Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Tkorrovi and Paul Beardsell

Commentary moved from original request
I don't have time today to answer this properly. Not today. I note that one or two "arbitrators" are already starting to pass comment without waiting to read what I have to say. Paul Beardsell 20:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * They seem to be acknowledging that there's a situation - not that you're in any way to blame. Snowspinner 20:38, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. My response may well be that there is no substantive case to answer. This arbitration request is just a resort to procedure by one who is unable to argue his points cogently in the article itself or on the article's talk page. Now, before anybody jumps into arbitration mode, I have NOT yet made my submission. So desist from commenting. Paul Beardsell 21:23, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please do not comment UNTIL I have made my submission. I am told I have a week. Is that correct? Paul Beardsell 21:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * You're misinterpreting my response; I had intended to say that once the case has opened arbitrators will generally wait a week for the compilation of evidence before composing decisions. Votes on acceptance are not generally viewed to be restricted by time in any fashion. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:30, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

You are not being clear. When must I make my response by? Paul Beardsell 21:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * There is no set hard limit for a response; however filing a statement prior to, or during the first week of, a case opening is considered prudent. If you are going to file a statement, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:36, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)
 * Wait for other party to go on holiday. File complaint.  Paul Beardsell 22:35, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If someone could point me at the pages where the mediation to which Tkorrovi refers took place and to the findings of the mediator I would appreciate it. Thanks. Paul Beardsell 22:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I believe the reference is to User talk:Cimon avaro/ArtConsc mediation. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:37, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Paul Beardsell 22:49, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What does "accept" mean? That an arbitrator "accepts" that the case shall be dealt with here? Presumably not that the complaint is valid. So I have been reading up. The usual state of affairs is that those who performed the mediation would recommend (or not) a case for arbitration. Usually, says the docs on arbitration, not just any old case put forward by anybody is accepted. Mediation first. There was a mediation process in progress. Either it has been abandoned or a report has been made and I have not seen it. What has happened? Anyway: As you can see, my point is that there is no case for me to answer, so how can it be "accept"ed for arbitration? Paul Beardsell 01:30, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * "Accept" means the arbitrator has voted to open the case - four or more Accept votes by arbitrators will open the case. If, however, there is no evidence brought before the Arbitration Committee within approximately a week of the case opening, the case may summarily be closed. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 01:40, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

Important notice Paul Beardsell changed the text of this arbitration request submitted by me already second time -- the title , involved parties , previous time. I changed them back to the original. This arbitration request was submitted by me, and I change it only if the arbitrators ask me so, modification of other user's edits of Arbitration page are not allowed.Tkorrovi 23:58, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While we wait for a statement from Paul Beardsell, do the Arbitrators agree to create the Evidence page now? Maybe it would also be easier for Paul Beardsell to write his defence in such more organized form, and the Arbitrators may start to look at the evidence.Tkorrovi 19:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Someone here should be taking charge of the presentation of evidence and should be ruling on who decides the title of the case and what the title is allowed to be. Further, the template does not allow for a short, pithy title to be inserted in the list of parties; but perhaps it should. But why should the plaintiff decide it? Paul Beardsell 21:18, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have attempted to clarify what the nature of the complaint is. Tkorrovi has a little confusingly insisted the words "personal abuse" be included in the list of interested parties. If that is the nature of the complaint then how I have edited his article is not the point. Much of the original statement and of the subsequent statement commentary by him is just irrelevant - although I dispute that an examination of the underlying FACTS would show me in a bad light. Paul Beardsell 23:33, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

More commentary
My response to the comments by Paul Beardsell. Mainly, why I made an arbitration request now, and whether it is timely. The main reason why I made it now was that mediation on this case started in December, 2004, and did not produce results, I consider 3 months to be enough time to settle the dispute. That I submitted an arbitration request now, doesn't supposed to be a surprise to Paul Beardsell, because I said exactly that I shall do that when there are no other alternatives, during the mediation on the mediation page . And there clearly were no alternatives, because during the mediation Paul Beardsell not once said that he is going to change his behaviour any way, or is going to stop the personal attacks against me. Instead, he seemed to doubt in the necessity of mediation, and had no will to even start the mediation. And, in addition to that, he continued his personal attacks against me on the mediation page  ("You remind me of that", with a picture of monkeys in a car, yelling to the passing pedestrians "Bastards! Homo Sapiens!", in the end of the page confirming that he meant me as a monkey "In the cartoon that is what the chatting pedestrians should do too"). This offense might been provoked by me ("I don't remember, I don't want to remember the bad things, I want to remember the good things. But now it was only as much important, that I found it necessary to archice the discussion and history, just as a precaution. But if one wants to see an offense by Paul Beardsell, now they will follow"), I did it only that time in order to find out whether Paul Beardsell's habbit to use personal attacks against me, anyhow changed, this was just the only thing I found possible to do in the condition of total unwillingness of Paul Beardsell to carry on the mediation.

Then my last hope of solving the case without arbitration was that maybe Paul Beardsell would finally change his aggressive ways of working with the article, at that time there was almost no activity on the article. Until recently, other people started to edit the article, and I found some changes necessary on definition (mainly, I didn't find it quite correct to state the AC is something which necessarily possess consciousness, it did not come clearly from the wording that it is also a study, and mentioning a myth of creating people by god immediately after it in my mind made the definition of the topic even more ambiguous). I made the changes, explaining them in the revision log . Then two days later, came Paul Beardsell, who edited the article last time in December 2, 2004, and there were more than 20 edits meanwhile. Paul Beardsell reverted my edit, mentioning only the Prometheus myth ("interesting and relevant historical point"), but made no comment on why he reverted the definition. I reverted the creation myth, asking him to explain, why the myth of God's creation of man is proper there, because it would fit there only when such myth in principle (no matter whether Greek, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Babylonian etc) fits in that place for some reason, and why this would be more proper than some examples of early fiction, or attempts to create some equivalent of conscious entity by man. Also, without having his comment, I tried to guess the reason why he reverted my change of the definition, now considering how he usually treated me, I was in difficult situation. I wanted to change the definition more in accordance with the original definition of AC by Igor Aleksander (likely the first definition of AC), so that it would then be more appropriate, when this was the reason why he reverted my change. But unfortunately the definition by Igor Aleksander was not concise enough for the purpose, the full definition also being in two sentences, but considering the reactions of Paul Beardsell before, as he criticised me earlier not only for writing in the article a sentence written by me, but even a sentence based on a scientific paper, and worded by me, in order to achieve some kind of co-operation with him in these conditions, and in order to making possible to edit the article in these conditions, I was forced to write the definition exactly how it was in the paper, though it unfortunately was not concise enough for that place, and better were re-worded. But Paul Beardsell reverted all my changes. He did not explain the necessity of including the creation myth, in spite that I asked, stating more shortly the same which he stated earlier ("ancient history"). And concerning the definition, he stated "remove non-grammatical, non-sequiter addition by Tkorrovi which is UNFIXABLE". The definition was exactly copied from the paper "Artificial Neuroconsciousness: An Update" by Igor Aleksander, Professor of Neural Systems Engineering in Imperial College, London, and a former prorector of that college . Maybe the best description of this paper is the BibTeX entry , it was submitted to "International Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks" in 1995 (IWANN '95), as it was an accepted paper of the conference , and therefore it is considered peer-reviewed (in science the papers accepted by the organizers of the conference are reviewed before the acceptance, and therefore are considered to be peer-reviewed). If Paul Beardsell thinks that what Igor Aleksander writes is non-grammatical, then either he found something which people who publish the articles by Igor Aleksander did not find, or he has some different understanding of the grammar. As usual, he did not explain again. So, I did not find his reverting anyhow substantiated, and reverted the definition, but did not revert the creation myth, not because I found it appropriate, but just because I found the definition higher in priority, and in these conditions, with Paul Beardell acting so, I did not find it possible to constructively work on more than that. Later, other editors came, made more constructive edits, didn't just blindly revert, and understood better my intentions, at least the necessity of stating "Artificial Consciousness" as a study. So after a few months, when Paul Beardsell didn't edit the article, seeing his additude, behaviour, and unwillingness to co-operate the first time he did after that, I finally found that his additude did not change, and that his aggressive behaviour, including the personal attacks, is not likely to change in the near future. So I found that thre are no ways any more to avoid the arbitration, at that point.

These recent events were not the reason why I submitted the request for arbitration, but it was when I finally found that there are no other alternatives. The reason was that all other means to solve the conflict and to stop Paul Beardsell from using personal attacks against me over a period of time almost a year, were exhausted. Almost all the possibilities to resolve the conflict were tried, like vandalism in progress, request for comment etc, it's maybe the best to see that on "what links here" page of the article . I tried to use all other possibilities first, and hoped that acting in the most civil way, and not reacting to his attacks, would change his mind and solve the dispute, but it had no effect on him at all, rather I noticed that the frequency of his attacks increased with the time past. The reason why it took so long time, as much as I am concerned, is that such measures as arbitration are not the means I like, submitting this request was extremely unpleasant for me, but unfortunately finally necessary. If you notice, in science forums, and in irc chatrooms for scientific topics, where other than intelligent people never go, almost no banning happens (as it is very frequent in other topics, in some channels in irc you may get kicked out even if you say only hello), with intelligent people who can solve the disputes by other means, things never go that far. But in this case, unfortunately banning or other extreme measures may be necessary, as unfortunate and sad as it is.

(Concerning me, just to shortly introduce myself, I'm an Automatic Control engineer, and I maintain several Open Source projects in SourceForge (yes I made my real name public here, as well as Paul Beardsell did). In fact, the only thing which I know thoroughly about programming, is c89 ("ansi c"), I can do programming in c++, but I'm convinced that everything can be done in c89, while using right programming methods, and languages which become too complicated, like c++, may have the same faith as IBM's PL/I had, which was abandoned just because it was too complex.)

PS The title of this arbitration request was changed from "Paul Beardsell" to "Tkorrovi"  by Paul Beardsell. I changed it back to the original, to be the same as it was when I submitted the request. Is changing the original initial text of the request for arbitration, which was submitted by another person, allowed by the person against who the request was made? And I re-confirm, that I made this arbitration request only against Paul Beardsell concerning his personal attacks and offensive behaviour. Arbitrators, please say if you consider that there must be any other title, otherwise I don't accept any other title.Tkorrovi 10:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * As I remember from previous interesting and sometimes amusing discussions with User:Tkorrovi, who works as a customs officer in Estonia, one of the most difficult issues was his own grasp of the English language. A subject like artificial consciousness needs careful and concise treatment, which it was not getting until Paul Beardsell came along to contribute to the article. Paul's pedantry no doubt got up User:Tkorrovi's nose, but in the interests of quality Paul persisted, and this led to the peception by some that Tkorrovi was a troll and the perception by User:Tkorrovi that others who enjoined in Paul's support were sock puppets. I can confirm that it was I, not Paul, who used the example of Christopher Nolan in order to falsify Tkorrovi's notion that consciousness had to be tested against the attributes of what he dubbed "the average human". It was my contention that Christopher Nolan, by being different from the average and unable to interact with humans in the usual way because he suffered from cerebral palsy was nevertheless a prize-winning author and therefore should be deemed conscious. At no time has Paul as far as I am aware resorted to the use of sock puppets and, knowing him to be a man of integrity as I do, I very much doubt he would do such a thing in this circumstance - surely being sufficiently confident of his contributions in his own name without the need of such an expedient. User:Tkorrovi claims that Igor Aleksander has some special place in the history and development of Artificial Consciousness. There is certainly no consensus in academic fields that Aleksander is the leading proponent. He is, however, much admired by User:Tkorrovi. I think it would be a waste of time for this to go to arbitration. Matt Stan 13:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, Matthew Stannard, you are a friend of Paul Beardsell (I think so, Paul admitted that, and I think you don't deny that either), and you were the other one who used personal attacks against me, together and in co-operation with Paul Beardsell. But this case is not against you, I sincerely hope that you improve your additude, and arbitration case against you would not be necessary.


 * I also remember writing at some stage that I would be interested to meet Tkorrovi if he came to London, and not being unfriendly towards him. I don't know what if takes to be called someone's friend, but Paul and I worked together for several years. In fact I was his boss. Before that I obtained an anthropology degree. Matt Stan 21:33, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Then I insist, you must add my name to the ticket for this arbitration, so that I can show that I too am unaware of what you construe as personal attacks. There have been attacks, sure, as there are in any argument and some games, but to claim correctly that there have been personal attacks, you must give an example, together with its context, unequivocally to show that there has been a derogatory statement about you, as distinct from what you do in wikipedia. I thought, incidentally, that the cartoon with the chimps in the car cursing humans was quite funny, and topical in the context of our discussions about artificial consciousness. I didn't interpret it as a slur on you, though I daresay I might have anticipated that you would not get a rather unsophisticated joke. I would say in your mitigation that your lack of comprehension of some of the subtler points made in argument has been cause of some mirth. But to laugh at someone (because they are funny without necessarily intending to be so) is not a personal attack either, just indicative that two people have different senses of humour. I have however always aimed to correct rather than castigate, but to have someone claim, using the authority of an English Grammar, that he was right when in fact he was wrong on some simple point of English usage did make me laugh. Matt Stan 23:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * First, during our discussion on Artificial consciousness article's talk page, I said you repeatedly, that my nationality is not relevant concerning editing that article, this concerns science, and some even state that scientists have no nationality, at least it is in no way relevant to science, especially the field we talked about. But in spite I, and even other users who came along, asked not to talk about my nationality, you continued to repeatedly emphasize it. Why you had to do that agains other person's will, if I don't want it to be mentioned, then I must have my reasons. I don't want my nationality to be mentioned because many problems are related to that nationality, like many Russians don't like Estonians, because Estonia broke away from their evil empire called Soviet Union, and did never want to belong together with Russia. Some Russians are deeply grieved because a loss of a part of their empire, and sea ports on the Baltic sea. Then, if some Russians with no good intentions happen to know that I'm Estonian, this may mean a trouble for me. You are probably not aware of all these problems, but you still should understand that mentioning a nation of people of certain nationality may cause problems to these people, and not to do that against that person's will, especially not in inappropriate for that places. And no, I don't work as a Customs officer in Estonia.


 * The next you say is a lie.


 * Concerning Christopher Nolan, this was an idea of both of you and Paul Beardsell, you both talked about it. Yes I don't deny that Christopher Nolan was a good writer, and therefore likely had some attributes of his mind even more developed than average human has, but including such very unrelated issues in the article, makes the article very obscure and out of topic, as I considered then, and what is reasonably understandable for any person who thinks seriously about the article. We may then as well talk about the pope John Paul II in the article, also undeniably a wonderful person, also suffering from disabilities, but you certainly understand that information about him should be in the other articles.


 * The point was simply to know how you defined "average human", a point about which I am still no wiser. Matt Stan 23:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Concerning different wordings which were discussed, it is a process of discussing the possibilities, which always happens, nobody can put everything right in the first attempt. "Average human" is probably not the best term, but yes I mentioned it then, there is nothing wrong in discussing things like that.


 * Igor Aleksander wrote probably the first definition of Artificial consciousness in my knowledge, he was the one who was at the beginning of Artificial Consciousness and Machine Consciousness. There are not so many scientists involved in Artificial consciousness, there are only a few dozen mentioned in Owen Holland's website, with only a dozen who wrote articles in Journal of Consciousness Studies, or other peer-reviewed journals. Igor Aleksander is one of the most prominent of these, though certainly not the only one. Yes he has some "special place" due to the issues he wrote about, but he is not exactly "much admired" by me, I talked about him when I found it relevant. Neither did I, or no one else claim that he is any leader in Artificial consciousness study, there simply are no leaders. But, please don't make this arbitration request a discussion about the article, it was frequently the habbit of both you and Paul Beardsell to initiate a long discussion, to hide a topic in some way unpleasant for you. I don't think that you necessarily plan to do it now, I just say that it is not desirable here because when it will happen, it shall become obvious. Please try to restrict your comments only to matters directly relevant to this arbitration request.Tkorrovi 15:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Matthew Stannard, please don't write your comments in the middle of other people's comments, you cause confusion with that, so that it would be difficult to see who wrote what. You would be included if arbitrators decide so, I made request against Paul Beardsell. "The point was simply to know how you defined "average human", a point about which I am still no wiser." I think that we shall not talk about that point here, again, the comments here should only be about the matters directly relevant to this arbitration request.Tkorrovi 01:00, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Paul Beardsell, please stop messing with this page, and move other people's comments to other places. Concerning titles etc, as I said, only Arbitrators have a right here to change that which was submitted by other users. And now my comment again, which you moved from here: While we wait for a statement from Paul Beardsell, do the Arbitrators agree to create the Evidence page now? Maybe it would also be easier for Paul Beardsell to write his defence in such more organized form, and the Arbitrators may start to look at the evidence.Tkorrovi 19:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

-

A message from Paul Beardsell to me :

Look, this is going to get messy. You know that as I point out the history, event by event, you will end up looking very silly, and already in the arbitration request you are looking ridiculous. Why not just withdraw your request for arbitration? Paul Beardsell 23:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Legal threat + personal attack. When does it stop...Tkorrovi 23:28, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I rest my case, m'lud. Paul Beardsell 23:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I advise you to think twice about that.Tkorrovi 00:04, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request for Summary Judgement
Without prejudice. I suggest that arb com immediately rule that neither Tkorrovi nor Psb777 be allowed to edit the article "artificial consciousness" for a period of one year. Paul Beardsell 22:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Why Paul Beardsell wanted to go ahead with the conflict, and didn't want to settle it? Just that this is a problem now already almost a year, I had no alternatives other than submitting this arbitration request. As I, and other editors of the "Artificial consciousness" article want to work and edit the article without conflicts, I suggest to ban Paul Beardsell.Tkorrovi 14:30, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request that Advocate for Plaintiff be appointed
I request that an advocate for the plaintiff be appointed so that the case can be made cogently thus allowing the court to decide if there is indeed a case to hear and allowing the defendant the reasonable possibility of making a defense. Paul Beardsell 00:09, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comments from a disinterested party (User:Chinasaur)
I ran into the debate over the AC article about a year ago and had some initial impressions that I'll try to restate here. I should warn that I've only briefly skimmed more recent developments. And I should say that generally I have scrutinized Tkorrovi's behavior more carefully than Paul's.

Both parties seem to be at fault. From what I can tell, Paul is indeed unnecessarily abusive towards Tkorrovi and should probably know better. Further, in dealing with this case, his attempts (as I see it) to have the arbitration dismissed on technical, nit-picking grounds do him no credit.

However, I continue to be inclined towards Paul's side. My observation (but not direct participation) at the AC article leads me to conclude that Tkorrovi is difficult to deal with reasonably. He consistently adopts the position of a victim, usually complaining about personal attacks even when no real offense is meant. Meanwhile, he is just as serious an offender in terms of revert wars and uncooperative behavior.

Tkorrovi's participation in WP is essentially limited to this one article. He has also fought, in the past, to include links to his personal online forum and articles on AC in the WP article. And he tends to be extremely proprietary about "his article" article (as many of us, but to an uncommon level). My past conclusion was that Tkorrovi considers WP simply an additional forum to push his own expert opinion on this topic. This is only my impression. I can't be sure whether more recent developments agree.

Finally there is the minor point that Tkorrovi's English is not good enough to be left alone. This is not meant as a putdown. Tkorrovi's English is miles ahead of my own ability in any second language. But the fact is that Tkorrovi does not always express himself clearly, so that copy edits are necessary. Occasionally, Tkorrovi's point will be distorted or destroyed by these copy edits, no matter how well meaning the editor. Sometimes, the editor may even have to revert Tkorrovi's changes, asking for more clarification on what he intended to say. This is something Tkorrovi must accept.

I would support the measure suggested by Paul (!) that both editors be banned from the article for a year. As punishment, banning is Paul's desert for abusing Tkorrovi when he knows better and letting his frustration get the better of him. As rehabilitation, banning from his pet project will perhaps give Tkorrovi a chance to explore the rest of WP and learn that his management of the AC article is not the way that things are supposed to work. He will also perhaps come to accept that his current way of dealing with people frustrates more than just Paul, Matt, and myself.

Comments "lost" during the recent revert war:

These comments triggered a lengthy discussion between Chinasaur and Tkorrovi, and then argument between Tkorrovi and Paul Beardsell that can be found here: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Tkorrovi_vs._Paul_Beardsell/Tangents ''but this movement is said to be the cause of the revert war so the move has been reversed. Follows comments that are pertinent. Chinasaur continues...''

One point that Tkorrovi made that I think is important is that contrary to what I wrote above, he never tried to link to his own AC articles, only to other peoples articles and the forums at his site on AC.


 * Not true, Chinasaur, he did try to link to his own article and insisting on continuing to do so even when the prohibition of merely self-promoting links on Wikipedia was pointed out. What happens is that Tkorrovi creates such a smoke screen of bleating about supposed insults and unfair treatment that people just don't see his contributions are, err, not of encyclopaedic quality, to coin a phrase.
 * I removed this link on this  edit and I removed it again here  and again here  and did a null edit here  where I called for assistance.  The link is to an article written by Tkorrovi and the discussion during which I realised this is here.  The old target has been moved but here is a link to the same article .  I believe Matt Stan tried to download and run the software from SourceForge with very unsatisfactory results.  Chinasaur, don't be blinded and deafened by this parody of injured sounds and floods of stage blood from Tkorrovi.  Trust yourself, your memory of events and content will always be more valid than Tkorrovi's account.  Paul Beardsell 03:38, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * There is no link to my article now. Matt Stan downloaded the software and said that it run correctly. I don't screen anything, the question is only what is relevant for the article. Paul didn't like anything which I wrote, and came like to crusade to remove everything, instead of developing it further. Just all that crusade was totally unnecessary, it was possible to solve everything peacefully.Tkorrovi 05:30, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Misrepresentation / prevarication: Matt Stan said no such thing.  See .  But evry sentence from Tkorrovi is misleading:  I "came like to crusade to remove everything" yet when I started editing AC it was but this derisory stub  and it had been nothing but that for months.  If it were all deleted it would have been little loss.  Yet when I gave up on it it was this much more substantial article .  Many of the contributing edits and much of the discussion re content was by me.  Just look at the edit history.  Word count the talk page.  Tkorrovi misleads a second time in the above paragraph.  The lies per sentence quotient in his arguments in this case is just too high.  Paul Beardsell 06:54, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Matthew Stannard said "I downloaded, installed and ran this program on my PC running Windows XP. It loaded without error." Now you claim much of the content to be yours, but very often, when you found it useful, you claimed the article with all that your content, and other users' content, to be "my" (Tkorrovi's) article.Tkorrovi 12:19, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * He said it "loaded" without error and then, if I remember correctly, he went on to say other things about it. I am looking for the reference.  You seem to have it at hand, please provide a link.  Paul Beardsell 21:30, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

--Chinasaur 22:54, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Response by Tkorrovi to the comments by Chinasaur

 * Replies interleaved at indentation 1 are from Chinasaur 10:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Replies at indent 2 are from Tkorrovi 17:21, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Replies at indent 3 are from Chinasaur 19:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A bit more background, as this is an arbitration case. User Chinasaur was asked by Paul Beardsell to help him in this case , and the reason why Paul Beardsell asked Chinasaur, was that Chinasaur wrote this  more than a year ago. I'm not so complaining man, but in the circumstances, however forgiving I was, statements like "From my experiences on UseNet, I would say his behavior is very trollish and would most likely be dismissed as such if the argument were happening on UseNet", "his English is below the general standard of Wikipedia", "As my conclusion is that tkorrovi is a troll, I prefer not to make myself overly conspicuous; I fear I could get vandalism at my own user page" are not substantiated by Chinasaur. Not all my arguments were dismissed in forums, I had very interesting conversations, and I have a few good friends now from these conversations, I talk to them frequently now through instant messenger. If this "trolling" is anyhow substantiated, then through another questionnable arguments, sometimes using obscene language, like "shamelessly reverts other people's edits (pehaps because he suspects new editors to be aliases of the person who originally pissed him off". I'm really sorry, however good man I was, nobody can demand me to accept obscene language. I have no idea why Chinasaur came out with this comment, never saw that nick before, maybe he was asked by Paul Beardsell, as his comment appeared at the same time when Paul Beardsell contacted people like Ugen64 to help him against me, I don't know.


 * Correct, Paul asked me to put a word in at this case, perhaps because he has not yet found time or motivation to defend himself and knew roughly where I stood. However, my comments a year ago were entirely self-motivated; I had stumbled upon your argument and felt strongly that your behavior was overly sensitive, and more importantly suspicious due to your linking to your own materials.  Perhaps I jumped to conclusions saying you are a troll (meaning that you are intentionally creating chaos, advertising your own site, and generally wasting people's time rather than arguing/editing/reverting in good faith).  I did emphasize that this is only my opinion. Chinasaur 10:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * What do you complain about? That I don't edit and revert too much? Now for a long time I indeed did not revert, or even edit much, but your questionnable comment a year ago was sent to Ugen64 as an evidence for taking measures against me for reverting too much. So what is your complaint?Tkorrovi 18:49, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I provided a link on a talk page to AC forum, in Archive_1 and in Archive_2 . In Archive_1 I did it just to provide a place to discuss the issues, which may not be appropriate to discuss on the article's talk page. In Archive_2 I provided links there to articles, not written by me, just that everyone could add there the links he finds. And after I saw that Paul doesn't want to see it, I didn't mention that forum any more, I don't understand why I'm criticized for that.

And at the time this comment was written on Ugen64 web page, I was punished by Ugen64 for reverting more than three times, by freezing the page in favour of Paul Beardsell, and threatening to ban me on my talk page. That punishment was wrong, because 3 time revert rule was not in force then, Ugen64 himself admitted that recently on Paul Beardsell talk page . And now one suggests that I should be punished that I could "see the rest of Wikipedia" (which I, btw, read a lot, not recently though, as I found the sound list page, and I'm busy downloading the music there). I think I'm not so very complaining person when I ask, isn't it too much punishment for one user for no reason?


 * To me the more important questions is "why does losing access to this one page seem like such severe punishment to you?". For most serious WP editors, being banned from one page would hardly impact their overall activity.  It bothers me that you are so determined to have a say in this one particular article.  If Paul is also banned, the article will almost certainly develop faster and better than the way it has with the two of you fighting over it, and you wouldn't have to worry about Paul in particular doing things you don't like.  Although you might not have thought about it this way, to me your insistence to have a say in the article for better or for worse is like you saying "I am the only person who can do this right and everyone else will just mess it up".


 * I also think if you did more editing at other pages, you would get a better sense for the diversity of people (some who swear a lot, some who nit-pick grammar a lot, etc.) here, and the way those people compromise on other articles. You and Paul do have some fundamental disagreements about the article content, and I admit those will be hard to reconcile, but for the most part your arguments are over trivial things that other editors don't waste their own or other people's time over. Chinasaur 10:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * No, it is not about disagreements concerning the article's content, I'm not sure whether Paul is interested in article's content at all, as he tried to delete almost the whole article, and wanted to insert nonsense in it. The problem is how Paul treats me, the confusion he makes in the article by unnecessary edits, and his personal attacks against me, which by themselves cause otherwise unnecessary discussion, like this page here.Tkorrovi 18:57, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * But you are the only one who asserts that Paul's edits are nonsense, while he asserts that some of yours are nonsense. Similarly you find Paul's abuse intolerable, but I find your complaining oversensitive, and you can be just as stubborn and uncooperative as Paul only you don't use bad language. Chinasaur 19:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * It is not that I said that all Paul's edits are nonsense, and not that I'm oversensitive, I said exactly what I said in evidence.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was in a very difficult situation, with so much action against me. I don't wish such treatment for anybody, and I'm very far from going somewhere and starting to embarrass some user there, I don't understand how Chinasaur could think that I so much lack intelligence. And again, all that talk is directed against my (supposed) person, not against my arguments, and very far from having anything to do with artificial consciousness, or even science. Concerning Paul Beardsell, I think it also has nothing to do with the article, I just think that I was the user he stumbled upon, who doesn't accept his ways, and a user who edited an article on somewhat controversial topic, which not so many other users visited at that time, and therefore a user, he chose to "wind up". This is the only logical explanation I could have, at least I cannot anyhow associate what happened with the topic of the article.


 * I'm sorry to insult your intelligence. Indeed, some of my comments are condescending.  It's just that I see most of your complaints as irrationally oversensitive, and it frustrates me that you just don't seem to get why people got impatient with you in the first place.  One thing I'm trying to tell you is that I don't think you were just unlucky to run into an unfriendly person on a controversial subject.  I think you have to be a little more willing to cooperate with other people yourself. Chinasaur 10:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * You are irrationally too aggressive.Tkorrovi 17:39, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Getting into other people's business like this is not a hobby of mine. I felt stongly enough about your particular case to speak out.  I am trying to speak truth to you, not speak in anger.  But I am not infinitely patient.  I've tried to make my honest criticisms as clear as possible, without resorting to obscenity or baseless attack.  If you assume that everyone who criticizes you is just irrationally aggressive, a mindless potty mouth, out to get you, or whatever else, it seems you will never listen to anyone.


 * At any rate, I have said my piece and will not further interfere with your case, so don't worry about that. If you are actually interested in what I'm trying to tell you we can discuss it elsewhere. Chinasaur 19:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Don't you see, you said may complaints are irrationally oversensitive, then you most likely don't want to hear them, but you want me to listen you.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit tired of this, I wanted to work constructively with others, not to deal with continuous attacks instead, as it unfortunately was the case. I don't think that this is what Wikipedia should be, I think the problems should be solved with discussion, what almost never happened concerning Paul's changes in AC article. And I think all editors should be equally forgiven, if they wrote some text, not entirely correct, everyone did it, this is the process of editing. I don't understand why people must be treated so violently, this in addition to everything else, just doesn't make sense at all.Tkorrovi 05:07, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry this is wearing you out so much. I personally believe (this is only my opinion) that you were treated more violently than others because you reacted violently in the first place to having your own work edited.  Honestly, try editing some other articles for a while; you'll have more fun and maybe regain some faith in the system. Chinasaur 10:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * This is for me to decide, if you really wanted to give a friendly advice, then you did say what to do regarding Paul, that he finally will stop his continuous personal attacks against me, and that he would have even a slightest respect towards me, instead of comparing me with monkey. If you can give any advice, then answer to that, say one thing what would *really* help. And I don't like when others write in the middle of my comments, no, I  think it's not exactly forbidden in comments, but think yourself how good to follow it would be, if part of comments are in regular fonts, other in italics, other in bold, or interleaved, all in the middle of one another, and by different people. And, if one says that he was provoked, your comment a year ago was well done to provoke me, pretended friendliness doesn't provoke less. But I at least believe that I'm strong, and don't let to provoke myself.Tkorrovi 17:21, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Of course it's your decision; I'm not trying to give you orders or anything like that. But my advice to you is very simple and I think other people might agree with it: let it go.
 * No, I don't think that all other people agree that nothing should be done against personal attacks which lasted already more than a year, and there is no sign that they will stop.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * All your feelings of offense towards Paul: let them go. If he is really so out-of-control rude, other people will complain about him eventually; it does not have to be your fight.  If you find that he is able to interact peacefully with others, maybe you two can eventually find a way to respect each other again.
 * The problem is that Paul saw during more than a year that he can personally attack me without almost any risk taken, so I am his chosen victim, as far as he can attack me, others may not be in danger at all, things may change only when he cannot attack me any more.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * All your frustrations about the development of the AC article: let them go. You are not the only person in the world who can make this article better; it does not have to be your fight.
 * Everyone chooses what he does, and I want to do well what I do, not just do everything and nothing. Doing something is kind of purpose.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * So my previous suggestion stands: go have fun other places and let this rest for a while. I know when you start an article it is hard to leave it to other people; I have reverted changes to articles that I started, and sometimes I have had to argue about it somewhat.  But this is getting ridiculous.


 * As a final attempt to help: if you were banned from the article, we could have an agreement that after 3 or 6 months or something you can write me a message on my talk page of anything that you feel is wrong with the article at that point. I will do my best to investigate myself and fix things if I agree they have gotten worse rather than better.


 * I did not choose you as my trusted attorney, and if I need one, obviously you are not the best candidate. Just you know, I have friends who can help me, but I don't exploit my friends so as Paul Beardsell does, to write evidence for him here. I treat my friends well, but they did certainly help me if I asked.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the interleaved comments; I agree it's not nice to read. But your writings are all so long that if I answered at the end it would be too hard to figure out what part I was replying to. Chinasaur 19:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Not at all, the longer they are, the better they are to follow, when they are all in their own places. But this is only my own opinion of course. Well, as you criticized me in many things at once, so I also had to talk about many things at once. Try to talk only about one thing, and I also talk about only one thing.Tkorrovi 20:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Further response by Tkorrovi
I also edited a few other articles in Wikipedia, but I think everyone agrees that this is for me to decide, what articles I edit. Mostly I edited artificial consciousness indeed, so banning me from that is equal to banning me from Wikipedia. No, I don't advertise any of my own articles, there are indeed two SourceForge projects, these are in fact all open source projects at present in SourceForge, related to artificial consciousness, yes I'm developer in one of these. But I think that links to SourceForge projects must be in Wikipedia, especially when there are not much of these in certain field, this is the only code one can get for free, and this is valuable, so often there is only a theory and a lot of talk, but no code. But in spite I develop an open source project, it was never my intention to write the article anyhow related to that particular project, what I want is an article about what is known today about AC based on scientific papers, and what principles there are. This is necessary also for me, because whatever theory I have, I want it to be based on what is known today based on the peer-reviewed papers. Was my intention to write such article something which caused a crusade by Paul Beardsell and others, or is a person who wrote some code regarding AC not allowed to participate in editing an article about AC in general? Yes it might be that I have my own bias without wanting so, as well as Paul Beardsell has, but I helped to incorporate into the article even his views such as "Genuine AC", only in the name of consensus, in spite that I considered them wrong and that they shouldn't be in the article. Yes I had maybe not the best idea at first about AC as it is known in general, but this is the process of editing, I maybe did not put the things completely the right way at first. This was a dearing attempt anyway, as before that a long time no one could even start the AC article, though there was a link to it in psychology topics. But in the process I learned how in the papers the researchers put it, so gradually the picture of what is the understanding of AC today becomes more clearer. It is not so simple, yes you supply quotations and references, but it is difficult from these make the article as more or less whole picture, rather than just a set of fragments, and that this picture is correct and corresponds to what is known based on the papers. It is especially difficult because AC is new field, though many peer-reviewed papers are published, but not many people attempted an overview. But exactly because of that it is valuable for Wikipedia, as there is no such article in many other encyclopedias. In fact, finally Paul could insert into article everything he wanted. But in spite of my so many efforts to have a consensus in the article, how Paul Beardsell reacted was with inserting NPOV label on the article without explaining, and by continuing personal attacks, so all my efforts to reach consensus remained futile with Paul Beardsell and his friend Matthew Stannard. I mostly had no conflicts at all with other users editing the article, and none which was serious or not solved. I did not want to argue over small things with him, but as he just wanted to delete what was written, and refused to discuss (it was what I asked him several times before the edit war, "please discuss"), and then when he finally started to discuss, he didn't want to talk about things in general, but talked a lot about some minor details, or even redicilous issues, like this argument by Chalmers that thermostat is conscious, about what Chalmers himself said that this is very speculative. And in general, he often even don't exactly discuss, rather his only intention is to make me redicilous, and attack me personally, so that others would have as bad impression of me as possible. It is not possible to work constructively in such conditions, when a person uses regularly personal attacks against you during more than a year, this is why I think it is necessary to ban Paul Beardsell from at least editing artificial consciousness article, and at least for a year, as it lasted already a year, and any shorter ban in such case is just not reasonable. No, this is not what any user does, personal attacks cannot be justified, the conflicts must be solved by discussion, and if it is indeed not possible, through a dispute resolution process, not taking action against personal attacks means that they are a legitimate way to achieve an unfair advantage, with by far much more damage to others than any such advantage may be. More than that, the unfortunate people who were attacked, may be thrown to the dustbin together with these wo attacked them, as an easiest way to end the conflict. It might been, that Paul Beardsell justified his actions by some crusade against controversial topic, but this by itself does not mean that the article caused the conflict, there are many controversial articles in Wikipedia, not difficult to choose another one, and it is also not difficult to find a reason for crusade. (BTW, I saw him trying at least one other controversial article, "space elevator", there he also started a long discussion, without wanting to find consensus, so that he could afterwards say that because such long and futile discussion, the article is wothless, and must be deleted or re-written by him. But unfortunately for him, there was more than one editor there, who did not allow him to make confusion, not how in artificial consciousness I was at first the only editor more or less regularly present.) And it is exactly so that I am just a user he stumbled upon, who didn't want to do everything he said, one of these users who happen to edit controversial articles, and so are more vulnerable, and can hope for less support by other users, than others. Therefore this arbitration case is about the behaviour of Paul Beardsell, and has nothing to do with Artificial consciousness article.Tkorrovi 16:55, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * If Paul is really trying to control things this much, and cannot find a way to work with others, then you are right that the case should address this. But right now it is just you versus him and I'm not so sure that there are many others who feel as strongly as you do that it is only Paul's behavior that has caused this conflict.  --Chinasaur 19:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I provided my evidence. And I didn't see no evidence yet about my personal attacks against Paul Beardsell, no one which I initiated, I also did not respond to his attacks with mine, almost never. Maybe you may consider two cases, but these were also not attacking back, but rather naming Paul's attacks with a proper name, maybe exaggerated, but not directed against person, but remarks. And both of these are not even presented as evidence. So based on what can you make a decision now, that it is just I versus him? You show one my personal attack against Paul Beardsell. Personal attacks are not my way to achieve things, I hate this, these are extremely unfair, and I hate achieving any advantage using them. People sometimes use personal attacks instead of arguments, always when they have no sufficient arguments to defend their position.Tkorrovi 20:38, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, my evidence is in preparation and will be presented. Many of the faults Tkorrovi ascribes to me are his own.  Tkorrovi has often  prevaricated / misrepresented the facts / been shown to have a poor memory of the truth / (substitute your favorite euphemism here) and he continues to do so in this case:  He forgets he called me a racist?  Paul Beardsell 21:15, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes this is the one I mentioned, I just had to wait when Paul will say that. I don't remember calling Paul a racist, I only remember asking him to stop the racist remarks, and one of his remarks was that an anthropologist would be necessary to find out who I am. Unfortunately, this happened on 10 Apr 2004, but the article's talk page history goes back only to 28 Apr 2004. Find it somewhere here, search "anthropologist". Unfortunately not all conversation seems to be there, Paul Beardsell made many remarks concerning my nationality, or whether I am human or not. Maybe I wrongly called them racist remarks then, as I had no understanding then of the reasons of his personal attacks against me; I didn't realise then, that Paul Beardsell simply uses every possible way to attack me personally. So this, as I said, was how I named his remarks, not an attack by me. This might been exaggerated, but not entirely wrong when one compares you with monkey.Tkorrovi 22:15, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I didn't quite do that. But if the cap fits:  Strange how you did not choose to identify yourself with either of the pedestrians in the cartoon.  And, of course, the cartoon is long after you called me a racist, but that is not the impression you give.  And the one rather lighthearted nationality remark made by me was _after_ you called me a racist.  And my anthropologist remark was a reference to Matt Stan, who is one.  It is he who brought your nationality into play, in a discussion about some basic English errors you refused to have corrected.  Not me.  And the deletions of the racism allegation about me by you was deleted from the Talk page by you and this is why we have difficulty finding the trail now.  Wrong, wrong, half-truth, wrong, misrepresentation.  This is just more typical prevarication by you.  Every time you open your mouth you make your position worse.  Is that a personal attack?  Paul Beardsell 23:42, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * This is just a lie. I'm not going to expose all that. It takes too much time to discuss when your opponent lies. So only about this monkey thing. On the mediation page, when Matthew Stannard said to Paul: "Paul, why don't you take your own advice posted elsewhere and not take any notice of Tkorrovi, i.e. just don't respond, just let him have the last word, and focus on the content of the articles?" (ie he talks about what Paul should do), Paul responded "In the cartoon that is what the chatting pedestrians should do too. Easy to say, more difficult to do." (responding to the question what *he* should do against someone else)  thus identifying himself with the pedestrians, anyone other than pedestrians on the cartoon were only monkeys, to whom, by Paul, the pedestrians did not have to respond. This exposes that Paul meant me as a monkey. Tkorrovi 00:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * By then, of course, Tkorrovi had identified himself with the monkey. It's as if you show a Laurel and Hardy cartoon and a fat man exits the auditorium. "They're getting at me," he sobs, falling into the arms of the stupid man, who has also left in tears, "No, it's me they're getting at!", he insists. Paul Beardsell 03:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My view User:Klonimus
Both editors seem to take wikipedia too seriously for their own good, and the good of the project.

Proposed solution.

0. Member's advocate's are appointed for both sides, as they are both excessivly verbose.

1. Tkorrovi and Paul Beardsell are banned from editing AC for three months.

2. After the ban is over, for six months they are limited to 1 revert per day on AC and enjoined not to engage in personal attacks. Admins can enforce this with appropriate actions.

I am somewhat opposed to ArbCom's handing out long nonspecific bans for people judged to commit wikicrime, which does not involve the destruction of information. The trouble caused by these users is limited to one article and so the proposed injuction should also be limited to that article.

Klonimus 04:17, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Comments on Klonimus's view

 * Seems to me at least as many words are needed to answer the charges made as there are words in the charges themselves. I do not see how Klonimus could say that my responses are "excessively verbose".  They are not but I reserve the right to make them so if I wish.  In the interim I suggest that Klonimus count the words written by each of the parties.  I am puzzled too as to how taking Wikipedia "too seriously" could be held to be a bad thing, assuming that is what I have done.  Regular (small but non-trivial) financial support presumably counts as "too serious" so should I stop that?  Someone who takes Wikipedia seriously would presumably be in favour of an informative NPOV artificial consciousness article.  And would support someone who has worked had to make it so.  Sometimes that required telling Tkorrovi off.  I did that.  Paul Beardsell 17:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Paul Beardsell here. It's sometimes necessary to be verbose when there is a dispute, as it helps to explain the problems better, and may help to avoid misunderstandings. But the problem with "telling me off" was that Paul tried to do that with personal attacks, and sometimes did it, as to personal attacks there is often no response, if one wants to be civil, and expect the best from the other party, in trying to give it a possibility to continue normal discussion again. These personal attacks were the only reason why I submitted this request for arbitration, because in spite of many efforts during almost a year, it was not possible to stop Paul doing that, and without stopping these attacks it is impossible to continue the work normally any more. If this question would not be addressed, then it is equal to considering personal attacks as a legitimate way to "talk off" a user in Wikipedia; and the rest of this arbitration case, in discussing a minor mistakes made by me or Paul, is more or less nonsense, enough to tell us, and we are both smart enough to understand.Tkorrovi 18:28, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


 * It is not I who is being overly verbose in this arbitration request. Count the words.  That I have criticised Tkorrovi is without question.  That the attacks were personal or not, punisable or not, or, given either of those, recent or frequent enough to be brought to arbitration now is the question.  I say:  "No, no or, if so, no."  Paul Beardsell 07:19, 13 May 2005 (UTC)