Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV/Evidence

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Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-consciousness rants are not helpful.

As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&oldid=5584644] [1].

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

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The 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 voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Evidence presented by SimonP[edit]

The central issue to this dispute is a series of centralized discussions initiated by -Ril- about Bible verse articles. This applies to Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/200 verses of Matthew, Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Verses of John 20, Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Whole bible chapter text. All three of which -Ril- initiated on January 15. My contention is that despite outward appearances, they do not reflect community consensus and can be ignored.

This is easiest to illustrate with the first two discussions, which are almost completely counter to a wide array of other expressions of community opinion. These two discussions were summarized with the comment that "a simple discussion of a verse does not make for an acceptable article." However, this fall a centralized discussion at Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses was summarized as there being consensus that "articles on notable Bible verses are encyclopedic." There have also been some 12 VfDs none of which resulted in an article on a verse being deleted. In my view this does not actually represent a u-turn in community consensus, but rather that these most recent discussions were quite badly skewed by -Ril-'s intensive efforts to have them reflect his views.

New discussions counter to community views[edit]

The debate over Bible verses has been going on for almost exactly a year, there have been a number of centralized discussions and also several well attended votes on VfD. The earliest votes showed a fairly strong view that these pages should be kept and quite clearly counter that it is the view of the community "a simple discussion of a verse does not make for an acceptable article."

After these debates it became quite clear that the articles were not getting deleted. This summer the discussion turned to merging, and subsequent AfDs have been largely about whether the pages should be merged or not. These got mixed results, with fairly even splits between those supporting merging and those supporting keeping.

After the first of these debates produced ambiguous results, Radiant! began a centralized discussion titled, Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses. Doc Glasgow summarized the conclusion of that debate as "articles on notable Bible verses are encyclopedic - and we can only judge what's worth keeping intact when we see the article. Good, full, well-referenced articles should stay. Stubs and bare-bones may be merged." Which I fully agree with. -Ril- also began a concurrent poll at Wikipedia:Bible verses, which got a similar result.

-Ril- has noted correctly that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Exodus 30:23 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John 20:19 did result in deletions. However these were not articles on verses, but simply copies of the verse texts. These are of no use to readers, and I myself voted to delete John 20:19.

In summary we have had a large number of discussions, it is quite clear that the articles on Bible verses are not getting deleted. It is also quite clear that pretty much everyone agrees that some Bible verses are worthy of articles, and pretty much everyone agrees that some might be better merged together.

Why these new discussions got different results[edit]

The main reasons these discussions ended with a different result is that -Ril- did everything within his power to skew them. After creating the centralized discussions he immediately contacted 62 different users:

These were all users who had expressed some view against Bible verses in any of the earlier many debates. The vast majority of the people who participated on those pages, especially in the first few hours, were individuals who had been contacted by -Ril-. Moreover, for several weeks that the page was open, -Ril- had appended to his signature a call to "help remove Biblecruft," linking to this discussion. These pages do not thus represent anything close to an accurate cross section of the community.

Perhaps one of the strongest influences, certainly the one that had the greatest affect on me, is that -Ril- is a poisonous presence in virtually any discussion he chooses to insert himself. He main goal seems to be to simply get a rise out of people. Among his contributions in the last month he has:

I'm can't speak for others, but for myself past experience with -Ril- is a very strong motive for staying away from any projects he has initiated. This could further explain why almost all the users who in the past have been interested in this issue chose to ignore these discussions. There was a fairly lengthy discussion of this at WP:AN/I, where the general sentiment was that these discussions were at best useless and at worst trolling.

Perhaps the best piece of evidence for how these votes don't reflect the community can be seen from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1:2 (second attempt). This vote happened during the period that the centralized discussion was open, but there was no recruiting of voters, signature messages pointing to it, or spiels by -Ril-. It got quite a different result, 9 merge votes, 8 keep votes, and 3 delete votes. The same lack of consensus seen in earlier debates.

Source texts[edit]

There has been far less discussion about source texts, simply Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Whole bible chapter text, and an earlier poll that was subject to the same skewing by -Ril-. That poll was close, but did not meet the standard 70% threshhold for a new policy to be enacted. Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Whole bible chapter text was subject to the same pressures by -Ril-, and is just as unrepresentative as the other two discussions.

This can be seen by simply looking at standard practice and policy. Both policy and standard practice are explicit on short source texts: when possible they should be included in Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia:Lyrics and poetry, for instance, states that "you should include lyrics and poetry whose copyright has expired." Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources agrees, saying that "smaller sources and samples are acceptable in articles." Certainly Bible verses are about as small a sample you get, they are a sentence or two at the most, and the source text makes up a tiny fragment of the verse articles. Even the chapters are a few hundred words at most in most print editions of the Bible each chaptertakes up considerably less than a page.

Adding copies of short primary sources is also the overwhelmingly standard practice. You will not find many entries in Category:National anthems or Category:William Blake's poems without copies of the text. No one questions that the article on the To be, or not to be soliloquy should have the full text of that piece, or that La Marseillaise should have an arbitrrily chosen translation of that song. Don't include copies of primary sources was not included to exclude examples, rather it was created when Wikipedia was home to entire copies of Macbeth and the U.S. Constitution.

In summary, while Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Whole bible chapter text, may show that some prefer to create a new policy to exclude Bible texts. This discussion runs counter to existing guidelines, and is just as skewed as the merger discussions already discussed.

Tangential issues[edit]

Personal attacks/assuming bad faith[edit]

Over the last few weeks -Ril- has been asserting that I am an evangelical Christian who is scheming to flood Wikipedia with religious content to promote Christianity ([2], [3], [4], [5]). And he has accused me of being a member of the UCCF or IVCF.

I'm not an Evangelical Christian, I'm actually not even Christian, but I also don't consider the term an insult. However, the way -Ril- uses the term makes it quite clear that to him calling someone a member of the UCCF is an insult. While this might be a borderline personal attack, asserting that a user is adding content in order to evangelize it at the very least an assumption of bad faith. (Also an assumption that can be fairly easily be disproved by simply reading the articles)

Mistagging articles for speedy deletion[edit]

-Ril- has again been attempting to get admins to speedy delete Bible verse articles, something he was penalized for in his last ArbCom. He did this logged out as User:86.136.61.186, but the edit history of that IP address makes quite clear it was -Ril-, and Matthew has confirmed this with CheckUser. Fortunately the admins that came across these tags simply reverted them


Evidence presented by -Ril-[edit]

I apologise for the verbose structure of this evidence, but I am forced to use it as Simon has done also thusly above.

On votes, and misleading summaries of them[edit]

This particular request was intended to be about the source text. None of the votes SimonP mentions above (prior to 23:17, 13 February 2006 (UTC)) are in fact relevant. They concern whether or not several articles should exist or be merged together or outright deleted. What is relevant are the votes about the source text, which I shall come to shortly. Nevertheless, SimonP has presented a very misleading summary of the votes, deliberately portraying merge votes and merge/delete votes as keep votes. SimonP's deliberate misconstruing of prior consensus, and votes, is indeed part of the problem.

A more factual summary of the votes is as follows:

  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 2:16 - This was a keep outcome, but it does not detract from the fact that Matthew 2:16 is a POV-fork of Massacre of the innocents, something which was neglected to be mentioned at that AFD until well after it had begun.
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1:verses
    • Raw votes:18 merge, 12 keep, 7 delete, 1 Transwiki
    • Outcome: Allen3 closed it claiming it was a default keep, despite the fact that 68% (26 people) thought it shouldn't exist as a seperate article (i.e. merge or delete). Allen3 voted "keep" on a later related AFD, demonstrating their bias.
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Individual Bible verses
    • Raw results:31 keep, 2 "'keep or merge", 23 merge, 5 delete, 3 transwiki, 1 "keep or transwiki", 2 "delete or transwiki", 3 "merge or transwiki", 1 "merge and transwiki", and 1 "merge, transwiki, or delete", with 2 abstentions and 2 discounted votes.
    • I.e the total vote was 31 keep (+3 ambiguous "keep or ....") against 38 to not keep them as distinct articles. This is hardly a keep outcome, quite the opposite in fact.
    • If we were to allow the votes that were "A or B" to count as seperate votes for A and for B, this would result in 33 keep, 30 merge, 10 transwiki, and 7 delete
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1:2 (second attempt) - 9 merge, 8 keep, 3 delete

The outcome of the Matthew 1:2 AFD was even officially announced to be "merge and redirect", giving some indication of the community view that the articles shouldn't exist like this, yet SimonP still insists that the community believes the opposite. SimonP in his presentation above has claimed that Radiant started a centralised discussion due to ambiguity, implying that the merge outcomes were ambiguous, but this is misleading, the Matthew 1:2 AFD was only made in January 2006, while Radiant's discussion was last summer, i.e. the Matthew 1:2 AFD is more recent. SimonP has also continued editing Matthew 1:2 despite the fact that other editors merged it and the AFD outcome was officially to merge it.

SimonP has also forgotten to mention

The only reason I can think of for forgetting to mention this is that SimonP was deliberately trying to mislead readers of the evidence as these two set the opposite precedent to the one he claims exists.

On gerrymandering and the electorate[edit]

Apparantly it is an accepted principle on Wikipedia that people may round up parties of their choice that they consider interested in order to invite them to a vote. Therefore SimonP's accusations over "bias" in the debates is entirely without standing. Furthermore, SimonP and his supporters could equally have e-mailed each other, and there would be no record of it, and no way for them to prove that they haven't. Likewise they could use IRC etc. There is absolutely no reason to view open and publicly visible invitations to others as somehow more underhand than the secret conspiracies that he could easily have carried out by e-mail.

SimonP's claims essentially boil down to this:

  • That I somehow caused the debate to be totally skewed and not reflective of the Wikipedia community by somehow gerrymandering the debators.

I would like to point out that

  • Anyone can read my signature. That includes people who have the opposite stance. Is SimonP saying that absolutely no-one I contacted will ever have their talk page read by someone who opposes my stance?
  • I edited several very public locations, like WP:AN/I, with that signature. Is SimonP seriously claiming that WP:AN/I is totally unreflective of the community and that anyone who came to the debate c/o my signature at WP:AN/I is to be ignored due to this?
  • I very clearly added a notice to the Cent template announcing the debates. The cent template appears on all the main AFD pages, and so forth. It is used to advertise all the main debates, and many people read it. Is SimonP seriously claiming that by doing so I was attempting to rig the debate? Or is SimonP seriously claiming that people who read the cent template are all avid bible-haters who all have a single POV and can no-way reflect the community? This is really quite ridiculously implausible.

Several, in fact most (2/3) of the people discussing the most recent debates came to it either from template Cent or from WP:AN/I or were people trolling my edit history, or being informed by those on the opposite side of the debate to me. I made absolutely sure that I advertised the debates to the widest spectrum of the community by my actions, and in no way can SimonP justifiably claim that they do not reflect the community. I see SimonP's claims as essentially clutching at straws because the debates didn't go the way he liked.

On the 62[edit]

The users involved in the centralised discussions were: Cohesion, Alex.tan, Radiant, InShaneee, SimonP, JzG, Onthost, Logophile, R.Koot, Pureblade, Merovingian, Aranda56, Rd232, Kingboyk, Eusebeus, Nightstallion, Thryduulf, Nae'blis, Parallel or Together?, Thesquire, Stifle, IZAK, Ragesoss, Ihcoyc, B.ellis, Gareth Owen, Angr, Interiot, Jfdwolff, Doc glasgow, SCZenz, A.J.A., Endomion, T-rex, Avriette, Jmabel

Of these, the following are amongst the 62 that simonP lists above as a group: Alex.tan, JzG, Logophile, Pureblade, Merovingian, Aranda56, Rd232, Kingboyk, Eusebeus, Thryduulf, Nae'blis, Thesquire, IZAK, Angr

In other words, out of the 36 users involved in the discussion, only 14 were contacted about it by me, the other 22 arrived by some totally independant means.

Statistically, only 39% were invited by me, and 61% were totally independant.

I fail to see how SimonP can justifiably claim that this is gerrymandering.

On personal attacks[edit]

Firstly I would like to point out that much of what SimonP has stated above about me in person is highly off topic, and personal attacks.

This is about whether or not SimonP's behaviour in continually restoring the source text of the KJV into several biblical articles is acceptible in regards to WP:NPOV, community consensus as reached previously, and Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources. To try to cast aspertions about my motives is simply a logical fallacy, it doesn't matter to this case why I do things, this case is about whether SimonP's behaviour is in accordance with policy or against it, and perhaps more generally about whether a consensus exists on the KJV source text inclusion/exclusion, and what that might be. I could be Satan incarnate and that still wouldn't remove the question of whether or not SimonP has been a good boy/girl (I'm not Satan by the way).

More importantly, trying to portray me as the sole opposition is quite simply diversionary, as can clearly be seen from the fact that several other editors made statements corroborating mine to greater or lesser extents when this case was first put before the arbitration committee.

On entirely off-topic charges that SimonP has made against me[edit]

  • We are allowed to make pages in our user space. We are allowed to put images that are already' uploaded, don't have copyright issues, and are used in articles, into our pages. Indeed there is nothing wrong with this. Saying it is somehow wrong to do so simply because of the viewer's sense of morality opens up that whole "I will impose my sense of morality on you, and completely ignore the DO NOT JUDGE commandment that Jesus apparantly makes in Matthew 7:1-7 that SimonP recently created articles about" issue we had with Wikipedia:Wikipedian's for decency. If you would care to check the history of those subpages, you will see that I was in the process of categorising the images. When I had finished I was intending on adding the images to suitably descriptive categories, the categorisation being a fundamentally necessary first step.
  • I claimed that the edits to Flower of Life were my work. They are not copyvios - it helps if people check what my edits actually were before jumping to conclusions. You can check the Channel 4 schedules for December 24-30 2005 and you will find a programme (not sure which day) that was on somewhere between 7- 10 about biblical archaeology. I happened to be watching it, and the edits I made shortly thereafter (early January) to Flower of Life are entirely derived from that programme - I forget the name, but if you look up the schedules to find out what it is and then watch it yourself you will spot that the details it mentions about the Flower of Life are very much related to what I wrote - because this is what spurred me to write them and from where I derived the content.
  • Same-sex marriage (the article) being separate to marriage (the article) IS POV - it implies that Same-sex marriage isn't marriage - because marriage (the article) almost entirely concerns different-sex marriage; an entirely pov interpretation of what constitutes "marriage", regardless of whether that stance is or isn't the morally right one.
  • I am entirely justified in nominating a page for deletion. Especially one which suggests that people who have had several RFCs against them, including the biggest number of co-signatories in wikipedia history by a wide margin, are somehow better than other editors and somehow have more authority, despite the fact that the community adamantly did not elect them in the recent elections.
  • FARC is offensive to columbians. Just like WP:NAZI would be an offensive redirect to Jews. A redirect named WP:NAZI would be deleted instantly, so why is the redirect WP:FARC to be considered beyond reproach?
  • Maybe we should rename Moses to Moshe (or whatever the hebrew spelling is), and rename Jesus to Jesu or Iesu or Iesous or even Joshy? Why don't we? Because this is the english language version of Wikipedia. Why should a polish dictionary be any different?
  • During the last month I have been mostly lecturing first year students about linguistics, and carrying out (academic) research. Not all of us are jobless, or can afford to spend 100% of our spare time on wikipedia. Some of us have lives to lead elsewhere as well. There is nothing wrong with not doing much editing for a month. Several well respected editors have taken time out. The charge is quite frankly clutching at straws.
  • I was rather under the impression that what is and isn't trolling was a question of perception - people who can't cope with strong opposition frequently cast their opponents as trolling. I note that SimonP refers to someone accusing me of trolling for commenting about the Clerks position. I have made a grand total of a maximum of six comments on the subject, probably including this one, how that constitutes trolling is beyond me. SimonP has continuously tried to distract attention from the consensus on Bible verses and source text - see for example his recent behaviour in attacking what had till that point been a conclusion that had consensus from the debators at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/200 verses of Matthew. One could easily call SimonP's behaviour on this matter trolling, but that would be stooping to personal attacks, quite childish behaviour that quite frankly I wouldn't even believe a 6 year old would be so pathetic as to stoop to (see also proslepsis).
  • Philippians 2:5-8 is an article that solely exists for someone to use as a soapbox (read it). It has no content whatsoever except for blatant soapbox and fourfold duplication of wikisource. Matthew 24:36 is another article of exactly the same sort, created by the same person to push a pov about the same subject. Acts 19:11-12 is virtually non-existant, consisting almost entirely of a biblical quote (and nothing but the quote itself), except for a tiny piece of POV that claims it justifies Miracles of Jesus - i.e. its intended as a fork of that article. 1 Corinthians 13:1 is also a piece of blatant soapbox/pov-fork on the subject of glossolalia, using highly selective (and obviously so) quotations to back up the pov.

If trying to make Wikipedia neutral, and well laid out, is somehow poisonous, then perhaps SimonP thinks the sites listed by this random google search are bliss and sweet roses?

And if SimonP's accusations that I am poisonous are not clear and obvious violations of WP:NPA for which he should be penalised then I would like to know what I may justifiably slander him with?

On SimonP's motivation[edit]

SimonP claims above not to be either Christian or protestant. Nevertheless, the external links that he added to the articles John 20:1, John 20:2, John 20:3, ...., John 20:18 are all either Calvanist, Puritan, or more mainstream Protestant (it's the same four links each time, by the way). SimonP's use of references in these and the 200 similar Matthew articles demonstrate a profoundly Protestant bias, and SimonP refers to Catholic and Orthodox writers only fleetingly. It is perhaps telling that despite there being over 1500 years of Christianity, SimonP seems to almost exclusively refer to modern Protestant commentators, despite whatever claim's to the contrary he might make.

A large number of these articles, which he has written, have a high degree of editorialising - e.g. "the moral here IS X" rather than "some say the moral here is X". Or "this means" rather than "X suggests it means", despite the fact that as a very talked about book there is bound to be some dissent. On many occasions I have noticed that what SimonP has added is only one interpretation and that there are very clearly many others, yet SimonP presents his as if it were fact. This concerns me that his motivation in keeping all of these articles is effectively to turn wikipedia into a soapbox for his sermonising - it is very difficult to be vigilant against POV when there are 200+ articles to watch - and the heavy crosslinking effectively causes web servers, like google, to advertise his four or five favourite references by adding them to 200+ articles - effectively linkfarming them.

SimonP consistently includes the source text for the KJV in all of these 200 articles, and the entire chapter articles, even though it absolutely clear that the KJV is not the only translation of the bible in existance, nor do a majority of scholars view it as the most accurate. SimonP continually neglects Roman Catholic translations, for example - the New American Bible being the only American version that the Catholic church officially sanctions, and yet despite it clearly being a major modern translation, in not one of those 200+ articles does even a snippet from it appear, even though SimonP willingly includes the conservative Protestant New International Version, and the conservative Protestant World English Bible. The WEB translation is viewed by many scholars as particularly shoddy, so it is quite odd that SimonP has included it in 150+ articles while neglecting to include a well respected modern scholarly translation in more than 20.

It is increadibly easy to selectively pick and choose Biblical commentaries that suit your bias, and pretend that the whole spectrum is covered - one simply chooses reference sources that are slightly different and slightly antagonistic towards each other, but still support your bias overall - it gives all the appearance of a debate, but in reality only the minutiae are being bickered over and the bigger issues are presented as fact. I found several the other day that said Jesus was gay, based on careful reading of an ancient manuscript fragment for the Gospel of Mark, and with reference to John - clearly its a fairly ridiculous suggestion, but I could easily present the case, and suggest that he was sleeping with Mary Magdelane as the alternative possibility, hence presenting it as a fait accomplis that he was having sex with someone, even though this is not the mainstream view at all.

I have read all of Simon's 200+ bible verse articles, including the five he added last week, and in those 200+ I've seen only about 3 references to Loisy, a (now dead) victorian priest, a handful to Brown, apparantly a significant modern Catholic bible scholar, but over 100 to William F. Albright, a creationist evangelical, and over 100 to France, similarly a conservative Protestant. .

For the reasons I list above reasons I strongly feel that SimonP has a seriously alterior motivation, and believe that is claims to the contrary are entirely false and untrustworthy.

On Blatant Pov Pushing edits (in Bible verse articles) by SimonP[edit]

On source texts[edit]

It's nice to actually be able to address the actual case I brought up as well, i.e. source texts.

The "earlier poll":

  • SimonP says I skewed it. I say I advertised it at Wikipedia:Current surveys in good time. It therefore has consensus.
  • SimonP says it didn't reach consensus for new policy. I say it wasn't policy, just an attempt to determine consensus about existing policy. Further, I say that I clearly stated and spelt out that this was the case at the very top of that poll. In a nice brown box so that everyone could be absolutely certain that it wasn't needing to reach 70% for new policy.
  • SimonP says it didn't reach 70%. I say that if you don't count the 3 abstentions then it did reach 70%. Further, I say that it reached 65%, close enough for VFD to have deleted it if it were something that could have been put to VFD.

The guidelines:

  • SimonP says that Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources instructs that "smaller sources and samples are acceptable in articles". I agree, but the entire text of a whole biblical chapter is neither "small" nor a "sample" in an article about that chapter.
  • SimonP says that To be, or not to be contains the relevant text. I agree, its a notable poem, its quite eloquent. Maybe it belongs on wikisource when the article gets bigger. "David begat Solomon. Solomon begat Rehoboam. Rehoboam begat Jeconiah. Jeconiah begat Josiah. Josiah begat Hezekiah. Hezekiah begat Jehoash. Jehoash begat Ahaziah. Ahaziah begat Pekah. Pekah begat Micah. Micah begat Amen. Amen begat Manasseh. Manasseh begat Absalom. Absalom begat Abraham. Abraham begat Jacob. Jacob begat Joseph...." isn't notable. It isn't even worth writing it down anywhere when a simple list of names or family tree would do much better (techniques that unfortunately hadn't been well known at the time the bible was written). We certainly don't have I'll bugger you and make you suck it (it's blue because I've made it a redirect), even though that too is very well known (it's a genuine poem if you're wondering, and by Catullus), though we do have a tiny bit of it at Libel (poetry).

The recent debate:

  • SimonP says that at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Whole bible chapter text a majority view the source text as something to keep out of the chapter articles. I agree, and I agree with the conclusion too.
  • SimonP says that this runs counter to prior discussions. I say it doesn't, the prior discussions have all reached the same conclusion, and SimonP has repeatedly deliberately tried to misconstrue the outcomes.
  • SimonP says that if it runs counter to prior consensus it should be ignored. I say that since when were wikipedia policies or even articles ever frozen in stone?

On copyright[edit]

As a somewhat side issue, the three texts that SimonP has been putting consistently into the articles are the King James Version, New International Version, and World English Bible. These have copyright issues. The KJV is crown copyright which means that in all crown territories (e.g. Australia) it may not be published without permission - obviously the US doesn't consider that to apply to them, and so it is a minor issue until anyone considers moving the servers elsewhere - it also means that any Wikipedia mirrors based in crown territories will be forced to block those pages from being mirrored, this also affects CD/print-publication that Jimbo is trying to carry out - particularly in africa, where I believe Jimbo has indicated that CD publication of Wikipedia would be desired by the Wikimedia foundation for public benefit, as africa contains several commonwealth territories, and places similarly respecting KJV copyright.

The New International Version, however, is more urgent to Florida hosting - SimonP has been adding it to many (but not all) of the 200+ articles for verses - constituting duplication of approximately one fifth of the NIV translation of Matthew, for example, so far. The NIV is a modern translation and subject to domestic american copyright law. I don't know what the limits of "fair use" are, but if SimonP continues making verse-articles and putting NIV in them then we will inevitably violate the limits of fair use, if we haven't already.

As for the World English Bible - not only is it regarded as appallingly shoddy, academically, but it is inherantly public domain - so anyone can edit it, and anyone can claim that their version is the World English Bible. You can't make a definitive version of something that's public domain before it is even created. And SimonP elevating it to some sort of quasi greatness by using it as the major version bar the KJV in all of the 200 verse articles is quite simply ridiculous - it isn't respected academically or religiously (for obvious reasons of poor quality) except by the few people who edit it and those who agree with its evangelistic aims.

There are over 200 versions of the bible, and over 50 of them are out of copyright, so why does SimonP insist on using the KJV or a shoddy modern protestant evangelical version?

On ownership[edit]

WP:OWN states that one must not try to take editorial control over articles. I contend that SimonP has done just that for over 200. The evidence lies above and in their edit histories, there are far too many articles to point to completely, but, for the sake of sampling, I offer the evidence I gave in my request.

I also offer this little edit Simon made recently:

It's over an apostrophe. How ridiculously petty can you be? Obviously he didn't mean to do it as he immediately reverted - ([19]) but if he isn't so intent on owning the articles, then why does he watch the edit history of all 200 verse articles so closely that he would check it even for such a minor edit that declared itself as such in the edit summary?

This too:

It's reverting vandalism - fair enough. But it does prove he watches it. Above you will see several pieces of evidence that people wanted the verse articles merged to a degree. I added a notice to that effect for just one of those articles at Sermon on the Mount - SimonP removed it just 15 minutes later without even changing it to mergedisputed or discussing it at talk first. And he did it again when it was pointed out that he was ignoring consensus - [20] - and he didn't even explain his edit. Why might Simon watch it? maybe it has something to do with this edit ?

And what about bias? Well, I can't see why he removed this link unless he had a POV view over the commentary it pointed to. And we mustn't forget someone else's merge suggestion being silently deleted or maybe his POV editing - "complete non-resistance is incompatible with survival" - says who?, I'm sure several radical pacifists would quite disagree, so stating it as fact is pure pov. That's only two articles, there are hundreds involved here, and I'm quite sure the behaviour is repeated elsewhere

--Victim of signature fascism 18:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by InShaneee[edit]

Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/200 verses of Matthew was a fair and valid discussion[edit]

  • 12:28, 15 January 2006 - -Ril- adds discussion to Template:Cent. [21]
  • 09:00, 20 January 2006 - Final comment is made to discussion. [22]
  • 05:22, 22 January 2006 - After two days of inactivity, Radiant! lists discussion as closed.[23]
  • 22:14, 24 January 2006 - Finding the closing incomplete, I write a conclusion from the fairly obvious results of the discussion.[24]
  • 12:07, 29 January 2006 - Simon P appends conclusion to state that the results can be "safely ignored".[25]

My point here is this: while I don't neccisarily disagree with Simon's assertion that Ril was acting in bad faith during all of this, what came out of it hardly amounts to any sort of clandestine op. The 'Cent' template is prominantly displayed on AfD, an extremely high traffic page. Regardless of who may or may not have come due to Ril's cajoling, the fact is that a whole lot of people must have seen it, and it wasn't closed until people stopped commenting on it. Simon's main argument seems to consist of, "Ril is a bad guy and my people didn't get their say", but in the end, this really seems shipshape to me. Since this is about Simon's conduct (and not the actual article content), I think this (and his continued refusal to let the discussion stand) is key. --InShaneee 04:18, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Doc glasgow[edit]

-Ril- has a history of being a disruptive user[edit]

-Ril- is trolling and POV pushing in this case too[edit]

  • -Ril- does not have any interest in editing Bible articles. He states himself I am indeed not a substantial contributor of material to Bible articles. I have little interest in the subject in general …. I am here because I hate sophistry, fancruft, and spam, of which this is a pure and obvious example. [34] (see also [35]). Until recently, his signature tailed with 'help remove biblecruft’ – hardly a declaration that he strives here for NPOV.
  • Yet this non-contributor has edit warred, mass nominated Bible articles for deletion ([36], [37] etc), opened two polls ([38], and [39]), three simultaneous centralised discussions ([40], [41] [42])
  • Finally he attempted to get a policy pre-emptively 'banning’ certain Bible articles from creation - effectively adding them as a special case to the 'criteria for speedy deletion’ [43].
  • When one scheme has failed, he has tried another to push his obvious POV. (Yet he accusses SimonP of POV pushing - hardly assuming good faith.)
  • -Ril- speaks of the need for SimonP to observe 'consensus'. This is hypocritical. In the long-running Authentic Matthew saga, after many months of stress due to the POV pushing of User:Melissadobeer, and the aggressive and disruptive way -Ril- reacted to her, a consensus was eventualy brokered by an number of editors with experience in the field (including myself and SimonP) this consensus redirected the article to the Gospel of the Hebrews. Four times -Ril- unilaterally undid the consensus without dicussion [44]. Further he then listed the redirect on RfD [45]. This was at best a disrespect for consensus, and at worst a troll's attempt to reopen an argument.
  • When Ril says 'merge' he means 'delete' and loose the content. Merging articles should not be about removing good material, but re-organising the encyclopedia in a better way. Yet Ril wants to 'remove biblecruft' and further has interpreted 'merge' to be 'redirect without merging' [46].

Merging and consensus[edit]

I am aware that Arbcom do not usually involve themselves in content disputes, but by taking this case they have little choice. -Ril- alleges that there is a 'consensus' which SimonP has flouted. If arbcom uphold that, then they effectively enforce a very general rule over a whole subject field (particularly regarding merging). That would have a wide impact on Wikipedia's content and the freedom for it to develop. Arbcom need to take extreme care in this area. Simon has questioned the integrity of the consensus, I would like suggest that any such consensus is contrary to wikipedia's general policies and interests, and would represent biblical studies being treated prejudicially.

  • Biblical Studies is a large academic field. Biblical studies is not just the preserve of preachers and believers, globally thousands of people are employed in academic study. Most universities have chairs and departments. In the UK most of these are entirely secular (liberal arts). Research has been done historically over generations, and is today carried out by people of varying interests - social historians, classicists, social anthropologists, feminist Biblical scholars, Queer theologians, and a growing amount of liberal literary studies. The Bible has had (a probably unique) theological, linguistic, artistic, cultural, legal and philosophical impact. There exists a huge amount of verifiable material, which can be recorded in an NPOV manner, on just about every area of the Bible. Implications:
  1. Limiting the creation of articles on verses by notions of 'popular notability' (='I've heard of it') is absurd and biased. Would we insist that all articles on astrophysics be up-merged or limited to concepts that non-specialists thought were notable? Would we tolerate those admitting they have no specialist knowledge to dictate how articles on any other non-specialist field were organised? Would we allow a poll to determine how many asteroids might be notable? Biblical studies should not be treated differently from any other specialist subject
  2. Decisions as to whether to merge or split articles are questions of content organisation not notability. It is not about pro or anti Bible POV, but about what makes our content in this field better. Often merging will be appropriate, but if good verifiable NPOV material is written on a small section (and such small section may historically have had huge artistic or theological impact), up-merging may be harmful to the coherence of the larger article. Thus, merging needs decided on a case-by-case basis and not by some meta principle.
  3. In any case, it is unwise to decide the notability of an article before it is written. It is in the research that the impact of the subject is found and presented; to discuss notability in the abstract is absurd.
  4. Any systematic bias should be dealt with by encouraging development of neglected fields not by the exclusion of material from larger fields. Wikipedia is not paper.

Evidence presented by Robert McClenon[edit]

-Ril- uses the dispute resolution process to worsen disputes[edit]

On 5 February 2006, users -Ril- and Thyrduulf made threaded comments in the KVJ RfAr. On 6 February 2006, ArbCom clerk Ryan Delaney removed the threaded comments. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=38472086&oldid=38471956 Also on 6 February 2006, -Ril- reinserted the comments with an uncivil edit summary http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=38532706&oldid=38472086 note: "Do not delete other people's comments. You are NOT an arbitrator." Also on 6 February 2006, Ryan Delaney reverts the deletion: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=38533492&oldid=38532706 On 8 February 2006, -Ril- inserts a section entitled "Urgent Injunction Requested" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=38795336&oldid=38794858 The statement includes: Ryan delaney keeps deleting parts of Thryduulf's statement, and parts of mine, in this request. This results in a severe distortion of what kind of case is being presented here. Consequently, I urgently request that the Arbitration committee ban him from editing this page until the issue is settled. In fact, the threaded comments made the reading of the statement more difficult, so that the clerk was facilitating, not interfering with, the understanding of the nature of the case.

Robert McClenon and Phroziac request the division of this case[edit]

On 26 February 2006, Robert McClenon and Phroziac posted a new RfAr requesting that the ArbCom split any case against -Ril- from the dispute about the KJV. Robert McClenon 23:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

-Ril- would support any such move to seperate off topic accusations from this case[edit]

--Victim of signature fascism | There is no cabal 20:49, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Phroziac[edit]

-Ril-'s use of strawman sockpuppets[edit]

Melissadolbeer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), a sockpuppet of -Ril-, was used to present strawman arguments, including "Doc glasgow is a -Ril- sockpuppet!". This sockpuppet has made many edits to bible articles, and actually created Authentic Matthew, which -Ril- put up for deletion, and used multiple sockpuppets to present arguments for and against his view, disrupting it so much that no-one could actually read the vfd. --Phroziac ♥♥♥♥ 19:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Evidence presented by {your user name}[edit]

First assertion[edit]

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion, for example, your first assertion might be "Jimmy Wales engages in edit warring". Here you would list specific edits to specific articles which show Jimmy Wales engaging in edit warring

Second assertion[edit]

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion, for example, your second assertion might be "Jimmy Wales makes personal attacks". Here you would list specific edits where Jimmy Wales made personal attacks.


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