Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/John F. Kennedy School of Government

John F. Kennedy School of Government

 * Editors involved in this dispute
 * 1) – filing party


 * Articles affected by this dispute


 * Other attempts at resolving this dispute that you have attempted
 * Talk:John F. Kennedy School of Government
 * Talk:John F. Kennedy School of Government
 * Talk:John F. Kennedy School of Government
 * Talk:John F. Kennedy School of Government

Issues to be mediated

 * Primary issues (added by the filing party)
 * 1) Reverted edits by User:JesseRafe, Why: Choice of what is "notable" was arbitrary. Need more information why certain items need to be removed. Are they not notable, not alumni, or some other reason?
 * 2) Wikipedia's own definition of Alumni is worth reading as we work on a compromise. It notes that commonly, not always, does an alumni mean the individual graduated. Alumnus in the English definition of Wikitionary notes that it can be a 1. a student or 2. a graduate. Graduation doesn't have to have occurred. Also it can be male or female, or male only. I assume in this case we mean both male and female.
 * 3) JesseRafel, please re-read my question to you - your criteria for edits is capricious. You did not remove someone who had absolutely no degree year listed, yet you removed others. Why?
 * 4) Furthermore you seem to think it is okay to have someone do the ExecEd program but not the Post-Doctoral program, why?
 * 5) Lastly, you removed someone because you said "the JD means they clearly didn't go to the school" when in fact the page for that person said they did both a JD and an MPP, potentially as part of a joint program. So again, your edits are capricious.
 * 6) At this point we are now running-up against Wikipedia's "rule of 3" which means you need to stop reverting and we need to discuss a solution together. If you want to label, "needs more references" for this part -- that makes sense. Or if you want to discuss a proposal for what should vs. should not be included in alumni, ExecEd? Post-Docs? Joint degree programs like the JD/MPP example? that's another path. However please do not keep on reverting edits, as that is against Wikipedia's Rule of 3.

Update to reply to JesseRafe:


 * 1) JesseRafe, I never said JD stood for Joint Degree, I said that one of the alumni listed you removed said on the Wikipedia that they had received both a MPP and a JD, and that could be a Joint Degree. Check what I wrote and you'll see that you misunderstood me. I just suggested there be some time before we rush to remove, to allow people to make edits. Even the mediation process started today allows until Dec 7. I indicated that was open for debate as I am not familiar with what is a good norm. Benutzernamen188 66 8 4 (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 2) Also JesseRafe, remember Wikipedia is about assume good intent. You seem to now be labeling me as not having a NPOV or being a sockpuppet solely because I disagree with you, when I have tried the Wikipedia approach to build consensus and now request for mediation. If you could spell out your criteria for why you're moving certain things and not others we could work towards consensus as opposed to you throwing mud my way.
 * 3) For example: You did not remove Ed Balls, no degree noted. You did not remove John R. Allen, Jr., Exec degree. You did not remove Andrey Bezrukov, degree stripped. You are inconsistent in what you claim is an Alumni. Wikipedia's own definition of alumni says it does not necessarily have to be someone who graduated.
 * 4) Case in point: Harvard_University lists Bill Gates as a notable alumni, yet Bill Gates did not complete his degree. Benutzernamen188 66 8 4 (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 5) Similarly Harvard_University lists Mark Zuckerberg as a notable alumni, also did not complete his degree. I have tried to engage you in discussing this, you don't seem to be open to discussion. Wish we could work towards consensus together. Benutzernamen188 66 8 4 (talk) 01:53, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Additional issues (added by other parties)
 * This editor has an obvious Conflict of Interest, I don't know or care which person they want so badly on this list, but their entire edit history is full of nothing but this article. Broke 3RR (yes, I know) because this is either a sockpuppet or some other malicious user. No idea what they are talking about alumni being female, that was never an issue, user is making things up. Similarly their claim that "JD" stands for "Joint Degree". Editor also wants their mystery non-notable personage listed on the page for THREE WEEKS while they write the article instead of writing an article first. Nor can they grasp the concept that regardless of whether the individual has an MPP if they're listed as having a JD, then they don't belong on this list. Whoever listed them should have put the relevant degree, that's still a valid reason for removal from such a list. It's not capricious, it's good housekeeping. Similarly all the names without blue links or references are by definition not notable, ergo removed. Further post-docs are not students, so cannot then become alumni, alumnae, or alums if the user has an issue with which word to use. JesseRafe (talk) 00:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Further: As can be seen from my edit history, I consistently remove non-notable people from these lists which often get overlooked (schools, neighborhoods/cities, etc.), and are snuck in by people with ties to the subject, and at the same time on multiple tabs I was also busy removing non-notables from Columbia's similar SIPA school as I was also culling down this list on HKG on November 23. JesseRafe (talk) 01:04, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Additional issue 2

Parties' agreement to mediation

 * 1) Agree. Benutzernamen188 66 8 4 (talk) 00:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Decision of the Mediation Committee

 * It does not seem like the parties here are interested in working productively together on an attempt at mediation. This predisposes mediation to failure if used in this dispute. Can the parties comment on this either way, please? For the Mediation Committee, AGK  [•] 10:42, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Reject. I agree with my colleague AGK's assessment, but rather than wait for responses, I am going to exercise my prerogative as chairperson under prerequisite for mediation #9 to determine this to be "a dispute which would benefit from additional work at lower levels of the dispute resolution process" such as "dispute resolution noticeboard, third opinion, request for comment, or additional talk page discussion". I'd strongly advise starting with third opinion and if that does not resolve the dispute, then moving on to DRN. For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 15:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC) (Chairperson)
 * Comment as per AGK's request, this is more than a little disappointing. Can you admins please look at the substantive issue here rather than the formal one? Namely, that this editor created an account solely for the addition of people to a list of notable alumni at a prestigious school and then maintained this account solely for the purposes of guarding against those additions' deletions. Every other issue is a smokescreen or strawman against my correct edits. (Their latest claim is that because I only removed 80% of the entries that ought to be removed none of them should have been removed, but, in fact it's just a really long list and I probably didn't see everyone I thought fit the bill for removal. Then, they use this criterion to label me capricious. It's really sad that this behavior is rewarded.)JesseRafe (talk) 23:40, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment Also, just because Benutzermen claims I refuse to discuss the issue (multiple times) in no way makes it true. Benutzerman instead rarely responded on their own Talk messages and had the befuddling and annoying habit of starting multiple threads on the same topic that were largely redundant and never directly addressed my prior responses, so, yes, I did begin to ignore his/her Talk Page requests because it was fruitless to get a dialogue on there as they would just start a new overly-long section on it anyway. JesseRafe (talk) 23:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)