Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Uruk2008

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 15:08, 12 June 2009 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 08:40, 3 January 2025 (UTC).

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• Uruk2008 (talk · contribs · logs)

Suspected aliases:

• Gil987 (talk · contribs · logs)
• Three887 (talk · contribs · logs)
• Casimir9999 (talk · contribs · logs)

Uncertain aliases: (see talk page):

• MessiahBenDavid (talk · contribs · logs)

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Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who are concerned by this user's conduct. Only users who certify this request should edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

Cause of concern

Uruk2008 has been adding web references of poor quality to Wikipedia's physics articles (and other subjects, but I've only looked at the physics edits). I say poor rather than dubious because there's no way anyone with a basic understanding of the subject could mistake these for legitimate research. I started a thread about this on Uruk2008's talk page, which was removed without comment by Uruk2008 several days later. Looking at the page history I see that I'm not the first person to be treated this way; in fact, as far as I can tell Uruk2008 has never spoken a word to anyone in the Wikipedia community in his/her 15 months of editing, despite numerous warnings and two blocks, one of 48 hours. Here is a selection of previous warnings dating back to early 2008, all later blanked without comment: [1][2][3][4][5].

I'm mystified by this user's behavior. The mainspace edits suggest a well-meaning but misguided editor, but the repeated ignoring of warnings seems inconsistent with that. Each edit individually could be self-promotion, but the sources are too varied for all of them to be. All I can think is that Uruk2008 doesn't like mainstream science and is adding random web pages from Google searches to create some kind of balance. Or maybe this is an experiment to see how long someone can get away with this kind of behavior before being banned.

A more recently created user, Gil987 (talk · contribs · logs), has such a similar edit history that I can't help but think that it is the same person. No one seems to have attempted communication with this user so far.

(Added 13:45, 14 June 2009 (UTC)) As mentioned below Three887 (talk · contribs · logs) seems to be another alias. Also, as Enric Naval and Spacepotato said, some of the references seem to be fine. Uruk2008 has blanked the notice of this RfC's existence ([6]), which constitutes evidence that the notice has been read. Gil987 and Three887 blanked their talk pages within the next five minutes ([7][8]).

Desired outcome

I have no particular desire aside from an end to these edits, and I'm not that familiar with Wikipedia policies, so I'm posting here to get suggestions about what to do. My impression, though, is that Uruk2008 should probably be banned at this point if he/she continues to be silent. Gil987 seems likely to be a sockpuppet.

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(See above.)

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute.

1. BenRG (talk) 15:08, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
2. I gave him an uw-unsourced3 warning including a long explanation of why the sources were problematic. acknowledgment that some of the sources were actually good and asking that he keeps posting sources like those ones, warning not to use unpublished sources in the same article as before. All blanked with no reply. Gil987 adds unpublished arxiv.org papers just like Uruk2008[9], with very very similar edit summaries. Enric Naval (talk) 16:24, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
3. I put in a request to Gil987's talk page for the user to pause in their citations and make a response here. The user blanked the request. Quaeler (talk) 04:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
4. I wrote on User talk:Three887's talk page after undoing some of his refs, asking that he join the article's talk page and clarify the relevance of the refs. He blanked his talk page shortly thereafter. Dmitry Brant (talk) 13:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

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Additional users endorsing this cause for concern.

Questions

Any users may post questions in this section.  Answers should be reserved for those certifying the dispute.

Q. Could you link to some examples of links he has added that your feel are poor? It would help to have a sense of the sort of linking behavior you are talking about. Locke9k (talk) 23:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

A.

Searching quickly some examples

• Dirac’s Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy, in Dirac sea[10]. Unpublished article by unknow author that publishes only in very fringe magazine Infinite Energy. Appears to be pure pseudoscience, including claims that the Standard model is profoundly wrong[11]. The link in added in the "References" section despite not having been used to write the article.
• Vagus Nerve Stimulation (see page 10) in Brain-computer interface[12]. The sentence says that it's used in 100000 patients worldwide and already has a source saying that. He adds a reference that only explains what the implant is, but the type of implant is already wikilinked, and the sentence does not explain anywhere what the implant is, so that reference is serving absolutely no purpose there.
• [13] he adds a source with User:Three887, and 25 minutes later he adds another source with User:Gil987 in the same article.

--Enric Naval (talk) 00:16, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Q. Is there any evidence that the editor in question is aware of the poor quality of his sources? Is it possible that he is simply a lay person who believes these to be valuable references? Locke9k (talk) 00:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

A. My impression (after checking a lot more edits) is that he/she has no understanding of the article subjects at all, and is simply plugging keywords into Google and putting whatever shows up into the article. Some papers are legitimate but ridiculously overspecific and technical, like "Tachyon Condensation and Non-BPS D-branes in a Ramond-Ramond Plane Wave Background" added to Tachyon condensation (edit). There are also cases where the papers contain obvious keywords but have no connection to the article topic, e.g., these two, added to Omega baryon, which have the words "omega" and "baryon" in them but are about the cosmological parameter Ω_b, an unrelated topic. The only problem with the "misguided layperson" theory is the repeated ignoring and blanking of feedback from other users. -- BenRG (talk) 01:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

So that's what that edit was. It was the weirdest thing in the world.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

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Response

{This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed.  Users not named in the request or certifying the request should post under Additional views below.}

Response to concerns

{Add summary here.}

Applicable policies and guidelines

List the policies and guidelines that apply to the response.

Questions

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Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.

Outside view by User:Spacepotato

I'd like to add that Three887 (talk · contribs · logs) appears to be another alias of this user. Also, the references aren't always unusable; this one for example seems perfectly reasonable. The overall behavior is unusual however.

The overall behaviour is disrespectful and inconsiderate. He's clearly violating WP:CIVIL. -- œ^™ 09:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

1. BenRG (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
2. Three887 has the same area of interest and behaviour and type of links. Enric Naval (talk) 23:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to add that yet another alias, Casimir9999 (talk · contribs · logs), seems to have appeared. Spacepotato (talk) 04:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Outside view by User:Christopher Thomas

I brought this user's edits to the attention of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics, which resulted in this RFC. I've been checking in periodically, and the editing pattern of this user and their sock-puppets hasn't changed. I attribute occasional pauses in output to activity being switched to aliases I'm not aware of. As far as I can tell, this user relentlessly adds apparently arbitrary rereferences to articles, which are usually removed after being vetted by other editors. This user has never to my knowledge responded in any way to attempts at communication regarding their editing, or regarding anything else. So, good luck getting mediation to work, if we're working through the WP:DR chain.

User:BenRG noted that the reference links added appeared to be random hits from Google. Per my note on WPP, I'm starting to suspect that this user is a bot.

I'm opening a couple of "proposed solutions" threads to move things forward a bit. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Update: They've made a single unambiguously non-bot edit after User:Looie496 brought this to AN/I. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 15:50, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

Proposed solutions

This section is for all users to propose solutions to resolve this dispute.  This section is not a vote and resolutions are not binding except as agreed to by involved parties.  

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1) Submit formal CheckUser requests on all of the suspected aliases/sock-puppets. That'll verify that this actually is the act of a single user, and allow a remedy applied to any one of these aliases to be applied to all of them. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:17, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

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2) Someone with more knowledge of Wikipedia rules than I have can start the process to get this user banned as a malicious bot, if they continue to fail to demonstrate signs of sapience. All they have to do to avoid this is respond to any of the many attempts at communicating with them. I have no idea where to start on this, and have insufficient free time to do it myself, but it's the logical endpoint of this user's actions if they continue in the current manner. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:17, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Update: Remedy proposal withdrawn, as they've demonstrated sapience. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 15:52, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

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3)

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Reminder to use the talk page for discussion

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.