Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Dominick

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1 Statement of the dispute
2 Response
3 Outside view
4 Discussion

[edit] Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

[edit] Description

This dispute concerns User Dominick, with whom I've been in a content-related disagreement regarding the entry Traditionalist Catholics for months now. Since this very heated disagreement began, Dominick has been sabotaging my work elsewhere on Wikipedia by following me around and removing links to 100% relevant, on-topic, informative pages of a site he does not like (www.fisheaters.com) because of religious differences. A few examples:

Removed a link to the page "Religious Life" [1] from the entry "Nuns."
Removed a link to a page on Twelfthnight [2] from an entry called "Twelfth Night".
Removed link to Epiphany customs [3] from the entry "Epiphany."
Removed another link to the page called "Religious Life" from the entry "Religious Order."
Removed link to site's index page [4] from the entry "Catholicism"
Removed link to the site's index page from the entry "Apologetics"
Removed link to page on the Feast of St. Anthony [5] from the entry "Anthony of Padua."
Removed link to page on the Feast of St. Brigid [6] from the entry "Brigid of Ireland."
Removed link to page called "Votive Offerings" [7] from the entry "Ex-voto."
Removed link to page on the Day of the Dead [8] from an entry "Day of the Dead."
Removed a link to a page on Catholic funerals [9] from an entry called "Requiem."
Removed link to a screen capture of EWTN's priests calling the Novus Ordo a "complete fabrication" [10] from the entry "Novus Ordo Missae."
Removed a link to Jewish-Christian relations section [11] from the entry "Jewish-Christian Reconciliation."
Removed link to page summarizing Catholic doctrines about Mary [12] from a page called "Immaculate Conception"
Removed link to page on Purgatory [13] from the entry "Purgatory"

Though these links are perfectly relevant, he has called them "POV," "out of context," and, most annoyingly, "linkspam" (while, revealingly, not removing similar such links to sites he approves of, such as www.catholic.com, www.ewtn.com, and www.newadvent.com -- sites which are linked to repeatedely in specific ways because they are informative). He also has otherwise repeatedly slandered me by accusing me of sock-puppetry, meat-puppetry, and using various third party websites and forums to "coordinate attacks. He points to this page [14] at the website he hates as "proof."

When I was encouraged by mediator Gator to make an RfC, he, of course, has to make one first, a typical tactic as he has been engaging in "projection" with me for two months now during the content-related disagreements in the Traditionalist Catholics entry. In his RfC or to mediators and admins, he has lied, saying that I have refused to "work on consensus" though I have been doing such since late September [15]. He has intimated that a "mediator" (actually an admin) has gotten frustrated with me and gave up after finding himself unable to "work with" me [16] (the admin in question, Pathoschild, simply encouraged us to move forward to formal mediation).

Since I have begun editing the "Traditionalist Catholic" page, I have been accused by Dominick of meat-puppetry, sock-puppetry, astroturfing (though when Dominick got caught doing this red-handed, it was brushed off, of course), not exhibiting "any evidence of a good faith effort," making personal attacks (though I readily admit to being extremely sarcastic after two months of madness), throwing out "red herrings," being unresponsive (though I have answered every question put to me while the other side took two months to answer some very basic questions I'd asked over and over and over again. I have even answered questions only to be told by Dominick in the next post that I haven't and am being "unresponsive."

Traditionalist Catholics are called in the Talk Pages or in proposed edits: "Vatican-bashers," "Rome-haters," Pope-bashers," not "official Catholics," "Dissenters," "militant," etc., etc. Dominick has even recommended removing mention of sedevacantist Catholics (traditionalists who believe the Catholic Church has no true Pope) because he doesn't like or agree with them or even consider them Catholic. [17]. This attitude explains his apparent motivations.

User Dominick has been making deceptive reverts -- e.g., actually reverting while pretending, per his summaries, to make minor adjustments (e.g., see Traditionalist Catholics history, 13:17, 2 November 2005). Or, he might revert and summarize by saying "RV among active editors this had more support" (e.g., ibid, 14:24, 6 December 2005) -- when said statement is a blatant lie. This sort of thing has happened repeatedly.

He has also removed content from Talk Pages.

[edit] Evidence of disputed behavior

(provide diffs and links)

A sample of his removing links he doesn't like from the entries below

Purgatory [18]
Apologetics [19]
Immaculate Conception [20]
Christian-Jewish Reconciliation [21]
Nun [22]
Novus Ordo Missae [23]
Requiem [24]
Religious Order [25] Note that in this one, he replaces the link with another link to a site that is linked to repeatedly at Wikipedia because it is informative
Same with this entry on Relics, but only better. He replaces my "linkspam" with TWO links to the same site referenced above: [26]
St. Anthony of Padua. Another link replacement, this time to EWTN, a site that is linked to repeatedly on Wiki. [27]
St. Brigid. Here he also replaces links, but I don't know the sites in question this time. [28]
Ex-voto [29]
Day of the Dead [30]
Hey, just for the record, lookie! He actually found some real linkspam! [31]

Note that "www.kensmen.com/catholic" and www.fisheaters.com are the SAME site. It recently moved from kensmen.com/catholic to fisheaters.com. This forum he mentions is the forum for the Fish Eaters website (and there are no "Malachias111s" there. Malachias111 had been an editor for the Traditionalist Catholics entry as far back as March, 2005, long before Dominick arrrived on scene two and a half months ago, on September 21. LaMinturnesa had edited there as far back as October, 2003. (see [32]) 3 or 4 people from that forum did come and talk on the Talk Page for the entry "Traditionalist Catholics," as they have every right to do, but that is it. I hope that hose same people from that forum come here and express their opinions and serve as witnesses for Dominick's attitude and tactics, and I may invite them to if that is the only way to defend myself). At www.kensmen.com/catholic, an .htaccess redirect file is in place, and I've spent hours tracking down links to kensmen.com/catholic at Wiki so I could update the links to fisheaters.com. And Dominick has been right behind me every step of the way, undoing my work.

This indented text is being added after Dominick made his response below:

From the history page for the entry "Eucharist":

02:52, 16 December 2005 User:Srleffler (rv. The page he removed doesn't look like a blog, and seems to have lots of relevant information.)

01:56, 16 December 2005 User:Dominick (RM BLOG)

The page Dominick removed and labelled a "blog": http://www.fisheaters.com/mass.html

This text added also after Dominick's response below:

A. From the History page for the entry "Eucharistic Adoration":

16:56, 16 December 2005 Dominick (?External links - LEts remove it, it does not meet wikipedia source quality guildelines, as it only is a monograph.)

The link in question? this page

B. From the History page for the entry "Novus Ordo Missae":

1. 16:57, 16 December 2005 Dominick (?External links - rm conspiricy theory monograph)

The page in question? this page

2. 16:57, 16 December 2005 Dominick (?External links - rm monograph website link)

The link in question? The Mass: Introduction this page

Used2BAnonymous 17:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

In swoops Dominick's ally, JG of Borg. Yay! From the History page for the Novus Ordo Missae entry:

21:15, 16 December 2005 Jgofborg (How dare you! - please stop spamming)

21:09, 16 December 2005 Used2BAnonymous (talk about a "conspiracy theory," JG Quit your slander. Never said SC covered the screenshots.)

17:46, 16 December 2005 Jgofborg (rv - why don't you add the "Seattle Catholic" article you claimed covers your fake screenshots?)

And where does this "why don't you add the 'Seattle Catholic' article you claimed covers your fake screenshots?" come from? Thin air, of course (see Discussion Page) But Truth shouldn't stand in the way of a good lynching, so here's what's going on at Dominick's Talk Page:

U2BA is spamming again, and denying false statements she made... how can we get her banned? This is getting ridiculous. JG of Borg 21:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

No matter, as over winter break I'll have plenty of time to search for and remove (or at least modify the titles of the links to) her spam. JG of Borg 21:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I think she violated the 3RR, but I'm not sure. When you get back, please check. JG of Borg 21:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Used2BAnonymous 22:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
17 December: the history page for the entry "Rosary" shows that, in the external links section at the entry "Rosary," Dominick replaced this link with this one, calling the former a "monograph site" and a matter of "one person's opinion."

(N.B. User "JG of Borg" later helpfully re-arranged and labelled the links and did not remove or replace the traditional Catholic links Dominick removed. I thank him.) Used2BAnonymous 21:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Applicable policies

I don't know what the official policies are, but he is slandering me, stalking me, wasting my time, and engaging in a sort of "vandalism" by removing perfectly good content. I don't think his doing so is a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia"; it is, instead, a POV removal of content of which he disapproves, apparently born from an animus against me and against traditional Catholicism.

[edit] Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

[edit] Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

(sign with ~~~~)

Used2BAnonymous 06:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Malachias111 15:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
JLeigh 22:13, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other users who endorse this summary

(sign with ~~~~)

M4dch1ld 07:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)... unbelievable

I've read about this attack on Catholics at the Fish Eaters website and am sickened. Dominick is a menace. The information at Fish Eaters about the differences in how Catholics and Chabad are treated is very revealing. KofC 03:06, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response

This dispute concerns User Dominick, with whom I've been in a content-related disagreement regarding the entry Traditionalist Catholics for months now.

It goes farther than that. This is in response to me writing an RFC, instead of leaving her response there, she decided to add an RFC here. Let me deal with the basics terms.

Since this very heated disagreement began, Dominick has been sabotaging my work elsewhere on Wikipedia by following me around and removing links to 100% relevant, on-topic, informative pages of a site he does not like (www.fisheaters.com) because of religious differences.

No it is because the editor, U2BA owns that site, and adds them to almost any page possible. disambiguation pages, stubs etc. It seems the ranking in search engines is key for her plan to oppose the Vatican with her extremist traditional PoV. Many places they are not on topic, in any place where she sees the word Catholic up goes a link to her site. Notice I do not remove links to other sites with primary information, even though the view is more PoV than her site.

He also has otherwise repeatedly slandered me by accusing me of sock-puppetry, meat-puppetry, and using various third party websites and forums to "coordinate attacks. He points to this page [14] at the website he hates as "proof."

Sure the coordination starts here publically. On the Wiki in the other RFC shows the infamous wikiwar post. Two users, the admin for the "apoligia" :#(Malachias111 | talk | contributions) and another (La Minturnesa | talk | contributions) were "credentialized" in a few hours on Dec 6th, in response to a vote [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Traditionalist_Catholic&diff=prev&oldid=30389822 (diff) where the mediator gave up. They followed that post. The forum is attached to the Fisheaters.com site. Her website also has these pages, Take back the Net (Kensmen) and Take back the Net (fisheaters) which I found after seeing blog entries like this, Radical catholic coaching to rewrite Wikipedia articles to suit their agenda.

I encouraged Gator to take the case and mediate. When he was reluctant, I tired to persuade him.

This cooperation consisted of changing the name of a proposal to "operation cuttlefish", not discussing topics, and hurling insults. Telling people such hyperbole that the traditionalists who do not hate the Vatican policies number about three people me and two apologists. There are many more. The only changes she would make are minor wording. When three editors suported a draft, the page was changed and she chages it back or used one of her other forum mates to change it.

He has intimated that a "mediator" (actually an admin) has gotten frustrated with me and gave up after finding himself unable to "work with" me [16] (the admin in question, Pathoschild, simply encouraged us to move forward to formal mediation).

I provided a link where Pathoschild refused to continue the vote, after two meatpuppets under command of U2BA were credentialized.

Since I have begun editing the "Traditionalist Catholic" page, I have been accused by Dominick of meat-puppetry, sock-puppetry, astroturfing (though when Dominick got caught doing this red-handed, it was brushed off, of course), not exhibiting "any evidence of a good faith effort," making personal attacks (though I readily admit to being extremely sarcastic after two months of madness), throwing out "red herrings," being unresponsive (though I have answered every question put to me while the other side took two months to answer some very basic questions I'd asked over and over and over again. I have even answered questions only to be told by Dominick in the next post that I haven't and am being "unresponsive."

You can read this to see that many of the allegations are substatiated in her own words.

Traditionalist Catholics are called in the Talk Pages or in proposed edits: "Vatican-bashers," "Rome-haters," Pope-bashers," not "official Catholics," "Dissenters," "militant," etc., etc.

Please prove this to me, find a place where I called traditionalists as a whole these things. Even here I use the term because it describes the specific view of this vocal and motivated Catholic minority of extremist traditionalist. I attend a 1962 Mass, thats a Latin Mass for those non-Catholics, and am considered a traditionalist by mainstream Catholics. I do not pass the extremist "purity test" that U2BA and her group has, so this PoV is not included. Her actions were to deny description and meaningful inclusion of groups like mine, the FSSP and ICK which are two loyal to the Vatican traditionalists.

Dominick has even recommended removing mention of sedevacantist Catholics (traditionalists who believe the Catholic Church has no true Pope) because he doesn't like or agree with them or even consider them Catholic.

Sure, if they leave the Church, then they are traditionalist but not Catholic. I went with leaving them in, and I also comprimised on SSPX discussion that you wanted removed, in order to work toawrd complete traditionalist inclusion.

User Dominick has been making deceptive reverts -- e.g., actually reverting while pretending, per his summaries, to make minor adjustments (e.g., see Traditionalist Catholics history, 13:17, 2 November 2005). Or, he might revert and summarize by saying "RV among active editors this had more support" (e.g., ibid, 14:24, 6 December 2005) -- when said statement is a blatant lie. This sort of thing has happened repeatedly.

In one case, I made the changes on a reverted version, that you reverted out from under me before I could change it. I did revert from the edit widnow showing my changes. Other times it was a section by section edit. There is only one line for the comment on the edit. If you look at the contributions) from U2BA, you can she she mostly leaves hers blank.

He has also removed content from Talk Pages.

I applied WP:RPA which isn't popular, but I got sick of the nastiness. Here she has a point, many people don't like WP:RPA, but I didn't have many tools left, and I didn't want to see any more attacks that were subsituted for debate.

In conclusion, please let this person know that she may not linkspam her own site, and use it to attack wikipedia. She may not exclude other editors and groups from inclusion in wikipedia, and while my tone did get sharp with her, I commented on her ideas, and not her person. My apologies for a long response. Dominick ^(TALK) 11:44, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

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Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

Dominick ^(TALK) 11:44, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I also believe Dominick is correct. JG of Borg 01:30, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Added 18:45, 16 December 2005 (UTC): This person adds links to her own website she maintains and solely controls the content. When removed, she starts edit warring. The website is a monograph, it is nobodys opinion but hers.

[edit] Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

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I think we all appreciate that external links are open to abuse. Many people insert links in order to try to boost traffic and credibility for a site, others use them as a sort of offsite POV fork. I would normally judge whether a link should be included by the likelihood of the site meeting WP:WEB, or whether it offers separate and unique insights (e.g. the archives of some collectors' groups, which have many copyright pictures or comprehensive and well-sourced information which is nonetheless too trivial, or too obsessive, for inclusion in WP).

I can't see much evidence of that in this case. The site seems to me, as an outsider, to be a "me-too" site. Alexa ranking is >400,000 (compared to 11,132 for catholic.com, cited above), and there is little evidence that the site is regarded as an authority by the wider Catholic community. In fact it's kind of hard to find any sites linking to fisheaters.com at all. That Alexa tanking, incidentally, was below the scale altogether until the linking started on WP, and is headed back there now by the loks of it.

So whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, it is easy to defend the removal of these links. I would likely have done much the same, not that I hold myself up as a shining example.

I also note the following page: [33], encouraging people to come along and hold up the traditional catholic end, as it were. I have no problem encouraging editors, I do it myself on Usenet all the time, but in the context of this RfC it caused me some slight unease, carefully worded though it is.

I don't know enough about this dispute to support either side, as yet, but in respect of the linking and reversion I should say that the reversion is entirely defensible in context.

Update: U2BA noted that the domain name recently changed. The former domain name (kensmen.com) has Alexa rank > 200,000 and Wikipedia is the major site linking in which in my judgment supports the view that U2BA is linkspamming. - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 22:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Update: I have just realsied the scale of the problem. Here is a subset of articles to which U2BA has added links to her site:

Some, such as the Bell dab page are clearly irrelevant to the context and purpose of the page - I would say that the Bell page is prima facie evidence of linkspamming. - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 14:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

(moved comment to talk page) Dominick ^(TALK) 14:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

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The above from Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 18:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
It's very clear to me that this is nothing but spamming. --GraemeL ^(talk) 16:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't like spam, and most of this looks like it. I could see a link on the "Traditional Catholics" article(s), but all of that isn't necessary. Dominick looks OK to me. KHM03 19:15, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved debate to talk Dominick ^(TALK) 21:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[Entire "Update" section moved to talk page.]--Srleffler 21:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Discussion moved to talk, again.--Srleffler 01:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

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