User talk:Mel Etitis/Forum

On this page I intend to gather correspondence with and about Sam Spade, together with evidence of his interactions with other users, and his behaviour on articles and Talk pages.

Other collections & pages

• User:Spleeman/Sam Spade
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004/Candidate statements/Endorsements/Sam Spade

William_A._Dembski

I've just reviewed your user page, and if what you say is true (and I'll assume good faith ;) than I thank you for the opportunity of speaking with an oxford proffessor. Unfortunately, despite us seeming to agree on a great many things in theory (according to your user page again) we don't seem to agree on much in practice. In any case, please have a look at Talk:William A. Dembski, we seem to have had some misunderstandings. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 23:36, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

{Continued here.)

Communication breakdown

I don't know what the situation is, but I've never had such a complete failure of communication outside of language barrier and outright trolling. Nothing I say seems to be understood by your self, and while I think I understand what you’re saying, I don't understand why you’re saying it. We either need to change our paradigm utterly or cease communicating entirely, the present circumstance is untenable. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 16:52, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

(Continued here and and here.)

Learning from previous similar experiences

(from my Talk page)

The problem you are presently experiencing with a particular editor at Talk:William_A._Dembski is nothing new. Please have a look at the archives of Talk:Atheism covering the last 11 months to see how we dealt with the same editor behaving in the same way. A visit to my user talk page and it's archives would also provide some insight to see how out of hand this situation can become.--FeloniousMonk 18:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you folks over at atheism figured out how to keep this user at bay please don't keep it a secret. He has been ransacking the anarchism and related pages for more than a year now, and not surprisingly when a good discussion of the article gets going between various parties who disagree his arrival inevitably signals imminent disaster. Frankly, people have gotten so tired of responding to his constant repetition of the exact same POV pushing that they have ceased to even try to debate at all. Kev 05:06, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It takes those editors who are aggrieved to temporarily agree to only edits to the article that are reached by consensus/majority opinion until the troublemaker moves on. It's not particularly easy, as it takes cooperation of parties that often have little else in common in the article other than their difficulties in dealing with the obstructionist behavior of one particular person. This worked well for us at the atheism article. Each of us also began citing credible outside support for our arguments in reply to his objections. We built consensus as to page content working paragraph by paragraph, always editing the content in the article only after a majority opinion is reached. Anyone who didn't provide credible support for a particular argument or repeatedly obstructed progress was not able expect anything near majority support for their opinion or enjoy the assumption of good faith indefinitely. Someone will need to step up on the talk page to get a majority to agree to put this into action. Keep in mind obstructionism or constantly repeated edits that ignore consensus need not be tolerated indefinitely, particularly when it prevents progress, and if the editor in question insists on flaunting consensus the group always has a good case for a request for arbitration or request for comment.--FeloniousMonk 07:03, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Felonious Monk

Sam Spade's email

Sam, you misused the "E-mail this user" wikipedia email system to send me this:

Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 12:36:29 GMT

To: "FeloniousMonk" <thurstonhowellsrevenge@XXX.com>

Subject: Wikipedia e-mail

From: "Sam Spade" <jacklynch@XXX.net>

Fuck you, you ignorant rat bastard

I am still waiting for an apology, Sam.

Related links:

1. Sam deleting my response. [1].
2. Justifying his email. [2]
3. Admiting his actions were an intentional exploitation of a policy loophole intended to side-step the incivility policy. [3]
4. Refusal to apologize. [4]
5. Sam demanding (and receiving) an apology from an admin for performing his job in good faith [5], then a few hours later refusing to apologize himself. [6].

Comments Deleted by Sam_Spade from his Talk page

• February 7, 2005: [7]

About your actions at the Atheism article today

Sam, your attempt to rewrite the atheism article to suit your POV undoes months of consensus and good work by earnest, responsible editors. Repeatedly insisting on inserting POV and undoing reverts correcting it is vandalism. Since you hold yourself up elsewhere to be an allegedly responsible and trustworthy editor, isn't it time to 'walk the walk'? If you're going to edit the article, please try make an effort to collaborate and be a positive influence on the article. We'd rather not have to protect the article again because of you resisting consensus, it would make it the eighth time in 12 months that your actions result in the page being protected.--FeloniousMonk 18:06, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Arguing with himself?

self-debate

This all happened on 27 ii 05

1. 00:53 164.67.221.197 left the 'skinhead' message
2. 02:04 El C removed the message
3. 13:56 Sam Spade reinstated the message, and added a reply
4. 14:35, 14:39, 14:42, 14:43, 14:46 Sam Spade edits his message, expanding it to present state.

Talk:Atheism

• In response to S.S.'s 'overhaul: [8], followed by: [9].

Sam Spade Edits

Don't revert non-vandalism. I worked on that edit for about 20 minutes, removing original research and postulated opinions, and clarifying the atrocious sentance structure. Point by point my edits were improvements, most obviously in the first sentance, which was nearly unreadable in its lack of inelegance. Featured article status should be our goal, and cited, readable information should be our method of achieving such, as with all articles. Sam Spade (talk · contribs) 17:04, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

BTW SS - "sentance" should read "sentence". But keep up the desire for "readable information". --Mrfixter 17:15, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sam, your recent effort to rewrite the atheism article to suit your well known POV undoes months of consensus and good work by earnest, responsible editors; only accomplished I might add after you ceased your many months of disruptive obstructionism. Rewriting a accurate and serviceable article to significantly change its tone and meaning to reflect your personal POV and against consensus is vandalism personified. You hold yourself up elsewhere to be an allegedly responsible and trustworthy editor, yet you pull stunts like this? Protecting the page again may be the only option to prevent Sam from rewriting it with his POV. That would make it the eighth time in 12 months that Sam's vandalism results in the page being protected.--FeloniousMonk 17:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

while I don't call it vandalism, Sam cannot seriously have thought that his "overhaul" would go unreverted. This article will only progress in very small steps and by balanced compromise. Any major "rewrite" is doomed to wholesale reversion. dab (ᛏ) 17:33, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sam's engaged in this sort of behavior and obstructed progress here for exactly one year now. Only after Sam swore off editing the article in December(?), after being nearly being banned for 3rr violations, has any significant progress been made. His method here smacks of vandalism to me.--FeloniousMonk 17:55, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

calm down. it's reverted. nothing happened. Maybe SS will discuss, now. dab (ᛏ) 20:29, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Seven months of Sam pulling this very stunt will do that to you. The last two months without Sam were very productive and peaceful. Exactly how many chances are we to give someone before declaring they're acting in bad faith? How long do we have to wait for them to edit responsibly in an NPOV manner? Twelve months is very long time.--FeloniousMonk 20:53, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I reverted Sam's edits not because I disagreed with all of them. In fact some of them amounted to copy-edits. However, others were more substantial and should be discussed here first. In general, Sam, it seems a better policy when making a large number of changes, some of which you know are apt to be controversial, to make them piecemeal in increasing order of size and/or degree of controversy, waiting a bit after each one to test (and/or obtain) consensus. This might seem tedious, but you know from personal experience that being bold won't have good results on this article. By the way, if you don't proceed in this manner, I think you will find that this article has quite a large cadre of editors now who will simply revert your work. --BM 17:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I strongly concur that "when making a large number of changes, some of which you know are apt to be controversial, to make them piecemeal in increasing order of size and/or degree of controversy, waiting a bit after each one to test (and/or obtain) consensus." I think that is suggestive of one possible way to proceed here, if it is clear which edits are more likely to be controversial. Certainly any that are simply improvements of grammar, etc., should come first and should be uncontroversial. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:44, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I've asked for admins to have a look at Sam's actions and protect the page (again) if Sam insists on not playing by the rules. Thanks Sam for making this a place of bitter contention again.--FeloniousMonk 17:55, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I think protection would be excessive. As far as I can tell, most of the edits consist of moving material around. Sam, I think it would be very useful for you to be explicit here about what your edits are, other than simply moving material. I'd also suggest that moving material without consensus is probably not the greatest idea in an article where consensus has obviously difficult to hammer out. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:44, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your suggestion, though I'll point out Sam's edits are far more than just "moving material around". Consider: [10]. Sam completely changed the meaning and tone of the introductory paragraph, and went on to do the same to the 'Types of atheism' paragraphs. Those two sections alone were the result of months of negotiation and compromise.--FeloniousMonk 20:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jmabel, I generally third your seconding of my comments. However, I would point out that unfortunately in this article apparently trivial wording and grammar changes can trigger edit wars, since in some places the consensus has been hammered out word by word. It may not be obvious where these trip-wires are, but Sam should know, having spent a lot of time on this article. Whether he decides to deliberately trip them anyway is another question. --BM 21:10, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sam, as for some of your specific edits:

1. I've never been completely happy with the content of the first sentence, and leaving content aside, I also find the syntax and word-choice to be infelicitous and "clunky". HOWEVER, there are other editors here who feel very strongly that it should be retained, word for word. Since most of us can live with it, the consensus seems to be that it isn't worth having an edit war about.
2. The remaining few sentences of the intro were a summary which I added. The general view is that the intro of the article should be more than one sentence and that it should include a short summary of the article, as do other articles. Those sentences are a summary of the history section, which is now the bulk of the article. The last sentence is still controversial, and when you moved almost the entire Talk page to the archives, you moved an active discussion on that point. I have moved it back, as you see. This controversy is at this point confined to the Talk page, and the people disagreeing with that sentence so far have not attempted to change or move it in the article. Incidentally, where you tried to move this (the Etymology section) didn't make a lot of sense.
3. The edit in the paragraph about the monotheistic "god": you have a bee in your bonnet about this, Sam, and you should just let it drop, since people either don't understand what you are driving at, or consider it POV.
4. I will have to look again at your other edits. As I recall they were small changes, but I can't recall if there was anything controversial about them.

--BM 18:08, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Conscious Evolution

After a long Vfd debate, the page was deleted, the opinion being that it should go completely, with no redirect. Shortly afterwards, a 'new' user (4.250.138.88) recreated it (as his ninth edit) with a redirect to 'Transhumanism'. When it was blanked, S.S. recreated it, and when an admin removed it, S.S. put it back again (see a discussion with SlimVirgin from S.S.'s Talk page [11], and SlimVirgin's explanation to me [12]).