Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Highways 2

Statement by uninvolved Picaroon
This doesn't appear to be an arbcom-level dispute; the extent to which user conduct is an issue here is even less than in Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters. In this case, several project members have an opinion one way, while NE2 disagrees (see talk page). That's about it. RFCs 1 and 2, while pitting NE2 vs a couple of the same project members, are not the same dispute as this one, and should not be listed under the dispute resolution section. None of the three show much outside commentary: the project members who disagreed with NE2 are signing one set of views, while NE2 signs another view.

In response to Scott5514, and  are isolated examples of borderline incivility. Hardly arbcom worthy. "He has also failed to assume good faith by accusing his opponents of forming a false consensus through IRC" Assuming SPUI is telling the truth here, (and I see no reason to assume otherwise), NE2's distrust of this cliquish project's IRC channel is well-founded.

Again, there's not really a case here. My advice to the road project members is to desist with the fortress mentality, which Krimpet brings up in the second rfc, and actually seek a compromise with NE2. You're all part of one encyclopedia, first and foremost. Wikiprojects are insignificant in the scheme of things, and attempts to make them otherwise should be discouraged. Picaroon (t) 04:40, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Edit Centric
In the process of contributing to the WP:USRD and WP:CASH projects, it has been my fortune to work with a number of these editors, including NE2. While some of our discussions have not been, shall we say "productive", I have also seen this editor make some noteworthy contributions to articles that I regularly keep a weather eye on, such as CA SR 99's history section. I truly believe that NE2 is capable of some fantastic contributions to the project overall.

While saying this, I also have noted his unwillingness to work within consensus at various times, as well as an equal unwillingness to join other USRD editors over in IRC. I'm not insinuating that the IRC factor is necessary for development of articles, however it IS a useful tool for real-time discussion of various edits, proposals, and just getting to know your fellow editors. In short, it's yet another community-builder, one that NE2 has chosen to remain OUTSIDE of. I have personally invited him over to IRC, in the hopes that through this medium, the different thought processes and conversations that affect USRD might be better revealed, and that NE2 might be a bit more enlightened by it, as would all USRD editors.

Since there have been other RFCs on this editor, this begs the question; how many does it require before an editor will either A)work within the project's editing community for the betterment of the project, or B)be respectfully asked to dissociate themselves from the project, and move on to other avenues for success? Personally, I would LOVE to see NE2 make more attempts to follow consensus, make more wonderful contributions like he has done in the past, and remain a viable part of USRD. It is my sincere hope that this RFA process will result in these ends. Edit Centric (talk) 09:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * FOLLOW-UP - Evidently, we DO have a problem within USRD and CASH. Please see the following link of today's revert war between NE2 and admin FCYTravis.
 * Personally, I am a bit surprised at this, especially given the circumstances of this RFAR. Edit Centric (talk) 21:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FOLLOW-UP 2 (Response to assertions regarding IRC) - In regards to statement by Daniel Case, I would like to clarify a few items of interest here. IRC had NO role in bringing this about, it was editors' use of IRC that may have been a contributing factor. (The GUN did not kill the victim, the shooter killed the victim. The gun was simply a means to an end) Also, IRC is NOT the "walled garden" that Mr. Case is characterizing it as. Anyone may connect to the Freenode servers, register a nick, and join the channels. There has been more than adequate reference to the existance of the #wikipedia-en-roads channel, and how to get there. mIRC is one of several shareware programs available as free download to facilitate this, I've personally been using mIRC and IRC in general for the past 10+ years. As to the "discussions there", yes, anyone can be privy to them if they wish. Edit Centric (talk) 00:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Will Beback
I'm concerned with a related admin action by Rschen7754. He edited the project page in the midst of an edit-dispute, then protected it. When I asked him about it on his talk page he showed no awareness of his error. On further onvestigation, it appears that Rschen7754's blanking was not neutral, but rather had the effect of reverting a previous edit by NE2, his opponent in this dispute. (I've been told that the blanking was reasonably neutral) If the ArbCom takes this case I suggest they review this type of behavior. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 07:24, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm also concerned about the behavior exhibited regarding East Fork Road, which is how I became aware of this dispute. That article has been on my watchlist for years. NE2 made some small additions to it earlier this month, then yesterday he tagged it as belonging to the USRD project. Rschen7754 reverted that tagging four miuntes later. 32 minutes later, with no apparent discussion, Rschen7754 redirected the article to California State Route 39, even though they are different roads. He immediately undid that action and a minute later user:O nominated the article for deletion. The AfD was marked by at least one "per Scott5114 and Rschen7754" vote by a party to this RfAr. In the midst of the discussion Rschen7754 cited a notability standard that apparently has not been adopted. Within three hours six members of the USRD project had participated, all (besides NE2) asking for deletion or merging. As it happens, sources and additional claims of notability were easily added and the nominator withdrew the AfD. But the quick piling-on seemed so notable that I commented about it on the mediation page. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 22:50, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Amarkov
Neither side is free of blame here. NE2 is certainly ignoring consensus when he wants to, but at the same time the USRD participants are either collaborating on IRC or doing a very good job of appearing to. I think we really need Arbcom to sort this out. -Amarkov moo! 07:18, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by tangentially involved Krimpet
I used to be involved in USRD months ago, and pretty much ended my activity with the WikiProject over these issues. As Picaroon mentioned above, I stated my opinion on this dispute in one of the NE2 RfCs, and I'll expand on it here.

Sadly, this is largely a rerun of Requests for arbitration/Highways. USRD has unfortunately turned into a rather arcane bureaucracy, claiming and maintaining roads-related articles as a walled garden with their declared processes and guidelines over such minor and trivial details as style, formatting, and WikiProject tags, the same kind of trivial stuff that led to the SRNC debacle that was thankfully before my time here. :/ NE2 tends to be quite BOLD and overly headstrong at times, but his concerns are valid and it seems he's being ignored and steamrolled by a supposed consensus to revert his changes per these supposed processes and guidelines even when it's been explicitly stressed in the Highways RfAR that here on Wikipedia that guidelines are only that and not binding, alternative forms and arbitrary decisions are acceptable, and that there are many ways acceptable to accomplish a given task.

If there's something ArbCom needs to look at, it should really be the "us vs. them" attitude of a core group of USRD members, and how the WikiProject has largely become a bureaucratic walled garden instead of integrated with and subordinate to the project and community as a whole.  krimpet ✽  14:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by partly-involved Mitchazenia
I am a usual active member of USRD but decided to back out until being persuaded by another user to release my feelings. I've opposed this ArbCom case in the IRC channel, where much of yelling and complaining goes on over and over again.

Most users find NE2 an editor who does good work when its right, but he often goes against consensus. Usually consensus is not a thing to ignore consensus. The first example was in the third RFC where he changed the term "decommissioned" to "deleted" without a consensus. He did start a conversation before doing that however. My personal feelings are that NE2 should try to start waiting for consensus. His continuous denial of everything is causing the project to go nowhere. We're here to make/expand articles for the common good, not to argue over dumb issues like consensus. I'd also like to see less of the "All of us versus NE2" in IRC and on Wiki, as its causing a big blacklistment of the project and problems with the users. The third RFC was a minor example of this and now this ArbCom case is making things worse.

This is not the first time that USRD has gotten in trouble, see the State Route Naming Conventions case back in 2006. Most of those users aren't with Wiki anymore, but it helped make the project better (and unfortunately gave it a black-eye for some users). Around May 2007, the current group of USRD editors came together. However, NE2 has always felt we hate him and always defy anything we say. Look at New York State Route 52, he and the usual group disputed his ownership of the article, that resulted in the first RFC for him. That was solved in time, and he learned that. For a little while, it was just small bouts. Then he decided to have a thing for the Non-free shields, causing another RFC, which was filed under WikiLawyering. Things got worse, with more IRC bashing, and the third RFC came out over the decommissioned dispute. I haven't checked if there was a consensus, but I know that is was going somewhere. Now this. Everything was going smoothly on a new task force, and NE2 went crazy on it.

Now that I've expressed details, this is what I want to see personally:


 * For NE2:
 * 1) NE2 listening to consensus and be willing to be more civil.
 * 2) NE2 to be more on the willing side at all. He has issues. He's a great editor, he's just gotta be more understanding. If you have an idea, bring it up civily, not personally attacking people.


 * For Rschen, TMF, Scott5114 and etc.
 * 1) The current users, including me, stop bashing all of NE2's moves on IRC and take it like men.
 * 2) Stop using IRC for consensus: This is what personally is making all these messes. Ideas should be brought up on IRC, but also brought to the project talk.

One reason I opposed this ArbCom is that I don't wanna see my buds here at USRD banned or topic banned from Wiki, they're some of my best friends and I accept them a lot. Sure, I'm not the best, so what? They do enough for me and willing to stand up for my friends in return. Thanks for your time and patience.Mitch32contribs 17:44, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by partially involved Master son
What I see here is that the members of USRD are involved in a behavioral conflict. I too have been involved in some of these consensus debates and have cosigned the second RFC. After doing that - I came to realize it isn't just about NE2, its about the walled garden that certain members of U.S. Roads WikiProject have developed.. Some users were hoping that I defend the claim that this walled garden has been broken, but I have to say that is not true. Many of the evidence pieces above show more that this garden is stronger.

NE2 is being bold in his edits and he has contributed exceptionally to Wikipedia, he has presented ideas via the talk page, but it seemed to me that those ideas were unfortunately met with resistance from the majority of active U.S. Roads editors. I have seen the discussions - but chose not to participate in them, but being the Channel Contact for #wikipedia-en-roads I have seen these very same users getting together to talk about these discussions and have been very disappointed that this channel was used for this. The channel should be for informal Q & A talk and simple conversation between members, not for bashing users and ideas behind Wikipedia's back and hiding consensus from the non-IRC users, and most certainly for formal consensus gathering - something that needs to be done in the project's talk page on Wikpedia.

I have bashed users such as NE2 myself in the past and now I realize the gravity of the situation and apologize. My wish is for the remaining members who do this to do the same. NE2, I do see that you have contributed greatly to the project, but you also have been pretty persistent in pushing past consensus. I agree there are times when we should Ignore all rules and be bold. I also agree that there needs to be consensus to make a decision. USRD does not own the articles. Whatever comes of this RFAR, I ask that we all work together to clean up our acts. —  master son T - C 04:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by partially involved Daniel Case
This is the first time I've ever added a statement of my own to an arbitration case, and in short I will concur with Amarkov and Mitchazenia: while NE2's conduct is the central issue here, he hasn't been the only source of this conflict. I am not greatly involved with USRD as a whole, primarily working in the New York State Routes subproject, so I am insulated from what has led to this but not entirely unaware, and I have felt obliged to contribute statements to all three RFCs.

I first became aware of him and his methods roughly a year ago when he and Krimpet (above), began what I now see is a typical campaign of his: make massive edits to virtually every article in the project over what is usually a minor semantic issue. In this case, it was the use of the words "duplex" "triplex" and "multiplex" for concurrencies. The argument was that they were roadfan neologisms, not in use by state or federal DOTs. Most of us only found out about this when articles on our watchlists started showing these changes and we started reverting and being reverted in turn. I began discussing this with Krimpet, relatively new to Wikipedia at the time, and learned he had posted about this previously only on the minimally-trafficked Highways project talk page. I suggested he take it to the USRD talk page, where most of these discussions go on, and it got consensus there. Krimpet learned from this experience and is now an admin.

This ongoing dispute between NE2 and the USRD core group (many of the editors above) figuratively and semi-literally spilled into my front yard in the aforementioned NY 52 dispute last June. Since Route 52 and one of its main bridges are within a block of my house and I travel on some portion of it almost every day I have done a great deal of the work on this article, writing the route description and taking almost all the pictures. The roads project descended upon it to improve it for a potential GA nom and all of a sudden the talk page was incredibly busy, largely with heated exchanges between NE2 and the other editors. Ditto with the edit summaries. The net result after a few days was some undeniable improvements to the article, in no small part due to NE2's zeal and knowledge, but also the first RFC.

I will repeat my conclusion there: NE2 really needs to learn to balance WP:BOLD and WP:CON better than he has been.

The second RFC came a mere month or so later and turned on an issue related to another of my personal pet issues: the limited knowledge many editors have of WP:FUC. Consistent with existing understandings of that, NE2 had been removing the logos of toll roads from all articles save those on the roads themselves on the grounds that they were the copyrighted works of the operating authorities in question and thus not automatically in the public domain as road shields run by the state DOTs are due to their original publication in state derivatives of the MUTCD (Follow that?)

I will leave my complaints about this as yet another instance of the needless strife caused by the tightening of the fair-use standards and users' imperfect attempts to understand and implement them to the proper forum. The issue seems to have been settled when it was realized that the publication of those logos without copyright notices at the time, under contemporary U.S. law, placed them into the public domain. In the RFC that grew from this I supported NE2. It ruffled feathers but he was making a good-faith effort to implement policy.

In the most recent one I felt he was claiming a consensus that couldn't demonstrably exist, since there seemed to be no consistent term used, if at all, by state DOTs for a term for roads that still exist and are in use but are no longer designated by them as state highways. I felt in the absence of that our own consensus for "decommissioned" was fine, and that NE2 should respect that whatever his personal sentiments.

So now we are here. I have nothing to add by way of remedy-specific suggestions but, should the ArbCom accept this case (as it seems they are ready to), I would be quite willing to participate in any workshop discussions or other efforts to resolve this. I would, however, like to say that I would ask that the committee consider some assessment of the role that IRC has played in bringing this about. It isn't the first time that discussions there, which not everyone can be privy to, have led to a case here and I believe that the nature of IRC communication and the fact that it's not as easily reviewable as edits here could have a detrimental effect on the project in the long run. Daniel Case (talk) 19:03, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Addendum: Lest there be any doubt, my statement is meant to encourage the ArbCom to take the case. Three RFCs on a single user is too many. As for IRC, I should clarify that my criticism of its use is not limited to the USRD cases ... there have been a few other cases from other projects in which someone's behavior and/or actions on IRC became an issue here. Walled garden or not, I believe it poses other problems: it can sometimes encourage people to heat up rather than cool down due to its real-time nature, and is it under Foundation control? I believe our interactions and collaborations take place best in spaces where we are completely within Foundation ownership and Wikipedia policy. Daniel Case (talk) 05:48, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Statement by partially involved Jeff02
I'm somewhat involved with USRD, to the extent that I am a member of one of its subprojects, Roads in Maryland. I think Krimpet's comments hit the nail right on the head. USRD has become a bureaucratic walled garden. The "core members" have positioned themselves as the leaders of all the individual projects that fall under the USRD umbrella (such as MDRD), and through their perceived authority, have performed actions on these individual projects without their consent. Participants lists and project banners were both taken over by USRD without even the posting of a comment on the individual project pages. Rschen's response to my complaint over these issues was that it was too difficult to post comments on the individual project talk pages and that he had already posted a discussion regarding the participants list on WT:USRD beforehand. The participants list discussion received no responses, and Rschen used this as justification for carrying out the merging. However, in the USRD discussion that occurred after the merging (linked above) several editors, including myself, expressed disapproval of it. This shows how USRD has basically failed to reach out to the individual projects and members and instead asserts its authority, or even ownership of the projects as well as articles that fall within it. This is just another example of the mentality of USRD. A group of "top members" believe that as soon as they make a decision within their walled garden that is USRD, they have the right to apply it to articles and subprojects no matter what any "lesser" member has to say. Not that I feel NE2 isn't to blame as well, I feel that NE2 needs to work better with other editors, but the same can be said about the core USRD members.-Jeff (talk) 08:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Jeff02
It is not practical to post every state highway WikiProject when a discussion is held at WT:USRD. Therefore, USRD editors need to watchlist WT:USRD. It is not our fault if they do not. In fact, I have sent messages to each WikiProject reminding them about this point. (And that took a long time - showing how impractical such an action is). If we hold the nationwide discussions at WT:USRD, this saves much time that could be better used for improving articles. --Rschen7754 (T C) 19:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Question
Would the findings of Requests for arbitration/IRC affect this case? --Rschen7754 (T C) 22:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I would expect that, given the overlap in arbitrators between both cases, there is likely to be parallel consideration of related matters rather than one setting a "precedent" for the other. Just my two cents.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 23:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Shortcut
Could we get a shortcut for this case? WP:RFAR/HWY2 for example. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That's generally considered a bad idea&mdash; the lifetime of an arbitration case is finite (and relatively short) and there are a sufficient number of them that we couldn't keep them around and the risk of dangling links is too great to delete them afterwards. &mdash; Coren (talk) 02:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * WP:RFAR/HWY exists... --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, and the fact that it does still exist is testimony to how bad an idea that was. :-)  &mdash; Coren (talk) 04:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Timing
I was wondering when the Committee would look at our case? --Rschen7754 (T C) 20:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)