Misplaced Pages

"Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda…an article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to approach a neutral point of view".

The evidence will show that user:Zero0000 uses wikipedia as a vehicle for propeganda and that he continusly violates Misplaced Pages basic policy of WP:NPOV.

The evidence used is very recent.

In fact some of it is his edits from the days after this arbitration process has already started.

Evidence of Zero's editing and violation of several key policies

A typical Zero edit from two days ago: –long massive changes all over the article. Zero is involved in long stream of edit wars in this article (Zeq never edited this article ) argument for the change is by discredit those who oppose him: "restore…no good case made to remove it" – This edit comes after edit war of months. While the edit war has been raging on – From Nov 2006 until April 11, 2007 (i.e. for over 4 months) Zero has not touched the article talk page. . He just edit-war and edit-war – here are the last few rounds of that war:

edit-war

, , , , – similar reverts , – Continued edit war over POV tag and using the word terror. – more reverts

NPOV violation

–NPOV violation, Zero is using words from"Misplaced Pages words to avoid" and edit-war to keep them in.

Removal of sourced info

– massive changes, removal of what Zero's deem "un-sourced info" without using talk at all. (policy is to place such text on talk)

- removal of noted historians Milstein and Pail while adding a link to a propeganda web site.

Use of questionalble and unreliable sources - prefering only his own POV

– restored his preferred version that includes large text from a source described as "No author is stated" (line 20 of article).

"This is an encyclopedia, not a leaflet, no good reason has been given"

Zero response is to revert to his prefered version: (null edit showing it is 100% revert)

In the edit Zero's makes use of words from a propaganda pamphlet by extremists – he does this to prove his own assertion that the article subject is a terrorist organization (Zero edit war to remove the " " from the word terrorist).

reminder: NPOV means presenting both sides. Zero violates NPOV by pushing outside the other side POV (rejecting them as onesided unrailable sources) and keeping his own POV.

Just few days later he argues against using the words of massacre victims: "It should go without saying that organizations with a very strong motivation in presenting only one side of the case are not reliable sources. The Jewish community of Hebron is an obvious example." To apear nuetral Zero adds this :"We should avoid publications of the Arab community of Hebron too" - knowing very well that, in this case, there are no relevant publications from the prepatrator side.

When it does fit his POV, Zero does quote the words of those who are "very strong motivation in presenting only one side" - example: - it include "Victoms of Deir Yassisn massacre" .

Why Jewish victims of Hebron massacre are not a good source (according to Zero) while Arab victims of Deir-Yasin massacre are a good source (according to Zero).

Zero often use one-sided Palestinian sources such as Miftah, Nad-PLO, which generate anti-Israel propeganda: ,, and others with "very strong motivation" as long as they fit his POV.

So it is clear from this example that the issue for Zero is not the quality or impartiality of the source but only if the source fit his prefered POV.

This is Zero in a nut shell: A combination of extreme intelligence, able to argue both sides of the same argument in order to get his POV (and remove the opposing POV) - However, if that "logic" fails he uses massive reverts and edit war to get the article just the way Zero wanted it to be.

Additional Evidence regarding edit-war and removal of WP:RS sources

Zero's edit patterns are not an isolated incident. In fact he is part (or the leader) of a tag team involve in edit-wars.

Removal of sources, Edit-war

- removal of source (Ynet)

- typical POV edit by Zero: remove the source.

– Making the WP:LEAD POV by removing balance.

– refused mediation

– edit war

– Making the WP:LEAD POV by removing balance.

- edit war - edit war

- edit war same edit as above.

- slim restore (she later self revert to avoid 3RR but others (including myself) restore.

- zero remove as part of the edit war

- slim restore

- El-C join the edit war on Zero's side

- slim tries a compromise

Zero and El-C slowly remove critism from the lead section over several edits and slim responds:

- Slim to Zero: "This is not fair. The lead …must be balanced" !!!"

At this point Zero is OUT due to WP:3RR

– el C continue the edit war

– slim revert

– el c 2nd revert

Zero back from 3RR and continue to remove sources, offering to replace a WP:RS source with his Original Reaserach ??

zero wait for 2 days and remove again:

– Krigman add news link about checkpoints

– Zero counter with use of links to propaganda sources (fromoccupiedpalestine.org)  !!!

On May 9 Zero decide to remove it again:

- Zero object to include a quote from a father of a victim.

– slim restore the paragraph.

– zero removes

– slim restore

– zero remove

– zeq rv to slim

month later Zero remove one of the paragraphs and "win" the edit-war:

• note: additional evidence (hundreds of diffs) regarding violations of other key policies NPA, AGF as well as evidence regarding editwar over tens of articles is available - among them will be this use of admin tools to revert a good faith edit which was well sourced:. Zeq 06:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Zero

I do not have very much to add to what is written on the parent page. Please read there my personal description of what I did and why. I will only make a few comments in addition.

1. I admit that it would have been better to seek the involvement of another admin, and that my failure to do so was poor judgement.
2. I strongly believe that a ban against Zeq for his behavior was justified with a large margin of error (leaving aside the issue of who was to enforce the ban).
3. I absolutely deny any suggestion that I behaved in bad faith.
4. I absolutely deny having used my admin powers to gain advantage in a "content dispute". This one needs some explanation, so here goes. Something is not a "content dispute" just because it involves the text of an article. If that were so, it would be a "content dispute" to revert someone repeatedly adding "poopoo" to an article. To me a content dispute is when there is disagreement between good-faith editors (defined generously) over what an article should contain. I have been involved in many such disputes, and nobody who regularly edits in the mideast section can claim otherwise. However, between these categories there is the situation where someone continually adds something that any reasonable person can see is a violation of the rules, and this violation has been explained. At some degree of severity it upgrades from a "content dispute" to a "law enforcement task". Of course there is no sharp boundary, and the "assume good faith" rule tells us to err on the side of caution. But, when an editor with a long history of continual rule violation and article disruption starts adding outrageous material that he can't possibly believe satisfies the rules, the correct classification is clear. This was not a content dispute and not a boundary case either.
5. I trust that the ArbCom will distinguish between the question of what the text "any administrator" meant in Zeq's ArbCom ruling, and the question of what (mis)interprettation might have been made in good faith. These are very different questions. The initiator Dmcdevit is in a good position to answer the first question, having been one of the admins who wrote it, but that answer has no actual bearing on the second question.

--Zero 12:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I do not find many of Dmcdevit's assertions at all reasonable. Take for example "Zero0000 used his admin rollback on good faith edits". Who says they were good-faith edits? Does Dmcdevit even understand the issues involved there? Take the insertion "The massacre was part of the Jewish-Arab 1929 riots sparked by the incitement of Amin Husseieni the grand mufti of Jerusalem." Zeq knows perfectly well this is highly disputed and only claimed by a minority of sources, but he inserted it as a plain fact without giving a source at all. Obvious violation of NPOV, RS and CITE. I repeat: Zeq is not a newbie who needs educating about the editing rules, he is a very experienced editor who knows exactly what is allowed and what isn't allowed. He broke the rules on purpose and I undid the damage. It was a perfectly reasonable action to take. --Zero 05:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Or take "two minutes after reverting the article to his preferred version". What a prejudicial way to put it! I reverted the article to a version that didn't include the blatant rule violation that had just been inserted. Removing it was my duty. Then I told Zeq he wasn't allowed to do it again (though I should have gotten another admin to take that role). For all his assertions about good faith, it looks to me that Dmcdevit is not giving me any presumption of good faith whatever. --Zero 05:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Dmcdevit continues to misrepresent me. I never said "'obvious' violations of NPOV are therefore bad faith", and would never say that because I don't believe it. Every day I see obvious violations of NPOV and fix them myself or discuss with the editor concerned why they are not NPOV. The real points are: (a) Even if Zeq's edit was made in perfect good faith, I was still perfectly entitled to remove it on the grounds of rule violation. (b) I didn't take the time to explain it to him in detail because I knew it would be a waste of time, based on years of experience with Zeq. On the (my point 5), I gave a detailed example of what it means to explain things to Zeq. That incident cost me a whole afternoon in the library, which is not unusual for me, and Zeq totally ignored everything that was said. And I was supposed to go through that again? It is all so easy to cherry pick this or that incident and ignore both my record and the context. --Zero 08:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Sigh. Do I really have to give Zeq an assumption of good faith despite evidence to the contrary over several years, over multiple bans and blocks, endless attempts by multiple editors to try to reason with him, plead with him, beg him to please oh please behave correctly? Well, no I don't. WP:AGF states: "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary." (bold in source). What can I say? --Zero 03:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It is also a serious injustice to look at just one article and count my edits there as if that tells the whole story. The issue at the core of this dispute extends over a whole set of articles. I did what I did as the culmination of an extended process, not on the basis of a single edit or a few edits to one article. It is not right to focus on how light the straw was without considering why the camel's back was already so close to breaking. --Zero 08:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Zeq. Here we have, right on this page, a lovely lesson on what good faith means in Zeq's case. Above he quoted a recent edit of mine as follows: "It should go without saying that organizations with a very strong motivation in presenting only one side of the case are not reliable sources. The Jewish community of Hebron is an obvious example." Kindly look at what I wrote and see that in the very next sentence I included the Arab community of Hebron in the same category. Zeq deliberately truncated the quotation to make me look like a bigot. This is how he always operates. Who is going to do something about this malicious attack? --Zero 11:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

To ArbCom, please consider this example as a charge against Zeq. Also note that his "reply" is yet another lie. The modern settlers of Hebron (the people who run the web site I dispute the reliability of) are not the vicitims of the 1929 massacre. --Zero 03:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

And, though it is a side issue, in the same edit I offered to bring the original English text of the British report that someone wanted to cite in Hebrew translation to the Jewish community of Hebron. That was a very generous offer since the document consists of thousands of pages on microfiche without an index. Seems my contribution to Misplaced Pages is truly shameful, I recommend immediate execution. --Zero 11:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Amoruso for providing some comic relief to these otherwise unpleasant proceedings. He cites this edit as a "threat" under the heading "abuse of administrator power". And what was the threat? To make an RFAR case against him! Something every editor is perfectly entitled to do! And the reason? Repeated mass deletion of well sourced material . Note the four peer-reviewed academic sources and two key primary source given for the material he blanked. The latter, incidentally, Amoruso had been claiming to be quoting from himself , but when he realised I had caught him he had to admit he was just copying from his favorite trashy propaganda book. Oh, and just in case you think Amoruso was himself citing good sources in his mass-deletion edit , be advised that the first two sources simply do not contain what he claims (an Amoruso specialty), the third is a book written by one of Bernadotte's murderers and panned even by his own colleagues, and the fourth is a book by a travel writer at that time under heavy discussion on the talk page. The most amazing thing is that Amoruso thought it was to his advantage to bring up this shameful example of his own behavior. Well, it is time to follow through on that "threat". Amoruso, I'm going to make an ArbCom case against you and that's a promise. --Zero 01:47, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, I took Dmcdevit's word for it when he wrote "He made not a single edit to the article's talk page before this arbitration case", even though I was surprised. I should have known better. What about this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Or this? And guess what, these seem to show me discussing disputes politely with good faith editors! Can't be me, must be a different Zero! --Zero 02:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Dmcdevit

Zero0000

Zero0000's history

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Lance6wins

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Lance6wins#Findings_of_Fact: "User Zero0000, frustrated by the inaction of the Arbitration Committee with respect to the editing of user Lance6wins while engaged in an editing dispute with Lance6wins improperly threatened him and blocked him."

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Lance6wins#Remedies: "User Zero0000 will have administrator privileges suspended for two weeks. Following that time, Zero000 will be on probation for a period of two months..."

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Zeq

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Zeq#Edit_warring_by_Ian_Pitchford.2C_Zero0000_and_others: "Ian Pitchford, Zero0000 and the others involved in this dispute have engaged in extensive edit warring."

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Zeq#Others_cautioned: "Ian Pitchford, Zero0000 and the others who were involved in this dispute are cautioned to use the procedures in Misplaced Pages:Resolving disputes."

Zero0000 was involved in a content dispute with Zeq

1929 Hebron massacre edit war

The following are content reverts by Zero0000 to 1929 Hebron massacre—every one of his edits to the article since March 22, 2007

None of the edits he reverts are clear vandalism or made in bad-faith, and claiming such is a serious assumption of bad faith.

Prior dispute reolution

Zero0000 was a party to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Zeq and was found to have edit warred. He had evidence presented against him by Zeq (which included edit wrring with him more than a year ago) and offered evidence against Zeq. He is not a neutral party.

Zero0000 used his admin tools while involved

Banning Zeq while involved

Zero0000 banned Zeq from 1929 Hebron massacre two minutes after reverting the article to his preferred version . He failed to post to the ban for review at WP:AN or to log the action at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Zeq#Log of blocks and bans as required by Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Zeq#Zeq banned from articles he has disrupted and placed on Probation.

Blocking Zeq while involved

Zero0000 later blocks Zeq 48 hours for editing 1929 Hebron massacre.

Misuse of vandal rollback

Zero0000 used his admin rollback on good faith edits, providing no revert rationale .

His reasoning

As you can see from his evidence above above, Zero0000 seems to think that "obvious" violations of NPOV are therefore bad faith and should be dealt with as vandalism. Apparently the other editor "knows exactly what is allowed and what isn't allowed. He broke the rules on purpose." That is the unwarranted assumption of bad faith that suggests to me that Zero0000 cannot tell the difference between a content edit he disagrees with and bad faith. If NPOV were that simple our job would be much easier, wouldn't it?

Zero0000 has engaged in edit warring

Recent edit warring at 1929 Hebron massacre

Zero0000 was an equal party to the recent edit war at 1929 Hebron massacre:

Zero0000 made no attempt at discussion or dispute resolution

Despite the prior arbitration warning for edit warring and lack of dispute resolution, Zero0000 engaged in edit warring with no attempt at discussion whatsoever. He made not a single edit to the article's talk page before this arbitration case, despite many reverts . His first communication with Zeq is his notice of banning him after several reverts of him .

Zeq

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by Amoruso

Zero's personal attacks

In many cases, Zero0000 has responded to me in negative rude way as in here and here and here and far worse stuff. This seemed peculiar I believe to other users: Amoruso 14:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Zero's Edit-warring

Here is a list of his edits each of them is an edit war with other editors, each is a removal of well sourced info:

Removal of a news paper from 1929 with the headline "massacre of Jewish women and children in Hebron" similar removal of well sourced photo Zero in edit war with me... Zero in edit war with user Isarig.

Zero started another edit-war this time with Humus Sapiens.

Zero "won" the edit-war and the image was only restored by user Humus Sapiens days later:

and more: and again . At that point Zero was fully in battle mode and in the middle of his edit war with 2-3 editors.

Zero continued the edit war:

Zero continued the edit-war: This is when Zeq made the single edit ->: . When Zeq made the single edit (restored a WP:RS deleted by Zero) this immidiately caused Zero to threaten him and ban him (improperly).

Of course this happened in many articles, here's one of his "best" - yes , it's just one article and all of this is his definition of WP:AGF and civility it seems:

• reason : "junk"

Zero Abusing his adminstrator power

This did not only happen to Zeq. Look here: I've received an apparent threat from User Zero0000 here He has said he will ban me because of a content dispute and accused me of vandalism, and not for the first time. Zero has been contiuously incivil to me, and has blanked sourced material for months. I've already asked him to remain civil in the past but he always continues with the same approach. He even did while he I was new to wikipedia in a content dispute with me after his edit-warring on article Palestinian exodus where he kept removing well sourced material.

I've previously presented the following instances of his violations towards]] me

Amoruso 13:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Mackan79

While I wasn't involved in the Hebron Massacre article, I've edited with Zero for some time on Misplaced Pages, and would like to offer a few thoughts. Primarily, I agree with Sjakkalle that there was real confusion here about Zeq's previous arbcom ruling. I'll address that briefly below, but would also like to address Dmc's evidence of edit warring, which I think misses a few important points.

Edit warring

In discussing Zero's editing, Dmc provides a list of Zero's edits on that page, adding that Zero made "no attempt at discussion or dispute resolution." If you look at the edits in order, however, this seems to miss the very clear explanations in Zero's edit summaries. Looking through these, I see four important points.

• In fact, Zero explained very clearly in the edit summaries why he was removing material.
• Only after doing so, and when the material was reverted without any response or explanation, did he ever revert without further explaining himself.
• When Zeq showed up, Zeq immediately reverted Zero with an entirely nonresponsive summary. Assuming good faith with Zeq here would depend on whether we think he was unable to comprehend Zero's edit summary, and second whether we think Zeq believed Zero had removed the sentence on the basis that Haaretz was not a reliable source. I'm not sure either assumption is plausible.
• If we're talking about when Zero might have initiated dispute resolution, it's also not entirely clear. The first dispute was with Isarig, after which Zero left. Two weeks later, it began and ended rather quickly with Zeq. For a lot of reasons, I think dispute resolution in the Middle East section generally just doesn't happen that quickly.

Admin tools

Regarding the use of admin tools, I don't have much to add to Sjakkalle or my previous comment. For one thing, I think it's important to note the specific nature of Zeq's editing, including both the tendentious style and the problems using English. These are relevant, because I think together they suggest that a decision very well could have been made to address this as in the LaRouche situation, whether this was ultimately intended or not. Mackan79 20:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Doron (talk · contribs)

Zero's contribution to Misplaced Pages

Zero must be one of the most knowledgeable and thorough editors I've had the pleasure to collaborate with. Unlike Zeq (and a few others), whose knowledge base is limited to a handful of dubious propaganda websites and perhaps a book or two, Zero does a thorough research and provides information from a wide variety of published material of the highest quality. Zero's work is the kind of thing that makes Misplaced Pages such a good source of information, rather than a political pamphlet, of which there are plenty around.

Zero's offenses are minor, at best

Perhaps this is not the Misplaced Pages way of doing things, but if bans were enforced automatically by the software (this is the 21st century, you know), this whole case wouldn't have even existed, because Zeq wouldn't have been able to edit an article he's not allowed to in the first place. I appreciate the importance of administrators not being involved when using their authority; however, there is no doubt that Zeq violated his probation, so an unbiased administrator is as good as a biased one in calling this case -- even a robot would come to the same conclusion -- that Zeq violated his probation. Failing to carry out a sanction against Zeq would have been a violation of a binding ArbCom decision, even if Zero was arguably not the right person to carry it out.

As for edit warring, I think it would be safe to say that a significant part of the activity going on in Misplaced Pages's Middle East articles constitutes edit warring, and it involves sysops and mere mortals alike. Misplaced Pages ought to beef up her policies to counter this widespread problem.

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.