Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Reddi 2/Workshop

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This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. It provides for suggestions by Arbitrators and other users and for comment by arbitrators, the parties and others. After the analysis of /Evidence here and development of proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies. Anyone who edits should sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they have confidence in on /Proposed decision.

[edit] Motions and requests by the parties

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[edit] Proposed temporary injunctions

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[edit] Proposed final decision

[edit] Proposed principles

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1) {text of proposed principle}

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[edit] Proposed findings of fact

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[edit] Reddi's reputation

1) Reddi has a reputation among Wikipedia editors for supporting speculative or pseudoscientific perspectives [1], Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pseudoscience#WMC.27s_removal_of_my_name. William M. Connolley cites this edit to Ark of the Covenant, see this discussion

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Earned? Fred Bauder 19:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Point of view editing by Reddi

2) Reddi has engaged in point of view editing with respect to pseudoscientific topics such as this removal of Template:perp from Motionless Electrical Generator [2]

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[edit] Pattern of POV editing

Reddi has engaged in a sustained campaign to promote the inclusion here of material relating to perpetual motion and other fringe science topics. His edits show a pattern of POV pushing, in the way of excess credence given to inventions and theoretical postulates well outside what is generally accepted. He 'defends' both pages of particular concern to him, and inappropriate edits, with a variety of tactics and with some success over the longer term. His edits have resulted in a wedge of pseudoscience coverage here that is not easily editable by others.

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[edit] Scientific competence

3) Reddi may lack sufficient grasp of modern science to edit some scientific articles see [3] which he attributed to "bad faith and POV pushing" [4]. Another example may be this edit [5] where Pjacobi removes edits by Reddi. See the assertion by Pjacobi at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Reddi_2/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Pjacobi. See also this edit [6] where a clearly unreliable source is cited. A very strange edit.

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Of course, for all I know, he's right Fred Bauder 20:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

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I don't think it is an issue of scientific competence. Plenty of non-scientists are successful editors of scientific articles, and will happily oblige if other editors point out when they make mistakes. The problem is the above two proposed findings of fact: he systematically pushes a pseudoscientific point of view, and tries to be as disruptive as possible when other editors oppose him. One example is the flak he pushes accusing other editors of a "scientific point of view", seen very recently in this edit [7]. (See the comments of Pjacobi and myself here.) –Joke 01:05, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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Reddi at times shows a massive misunderstanding of even elementary (non-quantum, non-GRT, ...) physics ([8], [9]), that I even considered this to be a strange gambit. OTOH never attribute to malice which can be attributed to ignorance. --Pjacobi 13:03, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reddi's reputation

3.1) Irrespective of his competence Reddi has a reputation for promoting a pseudoscientific perspective. There is a User:Tim_Starling/Reddi_watchlist, see conversation at Talk:Plasma_cosmology#Deeply_troubled_with_Joshuaschroeder.

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Talk:Rotating_magnetic_field

[edit] A pop-quiz for Reddi

3.2) Talk:Rotating_magnetic_field

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The fallback to quoting Tezla is rather lame Fred Bauder 17:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Edits cited

4) This edit seems to be sound but is cited as evidence by ScienceApologist.

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Reddi seems to only have improved the article. Fred Bauder 21:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

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The edit in question was a revert to an edit by Elerner: [10] which was made with this comment on the talk page [11]. A response is [12] but essentially this edit gives a distorted impression of the big bang: it overemphasizes controversies and negative results using either very recent non-peer reviewed papers (Lieu, Lerner), or representing only one side of the controversy in the community and overstating its claims (the WMAP results, which are widely viewed as the most precise confirmation of the big bang to date, have a controversy with the low multipoles, discussed with references here). –Joke 00:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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Key to understanding why it was cited as evidence by ScienceApologist is to know that the opinions of the critics of the Big Bang that he is referring to carry no weight in scientific circles. 70.49.60.57 00:13, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name change

5) Joshuaschroeder (talk • contribs) changed his name to ScienceApologist (talk • contribs) [13].

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Confused me Fred Bauder 16:26, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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This was after Reddi's harassment in this edit [14] (see also [15]) which got this RFAr rolling. This wouldn't have bothered more thickskinned contributors like me [16], but it gave Joshua reson to leave Wikipedia. He later reconsindered to return just for defending against this attack. Asking Jossi to change his username to take Reddi's labelling as a badge of honor. I myself would have tried to talk Joshua out of this name change, as it would confuse matters, but Jossi fulfilled his request immediately. --Pjacobi 18:41, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reddi's signature

6) Reddi sometimes signs as JDR or as J. D. Redding

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Confused me Fred Bauder 16:42, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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1) {text of proposed finding of fact}

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[edit] Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

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[edit] Troika

1) Art Carlson (talk • contribs) and William M. Connolley (talk • contribs) shall appoint a third user competent in basic science. These three users shall have the power to ban any user who disrupts the editing of articles which relate to science from those articles which they are disrupting. Should either of them decline to serve, the other shall make two appointments. In the event neither choses to serve the Arbitration Committee shall call for nominations for this role. Members of the troika shall serve at the pleasure of the Arbitration Committee.

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Trial balloon Fred Bauder 20:23, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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How is this supposed to work? Who should give me this authority? Is that consistent with the principles of Wikipedia? What constitutes disruption? Why should I get power on the innumerable topics of science that I know absolutely nothing about? What does this proposal have to do with User Reddi? And above all, what is the problem that this proposal is supposed to fix? --Art Carlson 11:40, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem it is supposed to fix is that I (and presumably most other arbitrators) can't make head nor tail of the subject; can't tell whether Reddi is making substantial (but unusual) additions or just adding crap and confusion. I suppose the alternative is consensus of editors. Fred Bauder 13:45, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

You don't need any knowledge of science to see that behavior like this is inappropriate. On the other hand, he walked away from that fight, so no further action is necessary. Looking over Reddi's copious edits, it seems that most of them are minor and only a few are really rotten science. He started some articles on topics I consider crap (Motionless Electrical Generator, Hutchison effect), but I don't see any reason not to report on these ideas in a NPOV way. In short, I think you should be able to handle wikiquette problems - including vandalism - without me, and content problems are best discussed on a case by case basis. Of course, I am always willing, within my time constraints, to give my opinion on science issues which I know something about. --Art Carlson 16:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

To answer AC's last question, Reddi and his like provide a constant and hard to remove source of psuedo-science pollution for various articles. This behaviour is hard to deal with and rarely reaches anything tangible enough to get to arbitration, but nonetheless damages wiki. My answers to the first question are that the Arbcomm can devolve power as it likes; and presumably, if this got created, the Troika would say "we ban X; arbcomm judgement Y is our authority" and it would then (in the usual way) be up to admins to do the appropriate blocking. However, I think this would be a major policy step. For the record, I'll accept if its enacted, but other less drastic proposals come to mind: if the problem is content, and the understanding of edits, then creating a panel on a case-by-case basis to *advise* each arbcomm case might make more sense: as AC points out, science is a very wide field. If (contrariwise) the intent is to try to settle *content* disputes before they get to arbcomm, then this proposal would give the Troika unprecedented powers and I suspect might well lead to community resistance. William M. Connolley 22:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC).
I agree with the comments of WMC and Christopher Thomas. –Joke 17:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

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This proposal was brought to my attention at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pseudoscience. While it has the potential to greatly streamline editing of science-related articles, it sounds like it would be extremely difficult to implement in a way that was both fair and difficult to abuse. Specific concerns are:

The mandate of this group would have to spell out very clearly that banning could only be performed where it was completely unambiguous that either edits in bad faith or a concerted campaign of misguided editing was in progress. Banning over edits that were merely controvertial would result in the proposed committee biasing articles (intentionally or unintentionally).
Some form of appeals process would have to exist. This appeals process would be prone to abuse, as I'd expect just about anyone banned to appeal their ban.
This or any other form of formalized accredition for expertise would likely suffer from either being too lax in its standards, or too strict in its standards, or too arbitrary in its standards. If it's too lax, biased committee members either ban legitimate editors or get into ban wars. If it's too strict or too arbitrary, it risks imposing systemic bias (limiting members to those who share a common non-neutral view of what is and is not valid science).

A committee like this would only seem viable to me if there were sufficient controls in place to limit bias and to flag and reverse misrulings, and if it was restricted to sufficiently serious cases of disruption that its beneficial actions outweight any drawbacks imposed by potential committee bias or lack of expertise in specific fields. However, cases that serious theoretically fall under the purview of admins already (edits in bad faith and ignoring consensus are already against the rules).

Short version: This sounds like a neat idea, but I'm not sure a viable implementation can be constructed. --Christopher Thomas 00:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh boy. Yes, there are a few single-issue/narrow-issue disruptive editors who can overwhelm the more mainstream/broad-focus editors. That's because the later are "spread too thin" and can easily feel overwhelmed by multiple edit battles coming from multiple directions. I've seen experienced, senior WP editors leave because of this battle fatigue. If senior editors feel that they're "spread too thin", the answer is for them to team up, remove the thorn in the side, and ban the source of their aggravation. I presume the goal here is not to judge the quality of the content added by disruptive editors, but rather to reduce the overall wikistress to tolerable levels. linas 23:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully not to get too far off topic, but this is trouble I've had with my own editing. I like being involved in Wikipedia when I feel I can make a tangible, positive contribution, but sometimes it seems like it takes a monumental effort to stay in the same place, even on fairly mainstream articles. All that effort is wasted, because once one conflict is settled, soon enough a fresh batch of crank editors appears who want to rehash the same old arguments once again. Wikipedia policy doesn't seem to allow you to tell people to buzz off and read the hundreds of kilobytes of talk page archives in which some kind of consensus was painfully established. –Joke 00:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I certainly share everybody's frustration. Defending the Truth can be fun and rewarding, but it takes a lot of time and energy. (I, personally, am starting a new job and will soon have less of both.) I'm just not sure what to do about the problem of incompetent or crank-y editors that have a lot of time on their hands. Is it possible to institute some kind of rating system to reflect the reputation of editors? Either simple voting or something automatic like the product of the number of reverts made with the product of the number of times the editor was reverted himself. Editors with bad ratings would have restricted powers, maybe a limited number of reverts they can make, or a limited number of edits per day, or enforced vacations every few days. It's a half-baked idea. Can anyone beat it into something useful? --Art Carlson 12:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I MUD, so am familiar with the experience point system. It would take a lot of coding and would give a disproportionate advantage to folks who were on here 24/7, something no competent scientist would do. As a practical matter what will happen is that we will rely on those who seem to have a good reputation among the other editor of a disputed article and call on their expertise as needed. Fred Bauder 15:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

This is a terrible, terrible idea. 1. No matter how expert they are in their own fields, no three users may be counted on to evaluate all science topics. Ten (or twenty, or whatever) users will not do much better. In some cases the difference between science and nonsense is not even obvious to experts in a specific narrow field and/or some of recognized top experts disagree, calling each other's work nonsense. That's just how science works. 2. Inevitably the standard for "disruption" will be lowered and used to simply prevent certain views from getting a fair hearing. The temptation to shut down debate instead of laboriously and painfully working out a compromise is just too great. 3. Pathological skepticism is prevalent enough in science and in Wikipedia as it is, this will make it far more prevalent. Please don't do this. ObsidianOrder 07:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. If you do decide to do it, at least be honest enough and call it the "Science Tribunal". ObsidianOrder 07:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Yikes, no! ObsidianOrder nails it. Bad solution for this particular problem. "Pseudoscience" is way too often just another POV for this to be viable. James James 11:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

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One thing you could do to show how well the proposal would work is ask the prospective troikaniks to show us their wisdom by showing exactly where (which edit) they would call forth their special powers on recent science disputes, last 6 months or so. At that point is the line crossed? In other words, if you had the power, what would you have done? Then we can examine the actual history of the cases and see it this would have been an improvement. ( Presumeably, Reddi would be among these cases. ) GangofOne 11:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

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