Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/CltFn

I'm not quite sure where I should put my comments. I have worked on the Islam in the US article, and have butted heads with CltFn there, so I suppose I'm involved with the dispute. However, I made no effort to resolve matters. I have such a long history with CltFn that I no longer believe that there is anything I could say to him that would make him act reasonably. I have clashed with him at various pages related to the academic study of Islam, such as Christoph Luxenberg, Hagarism, Historiography of early Islam, and many others. From my POV, the problem is that he's trying to use academic materials to "debunk" Islam and embarrass Muslims. However, it does not seem to me that he has had any academic training and he consistently misuses academic materials. I say this not from the perspective of a devout Muslim who resents criticism, but as a failed academic who nonetheless got a thorough grounding in proper uses of sources, historical research, etc. It bugs the heck out of me when he misrepresents mainstream scholars, or the state of affairs in Islamic studies.

As an example, let us take the Islam in the US article. We have various estimates of the numbers of American Muslims, estimates that range from 1.1 million to 7 million. They date from 1997 onwards. CltFn wants them arranged chronologically, as he believes that they illustrate a theory of his (personal opinion) that the number of Muslims and especially practicing Muslims in the US has been dropping since 9-11. The other editors are happier with an arrangement by size of the estimate, as that best illustrates a clustering between 2 and 5 million. We do not believe that CltFn understands that it is NOT OK, speaking statistically and sociologically, to treat studies conducted by different groups, using different methodologies, coming to wildly variant conclusions, as strictly comparable and illustrative of a trend in American Islam that no one save CltFn seems to have seen.

Or as another example, he likes Crone and Cook's 1977 book Hagarism, and insists that it is well-regarded by other scholars. His evidence for this is that it is found in a number of course syllabuses. We can quote other scholars till we're blue in the face, scholars saying the book's hypotheses are dubious, and point out that it's in the bibliographies because it's part of the history of the field, not because it is highly regarded ... but he doesn't care. It says what he wants it to say, it offends Muslims, therefore it is true and important.

This are just a couple of the endless controversies that CltFn leaves in his wake. The problem is not that he criticizes Islam, the problem is that he does so ineptly, pig-headedly, and without any sign that he is able to compromise or work with other editors. A strictly academic, critical POV on Islam would be a great additJion to many Islam-related articles that are currently mere sermons or hagiographies but ... CltFn is not qualified, by training or temperament, to provide it. Zora 01:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we need to make a relatively concise point and put it under "Outside view" and then see how popular we are and if others endorse it. gren グレン 10:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * sigh* well, you can see what I've written on the main page. gren グレン 10:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Gren's comment
I also want to agree with most of what Zora has said. My exception would be the importance of Hagarism. My perception about it has been formed in great part to Rudi Matthee's commentary on it and I don't hold it's authoritative but I consider it "an important founding piece". I would argue that Hagarism is well regarded but we shouldn't confuse well regarded with true (which is what I feel CltFn is trying to push). It pioneered an interesting direction which is still being pursued. Its flaws are being hashed out in subsequent scholarship. As Crone said, that's how studying history works. You posit a thesis and try to prove it, people assess it and build from it. CltFn argued that Crone still believed this just because she had not written a retraction. This is where his behavior became incredibly problematic since he argued that it was important, there was no retraction, so therefore academics had more or less decided this book was the Truth about early Islam. I don't fault him for calling it important. It's incredibly hard to get a basis for importance of semi-obscure academic works from secondary sources. It is just one of those things that seems to be known by academics. The best example I can give is works on Mawdudi. I have never seen it written that the Vali Nasr work is the definitive English language study--yet, every professor I have asked refers me to it first. It's what stems from CltFn's insistence on its importance and then his arguing and reverting to get his way that is the problem.

He also has a tendency to misrepresent sources. Crone herself asked me to remove a quote from Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam because it was nowhere near the thesis and she (and I) thought it was being used to make it look like she was calling the Arabs pugilists. I got a copy and read through her book and the quote completely missed the point--but it had been posited as representative. This is a huge problem and it may be insulting to say this, but, I think others would agree that we have this trend. People who are argumentative and really want to push a point can find good quotes and with lovely demagoguery put the quote in the article as the author's point. People whom I greatly respect like Zora have to read full book (or at least chapters) to really judge if these quotes represent the works they purport to. It's very difficult to keep up, by the time you have read enough to realize a quote is wrong it's easy enough for someone to put another up from another work doing the same thing. This is why--for the most part--I will quote from scholarly articles and book reviews--because it's easier to create a concise and accurate summary of them. This is not a problem that I feel we have any easy way to fix--yet, it needs to be fixed.

I haven't been paying attention to CltFn (or Wikipedia for that matter) lately but just checking his recent contribs you see a controversy on Dawn of the Dead (2004 film) where he has uploaded two images linking the film to Islam. It's not that this is a huge violation of policy but this is what he does. Not to mention he has apparently gone back to not sourcing his images. Even screenshots should mention the source they are from... and those don't appear to be full resolution shots from a DVD. So, are they divx rips, did he do them himself. He has gotten better with sourcing things after we had a few problems with that.

Just for "the record" I don't endorse any talk of sock-puppetry. I have no idea if CltFn uses sock puppets or not. If it can be established he did--fine--if not, fine. I don't particularly find most mention of it productive. I am also not involved in any of the new disputed evidence... but it appears to be a continuation of old trends. This is a longer more rambling version of what I will hopefully make concise and put on the main page. gren グレン 10:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

PelleSmith's Comment
From my own limited experience I agree with the main evidence and with the comments by gren and Zora. CltFn engages in active POV pushing, and does so by presenting missleading edit summaries, slow revert warring (perhaps to avoid 3RR) and a refusal to engage in productive discussion on talk pages. I also agree with gren, however, that the policies cited may not directly deal with these problems. I also believe that at times CltFn engages in more explicitly bad faith editing than gren gives him/her credit for. In but very few encounters I have had with CltFn as an editor this has become apparent on at least one occasion. CltFn may push a POV that is disruptive to the many entries listed already, but the issues I want to address aren't with POV pushing but with willfully misrepresenting information in doing so. Providing half of the "facts" is one thing, distorting the facts is another altogether. Here are varying examples arranged in the order of my encounters: Those are the instances in which I have been less than pleased to have to deal with CltFn's missdirections. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a staging ground for propaganda. It is with regret that I'm beginning to conclude that editing Islam related entries may not be worth the effort, exactly because of the type of behavior expressed above. As others have pointed out, this type of behavior comes from both sides of the fence, and exists in varying degrees ranging from pure vandalism to mild POV pushing. Yet as such, it exists to a deplorable extent, and when simple varifiable facts get trampled I still think its important to draw a line.PelleSmith 14:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Conscious Bad Faith: On John Esposito CltFn justified putting back reverted information he had added orginally about a donation from a Saudi Prince to an organization at Georgetown University run by Esposito by referencing Georgetown's press release . I changed the information to accurately conform with the press release since the statement that the donation's intent was "to promote a favorable image of Islam in the United States" can not be referenced anywhere .  CltFn did not revert me so I figured my clear explanation was understood.  Yet weeks later he added the same information to the mention of Esposito in the Bat Ye'or entry, reverted its removal once, and then brazenly reverted my removal of the information despite my clear explanation of why the information he presented was false .  When an editor uses the edit summary "actually it is completely true", yet they are not only familiar with the untruth of their statements, but have actually introduced the evidence of this untruth themselves in another entry, then I have to see this as consciously in bad faith.  I reverted again, with the reference this time, and documented the incident on CltFn's talk page.
 * UPDATE: It appears that after waiting some time CltFn has again added some of the same false information about Esposito back onto the Bat Ye'or page. See here. What explanation can there be?PelleSmith 15:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Promoting missinformation: As mentioned in the request for comment, CltFn has been enaged in a slow revert war with several other editors on Islam in the United States. In order to avoide precisely the kind of blanket reverting that I later found out had been happening on the page, I made several edits as seperate occurances, so they could each be evaluated on their own, and not simply all be reverted.  The only content edits I made were to the subsection "Opinion Surveys", and here is the diff spanning all those content edits .  During these edits I removed several pieces of false, and unsupported data referenced to a Pew study and originally inserted by an IP editor  and, ontop of which I added information from the Pew survey to balance what seemed a selective presentation of another survey. Other edits included copyedits and some structural rearrangements, but no removal of content.  CltFn reverted all of my edits under the edit summary "edits"  and attempted to justify himself after my request to discuss on the talk page by saying "(y)ou were messing the article by cutting out a bunch of stuff", and then he insinuated that I am "a new incarnation of some former wikipedia editor".
 * Adding missinformation. After digging around in the history to figure out where the missrepresentation of Pew data on Islam in the United States originated (see above) I found another instance of such behavior, but this time by the same editor who provided the reference, CltFn. Here CltFn adds the false figure  and here months later someone removes it .  I'm not calling this conscious bad faith, because for all I know an over-zealous CltFn may have missread a stastic similar to the false one he added.  But the likelihood of that will undoubtedly be judged by others through his/her various other edits as presented here and on the main project page.

BhaiSaab's Comments
Arrow and CltFn's comments are nothing but ad-hominem attacks and have nothing to do with the evidence I provided, as PelleSmith has explained. BhaiSaab talk 16:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

In response to Karl Meier, if someone is a sockpuppeteer and is often editing in bad faith, then there's nothing wrong with checking that user's edits. CltFn fits the profile. BhaiSaab talk 01:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Karl states "I can understand why he might have been tempted to use such measures in order to escape this constant harassment." Unfortunately for this illogical defense of CltFn's actions, both of the sockpuppets were created before I even began editing here. BhaiSaab talk 01:45, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

If you feel there is something wrong with someones edits you should bring it to the attention of a broader range a Wikipedians. What you shouldn't do is to follow people around, harassing, reverting and attacking them on every possible occasion, because that is against Wikipedias policies regarding Wikistalking. Another thing is that apart from following people around on Wikipedia, you should also end your stalking people outside the project by tracking down their real-life identity, calling their work place and so on. As I already mentioned, your harassment makes Wikipedia a very unpleasant place for anyone daring to disagree with your personal views. -- Karl Meier 01:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You seem to be confused. I've never tracked down anyone's real life identity. How would I do that, unless a Wikipedian gives out his or her name? In the case of calling their work place and so on the person you're talking about had their number already listed on the internet, and the editor had given out his name on Wikipedia. I've already told an admin that I would not attempt to contact the person after he told me that doing such independent research was inappropriate, so your suggestion "to end your stalking" seems to be a baiting tactic here. BhaiSaab talk 02:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Your little "stalking" of hkel is coming back to haunt you....--D-Boy 03:38, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Your trolling is getting somewhat annoying. BhaiSaab talk 04:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

As for alleged sock puppets, have you every used any other account than you current "BhaiSaab" account? -- Karl Meier 01:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Is this some sort of "Tu Quoque"? CltFn's sockpuppets are not "alleged." They are blocked as sockpuppets of CltFn. See Suspected_sock_puppets/CltFn, User:Amenra, and User:Urchid. BhaiSaab talk 02:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * User:BhaiSaab is simply a vindictive and disruptive editor, who brings up issues that have long since been resolved in order to try to build a bogus case against editors he disagrees with, after he has been told by admins that these issues are resolved. --CltFn 05:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Personal information: Karl, I do not know what you are referring to when you say "you should also end your stalking people outside the project by tracking down their real-life identity, calling their work place and so on" but if you have evidence to show of that do tell me or another admin and he will be permanently banned. The same goes for anyone doing that. If you don't really have evidence it's better not to bring it up. I am very interested in what you are referring to because that is clearly unacceptable behavior. It's also not something to be taken lightly--which is why you should only mention it if you really mean it and can show it.

In regards to the less serious wiki-stalking. The policy is clear to state that it must cause "disruption". I have gone through the contributions of Striver, CltFn, Karl, Bhai and even Zora at many points in time. It wasn't always out of curiosity. For Striver I constantly had to undo page moves. For CltFn I had to tell him to source his images. The point is stalking involves disruption. Wikipedia is building up an interesting jurisprudence of sorts (despite WP:IAR) and we should not use wiki-stalking so loosely. I know you all think the other are being disruptive but this has just become a massive attack fest. Please don't use these phrases so liberally. Disrupt, stalking, sockpuppet all have specific meanings on Wikipedia and much of the time they are just being thrown around as insults instead of their specific definitions of policy violations. There is apparently an abrcom case against Bhai? Hopefully that will put this issue to rest. I don't follow Bhai around enough to know if he stalks or not... but that decision will decide this (can you link me to what you're talking about? I didn't find it).

Karl, in regards to using another account for the reasons you would say may fall under sock puppetry (in the negative sense). I didn't think it would--but I've changed my mind after reading the policy. The main issue is that it's alleged that CltFn edits the same type of articles with both accounts. This would be "[a]voiding scrutiny from other editors" which is a disallowed reason for a sock puppet. In my opinion it's not a huge deal if it's not trying to vote twice, comment twice on the same issue with different names... things that are obviously trying to gain the upper hand by having two accounts. This is all in the theoretical realm since I have no idea if CltFn has nad sock puppets and if he does I hope he gets blocked and if he doesn't I hope people stop talking about it. I just think you should read that (if you haven't) because in the case you're describing it seems that trying to get someone blocked for stalking is what you should do--not use another account. Only use an alternative account if you are strictly compartmentalizing them. Don't involve yourself on the same topic with two accounts--that's a big no-no.

My point is can't we all just be friends? There's no need for CltFn to call Bhai vindictive and there's no need for Bhai to bring up the sock puppets case from a while ago. If he's doing it request do a check user or however one deals with sock puppets. But please, avoid this kind of behavior. gren グレン 16:22, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * As usual your points are well taken. For your information the evidence for what Karl had mentioned regarding BhaiSaab's real life stalking of User:Hkelkar which he has been in a heated battle with for month, you can see BhaiSaab's own admission  here--CltFn 17:26, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks CltFn. I read the discussion about it here.  It seems it has been dealt with?  Yeah... that's not really a good thing to do, no matter your intent.  He admitted it and stopped?  So, maybe not stalking... but still very bad... and something that will get him blocked if he does it again.  I don't know... I would have blocked for a bit if I had been around when it happened.
 * I do want to say one thing. It was bad and I don't think I can really do anything about it... he admitted, etc.  But, are you (Karl and CltFn) satisfied that he won't do it again? because, I don't think you should bring it up since it appeared to be a one time (still not so swell) thing.  I mean, I don't think it helps if you bring it up and I think we should all stop bringing up the past.  So, can we not bring up this real-life-calling-thing or any other sock puppet cases that are over?  Also, we should accept that we're going to follow each other around because we are wary of each other's edits.  That's not necessarily wiki-stalking unless it's "disruptive". gren グレン 18:45, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

FayssalF's comment
I've a lot of things to say but i prefer to be very brief. I am giving this example as to show why CltFN should revise their behaviour. --  Szvest   Ω  Wiki Me Up ®  21:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll use that example as a basis for why I don't want to go specifically after CltFn. I just attended a conference on "jihad" given to some U.S. government people.  Suhl was briefly mentioned--with a specific time period--where it was mentioned treaties were only allowed to be for up to 10 years but were renewed indefinitely.  I don't really know well (someone should consult a good Arabic dictionary) what suhl means in common speech.  But when referred to as Dar al-Sulh I don't think it's safe to simply call it "domain of peace"... because, it's the domain of truce--or that's the reference I've heard more often.  It was Sohail Hashmi talking about it and he did talk about it in terms of expansion.  Islam was not meant to be passive and therefore there was not eternal peace because the goal was to spread Islam.  Your version doesn't show that.  His version doesn't show that.  And my conception is based on a period of time and doesn't refer to the relevance or irrelevance of the concept over time.  There are times when 'the dars' are important to Muslim thought and times when they don't matter as much.  Wikipedia (maybe any encyclopedia) is horrible for explaining these complexities.  We have 60KB to describe a concept that we pretend is steady over time and over all Muslims.  These terms have histories that need to be explored and contexts.  So, yeah, we can call CltFn out for simplistic view that it's a "tactical tool".  No, there are instances when it was renewed and stable... and it was a truce.  Also, this concept often worked in an area where war was the norm--not peace, as it is now.


 * Describing the past has political implications for the present--and that is our problem. We all have conceptions of morality and we shouldn't be surprised to find the differ from those in the past.  I think many of 'anti-Muslim' leaning editors want to point out these 'bad' things of the past and essentialize them as a constant of Islamic history.  Our 'Muslim' leaning editors want to lessen or rationalize these views.  Neither way works and it is very difficult to present this in a neutral light.  We aren't a scholarly paper that can have a thesis and we aren't a paper encyclopedia which only covers the basics (which makes it much easier). gren グレン 15:14, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

minor note: removed self-endorsement
Karl Meier signed in endorsement to his own summary, perhaps by mistake. i proceeded to remove it.  ITAQALLAH  15:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)