User:Zordrac/helping

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Helping - User:Zordrac's efforts to help out newbies who are being bullied or are otherwise in distress (including users who might not ordinarily be called newbies). Here are some of the more notable efforts:

Contents

[edit] User:Daniel Brandt and article Daniel Brandt

This issue started out because I went to the Village Pump and read up about the Seigenthaler controversy, which I made comments about here: User:Zordrac/Seigenthaler, and this then led me to discover another related controversy of a similar issue involving Daniel Brandt, which I wrote comments about here: User:Zordrac/Daniel Brandt. As a result, I eventually made it a point to try to work with the people who had criticised him, to try to convince them what his point of view was, not necessarily so that they could be friends, but in an effort to make peace and see things from his point of view and understand him. I also worked to improve the article that was about him so that it was more accurate and more correctly represented who he was, covering more equally the positive and negative aspects of his life, rather than just focussing on the negative aspects. I even wrote an e-mail to Daniel Brandt as part of this, and also sent him 1 message on talk, and he replied to me once on talk and also included me as a Blind Copy of an e-mail that he sent to someone on Wikipedia. In my e-mail, I asked him to take down the names and personal details of the users affected (but keep their usernames and quotes), and I also suggested that he take actual legal action against people responsible, demonstrating to him that in fact he had been defamed, by virtue of the fact that a number of people who didn't know him were now, purely based on the article about him, saying untrue things about him that put him in a very negative light. I pointed out to him one hole in his quote as well, which referenced why User:Antaeus Feldspar had included "See also: Outing" in entries about him. I referenced what Antaeus Feldspar had said in comments, and quoted this to Daniel Brandt, linking directly to what Antaeus had said, stating that basically he was calling Brandt a hypocrite, not gay, but that in fact this was actually a lot worse.

[edit] Achievements (in rough chronological order)

  1. A number of users who had previously refused to see Daniel Brandt's point of view, started to see it.
  2. A number of neutrals who became involved spoke out in support of Daniel Brandt.
  3. Rather than 90% of Wikipedia against Brandt, it became about 50/50 of those who were involved.
  4. His two greatest critics, User:Linuxbeak and User:SlimVirgin both wrote to apologise to him.
  5. The Daniel Brandt page was fixed to be neutral.
  6. Linuxbeak and SlimVirgin did agree to remove all of the personal information from the Daniel Brandt page, and also went further to redirect, merge and page protect, and even got in trouble for breaking Wikipedia rules in order to help their enemy.
  7. Daniel Brandt's indefinite block was completely removed (permanently).
  8. Daniel Brandt did (briefly) completely remove his "Hivemind" page.
  9. Jimbo Wales spoke out in support of Daniel Brandt.
  10. Jimbo Wales spoke out in approval of my efforts to help to resolve the issue.
  11. A number of people who were previously angry with Daniel Brandt commended me on my efforts.
  12. Daniel Brandt fixed the incorrect reference to User:Antaeus Feldspar (later reverted back)
  13. After restoring the "Hivemind" page, Daniel Brandt then removed the names of his 2 greatest detractors, Linuxbeak and SlimVirgin. (later restored)
  14. Daniel Brandt then removed the personal details of all of the editors on his "Hivemind" page. (later restored)

[edit] Sufferings as a result of my efforts

  1. A number of users wrote extremely nasty things about me on talk pages in relation to this (although most later apologised for this).
  2. I was accused of being a sock puppet of Daniel Brandt's, or of working as his proxy.
  3. I was threatened to be banned for helping out a banned user (until the ban was lifted).
  4. Daniel Brandt accused me of "going too far" and of "getting him in trouble" by insisting that the people attacking him were worse than they were.
  5. Daniel Brandt accused me of "getting my facts wrong" when talking about who he was (i.e. noting that we are not the same person)
  6. Daniel Brandt attacked me and said that I was "prematurely ejaculating" and ruining everything. As a result, I stopped helping him.
  7. Antaeus Feldspar accused me of being on a campaign to attack him and Wikipedia, and lots of other things.
  8. Antaeus Feldspar threatened me many times.
  9. Antaeus Feldspar, after I had helped him out, accused me of lying about him, and insisted that he hadn't asked to be helped.
  10. Antaeus Feldspar threatened me on my talk page.
  11. Antaeus Feldspar vandalised my pages in an effort to "expose" me.
  12. Antaeus Feldspar refused to leave me alone.
  13. Antaeus Feldspar began following me around on to other Wikipedia pages, and follows my contributions so as to harass me.
  14. Antaeus Feldspar is now threatening to get me banned for helping him.

There are always good and bad elements for doing something like this, and some people would suggest therefore that its not worth it. Some users don't even appreciate it. Some don't deserve it. And you almost always get attacked by someone because of doing it. And emotionally its not worth it. Emotionally its a lot easier to just sit around and do nothing, to hide from conflict and just stay away. But morally, and ethically, it is wonderful to do this. It makes you feel good about yourself. You know that what you are doing is right. You know that you are helping out your fellow human being.

[edit] User:Fortunelounge and Fortune Lounge Group

This issue started when User:Fortunelounge started up a page about the online casino group Fortune Lounge Group which ended up in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, and was deleted for being "advertising". Yet the topic is in fact extraordinarily notable, which was universally agreed in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fortune Lounge Group. It is the biggest online casino group in the world and has been talked about widely. Over 28,000 google hits. They have no reason to advertise as they are already very popular. All that we had was a non-neutral article that needed fixing in order to be neutral. But the article was deleted. A second version of the article, which had entirely different content and was much more neutral, was incorrectly speedy deleted as "recreation of previously deleted content" even though it had different content. User:Fortunelounge then tried to userfy the contents, and even his own user page was speedy deleted! He was warned and threatened with being banned for spamming! So he asked what he was supposed to do, and was advised to contact the people who had voted "keep" (which included me) to see if we could help to rewrite the article and have it undeleted. As such, I wrote him an e-mail and agreed to talk to people to see if they would allow it to be recreated. It was allowed to be recreated, but I first wrote it as a subpage at User:Zordrac/Fortuneloungegroup. I then got approval from some of the administrators concerned, who then agreed to let me move it. Then this user started editing the page, to "PRize" it - in other words getting rid of all of the information about the scandals surrounding the casino (which were notable scandals, it should be noted) and trying to hush it up. The user was warned with blocking for breaching 3RR and I agreed to abandon helping the user. I had done my bit, and this user had ended up not really deserving it. I still don't regret trying though.

[edit] Achievements (in rough chronological order)

  1. There was an agreement to have the article recreated as a sub page.
  2. The people who didn't want it included all agreed that it could now be included.
  3. It was made in to a real article.
  4. The Fortune Lounge Group guy was happy.
  5. A lot of admins, who had previously questioned my motives for helping out newbies, worked with me to help to improve this.
  6. The article Fortune Lounge Group remains to this day, and has not been nominated for deletion again (and probably never will be).

[edit] Suffering as a result of my efforts

  1. I got quite a bit of abuse in relation to trying to help this guy out.
  2. The Fortune Lounge Group guy was angry with me for including the scandal and not letting him delete it (he said that it was a lie, but couldn't provide any evidence to dispute it).

In comparison to other efforts, this was less controversial than most others, and ended up being a good idea to go for. Whilst in the end the guy probably didn't deserve any help, it nonetheless worked out pretty well for me personally and I feel good about it. It also helped people to understand why I was doing all of this.

[edit] User:Peter Campbell and Peter Campbell

This was a case where a well known politician wrote an article about himself, and this article was then nominated for deletion on the basis of being an autobiography (and of his being non-notable) and in fact it was deleted in the end. The guy was treated very disrespectfully and suffered from a lot of newbie-bashing (see WP:BITE for an explanation of what this means). So I wrote to him to try to explain things, and give him some tips for what to do. The guy ended up accepting the decision and deciding to be a regular Wikipedia editor, and to see the benefits of it, and will likely end up being one of Wikipedia's best ever edits. I hope that his article is included at some stage, as, to me at least, he is very famous. I felt honoured that he would talk to me.

[edit] Achievements (in rough chronological order)

  1. Peter Campbell understood what was going on, and accepted it.
  2. Peter Campbell thanked me for it.
  3. Peter Campbell contributed more heartily to Wikipedia.
  4. Peter Campbell created and edited many other useful articles (already).
  5. Peter Campbell contributed to Wikipedia discussions about policy etc.

[edit] Suffering as a result of my efforts

In this case, basically zero, other than perhaps a few people who had "bitten" him probably feeling a bit sheepish for doing so, and a few people in the AFD discussion suggesting that I was wrong.

Ah, if only they were always like this! But its really impossible to know how they are going to work out. What I did probably didn't make much difference ultimately. Who knows. But maybe it was enough to turn the tide and change him from being a Wikipedia enemy to being a Wikipedia supporter.

[edit] User:Mrhyde and Madhuri Guin and Madhuri Guin and dollsofindia

This case started off just in AFD in this discussion here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Madhuri Guin and was a complicated case. It was a very well written article but the person who it was about wasn't obviously notable. The creator of the article, Mrhyde, had also created many other well written articles and was an exceptional contributor to Wikipedia - but there was a suspicion that secretly he may have subtly vandalised Wikipedia (or hoaxed it) just in ways so subtle that nobody noticed. I started off with a simple keep vote, then changed it to delete after seeing what was written on the dollsofindia page "the famous Madhuri Guin as seen on Wikipedia", and then I just got confused, so I wrote to Madhuri Guin per the dollsofindia site. In the end, everyone agreed to be more pleasant with it, as we all agreed that the motives were good. So the article was deleted/userfied and placed on the dollsofindia site as requested, and everyone ended up happy.

[edit] Achievements (in rough chronological order)

  1. We managed to work towards a peaceful solution in which all hostility ended.
  2. Madhuri Guin was happy with the result.
  3. Mrhyde was happy with the result.
  4. All of the detractors were happy with the result.
  5. I got a nice e-mail from dollsofindia thanking me for it.
  6. Wikipedia gets to keep Mrhyde, who is one of their best editors.
  7. I got a thank you note from one of the detractors.

[edit] Suffering as a result of my efforts

  1. I got some criticism for helping out Madhuri Guin too much (initially).
  2. I got some criticism from Madhuri Guin that she didn't think that the article should be deleted.
  3. Mrhyde thought that some of my comments were unfairly criticising him.

It wasn't totally ideal, but it basically ended up pretty good all around. I did write a huge amount in the AFD though.

[edit] User:PrudenceBumpkin and Macedonia (Greece)

This was a case that I stumbled upon basically when writing a talk message to User:Izehar who was involved in the case. I thought to be extremely friendly towards Prudence Bumpkin in the hopes of reaching a resolution. I also wrote on the talk page of the disputed article to try to reach a resolution. Sadly, it didn't really work. PrudenceBumpkin responded on his own talk page (I am assuming it is a he) with some hostility, and didn't seem willing to reach any kind of a compromise. There was really nothing more that I could do. I had done all that I could really. Izehar was handling it so I was really just supporting Izehar's efforts.

[edit] Achievements (in rough chronological order)

None really.

[edit] Suffering as a result of my efforts

Other than being harassed by Antaeus Feldspar and having my efforts abused by him per Izehar's talk page, there wasn't really much in the way of suffering. And the abuse from Antaeus wasn't really related to this case.

[edit] User:Poetlister and User:Zordrac/Poetlister

I got a message from out of nowhere from someone I'd never met before, and for the life of me I still don't understand why she thought to write me a message or how she found me. She mentioned User:SlimVirgin so I presume that she saw my comment in support of Slim Virgin in relation to a Request for Arbitration against SlimVirgin. But why ask for help from someone who is supporting the person who you are opposing? That didn't add up to me. Maybe she got confused and thought that I was against SlimVirgin? I nearly told her that I was sorry but I wasn't going to go against SlimVirgin and maybe she should ask an enemy of SlimVirgin not someone who supports her when I realised that I have in fact never talked to SlimVirgin, and really I should be neutral towards her, since what I knew of her, in relation to Daniel Brandt, was that she started the whole mess with him and then later apologised - which was both good and bad. So really I should be neutral. So I thought that perhaps I could answer this case.

Originally, I was just going to write to her to say that the situation was hopeless, and just to give her advice to how to handle it. Sadly, yes, she was being abused (or at least felt that she was), but there was nothing that I or anyone else could do about it. I could just give her advice for how to cope with it. I had no desire to get involved in this, and wanted to stay right out of it. Then I saw that she was banned halfway through my writing the e-mail. I was dumbfounded. I had 2 reactions simultaneously - that either she was banned because she was a bad user and was trying to con me in to supporting her or else alternatively that she was banned because she was trying to stop this abuse. I couldn't tell which so just left it at that. I then sought to find out why she was banned, so that I could handle it appropriately. If she was banned legitimately, then I could write to her and explain it and empathise with her so that she could accept it. If it was not legitimate, I could explain to her that it was not, and try to get her to cope with it. I still had no real desire to get involved.

Finding out that there was no evidence, and that it was virtually unanimous from all Wikipedians (including administrators) that the ban was illegitimate, I decided that it was almost certain that I should support for her ban to be lifted.

In trying to sort this out, I of course had to explain what had happened, and User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote me an abusive message on my talk page as a result. Having never met Lulu before, I thought to write on her talk page to explain it. I will just say here what I was planning to say:

"Hi Lulu. No you are wrong that I am your enemy. I am not your enemy. I don't know you. I am just trying to help someone out. Its unfortunate that you are against them. I am hoping that we can all work together on this. Please don't take it personally. You will note that in fact I am supportive of SlimVirgin and hence through her I am also supportive of you. I am supportive of everyone involved in this :). Please can we drop the hostility and work towards sorting this out"

However, when going to write this, I noticed that the feind Antaeus Feldspar had got in ahead of me to write abuse to me on Lulu's talk page - the first time that Antaeus had done this before I'd written there first. Antaeus was in fact responding to what Lulu wrote on my talk page - by responding on Lulu's talk page. A new approach at stalking! I was so horrified at this that I didn't know what to do. Say nothing and let Lulu get the wrong idea, or write on my talk page where its safe, write what I was going to write anyway, in spite of Antaeus' harassment, or write to criticise Antaeus. In the end, I wrote to Lulu to advise her not to associate with Antaeus, and then I wrote a response to Lulu on my talk page.

The result of this was that Lulu started stalking me too. It was then very hard to remain neutral. According to Lulu, I was never neutral to begin with, as Lulu insisted that I was "best friends" with Poetlister or even a sock puppet, and that I had a big campaign against her in spite of never having met her before and having nothing to do with her before this. Lulu's lies were horrendous and they competed with Antaeus' lies. It became such that I couldn't tell them apart. They were acting as "one voice" as it were. There were a few minor differences though. Lulu at least didn't go so far as to go to my talk page to harass me so as to accuse me of falsely accusing her of harassing me, while Antaeus did. Lulu also didn't go so far as to go to other people's talk pages to stalk me so as to accuse me of falsely accusing her of stalking me, while Antaeus did. But Lulu still harassed me, and still stalked me - just that she insisted that her reasoning to do so was to point out what a terribly bad user I was and that I should be banned. As with Antaeus, absolutely nobody listened to her and paid her no attention. The two would make a lovely couple.

Partially to try to disprove Antaeus and Lulu's lies, I made User:Zordrac/Poetlister, so as to demonstrate that it was not about them. I was not doing this to attack anyone. I was doing it to help people. Of course, that didn't stop their ridiculous lies, harassment and stalking, but it at least made their claims a bit easier to routinely dismiss.

The vast majority of people thought that the ban was unfair, but nobody seemed willing to do anything. The people involved got in to some serious "back patting" and backed each other up by lying about what was going on, and even went so far as to accuse me of doing the wrong thing and threatening to ban me for trying to right this wrong. They also pretended to be neutral when they were directly involved, such as User:SlimVirgin insisting that she was a "neutral party" when in fact she was the one that asked for the ban and was extremely heavily involved, and User:Kelly Martin insisting that she had completed a "neutral investigation" in spite of the fact that she was the one who was asked by SlimVirgin to make the ban - making her as un-neutral as they come! There were a lot of other lies about what was going on.

Eventually, the production of the page exposed the sheer level of the corruption, and one administrator, User:Dan100, agreed to remove all of the bans, and to investigate the matter properly and independently. Whilst of course it doesn't mean that the bans will be lifted forever, and its quite possible that in fact Poetlister et al really are guilty, it is a start. Its something. Even if the whole thing ends up with all of them banned indefinitely, we will have achieved something. Even if Mistress Selina Kyle, Arniep, myself, and everyone else involved in trying to help find ourselves permanently banned because of our efforts, it was still worth it. It is the principle of the thing.

[edit] Achievements (in rough chronological order)

  1. Proving that the ban was illegitimate.
  2. Exposing the lies about what had happened with the process, and proving that they were lies.
  3. Exposing the corruption in the banning process, and the real reasons for the ban (to push a POV in an edit war, and to cover up all opponents)
  4. Convincing most Wikipedians that the ban was illegitimate.
  5. Getting everyone involved, including people who were opponents of Poetlister, and including friends of the people involved, to agree that the ban was illegitimate.
  6. Working towards making this banning process more transparent.
  7. Providing evidence as to what had really happened.
  8. Performing my own "CheckUser" (without the command) through investigation to prove which IP addresses were used by each user.
  9. Presenting a really good, accurate, page to document the events.
  10. Getting assistance from Mistress Selina Kyle, Arniep and Poetlister with creating the page more accurately.
  11. Getting rid of the corruption in the related RfM, RfC and RfAr processes relating to this.
  12. Getting the bans lifted!
  13. Getting a lot of thanks from Poetlister for my efforts.
  14. Commendations from everyone involved (other than those who were involved in making the ban and Antaeus Feldspar) for my efforts.

[edit] Suffering as a result of my efforts

  1. Being accused of being a sock puppet of Poetlister.
  2. Being threatened with being banned for helping out a banned user.
  3. Being threatened with being banned for not assuming good faith that an administration decision that had no evidence behind it and looked very wrong was correct. In spite of explaining that it was the administrators that broke WP:AGF by not giving them the chance to explain why their IP addresses were similar, they still insisted that I had breached WP:AGF and deserved to be banned.
  4. Being accused of lying about what had happened as a campaign against Lulu.
  5. Being accused of actually not helping anyone - that I was in fact there to attack Lulu.
  6. Being accused of disrupting Wikipedia and trying to destroy it - and threatened with banishment because of it.
  7. Giving Antaeus Feldspar a supporter in stalking and harassing me, in the name of Lulu.
  8. Having Antaeus Feldspar increasing his stalking activities 10-fold.
  9. Having Lulu stalk me, now giving me 2 stalkers.
  10. Having a wealth of accusations put up about me by Antaeus and Lulu in relation to this.
  11. Having Antaeus and Lulu threaten to ban me because of this.
  12. Having Antaeus and Lulu threaten to get an RfAr against me in relation to this.
  13. Having people try to force me to choose sides.
  14. Being told that I was best friends with Poetlister and was on her side.
  15. Being criticised by Poetlister for including details of her e-mail, which she said was private.
  16. Being criticised by Poetlister for quoting her and including photos of her.
  17. Being criticised by Arniep for remaining neutral.

The whole issue has been very stressful, but at the same time very rewarding. Whilst it raises the question of the antics of Antaeus and Lulu in harassing and stalking me, and the reality that this, combined with the fact that I exposed corruption in the administrative process, means that the Arbitration Committee would have reason to rush through an illegitimate ban of me so as to seek revenge and hush me up, and that Antaeus and Lulu could conceivably win through. Whilst ordinarily their complaints would be laughable, in this circumstance maybe not. They probably realise this too. And of course, until they are banned, or otherwise stop the abuse, it makes life very unpleasant for me in using Wikipedia. However, that being said, I would be happy to be banned over this. It is the Wikipedia equivalent of dying while rescuing a crying baby from a burning building. It is well and truly worth it. In the end, being on Wikipedia isn't all that important, and I am happy to take this kind of risk. And as for being forced to put up with harassment, no, I will not do that. If Wikipedia has a rule that insists that I am forced to be harassed in order to stay here, then its quite simple - I won't stay.

[edit] Smaller cases

Some smaller cases that are not worth going in to in detail are as follows:

  • Trying to help out a newbie who was being unfairly accused of vandalism - I wrote him a little note and he wrote me a note of thanks, and stopped getting banned all of the time and became a good editor.
  • Trying to help out a newbie who was being accused of disruptive behaviour - He told me to get stuffed and vandalised my page and attacked me, and was quite correctly banned.
  • Trying to help out a newbie who had their page unfairly deleted - The guy said thanks and then said that Wikipedia was corrupt and left, never to return, and became a major Wikipedia critic.
  • Trying to help out a newbie who had their page unfairly nominated for deletion - The guy said thanks, then explained why the page shouldn't be deleted, it wasn't, and it remains to this day. The guy however was disillusioned and left Wikipedia never to return, but said that I was one of the few shining lights here.
  • Trying to help out various newbies who were being bashed in AFDs and having pages unfairly deleted - most of them didn't say thanks at all, and some even attacked me for doing it, saying that I wasn't doing enough. So on top of getting abuse from other people for sticking up for them, they often bashed me too - unless, of course, the article was actually kept.

[edit] Summary: Types of newbies who I help

In summary, there are the following types of newbies:

  1. Newbies who deserve to be helped and appreciate it, e.g. Peter Campbell.
  2. Newbies who deserve to be helped but don't appreciate it, e.g. Daniel Brandt.
  3. Newbies who don't deserve to be helped and attack me because of it, e.g. Antaeus Feldspar.
  4. Newbies who don't deserve to be helped, but it was worth it, e.g. Fortune Lounge Group, PrudenceBumpkin.
  5. Newbies who deserve to be helped but its hopeless, e.g. Poetlister

Of all of these, the only one that I really regret helping was Antaeus Feldspar. If I had it to do again, I would never have communicated with him or agreed to help him at all. People like that don't deserve help from anyone. And when someone threatens you demanding that you help them, that is probably a good sign that its a bad idea to try to help them. Anyone reading this, that's a tip for you. But for all of the others, yes, it was very much worth it. Also for the ones that I tried to help and just left me a little note or something, and it didn't really make any difference, yes, that was worth it too. And some of the people were bad choices of who to help, but I still don't regret it. I don't think that you can tell whether or not they are "deserving" and in the end it doesn't really matter if they are deserving or not. If they are not deserving, maybe they will change and become deserving.

So anyway, that's all of them. I thought it was a good time to discuss this.