User talk:SlimVirgin/AGF

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Contents 1 Why I've proposed this 2 Copied from Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Rangerdude/Evidence (and refactored) 2.1 Suggestion 2.2 Proposal 2.3 Response to Rangerdude (re: protection of Islamophobia) 2.4 Good faith

[edit] Why I've proposed this

The arbitration is probably making us all miserable. I know it is me. There's already so much evidence — and it's not finished yet — that it's unlikely the arbitrators will read it. I mean no disrespect to them by saying this. I'm just acknowledging that we're all human beings with limits on our time, and there comes a point ...

I think we can resolve this on our own if the goodwill is there.

However, because there are so many claims and counter-claims, the only way forward, as I see it, is to agree not to mention the past again, and to develop proposals for future behavior toward one another that ensure the dispute doesn't start up again.

That's what I'm hoping we can do with this page. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copied from Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Rangerdude/Evidence (and refactored)

[edit] Suggestion

At least we can agree it's unfortunate that it's come to this, and that we'd all rather be editing the encyclopedia. I feel your identifying this as starting with Will in February leaves out that you requested formal mediation with another editor on your first day editing with this account in January, accusing him of having "severely breached editing protocol." [1] You tend to jump to the worst conclusions about people immediately. They then defend themselves. You dig your heels in, start nitpicking, and become rhetorical, eventually being convinced by your own rhetoric so that you see no wrong in what you're doing. The people you're accusing defend themselves even more, and maybe their friends join in, which you see as a conspiracy. And the stage is set for a prolonged dispute that will make everyone miserable, yourself included (I assume).

You've done that with me over the protection thing. I haven't breached any policies. You've chosen to take the most negative view possible, but there is actually an innocent explanation, and you'd see it if you looked for it. But now I'm going to have to waste time going through all the diffs and writing up a defense, the thought of which makes me weep, to be frank, because I really dislike these dispute-resolution structures, and I want to be doing other things. As I'm sure you do too.

The solution to all of this is to assume good faith. I know there are some people with whom there's no point in assuming it, but I don't get that sense from you. I do think you've become a vexatious litigant, but that's perhaps just a role you found yourself in, rather than something you planned. It isn't too late for us all to look for another way to sort this out. Would you like to try? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal

Would something like this work, for example — User:SlimVirgin/AGF? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:31, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

You are correct that I requested mediation against another editor right after I picked a username, Slim. But do you know why? Do you even bother yourself with checking the reasons behind my decisions to seek dispute resolution with other editors before you label them "frivolous" or "vexatious" or whatever your attack term of the day happens to be? The reasons for that dispute are documented in the history of edits to that article and show that the other editor I sought dispute resolution with (incidentally an admin) was clearly misbehaving. I arrived on that article on January 8th, voiced disagreement with POV's being asserted in the article, and added an appropriate POV tag to reflect this. Only 45 minutes passed by and that other editor reverted me and removed the tag without even considering my input [2]. I restored it with a note on the talk page, only to be reverted a second time and a third, which was incidentally the fourth revert made by that same editor in less than 24 hours (Revert 1 [3], Revert 2 [4], Revert 3 [5], Revert 4 [6]). That same editor also engaged in personal attacks and namecalling in both his edit descriptions and on the talk page and refused both polite requests to discuss and a subsequent warning that I would seek an outside mediator. Given those events, I believe it is an accurate statement to say that the other editor was entirely in the wrong on that article - a circumstance reflected in the fact that another neutral admin responded to my request by imposing page protection to prevent his reverts and the fact that he later settled down and agreed to discuss and accept many of the changes I was seeking. I detailed this incident to illustrate a point, Slim. That point is that both you and Willmcw are misrepresenting my participation in previous editing disputes - many of which did not even involve either of you - in ways that completely neglect the fact that the other editors in each case normally did something in direct violation of Wikipedia's written policies. That's not nitpicking, Slim. That's pointing out a major policy violation:

- violations such as breaking 3RR as happened with User:172 in the January 8th case you reference

- violations such as ignoring consensus and personally attacking other users, as user:Jonathan_Christensen did in his very first post to me on the Jim Robinson article that you and Will love to beat me over the head with

- violations such as inserting and abusive flagrant POV into articles, as Willmcw did with his David Duke quotes on the LVMI article page

- violations such as personally attacking the employment and financial motives of another editor, as Willmcw also did to user:nskinsella on LVMI

- and yes, violations of WP:PPol as you did in protecting your own version of Islamophobia less than 24 hours after you rewrote much of the article.

If you continue to flaunt policies like that, Slim, I will not hesitate to point it out. If, on the other hand, you behave yourself in an appropriate manner I'm more than happy to live and let live. As to working this out another way than arbitration, I'm certainly open. In fact that's what I was hoping to do when I offered you mediation before filing this case - something that you refused along with a statement to the effect of "see you in court." Nevertheless, I'm still open to the possibility and will state right here and right now what my conditions are:

(1) Willmcw must cease and desist in wikistalking my edits. Evidence of any pattern in which he intentionally lurks me to new articles I've created or new edits and additions to existing articles I've made will be construed as wikistalking under the definition of that term at WP:HA. Should he desire to edit articles of common interest between the two of us in a manner that reflects good faith and generally contributes to the article's content, it will not be construed as wikistalking. Edits made solely for the purpose of harassing and deconstructing my contributions, however, and demands made under threat of deletion that my contributions meet special and arbitrary criteria for inclusion above and beyond any requirement of wikipedia guidelines or policies will be construed as wikistalking and harassment.

(2) Willmcw must abstain from POV provocation, such as the David Duke incident, and excessive edit/revert warring, which seems to be his approach to virtually everything I edit nowadays.

(3) You must abide by WP:PPol's restrictions against admins from protecting articles they've worked on. You must also abstain from personal attacks.

(4) The two of you must abstain from coordinated disruption activities such as the joint Village Pump/Userpage posts you made regarding my stalking guideline proposal.

In exchange I will gladly do all that is possible to maintain decorum and civility with the two of you on my own part. Furthermore, so long as the conditions I have stated are adhered to, I will not bother either of you with further dispute resolution complaints (if OTOH, say, Willmcw's wikistalking of me resumes I would seek dispute resolution). Rangerdude 23:05, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Rangerdude, and what specific behavioral and/or editing changes will you make or stipulate to adhere to in exchange? You lay out specific yardsticks you expect other editors to meet, while only vaguely referring to your being civil and not filing dispute resolutions against other people in return. How about stipulations about your own editing? Or do you believe that others' complaints about your editing practices on Wikipedia are completely unfounded? · Katefan0^(scribble) 23:16, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

What specifically do you wish me to commit to, Katefan0? I'll readily concede that my tone in later stages of heated conversations has become uncivil at times, albeit never to an extreme degree such as profanity, threats, and personal abuse. But beyond that, I do consider many of the complaints on Willmcw's list to be unfounded and frivolous. Taking issue with me for voting differently from him on RfA's and RfC's and for using Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedures borders on being absurd. The stipulations I suggested for the other editors refer to several specific violations of Wikipedia policy and guidelines such as abusing Page Protection powers, coordinating hits on the Village Pump, and wikistalking. Personal attacks and POV pushing are harder to identify, though I would argue that in their most extreme form (the examples here being Willmcw's attack on NSKinsella and his David Duke quotes) they are incontrovertable and thus subject to a stipulation. By comparison, the allegations against me by Willmcw seem to apply a significantly looser measure of what constitutes an "attack." For example, both you and Will have cited the fact that I even participated in RfA's, RfC's etc. as if they were some sort of wrongdoing by me. Willmcw's list of what he calls "attacks" is of a similar nature, and contains many talk page notes where I did nothing more than complain about another user's violation of POV pushing or another guideline. Even the very worst cases he gives are little more than mild breaches of civility, and none contains anything profane, obscene, personally threatening, or exhibitive of severe personal abuse. With that in mind I would not commit myself to abstaining from RfC's, RfA's etc that I have a right to participate in as much as any other editor. Neither will I bind myself from using dispute resolution when it is necessary, nor commit myself to not pointing out policy violations on the talk page if they arise. I will, on the other hand, commit to maintaining a civil tone in my comments. I'll also commit to using dispute resolution only in cases where all other options have been exhausted on the talk page, and to seeking it only in the immediate case rather than bringing in past disputes as well (in fact, Slim's provision about all parties of putting our past disputes w/ each behind us would be a reasonable stipulation for everyone). Rangerdude 00:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Rangerdude, you keep referring to my so-called "attack" on user:NSKinsella. Haven't you noticed all his personal attacks against me, including the one which led me to question his agenda in that instance? -Willmcw 00:51, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Willow, are you saying that your personal attacks are excusable if they are in response to others made against you? Moreover, I never knew anything about you until I saw you making up stuff about me--that I had erected my own entry (untrue); that I worked for the Mises Institute (untrue)--in your first attempt to delete my entry. When I objected, you smarmily danced around and I then noticed your pattern of snide, leftist-inspired wikistalking, such as your second attempt to delete me, your utterly outrageous and repeated attempts to add a snide comment about the copyright status in one of my articles detailing my opposition to IP law; when you did not like my edit to the Mises Institute page showing the the SPLC, who had smeared the Mises Institute as being a hate group, had been criticized by others for going overboard--you "buttressed" this with a criticism by David Duke, which was a very slimy, dishonest, bad faith, and disingenuous move; and your ridiculous repressing of my entry due to a CopyVio simply because of your busybody dislike for my own website's quite standard copyright notice, in your attempt to use your power as an editor to try to push your pet GNU agenda. Outrageous. NSKinsella (Stephan Kinsella) 02:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Stephan, this isn't helpful. We're trying to resolve the dispute here, not engage in it. Words like outrageous, snide, dishonest etc etc are the problem, not the solution and I'm asking everyone here to be part of the solution. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The wording used aside, I do believe NsKinsella is raising an important point here. Two wrongs do not make a right. Though I observed plenty of hostility from both sides in NSKinsella's dispute with Willmcw, the attack Willmcw made about NSKinsella's supposed financial affiliations with LVMI stuck out as particularly eggregious and uncalled for. That doesn't excuse anything else others said inappropriately in that dispute, but it is something Willmcw did that was very problematic under wikipedia's no attacks policy. The David Duke incident was similarly uncalled for, and IMO was the most offensive POV-pushing violation from either side during the LVMI dispute simply because Duke is such a notorious and reprehensible character. Willmcw might as well have been sticking quotes from Hitler in there, as Duke is truly the bottom of the gutter. This also raises another important point: can we all agree that attacking NSKinsella's LVMI affiliations and quoting David Duke were inappropriate? I ask this because these two incidents were both the main subject of the RfC I posted and 2 other editors from that dispute certified. This is a matter of concern because, regardless of where anyone fell in that RfC or the LVMI dispute, they should be able to recognize that quoting David Duke and attacking another editor's financial motives are disruptive. Rangerdude 04:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response to Rangerdude (re: protection of Islamophobia)

RD, in response to your points above, my protection of Islamophobia is a good example of where a failure to assume good faith blinds you to a possible innocent explanation. I apologize for the length of this, but I want to show you, just for this one example, how my mind was working, and how you misinterpreted by actions.

A new user had arrived, someone who maintains an anti-Islam website using a pseudonym, so no one knows his identity or the identities of those who post on his forum. For these reasons, it's not a good source for Wikipedia, plus some of it is very extreme, bordering on offensive (e.g. Muslims have evolved to have no conscience, and similar statements). He started making POV and unsourced edits to an article about himself, Ali Sina, in violation of several policies, and a revert war broke out between him and the other editors, so I protected the page. I took a look at his contribs and found he was making edits to Islamophobia, and another revert war had broken out, so I protected it too. I then took the time to make suggestions on the talk page of both articles about which sources were okay and which best avoided, and if anything, I probably came down slightly more in favor of Ali Sina.

However, you're right: I had recently edited Islamophobia, but I'd completely forgotten I had. I'd edited it once in June, and a second time to add an image, add something to the intro, and a copy edit on October 15. I'd then vprotected it on October 16 (any admin is allowed to protect against vandalism, whether involved in editing or not); and then a week later, on October 23, I protected it during Ali Sina's edits. You're absolutely right: I probably should have waited more than a week. But the reason I'd forgotten I'd edited it is precisely because it's not an article I often bother with. I wasn't involved in the dispute with Ali Sina; in fact, it was the first I'd heard of him. I had no dog in the fight, and that's the important issue when it comes to admins protecting pages: we shouldn't protect pages to gain an advantage in an edit dispute.

Ali Sina objected to my protection of the page because, he said, I'm an Iranian Islamist jihadist, so I unprotected it and left a note explaining why on WP:AN/I. To call this sequence of events an "abuse of the protection policy" is to suggest that I deliberately did something wrong in order to benefit myself, whereas a more charitable description would be that I'd protected a page where I wasn't involved in the dispute, and unprotected it as soon as someone accused me of bias. My argument with you here is simply this: in cases where assuming good faith throws up a possibly innocent explanation for something, isn't that the one we should choose?

Then the scene switches to WP:PP. You'd accused me of policy violation at Islamophobia. So I got to thinking: I wonder how long admins should wait between having edited a page and protecting it? Then I realized it's not really a question of the length of time at all, but more whether they were involved in the dispute that led to the need for protection. I might not have edited a page for six months, but the same dispute I was previously involved in might have continued with others.

So I went to WP:PP intending to add something to that effect. Several weeks ago, I'd already added a sentence to the intro saying "Admins must not protect pages they are engaged in editing," so to firm that up, and to make clear what I'd meant, I added "actively" i.e. that they are actively engaged in editing. Remember: I was the one who had added that sentence in the first place. I was changing my own edit, not someone else's.

You then came along and accused me of adding "actively" to get myself "off the hook" in the arbcom case. Again, a failure to assume good faith leads you to the darkest possible conclusion. (And anyway, if you feel I abused the policy on a certain day, it's what the policy said on that day that the arbcom will look at.) Because you've accused me of that, I can't add the rest of what I wanted to say, all or most of which I'm pretty sure you'd have agreed with, because I do agree with you on the substantive issue.

Now I'm expected to write all of this up in a succinct way for the arbcom, find all the diffs, find diffs to the other admins' posts who supported me, and the same for all the other claims you've made against me, and it's going to take hours. And for what? There's no benefit to anyone.

Regarding your RfM with 172 on your first day, what you say is correct: I didn't look at the dispute, and maybe you were 100 per cent right about it. Even so, I feel it's telling that you turned to dispute resolution on your first day. And I also want to say: just because you're 100 per cent right about something doesn't mean you have to pursue it. We can't see every situation we encounter in terms of winning or losing. I've had to take articles off my watchlist where I wasn't getting my own way — articles I felt I was absolutely right about and that I cared about — just because at the end of the day, it's not worth it. Part of what it is to work on Wikipedia is to learn to live with fairly high levels of frustration.

The "coordinated disruption" at the village pump you've talked about: there was no coordination there at all. I give you my word. I saw Will add something, and I saw you delete it. So I restored it. I then saw someone delete Will's post to your talk page several times. I protected it for 10 minutes until I could work out whether the guy was a vandal or not, and while I was trying to determine that, he posted something obscene to my talk page, and that decided the matter for me. I blocked him and unprotected your page. End of story. Nothing to see.

I'm not saying it always make sense to assume good faith, because there are people it's just impossible with, and it would be silly to try it. But it's a great policy in cases like this, where there's a black explanation of events, and an innocent one, and where they're both real possibilities.

I don't think any of us can come to this with conditions. I think we have to agree to move ahead or not, and if we do, leave all the baggage behind. However, I should stress that I'm only speaking for myself here. I can't make suggestions on behalf of the others. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:05, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Slim - I understand you feel that your actions were justified in protecting Islamophobia. In fact, I do not doubt that you thought you were doing something right. The problem is not with your intent, but rather with the way you conducted yourself in the page protection. Regardless of whether you were justified in your position or not, you were a party to the dispute with the other user you were protecting the page against. Wikipedia's policy is explicit that you should've sought out a neutral admin who was not a party to that dispute and gotten him to protect it instead. Even if you feel you were 100% justified, you still have to follow the rules. Otherwise the rules become meaningless and you end up damaging your own credibility by ignoring them at will. In the case you describe it would've been easy - just post a note requesting a neutral admin to protect it until the dispute was worked out. Same goes for changing the rules the day after you get reported for the original violation of them. Perhaps you have a good reason for the changes you seek on PPol. But changing it in the manner you did, and reacting as you did to what was quite frankly a polite request on the talk page that you simply abstain from pushing the change until the Arbcom case was over, doesn't pass the smell test. When you get accused of breaking the rules and the very next day you're seen trying to not only change the rules but change the exact clause of the rules that you were accused of breaking, people are going to be suspicious and with justification. Things like that hurt your credibility, and when they accumulate in a pattern of behavior - as was the case here, at least from my perspective and apparently other editors who have since agreed with it - it's very trying on the patience to turn around and demand that everyone assume it was all in good faith. Good faith should be an assumed given from the beginning - a clean slate for every editor. But when the editor's respect for good faith has been questioned and the edits are part of a pattern, it becomes increasingly hard to honestly assume it. Responding in hostility as you did on the talk page only worsened the matter and gave more reason to question that you were acting in good faith there.

The dispute with 172 is an unfortunate incident and believe me - I did not come here hoping that I'd walk into a dispute on my first day. I simply signed up and started making perfectly reasonable and productive edits to an article that 172 was apparently very attached to. For whatever reason, he reacted in a way that was completely inappropriate. I didn't ask him to pick a revert war with me - it simply happened by coincidence. And when things happen, you have to figure out ways to deal with them. So I searched around in the wikipedia guidelines, saw there were places to report admin abuse, and posted a note requesting help with 172. In reviewing the incident I cannot find a single thing that I did that would've merited the response he directed at me or anything wrong with the way I responded to him. In fact, that's what the guidelines say to do - if a dispute emerges on the talk page and the other guy is completely uncooperative, as 172 was being, you go to dispute resolution. You can't hold it against me that by accident I happened to walk into an article where a hostility-prone editor was very closely guarding his own version of the text. If I had a choice between other editors to deal with and full knowledge of how 172 was going to conduct himself I would've started work somewhere else on wikipedia, but those aren't conveniences that most people have.

On the Village Pump incident, the coordination I am talking about is the fact that Willmcw posted a wikistalking allegation on my user page and that moments later you posted a link and notice about it to my village pump announcement with extremely snide and insulting content and edit descriptions - "Oh dear, Rangerdude himself is now accused of wikistalking" and "Rangerdude accused of the very thing he was posting about. How irritating." Whether formal or spur of the moment, it was a coordinated hit on me. Your post was clearly designed to complement and promote Willmcw's allegation, all to the end of discrediting the hours of work I'd spent trying to develop a guideline on wikistalking. This incident, of course, was not helped by our previous fight on the village pump post itself. While I concede my part of the responsibility in the revert warring there, I am of the firm belief that the original problem was caused by your failure to assume good faith. When Willmcw and I posted virtually simultaneous announcements of the stalking proposal I sincerely believed it would create confusion there. Since my post was more detailed about the nature and purpose of the proposal and since I was the author making the proposal (not Will who took it upon himself unilaterally), I attempted to merge the two links into one. You assumed bad faith from the start and accused me of wrongly deleting his material, and when I tried at length to explain that I was simply trying to merge two redundant announcements of the same thing, you only responded in further hostility and bad faith assumptions. That bad faith even extended over onto the incident board a few days later when a programming glitch there was causing text to get accidentally deleted. When a completely unrelated post by somebody else got caught up in that glitch, you blamed me and berated me for it in very hostile language. And that incident, of course, didn't help your credibility with me when we encountered each other again a few weeks and then a few months later, such as at PPol. Rangerdude 04:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, RD. Just a quick response for the time being to one part of it. You wrote: "Regardless of whether you were justified in your position or not, you were a party to the dispute with the other user you were protecting the page against." But I wasn't a party to the dispute. Not at all. I barely knew who Ali Sina was, I'd never edited a page with OceanSplash (Ali Sina's user name), wasn't involved in the dispute, was approaching it only as an admin. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Slim - I think there's a difference between what you consider being a party to a dispute and what PPol defined it as. PPol is explicit in saying that it is ANY substantive edit to the article's content in proximity to the page protection. You may not have felt that you were involved in the fight with OceanSplash or Anon. editor, but you made substantial content changes to the material they were fighting over and thus by the definition of PPol made yourself a participant - even if you felt you were doing it for the purpose of moderating the dispute. The solution in the future is to either get another editor with no connections to the article to protect the page or to abstain from editing the article itself before imposing protection. The one thing that PPol does not let you do though is to BOTH edit the article and protect it, and IMO that's for a good reason of avoiding conflicts of interest. Rangerdude 04:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've developed what I feel are quite good instincts regarding when I should refrain from protecting a page. There are pages I haven't edited in months, and yet I wouldn't protect them because I wrote them, edited them heavily, or still care a lot about the issues. There are other pages I've edited relatively recently that I'd have no qualms about protecting because I have nothing invested in them and don't know the issues well. This is why I wanted to edit WP:PP to make clear that it's not always a matter of time, but emotional investment too (for the want of a better term). Anyway, in the case of Islamphobia, I simply forgot I'd recently edited it, which shows you how little investment I had in it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Rangerdude, regarding your saying that SV showed bad faith towards you for an accidental text deletion. Isn't that what you did here, assume bad faith on my part when I did the same thing? [7] In fact, I was trying to fix an accidental deletion of yours. [8] -Willmcw 04:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem there, Will, is that what you were trying to restore was not a deletion by anybody, accident or otherwise - it was one of the comments that disappeared due to the program glitch. At the time you restored it and in doing so blanked my comment I had already been accused in bad faith of intentionally deleting things. I apologize if my characterization of your intent was mistaken, however at the time it occured (1) a condition bad faith had already been created between us by the earlier allegations made against me, and (2) you had given no indication in your edit description or other comments to suggest it was anything other than an intentional deletion. Rangerdude 04:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

As for your accidental deletion, I saw it was an accident and tried to fix it. I don't understand what you are saying about the incident. Are you saying you were justified in assuming bad faith on my part? But that other people making a similar assumption about you were unjustified? -Willmcw 04:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Also, I appreciate and accept your apology. Thanks, -Willmcw 06:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm essentially saying that a bad faith environment had already been established by the earlier allegations at that point in the argument. As a result, the good faith assumption that would've been present in other circumstances had already been spoiled between all participants in the discussion. Rangerdude 07:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

RD, I wonder whether it was becauses your first encounter at WP was hostile, and it set the tone. That's what I'm picking up from this correspondence: that we've all gotten off on the wrong foot with one another and there was a snowball effect.

Regarding the village pump, there really was no coordination. I posted the link and the comments "Oh dear etc" only because I found it funny, and I apologize for that. It wasn't very mature, and I was having a joke at your expense. But I promise you that's all it was. There was no coordination at all. I didn't even know the details of the various proposals and I hadn't edited the wikistalking page or, as I recall, even read it carefully. But you're right: when I saw you delete Will's post, I failed to assume good faith, and I did the same over the later editing glitch where I accused you of having deleted a post. I am sorry for that. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the apology re. the village pump incident. Having a hostile encounter in my first edits as a registered user certainly didn't help things and made me somewhat suspicious from the get-go. I put it aside for the first few weeks of editing and actually made several dozen extensive contributions throughout mid to late January. When I encountered Willmcw in late January and early February things again degraded into hostility due to him following my edits and being extremely nit-picky in his demands. For example, he would frequently decide for himself that a source I was using wasn't "good enough" by his own criteria and then threaten to delete whatever I had added if I didn't find another. In many cases this caused a problem as Willmcw began stalking me into areas that are outside of his realm of interest and expertise (e.g. United States trade law). Trade law is a very arcane and narrow focused subject matter that most people don't understand and could care less about. It's an area of interest to me though, hence my efforts to expand several articles on it here. Unfortunately as a consequence of its arcane nature, there are very few websites out there covering trade law - especially historical statutes that are no longer in effect - in any degree of detail. Many of my additions added detail of this sort from offline sources including some that are difficult to obtain today without doing a lot of research (e.g. 18th and 19th century government publications from the treasury department, historical newspapers etc). Many of the additions I made based on these are factual matters and universally agreed upon principles among experts on trade law, but because Will lacks familiarity in this area he began challenging and threatening to remove almost every substantive addition I made to some of these articles on account of there not being a website out there that could be linked to. When I visited wikipedia every morning only to find that Will had left all sorts of bizarre little "tasks" and homework assignments for me on talk pages of virtually every article I had edited in the days or weeks before it became very frustrating to even edit here. Regardless of what anyone thinks of my edits, it cannot be denied that I've made extensive positive contributions to several trade policy articles. I essentially wrote the entire Morrill Tariff article, which was a one-line stub on January 7th before I began editing it. The Walker Tariff article was also a two paragraph stub before I turned it into a full article in early February. The Tariff of 1842 didn't even exist until I wrote virtually the whole thing. Yet each and every one of these involved a fight of some form or another with Willmcw, who didn't know much of anything about the subject area but nevertheless made it a point to follow my edits to all of these articles and challenge them. This sort of behavior is what I have found so frustrating, and I also find it detrimental to wikipedia because all three of those articles I just mentioned would still be tiny stubs today if I had thrown in the towel when Willmcw began popping up at them to make challenges against what I added. Rangerdude 07:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Good faith

Rangerdude, I'm a bit concerned that after I tried to open a dialogue with a view to resolving this, you carried on posting criticism of me elsewhere. You posted a complaint about me here on November 7, just before we started talking, but then while we were talking you posted two more, here and here on November 8. So now I don't know what to do. How do you see this continuing? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually Slim, if you'll look more closely at the two responses, they were replies directed at Guettarda to comments he made to me regarding his interpretation of PPol and defense of the page protection you applied on Islamophobia. I intentionally avoided making any direct reference to you where possible as this conversation continued, and replied to Guettarda because he responded directly to me there and because I consider his actions in that case to have been evidence of the RfC's subject. As the original post there began prior to this discussion, holding it against me in hindsight is a breach of faith itself. I was responding to Guettarda in good faith about the RfC's subject following his comments addressed to me. Unfortunately it created two simultaneous discussions. I just posted a response on the RfC that included a note linking to this page and asking that future continuations of that discussion occur here. Hopefully this will resolve any further confusion. Rangerdude 18:58, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

One of the problems is that you keep saying I protected the article 24 hours after editing it. But I vprotected it that time, which any admin is allowed to do, whether editing or not. It was an anon IP address who kept adding the VfD tag, but without any corresponding VfD page, which is a case of simple vandalism, and it was only vprotected for eight hours until he got bored and moved on. You keep calling this a policy violation on my part, without mentioning that it was vandalism. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:45, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Slim - As far as I can tell the anon IP made only two edits to the article before you protected it. In the first one he added a dispute tag [9]. User:Yuber then removed that tag without explanation about 9 minutes later. I only see one VfD by that same anon in response to Yuber a few minutes after that. Then Yuber reverted again and you imposed page protection. Of those two edits, the only one that is even borderline vandalism is the second VfD tag and seeing as no attempt was apparently made to figure out why he added it, simply labelling it vandalism would seem to violate the good faith assumption. Adding a dispute tag to an article where you dispute the content certainly isn't vandalism though, so I don't see any wrong he committed in that act. In sum, responding to a single VfD tag on the article by page protecting it is excessive - esp. when you've been extensively involved in that article's edits according to PPol's definition of involvement. Rangerdude 04:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The anon had put the dispute tag up [10], which another editor reverted (drive-by tagging isn't allowed), had added a VfD tag, which another editor reverted, [11], then deleted the archived discussion of the previous VfD [12], so I vprotected the article for eight hours, so people wouldn't have to keep reverting him. That's a perfectly correct use of protection. The policy doesn't say we can never protect articles we've editing, and it specifically excludes vandalism.

I find it incredibly depressing that you're going on about this, and that I have to spend time hunting for diffs to satisfy you over such a minor incident. We can't spend our lives going over and over past incidents, and that seems to be what you want to tie us up doing. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)