Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/JonGwynne

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Case Opened on 21 February 2005 Case Closed on 6 March 2005

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this case; editing this page implicitly authorizes the other participants to enter a complaint against you which may be considered by the Arbitrators as may your behavior. Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators will be working on a proposed decision at /Proposed decision.

Contents

[edit] The parties

User:William M. Connolley, petitioner

v.

User:JonGwynne, respondent

[edit] Statement of complaint

Please limit your statement to 500 words.

JonGwynne has disrupted the normal functioning of the global warming related pages with a string of POV edits. These have been resisted by me, and others; JGs inability to accept any "community editing" has left him with a series of 3RR rule bans (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/JonGwynne - also note no signs of contrition), to carbon dioxide being protected, and Greenhouse_gas too. Note that periods of his 3RR bans have seen tranquility descend on the global warming related pages.

Most of his edits have been POV pushing (this may be slightly difficult to demonstrate if you don't want to get too deeply into the content): e.g. [1] [2], but a glance at, e.g., the history of the GW page [3] will show that his changes have been resisted by a variety of editors. Also history of IPCC [4]. And more.

He has also indulged in numerous personal attacks, mostly against me [5] [6] [7] [8] (note edit comment) but also against others [9] (note edit summary).

He has used deliberately deceptive edit summaries e.g. [10], described as "copyedit"; [11] - that one labelled "not a revert" was part of his most recent 3RR ban. Note also abusive edit comment. He frequently disguises his reverts.

Note that we have been through RFC: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JonGwynne, [[12]] (note the latter started by Cortonin, who is quiet recently, but signed to by JG), with no sign of progress.

[edit] comments in support of Jon Gwynne

When I first read the artical I was throughly disappointed. IMHO user William M. Connolley is very biased and is trying to steer the artical in a direction that is factually wrong. I was movtivated enough to post comments in the discussion and this movtivated WMC to attack me as well. In response WMC suggested I read his blog - which I did and I find this is factually incorrect as well.

Most likely, the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere has increased as a result of human activity. Distruction of the rain forests will reduce the amount of H2O in the atmosphere while irrigation and burning of fossil fuels will increase it. WMC correctly states that H2O is short lived in the atmosphere. While this is correct, it is constantly being replaced.

That being said - the amount of H2O added by mankind is insignificant compared to what nature put into the atmosphere. The problem with this notion is that while it is insignificant, it is still greater than the CO2. Now the biggest influence of H2O is ocean surface temperature and circulation patterns. Nothing of this is mentioned in the artical. In fact, H2O is hardly mentioned at all even though it is responsible for anywhere from 69% to +95% of the greenhouse warming of the planet. When JG made a simple edit that mentioned H2O, it was promptly removed.

The second problem with CO2 is that in the orovician ice ages for instance we had 19x as much CO2 in the environment as now. You can confirm this at the geocraft website:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

If you look at the CO2 curves from R.A. Berner, 2001 (GEOCARB III) you may note that it is not correlated with climate change at all!

If the arbitrators would be so kind as to read my comments in the discussion and then follow the links I posted I would really appreciate it.

I would further ask that the arbitrators read the following website:

http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatechange/climatehome.html

Please pay special attention to this:

http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatechange/change/change1.html

I will quote from Tim Patterson:

"Since the Miocene, mountain ranges and plateaus have risen to the sky in southwestern North America and central Asia. The elevation contours are labeled in kilometers. The appearance of these giant barriers across the planetary circulation of the northern hemisphere may have given the final push to the northern hemispheric glaciation."

When I expressed these ideas in the discussion not only was I attacked, indeed I was accuse of suggesting original research! If one correlates the major ice ages to the periods of exteme mountian building then one gets a 100% correlation dating back into the precambrian.

It appears to me that many who have been arguing about this controversial theory of global warming have a problem accepting these facts.

IMHO Tim Patterson has discussed the issues fairly. I do not think the wiki artical is fair. In fact in some respects I think the wiki artical is pathetic. I am not the only one who has this opinion. Please contact user: Greg Benson.

In short:

The vast majority of the causes that influence climate change are not even mentioned.

Terrell

Please note that I have not made any edits to this artical.

- My comments. I am new here and somewhat surprised to see an arbitration process underway over this matter. I see two people in disagreement. I see neither being able to compromise on the issue owing to strong opinions. I see Connolley wanting action taken against Gwynne. I don't know if Gwynne wants any action taken against Connolley. Connolley is aggressive with his opinion which is not good for an encyclopedia. Arbitration committee must consider whether Connolley and Gwynne are able to contribute to a neutral encyclopedia entry and if they are not they should be asked to leave. Connolley can continue to aggressively argue his opinion on sci.env on USENET. I don't think that I can stay here on wiki as this is too much like USENET but will be interested to see how this matter is addressed through arbitration. Thank you. KlausH 00:01, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

--

Connelly's description of the situation is completely inaccurate. He is a POV warrior that removes notable and cited material as part of his drive to control the page. "Peace" hasn't arrived on the page, what has happened is that he is making POV edits and using arbitration to drive people off. I would support a one year banning of this user for abusing the arbitration system and lying about the state of a page simply because he has driven off anyone else. Have reverted the page to include material which Connelly censored, and will continue to do this. Again - support a one year ban of Connelly. The judicial process should not become a weapon to drive out accurate and encyclopediac writers by a numerically superior group of Poves.

Stirling Newberry 13:36, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In fact he is already running a revert war on the page. [13]. In fact he is already running a revert war. Stirling Newberry 14:17, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments in support of William M. Connolley

User JonGwynne (JG) has a strong opinion about the matter of climate change and tries to push his POV into the article. Unfortunately he seems to lack scientific education and is by far not on the same scientific level as Dr. Connelly (WMC). Discussions with JG are difficult and rarely lead to a compromise. Furthermore he does not accept a majority decision and keeps reverting to his version instead.

In one case JG tried several times to add the fact that the atmosphere only contains a very small fraction of CO2. The insertion was highly misleading at best and showed that he had problems differing between "increase of x%" and "increase of x percentage points", two very different values [14]. This actually small difference lead to a huge discussion (see Talk:Carbon dioxide) where JG argued ad nauseam and several dozens reverts. Despite being reverted by at least four different persons (Shimmin, VSmith, Gene Nygaard and WMC) JG kept reverting until the article was finally protected.

At times he becomes ad hominem in his comments and if he is reverted often he tends to do changes with misleading comments. Furthermore he tries to circumvent the 3RR by combining partial reverts with other edits. Nevertheless JG has violated the 3RR several times and consequently was banned for multiple periods of 24 hours.

All the above leads to a bad climate for working on the articles and costs the contributers a lot of time for discussion and reverts. I very much believe that JG can be a valuable contributer in less controversial areas, for instance [15]. Unfortunately his strong believes and his lack of scientific understanding hinder him to work on the climate related articles in collaboration with others and in particular with Dr. William Connolley.

General comment: Unfortunately the history of the climate related articles reveals a deeper problem. Experts who write about their subject in Wikipedia have to defend their work all the time against "decay", i.e. new users who lack the expertise, but modify the articles nevertheless (not necessarily in bad faith). In particular highly controversial topics such as climate related articles suffer from a constant stream of "skeptical" users who have at best read a Crichton book and then start editing. This of course is a bad climate for keeping or winning experts for Wikipedia who have to deal and discuss the same things over and over again, e.g., the influence of water vapor. After seeing what is happening here I can partially follow Larry Sanger in his criticism about Wikipedia.

-- mkrohn 02:08, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by affected party

This is just the latest in a laundry list of complaints against me by WMC. If memory serves, they began in earnest when I co-signed a complaint against him on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/William M. Connolley because of his inappropriate behavior regarding other used. It should be noted that the complaints against him have gone unresolved and unaddressed. I suspect the reason no one has escalated the matter further is that the rest of us are more interested in writing and editing articles than in wasting the admins' time with complaints that can be addressed between the users involved.

WMC's complaints here are, as per his usual, entirely without merit.

  • What he describes as "POV edits" are, in reality NPOV edits designed to bring balance to the articles on climate-change. He, and a few others, resist them. Others do not. These are issues that can and should be resolved in the ordinary matter of wikipedia.
  • The "series of 3RR bans" are, with one exception (the one on Global Wariming, that was my mistake and I'll take responsibility for that one), entirely illegitimate and only the result of deliberate or negligent misstatements by WMC and one other user.
  • What he describes as "personal attacks" are, in reality, admittedly brusque statements censuring his objectionable behavior as described in his RFC and attempting to discourage repetition of such behavior.
  • His complaints about my edit summaries are subjective at best and ultimately irrelevant in light of the compare tool provided by wikipedia.
  • The RFC he filed against me was not only entirely without merit - I systematically rebutted every single one of his complaints, but it was only endorsed by his group of idealogical supporters.

It should also be noted that he filed the RFC against me after he tried and failed to get an article of mine deleted.

This whole thing is strongly suggestive of nothing more than a peevish, personal vendetta and a waste of the admins' time. My advice to the admins is: don't let yourselves get sucked into it.

In my opinion, William is a petty, vindictive, narrow-minded person who contributes little to wikipedia apart from extremist environmentalist POV.

Once again, I suggest you reject his complaint out of hand and not let yourselves get dragged into this mess.

(William M. Connolley 21:50, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)) My comments on this are at: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/JonGwynne/Response_to_JG

[edit] Preliminary decision

[edit] Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (5/1/0/0)

  • Reject until there's some actual content on the subpage. -- Grunt   ҈  23:51, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC) I am now waiting for a response by JonGwynne. -- Grunt   ҈  00:13, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)A respone doesn't seem likely yet, so accept. -- Grunt   ҈  15:06, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
  • Reject - request is not placed in the proper format (it should be here, and not on a subpage). Ambi 01:28, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Accept Fred Bauder 02:05, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Accept to examine the issue of revert warring and POV-pushing. Neutralitytalk 02:13, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Accept Nohat 07:14, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Accept Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 10:40, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Temporary injunction (none)

[edit] Final decision

All numbering based on /Proposed decision (vote counts and comments are there as well)

[edit] Principles

[edit] No personal attacks

1) No personal attacks.

Passed 7-0.

[edit] Civility

2) Wikipedia users are expected to behave civilly and calmly in their dealings with other users. If disputes arise, users are expected to utilise dispute resolution procedures instead of merely attacking each other.

Passed 7-0.

[edit] Consensus

3) As put forward in Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, Wikipedia works by building consensus. This is done through the use of polite discussion, in an attempt to develop a consensus regarding proper application of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines such as Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Surveys and the Request for comment process are designed to assist consensus-building when normal talk page communication has not worked.

Passed 7-0.

[edit] Neutral point of view

4) Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view (NPOV) policy contemplates inclusion of all significant points of view regarding any subject on which there is division of opinion.

Passed 6-1.

[edit] Findings of Fact

[edit] Personal attacks

1) JonGwynne has engaged in personal attacks [16].

Passed 7-0.

[edit] Incivility

2) JonGwynne has at times resorted to comments which, although not necessarily rising to the level of personal attacks, can be considered incivil [17].

Passed 7-0.


[edit] Revert warring

3) JonGwynne has refused to accept consensus on articles related to global warming and has continued to revert war in order to promote a particular point of view despite being blocked numerous times for violation of the three revert rule [18], [19], [20], [21].

Passed 7-0.

[edit] Remedies

[edit] Personal attack parole

2) JonGwynne is placed on standard personal attack parole for three months. If he makes any edits which are judged by an administrator to be personal attacks, then he shall be temp-banned for a short time of up to one week.

Passed 7-0.

[edit] Revert limitation

3) JonGwynne is limited to one revert per 24 hour period on articles related to global warming; violations shall be interpreted as violations of the three revert rule..

Passed 7-0.
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