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* '''Support''' [[User:Odd nature|Odd nature]] 22:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
* '''Support''' --[[User:Pleasantville|Pleasantville]] 22:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
* '''Support''' Exactly how many times do I have to vote on this ban?[[User:Orangemarlin|<font color="orange">'''Orange'''</font><font color="teal">'''Marlin'''</font>]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Orangemarlin|Talk•]] [[Special:Contributions/Orangemarlin|Contributions]]</sup></small> 22:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
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Revision as of 22:21, 21 September 2007
Template loop detected: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Community sanction/Header
Ratify indefinite ban of Giovanni33 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Proposing Community Ban on User:Gold heart
Let it Snow!
- Pile-on support I know this is closed, but I just wanted to register my support of Alison. She's a great admin and crap like this won't be allowed. Of course it's snowing. . .as well it should be. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. R. Baley 07:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
The above arbitration case has closed. Maurice27 (talk · contribs) is banned for 30 days, and the parties to the underlying content disputes are encouraged to continue with the normal consensus-building process to produce high-quality articles. For the Arbitration Committee, Picaroon (t) 02:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Proposing Community Ban on User:Ferrylodge
Ferrylodge (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Perhaps some of you recall Ferrylodge, who has been waging a low-level edit war via attrition on Abortion and related pages since December 2006. His technique has been successful enough to drive at least one contributor (one of our better and more productive ones) from the project altogether. He has now turned his attention to harassing, attacking, and maligning me - using the same just-under-the-radar techniques - while continuing his tendentious editing. I have been ignoring this, but it has reached a point where I am now asking for community involvement.
His approach is that of a 'victim bully,' using claims of having been wronged to attempt to gain leverage over others. He has twisted my attempt to support consensus into me being an "edit warrior", my attempts to enforce policy and guidelines into "harassment" and so on. Examples, all taken from today: In the "edit war", he was blocked by MastCell for 3RR on Stillbirth, for insertion of the word "womb". My count (and I may have missed some) is six editors supporting "uterus" over "womb" as a more accurate and appropriate term, and one or two "no preference" editors, and one, Ferrylodge, edit warring to use the word "womb" - the debate has been spread over multiple articles. This is indeed a content dispute, I am well aware of that. I am not here for suggestions or help on the content dispute. I am here because Ferrylodge is maintaining his position that he alone is correct, that he alone is NPOV, that editors who disagree with him are disruptive edit warring POV pushers. No one supports his preferred phrasing and since his block, no one has reverted to his version or inserted the word. He added a POV tag to Abortion because his edit did not have consensus nor even support. This is dishearteningly similar to Sam Spade - in specific, that he "wages POV war designed to wear down opposition, even where he is in a minority of one, by sheer unreasonable persistence in the face of consensus", and he maligns those opposing him to make it appear that it is a personal matter on their part, rather than a policy matter on his. He even "strongly recommended" (on Talk:Pregnancy) that an opposing editor on the Stillbirth article be blocked for disruption, because of course it could not be a simple case of Ferrylodge editing against consensus - it must be that the other editor is disruptive!
He consistently cherry-picks my words to twist them into false meaning - for example, when I referred to a word as "vulgar" and to clarify I posted the definition link to the meaning of vulgar I was using (commonly used language), he removed it with the edit summary " Please do not post at my talk page, KC." - then proceeded to post on his talk page that "she said that I was trying to insert a "vulgar" word into the article. It astounds me that an admin can get away with such incivility, and I find it very difficult to respond in a constructive way to her personal attacks" - which is typical of his tactics, for I must either ignore his misrepresentation of my statement, or ignore his request to not post on his talk page - which surely he learned in his block for harassment would be harassment, as that is precisely what he was last blocked for. In short, he's using the "lessons learned" not to be a better Wikipedian, but to game the system so that he is "innocent" and I am "doing wrong." I am not the only editor he uses these tactics against, if similar evidence for these actions against other users is desired I can dig though his history and place them here.
I doubt that an Rfc would be of any help, because in the few previous instances I have seen of community input, Ferrylodge showed himself resistant to the concept that he could possibly have erred at all. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive252#Harassment Charge By Bishonen Against Ferrylodge, followed by Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Bishonen 2, followed by Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive259#Disruptive editing at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment by Ferrylodge - all of which stemmed from one 24-hour block, and all but the last were Ferrylodge stridently defending himself and accusing all and sundry. The last was a suggestion that he'd become disruptive enough on the Rfc talk page (post-closing) to be blocked. I argued against blocking for disruption, because the minute that was posted, he ceased the disruption. My mistake. I note a similar pattern of behavior every time attention is focused on Ferrylodge - he fades quietly into the background for a brief spell, then returns renewed to the attack. This has gone on long enough. KillerChihuahua?!? 23:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm, blocked once for harrassment already and still at it. Doesn't seem amendable to any view other than his own or willing to let matters drop, and too willing to carry a grudge. I doubt other forms of WP:DR will yield other outcomes. A ban seems warranted, and I'd support one. Odd nature 23:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong support per all the evidence presented by KillerChihuahua, and the fact that he has been warned dozens of times to stop harassing KC, and he still continues with no attempt to be civil. Need I note that he was recently featured in the Washington Post for edit warring on the Fred Thompson article? ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 23:54, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong support for ban However, per KC's comments and my own personal observations including this response, he needs to go. Moreover, this offensive RfC just begs for removal of this person from the project. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 00:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I admit that I am the contributor who has stopped editing Wikipedia due to having to deal with Ferrylodge's tendentious editing. I first encountered him in December 2006, when he came to Abortion,[49], which ended up leading to his first block for 3RR. I was accused of "request[ing] that [he] be blocked,"[50] although I'd only reminded him to watch out for 3RR in an edit summary,[51] and the blocking admin confirmed that he had acted indepedently.[52] I tried to put this behind, and to focus on content, not the contributor, during the many disagreements that arose between Ferrylodge, myself, and other editors on abortion and pregnancy-related articles in the following months. It was difficult, though, because I sometimes got the impression that Ferrylodge was trying to make things personal, such as when he apparently went out of his way to insert himself into a minor dispute which arose between myself and an anonymous editor on Vaccine controversy, although the dispute did not involve Ferrylodge, and Ferrylodge had never edited the article in question.[53] I am surprised to find that he is still making disruptive edits on the same constellation of articles — Abortion, Pregnancy, Stillbirth — after almost nine months.[54] I think this is a very long time to learn the ropes on Wikipedia; Ferrylodge has had ample time to learn how to work cooperatively with other editors. When I felt that my personal frustation was beginning to compromise my ability to contribute to this community, I left, but Ferrylodge continues to edit despite the chip on his shoulder, and refuses to let bygones be bygones with regard to users like KillerChihuahua. I don't think it's fair to editors who have dedicated themselves to building this encyclopedia to have to sort out Ferrylodge's disruptive editing and confrontational behavior any longer than they already have. -Severa 01:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support motion. I just thought I would clarify in case this was unclear from the statement above. -Severa 02:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Please note that I have unblocked Ferrylodge so that he can participate and respond here. I had blocked him earlier today for violating 3RR; he requested an unblock to respond here, and I felt that was only fair. MastCell Talk 03:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, but only for commenting here. Any other editing or disruption and it's right back to blocksville. FeloniousMonk 03:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support block. He's a chronic troublemaker, unlikely to change. FeloniousMonk 03:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Also supporting. KillerChihuahua makes a strong case. As a second choice, would support a topic ban on reproduction and political articles. DurovaCharge! 04:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose ban
- Firstly, perhaps I should say that I personally am strongly inclined to side with KC on the issues in question and to oppose Ferrylodge's POV. But while Ferrylodge is clearly an obstinate editor, I don't believe the evidence presented by KillerChihuahua here is enough to warrant a ban. Nor do I see any evidence, that some have alluded to, of "harassment".
- One inadvertent breach of 3RR in a year hardly constitutes grounds for a permaban, and I see little evidence of KC's assertion that Ferrylodge routinely defies consensus. For example, recent discussion at Talk:Abortion indicates that Ferrylodge has as much support for his views as opposition.
- Ferrylodge seems prepared to discuss his concerns at length on talk pages, and I think if he were to make a commitment to agree to abide by consensus, that ought to be sufficient at this stage. If not, then I think this is a problem that would be best handled by an RFC, I don't see that it's severe enough at present to warrant intervention here. Gatoclass 07:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: This has nothing to do with POV - there are always editors of all POVs on the articles in question, and generally, we all work well together, or at least, well enough. This is an issue of low-level, constant warring, both on the articles, and against any editor FL perceives as "in his way". Like Sam Spade, the individual instances are annoying and bothersome, but not enough to bother doing much about - the volume is such that I haven't even bothered responding to most of his misrepresentations of my statements and views. But the sheer volume of it makes it impossible to ignore. If it were just that he accused me of harassment, I'd ignore. If it were just that he twisted everything I said into something else, I'd probably keep it between us. But he's driven off one editor completely, he is working on Tvoz, as seen by her lengthly evidence - and that from only 10 days. The three here are not the only ones. I posted instances from only one day, and could easily write a full page correcting his false representations and misleading statements from his response, below - and this is one reason he's a problem. He "responds" by a series of false or misleading statements about what "KC asserts" - all of which instances are utterly false or grossly inaccurate or misleading. His "willingness to discuss at length" bears this same flavor. Its not willingness to discuss, its wearing out the opposition in bullheaded obstinacy and unsupported accusations and misleading representations of the other party. What purpose would it serve if I were to spend the full page necessary to correct his false allegations against me in his response, below? We'd get the same kind of thing as we saw on ANI, where all but one editor told him the same exact thing, and he did not change his view or even concede that others might have any validity. He actually escalated it, having gotten no joy on ANI, to an Rfc. Read the ANI thread, read the Rfc, and I don't see how anyone can think an Rfc might have a positive effect. Actually, just read his response, which has nothing to do with him addressing any problems in his behavior, and everything to do with making it personal by attacking me, Bishonen, and Severa. Because, as usual, FL cannot possibly have erred at all - its everyone else who is in the wrong. KillerChihuahua?!? 10:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Like Sam Spade...the sheer volume of it makes it impossible to ignore - KC
- That may be the case, but perhaps I should remind you that Sam Spade was never permabanned from Wiki. Rather, he was placed on indefinite probation - after which he chose to cease editing of his own accord.
- My concern is that CSN is being used to simply dispose of editors who hold unpopular positions. IMO, Wiki needs the editors who hold unpopular views, because they help to keep the majority honest. Maybe it's the case that Ferrylodge is just a disruptive troll, I don't know - but the case you have presented here is rather long on accusations and short on substance. Permabanning is a radical step, and IMO it should only be used in the worst cases, and backed up by the strongest possible evidence - everything else should go through normal arbitration processes. And while Ferrylodge plainly has made few friends on Wikipedia, I've yet to see much evidence to suggest that he has in recent times been anything more than a minor nuisance for editors who don't like his views or his obstinate approach. Gatoclass 17:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps you might examine that statement. Are you saying that I, and Severa, and Tvoz, and Pleasantville, are "using" CSN to "dump" someone we don't agree with? That's a fairly strong insinuation that someone is gaming the system, and as the one who started this process, I can only take it that your "concern" is that it is I who am most likely to be guilty of "using CSN". I take exception to your hint that this might be a method to remove an editor I disagree with. KillerChihuahua?!? 17:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- My concern is that CSN is being used to simply dispose of editors who hold unpopular positions. IMO, Wiki needs the editors who hold unpopular views, because they help to keep the majority honest. Maybe it's the case that Ferrylodge is just a disruptive troll, I don't know - but the case you have presented here is rather long on accusations and short on substance. Permabanning is a radical step, and IMO it should only be used in the worst cases, and backed up by the strongest possible evidence - everything else should go through normal arbitration processes. And while Ferrylodge plainly has made few friends on Wikipedia, I've yet to see much evidence to suggest that he has in recent times been anything more than a minor nuisance for editors who don't like his views or his obstinate approach. Gatoclass 17:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have to agree with KC here. Tendentiousness is actually quite damaging to a project which functions on consensus, and in which one determined, obstinate editor can stall an article or discussion indefinitely. It's actually a far worse problem than vandalism (yet we keep hearing the arguments on this board that "well, he may be a tendentious POV-pusher, but at least he's not a vandal!") Lots of people hold "unpopular" opinions, but advancing those opinions in a disruptive or tendentious manner is the issue. MastCell Talk 18:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- No, sorry, that was intended as a criticism of the process, not of the person or persons making use of it. I just happen to think that the process appears to lack adequate safeguards for the protection of users who take unpopular positions, that's all. You are of course perfectly entitled to bring up another editor's behaviour at this page, and even to call for their permanent banning if you feel so inclined. It's just that I am concerned that users may not always get the kind of process here that I think is warranted by the severe penalties that can be handed down. Gatoclass 18:56, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support - I have had numerous dealings with Ferrylodge (including, but not limited to, the Freddie/Fred dispute on Talk: Fred Thompson referred to in the Sept 17 Washington Post article) and several times in the last 10 days he misrepresented my edits or comments. I called him on it each time, and he has yet to retract or apologize for any of them. None of them are grievous, or the end of the world, but it is the pattern that I am raising here:
- -On September 9, here, he erroneously claims that I had previously "urged" that the name be rendered in the way that he preferred and claimed that all he was doing was advocating the same thing I had advocated (which I had not); when I pointed out here that he misrepresented my edit, and that I had not even addressed the rendering of the name in that edit - just provided citations for it - he neither retracted his comment nor apologized for it as an error.
- -On September 10 he went to WP:MOSBIO and tried to modify the relevant section to support his position on Fred/Freddie, but neglected to say why he was so interested in that section, claiming to only be looking at John Edwards' name; in the middle of the argument he claimed here that "Tvoz suggested I visited here, and I have taken up her suggestion", including this diff of mine which clearly indicates that in fact I asked him if he was planning to go to John Edwards' page to advocate changing his name rendering to match - if indeed his concern was that saying that Thompson was named Freddie would make him look silly, then surely the same would apply to Johnny Reid "John" Edwards. I clearly was not suggesting that he try to reword MOS policy to conform to his position. (My position was consistently that Edwards and Thompson's names should be handled in the same way as they are virtually identical situations.) When I pointed out that he was again misrepresenting my comments, he ignores the comment and does not apologize or rescind it, but goes on to ask me to AGF - he's the injured party. This misrepresentation is important because I think changing policy or guideline wording should not be done to bolster one's position in a content dispute - especially in a stealth manner - and his prominent and incorrect claim that he was doing so at my suggestion is putting words in my mouth that I never said - this is unacceptable, and I've yet to receive an apology.
- -The third instance of his misrepresentation of my edits in the last 10 days came on Sept 15, in regards to a sourced comment by George Will in the Washington Post where he compares the launch of the Thompson campaign to the launch of New Coke. Ferrylodge claims "The article has again been edited (by Tvoz) to reinsert this material" and goes on to say that editors should "work by consensus, and not insist on inserting material into the article when it has been removed and rejected by multiple other editors", citing SBowers3 as one of the "multiple editors". First, I only made that edit once, not "again", and second, SBowers3 made his comments opposing the Will quote after I reinstated it, and indeed SBowers3 did not remove the George Will material at all, because he, unlike Ferrylodge, correctly recognized that there was an ongoing discussion and did not choose to edit war, just to discuss. Ferrylodge doesn't do that - he'll discuss, but only if his preferred wording is in place in an article, and he'll revert to his wording repeatedly, even when several editors are changing it. At the time I reinstated the material there were three editors including me who spoke up for including the material, and only two, Ferrylodge and Rosspz, who opposed it. I pointed out to Ferrylodge that he had misrepresented me for the third time, asked him to correct his comment on both counts. No apology for misrepresenting me was given, and although he edited his comment here, he did it in a way that didn't really address my objection.
- -The fourth problem occurred on Sept 19, when Ferrylodge, by innuendo, falsely accused me of wikistalking because I commented in support of another editor's point that disagreed with his; I objected to the accusation, and he disingenuously said that some editors don't know what wikistalking is, and that he wasn't making accusations. Meanwhile I brought the conversation to his talk page and asked him to point out where I was harassing him or disrupting anything - which as another editor also pointed out is the key point in identifying wikistalking. He has had no reply, as I have done no such thing, yet he again did not apologize or rescind his accusation, only implied that I was accusing him of harassment which I was not.
- Although on their own, individually, these instances are not particularly grievous (except perhaps the MOSBIO manipulation), taken together I think this reveals a pattern that is very disturbing, and I am only speaking here of the recent instances where I noticed his misrepresentations and unwillingness to admit error and apologize. I also have observed that often Ferrylodge's edits express his POV, rather than neutrally approaching the subject of reproduction on the one hand and political candidates on the other, and he tends to use bully tactics, editing in a tendentious manner, making disingenuous arguments. For all of these reasons, and based on comments of the editors above, I think that a ban is in order. Short of that I would concur with Durova in support of at least a partial ban on editing all reproduction and political articles. Tvoz |talk 09:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: Regarding the MOSBIO issue, you have misrepresented the facts. As you can see in the history, Ferrylodge made only three edits, each time reverting Threeafterthree's attempt to manipulate the MOS to support their position on Fred/Freddie. The text after his final edit is identical to what it was before Threeafterthree messed with it. That's the exact opposite of your claim that he "tried to modify the relevant section to support his position". Now I'm not sure what he was thinking when he said that you had referred him there – maybe he confused you with Threeafterthree, since your names both start with T? – but your recounting of events is at least as flawed. (And to pick a truly minuscule nit, Ferrylodge's edits were on 9-Sep, not 10-Sep as you wrote - I point this out merely to demonstrate that memories aren't 100% perfect.) -- Zsero 18:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps I wasn't clear: I was talking about his proposal on Wikipedia talk:MOSBIO of September 10, not his edits of Threeafterthree on September 9. See the diff I posted last night. He proposed a MOSBIO change here and the objection I raised above was not about the substance of his proposal, but about his misrepresentation of my role in it. I have not misrepresented the facts, Zsero. Tvoz |talk 20:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: Regarding the MOSBIO issue, you have misrepresented the facts. As you can see in the history, Ferrylodge made only three edits, each time reverting Threeafterthree's attempt to manipulate the MOS to support their position on Fred/Freddie. The text after his final edit is identical to what it was before Threeafterthree messed with it. That's the exact opposite of your claim that he "tried to modify the relevant section to support his position". Now I'm not sure what he was thinking when he said that you had referred him there – maybe he confused you with Threeafterthree, since your names both start with T? – but your recounting of events is at least as flawed. (And to pick a truly minuscule nit, Ferrylodge's edits were on 9-Sep, not 10-Sep as you wrote - I point this out merely to demonstrate that memories aren't 100% perfect.) -- Zsero 18:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment about edit warring on Fred Thompson regarding Fred/Freddie. Regardless of what one can conclude from reading the Washpo article, and contrary to what is asserted below, Ferrylodge, with 7 reverts in one day on this one point, accused me - with only 2 - of edit warring. I'll leave it to others to reach conclusions, except to say that "one inadvertent breach of 3RR" is not quite the situation - it's just the only time he was called on it recently:
- These are diffs of relevant edits by Ferrylodge on September 9, all but one of which are haggling about word order regarding Fred/Freddie, the other one was removing Freddie altogether:
- 1st revert: 05:52, 9 September 2007
- 2nd revert: 06:05, 9 September 2007
- 3rd revert: 06:20, 9 September 2007
- 4th revert: 06:33, 9 September 2007 (this one completely removed "Freddie" despite the reliable sources that accompanied the name)
- 5th revert: 16:09, 9 September 2007
- 6th revert: 17:41, 9 September 2007
- 7th revert: 17:50, 9 September 2007
- These are my relevant diffs on September 9:
- 1st revert: 9:21 9 September 2007 (putting "Freddie" and sources back in)
- 2nd revert: 18:08, 9 September 2007
Tvoz |talk 09:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support I have had only limited and very recent interaction with Ferrylodge, but overall his tone was hostile and I asked repeatedly that he adopt a more civil tone, with no particular effect. Also disturbing was his tendency to preemptive accusation: accusing TVoz of wikistalking and then (on another page) clarifying that she hadn't wikistalked him yet but that he (apparently) anticipated that she would; preemptively accusing me of making unsourced modifications to an article, when I had not yet made the modifications, etc. He gave no explanation for his position that "motherhood" begins at conception and not, as it is usually defined, at the birth of one's child, but defended it simply with hostility.
- Checking into his history, I find that he is a Men's Rights activist who's focus is the abortion issue (see the bottom of this page). In keeping with that, his Wikipedia edits focus strongly on abortion and related subjects: 511 edits to Roe v. Wade, 297 edits to Fetus, and many edits to Abortion in the United States, Intact dilation and extraction, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, etc. This focus and his abrasive manner has lead to his being blocked twice, and seems to underly his insistance that his description of gestation be featured in the lede of the article Mother.
- In summary, he has a strong point of view and seems to be using intimidation tactics to defend it. --Pleasantville 14:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, now that's interesting. I'm not sure if this is germane or not, but I just noticed that all four of the editors who have posted evidence of having been seriously harassed by Ferrylodge, and the one administrator whose block he has protested for months, are female. And clearly self-identify as female. He has maligned Bishonen endlessly since she blocked him; he has never offered a peep about his other two blocks, and even apologized for breaking 3RR. KillerChihuahua?!? 15:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, so now I'm a misogynist? If Pleasantville is female, I had no idea of that until just now. What I do know about Pleasantville is that she is a very unkind editor. I refer any interested readers to this discussion which is the only discussion I ever had with Pleasantville. KC has edited many abortion-related articles, and that mere fact does not imply anything about her POV; likewise, I fail to see how some DMOZ editor's POV can be deduced from a category that he or she edits. But apparently any shred of alleged information is fair game here.Ferrylodge 16:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I'm missing where "Ferrylodge, please maintain a civil tone" is unkind, although your accusations she was "condescending, psychoanalyzing, and pretending that [Ferrylodge's] tone is not civil" in response to that gentle request seems a bit confrontational. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- For clarification: My initials are also KC as in Kathryn Cramer; I presume for the purposes of this discussion,"KC" refers to KillerChihuahua. --Pleasantville 16:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, sorry about that. If anyone shortens your name, it will probably be "PV" for Pleasantville, which I hope will not be unduly confusing for everyone. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, so now I'm a misogynist? If Pleasantville is female, I had no idea of that until just now. What I do know about Pleasantville is that she is a very unkind editor. I refer any interested readers to this discussion which is the only discussion I ever had with Pleasantville. KC has edited many abortion-related articles, and that mere fact does not imply anything about her POV; likewise, I fail to see how some DMOZ editor's POV can be deduced from a category that he or she edits. But apparently any shred of alleged information is fair game here.Ferrylodge 16:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support - Obvious case of WP:TE and of exhausting the community's patience. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose. The behavior is troubling, but it does not seem to rise to the level of an outright community ban. I would support a topic ban and some sort of behavioral probation. Maybe mentoring is also appropriate. Dean Wormer 16:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to opine that I oppose this proposed ban. And rather strongly at that. I haven't had that much interaction with Ferrylodge, but it seems to me that Wikipedia would be better off if we were discussing something better than banning a contributor who, contrary to some people's opinions, does actually improve the encyclopedia. I can't comment on the uterus/womb dispute, but in a lot of cases, it does look like he is being railroaded because of his point of view. There is a content dispute that he is a part of. But it takes two (or more) to edit war. I've seen Ferrylodge be a helpful contributor on the Fred Thompson article, and agree with some of what he says below. I didn't follow Bishonen's 2nd RfC, but at first glance it does seem like people were just laughing at Ferrylodge. I don't know the full details, but community bans are not for useful contributors. If he was revert warring, block him accordingly. No need to deprive the project of a helpful contributor forever. He's not a vandal, he's not unhelpful, he participates in discussion (although sometimes not as well as we'd all like), and he's not creating a big enough disruption that it is shutting the encyclopedia down. He may deserve to be blocked, but he doesn't deserve this. Mahalo. --Ali'i 16:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment How about instead of an outright ban or a topic ban, a restriction to one revert per week (that is per 168 hours) per article? Or something like that, anyway. Perhaps that's too strict, perhaps that's not strict enough. Perhaps 2RR per week with a maximum of 3RR per month. This would seem likely to take care of many of the concerns raised above. --Yamla 16:58, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- That might be a workable solution. I think that the major problem here is indeed tendentiousness; Ferrylodge has often persisted in beating a dead horse when he's failed to convince anyone else of his argument. Restricting him from edit-warring (e.g. with 0RR or 1RR) would allow him to continue to contribute, but he would need to actually build consensus to see his proposed edits enacted. I do think that continuing the status quo is a bad idea, as there's clearly a problem here; I also wonder whether a full siteban without an intermediate step is overkill, though I'm not categorically opposed. MastCell Talk 17:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- That sounds more reasonable to me. I think an approach along these lines would probably be more appropriate at this stage. Gatoclass 17:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- That might be a workable solution. I think that the major problem here is indeed tendentiousness; Ferrylodge has often persisted in beating a dead horse when he's failed to convince anyone else of his argument. Restricting him from edit-warring (e.g. with 0RR or 1RR) would allow him to continue to contribute, but he would need to actually build consensus to see his proposed edits enacted. I do think that continuing the status quo is a bad idea, as there's clearly a problem here; I also wonder whether a full siteban without an intermediate step is overkill, though I'm not categorically opposed. MastCell Talk 17:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- (after ec) Which would be acceptable were it only his DE; however, its also the harassment and accusations he bogs people down with which is a massive problem. Did you not see his accusation that Pleasantville is "not nice" and when one looks, oh hey, she asked him very nicely and politely and delicately to be civil - which resulted in a response of him making further and FAR more hostile accusations. I don't know how anyone can see his history and the linked information and somehow conclude this has anything to do with his POV. No one cares what his POV is, so far as I know - I certainly don't, its irrelevant - its his nasty insinuations, false accusations, personalizing of any type of disputes, and edit warring as a minority of one which is the problem. He was blocked for 3RR, and his disingenuous argument below is that "there was only one edit on talk:stillbirth - conveniently ignoring the thirty or so on the previous articles where he was waging that little war before taking it to other articles. This is precisely the situation with his RCOG edit warring: everyone but he stated clearly there was zero reason to characterize RCOG as "pro-choice" - on talk:abortion. When he took the term off to the RCOG article that very same day, he stridently protested that there had been no discussion, because it hadn't been discussed on the RCOG talk page. Now, this is beyond nonsensical. If they aren't pro-choice, and there are no sources to say they are pro-choice, it really doesn't matter where that statement is made, its unsourced. Its not the revert warring. Its the approach and the treatment of others. I see some people are actually swallowing his story that there is some kind of dispute between the two of us. If the community wishes to give a topic ban, I selfishly would be happy enough, as if he's off the pregnancy and abortion articles I won't have to deal with him any more, and hopefully we won't lose Pleasantville as we lost Severa. However, from what I see here, Swatjester and Tvoz among others might object to continuing to deal with him on political articles. I have no idea about the legal articles, I don't edit or watch them. But if there is to be any kind of helpful resolution, it must address his behavior towards others. I cannot spend the hours of time it would take to refute and correct every spurious charge he makes against me, and it is wearing to the spirit to have to contend with that kind of character assassination day in day out. its why Severa left. Its why the other people who have been treated this way are here. Its not something "between me and FL" it is something about how FL treats others. Puppy has spoken, puppy is done. KillerChihuahua?!? 17:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong oppose. All I know about is what happened at the Fred Thompson, and it's been completely misrepresented here. Ferrylodge was simply maintaining the status quo while a contention proposed change was being discussed. That's what's meant to happen, isn't it? If you want to make a change to an article, and it's strongly opposed, you're meant to discuss it on the Talk page and see whether a consensus develops for or against it. You do not keep re-inserting your change while the discussion is going on. The status quo should be maintained, and that's exactly what Ferrylodge was doing. Any blame for edit-warring belongs squarely on the shoulders of those who insisted on making their change without first achieving consensus for it.
- As for the 3RR that got him blocked, which is supposedly the trigger for this discussion, I disagree with Yamla's claim that the four reverts were all essentially the same because they all "serve to reintroduce "womb" each time in any case". At first he seems to have tried to revert the unilateral attempt to change "womb" to uterus, as was his right; when that encountered opposition, he seems to have tried for a compromise that would include both words. That's a substantive difference, and should not have been counted as a continuation of the same revert. He should never have been blocked in the first place, and this discussion should not have been initiated.
- -- Zsero 19:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Say what you will about the community ban, but you're wrong about the 3RR block. Four edits in the space of a few hours which undo another editor's work, in full or in part, violate not only the spirit but the letter of 3RR. You may want to re-read WP:3RR, because this one was open-and-shut. MastCell Talk 20:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I have interacted with Ferrylodge since roughly January of this year. Things got so intense that I had to take a wikibreak, and consciously avoided FL for a while. I think a good example of what many people find objectionable is this: Talk:Abortion#New paragraph and technical language. Reasonable objections to the proposal are ignored, and the replies are short, smug, and throwing back a strawman caricature of what the previous person had said. If this isn't patronizing, or an attempt to bait, then I don't know what is. So after 4 different editors objected the the proposal, FL makes a threat to "[slap] a POV tag on this article", which he later fulfills (and decided to make the same general arguments from 4 days before while attacking myself and KC). It is just frustrating to try to work with someone who is combative and defensive. While we can't make people be nice to one another, it sure is civil to have humility and sympathy with those you disagree with.
One of the issues is, the negative conduct only comes out during content disputes. From having interacted with FL, and reading all these others who have interacted with him on other articles, it seems clear that this is more than just a handful of people trying to get a user who they politically disagree with banned. It's about if you say something critical about FL, you are bound to get something worse and more hurtful thrown back at you (i.e. Pleasantville saying Please try to adopt a more civil tone. You seem to be extremely anxious about this and FL responding Please stop condescending, psychoanalyzing, and pretending that my tone is not civil. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in that regard. [55]), it's about an editor who behaves childishly when he doesn't get his way, and editor who leaves editors hurt after content disputes, and has no regrets or apologies.
So what will a topic ban do? Will it prevent him from getting in content disputes? Will it make him realize that his editing has hurt a lot of editors? That reasonably, he should feel guilt or remorse and apologize, even though that seems to go against his very nature. Clearly a topic ban will not solve these underlying issues. It will just help the editors with whom he spars feel more comfortable in the topics they regularly edit, knowing that they don't have a difficult editor to deal with anymore. Limiting the number of reverts wouldn't help because the main issue is how he handles himself on talk pages during disputes, not his excessive breaking of revert rules.
Now, I do not believe that those of us who have interacted with FL should be the ones to decide his editing fate on wikipedia. And because of that, I will not vote one way or another (at least not yet) in regards to a block or topic ban or whatever. It does seem a little suspicious that editors who have disagreed with FL in the past are now here in troves saying he be permibanned, while editors who have sided with him are saying he shouldn't (with a few uninvolved parties on both sides). I believe the ban was given out too early, and I believe we should wait for more uninvolved parties to examine this.
For those uninvolved parties, I'd say look at FL's recent edit history at Talk:Pregnancy, Talk:Abortion, Talk:Mother. There is a pattern of moving debates from one article to the next, even if (and perhaps especially if) consensus is not going his way. There is a pattern of boarderline incivility (and clearly patronizing) posts when consensus isn't going his way or if he is called out on his editing behavior. If anyone examining this case decided to look at FL's talk page, I recommend searching through the page history, because not all posts that were made to FL are represented in the linked "archives". Additionally, the RfC is an example of FL knowing that he can never be wrong taken to the extreme (just see how he still refers to this day). I'd be glad to discuss the conflicts from early 2007 that I/Severa were involved with, but I think the important thing is that concerns of FL's talk page behavior during disputes date back to then. And not a whole lot has changed. -Andrew c [talk] 22:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Reply to KillerChihuahua's Proposed Community Ban
I have been editing at Wikipedia since April of 2004. As KillerChihuahua knows, I was blocked today for the third time, so I have been blocked on average once per year. The current block was for 3RR when I reverted KillerChihuahua, and I have already apologized repeatedly for it at my talk page. As MastCell put it, I "did show contrition for violating 3RR." If anyone wants to read the details at my talk page, here's the link. Mastcell also noted that, "There's been incivility on both sides."
KillerChihuahua has taken this opportunity to build a case for banning me. I disagree with her, and would like to explain why.
KillerChihuahua has been uncivil to me today. At the abortion article today, she asserted that my words are "bullshit". At the pregnancy article today, she suggested that I am "naive and disingenuous." More recently, at the stillbirth article, she said that I am a "spammer". Actually, the "spam" to which she referred was a list of definitions of the word "womb" from reliable sources, and I had not previously listed those definitions (or any of them) anywhere else, prior to listing them in the stillbirth article. More examples of incivility abound. Here, KC said that my words are "inane." Here she said that my behaviour served no purpose, "unless your purpose is to convince others that you are congenitally dense."
Let's look at KC's allegations. She says that I have been waging a low-level edit war via attrition on abortion and related pages since December 2006, fading in and out like some kind of guerilla. It is true that I have edited those pages, among many many others, as can be seen from my contribution history. I have 271 articles on my watchlist, and I do not enjoy the hassles of continuously editing the abortion-related articles, so I revisit them now and then.
I will pass over KC's generalized allegations (which I deny) and go to her specific examples. She starts with the example of the stillbirth article, which involved the 3RR for which I have apologized today (involving my third block in as many years). KC says: "My count (and I may have missed some) is six editors supporting 'uterus' over 'womb' as a more accurate and appropriate term, and one or two 'no preference' editors, and one, Ferrylodge, edit warring to use the word 'womb' - the debate has been spread over multiple articles....Ferrylodge is maintaining his position that he alone is correct, that he alone is NPOV, that editors who disagree with him are disruptive edit warring POV pushers. No one supports his preferred phrasing and since his block, no one has reverted to his version or inserted the word."
But look at the actual discussion at stillbirth that KC emphasizes. Prior to KC's appearance at that article, a grand total of one single editor (ConfuciusOrnis) sought to completely remove the word "womb" from that stillbirth article. I wrote a talk page response to that one single editor, in which I pointed out that I was not seeking to introduce the word "womb" into the article, seeing as how that word had been in the article long before I ever touched that stillbirth article.[56]. Moreover, I explained that I was not advocating removing the word "uterus" from the article, but rather believed the article should contain both words, which are synonymous.
If there had been more than just one other editor trying to change the stillbirth article to completely delete the word "womb", then I would have acquiesced, with objections. But there was only one. KillerChihuahua then came to the stillbirth article today, and reverted in favor of ConfuciusOrnius here. I now quote her edit summary verbatim: "Ferrylodge I have no idea why you are so in love with the word 'womb' but please stop this silly campaign to use an inaccurate and non-specific vulgar term. Write a poem or something. 'Ode to the womb.'" I am not in love with the word "womb". Rather, I objected to the recent effort (of the last two days) to completely delete this word "womb" from all of Wikipedia's abortion-related and pregnancy-related articles. I have never suggested that either the word "uterus" or the word "womb" should be completely removed, but have instead contended that they are synonymous words so that neither should be eliminated from Wikipedia. After all, Wikipedia guidelines say: "Write for the average reader and a general audience—not professionals or patients. Explain medical jargon or use plain English instead if possible."
In addition to KillerChihuahua's rude edit summary (accusing me of a silly campaign and telling me to go write a poem), Killerchihuahua also commented very briefly at the talk page, accusing me of spamming the stillbirth talk page. Please look at what she erroneously called "spam": a detailed list of reliable sources stating that those two words ("womb" and "uterus") are synonymous --- at that time (14:13 on 20 September) I had not shown that list anywhere else but at the stillbirth talk page (I would later copy the list at 14:45 in the pregnancy discussion because people were similarly attempting to completely delete the longstanding word "womb" from that pregnancy article as well). Instead of replying civilly at the stillbirth discussion page, KillerChihuahua blithely called the list of references in the stillbirth talk page "spam", and reverted my edit without addressing that list of references whatsoever (beyond her insults in the edit summary and her accusation of spam at the talk page).
Killerchihuahua suggests that no one has agreed with me that the word "womb" can sometimes be used in addition to the word "uterus" in these types of articles. She is incorrect. Hoplon has agreed with me today. Also, Agne has also agreed with me that "'womb' is undoubtedly the more common term. Both Wikipedia policies and common sense implores us to look at the context of each usage and decide which one is one appropriate." I understand the need to acquiesce when outnumbered. I've done it a million times at Wikipedia (more than I would like). And I am prepared to do it here as well, though I detest the effort to completely delete the word "womb" from numerous Wikipedia articles where it has coexisted with the word "uterus" for years, without any fuss at all.
KillerChihuahua's next example is the POV tag that I added to the abortion article. In my entire three years at Wikipedia, I have never before added a POV tag once until this week. I do it twice this week and that's grounds for banishment? Killerchihuahua is incorrect when she says that I had no support at the abortion article; you can go to the discussion page and see the support. For example, LCP wrote today that his "main argument is that the lack of any image of what is aborted or any mention of how what is aborted is disposed of harms the credibility of this article."[57] When the POV tag was removed for a second time, I did not edit-war about its removal. And I stand by my contention that the abortion article is slanted; it contains virtually no description of what is aborted, and KC has insisted yet again this week that the article not even contain a single image of what is aborted.
KC also criticizes me because I "strongly recommended" (on Talk:Pregnancy) that an opposing editor on the Stillbirth article be blocked for disruption; she sarcastically writes: "of course it could not be a simple case of Ferrylodge editing against consensus." As I already pointed out, at that time there was only one single editor (ConfuciusOrnis) at the stillbirth article who wanted the word "womb" to be completely deleted from that article though it had been in that article for years. ConfuciusOrnis was edit-warring about it, as the article's edit history shows. If one editor supports a change in the article, and another editor opposes the change, how does that create a "consensus" for changing the article? KC is flat wrong about that.
KC also asserts that I should be banned because I asked her today to not post on my talk page. I have previously been accused of harassing KC at her talk page, and I have not gone anywhere near her talk page since that accusation. Am I under an obligation to allow her to post at my talk page? Is it grounds for banishment for an editor to politely ask another editor to post elsewhere than at the first editor's talk page? KC also complains that I cherry-pick her statements. I quoted her above several times, and I provided a link every time. Is it cherry-picking to mention that she characterizes my words as "bullshit"? If KC does not want such insults to be cherry-picked, then she should not utter them in the first place.
KC also asserts that "Ferrylodge showed himself resistant to the concept that he could possibly have erred at all." That is obviously false, and she knows it. Earlier today, I repeatedly apologized for my 3RR error. Likewise, yesterday, I specifically apologized to KC for another error here. When I make mistakes, I try to own up to them.
Lastly, KC complains about an RfC that I initiated against Bishonen. That was the only RfC that I have ever initiated against anyone during my entire three years at Wikipedia, although I did once join an RfC launched by someone else. KC is now seeking to dredge up that incident, and to get the last word. I feel compelled to briefly respond yet again. In my view, the harassment charge against me several months ago was inappropriate. Killerchihuahua never asked me to leave her talk page.[58] Bishonen asked me to leave KC's talk page, but Killerchihuahua did not. I did leave KC's talk page after denying the harassment charge, and I was blocked for denying the charge. How many other people at Wikipedia are blocked for harassing someone who never asked to be left alone? When I subsequently brought an RfC against Bishonen, Bishonen rounded up her friends, who proceeded to abuse the RfC, for example byposting images of food and the like. Neither I, nor the editor who joined me in the RfC, agreed with the outcome,[59] but I dropped the matter rather than going through a time-consuming and disruptive arbitration.
So, those are my responses to KC's initial post here. I may or may not have further comments, depending upon whether time permits, although I will be travelling on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (September 21-23) and therefore will not have internet access.
I would like to very briefly respond now to Swatjester, who mentions a recent article in the Washington Post, which mentioned me. No objective person could read that article and conclude that I was edit-warring, anymore than they conclude that the other mentioned editor (Tvoz) was edit-warring. The fact of the matter is that there was a lot of controversy at the Fred Thompson article, and the majority of editors agreed with my position. Why should I be banned from Wikipedia because a majority of editors agreed with me about a particular matter?
- You know quite well that's not why you're being requested to be banned. Don't attempt to hide this in a content issue; this is about your disruptive behavior. ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I will also briefly respond now to Severa. KillerChihuahua accuses me above of "using claims of having been wronged to attempt to gain leverage over others." Then Severa posts her comment that she "stopped editing Wikipedia due to having to deal with Ferrylodge's tendentious editing." I wonder if KC will criticize Severa for "using claims of having been wronged to attempt to gain leverage over others."
Severa is upset about a comment that I made at a talk page over six months ago, and here is the entire comment: "I have posted a general comment about reverts, and the need to explain them, here." That's it. I have little recollection of it, but if people really believe that such a brief comment six months ago supports banning me, then I will investigate further, and try to reconstruct why Severa could have been so offended by such a brief remark by me. My understanding of "wikistalking" is that it's done to harass, whereas it's perfectly OK to monitor a user if one believes that the user's edits are suspect and need another eye. I hardly think that that one brief sentence over six months ago is even remotely related to wikistalking.
I have no grudge against anyone at Wikipedia, including KillerChihuahua. But that does not mean I should relax and accept being called a "bullshit" artist, or the like, does it? My goal is to calmly develop a neutral and well-referenced incredible encyclopedia. If anyone looks at my contributions in toto, I believe you will find that they have helped reach that goal, including my edits to abortion-related articles. Among other things, I brought the Roe v. Wade article through a featured article review, and have done much else to improve Wikipedia, and I am proud of it.Ferrylodge 05:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Given your repeated claims that you will not apologize ever to KillerChihuahua, you most certainly do have a grudge. ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I will tell you what the concern is, Ferrylodge. Had you responded in a manner that shows some kind of understanding and acceptance that your behavior has been disruptive, I would have reconsidered my support for a community ban or a topic ban. We all make mistakes, and can learn not to repeat them, if willing. That is a choice we all have. But your response is a defense in which you claim that you have not erred, when the evidence is overwhelming that you did. That's a pity. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:44, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Reply to Tvoz
Tvoz has made some pretty extensive comments above, and so I should respond. Tvoz and I were both honored to appear in a Washington Post article together recently. The subject was the rather trivial matter about how Fred Thompson's name should be presented in his Wikipedia article. Ultimately, the position that I supported prevailed (at least for the time being), and Tvoz is understandably not happy about that.
Tvoz now charges me with four separate "misrepresentations." However, she mischaracterizes all four of those matters.
Tvoz, please look at this edit of yours on September 9. When a person (such as yourself) footnotes a proposition, the implication is that the person supports the proposition. You are wrong to seek my banishment merely because I inferred your support for a proposition that you yourself footnoted. You’re entitled to correct the misimpression left by your edit, but please don’t demand apologies from me for drawing a perfectly reasonable inference. People do not normally footnote propositions with which they disagree.
- I'll quibble with that: in that very same matter, I introduced a link to an image of Thompson's first marriage certificate, and argued for retaining it, although it tended on the whole to support Tvoz's position rather than ours. OTOH, Tvoz expressed surprise at my action, and seemed to think I didn't realise that it tended to support her position, which tends to support your claim that this behaviour is unusual. But it's all a bit murky. -- Zsero 18:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Regarding Tvoz's suggestion that I crept over to the wp:mosbio and supposedly neglected to say why I was so interested, please look again. Before I ever suggested any change to the mosbio, I loudly and plainly announced at mosbio that I was concerned about Fred Thompson.
Tvoz also says that I “misrepresented” her suggestion that I visit the John Edwards page to argue about how Edwards's name should be presented. I visited the MOSBIO (instead of John Edwards's page) and mentioned that Tvoz had suggested I do so. What difference does this miniscule error make? Tvoz was suggesting that I argue about how John Edwards’s name is presented, so what difference does it make if I ended up making that argument at MOSBIO as opposed to at the John Edwards article? Why is this more than splitting hairs? What possible benefit could I derive from this incredibly slight imprecision? Tvoz keeps saying that I “misrepresented” her, but there was no dishonesty on my part, only an extremely slight imprecision.
Then Tvoz piles on with alleged misrepresentation #3: that I said “The article has again been edited (by Tvoz) to reinsert this material.” I only meant that the article had been edited to reinsert the material more than once, and that Tvoz was the person who did so the last time. After Tvoz requested that I clarify, I did here, in order to emphasize that the material was previously reinserted by another editor instead of by Tvoz. What more could I possibly do than correct myself? These are extremely slight matters, and not relevant to a proposed ban.
Then Tvoz alleges a fourth misrepresentation: she says that I falsely accused her of wikistalking. But I told Tvoz point blank: “I am not making accusations. Some users are unaware that it is bad form to follow other users around. If you are following me around (from Fred Thompson to abortion to mother), then I would kindly ask you to please stop.” Do you want me to engrave that in gold and send it to you, Tvoz? How can I say that I am not making accusations any better than that?
And as for the other events at the Fred Thompson article, here’s a link in case anyone’s interested.Ferrylodge 10:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Your point? I was in the WaPo article as well. Doesn't dismiss Tvoz's evidence that you have been edit warring on the FredThompson page. The fact that your tendentious editing rose to the level of finding its way to the FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post due to your edit war over Fred Thompson's name, should be a telling sign of your tendentious editing tendencies. That Pleasantville suggests that you may also be misogynist only makes even more sense; the weight of the evidence apparently supports it, and it is pretty widely known that my history with Pleasantville has been less than stellar. At your fourth "misrepresentation" it does not matter how you couch your words in the illegitimate form of a question. You were accusing Tvoz of stalking you. Saying "I'm not making accusations. Stop stalking me." is itself a clear accusation. At your second "misrepresentation" you say "Tvoz keeps saying that I “misrepresented” her". Your entire freaking argument is about how she's misrepresenting you. Which is it? ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- This is completely wrong. The WaPo piece was not about Ferrylodge's "edit war"; it would be just as fair to say that it was about Tvoz's "edit war". Tvoz was the one who insisted on making a change without first achieving consensus for it.
- Pleasantville's accusation of misogyny is contemptible, and there's nothing at all to support it - we generally don't know each other's sexes around here. I only learned that Tvoz was a woman from the WaPo.
- And no, Ferrylodge did not say or imply "Stop stalking me", which would indeed be an accusation; he said, in effect, "please don't stalk me". When asked about this, he made it clear that his warning was preemptive, not an accusation of misconduct that had already happened.
- Zsero 19:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Your point? I was in the WaPo article as well. Doesn't dismiss Tvoz's evidence that you have been edit warring on the FredThompson page. The fact that your tendentious editing rose to the level of finding its way to the FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post due to your edit war over Fred Thompson's name, should be a telling sign of your tendentious editing tendencies. That Pleasantville suggests that you may also be misogynist only makes even more sense; the weight of the evidence apparently supports it, and it is pretty widely known that my history with Pleasantville has been less than stellar. At your fourth "misrepresentation" it does not matter how you couch your words in the illegitimate form of a question. You were accusing Tvoz of stalking you. Saying "I'm not making accusations. Stop stalking me." is itself a clear accusation. At your second "misrepresentation" you say "Tvoz keeps saying that I “misrepresented” her". Your entire freaking argument is about how she's misrepresenting you. Which is it? ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Where have I allegded that Ferrylodge is a misogynist? I have pointed out (correctly) that he is the editor of a "Men's Rights" page concerning reproductive rights. If in Zsero's opinion, "Men's rights" are misogynist, he is entitled to his opinion, but that is not my opinion. --Pleasantville 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Pleasantville didn't. Ferrylodge accused Pleasantville of alleging he was a misogynist. Or he accused me, that part is unclear. I think it was probably me. However, it was a fairly typical case of Ferrylodge inflating and twisting what someone else said, so that now Zsero is left with the impression Pleasantville alleged something she didn't. KillerChihuahua?!? 22:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Where have I allegded that Ferrylodge is a misogynist? I have pointed out (correctly) that he is the editor of a "Men's Rights" page concerning reproductive rights. If in Zsero's opinion, "Men's rights" are misogynist, he is entitled to his opinion, but that is not my opinion. --Pleasantville 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Summary so Far
So, it seems that there are a few choices after some discussion:
- - Outright ban (seems excessive)
- - Topic ban on reproduction and US politics
- - Edit Warring parole (1RR or similar)
After reading this I think that an edit warring parole is the place to start, and that the specifics of it should not be limited to reverts of article space. The parole should include all facets that have been discussed of tenditious distruptive behavior. --Rocksanddirt 17:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- 1RR per week site-wide in all namespaces and topic ban from reproduction-related and U.S. politics articles, per Yamla. Also, an immediate, total site ban if Ferrylodge is discovered circumventing his restrictions with sockpuppets.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.195.94.194 (talk • contribs) 18:01, 21 September 2007
- I support an outright ban. Reading his comments and viewing his history he's not ammenable to change. Odd nature 18:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I think that this matter, seeing opposition (including my own) to the outright ban, should be requested to be discussed by the Wikipedia:Arbitration committee. The top of this page reads, "Complex or ambiguous cases should go to dispute resolution." This isn't the type of case that should really be handled by the community sanction noticeboard. I know some of you have said, "I don't think dispute resolution would work", but you never bothered to try the next steps. Bans are supposed to be a last resort. Please consider taking this to the ArbCom. Mahalo nui loa. --Ali'i 18:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Banned
Based on the overwhelming consensus for a ban seen here, I've blocked Ferrylodge idedfinitely. FeloniousMonk 18:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Concur. (See Tom Harrison's quote on my user page.) Raymond Arritt 18:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose this (in my opinion, premature) indef block, as I don't think you can determine "overwhelming consensus" after less than 24 hours of discussion. (However, I have no opinion on the overall merits of the case against Ferrylodge yet, as I haven't had the chance to fully review his contributions). JavaTenor 18:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- He can appeal it if he wants. But this was approaching snowball's chance in Tahiti of not happening. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 18:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I object to such a quick decision, and also object to this being characterized as a WP:SNOW situation. There are numerous objections above, which, if you read WP:SNOW, is not a snowball. - Dean Wormer 18:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- He can appeal it if he wants. But this was approaching snowball's chance in Tahiti of not happening. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 18:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support Odd nature 18:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strongest Possible Support Filll 18:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong Support OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 19:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support. He can show some contrition and appeal. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support (obviously, but just for the record) KillerChihuahua?!? 19:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose - "overwhelming consensus"? I make the vote thus far 9 to 6 in favour of an outright ban versus a lesser
penaltymeasure. That doesn't seem very "overwhelming" to me. Gatoclass 19:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)- comment: Its not a "penalty". Please feel free to ask me about this on my talk page, but blocks are always preventative, not punitive. That you so clearly misunderstand the purpose and intent of blocking and banning leads me to be concerned that your reasoning in other areas concerning this may be somewhat faulty as well. KillerChihuahua?!? 19:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Quite frankly, the difference seems semantic to me. You may throw someone in jail as a "preventative measure" rather than a "punishment", but I doubt the terminology makes much difference to the timeserver. Gatoclass 19:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I object, strongly. This was a fucking terrible call. See my statement above this section for my reasoning. Mahalo. --Ali'i 19:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: After months after months of low-level disruptive editing, this editor has to be dealt with, IMHO. If there are not enough people to support this ban, and/or if this editor successfully appeals, then of course he should be welcomed back to WP. For now, this gives the community time to look at his egregious and shameful record of past abuses and consider if this is the kind of element we support having here. And we can do so without his excessive interference and personal attacks on those considering the situation while we contemplate his record, as he has done in the past when corrective measures and guidance were suggested or offered. If it is decided this was done with excessive alacrity, then it can of course be reversed, right?--Filll 19:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support -Severa 19:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support a full ban (though I do think the implementation of it was premature). I read all of the evidence (and more) yesterday and waited until Ferrylodge had a chance to respond (perhaps others did the same?). I found his response lacking in both remorse for his incorrect actions and truth. I looked at the things he claimed supported his position, and his misrepresentations of what actually happened were clear, which is in keeping with all of the other evidence presented I'd love it if a parole or topic ban would help, but based on his past, I don't think either will. It's a fundamental issue here. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I concur. It did happen rather fast, but apparently was driven largely by his own response (based on edit summaries.) And it was much longer than the time it took for Theodore7's ban, for example. KillerChihuahua?!? 19:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support ban Ugh, just finished going through his responses and some of his earlier talk page contribs. The user is incorrigible, a ban is the only way to stop his disruption. ornis (t) 19:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong oppose and object. There's hardly been time - I only learned about this last night. Of course there's an initial surge of support for a ban, because those users knew about it first. It's especially unfair since Ferrylodge's ability to respond to accusations has been extremely limited (his IP at work remains blocked, and he's already said he'll be away from the net over the weekend). This block is completely unfair, and all on its own justifies Ferrylodge's claim to be the victim here. It looks to me like a lynching. I demand that it be reversed at once. -- Zsero 19:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Regarding the IP not working... it was a lingering autoblock from my 3RR block. I used our autoblock-finding tool to undo it when I unblocked Ferrylodge's main account, but it didn't show any autoblocks, so I was confused. As it turns out, the autoblock finder was malfunctioning, so I was unable to find and undo the autoblock on Ferrylodge's work IP. I apologize for this technical problem. MastCell Talk 20:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Especially when the one doing the final deed is involved in the discussion. Like I said... this has all the appearances of a railroading. Oh, the irony. --Ali'i 19:24, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, it does not pass the smell test. It should be reversed for further discussion, to allow an actual "overwhelming" consensus to form. Several options were proposed, and were not discussed fully. Dean Wormer 19:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- 2.5:1 in favor of a ban passes my smell test, pal. Odd nature 20:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Your use of the word "pal" in this context is decidedly uncivil. Please reformulate your response. 2.5:1 is certainly not an "overwhelming" consensus, nor a snowball. The discussion isn't over yet. Dean Wormer 21:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- 2.5:1 in favor of a ban passes my smell test, pal. Odd nature 20:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- At the moment it is running 4:1 in favor of a ban, so if something is rotten in Denmark here, it is not the consensus for a ban. It must be something else. Hmm...I wonder what that might be?--Filll 20:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- And what exactly is it you are implying with that thinly veiled lack of AGF? Dean Wormer 21:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, it does not pass the smell test. It should be reversed for further discussion, to allow an actual "overwhelming" consensus to form. Several options were proposed, and were not discussed fully. Dean Wormer 19:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Come now, this can easily be reversed if the situation is as unfair, biased and one-sided as you assert it is. What this does is, create a breathing space for the community to consider this festering DE problem that has polluted WP for at least 9 months in an unimpeded manner. Past evidence suggests that in some cases, pre-emptive measures are appropriate and prudent since those considering the record of this editor do not themselves want to be subjected to intimidation and harassment and wikilawyering. If in a calm, contemplative atmosphere, it is determined by the community that some mistake has been made, or some rules violated, or some element of protocol applied inappropriately, this decision can be revisited and reversed, of course.--Filll 19:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, let's tape the defendant's mouth while we all discuss which tree to hang him from. This is a f---ing travesty. -- Zsero 19:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- This is more like taking the defendant's gun away from him while we discuss his fate, when the defendant has previously fired his gun at those who dared suggest he had done anything inappropriate.--Filll 19:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- What gun? You're assuming what it's up to you to prove. All he's done that I can see is defended himself when attacked, and pointed out that he has not in fact done the things people have accused him of. And now you're taping his mouth shut to prevent him from doing so. Verdict first, trial after. In any case, he's already said he'll be away from home over the weekend, and he can't edit from work, so what are you afraid of? That he'll get a word in edgewise when he can manage a net connection that isn't blocked? -- Zsero 20:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I suspect Zsero is unaware of this editor's past behavior when challenged, which goes well beyond "defending himself". I suggest you review the record carefully before making such statements.--Filll 20:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- This is more like taking the defendant's gun away from him while we discuss his fate, when the defendant has previously fired his gun at those who dared suggest he had done anything inappropriate.--Filll 19:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Zsero here is a frequent revert-partner (I'd go so far as to say an accomplice) in Ferrylodge's tendentious editing. Zsero should probably be on revert parole himself.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.174.171.187 (talk • contribs)
- Please do not make personal attacks. It is not productive, and your reasoning is flawed. We are not all in cohoots with Ferrylodge. Dean Wormer 19:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Zsero here is a frequent revert-partner (I'd go so far as to say an accomplice) in Ferrylodge's tendentious editing. Zsero should probably be on revert parole himself.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.174.171.187 (talk • contribs)
- Oppose block (for now at least) per Ali'i and the lack of time. As I read more about Ferrylodge's action, I became more incline to advocate a strong topic ban (including contact with KC) with 1RR but action was taken far to prematurely without clear consensus to do so. This was far from a WP:SNOW situation. AgneCheese/Wine 19:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oh, I don't know about that, there was a clear consensus and whatever support for Ferrylodge there was was weak and scatered, and none made very compelling arguments for not banning. Add that to his total lack of contrition and the additional evidence presented by Raymond Arritt, and I don't see how he wouldn't be banned. He practically begged for it in his response. Odd nature 19:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree there was consensus for some kind of sanction but I don't see how you can read the above small sampling of response and see anything close to a WP:SNOW consensus for indef ban. Couple that with the incredibly short time frame and it clear that the block was premature and (right now) inappropriate. AgneCheese/Wine 19:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oh, I don't know about that, there was a clear consensus and whatever support for Ferrylodge there was was weak and scatered, and none made very compelling arguments for not banning. Add that to his total lack of contrition and the additional evidence presented by Raymond Arritt, and I don't see how he wouldn't be banned. He practically begged for it in his response. Odd nature 19:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Object I am adding my objection here, as my objection above is nested within a sub thread. Dean Wormer 19:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support, we must always protect our project and its volunteers from chronic harassment and abuse. How much longer do we accommodate Ferrylodge's disruption? 84.174.171.187 19:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support, for reasons argued in the initial discussion; Ferrylodge is an activist with an unremitting agenda. --Pleasantville 20:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Hold on there, are you saying that there are political motivations at play here? Then I object even more strenuously. This is starting to sound like a content dispute. Dean Wormer 20:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have no objections to his contributions. I have severe objections to his past behavior, which is well beyond what should be allowed in the project. And this is true no matter what is personal political position or agenda might be on any particular issue.--Filll 20:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Dean Wormer: I was summarizing my initial statement. See above in the first discussion. My remarks pertain to behavior rather than to the specifics of his opinions. --Pleasantville 20:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have no objections to his contributions. I have severe objections to his past behavior, which is well beyond what should be allowed in the project. And this is true no matter what is personal political position or agenda might be on any particular issue.--Filll 20:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support ban. Guettarda 20:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support a full ban – dave souza, talk 20:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- CommentA pre-emptive block during an ongoing discussion is very poor form, especially when it undermines the actions of another admin - Mastcell specifically unblocked Ferrylodge so that he could participate in this discussion. See Wikipedia:Wheel war. I note that FeloniousMonk has also tagged Ferrylodge's userpage with the community ban template, without closing this discussion. Very poor choices for an admin. Banno 21:08, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I do not pretend to know all the niceties and protocols that hold here. However, I do know what the past record shows. And I for one, would not welcome a personal attackod or having an RfC filed against me for no good reason, or other tactics this editor has employed in the past. Enough is enough.--Filll 21:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- It's not preemptive block. FM's block summary implies just the opposite, that the block was instantiating a ban which had consensus, both true BTW. Odd nature 21:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: FeloniousMonk didn't add the tags to Ferrylodge's page. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- FeloniousMonk wasn't wheel-warring. I unblocked Ferrylodge so he could contribute to this discussion. FeloniousMonk blocked him in consequence of this discussion. He wasn't undoing my administrative action; regardless of what you think of the propriety of the block, he was not wheel-warring. MastCell Talk 21:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- FM and Swatjester both added templates, but where is it written that the person issuing the block has to close the discussion here? I don't see anything that says FM should have done that. Odd nature 21:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- My error, I only saw Swat's. Thanks for the correction, ON. I have to say I don't see why FM should be criticised for not closing this, as clearly some contributors feel more discussion and input is needed. That seems to conflict with the concerns that this was a "too rapid response". I'm perplexed by the contradictory assertions. And no, the blocking admin doesn't have to close, nor is it written anywhere that he does. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment. I supported sanctions short of a full community ban, and questioned the speed with which a not-yet-formulated consensus was carried out, and characterized. For that, I have been treated uncivilly, and had my good faith questioned. I have more important wiki work to do, so I will participate in this drumhead court no longer. Dean Wormer 21:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Unblock please
I'd strongly urge FeloniousMonk to unblock Ferrylodge at least until the conclusion of proceedings here, and until stronger consensus for a ban appears, a simple vote count (I know, evil) reveals something around 65% support for a ban at the present time, not really a firm enough consensus to warrant a definitive, final ban. Nick 21:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Actually its a 4:1 consensus in favor of the ban. Why on earth would should FM unblock him? Odd nature 21:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree completely with KillerChihuahua's formulation of the problem here. Yes, Ferrylodge is a tendentious editor; yes, interacting with him has driven at least one highly valued contributor from the project, a significant loss for Wikipedia; yes, I personally feel that a siteban is a reasonable, if somewhat strong, remedy. But I don't think anyone can dispute that some significant objections have been voiced here, and there's been some support for discussing alternative remedies like 0RR/1RR or topic bans. I think that if we enact a siteban in the face of real, good-faith dissent, then we're undermining the credibility this process in the long run. Far more tendentious editors have been given a last-chance topic ban or revert limitation. I don't think anyone has seriously disputed that Ferrylodge's approach is problematic; why not take the opportunity to discuss our options in dealing with it a little further and try to bring some of the editors who have opposed a siteban into the consensus? If we block him now, then the discussion is going to be viewed as closed, for all intents and purposes. Like Nick, I'd just rather see a little more before we take that step. MastCell Talk 21:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Despite what you may have read in the Washington Post :-P , I have seen Ferrylodge be a helpful contributor at Fred Thompson, and would support a topical ban from abortion/pregnency articles or a revert limit if that is where he is being disruptive. But I've been maligned enough in this "discussion", so I'm taking a break. Mahalo. --Ali'i 21:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree completely with KillerChihuahua's formulation of the problem here. Yes, Ferrylodge is a tendentious editor; yes, interacting with him has driven at least one highly valued contributor from the project, a significant loss for Wikipedia; yes, I personally feel that a siteban is a reasonable, if somewhat strong, remedy. But I don't think anyone can dispute that some significant objections have been voiced here, and there's been some support for discussing alternative remedies like 0RR/1RR or topic bans. I think that if we enact a siteban in the face of real, good-faith dissent, then we're undermining the credibility this process in the long run. Far more tendentious editors have been given a last-chance topic ban or revert limitation. I don't think anyone has seriously disputed that Ferrylodge's approach is problematic; why not take the opportunity to discuss our options in dealing with it a little further and try to bring some of the editors who have opposed a siteban into the consensus? If we block him now, then the discussion is going to be viewed as closed, for all intents and purposes. Like Nick, I'd just rather see a little more before we take that step. MastCell Talk 21:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- (ec)I strongly feel that eventually it will have to be a site ban, as I just don't see Ferrylodge ever seeing anything problematic about his behavior. I think unblocking him will simply take more time and waste more virtual ink. However, I do not object to unblocking him if anyone feels his lengthly diatribe against those who presented evidence here and supported his block has afforded him insufficient response. Meanwhile, the "ban" section above seems to consist of those supporting the block, and those opposing it as enacted too quickly. I again point to Theodore7's ban, as precedent, that "fast" isn't always the wrong choice, and suggest that merely opposing on the grounds of rapidity is unhelpful. Fast is sometimes better than slow, if it merely serves to prolong the agony. I suggest if anyone wishes to make an argument for another remedy, such as 0RR, 1RR, topic bans, and the like, that a section be created for that purpose. However, as opinions are split, care will have to be taken not to conflate opposition to the ban with support of Ferrylodge's behavior. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- While I agree with KC that Ferrylodge will end up with a site ban as he cannot learn, I do not like implementation of such a ban prior to the completion of this discussion, unless there was disruption somewhere else. I agree with Mastcel that it undermines the integrity of this forum, which is part a way to speed up the process of dealing with disruptive editors. --Rocksanddirt 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- at the risk of sounding dense... you think he should be site banned, but you object that its been done? I'm sorry, that reads like "we should spend lots of time discussing it, then do it." Rather than "its going to happen anyway, why waste everyone's time?" KillerChihuahua?!? 22:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- If the editor is going to be banned, sit back, relax and wait for consensus to emerge, don't cut the guy off and stop him from mounting a defence, no matter how ridiculous or an attack on others, if he is to avoid being banned, he deserves every change to do so, and if he is going to be banned, allowing things to run to their conclusion isn't hurting anyone. If it takes another few hours, a day or more before everyone is happy to close the discussion and ban the guy, so what. Rushing everything through is just causing more problems than it solves, as we see here. I don't see any reason to block the guy while there is still discussion ongoing about a ban or other measures though. Nick 22:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- While I agree with KC that Ferrylodge will end up with a site ban as he cannot learn, I do not like implementation of such a ban prior to the completion of this discussion, unless there was disruption somewhere else. I agree with Mastcel that it undermines the integrity of this forum, which is part a way to speed up the process of dealing with disruptive editors. --Rocksanddirt 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- (ec)I strongly feel that eventually it will have to be a site ban, as I just don't see Ferrylodge ever seeing anything problematic about his behavior. I think unblocking him will simply take more time and waste more virtual ink. However, I do not object to unblocking him if anyone feels his lengthly diatribe against those who presented evidence here and supported his block has afforded him insufficient response. Meanwhile, the "ban" section above seems to consist of those supporting the block, and those opposing it as enacted too quickly. I again point to Theodore7's ban, as precedent, that "fast" isn't always the wrong choice, and suggest that merely opposing on the grounds of rapidity is unhelpful. Fast is sometimes better than slow, if it merely serves to prolong the agony. I suggest if anyone wishes to make an argument for another remedy, such as 0RR, 1RR, topic bans, and the like, that a section be created for that purpose. However, as opinions are split, care will have to be taken not to conflate opposition to the ban with support of Ferrylodge's behavior. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Proposals
- Endorse current ban
- Support ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support Odd nature 22:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support --Pleasantville 22:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support Exactly how many times do I have to vote on this ban?OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 22:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- -
- Indef topic ban on all pregnancy and abortion related articles, zero tolerance on continuing WP:TE on other articles
- -
- -
- Indef topic ban on all pregnancy and abortion and political related articles, zero tolerance on continuing WP:TE on other articles
- -
- -
Ratify indefinite ban of Giovanni33 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Proposing Community Ban on User:Gold heart
Let it Snow!
- Pile-on support I know this is closed, but I just wanted to register my support of Alison. She's a great admin and crap like this won't be allowed. Of course it's snowing. . .as well it should be. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. R. Baley 07:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
The above arbitration case has closed. Maurice27 (talk · contribs) is banned for 30 days, and the parties to the underlying content disputes are encouraged to continue with the normal consensus-building process to produce high-quality articles. For the Arbitration Committee, Picaroon (t) 02:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Proposing Community Ban on User:Ferrylodge
Ferrylodge (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Perhaps some of you recall Ferrylodge, who has been waging a low-level edit war via attrition on Abortion and related pages since December 2006. His technique has been successful enough to drive at least one contributor (one of our better and more productive ones) from the project altogether. He has now turned his attention to harassing, attacking, and maligning me - using the same just-under-the-radar techniques - while continuing his tendentious editing. I have been ignoring this, but it has reached a point where I am now asking for community involvement.
His approach is that of a 'victim bully,' using claims of having been wronged to attempt to gain leverage over others. He has twisted my attempt to support consensus into me being an "edit warrior", my attempts to enforce policy and guidelines into "harassment" and so on. Examples, all taken from today: In the "edit war", he was blocked by MastCell for 3RR on Stillbirth, for insertion of the word "womb". My count (and I may have missed some) is six editors supporting "uterus" over "womb" as a more accurate and appropriate term, and one or two "no preference" editors, and one, Ferrylodge, edit warring to use the word "womb" - the debate has been spread over multiple articles. This is indeed a content dispute, I am well aware of that. I am not here for suggestions or help on the content dispute. I am here because Ferrylodge is maintaining his position that he alone is correct, that he alone is NPOV, that editors who disagree with him are disruptive edit warring POV pushers. No one supports his preferred phrasing and since his block, no one has reverted to his version or inserted the word. He added a POV tag to Abortion because his edit did not have consensus nor even support. This is dishearteningly similar to Sam Spade - in specific, that he "wages POV war designed to wear down opposition, even where he is in a minority of one, by sheer unreasonable persistence in the face of consensus", and he maligns those opposing him to make it appear that it is a personal matter on their part, rather than a policy matter on his. He even "strongly recommended" (on Talk:Pregnancy) that an opposing editor on the Stillbirth article be blocked for disruption, because of course it could not be a simple case of Ferrylodge editing against consensus - it must be that the other editor is disruptive!
He consistently cherry-picks my words to twist them into false meaning - for example, when I referred to a word as "vulgar" and to clarify I posted the definition link to the meaning of vulgar I was using (commonly used language), he removed it with the edit summary " Please do not post at my talk page, KC." - then proceeded to post on his talk page that "she said that I was trying to insert a "vulgar" word into the article. It astounds me that an admin can get away with such incivility, and I find it very difficult to respond in a constructive way to her personal attacks" - which is typical of his tactics, for I must either ignore his misrepresentation of my statement, or ignore his request to not post on his talk page - which surely he learned in his block for harassment would be harassment, as that is precisely what he was last blocked for. In short, he's using the "lessons learned" not to be a better Wikipedian, but to game the system so that he is "innocent" and I am "doing wrong." I am not the only editor he uses these tactics against, if similar evidence for these actions against other users is desired I can dig though his history and place them here.
I doubt that an Rfc would be of any help, because in the few previous instances I have seen of community input, Ferrylodge showed himself resistant to the concept that he could possibly have erred at all. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive252#Harassment Charge By Bishonen Against Ferrylodge, followed by Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Bishonen 2, followed by Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive259#Disruptive editing at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment by Ferrylodge - all of which stemmed from one 24-hour block, and all but the last were Ferrylodge stridently defending himself and accusing all and sundry. The last was a suggestion that he'd become disruptive enough on the Rfc talk page (post-closing) to be blocked. I argued against blocking for disruption, because the minute that was posted, he ceased the disruption. My mistake. I note a similar pattern of behavior every time attention is focused on Ferrylodge - he fades quietly into the background for a brief spell, then returns renewed to the attack. This has gone on long enough. KillerChihuahua?!? 23:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm, blocked once for harrassment already and still at it. Doesn't seem amendable to any view other than his own or willing to let matters drop, and too willing to carry a grudge. I doubt other forms of WP:DR will yield other outcomes. A ban seems warranted, and I'd support one. Odd nature 23:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong support per all the evidence presented by KillerChihuahua, and the fact that he has been warned dozens of times to stop harassing KC, and he still continues with no attempt to be civil. Need I note that he was recently featured in the Washington Post for edit warring on the Fred Thompson article? ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 23:54, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong support for ban However, per KC's comments and my own personal observations including this response, he needs to go. Moreover, this offensive RfC just begs for removal of this person from the project. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 00:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I admit that I am the contributor who has stopped editing Wikipedia due to having to deal with Ferrylodge's tendentious editing. I first encountered him in December 2006, when he came to Abortion,[108], which ended up leading to his first block for 3RR. I was accused of "request[ing] that [he] be blocked,"[109] although I'd only reminded him to watch out for 3RR in an edit summary,[110] and the blocking admin confirmed that he had acted indepedently.[111] I tried to put this behind, and to focus on content, not the contributor, during the many disagreements that arose between Ferrylodge, myself, and other editors on abortion and pregnancy-related articles in the following months. It was difficult, though, because I sometimes got the impression that Ferrylodge was trying to make things personal, such as when he apparently went out of his way to insert himself into a minor dispute which arose between myself and an anonymous editor on Vaccine controversy, although the dispute did not involve Ferrylodge, and Ferrylodge had never edited the article in question.[112] I am surprised to find that he is still making disruptive edits on the same constellation of articles — Abortion, Pregnancy, Stillbirth — after almost nine months.[113] I think this is a very long time to learn the ropes on Wikipedia; Ferrylodge has had ample time to learn how to work cooperatively with other editors. When I felt that my personal frustation was beginning to compromise my ability to contribute to this community, I left, but Ferrylodge continues to edit despite the chip on his shoulder, and refuses to let bygones be bygones with regard to users like KillerChihuahua. I don't think it's fair to editors who have dedicated themselves to building this encyclopedia to have to sort out Ferrylodge's disruptive editing and confrontational behavior any longer than they already have. -Severa 01:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support motion. I just thought I would clarify in case this was unclear from the statement above. -Severa 02:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Please note that I have unblocked Ferrylodge so that he can participate and respond here. I had blocked him earlier today for violating 3RR; he requested an unblock to respond here, and I felt that was only fair. MastCell Talk 03:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, but only for commenting here. Any other editing or disruption and it's right back to blocksville. FeloniousMonk 03:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support block. He's a chronic troublemaker, unlikely to change. FeloniousMonk 03:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Also supporting. KillerChihuahua makes a strong case. As a second choice, would support a topic ban on reproduction and political articles. DurovaCharge! 04:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose ban
- Firstly, perhaps I should say that I personally am strongly inclined to side with KC on the issues in question and to oppose Ferrylodge's POV. But while Ferrylodge is clearly an obstinate editor, I don't believe the evidence presented by KillerChihuahua here is enough to warrant a ban. Nor do I see any evidence, that some have alluded to, of "harassment".
- One inadvertent breach of 3RR in a year hardly constitutes grounds for a permaban, and I see little evidence of KC's assertion that Ferrylodge routinely defies consensus. For example, recent discussion at Talk:Abortion indicates that Ferrylodge has as much support for his views as opposition.
- Ferrylodge seems prepared to discuss his concerns at length on talk pages, and I think if he were to make a commitment to agree to abide by consensus, that ought to be sufficient at this stage. If not, then I think this is a problem that would be best handled by an RFC, I don't see that it's severe enough at present to warrant intervention here. Gatoclass 07:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: This has nothing to do with POV - there are always editors of all POVs on the articles in question, and generally, we all work well together, or at least, well enough. This is an issue of low-level, constant warring, both on the articles, and against any editor FL perceives as "in his way". Like Sam Spade, the individual instances are annoying and bothersome, but not enough to bother doing much about - the volume is such that I haven't even bothered responding to most of his misrepresentations of my statements and views. But the sheer volume of it makes it impossible to ignore. If it were just that he accused me of harassment, I'd ignore. If it were just that he twisted everything I said into something else, I'd probably keep it between us. But he's driven off one editor completely, he is working on Tvoz, as seen by her lengthly evidence - and that from only 10 days. The three here are not the only ones. I posted instances from only one day, and could easily write a full page correcting his false representations and misleading statements from his response, below - and this is one reason he's a problem. He "responds" by a series of false or misleading statements about what "KC asserts" - all of which instances are utterly false or grossly inaccurate or misleading. His "willingness to discuss at length" bears this same flavor. Its not willingness to discuss, its wearing out the opposition in bullheaded obstinacy and unsupported accusations and misleading representations of the other party. What purpose would it serve if I were to spend the full page necessary to correct his false allegations against me in his response, below? We'd get the same kind of thing as we saw on ANI, where all but one editor told him the same exact thing, and he did not change his view or even concede that others might have any validity. He actually escalated it, having gotten no joy on ANI, to an Rfc. Read the ANI thread, read the Rfc, and I don't see how anyone can think an Rfc might have a positive effect. Actually, just read his response, which has nothing to do with him addressing any problems in his behavior, and everything to do with making it personal by attacking me, Bishonen, and Severa. Because, as usual, FL cannot possibly have erred at all - its everyone else who is in the wrong. KillerChihuahua?!? 10:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Like Sam Spade...the sheer volume of it makes it impossible to ignore - KC
- That may be the case, but perhaps I should remind you that Sam Spade was never permabanned from Wiki. Rather, he was placed on indefinite probation - after which he chose to cease editing of his own accord.
- My concern is that CSN is being used to simply dispose of editors who hold unpopular positions. IMO, Wiki needs the editors who hold unpopular views, because they help to keep the majority honest. Maybe it's the case that Ferrylodge is just a disruptive troll, I don't know - but the case you have presented here is rather long on accusations and short on substance. Permabanning is a radical step, and IMO it should only be used in the worst cases, and backed up by the strongest possible evidence - everything else should go through normal arbitration processes. And while Ferrylodge plainly has made few friends on Wikipedia, I've yet to see much evidence to suggest that he has in recent times been anything more than a minor nuisance for editors who don't like his views or his obstinate approach. Gatoclass 17:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps you might examine that statement. Are you saying that I, and Severa, and Tvoz, and Pleasantville, are "using" CSN to "dump" someone we don't agree with? That's a fairly strong insinuation that someone is gaming the system, and as the one who started this process, I can only take it that your "concern" is that it is I who am most likely to be guilty of "using CSN". I take exception to your hint that this might be a method to remove an editor I disagree with. KillerChihuahua?!? 17:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- My concern is that CSN is being used to simply dispose of editors who hold unpopular positions. IMO, Wiki needs the editors who hold unpopular views, because they help to keep the majority honest. Maybe it's the case that Ferrylodge is just a disruptive troll, I don't know - but the case you have presented here is rather long on accusations and short on substance. Permabanning is a radical step, and IMO it should only be used in the worst cases, and backed up by the strongest possible evidence - everything else should go through normal arbitration processes. And while Ferrylodge plainly has made few friends on Wikipedia, I've yet to see much evidence to suggest that he has in recent times been anything more than a minor nuisance for editors who don't like his views or his obstinate approach. Gatoclass 17:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have to agree with KC here. Tendentiousness is actually quite damaging to a project which functions on consensus, and in which one determined, obstinate editor can stall an article or discussion indefinitely. It's actually a far worse problem than vandalism (yet we keep hearing the arguments on this board that "well, he may be a tendentious POV-pusher, but at least he's not a vandal!") Lots of people hold "unpopular" opinions, but advancing those opinions in a disruptive or tendentious manner is the issue. MastCell Talk 18:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- No, sorry, that was intended as a criticism of the process, not of the person or persons making use of it. I just happen to think that the process appears to lack adequate safeguards for the protection of users who take unpopular positions, that's all. You are of course perfectly entitled to bring up another editor's behaviour at this page, and even to call for their permanent banning if you feel so inclined. It's just that I am concerned that users may not always get the kind of process here that I think is warranted by the severe penalties that can be handed down. Gatoclass 18:56, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support - I have had numerous dealings with Ferrylodge (including, but not limited to, the Freddie/Fred dispute on Talk: Fred Thompson referred to in the Sept 17 Washington Post article) and several times in the last 10 days he misrepresented my edits or comments. I called him on it each time, and he has yet to retract or apologize for any of them. None of them are grievous, or the end of the world, but it is the pattern that I am raising here:
- -On September 9, here, he erroneously claims that I had previously "urged" that the name be rendered in the way that he preferred and claimed that all he was doing was advocating the same thing I had advocated (which I had not); when I pointed out here that he misrepresented my edit, and that I had not even addressed the rendering of the name in that edit - just provided citations for it - he neither retracted his comment nor apologized for it as an error.
- -On September 10 he went to WP:MOSBIO and tried to modify the relevant section to support his position on Fred/Freddie, but neglected to say why he was so interested in that section, claiming to only be looking at John Edwards' name; in the middle of the argument he claimed here that "Tvoz suggested I visited here, and I have taken up her suggestion", including this diff of mine which clearly indicates that in fact I asked him if he was planning to go to John Edwards' page to advocate changing his name rendering to match - if indeed his concern was that saying that Thompson was named Freddie would make him look silly, then surely the same would apply to Johnny Reid "John" Edwards. I clearly was not suggesting that he try to reword MOS policy to conform to his position. (My position was consistently that Edwards and Thompson's names should be handled in the same way as they are virtually identical situations.) When I pointed out that he was again misrepresenting my comments, he ignores the comment and does not apologize or rescind it, but goes on to ask me to AGF - he's the injured party. This misrepresentation is important because I think changing policy or guideline wording should not be done to bolster one's position in a content dispute - especially in a stealth manner - and his prominent and incorrect claim that he was doing so at my suggestion is putting words in my mouth that I never said - this is unacceptable, and I've yet to receive an apology.
- -The third instance of his misrepresentation of my edits in the last 10 days came on Sept 15, in regards to a sourced comment by George Will in the Washington Post where he compares the launch of the Thompson campaign to the launch of New Coke. Ferrylodge claims "The article has again been edited (by Tvoz) to reinsert this material" and goes on to say that editors should "work by consensus, and not insist on inserting material into the article when it has been removed and rejected by multiple other editors", citing SBowers3 as one of the "multiple editors". First, I only made that edit once, not "again", and second, SBowers3 made his comments opposing the Will quote after I reinstated it, and indeed SBowers3 did not remove the George Will material at all, because he, unlike Ferrylodge, correctly recognized that there was an ongoing discussion and did not choose to edit war, just to discuss. Ferrylodge doesn't do that - he'll discuss, but only if his preferred wording is in place in an article, and he'll revert to his wording repeatedly, even when several editors are changing it. At the time I reinstated the material there were three editors including me who spoke up for including the material, and only two, Ferrylodge and Rosspz, who opposed it. I pointed out to Ferrylodge that he had misrepresented me for the third time, asked him to correct his comment on both counts. No apology for misrepresenting me was given, and although he edited his comment here, he did it in a way that didn't really address my objection.
- -The fourth problem occurred on Sept 19, when Ferrylodge, by innuendo, falsely accused me of wikistalking because I commented in support of another editor's point that disagreed with his; I objected to the accusation, and he disingenuously said that some editors don't know what wikistalking is, and that he wasn't making accusations. Meanwhile I brought the conversation to his talk page and asked him to point out where I was harassing him or disrupting anything - which as another editor also pointed out is the key point in identifying wikistalking. He has had no reply, as I have done no such thing, yet he again did not apologize or rescind his accusation, only implied that I was accusing him of harassment which I was not.
- Although on their own, individually, these instances are not particularly grievous (except perhaps the MOSBIO manipulation), taken together I think this reveals a pattern that is very disturbing, and I am only speaking here of the recent instances where I noticed his misrepresentations and unwillingness to admit error and apologize. I also have observed that often Ferrylodge's edits express his POV, rather than neutrally approaching the subject of reproduction on the one hand and political candidates on the other, and he tends to use bully tactics, editing in a tendentious manner, making disingenuous arguments. For all of these reasons, and based on comments of the editors above, I think that a ban is in order. Short of that I would concur with Durova in support of at least a partial ban on editing all reproduction and political articles. Tvoz |talk 09:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: Regarding the MOSBIO issue, you have misrepresented the facts. As you can see in the history, Ferrylodge made only three edits, each time reverting Threeafterthree's attempt to manipulate the MOS to support their position on Fred/Freddie. The text after his final edit is identical to what it was before Threeafterthree messed with it. That's the exact opposite of your claim that he "tried to modify the relevant section to support his position". Now I'm not sure what he was thinking when he said that you had referred him there – maybe he confused you with Threeafterthree, since your names both start with T? – but your recounting of events is at least as flawed. (And to pick a truly minuscule nit, Ferrylodge's edits were on 9-Sep, not 10-Sep as you wrote - I point this out merely to demonstrate that memories aren't 100% perfect.) -- Zsero 18:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps I wasn't clear: I was talking about his proposal on Wikipedia talk:MOSBIO of September 10, not his edits of Threeafterthree on September 9. See the diff I posted last night. He proposed a MOSBIO change here and the objection I raised above was not about the substance of his proposal, but about his misrepresentation of my role in it. I have not misrepresented the facts, Zsero. Tvoz |talk 20:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: Regarding the MOSBIO issue, you have misrepresented the facts. As you can see in the history, Ferrylodge made only three edits, each time reverting Threeafterthree's attempt to manipulate the MOS to support their position on Fred/Freddie. The text after his final edit is identical to what it was before Threeafterthree messed with it. That's the exact opposite of your claim that he "tried to modify the relevant section to support his position". Now I'm not sure what he was thinking when he said that you had referred him there – maybe he confused you with Threeafterthree, since your names both start with T? – but your recounting of events is at least as flawed. (And to pick a truly minuscule nit, Ferrylodge's edits were on 9-Sep, not 10-Sep as you wrote - I point this out merely to demonstrate that memories aren't 100% perfect.) -- Zsero 18:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment about edit warring on Fred Thompson regarding Fred/Freddie. Regardless of what one can conclude from reading the Washpo article, and contrary to what is asserted below, Ferrylodge, with 7 reverts in one day on this one point, accused me - with only 2 - of edit warring. I'll leave it to others to reach conclusions, except to say that "one inadvertent breach of 3RR" is not quite the situation - it's just the only time he was called on it recently:
- These are diffs of relevant edits by Ferrylodge on September 9, all but one of which are haggling about word order regarding Fred/Freddie, the other one was removing Freddie altogether:
- 1st revert: 05:52, 9 September 2007
- 2nd revert: 06:05, 9 September 2007
- 3rd revert: 06:20, 9 September 2007
- 4th revert: 06:33, 9 September 2007 (this one completely removed "Freddie" despite the reliable sources that accompanied the name)
- 5th revert: 16:09, 9 September 2007
- 6th revert: 17:41, 9 September 2007
- 7th revert: 17:50, 9 September 2007
- These are my relevant diffs on September 9:
- 1st revert: 9:21 9 September 2007 (putting "Freddie" and sources back in)
- 2nd revert: 18:08, 9 September 2007
Tvoz |talk 09:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support I have had only limited and very recent interaction with Ferrylodge, but overall his tone was hostile and I asked repeatedly that he adopt a more civil tone, with no particular effect. Also disturbing was his tendency to preemptive accusation: accusing TVoz of wikistalking and then (on another page) clarifying that she hadn't wikistalked him yet but that he (apparently) anticipated that she would; preemptively accusing me of making unsourced modifications to an article, when I had not yet made the modifications, etc. He gave no explanation for his position that "motherhood" begins at conception and not, as it is usually defined, at the birth of one's child, but defended it simply with hostility.
- Checking into his history, I find that he is a Men's Rights activist who's focus is the abortion issue (see the bottom of this page). In keeping with that, his Wikipedia edits focus strongly on abortion and related subjects: 511 edits to Roe v. Wade, 297 edits to Fetus, and many edits to Abortion in the United States, Intact dilation and extraction, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, etc. This focus and his abrasive manner has lead to his being blocked twice, and seems to underly his insistance that his description of gestation be featured in the lede of the article Mother.
- In summary, he has a strong point of view and seems to be using intimidation tactics to defend it. --Pleasantville 14:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, now that's interesting. I'm not sure if this is germane or not, but I just noticed that all four of the editors who have posted evidence of having been seriously harassed by Ferrylodge, and the one administrator whose block he has protested for months, are female. And clearly self-identify as female. He has maligned Bishonen endlessly since she blocked him; he has never offered a peep about his other two blocks, and even apologized for breaking 3RR. KillerChihuahua?!? 15:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, so now I'm a misogynist? If Pleasantville is female, I had no idea of that until just now. What I do know about Pleasantville is that she is a very unkind editor. I refer any interested readers to this discussion which is the only discussion I ever had with Pleasantville. KC has edited many abortion-related articles, and that mere fact does not imply anything about her POV; likewise, I fail to see how some DMOZ editor's POV can be deduced from a category that he or she edits. But apparently any shred of alleged information is fair game here.Ferrylodge 16:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I'm missing where "Ferrylodge, please maintain a civil tone" is unkind, although your accusations she was "condescending, psychoanalyzing, and pretending that [Ferrylodge's] tone is not civil" in response to that gentle request seems a bit confrontational. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- For clarification: My initials are also KC as in Kathryn Cramer; I presume for the purposes of this discussion,"KC" refers to KillerChihuahua. --Pleasantville 16:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, sorry about that. If anyone shortens your name, it will probably be "PV" for Pleasantville, which I hope will not be unduly confusing for everyone. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, so now I'm a misogynist? If Pleasantville is female, I had no idea of that until just now. What I do know about Pleasantville is that she is a very unkind editor. I refer any interested readers to this discussion which is the only discussion I ever had with Pleasantville. KC has edited many abortion-related articles, and that mere fact does not imply anything about her POV; likewise, I fail to see how some DMOZ editor's POV can be deduced from a category that he or she edits. But apparently any shred of alleged information is fair game here.Ferrylodge 16:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support - Obvious case of WP:TE and of exhausting the community's patience. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose. The behavior is troubling, but it does not seem to rise to the level of an outright community ban. I would support a topic ban and some sort of behavioral probation. Maybe mentoring is also appropriate. Dean Wormer 16:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to opine that I oppose this proposed ban. And rather strongly at that. I haven't had that much interaction with Ferrylodge, but it seems to me that Wikipedia would be better off if we were discussing something better than banning a contributor who, contrary to some people's opinions, does actually improve the encyclopedia. I can't comment on the uterus/womb dispute, but in a lot of cases, it does look like he is being railroaded because of his point of view. There is a content dispute that he is a part of. But it takes two (or more) to edit war. I've seen Ferrylodge be a helpful contributor on the Fred Thompson article, and agree with some of what he says below. I didn't follow Bishonen's 2nd RfC, but at first glance it does seem like people were just laughing at Ferrylodge. I don't know the full details, but community bans are not for useful contributors. If he was revert warring, block him accordingly. No need to deprive the project of a helpful contributor forever. He's not a vandal, he's not unhelpful, he participates in discussion (although sometimes not as well as we'd all like), and he's not creating a big enough disruption that it is shutting the encyclopedia down. He may deserve to be blocked, but he doesn't deserve this. Mahalo. --Ali'i 16:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment How about instead of an outright ban or a topic ban, a restriction to one revert per week (that is per 168 hours) per article? Or something like that, anyway. Perhaps that's too strict, perhaps that's not strict enough. Perhaps 2RR per week with a maximum of 3RR per month. This would seem likely to take care of many of the concerns raised above. --Yamla 16:58, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- That might be a workable solution. I think that the major problem here is indeed tendentiousness; Ferrylodge has often persisted in beating a dead horse when he's failed to convince anyone else of his argument. Restricting him from edit-warring (e.g. with 0RR or 1RR) would allow him to continue to contribute, but he would need to actually build consensus to see his proposed edits enacted. I do think that continuing the status quo is a bad idea, as there's clearly a problem here; I also wonder whether a full siteban without an intermediate step is overkill, though I'm not categorically opposed. MastCell Talk 17:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- That sounds more reasonable to me. I think an approach along these lines would probably be more appropriate at this stage. Gatoclass 17:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- That might be a workable solution. I think that the major problem here is indeed tendentiousness; Ferrylodge has often persisted in beating a dead horse when he's failed to convince anyone else of his argument. Restricting him from edit-warring (e.g. with 0RR or 1RR) would allow him to continue to contribute, but he would need to actually build consensus to see his proposed edits enacted. I do think that continuing the status quo is a bad idea, as there's clearly a problem here; I also wonder whether a full siteban without an intermediate step is overkill, though I'm not categorically opposed. MastCell Talk 17:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- (after ec) Which would be acceptable were it only his DE; however, its also the harassment and accusations he bogs people down with which is a massive problem. Did you not see his accusation that Pleasantville is "not nice" and when one looks, oh hey, she asked him very nicely and politely and delicately to be civil - which resulted in a response of him making further and FAR more hostile accusations. I don't know how anyone can see his history and the linked information and somehow conclude this has anything to do with his POV. No one cares what his POV is, so far as I know - I certainly don't, its irrelevant - its his nasty insinuations, false accusations, personalizing of any type of disputes, and edit warring as a minority of one which is the problem. He was blocked for 3RR, and his disingenuous argument below is that "there was only one edit on talk:stillbirth - conveniently ignoring the thirty or so on the previous articles where he was waging that little war before taking it to other articles. This is precisely the situation with his RCOG edit warring: everyone but he stated clearly there was zero reason to characterize RCOG as "pro-choice" - on talk:abortion. When he took the term off to the RCOG article that very same day, he stridently protested that there had been no discussion, because it hadn't been discussed on the RCOG talk page. Now, this is beyond nonsensical. If they aren't pro-choice, and there are no sources to say they are pro-choice, it really doesn't matter where that statement is made, its unsourced. Its not the revert warring. Its the approach and the treatment of others. I see some people are actually swallowing his story that there is some kind of dispute between the two of us. If the community wishes to give a topic ban, I selfishly would be happy enough, as if he's off the pregnancy and abortion articles I won't have to deal with him any more, and hopefully we won't lose Pleasantville as we lost Severa. However, from what I see here, Swatjester and Tvoz among others might object to continuing to deal with him on political articles. I have no idea about the legal articles, I don't edit or watch them. But if there is to be any kind of helpful resolution, it must address his behavior towards others. I cannot spend the hours of time it would take to refute and correct every spurious charge he makes against me, and it is wearing to the spirit to have to contend with that kind of character assassination day in day out. its why Severa left. Its why the other people who have been treated this way are here. Its not something "between me and FL" it is something about how FL treats others. Puppy has spoken, puppy is done. KillerChihuahua?!? 17:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong oppose. All I know about is what happened at the Fred Thompson, and it's been completely misrepresented here. Ferrylodge was simply maintaining the status quo while a contention proposed change was being discussed. That's what's meant to happen, isn't it? If you want to make a change to an article, and it's strongly opposed, you're meant to discuss it on the Talk page and see whether a consensus develops for or against it. You do not keep re-inserting your change while the discussion is going on. The status quo should be maintained, and that's exactly what Ferrylodge was doing. Any blame for edit-warring belongs squarely on the shoulders of those who insisted on making their change without first achieving consensus for it.
- As for the 3RR that got him blocked, which is supposedly the trigger for this discussion, I disagree with Yamla's claim that the four reverts were all essentially the same because they all "serve to reintroduce "womb" each time in any case". At first he seems to have tried to revert the unilateral attempt to change "womb" to uterus, as was his right; when that encountered opposition, he seems to have tried for a compromise that would include both words. That's a substantive difference, and should not have been counted as a continuation of the same revert. He should never have been blocked in the first place, and this discussion should not have been initiated.
- -- Zsero 19:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Say what you will about the community ban, but you're wrong about the 3RR block. Four edits in the space of a few hours which undo another editor's work, in full or in part, violate not only the spirit but the letter of 3RR. You may want to re-read WP:3RR, because this one was open-and-shut. MastCell Talk 20:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I have interacted with Ferrylodge since roughly January of this year. Things got so intense that I had to take a wikibreak, and consciously avoided FL for a while. I think a good example of what many people find objectionable is this: Talk:Abortion#New paragraph and technical language. Reasonable objections to the proposal are ignored, and the replies are short, smug, and throwing back a strawman caricature of what the previous person had said. If this isn't patronizing, or an attempt to bait, then I don't know what is. So after 4 different editors objected the the proposal, FL makes a threat to "[slap] a POV tag on this article", which he later fulfills (and decided to make the same general arguments from 4 days before while attacking myself and KC). It is just frustrating to try to work with someone who is combative and defensive. While we can't make people be nice to one another, it sure is civil to have humility and sympathy with those you disagree with.
One of the issues is, the negative conduct only comes out during content disputes. From having interacted with FL, and reading all these others who have interacted with him on other articles, it seems clear that this is more than just a handful of people trying to get a user who they politically disagree with banned. It's about if you say something critical about FL, you are bound to get something worse and more hurtful thrown back at you (i.e. Pleasantville saying Please try to adopt a more civil tone. You seem to be extremely anxious about this and FL responding Please stop condescending, psychoanalyzing, and pretending that my tone is not civil. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in that regard. [114]), it's about an editor who behaves childishly when he doesn't get his way, and editor who leaves editors hurt after content disputes, and has no regrets or apologies.
So what will a topic ban do? Will it prevent him from getting in content disputes? Will it make him realize that his editing has hurt a lot of editors? That reasonably, he should feel guilt or remorse and apologize, even though that seems to go against his very nature. Clearly a topic ban will not solve these underlying issues. It will just help the editors with whom he spars feel more comfortable in the topics they regularly edit, knowing that they don't have a difficult editor to deal with anymore. Limiting the number of reverts wouldn't help because the main issue is how he handles himself on talk pages during disputes, not his excessive breaking of revert rules.
Now, I do not believe that those of us who have interacted with FL should be the ones to decide his editing fate on wikipedia. And because of that, I will not vote one way or another (at least not yet) in regards to a block or topic ban or whatever. It does seem a little suspicious that editors who have disagreed with FL in the past are now here in troves saying he be permibanned, while editors who have sided with him are saying he shouldn't (with a few uninvolved parties on both sides). I believe the ban was given out too early, and I believe we should wait for more uninvolved parties to examine this.
For those uninvolved parties, I'd say look at FL's recent edit history at Talk:Pregnancy, Talk:Abortion, Talk:Mother. There is a pattern of moving debates from one article to the next, even if (and perhaps especially if) consensus is not going his way. There is a pattern of boarderline incivility (and clearly patronizing) posts when consensus isn't going his way or if he is called out on his editing behavior. If anyone examining this case decided to look at FL's talk page, I recommend searching through the page history, because not all posts that were made to FL are represented in the linked "archives". Additionally, the RfC is an example of FL knowing that he can never be wrong taken to the extreme (just see how he still refers to this day). I'd be glad to discuss the conflicts from early 2007 that I/Severa were involved with, but I think the important thing is that concerns of FL's talk page behavior during disputes date back to then. And not a whole lot has changed. -Andrew c [talk] 22:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Reply to KillerChihuahua's Proposed Community Ban
I have been editing at Wikipedia since April of 2004. As KillerChihuahua knows, I was blocked today for the third time, so I have been blocked on average once per year. The current block was for 3RR when I reverted KillerChihuahua, and I have already apologized repeatedly for it at my talk page. As MastCell put it, I "did show contrition for violating 3RR." If anyone wants to read the details at my talk page, here's the link. Mastcell also noted that, "There's been incivility on both sides."
KillerChihuahua has taken this opportunity to build a case for banning me. I disagree with her, and would like to explain why.
KillerChihuahua has been uncivil to me today. At the abortion article today, she asserted that my words are "bullshit". At the pregnancy article today, she suggested that I am "naive and disingenuous." More recently, at the stillbirth article, she said that I am a "spammer". Actually, the "spam" to which she referred was a list of definitions of the word "womb" from reliable sources, and I had not previously listed those definitions (or any of them) anywhere else, prior to listing them in the stillbirth article. More examples of incivility abound. Here, KC said that my words are "inane." Here she said that my behaviour served no purpose, "unless your purpose is to convince others that you are congenitally dense."
Let's look at KC's allegations. She says that I have been waging a low-level edit war via attrition on abortion and related pages since December 2006, fading in and out like some kind of guerilla. It is true that I have edited those pages, among many many others, as can be seen from my contribution history. I have 271 articles on my watchlist, and I do not enjoy the hassles of continuously editing the abortion-related articles, so I revisit them now and then.
I will pass over KC's generalized allegations (which I deny) and go to her specific examples. She starts with the example of the stillbirth article, which involved the 3RR for which I have apologized today (involving my third block in as many years). KC says: "My count (and I may have missed some) is six editors supporting 'uterus' over 'womb' as a more accurate and appropriate term, and one or two 'no preference' editors, and one, Ferrylodge, edit warring to use the word 'womb' - the debate has been spread over multiple articles....Ferrylodge is maintaining his position that he alone is correct, that he alone is NPOV, that editors who disagree with him are disruptive edit warring POV pushers. No one supports his preferred phrasing and since his block, no one has reverted to his version or inserted the word."
But look at the actual discussion at stillbirth that KC emphasizes. Prior to KC's appearance at that article, a grand total of one single editor (ConfuciusOrnis) sought to completely remove the word "womb" from that stillbirth article. I wrote a talk page response to that one single editor, in which I pointed out that I was not seeking to introduce the word "womb" into the article, seeing as how that word had been in the article long before I ever touched that stillbirth article.[115]. Moreover, I explained that I was not advocating removing the word "uterus" from the article, but rather believed the article should contain both words, which are synonymous.
If there had been more than just one other editor trying to change the stillbirth article to completely delete the word "womb", then I would have acquiesced, with objections. But there was only one. KillerChihuahua then came to the stillbirth article today, and reverted in favor of ConfuciusOrnius here. I now quote her edit summary verbatim: "Ferrylodge I have no idea why you are so in love with the word 'womb' but please stop this silly campaign to use an inaccurate and non-specific vulgar term. Write a poem or something. 'Ode to the womb.'" I am not in love with the word "womb". Rather, I objected to the recent effort (of the last two days) to completely delete this word "womb" from all of Wikipedia's abortion-related and pregnancy-related articles. I have never suggested that either the word "uterus" or the word "womb" should be completely removed, but have instead contended that they are synonymous words so that neither should be eliminated from Wikipedia. After all, Wikipedia guidelines say: "Write for the average reader and a general audience—not professionals or patients. Explain medical jargon or use plain English instead if possible."
In addition to KillerChihuahua's rude edit summary (accusing me of a silly campaign and telling me to go write a poem), Killerchihuahua also commented very briefly at the talk page, accusing me of spamming the stillbirth talk page. Please look at what she erroneously called "spam": a detailed list of reliable sources stating that those two words ("womb" and "uterus") are synonymous --- at that time (14:13 on 20 September) I had not shown that list anywhere else but at the stillbirth talk page (I would later copy the list at 14:45 in the pregnancy discussion because people were similarly attempting to completely delete the longstanding word "womb" from that pregnancy article as well). Instead of replying civilly at the stillbirth discussion page, KillerChihuahua blithely called the list of references in the stillbirth talk page "spam", and reverted my edit without addressing that list of references whatsoever (beyond her insults in the edit summary and her accusation of spam at the talk page).
Killerchihuahua suggests that no one has agreed with me that the word "womb" can sometimes be used in addition to the word "uterus" in these types of articles. She is incorrect. Hoplon has agreed with me today. Also, Agne has also agreed with me that "'womb' is undoubtedly the more common term. Both Wikipedia policies and common sense implores us to look at the context of each usage and decide which one is one appropriate." I understand the need to acquiesce when outnumbered. I've done it a million times at Wikipedia (more than I would like). And I am prepared to do it here as well, though I detest the effort to completely delete the word "womb" from numerous Wikipedia articles where it has coexisted with the word "uterus" for years, without any fuss at all.
KillerChihuahua's next example is the POV tag that I added to the abortion article. In my entire three years at Wikipedia, I have never before added a POV tag once until this week. I do it twice this week and that's grounds for banishment? Killerchihuahua is incorrect when she says that I had no support at the abortion article; you can go to the discussion page and see the support. For example, LCP wrote today that his "main argument is that the lack of any image of what is aborted or any mention of how what is aborted is disposed of harms the credibility of this article."[116] When the POV tag was removed for a second time, I did not edit-war about its removal. And I stand by my contention that the abortion article is slanted; it contains virtually no description of what is aborted, and KC has insisted yet again this week that the article not even contain a single image of what is aborted.
KC also criticizes me because I "strongly recommended" (on Talk:Pregnancy) that an opposing editor on the Stillbirth article be blocked for disruption; she sarcastically writes: "of course it could not be a simple case of Ferrylodge editing against consensus." As I already pointed out, at that time there was only one single editor (ConfuciusOrnis) at the stillbirth article who wanted the word "womb" to be completely deleted from that article though it had been in that article for years. ConfuciusOrnis was edit-warring about it, as the article's edit history shows. If one editor supports a change in the article, and another editor opposes the change, how does that create a "consensus" for changing the article? KC is flat wrong about that.
KC also asserts that I should be banned because I asked her today to not post on my talk page. I have previously been accused of harassing KC at her talk page, and I have not gone anywhere near her talk page since that accusation. Am I under an obligation to allow her to post at my talk page? Is it grounds for banishment for an editor to politely ask another editor to post elsewhere than at the first editor's talk page? KC also complains that I cherry-pick her statements. I quoted her above several times, and I provided a link every time. Is it cherry-picking to mention that she characterizes my words as "bullshit"? If KC does not want such insults to be cherry-picked, then she should not utter them in the first place.
KC also asserts that "Ferrylodge showed himself resistant to the concept that he could possibly have erred at all." That is obviously false, and she knows it. Earlier today, I repeatedly apologized for my 3RR error. Likewise, yesterday, I specifically apologized to KC for another error here. When I make mistakes, I try to own up to them.
Lastly, KC complains about an RfC that I initiated against Bishonen. That was the only RfC that I have ever initiated against anyone during my entire three years at Wikipedia, although I did once join an RfC launched by someone else. KC is now seeking to dredge up that incident, and to get the last word. I feel compelled to briefly respond yet again. In my view, the harassment charge against me several months ago was inappropriate. Killerchihuahua never asked me to leave her talk page.[117] Bishonen asked me to leave KC's talk page, but Killerchihuahua did not. I did leave KC's talk page after denying the harassment charge, and I was blocked for denying the charge. How many other people at Wikipedia are blocked for harassing someone who never asked to be left alone? When I subsequently brought an RfC against Bishonen, Bishonen rounded up her friends, who proceeded to abuse the RfC, for example byposting images of food and the like. Neither I, nor the editor who joined me in the RfC, agreed with the outcome,[118] but I dropped the matter rather than going through a time-consuming and disruptive arbitration.
So, those are my responses to KC's initial post here. I may or may not have further comments, depending upon whether time permits, although I will be travelling on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (September 21-23) and therefore will not have internet access.
I would like to very briefly respond now to Swatjester, who mentions a recent article in the Washington Post, which mentioned me. No objective person could read that article and conclude that I was edit-warring, anymore than they conclude that the other mentioned editor (Tvoz) was edit-warring. The fact of the matter is that there was a lot of controversy at the Fred Thompson article, and the majority of editors agreed with my position. Why should I be banned from Wikipedia because a majority of editors agreed with me about a particular matter?
- You know quite well that's not why you're being requested to be banned. Don't attempt to hide this in a content issue; this is about your disruptive behavior. ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I will also briefly respond now to Severa. KillerChihuahua accuses me above of "using claims of having been wronged to attempt to gain leverage over others." Then Severa posts her comment that she "stopped editing Wikipedia due to having to deal with Ferrylodge's tendentious editing." I wonder if KC will criticize Severa for "using claims of having been wronged to attempt to gain leverage over others."
Severa is upset about a comment that I made at a talk page over six months ago, and here is the entire comment: "I have posted a general comment about reverts, and the need to explain them, here." That's it. I have little recollection of it, but if people really believe that such a brief comment six months ago supports banning me, then I will investigate further, and try to reconstruct why Severa could have been so offended by such a brief remark by me. My understanding of "wikistalking" is that it's done to harass, whereas it's perfectly OK to monitor a user if one believes that the user's edits are suspect and need another eye. I hardly think that that one brief sentence over six months ago is even remotely related to wikistalking.
I have no grudge against anyone at Wikipedia, including KillerChihuahua. But that does not mean I should relax and accept being called a "bullshit" artist, or the like, does it? My goal is to calmly develop a neutral and well-referenced incredible encyclopedia. If anyone looks at my contributions in toto, I believe you will find that they have helped reach that goal, including my edits to abortion-related articles. Among other things, I brought the Roe v. Wade article through a featured article review, and have done much else to improve Wikipedia, and I am proud of it.Ferrylodge 05:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Given your repeated claims that you will not apologize ever to KillerChihuahua, you most certainly do have a grudge. ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I will tell you what the concern is, Ferrylodge. Had you responded in a manner that shows some kind of understanding and acceptance that your behavior has been disruptive, I would have reconsidered my support for a community ban or a topic ban. We all make mistakes, and can learn not to repeat them, if willing. That is a choice we all have. But your response is a defense in which you claim that you have not erred, when the evidence is overwhelming that you did. That's a pity. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:44, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Reply to Tvoz
Tvoz has made some pretty extensive comments above, and so I should respond. Tvoz and I were both honored to appear in a Washington Post article together recently. The subject was the rather trivial matter about how Fred Thompson's name should be presented in his Wikipedia article. Ultimately, the position that I supported prevailed (at least for the time being), and Tvoz is understandably not happy about that.
Tvoz now charges me with four separate "misrepresentations." However, she mischaracterizes all four of those matters.
Tvoz, please look at this edit of yours on September 9. When a person (such as yourself) footnotes a proposition, the implication is that the person supports the proposition. You are wrong to seek my banishment merely because I inferred your support for a proposition that you yourself footnoted. You’re entitled to correct the misimpression left by your edit, but please don’t demand apologies from me for drawing a perfectly reasonable inference. People do not normally footnote propositions with which they disagree.
- I'll quibble with that: in that very same matter, I introduced a link to an image of Thompson's first marriage certificate, and argued for retaining it, although it tended on the whole to support Tvoz's position rather than ours. OTOH, Tvoz expressed surprise at my action, and seemed to think I didn't realise that it tended to support her position, which tends to support your claim that this behaviour is unusual. But it's all a bit murky. -- Zsero 18:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Regarding Tvoz's suggestion that I crept over to the wp:mosbio and supposedly neglected to say why I was so interested, please look again. Before I ever suggested any change to the mosbio, I loudly and plainly announced at mosbio that I was concerned about Fred Thompson.
Tvoz also says that I “misrepresented” her suggestion that I visit the John Edwards page to argue about how Edwards's name should be presented. I visited the MOSBIO (instead of John Edwards's page) and mentioned that Tvoz had suggested I do so. What difference does this miniscule error make? Tvoz was suggesting that I argue about how John Edwards’s name is presented, so what difference does it make if I ended up making that argument at MOSBIO as opposed to at the John Edwards article? Why is this more than splitting hairs? What possible benefit could I derive from this incredibly slight imprecision? Tvoz keeps saying that I “misrepresented” her, but there was no dishonesty on my part, only an extremely slight imprecision.
Then Tvoz piles on with alleged misrepresentation #3: that I said “The article has again been edited (by Tvoz) to reinsert this material.” I only meant that the article had been edited to reinsert the material more than once, and that Tvoz was the person who did so the last time. After Tvoz requested that I clarify, I did here, in order to emphasize that the material was previously reinserted by another editor instead of by Tvoz. What more could I possibly do than correct myself? These are extremely slight matters, and not relevant to a proposed ban.
Then Tvoz alleges a fourth misrepresentation: she says that I falsely accused her of wikistalking. But I told Tvoz point blank: “I am not making accusations. Some users are unaware that it is bad form to follow other users around. If you are following me around (from Fred Thompson to abortion to mother), then I would kindly ask you to please stop.” Do you want me to engrave that in gold and send it to you, Tvoz? How can I say that I am not making accusations any better than that?
And as for the other events at the Fred Thompson article, here’s a link in case anyone’s interested.Ferrylodge 10:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Your point? I was in the WaPo article as well. Doesn't dismiss Tvoz's evidence that you have been edit warring on the FredThompson page. The fact that your tendentious editing rose to the level of finding its way to the FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post due to your edit war over Fred Thompson's name, should be a telling sign of your tendentious editing tendencies. That Pleasantville suggests that you may also be misogynist only makes even more sense; the weight of the evidence apparently supports it, and it is pretty widely known that my history with Pleasantville has been less than stellar. At your fourth "misrepresentation" it does not matter how you couch your words in the illegitimate form of a question. You were accusing Tvoz of stalking you. Saying "I'm not making accusations. Stop stalking me." is itself a clear accusation. At your second "misrepresentation" you say "Tvoz keeps saying that I “misrepresented” her". Your entire freaking argument is about how she's misrepresenting you. Which is it? ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- This is completely wrong. The WaPo piece was not about Ferrylodge's "edit war"; it would be just as fair to say that it was about Tvoz's "edit war". Tvoz was the one who insisted on making a change without first achieving consensus for it.
- Pleasantville's accusation of misogyny is contemptible, and there's nothing at all to support it - we generally don't know each other's sexes around here. I only learned that Tvoz was a woman from the WaPo.
- And no, Ferrylodge did not say or imply "Stop stalking me", which would indeed be an accusation; he said, in effect, "please don't stalk me". When asked about this, he made it clear that his warning was preemptive, not an accusation of misconduct that had already happened.
- Zsero 19:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Your point? I was in the WaPo article as well. Doesn't dismiss Tvoz's evidence that you have been edit warring on the FredThompson page. The fact that your tendentious editing rose to the level of finding its way to the FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post due to your edit war over Fred Thompson's name, should be a telling sign of your tendentious editing tendencies. That Pleasantville suggests that you may also be misogynist only makes even more sense; the weight of the evidence apparently supports it, and it is pretty widely known that my history with Pleasantville has been less than stellar. At your fourth "misrepresentation" it does not matter how you couch your words in the illegitimate form of a question. You were accusing Tvoz of stalking you. Saying "I'm not making accusations. Stop stalking me." is itself a clear accusation. At your second "misrepresentation" you say "Tvoz keeps saying that I “misrepresented” her". Your entire freaking argument is about how she's misrepresenting you. Which is it? ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 17:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Where have I allegded that Ferrylodge is a misogynist? I have pointed out (correctly) that he is the editor of a "Men's Rights" page concerning reproductive rights. If in Zsero's opinion, "Men's rights" are misogynist, he is entitled to his opinion, but that is not my opinion. --Pleasantville 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Pleasantville didn't. Ferrylodge accused Pleasantville of alleging he was a misogynist. Or he accused me, that part is unclear. I think it was probably me. However, it was a fairly typical case of Ferrylodge inflating and twisting what someone else said, so that now Zsero is left with the impression Pleasantville alleged something she didn't. KillerChihuahua?!? 22:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Where have I allegded that Ferrylodge is a misogynist? I have pointed out (correctly) that he is the editor of a "Men's Rights" page concerning reproductive rights. If in Zsero's opinion, "Men's rights" are misogynist, he is entitled to his opinion, but that is not my opinion. --Pleasantville 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Summary so Far
So, it seems that there are a few choices after some discussion:
- - Outright ban (seems excessive)
- - Topic ban on reproduction and US politics
- - Edit Warring parole (1RR or similar)
After reading this I think that an edit warring parole is the place to start, and that the specifics of it should not be limited to reverts of article space. The parole should include all facets that have been discussed of tenditious distruptive behavior. --Rocksanddirt 17:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- 1RR per week site-wide in all namespaces and topic ban from reproduction-related and U.S. politics articles, per Yamla. Also, an immediate, total site ban if Ferrylodge is discovered circumventing his restrictions with sockpuppets.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.195.94.194 (talk • contribs) 18:01, 21 September 2007
- I support an outright ban. Reading his comments and viewing his history he's not ammenable to change. Odd nature 18:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I think that this matter, seeing opposition (including my own) to the outright ban, should be requested to be discussed by the Wikipedia:Arbitration committee. The top of this page reads, "Complex or ambiguous cases should go to dispute resolution." This isn't the type of case that should really be handled by the community sanction noticeboard. I know some of you have said, "I don't think dispute resolution would work", but you never bothered to try the next steps. Bans are supposed to be a last resort. Please consider taking this to the ArbCom. Mahalo nui loa. --Ali'i 18:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Banned
Based on the overwhelming consensus for a ban seen here, I've blocked Ferrylodge idedfinitely. FeloniousMonk 18:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Concur. (See Tom Harrison's quote on my user page.) Raymond Arritt 18:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose this (in my opinion, premature) indef block, as I don't think you can determine "overwhelming consensus" after less than 24 hours of discussion. (However, I have no opinion on the overall merits of the case against Ferrylodge yet, as I haven't had the chance to fully review his contributions). JavaTenor 18:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- He can appeal it if he wants. But this was approaching snowball's chance in Tahiti of not happening. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 18:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I object to such a quick decision, and also object to this being characterized as a WP:SNOW situation. There are numerous objections above, which, if you read WP:SNOW, is not a snowball. - Dean Wormer 18:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- He can appeal it if he wants. But this was approaching snowball's chance in Tahiti of not happening. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 18:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support Odd nature 18:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strongest Possible Support Filll 18:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong Support OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 19:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support. He can show some contrition and appeal. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support (obviously, but just for the record) KillerChihuahua?!? 19:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose - "overwhelming consensus"? I make the vote thus far 9 to 6 in favour of an outright ban versus a lesser
penaltymeasure. That doesn't seem very "overwhelming" to me. Gatoclass 19:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)- comment: Its not a "penalty". Please feel free to ask me about this on my talk page, but blocks are always preventative, not punitive. That you so clearly misunderstand the purpose and intent of blocking and banning leads me to be concerned that your reasoning in other areas concerning this may be somewhat faulty as well. KillerChihuahua?!? 19:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Quite frankly, the difference seems semantic to me. You may throw someone in jail as a "preventative measure" rather than a "punishment", but I doubt the terminology makes much difference to the timeserver. Gatoclass 19:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I object, strongly. This was a fucking terrible call. See my statement above this section for my reasoning. Mahalo. --Ali'i 19:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: After months after months of low-level disruptive editing, this editor has to be dealt with, IMHO. If there are not enough people to support this ban, and/or if this editor successfully appeals, then of course he should be welcomed back to WP. For now, this gives the community time to look at his egregious and shameful record of past abuses and consider if this is the kind of element we support having here. And we can do so without his excessive interference and personal attacks on those considering the situation while we contemplate his record, as he has done in the past when corrective measures and guidance were suggested or offered. If it is decided this was done with excessive alacrity, then it can of course be reversed, right?--Filll 19:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support -Severa 19:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support a full ban (though I do think the implementation of it was premature). I read all of the evidence (and more) yesterday and waited until Ferrylodge had a chance to respond (perhaps others did the same?). I found his response lacking in both remorse for his incorrect actions and truth. I looked at the things he claimed supported his position, and his misrepresentations of what actually happened were clear, which is in keeping with all of the other evidence presented I'd love it if a parole or topic ban would help, but based on his past, I don't think either will. It's a fundamental issue here. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I concur. It did happen rather fast, but apparently was driven largely by his own response (based on edit summaries.) And it was much longer than the time it took for Theodore7's ban, for example. KillerChihuahua?!? 19:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support ban Ugh, just finished going through his responses and some of his earlier talk page contribs. The user is incorrigible, a ban is the only way to stop his disruption. ornis (t) 19:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Strong oppose and object. There's hardly been time - I only learned about this last night. Of course there's an initial surge of support for a ban, because those users knew about it first. It's especially unfair since Ferrylodge's ability to respond to accusations has been extremely limited (his IP at work remains blocked, and he's already said he'll be away from the net over the weekend). This block is completely unfair, and all on its own justifies Ferrylodge's claim to be the victim here. It looks to me like a lynching. I demand that it be reversed at once. -- Zsero 19:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Regarding the IP not working... it was a lingering autoblock from my 3RR block. I used our autoblock-finding tool to undo it when I unblocked Ferrylodge's main account, but it didn't show any autoblocks, so I was confused. As it turns out, the autoblock finder was malfunctioning, so I was unable to find and undo the autoblock on Ferrylodge's work IP. I apologize for this technical problem. MastCell Talk 20:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Especially when the one doing the final deed is involved in the discussion. Like I said... this has all the appearances of a railroading. Oh, the irony. --Ali'i 19:24, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, it does not pass the smell test. It should be reversed for further discussion, to allow an actual "overwhelming" consensus to form. Several options were proposed, and were not discussed fully. Dean Wormer 19:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- 2.5:1 in favor of a ban passes my smell test, pal. Odd nature 20:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Your use of the word "pal" in this context is decidedly uncivil. Please reformulate your response. 2.5:1 is certainly not an "overwhelming" consensus, nor a snowball. The discussion isn't over yet. Dean Wormer 21:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- 2.5:1 in favor of a ban passes my smell test, pal. Odd nature 20:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- At the moment it is running 4:1 in favor of a ban, so if something is rotten in Denmark here, it is not the consensus for a ban. It must be something else. Hmm...I wonder what that might be?--Filll 20:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- And what exactly is it you are implying with that thinly veiled lack of AGF? Dean Wormer 21:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, it does not pass the smell test. It should be reversed for further discussion, to allow an actual "overwhelming" consensus to form. Several options were proposed, and were not discussed fully. Dean Wormer 19:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Come now, this can easily be reversed if the situation is as unfair, biased and one-sided as you assert it is. What this does is, create a breathing space for the community to consider this festering DE problem that has polluted WP for at least 9 months in an unimpeded manner. Past evidence suggests that in some cases, pre-emptive measures are appropriate and prudent since those considering the record of this editor do not themselves want to be subjected to intimidation and harassment and wikilawyering. If in a calm, contemplative atmosphere, it is determined by the community that some mistake has been made, or some rules violated, or some element of protocol applied inappropriately, this decision can be revisited and reversed, of course.--Filll 19:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, let's tape the defendant's mouth while we all discuss which tree to hang him from. This is a f---ing travesty. -- Zsero 19:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- This is more like taking the defendant's gun away from him while we discuss his fate, when the defendant has previously fired his gun at those who dared suggest he had done anything inappropriate.--Filll 19:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- What gun? You're assuming what it's up to you to prove. All he's done that I can see is defended himself when attacked, and pointed out that he has not in fact done the things people have accused him of. And now you're taping his mouth shut to prevent him from doing so. Verdict first, trial after. In any case, he's already said he'll be away from home over the weekend, and he can't edit from work, so what are you afraid of? That he'll get a word in edgewise when he can manage a net connection that isn't blocked? -- Zsero 20:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I suspect Zsero is unaware of this editor's past behavior when challenged, which goes well beyond "defending himself". I suggest you review the record carefully before making such statements.--Filll 20:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- This is more like taking the defendant's gun away from him while we discuss his fate, when the defendant has previously fired his gun at those who dared suggest he had done anything inappropriate.--Filll 19:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Zsero here is a frequent revert-partner (I'd go so far as to say an accomplice) in Ferrylodge's tendentious editing. Zsero should probably be on revert parole himself.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.174.171.187 (talk • contribs)
- Please do not make personal attacks. It is not productive, and your reasoning is flawed. We are not all in cohoots with Ferrylodge. Dean Wormer 19:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Zsero here is a frequent revert-partner (I'd go so far as to say an accomplice) in Ferrylodge's tendentious editing. Zsero should probably be on revert parole himself.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.174.171.187 (talk • contribs)
- Oppose block (for now at least) per Ali'i and the lack of time. As I read more about Ferrylodge's action, I became more incline to advocate a strong topic ban (including contact with KC) with 1RR but action was taken far to prematurely without clear consensus to do so. This was far from a WP:SNOW situation. AgneCheese/Wine 19:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oh, I don't know about that, there was a clear consensus and whatever support for Ferrylodge there was was weak and scatered, and none made very compelling arguments for not banning. Add that to his total lack of contrition and the additional evidence presented by Raymond Arritt, and I don't see how he wouldn't be banned. He practically begged for it in his response. Odd nature 19:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree there was consensus for some kind of sanction but I don't see how you can read the above small sampling of response and see anything close to a WP:SNOW consensus for indef ban. Couple that with the incredibly short time frame and it clear that the block was premature and (right now) inappropriate. AgneCheese/Wine 19:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Oh, I don't know about that, there was a clear consensus and whatever support for Ferrylodge there was was weak and scatered, and none made very compelling arguments for not banning. Add that to his total lack of contrition and the additional evidence presented by Raymond Arritt, and I don't see how he wouldn't be banned. He practically begged for it in his response. Odd nature 19:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Object I am adding my objection here, as my objection above is nested within a sub thread. Dean Wormer 19:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support, we must always protect our project and its volunteers from chronic harassment and abuse. How much longer do we accommodate Ferrylodge's disruption? 84.174.171.187 19:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support, for reasons argued in the initial discussion; Ferrylodge is an activist with an unremitting agenda. --Pleasantville 20:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Hold on there, are you saying that there are political motivations at play here? Then I object even more strenuously. This is starting to sound like a content dispute. Dean Wormer 20:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have no objections to his contributions. I have severe objections to his past behavior, which is well beyond what should be allowed in the project. And this is true no matter what is personal political position or agenda might be on any particular issue.--Filll 20:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Dean Wormer: I was summarizing my initial statement. See above in the first discussion. My remarks pertain to behavior rather than to the specifics of his opinions. --Pleasantville 20:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have no objections to his contributions. I have severe objections to his past behavior, which is well beyond what should be allowed in the project. And this is true no matter what is personal political position or agenda might be on any particular issue.--Filll 20:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support ban. Guettarda 20:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support a full ban – dave souza, talk 20:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- CommentA pre-emptive block during an ongoing discussion is very poor form, especially when it undermines the actions of another admin - Mastcell specifically unblocked Ferrylodge so that he could participate in this discussion. See Wikipedia:Wheel war. I note that FeloniousMonk has also tagged Ferrylodge's userpage with the community ban template, without closing this discussion. Very poor choices for an admin. Banno 21:08, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I do not pretend to know all the niceties and protocols that hold here. However, I do know what the past record shows. And I for one, would not welcome a personal attackod or having an RfC filed against me for no good reason, or other tactics this editor has employed in the past. Enough is enough.--Filll 21:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- It's not preemptive block. FM's block summary implies just the opposite, that the block was instantiating a ban which had consensus, both true BTW. Odd nature 21:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: FeloniousMonk didn't add the tags to Ferrylodge's page. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- FeloniousMonk wasn't wheel-warring. I unblocked Ferrylodge so he could contribute to this discussion. FeloniousMonk blocked him in consequence of this discussion. He wasn't undoing my administrative action; regardless of what you think of the propriety of the block, he was not wheel-warring. MastCell Talk 21:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- FM and Swatjester both added templates, but where is it written that the person issuing the block has to close the discussion here? I don't see anything that says FM should have done that. Odd nature 21:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- My error, I only saw Swat's. Thanks for the correction, ON. I have to say I don't see why FM should be criticised for not closing this, as clearly some contributors feel more discussion and input is needed. That seems to conflict with the concerns that this was a "too rapid response". I'm perplexed by the contradictory assertions. And no, the blocking admin doesn't have to close, nor is it written anywhere that he does. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Comment. I supported sanctions short of a full community ban, and questioned the speed with which a not-yet-formulated consensus was carried out, and characterized. For that, I have been treated uncivilly, and had my good faith questioned. I have more important wiki work to do, so I will participate in this drumhead court no longer. Dean Wormer 21:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Unblock please
I'd strongly urge FeloniousMonk to unblock Ferrylodge at least until the conclusion of proceedings here, and until stronger consensus for a ban appears, a simple vote count (I know, evil) reveals something around 65% support for a ban at the present time, not really a firm enough consensus to warrant a definitive, final ban. Nick 21:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Actually its a 4:1 consensus in favor of the ban. Why on earth would should FM unblock him? Odd nature 21:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree completely with KillerChihuahua's formulation of the problem here. Yes, Ferrylodge is a tendentious editor; yes, interacting with him has driven at least one highly valued contributor from the project, a significant loss for Wikipedia; yes, I personally feel that a siteban is a reasonable, if somewhat strong, remedy. But I don't think anyone can dispute that some significant objections have been voiced here, and there's been some support for discussing alternative remedies like 0RR/1RR or topic bans. I think that if we enact a siteban in the face of real, good-faith dissent, then we're undermining the credibility this process in the long run. Far more tendentious editors have been given a last-chance topic ban or revert limitation. I don't think anyone has seriously disputed that Ferrylodge's approach is problematic; why not take the opportunity to discuss our options in dealing with it a little further and try to bring some of the editors who have opposed a siteban into the consensus? If we block him now, then the discussion is going to be viewed as closed, for all intents and purposes. Like Nick, I'd just rather see a little more before we take that step. MastCell Talk 21:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Despite what you may have read in the Washington Post :-P , I have seen Ferrylodge be a helpful contributor at Fred Thompson, and would support a topical ban from abortion/pregnency articles or a revert limit if that is where he is being disruptive. But I've been maligned enough in this "discussion", so I'm taking a break. Mahalo. --Ali'i 21:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- I agree completely with KillerChihuahua's formulation of the problem here. Yes, Ferrylodge is a tendentious editor; yes, interacting with him has driven at least one highly valued contributor from the project, a significant loss for Wikipedia; yes, I personally feel that a siteban is a reasonable, if somewhat strong, remedy. But I don't think anyone can dispute that some significant objections have been voiced here, and there's been some support for discussing alternative remedies like 0RR/1RR or topic bans. I think that if we enact a siteban in the face of real, good-faith dissent, then we're undermining the credibility this process in the long run. Far more tendentious editors have been given a last-chance topic ban or revert limitation. I don't think anyone has seriously disputed that Ferrylodge's approach is problematic; why not take the opportunity to discuss our options in dealing with it a little further and try to bring some of the editors who have opposed a siteban into the consensus? If we block him now, then the discussion is going to be viewed as closed, for all intents and purposes. Like Nick, I'd just rather see a little more before we take that step. MastCell Talk 21:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- (ec)I strongly feel that eventually it will have to be a site ban, as I just don't see Ferrylodge ever seeing anything problematic about his behavior. I think unblocking him will simply take more time and waste more virtual ink. However, I do not object to unblocking him if anyone feels his lengthly diatribe against those who presented evidence here and supported his block has afforded him insufficient response. Meanwhile, the "ban" section above seems to consist of those supporting the block, and those opposing it as enacted too quickly. I again point to Theodore7's ban, as precedent, that "fast" isn't always the wrong choice, and suggest that merely opposing on the grounds of rapidity is unhelpful. Fast is sometimes better than slow, if it merely serves to prolong the agony. I suggest if anyone wishes to make an argument for another remedy, such as 0RR, 1RR, topic bans, and the like, that a section be created for that purpose. However, as opinions are split, care will have to be taken not to conflate opposition to the ban with support of Ferrylodge's behavior. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- While I agree with KC that Ferrylodge will end up with a site ban as he cannot learn, I do not like implementation of such a ban prior to the completion of this discussion, unless there was disruption somewhere else. I agree with Mastcel that it undermines the integrity of this forum, which is part a way to speed up the process of dealing with disruptive editors. --Rocksanddirt 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- at the risk of sounding dense... you think he should be site banned, but you object that its been done? I'm sorry, that reads like "we should spend lots of time discussing it, then do it." Rather than "its going to happen anyway, why waste everyone's time?" KillerChihuahua?!? 22:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- If the editor is going to be banned, sit back, relax and wait for consensus to emerge, don't cut the guy off and stop him from mounting a defence, no matter how ridiculous or an attack on others, if he is to avoid being banned, he deserves every change to do so, and if he is going to be banned, allowing things to run to their conclusion isn't hurting anyone. If it takes another few hours, a day or more before everyone is happy to close the discussion and ban the guy, so what. Rushing everything through is just causing more problems than it solves, as we see here. I don't see any reason to block the guy while there is still discussion ongoing about a ban or other measures though. Nick 22:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- While I agree with KC that Ferrylodge will end up with a site ban as he cannot learn, I do not like implementation of such a ban prior to the completion of this discussion, unless there was disruption somewhere else. I agree with Mastcel that it undermines the integrity of this forum, which is part a way to speed up the process of dealing with disruptive editors. --Rocksanddirt 21:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- (ec)I strongly feel that eventually it will have to be a site ban, as I just don't see Ferrylodge ever seeing anything problematic about his behavior. I think unblocking him will simply take more time and waste more virtual ink. However, I do not object to unblocking him if anyone feels his lengthly diatribe against those who presented evidence here and supported his block has afforded him insufficient response. Meanwhile, the "ban" section above seems to consist of those supporting the block, and those opposing it as enacted too quickly. I again point to Theodore7's ban, as precedent, that "fast" isn't always the wrong choice, and suggest that merely opposing on the grounds of rapidity is unhelpful. Fast is sometimes better than slow, if it merely serves to prolong the agony. I suggest if anyone wishes to make an argument for another remedy, such as 0RR, 1RR, topic bans, and the like, that a section be created for that purpose. However, as opinions are split, care will have to be taken not to conflate opposition to the ban with support of Ferrylodge's behavior. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Proposals
- Endorse current ban
- Support ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support Odd nature 22:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support --Pleasantville 22:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Support Exactly how many times do I have to vote on this ban?OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 22:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- -
- Indef topic ban on all pregnancy and abortion related articles, zero tolerance on continuing WP:TE on other articles
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- -
- Indef topic ban on all pregnancy and abortion and political related articles, zero tolerance on continuing WP:TE on other articles
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- -