Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mattisse 2

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In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: ~~~~), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 14:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC).

Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Contents

[edit] Statement of the dispute

Please see Description.

[edit] Desired outcome

I, Cyborg Ninja would like other Wikipedians to decipher who is in the wrong here about this exact situation with drapetomania, and for any poor conduct to be commented on. I tried to stay within the right on this, without using any kind of personal attack or assuming bad faith without reason. Also, I'd like to know what the policy is for medical diagnoses that were made in the past, but are not currently accepted. Would it still be acceptable to list that subject in a medical category? Possibly Mattisse should be barred from editing drapetomania, if that is possible. Finally, I would like the warning on my Talk page from Mattisse citing "personal attacks" to be withdrawn, as it is without merit.

I mentioned twice, including on Mattisse's talk page, that she was a regular contributor, especially for Psychiatry and Psychology articles, and so I have never desired to notify administrators about this one incident. I think it "kinder" to bring this up with Requests for Comment than AN. This way Mattisse is protected from administrative action even though she violated policy, and all users, including myself, can learn from the issue.

[edit] Description

Problems began when Mattisse nominated the article drapetomania for deletion. Malik Shabazz made a comment about it possibly being a bad faith nomination, so I looked into it. After seeing that Mattisse added several tags to the article, one after another, then giving users approximately 2 hours (around midnight) to edit the article before nominating it for deletion, I also suspected bad faith. Both Malik and I begin to edit the article to improve it. Mattisse continues to contribute nothing but add tags and say the article is junk.

Mattisse's view is that drapetomania is not a psychiatric diagnosis even though the article described it as archaic and scientific racism, and seems to think that the article should be deleted because it is not currently accepted in the medical community. However, the subject matter is clearly historical and many references were added last night to improve the article. The user is a Psychologist according to his user page. I believe he is violating WP:POINT and trying to wipe all record of the subject ever being considered a psychiatric diagnosis. Two references were added by me to show that it was considered a psychiatric diagnosis. It is also mentioned on the Anti-psychiatry article. Mattisse later withdrew the nomination after a snowball keep was looming. The user later said that he used the AfD in order to call attention to other users to cleanup the article. He thought that because one of his edits was reverted, that he could not edit the article at all, or so he claimed.

Both Malik and I tried to discuss the matter with Mattisse in the talk pages, but Mattisse continued to use personal attacks and acted like other editors of the article were ignorant because they disagreed with his view. He has since threatened to block me from Wikipedia for supposed personal attacks. Please keep in mind that Mattisse is also a known user of sockpuppets, as evident from her previous RfC linked to at the top of this page.

[edit] Evidence of disputed behavior

[edit] Events preceding the AfD

  1. On October 4, between 18:21 and 18:31 Mattisse added 3 banners to Drapetomania (Quotefarm, Citations missing, and Primarysources) and deleted 2 links from the "See also" section. Mattisse left no comments at Talk:Drapetomania. [2]
  2. At 19:28, Malik Shabazz restored one of the "See also" links (Oppositional defiant disorder). [3] Please note that, at the time the link was restored, Drapetomania was listed among the "See also" links at Oppositional defiant disorder. Mattisse deleted that link at 20:31, [4] after Malik Shabazz mentioned Oppositional defiant disorder at the AfD discussion. [5]
  3. At 19:59, Mattisse added a 4th banner to Drapetomania (POV). [6]
  4. At 20:04, Mattisse started an AfD for Drapetomania with the edit summary "there is no inclination to fix article". [7]
  5. Please note the extremely short period of time that had elapsed since Mattisse's first edit (18:21) and the AfD (20:04).
  6. Please note that Malik Shabazz had never edited Drapetomania before October 4. [8]

[edit] AfD discussion

  1. When Malik Shabazz became aware that Drapetomania had been nominated for deletion, he expressed his view that it was a bad-faith nomination based on the facts described above. Due to edit conflicts, his comments were not the first, but appeared soon after the nomination.
  2. Cyborg Ninja tried to point out logical flaws in Mattisse's argument. Cyborg Ninja also expressed the view that the nomination was made in bad faith and to make a WP:POINT.
  3. Mattisse acknowledged that she "[does] not care what happens to the article", so long as it is removed from "bonifide [sic] psyciatric [sic] and psychological categories". She later wrote My original AFD statement was not even a recommendation to delete, acknowledging that she abused the AfD process to make a WP:POINT.
  4. Before nominating Drapetomania for deletion, Mattisse made no attempt to change the article's categorization, nor did she suggest such changes — or any improvements at all — at Talk:Drapetomania.
  5. Please note Mattisse's repeated reference to Malik Shabazz as the "author" and "owner" of Drapetomania, despite the fact that Malik Shabazz had made only a single edit to the article.
  6. Also note the nastiness expressed by Mattisse toward all commentors at the AfD, but especially toward Malik Shabazz ("ignorance", "it is his article and he calls the shots", "not interested enough to improve the article himself") and Cyborg Ninja.
"I will make sure his articles do not disrupt legitimate diagnostic articles that have legal implications when false or misleading info is passed on to the public"
  1. Finally, note that Mattisse continued to contribute vitriol aimed at Malik Shabazz ("the author thinks African Americans in the 1850s are equivalent to acting out of problem children of today") after the AfD had been closed.

[edit] Events following the AfD

  1. After Mattisse withdrew her nomination in advance of a WP:SNOW closure, Cyborg Ninja left a message at User talk:Mattisse#Recent AfD concerning bad faith and WP:POINT.
  2. Malik Shabazz left a message at User talk:Mattisse#Drapetomania concerning Mattisse's repeated references to him as the article's "owner" despite all evidence to the contrary, indicating a disinterest in the facts but a zeal to delete the article, and her lack of civility during the AfD.
  3. Mattisse replied by evading the points discussed in Malik Shabazz's message and continuing her nastiness toward him.
  4. Cyborg Ninja left a message agreeing with Malik Shabazz's message.
  5. In her response to Cyborg Ninja, Mattisse continued to refer to Malik Shabazz as the article's author, despite being told by two editors that he had made only one edit to the article.
  6. At 04:12, Cyborg Ninja left a final message at User talk:Mattisse#Drapetomania concerning the improvements being made to Drapetomania.
  7. On October 6, Mattissee admits on Talk:Dysaethesia_Aethiopica that she intends to trivialize Drapetomania and two related articles.

[edit] Talk:Drapetomania

  1. While Cyborg Ninja and Malik Shabazz begin to improve Drapetomania, Mattisse chose to critique their work at Talk:Drapetomania, continuing the personal attacks. Please try to learn what psychiatry is. It might be helpful if, not only did you learn something about psychology and psychiatry before you start adding terms, you learned something about the history of psychiatry and psychology.
  2. Mattisse also threatened to nominate Drapetomania for deletion again if the article wasn't edited to her personal satisfaction. It will be monitored, and returned to AFD if false and misleading material purporting to be medical, psychiatric or psychological is returned to the article.
  3. Mattisse repeatedly has described feedback from the Wikipedia community, and from Cyborg Ninja in particular, as "harassment and attacks". [9] [10]
  4. Mattisse left a message at User talk:Cyborg Ninja#October 2007 calling for him to "stop personal attacks". [11]
  5. When Cyborg Ninja replied that he had not attacked Mattisse, [12] she responded with a Level 4 "No personal attacks" message and threatened to have him blocked. [13]

[edit] Applicable policies and guidelines

  1. WP:POINT
  2. WP:FAITH
  3. WP:CIVIL
  4. WP:NPA
  5. WP:DISRUPT (Notably, resisting community input by nominating inappropriate article for AfD and not discussing wanted improvements on Talk page beforehand)

[edit] Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

  1. Original AfD page for drapetomania (I tried to point out the user's logical flaws in his argument
  2. Mattisse's user talk page (See bottom three sections. Pay particular attention to Mattisse's commentary about how he would not have nominated the article for deletion if it were cleaned up within 3 hours, how he continues to believe Malik in the author of the article despite his stating otherwise, and his insults to Malik saying that Malik compares African-Americans to children).
  3. Talk:Drapetomania Talk page for Drapetomania
  4. Drapetomania Malik Shabazz took out the reference to oppositional defiant disorder. Both of us edited the article and added several references. Another user today edited the intro slightly (changing "is a psychiatric disorder" to "was a psychiatric disorder"). Mattisse added a citations tag to a reference made from The University of Newcastle, a prominent medical university, questioning its reliability. I added another reference and deleted the tag, to which he complained. It was clearly not deserving of the tag.
  5. Talk:Drapetomania Cyborg Ninja suggests various improvements for the article, including a category for "Obsolete psychiatric theories" to appease Mattisse.

[edit] Users certifying the basis for this dispute

  1. Cyborg Ninja
  2. Malik Shabazz

[edit] Other users who endorse this summary

[edit] Response by Mattisse

On September 2, 2006 User:Rdsmith4 sent me the following message, [14] which accused me of having sock puppets and vote stacking against User:999.

I explained that a painful personal incident had occurred in my family involving my daughter and my grand kids temporarily staying with me over the two previous months and that I could not explain his sock puppet accusations. I accepted Rdsmith4's statement although it was confusing, as I did not know who had used my computer over that span of perhaps two months as I had not been monitoring all users, nor was I always home. This became known as the granny defense by Hanuman Das and that has followed me around until he "retired" and was banned.

The sock puppets were a confusing assortment, some with only a few or no edits, others with edits over a period of a month or so. It was hard to figure out. At no time did any of the sock puppets (and I did look through their contributions histories a year ago) make racial comments or personal attacks. Nothing any of those sock puppets attributed to me did was rude or abusive. The problem was they vote stacked on at least on occasion which is against the rules. I was blocked for 24 hours perhaps two times for the sock puppet offense. That was in September 2006.

There have been no sock puppets after my family left. That was last September, over one year ago.

After User:Rdsmith4's posting I was relentlessly stalked, harassed, and accused of having sock puppets by User:999, User:Ekajati, and Hanuman Das for six months without relief. There were numerous ANI posted against me, beginning with the following:

Also, numerous procedures were started against me. These examples focus on my sock puppets, regardless of the title:

Later it was discovered that the original mediator in the Starwood Mediation cabal User:Geo.plrd was a sock puppet. He has been permanently banned.

The second mediator appoint to the Starwood Festival retired from Wikipedia suddenly, over the weekend, just after been appointed as mediator and posting "Mattisse Redux" on ANI December 7 because I unsatisfactorily tried to answer a question about my sock puppets: [15]. User:Morven made one of the many complaints about my granny defense. (However, there is nothing else I can honestly say.) This second mediator was User:Aguerriero who had harassed me at the request of the sock puppets stalking me (see below Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Ekajati) under this name but then changed his name to User:Ars Scriptor. He had his contributions, pages etc. permanently deleted by a special Wikipedia process and his actions under both names hidden.
  • The above demonstrates the usefulness of the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal and the biased nature of the mediators. Next the follow Arbitration was filed:

In none of these proceedings listed above, including the Arbitration, the RFC, or the numerious ANI's was I found to have done anything wrong.

During the arbitration, one arbitrator recused himself, User:Blnguyen, and spent a month chasing down the sock puppets harassing me. He discovered that all of the editors involved in stalking and harassing me were sock puppets and had been since at least the Spring of 2006. They have all been permanently banned.

After this a new series of sock puppets related to Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Ekajati started up, but because they were harassing others besides me, this was nipped in the bud.

However, it is clear that whole painful incident regarding my daughter and her children, occurring in the Summer of 2006, will always be an element of my involvement with Wikipedia, as verified by this RFC and again User:Rdsmith4's allegations of over one year ago once again being used against me.

A person is always guilty on Wikipedia. There is no such thing as having a stressful period over a year ago understood, forgiven, and laid to rest.

All this has taken its toll. I have tried to survive and lately have been feeling a little less afraid about interacting with the Wikipedia community. But being bold on Wikipedia was a mistake. As Wikipedia continues to bring up and remind me of a very painful period in my life and there is no indication that this will ever stop, I choose not to continue on Wikipedia as a member who interacts with others, if that is a comfort to User:Cyborg Ninja and User:Malik Shabazz.

I wish you, User:Cyborg Ninja and User:Malik Shabazz, to please stop dwelling on this very painful event of over a year ago that to this day has affected relationships within my family. But it is out of my hands.

Do what you want with this RFC. If you think that some minor short-term sock puppet behavior is equal to the above banned sock puppets and want to base your case on that, then continue to do so. It quite likely will be successful, as it was for User:Ekajati until banned. Read back through the RFC's, Arbitration etc. for some tips on how to prolong one incident into a year long harassment. --Mattisse 18:44, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


Users who endorse this summary:

  1. I endorse the withdrawal of Mattisse from communication with other Wikipedian editors. I will when obliged communicate with Admins, etc. as I refuse to be intimidated any longer on Wikipedia --Mattisse 00:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Addendum by Mattisse

  • A note on the allegations:

The fact that User:Malik Shabazz had never edited the article in question, Drapetomania, before makes it doubly strange to me that within 9 minutes of my removing the link to Oppositional defiant disorder, he would return the link to the article as his first ever edit to the article and then do nothing to improve the article that has existed since 2005. I interpret that type of behavior as "Ownership" because that editor is not allowing others to improve the article but rather guarding it from changes of which he does not approve.

Oppositional defiant disorder, a disorder that only relates to children with psychological problems in recognizing the appropriate authority of teachers, principals, parents etc., is not a diagnosis with any relevance to adults whose actions are presumed to be determined by legitimate reasons.

Equating drapetomania with the existing diagnosis of Oppositional defiant disorder is the equivalent, in my opinion, of saying that slaves ran away because they had psychological problems in handling authority figures similar to those of children who routinely refuse to accept appropriate adults as authority figures and insist on doing the opposite of what is considered normal behavior. Why would User:Malik Shabazz or User:Cyborg Ninja think that it is racist to remove what I see as a pejorative comparison of the behavior of runaway slaves to that of unruly children? Do you not think that it is, at the very least, debatable whether the behavior of runaway slaves is equivalent to disobedient children?

Further, if you read the link Talk:Dysaethesia Aethiopica given above as an example that "she intends to trivialize Drapetomania and two related articles" actually says just the opposite, that I do not want to see the articles trivialized.

I am not going to go through all of them, but they are equally misconstrued. If User:Malik Shabazz had shown the least inclination to do anything for the good of the article, I would have felt differently. That article has existed since 2005, and all the editor did after I examined it and removed the inappropriate link was return the in appropriate link. Yes, I tagged it. The tags were not inappropriate in my opinion. Articles are often improved by the AFD possess, as this one was. As far as deleting the link to Drapetomania on Oppositional defiant disorder, that will stay deleted as Oppositional defiant disorder is an ICD-9 and 10 diagnosis.

  • Accusations of "bad faith" are personal attacks of a very serious nature.

My edits were repeatedly called "bad faith" edits. Because you do not agree with my edits does not mean I acted in "bad faith". It does not. That is not evidence of bad faith. Bad faith is not accepting another editor's edits as good faith edits, even if you disagree or in your mind question the motivation. Accusing another editor of bad faith is the most condemning personal attack you can make, in my eyes.

  • Introduction of inappropriate material. This RFC does not involve past cases that have already been decided.

The link to Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Mattisse and Here is a list of Mattisse's sockpuppets: [[16]] is totally inappropriate. Regarding the September 2, 2006 posting, at the time of the posting (September 2, 2006) the punishment was meted out (24 hour block) and the episode was over. Regarding the RFC, every person, including the Mediation Cabal mediator, who signed the charges against me was a sock puppet. Sock puppet Hanuman Das was blocked most of the time of this RFC for telling me to Go fuck yourself up the ass with a straight-razor. Those are the people whose credibility you are basing your case on. --Mattisse 18:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

  • The RFC, if you had read it, completely vindicated me.

The sock puppet charges in the RFC were disregarded for two reasons. One is that by the time of the RFC, the September 2, 2006 posting was already old news (used merely for harassment purposes in the RFC) and was not an issue in the RFC. Secondly, none of the sock puppet charges in the RFC were credible. The RFC itself was seen as a way of harassing me for edits the editors who originated the RFC did not like—very similar to this one.

There has never been an RFC that has found be guilty of sockpuppets. --Mattisse 23:22, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view by John254

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

This RFC is without merit. Neither the single AFD nomination nor the related two day content dispute indicate any conduct by Mattisse sufficiently severe or pervasive as to warrant the filing of an RFC. Move on.


Users who endorse this summary:

  1. John254 03:34, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Objection Please note that this conclusion was reached before Malik Shabazz provided a fuller list of evidence of disputed behavior, including diffs. — Malik Shabazz (Talk | contribs) 06:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view by David Fuchs

To blame Mattisse for personal attacks is a rather one-sided claim.; this RfC should be dropped. Both Milk Shabazz and Cyborg have repeatedly assumed bad faith from the get-go, as they themselves noted, and this appears to be the rule for Cyborg Ninja, rather than the exception.[17][18] Malik Shabazz's comment that Mattisse's opinions were 'very white' with the edit summary of 'thank you massa' lampooning slave dialect also undermines their credibility. All I see is a possible editing dispute over the use of a cancer source for the article, and a few editors not liking how Mattisse put tags on an article. Should Mattisse have put the article up for AfD if all it needed was cleanup? No, but that is hardly a major offense that level discussion wouldn't solve. It appears Mattisse was fully justified in warning Cyborg Ninja to not make personal attacks.

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. David Fuchs (talk) 15:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
  2. ThuranX 00:47, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
  3. Addhoc 11:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view by Merkinsmum

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

Don't know if this is the right section for comment in, but how is this -"Please try to learn what psychiatry is. It might be helpful if, not only did you learn something about psychology and psychiatry before you start adding terms, you learned something about the history of psychiatry and psychology."- a 'personal attack' as is claimed above? It's not saying other editors are !%*!s or anything. Matisse is entitled to disagree with other editors and voice that disagreement with their edits etc, it's not a 'personal attack' to do so. I've always known Matisse to be a very civil editor and she is not rude to other editors, though she is deeply annoyed by edits she sees as !^*!ocks, she does not use any foul language to the editors, whether they have an agenda or not, but instead argues her case with persistence in the face of behaviour she finds infuriating, and she has great intellectual rigour. She is also not biased and even if editors with similar viewpoints write OR or POV statements, she will correct them for it. So this is my 'character reference' having edited with Matisse and discussed on the talk page of the now extinct 'psychiatric abuse' article.Merkinsmum 17:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Please also note that the previous RfC about Matisse having sockpuppets, the accusations of sockpuppetry were seen to be malicious and largely unfounded, and the whole AfD was made by the notorious sockpuppeteer User:999 and his imaginary friends!:) See [19]. Merkinsmum 00:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment While you are correct that User:999 was a sockpuppeter, it was indeed proven that Mattisse was/is a regular user of sockpuppets. I merely clicked on several user accounts listed on the previous RfC and saw many that were banned for being sockpuppets of Mattisse. An admin also said, in the RfC, that Mattisse's sockpuppetry was well-known. The outside views were more about other matters than her sockpuppetry. Also, 999's conduct does not mean that Mattisse gets a free pass, so to speak. - Cyborg Ninja 00:48, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
The 2 nominators of the RfC were in fact only one person, so the whole RfC was invalid as 2 nominators (or whatever the proper word for them is) are needed.Merkinsmum 12:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
You're missing the point. I obviously don't condone User:999 and his clones. But Mattisse did in fact have several puppets that have since been blocked from Wikipedia by administration who check IP logs for validation. Mattisse herself admitted the sockpuppets, but says they were from her granddaughter. I cannot make this any clearer. - Cyborg Ninja 23:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. Merkinsmum 00:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

I have been involved in AfDs and Speedys on both sides and find that my adrenalin level is often high and my ability to assume good faith on the other person's (even completely imaginary person's) part low. I have imputed ownership to people who took the anti-deletion stance. I have also been sarcastic/abusive. Thus, as a fellow sinner, I can possibly empathize. Furthermore, in one of my disputes Matisse was on the other side. I, too, found Matisse's stance excessively firm in tone. But, in substance it was correct.

In this case, I see replayed the same kind of dispute. There is nothing wrong with one editor placing multiple tags on an article, even while others are working on it. It should be viewed as helpful if it is accurate. Although article improvement may be nobler than criticism, criticism is essential to mobilize the improvement process. The AfD nomination was also within the rules, although at that point emotions had risen so that both sides were questioning each other's motives.

The situation was a classical one of emotional escalation of a dispute. The classical remedies in such cases include couching discussion in terms of the higher purpose shared by both parties ("a better WP"), building trust, and each party attempting to meet the other party's legitimate needs. DCDuring 00:44, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. --Salix alba (talk) 16:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
  2. --Application of WP:COOL recommended for all parties. LessHeard vanU 20:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.