Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Beckjord/Evidence

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Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.

As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&oldid=5584644] [1].

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Contents


[edit] Evidence presented by DanielCD

[edit] First assertion

My statement is for the record, mainly. I don't expect it to have any significant effect on the outcome, but I feel it deserves mention.

I don't believe Beckjord is here solely with the intent of causing trouble. The trouble is a result of his personality, and as it is trouble, it deserves whatever judgement assigned. He has asked for help, and I tried to give it to him. However, I didn't refer him to other resources when my time got tight over the last month, and perhaps that is a failure on my part.

As evidence, I refer this comment on my userpage by Beckjord: Questions for Daniel.

Here is the edit/difference link: User talk:DanielCD 19:50, 11 December 2005

--DanielCD 20:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Note My judgements are based on the period in which I had experience with him, which was primarily before the current issues were brought up. --DanielCD 17:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evidence presented by Martial Law

[edit] First assertion

When I found this subject, it appeared that the all of the Users were violating WP:BITE, WP:NPA protocol, calling him disruptive and the like, so DanielCD and I attempted to help him with Wikipedia and its protocol. He may indeed have issues with his personality. He says that he has had multiple Bigfoot and UFO encounters, and implies that the skeptics are accusing him of lying and/or being a idiot, and are trying to silence him. I've personally investigated a Bigfoot case myself in which the people don't like skeptics because they have outright accused the residents of lying and/or being idiots, so I can see why User:Beckjord does'nt like skeptics. I do not think he intends to be disruptive at all.

[edit] Evidence presented by MONGO

[edit] Using sockpuppet accounts for dubious reasons

Beckjord (talk · contribs) is apparently Erik Beckjord, and has edited his own article (07:45, 7 December 2005), usually posting links to his website(s). After being welcomed as a new account, (22:19, 6 December 2005) Beckjord later creates a sockpuppet army to circumvent the three revert rule and/or to give the appearance of more editors in agreement with his perspective. Originally posting solely with his username Beckjord commencing in early December, 2005, Beckjord then creates sockpuppets and also uses an AOL IP. Beckjord has a particularily easily identifiable editing style as shown in talk pages including alphanumerical rows as some form of page break, random line spacing and indenting frequently for every papagraph or sentence, causing page overrun.

Examples of distinctive editing style:
Early contributions (from Beckjord account)
Sock puppets:
AOL IP

[edit] Violation of no original research

Beckjord (talk · contribs) violates no original research with postings linked from his website(s), and his unproven personal opinion that Bigfoot is essentially from outer space. [2],[3], [4],[5], [6], [7]

Beckjord was asked numerous times to not cite himself or his independent website(s), [8], [9], [10]

[edit] Violation of no personal attacks

Beckjord (talk · contribs) violates no personal attacks on dozens of occasions either in his

[edit] Evidence presented by DreamGuy

[edit] Extreme lack of civility

Everyone gets a little test sometimes. Beckjord, however, even at his best is usually far beyond anything that can be excused. His reponse to my removing the link to his own personal website as a violation of Wikipedia:External links policy was to create this rant (with the heading of "F*ck you DreamGuy")

[edit] Violating no original research policy

Beckjord considers himself the only expert on Bigfoot, as he states in this comment on Jan. 29, 2006. He feels listing himself as a source for claims is justified, despite clear guidelines to the contrary. See also this edit comment on Jan. 30. This is not a new problem. On his second day with his registered account, on Dec. 7, 2005, he is already denies No Original Research policy applies to him. This policy was explained to him by myself and others in response to one of his first edits, where he simply cites himself as the source for massive article changes and adds links to his own site and removes a link to an essay by one of the field's leading experts but who he disagrees with.

[edit] Legally questionable comments

He has used articles, talk pages and edit comments to make severe accusations of criminal wrongdoing against experts in the field of Bigfoot studies who he disagrees with. Like in this example, where he accused a man of theft and not knowing what he's talking about in an effort to remove a link to an essay from Loren Coleman, who is widely considered one of the top(if not the top) experts on the topic. Note that this change was the exact same change he originally made in the edit I linked to previously. It's a month and a half and he's still fighting to remove it despite lacking support for the change from any other editor. He has also accused another author of libel more than once in order to justify removing her book from the list of sources. These kinds of accusations are quite problematic and should not be entered here by anyone for legal reasons.

[edit] Disruption of Wikipedia

In addition to use of a large number of sockpuppets and anon IP accounts (through AOL, unfortunately) as detailed by MONGO above (and see this recent one on January 30), Beckjord uses the internet to try to orchestrate attacks on Wikipedia. For one thing, he puts up pages on his own website beckjord.com calling people to revert to a version (by date and time or editor name) of the article he approves of and to mark it a "minor edit" -- He did this on beckjord.com/bigfoot/wikipediabigfoot.html (which I documented in the RfAr) but apparently removed the page when he saw that we found it. He also had this info on beckjord.com/bigfoot/wikipediasmear.html which is also now deleted but can be seen in a Google cache by entering that address or going here (assuming links to caches work and stay active long enough for you to see this). I have a backup copy of this document at User:DreamGuy/SavedBeckjordArbitrationEvidence.

He posted similar calls to attack Wikipedia on other sites, such as network54.com/.

Furthermore, once he has you singled out as enemy, he follows you to other articles you edit to revert it back to an old version and includes misleading edit comments. Here is him reverting Mythology back to an ancient version when Myth still redirected to it: [33] and here's his edit to Bigfoot minutes later on the same IP to show it's him: [34] (note also again claiming a famous expert is an "admitted thief"). Earlier in the day on another AOL IP the same misleading edit was done on Mythology: [35] and compare to the mention in his rant earlier today (the first link I provide as evidence) that "Your pages get massive reverts and edits from others, all the time." And then later in the day he reverted the Mythology article again to the same out of date version with only a minor edit checked as 205.188.117.6, then vandalized Android79's user page as 205.188.117.74, just after he added the comments to this page as 205.188.117.68.

This is not the first time he's done this sort of thing either. See the contributions of 172.137.247.247 on January 22 for examples of similar petty harassment on pages linked to editors he considers enemies.

[edit] Evidence presented by android79

Beckjord threatens to use any means necessary to continue to disrupt the article and others he feels need "the truth" added: [36]. This by itself is probably enough to show that Beckjord does not have good intentions for his time on Wikipedia.

[edit] Sockpuppetry

Beckjord has used many sockpuppets to revert Bigfoot and to support his position on the talk page. He has denied such accusations, claiming that it is simply his followers that are making supportive edits and comments, in the exact same style that he does. Unfortunately, he has used AOL to make anonymous edits and, presumably, logged-in edits, so CheckUser will be relatively unhelpful.

205.208.227.49 (talk · contribs) appears to be Beckjord's main IP, and has remained static since I became involved in this situation. Initially, Beckjord would sign edits from this IP as himself [37], but later signed edits from this and other IPs claiming to be a part of an "editing group" that has gone by various names, such as "Jeff" [38] and "DrJoe" [39]; see also DrJoe (talk · contribs), Dr Joe (talk · contribs), and [40], in which it is signed as the "Dr Joe Editing Consortium".

Beckjord also routinely uses AOL to edit anonymously, either while he is blocked or while he is ostensibly "away" from Internet access [41].

[edit] Violations of Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and No original research

Beckjord sees the above three policies as flawed, at least when applied to him or his research and edits.

  1. Beckjord takes issue with verifiability as a valid policy: [42]
  2. Beckjord complains about the NPOV policy, which he admits to not having read, and complains that the rules are too complicated, and that no one follows them anyway: [43]
  3. Beckjord inserts external links to his own personal website, thus violating the original research policy: [44]

These are merely representative examples; you don't have to go far in the history of Talk:Bigfoot to find many more.

[edit] Violations of No personal attacks, Civility, Assume good faith

A representative sample of personal attacks by Beckjord:

  1. I am told to "G.F.Y." [45] by "Jeff", presumably shorthand for "go fuck yourself". Beckjord frequently uses abbreviations such as this one or Bowdlerizes his comments so he can later claim that's not what he really meant, even going so far as to turn "jerk" into "j**k".
  2. I am, among other things, a know-nothing asshole: [46]
  3. In an edit summary, I am told to "cram it up" my "fucking ass": [47]

Beckjord's biggest problem with Wikipedia appears to be that anyone, including non-experts, can edit any article, and that pseudonymous editors such as myself don't have to reveal our real names or credentials. Beckjord has attacked nearly every editor he has come into conflict with in this manner, calling us cowards and worse: [48].

Recently, Beckjord proposed a rule whereby only those with college degrees should be allowed to edit, at the same time insulting my intelligence and education: [49]. Naturally, I respond, letting him know that this proposed ban will not affect me: [50]. As I suspected would happen, Beckjord refuses to assume good faith and uses this as an opportunity to berate me for remaining anonymous: [51].

[edit] Article ownership and disruption campaign

Today (Jan 30) Beckjord related to us through one of his "committee members" (presumably Beckjord on AOL dialup) that the Bigfoot article is owned by the "committee" and that it will be reverted to a state "they" prefer continuously: [52]. android79 23:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Responses by User: 205.188.117.68 (an AOL dial up IP)

(note, these were added within my evidence above... I moved it here) DreamGuy 09:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] COLEMAN NOT EXPERT, NOR LEADING ANYTHING EXCEPT CRIME

Merely because DG or whomever says something is so, does not make it so.

You naive people do not understand what lies are.

To be a leading expert, one must, in BF field, do OR. Coleman does no OR. He is widely hated.

Garry

[edit] expert

EB says he calims to be the only one on WIKI to be a BF expert.

Appearantly you people cannot read.

This statement above here is just a lie.

Also, he cannot speak here,because the male/female Bishonen tulip person has blocked him so he can't post here. Really bright of you guys.

mongod

_______________________


[edit] criminal acts

Loren Coleman was canned from the Univ. of So. Maine for having stolen photos from Peter Byrne.

He is a thief. It is not maybe. See copies of illegal contracts on http://www.beckjord.com/bigfoot/coleman.html

He is NOT respected, anywhere.

Gary


[edit] asking for new people to edit

is not illegal.Asking for new people to revert bad edits by DreamGuy is not illegal.

This is not "attacking Wiki". It is reverting bad edits.

Garry

[edit] IP is not proof of anything.

An AOL ip can be anyone.

Bonk!

Garry

00000000000000000


[edit] Avoid stroke, DG=

-)

Garry

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllll