, 22 March 2005 Tony Sidaway blocked "User:TDC" with an expiry time of 12 hours (Refdoc's block adjusted to within that permitted by WP:3RR)
 * 12:14, 22 March 2005 Tony Sidaway unblocked User:User:TDC (Released to adjust period to within that permitted under WP:3RR)
 * 11:48, 22 March 2005 Administrators' noticeboard/3RR Comments on TDC/Christian edit war and mutual 3RR reports

=— Chameleon 23:17, 26 November 2005 (UTC)= The fact that people like TDC are tolerated demonstrates that the fundamental structure of Wikipedia is flawed and it is not worth contributing to this project. — Chameleon 23:17, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * This from an editor whose idea creating a constructive community is using  Ten progressives each committing to voting just once can easily overcome this and more. By working together, we can stamp out certain POVs.  TDC 15:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

= Evidence presented by TDC= Let me start out by repeating to Travb who seems to have made this RfA out to be some kind of personal Jihad against me, this RfA is about the Winter Soldier Article, not about my or my conduct on other articles. Although my prior actions will weigh on the decision of the arbiters, this RfA is about the Winter Soldier Article, not about my or my conduct on other articles. I find it completely unfair that Travb has gone on a fishing expedition to find users that I have had disputes with in the past to turn this into a pile on. So far Travb has contacted the following for this fun little pile on: Tony Sidaway, Stevertigo, Saravask, and the following who have had no involvement in the article, only disputes with myself: Chameleon, Ericd, Rama, Jmabel, Rei, Viajero, Dbiv, Get Back World Respect, Kevin Bass, Zippedmartin, Shorne, Calton, and Bryan Derksen.

Unlike Travb, I will try and keep my comments on the RfA to the actual subject of the RfA.

As it stands, this article is little more than fluff. It is comprised almost exclusively from content from the VVAW website and two sympathetic authors, with most of this being completely without attribution to the source of the information. The inclusion of this information in its current form heavily biases the POV of the article. why this is even a point of contention is beyond me. One entire section of the article is comprised almost entirely of a 528 word passage from Gerald Nicosia. Claims made by the sources are given little scrutiny and reflect the POV of the source, which in the case of the article is always sympathetic to the VVAW. When information that runs counter to the POV of Anon, it is almost always watered down, or eliminated in its entirety, no matter how well sourced or valid it is. Would we allow an article on GW Bush to be comprised almost entirely of press briefings from the White House? Would we allow an article about PETA to consist primarily of quotes from PETA friendly sources? Anyone who believes that myself or the other editors who have contributed to the article have not attempted to engage the anon and attempt to come to a compromise on the talk page only has to look at the article’s talk page. There is one active and 3 archived pages with massive amounts of text on them. . The anon uses them to argue his opponents into the ground. He will take out any paragraph he objects to and run circular arguments of its factually accuracy, its relevance, or its significance. Any attempt to reinsert the material in any form will lead to a never ending RV war. The anon knows he immune to disciplinary action, so there is no effective way to sanction him, and he knows this. The anon will not even allow a disputed tag to be place on the page, even when it is evident that the article is greatly disputed. 

A Brief Timeline Anon begins contributing to article, and immediately begins POV push and edit warring. User:SeWilco raises first case of possible copyvio, anon refuses to change wording or source material After reverting the article to its last non copyvio version, as per Wikipedia policy, anon begins edit war labeling removal of copyvio material as vandalism.  User:TDC first raises possible copyvio, again anon refuses to comply SEWilco stops contributing to article and over the course of the next several months, anon fills the article with copyvio material. More Possible copyvio found Anon claims all copyvio material removed: User:Duk investigates claims of copyvio, and removes questionable material. The anon argues for several weeks that the material is not copyvio and that he is not the individual who has inserted it. The anon also spends considerable time insulting Duk and questioning his motivations, who has no agenda on the article other than to remove copyvio. Duk comes to the determination that the anon is “grasping at straws and deflecting the argument with insignificant details. You were still copying substantial amounts of other people's creative work, changing it slightly, and claiming that it isn't a derivative copyright violation”
 * July 2004
 * September 2004
 * October 2004
 * December 2004
 * January 2005
 * August 2005
 * September 2005

Anon then engages in RV war with User:Duk over copyvio material, until Duk deletes history and forces anon to re-write article on a temp page.  More possible copyvio in the article from the anon
 * November 9, 2005

Keep in mind that all the while thus has been going on, the anon denies that any of the material he was putting into the article was not copyvio, a claim that User:Duk has weighed in on, and found to be without merit. The anon has used similar tactics in the following articles VVAW, and the Russell Tribunal

Also, I might point out that the anon's refusal to cooperate with this RfA leads mne to beleive that no matter what decision is made, he will not abide by it; knowing there is little that can be done to him. TDC 17:24, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Note to Travb: ::: There is a difference between copyvio and plagiarism. The material I have cited contains no specified CW protection, the information the anon keeps putting in has a specific copywrite protection posted right on the page he cuts and pastes it from. I post, cite it (i.e. Lewy says..) and provide a link. The anon attempts to pass it off as his own. If you cannot see a difference, then I suppose the issue is lost on you. TDC 00:06, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Deceptive editing
On more than one occasion the Anon has used source, naturally without citing them, and twisted either the conclusion of the source or omitted key contextual details. As documented from this portion of the talk page, the anon plagiarizes Guenter Lewy, while dropping part of the quote to change its meaning.

To prevent the Detroit hearing from being tainted by such irregularities, all of the veterans testifying fully identified the units in which they had served and provided geographical descriptions of where the alleged atrocities had taken place.

and now the full quote:

''To prevent the Detroit hearing from being tainted by such irregularities, all of the veterans testifying fully identified the units in which they had served and provided geographical descriptions of where the alleged atrocities had taken place. Yet the appearance of exactitude was deceptive.''

and to compound his dishonesty, he denies doing it.

He has also done taken information that he plagiarized, and changed factual details of it to skirt copyvio. . In the cited example, the anon changes The CBS television crew that showed up were themselves deeply impressed, but none of their footage made it to the nightly news, which is from the source he grabbed it from, and changes it to this: The CBS television crew that showed up were impressed, but only three minutes made it to the nightly news on the first night -- three minutes that were "mostly irrelevant to the subject" , and then cites the VVAW as his source instead of Nicosa.

=Evidence presented by User:Rama= "TDC wrote: 'turn this into what User:Rama called a lynching''" I said nothing of the sort. I was pointing to Ericd that he would be well-inspired to be extremely cautious to avoid to give any pretext to some people to discredit this RfAr by claiming "lynching". I am sad to see that I was so very right to do so.
 * I am willing to assume that TDC's command of the French language is not good enough to allow him to grasp such nuances, but I would appreciate if a less cavalier behaviour, which does not force words into my mouth, could be adopted. Rama 18:04, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * And after all, since Travb has been so kind as to solicit the contributions from many editors who are openly hostile to me, that would be an absurd conclusion. TDC 22:07, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Note that I did not start this section, and I do not approve of its creation without me being even notified. I was only commenting on TDC's sort-of-quasi quotation of me, and only so that I would not be attributed words and meanings that I did not speak or think. I am worried at the though that disposing of other's words could become a custom. Rama 22:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

=Evidence presented by User:Duk= Please see my earlier statement at Requests_for_arbitration/Winter_Soldier. I wasn't going to comment any further. Then I noticed Sasquatch's statement where he writes;
 * My only involvement was brief as there was a period where I attempted to get some copyright issues sorted out. One side (TDC and Duk) insisted on deleting the entire page over a few sections that appeared to be copy and paste jobs while I insisted what we delete those sections.

This is completely and totally wrong. I NEVER, in any way shape or form tried to delete the entire page. What Sasquatch is talking about here is my second copyvio-tagging of the page. Copyvios were being re-inserted into the article after they were removed by my earlier revert. I tagged the page while investigating. That's all. I have no idea how Sasquatch got the idea that I wanted to delete the entire page, just because I tagged it with a copyvio tag while investigation copyright violations. Furthermore, Sasquatch did not delete the offending text, he edited it, creating derived work that was still a copyright violation.

Sasquatch and I had a heated argument over addressing copyvios on this page. What it boiled down to was that Sasquatch didn't know that copyrights extended to derivative works. I had to explain this to him, ,. I also explained that it was the reason why copyvios are resolved by reverting to the pre-copyvio version (per WP:CP), rather than morphing the text.

After having this explained to him, Sasquatch proceeded to address the newly identified copyvios. He did not revert (per WP:CP), nor did he delete the text (per WP:C); instead, he addressed the copyvios by morphing the text in question,, ,. Even after detailed discussion of how and why wikipedia deals with violations, Sasquatch managed to do the exact wrong thing.
 * So, for the first example (noted above);
 * The entire Dewey_Canyon_Operation_revealed section started out as a cut&paste from.
 * It was edited and morphed a little and still contained some identical parts, and otherwise was a derivative work copyright violation.
 * I resolved the copyvio by reverting. No copied or derived text remained in the article.
 * The offending text was restored by the Earthlink anon, s/he basically un-did the copyvio remedy and reinstated the old copyvio text. This went unnoticed by me until recently. The Dewey_Canyon_Operation_revealed section ended up being the same as version #2 (above), shown to be a copyright violation.
 * Sasquatch morphs the section a little more when copied text is identified, instead of deleting or reverting per Wikipedia policies. The sub-section is still a copyright violation.
 * This example shows a direct evolution from cut and paste copyvio to derivative work copyvio. The example here still hasn't been addressed. This is just one of many examples.

At this point, and considering that Sasquatch was an admin, I gave up all interest in the page, took it off my watch list and had nothing more to do with it, save defending myself from misinformed, baseless grumblings. And answering a few notes on the article's and my talk page. --Duk 00:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Since leaving the page, I understand that even more copyvio have been identified (this time by TDC instead of the Earthlink IP). The page is currently a copyright violation due to large parts of it being derived from copyrighted works (see the example above, which is one of several). --Duk 23:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)