Wikipedia:Requests for comment/DPeterson

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Statement of the dispute
DPeterson has been involved in several long-standing disputes concerning articles about attachment therapy; Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) is a relatively unknown and benign attachment-based therapy. DPeterson appears to be somehow related to DDP and one of its primary practitioners, Dr. Becker-Weidman. This conflict of interest is the likely cause of DPeterson's troubles on wikipedia. The principle complaint in this RfC is that DPeterson has used wikipedia as a venue for DDP advocacy and that, in doing so, has repeatedly subverted core wikipedia principles to the point of disruption.

Desired Outcome
That DPeterson stop this behavior, refrain from using wikipedia to advocate for DDP, and stop using sock/meat-puppets.

Description
Throughout his history of editing at wikipedia, DPeterson has edited with an uncompromising bias toward DDP and attachment therapy. Claims and external links concerning DDP have been inserted into a wide variety of articles, ranging from Adoption to Post-traumatic stress disorder. The number of claims concerning DDP in wikipedia is highly disproportionate to the handful of times DDP is mentioned in the literature. All of these claims and external links have been inserted and defended by DPeterson or one of the other accounts discussed below. In his advocacy efforts, DPeterson has consistently subverted core wikipedia principles such as WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:ATT. Oftentimes, he will unfaithfully represent a source or use primary sources and OR to support his claims. Many of the issues with DPeterson stem from his inappropriate use of sources in a fashion that almost always introduces POV. The clear aim visible on the pages is to present Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy as an evidence-based therapy, sometimes the 'only' evidence based therapy for attachment disorder, to present it as 'mainstream' and accepted by the mainstream scientific community, to conceal it's roots in attachment therapy, to exclude or obfuscate all material that might reveal criticisms of its current methodology or of it's roots in attachment therapy including major and important sources, historical material and details of criticism, and to obfuscate and distort the presentation of the phenomenon of attachment therapy. As a consequence, the attachment therapy page was confusing and inaccurate for a long period of time and still contains much inaccurate and obfuscating material.

An aggravating factor is that there are a large number of nearly identical accounts who have unfailingly backed DPeterson with regard to the attachment therapy articles. They go so far as to offer support for arcane positions such as putting redundant 'See also' links into an article or maintaining a dead link by consensus rather than repairing it. Polls or votes are frequently set up when other editors disagree with DPeterson or propose the insertion of material that in anyway impinges upon the presentation of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. These accounts were all created around the time that there was mediation concerning John Bowlby and an AfD concerning Advocates for Children in Therapy. Each account came out in support of User:AWeidman's (Dr. Becker-Weidman) position. A number of unrelated editors have come to the conclusion that these accounts are all sock puppets of User:AWeidman or DPeterson. Whether or not these account are sock-puppets, the pattern of meat-puppetry is clear. The accounts who push the same POV and support each other's edits via frequent polls and redundant talk page discussion to achieve 'consensus' are RalphLender, SamDavidson, MarkWood, JohnsonRon, and JonesRD.

DPeterson has a long standing habit of badgering and harassing those who oppose him. DPeterson has filed an extraordinary number of user conduct RfC's. He has handed out a large number of user talk page template warnings. Most often, these are vandalism warnings for such things as moving inappropriately placed comments, tagging an article for citations, or rearranging an article. He gives incivility warnings for things that are accepted practice, such as politely pointing out a conflict of interest, filing a suspected sock puppet report in a civil fashion, and sometimes just disagreeing bluntly. Furthermore, he will frequently spam the talk pages of unrelated admin's or write on AN/I about these perceived acts of vandalism and incivility. He frequently resorts to labeling good faith editors as vandals or extremists.

In addition to these issues, DPeterson and his meat-puppets frequently edit war. Reverting is DPeterson's first and immediate reaction to an edit he dislikes. The large number of accounts that back up DPeterson and mimic this behavior serve to create false consensus, unnecessarily lengthen disputes, bewilder editors, and generally disrupt wikipedia.

Evidence of disputed behavior

 * Talk page discussions at Talk:Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Talk:Advocates for Children in Therapy,Talk:Attachment Therapy, and Talk:Attachment disorder provide good examples of the behavior described above.
 * The histories of Attachment Therapy Advocates for Children in Therapy, and Dyadic Developmental Therapy show DPeterson's tendency to frequently revert without discussion. His edit summaries indicate some presumption of ownership over the article by him and the accounts named above.
 * An old suspected-sock puppet report names the accounts involved in sock/meat-puppetry and provides evidence of their relation.
 * In Attachment therapy, DPeterson made an artificial distinction between 'Attachment Therapy' and 'attachment therapy' (note the caps). Critics have varied their use of capitalization and DPeterson was trying to assert that the critics were talking about something different when they did so. This distinction would have the effect of deflecting criticism away from DDP. This talk page excerpt shows DPeterson attempting to defend the distinction. This argument occurs more than once and has been attempted to be replaced in the article, even after its removal has been agreed.
 * Here DPeterson inserts a claim concerning the licensure of the leaders of Advocates for Children in Therapy.   He does so on the basis of his own public records research.
 * DPeterson heavily paraphrases a source and dramatically changes author's intention: . The original source can be found at Sagepub.
 * Here DPeterson plainly alters what is clearly a direct quote from a cited author, altering it's meaning.
 * Here material on the history of attachment therapy is stated to be 'out of date' by JohnsonRon and all the others agree to delete it despite having earlier said it was good.
 * Here is a characteristic reply by DPeterson in response to his use of unrelated sources to support a claim: . DPeterson is defending assertions that DDP is "effective and evidence based" with claims by Becker-Weidman (the lead practitioner) and a peer-reviewed article that does not support this conclusion.
 * Here User:RalphLender inserts a statement that ACT use the term rebirthing for attachment therapy. He was asked to provide evidence of this. DPeterson took over the dispute and 2 links were provided, none of which showed rebirthing and attachment therapy were interchangeable terms. A link was provided by another editor showing the opposite, yet they continued to assert that the links showed the words were effectively synonymous. See the talkpage over 17th and 18th April 2007. This attempt to define attachment therapy as synonymous in particular with rebirthing therapy resurfaces again and again in the talkpage and the article. See for example   The purpose is to limit the definition and deflect attention from the broad range of attachment therapies, to which sources claim Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy belongs.
 * Here at 12.11, an editor posted a proposed version of the article for discussion on the talkpage amongst editors:   Between 00.28 and 00.51 at night DPeterson rewrote it, removing large chunks of material and adding in a lot of the existing article. He then invited other editors to comment, although they would have not have been able to see the editors proposals as they had largely been removed, completely altering the editor's intentions.
 * Here DPeterson made some comments on a proposed paragraph of another editor on the talk page in the agreed fashion, by comments in italics. However, he also made a ‘silent’ but significant change and left no sign of it. This was to remove the fact that the cited authors had criticised the one study on holding therapy(a form of attachment therapy). The alteration made it look as if it was approved by them. This was at 23.32. At 23.34 he votes on it  as do subsequent editors.
 * Here is an example of how 'consensus' works to exclude relevant material and promote Becker-Weidman. Consensus was reached to include a passage from Chaffin et al as to the characteristics of traditional therapies. This passage included two cites. When the consensus version was posted on the article, it was very quickly altered by SamDavidson to include Becker-Weidman amongst the cites as if he was quoted approvingly by Chaffin et al. DPeterson also continues to insert this cite. When the original editor complained that this perverted a quotation, the quotation was altered and claimed not to be a quote and Becker-Weidman was retained.  All attempts to replace the original quotation from Chaffin have been reverted.
 * Here DPeterson puts in additional paragraph to a proposed edit that is partly a repeat of earlier paragraphs, partly irrelevant to the subject of the paragraph, but significantly, contains several lines of previous comments from talkpages which he has forgotten to edit out. RalphLender, JohnsonRon and DPeterson all voted to keep it as it was and it took 3 days of argument to get them to agree to remove the interpolated talkpage comments.
 * Here DPeterson repeatedly claims that a main source, critical of Becker-Weidman, published end of 2005, in a journal in February 2006 and citing material from 2005, was written variously in 2000/02, or 2003, or 2004, and refuses to acknowledge the existence of the follow up report in November 2006 specifically dealing with Becker-Weidman's 2006 study despite cites and passages being provided on more than one occasion.
 * DPeterson is asked on many occasions to provide sources for the supposed evidence-base of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, which was until the article was frozen, constantly inserted amongst a list of mainly evidence based therapies. No such source was ever given (other than Becker-Weidman's own work) until a paper called Craven & Lee was cited. This paper was then significantly misrepresented and attempts to replace the passage with an accurate representation were repeatedly reverted.
 * RfC's filed by DPeterson:, , , , , . In recent RfC's, he has shown an inability to properly conduct himself. (Such as  or ).
 * Typical examples of talk-page warnings include and . The first is in reference to citation requests, and the second is ostensibly related to this comment.
 * Some examples of talk page spamming. Note that he has done this in nearly every dispute:, , , , , ,

Applicable policies and guidelines

 * WP:COI
 * WP:NPOV
 * WP:NOR
 * WP:ATT, WP:V, WP:RS
 * WP:CIVIL
 * WP:SOCKS
 * WP:OWN

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute
Endless talk page discussions at Attachment therapy, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, and Advocates for Children in Therapy to name a few. DPeterson has also been involved in several failed mediation atttempts (e.g.  ).

From Fainites, endless discussion on the talkpage of attachment therapy where I attempted to edit the attachment therapy article entirely by consensus on the Talkpage from 6th April 07 to 7th May 07. Thereafter I have continued to attempt to discuss all proposals and edits on the Talkpage and have offered to e-mail all sources and have posted full quotations from sources to support my proposed edits.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}


 * shotwell 01:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Fainites 06:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * StokerAce 12:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC) — StokerAce (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * FatherTree 12:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC) — FatherTree (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Other users who endorse this summary

 * V.☢.B His pattern repeats itself over and over it seems.
 * -Jillium 18:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC) DPeterson, RalphLender, SamDavidson, and JonesRD have also deleted accurate material and inserted and reinserted each others' false claims into the Child sexual abuse article. See Talk:Child sexual abuse, eg. Talk:Child_sexual_abuse
 * Jean Mercer 16:12, 19 May 2007 (UTC) — Jean Mercer (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. I agree with the summary and am very concerned about our responsibility to the public, which cannot be met by omitting or distorting relevant material.
 * Larry Sarner 17:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC) I was an early victim of DPeterson's behavior and of the successive arrivals of his cohorts; I was effectively stalked on Wiki. Sabotage, if not vandalism, is an MO of this cabalistic group of accounts headed by DPeterson, as witness on this very page the editing of endorsers' comments by SamDavidson with "SPA" templates. (I fully expect that my comments here will get the same treatment.) — Larry Sarner (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. (See — except this one was done by DPeterson himself, underscoring the point. Larry Sarner 07:42, 26 May 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.'' ''

This is a content dispute that has been flaring up over the years with this group, several of whom are leaders of the advocacy group Advocates for Children in Therapy, which has a specific agenda it pushes. User:Sarner, User:StokerAce, User:Shotwell, User:FatherTree, User:Mercer, User:Fainites, and others have been raising issues via talk pages, RfC's, Mediation, etc. that get resolved or dismissed and then they bring up the same issues again. They work in concern, communicating strategy. They are now spreading this dispute to the Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Advocates for Children in Therapy articles. They raise "red herrings" such as the sockpuppetry issue when they know it to be false and settled.


 * Continues to try to involve others and spread the dispute [] [] [] []

[] DPeterson talk 22:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC) {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:
 * 1) DPeterson talk 22:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) SqueakBox 22:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Dcooper 12:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) JohnsonRon 16:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) JonesRD talk 18:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) SamDavidson 19:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Addhoc
The editors supporting this RfC represent a coalition between those who support an opposing view on attachment therapy and those who condone paedophilia.

In essence, there is a legitimate content dispute on the attachment therapy article, however this RfC isn't conducive to its resolution.

Users who endorse this summary:
 * 1) Addhoc 09:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Strange bedfellows indeed.  ·:·Will Beback  ·:· 10:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Dcooper 12:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) MarkWood 14:00, 17 May 2007 (UTC) This is a legitimate content dispute that should be pursued via Mediation per Wikipedia dispute resolution procedures.
 * 5)  RalphLender talk 14:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC) See talk page for comment on Sockpuppet issue those editor making false allegations.  RalphLender talk 14:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) This sounds accurate to me, SqueakBox 15:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) I agree.  See talk page for more details.  JonesRD talk 16:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) JohnsonRon 16:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) SamDavidson 16:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Outside view of Hipocrite
Too many SPA's. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, or battleground. Go somewhere else to argue on the internet.


 * 1) Hipocrite - &laquo; Talk &raquo; 17:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Dcooper 18:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) SqueakBox 18:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 4)  RalphLender talk 19:38, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) --  Ziji   (talk)  21:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Addhoc 22:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 7)  JonesRD talk 16:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) JohnsonRon 16:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Too right. Tony Fox (arf!) 22:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) SamDavidson 16:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

View of FatherTree
Wikipedia is not a soapbox, or battleground. But like it or not it comes up high on search engines and when there is information that is untrue and misleading in an article it hurts people. The older editors of this article were chased away by DPeterson et al. That is why his group are the only long term editors. So the above comment to 'go away' is unkind and unfair. Wiki has a responsibility for truthfulness. Maybe if some editors do not like those who want accurate information to be on WIki should go somewhere else and stop Wiki from coming up on search engines.


 * 1) FatherTree 22:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Outside view of FT2
Reading the main article itself, it is clear that the approach is inappropriate. The intro alone reads like a promotional piece. Instead of a description of the subject, it starts by asserting that it is evidence based, that two studies (a lot?) fopund it effective for some issues, that people can benefit from it, that it meets the standards of some professional society "and various others", that it is "non coercive" and that it is based on "long standing principles". With "very strong empirical evidence" and a "long history" or "proven efficacy".

That is the entirety of the introduction.

Verdict - POV, and reads like an advert. And that's only the first paragraph of one article.

Editors who wrote it that way, would seem to be rather suspect. I might involve myself in this a little. FT2 (Talk 15:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) I agree. Wiki is not an infomercial site. FatherTree 15:38, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Outside view of Ramdrake
I'm very concerned that so many users reduce this issue purely to one of editorial content dispute. I haven't been following this issue for long, but from what I can tell, User:DPeterson is indeed accusing others of things he has done himself: violation of WP:CANVAS (see the recently closed issues he raised about User:Father Tree when he himself had been shown canvassing), borderline violation of WP:NPA, and insistence that other focus on the issues he brings up, to the exclusion that he may himself have been culpable of the same errancies within the same interactions. I must admit that the current dispute about Attachment Therapy is beyond my expertise, but I thought I'd at least testify that User:DPeterson's behavior in this dispute is at the very least ethically questionable within the confines of Wikipedia policy.--Ramdrake 00:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) --Ramdrake 00:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) --Lsi john 02:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Discussion
All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.