Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Intangible

Comment by LucVerhelst
Intangible has a very confrontational style. He seems to be unable to accept changes that are outside what he believes is the truth. The only way to bring NPOV into such articles, seems to be to go along with his tendency to start an edit war, an hoping that during the conflict a third party can convince him to partially concede.

I seem to find it harder and harder to go along with this confrontational style, and have a tendency to give up, letting him have his POV-truth.

Some examples :
 * 12 July 2006 Vlaams Belang While reverting vandalism, Intangible reverted good faith edits by TedMundy. After a revert back by TedMundy, new revert by Intangible ("use the talk page first when you want to remove references here"). Revert back by TedMundy, commenting "What references ? I edited the text, made it better. No need to ask permission first, I should think.", upon which Intangible reverts back again : "I don't have time for silly games, so use the talk page first". I step in, and revert back : "I don't see why user TedMundy should first confer on the talk page". New revert from Intangible : "surely it can be included though". Revert back from myself :"I agree with TedMundy. This belongs in the Vlaams Blok article", upon which Intangible goes to my talk page : .  My answer on his talk page :, upon which Intangible reverts back Vlaams Belang : "instead of proving a POINT, I will add the reference back again". Another revert from me, following some edits by me and another user, and a final revert back by that other user, accompanied by a personal attack by that user on me and TedMundy on the talk page.
 * Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, 15 July 2006. Between edits and  : discussion between myself and Intangible about the content of the criticism section. Intangible inserts the vision of a minority far right group, using weasel words, trying to depict them as mainstream. I tried to find some middle ground, but I gave up.
 * July 18, Guido Demoor Guido Demoor recently died in Antwerp, Belgium. Initially, press coverage led to believe that he was the victim of a beating by 6 youths of North African descent. Later was revealed that he himself had far right connections, that he initiated the fight in question, and that his death was primarily caused by his bad condition, and only circumstantially by the fight (that he started himself). The article as it is now depicts only the first, racially coloured story. I've tried to bring NPOV into it, giving two independent sources, but my edits were plainly reverted by Intangible, while commenting : "rv to sane version - see talk page". The page meanwhile has been blocked. The discussion on changes continues on the talk page, where he refuses to cooperate to find a middle ground, but instead suffises with trying to minimise the value of the sources provided. --LucVerhelst 21:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments by Lingeron (Shannon)
concerning the comment by AaronS: As AaronS breaks the 3RR himself, I would hardly take his complaints seriously. Here is an example of his disergard for the 3RR rule. where User: AaronS makes 7 edits on July 12 and 8 edits on July 6.

AaronS calss this edit a "dubious claim", I would call it inserting neutrality. Additionally AaronS complains that Intangible uses "a 120 year old reference" and calls it thus unreliable. If there is some connction between the age of a source and it's unreliablility I for one find it impossible to see.

I would dismiss as dishonest and frivolous the comments of this user, on these facts, alone.

concerning the comment by LucVerhelst: "Intangible has a very confrontational style. He seems to be unable to accept changes that are outside what he believes is the truth. The only way to bring NPOV into such articles, seems to be to go along with his tendency to start an edit war, an hoping that during the conflict a third party can convince him to partially concede." This is incorrect. Intangible does back up his edits with fact, both in the ariticle and in the discussion. These factual edits are then blatantly ignored by those that gather and bully this editor in an effort to maintain domination over an article. Here is an example: 

Here is an example of Intangible trying to get neutrality into anarchism

If there are edit wars going on it is because there is no other ways to introduce fact into many articles. The edit wars are occuring because of the guard dogs of articles not the individual who wants to add facts that disagree with these guard dogs. I can personally attest to this as it is my experience as well.

concerning the comment by Tazmaniacs: "Intangible has decided to cut out the term far right wherever editorial consensus has judged it necessary." As consensus currently means the agreement of a group of socialist or left-leaning editors who bully and play mind games with any dissenting editor at Wikipedia now, consensus means cow flop. Then again, consensus often means as much in other instances. I would imagine there was consensus in some southern towns when the KKK lynched blacks who tried to vote or ride in the front of a bus, for example, and there was consensus when Jesus got nailed to a cross and left there to suffer and die. That is the extent of my impression of the evidence of Tazmaniacs and often of the over valued term consensus.

My experience with Intangible is that he is a good sound editor who has been harassed because he disagrees with the views of the above editors. His aim is only to get neutrality into an article. This arbitration case looks like a bullying attempt at getting rid of an editor who has only tried to contribute to an encycopedia and round out the POV of others. He also gets insulted a lot and doesn't attack back as a result, which is commendable. Sha nnon duck talk  00:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Response by WGee
''As AaronS breaks the 3RR himself, I would hardly take his complaints seriously. . . . I would dismiss as dishonest and frivolous the comments of this user, on these facts, alone. Shannon's argument to invalidate the opinion of AaronS is an ad hominem tu quoque'' fallacy, and should accordingly be ignored by the arbitrators.

AaronS calls this edit a "dubious claim", and rightfully so. That contribution by Intangible was unsourced and therefore constitutes orignal research. As Jimbo states, "[Unsourced information] should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced." Moreover, his attempt "to get neutrality into anarchism" made use of weasel words, which Wikipedia editors should avoid.

''Additionally AaronS complains that Intangible uses "a 120 year old reference" and calls it thus unreliable. If there is some connction between the age of a source and it's unreliablility I for one find it impossible to see.'' There is certainly a connection between the age and the reliability of a source. If a source is 120 years old, for instance, there's a good possibility that it is not applicable to contemporary politics, which is full of changing trends, theories, and norms.

As consensus currently means the agreement of a group of socialist or left-leaning editors who bully and play mind games with any dissenting editor at Wikipedia now, consensus means cow flop.  We could go on accusing each other of having left-wing or right-wing biases for ages, but it would accomplish nothing. Despite what you say, Tazmaniacs' inclusion of the term far-right has always been backed by an editorial consensus, with Intangible being the only detractor&mdash;take the consensus at the National Front talk page, for instance. There, not only can one see an editorial consensus, but a consensus amongst reputable sources, as well.

His aim is only to get neutrality into an article. One doesn't effect neutrality in an article by supressing a consensus amongst some of the most reputable, scholarly, non-partisan sources, as Intangible did in the National Front article. Instead of presenting multiple sources of equal esteem to support his claim that the National Front is not far-right (which would be the appropriate course of action), Intangible resorted to a specious, tangential argument about semantics to nullify the findings of the well-established, academic sources already in use. Because Intangible believes that the terms "left-wing", "right-wing", and their offshoots should not be used in political discourse, as Tazmaniancs noted in his earlier comment, he evidently feels it fit to ignore any source that uses the term. I, for one, believe that Intangible should not impose his minority POV on the editing process, nor should he have the right to unilaterally invalidate the findings of highly-esteemed, well-known sources based on his personal beliefs. If action is not taken by this arbitration committee, I am fearful that Intangible's editing streaks will harm the factual accuracy and credibility of multitudes of politics-related articles.

This arbitration case looks like a bullying attempt at getting rid of an editor who has only tried to contribute to an encycopedia and round out the POV of others. Rather, this arbitration case is intended to protect a class of articles from Intangible's disruptive, tendentious editing patterns.

-- WGee 20:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Procedural problems
For reference, see discussion following this post by me to WP:AN/I. --AaronS 23:01, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

confused
I'm confused. Somehow the ArbCom did not find my edits to be "tendentious," yet the probation is about that. How is this logically possible? Intangible 23:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Intangible
Please see this WP:AN/I discussion regarding my involvement in this case. The general feeling, it seems, is that this case needs to be revisited for the following reasons:


 * 1) I was never informed that I was a party to the case;
 * 2) neither I nor any other editor could thereby provide evidence in my defense;
 * 3) no evidence to which I could respond was presented against me;
 * 4) and the action taken against me did not have the support of the required majority.

Thank you, in advance, for your time and consideration. Best wishes, --AaronS 01:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Note: I shall be very inactive until 30 September (preparing my thesis, taking GRE, and applying to grad schools). If it is decided that this issue should be re-examined, please keep this in mind. Better yet, feel free to keep this on the backburner and deal with more pressing problems for the time being. --AaronS 03:47, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The evidence was your edit warring and prior blocks. Please offer actual reasoning why you should not be on probation, rather than procedural arguments against how it was done. Dmcdevit·t 04:43, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * If that is the evidence, here is my short response: two of the administrators who blocked me for WP:3RR have since re-examined their decisions and regretted them.The first block was deserved, but I had violated 3RR inadvertently. I discussed the situation with the admin who blocked me, and he lifted the block, because I was at the time doing a lot of work to improve the New England article. I stayed away from anarchism for a while, because it is truly a difficult page to work with.


 * One always walks a thin line while trying to improve controversial articles. I have had the benefit of working with several excellent editors from all sides of the ideological spectrum. In fact, I'm amazed at how some people can have such strong feelings about either side of an issue and still work together and reach compromises through civil discussion. This is how things usually proceed at anarchism when a few inflammatory editors are not around -- namely, User:RJII, User:Thewolfstar, and User:Hogeye and their various admitted or proven socks. When they or their sock puppets are involved, things usually get heated up very quickly, and that's when edit wars start to crop up.


 * I try to avoid edit wars as best as possible. When I revert, I try my damnedest to revert without edit warring. Or, I only revert sock puppets of banned users, suspected or proven. I should note that I rarely revert people who are simply suspected of being sock puppets, unless they have come from out of nowhere and are making the same edits or arguments as a recently banned user without any discussion (see User:That'sHot and User:DTC). As soon as they start engaging in discussion, I don't care whether or not they are sock puppets, and am happy to have them on board as long as they play nicely. If a sock puppet is obliged to edit in the best interests of the article, then there's no harm done. Unfortunately, their talk page discussions tend to descend into some nasty stuff.


 * In conclusion, with an examination of the current evidence, if I were to be put on probation it would be for nothing more than having a one deserved 3RR violation block on my record, a block that was soon lifted. I am a helpful, cordial, friendly editor, and quick to apologize to those whom I have wronged. I do not like edit warring, and find it pointless. It achieves nothing. I don't mean that philosophically, either. I mean that literally. What an article says right now doesn't matter, so long as there are other people who think that it shouldn't say that, and who can back up their claims with verifiable, reliable sources. At the same time, socks of banned users should be reverted, if only because they are a nuisance. I also do not edit tendentiously. Very few of my edits are controversial, and they are usually either (a) common opinion or (b) backed up with sources.


 * I think that you will find that most of my edits are useful, and that all of the editors who get along well here also get along well with me. People need to work on controversial articles like anarchism, and those articles need to be watched; however, it is very difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes frustrating.


 * Lastly, if there were 11 arbitrators in the beginning, and 1 recused himself/herself, then 6 is still the majority; 6 is the majority in a group of 10, and 5 would only be half. Forgive me if I'm using the wrong numbers, but if I am not, then this whole discussion seems rather moot. --AaronS 13:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

The abstention of User:SimonP from Remedy 3 was treated in the same manner as a recusal, reducing the majority for that motion to 5. The motion passed. Evidence was presented demonstrating that AaronS was blocked for edit warring, and a Finding to that effect was made in the case. I regret that neither the arbitrators nor the clerks informed AaronS that probation was being considered in his case. This was an oversight. --Tony Sidaway 04:54, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, since Aaron is currently busy, I will try to do what I can to explain why he should not be on probation. As you know, his first block was overturned after he explained the situation. The blocking admin in the second case later apologized and said they wouldn't have blocked had they had more information at the time of the block, but since the block had already expired by that time he was never unblocked. It appears as if the blocking admin from the third block may feel the same way, although they didn't explicitly say they wouldn't have blocked, but I think it was implied. See for yourself and decide I guess. . Anyways, most of the edit warring that happens at the anarchism articles is due to users who are now indefinitely blocked, or sockpuppets of those users before they are blocked themselves for being socks. A lot of outsiders don't realize this, so users like Aaron will occassionally be blocked. It's understandable, and it usually gets resolved without a problem. I personally think probation is inappropriate in his case, especially considering he was never even notified. The way I see it, the case for Aaron needs to be reopened. Some of the original supporting voters may change their minds after hearing Aaron's side of this. I'm not sure Tony if your post above is meant as a way of saying the case is closed and won't be reopened, but if so, that is not right. You shouldn't be able to decide whether Aaron still should be on probation since you (nor anyone else) can unilaterally put a user under probation. Aaron's part of the case needs to be re-voted on to maintain basic fairness. The Ungovernable Force 06:40, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm just a clerk so I wouldn't be involved in the decision on whether to re-open. However as a clerk I rummaged around in the case and came up with what I thought might be relevant detail. --Tony Sidaway 06:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, just wanted to make sure. It sounded like you were turning it down without saying so explicitly. Thanks for the clarification.  Ungovernable Force  Got something to say? 07:04, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Intangible (encore)
I have asked for a clarification on my arbitration, but got no response there, so I will try it here. My comment was:I'm confused. Somehow the ArbCom did not find my edits to be "tendentious," yet the probation is about that. How is this logically possible? Intangible 10:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * This should read edit-warring. If there are no objections, I'll change this in a day or two.  Sam Korn (smoddy) 21:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I suggest to combine this with the review of AaronS's arbitration decision. --LucVerhelst 19:19, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * This is quite clearly an error of notation rather than any kind of alteration to the decision. Sam Korn (smoddy) 21:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It is, but both for the decision on Intangible as for AaronS's decision, I believe. --LucVerhelst 22:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, the consistent wording would then be "for any disruptive edits." That's our convention, I don't recall our ever using just "edit warring" in the probation remedy, even when edit warring is the finding. Assuming there are no objections, I've fixed it. Dmcdevit·t 02:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I do not see why one should have to wait for User:AaronS to come back to Wikipedia. His review is pretty much irrelevant to the above question. Intangible 21:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Not to be picky, but is "for any disruptive edits" a convention used when the only thing Arbcom really had a concern with is the two times I was blocked (one block for just putting a NPOV tag to the Anarchism article—an article which has had that same tag now for about two months)? Intangible 13:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Frankly, I consider your removal of sourced information from Paul Belien disruptive, and was going to ban you from the article until I saw that you and Luc were talking nicely on the talk page. Your interpretation of reliable source policy is frankly ridiculous in this case.  You can not exclude newspaper articles as sources just because Mr. Belien says in his own blog that he considers the reporter to be baised against him.  Personal blogs are acceptable sources for non-controversial information about a person's life; they are not authoritative regarding that person's perceived enemies.  This sort of problematic source removal is part of what got you in trouble before.  The alternative to having individual admins making judgements on what is "disruptive" is to fully reopen the arbitration case to consider all of your recent edits, including to Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw.  I hope you will avoid removing reliable sources from other articles in the future, as that will only create problems for all concerned. Thatcher131 14:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:RS says: "Exceptions to this may be when a well-known, professional researcher writing within their field of expertise, or a well-known professional journalist, has produced self-published material. In some cases, these may be acceptable as sources, so long as their work has been previously published by credible, third-party publications, and they are writing under their own name or known pen-name and not anonymously." Belien is professional journalist. He is also well-known, inside and outside of Belgium. Intangible 14:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Even if journalist A has argued that journalist B is biased against person C, that is not reason to exclude B's sources from the article but to include both A and B. In this case, journalist A argues journalist B is biased against journalist A (i.e. himself).  That's an overwhelming conflict of interest and I doubt you would see the same logic accepted at Ann Althouse or Michelle Malkin for example.  Maybe Arbcom should reopen your case. Thatcher131 14:50, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but if journalist B writes that paleoconservatives are libertarians, which is refuted by journalist A, I'm not going to give undue weight to journalist B (probably none at all in this case). Intangible 15:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sam, there is a potential problem here. At the moment, Intangible is removing statements with reliable newspaper citations from Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw and Paul Belien; in one case because the version of a person's statement quoted in a French language newspaper differs from the version on Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw's own web site (hence, a mistranslation, according to Intangible); and in the other case because Mr. Belien has stated on his personal blog that the newspaper reporter responsible for the articles is biased against him. "Tendentious editing" was rejected as a finding of fact because it is content based. However, whether Intangible edit wars over his interpretations depends on the number of opposing editors and their tenacity. This doesn't seem right to me. Thatcher131 16:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:RS tells me that I can use both sources in those articles. Intangible 16:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the wording should just remove "by tendentious editing". You are quite right, of course, that the issue was more than edit-warring. Any other comments? Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, as you can see above he has an interesting view of reliable source policy. If you leave it as, "may be banned from any article he disrupts," my question as an admin would be how it should be enforced.  In the case of Paul Belien, can Intangible be banned from the article for his removal of sourced material even though he and Luc are talking politely?  In the case of  Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw, where there was disruption until the article was protected, should Intangible be banned from the article even though both editors were stubborn?  One answer would be to file article RFCs or requests for 3rd opinions, and then ban from the article if he refuses to accept the consensus of outside opinion.  That's a "process" answer although the gears grind slowly some times. Any further thoughts would be appreciated. Thatcher131 02:24, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I was working with Intangible to get Paul Belien a little more balanced. Since a civil discussion on the talk page didn't get us anywhere, I put an template on the article page. He reverted it immediately, saying that the article wasn't unreferenced, so I put some templates on the page, and the  template, hoping it would make my goal clear. About minutes later, he did this :. Of course, the two can be unrelated, and (assuming good faith) he might genuinely be worried that there is a reference problem with George W. Bush being the U.S. president. --LucVerhelst 15:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sigh. I think the situation at Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw is somewhat different than at Paul Belien and calls for a different response.  I'm waiting for a third opinion from a more experienced administrator. Obviously, Intangible should not make edits just to make a point; doing so repeatedly will likely trigger the disruptive edits remedy in his arbitration. Thatcher131 16:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)