Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Deir Yassin massacre

Statement by FrancisTyers ·
I banned Guy from the page for inserting a number of paragraphs of copyvio text in his rewrite. People able to read proprietary document formats can see Kim's summary here. I was asked to remove the ban by SlimVirgin as I had been discussing the issue of the title on the talk page with him, taking an opposing stance, although I hadn't made any content edits to the article itself. I subsequently removed the ban.

Guy first denied any copyright violation, but then implicitly accepted it by requesting permission to use the text. At the moment the article has been reverted to a version without any copyvio text that Guy inserted, although there may be others. So far there has been no permission given to use the text.

The fact that much of the copyvio material was from the Zionist Organisation of America, an organisation that would be expected to have a strong point of view in the matter is also concerning. I think if the article is reflecting the view of the Zionist Organisation of America, we haven't been doing our job to represent a neutral point of view. - FrancisTyers · 22:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Leifern ·
It seems to me that adequate disciplinary action already has taken place against Guy Montag, in that he was been banned for some time from editing the article in question. It isn't clear to me why KimvdLinde thinks such vigorous action is necessary. And several of her complaints are in fact legitimate content disputes that remain unresolved. Guy Montag should refrain from misbehavior, but he should not be prevented from engaging in an honest debate. --Leifern 23:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Ral315
I'm marginally involved, having placed a short-lived article ban on Guy Montag for his editing on Deir Yassin massacre (per my instructions, an administrator who dissented removed the ban). While I think a few of his actions were a bit out of line, I'm not necessarily sure it's enough to warrant a re-opening of his case. Ral315 (talk) 23:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Bibigon
I'm involved in this largely because KimvdLinde was the one who started this arb case, after previously initiating a move war on the article. KimvdLinde at this point appears to me to be an administrator who regularly abuses her powers in the pursuit of pushing her own POV, all the while cloaking her actions under the claim that she is uninterested party. She has previously done this in the Allegations of Israeli apartheid article and arb case, where she tried to excuse her improper behaviour in the move war that occured there on the basis that she was a mediator in that case. With regards to the Deir Yassin article:
 * 1. Guy Montag rewrote much of the article and moved it, apparently believing that the move was not likely to be contested.
 * 2. There was disagreement, and as far as I can tell, the article should have been moved back then and there until a consensus could be reached.
 * 3. Instead however, KimvdLinde then began a poll on the matter, to propose moving the article back the 'Massacre' title.
 * 4. There was no consensus after the prescribed period of time, but a majority did exist to move the article back. Given the lack of a consensus, several parties then agreed to extend the poll to get a better idea of where other editors stood on the matter.
 * 5. The voting then shifted, with eventually a slight majority opposing moving the article back. Again, no consensus was forthcoming.
 * 6. KimvdLinde then all of a sudden, without warning, without discussing closed the poll, claiming that Guy Montag had invalidated it by informing other editors that a poll was ongoing. There was no evidence presented to suggest that Guy Montag's actions were inappropriate, merely that KimvdLinde did not approve of them. She said this notification began after the extension of the poll deadline. It is worth noting that at that point, no consensus existed for moving the article.
 * 7. Stunningly, KimvdLinde also took Guy Montag's actions as reason to unilaterally move the article back, initiating an edit war in the process. She did so in spite of the fact that even before Guy Montag notified other users, no consensus existed for her move. She also did so in spite of the fact that she had begun the poll in the first place, thus presumably believing it had some validity and legitimacy to begin with. So to recap, she began a poll, lost, claimed irregularities, and then without discussion, used those claimed irregularities as reason to declare victory. Note please that she did not try another poll, nor did she respect the results of the poll before the alleged irregularities. Instead, she took the her claims as cause to completely reverse the results, and take the same action that she would have had a consensus existed for the move. So if a consensus had existed for her proposed move, she would have moved the article, and if a consensus did not exist, she still would have moved the article. This does not appear to me to be appropriate behaviour from an administrator.
 * 8. While KimvdLinde may have had legitimate cause to move the article back in the first place, due to the nondiscussed nature of the original move, the moment she began the poll, she lost any such claim to legitimacy. Why? Because by starting the poll, she implicitly gave it legitimacy and weight. If she had consensus, she was going to move back on that basis. If she lacked consensus, beyond her inappropriate actions in closing the poll, she clearly planned on moving the article back anyways claiming that Guy Montag's initial move was out of process. If that is the case however, then why did she begin the poll in the first place if she was going to take the same action regardless. What she has done here is a clever, yet appalling abuse of process. Assuming that Wikipedia still works through consensus, and that process is important, KimvdLinde's actions fail to meet those standards in this case.
 * 9. In KimvdLinde's statement here to the Arbitration Committee has misrepresented the facts of what happened on the Administrator's Noticeboard. To quote her "The rational for the move was posted at [the Administrator's Noticeboard] and the motivation was considered valid." Reading through the noticeboard, this does not appear to be the case. Her actions were heavily disputed, and her rationale, behaviour, and tone was also severely criticized by other admins there. Some agreed with her, other did not. Her misleading attempts to claim approval here for actions should be noted as well.
 * If the Arbitration Committee is going to be considering Guy Montag's actions here, then KimvdLinde's must also be considered. I would like to remind the committee that KimvdLinde is currently involved in another arbitration case about Allegations of Israeli apartheid about almost this exact same issue. There, poll about a proposed article move which ended without consensus, and was followed by a move war. The entire arb case is focused around claims by several editors, including KimvdLinde, that the move was out of the process, and thus not valid, and that the involved editors should be reprimanded. Invoking a curious double standard, KimvdLinde regardless saw fit to again engage in the same same behaviour herself, without even waiting for a ruling in the ongoing case. As an administrator, her actions and her behaviour, should not be allowed to go unnoticed. Bibigon 02:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Briangotts
I requested that the ban on Guy be lifted per the instructions because it seemed inappropriate to me and inconsistent with the previous arbcom ruling. I generally endorse Bibigon's summary of the facts. I find KimvdLinde's pattern of behavior disturbing in the extreme, all the more so because s/he is an admin. This is a case of an admin heavily involved in edit conflicts in an article now using admin powers to persecute a user whose views differ. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 03:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Gatoclass
Tony Sideaway has asked me to shorten the length of my submission.

My original statement on this page was intended to be my final statement on the matter, and I really can't be bothered rewriting the whole thing again for brevity.

So all I'm going to say now is - I fully support KimvdLinde's move to have Guy Montag's status as a Wiki editor reviewed. He breached the terms of his probation by making a highly contentious POV rewrite of the Deir Yassin massacre page, including a unilateral page move, he engaged in votestacking when a straw poll threatened to move the page back, and then after long debate over his edit, we discovered that much of it had not been taken from the original sources as he pretended, but had simply been plagiarized unattributed from a handful of partisan websites.

Just to emphasize the extent of POV in his rewrite - the main denialist website he used to construct his piece itself admitted that a mere 5% of 170 books it reviewed seriously disputed the occurrence of a massacre. Guy's rewrite by contrast effectively reverses that proportion by limiting accounts of the massacre to a mere 5% of the text, while most of the other 95% lends support to the denialist position.

He wasted several weeks of other users' time on an edit that was not only heavily POV, but which also turned out to be substantially a cut-and-paste copyvio. I feel that deserves some sort of disciplinary action over and above merely banning him from the page in question - particularly since he was already on probation for similar behaviour. Gatoclass 11:21, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg
I find many of Kimv's recent actions to be very concerning. She seems to either not understand or not care about the fact that adminstrators do not have any extra "powers" per se, they just have extra responsibilities. She regularly uses her privileges to gain an upper-hand in disputes that she is not only involved in, but is actually a primary party to, all the while she pretends to have no personal convictions one way or another about the dispute. I think it is particularly odd that she would even attempt to open this RFA on the heels of another conflict where she engaged in the same kind of inappropriate behavior.

As for Guy's behavior, I do not think that it can be called exemplary by any stretch of the imagination, however I find it equally difficult inapplicable to state that Guy's edits were a violation of his probation. Sure he edits from a pov, but so do all of us, at least Guy is able to admit it right on his userpage. If Guy did anything wrong it does not even compare to the actions of KimvdLinde. If there is a reason to accept this RFA it is only to take a closer look at the actions of Kimv.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 12:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Huldra
I also fully support KimvdLinde's move to have Guy Montag's status as a Wiki editor reviewed. I think that the statement by Gatoclass (as given here) nicely sums up what has been problematic with Guy Montag´s editing.

Many of the statements above by Bibigon have earlier been raised by him/her on the the talk-page, see Talk:Deir_Yassin_massacre. Most of his/her arguments have also been answered there; to summarize: Huldra 07:05, 25 July 2006
 * that Guy Montag´s unilaterally moved Deir Yassin massacre (about 30.000 Google hits) to Battle of Deir Yassin (about 100 Google hits)  "believing that the move was not likely to be contested", is at least stretching my WP:AGF
 * I agree with Bibigon that a better procedure would have been to just move the article back right away, and ask Guy Montag to build a consensus for such a move.
 * The claim that KimvdLinde "clearly planned on moving the article back anyways claiming that Guy Montag's initial move was out of process" is completely unsubstantiated. *IF* the vote had showed a consensus for *not* moving the article back; then I cannot imagine that Kim would have moved the article. So to say (directly/indirectly) that the outcome of the poll would not matter to Kim is simply pure speculations, and certainly not AGF.
 * The argument presented by Bibigon seem to claim that somebody who is in favour of moving Battle of Deir Yassin to Deir Yassin Massacre would not also be against moving Deir Yassin Massacre to Battle of Deir Yassin in the first place. This argument hinges on that those two moves are different, i.e. people will have different preferance w.r.t. the title depending on whether you start with the "Battle.." version, or whether you start with the "Massacre.." version. I am of the opinion that when people have a preferance on one of the titles, A or B, then they will have that preferance, irregardless of whether the poll is about moving A ->B, or if it is about moving B->A. And if that preferance is static for any one editor, then the result of the poll shows that there was no concensus for the move to the "Battle" version in the first place.
 * However, I think a lot of the confusion here could have been avoided if the poll had been about moving Deir Yassin Massacre to Battle of Deir Yassin (and not the opposite). Now, Guy Montag and equal minded could claim that there had to be a clear majority, (consensus), for undoing a move that was done without consensus in the first place.

Comment by ChrisO
I've been involved on the margins of this article, providing advice on Talk:Deir Yassin massacre on the requirements of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. (Disclaimer: I've not come across Guy Montag before and I've not had any previous involvement in this particular article, which I've only edited once to remove an erroneously placed tag. Nor am I a partisan on Israeli-Palestinian issues - my comments below have no political motivation.)

I'm not adding myself as a party, but I believe there are two key issues that need to be addressed here:


 * 1) POV editing - as noted by other editors, GM appears to have relied on a minority POV (essentially a denialist one) to rewrite the article and move it to a new title. This presents obvious difficulties as far as WP:NPOV is concerned and the move unquestionably caused significant controversy and disruption.


 * 2) Copyright violation - there is clear evidence that much of the content added by GM was lifted verbatim from third-party websites without permission. Personally I found this revelation very disappointing, as I'd assumed that GM was at least producing some original work. The article instead ended up being a mashup of plagiarised content.

I note that the ArbCom has already found GM to have "engaged in disruptive point of view editing" and this certainly strikes me as being more of the same. However, I don't believe that a permanent ban is appropriate in the circumstances.

I believe that GM is sincere in wanting to improve Wikipedia, but I think the strength of his POV on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impairs his judgment in editing such articles. A lengthy ban from I-P articles would probably be sufficient and would allow GM to turn his energies to editing less contentious areas of Wikipedia, where his POV wouldn't get in the way so much. -- ChrisO 21:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)