Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Pudgenet/Proposed decision

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[edit] Vandalism allegation by Barry

I am totally neutral in this case, but I believe the same possible mistake that I flagged in the Workshop area is repeated here. In this section on this Project page it is again stated that the edit that Barry relied on to make the Vandalism allegation was this one, whereas it was in fact the combination of these [1][2] edits (the first of which is clear vandalism, the second immediately subsequent one has a rude personal attack in the edit summary), as can be easily seen from the History section of the article. This was correctly reverted and labeled here by Barry. Also, the History timestamps of the Pudgenet Talk page clearly show that Barry placed his Vandalism warning template there shortly after the vandalism edits by Pudgenet. Again, I have no ax to grind in this case; for all I know, Barry may have his own failings to answer to, but this specific case, calling and reverting an act of vandalism when it is clearly so, and inserting a template to that effect in the vandal's Talk page, is not one of them. Crum375 23:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you think you could put your comments in the "comments by other parties" section of the project page rather than on these talk pages? I know they're getting rather long but having to switch back and forth between pages is awkward. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 23:37, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Please correct me if I am wrong. I put my original comments exactly as you suggest in the "comments by other parties" section of the project page of the Workshop area. Now I see the same mistake I am trying to highlight propagated to the Proposed Decision area, where there is no "Comments by other parties" section that I can find. Again, if I am missing something, please let me know. Thanks, Crum375 23:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Also I am quoting from the Project page of this Proposed Decision area: "For all items: Proposed wording to be modified by Arbitrators and then voted on. Non-Arbitrators may comment on the talk page.". Crum375 23:49, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have read your comment more carefully. Never mind, thanks. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 00:05, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with Crum375. The second Blatantvandal template was pretty inappropriate, but the first was in response to this, which was in fact blatant vandalism. Could we have an arbitrator comment on this? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Clarification: if Pudgenet was accidentally reverting to a vandalized revision, possibly it wasn't actually vandalism, but -Barry-'s was then a reasonable mistake to make, at the least. Saying that -Barry- assumed bad faith might be accurate, but given the context, I have to sympathize with his assumption that Pudgenet was aware of what he was reverting to. His vandalism warnings still may not have been the best response, and perhaps he should be held accountable for them, but whatever is decided, it should be made clear that -Barry-'s actions were in response to apparent vandalism by Pudgenet. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Scarpia is the one who reverted to the vandalized paragraph that Pudgenet added. My actions were in response to apparent vandalism by Scarpia, and previously to clearer vandalism by Pudgenet. -Barry- 21:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Oops, you're correct: Scarpia's reversion. So yes, {{bv}} was clearly not an inappropriate accusation of vandalism, even if it may not have been the best thing to do. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I would have apologized, as I did with a similar misunderstanding, if Scarpia said he didn't notice the vandalism that he put back. -Barry- 20:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification needed

What's the significance of this:

Framing a content dispute as a behavior dispute
7) Framing a dispute which, at bottom, is about content as a behavior dispute does not, however many behavior problems might exist, change its essential nature. It will be treated as a content dispute.

It can't possibly mean that the arbitrators are ignoring behavior problems. It doesn't mean they're dealing with the content either. I don't get it. Maybe it's their way of saying that they think some of us were trying to mislead them. Wasn't me.

And how about some more detail about:

Content dispute regarding Perl
1) Barry is involved on the losing side of a content dispute at Perl. He seeks relief regarding content which we are unable to grant, see [1] and the first and third temporary injunctions proposed by Barry.

I quoted an arbcom member saying that they do content disputes. In this case, would the content I want to add (like five things, forgot exactly) make the article worse? Or are the signed arbitrators saying they don't do content disputes? -Barry- 08:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

As to your specific edits, I have a feeling that they are poor additions to the article and were properly rejected, but don't quote me; we don't do content disputes. Obviously the programming world is moving on and Perl is not the hot new topic, but that does not mean it is passe as a language. Fred Bauder 11:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
When both sides are tired of getting nowhere and are willing to entrust arbitrators with the decision (which isn't necessarily the case here), I think you should do content disputes. If you don't, then there's a need for a new kind of dispute resolution, which I'll try to make happen if I decide I want to continue contributing to Wikipedia.
My Advisory opinions idea would be able to be used here because it would just be an opinion of someone whose been found to be rational in an election (administrators and higher). There would be so many favorable opinions for my side of the many arguments that this would have been settled in mediation long ago because my opponents would realize that it's not just Jbolden and a few others who are against them, it's just about EVERY rational person. Some of the issues were whether an opinion expressed in scholarly material is worthy of the opinion section or whether it needs to be proven, whether something is scholarly, whether external links can be included if they're self-published, and whether I was vandalizing anything. Some issues were less about Wikipedia guidelines, but administrator input would have helped there too, such as whether benchmark data can be used for an overall measure of speed, memory consumption, etc. of a programming language, whether that measure is encyclopedic, and whether a critical opinion (shlomi's) is poorly written. A policy to encourage administrators and arbitrators to give their input on these things, rather than just having a RfC and hoping for any old editor to respond, would help greatly, and I'd be contributing stuff to articles right now instead of deciding whether I want to be a part of Wikipedia. -Barry- 21:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Many of us have come to the same conclusion. Fred Bauder 21:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
"Just about every rational person" would agree with you that "scholarly data" about "popularity" that is, in fact, clearly, demonstrably, neither scholarly data nor about popularity, should be included and identified as such? I think not. Maybe if you define "just about every rational person" as Bush supporters ... but in the real world, it's called deception. As someone who is well-versed in social science methodology -- and can speak quite plainly to how TIOBE's data and methodology are useless, and to how even if it wasn't, it couldn't possibly speak to popularity -- I have no problem whatsoever with anyone else looking at all sides of the issue, because I know for a fact that I am correct, as surely as I know that 2+2=4. Everyone who has studied social science methodology would come to the same conclusions I did.
Similarly, I and others can speak quite well to how the benchmarks you supplied were utterly meaningless, as benchmarks about a language have to be comprehensive, and yours were extremely limited; as I said, it would be better to instead link to a web site devoted to the topic rather than cherry-picking benchmarks favorable to your bias, and again I have no doubt whatsoever that consensus would come down strongly in favor of this perspective.
But the problem is that you were asking ArbCom to come to a conclusion about the issue behind the other editors' backs, and you continue to do so, and are apparently threatening to leave Wikipedia if they don't do so. Talk about not playing nicely ... Pudge 15:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
This, which is currently in Perl, is "cherry-picking benchmarks," not my numbers, which took into account all of the benchmarks. -Barry- 21:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tendentious editing of Perl and with respect to prominent members

There are no references for this claim that "Barry has engaged in tendentious editing of Perl and with respect to prominent members of the Perl community" so I'll try to guess how to defend myself. What's the con section for if not for information from reliable sources about Perl's bad points? I wanted to add more pro stuff. See this, this, and the last paragraph of this. But you guys aren't judging the content, so I don't see how you can make the tendentious judgment.

As for "...with respect to prominent members of the Perl community" I guess you mean when I called Pudgenet and Scarpia vandals.Well, they are, and I explained in or immediately after each vandalism warning. After the true, in-article vandalism accusation I made about Scarpia (in the section about him) was continually reverted by Pudgenet, and after Pudgenet received a second warning from Durin about it, I sought Durin's advice on his talk page on how I should go about putting my vandalism accusations back. Durin ignored me. I then came to an agreement on the talk page and added links to some of Scarpia's vandalism with no link text, which was kind of dumb, but I didn't argue about it.

You guys can settle content disputes, and that's what you should be doing here. If not, make it clear on one of the arbitration pages that you don't. The only place it's clear whether you do or don't is on the talk page I linked to, and there an arbitrator says you do! Either way, you should be banning vandals like Pudgenet and Scarpia and maybe a couple or others from editing Perl, not me. -Barry- 21:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The principle cited states that "Users who disrupt Wikipedia by tendentious editing and edit warring may be banned from the affected articles". I feel it's important to note that the findings of fact address only one of these points: you state that "Barry has engaged in tendentious editing of Perl", but make no finding of edit warring or disruption. Do you mean to extend the cited principle to any and all tendentious editing, or did you also find that -Barry- engaged in edit-warring or disruption?

I would note that similar findings of fact in other cases (e.g., DarrenRay and 2006BC, Marcosantezana, SqueakBox and Zapatancas) link to lengthy evidence of clear misbehavior. It might be a good idea to collect the relevant evidence from Wikipedia:Requests for comment/-Barry-#Evidence of disputed behavior or elsewhere and link to it. —Simetrical 04:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I should have thought that tendentious editing alone, if sustained, constituted disruption. But I'm not an arbitrator. --Tony Sidaway 06:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

"Tendentious" is basically a fancy way of saying "POV-pushing". Tendentious editing is entirely warranted if an article is POV and you're trying to add the opposite POV to balance it per WP:NPOV. So I'm actually not sure how you can judge edits to be contentious without judging whether the original/added content was POV, i.e., judging a content dispute. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
If all you are doing is following NPOV you are not engaged in tendentious or biased editing. Tendentious editing is aggressive biased editing in a point of view manner: removing the other point of view and unduly emphasizing the favored point of view. Aggressive editing which violates NPOV. Fred Bauder 12:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
NPOV disputes are basically content disputes. If the ArbCom would like to adjudicate such a dispute, I think it's necessary for each said to explain why it thought the changes were (un)warranted. This requires some knowledge of Perl, of course, which as I understand is the reason the ArbCom typically avoids content disputes; to judge whether -Barry-'s contributions were NPOV, it's necessary to understand the material. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Editing that repeatedly inserts material which has been widely agreed by other editors to be unworthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia is tendentious. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 13:24, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
However, the editors who widely agreed that were not in any sense a cross-section of the Wikipedia community, and it would be fair to suggest that they might be disproportionately pro-Perl. I would be wary of calling such agreement "wide".

But in any case, from what I've seen, it mostly went: -Barry- added material, someone else removed it, -Barry- possibly readded it once or twice with edit summaries addressing any stated concerns in some detail, discussion ensued, people agreed it was no good, and -Barry- didn't add it again. Is that not the case? What content did -Barry- readd more than about once or perhaps twice, keeping in mind that if only one or two different people reverted him it doesn't really qualify as wide agreement?

The only things I spotted in the RFC were a) Shlomi Fish's article, which was repeatedly removed without any real justification (e.g., here) and where -Barry- apparently had at least one reserved supporter here; and b) the whole Wikipedians with articles mess, where -Barry- revert-warred extensively. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that the editors of most articles in Wikipedia "a cross-section of the Wikipedia community"? For many articles to be accurate, they require specialist knowledge above and beyond what the "cross-section" is capable of. I would expect no more of a cross section in Perl than that in discussion on manifolds and their use in proving the fundimental theory of calculus or discussions on literary analysis of Ulysses by Joyce.
I do not believe that -Barry-'s ultimate goal was to inject an anti-Perl point of view. His actions seemed aimed at trying to provoke editors into a response based on edit summaries and the content that was added. The POV-base content simply the means to bring about conflict and disruption to the Perl article. This desire to provoke is the main reason why -Barry- wanted to force Pudge to restore his comments to User_Talk:Pudgenet. This is also why this is a behavior issue rather than a content based one.
To help answer the question on where -Barry- repeatedly re-added previously removed content, I've included a few examples. As you pointed out, some of the reversions were discussed. Others, -Barry- simply moved on to different material to re-add. He wanted all of his edits reinstated as part of the mediation. Also, I believe that the below are the majority of the content which -Barry- wanted the arbitrators to rule on. So, he didn't simply discuss the issues on Talk:Perl and move on.
First of all: most articles are not written by a cross-section of Wikipedia editors, of course. But a microcosmic consensus of editors on a single article's talk page does not constitute real consensus, although provisionally it will have to serve in any given case. On that score I'm just saying that I don't think -Barry-'s edits were bad solely because he was strongly opposed to the consensus of a few editors on the talk page.

-Barry- is, unfortunately, a provocative individual. He acted with undue aggression on a number of occasions, and made unnecessarily provocative edit summaries and statements. I don't think that he's out to disrupt anything, though; I get the strong impression that he's sincerely trying to balance what he views as unbalanced Perl coverage. Yes, he did edit-war once or twice, but the only one where he made more than a couple of reverts was Wikipedians with articles — which is bad, and deserves a stern warning from the ArbCom and maybe even a one-revert restriction, but is irrelevant to a general ban from Perl, or from interacting with anyone in particular. I don't think -Barry- is free of guilt, but I think the current proposed decision punishes him with undue severity — at least ban him only from editing Perl-related articles and allow him to suggest changes on talk pages. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't so much trying to balance the Perl coverage as trying to add relevant information and improve the article in other ways. I didn't see a major bias problem before my edits were reverted. Then there was Jbolden's opinion that there was bias.
I rewrote my old benchmark section a little and published it here. I mentioned Brian D Foy's comment that the "sux" quote was a joke, but I mainly included weaker warnings about benchmarks than I had for the Wikipedia version. That's the version I've been pointing people to now that even my watered down version was reverted. It's more accurate, and the chart wasn't aligned properly on Wikipedia anyway. I've been spreading around my other reverted content too. -Barry- 07:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Bottom line, enough. Fred Bauder 11:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was about to say that. I think we've all said what we have to say. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Probation / Parole

Obviously, you are all more experienced than I am, but I think parole/probation is really nonsense. It doesn't seem that anything positive can come from it. It makes more sense to simply take each case as it comes, rather than have some formal parole/probation process. It's pretty clear people like Barry would take advantage of the opportunity to troll someone on parole/probation, and there's no reason I can see to not simply enforce the rules as they are.

If the behavior continues, any judgment against someone would be known by an arbitrator anyway, and that could be taken into consideration by the administrator looking to take action, which could very well be the actions suggested by the parole/probation, or could be something else, as the administrator deems is necessary and warranted.

Additionally, in regards to this particular case, as the only two people with actual complaints were themselves obvious bad actors (Barry and Jbolden), it seems odd and inappropriate to single me out for parole/probation.

Frankly, a one-day ban seems a lot more reasonable. James said he thinks it goes too far, but I think parole/probation goes a lot farther than a one-day ban does. A one-day ban sends the message that this behavior is not to be tolerated, and recognizes that it was something that happened quite awhile ago and has not persisted. Parole/probation sends the (in my view, incorrect) message that this behavior is something that is ongoing and that the particular user needs people watching over his shoulder (and, worse, it serves to attract people like Barry to attempt to troll the user into perhaps violating his parole/probation).

The one-day ban also serves to be a notice to future administrators that there was a previous problem, in case the behavior is recurring, which accomplishes much the same function as parole/probation does.

Not that I am asking to be banned for a day; I just don't get how that's considered to be worse than some formal parole/probation which is omnipresent for the allotted lengthy time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pudgenet (talk • contribs) 10:04, 25 July 2006.


[edit] History of Incivility, etc.

Note that almost every thing Jbolden listed in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pudgenet/Evidence#History of incivility is simply false. "Pudgenet has engaged in incivility" is inappropriate, as the evidence used to support it is not only false, but, in my view, was intentionally skewed. Jbolden was, shortly after posting that, ejected from the mediation cabal, and has since left Wikipedia, and I urge you to actually look at those links he posts: they do not say what he says they say.

Also, under "Pudgenet has engaged in personal attacks," several of those links are simply not personal attacks, particularly [23] and [24]. In the first, I was "attacking" the conduct of a mediator, in his official capacity as a mediator, and I cited specific examples of his misdeeds, and that post was after he consistently and repatedly ignored my requests for clarification on those misdeeds. This is no more a personal attack than you accusing me of making personal attacks. In the second, that was after he vandalized my user page. I didn't consider "you're losing it" or saying his conduct was "insane" in that context to be a personal attack. I suppose there's room for disagreement on that.

Further, as mentioned earlier, saying "Pudgenet has failed to communicate appropriately with users he has disagreements with" has two false implications. The first is obvious: I do communicate appropriately with most people I have disagreements with. The second is more subtle: at its most basic level, my problems with the two users in question had little to do with disagreement at all. That was a catalyst, but my problem with them was their behavior.

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