Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Canadian politics/Evidence

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Case clerks: DeltaQuad (Talk) & Cameron11598 (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Premeditated Chaos (Talk) & KrakatoaKatie (Talk)

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Questions from arbitrators for the parties

Evidence presented by Olive

Background considerations

Writing an article based on sources being created in real time impacts the content and kind of article written.

A Canadian election is five months away and a political controversy sells papers and also can impact an election. Usually when writing Wikipedia we don't spend a lot of time analyzing the POV of a source; we have internal mechanisms for insuring neutrality. However, this article is being written in real time based on press releases almost as they occur; the sources in our article have not undergone the kind of vetting that comes with time and a long view. News sources and platforms have political leanings and know especially these days that they can influence elections. I'm not convinced Wikipedia/encyclopedic content like that of the SNC-Lavalin affair article should be written in real time with the length and detail of this article. This kind of writing may have allowed for certain kinds of neutrality problems. In a sense such an article becomes a realtime repeat and replication of the news sources whatever their political leanings are multiplying impact of the sources and in this case allows for interpretation of the affair with out the final conclusions that comes with time. An editor can use this kind of situation to benefit a particular viewpoint- hard to refute when press, normally a RS, are invoked. Littleolive oil (talk) 17:57, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Mr.Gold1

The Fundamental Questions that Matter

For me there is no doubt the SNC-Lavalin affair is a political scandal. Why? Because, the answers to the following questions which define what a political scandal is, satisfy the definition of a political scandal and do not satisfy the definition of a political controversy nor political dispute.

  1. Is the SNC-Lavalin affair an action or event? = Yes
  2. Did the SNC-Lavalin affair cause general public outrage in Canada? = Yes
  3. Does the affair breach ethics? (An ethics investigation was opened when the affair was first reported to the general public)? = Yes
  4. Is the affair only just a heated prolonged public disagreement that doesn't involve any actions (e.g. investigations, hearings, apparent political actions, etc)? = No

The following are examples of the media in Canada and North America calling the SNC-Lavalin affair what it is, a political scandal;

By not calling the affair a political scandal or by calling it something else like political dispute or political controversy, for which it isn't, misrepresents the reality of the event itself. Mr.Gold1 (talk) 23:52, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Pldx1

There is no evidence of any evidence

This case was submitted 18 May 2019, as an intractable dispute, that was threatening the peaceful flow of the Galaxy. The evidence phase was opened 24 May 2019. Now, 28 May 2019, it seems there is no evidence of anything, except perhaps a quarrel about describing the facts as an ordinary event in an ordinary year or as the key event of the century. But this would be only a content dispute, outside the remit of ArbCom. There have been some allusions to possible misdeeds of POV pusher warriors... but as of now, there is no evidence of any POV, or pushers, or warriors or misdeeds. Perhaps, a motion to close as "nothing to be done" would be in order. Pldx1 (talk) 08:46, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence phase should be devoted to cross-examination

Due to the late submission of Curly Turkey's evidence, the replies are only coming now, and the cross examination period will be reduced to a couple of days, instead of a couple of weeks. One more week could help.

Nevertheless, the diffs submitted by Curly Turkey himself are giving the impression of an over-pedantic wall of quibbles, targeting the lede paragraph. E.g. at [diff 3], the summary given is : SNC-Lavalin is a Quebec-based international company; also, a [citation] that is a list of companies is not an appropriate citation for "Quebec construction giant"; this article really will require a thorough scrubbing. How could this be a proof of an organized attack of POV pusher warriors ?

In fact, a great summary of the case could be the very signature of the plaintiff: Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble!. In other words: I am the Turky in the circle, I am a native expert on Canadian topics, and you can gobble as much as you want. For more details, see the picture at this user's home page -- it was removed from here as a clerk action. Ordinary turkeys haven't been convinced, and we are here. Pldx1 (talk) 08:19, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Curly Turkey

While copyediting article, found numerous sourcing violations, and began full verification check; editors have so interfered that they've halted both activites.

Focus is to skew POV against the Prime Minister's Office (PMO)—sources give variety of viewpoints, none established by legal or scholarly experts. Some edits obvious, others more subtle, relying on wordings that colour the text or use (often multiple) cites that do not back up text cited, giving impression (by their presence) that they do.

It's WP:INTEGRITY violations where I first ran into bahavioural issues.

WP:INTEGRITY violations

WP:INTEGRITY violations citing statements not in sources:[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]—including the original Globe and Mail article to cite events after the story appeared.[10]

I removed an inline cite (not the source itself) from after a quote that did not appear in it.[11] Safrolic 3RRed to keep it[12][13][14] citing WP:BUNDLING,[15]—but

  • cites not bundled
  • no indication which part of text sourced to the second cite, which does not contain the quotation it immediately follows—which WP:BUNDLING requires

I clarified WP:BUNDLING, but they've repeated claim in ArbCom request and evidence.

Safrolic gains nothing here from violating INTEGRITY, so stonewalling appears meant to antagonize an opponent, while creating impression I'm being pointlessly disputatious. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

POV statements

Editors been open about whom they consider guilty parties in affair, and that article must reflect this POV—"call a spade a spade".[16][17][18][19] WP:CCPOL (WP:INTEGRITY, WP:WEIGHT, etc) are optional nuisances to be overridden with a raise of hands.

POV statements: Mr.Gold1[20] Legacypac[21][22][23] Safrolic[24][25][26][27] Darryl Kerrigan[28][29][30]

FUD attacks for having an "agenda" they refuse to name or demonstrate: [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]

Legacypac bullied Olive off article,[43][44] and gravedanced over it. Olive returned only after Legacypac indeffed. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IDHT

One of the most persistent stonewalling behaviours.

Example: Darryl Kerrigan keeps repeating unsupported claim, "You [Curly Turkey] proposed multiple alternative names along with LavScam." I detailed this Detailed here; nevertheless repeats here, on ArbCom Request page and El_C's talk. Appears deliberate—likely both FUD to discredit me and to antagonize me.

See "scandal" below for more IDHT. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Single-mindedness

A Wikipedia article sums the consensus of sources, subject to WP's guidelines and policies. A POV editor begins with a conclusion and focuses on its inclusion. The latter has consistently been the approach of these editors, which has also led to an over-use of primary sources;[45][46][47] I've replaced some with third-party ones,[48] which has been difficult to do with others, raising questions of WP:WEIGHT—why report details the thousands of third-party RSes don't?

Example 1: "LavScam"

"LavScam" is one of many alt terms appearing in a small minority of sources, patterned on "AdScam", a scandal that brought down the government in 2006. We are a few months from a federal election, and some would benefit from highlighting a fringe term on the world's 5th most accessed website.

The goal has not been to sum up what sources say, but to highlight "LavScam" in the lead no matter what.

"LavScam" warring began before I arrived: Anne drew Andrew and Drew removed it a month before I did: [49] TrailBlzr restored;[50] an IP removed, citing same sourcing issues I would;[51] another restored without dealing with the ref issue,[52] and Master Deusoma added {{fact}} tag.

Of numerous sourcing issues, one sourced the statement "colloquially referred to as LavScam" to article about #LavScam hashtag, implying nothing about "colloquial" use. I removed it as obvious WP:INTEGRITY violation; Legacypac restored it; Darryl Kerrigan alsorestored it with same INTEGRITY-violating source. Bradv removed as "not neutral", Legacypac reverted, and Bradv reverted and opened RfC, which closed "no consensus" largely because term was found to be fringe, appearing in very small percentage of sources, primarily right-leaning tabloid Toronto Sun.

It's distressing these editors try overturn WP:WEIGHT and other policies with a mere show of hands. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Example 2: "Scandal"

MOS:W2W (linked from WP:NPOV) instructs to take care with loaded terms. Olive found one and replaced "scandal" with "controversy", leading to more editwarring[53][54][55] and circular discussions. I changed it to "dispute" as a placeholder, but even that drew fire and editwarring.[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]

Another RfC opened, during which Harris Seldon put forth an alternative that avoiding all the terms.

Darryl Kerrigan summed up opposition: "Perhaps it is 'more neutral' if there is no wrongdoing here, and 'less neutral' if there is."—thus a POV there was "wrongdoing" justifies a war to push "scandal". This logic leads to vague accusations that not calling the affair a "scandal" "whitewashes" the article[69][70][71][72] with a "nothing to see here POV"[73][74][75] Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IDHT that word choice is subject to our policies and guidelines—in particular MOS:W2W[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87]—they stonewall over a (cherrypicked) "dictionary defintion" of their preferred term:[88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97]

I detailed why "dictionary definitions" and use in sources could not determine article vocab. They reject "existence in sources" for all other terms—even when appearing alongside "scandal". Never do these editors entertain the possibility of any alternative: every discussion stonewalled because alternatives not "scandal". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

[...]

Persistent removal of maintenance tags

Despite the number of sourcing issues I've shown (including several sections + two more just after J.J. removed the tag), J. J. accused me "there are NO indications of any 'citation" problems'", "there is no basis for alerting the readers of problems that don't exist", "problems you can't find", "problems that exist in only one editor's mind" ...

J. Johnson accuses me of POV[100][101][102] for adding the {{Cite check}} and asserts the tag requires {{verify source}} or {{failed verification}} tags in the body; this contradicts {{Cite check}}'s docs: "If only one citation is problematic, or there is a desire to tag particular citations, consider using {{Verify source}} or {{Failed verification}} instead."—{{Cite check}} is for the general case (as here) where problems continue to arise. Regardless:

Yet J. Johnson restates there were no "current" issues. The hoops he requires would make maintenance tagging nearly impossible and mostly pointless, and he presents no cogent argument or precedent why such tagging would be "POV", and insists the problems "don't exist". Other editors' edit comments "Very balanced and factual" and "This article is very accurate" should raise anyone's suspicions in light of continued sourcing and POV issues.

The sources still require scrubbing; I've been unable to continue, as every edit not conforming to the "right" POV is challenged. Persistent tag removal hides the article's continued, widespread issues from readers and editors. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rebuttals

Safrolic's evidence needs careful examination of context: "Curly says there is no problem with using the word 'scandal'"—"never any issue" means "nobody brought up the issue", response to strange DK comment DK never clarified. Many more examples, but word limit's run out. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:41, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by J. Johnson

In his preliminary statement Curly Turkey (CT) attributes the debacle at SNC-Lavalin affair to "POV editing by a large number of editors, mostly brand new with histories of hundreds or fewer edits." Elsewhere he has accused me of editwarring and "tag-teaming with others". To be clear: my edit count is over seventeen thousand; aside from Curly Turkey and Legacypac I had never even heard of these other editors before; I do not know enough about Canadian politics to have a point-of-view, and I have made only a single edit to the article.

The slow-motion edit-war CT refers to began with his insertion of the {{cite check}} template, which generates a box that says: "This article possibly contains inappropriate or misinterpreted citations that do not verify the text." (Bolding in the original.) This and subsequent re-insertions (here, here, and here) were removed by PavelShk (twice, first time while not logged in), SWL36, and myself here, here, here, and here. (Also removed by Legacypac and restored by Bradv.)

Following PavelShk's second removal CT said PavelShk "looks like ... a sock-puppet". After his last restoration CT opened a new section (Talk:SNC-Lavalin_affair#Repeated_removals_of_{{Cite_check}}_template), saying: "The removals of the {{Cite check}} template have to stop. Numerous citation violations continue to be found, and the source check isn't even close to finished. The template has been removed three times in the last two days—this is editwarring and is unacceptable."

On various occasions CT was asked to either explain why he kept adding the template, or to list or discuss the problematic citations (diff [PavelShk], diff [SWL36], diff [Legacypac], diff [Harris Seldon], diff [J. Johnson], and diff [SWL36]). To my suggestion that he raise his concerns in a discussion he replied: "No. I fix them."

When I stated "... you have not shown that there are any current (i.e., unfixed) problems, CT replied (here): "I have indeed shown there problems (plural) have continued to exist after the template was added—and after the template was removed. And you have indeed shown that no matter how many turn up, you are poised to move the goalposts once more—below you even warn me not to add any {{failed verification}} tags if any of the sources fail verification!" And:

"You're WP:NOTHERE to help improve the article. Shoudn't you be off to ANI with your fantasy accusations that my fixing the article's sourcing is POV-pushing?"

(The forgoing material can be viewed in a clearer, chronological format here.)

The nature of the sourcing and IDHT problems here are illustrated by comments at Talk:SNC-Lavalin affair#Repeated removals of {{Cite_check}} template (at 23:35, 18 April, and following) where SWL36 tells Curly Turkey: "Other editors can't understand these problems because you do not state them. ... there is nothing wrong with those citations that you are currently edit warring over." CT replies he has stated the problem in his edit summaries (with three variants of "the quote DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE SOURCE CITED"), then provides a full citation, stating: "Not one word of that quotation appears in the source!" Safrolic then explains: "the quote itself is sourced from the first source, where it appears verbatim. You are taking issue with the second source, which supports all of the content in the preceding two sentences except the exact quotation." CT then protests that The second source is given as a source for the quote—a black-and-white violation of WP:INTEGRITY" (which concerns placement of citations, not sources), and discussion devolves into wrangling on the placement of footnotes.

Further evidence of Curly Turkey's battleground attitude and failure to engage in consensus building can be found in the ANI discussion. E.g., at CT's TBAN proposal (following PavelShk's "Comment" at 03:38, 3 May), CT claims to have retracted the statements of sock-puppetry, but (there being no evidence of any such retraction) he refuses to provide any diffs that would resolve the point. He responds with: "Heads games—WP:NOTHERE. Won't be responding to your belligerent horseshit further", and (in part): "Nothing will satisfy J. Johnson regardless, who has contributed nothing to the article or the discussions that hasn't been pure belligerent drahmah—and with no diffs to back up any of his horseshit claims over these weeks."

♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:54, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strictly speaking, I did not accuse CT of "POV", nor have I asserted that {cite check} requires any supporting tagging. What I maintain is that, lacking a showing of definite and general problems — and perhaps I need to emphasize, of current problems, not past history — the strong message of {cite check} is a strong, non-neutral POV. CT claims he "had done[shown] just that". However, his first diff ["just"}, when followed out, refers to the trivial omission of a word (which he fixed) and a source that he removed, while the second diff ["that"] is just his unsupported reiteration that "problems (plural) have continued to exist". This is further evidence of the flimsiness of his arguments. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:55, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Handy History Handbook

It's very hard for me to believe that any other user can look over the article history and the talk page and not see that Curly Turkey is by far and away the most disruptive of the editors working on the article. I am almost certain he would have received a page ban at ANI if the thread had stayed open for a few more days. He definitely has tried to whitewash the article of certain words like "scandal" and "Lavscam", which are widely reported by the media, and, in the latter case, supported by eleven other editors. Also, he makes sure to insert some sort of personal attack in the overwhelming majority of his comments on this case.[103][104] Frequently, he makes edits for no purpose whatsoever other than to add an extra insult.[105][106][107] What I find especially odd is that he keeps on accusing others of POV-pushing just for expressing a fair opinion on the talk page concerning what sort of content should be included in an article.[108] I am hesitant to participate in this discussion when other users won't speak to one another like ordinary human beings, and I suspect a lot of other editors will also be driven away by such conduct.Handy History Handbook (talk) 10:49, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by PavelShk

1. I'm a new editor. I created my account specifically to edit SNC-Lavalin related pages because I'm interested in Canadian politics. My goal was to help with gathering accurate information about SNC-Lavalin scandal, using various sources.

2. I made a lot of edits to the page and did a lot of research (including researching Canadian law and reading Justice Committee proceedings). I started editing on March 3, just a few days after the page was created.

3. From day 1, I collaborated peacefully with all other editors, never engaged in edit wars, participated in talk page discussions and RfCs, read and followed Wikipedia policies. Generally, during the month of March, it was a productive, collaborative environment with little disagreement. The focus of our work has been to give Canadians as much accurate information as possible about the political event, using both left- and right-leaning news sources.

4. Some time in early April, Curly Turkey started editing the page. He did not contribute anything to the article, but, under the guise of "neutral POV", this editor engaged in a significant rewrite of the leading paragraph, giving no explanation for his changes, but engaging in constant personal attacks towards everyone else. Most of his effort was spent on trying to remove the words "LavScam" and "scandal" from the lead and to create an impression the article has is not accurate and has a large number of sourcing violations.

5. On numerous occasions, without discussion, Curly Turkey has been baselessly accusing and attacking all other editors. For instance:

  • "The belligerence some of these editors continue to show—and the facile dismissal of all evidence provided—demonstrates this is a behavioural issue that won't be solved through discussion. The bad faith is so thick you can cut it with a knife" [109]
  • "This, combined with the push to characterize it as a "colloquialism", have raised concerns of astroturfing" [110]
  • "The lot of you have taken collective WP:OWNership of the page to ensure your particular POV, and screw Wikipedia's sitewide policies..." [111]
  • "These editors have shown no concern with putting in the body (it's still not there), which again would be consistent with an astroturfing campaign..." [112]
  • and so on

6. At some point, Curly Turkey introduced a "cite check" template at the top, which I removed, asking him to list specific sources that needs to be checked - which he never did. Instead, he unleashed a series of personal attacks against me, accusing me of being a "sock puppet", "single purpose account", etc. after which I stopped editing anything for a week and contemplated leaving Wikipedia completely.

  • "PavelShk is a Single-purpose account... So, it looks like our single-purpose account may also be a sock-puppet account... And the plot thickens" [113]

7. Since then I found this policy: WP:DNB and I can attest as a newcomer that Curly Turkey violated every single point in there. This was absolutely miserable experience for me as a new editor. All Curly Turkey tried to do was scaring off other editors and rewriting the leading paragraph to push his point of view.

--PavelShk (talk) 03:54, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Safrolic

There have at one point or another been accusations of bad faith or personal attacks made by and against almost every editor to this page. However, I believe this has been instigated and exacerbated by Curly (and to a lesser extent, Legacypac).

Battleground Behaviour

Interaction between CT and other editors has been marked by uncivil behaviour and strange policy disputes. CT supports an interpretation of WP:CITE that doesn't allow for citations to be bundled at the end of a sentence[114], an interpretation of WP:PRIMARY which doesn't allow for organizations like the RCMP to be used as a source for their own non-controversial words (here and on my talk page), and of WP:RS that doesn't allow the newspaper article that broke the story to be used as a source on the story. For several days, CT improperly insisted on keeping an integrity warning template at the top of the article- when an uninvolved editor told him to stop and removed the template, CT accused them of edit warring.

Curly first edited the talk page on 8 April. His first and second edits displayed immediate belligerence [115][116] towards Legacypac, his second reply to Darryl aspersed bad faith [117], and his fourth reply to Darryl included a personal attack [118]. These were replies to other editors who had not made any personal attacks or aspersions of bad faith against Curly at that point. The pattern of personal attacks and aspersions has continued, with many responses being purely some mixture of the two. [119][120][121][122] CT has accused any editor who persists in disagreeing with him of failing to hear or not being here,[123][124][125] and continues to make these accusations in strings of replies.[126] His accusations of POV/other violations are disproportionate to the text/changes he takes issue with,[127][128] and sometimes eisegetic.[129][130] CT has spuriously accused 'the lot of us' of taking 'collective OWNership' of the article over these disputes.

On multiple occasions prior to the ANI, Curly threatened to open a report there in response to disagreements with him by other editors.[131][132][133][134][135] Following an unproductive discussion with CT on my talk page, I wrote an ANI report to get input on CT's behaviour and the dispute in various policy interpretations. In that discussion, I had asked Curly multiple times to suggest where I should go to get outside input. Curly called this as “sneaky”. Later, when I restored the unfinished discussion to ANI, CT proposed a topic ban for LP, Darryl and I. Since then, I have not felt that CT was working in good faith, and I supported J.Johnson's TBAN proposal.

The battleground behaviour continues to the present day. Beginning here, I attempted to return the discussion to civility and see if we could find consensus on some underlying facts which was already reported in the article and backed by RS. I strived not to make any personal attacks against Curly in the ensuing discussion. Nearly every reply made by him, though, did include a personal attack or aspersion, culminating in this. I urge arbitrators to read this full chain and judge for themselves who is attempting to engage in good faith. (Also note this diff from a month earlier, where Curly says there is no problem with using the word "scandal".)

Spurious accusations

Curly has on several occasions made aspersions which were not supported by the evidence. Here at ArbCom, he has attributed edits by Legacypac to myself. He has described edits by myself and others as "attacks for having an "agenda" they refuse to name or demonstrate", but linked edits which did not include any accusation of POV, and edits which did include one and included details to back it up. He has described diffs like these [136][137][138] as expressions of POV.

He has misrepresented past discussions (e.g. [139] says there was no discussion of the phrase "Wilson-Raybould scandal", despite his own edits [140],[141],[142],[143] and [144]). He did not respond to Darryl's edit calling him on this.

CT has accused Darryl Kerrigan of "drowning [the talk page] in verbiage" [145][146], but CT has created ~30% of the total talk page text [147] and 45% of the ANI discussion text (calculation mine, manual).

On multiple occasions, CT has ignored the response to an argument of his, to later claim there was no response. [148][blocked ANI diff at 22:28 1 May 2019]


I'd like to request an extension to the evidence phase of 3-5 days, both to give Curly and others time to respond, and to allow me to add to this/organize my thoughts better over the weekend. It's my understanding right now that no more diffs are allowed to be presented once we enter the workshop phase. I'm very sorry for the delay on this stage. Safrolic (talk) 09:10, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Darryl Kerrigan

Thank you to everyone who has provided evidence here. I think Curly has been disruptive here and I think his case misrepresents the conversations which have occurred on the talk page and at ANI. I agree with the submissions made by J. Johnson, Handy History Handbook, and Safrolic. Barring questions, I do not have anything I wish to add. This has been a rather unpleasant process. I think it is important that this is addressed, but I think that there is now a full enough evidentiary record. Should there be questions, I will make myself available to respond further.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 20:16, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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