Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/International Churches of Christ/Evidence

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Contents


[edit] Evidence presented by Xiaphias

I strongly believe that TransylvanianKarl should be banned from editing the article regarding the International Churches of Christ (ICoC) and that the page be granted semi-protected status for a period of at least several months. Karl's long history of persistent, biased, and disruptive edits – including instances of outright vandalism – speaks for itself. The evidence I've gathered here is scant, even superficial, and I urge any involved arbitrator to peruse the ICoC edit history and Karl's edit history, for these two sources are far more illustrative.

The following are the broad reasons for banning TransylvanianKarl and awarding semiprotected status.

[edit] Heavily Biased Editing

  • Self-announced member of the ICoC[10]. (His mother and brother are also members[11].)
  • Routinely cites biblical passages as sources for ICoC practice and doctrine.[12][13]
  • Values church publications over scholarly sources; in this example he changes an established fact accordingly. [14]
  • Changed the church founder from “Kip McKean” to “Jesus Christ.” [15]
  • Removed a chart indicating which levels of clergyman were salaried, explaining it was POV because all members are paid by God. [16]

[edit] Refusal to Yield to Consensus

  • Of the four Wikipedians who responded to my Request for Comment, all four supported my revised version of the article. [17][18][19][20]
  • However, Karl repeatedly reverted to the pre-Xiaphias version. [21][22][23]

[edit] Persistent, Single-Purpose Account

  • Of his 1780 mainspace edits, fully 70% are from the ICoC article alone. [24]
  • 11 of his 15 most edited articles are tangentially related to the ICoC.[1]
  • He’ll make hundreds of edits over the course of just a few days. [25]
  • I believe that his habit of using dozens of edits at a time without any edit summaries – which users have specifically asked him to stop doing – can only be explained as an attempt to conceal the nature and degree of his involvement. In one instance, he encountered a statement with three footnotes; he deleted one and returned thirty minutes later to delete another. Both removals were embedded in a sea of tedious edits.

[edit] Vandalism

  • Frequently removes citations for no obvious reasons, [26][27][28][29][30][31] sometimes flagging the change as 'minor.' [32][33]
  • Deletes well-referenced statements if he disagrees. [34][35]
  • Replaces scholarly in-line citations with ICoC-published material, with no regard for the corresponding facts. [36][37] In one instance he redirected a reference's URL to an ICoC website, without changing the source's title or other information. [38] A possible explanation for these bizarre actions is that Karl hopes to trick unwitting Wikipedia browsers into reading ICoC publications.
  • Inexplicably removes other page information; in this example he deletes a category. [39]

[edit] Karl’s Use of IP Editing

[edit] The Problem

Most editors, I assume, occasionally edit Wikipedia without logging in. The problem is that Karl uses IPs as sockpuppets to violate Wikipedia policy and avoid scrutiny. I present this section as evidence both for banning Karl and for semiprotecting the article.

  • Disguises acts of maliciousness. An anonymous user with IP 193.6.208.101 (obviously Karl[2]) broke a series of "<ref>" links; Karl subsequently removed the now-broken sources, explaining “not real reference.” [40]
  • Diffuses blame for major, controversial changes. Karl used IP 85.238.66.119[3] to revert the page to its pre-Xiaphias state [41], then TransylvanianKarl arrived to make more minor edits.[42]
  • Allows Karl to anonymously lash out against editors with whom he has been involved in a debate. Karl uses IP 195.38.99.103[4] to delete my "Xiaphias may be able to help with source verification" tag from the article's talk page.[43]

[edit] The Proof
  • As alluded to previously, a disproportionate number of anonymous ICoC editors can be traced back to Budapest, Hungary.[5] According to his userpage, this is Karl's city of residence.[44]
  • Beginning after September 25, 2007, Karl made no edits to the ICoC page for a period of nearly four months, during which time malicious IP edits flourished. Because of this, a semi-protected status was introduced December 13 to prevent anonymous edits; four hours later, Karl returned to edit the page.[45]
  • Compare these edit summaries of IP 85.238.71.148 [46] and 193.6.208.101 [47] with these of Karl [48][49]; both IPs are registered to Budapest.
  • There are also numerous occurrences of Karl and a specific IP (193.6.208.101 in this example) editing as a tag-team. [50]

[edit] Non-Karl IP Editing

  • Amplified by the complete absence of regular editors, IP vandalism poses a constant and often overwhelming threat. [51]
  • IP editors are often very passionate supporters of the ICoC, writing as undisguised members. [52][53]
  • On the opposite side of the spectrum are vehemently anti-ICoC editors. [54]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ International Churches of Christ (1247), Kip McKean [ICoC founder] (155), Churches of Christ (29), Calvary Chapel (25) List of people with Restoration Movement ties (16), Restorationism (14), List of groups referred to as cults (13), Jesus movement (12), Seventh-day Adventist Church (7) Restoration Movement (6)
  2. ^ 193.6.208.101: Traced to Karl's hometown of Budapest [1], uses Karl's characteristic edit summary [2][3], and edits the ICoC article almost exclusively.[4]
  3. ^ 85.238.66.119: Traced to Karl's hometown of Budapest.[5]
  4. ^ 195.38.99.103: Traced to Karl's hometown of Budapest [6], responded [7] to Minan's criticism of TransylvanianKarl [8], uses Karl's style of making a large number of very minor edits.[9]
  5. ^ Of the 100 most recent edits to the ICoC article, I traced five unique IPs to Budapest: 195.38.115.37, 85.238.66.119, 85.238.67.17, 217.197.188.4, and 195.38.110.97

[edit] Evidence presented by LtPowers

[edit] The problem is long-standing and potentially endemic to the ICoC

I was originally directed to this article in August 2007 by a fellow participant on an Internet forum (atheism.about.com's forum, to be precise). Said acquaintance (who I think edited here as KeithStump (talk · contribs)) is a former member of the ICoC, an organization he considers to be a cult. He mentioned that he had tried in the past to edit this article but was thwarted repeatedly by TransyvanianKarl:

When I was trying to get some facts into the article, I had to wrangle with this "Transylvania Karl" person. He has been relentless at stripping out any inconvenient fact from the article. He's been at this for years.
If you look in the discussion section, I basically called Karl a liar. He was claiming they no longer taught that they were the only true Christians, so I asked him to name a single Christian group with no history with the ICOC, that he considered to be saved. Of course, he couldn't do it."

This conflict apparently occurred in July-September 2006, based on KeithStump's contribution history.

KeithStump further indicated that this is par for the course for the ICoC: "I've given up on any attempt to maintain honesty in the article. The current members simply won't tolerate such things." He also said: "The former leader, who was forced to resign under scandal, has started a new cult. Therefore, the current membership attempts to blame all problems on him and make itself out to be a shining beacon of god's will on earth, now that the former leader (Kip McKean) is no longer affiliated with it." This explains why TransylvanianKarl often edits Kip McKean's name out of the article, as Xiaphias notes above.

I realize the above quotations are hearsay; I include them primarily for completeness. I can provide links if necessary, but they may require forum registration.

[edit] TransylvanianKarl hides his motives behind misinterpretations of Wikipedia policy

We all know that T.Karl's first language is not English. As such, he can be very hard to understand at times -- he admits as much and solicits feedback on his English. No problem there. However, it does make it hard to tell whether he is actually misunderstanding Wikipedia policy or if he's maliciously twisting it to suit his own ends. Perhaps a combination of both.

That caveat in mind, here are some instances:

  • T.Karl's defense of excising information on past (i.e., pre-Kip McKean) controversial beliefs and behaviors is that the article must be "topical": [55]
  • T.Karl complains that Xiaphias's version is "not neutral": [56]
    • When asked for specifics, one of his examples was that "paid and unpaid" are not neutral terms by which to categorize members of the church: [57]
  • T.Karl refers to Xiaphias's version as "vandalism": [58][59]
  • Apparently, according to T.Karl, such things as the founding date of the church and the name of the founder are matters of opinion and thus their inclusion is a violation of NPOV policy: [60]
  • Reverting away from T.Karl's preferred version is, according to him, vandalism because his preferred version is longer: [61]

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