Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Evidence

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk) — General discussion (Talk) Case clerks: Amorymeltzer (Talk) & Dougweller (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Newyorkbrad (Talk) & Rlevse (Talk) & Risker (Talk)

Prior instructions

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum of 1000 words and 100 diffs. Giving a short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior. It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide. This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to refactor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move. Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

In addition to the usual guidelines for arbitration cases, the following procedures apply to this case:

• The case will be opened within 24 hours after the posting of these guidelines.
• The drafting arbitrators will be Newyorkbrad, Rlevse, and Risker. The arbitration clerk for the case will be Amorymeltzer, but all the active arbitration clerks are asked to assist with this case as needed.
• The title of the case will be Climate change. Participants are asked to bear in mind that case titles are chosen for administrative convenience and do not reflect any prejudgment on the scope or outcome of the case.
• Notice of the opening of the case will be given to all editors who were named as parties in the request for arbitration, all editors who commented on the request, and all editors who commented on either of the two pending related requests ("Sock Puppet Standards of Evidence" and "Stephan Schulz and Lar"). If any other editor later becomes a potential subject of the case, such as by being mentioned extensively in evidence or named in a workshop proposal, a notice should also be given to that editor at that time.
• The issues raised in the "Sock Puppet Standards of Evidence" and "Stephan Schulz and Lar" requests may be raised and addressed in evidence in this case if (but only if) they have not been resolved by other means.
• Preparation of a formal list of "parties to the case" will not be required. In previous cases of this complexity, extensive discussion about who is or is not or should be or should not be a party has often become the focus of controversy, sometimes to the detriment of the parties' focusing on the merits of the case itself. As long as all editors whose conduct is being reviewed are notified of the case, and the decision makes it clear which editors are affected by any sanctions, it does not ultimately matter whether a given editor was formally named as a "party" or not.
• Within five days from the opening of the case (i.e. by 00:28, 18 June 2010 (UTC)), participants are asked to provide a listing of the sub-issues that they believe should be addressed in the committee's decision. This should be done in a section of the Workshop page designated for that purpose. Each issue should be set forth in as a one-sentence, neutrally worded question—for example:
  • "Should User:X be sanctioned for tendentious editing on Article:Y"?
  • "Has User:Foo made personal attacks on editors of Article:Z?"
  • "Did Administrator:Bar violate the ABC policy on (date)?"
  • "Should the current community probation on Global Warming articles by modified by (suggested change)?"

The committee will not be obliged to address all the identified sub-issues in its decision, but having the questions identified should help focus the evidence and workshop proposals.

• All evidence should be posted within 15 days from the opening of the case (i.e. by 00:28, 28 June 2010 (UTC)). The drafters will seek to move the case to arbitrator workshop proposals and/or a proposed decision within a reasonable time thereafter, bearing in mind the need for the committee to examine what will presumably be a very considerable body of evidence.
• Participants are urgently requested to keep their evidence and workshop proposals as concise as reasonably possible.
• The length limitation on evidence submissions is to be enforced in a flexible manner to maximize the value of each user's evidence to the arbitrators. Users who submit overlength diatribes or repetitious presentations will be asked by the clerks to pare them. On the other hand, the word limit should preferably not be enforced in a way that hampers the reader's ability to evaluate the evidence. For example, an editor may present evidence in a form such as "event A occurred [diff 1] and then event B occurred [2], which led to event C [3], followed by a personal attack [4], and an uncivil comment [5], resulting in a block [6], an unblock [7], and an ANI discussion [8]." It sometimes happens that the editor is asked to shorten his or her evidence, and it is refactored to read something like "there was a dispute about a block [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]." This does not make life easier for the arbitrators who have to study all the evidence. Editors should take this into account before complaining that other editors' sections are too long.
• All participants are expected to abide by the general guideline for Conduct on arbitration pages, which states:

  The pages associated with Arbitration cases are primarily intended to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at a fair, well-informed, and expeditious resolution of each case. Participation by editors who present good-faith statements, evidence, and workshop proposals is appreciated. While allowance is made for the fact that parties and other interested editors may have strong feelings about the subject-matters of their dispute, appropriate decorum should be maintained on these pages. Incivility, personal attacks, and strident rhetoric should be avoided in Arbitration as in all other areas of Wikipedia.

• Until this case is finally decided, the existing community sanctions and procedures for Climate change and Global warming articles remain in full effect, and editors on these articles are expected to be on their best behavior.
• Any arbitrator, clerk, or other uninvolved administrator is authorized to block, page-ban, or otherwise appropriately sanction any participant in this case whose conduct on the case pages departs repeatedly or severely from appropriate standards of decorum. Except in truly egregious cases, a warning will first be given with a citation to this notice. (We hope that it will never be necessary to invoke this paragraph.)
• This procedural notice shall be copied at the top of the evidence and workshop pages. Any questions about these procedures may be asked in a designated section of the workshop talkpage.
• After this case is closed, editors will be asked to comment on whether any of the procedures listed above should be made standard practice for all future cases, or for future complex cases.

Evidence presented by BozMo

Too few uninvolved admins are trying to do too much

Someone with a better tool set can check the numbers but I think there have been around 100 cases (?98) discussed on the enforcement pages with at least 5000 diffs worth of discussion in a matter of months. You need to be pretty self-confident as an uninvolved admin to get stuck in without having a reasonable feel for precedent. In practice most cases are dealt with by the same (roughly five) admins discussing them. We need ventilation; about five or ten more people who, like 2/0 originally feel called to get stuck in and some sort of rotation system. If we cannot get uninvolved admins prepared to do this forever then doing one month shifts or similar would help. --BozMo talk 08:04, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There is evidence that people seek kudos from bringing down WMC

I am a bit concerned that there is almost a cult of people seeking kudos as giant slayers, with WMC being target (frustrating as an editor though he may be). Aside from a large number of complaints on enforcement which no one would even look at if made about other editors, and some fine examples below from editors with, shall we say, total contributions to the project smaller than their contribution to this workshop, see things like [1] "I'm guessing and hoping that the three of us will all be topic-banned by ArbCom." That's AQFK saying he, Mark Nutley and WMC as "all three". AGFK may not have meant it the way I am taking it but it is representative of a tone of kamikaze concert party. Together they make a series of mainly frivolous complaints, then argue that the length of their list proves guilt. Not just at the probation pages where we have had multiple complaints here even below there seem to be syntheses slanted by selection and interpretation just aiming at this outcome. We can ignore comments from non-contributing disruptors, but they do bait and chip away at the atmosphere. WMC is the most scrutinised and baited editor on Wikipedia and most of the diffs below on WMC (some of which included below at the time I write this are from 2006) have long since been properly dealt with. I add to this two other examples (one by a user who was banned from all Climate Change pages and discussion except appeals and Arbcom at the time and has filled pages on these arbcom pages) [2]. Whatever anyone in Arbcom thinks about WMC, claiming this kind of socking is absurd and just a coatrack for PAs on CC as a topic ban evasion. And equally the repeated removal of his WMC's qualifications from the article about him, which eventually got stopped by Jimbo [3] but which raises the question why him. --BozMo talk 23:13, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

There is some real BLP concern

The single point where I still feel we are failing in quality is in the tendency to include material which undermines the reputation of some "skeptical" BLPs. I have not edited main CC articles for a considerable time but on the small number of BLPs I watch I do keep having to take stuff out which really shouldn't be there. [4] [5] [6]. I think there is a failure on the part of some more knowledgable editors to make the extra effort to be really fair to these people. A taskforce for this would be nice. However, it is fair to say that more central figures in CC get attempts made to undermine them too. --BozMo talk 12:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Side comments to below

@ZP5. I am not sure that this is the place for you to bring up what is essentially another enforcement case below (an enforcement case which has, pretty much, been discussed to death on the enforcement pages in all the cases you mention although you are clearly unhappy with the conclusions). Rather than presenting all this (arguably off topic) material and encouraging others to respond with all of the context and detail in the various points again, perhaps you could explain how you feel the probation is going, whether it should carry on and what could be improved in it (we recognise of course your feeling it could be improved if fewer people disagreed with your perspective on WMC's editing pattern). --BozMo talk 6:11 pm, Today (UTC−4)

@The Good Locust. (1) presenting the diffs of your own talk page contributions as evidence for the assertions contained therein is an interesting form of evidence (2) You might for context include evidence about the circumstances which led to you being topic banned from CC under the probation terms, in case your readers have missed them. --BozMo talk 10:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by ZuluPapa5

William M. Connolley should be topic banned for repeated uncivil disruptions

Where the Request for Enforcements have been unable in whole, ArbCom should review William M. Connolley's newbie biting, overwhelmingly single purpose, antagonistic, and hostile "ownership" behavior in the Climate change articles and remove WMC to restore civility and progress the content with a NPOV. Diffs from William M. Connolley's (WMC) 18 cases "for disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith". Brought by 10 editors and involving many other users time in the Climate change probation from January to June 2010. Opening and closing comments linked to an index. Demonstrates that WMC has continued: edit-waring; interacting uncivilly with other editors; making repeated comments unrelated to bettering the articles and repeatedly discussed other editors, instead of discussing the article; to basically not be a model Wikipedian; after knowing he crossed the line.

Newbie biting, PA and other antagonistic examples

1. Newbie biting confession "being excessively soft on overenthusiastic noobs does not do them any favours in the long run"
2. "spoon feeding for the hard of understanding"
3. "AQFK's assertions of impartiality indeed appear 'laughable'...Could we try to stick to reality, please"
4. "What are you on, old fruit?"
5. "If you don't want to be condescended to, I suggest you stop making quite so many mistakes."
6. "@MN:noob"
7. "repair for the incompetent"
8. "this entire section is stupid"
9. Unproductive jab ("utter rubbish").
10. Adds an insinuation that an editor is a fool to his comment
11. Adds an accusation of bias to his comment
12. "MN is, as usual, defending anything anti-GW, regardless of reality"
13. Attacks editor with "pointless malicious revert"
14. Calls an editor "malicious"
15. Repeats above infraction
16. Edits another editors post to say he does not care
17. Accuses another editor of "Spamming"
18. Same as above "spam"
19. Accuses an editor of being "snarky"
20. Attacks editor with "you should learn to make coherent valuable content edits."
21. edit summary "clueless", directed at Mark Nutley. Text: "Face it, you really don't know what is going on here but are determined to push your POV anyway"
22. Incivility directed at MN: "you should find an arera to edit that you understand"
23. "MN's statement reflects a lack of understanding of the science, and was correctly removed. It is regrettable that he is adding material that he doesn't understand. It cannot be a co-incidence that this suits the POV" #"I note that MN is still pushing his bizarre "this is what all the sources call it" unmarked reverts"
24. "It's good to see you chaps finally coming out into the open and admitting you're a team. Full points for honesty, well done Cla and ATren!"
25. Refers to an editor's contribution "we don't expect miracles"

Edit waring during the sanctions

1. [7]
2. [8]
3. [9]
4. [10]

Example of WMC ownership and uncompromising edits in a single article

In December 2009, before the Climate change probation, admin 2over0 instructed WMC to talk and provide compromises. In the Scientific opinion on climate change article example, I counted 9 instances of WMC negative edit summaries (i.e. "no" and "not" language) and 35 instances in the article talk page. This demonstrates WMC inability to provide for compromise by consistent reverting with "no" an "not" language. The example demonstrate that the editor's narrow point of view and ownership behavior is obstructing article progress. From this behavior analysis, I concluded that WMC is an "indignant reverter" and, at that time, should have been subject to a zero revert restriction.

• The editor's 9 "no" and 'not" reverts to the main article: [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20] (Reverts to other articles excluded.)

• The editor's 35 "no" and "not" talk, without or with little compromise: [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55]

In whole, this example of excessive negativity is cause for concern with WMC's WP:OWN behavior. It is largely uncompromising and often defended with personal attacks [56] and other uncivil behavior, such as introducing original research and synthesis from his blogs [57], during the discussion on the article talk page.

What is most concerning, is WMC attempts to circumvent dispute resolution and have newbie editors banned [58] [59] with personal attacks and socking allegations.

WMC's Conflicts of Interests

WMC's owns the point of view and opinions put forth by a political organization of scientists known as the IPCC. This group has a narrow mission, which WMC aggressively advocates on Wikipedia with uncivil conflict. Owning a POV is sufficiently harmless; however, WMC's activism in the Scientific opinion on climate change article (and others), has antagonistically excluded [60] [61] reliably published views from other legitimate organizations NIPCC, causing harm to the content's NPOV. Editing to represent a single owned POV in the climate change articles is a conflict of interest. Wikipedia's best interests are maintained when many views and opinions, from diverse organizations, are combined into a NPOV.

WMC's owned views and activism has adversely affect biographies of living persons, which was recently determined in Fred Singer (NIPCC contributor) for which he was banned. However, List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming largely created by WMC, is a BLP violation designed to present scientists who oppose WMC's owned POV in a false light. The listing itself has no source support, it was constructed for WMC's activists views and harms BLPs. WMC (and others) select membership based on their owned opinions and synthesis of other scientists views, so as to distort them as being in (battleground mentality) opposition to the IPCC. [62]

WMC holds his activist views above other editors and published sources, to the point of causing other users great pains with uncivil personal attacks. A true Doctor of Philosophy, meaning "teacher in philosophy", is chiefly concerned with educating the newbie over denigrating them with their knowledge, for their owned selfish benefit.

Essentially, WMC would like Wikipedia to serve his vested interests in a POV, rather then him civility serving the Wikipedia community to reach a NPOV.

Editor comments on WMC's civility

• Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2009/Comments/William_M._Connolley
• Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2009/Comments/William_M._Connolley
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/William_M._Connolley
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/William_M._Connolley_2
• Editors WMC incited to misbehave [63]

Drama resulting from Lar blocking WMC

Arbcom should review and affirm Lar's original block to WMC. In addition, it should be noted that the escalations associated with this 1 hr block, are precedent to the elaborations in the RFC and this ArbCom case.

• Lar blocks WMC for 1 hr for "Disruptive Editing" [64] citing this diff [65], and follows up with [66], [67]
• 2over0 quickly unblocks WMC [68] and files for ANI review [69] where Stephan Schulz is implicated.
• 2over0 opens Climate Sanctions RFC claiming "Most of the disruption boils down to often heated or uncivil disagreement ..." [70]
• ArbCom opens "Climate change", combines "Stephan Schulz and Lar" filing from ANI dispute, after disappointment with RFC. [71]

Scibaby sock investigation performance

A preliminary analysis in June [72] indicates 165 accused socks with 133 true positive finding, 12 socks found (but were not Scibaby) and 20 editors falsely accused with possible preemptive blocks.

GoRight's Request for Arbitration should be reopened in this case

• GoRight's good faith request, [[73]] where ArbCom placed faith in the Climate change probation to solve disputes. Which resulted in GoRight being banned.

Responses not covered in talk page

@BozMo see [74], your request would approach ArbCom like an RFC. There are other opportunities for collecting comments and attempting to set Wikipedia content or policy. WMC's behavior has been disputed for years in the climate change articles, by many others than me. Time for an arbitration with Wikipidia's principles front and center along side of WMC's disruptive behavior.

Evidence presented by Polargeo

Lar should not act as an uninvolved admin in Climate Change Enforcement but particularly in cases where he has displayed personal animosity to a user

A previous arbcom ruling highlights the problems and sensitivities in the area [75]

Avoiding apparent impropriety

All editors, and especially administrators, should strive to avoid conduct that might appear at first sight to violate policy. Examples include an administrator repeatedly making administrator actions that might reasonably be construed as reinforcing the administrator’s position in a content dispute, even where the administrator actually has no such intention; or an editor repeatedly editing in apparent coordination with other editors in circumstances which might give rise to reasonable but inaccurate suspicions of sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry.

• The most supported viewpoint in the recent RfC/U was Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lar#Outside view by Short Brigade Harvester Boris which clearly states If adherence to the spirit of policy is of any interest at all, then Lar's continued involvement in enforcing the climate change probation is problematic
• The view in the RfC/U that Lar was involved regarding William M. Connolley was not supported however, the most relevent evidence only came to light late on on the RfC/U talkpage and these diffs were never presented on the main page. I give examples of them here and here. I think Lar's animosity towards WMC started with him undoing the close of an MfD [76], before and after undoing this close Lar participated in the discussion and so was not acting as an uninvolved admin. These examples show that in two completely unrelated cases, shortly before Climate Change sanctions began and where Lar was not acting as an admin in either, Lar has shown a clear animosity towards WMC. Therefore Lar now acting as an admin on sanctions enforcement with often the heaviest calls for bans against WMC shows that he is not in line with the arbcom ruling I outlined earlier. Polargeo (talk) 16:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Count Iblis

Current situation

Like almost all science related articles, the global warming related pages are edited according to WP:SPOV, despite this not being official policy. This then leads to tensions in which the sceptics seem to engage in bad behavior a lot more than the other editors, because of the following dynamics.

From the perspective of a sceptic, it is not nice to find out that the rules are only used against you. When a rule favors your position, it is not valid "by consensus"; this may invite more arguments based on the rules which then will be seen to be wikilawyering by the other editors, ultimately escalating into Adminstative interventions which tend to target the sceptics. This may lead to a perception that the Administrative processes are biased against the sceptics, which in turn polarizes things even more, even leading to disputes at the Admin level.

How we got where we are today

While the main Global Warming article was always written from the SPOV perspective, there was vigorous opposition to this by sceptical editors until early 2007. There were frequent edit wars, but despite that, the editors succeeded in maintaining the FA status of the article. The crucial thing that made this possible was not Adminstrative involvement, topic bans or anything of that sort (Apart from Scibaby, no one was banned). Instead, it was keeping the politics away from the main article and moving that to the global warming controversy article.

What changed in early 2007 was that the bikkering on the talk page became a lot less after a poll on article subject was held with the discussons indicating a consensus on scientific focus his was not the first poll of this sort and it came after a sceptical editor asked for help here and and here in vain. So, the support for the scientific perspective was quite solid, but by making that more explicit by holding polls, the sceptics could see more clearly that they were fighting a losing battle.

Here is the reason I gave for rejecting inclusion of politics in the article at that time. As is clear from that discussion, you could not do that at that time, because this would inevitably bring in bad science in the article. Today, the political climate surrounding global warming is a bit different and that has allowed the editors to have a paragraph in the article about the politics.

Conclusion

What should be clear from the history is that the right decisions were made in sometimes difficult editing environments. Whether or not someone had engaged in personal attacks in 2007 is not relevant at all to understanding the evolution of the article. What the above history does show is that there is a tension perceived by the sceptics between the Wiki rules and the scientific focus of the article. This leads to tensions today, because the sceptical editors of today are different from those in 2007 who conceded after vigorous discussions.

The only way to address this is by either making the de-facto SPOV official, or having to go through the same vigorous discussions every few years when the group of sceptics changes and start to question the consensus for SPOV. Count Iblis (talk) 01:22, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Cla68

In my opinion, the primary source of the problems that occur related to the global warming (AGW) topic in Wikipedia is not the ongoing, real-life debate about the theory of human-caused climate change, but the behavior of a group of editors, led by William M. Connolley (WMC), who regularly edit and attempt to control the content of the AGW articles. This group of editors make little attempt to cooperate, collaborate, and compromise with other editors who have differing opinions on article content. Worse, this group of editors continually seeks to defame, ridicule, embarrass, disparage, and attack the BLPs of climate change contrarians, occurring up to the present time [77] [78]. Thus, the issue here is primarily behavior, much of it unethical, not content. In WMC's case, I think there may be ulterior motives driving this behavior, as I will explain in my evidence below. The group in question, in my opinion, consists of, besides WMC, Stephan Schulz (an administrator), KimDabelsteinPetersen, Guettarda, Hipocrite (formerly PouponOnToast), Atmoz, ChrisO, dave souza, and Short Brigade Harvester Boris (who I understand has an alternate administrator account the he/she no longer uses.).

Has there been any extended abuse of BLP articles by the WMC's group?

Yes. See, on this page, [79] [80] [81] [82].

• A few others: [83] BLP violation in edit summary citing a blog for negative information again

• Because of the tight deadline, I don't have time to find further evidence on this point (besides the Solomon example below). I believe, however, that a perusal of any of the BLP's listed on this list will encounter a similar pattern of the editors I listed above adding generally negative information and removing positive information. Although in many cases the information removed will have issues, I think one will find that these editors simply remove it without trying to find any way, such as looking for alternate sources, to keep it.

WMC et al vs Lawrence Solomon

Two years ago, WMC attacked Lawrence Solomon on his blog, apparently after Solomon commented negatively on WMC in his newspaper column. Since that time, WMC and his group have effectively declared war on the Solomon bio, especially trying to keep Solomon, a career environmentalist, from being described as such in the article:

[84] [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99] [100] [101] [102] [103] [104] [105] [106] [107] [108] [109] [110] [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] [116] [117] [118] [119] [120] [121] [122] [123] [124] [125] [126] [127] [128] [129]

Noticing what was going on, I accessed Infotrac and ProQuest NewsStand and added some new information and sources: [130]. WMC reacted quickly then reverted the material and sources that I had just added, assisted by KimDabelsteinPetersen [131]. 2/0 asked for outside opinions at the WP:BLPN and an uninvolved editor responded. Kim and WMC continued to try to wikilawyer the new info and sources away, but eventually gave up. Or did they? WMC reattacks it again, while this case was ongoing. He and his group only backs off when ATren reminds them of WMC's blog post. All of this was completely unnecessary, but shows what happens when WMC decides someone is a threat or deserving of such treatment in their Wikipedia bio.

Has WMC's group employed incivility on the talk pages of any of the climate change articles?

Yes. For example, this is what I encountered when I first tried to edit the Global warming article as a newbie editor: [132] [133]. I gave up trying to discuss and improve the article's content soon after. The same type of behavior continued after that. Instead of listing an avalanche of diffs, I suggest simply going to the global warming talk page history and selecting a month at random. I'll list some examples from months I've chosen at random but from different years to show the pattern. Imagine if you were the editor on the receiving end of these comments or observed these discussions as an outside observer/lurker who was thinking of getting involved.

• November 2007- [134] [135] [136] [137] [138] [139] (Raymond arritt is apparently an old account of Short Brigade Harvester Boris) [140] [141] (notice that Raymond removed the personal attack against WMC, but supported the personal attacks which WMC and Raul654 had made previously) [142] WMC uses admin privileges in an article in which he is heavily involved? hypocrisy/double standard [143] [144]
• November 2008- [145] [146] Atmoz [147] [148] [149] pot calling the kettle black [150] [151] [152] [153] edit war over removal of talk page comment
• November 2009- [154] [155] [156] [157] [158] [159] [160]. Actually, the comments this month are noticeably tamer, I think as a result of the topic getting increased scrutiny from WP's administration. Unfortunately, the incivility has not completely ended, as further evidence shows: Atmoz; WMC: [161] [162] [163] [164] [165] [166] [167] [168] [169] [170] [171] [172] [173] [174] [175] [176] [177] [178] [179] [180] [181] [182] [183] [184] [185] [186] [187] [188] [189] [190] [191] [192] [193] [194] [195] [196] [197] [198] [199] [200] [201] [202] [203] [204] [205] [206] [207] [208] [209] [210] [211][212] [213] [214] [215] [216] [217] [218] [219] [220] [221]

As many of these diffs show, WMC usually prefers the word "septic" to describe those he perceives to disagree with his POV on AGW. Sometimes these "septics" are other Wikipedia editors and sometimes they are living people, some of whom have Wikipedia BLPs.

Has this incivility hindered cooperation, collaboration, and compromise in building or improving articles?

Yes, most definitely. Besides driving at least one editor away, the attitudes have made it difficult for new editors [222] to join in on those article.

• newbie editor driven away by WMC's incivility [223] I think WMC should have been the one to notify this editor of the ArbCom case as requested by that editor because WMC was the other party involved. I don't know if WMC did so.

• Since increased admin scrutiny of the AGW topics started about nine months ago, there has been less incivility from the involved editors, with the notable exception of WMC. That group, however, has resorted to more baiting, Lar being a case in point, as documented here. More: [224] [225]

Attitude towards other editors

I believe these comments by Stephan Schulz express clearly WMC's and his group's attitude towards editors outside their group who have differences of opinion on the content of the climate change articles. [226] [227] [228] [229] [230]. Notice that Stephan appears to try to justify his and WMC's violations of Wikipedia's rules and policies as necessary to safeguard Wikipedia's articles from fools, idiots, and morons.

Does WMC have a conflict of interest regarding any specific aspects of the AGW debate?

RealClimate advocacy

Yes. One of the issues with the Climategate emails is the obvious animosity shown by Phil Jones, Michael E. Mann, and a few others towards Stephen McIntyre (WP:LINKVIO removed. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:11, 8 July 2010 (UTC)) (Note: I had linked directly to the emails in question. To see them please click on an earlier version of this page in the page history. Cla68 (talk) 22:32, 8 July 2010 (UTC)). McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (M&M), in a paper published in a scientific journal, had sharply criticised the research methodology and conclusions by Mann and his associates which produced the "hockey stick" graph. Partly in response to this and other criticisms of the graph, in late 2004 Mann and associates started the RealClimate blog to defend their hockey stick research (abbreviated as "RC" in Mann's email I linked to above). WMC, who had previously declared that he thought M&M were wrong (post on 15 Oct 2004) was one of the founding members of this blog (WP:LINKVIO removed. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC)). Soon after, McIntyre started his own blog- Climate Audit. Climate Audit now has its own group of dedicated regulars, including McKitrick and a few others who are also mentioned in the ClimateGate emails. Notice that there is a Wikipedia article on RealClimate but not one on Climate Audit. This is not a coincidence as I'll explain below.

Since that time, both blogs have been extremely dedicated in their criticisms of each other. Some examples: RealClimate and [231] [232] Climate Audit and [233]. Believe me, the level of vitriol between the staffs of these two blogs would fill several volumes with material, although my own perusal of the articles turned up in the searches I linked to above appear to show that RealClimate is much more strident in its attacks on Climate Audit than vice versa. Several of the Climategate emails by Mann, Jones, and others disparaging McIntyre and his associates, which I linked to above, attest to this (WP:LINKVIO removed. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:14, 8 July 2010 (UTC)). RealClimate, in particular, which is a moderated blog (i.e. user comments are subject to approval before posting) has pulled no punches when it comes to attacking climate change skeptics (in this case, Ian Plimer). The point that concerns us is that, as a member now former member of the RealClimate staff, WMC, along with his Wiki-cabal, has brought this same battleground mentality into Wikipedia, acting as both a defender of Mann's hockey stick research [234] [235] [236] and trying to stick it to climate change contrarians [237] [238] [239] who are apparently perceived as threats to RealClimate's agenda.

According to the Alexa rankings, Climate Audit has a much higher traffic count (69,459) than RealClimate (113,471). Also, in 2007 Climate Audit was co-winner of "Best Science Blog" [240], a prize which RealClimate has not attained. So, why is there no separate article for Climate Audit? There used to be, and WMC, coincidentally, had given that topic some attention [241] [242] (notice in this diff that WMC self-ID's as a rep of RealClimate). The article, however, no longer exists. Here's why: After existing as a separate article since August 2005, in February 2009 Atmoz suddenly, and without any prior discussion that I can find, redirected it to the McIntyre article [243]. Editors who tried to undo the redirect were quickly reverted [244] [245] [246] [247] [248] [249] [250] [251] [252] [253]. The talk page discussion on why the article could not return is, I believe, a classic example of wikilawyering at its finest [254]. A subsequent AfD did not establish consensus for a redirect.

Evidently, WMC and his associates do not want Climate Audit to have its own article and have redirected it with the apparent intention of trying to make a case that it is one man, McIntyre, not an entire group of people, who have problems with WMC's friend Mann's research [255] [256]. This is political activism, not science.

• Further evidence of advocacy editing to defend RealClimate/Mann: [257] long thread on RealClimate talk page, also this thread is a good example of the double-standard and wikilawyering used by WMC's group to defend RealClimate while attacking perceived threats.

More POV

In the summer of 2008, Dave Rado, a UK citizen, filed a formal complaint with Ofcom over the AGW documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. According to Christopher Booker, Rado approached William M. Connolley to "peer review" his complaint. According to Booker, Connolley had by that time established a reputation among climate change circles for his effective work in ensuring that Wikipedia articles on global warming stayed "on message." Apparently, if Rado was looking for help from someone with a sympathetic POV he had chosen wisely, for a quick perusal of the Great Global Warming Swindle article does not disappoint in this regard: (2007) [258] [259] Syn violation RealClimate cite revert wars over it [260] [261] [262] [263] [264] [265] [266] [267] SYN violation [268] [269] WMC uses his own blog as a source [270] note edit summary [271] [272] [273] RealClimate [274] [275] [276] [277] [278] WMC readds his blog and RealClimate cites [279] RealClimate [280] (I think you get the idea so I'll jump ahead to 2009 to show that it kept going until now): restores uncited criticism [281] [282] see edit summary for POV stance uncited criticism removes positive info, citing "undue" (2010) readds blog cites, including RealClimate restores blog cite [283] [284] [285]

A few more random diffs: WMC is aware of article traffic WMC pushes RealClimate blog [286]

Has WMC or any others in his group used delaying tactics in article talk page discussions including non sequiturs, wikilawyering, and revert warring to impede addition of new content to any climate change articles?

Yes. I believe that evidence scattered throughout this evidence section above attests to this. I don't have time, because of the tight deadline, to find further evidence. One point I want to make, however, is how frustrating it is to deal with this group's wikilawyering when it comes to sources they don't like, but which otherwise meet WP's reliable sources policy, such as, for example, this one.

Has WMC and his group displayed contempt or indifference towards article improvement efforts, including any that fall under the Good Article or Featured Article processes?

In my experience regarding the DeSmogBlog and Watts Up With That articles, Yes, and I'll explain.

After seeing WMC trying to use the advocacy blog DeSmogBlog as a source in several articles (some of these diffs are scattered throughout this evidence section), I checked Infotrac and ProQuest NewsStand and found that there was sufficient sourcing to support an article on the blog. So I started it. KimDabelsteinPetersen [287] and Dave Souza [288] quickly responded with some helpful edits (WMC, in contrast, did not [289]). Soon after, I came up with an idea of using that article and the Watts Up With That article, which had been started around the same time, as a collaboration project to help get the AGW editors to work together better. I announced that I would be trying to take DeSmogBlog to Good Article [290], and invited WMC and the other regulars to do the same with Watts Up With That [291] [292] [293] [294] [295] [296]. My invitations were answered with silence [297], indifference [298], polite refusals [299] [300], or contempt for the idea [301] [302].

My reasoning for selecting those two articles was to show that collaboration and NPOV editing are reasonable expectations for all topics within Wikipedia, including AGW. DeSmogBlog is an advocacy site for the human-caused theory on global warming and Watts Up With That is a skeptical site.

Me, Ratel, Jprw, Mark Nutley, MastCell, JohnWBarber, and Arjayay then expanded and polished the DeSmogBlog article and nominated it for GA. What I found curious was that Kim, WMC, and Dave Souza, who had previously been very active in the article, avoided it completely during the entire process, including ignoring requests for help on the talk page, when they had been previously responsive. The one exception to this being when it was nominated for GA, Kim suddenly reappeared and (along with Guettarda) [303] complained very strenuously about the inclusion of the Alexa ranking in the article. The article did pass GA, however, and remains so, due to the helpful efforts of most of the participating editors and the GA reviewer, H1nkles, to which I am grateful.

There was one issue after it passed GA, however. During a discussion on sourcing with ChrisO at the Bishop Hill (blog) article (now redirected), me and Chris disagreed on the use of of sources which mentioned the blog, but weren't about the blog. ChrisO had removed a large amount of content and sourcing from the article during an AfD discussion (ChrisO had advocated deletion). During the discussion, I mentioned DeSmogBlog as an example of using sources that way. ChrisO immediately went and blanked the section from the article, then defended his action, even after being informed that the article had passed a GA review with that content [304]. Obviously, he couldn't admit that he was wrong, because then he would have lost the argument at Bishop Hill which he was working very hard to get deleted. The problem here is, clearly, that when people ride roughshod over the GA and FA standards, it completely strips those processes of any credibility. To do so for POV reasons is, in my opinion, very sad.

Anyway, during this time, I purposely stayed away from the Watts Up With That article. I planned on helping expand it later, and did add one paragraph in mid-April. One thing I found, to my surprise, is that in spite of WMC's and those other editors' declinations of invitations to participate in improving Watt Up With That, they remained very active in editing the article. Their edits focused, however, on removing content rather than adding any or improving what was there. When content was added, it was usually negative, pejorative, or POV. Some examples: WMC, WMC, WMC revert wars, WMC removes tag, then readds it, Stephan removes text, Stephan WMC blanks a section (note: he made no effort to try and fix it), WMC removes more text, WMC readds POV tag, Tony Sideaway removes text, WMC adds uncited, negative info, SBHB neutral edit, WMC actually adds some content, but it is criticism, SBHB neutral edit, WMC removes reliably sourced text (newspaper blogs are RS), Kim adds cn tag, doesn't attempt to fix it himself, Stephan does same, SBHB helpful edit, WMC removes the RS text again, Kim adds coatrack tag, SBHB readds coatrack tag, Stephan removes the text in question, WMC re-removes it with incivil edit summary, Stephan removes text, WMC POV edit.

If those editors had spent as much time adding content as removing it, Watts Up probably could be a GA now. In summary, these editors did plan on remaining active with the Watts Up article, just not with any plan or desire to improve it. What is clear is that their only goal with regard to that article was to make sure that it remained "on message." In fact, I think this applies to all of their editing in general, videlicet, these editors are not here to improve articles unless it coincides with the goal of keeping the AGW topic "on message."

Evidence presented by Stephan Schulz

Scientific competence

The alleged "Science Cabal" editors share an unusual level of expertise. Very many of them have PhD level qualifications, are or have been published research scientists, and have served as editors or reviewers for scientific journals. Several have made significant peer-reviewed contributions to climate science and related topics. Their largely synoptic view on the climate science articles thus is adequately explained by a common scientific approach and understanding of the scientific process.

A statement on the qualification of several editors has been provided to NYB directly to maintain privacy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:55, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Massive sock-puppeting

The climate change articles have been the target of an extremely aggressive and persistent sock-puppeting campaign. See

• Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Scibaby
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Scibaby/Archive
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Scibaby/Archive/1
• Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Scibaby (2007 and 2008 cases)
• Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Scibaby currently has some 660+ entries
• Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Scibaby has 170+ more entries
• Note that, while Scibaby is the most prolific sockmaster by far, several of the cases in 2010 and 2009 have also found other cases of sock-puppetry that could not be linked to Scibaby. Nearly all of these socks represent so-called "sceptical" positions, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously.

--Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:35, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Malicious and sophisticated socking

A recent case of socking via open proxies involved a group of accounts suggesting connections to a Wikipedia user and imitating some of his mannerisms. Another sock from the same group brought an SPI case against that user. The evidence is at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/GoRight/Archive. Due to the use of open proxies, there is, so far, no incontrovertible evidence connecting these socks to any user, however, I find the circumstantial evidence presented at the case suggestive. Either way, this is a case of malicious and disruptive WP:POINT. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:35, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Off-Wiki campaigning

There is significant off-wiki campaigning targeting the Wikipedia climate change articles and several Wikipedia users, particularly User: William M. Connolley. These campaigns range from the merely malicious to paranoid and from nuisance to active harassment. It includes explicit recruiting of inexperienced new POV editors (meatuppets). Several Wikipedia editors are involved in these campaigns. Much of this campaigning is based on plain wrong claims. Examples are below.

1. CONNOLLEY WATCH blog: "DOCUMENTING THE EVERY MOVE OF WILLIAM M. CONNOLLEY...William M. Connolley, is a fraudster...Welcome to your nightmare Connolley. Send him a hello on his Wikipedia talk page and let him know he is being watched." - stalking, and invitation to on-wiki harassment.
2. Lawrence Solomon, also User: Lawrence Solomon:
   • Lawrence Solomon: Wikipedia’s climate doctor: "How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles...All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions." The numbers cited apparently came from the, at that time completely open, edit counter. Note that "5428" was the total number of unique pages ever edited by WMC (not climate articles), the "500 articles that disappeared at his hand" were RfA closures and speedy requests, (nearly) all unrelated to climate change, and the "over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who [...] found themselves blocked from making further contributions" are nearly exclusively the subject of 24 hour blocks per then-standard WP:3RR policy, again all unrelated to climate change.
   • These, to be generous, "mistaken" claims have been widely and uncritically echoed in parts of the blogosphere: James Delingpole in the Telegraph blog [305], who also adds "Do you want to know just how ugly? I’ve been saving the worst till last. Here it is: William Connelley’s Wikipedia photograph.", Watts Up With That at [306], and then down to [307] and any number of other attack blogs.
   • Lawrence Solomon: Climategate at Wikipedia: "William Connolley, a Climategate member and Wikipedia’s chief climate change propagandist...Battles like this occurred on numerous fronts, until just after midnight on Dec 22, when Connolley reimposed his version of events and, for good measure, froze the page to prevent others from making changes". This refers to the editing initiated by this edit in the history of Medieval warm period. Note that the description does not only use extremely biased language, it also is factually wrong. William's edit "just after midnight on Dec 22" was a change unrelated to the previous edits described by LS, the article was not "frozen", but semi-protected, not by William, but by me (following IP vandalism), and not "after midnight on Dec 22", but nearly a day before the claimed time.
3. Two particular paranoid rantings have been submitted in private since they contain false and damaging claims about an unrelated Wikipedia editor.
4. Wikipedia Watch, run by User: GoRight and with contributions by User:Thegoodlocust, contains explicit instructions for effective meatpuppery at [308].

More on request. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:53, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Scientific consensus on climate change

Climate change is a vigorous research topic, but there is a strong scientific consensus on a number of core positions. These have been endorsed by all major academies of science and a large number of other scientific organisations, and are supported by analyses of the scientific literature and surveys among scientist. See scientific opinion on climate change for a summary. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:54, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by JohnWBarber

In the process of shrinking -- 14:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Polargeo violated behavior policies

• A case on the WP:GSCCRE page resulting in sanctions for disruption against him, May 27-30 [309]
• April 29 on WP:GSCCRE, creates a WP:POINTy complaint against himself [310]
• Some of the personal attacks against Lar:
  • April 27 [311]
  • April 29 [312]
  • May 4 (disparaging both Lar and his wife) [313]
  • May 24 [314] Merriam-Webster's definitions of "operator" [315]

• Personal attacks against others:
  • May 2 [316]
  • June 16 [317]

WMC

Recent personal attacks: June 15-18 [318][319][320]

BLP vio of 20 Nov 09: [321]

Hipocrite's promotion of a WP:BATTLEGROUND atmosphere

Violations of WP:CIV, WP:NPA and other violations and comments contributing to a WP:BATTLEGROUND atmosphere on climate change articles:

• March 16 [322]
• April 30-May 3 at Talk: Judith Curry For the context, which occurred roughly simultaneously in two threads, it's best to simply click on this link [323] and look at the bottom of this "Curry's notability...." section and the "Some refs" section (comments directed to me unless otherwise noted):
  • April 30 -- to Mark nutley:[324][325]
  • May 1-3 -- to me:
    • [326] -- exaggerates my comment in a disparaging way ("So, your argument is we need to use blogs as sources for quotes because it's VERY IMPORTANT RECENT INFORMATION, and for VERY IMPORTANT RECENT INFORMATION, we don't use an encyclopedic tone? No.")
    • [327]) After I asked him to substantiate his charge at 23:33 May 1 [328] there was no response.
    • [329] incivility, including an unjustified accusation of incivility
    • [330]
• May 24 [331] -- WP:BITE, WP:CIV unwelcoming comment directed at a new editor, Samwyyze (section title Hipocrite created: "A new user arrives") This was the response to the first and, as it happened, last edit by Samwyyze.
• May 25 [332] -- disparaging people with a different POV who edit climate change articles
• June 3 [333] -- WP:CIV, WP:TALKNO (misrepresentation) to Lar. (Lar explained [citing Lar's own words] how his meaning was clear)
• June 3 [334] -- to Lar on his talk page ("your side [...] your sockpuppet friends")
• June 10 at Talk:The Gore Effect, also including violations of WP:TALKNO (misrepresentation) and WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT (full thread [335] for context):
  • [336]
  • [337] -- caricaturing my argument rather than responding to it; suggesting to User:ActiveBanana that that editor should also not respond to points I made (that neither editor had responded to earlier).
• See 15:57 June 27 [338], 16:40 June 27 [339] in this discussion [340]. Other editors took note of the bad behavior [341] [342]

Jehochman and Franamax: WP:NPA, WP:AGF and promoting a WP:BATTLEGROUND atmosphere

User:ChrisO filed a complaint against me at WP:GSCCRE, alleging I filed an AfD to make a WP:POINT. I filed a complaint against ChrisO for filing a frivolous complaint. During discussions for these complaints, Jehochman and Franamax each made derogatory statements about me without stating why they believed I was doing wrong and without responding to my defense from accusations by ChrisO. As was explained to both editors, making derogatory statements about the actions of another editor without providing justification is a personal attack and a demonstration of an assumption of bad faith. Doing so in front of other editors is modeling bad behavior for them, promoting a WP:BATTLEGROUND atmosphere.

For context: This is ChrisO's complaint against me. This is my complaint against ChrisO. Both discussions mostly overlapped in time and essentially were the same one in two different places. I'm putting diffs from both threads in chronological order. "[JB]" means the comment was made in the complaint against me, "[C]" in the other one. Quotes are usually exerpts.

• 02:08 March 8 [343] -- [C] I file the complaint against ChrisO
• 07:01 March 8 [344] -- [C] Jehochman announces his conclusion, providing no justification (repetitions of this will be labeled "Jehochman does it again"): "This stronglt appears like a retaliatory filing. Gaming of this board must be discouraged. This request is therefore rejected, and I will leave it to the next admin to sanction or warn the filer as appropriate."
• 12:38 March 8 [345] -- [C] Jehochman does it again: "The subsequent comments on this thread seal the deal. I was thinking one to three months. How about one month?"
• 14:10 March 8 [346] -- [C] Jehochman does it again: "[...] I think we could justify a one month block for disruptive editing here, not a mere topic ban. [...]"
• 17:12 March 8 [347] -- [C] (diff with corrections) I ask Jehochman to justify his reasoning for thinking I did something wrong in filing this case
• 04:50 March 9 [348] -- [C] Jehochman does it again
• 06:41 March 9 [349] -- [C] Mackan79: "I don't see anything retaliatory here. I saw the AfD on Climate change denial and certainly did not perceive it to be a WP:POINT. One would have to presume that JWB does not believe the article should be deleted, and I think that's extremely unlikely. [...] much of the rest of this strikes me as utterly failing to consider the possibility that an editor was acting in good faith, and was personally attacked, and thus does not believe that he should have been."
• 13:20 March 9 [350] -- [C] Me: "I discussed POV editing less than six months ago with Jehochman both on his talk page [32] and mine. [33] and at ANI [34] and at ArbCom [35], so the idea that I would have any other motivation than wanting to delete a WP:POVFORK-violating article is ridiculous."
• 14:15 March 9 [351] -- [JB] Jehochman does it again
• 14:19 March 9 [352] -- [C] Jehochman does it again
• 20:52 9 March [353] -- [C] Jehochman does it again: "I am closing this as we aren't going to get any more done here than the following: the filing user is on notice not to use this page for retaliation."
• 23:21 March 9 [354] -- [JB] Franamax says he agrees with Jehochman's 14:15 comment that I was "pointy" and retaliating; accusation again without an explanation, on 02:29 March 12 [355]
• 23:40 March 9 [356] -- [JB] Mackan79, addressing Franamax: there's no proof of WP:POINT and anyone with accusations but without proof is violating WP:AGF
• 02:15 March 10 [357] -- I ask Franamax on his talk page to respond to my comments on the GSCCRE page
• 01:54 March 12 [358] -- [JB] ChrisO: "I suggest that the request [against me] be closed without action, but JWB could perhaps be reminded to consider how others may interpret his comments and actions"
• 19:00 March 12 [359] -- [JB] Jehochman does it again, implicitly
• 23:11 March 12 [360] -- [JB] Franamax claims to have evidence, doesn't present it: "the quick focus on JWB's behaviour below [in my complaint against ChrisO] was based on my initial assessment and confirmed by more detailed analysis. I still have the notes from the analysis but I threw away all the links after the thread was closed."
• 21:53 March 13 [361] -- [JB] Mackan79: "With all due respect, how long is this going to carry on? The initiator has proposed above that it should be closed without action. I cannot see how we would still be doing something here. The involved editor does not deserve this; please let's move on."
• 01:26 March 14 [362] -- [JB] Franamax posts a compromise decision suggested by LessHeardvanU: "All editors are warned that the tolerance for WP:BATTLE and general gaming of enforcement requests is approaching zero."
• 01:32 March 14 [363] -- Franamax on my talk page: "I will contact you presently (if you wish) to explain my methodolgy within the request, which I think you found troubling. This may take a while though, as there's a hockey game coming on soon. :)"
• 16:34 March 18 [364] -- I ask Franamax for an explanation. I never received one. That's one long hockey game.

• Long before any of this, Jehochman was well aware that those in authority on Wikipedia owe it to an editor to explain why they want to sanction him. [365]
• Long after Jehochman was calling for the strongest possible sanctions against me, he is calling William M. Connolley's long series of incivilities merely "[s]peaking one's mind" and complaints about them "petty". [366]
• Jehochman's blatant coddling of Ratel [367]

KimDabelsteinPetersen's double BLP standards for subjects, depending on their POV

Misunderstandings are one thing, but when obvious sophistry can be shown to be hurting the encyclopedia we leave the realm of content issues and are in ArbCom's purview of behavioral issues. If the subject is a climate-change skeptic, Kim D. Petersen interprets BLP loosely. For AGW-supporting scientists, Kim cites BLP to remove information. Kim and some other editors, while never or rarely violating WP:NPA or other easy-to-see behavioral violations, creates an enormous amount of difficulty for editors trying to add WP:NPOV information to articles or trying to fix POV problems. He has a strong pattern of WP:WIKILAWYERing, WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT disruption, which ties up a lot of time. His lack of real interest in WP:BLP concerns is unmasked when dealing with biographies of individuals whose beliefs oppose his own, which throws a lot of harsh light on his frequent recourse to BLP arguments. You can see the frustration of other editors in some of the discussions. In conjunction with other, like-minded editors in those discussions (who are the subject of evidence reports elsewhere on this page), Kim contributes in these ways to a WP:BATTLEFIELD atmosphere.

• June 2009 Richard Lindzen, Kim states no examination of the reliability of a source is proper once we know it's been published in what usually is a reliable source [368] [369]; reverts to allow critical op-ed-type piece for negative facts in this BLP [370], despite Kim's claims, the source is not an expert on the fact being alleged (about Lindzen and passive smoking) [371] and it was pointed out to him [372] that this contradicted his earlier criticism of using op-eds for information. [373] [374] Kim relies on a book titled The Republican War on Science [375] for information in this BLP. [376]
• Michael E. Mann' Nov & Dec 2009 participates in WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior using WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT arguments claiming concern about BLP for Mann, slowing discussion to WP:DISRUPT (I am not deaf to actual BLP problems with our coverage of Mann [377] [378]). Discussion in context (old version of page) [379] note [380] (rv per talk, then look at the discussion) (similar to arguments in Dec 8 incident below, essentially that investigations can't be mentioned until they conclude with findings of guilt [381] [382] [383]) Note participation of other editors in WP:BATTLEFIELD behavior: Edit warring link to "Climategate" article from this edit [384] to this one [385] (reverts by WMC, Tillman (2), ChrisO (2), WVBluefield (4), KimDPetersen [386], Atmoz (2), Stephan Shulz (edit summary: "I can be as petulant as anybody!"), the edit warring resumed on Nov 29). On Dec 18-19 Kim worked with WMC and ChrisO to remove all mention of "Climategate" from Mann's article (note specious grounds in the edit summaries) ChrisO [387] WMC [388] Kim [389] Not until Dec 20 did ChrisO and KimDPetersen accept mention of "Climategate" in the article [390]
• For skeptic Fred Singer, on Dec 3, KDP supported use of a blog to call a report of which Singer was the lead author "dishonest" [391] (his assertions about what WP:BLPSPS allows were incorrect). Recently, he defended this position. [392] Compare Kim's defense to what the source he defended said: S. Fred Singer and his merry band of contrarian luminaries [...] served up a similarly dishonest ‘assessment’ [393] Kim's edit violated WP:BLP. In Oct 2008 Kim understood the difference between attacks and criticism involving the same source (responding to this comment [394] with this one [395]
• In a separate article, on Dec 8 [396] Kim violated WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT when he objected on WP:BLPSPS grounds that Wikipedia could not use a Science magazine reporting blog citing a legal expert on UK FOI law who said CRU scientists "'may [...] find themselves in legal jeopardy if they" destroyed documents that fell under FOIA (quoting the report). [397] [398] Full discussions here [399] and here [400] (The individuals involved in the e-mail controversy were some of the same individuals in the source Kim edit warred to keep on Dec. 3)
• April 12 again at the "Fred Singer" article, argued for language that could easily have been interpreted as Singer using faulty science in commenting about aliens and the Martian moon Phobos [401] a BLP vio. Compare with what Kim would have known from an earlier version of the passage [402] Throughout, Kim's comments dance around FellGleaming's central point: Singer was commenting on the possible implications of someone else's scientific work, not doing his own Kim is oblivious to the BLP concern, yet is reverting the page [403]. Compare with Kim's arguing on April 15-19 that the president of the Royal Statistical Society, a member of an investigative panel, has statistical criticisms of Mann's Hockey stick theory that aren't worth mentioning in the WP article on the controversy over that theory. [404] Kim is highly protective of Mann, blithe with Singer.
• In May (in this section, [405] best seen in context), Kim violated WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT when he objected to use of a reporter's blog at the New York Times to source an innocuous quote by Fred Singer, the climate skeptic, because it hadn't been proven that the Times fact checked that blog. Kim's objections were repeatedly answered, at length. His peculiar interpretations of WP:BLP were brought up. And yet in April he was able to refute the suggestion that it needed to be proven that a particular blurb was unreliable, noting that blurbs can be assumed to be unreliable sources. [406]

Evidence presented by Jayen466

BLP editing by William M. Connolley

I found the editing behaviour by William M. Connolley related to the BLP of Fred Singer, a noted climate sceptic, problematic.

• This edit by WMC (31 December 2009) added a self-published source (link is to the most recent archive.org version, the page is no longer online) to Singer's BLP, in direct contravention of WP:BLPSPS ("Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, or tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject"), a policy which WMC is well aware of.
• This edit (2 November 2009) reinserts a ref to a site WMC is personally involved in, to contradict an opinion voiced by the article subject. None of the articles presented at the cited site actually discuss Singer, so this appears to be a case of using this BLP as a coatrack for conducting a scientific argument (as well as WP:SYN), rather than a reflection of Singer's reception.
• This (15 October 2009) is unsourced WP:OR commentary.
• This edit (15 May 2010) changes the description of Singer's SEPP institute from "a non-profit research institute, where he serves as president" to the dismissive "a website skeptical of global warming, which he runs", a change that is unsourced and is out of step with reliable sources.
• This edit (13 May 2010) as well as this (15 May 2010) as well as this (16 May 2010) diminished the subject, who continues to be described as an atmospheric physicist in the press.
• In the BLPN discussion related to this last point, ten editors (MastCell, Will_Beback, Cla68, Crum375, Bill the Cat 7, FormerIPOnlyEditor, SlimVirgin, Off2riorob, mark nutley, JohnWBarber) advocated (or agreed with) dropping the "retired" label, yet WMC showed himself unable to accept input by uninvolved editors, dismissing the entire noticeboard thread as "forum shopping" (08:38, 20 May 2010 in that discussion).
• Pointy edit. --JN466 11:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring at Singer's Science & Environmental Policy Project

1. Talk page discussion
   • [407], [408], [409], [410], [411], [412], [413], [414].
2. Cited source: New York Times, describing the Science and Environmental Policy Project as "a research and advocacy group financed by private contributions."
   • [415], [416], [417], [418], [419], [420], [421]
   • Talk page discussion

Evidence presented by Heyitspeter

The editing environment created by some users pushes NPOV editors out of the arena

I think this statement sums it up wonderfully. A review of the talkpage of that (from all reasonable perspectives) roughly inconsequential article should help you get an idea of the deleterious effect that some editors in this topic area have on the editing climate. I believe that a review of Hipocrite's edits, for example, in this article and elsewhere, reveal a (net) strongly negative effect on this topic area, and that it would be constructive to remove him or her from the area entirely. I do not mean to single out Hipocrite (though that will sound hollow given that I have technically done just that). I have elsewhere suggested that the removal of most of the strong personalities from (either side of) the topic area would have a positive effect, though I believe the evidence presented on this page should demonstrate that the 'pro-consensus' block of editors is consistently home to some of the worst behavior seen in the topic area (perhaps because most clearly skeptical POV editors have been topic banned at this point). A significant portion of the editors in this topic area are extremely hostile and unabashedly interested in pushing a single POV and removing others, which discourages editors interested in maintaining a neutral point of view from editing the articles and ipso facto polarizes the editing community. I believe removal of these editors from the topic area would be appropriate and ameliorative.

The rest of the sections in this supersection contain evidence of the fact that the present deleterious editing environment is at least in part the result of the actively negative behavior of certain editors. It's pretty clear to me that the users discussed here have been engaging in decidedly disruptive editing, though I have included links to sections and diffs of specific edits so that you can come to your own conclusions.--Heyitspeter (talk) 09:26, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE are misapplied by some editors to exclude content they do not like

Users claiming to represent the 'scientific consensus' have repeatedly and inappropriately attempted to categorize as WP:FRINGE reports in reliable sources that appear to damage the reputations of 'mainstream' climate change scientists in an attempt to disqualify those reports under WP:UNDUE. A simple statement by arbitrators that 'WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE should be followed' is therefore insufficient to resolve the problem of coverage of reliable sources that appear to cast a negative light on mainstream scientists.

An example of this maneuver can be found here. The main article space claimed that allegations of misconduct by researchers at the CRU were made exclusively by global warming skeptics. Attempts to fairly represent numerous other reliable sources (including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the BBC and the the British government) making identical allegations were countered by claims that because these allegations were also made by global warming skeptics they were skeptical allegations and should not be independently represented in the article, for fear of making the skeptical position appear stronger than it is in violation of WP:UNDUE. (I'm not making this up. See quotes below.) The sources here discussed have yet to be included in the lead, though skeptical allegations are covered (the New York Times citation was removed from a prior version of the article and was added to the fifth version of the proposed lead, though it is missing from the first through the fourth).

Highlights from the talkpage (viz.), including carefree violations of WP:OR and explicit disrespect for WP:V:

The notion that the accusations can be disengaged from the denial campaigns is inherently biased. It is to ignore the statements of scientific organizations and of the most prominent qualified scientists. The article is indeed biased. It has been stripped of the opinions of the most reliable sources. Tasty monster (=TS ) 00:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The question is where those allegations came from. Clearly they originated with denialist blogs and right-wing think tanks, and were then taken up by sections of the media. I think it's important to note the sequence of events here: the blogs created the initial framing of the story, which the media then reported fairly uncritically (and as it turned out, wrongly). So when we say that the allegations were made by denialists, perhaps we should be saying that they originated with denialists. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Once again, you seem to by trying to play up relatively minor criticisms and downplay the central part played by "skeptics", presenting "skeptical" claims as though they were mainstream, giving undue weight and support to the "skeptic" claims and unbalancing the lead. Not an improvement. . . dave souza, talk 12:18, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

(Dave souza continues with the same line later on the talkpage with [e.g.] these diffs [422][423][424])

And from the main article space, concerning the same content (note Dave Souza's explicit demonstration of an extraordinarily strained interpretation of WP:FRINGE):

"way too much denier spin. WSJ and Reason magazine in the lede? get real." -Yiloslime

"remove undue weight given in lead to opinions of a business newspaper and a libertarian magazine, the latter is dubious in the body and clearly fringe fro the lead" -Dave Souza

The herementioned tactic was recently described by an uninvolved editor at this diff: "Although there were multiple verifiable and reliable sources available to support the information in the article, the use of Lawrence Solomon as the initial source (again, through ignorance of the previous history) pretty much resulted in none of the other sources even being considered."

It's interesting to compare this section to the evidence given by Slim Virgin here: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Evidence#Statement_by_SlimVirgin.

WP:HEAR violations are consistently committed by some editors to exclude content they do not like and obstruct discussion

I have pursued just a few examples, all stemming from the only page I work with in the climate change topic area. The first two links separately display the use of repeated WP:HEAR violations to justify removal of a POV template from the article despite an outstanding dispute clearly displayed and directed to at the talkpage. You can see this maneuver at the following sections (you'll have to ignore a thread of inconsequential argumentation between AQuestForKnowledge and Viriditas, for which I apologize):

• User_talk:Heyitspeter#Re:_POV_tag.

For ease of viewing, here (Archive 30 and Archive 31) are links to the (now archived) talk pages that would have been current when Viriditas claimed not to be able to find mention of NPOV concerns (there are nearly 100 hits for the letters "NPOV" between the two pages, which of course does not include hits for "UNDUE").

• Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy#NPOV_tag.2C_again.'

(It might be interesting, or perhaps frustrating, to check out a third example of extraordinarily unhelpful editing by Viriditas as a demonstration of a continuation of a similar style of editing that does not come up in any other topic area I have happened upon: Here Viriditas makes 9 separate comments detailing how he refuses to add a citation that he says is easy to append with a simple reflink. [The required task is eventually carried out by Nsaa, an editor Viriditas would categorize as an opponent.])

And here's a link to an RfE where a different set of WP:HEAR violations were committed.

• Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement/Archive4#Guettarda

WP:V is explicitly disregarded by some editors in this topic area

All the examples in this section concern a single piece of content from Climatic Research Unit documents controversy and Climatic Research Unit documents, viz., a relatively short section about the 'non-email' portion of the documents. I don't want to spend all my time mining for diffs, so I hope the extensive selection from this single section is enough to suggest that "there's a lot more where that came from."

Though exhaustively cited by reliable sources, the "code and documentation" section has been entirely deleted at least four times by Tony Sidaway and WMC on the grounds that the reliable sources used to cite it are 'wrong'. While I make no comment as to whether that is true, it doesn't matter one way or another. As former admins, both editors know WP:V well and have opted to explicitly disregard this policy where they deem appropriate.

Some specific diffs:

• At the following three diffs, User:WMC is shown deleting the exhaustively cited "code and documentation" section three times with edit summaries to the effect that the RSs are 'wrong' (he discusses the intent behind his reversions in more detail on the talkpage but I believe the summaries suffice to reveal his motivation): [425][426][427].
• At the following section, User:Oren0 voices concerns over User:Tony Sidaway's outright deletion of the aforementioned "code and documentation" section: Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy/Archive_14#Proposed_re-add:_.22code_and_documentation.22_section. Tony defends himself by arguing that the author of the BBC article "is essentially a coder repeating for NewsNight what he wrote on his blog. The problem I have with this is that he's analysing a software bug in a piece of code of unknown significance. Garbage in, garbage out", and by saying that he "cannot read [the article by the NY times] for some reason (possibly my browser is rejecting its cookies)." The NY times article is visible on my browser, at least.
• And here is a quote from User:Nigelj with reference to the same section, where he suggests that we remove a statement by the BBC on the grounds that it is variously "erroneous" and "lame." [428]

I was and still find myself shocked to see editing like this.--Heyitspeter (talk) 04:26, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by William M. Connolley

Competence is required

WMC: wikipedia needs editors who are actually capable of editing the science-based climate articles [429], [430]. Examples of the "skeptic side" making *any* positive contribution to the science are so rare that I can't think of any, even small ones; making substantive contributions is unknow.

False neutrals

There are very few "true neutrals" in the area of climate change (nor even a clear definition of the term). But there are many who make false claims to neutrality, such as AQFK, whose real opinions occaisionally shine out [431]; [432]

Excess kibitzing

Climate change suffers from too many kibitzers who make no productive contributions. For example ZP5 has made *no* productive contributions to climate change articles: inchoerence such as [433] is more in his line.

MN: BLP violations, misrepresentation of science

MN has persistently misrepresented the state of climate science, often to a BLP-worrying degree. In [434] he asserts that The hockey stick has since been proven to be a fraud. MN's judgement is generally faulty. For example [435] he attempts to get User:Hipocrite/GWCC deleted. In [436] he adds strongly POV controversy to a direct quote from a PNAS paper for "balance", apparently giving equal status to blog comments and published literature. Placed on civility parole: [437] after his promise to be "civil at all times" was negated by a string of edits including [438] [439] [440].

Lar has falsely claimed to be neutral

Throughout the climate change probabtion, Lar has claimed to be sufficiently neutral to issue sanctions against me; he has taken nothing from Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lar. Yet previous to the probation Lar had been incivil [441] (this all swirls around his failed nomination for delete of one of my pages; see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:William M. Connolley/For me/Misc arbcomm-y stuff). His block of me was overturned on the grounds that he was "too involved" [442]. Lar continues to refuse to recognise his involvement. But even more clearly the evidence he has presented (especially " BLP Problems noted in the external press" section) shows his biases; in particular (see talk) once it becomes clear that the BLP issues with that article have nothing to do with the editors Lar wants sanctioned, he switches his position and appears to blame people for *not* editing the article ([443] appears to ask people to prove that they weren't watching the article. Let's quote Lar, it is worth seeing: Since the "regulars" can't prove they weren't aware of this article (although I'd be surprised if they weren't, frankly, since JD is one of their demons, isn't he?). What is this "demons" nonsense?).

Problematic editors

The climate change area has a number of problematic editors who make effective collaboration or progress difficult or impossible. GoRight was permanently banned [444] for a succession of problems collectively amounting to being a strong net negative. TGL was banned for 6 months [445] for significant soapboxing, use of talkpages as a forum for general discussion, treatment of the probation area as a battleground, incivility, anti-collaborative sarcastic remarks, and tendentious and disruptive editing. Just recently he has made implausible allegations of sockpuppetry swiftly rejected as worthless [446]. MNs understanding of sourcing is so poor that he has been prohibited from introducing new sources [447].

The Bishop Hill (blog) and LHVU's bias

The Bishop Hill (blog) was deemed non-notable and merged into Andrew Montford. Despite continual consensus for this merge, ideological opponents of the merger persisting in objecting. An RFC was started, which served no purpose other than to waste time and inflame tension. During this period, LHVU enforced his own preferred version of the BH(b) page [448] [449].

Fallout from Climatic Research Unit email controversy

A great deal of the recent trouble on the climate change pages has come not from the *science* but from the fall-out of Climatic Research Unit email controversy. Wikipedia repsonded badly to this incident: half-formed opinions and poor news sources were used to build a poor article over the objections of the science-based editors. Subsequent events (most clearly the outcome of serveral investigations) have vindicated those objections, as the current state of the article and more measured mainstream coverage demonstrates [450]. Not everyone has realised this [451].

No-one knows you are a dog until you start barking

Contrary to assertions elsewhere, new editors to the climate change area are not met with hostility - see User:Thegreatdr, below, for example; or User:ScottyBerg; or User:Snowman frosty; or User:Avetar [452] or User:Dave souza [453] or User:Awickert [454]. But when an editors first edit is a BLP-violating accusation of fraud [455], the second is a BLP-violating assertion of speculation as fact [456], the third a reversion of the fraud nonsense [457] and the fourth an aggresive complaint [458]: why, even then the editor is met with a polite reference to the policies [459] (all those from MN). But even having been pointed to all this, MN still refuses to read our policies [460] which presumably accounts for his current "sourcing" parole. TGL did not start with a blank slate, having previously been a pusher of the "Barack Obama birthplace" conspiracy [461] (and getting blocked for disruption [462]). TGL's first edit near Cl Ch was to the UHI page [463] where he failed to understand the subject. Despite his editing history he was met with politeness [464] which he returned with incivility [465] which rapidly transition into accusations of collusion [466]. TGL's failure to understand the subject continue [467] and he then veers off into deliberate incivility [468].

Indeed the only good evidence of people leaving due to the poor atmosphere is when pushed by the "skeptic" side [469].

Misc stuff

Worth a quick browse if you have time.

• Who got it right and who wrong at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Climate_change_exaggeration?
• Talk:William_Connolley#Redux: I [Jimbo Wales] recommend that Weakopedia be blocked if he does this again... this is just too ridiculous to permit to continue
• Incivility and battleground mentality from JWB [470] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:02, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
• AQFK has indulged in edit warring with spurious BLP exemptions [471]
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hide the Decline; Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Climate change exaggeration
• Lar wanted a diff of me apologising to someone, since he doubted I ever did. There are many, but H likes User_talk:William_M._Connolley/Old_talk_13#Sock_puppets; I like me apologising to H. Or there is [472]. And since BozMo complained that I hadn't apologised to him [473].
• Even highly contentious subjects can be edited in peace and harmony; see for example Soon and Baliunas controversy.
• User:Slim Virgin behaves abusively [474] (edit comment: attempting to bully other editors into leaving the page alone)
• JWB has been pointlessly inflammatory [475] (note the image) as recognised by the clerk [476]. He failed to understand this and persisted in continuing the argument on the clerks talk page [477].

William M. Connolley (talk) 10:57, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Addendum: Robert Watson (scientist)

The recent mini-edit-war over Robert Watson (scientist) is this case in minature. If you only have time to look at one thing, look at that. Hipocrite has provided the relevant diffs, so I'll just interpret them as I see it.

An anon added some text. It was wrong. All the scientifically literate edits agree it was wrong [478] [479] [480] [481] [482]. Even those less happy to judge the scientific content agree that the edit is impermissible as SYN [483] [484] [485].

So, removing it was correct and re-adding it was wrong. How then did we end up in an edit war? Answer: because some of the "skeptics" revert unthinkingly, merely to cause trouble. And despite an extensive conversation on the talk page, and on my talk page, to which I've contributed, not one of the "skeptic" reverters has shown up to explain themselves. You should read MN's explanation where he as good as admits that he didn't know what was going on but reverted anyway.

As I said at the start competence is required. If you leave the "skeptics" in charge of pages like Robert Watson (scientist) they will be full of meaningless drivel William M. Connolley (talk) 20:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Thegreatdr

@Heyitspeter: Just as a side note, I thought of making some edits to the Global Warming article back in November 2006. While I was treated with respect, I did notice the editing history of that article back then was a revert first/coordinate on edits later environment, which was new in my experience in Wikipedia at that time. It defintely doesn't fit the be bold comment concerning editing which greeted me when I joined wikipedia in January 2006. It doesn't appear to have changed much since then, and how the climate change (CC) articles are edited remains uniquely different within my wikipedia experience from how the tropical cyclone and meteorology projects function. Back then, blogs were considered reliable sources within the CC articles, but popular science magazines were not, which surprised me. They're pretty much on equally weak footing per wikipedia standards. Every so often, I still see editors squabbling over some details, trying to use blogs as proof that someone's wrong about some nuance of global warming. Last I checked, they're still not reliable, original sources. I have tried to stay away from editing the global warming set of articles since then, though I did have some luck upgrading the Urban heat island article to GA since then, and because of the 2006 experience, I did learn how to work better with people from that project. Thegreatdr (talk) 05:43, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by WavePart

People are being blocked as sock puppets to enforce article bias

It seems that there is a lot of sock puppet witch-hunting going on and indefinitely blocking of people as suspected sock puppets without any shred of evidence. In my case, without warning I logged on and saw that I was set on an indefinite block with the stated reason, "Abusing multiple accounts: fails the WP:DUCK test". This was quite surprising to me, since obviously I am not a sock puppet.

It seems my example started (without warning) with this edit by Hipocrite, followed 46 minutes later by this edit where I was again declared an "obvious" sock, given a permanent ban by The Wordsmith, and presumed without any evidence to be someone named Scibaby. Many ridiculous failures of logic then occurred on my talk page, where I was presumed guilty without a shred of evidence ever given, except repeated declarations that I was "obviously" a sock puppet. It was only on the third day that a rational admin finally removed the block declaring it "based more on suspicion than evidence".

I was also added to here as a sock puppet, which I was of course not. There appears to be a discussion here about the failures of "Duck" evidence. In that discussion, a user named User:Weakopedia challenged Hipocrite's standards for reporting "sock puppets", so Hipocrite promptly reported Weakopedia as a scibaby sock puppet, which received some criticism as a dubious action. It seems Hipocrite has indicated he supports policy changes to actively block editors with a POV contrary to his, and has stated that "all new editors that are brand newish and show single-purposed difficultness should be blocked ... that's the level of draconian I support".

Here is an example of the standards of evidence being used here by admins to support these blocks when users challenge them, such as "blatant", "obvious", and "compelling". Also, things like knowing how to use wikipedia tags, or knowing wikipedia policies, are being used as grounds for blocking. It is my understanding that wikipedia policies such as Clean Start and Privacy provide plenty of legitimate pathways for users with prior wikipedia experience to have new accounts, and thus mere familiarity with wikipedia cannot be grounds for blocking.

I mostly hope for the arbitration committee to issue a ruling about minimal standards of evidence before a sock puppet block is issued. It is my understanding that to even be a sock puppet, you essentially need to be using a new account to evade a block, ban, or injunction, or you need to be using multiple accounts at once to deceptively sway a debate. Yet clearly new users are being blocked indefinitely (and in a biased manner) without evidence being shown that EITHER of those two things have been done, and that really needs to stop.

I also hope that the arbitration committee can issue an injunction specifically against Hipocrite reporting any more "sock puppets", given his apparent abuse of this process for the purpose of winning arguments and enforcing bias.

WavePart (talk) 06:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Guettarda

Coverage of climate change in the media gives undue weight to fringe position

Through content analysis of US prestige press—meaning the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal—this paper focuses on the norm of balanced reporting, and shows that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.

Boykoff, M. and J. Boykoff, 2004. Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the U.S. Prestige Press, Global Environmental Change, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 125-136.[486] Note, this is an influential paper that has been cited 69 times according the ISI Web of Knowledge.

When mass media report on this particular issue, research has found that attention has been paid particularly to more extreme viewpoints rather than those in convergent agreement...It was found that minority views—in this case alarmist and denialist discourses—earned much more amplified attention in media reports (pp. 442–443)

Boykoff., M., 2009. We Speak for the Trees: Media Reporting on the Environment, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 34, pp. 431–57.[487] Annual Reviews are a family of journals that publish prestigious, invited review articles.

Contrary to news presentations, "skeptics" represent a tiny minority among climate scientists

A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC [anthropogenic climate change] discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider, 2010. Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences "Early edition". doi:10.1073/pnas.1003187107

"Skeptics" are also a small minority among the general public, even in the US

While only approximately 7% of the U.S. adult population (or 12 million people) according to this survey, naysayers are politically active, are significantly more likely to vote, have strong representation in national government, and have powerful allies in the private sector.

Alarmists represent approximately 11% of the American public. It is also important to note, however, that all other respondents had climate change risk perception levels much closer to alarmists than naysayers

Leiserowitz, Anthony A. 2005. American Risk Perceptions: Is Climate Change Dangerous?[488] Risk Analysis, Vol. 25, No. 6, 2005. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00690.x

Note that "alarmists" hold a view of global warming that is considerably more dire than the predictions of the scientific mainstream.

On experts

The fact is that these men [Fred Seitz, Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg, Fred Singer] were never really experts on the diverse issues to which they turned their attention in their golden years. They were physicists, not epidemiologists, ecologists, atmospheric chemists or climate modelers. To have been truly expert on all the different topics on which they commented the would have had to be all these things.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erick M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt. Bloomsbury Press, New York. pp 270–271

Evidence presented by MuZemike

Private evidence

I have emailed the Committee some private evidence in which, for potential outing reasons, I will not mention here as it may be related to this case. –MuZemike 18:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence provided by Collect

I include all my prior comments by reference, and also include [489] as being the current version of material presented in the RFC/U on Lar. [490] is, in fact, even more striking.

In another place, I was disparaged for believing in the value of statistical analysis <g> And that the reversion of "Scibaby" is a protected class - even when a substantial number have been "proven innocent." I have now found hundreds of reverts -- many of which are of those officially shown not to be Scibaby. I therefore iterate that having multiple editors co-ordinate reverts using the handy excuse of "of course it must be Scibaby because it does not agree with us" becomes a Catch-22 for anyone to disprove. Collect (talk) 19:58, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

At this point, I ask that ArbComm note the use of sideways disparaging comments from any editor regarding any other editor. My "intersections" with any of the others involved here are minimal. Collect (talk) 20:06, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Indirect material at [491] representing the absolute maximum overlap on User Talk pages by the committee -- where a large overlap would certainly be expected for sure. Number of 6/6 overlaps? 27. Many of which represent communication with people about cases, and with former arbitrators etc. And where a definite common interest for user talk pages would be expected. It is fair, indeed, to say that arbitrators should have such a degree of overlap. Collect (talk) 17:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Editors involved in Global Warming as their primary interest appear to be apt to act in what appears to be a co-ordinated manner

Not only is a small group apparently extraordinarily apt to edit on the same user talk pages in far beyond random chance numbers but also appears to act in reverts in what appears to be a non-random minuet in GW.

I decided to only look at the immediate past week in order not to show any biases on my part.

Examining only 3 articles out of many which I could list, I found

[492] Hipocrite 24 June [493] Squiddy 24 June [494] Hipocrite 24 June [495] Connolley 24 June [496] Hippocrite 24 June [497] Connolley 24 June [498] Atmoz 23 June [499] Connolley 23 June

All on one article in a very short period of time for one basic edit.

[500] Squiddy 24 June [501] Connolley 23 June [502] Wikispan 23 June [503] Connolley 23 June

All on one article for one basic edit

[504] Prolog 24 June [505] AgnosticPreachersKid 24 June [506] same 24 June [507] Connolley 22 June [508] Souza 21 June [509] Schulz 21 June [510] ChrisO 21 June [511] Atmoz 19 June [512] Connolley 19 June

Which suggests an extraordinary amount of co-incidental opinions and actions among a relatively small group of editors.

With regard to the valuing of the co-incidence level of the "wikistalk" results, I ran 30 editors with 30K+ edits who are currently active through a rough bubble sort, and found no group of six with anything near the overlap on user talk pages. I ran them twelve at a time, removing, one by one, anyone with esentially no UT overlap with the other 11. I invite any one else to extend that work. Collect (talk) 15:36, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

It is claimed that Scibaby is the reason why reverts get co-ordinated -- I do not find that a credible excuse, especially since a non-trivial number of editors aserted to be Scibaby "per the usual" have been shown not to be Scibaby. And some have been blocked "per the usual" without any backing by any checkuser. And, lastly, the range blocks are broad enough to block non-Scibaby editors. Collect (talk) 13:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC) It is claimed that this only affected "several" editors. Since last August, the "several" is now over fifty who were not Scibaby (and not including ones labelled "clearly Scibaby" who did not get a full checkuser). For some odd reason, I consider fifty to be a "significant number" of wrongly accused editors. Collect (talk) 11:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

As to stating that people are Scibaby ... note [513] wherein an editor used "stated" rather than "found" as a better wording. Reverted in rapid succession by WMC, Verbal and Schulz (emended here - Verbal did not state the person responsible for the basic edit was a Scibaby sock - I did not intend to make a claim that all did - but that the claim was made) -- who found that using such a clearly biassed word such as "stated" was sufficient to label a person a Scibaby sock whose edits can be reverted on sight without regard to any 3RR (or 1RR) limits at all. Evidence? Changing "found" to "stated" is clearly egregious POV pushing on the part of Wealths Wealth. A clear case of sufficient proof of being Scibaby? Come on! Collect (talk) 16:59, 11 July 2010 (UTC) emended Collect (talk) 18:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Yet more evidence of uncivil editing, battleground mentality, and CANVASSing

Why should I seek compromise - honestly - when every inch given is a mile taken?... Instead, every single step taken to try to appease them is met with a "great, now I can ask for more."

should not list every argument that some Oxfordian, or Climate Change denier, or believer that aliens built the pyramids can come up with

[514] Is nobody going to aid me in resisting the scibabies and deniers? Your comments at the RfCs on this Talk page would be gratefully accepted. Thanks! showing CANVASSing as well

[515] What, who thought that nonsense was gong to be anything more than a slush of empty public posturing, with a smattering of well-intentioned but naive participants? More Kool Aid is needed.

Hi, sorry to bother you, but Ian Plimer is becoming a battleground once again. Please protect it for a month or so. Thanks. Note the "again" here - from the same person CANVASSing above, who later turned out (shocking news) to be a sock.

same person in same archive Concerning the article Climate change denial, Mackan79 (talk · contribs · logs · block log) has opened an enforcement case against me at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement. As someone involved with the page, I thought you should be informed.

The global warming deniers are in full swing at the article, and another admin decided it was appropriate to protect.

I daresay the existence of an uncivil battleground mentality as well as CANVASS impropriety is shown in this small handful of diffs presented, as well as in the multitude presented by others. Collect (talk) 12:22, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by 2over0

RfC/Climate change

The request for comment on continued community support for the sanctions in this topic area has expired. I initiated the request, as required by the discussion establishing the probation, and offered an opinion so I will not attempt to summarize the RfC. I do feel, though, that it has some useful ideas and provides a decent overview of some of the problems that have lead to this case. - 2/0 (cont.) 05:20, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

ATren

Many of the following diffs are from conversations or situations where one or more other editors were also editing inappropriately, but who are omitted for the sake of presenting cohesive evidence as well as for obvious reasons of space constraints and duplication of effort. Many diffs also include reasonable discussion in addition to the cited text. In the context of this case, however, there is a clear pattern of a battleground mentality and harassment in response to content disputes.

Playing the ref ...

• requests that Jehochman step aside from adminning the climate change topic area, describing his actions as "questionable".
  • Jehochman's response indicates more personal motive.
• instructs Future Perfect at Sunrise to "back off"
• requests that TenOfAllTrades "take a step back"
• accuses me of "badgering of editors who don't share the pre-ordained POV". note: while obviously I was aware of this instance, I do not remember having seen the others in this section (hence the lack of dispute resolution on this topic)
• requests that I withdraw from adminning the climate change topic area - [516], [517],third request in less than a week. I am fully in favor that raising any issue personally should be the first step in dispute resolution, obviously, but the charge should not be the trial. Frequent accusation can be far more damaging than an honest request for comment from outside parties, and carries far less risk of being shown baseless.
• [518] accusation of bad faith following my closure of a report at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring unrelated to ATren. This was accompanied by an email making the clear accusation that I had made this decision based on the editors' (minor, unknown to me) contributions to climate change articles rather than on an open analysis of the situation at hand.
• [519] describes Polargeo (talk · contribs) as "disruptive and biased" and opines that they should "take a step back".
• [520] request to BozMo to "remove yourself entirely from this probation", adding that KillerChihuahua (talk · contribs) and I should as well (this is from early May, making the oblique request to me pretty much redundant)
• requests that Polargeo "take a break"

... not the ball

ATren (talk · contribs) has made, give or take, a little under three dozen contributions to climate change related articles this year. I cite a little over three dozen edits in this section.

Battleground mentality

• You are being baited by an editor with a long history of aggression towards those he disagrees with. Don't take the bait. (good advice to a new editor, except for the personal attack and contribution to the negative editing environment).
• [521] - bullying. Expressed with more assumption of good faith, though, this might make a good point for Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment/Climate change task force.
• Talk:Rajendra K. Pachauri/Archive 1#Reliably sourced claims being removed - two sections of tendentious IDIDNTHEARTHAT, and generally using an article talk page for purposes other than comments directly related to improvement of the associated article.
• I suggest we ... try to get the worst offenders topic-banned. (on an article talk page, no less)
• They are now spouting conspiracy theories
• participates in an edit war where the BLP exemption is credibly claimed.
  • talk page at that point; ATren did not contribute to that discussion
• [522] to the best of my recollection, this is the only time I have refactored another editor's comments on my talkpage (other than the occasional simple vandalism)
• I see nothing wrong with speculating on the motives of such an edit, especially since I've seen this kind of thing before from this group of editors
• Again, this comment is intentionally aggressive, because that's how WMC prefers to debate these issues -- I will gladly tone it down if WMC tones down his aggressive, condescending style - textbook WP:POINT (see also)
• Groups editors in opposing camps, accusing one "camp" of having base motives and making abusive edits: [523], [524], [525], [526], [527], [528], [529], [530], [531], [532], [533], [534], [535],
• Frequently shows up to volunteer an opinion when the topic is potential sanctions of William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) (WMC):
  • [536]
  • derails AN/I thread about edit warring over an administrator's close of an enforcement request at the climate change requests for enforcement board
  • ATren's response when Bozmo comments on the pattern established by this section
  • backdoor enforcement request

Evidence presented by LessHeard vanU

Preamble

I did consider that I might not evidence any of my concerns regarding the editing of AGW/CC related articles, since in my role as uninvolved admin I did not participate in the editing of any articles and my involvement regarding issues was therefore second hand; I was not exposed to the editing environment and could not ascertain that the requests I was involved in represented the norm in interactions of editors with opposing views. However, this ArbCom case has provided sufficient incidences of (IMO) non optimum attitude and viewpoint that I feel I should detail them - as well as an incident in which I was involved in outside of the Probation enforcement request page. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Curious claims in respect of both consensus and "new editor requirements " at Bishop Hill (blog) article

I was asked as an uninvolved admin to look at the matter of a contested source at the Bishop Hill (blog) article - now merged into the Andrew Montford article. Since it was my opinion that there was a slow edit war, I protected the article in an attempt to draw the contributors back onto the article talkpage. Upon a further request, and noting discussion had resumed as intended, I lifted the protection, whereupon there was a short edit/move war after which I sanctioned the involved editors. Given the circumstances, I placed the article on my watchlist. I subsequently became involved in issues arising on a RfC upon merging the article with that of its writer, of which more later. Soon after the RfC commenced the article was again redirected, reverted, and redirected again, after which I reverted as edit warring and then protected again. (Some comment was raised, both within AGW/CC Probation space and also ANI - where I noted my actions - that I should not have both reverted the last instance of edit warring and protected the article against further warring; which reasoning I disagree with and would be happy to have reviewed again in this ArbCom case). It should be noted that both times the article was redirected the editors concerned noted "per talk" and "...consensus", although as noted the RfC on the merger had commenced only two days previously and had been started because there was resistance to there being a merge or delete of the article (a recent AfD has been closed as inconclusive, defaulting to keep). I submit that editors, especially the two who performed the redirects, who voiced support for the merging of the articles either momentarily misunderstood WP:Consensus or were disinclined to provide any weight to the arguments of those opposing the merge per WP:IDON'TLIKEIT.
The RfC mentioned above was filed by SlimVirgin (talk · contribs), an experienced content contributor who had started editing the article around early May. While familiar with both Wikipedia practice and - I don't think this will shock too many readers - editing in controversial areas of the encyclopedia her contributions were both swiftly removed and her motives questioned, to such an extent that I felt I had to comment more than once, drawing complaining editors attention to the point that SlimVirgin was acting in accordance to established WP practice. SlimVirgin's raising of an RfC, given that her choice in contributing to the article had drawn criticism previously for not having been made after careful review of the editing and talkpage histories, was condemned by some parties as a means of delaying a merger proposal that had already attracted counter arguments. I submit the above, and indeed the entire merger discussion (and especially the Threaded discussion section), and the talkpage in its entirety, as evidence of the lack of application of Wikipedia policy, practice, and common courtesy on the part of certain editors, most of whom edit toward the scientific consensus regarding AGW, when presented with arguments for the inclusion or retention of material that is inclined toward a CC skeptical viewpoint.

LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Nigelj, ScienceApologist, Count Iblis and Guettarda oppose acknowledgement of non Scientific consensus pov within articles, contrary to WP:NPOV

These examples are from the pages within this case;

Nigelj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log): [537], [538]
ScienceApologist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) [539]
Count Iblis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) [540]
Guettarda (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)[541]

The above positions promoted both indicate a viewpoint that skeptic or denialist viewpoints are not tolerated within general CC/AGW article space, and are not conversant with the principle of WP:NPOV - and was one of the positions that I understand that the CC Probation was set up to counter. I find it unbalanced that such extreme positions have been permitted to remain largely unchallenged within the AGW article space, as extremist advocacy from the skeptic and denialist viewpoint has been successfully countered. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Avenues for resolution of content disputes are disrupted by interested parties

Following a notice to my talkpage (and the extension for providing evidence) I would note that there appears to be the situation that the processes for dispute resolution are being deprecated by the involved parties arguing for "their" interpretation of policy, and disinclining uninvolved editors from commenting. The page is Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Are the following blogs reliable sources. (A thank you to Stephan Schulz for making this a permanent link) I offer this as evidence that potential avenues of dispute resolution are being disrupted by the WP:Battle mentality of some parties, thus diminishing the potential for good faith resolution of issues. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:24, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Mark Nutley

The use of the term ClimateGate

The use of the term Climategate has been forced out of wikipedia by a small group of editors, if one thing comes from this case it should be a ruling that the use of the term is allowable within article content per wp:v. It is policy to use a term which the sources use yet the following diff`s will show a wilful disregard for policy.

• User:William_M._Connolley [542] removes Climategate even though the source uses the term. [543] Reverts out climategate again. [544] and again. [545] and again

User:ChrisO [546] removes the term, even though it is the name of the book which the article is about. And removes it again from another article, [547]

This has happened in plenty of articles and i feel a ruling here is necessary to stop this constant removal of the term. Especially as this is what all the sources use [548]

This got to the stage were i did an RFC about the issue [549] I believe there was a consensus there to allow it`s use yet the same editors continue to push their POV against policy to remove the term from wikipedia mark nutley (talk) 13:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Response to hipocrites comments on climategate

Below User:Hipocrite has presented this diff [550] stating Just now, marknutley has started inserting the word "climategate" without discussion in articles that were relatively stable. This kind of tension-elevating activity is par for the course This is entirely incorrect. That article section had been called climategate since it was moved into mainspace. It is Chris0 who has created article instability by changing a long standing section header, i would assume due to what i have written above.

Further response to hipocrites latest mistake [551] below, Section header Climategate dated one day after article creation [552] changed by User:Thepisky on 25 April 2010 [553] changed back by me last week after consensus was gained per the RFC [554]. I even waited a while to see if any further objections were going to be raised. It was then of course reverted out by Chris0 mark nutley (talk) 14:49, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

WMC`s abuse of identifiable living people

[555] Calls US senator John Barrasso a right wing nut in an edit comment (more to come) mark nutley (talk) 10:42, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Bishop Hill (Blog)

As the creator of this article and having seen it mention by both LHVU and WMC i fell the entire story should be told. This is the article as it was when moved to mainspace [556] After bickering on the talk page i did an afd [557] so we could see what the community thought, is it notable or not. During the AFD User:ChrisO more or less blanked the article [558] any editor trying to reinsert the content was reverted.[559] I revert the removal first, [560] Chris0 reverts me. User:Nsaa reverts content back in, [561] chris0 reverts it back our again, this is pure edit warring to remove content from an article he has voted to get deleted. In WMC`s evidence section he accuses LHVU of enforceing a preferred version, This is incorrect, how can an editor have a preferred version of an article they have never edited? Such bad faith accusations are all to common from these editors and leads to bad feeling all round mark nutley (talk) 13:18, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Further Evidence

WMC uses his own blog to make statements about an identifiable living person [562]

WMC reverts his own blog into an article with the edit summary, Nope; I'm as reliable as Pielke

WMc uses his site as a source [563]

WMC`s use his blog as a source [564]

Inserts a blog into a BLP [565]

[566] Uses a blog in a BLP

[567] reverts his blog back in as a source

WMC disruptive behaviour on talkpages and refusal to discuss issues

[568] Just look at this thread for a prime examle of the behaviour people have to endure from WMC mark nutley (talk) 10:52, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Addendum - Robert Watson (scientist)

I see hipocrite has not actually given the full account as he is claiming. ‎I shall start from when i arrived at the article User:Verbal reverts User:GregJackP with the edit summary Material is not well sourced and is UNDUE / unbalanced. Take to talk please So i look at the refs, and see NASA and The Guardian. I looked on talk and saw just the usual bickering going on. So i reverted the content back in, based on the facts before me. I had assumed from Verbal`s edit summary that he meant (NASA and The Guardian) were not reliable sources and the fact that nobody on the talk page had actually said what was wrong with this edit mark nutley (talk) 22:49, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Hipocrite

I'd like to preface my evidence by noting that I, unlike most of the other involved parties, have made many attempts to "cross-over," editing either entirely "for the enemy," working with the other "side" to improve articles, or making edits that satisfy no one. I link to a series of content edits by me that served to end disputes at User:Hipocrite/KingH.

Global warming

The articles on "global warming" are neutral, presenting all points of view in equal amount to their weight.

At the last evaluation, there were zero peer reviewed studies that contradict the major conclusions about global warming - that it is real, and caused, in large part, by anthropogenic CO2.[569] A recent United States National Academy of Sciences study shows that "97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers." [570] Denialism, therefore, is nothing more than politics - they merit no mention as science, as there are no published sources on the science of denialism - it compares to Holocaust Revisionism in level of acceptance.

The main article in the space - Global Warming includes entire sections about the manufactured controversy, and links to sub articles that detail the controversy, providing more than due weight to the minority view that all of modern climate science is wrong. [571]

Compare Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are peer reviewed studies and, in fact, entire academic works by well regarded (but a minority of) scholars that claim that bombing was not a military action in WWII, but rather the opening shot of the Cold War, or a propaganda requirement placed on the army by the populace. This is not detailed in the article, which hardly even mentions this interpretation, routing every single contrary fact into the sub article. The section in the main article is two paragraphs, and fails to note any peer reviewed works which disagree with the historical consensus that the bomb was dropped to minimize causalities in a hypothetical US invasion of the home islands. articlepeer reviewed dispute, and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Alperovitz, Gar, Vintage, 1996. Others on request. In fact, Global Warming is far more friendly to minority opinions than any other controversial article surveyed, except for those taken over in-full by said minority opinions.

Adminstrative conduct

Despite this, administrators who are skeptical or ignorant of the status of Global Warming have inserted themselves into the process, purporting to be "uninvolved." ([572] [573]) They are not uninvolved - their statements and protestations about being uninvolved are belied by their other statements about the content (LHVU - [574], Lar - 19:02, 19 March 2010) - they have determined preferred content and have manipulated results to ensure their favored version(Lar - [575], [576], LHVU - revert and protect ). This pernicious use of administrative powers and authority to win content disputes is directly contrary to our expectations of administrative conduct.

Further, Lar was in conflict with WMC before Lar's first action ever in relation to Global warming ([577] wheelwarring in an attempt to delete one of WMCs user-space pages, the well known whacko quote). Antagonizing an editor, especially on the eve of what might have been a difficult electoral loss is not acceptable. Later following that editor with the goal of exiling him from a topic area he has provided value to is even more problematic. ([578]).

BLP concerns

I am unhappy with WMC's edits to articles about deniers . I am equally unhappy about deniers edits to articles about scientists. I am most unhappy with people who pretend to care about BLP and kvetch about only one of the two.

Marknutley

I include only the first violation of BLP in each article - There are others, as recently as June 21, where marknutley returns to the first scientist he attacked and adds a link to a fringe attack book as a see-also.

• Adds totally non-npov accusation of fraud to bio of scientist [579] This accusation of fraud continued over multiple reverts and other attempts to accuse a living person of fraud.
• Adds totally non-npov accusation of conflict of interest to a politician [580] - "an obvious conflict of interest."
• Adds poorly source accusation of having leaked information to the biography of a scientist[581]
• In a branching out, returns poorly source fringy criticism about a US political candidate [582]
• Reinserts obvious defamatory information about a living person into his biography [583]. (this diff is co-listed below)

Disruptive behavior by various individuals

Most of the users who have little or no experience in other areas of the encyclopedia are disruptive - they have demonstrated no interest in providing encyclopedic coverage, opting instead to attempt to push their personal fringe beliefs, providing undue weight to unreliable sources, wikilawyering policies to say what they hope they say, or alternatively, just making things up.

Some examples:

• [584] - ZuluPapa5 writes in this very arbitration "least one reliable source has presented a consensus view on the science, which would could threaten the IPCC's monopoly view" - False. When repeatedly asked to provide this source, he stalls.
• [585] - Marknutly makes multiple things up. He attributes the quote "alarmist" to the wrong person. He uses a document from 2007 to document something that happened in 2009. He describes a position paper by an individual as representing the position of an entire national government. He invented that the position paper was "commissioned" by the Indian government.
• [586]. Cla68, normally a reasonable editor, fabricates the location of Al Gore. Even after this discussion, Cla68 again fabricated the location of Al Gore ([587], [588]).
• [589] Cla68 supports the addition of information sourced to a deleted blog comment, writing that the information sourced to said blog comment is "reliably sourced, neutrally written, and succinct." In the same argument, it is called "smoke & mirrors, and/or intimidation" to insist that our content fairly represent sources and not engage in plagiarism. Even later, Cla68 states that "Curry's blog post is directly referenced in the NY Times article." This is fabricated - Cla68 later admits that he "got the blog wrong." In response to this massive abuse of blog-sourced nonsense, Lar later wrote [590] - "The statements by Ms. Curry are impeccably sourced." When repeatedly challenged about this, Lar said that he didn't mean that the statements by Dr. Curry are impeccably sourced, but rather some of that removed content was poorly sourced, and that when he said "The statements by Ms. Curry are impeccably sourced," he actually meant that "The statements by Ms. Curry in the New York Times are impeccably sourced. He says this with a straight face while asserting attempts to "Spin Control," by others. In that same comment he stated that he "started by looking carefully at the article beforehand, and walking the diffs and checking the refs." In so doing, he did not, apparently, find it relevant to note the deleted blog comment being used as a source about a living person.([591])
• In [592], JohnWBarber asks me to read WP:BLPSPS, as a justification for including self-published sources for material about a living person. When I point out that BLPSPS says exactly the opposite, JohnWBarber says that we don't need to follow BLPSPS because it's just a guideline.
• In [593], A Quest for Knowledge includes information sourced to a blog, arguing that blogs can be used as reliable sources for opinions of the blog owner. Would he believe the same thing if people were to put blog-sourced opinions in articles about 9-11 conspiracy theories? Of course not. (ref)
• Just now, marknutley has started inserting the word "climategate" without discussion in articles that were relatively stable. This kind of tension-elevating activity is par for the course. [594]. Regarding this, Mark stated "That article section had been called climategate since it was moved into mainspace." This is not accurate. Per [595], mark changed it, without discussion, just a week ago for the first time. The article was made in mainspace. This kind of inaccuracy is also par for the course - if it's incompetence or dishonestly, it's disruptive.
• Heyitspeter has spent the better part of two months attempting to insert one sentence into the lede of Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy - see Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy/Archive_33#Lede_still_violates_WP:NPOV, ongoing in current Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy. His specific sentence is the uncited non-fact that the emails were reported by the media to withold scientific data and include all kinds of other purported malfeasance. In the light of [596], one wonders why the lede would include retracted allegations of malfeasance, rather than the retraction. Heyitspeter's suggestions have been routinely shut down - however, as recently as June 28, he has pledged to edit-war back in an NPOV tag, all without presenting any real dispute over the content.
• During the case Marknutley used a false edit summary to attempt to remove another users comment from a case page [597] Hipocrite (talk) 15:21, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
• During the case ATren threatened to use sources ATren thought were inapropriate on the published wikipedia biography of WMC in an attempt to get vengence on WMC for taking actions he thought were inapropriate. [598].
• During the case [599], [600], [601], [602] - Marknutley, GregJackP, and WVBluefield reinsert sneaky BLP vandalism into articles just because the people reverting them are on the other "side."

Pile-on disruption of noticeboards

Noticeboards are supposed to be areas where uninvolved users can assist in working things out. In this area, however, editors disrupt the functioning of said noticeboards by not allowing independent comment, drowning it out by showing up to push their partisan side (as opposed to their policy interpretation - the policy interpretation is always fluid enough that things they like are ok, things they don't like are banned). (diffs)

Specific responses to factual inacuricies

TheGoodLocust states that "Editors that have been driven off of wikipedia due to this group, off the top of my head, include UniteAnode (Scott), Jennavecia (Lara), Ottava Rima and Rootology."

• Unitanode (talk · contribs) left over Prod tagging and a dispute with Durova, who is not a party to this, per [603].
• Jennavecia (talk · contribs) is still active.
• Ottava Rima (talk · contribs) was banned by ArbCom in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions#Ottava_Rima_banned, a case with no party overlap.
• Rootology (talk · contribs) quit after the fracas over the illfated "Advisory Council on Project Development," which had little overlap with the parties here.

One wonders where TheGoodLocust, who had only interacted with Unitanode, got this list of names from - it certainly couldn't have been "off the top of [his] head."

Addendum - Robert Watson (scientist) ‎

Note - per [604], this addendum section appears to be permitted

On Robert Watson (scientist), there was recently a flare up that demonstrates all of the problems in this space. I present a full-timeline, along with some basic explanations:

[605][606][607] - In these three consecutive edits a dynamic IP adds a misplaced paragraph to the article, stating that Watson has used the Earth, Mars and Venus to explain global warming - Mars has almost no atmosphere, and thus, no greenhouse effect, Venus is a boiling soup with massive greenhouse effect, and you live on earth. This explanation is distorted by the fact it's not gas ratios that makes up this greenhouse difference, but rather gas density. The IP states that "This view is in conflict with our basic understanding of Mars." It's not - it is the standard view of Mars, as stated by even the most basic of resources ([608] many more on request). The IP does note that all of Mars' atmosphere (which is less than 1% as thick as earths) is CO2.

[609] WMC reverts it out - perhaps it's vandalism, perhaps it's not. It's definetly a BLP vio ("This view is in conflict with our basic understanding of Mars."). It's definetly WP:SYNTH. Hipocrite (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

[610] GregJackP, who is a serial gadfly reverts it back in. Where did he find this article? I know - he's watching WMC's talk page - a symptom of his previous attempt to create an article on "Adminstrator Abuse on Wikipedia," due to his prior run in with yet another admin - that's right - GregJackP is only involved in this article to harass WMC

[611] Verbal reverts GregJackP, asking him to take it to talk, calling the material UNDUE/unbalanced.

[612] Marknutley reverts Verbal - asking "since when was NASA not a reliable source." This non-sequitor takes place after Marknutley has made no edits to the talk page, as requested - he just shows up to revert. Why? Because Marknutley regularly reverts people who he disagrees with saying nonsequitors like this. He dosen't evaluate the content, he dosen't engage on talk pages, he's a slo-mo reverter.

[613] I revert Marknutley, stating "BLP violation." I file an RFE against marknutley, as I still hope beyond hope that RFE might work.

[614] WVBluefield reverts me, stating "i'm just not seeing it." He's just not looking - why? Because WVBluefield, like GregJackP before him didn't find this article because of some desire to help wikipedia - WVBluefield is TDC, an editor who was previously banned for his abusive stalkering - and he's picked a new target, and as you may have guessed, that target is me.

[615] I revert WVB. Perhaps this was an error. Do I trust RFPP to revert and protect to prevent BLP violations? Honestly, no, I don't, because admins don't do things right most of the time.

[616] WVB reverts me. Of course, any error by me is compounded hundredfold by someone making the same error, but also violating BLP.

[617] I revert WVB. As above.

Now, for the backdrop: After WMC's first revert, Off2riorob shows up at WMC's talk page to ask him why he's reverting. WMC isn't the most forthcoming, but I inform Off2riorob clearly that the edit in question is really, really bad. Does that appease him? No. You'll need to review the page history of WMC's talk to get the full monty.

But, who shows up to egg-on O2RR to escalate? Marknutley, who arrives on O2RR's talk page to tell him about WMC's worthless "Comment on your revert" probation - [618]. And [619] GregJackP. And [620] A Quest For Knowledge.

So, let me summarize - this problem, which was drive-by IP vandalism or drive-by IP disruptive editing, was inflamed into a real problem due to a loosely organized group of "skeptical" editors headhunting for people they disagree with.

Evidence presented by TheGoodLocust

Reading guide

BLP Violations

After being topic banned from the Fred Singer page (e.g. trying to make it look like he believes in martians), WMC implies, on his talk page that Singer is committing tax fraud (notice how incredibly incorrect his facts are too) and also links to a document with his phone number and address [621]] - this sort of retaliatory behavior is common.

WMC inserting his friend's blog [622], that same friend reinserting it [623], and WMC defending that behavior [624] (minor example, but he inserts his friend's blogs quite often).

Reverts to keep in his incredible BLP and privacy [625]

Final form of the discussion links to a diff of the previous discussion and WMC's attack blog (something he often does), where he now implies that Singer is insane [626]

Outsider SlimVirgin quickly gets to the heart of the matter [627] and [628]

"Retired" conversation (fairly short) [629]

Boris complains that WMC and confirmed sockmaster Ratel were blocked by ArnorldReinhold(agr). Who blocked them for edit warring to insert a possible BLP violation sourced to this blog, which Boris describes as "well-sourced" at the ANI. [630] The usual, including Bozmo and Mastcell, show up to defend WMC and Ratel. Note: Ratel had previously been "indefinitely" blocked by Gwen Gale due to this statement.

Wikilawyering/Rule violations to promote agenda

Canvasses for admin support to avoid sanctions [631]

"Hipocrite" canvassing off-wiki [632]

WMC attempts to make a deal with admin Polargeo, saying he will continue his edit war, and revert to their prefered version if Polargeo will unblock him when Less blocks him for edit warring. Noticable lack of 2over0 and Bozmo activity. [633]

Stephan explains that SlimVirgin will oppose him just because of "rules." Demonstrates their mindset about rules. [634]

The "usual" show up to defend WMC's editing with a clear COI (Solomon has wrote articles critical of WMC)[635]

"Soapboxing" not that I really care, but admins like 2over0 ban others for "soapboxing" with the opposite view [636]

Good example of how the Scibaby menace is used to harass the undesirables [637]

Admin directly named in complaint against me pops in to decide my fate - wasn't even in climate change, but shows how incredibly lax COI/involvement stanards are[638]

<samples of Schulz, WMC, Bozmo and Hipocrite commenting in "uninvolved admin" sections>

There is a negative culture in the topic area

Respect/Civility/Baiting

"we have people here who merit no respect when attempting to discuss the science of GW."[639]

"Respect" is a problem. Taken literally, your "Progress on articles can only happen with mutual respect..." means that the people who can't be respected (becasue they attempt to edit past their level of knowledge) need to leave those articles they can't cope with [640]

NigelJ also articulates similar beliefs that certain editors shouldn't be allowed to edit and justifies (read what he is responding to for context) the incivility demonstrated by the cc editors [641] The sentiment is further supported Schulz and WMC [642]

"Why play nice?" -Bozmo[643]

After Lar told WMC not to call him an "old fruit" (part of various harassment tactics - see admin baiting section for more examples), Bozmo, in solidarity with WMC, creates the old fruit template, and WMC continues to refer to Lar in that manner in a manner he thinks he can get away with (he did of course) - note edit summary and content of his post for context. WMC also takes the time to slander me for "ethnic slurs" for this diff, which was intended as a joke (I'd also refactored Schulz's initials when asked). Also, following this conversation might help make a little more sense of it. Additionally, Bozmo's statement about going "gun's drawn" and finding that Guettarda was not calling Lar a climate skeptic refers to this post - Bozmo seems to make interesting interpretations of things when defending some people - and the only "Michigander" WMC could've been refering to was Lar.

Schulz and WMC amusingly taking the time to mock my spelling[644]

"Interested in reality?" (edit summary) and "If you're not interested in incivility in general, but only in a grossly one-sided version, please declare your biases now and I'll stop harping on about it. But it would be better if you could drop your hypocrisy." [645]

"Can you pretend to be balanced?" [646]

Describes another's edits as "pointless and malicious" [647] and confirms his meaning to Bozmo.

"Why are you making things up" "Do you feel your credibility is too high?" [648]

"No, we shouldn't use yet another piece of journo tripe that just happens to fit with your POV" [649]

"Whitewashing starting?" [650]

Describes me as a "blind partisan" after I demonstrate, upon request, that such a label is not accurate [651]

Suggestions of "reading trouble" - something he also does to Less [652]

Civility parole is a "victory for the yahoos" [653]

"Oh dear. You really have firmly joined the waste-of-space brigade." (notice sensitivity to suggestions of off-wiki coordination between him and KDP) [654]

Obstructionism

[655]

Paranoia

[656]

Delusion

[657]

Mocking/Baiting Admins involved in enforcement

Lar

[658]

LessVanHeard

[659]

Wordsmith

[660]

Demonstration of Biased Administrators

2over0

[661]

Bozmo

[662]

MastCell

[663]

Polargeo

[664]

Vsmith

[665]

Misc.

[666]

Evidence presented by Sphilbrick

I view this case as nominally about Climate Change, but, in substance, about the Wikipedia dispute resolution process. The process works fine in many cases, but breaks down in highly contentious cases. It is inevitable that highly contentious disagreement about content will continue, whatever decisions ArbCom may reach in this present case. My hope is that outside observers of a revised process will agree that the views of all good faith contributors are dealt with respectfully, and the resulting articles reflect a neutral point of view. While it may not be within the remit of ArbCom to spell out the details of a revised policy, my hope is that a decision will re-emphasize a commitment that articles need to be neutral, and editors need to comment on content, not on each other, while suggesting procedures (such as rotating overview sysops, and broader discretion to apply short blocks of in-civil commentary).

Present processes are inadequate

The Dispute resolution process has evolved over the years. However, the provisions were not viewed as sufficient to deal with the disputes arising from climate change articles. As a result of a community discussion at AN a special venue was created: Climate change probation, partially, but expressly with the hope that "we could solve this dispute ourselves". The existence of this Arbitration is proof that even this special approach was not sufficient.

To be fair, the alternative mechanism has addressed a substantial number of issues. User:Ryan Postlethwaite deserves commendation for an excellent attempt at creating a dispute resolution alternative. However, while many disputes have been resolved. the tone of the discussion is still quite acrimonious. My concern is not the vigorous content disputes, which can and should be encouraged, but sniping and accusations against editors which should be easier to halt. We need to avoid the possibility of a Gresham's law driving out GF contributors in favor of extremists.

Contributors above have provided many examples which I won't repeat. However, I will add a few examples of word choices which should not, in general, be directed at editors.

Example of use of pejorative term "denier" or "denialist":

• Perhaps the preferred usage from now on is climate change denier...

• Wikipedia treats the beliefs of creationists and global warming deniers...

Example of use of pejorative term "septic":

• Is there any other "recognizable" use for the term septic?

Example of use of pejorative term "warmist":

• ...I suspect all of the global warmists blockers...

While none of these qualify as "fighting words" none are consistent with a collegial editing environment.

• Probably just replacing it with "Algore is fat" or something similarly erudite Unprovoked PA by ChrisO, regarding an IP contributor.

Evidence presented by A Quest for Knowledge

Incivility, failure to assume good faith and promotion of battleground atmosphere (in alphabetical order)

ChrisO

• "The way you're using this talk page to push POV speculation convinces me that you have no intention of respecting basic content policies"
• "Your intentions are abundantly clear and my assessment of your edit history is based on the way you have done little but advocate speculation"
• "Garbage in, garbage out. It certainly explains where JettaMann is coming from."
• "I am also rather suspicious of the rationale behind this proposal, given the repeated attempts to whitewash any mention of hacking from this article; I note that some of the supporting comments invoke this POV...." Related[667]
• "why are anti-science bloggers and their accompanying swarms of flying monkeys proclaiming that the controversy disproves climate change science?"
• "I presume this is your way of saying that you have no intention of compromising. Thanks for making that clear."
• "I find it hard to take you seriously when you claim..."
• "Booker is a crank" (edit summary)
• "the usual suspects have misrepresented things on his talk page"
• "reply to nut markley" (edit summary, emphasis mine)
• it's an absolute obsession among anti-science activists and sundry right-wingers." Jimbo's response:[668]
• "HiP's inability to read diffs properly" (edit summary)
• "you've certainly made your agenda clear"
• The only reason why this article has been kept is pure tribalism on the part of certain editors"
• "pig-headed obstinacy"
• "incompetent researcher"
• "Let me spell this out for you in words of one syllable"

GoRight

• "Chris is a well known AGW POV pusher who knows that there are other editors objecting to this change."
• Also, sock puppetry[669]

Marknutley

• "you are either incredibly stupid or are trying to muddy the waters"
• "if you can`t be arsed to look thats your problem."
• "Are you really as bovine as you act?"
• "billy boys constant blundering about in his haste to insult me"
• "There is nothing good faith about your edit, it is vandalism to insert junk like that into an article. It is painfully obvious what you are doing here, you wish to make the article unstable s oit can`t go up for GA status."
• "Rubbish, you have been giving me hell on my talk page for what you sy are cherry picking and not sticking to npov, and now this?"

Scjessey

• "I'm not going to waste my time arguing the science with someone who evidently gets facts from those who deny it"
• "I'm not interested in being friendly with agenda-driven SPAs either."
• "That's just garbage...people who eschew Wikipedia policies and guidelines to further their agenda."
• "If only there was a script that could automatically topic ban anyone who suggested it again"
• "I really don't care what you think, since your editing behavior indicates that you're only interested in furthering your agenda.
• "you have gone way beyond the level at which this kind of agenda-driven behavior"
• "It does absolutely nothing except rally the science-denying troops."
• "perpetual rants of POV pushers determined to use Wikipedia to further their anti-science agenda"
• "The tactics that science deniers are now employing to try to bend this article to their point of view are scandalous."

Thegoodlocust

• "A history lesson for you Dave, when we were trying to include the glaciergate information and all the sources said they broke the rules - your "side" said they didn't"
• "the arguments pro-AGW people use are usually based on the logical fallacies of arguments from authority and popularity"

WMC

• "Poor CoM has done his pointless malicious revert without realising that its the wrong article. Ah well, he'll get there in the end"
• "You snarking above seems all-too-typical of your style"
• "spoon feeding for the hard of understanding"
• "If you don't want to be condescended to, I suggest you stop making quite so many mistakes."
• "you're still a noob in some ways. You've only just realised that bare url's don't take double brackets, because I finally got bored of your repeated errors"
• "repair for the incompetent"
• "MN is, as usual, defending anything anti-GW, regardless of reality"
• "I think you should learn to make coherent valuable content edits. Failing that, and all the evidence up to now is that you do indeed fail that, this isn't the place for prattle: take it elsewhere"
• "Face it, you really don't know what is going on here but are determined to push your POV anyway"
• "you should find an arera to edit that you understand"
• "It is regrettable that he is adding material that he doesn't understand. It cannot be a co-incidence that this suits the POV of his "side""
• "It's good to see you chaps finally coming out into the open and admitting you're a team. Full points for honesty, well done Cla and ATren!"
• "MN: please explain why you have tagged this (with the wrong tag too, but we don't expect miracles)"
• "You have no interest in her science"
• "Sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la la la" was never going to be a very successful strategy"
• "Please keep your fantasies about FOI to yuorself"
• "Since you make yourself vulnerable I *will* snark at you: it is revealing that you know what Wegman is but don't know about NRC"
• "Looks like ATren has reverted this but it was beneath his dignity to trouble himself to discuss"
• "Thank you for making it clear that you have no purpose here other than to add pointless comments"
• "willful misrepresentation by SV" (edit summary)
• "it is nice to see you actually caring about article content for once, instead of just trolling on the probation pages. though really, you're just trolling here instead, so it is no great improvement."

Evidence presented by Horologium

Outside views are not really welcome

During the RFC on Lar I presented a brief comment on the situation as I perceived it (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lar#Outside view from Horologium). It would be harder to provide a more outside view, because I don't believe that any of my ~15,000 edits involve articles in this field. Nonetheless, I received a rather pointed query from Polargeo, and when I responded in a fashion contrary to his views, I was subjected to a rather unpleasant dismissal (on my own talk page), which leads me to believe that many of the self-styled proponents of the scientific point-of-view are unwilling to allow anyone to disagree with their biases. The entire exchange between me and Polargeo may be found in my May 2010 User talk archive. Horologium (talk) 02:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Franamax

I've been lately pursuing my second alternate career as a geocacher but have still been reading. I saw JWB's comments about Jeh and myself on another case page and indeed I did promise him an explanation several months ago and resolved to get it done. Now I see there is formal evidence, so JWB I suppose this is your explanation too. I've no intention of scouring for counter-evidence against JWB, that sort of tit-for-tat is a big part of the AGW problem on-wiki.

JWB's presentation against Jeh and myself I feel lacks credibility and further confirms the problems I initially perceived with JWB's approach to editing, namely a far too-close reading of the "rules" and a tendency to construct a theory based on a self-chosen premise.

So far as I can tell, the charge of NPA is based on the fact that both Jeh and I judged JWB's actions at the time to be disruptive. There's no way to sugar-coat that for someone when you're contemplating action to stop the disruption. And when someone presents their defence and you find the defence inadequate, you have a choice between getting into a drawn-out conversation where they'll never agree anyway, or moving forward. I see no personal attacks in the record, just two uninvolved administrators identifying what they saw as disruptive conduct.

On the AGF charge, not at all, I personally think that JWB was acting in the utmost good faith. The thing is, that good-faith action IMO resulted in disruption, and the disruption needed to be curbed. Most (not all) disruptive editors are working in good faith, but they still need to be steered off their course. JWB takes a very narrow approach to rules and policy IMO, reading words and phrases instead of paragraphs and whole essays.

The BATTLE accusation is a classic tactic, turn around the charge levied against yourself, put them against your "opponents" to see what sticks. But we're uninvolved so what battle are we fighting? Whereas my judgement is still that JWB exhibited battleground behaviour at the time; his "case" against ChrisO was CO's response to his counter-AFD, CO filing a CC enforcement request, CO responding at an ANI thread that JWB started about him and one other bit I'd have to check my notes for. Now that is battleground behaviour and I would have sanctioned JWB for the two cases rolled into one. The ChrisO case petered out though and I closed JWB as warniong only - but that is exactly the behaviour I think should be slapped down on the CC enforcement page.

In general, I question the whole purpose of this case. Thumbs up to Shell (I think) who opined that the community already had a process in place. IMO it was working reasonably well though I'm sorry I strayed from participating. An Arb case won't quell the ongoing problems, except for establishment of an enforcement regime six months from now - which it turns out we already have. And everyone who has staked their all on a winners-and-losers approach to this will win small battles and lose big ones during this case. I do think the enforcement should move toward wide but shorter-term general topic bans instead of blocks when a sanction-request case finally closes.

There is completely diff-free evidence, maybe a clerk will want to move this somewhere more appropriate. If arbitrators would like supporting evidence, I'll work it up. I do still have my notes. I will apologize here to JWB for not being prompt with my followup which may have helped him to better understand where the problems were, mea culpa there.

I'll check in on this, but it's summer in BC and those rocks won't climb themselves. We're starting into serious bear country now to find the good geocaches. :) Franamax (talk) 06:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by MastCell

Quality of climate-change content

The quality of Wikipedia's climate-change content has been assessed positively by both internal and reputable external reviewers. The latter have been sympathetic to the difficulty of maintaining an informative article in the face of politically driven pressure.

• Global warming became a featured article in May 2006. It was reviewed and retained in May 2007.
• Nature 2005, PMID 16355169: "In politically sensitive areas such as climate change, researchers have had to do battle with sceptics pushing an editorial line that is out of kilter with mainstream scientific thinking."
• New Yorker 2006 ([670]) detailed "a particularly nasty confrontation with a skeptic, who had repeatedly watered down language pertaining to the greenhouse effect" as an example of the pitfalls of Wikipedia's approach to creating a serious, respectable reference work.
• Denver Post 2007 ([671]): An expert "called the Wikipedia entry [on global warming] 'a great primer on the subject, suitable for just the kinds of use one might put to a traditional encyclopedia. Following the links takes the interested reader into greater and greater depth, probably further than any traditional encyclopedia I've seen.'" On the much-maligned topic structure, it was noted that while the main articles appropriately stick to the science of climate change, "students who want to study up on the controversy... find plenty of links if they want them."
• Lindsey 2010 ([672]): In a journal article generally critical of Wikipedia's featured-content processes, the global warming article was reviewed positively. An expert in the field "scored the article on global warming at an eight [of 10] and wrote that it was 'very concise and clear', but remarked that he could tell 'it was not written by professional climate scientists' and noted an error in the way the article explained how clouds are included in climate models."

The burden of dealing with sockpuppetry

At present, there are 670 confirmed sockpuppets and 182 suspected sockpuppets of a single agenda account. Based on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Scibaby/Archive, it appears that responsibility for identifying, reporting, reverting, and otherwise handling this prolific sockpuppetry has devolved to a very small handful of editors.

These editors are doing Wikipedia a service by dealing with one of our most prolific sockpuppeteers. However, because they have little or no help from other editors, they assume all of the risk of any false-positive identifications, which are consistently used to attack them. There seems to be little or no interest in helping these editors find a better way to deal with this abusive sockpuppetry - instead, their small number of errors are leveraged against them. Worse, their efforts are misrepresented as evidence of inappropriate coordination (see evidence presented by Collect, first & third set of diffs, for example).

Setting an example

Admins who hope to resolve intractable disputes need to be prepared to model the behavior that they want to see from others. A good example is powerful; a bad example even more so. I'm going to pick on Lar (talk · contribs) a bit here, not because he is the only admin to fail to set a good example, but because as the holder of multiple advanced permissions on this site (and as a highly respected Wikipedian above and beyond those permissions), his responsibility and the power of his example are magnified. Here are some concerns, in descending order of importance:

Wheel-warring with Jehochman

Lar and Jehochman wheel-warred over the closure of an enforcement request at WP:GS/CC/RE:

• Jehochman closes enforcement request
• Lar reverts the closure without discussing it with Jehochman
• Jehochman re-closes the request
• Lar re-reverts Jehochman's re-closure

The spectacle of two admins edit-warring over a closure set a horrible example for the editors at the climate-change enforcement board, and (I believe) went a long way in undermining its credibility. I voiced my disappointment here; Lar concluded: "So did I set an example? Yes, a good one, in my view."

Lar/WMC

Lar's opinion of William Connolley's editing has been discussed elsewhere in evidence. If William is indeed uncivil and interested in baiting others, then it should be paramount that admins avoid responding to that baiting in kind. Instead, sniping between Lar and William degenerated bilaterally (parenthetically, if this is not "baiting", I'm not sure what is). Ultimately, BozMo was concerned enough to consider proposing a two-way interaction ban between Lar and William. I will not touch on nor defend William's conduct, which I think will be adequately addressed elsewhere in this proceeding. Regardless of what conclusion one draws about it, admins responding to it need to set a more positive example.

Personalizing discussion with Dave Souza

Lar responded to a relatively innocuous comment from Dave souza (talk · contribs) with: "Was wondering when you'd turn up. You're a canonical example of the problem, you know, since you so often indulge in snark to the exclusion of anything else in these bunfights, just like a good enforcer." He also negatively retitled a comment from Dave: "Dave Souza twists things around".

Dave opposed Lar's reconfirmation as a steward on Meta. In response to a on-topic general enforcement board comment from Dave, Lar cited Dave's stewardship vote, concluding: "If you can't win on strength of argument, attack the folk doing the enforcement in whatever venue offers itself. Right, Dave?"

Our interaction

In this discussion, I felt Lar was being intentionally provocative in response to a straightforward question. He asserted that by asking him to clarify a comment, I'd "played right into Stephan Schulz's hand." He added (to Kim Petersen): "You and yours poisoned the atmosphere long ago." Lar's summary of the thread: "These guys are pretty good at tag teaming me and getting me pretty wound up." I don't think this was handled in a manner consistent with admins' obligation to be responsive to good-faith questions.

Separately, but on the same theme, this series of interjections was suboptimal.

Thegoodlocust

With less than 50 article edits, Thegoodlocust (talk · contribs) had already accumulated 4 blocks for edit-warring, disruption, BLP violations, and tendentious editing. His initial focus was Barack Obama, from which he was topic-banned in May 2009. He subsequently has edited nearly exclusively on the subject of climate change, acquiring a 5th block and another topic ban.

In one of his few edits outside these two political crusades, he made an edit to Talk:Miley Cyrus which was deleted as a clear BLP violation. When he was warned, he responded: "I realize that you are either an obsessed teenage girl or a gay male, and, apparently, you are the reason the Miley Cyrus article doesn't mention this well-known controversy."

Thegoodlocust's edits to this Arbitration case have focused on continuing to advance his agenda, e.g. [673]. Insofar as off-wiki evidence is relevant, searching this page for "TheGoodLocust" is perhaps enlightnening. MastCell ^Talk 00:08, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Addendum re: Thegoodlocust

More recent diffs (BLP):

• On Naomi Oreskes: ...several scientists, even social scientists, trumped up by the other side like Naomi Oreskes have published their own books which are clearly more tilted towards advocacy/money-making."
• In response to discussion of James Hansen's climate models: "Hansen? Wasn't he arrested for protesting at a coal plant?"
• On Michael E. Mann: "Odd how wikipedia promotes Mann's work so much - it is almost like someone editing the articles in his personal friend... again, funny how often wikipedia promotes his website and 'science'."

On the evidence against him:

• "...attack me by digging up some light trolling from a couple years ago and finding a few instances of me being frustrated with other fanboys... have to lie about my actual article contributions."

Explicit battleground worldview:

• "The current crop of admins on his side have learned their lessons and now simply employ a one-sided targeting system while avoiding edit wars with their future victims."
• "My basic belief is that neutrally presented information will eventually favor my side and failing that the test of time will since the temperature are going to start cooling drastically... In fact, my beliefs... are supported by scientific literature - just not the 'Real Climate' approved and pumped literature."

Gasoline on the fire:

• "Oh yeah, you or Raul would never use your admin tools while edit warring in climate change areas now would you?"
• "'Community ban' is that what we are calling it when you and your friends come together to form a magically delicious consensus?"
• Unhelpful input at SPI
• Baiting, expects Boris to be "excited" that "Obama will propose a massive tax increase"
• "You know in criminology there are basically two theories as to why criminals aren't arrested/imprisoned with the same frequency they were during their youth... I wonder if the same holds true for sockpuppeteers and cabals - what do you say Hipocrite?"

Tendentiousness:

• This exchange - with the case clerk - shows a typical need to have The Last Word.

Continually using ArbCom pages to argue his personal views on climate change:

• [674]; see hatted segment
• [675]
• This thread; see portion hatted as "Content discussion"

All of these are from within the Arbitration case itself. While none are individually as bad as the behavior that led to the multiple blocks and topic bans listed in the previous section, I think they are evidence of ongoing, unchanged problems and reinforce the pattern previously outlined, which is not counterbalanced by any record of positive contribution in moer than 2 years on Wikipedia. MastCell ^Talk 00:29, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Lar

Missing context

A bit of missing context... (context that no less than three other evidencers citing my jocular followup remark omit) WMC implicitly characterizes (some) other ArbCom candidates as wackos.

A bit more missing context (and it was easy to miss, as it was on my talkpage which only has 350 or so watchers): I characterize my comment to WMC as "Inappropriate, at this remove", and "an unkind and unnecessary remark", with an edit summary of "Suggestion: an unkind and unnecessary remark" (the edit raised multiple points). Now watch and see how this acknowledgment of my acknowledgement is spun... might be some more evidence coming. (added 17:20, 6 July 2010 (UTC))

Cabal self labeling

From December, WMC's talk page: Joking reference to "the Cabal" showing that the notion these editors work together is widespread and has been held a long time.

Bozmo's bias goes unremarked

From Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/Comments/William M. Connolley: Bozmo claims there are less than 5 "good faith editors" objecting to WMC's candidacy. Rather a shocking statement, even amended That entire page makes interesting reading... Bozmo shows a strong bias in favor of WMC. Yet we see no evidence introduced that Bozmo should have been removed from the enforcement... bias in favor of WMC isn't considered significant by those charging bias. I've myself argued that Bozmo should remain, to make sure all views are represented, and I still think that's the case, but this bias is pretty clear.

A telling exchange

From April, WMC's talk page: On being told that as a result of an enforcement action, he needs to not attack other editors, WMC calls LHVU a "bozo", and claims he is biased. Stephan Schulz replies "I'd say about 1e-17 microLar. ", then clarifies "an object with a full Lar of bias has to rotate at near light-speed to avoid collapsing into a black hole from the sheer weight of it...". SBHB next suggests "adoption of millilar as the appropriate unit of measure" ... I exasperatedly reply good grief AQFK takes WMC [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&diff=prev&oldid=353909453 to task] for calling users "yahoos, septics and fools", resulting in this barb from dave souza, and this one. After some more changes, WMC starts selectively editing his page, leaving comments from his allies, while removing those of "the trolls and fools" (note, it wasn't clear if he was calling me a troll or a fool in that case), then leaves this cheery note... resulting in a page that unless you walk the diffs, you can't see what actually transpired. note that the "milliLar" comments from StS, SBHB, dave souza et al, remain. They, of course, are not trolling.

This one exchange evidences lots of different things. WMC's basic incollegiality, the way editors such as StS, SBHB, dave souza and others, swarm in to support him by being snarky, the way that insults get coined (and passed on to be used later) by them, and the way that WMC "tidies up", leaving the gross insults of his allies while removing the reasonable ("good grief" was the extent of my comment... pretty mild) comments of others.. This is the way he used to operate on article talk pages until he was restrained, as others have no doubt introduced in evidence.

BLP Problems noted in the external press

Others have introduced evidence lauding the scientific aspects of our coverage of this topic area. They have neglected to introduce evidence that is somewhat less laudatory of our coverage of other aspects, such as that of BLPs of those who do not completely agree with certain views. On 2 Feb 2010, Marcika (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) introduced material alleging that James Delingpole attacked a WW2 veteran and climate change activist. The material remained, although revised to different wording by various editors, (SlimVirgin, among others, including at least one anon, tried to tone down and tidy the article). It was subsequently removed, but on 19 April SpaceMonkey (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) reintroduced it, where it remained for some time. Finally Delingpole and others highlighted the WP:UNDUE, and WP:BLP problems here and elsewhere, prompting a signpost story and Jimbo Wales to comment In my view, Delingpole's particular complaint here about his entry is without question valid. on the article's talk page. The section has subsequently been rewritten to improve its balance. Note, this also got mentioned in the Signpost ("Briefly Noted", last item). As a note, Stephen Schulz coincidentally happens to mention Delingpole in his evidence section.

Evidence presented by dave souza

Note: these are specific examples of what I see as wider problems. dave souza, talk 16:14, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Battleground mentality

I began editing in this topic area at the end of December 2009.[676] My first interactions with William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) found him civil. When we disagreed, after discussions[677] he acknowledged his error.[678]

The first interaction I recall with Lar (talk · contribs) discussed content policy,[679] and my attempt to defuse an acrimonious accusation by Unitanode (talk · contribs) that Hipocrite (talk · contribs) had compared "disagreeing about AGW with holocaust denial". That dispute began when Lar compared AGW and concentration camp articles, and I made a mildly humorous reference to earlier concentration camps.[680]

Lar's response inaccurately said I was "a canonical example of the problem, you know, since you so often indulge in snark to the exclusion of anything else", praised the civility of debate on Milhist, and wrote "The science cabal, (of course [[WP:TINC|it's just a turn of phrase) on the other hand, drives away people from whatever topics it touches. Are you lot just socially inept, or is it a deliberate control mechanism?"[681]

This suggests Lar already had misperceptions of my actions in other topic areas, and showed undisguised battleground behaviour. That's inappropriate from anyone, but a particular concern when Lar was acting as an "uninvolved admin".

On the Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement page, Lar made offtopic comments on stewardship elections vote.[682] After my restrained response, Lar made more accusations while claiming to be "impartially commenting here".[683] Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk · contribs) described Lar's behaviour as inappropriate.[684]

Lar accused myself and others of holding grudges against him, I assured him that this was not the case.[685] On his talk page,[686] he accepted my conciliatory explanation.[687] This was a difficult situation to defuse, with Lar acting in a bullying way.

In his evidence, Lar cites a "Joking reference" to "the Cabal" from 22 December 2009, and cabal accusations predate that. In a WR post of 10th December 2009, 5:25am, Cla68 wrote "I think the most serious issue with the GWcab editors is...",[688] like his comments above alleging a "WMCab". (later amended)

Such labelling is a low level breach of civility policy, and before commenting at Lar's RfC I raised this with him.[689] Before replying he produced an analysis alleging that there was such a "cadre" – this was strongly disputed.[690] I commented that such labelling promotes a battleground mentality.[691]

Use of fringe material

There is commonly dispute over the use of sources promoting fringe views, such as The Real Global Warming Disaster,[692]

Cla68 (talk · contribs) argued at length that this is a reliable source,[693], and after being shown that its author is unreliable,[694] stated his intention to cite the book in various AGW articles,[695] and argued that "The book is published by a reputable publishing house. That's all that is required."[696]

Cla ignored the WP:SOURCES policy requirement that the work and its author should also be considered for reliability.[697] Tony Sidaway (talk · contribs) commented on "editors ignoring due weight, verifiability and the BLP in an effort to shoehorn some bit of fringe stuff into the article". Cla68 dismissed this as "a few editors who appear to have strong personal feelings".[698]

More recently, Marknutley (talk · contribs) and Tillman (talk · contribs) have been arguing for inclusion in the biography of a scientist of a link to the article on The Hockey Stick Illusion, a barely notable book promoting fringe views and attacking the scientist's work, which has been ignored by the mainstream.[699] Clarification that the book promotes fringe views given here

Giving due weight to majority views

My statement "that articles should reflect majority expert views, and pages devoted to minority views should refer to the majority view and not present issues from the minority viewpoint" was contested by Sphilbrick (talk · contribs)[700] and Lar who called it "A very novel interpretation of policy at best."[701] In reply I quoted due weight, articles "should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more widely held views, and the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all", and articles on minority views "should make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint wherever relevant, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite content strictly from the perspective of the minority view."[702]

Regarding the Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing essay, Tony Sidaway agreed that there is a long term problem of POV pushing on the basis of fringe sources.[703]

For example, The Hockey Stick Illusion is barely notable, and has received no mainstream coverage showing that the book promotes a tiny minority view of science. While the majority view could be shown per making necessary assumptions, a source giving the mainstream view on the topic of the book was contested as synthesis as it does not specifically mention the book,[704] and it's claimed that the article is about the book, not its topic.[705]

BLP problems with blog sources

Dubious material, reintroduced into the James Delingpole bio on 19 April,[706] remained until Marknutley (talk · contribs) removed it on 26 June.[707] Mark had edited the page in the interim,[708] but in fairness the blog by Leo Hickman, a features journalist and editor at the Guardian, complies with WP:NEWSBLOG and WP:BLPSPS. Unfortunately, regular editors to the article didn't pick up the undue weight issue.

By coincidence, a diff already raised shows Gwen Gale (talk · contribs) suggesting the use of a blog by James Delingpole which raised very serious accusations about living persons. Initially the article on the topic cited that blog,[709] but the Climatic Research Unit email controversy article has since been improved.

Note that "all sides" attempt to give undue weight[710] to dubious BLP material.[711]

Addendum - Robert Watson (scientist) ‎

The paragraph introduced into the article by the IP and reintroduced by GregJackP was obviously defamatory, accusing a scientist of repeatedly making false statements in an area he specialises in, when it only provided as a source a link to an audio file of one debate, and presenting WP:SYNTH using a fact sheet and a textbook, neither of which mentions Watson's statements, to claim that "This view is in conflict with our basic understanding of Mars".[712] Even were this claim supported, it would give undue weight in a biography to one alleged statement, a serious BLP violation similar to that which Lars called in #BLP Problems noted in the external press, although in that case the allegation was supported by a valid WP:BLPSPS source. Reasonable caution and simple checking should have stopped editors from reintroducing this defamatory statement into a BLP, and the information was properly removed until proper verification of its content was provided.

The disputed content was cited to a statement made by Watson at 1 hour 15 minutes into this debate (audio file download page) but misrepresented Watson's statement by misquoting him and taking his remark out of context as saying;
"We only need to look at 3 planets: Mars, Venus and Earth and you can explain why there is such a difference, a frigid Mars planet, no greenhouse gases, Venus is absolutely boiling lots of greenhouse gases and earth is by luck somewhere in the middle".[713]
In the debate, Watson answered a question on the timing of rises in CO2 during past interglacial, and the suggestion that "natural cycles drown what its doing", by replying:
"It's the magnitude of the warming, there's no debate about whether greenhouse gases such as water vapour, CO2, or many others have a warming effect. You only have to look at 3 planets: Mars has almost no greenhouse gases [interruption by Piers Morgan] The physics of the radiative transfer is quite straightforward, it's simple physics, and you can look at 3 planets, Mars, Earth and Venus and you can explain why there's such a difference. A frigid Mars planet, no greenhouse gases, Venus absolutely boiling, lots of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and earth by luck has maybe the right amount."

Thus Watson was careful to state "Mars has almost no greenhouse gases", and it was only after an interruption that he simplified this to " A frigid Mars planet, no greenhouse gases".

Evidence presented by Cardamon

I see that the time for presenting evidence has been extended [714].

ZuluPapa5 has made personal attacks

For example:

• [715] Suggests that William M. Connolley (WMC) is corrupt. “Pardon me for interrupting, "political science" sources indicate (as experts in methodicaly studied corruption), that the "science view" may have been corrupted. That this corruption may extend to WMC uncivil behavior here with a disruptive pattern of PA, would be no surprise except to deniers. I suspect you may have a narrow view about what science includes. Zulu Papa 5 ? (talk) 01:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC) “
• [716] says “WMC makes Wikipedia weaker”
• [717]titled a section of diffs about KimDabelsteinPetersen “One bad apple spoils the bunch”

Cardamon (talk) 01:38, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Nsaa

I've been being made aware of that Ratel is indef. blocked for sockpuppetry. It's not directly connected to the civil and battleground comment below, but I strike it.

Incivility

Per WP:CIVIL.

• Nigelj (talk · contribs): "I don't know why I bothered to mention it to you. Maybe because I hoped you'd go away for a week or two trying to find that source?" [718]
• Ratel (talk · contribs): Uncivil/personal attack "Which ones bother you, nut?" [719]
• Ratel: Uncivil/personal attack "listen to what the admin said, nut" [720]
• Hipocrite (talk · contribs): Uncivil and promotion of battleground atmosphere "It's like you're all functionally unable to write for the enemy. Perhaps you should all go edit other articles until you learn how." [721]
• William M. Connolley (talk · contribs): Uncivil "Oh anon, I recommend reading my mails in there, you might learn something" [722]
• William M. Connolley: Uncivil and promotion of battleground atmosphere "This is silly and a victory for the yahoo's; but unfortunately you've succumbed to the mob." [723]
• William M. Connolley: Uncivil and promotion of battleground atmosphere "Boris: alas I lack your patience with the idiots," [724]
• William M. Connolley: Uncivil "Your edits speak for you; take a look at your recent contribs. You might find [725] illuminating; or perhaps not" [726]

Battleground mentality

Per WP:BATTLEGROUND.

• Ratel: "That is how people who are sympathetic to denialism want it to be seen. It is a factual statement, and some denialists are even proud of the tag" [727]
• Ratel: "it's a deliberate, organized and concerted effort to derail science, for ideological, or, more usually, commercial reasons." [728]

Assume good faith

Per WP:AGF.

• Hipocrite: Failure to assume good faith "Apparently, you think blogs that express opinions are ok […] unless, of course, you only include opinions of people you agree with." [729]
• Hipocrite: Failure to assume good faith and promotion of battleground atmosphere "At this point it's clear that "New User" Rush's Algore is just going to distort this article using cherry picked facts ("It was the coldest day ever.. wait, it was tied with the coldest January 16th ever!"). I've tagged the article based on this persistant problem and am now walking away." [730]
• William M. Connolley: Failure to assume good faith and promotion of battleground atmosphere "My assertion that you have a vendetta in this looks ever more correct" [731]

Statement by SlimVirgin

I would like to make a statement here about a series of emails I received in April in relation to the NPOV policy and SPOV. The e-mails were not written by a climate-change editor, but by an editor associated with that group. I believe the mindset they display is central to this case, and to the problem in general of following NPOV in certain articles.

SPOV

There has been mention on these pages of the climate-change editors insisting on SPOV—scientific point of view—in violation of NPOV, to the point of excluding even The New York Times as a source. There have been numerous examples of this; for the sake of providing a diff, here is William Connolley removing in May this year that Fred Singer, a scientist Connolley disagrees with, is known as the "dean of climate contrarians", sourced to the NYT. And here is a brief exchange on the CC workshop where Guettarda appears to uphold that academic and peer-reviewed sources should be prioritized, though there is nothing in any of the policies that says this, so long as no sentence is read out of context.

Reliable sources

I've spent the last few years on Wikipedia helping to make sure that our sourcing policies—Verifiability and No original research—make clear that a wide variety of reliable sources are acceptable on Wikipedia, not only specialist ones. In the course of that, I've resisted several attempts to have the policy point more toward SPOV—mostly attempts to exclude newspapers as sources in science articles. I've been mocked for this on and off Wikipedia—silly SlimVirgin and her reliance on journalism. The reason I've tried to make sure high-quality newspapers are always acceptable as sources is that they're often the only places dissenting voices can go when certain groups close ranks—not only scientists, but any intellectual or academic group. To maintain neutrality, Wikipedia must make sure that the high-quality publications that accept dissenting voices are, in turn, accepted by us as reliable sources.

NPOV

I was never able to find time to help to monitor NPOV too, and I watched in dismay as over the years it became more weighted toward SPOV. There were several problematic parts. One section took wording directly from a 2006 ArbCom decision about pseudoscience, and was being used by certain editors to label any idea and any person (including other scientists) as "pseudoscience," often prominently in the lead, whether it made sense to do that or not; see here for what it used to say. But the real problem is the UNDUE section. It is over-written to the point where it's hard to understand, and is used by the same editors—including editors from among the climate-change group—to exclude non-specialist, dissenting sources, often including high-quality publications such as The New York Times. Their argument is that those sources represent tiny-minority voices within the scientific profession and that to include them violates UNDUE. This misses the point that as soon as an issue is published by The New York Times it is no longer a tiny-minority issue in Wikpedia's terms. The climate-change editors have used the UNDUE section time and again to exclude points of view they disagree with, allowing SPOV to prevail over NPOV.

In March this year, there was consensus on the NPOV talk page to remove the section devoted to pseudoscience, and toward the end of April I saw discussion on the talk page that looked as though others agreed with me about the UNDUE section too, so I began trying to tighten it, removing some of the language that was being used to push the policy toward SPOV. This shows some of the edits I made on April 23. Some of the key changes were to the UNDUE section. Here it is before my changes, and after my changes. And this is the current version (with all or most of my changes gone).

E-mails

Almost immediately, I received a series of emails from a Wikipedian I hadn't heard from for a while. I'm not willing to say who it was, and I apologize if that makes my statement worthless. Several times he mentioned himself and unnamed friends. He told me to revert my changes to the policy immediately, and he specifically mentioned pseudoscience and UNDUE. He said:

• "I and my friends are not willing to wait till tomorrow."
• "To repeat, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to restore these clauses to the policy, and I can and will make a stink that will singe us both if I have to. I have a lot less to lose than you do, so please consider that."
• "The items I've provided you need to be restored. Today."
• "If I'm being a hardass on this, it's because I think your changes are so ill-advised that they actually run the risk of ruining the project."

I was stunned by this and told him I was not willing to revert myself. Shortly afterwards several editors arrived to do so, and in fact reverted to a version from months before my edits, thereby undoing lots of other editors' work too. I posted an RfC about the pseudoscience section, but otherwise did not try to push the issue, because I wasn't sure how best to proceed. I do agree that lots of changes to core policies should not take place against objections, though it's hard to know what to do when the objections take the form they took in this case. So I took the policy off my watchlist. The RfC eventually upheld that the pseudoscience section should be restored, and the edits I made to UNDUE remained reverted.

Conclusion

The editor who wrote to me is not so far as I know a climate-change editor. I'm making this statement because there are strong relationships between him and some of the climate-change editors. Some are off-wiki friends, they edit from the same songbook, rely heavily on the UNDUE section, target the same editors who disagree with them, and try to exclude the same kinds of sources for the same reasons. I think the very strong reaction I got to the UNDUE section being tightened shows how heavily they rely on its particular wording, and I hope when this case is over that editors will look at the NPOV policy to see how it can be improved to reduce its misuse.

These editors mean well, in the sense that, as they see it, they're helping Wikipedia to be accurate. And in certain science articles there are people who add nonsense to try to promote whatever the latest fancy idea is, so it's completely understandable that a battlefield mentality has developed. But the editors who see themselves as defending Wikipedia have forgotten the essence of the project, which is simply to tell other people's stories—so long as those stories are published by high-quality publishers—then allow readers to judge for themselves.

This means that politicians are not our only sources for what happens in government, priests are not our only sources for what happens in religion, judges are not our only sources for what happens in law—and climate-change scientists are not our only sources for what happens in climate change. When the NPOV policy is used by experienced editors to exclude even The New York Times as a source because it's not specialist enough, then we know something has gone badly wrong.

I hope in its decision the Committee will reaffirm its commitment to the spirit of NPOV. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 00:02, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by GregJackP

Edit warring

In article Robert Watson (scientist), there were 5 reverts in a very short period of time. The 1st was by WMC [732], who violated his editing restrictions by not leaving a comment on the talk page. The 2nd was by Verbal [733] who reverted stating that the sources were not good (sources were the Guardian, NASA, and a textbook by an Oxford professor). After 1 revert each, the above two stopped reverting and took the issue to the talk page. Hipocrite then reverted the material three times [734], [735] and [736]. No editor that reinserted the material did so more than twice, and attempted to discuss the matter on the talk page. Hipocrite did not attempt to discuss the matter but threatened to send the next person to restore the material to AIV [737]. At that point I requested page protection in an effort to stop the edit warring [738]. At approx. the same time, Rlevse protected on their own.

Hipocrite' behavior was clearly edit warring as defined at AN/EW as Edit warring is a behavior, typically exemplified by the use of confrontational edits to win a content dispute. It is different than a bold, revert, discuss (BRD) cycle. Reverting vandalism and banned users is not edit warring; at the same time, content disputes, even egregious point of view edits and other good-faith changes do not constitute vandalism.

Personal attacks and incivility by Hipocrite in re the Robert Watson article

Hipocrite has made numerous personal attacks and been incivil during this process. See I dispute that GregJackP is an established user. I suggest that he is a highly problematic agenda editor, who is, at this point, not trustworthy and [739] which said "GregJackP, who is a serial gadfly reverts it back in. Where did he find this article? I know - he's watching WMC's talk page - a symptom of his previous attempt to create an article on "Adminstrator Abuse on Wikipedia," due to his prior run in with yet another admin - that's right - GregJackP is only involved in this article to harass WMC".

This is a continuation of his pattern of incivility, failing to assume good faith, and personal attacks shown in the evidence presented by others. GregJackP Boomer! 05:49, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Minor4th

Robert Watson (scientist) evidence extension promulgated by Rlevse 7-16-10

Here is the sequence of events for context:

IP edit --> reverted by Connolley --> refimproved version inserted by GregJackP with comment on talk page --> reverted by Verbal --> reverted by marknutley --> reverted by Hipocrite --> reverted by WVBluefield --> reverted by Hipocrite --> reverted by WVBluefield --> reverted by Hipocrite -->page protected by Rlevse

Note: The initial IP edit was sourced with NASA information and guardian.co.uk article but contained SYNTH and was placed in the wrong section. It took the IP three edits to get the refs and formatting right - it appears to be a new editor attempting to improve the article.

Note: Excuse me for posting in your section, but there's a factual inaccuracy. I did not protect the page at GregJackP's request, I saw it was necessary myself. I don't even know where his request is. — Rlevse • Talk • 15:01, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I corrected the statement above. His request was at the request for page protection noticeboard: [740]. I thought that's what you were responding to. Minor4th • talk 15:31, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

William M. Connolley violated the terms of his editing restriction

William M. Connolley is under the following editing restriction:

William M. Connolley is required until 2010-08-03 to initiate or participate in discussion at the relevant talkpage any time he makes a revert to any article in the probation area, excepting to revert blatant, obvious vandalism. [741]

On 16 July 2010, William M Connolley reverted sourced information added by an IP to the article Robert Watson (scientist) and did not provide an edit summary or initiate or participate in discussion at the relevant talkpage. The material reverted by William M. Connolley was not "blatant, obvious vandalism." [742]

Hipocrite engaged in edit warring

Hipocrite reverted the same material three times in 26 minutes on Robert Watson (scientist) with no discussion or explanation on the talk page of the article until after the page was protected: [743], [744], [745], [746]

mark nutley engaged in edit warring

marknutley reverted Verbal and re-inserted material in Robert Watson (scientist) when there was already an edit war in progress. Marknutley did not initiate or participate in discussion on the article talk page. [747]

WVBluefield engaged in edit warring

WVBluefield twice reverted Hipocrite and re-inserted material on Robert Watson (scientist) when there was already an edit war in progress. WVBluefield did not initiate or participate in discussion on the article talk page. [748], [749]

Minor4th • talk 07:43, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Short Brigade Harvester Boris

The first edit in the Watson brouhaha was a textbook example of original research: the editor pulled a context-free quote from a recorded interview and used it to build an original argument. Those who say the "sources were the Guardian, NASA, and a textbook by an Oxford professor" conveniently omit the fact that this was not the Guardian's, NASA's or the professor's analysis but instead that the Guardian site was simply the source of the interview and the other sources were used to help build the novel synthesis.

The cited Guardian source is here: it is simply a link to the audio file and contains no analysis whatsoever, and as such is a classic example of a primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation, and no such secondary source appeared.

WMC should have left a brief note on the talk page as this is part of the formal terms of his parole. It is unfortunate that such formalities take precedence over content, but that's the way it is on Wikipedia nowadays and we all have to deal with it. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:56, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence presented by A Quest for Knowledge and Sphilbrick

The following is a compilation of diffs related to the incident at the Robert Watson page starting on 16 July. This material was compiled by A Quest For Knowledge and formatted by Sphilbrick as a sortable table to allow reviewers to follow the strict chronological order, or to see results by location or by editor.

• In the Edit Location column, the entry "article" means Robert Watson, while "talk" means Talk:Robert_Watson_(scientist)
• All diffs at those two pages are included.
• For all other edit locations, the first diff is included (but not subsequent diffs)

Robert Watson article dispute timeline

Link Time Editor Edit location Details [750] 09:31, July 16, 2010 211.28.194.74 Article 211.28.194.74 adds new paragraph with no explanation in edit summary. [751] 09:32, July 16, 2010 211.28.194.74 Article 211.28.194.74 fixes ref error. [752] 09:34, July 16, 2010 211.28.194.74 Article 211.28.194.74 adds reference to paragraph. [753] 09:47, July 16, 2010 William M. Connolley Article William M. Connolley reverts with no explanation in edit summary. William M. Connolley marks this edit as minor. [754] 09:58, July 16, 2010 Off2riorob William M. Connolley Talk Off2riorob Starts discussion at William M. Connolley's talk page: "Hi, you reverted this edit with no edit summary, why did you do that, there are citations, what is wrong with the content?" [755] 13:06, July 16, 2010 GregJackP Article GregJackP restores paragraph with edit summary ""restore well-sourced material, replaced 1 questionable source, material is clearly not vandalism"" [756] 13:09, July 16, 2010 GregJackP Talk GregJackP starts discussion at article talk page. ""I restored well-sourced material regarding a Climategate debate that was removed without comment, moved into correct section and replaced one questionable source with a better source. [757] 13:22, July 16, 2010 Verbal Article Verbal reverts with edit summary ""Material is not well sourced and is UNDUE / unbalanced. Take to talk please.."" [758] 13:52, July 16, 2010 William M. Connolley Talk William M. Connolley replies on article talk page. ""You restored junk. Are you really taking responsibility for that edit? And this has little or nothing to do with the CRU stuff"" [759] 13:53, July 16, 2010 Off2riorob CC/RfE Off2riorob Begins filing RfE against William M. Connolley [760] 14:03, July 16, 2010 Verbal Article Verbal replies on article talk page: ""I removed it for fairly obvious reasons before realising there had been a post here. If anyone seriously contests the removal then I'll justify it further."" [761] 14:18, July 16, 2010 GregJackP Talk GregJackP responds on article talk page: ""First, two of the references are to scientifically reliable sources. Are you really claiming that NASA doesn't know that Mars' limited atmosphere is 95% CO2? Or that a professor of chemistry at Oxford, writing is a college textbook is not scientifically reliable? Or is it the opinion of Watson that is objectionable? The material is his bio, and the "Climategate" tag is the title in the source, not what I think about it. The material covered his opinion, as publicly reported and was not negative. In addition, WP:UNDUE is specious argument, as it showed his opinion and then provided balancing information from NASA and an Oxford scientist. The material was balanced, as required by the standard. And the only "obvious" reason that I can see for reverting the material was a desire to keep the term "Climategate" out of the public view. BTW, it would appear to me that WMC has a WP:COI in any article mentioning that term, as some of the e-mails involved in Climategate were to or from him. Regards" [762] 14:35, July 16, 2010 Atmoz Talk Atmoz responds on article talk page: ""Watson's view is entirely in line with the two other sources you provide. The fact that some don't understand this speaks volumes."" [763] 14:42, July 16, 2010 William M. Connolley Talk William M. Connolley responds to article talk page: ""Per Atmoz and Verbal: there are any number of problems with the text, which is fairly standard ""skeptic"" nonsense. It is a shame you're trying to defned it. Anyway: Watson has claimed on many occasions that the proof of the greenhouse effect can be observed by looking at Mars, Venus and Earth doesn't look correct, and certainly isn't supported by the refs provided, which is only one mention on a video. But the real problem is This view is in conflict with our basic understanding of Mars. which is clear SYN (and wrong, too). The refs don't support that statement. There is more, but since you've veered of into paranoia about cenorship and COI I can't be bothered" WMC refactors.[764] [765] 15:01, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite GregJackP Talk Hipocrite begins discussion at GregJackP's talk page: "This edit inserts false, defamatory information about living persons into mainspace articles. This must not continue - do not insert false, defamatory information about living people into articles ever again." [766] 15:03, July 16, 2010 Marknutley Article Marknutley reverts with edit summary ""since when was NASA not a reliable source?"" [767] 15:10, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Article Hipocrite reverts with edit summary ""BLP violation. RFE filed"" [768] 15:11, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite CC/RfE Hipocrite begins filing RfE against Marknutley [769] 15:24, July 16, 2010 WVBluefield Article WVBluefield reverts with edit summary ""i'm just not seeing it"" [770] 15:24, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Article Hipocrite reverts with edit summary ""BLP exemption"" [771] 15:25, July 16, 2010 WVBluefield Article WVBluefield reverts with edit summary ""I dont think the BLP exemption covers WP:IDONTLIKEIT"" [772] 15:25, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Talk Hipocrite starts new discussion on article talk page: ""Next editor to insert the defmatory text is going right to AIV - not ANI, AIV. It's vandalism - if you don't understand why, don't reinsert it."" [773] 15:26, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Article Hipocrite reverts with edit summary ""BLP exemption"" [774] 15:29, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite ANI Hipocrite starts discussion at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents: "A series of loosely organized "skeptics" are attempting to put false, defamatory content in Robert Watson (scientist). Dr. Watson said that Mars' thin atmosphere causes it not to have a greenhouse effect (while Venus' thick atmosphere causes it to have a huge greenhouse effect). This is in line with standard scientific thinking. An IP vandal attempted to insert the false inormation that this is not in line with standard scientific thinking into the article - this was reverted, but that reversion was questioned as a vandalism or not-vandalism revert. However, users are now reinserting the false, defamatory information into the article, in violation of BLP. Please assist." [775] 15:40, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Arbcom Evidence Hipocrite begins adding evidence at ArbCom case: "During the case [776], [777], [778], [779] - Marknutley, GregJackP, and WVBluefield reinsert sneaky BLP vandalism into articles just because the people reverting them are on the other "side."" [780] 15:52, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Risker Talk Hipocrite starts discussion at Risker's talk page: "I realize that it is very much past the evidence deadline, but I think it's important that AC closely evaluate the recent flare up at Robert Watson (scientist), where an IP editor added sneaky obviously defamatory BLP vandalism (that Mars has a greenhouse effect and the subject of the biography had repeatedly gotten that fact wrong), is reverted by WMC, and then, because it's WMC doing the reverting, the BLP vandalism is edit warred back in by Marknutley, GregJackP and WVBluefield, WMC is brought before the enforcement board for not explaining his vandalism revert." [781] 15:52, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Rlevse Talk Hipocrite starts discussion at Rlevse's talk page: "I realize that it is very much past the evidence deadline, but I think it's important that AC closely evaluate the recent flare up at Robert Watson (scientist), where an IP editor added sneaky obviously defamatory BLP vandalism (that Mars has a greenhouse effect and the subject of the biography had repeatedly gotten that fact wrong), is reverted by WMC, and then, because it's WMC doing the reverting, the BLP vandalism is edit warred back in by Marknutley, GregJackP and WVBluefield, WMC is brought before the enforcement board for not explaining his vandalism revert." [782] 15:52, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Newyorkbrad Talk Hipocrite starts discussion at Newyorkbrad's talk page: "I realize that it is very much past the evidence deadline, but I think it's important that AC closely evaluate the recent flare up at Robert Watson (scientist), where an IP editor added sneaky obviously defamatory BLP vandalism (that Mars has a greenhouse effect and the subject of the biography had repeatedly gotten that fact wrong), is reverted by WMC, and then, because it's WMC doing the reverting, the BLP vandalism is edit warred back in by Marknutley, GregJackP and WVBluefield, WMC is brought before the enforcement board for not explaining his vandalism revert" [783] 15:59, July 16, 2010 GregJackP Hipocrite Talk GregJackP starts discussion at Hipocrite's talk page: "You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Robert Watson (scientist). Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Claims BLP exemption when there is not a BLP issue. " [784] 16:04, July 16, 2010 ATren Talk ATren responds to first discussion on article talk page: ""Regardless of factual accuracy, it's clearly WP:SYN to attempt to debunk statements from one source with ""facts"" from another source. And since it doesn't appear that anyone here wants to explain why it's factually dubious, I believe the issue is that Mars' atmosphere is so sparse, that even if it's mostly CO2, it's still a very small amount in absolute terms." [785] 16:04, July 16, 2010 GregJackP RPP GregJackP requests full protection of Robert Watson (scientist) artice: "Temporary full protection' dispute, Hipocrite, in conjunction with 2 other editors, have reverted sourced material 5 times within 24 hours, claiming a BLP exemption where none exists. Request that page be restored to this diff and protected for 7 days to stop the edit warring." [786] 16:07, July 16, 2010 ATren Article ATren responds to second discussion on article talk page: ""It's not vandalism (and you should stop saying that), but it's a BLP vio and I will revert if it goes back in. This is clearly WP:SYN."" [787] 16:08, July 16, 2010 Hipocrite Talk Hipocrite responds in second discussion on article talk page: ""ATren is close on the atmospheric physics. It's more that there is no atmosphere to retain heat."" [788] 16:08, July 16, 2010 Rlevse Article Rlevse protects article with edit summary ""edit warring over a GW BLP during the arb case is not good"" [789] 16:10, July 16, 2010 Rlevse Talk Rlevse starts new discussion on article talk page: ""I have full protected this for one week due to the edit war of today. Edit warring when the topic, esp a BLP, and parties involved are part of an ongoing arbcase is not a good idea.""

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.