Case Opened on 01:59, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Case Closed on 12:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Case Amended by motion on 30 October 2015

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this request. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators will be working on evidence and suggesting proposed decisions at /Workshop and voting on proposed decisions at /Proposed decision.

Involved parties

Phil_Sandifer (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
RyanFreisling (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Noosphere (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Kevin_Baas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Tbeatty (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Requests for comment

Statement by Phil Sandifer

For some time, 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities and its eight sub-articles have been a hotbed of POV pushing, abominable sourcing, and the sort of reckless expansionism that goes on with current events topics as they appear in the news, coupled with the reluctance to edit that often takes place in the months following. Unlike articles about living people, which tend to generate helpful complaints to the office that get these problems fixed, the election articles have sat basically untouched. Every attempt to take care of the problem over the past 18 months has been met by the most basic refusal to engage the issues – NPOV tags are removed saying that no dispute has been raised [1], complaints about giving undue weight to minority points of view are shot down as not being based in policy [2], and attempts to detail the appalling sourcing are met with requests to repeat an hour’s work, only this time with links to make it clearer [3]. The expectation on the part of other editors – most egregiously Ryan and Noosphere – is that those who object to the article must fix it themselves instead of adding dispute tags [4]. The tactics point towards a clear desire to keep the article in its current form, and some of the proponents of its current form have explicitly stated their goal of representing under-represented viewpoints. And all of this is done with a healthy dose of assumptions of bad faith [5]. The result is a series of articles that leans entirely on the partisan press and blogs for a story that was never widely reported. The problem is analogous to obscure pseudosciences where there is next to no material against them because nobody ever took them seriously enough to refute – or, alternatively, to LaRouche.

A quick comment regarding Xed's statement... absolutely all of it is completely untrue. Phil Sandifer 15:03, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it should be noted, lest this be seen as me raising Xed 3, Xed is not actually involved in this dispute. Phil Sandifer 17:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A comment regarding the request for recusal from Fred - since the arbcom does not issue content rulings, I should not think that Fred's distaste for the article in its current form is an issue. Furthermore, Fred's comment seems to me to be an observation, rather than an involvement - to ask him to recuse would be like asking an arbitrator who ruled in Case X to recuse in Case X 2. Phil Sandifer 04:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by tbeatty

I have been an editor of this article. Phil's statement and concerns are absolutely correct. Certain editors feel they "own" the article, notably RyanFreisling. There is not one, but two separate NPOV Dispute sections in the talk page. The editor/owners somehow dispute that there is a dispute about NPOV which is illogical on it's face. The article needs be rewritten (or merged and deleted into the 2004 election article). The NPOV tag serves as creating a flag for other editors to fix the POV issues with this article.

The outcome of the RfA should be to ban the offending editors from editing this article as their attempted "ownership" of it is disruptive. This will allow other editors to fix the POV issues without having to fight over small things such as tagging the article. --Tbeatty 17:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see I have been added as a party. I was not originally listed. I haven't been involved in the article for very long (I haven't been through the RfC or the deletion votes) but my comments above speak for themselves. The editor/owners of this article have used content disputes with other editors as precursors to threats of banning, other RfA's and other administrative action. --Tbeatty 23:32, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by RyanFreisling

Ever since Snowspinner / Phil Sandifer posted his attack message to the wiki-en mailing list titled "So what do we do about this?" in October 2005, in which he threw up his hands, absolved himself of personal editorial responsibility and began howling for the heads of the article's editors, It has been abundantly clear to me that his objection to this article is NOT about the neutrality of the assertions in the article, nor the origin or objectivity of the sources cited in those assertions. Phil says:

"The articles are, needless to say, utter crap - full of conspiracy theory rantings and POV, they read like the collected waste products of a month of blogging, which is, not coincidentally, exactly what they are." {...} We need some sort of system that's going to untangle this kind of mess - something that doesn't rely on enough people with a whit of common sense watchlisting the articles and being willing to angrily revert the stupid, because, quite frankly, that obviously didn't work here." [6]

Phil has stridently declared ever since that 'editing the article is impossible', and that it represents a 'stunning failure of Wikipedia process'.

In refusing to participate, it's quite clear to me that the failure is not Wikipedia - it is in fact Phil who has failed. He has failed to engage in basic productive editing. He has failed to convince others in good faith of the veracity and depth of his complaints. He has failed to implement his vision of 'what he should do about this' in anything other than a threatening and disrespectful way. With his email's title, Phil makes plain that he is the one who has the true 'ownership' obsession with the article(s).

Whether due to laziness or an abject lack of specific domain knowledge, Beyond 'angrily reverting the stupid', Phil has utterly failed to participate in good faith to improve the article and sees his failure as being the result of the actions of others, who despite his protestations have been engaging as editors in good faith.

As an illustration of my behavior, please refer to the links in Phil's statement. Each example Phil provided, alleging to substantiate claims of my 'egregious conduct', is an edit of which I am in fact proud. In each specific instance I believe I acted in good faith towards the community and consensus, and with the best interests of the article in mind.

Xed's summary of Phil's behavior is indeed accurate in my eyes.

Moreover, when a user trusted with powers of an administrator stands up and claims the Wikipedia process has failed miserably, he had better be certain he's tried everything in the book to follow the process first - including addressing content issues in good faith - otherwise, he's willingly engaging in a lasting and damaging violation of WP:POINT.

Please reinforce Wikipedia process, and turn this case over to effective mediation. Tbeatty and Phil Sandifer both chose not to engage the mediator and have a not made a good-faith effort at conflict resolution, nor productively addressing real content issues. Such is not the Wikipedia way. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 23:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Noosphere

I support Xed's summary.

But just to give anyone new to this controversy some perspective, this article has been a hotbed of controversy ever since it began around the time of the 2004 US Presidential elections. The debate on the article is clearly polarized in to two camps. In the camp that has consistently maintained that the artilce is notable, worth keeping, and tracks a real controversy in a NPOV way are myself, RyanFreisling, Kevin Baas, and a number of less regular editors. The other camp are Phil Sandifer, Tbeatty, Merecat, Arkon, and other currently less frequent editors, who seem to believe the opposite.

This article was nominated twice for deletion, with a result of keep both times.[7][8] If you look at these deletion debates you'll see basically the same arguments against this article being made.

The most recent dispute occured when Phil Sandifer mass tagged this article and its sub-articles with the rationale "I have placed an NPOV tag on this article due to its flagrant violation of the "undue weight" provision of WP:NPOV."[9]

When his tagging was challenged Phil replied contemptuously and refused to give details as to which specific parts of the article he thought were in violation of which parts of policy and why.[10] After more pressure to give specific details Phil replied that the reason he thought it violated the undue weight provision of WP:NPOV is because it's long relative to other articles.[11] WP:NPOV in fact says nothing about length relative to other articles, and as an administrator Phil should know better than to make a spurious claim that it does. Phil also claimed it used "local news stories", a claim he would repeat later. In fact, again, there is nothing in WP:NPOV that forbids using local news stories as sources. And again, as an adminitrator Phil should have known better.

After more pressure to name specifics about the article Phil listed a dozen sources, describing the problem he had with most of them with single words, mostly "local" or "POV".[12] Again I pointed out that local news sources were admissable according to WP:NPOV, as were sources that contained POV. WP:NPOV does not forbid sources expressing POV, in fact it allows for a plurality of POV, not just the most popular ones, as long as they are properly cited. Once again, as an admin Phil should have known better.

Eventually Phil decided that instead of discussing further he would "return to ignoring everything you say"[13]

This is just a small sample of what went on. In general Phil's approach to the article went as follows: he starts by making vague generalizations and unsubstantiated allegations, hours and dozens of pleas for specifics later he provides a slightly less vague accusation and a thoroughly misinterpreted policy justification. Then when it's pointed out to him that there's nothing in the policy that justifies what he maintains, he insists that it is really the spirit of the policy that is being violated, and then he returns to step one with the vague and unsubstantiated generalizations.

I should also mention that Phil has made a blatantly false accusation in this RfA itself when he said I'd claimed that "those who object to the article must fix it themselves instead of adding dispute tags", and I challenge him to find a single edit of mine that to substantiate this allegation.

Another misrepresentation of his is that mediation has been tried in this dispute. In fact, the only attempt at mediation on this page I'm aware of was when I had called in the Mediation Cabal two months ago myself.[14] But it was for a completely unrelated dispute. Phil was not even around. The only people involved were Arkon, me, RyanFreisling, Kevin baas, and three anonymous editors. And it had nothing to do with what's happening now.

Yet another misrepresentation of the facts is Phil's claim that "the election articles have sat basically untouched" and that we have "the most basic refusal to engage the issues". In fact, even during this very dispute I personally deleted a source he had problems with.[15] And when he mass-fact-tagged dozens of sentences in the article[16] dozens of citations were added by myself and RyanFreisling the very next day after many hours of work[17]. We've also engaged every issue he's brought up. The real problem has been that his allegations are many, his substantiations of those allegations are very few.

As for the other editors, Arkon and Tbeatty have chimed in in support of Phil's allegations and edits during this dispute, but have generally kept to the sidelines. The dispute has mostly been between Phil, Kevin Baas, RyanFreisling, and myself.

It is also worth mentioning that it appears the 2nd (Dec 2004) VfD was started by Phil/Snowspinner himself, who seems to have lost none of the contempt he had for the article then, when he claimed it was "the equivalent of listing every person who's ever claimed to be abducted by aliens on Alien Abduction, with spin-off pages for what color they said the aliens were."[18] The two VfDs didn't accomplish what he wanted, it's unlikely that another VfD would result in a different outcome, and his attempts to delete the article through other means have failed so it appears he hopes to get this accomplished through the arbitration committee.

Finally, I would like to say that this is my first AfD, so please correct me if I've messed up in the procedure of posting this statement or something. -- noosph e re 02:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kevin Baas

I find it a bit ironic that an administrator (Phil Sandifer) proposes that other editors be banned from editing the article, then accuses them of having ownership agendas. Kevin Baas^talk 14:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I ask that Fred Bauder recuse himself on the basis that he has expressed bias. Kevin Baas^talk 12:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fred responded on my talk page: "I have expressed support for Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Expressing support for Wikipedia policy is not a basis for recusal." To which I responded "I don't see where you have expressed support for NPOV, though I see where you have expressed an opinion about editors, and that is what I am refering to."

I think this case should be thrown out on procedural grounds: Namely, mediation has not been tried..

Beyond the non-justicableness of this case, from my prior experience with them, I have no confidence in the neutrality of the arbitrators who have accepted this case.

Preliminary decisions

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (5/0/0/0)

Accept. Charles Matthews 22:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Accept Fred Bauder 22:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 00:59, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:58, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. - SimonP 19:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary injunction (none)

Final decision

All numbering based on /Proposed decision (vote counts and comments are there as well)