Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006/Vote/JzG

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.

[edit] Rationale for ATren's oppose vote

Here is my experience in a mediation with JzG:

JzG mediated a dispute on the PRT pages, even though he admitted he was a "huge fan" of the single editor on the other side of the dispute (Avidor). JzG now claims it was not a mediation, but he himself called it a mediation here and didn't disagree here - it's clear he was acting as a mediator.

• Note: No, this is a content dispute with JzG, not a mediation. It is clear that one or two others assumed I was mediating, but I wasn't, and never said I was. I came to the dispute as an editor and a fresh pair of eyes, to do my best for the encyclopaedia in respect of a topic which interested me, and the other editors, including ATren agreed with the vast majority of the changes I made to that article. But... ATren has a dispute with User:Avidor, and I refuse to unilaterally condemn Avidor for his bias while ignoring ATren's bias, which ATren has never once acknowledged. Be that as it may, readers should bear in mind when reading this that ATren has spent months pursuing this campaign against Avidor and his edits, even to the extent of starting an attack blog, so clearly has very strong feelings on the matter.

When Stephen Streater came along, I more or less dropped out, since his edits were unambiguously improving the article and he was accepted by the other editors. Months go by without me going near the article. Not so ATren, I think, but I am not the one flinging around accusations of ownership so I have not really bothered checking in detail, it seems counter-productive. Guy (Help!) 12:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

JzG, whatever you recall today, at the time you said it a was a mediation. ATren 16:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This is a complaint by an editor who was unhappy how you intervened in a dispute. The fact that the editor himself had a strong POV is irrelevant here. Ashibaka tock 17:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The major problem here is that I refused to take sides. I didn't take sides with Avidor (I did not accede to the majority of his requests) and I didn't take sides with the pro-PRT crown either. For all their months-long grumbling, there does not seem to be much dissent from the view that I substantially improved the article. I like Avidior's cartoons. I'm also an electrical engineer, a cyclist, and a huge fan of mixed mode and alternative transportation. I am not a huge fan of articles sourced entirely from material which lacks critical analysis. Guy (Help!) 00:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Except one side of the argument was supported by four good faith editors who were adding well sourced material; the other side was a single editor who has maintained a relentless 3-year political campaign against PRT and who was (among other things) trying to add completely unfounded conspiracy theories to the article. Your idea of "not taking sides" was to remove supporting materials from tenured engineering professors, add Avidor's anti-PRT cartoon and other Avidor-related material, and then accuse us of POV pushing when we objected. ATren 01:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

During this dispute:

1. JzG threatened to lock the article due to his misreading of a single word. When the other editor politely corrected him, JzG insisted he read it right (he didn't) and again threatened to lock. JzG never acknowledged his mistake, and generally acted as if it never happened.
2. JzG effectively took ownership of the article - during and after his threat to lock, he summarily reverted almmost all changes we made, with cryptic or sarcastic edit comments [1], [2] ("History indicates that disinterested third parties are more likely ot be neutral than proponents." - rejecting an edit solely because he believed the editor was a "proponent"), [3], [4](reverted 9 separate edits with one cryptic edit comment), [5](reverted a whole set of unrelated changes because he disagreed with 3 words), [6](again reverted without apparently reading the edit).
3. JzG repeatedly tried to insert unreliable sources linked to Avidor, including one of Avidor's anti-PRT political cartoons, links to Avidor's personal anti-PRT web site, and links to Light Rail Now, a pro-light-rail (and anti-PRT) astroturfing group which features articles written by Avidor. None of these links was verifiable or reliable, but JzG continued to push them into the article even as he was rejecting journal articles and conference papers as invalid (because they were written by "proponents" - i.e. respected civil engineering researchers who specialize in PRT).
4. JzG repeatedly defended Avidor even though there was ample evidence that Avidor was manipulating Wikipedia to advance his well publicized political agenda. When I pointed this out to JzG, he accused me of having my own agenda - an accusation that is not only groundless, but completely false. I am willing to reveal my identity to a trusted third party to verify my complete non-involvement with PRT or politics.
5. JzG is also frequently sarcastic and condescending in content disputes, something that only serves to inflame disputes.

I've asked JzG why he didn't recuse himself from a dispute in which he clearly could be accused of having a bias, and he never gave me a direct answer - preferring instead to accuse me of political motivations. I would be more inclined to vote for JzG if he would admitted it was a bad idea to participate in this dispute given that he was a "huge fan" of Avidor's work, but JzG continues to assert he did absolutely nothing wrong. This leads me to believe he will be unwilling or incapable of recusing himself from arbitration cases where he has a bias towards one of the participants.

I have nothing against JzG. By all accounts he is a good person and well-liked by the community. However, as someone who has been involved in a content dispute with JzG, I can say without qualification that he is not a good candidate for the arbitration committee. His temper (see examples of outbursts linked from the vote page), his lack of attention to detail (see: his threat to block based on his misreading of a single word), and his inability to recognize his own biases... these are not qualities that make for a good judge. ATren 02:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

In the interest of full disclosure: I have an ongoing dispute with Avidor and his political campaign, and this dispute has spread off-wiki. The dispute started here on Wikipedia, when I was reading about PRT and encountered his edits. I was new to PRT then, and after I did my own research, I found almost nothing verifiable in Avidor's campaign. It was then that I registered a Wikipedia username and began challenging Avidor's edits. I was inexperienced then and lost my temper once or twice, but it was always in good faith - I didn't like the idea of Avidor using Wikipedia to advance his campaign. I've since posted many comments in forums and blogs, off-wiki, responding to Avidor's comments about PRT. I also recently started a blog to address Avidor's off-wiki tactics, including his year-long use of a sock puppet blog to feign third-party support for his campaign.

I mention all of this because JzG has made the accusation that I "brought an external dispute here" - but in fact it started here and spread elsewhere. He has also claimed that my external activities somehow indicate I must be involved with PRT or politics, but I am absolutely not. Again, I would be willing to reveal my identity to a trusted third party, to verify that I am nobody in politics or PRT. ATren 03:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• I have steadfastly refused to unilaterally condemn the bias of one half of a bipartisan dispute. I was never a mediator in this dispute. I did not say you are involved in the external politics, I said that the existence of your attack blog and your incredibly tenacious pursuit of Avidor, and your escalation of the dispute following the criminal charges brought against the two chief proponents of the Minnesota scheme, leave a very bad impression. This is one of the most exasperating disputes I have ever been involved in. The argument continues months after everyone has accepted that the content is actually about right! It's utterly absurd, it really is. Let me address the individual items one by one:

1. JzG threatened to lock the article. Quite right. I told people to stop the bloody silly edit warring, sit down and talk or else I would lock it (although I hope I'd have remembered to ask an univolved admin to actually do the deed). They did, and the result was, and is, a much better article. Good result for the encyclopaedia? I like to think so.
2. JzG effectively took ownership of the article. Rubbish. I removed a great deal of puff and flim-flam, and resisted its reinsertion, just as any editor would if they find an article that blatantly violates WP:NPOV. Look at the article's edit history, look at the talk page. You will see: ATren,. Fresheneesz, Skybum, myself, Stephen Streater. Count the edits. See who has most. Look at the length of involvement, and at involvement in other topics (clue: last time I looked, my watchlist contained something over 12,000 entries). See if you can spot any evidence of WP:OWNing on anyone's part. See if you think my edits are reasonable. It's all in the history; I am pleased to note, though, that ATren has now started to edit other topics as well. The article is now much closer to reality, including being illustrated by a picture of a real system rather than one which exists only on the drawing board of someone pitching for a backer, although it still describes mainly wide-scale operation, when no active systems or proposals for such currently exist. But above all, it's a content dispute. What, someone gets involved in a content dispute to fix NPOV violations and that's a bad thing?
3. JzG repeatedly tried to insert unreliable sources linked to Avidor. Not quite. The article has a lack of credible sources. A review of the literature found that it lacks self-criticism. I resisted the removal of a source which included some valid criticisms of the technology. Note that the article relied (and still to an extent relies) very heavily on the work of Anderson and Schneider, both proponents of PRT. Is Light Rail Now linked to Avidor? I don't recall any evidence to that effect being presented, and I am sure I'd have been a good deal less positive about that source had such been provided. Maybe it was and I missed it.
4. JzG repeatedly defended Avidor. O RLY? I've ignored at least two thirds of the requests Avidor has sent me to include content, because it's been inappropriate. I have also ignored his desire to include the legal troubles of the proponents of the Minnesota scheme, since that's completely inappropriate as well. Contrary to the impression ATren seems intent on giving, I am not completely stupid and I do recognise a political agenda when I see one.
5. JzG is also frequently sarcastic and condescending. Or rather, JzG replies to sarcastic and condescending comments with sarcasm. Big deal. I'd say that's the only truly valid criticism here, and yes, I will put my hands up to becoming exasperated when people won't actually listen to the answers they are given, and even more so when their questions require as a premise that one accepts an interpretation which I have already told them I do not accept. Given that you are biased, should you not have recused from mediation?' assumes (a) that I am biased, which I don't think I am, and (b) that I was representing myself as a mediator, which I wasn't.

Just to repeat, I am not a mediator, never have been a mediator, and the vast majority of my edits to the article were considered completely uncontroversial. The problem lies, still to my mind, in the fact that the article describes a wide-scale urban transportation system as proposed by some as a major mode-shifter from cars (in which it will face some pretty serious opposition from powerful vested interests), whereas all we have on the ground are a couple of test tracks and two orders for systems serving car parks. When the Heathrow car park system goes into operation it will be massively easier to write a properly neutral article, but I have always considered that subjects where the literature is dominated by people selling a Big Idea to be problematic. I really do not think I am alone in this.

The article has been plagued by neutrality issues, uncritical acceptance of the claims of proponents and excessive reliance on the work of Schneider, an advocate, since its very earliest days, and it's very hard to address that because as the literature review noted, the published sources are typically supportive and not objective. What do I want from this article? Better sources, preferably not just more advocacy (see ATren's recent addition of a new source, a report by a pro-PRT group funded by the EU - which incidentally was represented as an EU report which it isn't - reliable enough as a source, but in the end it's yet more advocacy from advocates, not actually a critical review of the subject, which is still conspicuous by its absence). What other editors want from it is not in every case entirely clear. Guy (Help!) 12:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

There's no point in debating this further if JzG continues to deny fact. The fact is, he himself called it a mediation, and we believed him, even if today he denies it. The fact is he threatened to lock an article twice based on his misreading (twice!) of a single word in a good faith edit, and he still refuses to admit as much (I should also add that the threat to lock came 30 minutes after Avidor told him to do so, evidence that perhaps JzG took Avidor's word that a lock was necessary, rather than investigating for himself).

JzG says on his candidate statement that he is "constantly plagued by doubts and the question I most often ask myself is 'what if I'm wrong?'" - and yet here we have two points that he refuses to concede even though I've provided diffs that confirm my position. If he cannot even accept such hard evidence that he's wrong in this case, how is he going to handle the subtleties of an arb com case? If he's exasperated by this debate, imagine how we feel when an admin with so much influence will not even concede his own obvious mistake in misreading a single word? ATren 17:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

There is indeed no point continuing this, since you continue to insist that only your version of events has any validity. Which one of us is currently more active on that article, and has been or months? That would be you. I walked away. The fact that you seem unable to, says more about you than about me, I think. I am a fan of Avidor's cartoons. There, I said it. You are a fan of PRT. Or at least I assume you are, form your edit history, for much of which time you edited no other articles. But you've never admitted to any boas whatsoever. I'm also biased in favour of alternative transportation, so that should cancel out. And I've never even been to Minnesota...

Since you assert it is fact that I called myself a mediator, perhaps you can cite the edit where I did so? Becaue I sure as hell don't remember it. Guy (Help!) 00:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How does "your version of events" account for the fact that you called it a mediation? How does "your version of events" account for the fact that you twice threatened to lock an article because you thought the word "reinvented" was actually "reviewied"?

You write: "I walked away" - but then you started editing again a few weeks ago, and the first thing you did was add a reference to a three year old, one-page resolution by a Avidor's local chapter of the Sierra Club. You did this at Avidor's request, and you added it to the article introduction! So much for walking away. So much for protecting the article from dubious sources. So much for not letting your affection for Avidor affect your better judgement.

You write: "You are a fan of PRT" - Yes, I like PRT, but if a vote came up in my city for PRT, I wouldn't give it blanket approval. I'd have to see the proposal, the costs, the system. But another thing I wouldn't do is reject it as a hoax and a fraud, and accuse anyone of bringing it up as being a wacky gadgetbahner, which is basically the crux of Avidor's campaign. If keeping an open mind about PRT makes me a "fan" in your eyes, then so be it, I'm a fan. According to you, published researchers like Schneider and Anderson are mindless proponents, so it's no shock that you assume the same about me. It's clear that anyone who doesn't treat PRT like a ridiclious hoax is considered a mindless proponent.

Also, for the record, I've never been to Minnesota either. ATren 01:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

And the "reviewed"/"reinvented" slip-up? Ashibaka tock 17:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Is irrelevant and trivial. What is important is that the article is now much better than it was. Like it or not, I went there out of interest, as an editor, because the subject was interesting. If I'd realised how many hours would be sapped by the endless argumentation of the PRT proponents... I'd still have gone there. An NPOV issue existed, and still to an extent does. We accept as fact that which is apparently only stated by fans of the technology , and we accept this largely die to a lack of neutral sources (as noted by the literature reviewer). And that's a problem for the project, per policy. Guy (Help!) 00:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

In other words, he has not admitted any error, and he never will. He said he was a mediator, though now he says he really wasn't; and I'm still waiting for his first word of explanation on the misread word - 8 months later. I stand by all my original concerns.

Also, I should point out that the "PRT fans" he continues to refer to are tenured civil engineering professors from respected universities, and their "fluff" is published in peer reviewed journals and engineering conference proceedings. Even as he repeatedly rejected these sources as unreliable, he was pushing Avidor's cartoons and content from an astroturfing site promoting a competing technology (and which has Avidor as a contributor). When we tried to discuss these issues with him, he either ignored us or dismissed our arguments because we were proponents.

I'd also like to point out that the article is better now, but only due to our tireless efforts. Almost every one of my edits, which were good edits and properly sourced, were reverted at least once by JzG. Some were reverted two or three times, in some cases with cryptic edit comments or accusations of POV pushing. Yes, the article is pretty good now, but only because I was persistent enough to patiently fight back against an administrator who was too busy to listen to our arguments, and too convinced we were POV pushers to care. ATren 01:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

In other words, I have not admitted to the specific error you assert, because, well, I think you're wrong. And the article is not better due top your tireless efforts, it's better due to a large number of editors, including those of you who were active on it while it was still blatant and largely unchallenged advocacy. I improved it, Stephen improved it, it is better now than before I edited it, it was better after I edited it than it was before, it may be better again now, articles improve over time. Your argufying was largely about re-inserting stuff that was removed, though. And your definition of "improved" appears to be synonymous with "becomes uncritical". And all of that is in any case irrelevant, because it's a content dispute. What you have done, however, is to demonstrate that I am bad at dealing with trolling, and that much is a valid criticism for which I thank you. Guy (Help!) 15:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutral

1. Neutral (based on answers to my questions) Anomo 14:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

I accidentally put an oppose vote for him I meant for another candidate. Anomo 14:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.