Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway 2

message: Please edit this RfC correctly.  The Response section should be left for Tony Sidaway.  Robert McClenon 13:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

message: I confused the sections. Agriculture 14:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  My bad 

message: :moved from rfc
While Tony's apology is a good step in the right direction, it is too little too late.  He has never settled nor apologized to me for the various points of friction we have had in the past.  In addition this, his first admission of being wrong in the history of Wikipedia, strikes me as an attempt to dodge punishment.  He's only willing to admit he's making mistakes when people draw him up on charges... with the sheer multitude of times he breaches community standards I shudder to think how often we would have to RFC him just to keep him playing fair. Agriculture 14:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You appear to be treating this RFC as an opportunity for free kicks - David Gerard 14:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: Davenbelle writes: My primary concern with Tony's conduct on wikipedia is his befriending and protecting problem users well after it is obvious that they are a problem. I refer specifically to the arbitrations in which I've been involved with User:Trey Stone and User:Cool Cat.
This statement is a little bit naughty.  Davenbelle omits to say that he himself is also a user whose behavior was identified as problematic in both cases.
I did not befriend Trey Stone, I mentored him in an attempt to improve his behavior; I had some success, through a combination of blocking and good advice.  Moreover in the arbitration case Davenbelle himself, an egregious edit warrior, was banned for one year from editing politics articles, because of his warring with Trey Stone (who was subject to a similar ban).
I also mentored Cool Cat, noticing as I did so that he was being harassed by Davenbelle and some others.  In the subsequent arbitration case, Davenbelle and another were found to have engaged in "wikistalking" or "hounding" Cool Cat, and so disrupting Wikipedia and discouraging his positive contributions.  The committee counseled them "to let other editors and administrators take the lead in monitoring Cool Cat. If subsequent proceedings which involve Cool Cat show that he has been hounded by them, substantial penalties may be imposed."  The committee appointed me and two others as official mentors to Cool Cat. --Tony SidawayTalk 09:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Tony, being that harsh was uncalled for, and you know, it wasn't as black and white as you decided to picture it here. Fadix 03:20, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Naughty? I think not; I gave links to the cases and did not go into any detail about any of the parties. And "egregious" is your word, not ArbCom's; the "edit warring" I was called on was all in opposition to User:Trey Stone — who edit warred all over the wiki pushing his POV on political articles. Your cat seems to have run off in a huff again — apparently nothing to do with me. — Davenbelle 04:00, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Response to Davenbelle

message: I strikes me that if one wants to make a good impression on someone this is a good case history of what not to do:
# Call him a troll
# Insult his intelligence
# Get your friends to come on IRC and tell him what a fine chap you are
Ryan, my opposition to your mediation candidacy has nothing to do with our personal differences, but in your approach to resolving problems.  Kelly felt the same concerns and she's an experienced mediator.  May I suggest that, if you are experiencing "frustration" or "burnout", joining MedCom may not be the best of ideas at this time? A "slip" like that in the middle of a mediation will kill the mediation and has major potential to make the situation at hand worse than it was to begin with. So, yes, I am still concerned.
When I discovered that you had applied for a position as a mediator, I was horrified.  You are not ready yet.  --Tony SidawayTalk 09:41, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. I never insulted your intelligence, I just spoke my mind -  although I suppose one can gather quite a few things as an insult of one's intelligence. Also, I certainly never organized the IRC thing. It is clear you are taking this more personally then I realized. I assure that I do not take hours out of my day just to boost my ego :) - it really is because I care. You can choose to think otherwise - but it is to your own detriment, my good friend. Ryan Norton T | @ | C 11:03, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

text: You talked down to me, and I think that's a bad habit that a potential mediator should work on removing.  You need to work on a few other things.  I'm sorry if this seems a little harsh, but you are not (yet) mediator material.  --Tony SidawayTalk 17:23, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Response to Ryan Norton

message: This is a straightforward one.  FeloniousMonk's one-sided evidence has been dealth with elsewhere.
In his outside view, FeloniousMonk says "I've...seen Tony lose perspective and act unilaterally, flouting community consensus when pursuing editors he perceives to be damaging the project."
He refers to my interaction with Mel Etitis, who as a matter of undisputed fact has engaged in egregious edit wars over a period of several months in order to make a number of music articles conform to the Manual of style.  Ironically, that document declares that it's a guideline, not official policy, and has contained the following introductory words for a long, long time:
: The following rules don't claim to be the last word.  One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. In this regard the following quote from The Chicago Manual of Style deserves notice:
::Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.''
: Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required.
In my outside view to Mel Etitis' case I quoted directly from both official policy and a recent arbitration case Yuber, which both spell out that edit warring is considered to be deleterious: "Edit warring is harmful to the purpose of Wikipedia and to the morale of its editors", and " is reminded that edit-warring is harmful to Wikipedia's mission and is advised to use Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedure in preference to attempting to control content through the use of reverts."
There were some other serious problems with Mel Etitis' behavior.  He was less than honest in his requests for help on WP:AN or its subpages, accusing other editors of mass-reverting while omitting the fact that, only minutes before, he'd been engaged in precisely the same activity.  A classic sterile edit war, with neither side budging an inch.  And this was an administrator!
FeloniousMonk suggests that in continuing to hold and express a very negative opinion of Mel Etitis, I am ignoring the consensus view--that I should shut up. This is not how we do things on Wikipedia.  Mel Etitis did unquestionably pursue many sterile edit wars, and did unquestionably damage Wikipedia and alienate newcomers in doing so.  Those being the facts, it makes absolutely no difference that a number of editors ganged together and expressed approval of Mel Etitis' actions.  Those actions were objectively wrong and the support he received from his peers can only be a matter of deep shame for our community in general but for administrators in particular.  Popularity contests are of little use in determining whether a policy was broken and damage done to the wiki in this case. Evidence and logical inference, and (as here) a well constructed case, will always make very short work of such fripperies. Consensus must always be subject to commonsense. --Tony SidawayTalk 10:49, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Response to FeloniousMonk

message: Mel Etitis writes In my own case, I see that some of those same people are occasionally still referring to my "biting newbies", etc., despite the fact that there was no evidence for this, and a pile of evidence to show that I'd done no such thing, but had explained Wikipedia policies and guidelines at length and repeatedly, and tried to sort matters out civilly and sensibly.
The evidence shows that Mel Etitis edit warred against newcomers to Wikipedia.  Ignoring the advice in the manual of style itself that "Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules", he edit warred at the same time he claimed to be educating them.  As just one small example, see the history of the  article.
Mel Etitis was also dishonest when he called for help, saying:
*  is mass reverting my attempts to tidy albums-articles, calling the removal of excessive Wikilinking (multiple links to the same year in successive lines, linking to seasons and months) and the conversion of hyphens to dashes "vandalous". Again, I started by trying to explain the MoS, etc., but he's just become more and more belligerent.
What he omitted to say was that only minutes earlier he had been edit warring with this same editor.  At that time, Mel Etitis had been in the "mass revert" game for months.  Newbies, sometimes already rather belligerent as newbies often are, were further provoked by his edit warring.
Mel Etitis claims that he helped newbies, but instead he simply promoted his viewpoint: " Please stop reverting against the MoS. Why do you think that Fall is relevant to the article, for example? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:40, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone who's been involved in disputes with the same editor as Mel Etitis was, I think it's important to recognize that the editor was not a "newbie," but a sockpuppet/new identity for a more experienced editor with a significant track record of abusive behavior. Monicasdude 23:07, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As the editor in question, I can assure you that I was forced to abandon my identity due to constant stalking measures by Monicasdude and that his OWN RfC speaks volumes on his abusive behavior.  My so called "significant track record" thereof is virtually non-existent. And, Tony, I agree with you 100%. BGC 23:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

text: The editing by User:Mel Etitis that User:Tony Sidaway describes as "piddling, piffling, idiotic trifles" was the removal of copyrighted images.  See Template talk:Album infobox 2 for more details, if they are necessary.  Jkelly 03:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Response to Mel Etitis

message: :You are basically saying that since you didn't like the way the VfU/DR vote was turning out that you venue shopped for a better vote.  If you think that the VfU/DR process needs changing then propose a change.  Don't reject the valid voting and start a new one on AfD because you didn't like the outcome!  You didn't even bother to await the results to see if the outcome was appropriate.  You IAR'd a unilateral outcome of your own. WP:IAR specifically says "IAR should never be used by administrators to make up and enforce their own set of rules." - Tεxτurε 15:15, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Venue shopping

message: "I think we have to get back to the facts." No problem, Tony.
----
From the deletion log:
*20:28, 17 October 2005 Tony Sidaway restored "Albert M. Wolters" (1 revisions restored) 
*20:27, 17 October 2005 Tony Sidaway deleted "Albert M. Wolters" (Ditching copyvios, leaving Snowspinner's rewrite) 
*01:05, 17 October 2005 Snowspinner restored "Albert M. Wolters" 
*00:55, 17 October 2005 Fvw deleted "Albert M. Wolters" (deleteagain, on VfU) 
*00:33, 17 October 2005 Snowspinner restored "Albert M. Wolters" 
*00:14, 17 October 2005 Zoe deleted "Albert M. Wolters" (recreation of previously VdF'd article. Tony Sidaway strikes again) 
*18:52, 16 October 2005 Tony Sidaway restored "Albert M. Wolters"  Emphasis mine.  
*18:46, 16 October 2005 Splash deleted "Albert M. Wolters" (temp undel to provide content) 
*18:46, 16 October 2005 Splash restored "Albert M. Wolters" 
*23:33, 4 October 2005 Doc glasgow deleted "Albert M. Wolters" (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Albert M. Wolters) 
*12:32, 20 April 2005 ALoan deleted "Albert M. Wolters" (content was: '#Redirect Al Wolters' - page move per WP:RM) 
----
From Wikipedia:Deletion review, Revision as of 18:50, 16 October 2005: 
====Albert M. Wolters ====
I'd like to nominate Albert M. Wolters for undeletion.  I have been away from Wiki for a while and was a little bemused to see that this article had been deleted.
Al Wolters is not a non-entity: he passes the google test and has published several books; including the very influential Creation Regained. Cheers, SteveBish 15:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  Do read these things before you post them.  The usual nonsense was being trotted out.  "Rigorous enough or not, the debate was unanimous."  Content arguments were being falsely discounted.  Undeletion policy was being blatantly ignored, as is usual on VFU.  This was an obvious, easy, summary undeletion, but VFU was turning it into the usual pointlessstalement. --Tony SidawayTalk 01:15, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The content was being had been provided, a link had been provided that explicitly says "you can recreate the article".  Deletion Review only requires a majority, so at the very second that you abandoned consensus, the article would have been restored if no other opinons had been voiced.  But I'm curious about your phrase, "was turning it into".  Are you explicitly saying that you were trying to short circuit this debate, to "get in early" as it were? - brenneman(t)(c) 01:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I've placed a more general statement on the main page, but will still reply to this.  When people are talking, it's generally considered rude to interrupt them.  That's what you did, Tony.  A fine and civil discussion that you seem unable to understand was going to almost certainly result in the outcome you would have liked was interrupted.  It's rude, and if you still don't see that I don't know what else to say.  Please do read over what I've put on the main page.  brenneman(t)(c) 04:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quick review of the ''facts''

message: I'd like to nominate Albert M. Wolters for undeletion.  I have been away from Wiki for a while and was a little bemused to see that this article had been deleted.
Al Wolters is not a non-entity: he passes the google test and has published several books; including the very influential Creation Regained. Cheers, SteveBish 15:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  Do read these things before you post them.  The usual nonsense was being trotted out.  "Rigorous enough or not, the debate was unanimous."  Content arguments were being falsely discounted.  Undeletion policy was being blatantly ignored, as is usual on VFU.  This was an obvious, easy, summary undeletion, but VFU was turning it into the usual pointlessstalement. --Tony SidawayTalk 01:15, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The content was being had been provided, a link had been provided that explicitly says "you can recreate the article".  Deletion Review only requires a majority, so at the very second that you abandoned consensus, the article would have been restored if no other opinons had been voiced.  But I'm curious about your phrase, "was turning it into".  Are you explicitly saying that you were trying to short circuit this debate, to "get in early" as it were? - brenneman(t)(c) 01:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I've placed a more general statement on the main page, but will still reply to this.  When people are talking, it's generally considered rude to interrupt them.  That's what you did, Tony.  A fine and civil discussion that you seem unable to understand was going to almost certainly result in the outcome you would have liked was interrupted.  It's rude, and if you still don't see that I don't know what else to say.  Please do read over what I've put on the main page.  brenneman(t)(c) 04:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Albert M. Wolters 

message: Texture provided some very interesting evidence on Mr. Sidaway's talk page, Mr. Sidaway promptly deleted the evidence.  I have restored it here and asked for Tony's comments here.  I encourage others to view this information and to think about both what it means, and what it means that Mr. Sidaway thought it correct to hide this information.  I believe the best way to have a constructive dialog is to review all presented evidence and weight it fully.  Not cover it up. Comments are appreciated. TheChief (PowWow) 18:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Tony has just deleted our entire conversation (minus the original evidence I gave him which he previously deleted) and left a now-incomprehensible comment by me (due to all the missing text) and claims it is ok because of a cite to the talk page history.  Tony, why didn't you just archive the page?  Why hide only our discussion?  Why didn't you just archive my original evidence if it offended you so much? By only showing your response (in the original deletion) you leave out anything I say that you don't feel like responding to. This is the kind of dismissive attitude that started this RfC. - Tεxτurε 21:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: So, this is a return to the original RfC where you indicated you would no longer respond to any attempts to resolve the issue through RfC? - Tεxτurε 21:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Tony Sidaway has just deleted my response to the complete removal of our discussion without comment or explanation:  - Tεxτurε 21:28, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Texture's Evidence 

message: ===Agriculture's attack sock puppetry===
David Gerard has blocked  indefinitely as an attack sock puppet of  in connection with this his personal attacks and badgering in connection with this RfC.  Agriculture has been blocked for forty-eight hours. --Tony SidawayTalk 15:34, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am most certainly not a sockpuppet of the TheChief.  This claim is fradulent.  My only accounts are User:PDE (inactive for a long, long time), and this account. Agriculture 16:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Agriculture and TheChief made remarkably similar edits in the same style, and the IP evidence backed it. Wikipedia is very very very tolerant, but we're not actually stupid - David Gerard 17:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

text: If the admins have decided to let the trolls and vandals run this place (and lets face it a lot of admins are trolls and vandals), we have every right to hit them with their own medicine. I, for one, am sick and tired of sitting back and watching while mods let personal attacks from trolls slip while nothing happens. I say hit the trolls hard and fast with their own medicine. If trolling and vandalism is obviously ok in the eyes of the admins, then for goodness sake use it to combat the trolls. (emphasis mine)
Despite repeated claims that it is leaving, nevertheless the agriculture account slowly resumes editing in early September.
After editing during its first nine days, including edits to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Talk:Old Dominion University, both of which had also been edited by the Agriculture account, the TheChief account disappears for over a month, returning October 4, the same day that marks the return of the Agriculture account after a break of four days.   TheChief edits sporadically in early October, taking another complete break from 8th to 16th.  Coincidentally, the agriculture account makes few edits between 8th and 16th, editing on only two days during that period, only five edits in all. TheChief then edits daily from 20-31 October.
In Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Midwestern_Ivy_League, TheChief explicitly claims affiliation with UIUC.  Agriculture uploads images of UIUC.
In retrospect, I think that Agriculture's declaration of malicious intent towards Wikipedia should have been taken far more seriously than it was. This editor claims once again that it has left Wikipedia forever, but it will be back, and we should probably keep a close watch for it. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved from main page - accusations of sock puppetry 

message: David Gerard has blocked  indefinitely as an attack sock puppet of  in connection with this his personal attacks and badgering in connection with this RfC.  Agriculture has been blocked for forty-eight hours. --Tony SidawayTalk 15:34, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am most certainly not a sockpuppet of the TheChief.  This claim is fradulent.  My only accounts are User:PDE (inactive for a long, long time), and this account. Agriculture 16:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Agriculture and TheChief made remarkably similar edits in the same style, and the IP evidence backed it. Wikipedia is very very very tolerant, but we're not actually stupid - David Gerard 17:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

text: If the admins have decided to let the trolls and vandals run this place (and lets face it a lot of admins are trolls and vandals), we have every right to hit them with their own medicine. I, for one, am sick and tired of sitting back and watching while mods let personal attacks from trolls slip while nothing happens. I say hit the trolls hard and fast with their own medicine. If trolling and vandalism is obviously ok in the eyes of the admins, then for goodness sake use it to combat the trolls. (emphasis mine)
Despite repeated claims that it is leaving, nevertheless the agriculture account slowly resumes editing in early September.
After editing during its first nine days, including edits to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Talk:Old Dominion University, both of which had also been edited by the Agriculture account, the TheChief account disappears for over a month, returning October 4, the same day that marks the return of the Agriculture account after a break of four days.   TheChief edits sporadically in early October, taking another complete break from 8th to 16th.  Coincidentally, the agriculture account makes few edits between 8th and 16th, editing on only two days during that period, only five edits in all. TheChief then edits daily from 20-31 October.
In Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Midwestern_Ivy_League, TheChief explicitly claims affiliation with UIUC.  Agriculture uploads images of UIUC.
In retrospect, I think that Agriculture's declaration of malicious intent towards Wikipedia should have been taken far more seriously than it was. This editor claims once again that it has left Wikipedia forever, but it will be back, and we should probably keep a close watch for it. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Agriculture's attack sock puppetry