Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:41, 22 September 2005

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Evidence presented by Ultramarine

I must mention user:172 in order to explain the events, but I have had no contact with him recently.

15 January 2005

A long dispute between 172 and me starts regarding whether the article Communism should have any mention of the large scale human rights violations that occurred .

15 February 2005

I start editing Democratic peace theory .

31 May 2005

Mihnea Tudoreanu starts editing Democratic peace theory .

3 June 2005

Septentrionalis/Pmanderson starts editing Democratic peace theory .

6 June 2005

Robert A West starts editing the talk page of Democratic peace theory .

8 June 2005

Frivolous accusations by Septentrionalis of copyvivo in order to remove arguments .

23 June 2005

Septentrionalis adds the 2V template to Democratic peace theory .

16 July 2005

172 files for 3RR violation by me .

172 now again tries to completely remove all criticisms from the Communism article. When this fails , he creates the Criticisms of communism article and moves the material there .

18 July 2005

Discussions and edits on Democracy regarding the role of capitalism. Repeated deletions of referenced facts .

19 July 2005

172 sends a personal message to Slimvirgin regarding the 3RR .

20 July 2005

Slimvirgin blocks me fours day after the initial request . 172 thanks Slimvirgin for the block .

Spontaneous page protection of Democracy without request .

RFC against me by Mihnea Tudoreanu . 172, Septentrionalis, and Robert A West participated in the planing before the RfC, in part by using email for things too sensitive for the talk pages. Apparently they filed the RfC while I was blocked so that I should have no chance to make an initial response "You MUST leave a note on Ultramarine's talk page ASAP informing him of the RfC; since he's blocked, he can't do anything about it" .

21 July 2005

I add the Two-version template to Criticisms of communism .

26 July 2005

Septentrionalis states that it was first now, two months after the start of the dispute, that he had read a basic review paper of the DPT that I had repeatedly pointed out and admits drawing conclusions without checking my sources .

27 July 2005

When I commented on Septentrionalis statement , he changes to that he had read the review earlier but that "the memory blurred" .

I add referenced critical facts to Vladimir Lenin which previously was clinically free from any . This as usual starts a series of summary deletions, involving among other Mihnea Tudoreanu and 172 . I request and get page protection . This finally starts a factual discussion . The article now has some critical content.

28 July 2005

172 is blocked for 3RR violation reported by me . 172 sends new personal message to Slimvirgin . After a long discussion, 172 is unblocked.

2 August 2005

On Misplaced Pages:Peer review Septentrionalis deceptively claims to be a neutral mediator of Criticisms of communism. We had at that time already been in dispute over the DPT article for two months .

14 August 2005

Robert A West , Mihnea Tudoreanu, and Septentrionalis reach a "consensus" between the three of them regarding Criticisms of communism. They ignore that a poll should not be used for "fact finding", make no attempt to let their straw poll be known outside the talk page, like on RfC or Misplaced Pages:Current surveys, and make no attempt to reach a consensus regarding the nature of the poll, as required on Misplaced Pages:Survey guidelines. Thereafter they refuse to discuss the facts and simply keeps mass reverting to their preferred version . This despite Misplaced Pages:Consensus and Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not: "Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. In difficult cases, straw polls may be conducted to help determine consensus, but are to be used with caution and not to be treated as binding votes."

18 August 2005

RFA against me by Septentrionalis. I add counter-charges and include Mihnea Tudoreanu and Robert A West . After this Mihnea Tudoreanu and somewhat later Robert A West have almost completely avoided disputes with me, the burden of which seems to have fallen almost entirely on Septentrionalis. Factual discussions resume for a while on Criticisms of communism after my counter-charges.

22 August 2005

Page protection of Criticisms of communism after request by me .

24 August 2005

Robert A West states to one the members of the Arbitration Committee "Since I did not initiate the action, and was not named as a party by Septentrionalis, I am not sure exactly what this means." . In fact, he was one of the authors of the RFA against me and he and Septentrionalis carefully coordinated their actions, even if only Septentrionalis presented it. My counter-charges were however not part of their plan .

7 September 2005

Uncivil edit summaries by Septentrionalis "Updating 2v for his latest dead pigeon" . "restore collaborative version over unilateral PoV rant" .

9 September 2005

Uncivil edit summaries by Septentrionalis "rv fraudulent superstition" . "Revert from incomplete inaccurate and dishonest piece of Rummel-worship" .

15 September 2005

Septentrionalis criticizes a reference style that my version no longer has , showing that he has poor understanding of what he blankly reverts and criticizes, which he also admits . My latest version at the time . He has still not corrected the problem he inaccurately criticizes my version for in his own version.

Septentrionalis deliberately lies regarding my "practice" , he is for example well aware that I have not requested that my version should be on top after page protection .

Uncivil comments by Septentrionalis .

16 September 2005

Septentrionalis on Democracy claims to be "centrist" and that it is thus not the extreme left and right who are criticizing liberal democracy. This despite his blank denials of referenced facts on Criticisms of communism and his blank refusal to admit any consequence for Marxist theory of the real-world failures of the Communist states. His insistence on a very rigid Marxist interpretation of history has been commented on before by other editors . On Russian famine of 1921 he has removed negative facts and added an inaccurate apology and in a dispute with another editor argued that it is doubtful that even the Holodomor was a genocide .

18 September 2005

Septentrionalis continues to refer to a "consensus" on Democratic peace theory as an excuse for mass deletion of referenced facts and arguments . In fact, there have never even been a straw poll and other editors have disagreed with his version .

21 September 2005

Septentrionalis edits Misplaced Pages:Consensus .

RJII

Regarding RJII's comment , I note the previous arbitration case against him by me and Slrubenstein and some of his previous personal attacks against me.

"I find your mentality and reasoning ability abysmal."

"looks like it was devised by a schizophrenic with ADHD."

"looks like it was written by third grader who can't get his thoughts together"

"Go to bed, little boy."

"an absolute incoherent mess, as one would expect."

Unfortunately, he seems to think that this arbitration case gives him permission to use even more vehement personal attacks. RJIII is also an anarcho-capitalist and is thus like Marxists a fundamental opponent of liberal democracy.

POV warrior?

In the RFC I was accused of being a POV warrior and that "He appears to be waging a single-handed crusade to purify Misplaced Pages of what he considers "various left and right extremists" by adding the "results of science," his code word for the Truth coming from right-wing think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute."

Examining my sources on Democratic peace theory and Criticisms of Communism will show that I have used very few from any right-wing think-thank. I used some on Democracy regarding the relationship with capitalism, but also there I used studies from other researchers. Note that even for conservative researchers it is the scientific methods and results that should be discussed, ad hominem should be avoided.

I will use some examples from the capitalism article. As openly stated , I think that capitalism is overall beneficial. However, I think that RJII's involvement is a sign that I add opposing arguments and facts also against my own view, like against capitalism. I have been the first to add many important criticisms against capitalism in that article:

First mention of market failures

First mention of the problem of monopolies .

First mention of externalities .

First mention of large scale human rights violatons, wars, and imperialism by capitalist states .

First mention of problems with sustainability, overpopulation, and energy depletion . I also found the subject so interesting that I created and wrote most of the content of Future energy development.

Primary evidence

My primary evidence is the difference between the two versions of the articles and and the sections in talk pages where the factual differences are discussed. Note that they do not always update the Two-version template, so please check the history for the latest versions. Please also note that there have been many changes since the start of the RFA.

Democratic peace theory. List of proposed changes: .

Criticisms of communism. List of proposed changes II: . Due to the page protection, my latest version using facts from the talk pages can be found here:

Examination will show the following behaviour by the opposing side:

• Blank denial of well-referenced facts and arguments
• Promise to soon add referenced support for arguments but never do
• Suddenly want to delete entire sections that they previously insisted on if new evidence against their position is added
• Make minor inconsequential changes and then falsely claim that errors in their version have been fixed
• Refuse to cite sources for claims or cite entire books but refuse to give quotes or page numbers
• Present original research as arguments for removing peer-reviewed studies
• Deceptively modify earlier comments after responses have been made
• Gross ignorance of the Democratic peace theory, do not even get the most basic definitions right
• Almost all of the factual content in both articles have been written by me. I have made a great effort in order to find, read, and then add material from many different reliable sources. Their contributions mainly being deletions and various unreferenced attempts to explain away the facts. In the Democratic peace article I have added over 40 inline links to peer-reviewed studies, statistics, and other empirical evidence. They have added 3 inline links to newspaper articles, 1 to an essay, and only 1 to a scholarly book. In the Criticisms of communism article I have similarly added 28 inline links, they 2. On the talk pages it is only I that do research and add any verifiable facts.

Evidence presented by Dejvid

Above, Ultramarine, talking about Septentrionalis, states that: "His insistence on a very rigid Marxist interpretation of history has been commented on before by other editors ." Both references point to comments by me. I have to say that had Utramarine done more than skim thru the discussion then he would have seen that nature of the disagreement was 180 degrees away from how he, Ultramarine, has presented it. My comments were in fact not about Septentrionalis at all but about Septentrionalis' opinion on Geoffrey de Ste. Croix. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix was a Marxist but I felt that Septentrionalis was too ready to assume that de Ste. Croix followed a rigid Marxist interpretation of history. Dejvid 17:09, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Septentrionalis

Original RfAR

• His talk page comments have been peremptory orders. For example: "Add back this critque now unless you can cite sources supporting your claim, not sometime in the future." in Talk:Democratic_peace_theory#Cold_war_peace_or_the_Bloc_peace_theory This is addressed to Robert West, who has been studiously polite to Ultramarine. I asked whether this was civility and Ultramarine denied any incivility. The point at issue was whether to include eight sources or whether five sources would suffice: a demand to cite sources was hardly relevant.
  • He has also claimed (here and elsewhere) that we have refused to discuss "his" version of Criticisms of communism. Its talk page is 153K and most of it (especially this very long section) has been spent on his version and proposals. Much of the text he has proposed has been included verbatim, some with modifications and some has been rejected by consensus after discussion. The remaining discussions are ongoing.
• Novel assertions on policy:
  • He applies an unspecified theory of consensus that amounts to asserting a liberum veto in contradiction to Misplaced Pages:Consensus. In particular, he objects that 3-1 is not consensus on an article ( and Talk:Criticisms of communism#comments)
    • He has likewise refused to recognize a consensus against him on a shortened version of Democratic peace theory. . See its talk page and archive for evidence of the consensus.
  • An NPoV article on a theory will refute all criticisms of that theory, even those criticisms not explicitly raised in the article.
  • The NPoV version of Criticisms of communism must be critical of communism , rather than a discussion of such criticisms. (The edit summaries are of virtually identical edits)
  • Archiving a talk page of 106K (archive) is violation of policy. . He made the same claims again when the length of the new page reached 37K Talk:Democratic peace theory#Page length.
  • Bullet-points are unencyclopedic. (Minor, but bizarre. Septentrionalis 17:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC))
  • He has used the talk pages in question to claim other violations of policy, many of them equally frivolous. This is uncollegial. (See the several sections he has titled Violations of Misplaced Pages policy)
• He has continually reverted Criticisms of communism to a private version, ignoring several invitations to join the version every other editor was working on. Diffs in this section of the RfC. This is his version alone; he has reverted, and been rereverted by, every other editor. page history.
  • Similarly Democratic peace theory, and apparently Democracy.
• He threatened on Talk:Criticisms of communism: "If you try to do any "merger", I will ask for protection of this page, using my version. Italics mine. A few days after, he added some of the text under dispute to Vladimir Lenin. He did three exact reverts in quick succession , although a large portion of his text was accepted; and then called for the page to be protected , as it still is. (page history)
  • And he has now done the same thing with Criticisms of communism in response to the consensus (3-1) decision to remove the two-versions tag and invite Ultramarine to actively edit the collaborative version. (WP:RfPP#Criticisms of communism) He has been expressly invited to insert the dozen or twenty sentences which he has added to his private version during August.

For my part, this is not a content dispute. This is a dispute about rudeness, and about Ultramarine ignoring and abusing policy. He asserts new versions of policy which let him do what he wants, and let him denounce and harass others for doing what he doesn't want. For example; "cite sources" as harassment. (There is no question of which website; the article cites it, and we've all quoted it).

Ultramarine's evidence

Ultramarine appears to have left these charges unaddressed, except two: that he threatened to have Criticisms of communism protected "with his version on top", and that he is failing to recognize consensus against him. These deserve sections of their own.

Ultramarine is, however, a master of the incomplete quotation and the suggestive irrelevancy. Most of his statement above consists of these; and it would be very long to discuss them all. One example of each should suffice (the most recent in his lengthy narrative):

Incomplete quotation

Ultramarine discusses my views on Holodomor under #16 September 2005 above. What I actually said was:

• Describing even the Holodomor as genocide (rather than, say, mass murder) is iffy, although the case can be made: it requires that Stalin have cared which peasants he starved.

I.e.: Stalin was a mass murderer by starvation; he may well not have intended the destruction of any particular group of people, as the definition of genocide requires. If this be Stalinism, make the most of it.

Suggestive Irrelevancy

Under #21 September 2005, he states that I edited Misplaced Pages:consensus. Quite true; so what?

I added the following paragraph , after putting a similar paragraph up for comment on the talk page for 48 hours.

The preferred way to deal with this problem is to draw the attention of more editors to the issue by one of the methods of dispute resolution, such as consulting a third party, filing a request for comment (on the article in question), and requesting mediation. Enlarging the pool will prevent consensus being enforced by a small group of willful editors. Those who find that their facts and point of view are being excluded by a large group of editors should at least consider that they may be mistaken.

This is mostly policy; the rest should be uncontroversial. I observe that no one has commented on it, or objected to it, in any way.

Page protection

Ultramarine did threaten, if he didn't get his way, to have Criticisms of communism protected "using my version".; and he requested to have 'his' version protected as "factually correct", when actually discussing his page protection request. .

Consensus

Criticisms of communism

Robert West called a straw poll whether we had consensus to remove the two-version tag and continue editing on the version he, I and Mihnea Tudoreanu had contributed to. Three of us felt it did exist, and again invited Ultramarine to join us. Ultramarine protested that no such proceeding could show consensus and declined to participate.

If Ultramarine thought a survey should have been called, he was free to call one; he has not.

When Ryan Delany protected the article, he reversed Ultramarine's last revert and changed to what Mr. Delany called the "consensus version."

Democratic peace theory

There are two versions at issue, the short and the long.

Robdurbar made an effort to mediate between the contending parties.

• He began by boldly shortening the text,12:12 12 August 2005, which Robert West and I approved;
  • there was much cooperative editing; in which Ultramarine hardly participated, including shortening the history section, to about where it is now
  • He proposed to add back some of Ultramarine's statistics section, and did so.
  • I suggested combining some of it with another section; Robdurbar said: go for it; and I did.
• The resulting version is substantially identical (with some local changes} to my last edit, and has been upheld, as consensus by Robert West and myself. (Mr. West has had some trouble editing over the last three weeks; he has made only a dozen edits from 2 September till now contributions).

• Ultramarine reverted to the long version, as a PoV fork, which has been since edited by himself alone, with one exception:
  • When Ruzmanci replaced the intro of the PoV fork, Ultramarine rejected it, and exluded it from his next reversion .
  • I took up Ruzmanci's intro into the shorter version, consolidated it into the text, and tweaked it; so has Ruzmanci. (see page history, for 10 September)

The long version is the work of one editor; the shorter version has the work and approval of four editors. The only other edits have been dabs and two cases of vandalism. (The only other comment on the talk page has Regebro's questioning of a single point; he is welcome to be bold and alter the text, if he wants - so far he has not.) This is consensus.

As for polling, there is not only the two-version poll mentioned in the arbitration request, Rubdurbar also posted the edit dispute on Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Politics, where it still is.

Content disputes

Ultramarine's content disputes fill literally hundreds of K on Talk:Democratic peace theory, its archive, and Talk:Criticisms of communism. Discussing them adequately would take at least as long. I do not request that ArbCom settle any of them; I believe the ordinary means of dispute resolution are sufficient, and repeat that I will accept mediation.

In summary, much of Ultramarine's arguments are the same techniques of incomplete quotation and suggestive irrelevance as above, applied to external sources. Much of the remainder is Ultramarine protesting that a point is accurate; when his preferred text has been deprecated as unbalanced, unclear, verbose, or off topic. Accuracy is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition.

Nevertheless, I will answer for my edits.

Incivility

Ultramarine charges that I made four uncivil remarks about his edits. I did; I regret the intemperateness.

He also charges that I have been uncivil to him. I regard as parliamentary; I should have said whinging in I will amend it.

I believe this to be all the substantive countercharges; I am willing to comment further on any of Ultramarine's statements above, if the ArbCom would like, but brevity is important. Septentrionalis 18:51, 22 September 2005 (UTC)