Rd232 vs SandyGeorgia, Sandy accused of attempting to smear Mark Weisbrot's BLP Options

[NotARepublican55]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN/...nough_is_enough

SandyGeorgia (an editor with over 100,000 edits and several featured articles) has been accused on AN/I by Rd232 of being an anti-Venezuela activist who has attempted to defame economist Mark Weisbrot (a proponent of Hugo Chavez economic policies) by directly linking him with Chavez administration - among other complaints against her, including:

1. highly problematic, badly sourced BLP-related content remains, with an open OTRS ticket
2. An account cleared of being a sock remains indeffed as a sock
3. 2 accounts using real names of individuals (including User:markweisbrot) remain indeffed as socks
4. the supposed sockmaster (now cleared) still remains blocked
5. the organisation/individuals who submitted the OTRS ticket cannot fully explain their concerns onwiki (and OTRS team does not seem to have done anything at all based on the ticket itself)


Here's an excerpt from the thread:

---
Issue 1:

On 23 Jan the biography of living person Mark Weisbrot looked like this. It included, as the second-to-last sentence, sourced to the New York Times, that "He is a broad supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez' economic policies."

After an enormous flurry of edits by Sandy, by 25 Jan it looked like this. At this point "He has been described as an adviser to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and supporter of his policies." was the last sentence in the lead. The sources supporting "adviser to Chavez" are i) a minor Spanish source which described Weisbrot as the "intellectual architect" of the Bank of the South and ii) infoshop.org, "An Anarchist At the World Social Forum"

One of these sources does not support the claim made, so the definitive statement he is an adviser to Chavez (not "some sources say" or "X claims that" - authorial claim of fact) rests on a single source. Is it a trivial claim, and a really good source? No, it is a massively significant claim, and an incredibly poor source: yet stated as fact.

---
This is the first I've learned about this issue, but it should be interesting and it doesn't make Sandy look very good. But with over 100,000 edits, that might help her case. I don't know how many Rd232 has.

This post has been edited by NotARepublican55: Thu 18th February 2010, 3:28am

[One]

"Anti-Venezuela activist," eh? I doubt that.

Cla68 has a recent thread about the Venezuela problems on Wikipedia.

[CharlotteWebb]

But with over 100,000 edits, that might help her case. I don't know how many Rd232 has.

About 24.7k, which I doubt is enough to pass RFA today. Rd232 was promoted in 2005 with 16 support votes.

I predict an arbcom case, which means everyone will lose.

[Jon Awbrey]

Mods,

This seems to belong in the Editors Forum.

Jon

[GlassBeadGame]

Mods,

This seems to belong in the Editors Forum.

Jon

Yes, that seems right.

Anyway, without going over endless diffs I seem to remember Kato holding SG in very high regard. Kato was also very knowledgeable about Latin America and would probably tend to be pretty even handed and fair toward President Chavez and his administration. Maybe something has changed in SG editing or maybe Kato just never had a chance to see that aspect of SG. But it does tend to make me take the whole anti-Chavez thing with a grain of salt. I'd like to see Kato weigh in here.

[NotARepublican55]

"Anti-Venezuela activist," eh? I doubt that.

Just for clarification, that wasn't a direct quote of what he said. It was my own attempt to summarize his claims about her (alleged) POV.

This post has been edited by NotARepublican55: Fri 19th February 2010, 1:35am

[Obesity]

I'm pretty sure SG reads WR religiously.... I could never quite figure out why she won't sign up (openly, anyway).

[chrisoff]

Just for clarification, that wasn't a direct quote of what he said. It was my own attempt to summarize his claims about her (alleged) POV.

* Looks like SandyGeorgia started a sockpuppet report Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Scalabrineformvp to quell Rd232 and Off2Rio. Two AN/I threads are still open, this one and this one. Does anyone get a TKO? (Act like you are going to ArbCon.)

[Cla68]

I don't think I've ever seen an editor who edit-warred to remove an NPOV tag who wasn't POV pushing in the article.

This post has been edited by Cla68: Sat 20th February 2010, 8:47am

[chrisoff]

*But edit warring is not the same as a bunch of sockpuppets. Is it justified for SandyGeorgia to accuse other editors of sockpuppetry as the first step in settling edit disputes? Note that none of the accusations were found justified. All of the initial blocks have been reversed. It was a question of biting the newbies. Not very friendly.

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Sun 21st February 2010, 1:19am

[One]

I don't think I've ever seen an editor who edit-warred to remove an NPOV tag who wasn't POV pushing in the article.

Yeah, almost diagnostic.

[chrisoff]

I don't think I've ever seen an editor who edit-warred to remove an NPOV tag who wasn't POV pushing in the article.

Yeah, almost diagnostic.

*What about the other way around. Equally diagnostic?

[Eva Destruction]

I don't think I've ever seen an editor who edit-warred to remove an NPOV tag who wasn't POV pushing in the article.

Yeah, almost diagnostic.

*What about the other way around. Equally diagnostic?

No. This is Wikipedia – if someone's saying something's biased and untrustworthy they're probably right; if someone's removing the maintenance tags without doing anything to fix it, it's generally safe to assume they've got an agenda to push and don't like being called on it.

[One]

I don't think I've ever seen an editor who edit-warred to remove an NPOV tag who wasn't POV pushing in the article.

Yeah, almost diagnostic.

*What about the other way around. Equally diagnostic?

No. This is Wikipedia – if someone's saying something's biased and untrustworthy they're probably right; if someone's removing the maintenance tags without doing anything to fix it, it's generally safe to assume they've got an agenda to push and don't like being called on it.

Precisely.

This is especially true because the tags are meant to indicate that someone has spotted problems with the article. The fact that someone posts such a tag is prima facie evidence that someone has spotted such problem. If such user also explains the problem lucidly on the talk page--well, then the remover apparently has issues with resolving the problem and would rather pretend it doesn't exist.

There are cases where tags are inexplicably slapped on articles, but this does not appear to be such a case.

[chrisoff]

* Well, she doesn't seem to have good reasons other than a crusade she is on. Typical of her. But, of course she is very busy with important stuff on Wikipedia. So, she doesn't have time to really document.

FYI, SandyGeorgia received a Barnstar from JN464 because she had to back down and avoid conflict with Rd232. Not because she was right. A tactful way to say, your are wrong, Sandy. Everyone must tiptoe around her.

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Wed 24th February 2010, 2:18am

[Malleus]

A tactful way to say, your are wrong, Sandy. Everyone must tiptoe around her.

You're a joker. Sandy and I have not infrequently fallen out, so you can scrub "everyone". Mind you, I've probably fallen out with everyone on wikipedia at one time or another, so perhaps that's not much of an endorsement.

[HRIP7]

FYI, SandyGeorgia received a Barnstar from JN464 because she had to back down and avoid conflict with Rd232. Not because she was right. A tactful way to say, your are wrong, Sandy. Everyone must tiptoe around her.

Sandy is right about a number of things. The state of the Hugo Chavez biography for example. Unlike thousands of news articles, the Chavez BLP does not even mention the word "dictator". Not once. And there is just a single passing mention of "human rights". That is a major problem.

Rd232 on the other hand was right about Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker and CEPR. Example: this edit labelling the CEPR a "progressive think tank". It cites 5 sources. The problem is that these are almost all the sources in existence that have ever called the CEPR a "progressive think tank". The clear majority of press articles labelling the CEPR call it a "liberal think tank". Citing 5 sources to push a minority term into a lead sentence is also diagnostic of POV pushing. Note that Sandy was not the original editor to insert this. She merely restored it after Rd232 (correctly) took it out.

Another, more problematic edit was this one, saying that Weisbrot " has

written for and been interviewed by online magazines such as SocialistViewpoint, Solidarity, a "an independent socialist organization", ...

The articles that were cited for this had been published in mainstream sources, weeks before they ever made it onto these websites. One was from the syndicated news service Weisbrot writes for, and the other was from an interview he had given to an LA radio station. Using such sourcing to characterise Weisbrot as someone who writes for socialist websites was improper. The guy mainly writes for The Guardian. Etc. There were other things like that, and I'm not surprised Weisbrot complained to OTRS.

So it was not a black-and-white situation. No one needs to be crucified here. They are both bona fide contributors whose opinions and prejudices sometimes get in the way. Both did remarkably well to put the strife behind them.

[chrisoff]

So it was not a black-and-white situation. No one needs to be crucified here. They are both bona fide contributors whose opinions and prejudices sometimes get in the way. Both did remarkably well to put the strife behind them.

*Well, Rd232 sure comes off looking better. SandyGeorgia starts off by collecting evidence such as this (not very friendly) and filing a sockpuppet fishing expedition.

*Rd232 tries to give her a hint that her mass tagging expeditions and inadequate explanations may not be the best way to go, and suggests that it takes two to edit war , as some of the editors of the articles object to her methods.

*Telling other editors to buy the book SandyGeorgia hasn't even purchased just doesn't seem like the way to go, while continuing to rip up more articles. (She has no qualms about adding material from a book she hasn't even read, just on the basis of a book review. Not proper, in my view. No different from using Google book snippets.

*Just go buy it at Amazon.com she says.

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Thu 25th February 2010, 2:49am