User talk:BOZ/RFCU Asgardian draft: Difference between revisions

I will copy and paste the results of this draft page into a new RFCU page when it is ready to go. I have protected the page and request that no one edit it unless they intend to be a certifier (please incidate so below). All non-admin certifiers should request contributions to be added on this talk page, and anyone is welcome to discuss any related topic here. Please do not certify or add endorsements or responses until the page goes live; the purpose is to draft the "Statement of the dispute" section. Thank you. BOZ (talk) 18:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is a summary written by users who dispute this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

WP:OWN and WP:CONSENSUS.

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Asgardian-Tenebrae#Asgardian restricted, for one year from December 2007, Asgardian was "limited to one revert per page per week (excepting obvious vandalism), and is required to discuss any content reversions on the page's talk page. Should he exceed this limit or fail to discuss a content reversion, he may be blocked for the duration specified in the enforcement ruling below." I'd like to clarify what the current situation would be with regards this sanction? I accept that the sanction has now expired, but if I feel it should be re-instated I'd like to clarify the process for re-instating it. Is another arbitration case the only way, or is it possible to have the case amended? I'm concerned about gaming of the system here, namely that a user sits tight for a year, and then once the sanction ends, returns to behaviour deemed unacceptable.

Asgardian tends to revert rather than to discuss, and doesn;t tend to accept pother points of view. The user appears to have a very literal take on policies and guidelines. The user's comments have also led many to believe Asgardian has acted disruptively.

This is a summary written by users who have initiated the request for comment. It should spell out exactly what the changes they'd like to see in the user, or what questions of behavior should be the focus.

Let's discuss, in very specific terms, what we are trying to accomplish with an RFCU. BOZ (talk) 18:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I guess we're looking for input on how to deal with the situation. My preferred outcome would be a probation similar to the arbitration outcome. We need a way of ensuring that gaming of the system isn't occurring. I'm interested in what happens with the page ban experiment, to be honest. I want to see what pattern of behaviour we see once it expires on the two pages. If problems arise, I think it might be worthwhile investigating further page bans for longer periods. Hiding T 08:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I believe Hiding makes perfect sense. He espouses a temperate approach that adds a single step to the year-long probation on reverts that was the result of last year's Asgardian Arbitration. Probation on reverts plus bans on selected, long-problematic pages is not draconian, and it signals two things: One, that we see hope and potential in Asgardian and are genuinely trying to work with him to encourage the better angels of his nature. While I grow increasingly despairing that this approach will ultimately work, it's certainly a show of good faith. And number two, it makes clear that his return to contentious, non-consensus, time-consuming bad behavior, after a year-long probation, will be met with the same response plus a little additional. This signals a second chance without undermining the seriousness of this effort. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:09, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Additionally, here he circumvents the mediation process by declaring an RfC null and void and, rather than going to next stage of mediation, reinserts his contentious, disputed edit and unilaterally declares this personal version to be something he dubs "Wiki-correct"! -- Tenebrae (talk) 18:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about this for desired outcome?

Asgardian is an editor who is knowledgeable in his primary field of focus, comic books, and has shown an ability to research and work hard to write and improve articles. In that sense, he is valuable to the Comics Wikiproject and Wikipedia as a whole. However, a number of editors have found it difficult and frustrating to work with him on the articles he chooses to volunteer his time at, for a variety of reasons detailed below. The editors of the Comics Wikiproject, and editors who work on comic book related articles, feel that certain aspects of Asgardian's approach are disruptive and would like to see Asgardian work with a more collaborative and less controlling spirit. If that does not happen, then perhaps mediation may be in order; if that does not work, then editors may need to seek sanctions through arbitration. As Tenebrae puts things, "we see hope and potential in Asgardian and are genuinely trying to work with him to encourage the better angels of his nature". BOZ (talk) 16:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{Add summary here, but you must use the section below to certify or endorse it. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries, other than to endorse them.}

Add anything here which you think is appropriate to the below subsections, and if deemed so it will be added to the RFCU draft page. We also need a tight, concise, but thorough explanation of the issues involved. BOZ (talk) 18:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've looked everything over, and would like to propose a rough draft for your perusal. It still needs some work, but I will post it to the front page when I've got a workable version. The idea is, I want to lay out the "charges" one by one, so that Asgardian and the community can clearly see what other editors think of his behavior, so that he and they can respond clearly to each point as needed. I've tried to word everything as neutrally as possible while still being factual and getting the point across to leave the judgment up to (hopefully) mostly uninvolved editors. I'll try to examine the diffs posted below one by one, and if you have more feel free to add. Note that here I'm focusing on the behavior; not what you disagree with him on, but how he reacts in response to that disagreement (you can always add the nature of the disagreement as part of an "involved view" of your own once the RFC/U goes live). If you have any comments on anything that should be added, altered, reduced, or eliminated, please add below. BOZ (talk) 16:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disclaimer: Much of the behavior described below is accompanied by similar behaviors from other editors, in "it takes two to tango" situations. Often enough, Asgardian is not the "bad guy" while the other editor is not the "good guy" – in fact, those roles can easily enough be reversed. However, given the sheer number of disputes that Asgardian has been involved in over the years with multiple editors, it is very concerning that he seems to be at the center of things so often.

Asgardian has been accused of taking ownership of certain articles. That is, it seems that once he begins to clean up an article in a manner he finds satisfactory, he tends to only "allow" changes that he agrees with. Asgardian denies this, however, feeling that the version he promotes is the "correct" (sometimes posited as "wiki-correct") version. He has made statements such as "this article is almost complete", which could be read as him being the one to judge whether something is complete or not, rather than one collaborator amongst the whole. He has recently been page banned from two articles for a month period.

Asgardian is often involved in what has been described as edit-warring with other editors. As seen in the evidence below, he will undo someone else's changes when he disagrees with changes that have been made, which is acceptable under the provisions of WP:BRD. Asgardian feels that he is not edit-warring, because either it is not a true revert (mostly reverting to his prior version, but making other changes along the way), or because he feels the other person was wrong in the first place. While neither of these actions are wrong per se, they will often occur multiple times in succession on the same article.

Asgardian often uses incomplete or inaccurate edit summaries to describe his changes. That is, he will use a brief edit summary that describes only a small portion of the changes he is making, while the rest of his edit will make significant changes to the article – often reverting parts of the text that other editor(s) have made. Asgardian often makes comments, sometimes condescending, about other editors in his edit summaries.

It has been suggested that Asgardian is gaming the system at times. For example, Asgardian does sometimes enter into a discussion with the aggrieved editors he is engaged with, but even after discussion he will sometimes resume with the prior behavior on at least part of the article when it appears the disagreeable editor may have lost interest in continuing the debate. Sometimes he interprets policies and guidelines in his own way and acts upon them, and does not seem to listen to input from other editors. Sometimes he is warned to disengage from a certain activity and will try to find a way around that.

When a consensus seems to have been built about a certain approach towards a style guideline, editing practice, etc, or perhaps what is to be done in a specific case on one article, Asgardian has been said to act against that. That is, if say a few editors on an article's talk page have agreed that this article should contain "Foo", Asgardian has been observed to remove "Foo" regardless.

Sometimes Asgardian will edit anonymously, making the same sort of edits he does to the same articles he has been observed to work on, and continuing the same behaviors as described above. When questioned about this, Asgardian states that this anonymous editing is not intentional, and that his computer timed out and logged him out. He has used at least one known alternate account, User:Obsidianblackboard, to continue editing when he was temporarily blocked.

Asgardian has removed maintenance templates, claiming that they are not needed and giving a rationale why he feels this way. When another editor places the templates back on, he will often remove them again, sometimes along with a significant edit to the rest of the article and often with an incomplete edit summary.

BOZ (talk) 16:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

• At Secret Wars, Asgardian engaged in edit warring with another user in September. See [1], [2], [3], [4]. No posts made by Asgardian to the talk page while the edit war was in progress, and Asgardian's last edit is after the other user had raised the issue on the talk page at Talk:Secret Wars#important information. I informed both users of the bold revert discuss guidance, [5] and [6].

• In light of this pointer to WP:BRD, at Abomination (comics) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and Rhino (comics) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) Asgardian engaged in revert warring with another user: a diff between Asgardian and Dr Bat here. Notice the many differences, mainly consisting of mentions of individual issues, for example, Solo Avengers #12 and Marvel Super-Heroes vol. 3, #6 - 8. Now we can see a diff here, which covers twelve edits to the page over the course of two days, four made by DrBat and five by Asgardian, the other edits from anonymous or uninvolved editors. The diff is from an Asgardian edit to an Asgardian edit. Note, no posts were made by Asgardian to the talk page of either article during this revert war.

• Although I have page banned both users (Wikipedia:AN#User:DrBat_and_User:Asgardian_page_banned_from_Abomination_.28comics.29_and_Rhino_.28comics.29), there appears no intention to resolve the dispute, there is instead a continuation of the dispute as can be seen at User talk:Hiding#Topic Ban, Wikipedia:AN#User:DrBat_and_User:Asgardian_page_banned_from_Abomination_.28comics.29_and_Rhino_.28comics.29, User_talk:Asgardian#Topic_ban_2 and User talk:DrBat#Topic ban

• Ownership issues: Please see this diff. I am concerned at the claim made by Asgardian that the "article is almost complete". It's an assertion Asgardian has made repeatedly in this dispute, see here: "It took hours to complete Abomination, and Rhino was in fact almost finished" and here: "one article as finished and supported by others and the other was one session from being completed". To me these comments completely cut across the idea that Wikipedia is a collaboration and that decisions are made through consensus. Hiding T 17:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

please review Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Comics/Archive_38#Stand_up_and_take_notice.21, Talk:Abomination (comics)#Who's in change?, Talk:Red Hulk#Dates while describing the plot, Talk:Abomination (comics)#Who's in change? and Talk:Abomination (comics)#Recent edits. Hiding T 18:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(NOTE: Emperor's post below copied from WT:COMICS) - BOZ (talk) 18:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the recurring idea that there is one "wiki correct" way of doing things and Asgardian seems to be the only editor capable of providing this (if we go by the number of editors he has reverted back to his preferred version). I keep stumbling across comics articles and can tell when Asgardian has "wiki corrected" them. So recently I took a swing at Beta Ray Bill and there is a large large slabs of in-universe material jammed into the PH. His idea of "wiki correcting" seems to involve removing the FCB header and jamming the two sections together [7] then there is a modicum of hacking this weird hybrid together into some kind of order but that seems to involve leaving most of the in-universe material while removing important out-of-universe information - in that example the original included the names of various creators and the "wiki correct" version expunged almost all of that. Kieron Gillen had a recent run on the character and has had a few interesting things to say about the character but you wouldn't know that from the article. Only recently as information on the creation of the character added (by me).

Dig through any article he has made "wiki correct" and you'll find a similar pattern combined with not playing well with others, like the "improvement" of Ms. Marvel:

• I had to revert him a couple of times (under his IP) because it was a mess [8] and [9]. He just put his head down, stayed anonymous and pushed on forward.
• Reverting and removing much needed maintenance tags [10], [11]. Removal of material claiming crystal balling when it in fact is in line with the guidelines [12], [13]
• Following the repeated inclusion of a source by another editor [14] he makes inappropriate comments [15], when it was him who was removing it all along [16]. Not the only comment there with such an edit summary [17]. There are also misleading edit summaries [18], the "bot blah" being the reversion of the anon IP version I'd also reverted twice (so he logs in to revert the bots reversions of his edits as an IP, which could mislead the unwary into thinking that one editor was supporting another's edits that he had been inappropriately reverted).

If you want to overhaul and article the best way is to do it in your sandbox and consult with other editors of the article about it or you follow the natural course of evolution an article goes through by focusing on expanding the PH and including material in it until the FCB is redundant. You don't make an unreadable mess of an article that doesn't actually achieve the result you are aiming at (relabeling out-of-universe material doesn't magically make it in-universe, it makes for a confusing hybrid article that pretty much needs a major rewrite). There is no deadline and if an editor isn't capable of rapidly overhauling articles then there is no need to try and force this through. (Emperor (talk) 14:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC))[reply]

• Under the guise of "some tidying up" at Awesome Android, his changes included a mash-up of real-life and in-universe material, starting with removing the "Fictional character biography" subhead [19]. This and other edits, such as inserting Britishisms, went much beyond "tidying up" [20]. I did a partial rv, trying to main some of his ("rv to Last JGreb, while retaining some of Asgardian's copy and line edits. We've been thorugh this b4: Pls do not make wholesale change eliminating established section without discussion!" [21]. He rv'd this without discussion, reinserting language errors and guideline vios [22] — in a repetition of the same edits that, as I wrote in the edit summary of my subsequent rv [23], "led to Arbitration 2 yrs ago. For 1 thing, real-world PH is not present tense. 'The Android features' is not standard English. Discuss on talk pg)." Asgardian rv'd, again mashing-up real-life and fiction by removing the "FCB" subhead [24]. Now, after nearly two weeks, I felt it was appropriate to get other editors' opinions, and called for an RfC [25]. Asgardian disregarded this, bad-mouthed by efforts at using this mediation tool ("I take requests for WP:RfC's comment with a grain of salt" [!]; "A kneejerk reaction" [after nearly two weeks seems a very slow "kneejerk"] [26] and rv'd the article again. User:Emperor commented in favor of my edits (see end of [27]), but to no avail. Making one last effort, I wrote a detailed list on the talk page of Asgardian's policy/guideline vios and language/punctuation errors [28]. (This is all during the period in which he was banned from editing the Rhino and Abomination articles, which indicates I am only one of multiple editors facing the Asgardian problem.) The amount of time wasted on essentially just back-and-forth rv's of his non-consensus, non-guidelines and non-proper-English edits is unconscionable — all the more so given that these were many of the same edits that helped put him on probation last year. There seems to be a defiant unwillingness to do things other than his own way, no matter what.-- Tenebrae (talk) 22:55, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• He is editing-warring at Juggernaut (comics), continually reverting to a disputed version that does not conform to WPC MOS, even though two editors favor another, more conforming version. See talk page discussion here. He also makes uncivil accusations of sockpuppetry simply to denigrate another editor, as Asgardian does not file a formal sockpuppetry grievance. -- Tenebrae (talk) 03:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• One day after the page protection was lifted at Juggernaut (comics), where he was edit-warring, Asgardian here dishonestly gives the simple edit summary "Added 3rd party source" — even though this edit was a complete rewrite that reverted the article to his highly disputed version. --Tenebrae (talk) 06:55, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}

1. WP:OWN
2. WP:CONSENSUS
3. WP:CIVIL

(provide diffs and links)

1. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Asgardian-Tenebrae
2. [29]
3. Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Asgardian-Tenebrae#Request for clarification: Asgardian-Tenebrae
4. Talk:Awesome Android#Reverted Asgardian, and why

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

Please state here your intention to certify this RFCU (this is not binding at this time):

1. BOZ (talk) 18:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2. Hiding T 17:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
3. Tenebrae (talk) 03:15, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My previous experience in dealing with RFC/U involves Gavin.collins' 2nd RFC/U (see draft page). If you look at the actual RFC/U page, you'll see that what we had for the Desired outcome was later criticised for being too vague and unenforcable, and the Description for being too long and filled with side issues not needing community input. I think they were both still fairly well-written, but I'd prefer not to make the same mistakes. If we hit on the various policy violations rather than the "but he said something I didn't like, and his feet smell" parts (of which there were plenty in my previous effort), I think this will be successful.

Remember, the point of RFC/U is not to punish someone or get them in trouble or use it as a precursor to ArbCom (in fact, ideally it is an alternative to ArbCom), the idea is to take someone's actions before the community at large, have numerous users comment on it, show the person invovled how others' see them, and hope that this effects a viable change in that person and the people who deal with him. The results of an RFC/U are not something with which you can force a change in a user, but they are a public airing of the grievances against that person, as a record that there is a dispute and that (hopefully) the community has come to a conclusion by which ideally the person involved should seek to abide. BOZ (talk) 18:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should consider skipping the DrBat evidence. Asgardian exposed him as a sockpuppeteer - which honestly shocked the hell out of me, especially given that User:CyberGhostface (later unblocked) and User:Silvestris, a couple of long-time active accounts, appear to have been blocked alongside of him. BOZ (talk) 02:16, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm discussing this block with DrBat and arb-com at the moment. DrBat has pointed out that Asgardian is a sockpuppeteer too, although one who was treated more leniently. Hiding T 16:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough! :) I imagine we should then add that info to the complaint? And his use of IP editing for reversion purposes, which is much more frequent. BOZ (talk) 18:01, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd just like to point out that, unlike Asgardian, none of my alternate accounts were ever used to violate restrictions (be they 3RR, or editing an article that I was restricted from editing). --DrBat (talk) 07:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After A Nobody's RfC, I don't think it's a good idea to add socking to an RfC unless it is relevant. I don't know anything about this particular case, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's relevant in the sense that he uses (whether intentionally or not, but it is common) his IP address to maintain reversions that he has done with his account. BOZ (talk) 13:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]