Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Lightbringer

Original request for arbitration:

Involved parties

 * User:MSJapan et al.
 * User:Lightbringer

The unsupported edits being made by User: Lightbringer to Freemasonry have led to a revert war, which has made it difficult to add new and better information to the existing article.


 * Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Notice on Lightbringer's Talk page is here and a notice was also posted on the Freemasonry Talk page here


 * Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

User:Lightbringer states clearly on his user page that he is anti-Masonic. He was asked to support his evidence; he did not do so. Someone has also seen fit to vandalize his user page, which is a separate issue. He continually reposts edits that have been proven to be false in other discussions, and makes claims that essentially boil down to "you're biased against my bias". He has shown himself to be unwilling to accept other viewpoints, and merely rants at the injustice he sees visited upon him by "pro-Masonic" people (i.e., thew people who are trying to make sure everything is factual and cited), which makes any further attempt as resolution futile.


 * I certainly do not make any such statement about anti-masonry on my page. It is an interesting insight into the mentality of Freemasons however as it show anyone who says they have an open mind and refuse to accept Masonic claims at face value as being ipso facto 'anti-masonic'. The label of 'anti-masonry' is theirs not mine. A critic perhaps, but so what is the problem with that? Furthermore there has been absolutely no attempt at dispute resolution, this is a complete falsehood. They have insulted and belittled me continually as an 'anti-mason', offer no references or explanations, and engage in bullying and 'tagteam' deleting of anything I post.


 * It is quite curious that it is MSJapan making the arbitration request as actually 90% of the 'edit wars' have been between myself and 'Dreamguy', another Mason who 'edits' here. This indicates that the Masons here are closely working together here co-ordinating their 'editing' of Wikipedia by e-mails to each other.


 * This entire 'dispute' centers around my refusal to let stand these Masonic 'editors' continual deletion of links to articles about Freemasonry that THEY don't like, primarily the article by the Archdiocese of Arlington, Virgina and the New York Times aritcle about a fatal shooting inside a Masonic Lodge ritual. The remainder of the edit wars came after it became clear to me that these Masons would not be reasonable and allow both sides of the story to be included here. Dreamguy in particular refused to allow any link to articles that contained information about the Freemasonry theories in the Jack the Ripper killings. Remember we are just talking about the posting of a couple of external links here. After realising what other "edits" the masons were doing here to an otherwise balanced article(you can see MSJapans idea of edits he made on Oct. 6), which are a slow march wholesale deletion of the balanced Wikipedia article on freemasonry replacing it with propaganda cut and pasted from Masonic websites.


 * MSJapan and Dreamguy are not doing any research they are just turning this page into a mirror of dozens if not hundreds of other 'official' masonic p.r. websites. Wikipedia is supposed to be different, including both sides of the debate.Lightbringer 13:37, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by MSJapan
User:Lightbringer has repeatedly reinserted an edit regarding Freemasonry and Satan Worship that has been factually proved wrong, yet he deleted that part of the argument in favor of his own viewpoint. Through discussion, he has shown that he is not at all interested in NPOV, but rather in showing the world the evils of Freemasonry through uncited or poorly cited sources, relying on zealotry rather than fact.

I have shown him clearly and objectively why his edits were refused, yet he stll persists in making and remaking the same edits. He ranted about a Washington Post article being removed, when it was a copyright violation in the first place. He cited a book unconnected with Freemasonry except via its author's status as a Mason as a source for Freemasons worshipping Satan. He took another quote out of context, in the process removing the statemrnt that the quote's existence is not disputed; only the interpretation.

This constant need to revert edits is causing we the editors to have to spend more time fixing the Freemasonry article than we do contributing to the polishing up of the article by adding citations.

Furthermore, from looking at the talk pages, Lightbringer is confusing facts and trying to support conspiracy theories with other conspiracy theories. He would rather post material that is supportive of his point of view, even if they havebeen proved to be factually inaccurate or clearly violate copyrights. His recent actions have spurred a revert war, the article is now at a length warning, and a request has been made to lock the article. This is getting out of hand and really needs to be dealt with swiftly. MSJapan 02:32, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The article was locked, with the result that the Talk page is now a mess. There also seems to have been complaints made on Lightbringer's Talk page regarding some bad edits to Jack the Ripper and Juwes(noted by User:CambridgeBayWeather), a similar denial of wrongdoing, and furthermore, a distinct possibility that Lightbringer was or is using a sockpuppet called User:Squaredeal to perform the same sorts of edits he was making as Lightbringer. I was unaware of this until now, but I think this definitely points to the existence of a systematic issue regarding Lightbringer and any tangentially Masonically related subject. MSJapan 02:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Since the lock on the article expired, User:Lightbringer has violated 3RR, and in the process reverted an edit for length concerns of Freemasonry that also provided a link to the full information in Anti-Freemasonry, claiming "destruction" of said information, when that was clearly not the case. This situation has to end. MSJapan 06:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by DreamGuy
I'll try to keep this brief. User:Lightbringer now denies being an anti-Mason, but his edit history is quite clear, focusing only on edits to Freemasonry, Jack the Ripper, Juwes, and many others solely to include information from highly discredited anti-Mason sources as if they were factual. His first edits were on an anon IP account, User:24.68.243.40, where the exact same edits he has taken up under the Lightbringer banner started. His comments on that page shows that he thinks Masons are "are stupid and they are liars." Note that even the name of his account is a reference to the claim that Freemasons worship Lucifer. He falsely claims that I am a Freemason solely because I undo his policy-violating edits, and he makes personal attacks against anyone and everyone who removes the bias he keeps inserting. A quick look at his edit history shows no attempt to follow the NPOV, WP:V and WP:NPA policies. He is now full aware that his attempted edits on Freemasonry go against clear consensus and violate policy, yet he consistently puts them back (accompanied by insults) regardless of the number of editors who remove it. DreamGuy 04:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by WegianWarrior
I'll try to be short and to the point. In my opinion, User:Lightbringer seems to be in violation of several Wikipedia policies and guidelines; including but not nececarely limited to WP:NPOV (demanding to insert his own POV into NPOV articles to 'balance' them), WP:V (see DreamGuy's statement above, and User:Lightbringer's edithistory), WP:POINT (starting at least editwar, which has so far resulted in at least one page being locked), and WP:NPA (both in his edit summaries and in talkpages). Futhermore he has on at least one occation I am aware about deleated an entire section of a talkpage with no explonation or edit summary - a section not even discussing anything remotly to do with his edits (later he added a comment in the restored section, claming the section was proof of "masonic POV").

User:Lightbringer also pushes his POV in other articles more or less related to Freemasonery - I got directly invoved when I tried to NPOV and improve the visual apperance of Stephen Knight, when User:Lightbringer changed the imagedescription to suit his POV.

User:Lightbringer also shows a disregard for talkpage conventions, by adding new subsections both at the top and bottom - but I'm willing to look past this due to his (claimed) unfamilarity with Wikipedia. WegianWarrior 06:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Lightbringer
'They are stupid and they are liars' - in the first place that is taken out of context, it was in reference to the behaviour of Masons at Dmoz gaining control of the Opposing Views catagory and refusing to post links to websites with actual opposing views, but instead doing what Dreamguy is doing in the Satanism paragraph, turning it into a lampoon of "antis". In the second place the offending phrase was 'up' for only 30 seconds as I thought the better of it 'in the spirit of not making personal attacks' and deleted it. You can verify this for yourself if you care to.

It is extremely difficult to retain ones 'cool' when one is being provoked by Dreamguy and others. He maliciously stalked me, wherever and whenever I made an edit on wikipedia he found it and deleted it, almost always with a derogatory comment about 'this antimason has a pov and his references have all been discredited' or some such malarky. Then when I didn't go away after his taunts about never allowing me to contribute, they dreamt up this plan to have me banned from Wikipedia, first by the false charge of 'sockpuppetry' and now by this arbitration, which you will see in the post by MSJapan on my talk page, is actually directed at me personally. I posted quotations from Masonic books giving author and page numbers that related to Masonic teachings about Lucifer. MSJapan, a Freemason keeps deleting them. He has provided no justification for his deletions, in fact he usually clandestinely deletes them as part of his edits on different paragraphs.

I posted links to articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Arlington, Virgina Catholic Herald on the topic of Freemasonry. MS Japan, a Freemason keeps deleting them. He has provided no justifications for his deletions, in fact he usually clandestinely deletes them as part of his edits on different paragraphs.

I explained in Talk section that MSJapan and another Mason editor were 'cut and pasting' material from Masonic websites in violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. The material was lengthy and seem designed to push down to the bottom of the page the critical viewpoints. Material included lengthy links to Masonic Grand Lodges and questionable and lengthy material documenting the supposed history of the Grand Lodge of Estonia. I placed the material on new seperate pages as the Wikipedia message at top of page stated article was getting too long at 76kb. MSJapan reverted all of the edits with no explanation.

MSJapan continues to go through the article on Freemasony and delete and modify any entry or line, written by others not I, that could call into questions any aspect of masonic teachings. I point in particular to his edit of Oct 06 that attempted to delete the history of athiesm in Freemasonry. MSJapan considers this "improving the page".

Additional activity by MSJapan and his Masonic confederates includes repeatedly placing derogatory "explanations" after any non-masonic webpage links, and continually deleting links to non-masonic websites that question their own narrow masonic p.o.v..

In fact I can say with certainty that not a single solitary edit I have made, no matter how minor, has not been reverted by MSJapan and his Masonic confederates who obviously feel the Wikipedia entry on Freemasonry is the sole editorial preserve of Masons. I find these Masons continual deletion of a link to an article written by the Rector of the Archdiocese of Arlington, Virgina on the subject of Freemasonry and Catholicism, with no explanation ever given, extremely offensive and no doubt motivated by hate.Lightbringer 18:54, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The "groups" latest stunt: Talk:Freemasonry Please read my comments at the bottom of the talk thread.Lightbringer 05:21, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Pjacobi
I've stumbled over Lightbringer's edits in Taxil hoax,, ,. I've reverted the first two ones, because they looked rather strange and like a complete unsourced reversal of the article. As the third one was at least formally semi-reasonable, I didn't revert that one but asked on the talk page and informed Lightbringer. The reversal was later done by others, no party using the talk page. --Pjacobi 20:44, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I did that last revert, because I couldn't even get through the first sentence without tripping over the grammar. :-) I'm willing to consider reverting my change and trying to clean up instead, but I'm not sure there's much point. --SarekOfVulcan 23:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Reverted. --SarekOfVulcan 23:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Spinboy
I don't contribute to the Freemasonry article regularly, just a minor edit here or there to revert edits. I should also note I am not a mason. If you look at Lightbrigher's contributions, you can see he purposely seeks out articles related to mason's, and reverts edits where he believes masons have undue influence, in fact, he'll go out to tip the balance of an article.

Comments he has made in his edit summaries:
 * revert vandalism of link by Masonic Hysteric
 * restored deletion vandalism by extremely P.O.V. biased and intolerant Masonic editor who has had many complaints made against him across Wikipedia
 * reverted vandalism by junior member of Masonic Sockpuppetry Tagteam
 * reverted deletions of links to NYT & Washington Post and additional quotes about Lucifer, plus MS Japans latest Masonic Propaganda deletions and cut and past copyright violations

As can be seen, he does not contribute to any article that isn't involved with masons, or that he believes is involved with masons. -- Spinboy 02:10, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Statement by CambridgeBayWeather
While involved in RC patrol I came across what appeared to be a copyrighted article on List of proposed Jack the Ripper suspects from Freemasonry Watch that had been placed there by [User:Lightbringer]. I tagged it with a copyvio notice. A few minutes later I realised my error and went back and reverted it to the last non-copyright version. After checking to see if there were any more edits by this user I found that Juwes was also a direct copy from Freemasonry Watch and I reverted it. I also notified Lightbringer on his talk page. He has since stated that these articles are not copyright material, and while not expressly stated on the Freemasonry Watch page I would, and did, assume that the copyright is implied. He also, without proof, stated that "you and other Masons don't seem to mind continually cut and pasting Masonic propaganda directly from Masonic websites." I am not a Mason and I do not believe that I have made any edits to any other Masonic themed page. I have most certainly not copied any material from any website, be it Masonic or otherwise. I was unaware of any edit war going on between these parties and of this RfA until notified of it by User:MSJapan CambridgeBayWeather 03:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

 * Accept Fred Bauder 22:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Accept. James F. (talk) 23:14, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Accept &#10149;the Epopt 04:05, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Accept. Kelly Martin 23:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration Timeline
Do arbitrations always take this long? This is the first I've ever watched from begining to end and it seems to be very tedious time wise. As this progresses, Freemasonry is locked and cannot be further developed.

This arbitration has come in the middle of a total revamp of style of the article too, I think realistically the non-stop reverting drama's and hate speech was easier to tolerate than seeing the article locked indefinately until this matter is resolved. :/

I am hoping it's not unreasonable or rude for me to ask, but could someone please clarify what the time period is before this arbitration gets sorted out? I'm not getting any younger or prettier. :P Jachin 04:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)