Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Zen-master

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Case Opened on 19:11, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Case Closed on 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Case Modified on 19:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this request. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) 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 evidence and suggesting proposed decisions at /Workshop and voting on proposed decisions at /Proposed decision.

Contents

[edit] Involved parties

  • About a dozen editors talked for 2 and 1/2 weeks with Zen-master on Talk:Race_and_intelligence regarding his concerns with the article. Nectarflowed and Zen-master conducted a lengthy discussion on Zen-master's talk page, trying to resolve the concerns in one-on-one discussion.[1]
  • Zen-master has been the subject of an RFA for name-calling on the race and intelligence talk page, 3 votes coming in on June 22 and the 4rth on June 26. Results were (2/2/0/0).[2]
  • Zen-master has been the subject of a proposed policy enforcement ban on June 30 for disruptive personal remarks on Talk:Race_and_intelligence.[3])

[edit] Statement by Nectarflowed

Summarizing the context this dispute occurs in, Race and intelligence is an article that has been scrutinized by a recent VFD, which it passed by about 40-6, and by a request for peer-review. The article was written by about a dozen users, many of them professional scientists working in fields that give them expertise. The article was regarded during the VFD as being exceptionally well-referenced, and is in line with published statements of mainstream science on the matter.[4]

Though Zen-master's argument isn't under question here, I should summarize. He believes that framing the racial IQ disparity under question in terms of race presupposes a genetic cause. Users have responded with different arguments, and my summary is that, assuming genetics are not involved, "racial IQ disparity" would still be the appropriate frame, as the difference in average IQ still exists between races. This is analagous to the phrases "gender IQ disparity" and "socioeconomic IQ disparity." Note that these terms aren't actually in use; they just refer to the frame of the article.

Over a period of a couple weeks, Zen-master failed to convince any of the roughly dozen users who engaged with him on the discussion page of the validity of his argument, though they talked with him at length. A number of users have expressed to him that they regard his behavior as being disruptive, and during this time, work on the article has all but ceased. A number of users have complained about his accusations and name-calling, especially calling people - themselves and their actions - "racist," "Nazi," and "evil." Some formerly-regular users have expressed their frustration and have stopped participating on the page or have stopped making contributions to Wikipedia, though this may be temporary. Zen-master has been asked to apologize a number of times by different users, including the mediator, Uncle Ed, both prior and following his proposed policy enforcement ban, but he has yet to do so. At one point, several days after the RFA regarding him, he moved "Race and intelligence" to "race and IQ,"[5] even though consensus had clearly rejected his proposal.

Zen-master has been warned or asked to stop name-calling related to this article maybe 15 times. Following the RFA and proposed policy enforcement ban for disruptive personal remarks, he wrote the following on the race and intelligence discussion page. "Even a random racist would seek a true scientific basis for their beliefs but you've gone way beyond that, you and others have perverted science and language into a racist economic caste system mass propaganda tool. You must have some need for racism and "IQ based classism" to exist in the world."[6]

Discussion having not convinced anybody, Zen-master has lately taken his argument from the discussion page to the article itself, and has attempted to make large changes that he knows are disagreed with by all of the regular editors of this page. Edit wars ensued. On July 2 he reverted 4 times, was warned, and then reverted a 5th time.

Zen-master has demonstrated an unusually strong commitment to POV-pushing and has consistently behaved disruptively in discussion. A number of users on race and intelligence talk have expressed that he has demonstrated a lack of significant experience in both the research areas race, and intelligence. If it's possible, I recommend Zen-master be banned from editing any article on either race or intelligence, as it would be a waste of time to have to go through this again at race or intelligence etc.--Nectarflowed T 3 July 2005 03:10 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by User:Zen-master

I think mediation or exposing the issue to a larger number of people might be the best first step at resolving the race and intelligence dispute, though I welcome this space to clear up the many inaccuracies that User:Nectarflowed presented above.

An article surviving VfD is not evidence that the content is neutral, on the contrary, many people errantly nominate articles that instead need a POV clean up rather than deletion. I share the earlier VfD nominator's concerns that the race and intelligence article presents the subject so unfairly as to be uncleanupable, which may be true but I thought I'd give it a shot.

User:Nectarflowed and many other pro "intelligence research" editors fail to acknowledge criticisms against the "intelligence research" field in general and "race and intelligence" in particular. Despite how Nectraflowed characterizes my criticisms above, I have not (yet) disputed the "pro" sources for the article directly (have not advocated their removal), instead, I have tried to clean up neutrality violations that completely ignore the existence of valid criticisms and lack of consensus on multiple levels. These neutrality violations include: exclusive and subtly tricky framing of the issue only in terms of "race", poor or suggestive word choices, and ambiguous or outright misleading sentence construction. [7] Just because a source was in a "peer reviewed" journal is not evidence that other cited criticisms from other reputable sources should be discounted out of hand. "Race" and "intelligence research" does not exist in a vacuum where there are no criticisms on multiple levels, the talk page and archive have numerous citations demonstrating this fact. The "pro" editors of race and intelligence seemingly would revert even a synopsis of the scientific racism article which is very relevant to this dispute as it is a core criticism of the field and the way race and intelligence uses implied conclusions in particular.

These handful of editors allied with User:Nectarflowed seem singularly interested in denying any mention of criticisms of the subject. A majority of editors can not violate Wikipedia's policy of presenting a subject neutrally, especially when there is no consensus in the wider academic community. The neutrality violations in the article are much more serious than what you might see in a run of the mill edit war amongst POV pushers, the language confusion and one sided framing of the issue, combined with repetition, seems to me to be designed to psychologically trick the reader into assuming "race" is the cause for the "IQ disparity" when there is no scientific consensus for that conclusion and no scientific consensus to even present the issue only that way. One test results data correlation pair "race" vs "IQ" is not conclusive or the only way to frame the issue given the many other data correlation pairs from the exact same data such as "wealth" vs "nutrition". In my interpretation, these "pro" editors of race and intelligence intentionally perpetuate and defend intentionally misleading or psychologically tricky presumption inducing language for political rather than objective scientific purposes. Note the suspicious, unscientific use of emphases that I tried to clean up. [8] Also note I and one other editor User:Willmcw were reverted just adding the {TotallyDisputed} header to the article, which is curious given the talk page, the archive, and now a second RfA which I submit as evidence that there is indeed a legitimate neutrality dispute. [9] [10] Even more suspicious was the outright deletion of talk page discussions through a long series of edits described as "archiving" (check the byzantine talk page history for the full story). [11] And finally the readibility of my first list of citations was seemingly intentionally damaged and mischaracterized, certainly not addressed or acknowledge directly. [12] Even more recently the talk page was suspiciously and suddenly archived a second time, with 2 core discussions that were the most critical of the article and active the day before, plus numerous others discussions active within 5 days before [13]. The handful of "pro" editors seems to have a pattern of being unnecessarily verbose generally, and they seem to immediately create tangential or superfluous discussions underneath core criticism discussions perhaps for the purpose of filling up the talk page to hasten the need for archiving and to minimize the exposure and readability of criticisms for third parties.

On a separate note, I am still unclear as to how User:Ed Poor appointed himself "mediator" given the fact that he is directly involved in the dispute and can not be considered neutral on this issue.

I do not understand Nectarflow's point above that many editors of the article are "intelligence researchers" themselves or experts in the field. How is that not "original research"? If some editors of a particular article potentially have a vested financial or political interest in presenting their pet subject doesn't that mean there is a greater chance of neutrality violations? The history and talk page are nothing but attempts at denying valid criticisms, what benefit did these experts add to the article? See Talk:Race and intelligence and [14] Why don't "intelligence researchers" generally seem to follow the scientific method especially as far as just presenting the subject goes? If the "pro" editors are themselves "intelligence researchers" with a training in the scientific method then the lack of language neutrality and choice of presentation method used in the article is exponentially more puzzling. The only thing the "pro" race and intelligence editors seem to be experts in is the psychology of language. zen master T 3 July 2005 07:32 (UTC)

User:PatrickOMoran's statement below is a great example of how repetition and one sided framing of the issue can be used to trick readers into forming presumptive conclusions about the subject. "Skin color vs skin cancer" is a carefully chosen analogy by POM to once again force the reader to only think about "race" and "intelligence" in terms of "race" so description can be confused with cause later on. POM's analogy also happens to be completely inaccurate, skin color is not the cause of skin cancer, sunlight and diet etc are (or is POM arguing/hinting otherwise?). The pro editors of race and intelligence's repetition misdirects away from the fact that the article is not just about description of the issue, the article is also about the cause for the issue. And most suspiciously, the article only discusses the implications of just one cause, "race". The criticisms against the article, area of research and method of presentation are fundamental, a provably one sided presentation of a subject should be disallowed. The very first sentence in the race and intelligence article is problematic on multiple levels: "...and practical consequences of group differences in intelligence" which not only induces readers to presumptively conclude that some sort of "group" based "IQ disparity" exists it also implies "race" is the cause. That sentence and "intelligence research" overall seems to be designed to achieve some sort of political result, divide and conquer, it effectively imposes a fabricated "IQ" based caste system upon society. If nutrition is the cause of the "IQ disparity" then instead of "consequences" the field should be focused on (or at least mention) ways of improving nutrition but most tellingly it does not. POM even says this:

"Ironically, one cannot hope to defeat the proposition that there is an actual causal connection (and not a mere correlation) between [race] and [intelligence] without looking at the evidence, criticisms of the studies, etc. -- which is exactly what the article on [intelligence] and [race] is intended to do."

Which completely misframes criticisms against the "intelligence research" field. Critics, including myself, accuse the intelligence research field of errantly implying, at a fundamental level, that "race" is the cause for the "intelligence" disparity because of the one sided way they present the issue. They ignore all other data correlations that might be causes and they repeatedly only want to present the issue in terms of "race" and "intelligence" when there are many other valid and scientific ways of looking at it (the issue is abstract in fact). Critics of the field are not advocating that "race" and "intelligence" evidence should be discarded, instead, they are precisely accusing the "intelligence research" field itself of, for some apparently political reason, choosing to only look at one set of evidence themselves. The key question is: if the issue can be presented multiple ways is it scientific and neutral to present it only one way? The pro editors do indeed ignore/misdirect away from the fact that the issue can be presented/thought of in multiple ways. Given the meaning of the phrase "sugar and tooth decay" there can be no doubt that "race and intelligence" is at best ambiguous and at worst presumptively conclusive inducing. If the pro editors of race and intelligence truly valued the scientific method they would not support the use of what is, at the very least, ambiguous language, they would want to expose their issue to the light of day and have conclusions be based on neutrally presented facts, instead of conclusion being induced through psychologically tricky language. zen master T 23:34, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by User:Drummond (DAD)

I have been a target of Zen-master's behavior. I had been hopeful that, given the relative lull in Zen-master's postings, the behavior indicated by Nectarflowed would not reoccur. Today, Zen-master resumed his behavior. Race and intelligence was recently nominated for featured article status and many productive suggestions have been made on its comments page. Zen-master posted a comment in which he theorized that all authors on the article are "ultra racist" and "insanely politically motived[sic]" [15]. He has continued to push a consistent POV, though results of a recent straw-poll he initiated [16] indicates that no other editor shared his POV [17]. I have lost my cool with him once [18] after being called "evil" and told to "enjoy [my] jail cell"; User:Ed Poor intervened and requested that we (and User:Patrick0Moran) unconditionally apologize to each other, which Patrick and I did [19][20] while Zen-master did not [21]. Zen-master's behavior has been unpleasant and upsetting to me, as I have no way to defend myself (his accusations are enough), and has also been disruptive to community work on a highly controversial issue. As a scientist working in population genetics in a cognitive science degree program, I have some expertise in the subject, but have spent a disproportionate amount of time dealing with Zen-master's attacks and rather naive diatribes. I strongly support Nectarflowed's RFA. --DAD T 04:41, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by User:Patrick0Moran (P0M)

Zen-master assumes malice and conspiracy where only good will (and sometimes impatience) exists:

The handful of "pro" editors seems to have a pattern of being unnecessarily verbose generally, and they seem to immediately create tangential or superfluous discussions underneath core criticism discussions perhaps for the purpose of filling up the talk page to hasten the need for archiving and to minimize the exposure and readability of criticisms for third parties.

Probably Zen-master is talking about my verbosity. What he describes as tangential discussions are those that try to get at an underlying problem of unclear thinking. They may seem verbose to Zen-master because when a short criticism that would hopefully "clue in" another contributer fails then one is tempted to try to explain things starting from a more fundamental level.

I have steadfastly avoided characterizing the personal attributes of Zen-master. I have also not characterized this contributor's ideological stance.

I have tried, perhaps too strenuously, to move this contributor past one fundamental obstacle to clear thinking. I have outlined a structure for a set of articles that would more clearly contextualize the discussion/debate about [intelligence] and [race]. Zen-master has never responsively commented on any of my attempts, and has never moved beyond the log jam exemplified in his words above:

One test result<s> data correlation pair{,} "race" vs "IQ"{,} is not conclusive or the only way to frame the issue given the many other data correlation pairs from the exact same data such as "wealth" vs "nutrition".

I've tried to clarify the meaning a bit by indicating a deletion (<s>) and two additions {,}

Zen-master makes a fundamental thinking error, apparently believing that one could discover some correlation, e.g., a connection between skin color and skin cancer, through a process of looking at every possible "data correlation pair" except the pair called "skin color and skin cancer." In the passage above, it even seems that Zen-master might be advocating examining every possible data correlation pair that includes neither skin color nor skin cancer. As the tag line in the old joke has it, "You can't get there from here."

Nectarflowed spent hours trying and failing to get Zen-master to look at this issue and similar issues. (See Zen-master's talk page.) Other people have made my point directly to Zen-master in direct answer to his remarks in ways that are more succinct and clear than mine. In all cases Zen-master has successfully defended himself from looking at the fundamental problem. He typically repeats earlier charges that assume that his interlocutors harbor ill will toward him and/or deep-dyed ideological biases. Above, for instance, he speaks of "exclusive and subtly tricky framing of the issue only in terms of 'race'". Ironically, one cannot hope to defeat the proposition that there is an actual causal connection (and not a mere correlation) between [race] and [intelligence] without looking at the evidence, criticisms of the studies, etc. -- which is exactly what the article on [intelligence] and [race] is intended to do.

Without tediously following through hours of old discussion page records it may be difficult to isolate the fundamental sources of trouble.

(1) I asked Ed Poor to have a look at the "Race and Intelligence" discussion page because Zen-master was calling names. False accusations can be very damaging to individuals, and I wanted it stopped. That was the one issue that I thought needed immediate attention from a respected senior member of the Wikipedia community.

(2) The fundamental question of clear thinking will not go away. It is so basic to the way that Zen-master looks at things that it is difficult to see a way forward while it remains unrecognized and unresolved. If someone will not go through a discussion in a logical and consequential manner, and insists on making strongly negative axiological judgments against those who disagree with him/her, then there is no real process of communication and the correct response would seem to be to detach from the encounter.

(3) If Zen-master had not shifted his efforts to editing the article in ways that were not cooperative and ways that were considered unhelpful by the other contributors, then the result would likely have been that nobody would have made new responses to old boiler-plate critiques. However, edit wars ensued in a climate wherein communication had already proven to be thoroughly road-blocked.

So here we are. We can go nowhere until somebody helps Zen-master untie the knot. Six or more of us have tried. So far, anybody who has tried to straighten things out has been viewed as not being neutral. Zen-master seems to see malice behind almost everything. Who would he trust? P0M 16:30, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by User:Rikurzhen (Rikurzhen)

I believe the Zen Master (ZM) issue has been described fully by commenters above. I will try to summarize as I see it. Most of the incidents I'm describing are archived: Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 9 (inherent language bias). I copied some relevant sections here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Zen-master/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Rikurzhen

  • ZM has an ostensibly unique POV about this subject, which he summarized himself as: Critics, including myself, accuse the intelligence research field of errantly implying, at a fundamental level, that "race" is the cause for the "intelligence" disparity because of the one sided way they present the issue.
    • ZM himself is the only critic that I know of who makes this claim.
    • Neither ZM, nor any other editor, has been able to substantiate this POV with citations. This is not to say that sharply critical POVs of race and intelligence research do not exist (e.g. Race_and_intelligence#Public_controversy describes many). However, none of these POVs correspond with ZM's POV.
      • It is understandable that a first-time editor may doubt that the article is factually accurate or unbiased because the understanding of this topic among the public and public intellecutals[22] is significantly different than the understanding of experts [23][24](this fact is described in detail in Snyderman and Rothman, 1988, The IQ Controversy[25]). However, many previous editors with these concerns have come to understand the problem and either moved on or jumped in to help. ZM has not.
    • ZM has been unable or unwilling to accept that his POV is unique, despite many attempts (some described above) to explain that his thinking is unique, and so cannot be included in the article.
    • By trying to add his POV to the article, I maintain that ZM is violating WP:NOR (and also WP:NPOV).
    • Edit wars with ZM resulted when he took his ideas from the talk page to the article.
  • ZM has personally attacked (AFAIK) everyone who has tried to talk with him.
    • To be fair, I can see how someone who believes as ZM does about this topic would think that anyone who disagreed with him was racist. While many of his personal attacks have been direct, others have been implicit; yet the meaning of each is clear.
    • Yet, he has been unwilling to give us the courtesy of taking our word that we are well-meaning people. Likewise, he has refused to accept the existence of a large, healthy scholarly process in the world as evidence that his accusations of a conspiracy of racists is implausible and unhelpful to work in the article.
    • His personal attacks were wholly disruptive and severely affected our ability to edit/discuss the article. In the ensuing mess, progress towards an FAC has been all but lost.
  • ZM seems incapable of contributing to this article without (1) injecting his unique, personal POV and (2) making personal attacks (explicit or implicit) against other editors

--Rikurzhen 20:00, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by User:Ed Poor (Uncle Ed)

As I recall, Zen Master responded to my requests to tone down the language in an admirable, not to say inimitably cooperative way. He is to be congratulated for elevating the level of civility re: this hot-button topic.

I do not see ZM as pushing any POV in the article, but rather persistently raising awareness of one particular idea on the talk page: that the relation between race and intelligence could or might be other than a simple cause and effect one. And he has been requesting that this POV be accorded some mention in the article.

Whether this view is so "marginal" as to necessitate its exclusion from the article might be a matter for RFC (or possible Mediation). But pursuant to a recent e-mail I got from Jimbo (about a similar issue) I would say that NPOV policy is best served by mentioning disparate points of view - rather than by excluding them. There would be no race and intelligence article if it were beyond doubt that blacks are stupid - it would simply be a paragraph tucked into a psychology or anthropology article, listed as a matter of fact.

The question of what relation intelligence has to "race" touches on wide-ranging issues of social policy which simply refuse to go away. Quotas for admissions, grading and degree-granting (at university) and hiring and promotion (at work); the so-called "affirmative action" approach; that much-discussed book The Bell Curve; and the whole nature-nurture controversy are all intimately related.

I think ZM has done a fairly good job of bringing to our attention the problems with the article, and I see no reason for an injunctions to squash or quell the "boy who said the Emperor has no clothes" (with apologies to both HC Anderson and Zen-Master). Uncle Ed 16:16, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Preliminary decisions

[edit] Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (6/0/0/0)

[edit] Final decision

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

5 is the majority in this case? zen master T 16:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

No, 4 votes is a majority in this case. There were 5 inactive Arbitrators, leaving only 7, of whom 2 implicitly abstained.
James F. (talk) 16:26, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Principles

[edit] No personal attacks

1) Personal attacks on other users are unacceptable, see Wikipedia:No personal attacks

Passed 5 to 0 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Assume good faith

2) Wikipedia editors are required to be courteous to other users and to assume good faith on the part of other users.

Passed 5 to 0 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Banning for disruptive behavior

3) A Wikipedia user may be banned from editing an article where their activities have been disruptive.

Passed 5 to 0 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC) [26]

[edit] Findings of fact

[edit] Personal attacks by Zen-master

1) Zen-master (talk · contribs) has made a number of personal attacks on the other editors of race and intelligence, been discourteous and has assumed bad faith on their part [27] [28] [29]. He also attacks books and scholars which deal with the subject matter such as The Bell Curve [30].

Passed 4 to 1 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disruptive edits

2) Zen-master (talk · contribs) has edited race and intelligence in a disruptive manner both in the article itself and on related pages such as Talk:Race and intelligence [31]. While he complains regarding improper framing of the article, he cites references which frame the subject in terms of a struggle between "Fascism" and "Communism" [32].

Passed 4 to 1 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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.

[edit] Zen-master placed on probation

1) Zen-master (talk · contribs) is placed on probation for one year, and during that time may be banned from any article if, in the opinion of any administrator, his editing is disruptive. This may include the talk pages of such articles. See Wikipedia:Probation.

Passed 4 to 1 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Modified from specific to race and intelligence to all articles, by order.
James F. (talk) 19:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Which arbcom members approved this? What was their rationale and evidence? I request an appeal to the full arbitration committee. zen master T 20:09, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Votes by arbitrators
  • Extend to all articles Fred Bauder 07:34, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Extend to all articles Kelly Martin (talk) 19:11, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Extend to all articles Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Extend to all articles Raul654 17:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Extend to all articles ➥the Epopt 21:05, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Extend to all articles. James F. (talk) 00:38, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Recuse. Jayjg (talk) 19:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Zen-master banned

2) Zen-master (talk · contribs) is banned for one week for personal attacks.

Passed 4 to 1 at 16:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Zen-master banned for a year

3) For continued bad behaviour since the resolution of this case, Zen-master is banned for one year.

Passed 6 to 1 at 23:43, 6 February 2006 (UTC) [33]

[edit] Impositions of a ban under the probation remedy

  • Zen-master is banned from editing the article namespace for Race and intelligence from 00:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC) to 00:48, 27 November 2005 (UTC). --Ryan Delaney talk 04:21, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
But for what incident, and how was I "disruptive"? If an in good faith dispute over an article exists how can adding the {npov} template to it possibly be a disruption? A quick look at the Talk:race and intelligence page will show the article and area of research are fundamentally disputed on numerous points. Also, Fred Baurer already pointed out the probation policy has specific requirements that don't appear to have even been attempted in this case: (From Wikipedia:Probation) "A ban may be imposed only for good cause which shall be documented in a section set aside for that purpose in the arbitration case. Banning without good cause or in bad faith shall be grounds for censure, restriction, or removal of administrative access". zen master T 04:52, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
He could have been more specific regarding the reason. Fred Bauder 12:57, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
If you mean "more" from the starting point of 0 then yes, Ryan hasn't offered any specifics as to what constitutes a disruption in his interpretation. Removing an {npov} template when an in good faith dispute exists violates various wikipedia policies on its own. zen master T 13:19, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • As requested by Fred Bauder, this is my rationale for the ban: For disruptive edits [34] [35] [36] [37] despite warnings [38]. These edits were disruptive because they constituted a unilateral addition of content irrespective of the views of other editors. The {{totallydisputed}} template represented a dispute advanced only by Zen-master and no other editor. His stubborn insistence on this kind of content change is the sort of disruptive editing that his RFAr was intended to prevent. --Ryan Delaney talk 19:38, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree that we disagree over the content of race and intelligence, when such disagreements arise a template is added at the top of the article signifying a dispute. This is basic NPOV policy. There are other editors on the talk page that dispute that article and area of research. IQ testing is itself fundamentally disputed, the word "score" is obviously loaded and should be disallowed. zen master T
I think probation is working as intended in this instance. Fred Bauder 20:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
How is it working? The NPOV policy should trump probation, when an in good faith dispute exists the {npov} template is added to the article. Your are (perhaps unwittingly) allowing Ryan Delaney and others to succeed in denying criticism against what appears to be a racism inducing article. The views of these "other editors" appear to support (perhaps unwittingly) its racist inducing method of presentation, how is that ok? At the very least the article's method of presentation is completely unscientific. zen master T 20:48, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • As indicated on WP:ANI, I have banned Zen-master from Conspiracy theory for the remainder of 2005, for revert warring and going against consensus regarding the direction of the article. Radiant_>|< 18:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
  • It was disruptive and against the spirit of wikipedia to put the {rejected} tag in a proposal that is actively receiving votes, debate and discussion. FYI, "multiple" = 2. At least 2 other editors on Wikipedia talk:User Bill of Rights have disagreed with Carbonite's page ban and his interpretation of "disruptive". zen master T 16:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Three different editors (myself, Ambi, and Radiant) added the rejected tag. You reverted each time [39] [40] [41], which is disruptive. The ban is only for two weeks and you're still allowed to edit the talk page. The proposal has clearly been rejected, despite what the supporters of the proposal believe. We have polls to determine consensus and once the outcome is clear, the poll is no longer needed. Carbonite | Talk 16:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
      • One of the reverts you cite is from Dec 25th, so 3 reverts in 4 days is hardly "disruptive". It is exponentially more disruptive to prematurely archive something that should be left open. Just because polling/voting is going a certain way doesn't mean the polling station should close early. Perhaps you are worried if more or a critical mass of users are made aware of Wikipedia:User Bill of Rights your side would lose? Also, your definition of "consensus" has been corrupted, it does not mean majority. The point is to encourage discussion, consistency and debate, the proposers of the User Bill of Rights have valid concerns. zen master T 17:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  • To put an end to these fruitless one-sided discussions, and by his ArbCom probation, Zen-master is hereby banned from discussing, or commenting on, article titles on any page in the Wikipedia namespace, and is requested to use the relevant talk pages instead. Additionally, Zen-master is hereby banned from starting polls or votes related to article titles on any page in the Wikipedia_talk namespace, and is requested to use consensual discussion instead. Both bans have a duration of one month. Radiant_>|< 22:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Counteracting your apparent censorship of a proposal should not be a crime. Where in the probation policy is there any justification for restricting what an editor can do on the discussion page (as far being banned from starting polls or votes)? A very serious pattern is emerging, I am on probation for basically criticizing the presumption inducing dichotomy and unscientific presentation method in the race and intelligence article and now you are effectively doing the same because of my Wikipedia:Conspiracy theory titles proposal? What is going on here? Feel free to disagree with my interpretation and criticism but don't censor it. zen master T 22:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)