Global ban for Abd?, Gotta stop that POV-pushing Options

[Abd]

JzG at AN, the usual

Some of the usual usual, but I'd noticed before that T. Canens knew the difference between a block and a ban, and he points it out. JzG will try to get a ban declared, that's his history. Not that it matters.

JzG, however, has been the long-term POV-pusher here, that's clear. EnergyNeutral was, indeed, my sock. Demonstrating how I'd edit if not for the ban. Middle-of-the-road, actually. JzG archived and collapsed a discussion that was started by others, in which I'd merely commented, as if it were mine. EnergyNeutral was cooperating with Brian Josephson, a Nobel laureate in physics. By comparison, JzG has a friend who is a scientist. And he's 100% convinced that he's right. (I.e., that what his friend told him years ago is The Truth, which it might even have been, but you have to have some background to understand the issues.) He thinks he's talking about me.

(EnergyNeutral was created for just what I wrote on the EN user page, because of what I saw happening at EnergyCatalyzer, which is either the biggest fraud ever to hit the field of cold fusion, or it's the real thing, and .... the real experts are saying, "Damn! We can't tell, this is either a huge fraud, or Rossi Has Done It." Lying was not involved.) EN "pushed" for reporting what is in reliable sources, only, and added highly skeptical material. Brian Josephson had been active there, that's how he became involved. Off-wiki, he's known as a supporter of cold fusion research, and so have at least two other Nobel laureates in physics....

Hut 8.5 points to the Wikiversity documentation. Why, thanks, Hut! I tried to point to that on-wiki and it was Revision Deleted. Leading to some, ah, consideration of the boundaries of revision deletion.... The last edit documented there was May 13, and very little has anything to do with ban evasion, but it's all block evasion. EnergyNeutral was ban evasion, almost totally editing in cold fusion.

How was EnergyNeutral identified? Topic interest. Any new editor who isn't pseudoskeptical in the cold fusion area arouses claims of ban evasion, since the road is littered with knowledgeable banned editors. Has Wikipedia ever considered that it's banning scientists and experts? (Most experts simply stay away, to be sure.)

If Wikipedia were sane, the "ban evasion" and "block evasion" would be considered as to the effect. But WP isn't sane. The early block evasion consisted entirely of self-reverted edits, so there was no necessity for further enforcement. But we all know that they don't think that way. It was when they turned to revision deletion and larger range blocks, making it less convenient to IP sock, that I turned to socking. I wonder. With some socks, I've not been so careful, with some, I very much doubt they could find them. EnergyNeutral was very obvious as a suspect, and I didn't take any care about OS and browser details, so Coren did not have to work hard.

Rdfox 76 suggests a global ban, based on alleged "POV-pushing." That's interesting. WTF is Rdfox 76 (T-C-L-K-R-D) ? From the user page, I get the distinct feeling that this guy isn't, er, collaborative. Guns.

Not only can someone be banned on Wikipedia for coming to positive conclusions about cold fusion (which is now a substantial minority position among scientists, possibly a majority opinion among subject matter experts, like the peer reviewers in journals), but we will attempt to make sure that it isn't even studied, as at Wikiversity.

My, my. JzG edits BLP on Brian Josephson. That had been discussed on Talk, and the removal had been suggested by Stanistani, I decided that it was poorly sourced, took it out, and 2over0, normally an editor who'd as soon see me vanished, agreed and praised the removal.

From my supposed POV-pushing, I'd have wanted it mentioned that Brian Josephson is friendly with cold fusion researchers, and, of course, I know it to be a fact, because I know the field and am in close contact with the scientists, including face-to-face contact with some, and, I expect, more coming. I'm having fun, except when I get tempted to look back at Wikipedia.... Someone may notice JzG's restoration of improperly sourced BLP material....

This post has been edited by Abd:

[Abd]

This response to a site ban proposal shows how it's possible to generate, with a brief paragraph of accusations, so many false assertions that a brief summary would be "pack of lies." But each one of the statements has enough basis in fact that some, glancing sideways at evidence, or relying on old impressions, never investigated, could easily agree. So this is pretty long....

If I cared enough, I'd boil it down. I don't. I've already wasted too much time on this. If you don't care, don't read it!

Franamax has now formally proposed a site ban:

Abd (T-C-L-K-R-D)

Abd has been a disruptive presence on this wiki for several years now. This disruption is characterized by attempts to influence project governance in ways orthogonal to accepted modes (e.g. delegable-proxy, self-reversion whilst blocked/banned, placing huge walls of text inside collapse boxes which "you don't have to read" but will be referred to nevertheless as being accepted if not read, maintaining unacceptable pages in userspace on the claim they constitute "evidence" in arbitration cases); a latter fixation on the topic of cold fusion, including promotion of copyright-violating external links and support for other site-banned editors; and sockpuppetry in the support of that same cause. An aggravating factor is Abd's participation at external and sister-project sites where they pursue the same agenda, and COI pursuit of commercial interests in cold fusion.

Abd is currently blocked indefinitely and subject to ArbCom sanctions, however it appears that no formal community discussion has ever taken place on the topic of a ban from this wiki. Thus I propose a community ban for Abd. I have deliberately not included links or diffs in the above, as many editors will be well aware of this history. However if such links are requested, I will try to supply them, and anyone else can feel free to do so also within or immediately below this preamble. Franamax (talk) 23:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

* Support ban as proposer. Franamax (talk) 23:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

At least he's got some perspective. I'm not allowed to comment in my own site-ban proposal, I haven't even been formally notified of it. However, big deal. If that's the worst thing Wikipedia ever did, piffle. Here's my response:

Attempts to influence project governance. Indeed. Some were, in fact, enthusiastic about the suggestions. There is something wrong with proposing more functional governance?

Delegable proxy would allow the ad-hoc process to remain, while compensating for participation bias. It could be used to create, spontaneously, a Wikipedia Assembly, to make overall decisions through representative democracy that actually represents, fairly, all users. It was only proposed as an experiment, not as anything binding on anyone. And it was viciously opposed. touched a nerve, in 2008. Definitely I can see why they want to get rid of me.

Self-reversion has been proven to be a way in which topic-banned editors may contribute to the topic, without disruption, and even a globally locked user was, through this, allowed to demonstrate useful contributions. Useless contributions by a banned editor are useless to the editor also, so self-reversion encourages cooperation, which these idiots frequently claim is impossible, after all, isn't that why the editor is banned? Sometimes! Not always!

Walls of text inside collapse boxes. "Wall of text" means "something I don't want to read," but the claim that acceptance of arguments was asserted for these collapse boxes must be based on the discussion of lenr-canr.org at Talk:Martin Fleischmann, where I effectively clerked a discussion by collapsing arguments -- not just my own -- into conclusions, so that a complex series of arguments became readable. It's hypertext, and the failure to understand the utility of hypertext is part of why discussions on Wikipedia tend to go nowhere. They become unapproachable. More commonly, I put extended argument and evidence in collapse, and put summary outside. Again, the problem with this is? I've seen administrators do the same thing in an RfC.

Promotion of copyright-violating external links. That's a lie. One time I requested the whitelisting of a link, because the article was already in the bibliography, and it developed that the page was an as-published page, rather than what lenr-canr.org normally hosts, a preprint, so there was an appearance of possible copyvio. (From later conversations, we don't actually know if these are copyvio or not, they merely present more of an appearance of one. Lenr-canr.org does claim it has publisher permission. JzG claims they are lying. Since I know that JzG routinely lies.... and I've never caught the site manager of lenr-canr.org in a lie -- but he may have some inadvertent pages with defective permissions) I immediately withdrew the request for whitelisting that link. All other requested links were whitelisted, and, eventually, after considering the copyvio argument at meta -- that discussion got me banned again on Wikipedia, because the WP admin who looked at it thought it was too wordy --, the whole site was delisted. I have never, to my knowledge, linked to a copyvio. It's been claimed, however, by JzG, and the claim is preposterous. See the current argument at meta, where I cover that claim, with diffs, showing his obvious error. (In a collapse box, because it's actually moot there!) I was actually brief.

Unacceptable pages in user space. One of the user space pages, the response to Verbal, was considered unacceptable by him, and this was debated at RfPP. My position prevailed, and the page was protected to stop vandalism from him. Why does the MfD for these "unacceptable" pages wait until almost two years after the case? All those pages were old, nothing was being currently created. So Franamax wants me banned for what I did two years ago? Hello?

Support for other site-banned editors? What's he talking about? I've supported anyone who is interested in improving the project, and some of these were later banned. I never acted improperly with banned editors. Examples?

Fixation on the topic of cold fusion. Yup. Guilty. So much so that I was happy to be site-banned for three months by ArbComm, because I used the time to start up some real efforts to shift the situation, educationally, instead of wasting time on Wikipedia, struggling with an entrenched faction that doesn't give a fig about policy and guidelines and neutrality, because it knows that it's Right. (That's what they claim about me, big surprise.) And they have the sysop tools and I don't. And the most outrageous violations by them are ignored by ArbComm. Yup. Fixation, replacing a much crazier fixation on Wikipedia.

Sockpuppetry in the support of [cold fusion]. One sock puppet. That's recent, and if the activities of EnergyNeutral (T-C-L-K-R-D) were disruptive, then, sure. Example? EnergyNeutral took a carefully neutral position on cold fusion and the Energy Catalyzer, suggesting reliance on reliable secondary sources instead of the piles of rumors that abounded in the Energy Catalyzer article. And acted for that, and his edits, some of which were reverted by JzG as soon as he saw his chance, were restored, properly. Same with an edit to the article on Brian Josephson. JzG reverted, 2over0 reverted him, because my edit was supporting BLP policy.

Abd's participation at external and sister-project sites. One WMF site. Wikiversity. External site: Wikipedia Review. Franamax is sooo transparent, I am so glad to be blocked! Wikiversity is an academic-oriented educational resource, and I'm dealing with academia now, in real life, I'll be at a conference at MIT this weekend, and I'll likely be publishing something myself within a year, my editing has already appeared in a mainstream journal. I had the educational background to understand cold fusion, I simply hadn't read the recent material, I'd assumed like most people interested in the topic that it was rejected twenty years ago, and properly so. I was wrong. That "evidence has accumulated" now a position found in peer-reviewed reliable sources, no matter what the Wikipediots think. The pseudo-skeptical position simply disappeared in those kinds of sources, but I never tried to put that claim in the article, because there wasn't any secondary peer-reviewed source on it! I did just find, and mentioned in a discussion that JzG fast-archived (it wasn't my discussion, but he did it anyway) on Talk:Cold fusion, an academic source, 2010, major mainstream publisher, the author an expert on nuclear physics, that talks about the bogus rejection. People are going to be surprised, the corner was probably turned somewhere around 2005, looking at publication rates.

COI pursuit of commercial interests in cold fusion. Yes. Declared, and I followed COI policy, before being banned again, which suggests not making controversial edits, but discussing them. The renewed ban request, by JzG, completely ignored that, simply discussing the topic, as having become expert, was considered prohibited. And that's what JzG has done with other experts. And his qualifications? Well, some years ago, he knew a scientist, see ... and his friend told him ....

The commercial interest? I realized that there was important work that had not been replicated, and that this replication could be relatively cheap, and the work was something that could be done by high-school students. So I got the idea to put together kits to do this, making a profit on the price difference between larger and smaller purchases. This is modest profit, to be sure, and I may never make my investment back until I sell the materials (see, it's gold and palladium and platinum, mostly, and they have increased in value,plus heavy water, about the same), but my real interest was in education, and I'm thrilled to be working with kids who want to experience things for themselves, and to do some actually valuable work. Hopefully. These are experiments, and there are piles of things that can go wrong. And that's how we learn.

For me, Wikipedia was an experiment, and I've learned a great deal. About lots of things, though, in fact, my prior understandings did predict more or less what happened. You run the experiments to find out the reality. Sometimes we forget that.

Final comment. Nothing has changed to suggest to me that there is value in cooperating with the "core community," having concluded that ArbComm is effectively corrupt (in spite of some decent members, I found that they were helpless against the tide). Therefore I don't intend to respect blocks or bans, because I answer to a higher authority. That authority does not allow me to damage the project itself (as some suggest, by, say, difficult-to-check vandalism), but it does allow me to make trouble for those who themselves damage the project, though either viciousness or foolishness The justice of the situation is clear to me, and I've offered opportunities for those involved with Wikipedia to negotiate this. They believe, however, that they are firmly in control, that anyone excommunicated is to be shunned, so they are welcome to what their delusions bring them, the waste of their own time.

Given this, a site ban is a reasonable conclusion, eh? The alternative would involve too much head-stretching. The best that can be done at this point, probably, is to encourage WP:RBI and the measure of sanity involved in it. But we know what will be done, given how much intensity is behind the Ban Abd history, they will run into major range blocks and use the edit filter and revision deletion. To stop or hide harmless edits. They will damage the project, and they don't care.

Maybe not revision deletion, but ... the editors who dinged them already for overzealous revision deletion don't seem to get it that if a loophole is left, they will use it, and if nobody is watching....

This post has been edited by Abd: