Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sheynhertz-Unbayg

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In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, 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: 16:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 20:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC).

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Contents

[edit] Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

[edit] Description

Sheynhertz-Unbayg has been creating strange "onomastical" articles with huge lists of redlinks, text copied from the German Wikipedia (and not translated), and has refused to listen to complaints or discuss his behavior. He has posted personal attacks directed to an editor.

[edit] Evidence of disputed behavior

  1. Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-06-16 User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg - the mediation case
  2. Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-06-18 Wahl - another mediation case
  3. Examples of articles he has created: Lilie, Buche (onomastics), Schul - He has created literally hundreds of these pages. Also see Category:Onomastics.
  4. User_Talk:Sheynhertz-Unbayg - Here he posted a personal attack directed at another editor (section 6.21.1 For User:Batamtig -- diff can be found here)
  5. He has been banned from the Japanese wikipedia for similar behavior to the above (with regard to edits, reverts, and personal attacks), after which he attempted to use a sockpuppet, which was also banned. See comments by User:Aphaia below, as well as his (Aphaia's) comments on the case in 1.
  6. Category:Articles in translation, currently contains 61 pages, most added by Sheynhertz. All these articles have {{intranslation}} added to them, which contains the words "please do not edit this article while this message is displayed". Per WP:OWN, such a tag should be used sparingly by editors, on articles that they are actively working on and expect to complete in a reasonable amount of time so that the tag can be removed.

[edit] Applicable policies and guidelines

  1. WP:CIV - He has refused to listen to other editors and has even threatened them. He refuses to engage in discussion in relation to the edits he makes.
  2. WP:OWN - He continually reverts attempts to clean up his articles or any attempts to remove his material, calling it "vandalism". Any attempts to engage him in discussion are met with silence or personal attacks.
  3. WP:WINAD, WP:DAB - With long etymological descriptions, and articles on ten different names which come from the same root (which would almost never be confused), these policies may have been breached (however even if it was not, he has never explained why).

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

In both of the mediation cases he has refused to participate.

  1. Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-06-16 User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg
  2. Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-06-18 Wahl
  3. He was contacted by a Japanese admin, in an attempt to engage him following the personal attack he made (see User talk:Sheynhertz-Unbayg#Wahl, translation here). It seems that he has not responded to her, nor modified his behavior since.
  4. User_Talk:Sheynhertz-Unbayg - I asked him to respond to this RfC, and he replied "I don't any responses. You are queer".
(diff can be found here)

[edit] Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

  1. Mo-Al 16:36, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. —WAvegetarian•(talk) 06:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Batamtig 04:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other users who endorse this summary

  1. Sam Blanning(talk) 12:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. ONUnicorn 14:40, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Bridesmill 00:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC) I have had similar issues with questions I had on articles I translated for him "in good faith".
  4. Kusma (討論) 17:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Users who endorse this summary:

[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.

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  • For a number of years User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg has worked hard on Wikipedia in the very specialized areas pertaining to Onomastics in Judaism (see Onomastics: "...the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names...") and he has probably been the greatest contributor to many articles in Category:Jewish families. He is evidently a Japanese editor judging by his user page and edits and he has shown a remarkable interest in translating and understanding very difficult words and ideas from Yiddish and Hebrew into Japanese and English for the benefit of the Japanese and English Wikipedias -- no easy task for anyone. In the course of his work he does tend to create pages with a huge amount of links and often many of them will be "red links" to articles that don't exist yet. I have not seen fit to view these as major impediments to the subjects he is presenting and I have assumed that there will always be people who will approach knowledge about names in the way that he does. Lately he has been somewhat nervous, anxious, and defensive especially when some newer editors unfamiliar with him come across his work and this has caused him to over-react in sometimes alarming ways. I think that a serious underlying problem here is a cultural clash between the Japanese way of doing things and a more Western way and to complicate matters many of the articles that he deals with relate to the languages and names of Jewish people. Therefore, my recommendation is that people give him a heaping serving of Wikipedia:Assume good faith and back off and think of creative ways to help him overcome his fears. He is obviously getting emotional because he has devoted many years of work to articles that no-one else has done. As I recently told someone who was alarmed about his over-reactions: Let's contact some admins at the Japanese Wikipedia and get their help and input in dealing with User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg at this time. Thank you. IZAK 04:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. IZAK 04:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. gidonb 05:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. abakharev 05:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. ←Humus sapiens ну? 08:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  5. Lectonar 13:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  6. Saint|swithin 14:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view 2

I certainly would presume good faith here, and IZAK may be correct that it would help to bring in a Japanese administrator, but these articles are a liability.

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. Jmabel | Talk 04:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Jmabel: Could you please explain what you mean by "these articles are a liability"? What "liability" are you referring to? Thanks. IZAK 05:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. There is no justification for leaving German in mainspace articles (see Heim (onomastics), Weis (onomastics), and others). Work in progress can be done in userspace. --Sam Blanning(talk) 09:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Kusma (討論) 09:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view 3

I'd like to make an even stronger point in support of WP:AGF. Risking to repeat what IZAK wrote, I'd like to emphasize that in this cross-cultural case we are dealing with a non-native speaker, therefore the risk of misunderstanding is very high. Let's not jump to conclusions. BTW, the same goes for Sheynhertz-Unbayg: please try to work with the community, most of us are rational and friendly folks. Thank you.

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. ←Humus sapiens ну? 09:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. abakharev 11:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Lectonar 13:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view 4

Apparently a while back someone created Category:Onomastics and put a lot of the onomastics pages he has created into that category. The issues seem to arise when he takes existing disambiguation pages and turns them into onomastics pages, then (perhaps due to language difficulties) does not listen to the objections of other editors. I don't think there is anyone here who is not assuming good faith; it is obvious that he believes his actions are a valuable contribution to Wikipedia. Rather I think people are unfamiliar with this field of study and are alarmed when a disambiguation page becomes confusing and ambiguous. Perhaps people who have worked with him before on Onomastics in Judaism articles could get together with him and form a wikiproject to set some guidelines for onomastics articles, and take category:onomastics in hand. That way, when someone else questions such an article (as happened with Roth (onomastics), or with the two mediation cases mentioned above) the person questioning can be pointed towards some guidelines, the wikiproject, and the broader categories, to see how the article fits in with the overall mission of wikipedia. That would cut down on Sheynhertz's wikistress levels, it would prevent articles like the Roth article from hasty deletion, and it would aid others interested in similar fields (like the creator of the other article I mentioned on the discussion page for this RFC) a place to turn to find articles similar to what they create.

Make sense?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ONUnicorn (talk • contribs) 21:04, July 17, 2006 (UTC)

  • Whoever provided the above anonymous statement should have signed it with four tildes ~~~~ please do so. IZAK 05:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry I forgot to sign my comment. I do forget from time to time. ONUnicorn 13:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

[edit] Outside view 5

By Sam Blanning, I am invited to add some materials on his behavours on Japanese Wikipedia, where I am active contributing, and some of the community supported even his permanent banning.

Not knowing English Wikipedia policy closely, I can only say his attitude toward other editors are same here and there in my impression.

Enforcing WP:AGF, I am also sorry to say on the below, I should however hereby oppose IZAK view at least for he did some contributions to Japanese Wikipedia. The person one of whose known user names is Sheynhertz-Unbayg submitted many articles about Israel and Jewish cultures, and in Japan, in a recent inquiry to academics, Japanese Wikipedia received a bad reputation in this area; heavily influenced by Zionism, opinions which can't be supported from academically accepted view and so on. Shortly, he contributed to declease Wikipedia credibility. So I need to say here his contribution for intercultural stuffs has to be valued based on facts, not too optimistic views. I don't oppose the possibility he did those editing from a good will, but the result is not fruitful.

As for his banning from Japanese Wikipedia, his Zionism was however not a problem. The dispute happened because of his massive copyright violations on images which he had uploaded to the Japanese Wikipedia and his incollaborative attitude to source them properly. The Japanese community reached once to a conclusion some of his uploading hadn't been in PD at that time, and decided to delete them by consensus. Sheynhertz-Unbayg showed a hostile attitude and threatened other editors with the possibility of his suicide; he stated he would kill himself because of hostility and the community should have taken the responsibility of his death. Later some editors found his tagging to the images were not trustable. Some GFDL released images were tagged as PD, some copyrighted images were tagged GFDL and so on. All seemed to be in a mess. The community asked him to stop uploading and to tag his images again but then properly. He denied and attacked other editors. And then, for stopping his uploading, the community was discussing if he should be blocking from editing at ja:Wikipedia:投稿ブロック依頼/Šeynhertz-Unbayg. At the course of this discussion, under another account, he continued to upload images still tagged unproperly, and he attacked other editors and blanked the discussion by his sockpuppet. Because of edit war on the request page, a sysop blocked him from editing for one weeks. It was his first blocking on JA WP, on late June of 2005.

After his banning term ended, he didn't change his attitude. Some troubles moved some of the Japanese Wikipedia community to request for placing a permanent blocking on him. He made troubles mainly around Translation requests, accused other editors at the archive page of his talk (he might think it as not apparent), and stated he has been victimized by other editors and treated unfairly and blanked user talks if he was talked by someone and disliked those editors. He continued to edit as both anons and other users, and creating similar problems. Finally both his known sockpuppets and his using IP addresses were blocked from editing on March 2006 (discussion).

  • Note: my former statement of his permanent banning was wrong. Apologies. I was then mislead with his user page, with "permanent banning" template. According to the discussion pages, he has been blocked from editing JA WP for six months (till September 2006).

It would be remarkable for me his attitude seems not to change at all, though his provider warned his behavours and attitude on JA WP hadn't been acceptable from the view of their Terms of Usage.

Last but not least, Thank you for your patience for my rusty English,

--Aphaia 16:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:


Comments:

  • I thank User:Aphaia for his efforts and I am really saddened by what seems to have overcome User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg after all these years. Perhaps he is suffering from fatigue or other problems as until recently he was not a problem. I have encouraged him in some great detail to respond to this RfC here (User talk:Sheynhertz-Unbayg#Sheynhertz we need your help) but so far he has not responded. Let us hope that what has happened to him on the Japanese Wikipedia will calm him down. IZAK 06:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view 6

This is a follow on from Aphaia's 'outside view' - which I don't really feel the need to endorse, as what Aphaia's saying isn't a view for the most part, it's a statement of fact, from someone who's a lot more familiar with this issue than the rest of us.

So here comes the opinion. I am very disturbed by the current prevailing opinion here, the essentials of which are "he can't speak English very well, so we should assume good faith". Well, by the time you get blocked from Wikipedia for six months - whether English or Japanese is neither here nor there - you have almost by definition exhausted assumptions of good faith.

The fact that he's been blocked from jaWiki for an extended period, in my view, completely nullifies IZAK's "cultural clash" theory (currently endorsed by six editors and repeated by View 3, endorsed by three) - whatever the culture is that's clashing with ours, it sure ain't Japanese, otherwise he wouldn't have clashed with the Japanese Wikipedia's culture to the extent that he got blocked for six months. I strongly reject the assertion that Sheynhertz' empty suicide threats (see Aphaia's submission and his "you want that I die" post here) and other disruption and incivility can somehow be attributed to his being Japanese, and consider this to be condescending at best. Sheynhertz' difficulties with the English language are not the most important issue here.

I would go so far as to say that Sheynhertz has only survived here so far without being involved in arbitration or worse because his editing paths rarely cross with those and other editors. When they do the outcome is rarely good, and despite the feel-good speeches above, I've yet to see any reason that it will get any better.

Users who endorse this summary:

  1. Sam Blanning(talk) 22:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. Bridesmill 00:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Batamtig 04:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. —WAvegetarian•(talk) 09:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  5. Mo-Al 04:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  6. nadav 21:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment:

  • Why wasn't the opening soliloquy here signed by its editor with the four tildes ~~~~ ? Please do so so that it can be known who is making the argument/s. To reduce my argument/s to an oversimplification that "he (User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg) can't speak English very well, so we should assume good faith" is downright silly because it's not what I said and not what I meant, which should be very obvious. Then, to throw in that: "The fact that he's been blocked from jaWiki for an extended period, in my view, completely nullifies IZAK's "cultural clash" theory..." is to pre-judge the case here, which is a job best left for the arbiters who will make a final decision on English Wikipedia in good time. I will for now assume good faith that the anonymous writer of the above summary is not casting any roundabout aspersions about me and (my ?) "feel-good speeches" in violation of WP:NPA at this point. My goal is to vouch for User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg's good work for many years, and it is immaterial if "his editing paths rarely cross with those and other editors" since that statement is in itself proof that User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg was doing work that others were not interested in for so long which should be a credit to him. It does not "marginalize" him. Obviously, it is undeniable that User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg has recently suffered an inexplicable "meltdown" of some sort but that should not in itself be a reason to deny him due process and he should not be subjected to any sort of "lynch mob" mentality on Wikipedia. Finally, as far as I know, only a professional psychiatrist or mental health practitioner is in a position to evaluate any kind of suicide threat (especially coming from Japanese culture with its history of hara kiri) and I would urge everyone here to choose their words with great care and extend the utmost consideration to a fellow Wikipedian who is obviously under some sort of great pressure in his/her life. We need to resolve this case in a gentle and humane manner and not resort to harsh verbiage or tactics at this time. IZAK 06:43, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
    I wrote it, as is perfectly obvious from the fact that mine is the first signature. There is no hard and fast rule as to whether to sign as the first endorsement, above the endorsement, or both. All three are present in this one RfC, and indeed Humus Sapiens did the same as me, which you don't seem to have objected to so strongly. Can't imagine why. While we're on RfC process, by saying "a job best left for the arbiters who will make a final decision on English Wikipedia in good time" you seem to misunderstand the process - this is not a request for arbitration, and arbitrators are not currently involved. P.S. - while we're in nitpicking mode, look up 'soliloquy'. It means a speech given purely to oneself, coming from the same root as 'sole'.
    Secondly, commenting on an editor's behaviour is not a personal attack. Indeed, I have stuck purely to Sheynhertz' actions, whereas you have shown no qualms about speculating on Sheynhertz' mental state ("emotional", "under pressure" etc), something that I regard as pointless at best and insensitive at worst.
    Finally, when I said "I strongly reject the assertion that Sheynhertz' empty suicide threats... can somehow be attributed to his being Japanese", I thought that the assertion I was seeing there could be attributed to a lack of information (there is, admittedly, a lack of diffs in this RfC), given that at the time of writing you had not seen Aphaia's statement, and possibly hadn't seen Sheynhertz' "you want that I die" outburst. I'm flabbergasted that now you have seen them, you still claim that "Japanese culture with its history of hara kiri" can explain Sheynhertz' bizarre outbursts. I'm not sure who that insults more, Sheynhertz or the Japanese. --Sam Blanning(talk) 08:50, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Samuel: I don't "nitpik" - I write. What are you so "flabbergasted" about? When was the last time we have had to (psycho)-analyze a case which focuses on the contributions, editing habits and conflicts of a voluminous Japanese editor (who responds with suicide threats) on the English Wikipedia? Wikipedians are human beings and if we have known them for a while to be good human beings we should avoid shooting the messenger on the pretext that we dislike their message for various odd reasons. You seem to have a rather blase attitude to people's personal circumstances. Anyone who repeatedly threatens suicide is in a serious emotional state which you seem incapable of grasping at this juncture. That is an obvious fact for all to see, User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg does not seem to be hiding it. I am fully aware that we are not at the point of arbitration, and thus you too should avoid sounding as if we are "about to nail" User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg with the "evidence" from what has been happening on the Japanese Wiki to back you up. So far, as you can see, a number of serious and responsible edditors are wiling to give User:Sheynhertz-Unbayg the benefit of the doubt and to apply Wikipedia:Assume good faith in the hope that this matter can be resolved satisfactorily. Finally, Humus did not pontificate needlessly and I hadn't noticed the lack of his signature. Again, I stress that there are serious issues that lurk behind the scenes here and we should not proceed with haste. IZAK 10:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
        • We are encyclopaedia editors, not counsellors. We should focus purely on Sheynhertz' issues with his editing. We are not qualified to speculate on or deal with his personal circumstances, and should leave that to himself, his friends and family, and his doctors, who are. --Sam Blanning(talk) 10:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
          • It would be a serious issue. Or not. As Sam suggested, we cannot deal with his personal circumstances without knowing him personally. Our interactions and their effects will be limited and our speculation therefore will meet its limitation. We can do only whatever we can. Taking care of him and accepting his editing or conduct are also different matters.
          • As for "harakiri" mention of IZAK, From differences of historical and social contexts, and observation of his personality, I presume argument on "harakiri" mentarity of Japanese would be a off-topic here. I took it as misunderstanding or overreaction rather insult. So-called harikiri, seppuku is a traditional but nowadays outdated form of death-penalty. Even when it was a part of social system, it was applied only for samurai males, less than 5% of population. Since it was a penalty faked as suicide, it could happen only in a limited circumstance - the committer admitted his fault or responsibility in public. It combined with two strong senses with self-responsibility and self-dignity. I don't know his personality closely nor his sense to dignity, but from my interaction with him on Japanese Wikipedia, he seemed to be hardly sensitive on his own responsibility. --Aphaia 15:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
            • I thank User:Aphaia for his helpful guidance in this situation. IZAK 04:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify, I don't think what we're dealing with is really a suicide threat, rather it's Sheynhertz making accusations, bizarre as they are, that other editors want him dead. I do think that everything here points to mental instability, which would justify proceeding with caution for the sake of his health. --Batamtig 07:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Sam Blanning wrote, Sheynhertz has only survived here so far without being involved in arbitration or worse because his editing paths rarely cross with those and other editors. When they do the outcome is rarely good, and despite the feel-good speeches above, I've yet to see any reason that it will get any better. Looking at the last 3 months of his talk page, I see very little communication and a general lack of meaningful response to others' posts other than some variation on "Thanks." That is actually the reason that I feel things might improve; pretty much any communication other than personal attacks and labelling clean up as vandalism would be an improvement. That said, he is running out of chances. After numerous attempts on his talk page by a handful of users followed (after not getting a meaningful response) by two MedCab cases, this is his penulitmate chance. If there is no response to this RfC I can see little course of action other than ArbCom. Sheynhertz has, apparently, a great knowledge base and reads 3(?) languages, but his refusal to interact and communicate with other editors as part of the community is unacceptable.The reason I hold out hope that "it will get better" is that that it should sink in soon how serious a matter this is. He has shown commitment to the project, if not the community, in the past so I hope that this overrides any wish to not communicate. Otherwise he may just leave Wikipedia, which I want to make completely clear is not a desirable outcome and would make me sad.—WAvegetarian•(talk) 09:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside view 7

I have come in contact with Sheynhertz-Unbayg by my efforts to clean up CAT:PNT and Category:Articles in translation. It appears to me that S-U has the laudable goal to add a lot of information about Jewish families and their individual members to Wikipedia. Unfortunately it seems to be beyond his (English language) skills to do this in a way that does not require major cleanup efforts from many other Wikipedians. In particular, his onomastics pages (which typically contain names that sound or seem similar, with no real evidence for connection) have a large overlap with disambiguation pages and the List of people by name. Unfortunately I don't know what the best way to distribute the information would be, but it is not Sheynhertz-Unbayg's.

The main problem with his behaviour is that he creates huge amounts of work for other Wikipedians. He does not only file enormous amounts of translation requests (he is resposible for the backlog at the German-English translation page), but also posts large amounts of half-translated pages in the main namespace that are hard to clean up. His suggestion that we should have articles about all these people is good, but the way he does it makes several project pages and categories practically unusable, which is a (mild) disruption to the project, no matter how well-intentioned.

I have recently posted several complaints about individual problems at his talk page, but haven't received a reaction. I don't know why he doesn't talk to me, but will block him to get his attention if all else fails. Shenyhertz needs to communicate with other editors, or he won't be able to reach his goal (which he perhaps should state more clearly, so others can help him) but just make a horrible mess out of all disambiguation pages that are related to Jewish names. As he is not capable of doing this alone, he needs to either cooperate with others or stop doing it. Kusma (討論) 09:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

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