Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Artaxerex

In order to remain listed at Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 10:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is:, 29 July 2024 (UTC).



Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute
has continuously attackd me and others by making personal attacks, false accusations of vandalism and sockpuppetry, and has himself resorted to sockpuppetry several times, and pushed his POV and OR. He has accused others of fascism, racism, and revisionism. While continuing on the same line after being blocked twice for sockpuppetry, he is now increasingly attacking me personally and trying to tarnish my image on wikipedia. He has attempted to divide wikipedia along political lines, accusing other editors of setting up a "monarchist gang". His behavior has not changed the slightest bit over the last months. I'm tired of this daily harassment and after trying several times (without success) to settle things with him, I have concluded that an RfC is the best course of action to be taken at this point.

Desired outcome
The best outcome would, of course, be for Artaxerex to realize his mistakes and for him to decide to adhere to wikipedia guidelines regarding NPOV and OR, to use a civil tone, and refrain from attacking and insulting others. If that is not the case, given the persistence and extraordinary harshness of his attacks, it might be best to consider banning him from wikipedia.

Description
User:Artaxerex has been avoinding constructive comments on talk pages, preferring instead to direct all his efforts at attacking my person, in what in fact comes close to defamation. He has made false accusations, personal attacks, and tried to distort wikipedia guidelines and policies to fit his situation. He is extremely rude on talk pages and accuses others of racism on a routine basis.

Evidence of disputed behavior
(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

Note: Some diffs provided below belong to the confirmed sockpuppets of the user in question. Note: Besides the diffs below, a large number of relevant posts (including many more attacks and accusations similar to these) can be found on and .

Personal attcks, false accusations, original research, edit warring:
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Sockpuppetry:
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False accusation of sockpuppetry:
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Applicable policies and guidelines

 * WP:NPA
 * Civility
 * Sock puppetry
 * WP:NPOV
 * WP:NOR
 * WP:EW
 * WP:BATTLE

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute
(provide diffs and links)
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Users certifying the basis for this dispute
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}


 * Shervink 10:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ♠ SG →Talk 13:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Rayis 08:54, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Mehrshad123 17:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

 * Dfitzgerald 16:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Response
''This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.'' ''

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Users who endorse this summary:

Artaxerex Response

 * In this response, I first provide some facts about my credentials (these can be verified by a reliable authority in Wikipedia). This is only to show that I am familiar with the subject and also to clarify any bias that I may have. Next, I briefly provide a short history of the dispute.


 * My family was rather close to the Shah, the Prime Minister office and Parliament. My father in his executive post as a prominent socio-political advisor was quite informed and involved with the regime, so much so that after the Islamic revolution in Iran his assets were confiscated by the new regime and he was forced to exile. At a very young age I met most of the ministers of the Shah, as well as himself on many occasions. Most of my friends at various schools were sons of the regime's generals, ministers, judges, and other prominent classes (these were called the sons of a Thousand Family). After my graduation I was given a very important job at the Plan and Budget Organisation of Iran, I was participating in the parliamentary discussions on annual budget presented by the Minister of Finance during which important information was discussed in private closed door meetings. At the same time I began writing socio-economical commentaries in some of the most influential Persian journals of the time. As the political climate of Iran became more and more oppressive under the Shah, and when some of my fellow writers had been arrested by his regime, I left the country in 1973. I began a long period of study at some of the most prestigious universities in Holland, England, Italy, Canada,and US culminating in a number of my degrees including a Ph.D. I have been publishing extensively and presenting papers in various academic conferences in the past 30 years. I have also been acting as a referee for a number of academic journals. I have taught at various universities and currently hold a prominent executive job with a prominent organisation. Googling my name will verify many of these facts.


 * The Wikipedia dispute started from Reza Shah page: when I met some students who were studying the contemporary Iranian history using Wikipedia as their main reference I noticed that the information provided was one-sided, erroneous and biased. Thus, I began to edit these articles extensively. Almost immediately confronted by Shervink, who unabashedly expected that all the sourced materials and balancing information, that was provided by me, should be deleted -- this was how the dispute started. To disrupt the editing process, Shervink invited a number of his group, like SG who cosponsored this RFC, (I call them a gang due to volgarity of their conducts such as using F-words by SG, and their silly arguments; such as "Western sources are biased against Iran,and you should use only Persian sources" or "the Shah as a head of state could not have been a despot!" ). I asked at the time some associates of mine to watch the Reza Shah page and contribute to the debate. This associates, together with some other editors that I don’t know them at all,  were accused of being my sock-puppets and were all banned.  I did ask for mediation, which got to nowhere. Thus, I continued to provide sourced materials in support of my edits.

Recently, on invitation by the Behnam I rejoined the talk page discussion in order to resolve this dispute. I rewrote the first point of the dispute and invited comments by other editors. The group has refused any discussion, they only wanted to vote to delete the sourced materials. On numerous occasions I invited these characters to provide their sides in order to balance the alleged one-sidedness in my contributions. When they refused I applied a definition of Vandalism provided by Shervink which considered the removal of content as Vandalism. I also considered their refusal to accept and entertain a different point of view as tantamount to Fscism. In response Shervink has called me A****. They have made fun of my spelling errors (that are unfortunately a characteristic of my writings), and I have been accused of using Western sources instead of Iranian sources (which is not correct as I have provided excerpt from Persian sources as well). They considered prominent Jewish sources (such as Black, Timmerman, Yossi Melman and Meir Javdanfar as unreliable in characterizing Reza Shah as a Nazi sympathizer.

Here is my last contribution to the talk page of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: 1.Wikipedia works by building consensus. Consensus is an inherent part of the wiki process. The basic process works like this: someone makes an edit to a page, and then everyone who reads the page makes a decision to either leave the page as it is or change it. 2.Good editors acknowledge that positions opposed to their own may be reasonable. 3.The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth."Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. 4.In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; 5. The NPOV policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. 6. As the name suggests, the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. 7. In NPOV, background is provided on who believes what and why, and which view is more popular.
 * A simple remedy for the problem would be for these editors to try to balance the articles with sourced materials of their own. There are many Wikipedia models that may provide a balanced view on the life of a despot such as Stalin, Mussolini, Bokassa, Mugabe, Idi Amin, Pinochet and so on. These can be replicated for constructing pages on Reza Shah and his son.
 * Please familiarize yoursel with the following Wikepedia policies on Consensus, verfiability and NPOV


 * Based on the above policies I will now return to edit.
 * Please note that removing content by other editors is considered vandalism.

Outside view
''This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.''

I just want to shortly write in support of Artaxerex. I think he is very knowledgeable about the subjects he writes and he has always provided valid references, even down to the page number. What Shervink is writing is very one sided. The dispute between Artaxerex and Shervink and the others began at the Reza Shah page, where Artaxerex tried to add referenced text, but was undescriminetly reverted by Shervink and others. The reason for the reverts were allegedly that the sources were propaganda and/or falsified. I tried to mediate the first time here but unfortunately this was the response i got from one of the editors trying to discredit Artaxerex:. Another editor, user:Scott Wilson also tried to mediate but he was told that "your assessment is superficial and incorrect" (see ). Furthermore, many of the things Shervink is accusing Artaxerex of, he has done himself. He has called Artaxerex for a "wannabe historian" and made fun of his name and spelling, which i reminded him of here. Finally i can from personal experience say that Shervink very often dismisses reputable sources such as the BBC, The New York Times, The National Security Archive, The Washington Post, The Guardian etc. which he calls quote: "sensational media reports" (please read this discussion: ). Also to see how stubborn Shervink can be regarding sources, its enough to quickly skim through these discussions, where he discredits reputable authors by pointing out that they dont speak Persian. I have many more such examples, which i can provide if requested. I hope that the admin who handles this rfc will takes the above into consideration. Shervink has been anything but willing to constructively resolve the disputes at the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Reza Shah

Unfortunately i dont have that much time to edit/watch wikipedia at the moment, so excuse me in advance if i am slow at replying to any comments regarding the above. --- Melca 21:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary: Melca 21:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by User:The Behnam
To be concise, Artaxerex's problematic behavior boiled down to: The users on the other side of the underlying content dispute also were involved in the edit warring and, at times, the civility issues.
 * 1) Edit warring
 * 2) Sockpuppetry awhile back (in support of edit warring)
 * 3) Regular civility, NPA, and AGF violations resulting from frustration over content dispute.

At this time, however, I believe that these behavioral issues have ceased and, hopefully, will not come up again. After some discussion with Artaxerex, I am pleased to note that he has agreed not only to cease edit warring, but also has apologized for his disrespectful treatment of the other users and will not do it again. I have observed him for a few days and have not found any violation of this new commitment to proper conduct. So long as this keeps up, no further pursuit of this RFC and similar avenues of dispute resolution should be necessary.

As for the underlying content dispute, it seems that informal mediation and the case-by-case discussion of each proposed inclusion are viable options. Most of the problems I found were with the presentation of the information rather than the sources themselves - this is a good sign. All in all, I think that Artaxerex now realizes his wrongdoing and has amended his ways, so we can close this RFC and go back to working on the articles. The Behnam 20:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:
 * 1) The Behnam 20:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Discussion
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