Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/RetroS1mone

Biggerpicture's certification

In regards to Biggerpicture's certification and RetroS1mone's response, I am somewhat ambivalent. I agree that Biggerpicture has not been involved in the general dispute between myself, RetroS1mone, and the others certifying the RfC. However, since the dispute that the RfC is about is the long-term conduct of RetroS1mone, I feel it may well be appropriate that he has chosen to certify this dispute rather than present or endorse any particular view. I will leave the final decision in this to non-involved editors.

If Biggerpicture's certification of the dispute is deemed to be appropriate, RetroS1mone's comment should probably be moved to the talk page with an appropriate explanation; again I leave this to non-involved editors to decide. --RobinHood70 (talk) 19:28, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

It might be helpful if Biggerpicture provided a link in the Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute section. Ward20 (talk) 20:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi all, No worries if it is decided that my certification for, or participation in this RfC page is not considered to be necessary or appropriate. Thanks for letting me know about the page, Robinhood70. I've quoted a few of my attempts at conflict resolution on the Jamie Doran discussion page (the page which RetroS1mone and I are contesting), and have included links in the "Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute" section. My quotes make this point much lengthier than the other points in this section - feel free to edit them if necessary. Biggerpicture (talk) 13:48, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Because I have not looked into the dispute between RetroS1mone and Biggerpicture (and am unlikely to do so), my "endorsement" doesn't automatically cover the Jamie Doran dispute. I wish you some good luck in the dispute though! - Tekaphor (TALK) 02:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest Issues section

I believe this section would more appropriately be titled POV Issues, as it's unlikely that RetroS1mone is affiliated with someone who would be interested in working against Jamie Doran's interests. I'll leave that to the original editor, however, as my interest in the Jamie Doran page was passing (only to see the nature of the dispute when it was brought up on RetroS1mone's talk page and do basic copyediting while there) and I am unaware of what has transpired there since it is no longer on my watchlist. --RobinHood70 (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Concur, not a COI issue. What is the convention for changing editing the evidence section once the RFC is posted? Strike out or change with note? Ward20 (talk) 20:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, apologies. I've changed the name of this section to POV issues, struck out the old title, and added a short explanation. Biggerpicture (talk) 14:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

"This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users."

RetroS1mone has obected to the RFC on the grounds of "This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users." I want to find where this statement is discussed but I don't see it on the Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct page. Ward20 (talk) 20:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

While it does indeed state this in the introduction to the RfC itself, I see no guidelines on what constitutes "the same dispute". I see "disruptive editing" as one dispute. Indeed, the opening line in WP:DISRUPT is "...a pattern of edits, which may extend over a considerable period of time or number of articles, that has the effect of disrupting progress towards improving an article". --RobinHood70 (talk) 22:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Response section

Just to clarify, there were three editors who contributed significantly to the RfC, not two. Tekaphor, however, collected his concerns into two edits, where Ward20 and I tend to work on a more piecemeal approach (which was particularly necessary, since we were often working at the same time and needed to avoid edit conflicts). --RobinHood70 (talk) 23:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I am indeed the third person who has tried and failed to resolve these issues in the past. See the below section "RetroS1mone's reply". - Tekaphor (TALK) 02:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Views

From Guidelines:

"Anyone, including those who wrote the original RfC, is allowed to post their own view, in a separate section with their name on it, such as ==View by <name>== It can be helpful to indicate the viewpoint of the particular editor, such as "Outside view" "Inside view" "Semi-involved view" etc"

There doesn't appear to be sections for several views so i"m going to add them. Ward20 (talk) 17:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

You could also just change the name to "Views", but I think it might be easier on the reader to categorize them, so I would agree with that. I'll also quote this in the relevant discussion (or lack thereof) here. --RobinHood70 (talk) 17:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

RetroS1mone's reply

(sorry for the large post, I've been drafting it over a few days)

After reading RetroS1mone's (R1 for short) response to this RfC (since removed by her [1]), it looks unlikely that there will be a cessation of the unsubstantiated accusations, advocate stereotyping, and the pattern of "automatically revert now, ask questions later if counter-reverted". Basically, I'm sick of how these smokescreen accusations are used to undermine other editors and I'm tired of all the extra work this "pattern" produces. This year-long trend hasn't been encouraging the assumption of good faith. It's unacceptable and discouraging, even if many of R1's other edits are OK. Some of the supposed previous "resolutions" really seems more like "other editors can't be bothered edit warring or debating anymore". I have a limited participation at Wikipedia and edit warring is too involving, so I try to follow the WP:1RR code of conduct. Unfortunately, WP:SILENCE takes on a new slant when "consensus" ends up being "whoever edits the most".

None of the RfC endorsers/supporters are "harassing"/threatening R1 or trying to keep the "psychological viewpoint" out of Wikipedia; these are just more distortions and false claims. How about a reality check? At the beginning of 2009 [2] (the last 500th version), the Mechanism section contained about 10 or so sentences outlining "biological" aspects and 3 for the "psychological" factors. Now in July 2009 as the article currently stands [3], despite the alleged besieging from a supposedly "pro organic group of editors", this section now has one sentence for "bio" and 10 for "psych" (although 2 or 3 of these are qualifiers based on systematic reviews, not added by R1). She still thinks that the psych-view is lacking from the article, so perhaps if it wasn't for other editors keeping this in check, this section would continue to be disproportionately bloated up further without any qualifiers. WP:WEIGHT anyone? The whole point of subpages is to expand it there, which is another issue.

I don't buy R1's MEDRS crusading either, which seems to be selective and at times even hypocritical (remember the CBT primary source incident?). For the psychological viewpoint, she only edits most optimistically and tends to strip down any information that doesn't present a clean cut image, with a revert-happy attitude towards any contrary but reliably sourced views (dismissing them as "cherry picking" and "OR" even when coming from systematic reviews as a "fundamental problem"). Yet R1 claims to be "NPOV" and have "no opinion on the subject" while just "following MEDRS". She places heavy emphasis on her opinion of the motivation behind edits (ie "trying to make CBT look bad", "trying to censor psychological factors", "patient advocate agenda", or whatever the current flavour of accusation is) and tends to lump whoever disagrees with her into a "group". I'm fairly confident that none of the RfC endorsers/supporters (1) dispute any role for the psychological domain in "CFS", (2) believe that biological text should not also be accompanied by the relevant qualifiers. Instead, the endorsers/supporters seem to want a balanced range of reliably sourced views fairly represented in the proper context, "in proportion to the prominence of each".

R1 had recently cleaned up the bottom half of the Treatment sub-article [4], removing the "energy envelope theory" text and sources etc while leaving the embedded section on "breathing therapy" untouched with a primary source pilot study with the results based on 5 patients. R1 is usually ruthless towards primary sources (non-psychological ones anyway), so I suspected that she was the originator of this text and I was correct [5]; coincidence? R1 had recently deleted (since "resolved") but then later relegated [6] the van Geelen 2007 systematic review on personality as "others argue" because it was published in a "minor journal" (Clin Psychol Rev) vs Lancet narrative review. Ironically, the Deary 2007 review which she has recently been citing numerously throughout the articles since June 2009 (including for the statement about "medically unexplained symptoms") is from this same journal; apparently not so "minor" of a journal now that it published a review she finds useful.

These two above examples aren't "offences" so don't belong as examples in the RfC, but give a general idea of what I usually notice from occasional manual monitoring of the articles (I don't even have any articles on my watchlist, so there is probably a lot of other changes I didn't notice). Why give R1's edits such scrutiny when none of us are perfect editors (especially me)? Because she is righteously parading the MEDRS flag and beating people over the head with the flag pole, using it to justify all the edits and comments other editors are taking issue with. R1 often types MEDRS, OR, POV, etc to dismiss other editors, but these acronyms have almost become meaningless on the talkpage when used with double-standards; now whenever R1 accuses someone of "OR", I think there's a fairly good chance it is not OR.

_Tekaphor (TALK) 02:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I would also like to respond to the "When is the last time...?" section - note that these are all recent, some even after the filing of this RfC:

• July 23, 2009: Jamie Doran talk page (COI, also suggests SPA)
• July 28, 2009: Response to this very RfC! (POV - "desire to keep citations of a major view point on CFS and related symptom syndromes, psychological view point, out of Wikipedia", "strong POV work to keep it out")
• July 30, 2009: MEDRS talk page (SPA)

She also suggests that we're hounding her, want to ban her or keep her from editing CFS-related articles, and a whole raft of other accusations in her response. I can't speak for everyone, but at least for myself, I have no desire to see her banned. She obviously has access to some good sources and a willingness to do research in support of the material she's adding. In addition, she has quite correctly disputed some edits that would probably otherwise have slipped through. These are excellent attributes in a Wikipedian in my view! My only desire in bringing this RfC forward (and indeed why I suggested a mutual 0RR agreement) is to try to get her to work collaboratively and constructively with others and stop assuming bad faith just because a "group of editors" disagrees with her edits or her talk page comments. --RobinHood70 (talk) 21:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Retro has deleted all her responses on the RfC page: [7] Wouldn't strikethrough be more appropriate, given the cirumstances? Retro has also taken the unusual step of deleting another user's comment from CFS talk Sam Weller (talk) 22:32, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I also think strikethrough would be more appropriate, but that's for her to decide. Any change of that nature that we make could be perceived as harassment. I just looked and the CFS talk page deletion has now been self-reverted. --RobinHood70 (talk) 22:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

RetroS1mone previously claimed that the RfC examples are stale. Perhaps some of the details are older, but the "pattern" is not, and some of the edit examples are recent too (not just the accusations). Anyway, an administrator (User:Colds7ream) has posted his outside view [8] and approved the RfC [9], although RetroS1mone then removed her previous response [10] and posted this comment [11] on Colds7ream's talkpage: "You approved the harassing RfC on me after involved editor wrote you private email. You did not ask for my side and you accuse me of Wikilawyering. I will not respond to this harassing any more." As far as I know, Colds7ream approved the RfC after looking at the presented case, not simply because he was emailed. Also, wouldn't the initial response, which she later removed, count as her side of the story? - Tekaphor (TALK) 02:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I date checked a random sample of diffs (no time to do them all), before supporting the RfC. They were overwhelmingly from June 2009. Colds7ream replied directly to RetroS1mone's claim that he had not listened to her side of the story: "I looked at both sides of the case, including your response to it, before making my decision." Sam Weller (talk) 08:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

So the issue continues, after I made this edit [12], with RetroS1mone reverting it and making accusations [13] "i remove cherry pick stuff by SPA editor to pretend there is not evidence on GET" (then later adds the same sources [14] as "i add 2 reviews wo cherry pick 'caveat'"). Colds7ream restored my original edit [15] (with the edit summary "Restore version by Tekaphor - accusations in edit summaries are unpleasant, particularly when you replace the text you removed with the exact same paragraphs under your own name.") and left comments on RetroS1mone's talkpage about disruptive editing [16] and the need to assume good faith.[17]. RetroS1mone reverted it again [18]. Ward20 essentially restored it with this edit [19]. I left a comment about it on the CFS treatment talkpage [20]. - Tekaphor (TALK) 04:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Is 0RR too extreme?

I'm unconvinced it would work, and RetroS1mone has rejected it anyway. What we need is for RetroS1mone to understand the issue with her editing style, etiquette, and accusations. However, her reply essentially denies everything and maintains the accusations. RetroS1mone also believes she has JFW's seal of approval and that other editors only have a problem with her because she's not editing politically correctly. Perhaps the only hope now is serious commentary from respected Wikipedians from outside this dispute. IMO, that seems doubtful, since the CFS controversy triggers a lot of eye-rolling, stereotyping, and meaningless generic statements about how "everything is physical anyway". - Tekaphor (TALK) 02:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

1RR might have been appropriate as well, but my thought in suggesting that was simply that the main things that I consider to be disruptive are the reversions and the accusations. 0RR would have addressed the reversions, and if she felt strongly that she was in the right, then she could take it up on the talk page and/or solicit outside help appropriately. --RobinHood70 (talk) 04:39, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, good point. - Tekaphor (TALK) 02:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)