Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Marcosantezana

Third party statements
The following statements by third parties have been omitted from the case page to keep it reasonably manageable.

Statement by User:Samsara
Valid points were being brought to the table by both sides. Overall, I would note that there was a lot of protectionism of various versions favoured by various editors going on. I would encourage the arbitrators to look into the edit history, edit summaries and talk page in some detail to understand more precisely what was happening. - User:Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Statement by User:Slrubenstein
There is an extensive record of Marcosantezana's edit warring at this article. It has died down, recently, but I do not see this as evidence that the problem has been resolved, and urge the ArbCom to acknowledge and deal with the problem. The problem is basically this: in early February 2006 Marcosantezana rewrote much of the introduction to the article. I and a couple of other people raised objections to his massive rewrite, and reverted his edits. for the next month, a pattern emerged: People would raise objections to Marcosantezana's rewrite on the talk page, and revert. Marcosantezana sometimes responded aggresively on the talk page, dismissing all objections to his rewrite. Marcosantezana would then make a series of six or seven edits to the article, with detailed but obscure edit summaries; the effect would be to restore his version of the introduction verbatim (in other words, he seldom just reverted. By making several different edits he created an edit history that suggests he was working on the article de novo.  However, after several edits all he had done was to restore his version of the intro, that had been reverted). Someone would revert, and the cycle began again.

I would rather not frame this problem in terms of a violation of the 3RR. I am not sure whether Marcosantezana violated this rule or not. But the 3RR is just one mechanism for dealing with edit conflicts - it is the underlying edit conflict that is the problem, not any violation of 3RR. Whether anyone violated 3RR or not, the fact remains that for a month or so, spanning February and March 2006, the introduction to the article simply bounced back and forth between Marcosantezana's version, and the consensus version (meaning, a version all other editors at the page favored). This is obviously an unproductive situation.

Why have several editors begun to revert Marcosantezana's edits automatically? My principal reason, which at least a few other editors share, is simply style: Marcosantezana's English is just horrible. Secondly, editors have also questioned the substance of his edits. I believe that Marcosantezana's poor grasp of English makes it difficult to distinguish between problems in style versus problems in substance - that is, it is hard to say whether Marcosantezana has a valid point to make, because he expresses it so unclearly. Finally, I suspect that Marcosantezana may be violating NOR or NPOV. Specifically, I suspect that he is trying to import his own view of natural selection, or the view of Elliot Sober, a philosopher of science. Again, Marcosantezana's problems with English make it difficult to know which. If the former, he is clearly violating NOR. If the latter, the violation of NPOV lies in his insisting that the article define and explain natural selection according to Sober's view of it, without stating that this is the view of one philosopher of science and is not the only view.

In fact, with regards to another article I once suggested, in good faith, that marcosantezana be careful to make sure his edits comply with NOR and NPOV; his response was typically defensive and aggressive, culminating in his saying, "if you want to worry about something please consider trying to clean up the utter non-sense that is a bit everywhere. you should realize that to do what i am trying to do is is hard work." 

Moreover, I believe that everyone who reverted Marcosantezana's edits did so in good faith, explaining their problems with his edits on the talk page. Marcosantezana, on the other hand, only dismisses other people's questions or explanations. This is the fundamental problem: Marcosantezana insists that he is right and refuses any dialogue or compromise. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 11:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Statement by User:Pete.Hurd
I'll be surprised if User:Marcosantezana participates in this. If he were to comment, I'd expect him to say something like "Every edit I've made to Natural Selection changed something factually wrong onto something factually right, and all other issues are so trivial in importance compared to the issue of making things right that it's a silly waste of time for me and everyone else to discuss".

Marcosantezana is a problem, he's knowledgeable, but either cannot, or will not, explain his edits to those that do not understand them. I think his violations of WP policies are done in ignorance, he doesn't really care enough for WP policies to inform himself (five months and 500 edits into his presence on wikipedia, and he's still leaving comments for users on their user pages, not their talk pages). I think he views his factual correctness as releasing him from having to abide by rules (I recall a statement to this effect, I may chase down the diff later). He's certainly claimed that he need not explain his edits even in edit summaries, let alone on talk pages, since the correctness of his edits ought to speak for themselves. "that's why even the short comments that accompany edits of the main article should be unnecessary. if they are well done the edits should speak for themselves." in here, some of his edit summaries are helpful, and others not (some examples below)


 * (do i need to comment ? read and rejoice ;))
 * (removed grammatically and semantically garbled "common" effort; content ueber alles)
 * (who cares who "wins"? are we kidding? but it's better hard to read than clear and wrong;)
 * (nat.sel is not evol by nat.sel.; read before "improving" darn! the "phenotype" is a term from genetics; where were the editors when this nonsense was added?)
 * (causation/fitness vs vapid self-contradicting supposedly didactic though erroneous common places plus history obscured by irrelevant jargon)
 * (fitness and its causation. it's what selection is, boys and girls :))

Note Mathbot reports: Edit summary usage for Marcosantezana: 51% for major edits and 2% for minor edits. Based on the last 150 major and 58 minor edits in the article namespace.

His edits have an excellent track record for factual correctness, just as they have a strong tendency to need polishing copyedits (when they are comprehensible at all). To the best of my knowledge, he has never complained in any way about such improvements being made to his text. But merely being correct isn't helpful if he refuses to explain why he's correct. This is not something he makes clear to those he's correcting, who usually just get the insulting tone, and not the pedagogical content. Making such explanations is something he's not interested in providing, and it seems an unrewarding thing to ask anyone else to do.

When Antezana does make editorial comments (less often of late) they often seem motivated more by an intent to insult than inform. Take for example, this remarkable edit, directed not at WP editors, but a string of famous evolutionary theorists Marcosantezana feels aren't as well schooled in philosophy as he, or his hero Sober. To be fair, this sort of behaviour is not uncommon in academics, but most of our peers would normally say such things only behind the veil of anonymity in a referee report.

Marcos' behaviour shouldn't overshadow too much the fact that there is a real debate taking place over whether the article should identify the one true definition (as defined by scientific researchers measuring it vs. philosophers of science more expert in definitions) or address and all commonly held incorrect definitions, etc, whether the article ought to be pitched primarily at correctly informing readers at the level of a high-school or graduate student level. Marcosantezana has strong views, and has explained his position clearly, he just doesn't engage in protracted debate. WP is very frustrating in that such debates are without end, including a rotating cast of debators. This debate is chewing up a lot of effort, from knowledgeable editors, User:KimvdLinde's laudable efforts at implementing WP's policies and guidelines, User:Samsara's effort at implementing some sort of WP:SPR seems motivated by this debate. Editors such as User:Barefootmatt seem to have been effectively chased off, if not by Marcos' insulting behaviour, then by the futility of the debate. Personally, I find User:Axel147 almost as frustrating as Antezana (I've sometimes wondered whether Axel is a clever troll), but in contrast to Antezana he's well behaved (Axel has a valid point in defending his major complaints, I just think he's wrong in spirit even when he's right on detail).

I doubt Marcosantezana will/can change his behaviour, and I think the most helpful thing any editor can do (excluding things like User:KimvdLinde's consensus seeking version writing) is to bring in more clear, cited, material in from outside WP to guide and inform all editors. There are a number of editors on this page with Ph.D.s in the subject matter, a more with an equivalent grasp of the issues. Marcosantezana seems to view his opinions as trumping all others, and really isn't willing to say much more than "go read a book", or "go take a logic class" to those he disagrees with.

In conclusion, WP:CIVIL etc matter a lot, while I agree with Marcosantezana on just about all substantive points, he just ticks me off to the point that Natural selection is a page I'm more than happy to take off my watchlist.

Pete.Hurd 20:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Guettarda
I was around when Marcosantezana started editing Natural selection. He made extensive edits which were poorly written. Because these edits were so substantive, it was a major task to go through and them and clean them up/evaluate their accuracy, so I hesitated. After he was rude to several other editors, I thought it best to leave it alone and give him some time to socialise to Wikipedia, since I didn't have major issues with content, but with style. But as the months passed, it didn't get a whole lot better. With a lot of competent new editors active on the page, and enough stresses elsewhere in Wikipedia, I thought it wasn't worth the trouble. However, the filing of this RFAr suggests to me that I am not the only one daunted by the way Marcosantezana's "plays poorly with others". I recommend that the arbcomm look into this issue.

Statement by Axel147
Marcosantezana often behaves as if he owns the article and is generally reluctant to discuss any difference in opinion from his own. As Marcosantezana genuinely seems to care about the definition I tried to put forward his position (position 2) against my own (position 1) in the discussion page in a bid to encourage discussion. He (and others) subsequently endorsed this view but Marcosantezana resorted to edit war. His mass edits to the article typically involve poor English. Personal insults to me include 'take a logic class' and 'read before "improving" darn! the "phenotype" is a term from genetics; where were the editors when this nonsense was added?)'. — Axel147 20:40, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Mccready
Marcosantezana has reverted my edits without discussion, despite my requests in my edit summaries and on the talk page. He consistently voilates 3RR. It is very difficult trying to improve this article with his presence. Mccready 08:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Ravedave
I have seen the same behavior at Kin selection. Very hard to work with.-Ravedave 04:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

bigger problem than just natural selection
See unit of selection, he's been at survival of the fittest too, aiming to represent the Soberian POV. &mdash; Dunc|&#9786; 13:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)