Wikipedia talk:Requests for checkuser/Case/GabrielF

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(Note: this is taken largely from messages I posted on User Talk:GabrielF and User Talk:Tewfik.)

Contents

[edit] Evidence

My concern was raised regarding this matter by the following series of edits on Anti-Zionism on February 21, before which neither Tewfik nor GabrielF appear to have edited the page in several weeks or months:

  • Edit 1: 20:44 21 Feb 2007 - Tewfik enters content dispute to revert Reinhart paragraph
  • Edit 2 (Talk page): 20:47 21 Feb 2007 - Three minutes later, not Tewfik, but GabrielF leaves message "explaining revert" of Reinhart paragraph (see edit summary).

Huh? Ok, we wait.

  • Edit 3 (Talk page): 21:03 21 Feb 2007 - Tewfik leaves message with nearly identical sentiment to GabrielF (but without acknowledging that GabrielF just said the same thing).
  • Edit 4: 21:50 21 Feb 2007 - Tiamut reverts Tewfik back to Mackan
  • Edit 5: 22:17 21 Feb 2007 - GabrielF finally reverts Tiamut in first edit on page since 13 September 2006

Specifically: What revert was GabrielF explaining at 20:47 21 Feb 2007? It appears Tewfik was the only individual who had just reverted the page, 3 minutes ago. GabrielF had not reverted the page for several months prior. So it a coincidence that both show up for the first time together in this manner?

In this regard I also found another sequence of interest, which I recalled from Zionism.

  • Edit 1: 15:54, 16 Feb 2007 - GabrielF reverts material for POV concerns.
  • Edit 2 (Talk page): 15:58, 16 Feb 2007 - Four minutes later, GabrielF leaves message "explaining my last revert further" (see edit summary)

And then on Racism by country:

  • Edit 1: 15:48, 12 Feb 2007 - GabrielF reverts, wanting more discussion
  • Edit 2 (Talk page): 15:55, 12 Feb 2007 - Seven minutes later, GabrielF leaves comment with "explanation of revert" in talk.

Two points:

  1. A person generally does not say they are "explaining revert" unless they have actually reverted. Rather, they post an explanation, and then revert "per talk." "Explaining revert" generally suggests one has already reverted, not that one plans to do so.
  2. GabrielF's previous editing indeed seems to show that his pattern is to revert and then "explain" his revert, not to "explain revert" and then assume the material will still be there to do so.

Based on these issues, I took a look through each of the edit logs (Tewfik and GabrielF), and was interested to find a very strong correlation. That is, when GabrielF is editing, Tewfik is not. In fact, despite rather heavy editing by both accounts, I could not find a single day among the first seven months of Tewfik's account where they were editing at the same time. This held true until 25 May 2006. On that day, GabrielF inexplicably went on a spree reverting vandalism on many random pages, something he hadn't done before, along with placing a series of "test" templates on user pages in very close succession. Tewfik, during this period, went on editing as normal.

In other words, the one time they edited at the same time, it was done in the way that would most likely have been orchestrated with a friend (or alone) to cover their tracks, and in a way that was highly inconsistent with GabrielF's previous style of editing.

I haven't spent too much time looking through the 'evidence', but pointing to the first seven months of my editing as proof that myself and GabrielF never edit at the same time, when I edited 1, 7, 1, 35, & 35 times respectively for each month of the first half-year, with only the 7th month being reasonably active at 397, is far from a legitimate basis for checkuser. I'm not sure how someone who has managed to locate every page we edited together from my thousands of contribs sees this as proving something, but I hope that he reexamines his report with fresh-eyes and apologises for his mistake. TewfikTalk 19:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Violations

[edit] Editing together (could be more)
  1. Anti-Zionism
  2. Zionism
  3. Racism by country
  4. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
  5. Israel-Lebanon Conflict
  6. 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

[edit] Votes together
  1. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_political_epithets_(2)
  2. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anti-Iranianism
  3. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_massacres_commited_by_Israeli_forces
  4. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Islamic_extremist_terrorism

[edit] Combined 3RR violation

Finally, of relevance to both issues, is GabrielF's response to my preliminary inquiry, in which he personally attacks me and accuses me of being an antisemitic conspiracy theorist. I consider this completely unacceptable by itself, and would invite anyone to look directly to my talk page for the discussion there. Mackan79 18:57, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Um, the reason I posted a message on the talk page "explaining my revert" when I hadn't actually reverted was because there was an edit conflict and my revert got lost. When I looked at the page after submitting the revert it didn't occur to me that someone else had gotten there first. I hope that readers will treat this request with the benign amusement that it deserves.GabrielF 19:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
So you're saying that you saw an edit conflict, and then didn't look to see what the edit conflict was? So you thought your revert had gone through, and went to explain it in talk? Or are you saying that it did go through, but it didn't change anything, and so it didn't show up in the edit history? I don't understand how you thought you reverted when in fact you didn't. Mackan79 19:16, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
No, that's not what I'm saying. Sometimes the software doesn't report an edit conflict. GabrielF 19:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Benign amusement would indeed be acceptable behavior while this is sorted out. Concocting antisemitic conspiracy theories and then planting them on Mackan79, however, is not.--G-Dett 19:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

...okay... I'm not entirely sure what you're accusing me of but I find it hard to believe that anyone would actually take my response on Mackan's talk page seriously. GabrielF 19:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Slim evidently did just that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by G-Dett (talk • contribs)
You seem to have misunderstood her comments. She mentioned "conspiracy theory" in reference to Tiamut commenting that GabrielF's comments were designed to scare people away from discussing a totally legitimate question. TewfikTalk 20:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
A comment of mine keeps getting deleted here by two editors, while another keeps gallantly restoring it. In it I said I had indeed misunderstood SlimVirgin's comment, and apologized. I also suggested the phrase "conspiracy theory" gets bandied about here too promiscuously, sometimes in a way that seems calculated to taint people. A charge of sockpuppetry, no matter how erroneous, unfortunate, ill-advised, blameworthy, etc. etc. – is not tantamount to an accusation of a "vast conspiracy theory." I expressed this in provocative terms; I hope this rephrasing puts the matter behind us.--G-Dett 20:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but Tewfik has misrepresented my comments above. I thought the Zionist-conspiracy-theory garbage was an anon posting when I made the remark that they "seemed to be designed to scare people away from discussing a totally legitimate question." I only found out the statement was posted by GabrielF after checking the Page History, and subsequently noted that that was a highly inappropriate way to respond to Mackan79's request for clarification of his editing behaviour. Tiamut 20:32, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
In what way did I misrepresent your comments? All I did was provide the quote to which SlimVirgin was directing her comments, which G-Dett mistakenly thought were directed at GabrielF's comments. I was clarifying a misunderstanding between other editors and made no comment about your quote or you at all, and I don't appreciate your running assumption of my bad faith, especially on a topic with which I'm not even sure how you got involved. TewfikTalk 20:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Clerk note: This is the original, lengthy report posted on the case page, placed here in the interests of brevity. ✎ Peter M Dodge (Talk to Me) 20:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)