Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/KDRGibby

message: I don't want to be drawn into discussion of the user's wider behaviour, by I remark briefly on my encounter with him on Marketization. In particular, I find it odd that he said (on Talk:Marketization, 7 December) "i've been on here for 2 years...got an account 2 months ago." when his KDRGibby account has made no contributions before 1 December. My impression is that the latter is a better indication of how long he's been around, given that he thought he could change part of Marketization and then be able to make an unsigned claim that I'd misquoted it as if it weren't easy to go back to the history and (a) disprove that and (b) show who claimed that. His attitude was also often rather unnecessarily confrontational. Rd232 talk 14:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't find it odd that someone posted to wikipedia long before they obtained an account.  I only obtained an account when I found that I was unable to make changes to a particular article without virtually immediate reversion. (BostonMA 18:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Read the passage in question again. What Rd232 finds odd is KDRGibby's claim that he got an account two months ago, when his account was only 6 days old at that time. Mattley (Chattley) 18:12, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments by Rd232

message: BostonMA, I will attempt to address several points you raise that I think will clarify the reasons I brought up this RFC. This also addresses Feco's points slightly.
:Quote: " Yes, the use does want to add his or her own interpretations. There is nothing wrong with attempting to have minority points of view expressed in wikipedia articles. According to NPOV ... "Wikipedia policy is that articles should be written from a neutral point of view, representing all majority and significant-minority views fairly and without bias. According to Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable"
::My response: This is Gibby's view, not the views of a minority. We have a policy of no original research. When minority views are represented, there has to be external evidence that supports that there indeed are a group of people making such a representation. Finally, all views should be represented factually. NPOV is not, stating different views, but rather reporting on different views. This is what people have been trying to communicate to KDRGibby. We have been trying to cite policies to Gibby and explaining them what they mean, but Gibby rejects all our explanations. To me, a resolution would have been to get Gibby to acknowledge policy, or to have Gibby and other editors come to a compromise that would have suited policy. Gibby shows no intention to follow actual policy at all, and instead tries to cunningly find loopholes in them. It is nearly impossible to have Gibby come to a compromise with anyone, and he continually attacks other editors. We have notified him about his behaviour, and showed him policy about civility and personal attacks. Gibby has made no effort to resolve the dispute - when other editors have made all the effort to try to find a solution to his grievances.
:::Gibby wishes to introduce a section of the Communism page which discusses the fact that the Chinese government permits large scale capitalism to operate under its jurisdiction. This fact about China is widely discussed, not only in the literature which is critical of communism (or Communism) but is also widely discussed in the literature of self-proclaimed communists. Different POV's will of course draw different conclusions from the same fact about China. However, that the fact is significant, and not merely "Gibby's view" is I think something which would be hard to argue with.
:::You state that you have been citing policies to Gibby, explaining what they mean, and that Gibby rejects your explanations. I think the policies of Wikipedia are good. However, you wish to apply them to exclude Gibby's edits, but you have shown unwillingness to apply those same policies to the existing article. You remove documented facts. You "protect" undocumented statements by removing their edits, etc. You claim that Gibby's points are redundant because they are found elsewhere in Wikipedia, but that is also true of much of the rest of the Communism article. In short, there is reason to be sceptical about whether the policies are being applied uniformly, or whether they are being applied in a way to prevent "outside" editors from making contributions.
:::Civility is a two way street. The way it appears to me is that your tactic is to revert, revert, revert to wear people down, and hope they go away in disgust. I am not surprised that Gibby would become extremely annoyed at you.
:Quote: The "other editors" reverted the edits of the user within a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds. The justification offered is that the user's edits had various faults. I agree that the user's edits contain some original research, and have other weaknesses as well. However, these weaknesses are found in the Communism article generally, and are not specific to the user's edits.
::My response: It was the general consensus among editors that Gibby's edits contributed no new information, ie. it is already mentioned that China has a free market in many articles which are linked from Communism. We explained on the talk page why adding an entire section did not suit the article. This is different from an edit that adds new information to an article.
:::Yes, it is true that the fact that the China has a private market is mentioned in other articles. There are also other articles which are devoted to Marxism, Leninism, the Soviet Union, etc. etc. The argument that the information is redundant is clearly not applied uniformly. An argument that is not applied uniformly is suspect.
:Quote: The "other editors" have shown amazing energy in attempting to prevent edits from being made to the Communism article by individuals outside their group.
::My response: I absolutely contest this. This statement labels "other editors" into a cabal, I do not think is a useful comment in RFC.
:::I think it is useful to attract the attention of others who are interested in the future of Wikipedia to the fact that there is a serious problem at the Communism page. I am glad that administrators have intervened. The administrator warned that a continuation of the revert war would result in the page being locked. You then proceded to ignore the warning and made a revert, "yes, this is what a revert is called". You violated the 3 Revert policy (not once but repeatedly, and after you were warned about it). You removed "disputed" and "npov" tags.
:Quote: However, when blatant instances of "original research" have been pointed out to them, when requests have been made for verifiable sources for dubious statements, when bias has been shown in the application of their adherence to Wikipedia guidelines, they seem to have no energy for correcting such things. In fact, they block the correction of instances of "original research" and remove edits which provide verifiable sources. The appearance is that the "other editors" are conducting a POV crusade against "outside" POVs.
::My response: Can you please give us diffs citing where original research was added, or at least quotes from the Communism article? The criteria for original research is quite clear: it is backed up by sources and can be verified externally. The sections in contest before the dispute had the consensus that they are historically accurate, and are further backed up in the articles linked in the section. Most of the disputes in Communism often pertain to criticisms, the future, and the like, and the history is rarely disputed.
:::Hmm. Perhaps you made a typo, or perhaps you do not understand what "orignal research" is intended to mean. Original research is "research" (whether well or poorly done) which is not backed up by verifiable sources.
:::In my opinion, there are many sorts of statements that are immediately suspect as original research, and more or less require verifiable sources if they are to stand. Such suspect statements include statements of the implications of certain theories. For example, if one states, "Person X's theory implies Y", that is likely to be original research, that it is likely that the editor actually made the implication. It would not be original research if a verifiable source drew the implication, although questions of neutrality may come into play at that point. Another suspect class of statements are those that purport to provide the motives or reasons behind the actions of various parties. Again, if there are verifiable sources, then it would not be original research, but these sorts of statements are immediately suspect. A third class of statements that I would find suspect includes those that have "The world" or "History" as the subject of an action clause.
:::Suspect statements are not necessarily original research. However, the following phrases in Communism are examples of things that raise red flags for me.
::::"Marx's theory had presumed that..." (Who drew the implication from Marx's theory? A verifiable source, or the author of the edit?)
::::"according to Marxian theory" (According to Marxian theory, or according to the interpetation of Marxian theory of the editor?)
::::"For this reason, the socialist Mensheviks..." (Who drew this inference? The editor? or a verifiable source?)
:::I have challenged the veracity of some statements of this sort in the discussion pages of Communism. I pointed to evidence that directly contradicted the purported claims, such as the statements of Marx and Engels themselves. (See the section "Under the Commintern" in the discussion page). In the absense of any verifiable supporting evidence, and in the presence of verifiable conflicting evidence, and based upon my own understanding of Marxism, that is my own "original research", which should carry no weight in wikipedia, but does carry weight in my own determinations of things, the statements found in Communism and described above are "original research". I have asked the editors to provide verifiable sources and none have been offered.
:::There may in fact be authors who will support the POV of the contested parts of the article. In that case, they would not be "original research". However, at that point, it would be important to establish a neutral POV, and not merely repeat the research of some author, even though documented.
:Quote:' For example, consider the phrase "Russia, the modern world's first effort to build socialism or communism on a large scale". The subject of the phrase is "the modern world". It appears to me very doubtful that statements of this sort would appear in scholarly work. Even if they do appear in scholarly work, I would hope that such words would be represented not as fact, but as the opinion of some scholars, else a question of NPOV arises. // The "other editors" claimed to be against "original research", and it was therefore reasonable the the user in qustion attempt to remove text which suffered from that defect.
::My response: This has nothing to do with Gibby for the time being, but I will respond that before then, the Paris Commune only took place on a city-level, rather than the entire nation.
:::The relationship to Gibby is this. You revert Gibby's edits claiming original research, but seem unwilling to allow existing original research to be removed. This gives the appearance of bias.
:::As far as the Paris Commune is concerned, I don't see how that is relevant to this discussion. Who says that the an attempt was made in Russia (an attempt made by the modern world no less) to build socialism or communism? I know it is "common knowledge", but that does not quite cut it for me. It is a fact that Stalin claimed to be building socialism/communism in Russia. It is also a fact the Ferdinand Marcos claimed to be running a democracy. Should the claims of politicians appear in Wikipedia as unqualified facts? So I ask, what verifiable source says that "the modern world" made an attempt to create socialism in Russia, or is that the "original research" of the editor?
:Quote: There is quite clearly factual and NPOV disputes involved with the Communism article. I put up "disputed" and "NPOV" templates myself. There is a section in the discussion devoted to NPOV, and other sections raise the issues of factual disputes. Although the other editors don't want warning templates on the website, they have not presented serious arguments that such disputes do not exists. Adding warning templates is a reasonable and legitimage activity.
::My response: See Wikipedia:Templates. Firstly, there is a template called Template:totallydisputed, it is general policy not to add both types of templates to an article because of the space it consumes. I contest the statement that we did not present "serious arguments". These kinds of comments are not helping the RFC. We both want to resolve this dispute. We are both pretty serious. I want to assume good faith about Gibby, but his behavior of attacking other users and suspecting them of having entrenched interests prevents me from doing so. In the process, other editors shoudl assume good faith when we come up with responses. Many editors such as myself and 172 provided what we thought were policy-based and logical reasons why the templates should not be included. I contest the statement that we were not serious about it.
:::Your resonse says that it is general policy not to have two types of templates. That may be true, I don't know. However, you removed those templates when they were put up separately.
:::I stated that no serious arguments have been presented that NPOV and factual disputes do not exist. You may have made "serious arguments" about this, that or the other thing, but you have not made a serious argument against the existence of factual and NPOV disputes. (Yet you take down those templates).
:Quote: The "other editors" have not acted in good faith, by removing edits within minutes of their first appearance. Nor have they acted in good faith in the consistent application of their alleged policies. When requested to abide by the guideline of improving edits rather than reverting them, as per Wikipedia:Resolving disputes ... none of them has expressed a willingness to abide by such a policy.
::My response: I maintain that this is no excuse to make personal attacks. There is the concept of staying cool when the editing gets hot. Removing edits is not assuming bad faith - rather they had been originally posted days ago, and not removed "minutes after they were first posted". It should also be noted that guidelines are not policies.
:::My first post of "disputed" tag was removed within 7 minutes. ::::http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&diff=prev&oldid=30847581
:::The substance of the dispute is found the discussion page.
:::It is not clear what personal attacks you are referring to, or in what way the things I have written justify personal attacks.
:Quote: My understanding is that he did not violate the WP:3RR rule because he had not reverted the public page. (By the way, the "other editors" have clearly violated the WP:3RR rule, and did so in a flaunting manner, after they had been warned by Wikipedia administrators.
::My response: One user copying and pasting the same thing after it has been removed by a variety of users multiple times is effectively a revert, since it effectively restores it to a previous version.
:::You are correct that "making the page the same" regardless of the means of doing so, whether it is through an explicit "revert" button, or through edits, is "reversion". When I wrote the above comment, I was under the impression, from reading Gibby's talk page, that he had been suspended for reverting his own talk page, not the public communism page. His own page included a copy of the communism page, which made following edits difficult. I believe I may have been mistaken about this, and perhaps someone who has more accurate knowledge can clarify.
:Quote: I don't see what is wrong with copying something to one's personal talk page...I fail to see an abuse of privilege in editing one's own talk page.
::My response: If it starts hindering other people's ability to communicate with the user about him, or to other users, it is not something explicitly wrong, but it is a sign of disharmony with the community. Deleting opposing comments from one's own talk page without archiving or responding to them can be seen as rude. There is of course, no problem in ignoring a user's attempt to discuss a matter with you, but then it clearly shows hostility and lack of willingness to resolve a dispute with that user.
:::Deleting comments may be considered rude. There are also many other behaviors that might be considered rude. Rudeness is often the result of animosity, and one might reasonably ask from whence that animosity arose. (BostonMA 16:21, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Natalinasmpf 07:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: BostonMA's reply to reply

message: Interesting Natlisnasmpf, you believe no effort was made by me, when I'm the one who placed 2 dissucsion comments on your own talk page, plus 2 others on the communism discussion page  before anyone decided to respond to discuss why YOU were continualy deleting my section. Interesting, there was no complaint about the section as it stood for several days until you took it upon youself to delete it in it WITHOUT DISCUSSION.
Do you have a word for irony in chinese there in singapore?  (Gibby)
A pet word?  No, overused?  Only because there are alot of people who are not consistent with their logic...as you have demonstrated.
And no discussion was made before you even deleted it. So how can there even be consensus on or a discussion on how odd it looked?
All caps to me isnt yelling, its emphasis, so people don't miss very important points.
And look, your going to have to learn to deal with rude people, especially on the internet, as I've had to learn to deal with nuts and flakes and people who don't know what the hell they are talking about.
(Gibby 22:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Gibby's counterstatement 

message: :It was overlooked. You should also make your initial statement at Response, then discuss disputed points here. This is better for dispute resolution as it will hinder the process otherwise. I removed your section because it was disjunct, (and I initially thought an edit summary was sufficient)...it was hardly deleting it without discussion. The section looked very bad to other readers, so I was bold in removing it. Disinformation is worse than information, so generally, new material needs to be shown that they are worthy of being included in, not that we need to prove that it should not be included. This was the general understanding of editing articles. I would also like to see you becoming more civil and polite, using less ALLCAPS, and improving in your tone. Your tone is very aggressive - stressing "YOU" and so on. This does not bode well for dispute resolution. You should also cut down on sarcasm, as it is very rude. In reply to your recent changes to your response section, I must say that no editor, unless it is a vandal, and even till then it is disputed, is ever deserving of a personal attack. "Tard" is a very immature comment, and shows disrespect for other editors. "Logically inconsistent" and "hypocrite" is borderline, and I suspect it's simply an overused pet word. You seem to treat this as a war against opposing editors, I will kindly remind you Wikipedia is a community, not a legislative assembly. 
:As for your cabal allegations, you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that we are a cabal of users intending to censor your ideas; for one I find that this will be very unlikely given that many of the editors who agree it shouldn't be included are in fact on opposite sides of the political spectrum. -- Natalinasmpf 22:48, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Natalinasmpf's near-concluding remarks

message: You dont know the defintion to circular logic.  Rewording logic so simple minded people can more easily understand does not qualify.  (Gibby 07:31, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: <sigh> I will see how this goes. I had already proposed a solution at Talk:Communism which was a compromise, but apparently you did not want to negotiate without spouting personal attacks. -- Natalinasmpf
The only time you mention compromise is when you are on this page.  In the communism page you delete everything and discuss nothing.  This page is nothing but a show so you can pretend you're doing right.  You're nothing but an internet thug abusing privilages of this website.  (Gibby 09:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

text: No, I have advocated compromise via discussion of the inserted material, not trying to force the material in. Elle vécut heureusement toujours dorénavant (Be eudaimonic!) 11:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gibby's response to Nati's response of his response to her response

message: (please do not modify this section)
According to many Maoists or adherents of movements that emerged from Maoism, Maoism is a branch of communist theory/politics, but  the political faction which holds power in the Peoples Republic of China today is not a branch of communist theory/politics.  I do not know whether any editors of belong to those political tendencies or not.  Nor is it any of my business.  However, the arguments against including a discussion of capitalist enterprises in the Peoples Republic of China are consistent with the POV of the Maoists and of movements that emerged from Maoism.
I will describe another POV as "A branch of Trotskyism" although it may be found amongst a wide variey of political POVs.  According to the adherents of this view, Maoism is a deviant offshoot of communist theory/politics, as is the current faction which holds power in China today.  A deviant offshoot of communist theory/politics might be considered "a branch" of the communist movement in some contexts, and might be considered "not a branch" of the communist movement in other contexts.  But in any context, either both Maoism and the current ruling faction are considered branches of communism, or both are considered not be be branches of communism.  I do not know whether any of the editors of Communism are aware that they have, in essence argued against the inclusion of this POV, or whether they are unaware.  That is also not my business.  The point is that the arguments that have been raised are consistent with a policy of excluding representation of this POV.
These two POV's are not minor views within the field of far-left politics.  Nor is the contention between them trivial.  It is my opinion, that the Communism article should incorporate and represent both POVs.  That is the road to neutral POV.
In my opinion, NPOV is more important than considerations of redundancy with other articles, length of the article, and other stylistic matters.
That in short, is the substance of the NPOV issue as I see it.  (BostonMA 02:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Substance of NPOV complaint

message: Hi Gibby, I would like the discussion to stay focused on the issues of NPOV, bias, content, openness to outside editors etc.  The remarks about "tard" and "moron" put you in a perilous position, and allow attention to be shifted away from the content issues, to issues of etiquette.  I think that apologizing for these remarks in an unqualified way, without any attempt to justify them, would help to keep the discussion focused on the more important issues such as NPOV etc.  (BostonMA 12:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That was exactly the problem at Liberalism Electionworld 15:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Etiquette

message: This user is only getting more and more ad hominem and uncompromising the more other editors try to engage in his concerns. I see little chance of the communism article being unlocked any time soon. If any other editors are interested in requesting arbitration against Gibby, let me know. 172 15:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Arbitration

message: Gibby, for goodness sake, please avoid tampering with the statement. Post discussion here instead.
"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&hs=2O4&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&oi=defmore&defl=en&q=define:CONSENSUS
THAT WAS NOT REACHED...NATI has no understanding of consensus.  (Gibby 07:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  comments