User:Dbuckner/Problem editors

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[edit] Case of Lucas

There are a handful of problem editors on the Philosophy page and its neighbourhood. One has been blocked for a week. The other is User:Lucaas. Lucas has a history of ungrammatical and unsourced edits, and persists in a confrontational attitude to other editors, many of whom have expert knowledge in their subject area. He also fundamentally misunderstands WP:NOR.


User:Rbellin sums up the problem as follows.

Again, User:Lucaas, your opinion here is just not correct. Because WP:NOR is such a fundamental policy, and because your editing shows that you don't understand it (though I and several other users have now tried to point this out to you), I'd like to ask you, politely, to read the policy again and reflect more carefully on why it exists. This is not meant as an attack, but an observation about a repeated pattern in your edits -- I've seen many cases now where you've introduced a 100% original synthetic interpretation or historical explanation, and then tried to defend it by either (a) derailing the discussion into interpretive minutiae and simple airing of opinions or (b) inventing new terminology and wildly misinterpreting specific passages of policy (often the examples rather than the rules themselves) to justify your insertion of your own views. (The second is what you've done above by inventing a new and idiosyncratic jargon about "canonical" and "academic" sources when you've been presented several times in the last day with a completely simple distinction between primary sources -- philosophical texts -- and secondary sources like textbooks and histories of philosophy.) This is not how Wikipedia works. Since Wikipedia is primarily a project to create an encyclopedia, it is most important that we avoid any original interpretation and synthesis of the material and stick to presenting familiar, well-established accounts (note that this means more than just relying on published sources, since it's easy to base a novel interpretation or synthesis on existing texts). I don't mean this as hostile in any way, and I won't use the word "troll" because it appears your intentions are good, but I have to say that I (and apparently several other contributors) am becoming increasingly dubious about whether your edits have been constructive or helpful at all. Again, I'd like to ask that you re-read the original research policy carefully, and consider why your contributions have seemed like original research to many Wikipedians. -- Rbellin|Talk 02:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on Lucaas

I believe Lucaas has been described as incorrigible. This is the precise term for what Lucaas is. My experience of his editorial practice is confined to the entry on Being and Time. It may be summarised as follows: He knows he lacks knowledge of the topics he chooses to write about, but defends the idea that it's fine to write about things you know little or nothing about. He knows his writing is poor, but defends the idea that the purpose of Wikipedia is not to produce "compelling writing." On this basis he grants himself free license. Add to this his propensity to falsely imagine himself the defender of "minority" positions, and what results is not merely a license to ignore others, but an insistence on doing so. Working on the entry is presently unrewarding to the point of being impossible, due to the efforts of this user. Mtevfrog 23:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Evidence

[edit] Constant mindless reverts

Reverting an version of an article which had been agreed by three editors.

here, here and here.

Lucas' first 3RR warning, coming four hours after his very first edit under this account, followed promptly by Lucas' removal of said warning from his Talk page and a retaliatory complaint by Lucas. These violations resulted in a 48 hour block on Lucas in his first day of contributing to Wikipedia.

Lucas removing his second 3RR block from his Talk page.

Four articles whose opening sentences Lucas edited to insert a POV judgment, all of which provoked multiple reverts and acrimonious Talk discussion:

Philosophy of mind Philosophy of mathematics Philosophy of language Philosophy of science

[edit] User:Tercross

Note the above was not actually the day of Lucas' arrival in Wikiland. Previously he logged up a horrendous record of edits as User:Tercross, after which he was blocked.

(note from Lucas: this user tercross is actually another person, a guy who was a roomate, and who started using wiki and then passed it on to me. -- Lucas (Talk) 17:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)).

See here where Tercross was blocked for 24 hours for using it to avoid the block on the User:Lucaas account. The block log is here. And here is Lucaas removing the record of the block on Tercross. Dbuckner 12:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

See also:

  • User:Tercross' first edit (under this account), a bizarre, though self-reverted, vandalism of the article on Condoleezza Rice. Again, this user's first edit immediately yielded a warning.
  • An edit, summarized by User:Tercross as "grammar and clarity", which adds a capitalization error ("The Levelling-off"), multiple omitted periods ("ie" for "i.e."), a diction error ("wain" for "wane"), and a sentence fragment ("Something prefigured perhaps in the eighteenth & nineteenth century theory of the Association of Ideas.").
  • An edit in which Tercross removes three tags without justification and adds a false claim to the article on ontotheology.

[edit] Refusal to comply with OR




  • [[1]] - Another diff showing the insertion of the Lucas OR agenda into a philosophy article (the claim that philosophy of mind is a branch of analytic philosophy only). KD Tries Again 19:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)KD

[edit] Complaints

  • An editor gives up on an important article after his edits go to the winds.


Talk:Being and Time 8 February 2007. More problems here, here and here.

[edit] Articles nominated for deletion

The Afd on an article by Lucas

The deletion review on said article, including evidence of Lucas's multiple re-creations of the deleted material.

[edit] Articles which haven't been nominated for deletion

Sublation, started by Tercross and still maintained by Lucas. Mostly rambling, disconnected nonsense. Dbuckner 12:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Note by Lucas

These minor edit-clashes are, in a certain sense, inevitable. Someone suggested to me early on that my position in philosophy, would encounter difficulties, since my scholarship does not come primarily from Analytic philosophy. I have no problem, per se, with the admitted over-abundance of mainly Analytic philosophers who are naturally on the English language wikipedia. I would say, along with Rorty, that Analytic philosophers preponder in the English-speaking world by about 90%. Nor do I have a problem with this preponderance, it is, as I said "natural".

The above "evidence" as it tries to call itself, consists only of various quotes taken completely out of context in order to try and cast me in a bad light. I have not the ability nor the time to enter into discussion on all these matters as they cover quite a long period of time and both Dbuckner and user 2917nnn, are far more proficient at accessing all this information.

Above you will not find comments of mine attempting to defend each of these over-zealous or vague remarks, as I find the process already one-sided and totally "out of court". Rarely, for example, was there a revert that was not matched by another. Most of it is water under the bridge, and was dealt with at the time. Some of it was part of my learning how to edit on wiki.

However, in each case if instead of a "diff" being presented the full context was, it would be clear that in each and every case, either, I agreed in the end, or de facto, to whatever the objection was, or I had a case to make and that the other editor, if you were to do a similar one-sided "evidence" gathering on them, would appear similarly or worse.

Let us consider this page as a poor attempt to present something as officious, which is in realty just a mean collection of one-half of any discussion I happen to involve myself in.

Nor can it be used in any future attempt to have administration step in, as this unending collection of half-quotes from me, and half quotes from someone who has gone off-topic and started making inflamatory remarks, or character remarks about me, seeks only to bias any fair examination of the matter, or perhaps, in a more sinister way, to bias any future discussions with me, and should not be admitted.

It is self-fulfilling bias and only ensures that instead of discussing an article or a matter in a responsible manner, the above arsenal of personal attacks will be "dipped into" and draw the discussions into a tit-for-tat personal attacks, thus allowing you to add more half-quotes to your list and build what you might try to fool yourself into believing is an "overwhelming case".

-- Lucas (Talk) 10:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

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