Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Arminius/Evidence

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Please could this be formatted along the guidelines, as shown on User:Raul654/Plautus, requested on Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration#New requirements for evidence pages, and (just now) templated on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Template/Evidence? Many thanks.
James F. (talk) 01:19, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Counterbalancing Arminius' fantasy version of events[edit]

I've left the project but I shall nevertheless make a few comments here. They should suffice.

I believe that Arminius should have his admin rights permanently removed due to his abuse of them. Because abuse of power is so serious, I also believe he should be blocked unless he fully apologises to all concerned.

I reject the implication that there was any wrong-doing by anyone but Darrien and Arminius.

The first implication is that I was wrong to undo Darrien's reverting of my de-POVing work to Apple pie and that I was wrong not to engage him in civil debate. There are two reasons for this:

  1. Past experience. I have been plagued by Darrien for some time. He has a habit of simply reverting when he disagrees with an edit, often removing content that people have spent some time on, instead of modifying the text. His edit summaries tend to be deliberately misleading: "rv: POV" or "rv: Vandalism" if the previous edit was not American enough for him, etc. At List of countries with mains power plugs, voltages & frequencies, he seemed to take pleasure in not revealing that the problem he had with the page was not how it displayed in any particular browser or system, but instead was caused by the large text he used in his browser. He could have said so at any time but instead choose to edit-war. He often reverts me on pages that are unlikely to be on his watchlist (no previous edits), which is a hint that he may deliberately stalk me via my user contributions. In short, I knew that there was no way to reason with him (though I tried in my edit summaries). I just had to revert back to the NPOV version of the page and hope someone would come along and support me.
  2. My version removed ridiculous American bias (there was even a Stars & Stripes flag at the top of it for chrissake!). Subsequent editors have all agreed that the article was previously absurdly biased and needed just the sort of change I made. I was of course open to the text being honed and improved, even by Darrien, but his reverting to the biased version was an act of cultural aggression. I could do nothing but revert to the less biased version. Upon Darrien's third unacceptable reversion to the jingoistic version, I lost my cool and called him a "vandal", sinking to his level. Though it is not good to use this term in such a broad sense, I do not feel that any sanction (blocking, etc) is warranted for this. After all, Wikipedia is full of edit summaries with the word "vandal" or "vandalism". It becomes a habit.

As you know, at this point Darrien went to IRC to find a sysop who would abuse his powers to protect the star-spangled version of the page. Arminius came and did so, reverting first. At this point it was no longer a matter of disagreement over content, but about abuse of sysop powers. I consider that any language from me would have been fine. Arminius stepped outside of the rules of Wikipedia that mandate neutrality, nice language, etc, and openly utilised technical privileges to enforce a POV. I consider that if I had descended into simply swearing at him, no one could have rightly berated me, since we all have a right to anger when provoked. I recently ran after a street thief who had grabbed my girlfriend's handbag. I shouted and swore. Was I a boorish oaf? Uncouth? Rude? I believe most reasonable people would not condemn me.

Nevertheless, in this case I did not go even to that point. My comment to Arminius was: "How dare you revert to a POV version of an article and then freeze it?" [1]. He removed this question without comment, considering himself to be unaccountable. I later noticed that the edit summary for this removal was (remove troll message). Note that I had never had any dealings with this individual, so "troll" was an unwarranted insult, the first unprovoked personal attack in the episode.

Reasoning with Arminius was clearly not going anywhere. He then left a message threatening to abuse his powers more by blocking me for:

  1. Calling Darrien a "vandal". Calling me a "troll" was apparently OK though.
  2. My edit to Apple pie — that is to say, an explicit declaration from him in favour of the biased version.

I felt quite rightly threatened and ganged-up-on. I thought I needed to act quickly or find myself "disappeared" (!), i.e. blocked without many people knowing about it. I made an official complaint on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, and alerted a number of people (via their talk pages) who I thought might help. Vague Rant complained the message was not personal enough, and I apologised for doing anything reminiscent of spamming, and hoped he would understand the necessity. Several people came to the article's talk page and began commenting on the controversy. There was a will to word it in a way that Americans could be happy with, but without the silly bias. It was impossible to put this into practice due to Arminius' block. This was, of course, the purpose of the block: to make sure that the biased version remained. In the face of the continued block, I quite accurately made references to "American bigots". Arminius and Darrien are both American and both bigots. Furthermore, these two descriptions go together, due to the fact that they are bigoted specifically on American issues.

An aside on insulting language. There are two quite different types of insults: pure, usually vulgar insults on one hand, and unfavourable descriptions on the other. For example, if I had said that the two offenders were motherfucking cock-heads, I would have let off some steam, but not provided useful information. This is a pure insult, and is usually uncalled-for. We have a policy against it. (N.B. In my newbie days, I called someone a "Wiccan freak". Sorry about that — it was irrelevant, if true) If, however, I call someone bigoted for doing something bigoted, a liar for lying, an abuser for abusing, or a thief for stealing, then it is a matter of an unfavourable description. We routinely on Wikipedia call people vandals for vandalism; I called the guy in the street a thief for stealing; I demand the right to call Arminius and Darrien bigots for their bigotry until such time as they explain they were somehow mistaken.

By this point there was a clamour for modifications to the page, which would only be possible if unprotected. I created a draft version based on my original version, plus the modifications other people were suggesting. Arminius therefore had to start pretending that the protection was about letting people cool down in order to avoid edit-warring, when in reality all the anger was due to the protection itself (and bigotry behind it). All that needed to be done was to unprotect it so that the growing number of contributors who wanted to edit the page could do so. The only possible problem with unprotecting it was that Darrien would revert to the bad old version. This could have been avoided by:

  1. talking to him
  2. blocking him
  3. allowing him to, knowing that the mass of people against him would outweigh him

Instead, Arminius chose to reprotect the article (a neutral admin had unprotected it) and tell a rather large lie, "The content doesn't concern me, the point is to get an agreement...", which enraged me (I'm a fan of truth; call me crazy) to the point where I committed the apparently unforgivable crime of pointing out this lie with the immortal words, "Liar! Liar!". I should probably have added "pants on fire" for greater effect, but it was not required: Arminius further abused his admin rights by blocking a valued contributor for this most heinous of crimes.

I had to be unblocked three times due to Arminius' repeated, unjustified, bigotry-fuelled blocking of my account and IP address. This seemed to placate Darrien, who finally agreed to stop reverting back to his biased version, and interfered little after that. Thanks to the people I had brought in, the article continued to be edited in an NPOV way, and is more or less OK now. If I had not managed to do that, the duo would have been free to revert to their one-sided version.

(Looking back, it is amusing that this should all occur over an article as trivial as one about a type of pie. Remember that this is not about that particular insignificant page, but the abuse of admin powers. A precedent for immediate revocation of those powers must be set.)

I have therefore won this issue, but Arminius and Darrien have won overall, because they have made me weary of the project, and I have gone the way of Secretlondon. They are no doubt happy that it will be that little bit easier from now on for them to continue as they desire. Perhaps one day on Wikipedia, Webster spellings will be mandatory, and we shall do away with that silly logo with the different scripts on it (how blatantly anti-American!) and revert to the fine Stars & Stripes that initially graced the top of Wikipedia's main page. Those were the days! Chameleon 03:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I was going to leave it there, but I thought I'd reassure any Americans reading this who might think that I automatically hate all of you, and might therefore feel animosity towards me. Not at all. I just hate nationalism, bigotry and abuse of power. Anti-international Americans hate me, but then so do anti-Spain Mexicans and Catalans, because I have battled against their POV in my time. And here is a rant against me for battling against anti-Catalan POV from a Valencian. I get grief from all these people, and praise from others. Chameleon 03:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Some questions for Amenius from Theresa[edit]

I'm not sure where these should go. If people dissaprove of them here please feel free to move them to the talk page.

  1. You say above that the admins who reverted you were not aware of the specifics. Seeing as this is a wiki and anyone can easily check the specifics, how do you know what I, or Guanaco or Mirv were aware of?
  2. Darren asked for help with vandalism. What was it about Chameleon's edits that are vandalism (i'm asking you about this because you have used it as a justification of the block)?
  3. Do you believe that if you protect a page then you are in charge of it and only you have the right to unprotect it.
  4. After the first block I pointed you to the blocking policy explaning that blocking is not permitted for personal attacks except in extreme circumstances. Did you read the policy, and if you did why did you reblock chameleon even though it is perfectly clear that "Darren is a vandal" does not in any way satisfy the criteria for blocking for personal attacks. I know that on occasions admins have sometimes blocked people for personal attacks without proper authority but it's contraversial and of you are going to do it, it should be with the backing of the community. The first time I undid the block, and the notes of dissaproval on your talk page from other people should surely have indicated that you did not have the backing of the community. So why did you reblock?
  5. You also said that you blocked because he insulted you. I don't know if this is a written rule or merely how we have always done things around here, but it has always been the case that when someone needs taking in hand for how they have behaved towards an admin that a different admin takes the necessary action. This is absolutely vital to prevent admins abusing thier power because they have lost their temper. Were you aware of this when you blocked him?
  6. I want ot bring up the point of ethnic slurs. Can you see (with the benefit of hindsight) that your actions on reverting his (non vandal) edits and protecting the page might have wound him up enough to say this. Do you think he was saying that americans are bigots or that you and Darren were bigots who were american?
  7. Finally, how do you define an edit war? I ask this because neither person broke the three revert rule. Had you not protected the page at two reverts each they might have gone to the talk page on thier own. Also you have used revert warring as a justification of the block, so I wondered why you feel that it's ok to block a user for revert warring when he hadn't violeted the community standards for revert warring. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 13:30, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC) Moved --Minority Report 13:54, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok here we go, In response:

  1. . An integral part of the situation (if not for it I would not have even been involved), was the conversation on IRC, both the public and private chat.
  2. . I actually will concede that upon further review that Chameleon really wasn't vandalizing the page which is why I put down "perceived vandalism" here in the evidence part of this investigation. At the time I misread his edit (based upon past expierence that people who call others vandals in edit summaries to articles, usually are vandals themselves). Had I not misread that as at the most a POV push (not as vandalism) events would have defintely transpired differently. If there was a key mistake I made it was that one.
  3. . No, I do not believe that. But I felt like I didn't have enough time to give resolving the conflict (my real goal in the situation) a shot. Neither party at that point gave an assurance that they wouldn't continue to revert and attack each other and I frankly didn't see the great harm in having the page protected a little longer to try and resolve the issues.
  4. . I think if you read my breakdown of events you would notice, that I warned and (to my mind at least) tolerated allot of abuse from chameleon before blocking. Chameleon was extremely offensive and insulting. Yes, I have seen others blocked for personal attacks which is why I was skeptical about the argument that it was totally out of sinc with policy. I also was aware from Darrien in chat that chameleon had spammed allot of users with his "bias" message. So I took the fact that I had a few messages on my page in regards to him with a grain of salt.
  5. . I am not aware if that is the rule either. But I sure as hell wish I had done it in this case.
  6. . NO, his history, edits and comments clearly show (from my perspective) an anti-American prejudice. And his comments were and still would be completely unacceptable. I doubt it would even by tolerated if not for his prejudices directed at America (as opposed to Israel, Mexico etc.) rather than some other nationality. And frankly, had I not taken myself out of commission for this arbcom case I would still be very concerned as an Administrator about "American bigots" remaining on his userpage. I found his sluring not only a personal attack by wikipedia standards but personally offensive.
  7. . Yes, I don't think it technically would fall under the three revert rule. But the situation was deteroriating and there is little doubt that it would have continued. Darrien at least was very upset as Chameleon apparently was as well. There was little hope of them agreeing to "work it out" on the talk page, neither party found the others prefered version acceptable. What made me believe that it was a war, was that I had one of the participants asking for Administrator intervention to stop vandalism and the other (chameleon) making personal attacks inside the edit summary.

Also an important note: I did not, have not and probably never will care about the content of apple pie nor apple pie itself ;) Arminius 15:17, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The page as it stood before Chameleon edited it did misrepresent a point of view that is solely American as if it was a universal point of view. Apple pies are not generally associated with any one nation, except in America where they are seen as quintessentially American; an American could be forgiven for not realising this. The picture shown also contained a stars and stripes and a Louisville slugger. With the best will in the world I don't see that you can characterize the qualifications that Chameleon added to the text and the label of the photograph as "anti-American." It seems to me that, if anything, he was calmly dealing with a lot of unwarranted US cultural assumptions in an encyclopedia that is at least nominally supposed to adopt a neutral point of view, in the face of an obstructionist revert campaign by one individual who then went onto an IRC channel and misrepresented Chameleon's work as "vandalism." --Minority Report 15:47, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reactions to Arminius' answers[edit]

  1. That is not a valid reason for saying that those admins did not have all the info. The only thing they did not know at that point was that Darrien was slandering me on IRC. If they had known this, they would have been all the more concerned with defending me against you two, not less so. You have therefore no justification for attacking them as "ignorant".
  2. In other words, the initial justification (vandalism) was entirely false and unfounded. Now you are saying that I had to be a vandal because I called someone else one. But Darrien publicly slandered me as a vandal on IRC. Why did this not make you come to the same conclusion about him? Rather selective, I'd say, and unjustly so. Regarding the "POV push", there is a clear consensus that my edit removed POV. I was also fully open to any remaining POV in my version being edited out. You, however, sealed your POV in concrete, as it were, with the abuse of admin rights.
  3. Your actions demonstrate that you considered yourself unaccountable and within your rights to act against the consensus of administrators.
  4. There are three issues here:
    1. No matter how much I criticised you personally, you had no authority or mandate to block me for it, particularly when confronted with a growing consensus against you.
    2. The fact that I was not initially insulting towards you. You threw the first insult ("troll"). I later responded in kind, with the difference that my two insults were entirely justified in both emotional terms (the mitigating circumstance of your provocation) and factual terms ("bigot" was in response to clear bigotry; "liar" was in response to a blatant lie).
    3. The one-sidedness and hypocrisy of characterising my use of unfavourable descriptions of you two as meriting blocking, whilst glossing over:
      • Darrien's public (yet sneaky, since he knew I was not on IRC) slandering of me as a "vandal",
      • your insulting description of my valuable work as "POV pushing",
      • your insulting deletion of various people's attempts at dialogue with edit summaries labelling them as "ignorant" and "troll",
      • your numerous comments about my being "prejudiced", "anti-American"...
        In other words, my insults, no matter how justified, are held to be unacceptable, and yours, no matter how unjustified, are brushed under the carpet. You have a rather twisted view of reality.
  5. It is no good pleading ignorance. It was your duty to ascertain you had authority before acting.
  6. There has been no ethnic slur. "Americans" are not a race. You use the term in order to make it sound as though I had called you a "nigger" or suchlike. You might have some sort of case if I had called you a "Yank", but I did not. When you, an American, were bigoted on issues concerning your nation, I rightly called you an "American bigot". I stand by that.
  7. So in other words, you admit there was no real edit war. Instead of telling Darrien to stop reverting to the biased version, you reverted it yourself and then protected it. And you are still lying to cover up your actions.

Chameleon 20:04, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chameleon there are a couple of things that i would like to say. It's never justified to throw insults at people. Armenius was wrong to call you a troll, and you were wrong to call him a bigot. We all have a responsiblity to be polite and nice. That fact that you were angry at your treatment means that people will more likely forgive your insults, but it does not mean that we agree that it is OK to insult someone. Personal attacks are not allowed. Calling Armenius an Americal bigot is not something you should stand by. It's something you should apologise for. Likewise Armenius should apologise for calling you a troll. Also I don't believe Armenius is lying. I am reassured that he has admitted to making mistakes, my opinion of him has certainly gone up since he answered my questions although i am still woried about some of his answers. But please let's stay calm and civil to one another. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 20:20, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Never justified? Are you condemning me for swearing at the handbag snatcher? Ah, it applies only to Wikipedia. OK. A quick Google search for the word "vandal" on wikipedia.org gives 3,960 results, the vast majority of which are internal references (not to the Germanic tribe or suchlike). So I get blocked for "throwing around" such terms? You'll forgive me if I feel singled out. Those people deserve it? Ah, so it is not a matter of being "never" justified then.
Have no fear. I shall from now on use the two-faced, weaselly, faux-respectful language that seems to be prized on Wikipedia. Arminius is no longer a bigot, but an individual whose actions demonstrate bigotry. The adders of random swearwords are no longer vandals, but individuals who carry out vandalism.
I personally don't see any advantage to this, but if it keeps people happy, then fine.
Do not let Arminius rise in your estimation. He is simply having to make some conciliatory noises in order to save his own neck. The more pressure you put on him, the more he will bow and scrape. Chameleon 20:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I was more concerned with the word bigot than vandal. You called Armenius a bigot in order to insult him. And he took it as an insult. You shouldn't have done that, and whilst I understand that you felt provoked, you will not convince me that it was right to do it. And you are certainly not being singled out. I also don't think admitting a mistake is bowing and scraping. Being able to admit that you made an error is an important quality in an admin. As is a willingness to apologise for those mistakes. (Which I very much hope he will do)Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 21:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This will most likely be the last response I can make before having to travel to celebrate on of those American holidays (Thanksgiving), so let me try to cover as much as I can.

Chameleon seems to hve raised many issues (despite being driven away from wikipedia by "American bigots") about my motivations. Though if I understand his argument if I concede that I made mistakes (which I have), I am "bowing and scraping" and if I don't, I'm being a "bigot". This is quite an analysis of how I behave from someone who doesn't know me in real life nor has even interacted with me on wikipedia other than this incident. Chameleon seems to want it both ways, or at least get me in a catch22. The fact that I made mistakes and did things wrong does not mean he did things right. Eitherway the biggest mistake by far was not just stepping away and getting someone else to deal with/block Chameleon.

In response to Thersea's and other users points, I will be making an extended statement on the main page.

I have been informed if there is not any more significant evidence to submit, the arbcom might be ruling shortly as it is moving quickly to deal with the upcoming elections. Which is why I have to more or less wrap it up soon as I am leaving to enjoy turkey, mashed potatoes and pie....pumpkin pie. ;) Arminius 02:45, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I invite people to look at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Xiapingowu. I believe that contains examples of actually abusive remarks by an editor, tremendously exceeding anything Chameleon ever said or that I could ever imagine him saying. I have been the main target of that abuse. I am an admin. I have never blocked him for this or even threatened to do so (although I have tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get him to agree to mediation, and am seriously considering asking for arbitration). Xiapingowu is a far less valuable contributor to Wikipedia than Chameleon. I cannot imagine what possible positive purpose was served by blocking a first-rate contributor for mildly intemperate actions or remarks. Arminius action seems to me like an abuse of administrative privileges and the project page here suggests to me that it was not an isolated case. Full disclosure: Chameleon has been extremely helpful on translation issues, one of my main areas of focus. That's my only special stake in this matter. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:30, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Comment on Arminius 'Statement by affected party'[edit]

Arminius, whilst summing up in your 'Statement by affected party', you accept that you may have acted wrongly but ask that consideration be given to the general standard of contributions to Wikipedia. It is a shame that you didn't extend the same consideration to User:Chameleon before reverting and protecting the apple pie page then blocking him.

I think it is a mistake to judge Wikipedian's by their number of edits, nevertheless it seems to be one of the considerations on WP:RFA. You'll notice that User:Chameleon had notched up more edits than any other party involved in or who has commented on this case (apart from Wolfman), and most are not one word edits either. He's been around longer than most too. Beyond that he had very useful skills as a translator of French and Spanish, contributed numerous photographs and had at least one Featured Article to his name - ironically, the very international mains power plug.

Perhaps it takes time to discover those details, but if you had taken a quick glance at Chameleon's talk page at the time of the dispute, you would have seen a series of general thank you's and requests for help with translations. Conversely, User:Darrien's talk page shows a repeated pattern of complaints to stop pushing American spellings, along with various disputes and requests for mediation. In using Administrator privileges you are not supposed to make value judgements, but the talk pages alone should have been enough to make you wonder whether you were doing the right thing. Your disregard for the actions of three other admins in trying to undo the damage was quite alarming too.

You say that on your request for adminship in September you didn't get one opposing vote. However, the main concern voiced at the time was that you hadn't been around long enough to know that you would act responsibly when life on Wikipedia gets difficult. I think those concerns have been born out.

Of course, the real damage has been done now. I would hope that in time, User:Chameleon will decide to come back, but I wouldn't blame him if he doesn't. You seem to accept that you made mistakes in this case. If that is so, am I alone in missing your apology to Chameleon? -- Solipsist 18:49, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clairification[edit]

I would just like to clear up some misconceptions that some people have here.

  • On IRC, I did not refer to Chameleon's edits to Apple Pie as vandalism. I did however, make a comment in jest about using {{vprotected}}.
  • Some of the older comments on my talk page that claim I was pushing American spelling are correct, however I have stopped now that policy has been pointed out. The newer comments are mostly by people that wrongly believe that my changing the spellings of chemicals to those used by the Internation Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) are an attempt at "Americanizing" articles, despite an entry in the Manual of Style prefering those to others.
  • Chameleon and I do have a history of disagreements, most of them centered around my changing spellings of chemicals to those prefered by the IUPAC or my misunderstanding of wikipedia policy. I have neglected to seek dialogs with him for a number of incidents because the few times that I have, I have been met with personal attacks and reverts.

Darrien 10:03, 2004 Dec 4 (UTC)

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