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Posted by: thegoodlocust

So after both of us were banned from the CC proposed decision page, I for pointing out that WMC was simply stirring shit for shit's sake and WMC for calling me insane, WMC seems to have gone on yet another one of his temper tantrums:

After running around to various talk pages making an ass out of himself he ended up http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&diff=389067713&oldid=389066945 after a dispute where Connolley sees no problem with him edit warring to delete his own comments in a conversation on Sandstein's talk page - Sandstein's position is that he should strike out his comments, but not remove them.

Will Lankiveil http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&diff=388672506&oldid=388668182 for making yet another PA? (probably not since several admins have made similar "threats" in the past and not followed through - not that anyone would notice though since he tends to delete such warnings on his talk page)

In any case:

http://myspace.roflposters.com/images/rofl/myspace/1207599771964.jpg.%5Broflposters.com%5D.myspace.jpg

Also, I was going to mention that he now appears to be socking, something he's done in the past when he's gotten ticked off, but I'm really not sure what to make of this. http://www.ip2location.com/194.66.0.122 seems to be trolling around a bit, and it belongs to Connolley's "old' employer the BAS, but if you look at the history of the IP then it looks like it has been used by Polargeo (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=329252444#Richard_Linzen and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming/Archive_17&oldid=385815026#Richard_Linzen).

The most obvious conclusion is that Polargeo and Connolley worked at the same place (at the same time?), which is probably nothing more than an interesting factoid.

Posted by: Abd

I've been fascinated to see how someone like WMC could behave in ways that would get a lesser mortal blocked in a flash, yet ArbComm piddles around trying to figure out what to do.

It's not that I'm big on blocking and banning, but .... if you are going to do it, how about blocking and banning the most disruptive, uncivil, disruptive of all the trolls? His behavior, as documented in RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley, was utterly outrageous, and it continued, only without admin tools.

I certainly got no gratitude for having reduced his clout that much. There is hardly anyone defending me on-wiki, certainly not of the old-timers. One of the global warming skeptic crowd has, and GoRight practically sacrificed himself for me, even though I have a very different POV. I prefer the company of the blocked and banned, to most of the idiots who remain. Still, here and there, there are glimpses of light. Petri Krohn, perhaps an enemy of some of my friends, has nevertheless been very helpful. Friends show up in the oddest places! If I were allowed, I'd try to mediate.... but I'm not, at least not on-wiki. That's ArbComm!

Rootology appears to have retired over Connolley's revert warring with him, during the RfAr, over a notice placed on Hipocrite's Talk page. I'd theorized that WMC and Hipocrite were in cahoots, that the whole situation where he banned both me and Hipocrite from cold fusion was a charade, and this was, later, quite a confirmation. Why was WMC risking sanction to protect Hipocrite from a mere notice?

Rootology was renamed to User:GoneAwayNowAndRetired (T-C-L-K-R-D) , see the essay: User:GoneAwayNowAndRetired/Wikipedia is broken and failing (T-H-L-K-D)

This is the legacy of people like WMC and others whom ArbComm has long tolerated. In the end, this is ArbComm's legacy, because by sanctioning others and leaving these "valuable volunteers" alone, they enabled them, like any collection of co-dependents.

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

Where on Earth did you get that one from, Abd? From my perspective, it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/GoneAwayNowAndRetired that Rootology resigned over disagreements (to put it mildly) about Wikipedia's governance (or lack thereof). Just take a look at his last 150 contributions...

Posted by: Hipocrite

It is, as usual, a complete and total fabrication by serial liar Abd. Shocker.

Posted by: tarantino

17:39, 6 October 2010 Coren (talk | contribs) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=User%3A194.66.0.0%2F24&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_review_log=1 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 2 weeks ‎ ({{checkuserblock}})
How embarrassing.

Here's a list of all of http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/rangecontribs/index.php?type=range&ips=194.66.0.0%2F24&limit=204 from that range.

Posted by: Cla68

I expect that we'll see more IPs making edits to climate change BLPs, or their talk pages, from now on with so many editors now topic banned who used to be active with those articles. Hopefully the participating admins (NuclearWarfare, this includes you) will be as dedicated at blocking the accounts who try to evade their bans, even if it is WMC or Polargeo, as they were at reverting suspected Scibaby edits. I shouldn't have to say it since I'm also topic banned, but none of those IPs will be me, as now that the case is closed I'm taking all the CC articles off my watchlist.

I suspect that WMC, if he doesn't fall prey to temptation to evade his ban by socking in the CC topic, will attempt to continue to influence the CC articles from his user talk page by posting links to RealClimate articles and the like. That's fine. As long as he is kept from continuing to try to defame BLP subjects with views on global warming that he doesn't approve of. The fact that it took so many years to get him stopped is completely ridiculous. I think it provides more evidence that Wikipedia is truly a social media forum and far from a really serious attempt at building an encyclopedia.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Could someone post a link to the most recent ArbCom decision on climate change? I always have difficulty finding them.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Newsflash: no one here believes you.

Prove it.

Posted by: Cla68

The decision is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change#Final_decision (I haven't been participating much lately so I can't remember how to embed the link in a word). Hipocrite was topic-banned also.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Wow, this is certainly groundbreaking:

Posted by: Ottava

Which is kinda why Abd's campaigns always fizzle out.

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

I would, if it weren't for http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steward_requests/Permissions&diff=prev&oldid=2159404.


Herschelkrustofsky, that principle you quote there is also somewhat contradictory to the following remedy. So it doesn't really matter too much; it won't change behavior in any way.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Class-action "remedies" like this (against an unclosed set of unnamed users) are too close to policy-making for my comfort, and probably should be disregarded.

Posted by: Cla68

Here's the thing about the Scibaby boogieman, in my nine months or so of involvement in the topic area, I saw a lot of reverted edits attributed to Scibaby. From what I observed, none of the edits were vandalism and very few of them were outright outrageous. Most of them were reverts of reverts of somewhat controversial material. So, I'm having a hard time understanding why it is necessary to risk blocking false-positive editors in the name of Scibaby as seems to happen far too often.

In my opinion, the WMC bloc didn't like Scibaby because he kept adding material and sources they did not approve of, forcing them to spend too much time guarding the CC articles. It didn't matter to them if the blocked editor wasn't Scibaby, they were happy to have blocked an editor that was making unapproved and unappreciated edits to their articles. Their behavior matches with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Activist I wrote (with help from SlimVirgin and few others) about the attitudes of activist editors.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Aye, there's the rub.

Posted by: thegoodlocust

So was your http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:List_of_administrators/G-O&diff=390461565&oldid=390028524 due to your release of private personal information that was used to harass people offline and possibly put them in physical danger? Is this being censored at wikipedia because they (and you) may be held liable if anything happens to them?

More importantly, why isn't ScienceApologist banned from wikipedia if he played a part in this? Does the person behind that account have that much clout (Raul654?)?

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

No one asked me to resign, because I supposedly released private information or for any other reason either. Confirm it with any arbitrator you wish. It isn't being censored on Wikipedia to protect me. Even if it were being censored on WP for that reason, how on Earth would that affect anything in real life.

ScienceApologist isn't banned because he didn't violate outing or harassment policies. I would doubt very much that he has any "clout" though, considering that he has been banned before. Also, the fact that he is Raul654's sockpuppet is simply laughable. Do some research next time?

Posted by: ATren

But you still emit unjustified warnings as if you were an admin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ed_Poor&diff=390911195&oldid=390911035

What exactly did Ed Poor do to warrant that? One pretty innocuous edit, which he discussed on talk, and then one revert, with a promise not to revert again. That merits a warning? Looks like you're right back to your old self again, NW, bit or no bit.

And I wonder if seeking content input from a topic-banned user is considered OK for a so-called "neutral" admin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&diff=390889758&oldid=390844758
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&diff=390772264&oldid=390771301
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&diff=389539422&oldid=389539366

I'm sure it's OK; the rules don't apply to those supporting the house POV.

Posted by: ATren

Two of the worst activist admins, 2/0 and NW, are still eligible to participate in enforcement there, while Lar -- whom the committee acknowledged was NOT involved and was one of the lone voices of sanity -- HAS been removed. How could then state he's not involved... and then remove him anyway? Because he was getting in the way of the worthy feel-good cause Wikipedia wants to promote.

So now with Lar and every other sane voice of opposition removed, the POV pushing admins have free reign. And indeed, NW has already hurled the first stone, with his first spurious warning of someone he doesn't agree with. 2/0 should arrive any day now.

Posted by: Abd

No, I prefer to lie all at once, in a tome, don't you know anything, you ninny?

I see that the bells have started tolling for you and company. ArbComm is an equal opportunity blunderbuss.

Now, as to Rootology. Let me rummage around in my kit. Surely Hipocrite, though he had "retired" at that point -- a trick he's used so many times that one would think it would be becoming a tad obvious, but .... -- is aware of what happened on his Talk page. It looks like it was the last straw for Rootology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Hipocrite&diff=302102064&oldid=299694226, I was adding him to the RfAr

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Hipocrite&diff=next&oldid=302102064

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Hipocrite&diff=next&oldid=302105867

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Hipocrite&diff=next&oldid=302108254 and refers to the RfAr page, where he was reverting my addition to the filing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&oldid=302191974#Inappropriate WMC blows him off. The clerks were snoozing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&diff=prev&oldid=302105486. This is why WMC could claim that Hipocrite was not a party, because he had reverted me, the filer of the case, setting up my own section, acting as if he could clerk a case where he was a primary party. And, in fact, he could, because the clerks did nothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:GoneAwayNowAndRetired&diff=prev&oldid=302116611 for using rollback to revert WMC. Rootology answers at 21:38.

At this point I assume that Rootology had, correctly, noticed that Wikipedia had gone completely mad. WMC actually revert warred (two reverts, one of me and then one of Rootology), and Rootology is dinged for one revert because he used rollback?

Rootology saw all this and was gone, quickly, starting to shut things down at 23:50. Sure, this wasn't the only cause. But it was sure proximate.

Now, what was all this about? Why was WMC willing to risk it? It certainly seemed that he led a charmed life, he did so much totally outrageous stuff, and not just to ordinary editors, he wheel-warred, edited under protection, and on and on. And he was grossly uncivil, again and again, and it took years for ArbComm to get around to addressing it, and even then ... most editors would have been site-banned several times over for what he did.

Because the clerks paid no attention to this complete violation of ArbComm process, it stood, and Hipocrite's actions received much less attention than they deserved.

I think it's obvious. How far back the conspiracy goes, I don't know, but definitely when WMC banned both Hipocrite and I from cold fusion -- Hipocrite had been the one revert warring, not I, not that last incidence -- it was for an appearance of equal treatment. WMC had been itching to get rid of me for maybe a year.

Hipocrite didn't care about cold fusion, he never made any substantial edits except for one that he made just as he requested page protection, and later, in the polling I was trying to run to find the most-approved version, he didn't even support his own version, it was so bad. He had suddenly come in with totally obnoxious behavior, much worse than the ordinary "skeptical POV" editors like Enric Naval, with whom it was possible to work.

I think that WMC had agreed to protect Hipocrite if he helped to arrange my ban. So he was fulfilling his part of the deal. I see no other explanation.

It would not have worked if ArbComm had been willing to confront the cabal a bit sooner. It would not have worked if ArbComm actually had set up and used decent process. They did better in the Climate Change case, though it took donkey's ages.

They allowed total misbehavior to run rampant on the case pages in the Abd-WMC arbitration. And, indeed, though WMC had made it utterly necessary to desysop him or it would have been way too obvious that he had a pass, they shot the messenger, an ancient tradition that they must have picked up from reading articles on feudal tyrants.

Posted by: Abd

Nah, they just go into remission.

Reminds me, I have some unfinished business at Wikiversity. I was distracted for a month or so shooting up Wikipedia. Now that I've been relieved of that burden, I can return some old favors. One good turn deserves another, eh? It's never too late.

Posted by: Minor4th

Can you break this down for me? What exactly does this mean or what do you think it means?

As for NW possibly releasing private information that led to off-wiki harassment, as one of the harassees, I'd appreciate if you would all give NW a break. He did not mean any harm and any part he played was unintentional. I think giving up the bit was appropriate, even if only temporarily, and some thoughtful introspection is warranted in this situation -- I trust that NW is giving it the attention it deserves. I do not agree with many of the admin actions NW has taken, and I have told him of my perception of biased actions on his part, but I also think he is a good kid trying to do the right thing. NW has made apologies and expressed appropriate regret for any inadvertent assistance he may have given to those who actually intended to cause harm. That's good enough for me and apparently good enough for Greg as well. I think the focus should remain on those who intended the harm.

Posted by: Cla68

Well, perhaps NuclearWarfare is now going to fully commit to participation in the CC articles as a regular editor. If so, NW, hopefully you won't experience what it was like trying to edit those articles before the arbcom case closed.

NW, let me tell you, it was an absolutely miserable experience. I never knew if, after spending 30 minutes building and sourcing a paragraph, it would be reverted in its entirety minutes later by WMC, KimDPetersen, Tony Sidaway, or ChrisO. Then, if one tried to defend the text addition, you would have to face condescending and patronizing comments by those and other editors like Dave Souza, Guettarda, and ShortBrigadeHarvesterBoris.

Hopefully, those editors I mentioned above who somehow didn't get topic banned will abandon their myopia and start trying to work with all other editors on those articles instead of trying to chase them away or treat them in a dismissive manner. One thing to remember is that the way Wikipedia is structured it doesn't matter whether Wikipedia articles have expert attention or not. What matters is how the involved editors work together. If expertise was valued in Wikipedia, it would be governed more like Citizendium. Trying to give self-proclaimed experts some favoritism in Wikipedia is like trying to force a square block into a round hole.

Posted by: WikiWatch

Perhaps you should talk to Paul Wormer, Martin Cohen, etc Despite being credentialled they were forced out of the project by people arguing with them outside of their own expertise. There is a culture of exclusionism at Citizendium that is not healthy.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Posted by: tarantino

The IP range 194.66.0.0/24 (194.66.0.0 - 194.66.0.255) is owned by the http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/science/climate/climate_change.php. There are climate change subject matter experts who work there. http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=24588&st=0 blocked them all from making accounts and participating anonymously for two weeks because of http://www.google.com/search?noj=1&q=geophysicist+%22Julian+Scott%22.

Posted by: Abd

Yeah, right.

This is the house that ArbComm built. At Cold fusion, as elsewhere, I attempted to find true consensus. It takes discussion to do that, lots of discussion. To someone not interested in the topic, not interested in discussion, but just in pushing a general point of view that they imagine is "scientific," this is incomprehensible if brief and "wall of text" if it is detailed To write convincing polemic on a difficult topic is no simple task. People get paid lots of money to do it in the real world!

Discussion in real consensus process takes place in layers. Not all participants follow and participate in all layers, it is very inefficient if they do. Some layers involve deep discussion. Some deal only with distilled, boiled-down summaries.

I was not banned for "walls of text," but it's clear that some arbitrators wanted to, and that's what they remember as my offense. It's not exactly clear what I was banned for. From the MYOB ban, there was no finding of fact that involved not "minding my own business." There had been some idea that I'd abused dispute resolution process, but the origin of that, AFAIK, was JzG's refrain that I was beating a dead horse, by bringing up "old issues" -- i.e., his own personal decisions -- but, generally, the community decided with me on those, unless the cabal gathered, they could make it look like I was an isolated lunatic, and this got worse and worse.

At cold fusion, ArbComm had originally looked like it was going to decide almost exactly what I'd asked for. Then, suddenly, it reversed. The mentor idea (I was eager for it!) got tossed as useless, and the MYOB ban was proposed; there was an obvious meaning: we don't like that Abd identified and "prosecuted" administrative misbehavior. I'd done it for an admin who had been considered practically bulletproof.

ArbComm is, functionally, like a coward. When they are faced with massive misbehavior, a large faction, involving administrators, they are terrified that all these "useful volunteers" will take offense and go away. They generally ignore, then, the long-term damage done to ordinary editors, who are not valued.

They took an extraordinary length of time to start working on the case, after closing evidence and proposals, for a long time. ArbComm has become, functionally, a star chamber, they clearly do much or most of their deliberation privately.

They did finally address the issue of a mutually involved faction, I'd begged them to do it in my RfAr, but they decided it was too difficult to read my stuff. Naw, it wouldn't have been that difficult, the problem was difficult!

It was still too little, too late. GoRight remains banned, as an example. They had worked on that diligently for about two years. A faction can set up conditions to ban almost any editor, because they can create an appearance of consensus that will fool a neutral admin who doesn't investigate deeply.

The odd thing is that the Eastern European Mailing List editors were accused of this, but they hadn't actually done it. ArbComm threw the book at them; it seems that the worst offense of Piotrus was that he'd semiprotected an article after IPs were revert warring, having been canvassed on the mailing list to help. But the actual decision was mild, temporary, and quickly moot, since as soon as the IP's couldn't edit, apparent meat puppets showed up, new editors, and continued, and the article was full protected. I think it was the very idea of people with common interests communicating off-wiki that freaked them out.

But, of course, they do it all the time.

Posted by: ATren

Why would he start editing? A "neutral" admin can do much more for his cause than a lowly editor.

The real travesty of this case is that more of those editors were not sanctioned, even though the arbs were presented with plenty of evidence to do so. Tony Sidaway was actually clerking the case even though he was an active participant in the content battles. How does he get away with it? (Yes, I know the answer -- house POV defenders can do whatever they want and survive).

I tried to get Shell Kinney to look at the evidence for Guettarda, SBHB, Stephan Schulz, and the activist admins 2/0, NW, TOAT and FPAS. She refused to even look at the evidence. Neither did Roger or any of the others. The best you can say about them is they are lazy, but I think it's even more than that: they think Wikipedia can save the world, and they think POV pushing in this topic area is the way to do it.

Why would they change now? The situation is actually more favorable for them now that Lar, you, me, JWB and a bunch of others have been removed while friendly admins like NW and 2/0 remain to clear out any others who dare oppose the house POV. If anything, their tactics will escalate because there is not even a check on their behavior anymore.

Posted by: thegoodlocust

You have a bright future as a lawyer.



ScienceApologist is probably in desperate need of therapy and medication - my opinion is that he has serous mental problems. There are a half-dozen reasons besides whatever you, him and Usher did to ban him. The suggestion that he is someone with political power like Raul is merely an example (I would not be terribly surprised if Raul was or is socking in the area though).

The point is that there is some reason he hasn't been banned. He is either innocent of the charges, the charges can't be proven effectively or he has some sort of clout that has nullified the judgment. I pointed out to Risker that SA has flat out stated that one of his goals is to needle people to hope they screw up and make mistakes that can get them banned.

That self-declared modus operandi by itself was sufficient to topic ban (if not outright ban) him. The only question is, "why not?"

Posted by: Cla68

I don't think that is entirely the case. First of all, the ArbCom did make it clear that no more monkey business will be allowed with CC BLPs. The three worst offenders of that policy were topic banned. Also, the http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/10/14/lawrence-solomon-global-warming-propagandist-slapped-down/ that WMC is topic banned, which I think will draw more new, interested editors to the topic in Wikipedia, on both sides.

I don't think the CC articles will dramatically improve in the future as far as NPOV, but I don't think they will get much worse. I think the environment for newbie editors will be better with those articles. Actually, only a few of those articles are blatantly POV, and those are the ones directly related to RealClimate and Connolley's paleoclimatic friends, like "Hockey Stick Controversy" or the "Climategate" article. I'll be interested to see how those articles look six months or so from now.

Posted by: Abd

It may improve, but this is the biggest problem: the combination of various POVs, which is what often motivates people to edit an article, and knowledge of Wikipedia guidelines and dispute resolution process. ArbComm tends to be slow to act, but then it often acts excessively. Sanctions should be measured, with Talk page access the last to go. If an editor is restricted to making suggestions in Talk, they may soon get it that, first of all, incivility will get them completely banned or at least topic banned, depending on whether they are WMC or not, and, second, if they make suggestions that are not adequately sourced, they will be wasting their time.

I'll say it again: Wikipedia should be quick to ban editors from the article page, except for self-reverted edits -- that was a sophisticated suggestion treated as if it was some attempt to wikilawyer! --, but slow to ban from Talk, because banning from Talk is very often excluding the most knowledgeable editors, and restricting them to Talk means they must respect other editors or they will be ignored.

True POV pushers will attack an article-banned editor, even when the editor follows COI rules (that's equivalent to a rough article ban from making edits that can be expected to be controversial), and that would be obvious for anyone following the activity at Cold fusion, but nobody follows it except for editors with an axe to grind. Cold fusion is under discretionary sanctions, but the only application of these sanctions so far has been to reban me for ... for ... for what? Now, my own question is whether or not I bother appealing this particular blatant stupidity. Indeed, this is how Wikipedia disintegrates: the brightest and smartest, most knowledgeable, and most motivated to create a neutral project, run into the Problem, and mostly just leave. It takes entirely too much time to run dispute resolution process, even at the article level, given the absence of skilled facilitation.

Dispute resolution process requires a lot of discussion! Sound bite exchanges preserve POV disputes and even amplify them, as the motive becomes winning a debate instead of seeking mutual understanding and consensus. The situation is so bad on Wikipedia, when disputes arise, that many experienced Wikipedians believe that factions will always be at each other's throats, that consensus is impossible, therefore the only solution is to ban the most egregious offenders.

Bans should be reserved for those who will not participate in dispute resolution, who will not restrain themselves when under "voluntary ban," i.e., bans not enforced by blocks, pending dispute resolution. And there would be a path to return, always, and that was part of the self-reversion proposal. And it works. It the community respects it! Serious POV-pushers, true fanatics, won't bother with self-reversion, it's easier for them to sock.

Wikipedia desperately needs, not more administrators, but more *facilitators.* And, ironically, that's what I was good at, particularly when I wasn't involved, but even sometimes when I was. So ... ArbComm banned me from it, completely. At the time, it seemed the scope of the MYOB ban was limited, but the cabal made sure that interpretation of it crept up, to the point to becoming an almost complete gag order, applying, for example, to user talk pages where the user welcomed my comments. But someone else objected. "Dispute" was widened to mean, for example, a request on the blacklist talk page for a whitelisting, where nobody had objected, I responded with a suggestion, someone else then objected, and I responded to that. MYOB!

And always the same people filing the enforcement requests. Usually Hipocrite, now banned from Climate Change, but Climate Change was only one area of cabal activity. Too little from ArbComm, too late, and then, paradoxically, too much, too soon.

Content? The hell with content! Protect the admin core, that is the real motivation, and this goes way back, it's a structural defect, which, once built in, can be the devil to change. And the tools of this "policy," which could, of course, never be stated as such, it would be a User:Abd/Rule 0 violation, are unaware of it, generally. They think they are enforcing this or that policy or rule; what they don't see is how the rules are selectively applied. Until it's too late, and the bell is tolling for them.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

If you could get competent editors to follow articles where they don't have an axe to grind, there might be hope for the fabled "neutrality." But, short of actually paying them, I see know way that that is going to happen.

Posted by: Abd

I've been forced to more or less the same conclusion.

Wikipedia can have very selective vision. ScienceApologist has many friends who generally agree with his pseudoskeptical POV. When JzG went to AN to request a renewal of my Cold fusion ban, if the admin reviewed the history of what had been going on, he'd have seen serious misbehavior by ScienceApologist, tendentious POV-pushing beyond all reason, clear violation of the prior Fringe science arbitration that originally banned him from Cold fusion. That was a short ban, three months, from all fringe science articles. His nemesis, Pcarbonn, for far lesser offense -- if any offense at all! -- was banned for a year.

He'd also have seen Hipocrite acting up, both of them seriously, both of them with article editing, I was merely discussing. (I did make two edits that I expected would be accepted, but SA and Hipocrite showed up unexpectedly....)

Cold fusion is now under discretionary sanctions, and what GWH did in banning me was to look only at my edits, it appears, and not the context. He sees me "arguing" with more than one editor, so, easy assumption, I'm tendentious. He doesn't look at the RfAr that he's enforcing to see editor histories. He doesn't understand the arguments or the issues, and why complex discussion might be needed. SA wasn't mentioned in that arbitration, though, because he'd already been banned and he hadn't been active at all with the article in the period when I was.

SA is now arguing that the immense amount of material that has appeared in mainstream peer-reviewed journals over the last five years (See the Sources page at Wikiversity:Cold fusion) is not usable because it's not "independent." That's based on the authors being researchers in the field, or writers following the field. Whom does he expect will write an article about the field? An ornithologist?

He's completely missed that the peer reviewers are now accepting articles, and the latest review, the deepest on the critical evidence for cold fusion, in the most prestigious journal, was actually solicited, the Naturwissenschaften "Status of cold fusion (2010)." Supposedly the gold standard for Wikipedia sourcing is peer-reviewed secondary source, and the "independent" requirement refers to publishers, not authors.

He's blatantly POV-pushing, tendentiously (against consensus at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard), and ... I'm prohibited from bringing this up on Wikipedia. Why?

GWH cited my delisting request (;enr-canr.org) at meta as a cause for the ban renewal. Besides being iffy as hell, citing off-wiki behavior, that request was fully in line with general community consensus. I was indeed challenging meta admin decisions, and I was prepared to go to an RfC if, as seemed fairly likely, the request was denied. Blacklist admins have a strong tendency to never delist, and I could certainly explain why.... (But Beetstra granted it, after complaining about my "irrelevancies." My "irrelevancy" was that I based the claim on the blacklisting never having had an adequate reason, it was abusive content control, as ArbComm had addressed, from the start. But I also responded to the farrago of issues raised as rationalizations, which takes a lot of words, so ... there goes that wall-o-text Abd again.... the original request was brief and to the point and a truly neutral admin would have granted it, no question, no fuss.)

Structural problem, bottom line.