Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat
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[edit] Statements by non-parties
[edit] Statement by non-party Cla68
This is the kind of issue that ArbCom was made for. Jossi shouldn't be anywhere near the Prem Rawat articles. He has severe COI issues, as disclosed, in part, by himself and further revealed in the recent Register article, and he continues to disrupt attempts to make the Rawat articles more neutral, such as by quickly archiving talk page discussions before they are finished and by trying to keep out referenced material from the article. He even tried to argue that the Los Angeles Times couldn't be used as a source for the article. Because of extensive community intervention, the Rawat articles are now more neutral than they were before, but Jossi is still fighting as hard as he can to keep them as close to "his" version as as possible, which I believe may be the reason for his last-ditch use of the ArbCom to try to salvage what he can. If the ArbCom accepts this case, you're going to see a lot of diffs and ANI, COI, and reliable sources board thread links entered as evidence and I think you'll see one person in particular right at the center of all the NPOV problems with those articles, and that's Jossi. Cla68 (talk) 20:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- Adding to statement...it appears that there may be some COI or obvious POV-pushing with other editors also. It may be that Jossi isn't the only one who needs to be prohibited from involvement with any of the Rawat articles. Also, I see no evidence of abuse of admin privileges by Jossi, just POV-pushing. Cla68 (talk) 22:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Statement by semi-involved Lawrence Cohen
Urge acceptance of this case. This is a long, long standing case of conflicting interests, possibilities of demonstrable efforts to own articles, many instances of dancing around BLP, and possibly a list of others. Community enforced 1RR has largely failed here, external media attention in the The Register has largely failed despite all the news eyes it brought in, and now the various parties are trying to find liberal interpretations of 1RR to use against each other. Please accept. Lawrence ยง t/e 22:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Statement by non-party user:Maelefique
I have followed this article for months, and despite Jossi's claims of "making good progress", it seems an awful lot more like 1 step forward, and 2 steps back, the vast majority of conflict seems to be attributable to a few editors in particular, who seem to constantly voice an obviously pro-Rawat sentiment and refuse to allow the article to read any other way. I have watched several edit wars unravel, many of which include Jossi either cajoling or threatening (with WP policies) only the editor who is not pro-Rawat, as seen in these examples here and here and here and here. I cannot find a single instance where he has acted the same way, and in the same tone, to any of the pro-Rawat editors.
When asked directly for help, if it does not lean towards a pro-Rawat statement (or is in conflict with something said/done by one of several pro-Rawat editors), Jossi is often at best, evasive, at worst, deliberately unhelpful. As evidenced here (sorry, couldn't find a better way to reference these) where I asked for a helpful reference and he referred me to the entire collection of sources available, and here (the entire argument here is not germaine, for brevity, I would suggest picking up the discussion at Will Beback's straightforward question, "Jossi, can you please give us your opinion about whether the L.A. Times and N.Y. Times are reliable sources for this article?") for example. Jossi's reply, which he even took the time to embolden, is obviously obtuse, he knows the source, and he knows the context. The question was clear and was later determined to be a reliable source [[1]].
And yet, Jossi seems to have no problem pulling up sources for statements that seem to be pro-Rawat, such as here where he manages to come up with no less than 5 sources supporting his view in less than 45 minutes (granted, this particular issue is not contentious, but I think it goes to the point that Jossi can certainly find supporting evidence when it suits his needs). I think we can stipulate that Jossi is somewhat of an authority on this subject, at least in terms of knowledge, if not viewpoint, and as such, should be held to a higher standard, certainly that would be standard in any type of academic context.
He has no problem promoting his viewpoint, backed up with many different sources, but when a viewpoint other than his own appears, he seems either strangely silent, allowing other pro-Rowat editors to further slow down the process of arriving at a consensus by arguing their blatantly obvious POV, edit-warring, etc, until other editors/admins step in to impose a halt to these actions, as was done here and here and here and here and here. Please note, that these examples are not included as any slight upon these users, they only go to illustrate my point that while Jossi is extremely active in the Prem Rawat article, he does seem to turn a blind eye to many obviously problem-ridden edits.
This pattern of conduct from Jossi seems fairly consistent with a COI, and I have to wonder, (and I realize this is probably a huge subject probably beyond the scope of this discussion), if there is ever a one-off argument for someone being involved in an organization and a consequent inability for them to discuss the issue with a NPOV, I would have to think a situation where someone is a disciple of the person being written about may be the case, as one's faith itself would, of necessity, be called into question regarding certain aspects of the subject. I don't want to suggest here that by extrapolation anyone who believes in God should not write about God for the same reason, I don't believe that and I'm not trying to suggest that (don't we have a template somewhere to notify the reader about possible COI edits in the article?). I have no doubt that many of the 50,000+ edits made by Jossi are of excellent quality and I am not questioning his admin actions either. However, doesn't the very meaning of faith include the concept of truly believing something you do not have the evidence of, or even despite evidence to the contrary of your faith? What I think about Prem Rawat should have no more or less weight than what Jossi thinks about him. If we can allow all sides of this discussion to work on this article without constant reverting/wikilawyering/whatever, I think this article could be turned into something most people could agree on, and isn't that what an encyclopedia should be? I firmly believe ArbCom should look at this case. Maelefique (talk) 01:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Statement by non-party User:Nsk92
Since by now it is clear that the case will be accepted for arbitration, I'd like to make a few general comments. I hope that in this case the ArbCom will go beyond the standard disciplinary actions and make some sort of policy recommendations, e.g. with regard to COI and merge issues, as well as make some specific recommendations on the editorial matters underlying this dispute that could help future editors of the Prem Rawat article. Given how much off-Wikipedia publicity this case has received, I think it is important that it be handled particularly carefully and well. As for disciplinary actions (that seem to be inevitable here), I would urge some leniency, that is, topic specific bans (including talk pages) plus probation rather than, say, a total one year ban from Wikipedia that seems to be a popular enforcement tool of the ArbCom lately. I hope that most editors involved in this dispute are capable of contributing constructively to Wikipedia on non Prem Rawat related matters, and it would be a pity to lose them completely. Nsk92 (talk) 19:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] two questions: scope and evidence from how long ago?
Is the article Teachings of Prem Rawat included in this case. Evidence from how long ago is okay? Max. one year? Andries (talk) 11:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
