Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Doncram

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: 22:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is:, 29 July 2024 (UTC).



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Statement of the dispute
is involved in two different, yet intersecting, disputes. Doncram and have been in a long-standing conflict regarding the naming of historic districts, particularly in Connecticut and other New England areas. Doncram and have also been involved in various conflicts lately. In particular, Doncram and Orlady have recently disputed wording such as, "The district has some significance." in regard to historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places. These disputes have involved a long amount of argument with various incivil behavior, as well as firmly entrenched ownership of articles and listing standards from Doncram and other editors in the dispute.

Note that although Doncram is named in this RFC, the behavior by Polaron and Orlady should also be considered.

Doncram and Polaron
Doncram and Polaron have been in a long-standing argument about naming of historic places and historic districts. Polaron has been placing redirects from NRHP lists to town names when the town has substantially the same boundaries as the historic district. The problem is that the boundaries of historic districts aren't always available. Talk:Poquetanuck is a perfect example of this dispute. The argument is many times longer than the article. Last October, I reported a three-revert rule edit war at Administrators'_noticeboard/3RRArchive112. The ensuing discussion generated a lot of argument, particularly Doncram alleging that Polaron was starting the dispute by creating the articles that engendered the dispute. (It sort of sounds like a Family Circus cartoon where Billy complains, "It all started when Dolly hit me back!") I should also note that Orlady participated in that discussion as well.

User_talk:Acroterion contains more of the discussion. Following that, brokered an agreement between the parties at User talk:Acroterion/NRHP HD issues list, which has mostly stuck together. Well, sort of. On February 2, Polaron created some redirects to Canaan (CDP), Connecticut. Doncram complained at User talk:Polaron, and also asked Acroterion to block Polaron at User talk:Acroterion. proposed an editing restriction at User talk:Acroterion, which has prompted a wall of text in reply.

Doncram and Orlady
On February 3, 2010, Doncram reported Orlady for edit-warring at Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring. See the version at this writing. To summarize the conflict at, Doncram initially created the article with the placeholder text, "The district has some significance..." Orlady commented out the placeholder text. Doncram took offense at Orlady's motivation and reinserted the placeholder text. After edit warring, the dispute continued at Orlady's talk page, where Doncram told Orlady to stop following him around. The argument at Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring has continued with no sign of stopping. To complicate matters, Orlady used administrative rollback for at least one of the reverts. Orlady has asserted that inserting placeholder text, such as, "The district has some significance" is vandalism and not subject to WP:3RR. I voiced the opinion that it isn't vandalism, but it is sloppy article writing.

Doncram and Orlady have a history of arguments beyond that. Orlady asserts that the dispute began at when Doncram reacted badly to some of her feedback. They've also disputed the actions of banned user and a number of sockpuppets in regard to articles concerning New Rochelle, New York.

User talk:Acroterion contains a proposal by EdJohnston to limit the dispute by putting restrictions on editors. This doesn't seem to be attracting an agreement.

Applicable policies and guidelines
List the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct.


 * Ownership of articles
 * Edit warring
 * No personal attacks
 * Stub
 * Gaming the system
 * Content forking
 * No original research

Desired outcome
First and foremost, the goal of writing articles about historic places should be to create good-quality articles that provide enough context to identify a district, to give an overview of what buildings and structures are included in the district, and to explain why it's important. I've voiced my opinion on this several times, but no progress is being made in this area.

Second, the personal attacks and continued sniping need to stop. Doncram's viewpoint appears to be that in each of these cases, a narrowly-structured agreement is necessary, and that any time the agreement is breached, he wants the editor(s) in question to be blocked. This attitude -- among many -- is causing continued problems.

To the extent that Orlady is saying anything personal about Doncram or making conjectures that are inapplicable, that needs to stop. I'm not exactly sure how to rate what she's said, so I'd like other editors' perspectives on the topic.

Third, we should remember that Wikipedia will not be broken if we don't have articles about every single historic district. Wikipedia is still a work in progress. If the encyclopedia is missing an article about Boston Post Road Historic District (Darien, Connecticut), for example, someone looking for information on the topic could go elsewhere. On the other hand, a sub-stub article on the topic would provide no meaningful information to the reader.

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

 * Doncram and Polaron have reached some sort of agreement on the issue of Connecticut historic districts at User talk:Acroterion/NRHP HD issues list. Orlady has been involved with this as well.
 * Talk:Poquetanuck reached some sort of agreement.
 * User talk:Acroterion
 * User talk:Acroterion and User talk:Acroterion -- these discussions were subsequent to this very long 3RR report and followup, in October 2009
 * Prior to the first item listed above, the various parties engaged in discussion of the issues at various places, including Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Connecticut, where most of the discussions are now found in Archive 1, Archive 2, and Archive 3. Discussion also occurred at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Vermont, Talk:Hartford (village), Vermont, Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Rhode Island, Talk:Peace Dale, Rhode Island, Talk:Wyoming, Rhode Island, Talk:Apponaug, Rhode Island, Talk:Wauregan, and Talk:Norris, Tennessee. Some of these discussions led to agreements (for example, the original dispute at Talk:Norris, Tennessee/Archive 1 was found to be due to a factor-of-10 error in the acreage data on a website that participants were using as a resource).

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute
(Provide diffs to demonstrate that the disputed behavior continued after trying to resolve the dispute.)
 * User talk:Polaron
 * User talk:Acroterion
 * User talk:Acroterion
 * Content fork creation concerning existing train station articles in Connecticut
 * Edit-warring, general warning

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


 * Elkman (Elkspeak) 22:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Although I am identified as a party to this case, I have tried valiantly over approximately the last two years to engage productively with Doncram. The cumulative volume of talk-page discussion between the two of us (including discussion between us and others) is now surely in the multi-megabyte range. Orlady (talk) 16:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Much of the actual discussion with Doncram has played out in my user talk space, AN/I or AN3. The issues involved do not exclusively concern Doncram, but he is the central figure in these disputes. Polaron and Orlady have had parts to play in this as well.  Acroterion  (talk)  21:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * EdJohnston (talk) 16:09, 6 February 2010 (UTC) Doncram is not the only person whose action may need to be reviewed. Polaron's name comes to mind as well. I still think that a voluntary agreement between those two editors on how to structure NRHP coverage might solve this whole problem. My past efforts to get a voluntary agreement did not stop the dispute. If those two editors won't volunteer to push things along, outside opinion may be needed to produce a solution that can be enforced by admins.

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Additional users endorsing this cause for concern.



Questions
''Any users may post questions in this section. Answers should be reserved for those certifying the dispute.''

Q. Why is an RfC on one of the disputants preferable to a request for comment on the underlying issues? Have the appropriate noticeboards been tried to get a consensus from uninvolved editors, rather than targeting one of those involved with a user conduct RfC? ChildofMidnight (talk) 01:58, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

A. While there are content issues that could be discussed in an article RfC, there are also behavioral issues, such as civility, sniping between editors, agreements being breached, 3RR, and so on. I don't know if there's a better format for addressing these issues other than a user conduct RfC. Acroterion asked me about the format as well. Perhaps the article content issues could be discussed in a different RfC, but there are still allegations that Doncram and Orlady are following each other around, or that Doncram and Polaron are following each other around, or other issues that have resulted in bickering. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 16:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned in the link Elkman references above, I don't view this venue as entirely satisfactory, since there is more than one party involved, and since there are issues of content-related policy in play. However, there have been repeated issues involving 3 and 4RR, with Doncram calling for the other parties to be blocked, without appearing to fully understand his role in the event.  Acroterion  (talk)  21:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

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Response
''{This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed. Users not named in the request or certifying the request should post under Additional views below.''}

I am aware of this RFC/U. I am confused by the statement of dispute above as I do not believe it supports the summary statement for this RFC/U, which states that it is alleged that I have been "involved in multiple edit wars, uncivil behavior, and ownership of articles and listing standards relating to historic districts and other geographic articles." I believe I have worked constructively to raise and discuss issues regarding historic sites and places. I would like to reply constructively to allegations, but I don't understand specifically what is being alleged. I also do not understand how each certifying party asserts he or she has tried and failed to address specific behavior of mine. There are other problems with the statement of this RFCU which have been pointed out by another editor at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Doncram. While I respect the right of other editors to comment, I don't see how having an open RFC/U on my behavior is helpful at this time. I remain open to receiving feedback, at my Talk page or otherwise. --doncram (talk) 00:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Response to concerns
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Applicable policies and guidelines
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Questions
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Outside view
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Proposed solutions
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Reminder to use the talk page for discussion
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