Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/History of the race and intelligence controversy

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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unresolved. editors can seek arbitration, rfc/u, or bring the matter up at any appropriate forum. --RegentsPark (talk) 12:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Tag team editing on History of the race and intelligence controversy

• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• David.Kane (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• mikemikev (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Distributivejustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Varoon Arya (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

These editors are attempting to use autobiographical writings by one of the main subjects of this article, Arthur Jensen, to write a severly biased version of a period in the 1970s. This is well recorded in secondary sources, which are published mostly by university presses. Captain Occam has given spurious reasons for removing material by Adrian Wooldridge, because it is 4 pages long and therefore too short. The views of these editors favour a minoritarian point of view and contradict what most historians of psychology, eg Franz Samelson, have written about Jensen's varying point of view over the years. Please could adminitsrators step in to sort out this tag-teaming and disruption on what was a neutral article. Captain Occam , by editng as part of a team, is attempting to impose a heavily biased and unacceptable version by force of numbers, in this case several WP:SPAs. I did suggest that they could write a separate section Jensen on "Jensenism" to include these autobiographical views, provided it was clearly labelled as such and separate from the history written relying on solid secondary sources and not written by the subject of the history himself. Captain Occam's finger was fast on the revert button. Note that he has been blocked three times before for revert warring on Race and intelligence. I would also note that the point of view of the tag-team on the sources seems similar to that of a review in The Occidental Quarterly. This looks like very agressive POV-pushing based on numbers, rather than arguments based on the readings of WP:RS. Possibly Captain Occam should be blocked. My temporary wifi link will unfortunately not permit me either to inform the above editors or to respond in the near future, Apologies about that. Mathsci (talk) 15:03, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Arbitration. The dispute is not being resolved, positions are increasingly entrenched. No way of untangling it here, I think. Guy (Help!) 15:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I think I should point out that Mathsci has another currently open AN/I complaint about this same issue here. The linked thread is a request that I be banned for tag-team editing on the same article about which he's making his current accusations. Aren't we supposed to avoid multiple simultaneous AN/I threads about the same issue? At the very least what Mathsci is doing here is forum shopping, and having two simultaneously open AN/I complaints about the same issue might be a violation of other policies also. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps "forum flooding". --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC) This editor is a block-evading sock. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• MathSci claims that books written by Jensen may not be used in an article that mentions Jensen. He claims that this is Wikipedia policy but fails to specifically cite any such wording. If writings by Ghandi may be used in the article about Ghandi, then writings by Jensen may be used in an article that mentions Jensen. (They do not have to be used and we need to evaluate them in the context of other sources.) Or am I missing something? David.Kane (talk) 15:59, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• History of the race and intelligence controversy is not about Jensen, it's about the history of the race and intelligence controversy. Hipocrite (talk) 16:19, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Well, obviously. The issue: Is there a general Wikipedia policy against using work written by person X in an article that touches on person X? MathSci asserts that there is, that in the paragraph or two in this article which discusses Jensen, we may not use work written by Jensen. But there is no such policy. MathSci is just making things up, hoping to bully people into getting his way. Could an experienced administrator at least tell us if there is anything wrong with the article on Ghandi using Ghandi's autobiography as a source? David.Kane (talk) 16:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Those sources are primary, so using them must be consistent with WP:PSTS. One could also argue that such sources are not WP:Reliable Sources, and that using them excessively is providing WP:UNDUE weighting to a particular POV, thus running afoul of WP:NPOV. Abductive (reasoning) 17:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe that all the (attempted) uses of Jensen's work has been consistent with WP:PSTS. And MathSci has not, to my knowledge, asserted otherwise. He simply claims that any use of work by Jensen is unacceptable in this article because they were written by Jensen. That is complaints about WP:UNDUE are secondary. David.Kane (talk) 18:24, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I second the vote for arbitration. Or at the very least mediation. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Mediation already failed as the mediator lost buy-in from one of the parties and then, as opposed to reengaging the party by determining their problems and adressing them, instead barrelled through mediation without that parties input. Hipocrite (talk) 16:20, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Around two weeks ago, we finished a five-month-long mediation case for the main Race and intelligence article, which also covered the way we’d be describing this controversy’s history. Our mediator was user:Ludwigs2. Mathsci refused to participate in the mediation for most of the time that it was underway, despite multiple attempts from Ludwigs2 to engage him in it, instead posting multiple AN/I threads trying to get Ludwig banned for allegedly mishandling the mediation case. Mathsci also refused to accept the outcome we agreed on during mediation after the mediation case was finished, which is what’s causing the current conflict. Since he voluntarily excluded himself from the first mediation case and refused to accept its results, I don’t think a second mediation case is likely to solve this. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:29, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

  Then off to the arbitration committee! If it's been going on for that long and it's still not going away I can't see any other way to solve it. Unless Mathsci was willing to engage in some sort of talks with other editors. I'd like to see some evidence from them for the accusations of sock puppetry too, because if that is happening, that should be addressed. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

It really doesn’t seem like arbitration should be necessary here. Of the seven users who are involved in the Race and intelligence history article, six of us are able to work together without any problems. (These are the six users about whom Mathsci is filing his complaint here—his complaint is against every user other than himself who’s involved in this article.) The only user involved in the article who hasn’t been able to work cooperatively on it is Mathsci. When the consensus of other users disagrees with him, rather than accepting what consensus has determined, he either edit wars over it or files complaints about it at AN/I like this one. Is it really appropriate to start an ArbCom case because of a single user who’s unwilling to accept consensus? --Captain Occam (talk) 16:58, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a democracy - and for that, you should count your lucky stars. If we did a quickpoll with only "topic ban MathSci" or "topic ban Captain Occam" as the only choices, I will personally guaranty that you would be banned from this topic. The same with every other name on the list of 7. If you care to dispute this, then I suspect that we could, in fact, host said quickpoll with your agreement. Hipocrite (talk) 18:27, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

We already have hosted a poll about this, when Mathsci tried to get me topic banned two weeks ago in the thread I linked to. Of the 15 or so people who voted in the poll, around five supported a topic ban for me, and the other ten opposed it. (We didn't vote on this in Mathsci's case.)

In any case, when I say that Mathsci has been refusing to accept consensus, I'm not just referring to what the majority opinion is. I'm also referring to the fact that when other users have addressed the arguments Mathsci was making for his preferred version of the article, Mathsci has only ever done one of three things in response: ignored us altogether (as he has towards the end of this thread and this one), made the exact same claims he's made before without addressing any of the earlier responses (as he has in this thread), or answered our rebuttals with snide comments or threats that have nothing to do with the arguments being made (as in this comment and this one). The real reason why consensus opposes Mathsci about this article isn't because the ratio of opinions is six to one (although that fact still makes some amount of difference)--it's because Mathsci apparently has very little interest in trying to justify the changes he wants to make. Not only does every other user involved in the article disagree with him about this; he also consistently evades our efforts to discuss it with him. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Disagreeing with you and your hordes of POV-pushing SPAs is not refusing to accept consensus, it's you refusing to accept that you and your hordes of POV-pusing SPAs have driven off all of the legitmate editors. Hipocrite (talk) 19:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I support arbitration. This needs to be dealt with sooner than later. Auntie E. (talk) 17:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I also support Arbitration, but then a process that looks also beyond the issues specific to this case. So, instead of just looking at editor conduct here and perhaps imposing topic bans, it is high time that it is recognized that there exist a class of topics like this, where you can just wait until editors with an agenda arrive who will edit in a tendentious way, interpeting RS in a way that suits them etc. etc.

Clearly what would help is if the policies are rewritten so that NPOV becomes SPOV. Not that we don't want NPOV, but rather that achieving NPOV is best done by sticking to SPOV. Now, there is no consensus to modify the wiki-policies in this direction. But then that's why we have an ArbCom. ArbCom can impose new policies for the benefit of Wikipedia, regardless of consensus. Count Iblis (talk) 17:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• I request that my name be removed from the above list, as the complaint is in regards to editors allegedly "attempting to use autobiographical writings by one of the main subjects of this article, Arthur Jensen, to write a severly biased version of a period in the 1970s", which simply does not apply to me. My only involvement in this issue - which spanned all of two comments on the talkpage - was a suggestion to consider the use of a secondary source on the topic of Jensenism which was not written by Jensen. Other than that, I've decided to leave this article alone, and have done for some time now, as Mathsci's antics literally turn my stomach. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 17:40, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, crap. I’d been wondering whether Mathsci’s behavior was the reason why you’ve mostly stopped contributing to Wikipedia, and it looks like my suspicion was right.

I consider you to be the most neutral and talented editor we’ve had involved in these articles in at least a year, so it bothers me a lot to see Mathsci driving you off the way he’s apparently doing. Is there no way you’ll be willing to resume participating in these articles as long as his behavior doesn’t change? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:05, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Aryaman neutral, lol. Maybe an uncivil civil POV pusher. The analogy he left on Occam's page and many others clearly demonstrate a POV. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:31, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Have any of Varoon Arya’s actual contributions demonstrated non-compliance with NPOV policy? During the time since he became involved in race-related articles last fall, my observation has been that he’s adhered to NPOV policy pretty strictly. If you disagree, I’d like to see diffs to support your claim about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

So you admit that Aryaman has a POV but that his actual contributions comply with NPOV. The difference between civil POV pushers and regular POV pushers is that civil POV pushers understand wikipedia's policies well, and are thus able to avoid any blatant violations of policy. Despite the lack of blatant violations, CPPs may violate the spirit of wikipedia by cleverly advocating certain POVs. Wapondaponda (talk) 06:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow, thought crime already. mikemikev (talk) 09:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, everybody has a point of view, including you. The only thing that matters at Wikipedia is whether we can avoid introducing our personal biases into articles when we edit them. If Varoon Arya is able to do this—and you seem to be admitting that he is—then he hasn’t done anything wrong.

The same goes for everyone else who’s a subject of Mathsci’s complaint here. This thread is really just a content dispute, although it’s being presented as a complaint about user conduct, so the only actual conduct issue on our part is the fact that a few of you disagree with us. That’s why none of the users making these accusations against us are able to provide any diffs of objectionable conduct on our part, although I’ve been able to provide diffs and links that demonstrate stonewalling from Mathsci. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, everyone is entitled to have a point of view, and we all do. You are correct about introducing personal biases into articles. If Aryaman's edits were completely neutral, then many editors wouldn't have a problem with them. Other editors have complained about an atmosphere of resentment, undercurrents of hostility etc. regarding some race related topics. This demonstrates that some editors' POVs are spilling over into their edits. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

“Other editors have complained about an atmosphere of resentment, undercurrents of hostility etc. regarding some race related topics. This demonstrates that some editors' POVs are spilling over into their edits.”

I don’t think this is VA’s fault, or mine. If you read the talk page for the R & I history article, you’ll see that Mathsci is the one who keeps threatening other editors with bans or blocks when we disagree with him, and he’s obviously also the person who keeps complaining here at AN/I whenever he doesn’t get his way. The only example of something comparable to this from a user other than Mathsci is Mikemikev’s suggestion of starting an RFC/U about Mathsci, which was directly in response to Mathsci having continuously engaged in this antagonistic behavior for several weeks.

As I pointed out in the diffs and links above, Mathsci is also the one who’s either unwilling or unable to justify his opinion based on any policies here. When he responds to the rest of us at all, it’s either with name-calling and threats, or by repeating himself in an endless loop without acknowledging any of the earlier responses to his points. Even if you disagree with the changes we’ve been making to the article in terms of content, I don’t think you can argue with the fact that nobody has raised any coherent objections to them, least of all Mathsci. Unless you’re going to suggest that we ought to submit to him just because of how much noise he’s been making, or out of fear because of his threats, there’s nothing that the rest of us could be doing differently in order to avoid this problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:43, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• I don't know what the Jensen issue is that Mathsci is referring to. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 18:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I was involved in the mediation, so I am not an independent voice. But when ArbCom was created, it was specifically to deal with personal behavior violations and conflicts. I know its brief has been expanding a bit but we Wikipedians should resist that. For a long time I have argued that we need a separate panel or multiple panels (e.g. of experts) to mediate content disputes. This is really a content dispute and should not be handled by ArbCom (although i agree that mediation did not resolve all issues in a years-long problem article). If this does not provoke the community into creating a separate mechanism for dealing with content disputes, then I suggest some kind of task-force. Wasn't this how ethnic-conflict e.g. Israel-Palestine conflicts were handled? The core issue here of course is race and racism so I think it is analogous. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:27, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Request Could an uninvolved editor please move this thread to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Slrubenstein and leave a pointer here? Or if nobody objects, I'll do it. I'm not involved in the content dispute but I posted some outside commments to the earlier thread. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 21:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

A task force specifically for these types of articles seems like a great idea. I think this situation blurs the line a little between content disputes and behaviour conflicts, so it might be appropriate to send it to ArbCom. But something tailored to the specific situation would be a lot better. Who would be willing to sit in on that though? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 22:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Why are we all "voting" on whether to take this to mediation or arbitration? If there's a conduct problem, present diffs illustrating the disruptive actions and myself or another administrator will slam a block on the guilty parties. AGK 01:44, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

(This comment by AGK went missing, pesumably after a wrongly corrected edit conflict by someone. It should be checked if more comments are missing elsewhere on this AN/I page. Count Iblis (talk) 02:01, 27 April 2010 (UTC) )

AGK: This case is far too subtle for that approach because there have been lots of researchers interested in race and intelligence, so a POV editor can find plenty of material to support their POV, and can keep pushing until all related articles "prove" their point. As far as I can tell, Mathsci is one of the few remaining editors who is attempting to keep a neutral portrayal of the science. Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps of only partial interest to this thread, but of considerable relevance to the actual issue of contention -- this is about history, not science. The NPOV issue surrounds the description of the motivations of various scholars 30+ years ago, but not their science per se. The science content is in the race and intelligence article, which is not at issue. --DJ (talk) 05:34, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

-> The Race and intelligence article has the problem that a number of largely single-purpose editors are trying to write the science themselves from primary sources. Not very much can be done about that as far as I can tell. But when it comes to history, they are now trying to play exactly the same game on the recently created History of the race and intelligence controversy. They want to write the history themselves using primary sources. They seem obsessive about their chosen subject and mostly edit very little else on wikipedia. So of course the game is to brush aside reliable secondary sources - in this case 4 pages from an account by Adrian Wooldridge, who is certainly not a Marxist historian (he lunches with conservative grandees and is Management Editor of The Economist) - and replace it with autobiographical statements by the person, Arthur Jensen, about whom the history is being written. They then spend time comparing that person to Gandhi and Winston Churchill. In this case, a fairer comparison would be to Enoch Powell, who sparked similar controversy to Jensen and produced copious amounts of primary autobiographical material, none of which is used directly in his wikipedia article. Fortunately, now that this has been reported here, several more widely experienced editors are now participating in the article and restoring some sense of normality to editing. If administrators want to look at the kind of edits I make, they can look at the carefully sourced material I added this morning [1] on Cyril Burt and the newly created biography of Otto Klineberg, a social psychologist whose career followed a slightly different path from that of Arthur Jensen. Or then again, they can look at Handel concerti grossi Op.6 or Christopher Jencks. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 13:39, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The comparison to the bio of Enoch Powell is close, but not quite analogous. A better comparison would be to Powellism, the discussion of the controversial ideas and views attributed to Powell. That article quotes him extensively, and includes quotes taken from both primary (written by Powell himself) as well as secondary sources. I don't think the editors involved here are requesting anything other than balancing what secondary sources attribute to Jensen with what Jensen himself has said. In light of NPOV, this would seem imperative, particularly given the fact that Jensen himself has noted on several occasions that his views are more often than not misrepresented in such secondary sources.

And, for the second time, I request that my name be removed from this list. I do not plan on participating in this any further. --Aryaman (talk) 16:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Unfortunately in the case of Jensen, it is well documented that he kept changing his mind on various issues, eg the "Burt affair". In the early 1970s Jensen was one of the stauchest defenders of Burt. In 1983 he accepted that Burt's results were probably fabricated. In 1992 he reversed his decision. Plenty of neutral secondary sources give long quotations from Jensen - they are easy to find. I'm not sure what exactly is needed. Certainly no long presentations of the "science" in his paper or his replies to criticisms 30 years later. Anyway, now that Captain Occam has spuriously removed any summary of what Jensen's critics wrote (as reported by Adrian Wooldridge), it seems even less relevant to include any material directly by Jensen. By favouring Jensen over his critics, that would appear to be a move by you and the others to skew the reporting of the history in favour of the hereditarian viewpoint. That doesn't seem very neutral to me and I haven't seen it done in any of the sources. Wooldridge carefully summarises what both Jensen and his critics said. Mathsci (talk) 03:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Aryman - I've redacted your name from the list, unilaterally. If mathsci wants to raise a stink about it, he can bring it up at ANI - LMFAO --Ludwigs2 19:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

"LMFAO" - So, you find this funny in some way? Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

proposed topic ban for Mathsci

No consensus for topic ban

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. I think it's time to raise the issue of a topic ban for Mathsci, much as I hate to suggest it. Mathsci has gotten so lost in his own personal perspective on this topic that he is no longer responding to reason or trying to edit cooperatively at all - he's simply engaging in procedural warfare against a half-dozen editors (starting or hijacking multiple ANI threads to pursue it), without even a minimal assumption of good faith for anyone. a short enforced break from any page related to the topic (two months or so) should give him an opportunity to regain some perspective. and Hipocrite, save your breath - threatening me isn't going to do you any good, and you've never given me a reason to give a shit about what you think. --Ludwigs2 19:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose Mathsci is not the problem here. --RegentsPark (talk) 19:14, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Are you sure about that? I think Mathsci is a fairly decent editor, all things considered, but in this case we are talking about a lot of ANI time he's monopolized trying to get people banned, blocked or otherwise in trouble. Further, his behavior on the articles and in article talk has been outrageous: He threatens people, reverts without credible explanation, indulges in name-calling and personal insults, demands that people accept his edits because he's a more experienced editor, and otherwise acts like a spoiled child. Don't believe half the hype he's been spouting here - I don't personally agree with Occam's or Mikemikev's perspective, but I can reason with them and start creating a balanced outcome. Mathsci simply refuses to listen to anything that he thinks is wrong, and starts ANI proceedings if anyone contradicts him. In my view he is the main and biggest obstacle to creating a balanced article, because he is (as far as I can see) hell bent on making sure that no other perspective save the one he believes in is represented in the article. Can honestly read through the respctive talk pages and ANI threads and tell me that you think Mathsci is behaving like a calm, rational adult? If so, then please do so, so we can get down to a detail by detail analysis of his silliness. I'd appreciate you explaining his behavior to me. This isn't about choosing sides, this is about creating a workable editing environment. --Ludwigs2 20:30, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Ludwig, it might be helpful if you were to provide diffs of some of Mathsci’s more problematic behavior. I suspect that you’ve been paying closer attention to it than the rest of us have, especially during the mediation case. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2010 (UTC) I will if anyone asks. If things are true to previous form, the first 8 or so responses will be (mostly) from people who would oppose a topic ban even if Mathsci physically threatened to kill you, on the grounds that that would somehow be your fault. Give it a day or two and some more level heads will weigh in. I doubt it will happen this time, but I will raise the issue again in each of the subsequent ANI threads that Mathsci starts or hijacks, and I figure somewhere around the fourth or fifth time (because you know there will be at least that many more ANI threads) even his die-hard supporters will will be developing some serious cognitive dissonance about him. I'm patient... --Ludwigs2 20:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Well, I’m asking. I do think that Mathsci’s behavior in these articles warrants a topical ban, but I also don’t think you’re going to be able to convince anyone of this without providing specific evidence. With the exception of Slrubenstein, everyone who’s commented “oppose” thus far doesn’t have any firsthand experience with Mathsci in these articles, and as a result probably doesn’t believe either of us that he’s been doing all of the things that we’ve observed from him. Providing diffs is the way to solve that problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:54, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose If there are candidates for topic ban, I would start looking at SPAs. Mathsci is definitely not that. He is an editor who generally works on articles in which he has genuine expertise, and where his knowledge is lacking it is clear he knows how to do real research, even if it involves physically walking to a library. He has demonstrated this at scores of other articles and his contribution to R&I is consistent with his contributions elsewhere. He is also clear about core content policy. I sometimes find his editing too aggressive but he same is true about me and th majority of wikipedians, and all of us know we sometimes need Wikibreaks, and I have seen mathsci take one periodically on his own accord. This - realistically speaking - is precisely the kind of editor we need more of, and should not be discouraging. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose Mathsci is definitely not the problem here, I came out of retirement to say so. Justin talk 20:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose - I don't think either "side" is behaving well under our policies, but Mathsci isn't causing the situation here and is not the worst offender. No. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:20, 27 April 2010 (UTC) As far as I am aware my mainspace editing is without blemish, on a broad base of academic articles in the arts and sciences. By his silence on the matter, Ludwigs2 seems to be supporting a whole series of WP:SPAs. This is completely in line with his previous attempts to skew wikipedia editing policy to favour unduly representing minority views on fringe topics. His emotional and highly charged statements about me are no different from those of Abd (talk · contribs): they do not reflect my editing patterns in any way and are simply out-and-out personal attacks on an academic mainstream editor, unsupportable by diffs. Captain Occam is continuing slowly to push for inappropriate primary sources to be used by asking the same question over and over again here: Talk:History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy#Primary sources - Jensen justifying himself 30 years after the event. These continued questions appear to have degenerated to trolling, Persumably when I tire of responding, this will give him the green light to reinsert material that several other editors have already removed. Isn't this just a slow version of edit warring on his part? I have no point of view to push in any of this, even if Captain Occam obviously has. Mathsci (talk) 22:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Mathsci, please leave me out of your mudslinging. How can I support anything through silence? Frankly, I've been avoiding the page(s) because you are being such an inveterate ass it give me a headache dealing with you. I have better ways to spend my time at the moment than watching you run around shouting "Off With Their Heads!" like the frigging Queen of Hearts. --Ludwigs2 22:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Ahem. you wrote above: "if Mathsci physically threatened to kill you". Please could you explain to administrators what that kind of phrase was supposed to convey. Please could you also explain what anything you have written here has to do with me insisting on secondary sources for the history of a controversial event. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 23:17, 27 April 2010 (UTC) It meant that there are a number of people who would willingly defend you well past the point of common sense. You command a decent amount of well-deserved respect, Mathsci, but you often receive respect beyond what you deserve, and I think it encourages you in your bad behavior. it's unfortunate that people resort to that kind of thing, and unfortunate that you let it turn your head, but it's not really a major issue. just something to be noticed. As to your second point: I don't have a problem with you insisting on secondary sources. I have a problem with you running your mouth off about how everyone else is a POV-pushing SPA who ought to be banned. I suspect that you're right, content-wise, but you're such an ass about it that you tick everyone else off, and so what could be simple, straight-forward discussions turn into knock-down, drag-out bitch-fests. frankly, if you were topic-banned it would leave me free to go in and make the same arguments you're making now, except nicely, and then the page would make some progress. sorry, but your arrogance gets in the way. --Ludwigs2 00:30, 28 April 2010 (UTC) I wonder whether you might please stop making these insulting remarks. I also hope that you are not acting on behalf of Captain Occam. [2] Mathsci (talk) 01:56, 28 April 2010 (UTC) And I wonder whether you will learn to treat people civilly in your own right. Somehow I suspect the answers to those questions will always be the same... Also, they have some marvelous new therapies available for clinical manifestations of paranoia. How frequently do you have these fears that people are conspiring against you? --Ludwigs2 04:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC) You have had a formal warning from an administrator on your talk page. Suggesting now that I have some form of "mental illness" is a personal attack. Please refactor the above immediately and apologize to me on my talk page. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 04:47, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Have I? where did you get that idea? and even if it were true, what business is that of yours anyway? again, you're being arrogant: I can handle handle my relations with other editors without your help, thank you, and I will do a far better job of it than you've managed to do with Occam. You'd best look to cleaning up your own house. --Ludwigs2 05:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC) You were warned by GWH and shortly afterwards wrote the above PERSONAL ATTACK. Your behaviour here has not been normal. I have privately contacted an administrator. Please redact the insults you have written and stop commenting like this. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 06:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC) C'mon guys. You're both good contributors. Let's take the rhetoric down a notch.   Will Beback  talk  06:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC) [3][4] Hmm, 10 content edits for April, with 2 of those to Goatse.cx. Mathsci (talk) 06:43, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose per Slrubinsetin. This is the wrong party to be topic banned. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC) oppose Mathsci is certainly not more responsible for the content disputes at race and iq related articles than a number of other editors. Topic bans would have to be for all involved editors - SPA's first.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:00, 28 April 2010 (UTC) As someone who has been passively watching the evolution of R&I and related articles for years, I have to agree with the "opposes": Mathsci is definitely not the problem here. Who or what may be the solution to this mess is a wholly different question, and given the history and unsettling attraction of this topic to multiple single purpose accounts, I for one am pessimistic. But to topic-ban Mathsci, as suggested by Ludwigs2, won't help this ill-fated topic one bit. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:00, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose - If topic bans are needed this isn't the place to start.   Will Beback  talk  23:01, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Support From what I've gathered Mathsci seems to be repeatedly inserting BLP violating material while attempting to get the consensus group of editors banned. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:31, 28 April 2010 (UTC) You have not gathered enough, keep gathering. ·Maunus·ƛ· 15:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC) Comment None of this bears any relation to reality. Mathsci (talk) 02:15, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Comment on previous behaviour. In a another arbitration case Mathsci was reminded "not to edit war — especially not on arbitration pages — and to avoid personal attacks at all times". He was also blocked previously for "harassing other users, making threats". Xxanthippe (talk) 00:51, 28 April 2010 (UTC). Comment It's a bit stale to mention something that happened two years ago with Elonka (talk · contribs), when I was unblocked almost immediately. Elonka is due to visit me here in France with her father on Monday. It's a sort of French wiki-meetup.Mathsci (talk) 02:15, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose Mathsci is following all appropriate procedures and has a proper understanding of the relevant policies, particularly the use of secondary sources and the need to avoid cherry picking from primary sources. The problem comes from the SPA editors and their misguided supporters. Johnuniq (talk) 01:11, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose. I suggest that Ludwigs2 find some other articles to spend their time on. Their involvement as mediator helped sink the mediation (due to partisanship), and their input into this thread has merely been disruptive, including swearing, hyperbole, and this proposal to ban a long-time respected editor while enabling the POV-pushing from a series of single-purpose accounts. Fences&Windows 01:33, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Comment In the earlier thread where Mathsci asked for a topic ban against Captain Occam, there seemed to be some chance of reaching an agreement where both of them would voluntarily quit the R&I topic. I couldn't support banning Mathsci from it involuntarily, but I wish he would lose interest in it and do something else, even if only because there's much more worthwhile subjects in Wikipedia that could use his help. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 02:05, 28 April 2010 (UTC) As far as I remember - correct me if I'm wrong - I write articles when I feel like it and when I have time. Writing this article was much quicker than most, 3 days as opposed to 4 months for Handel concerti grossi Op.6. However, watching it is a different thing. If you successfully listed it for deletion that might solve that problem :) Of course the main point is not me - it's the tag team and in particular Captain Occam. Ludwigs2 has done his bast to divert attention from that fundamental problem by creating this section. Mathsci (talk) 02:30, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose - Mathsci has made some very important contributions to this subject. I think we should be discussing, what is now undisputed, the SPA editing of some users. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:48, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Close this section per WP:Waste of Time. Count Iblis (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Heh, did you miss the Humor tag, or forget the smiley?  :) A.Prock (talk) 15:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose. Mathsci's Mike Tyson-like behavior helps break the monotony of Wikipedia. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC) *Oppose. We need someone with a Marxist POV to provide some balance. But could someone stop him using ANI as his personal Gulag? mikemikev (talk) 17:42, 28 April 2010 (UTC) Who are you saying has a Marxist POV here? Please could you explain yourself? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 11:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC) OK, I can't prove anything. Maybe you just accidentally wrote a history article trashing the reputation of a living scientist and maintained for several weeks that his own words should be kept out of the article (which you still appear to be doing in the face of several administrators). Allow me to refactor that. Maybe you would feel in more familiar territory if I followed up the unsubstantiated allegation with a call to have you blocked? mikemikev (talk) 15:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC) Support. mikemikev (talk) 15:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC) Mathsci wrote a quite fine article. Mathsci has not trashed Arthur Jensen's reputation, his reputation has been long in the making - and it would be a crime against WP:NPOV if the article did not expand on the extremely wide array of criticisms that have been levelled against him. It is rather unbecoming to see how you response to being called out on an unsubstantiated personal attack by grasping for the ban hammer. ·Maunus·ƛ· 15:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC) Oppose: while I can see that Mathsci's edits have sometimes been vigourous, and he has on occasion unfortunately resorted to disrespect for his adversaries, his broad contributions are a major indication of the quality of his ideas. It is always disappointing when people here resort to insults, particularly a mediator who should maintain moral authority, but ultimately the content of the encyclopaedia is most important. I still feel that the SPAs should go out and gain wider experience, and slowing down the editing of the article will give time to let some sunlight in and give tempers the opportunity to cool. Stephen B Streater (talk) 20:02, 29 April 2010 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggestion to Captain Occam et al.

Closed by Georgewilliamherbert (talk) on the grounds that in his judgement this is an inappropriate suggestion as he explains here in more detail.

This article needs a lot of work. Count Iblis (talk) 22:47, 27 April 2010 (UTC) What makes you think I'd want to spend time on trying to improve Conservapedia articles? Hardly anyone reads that site. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC) And why does hardly anyone read Conservapedia? Count Iblis (talk) 23:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Because most people aren't stupid. Not difficult. Next question? Black Kite (t) (c) 23:32, 27 April 2010 (UTC) Um, does it matter what the reason is? I was just telling you why I don't think your suggestion would be a good use of my time. That's the case regardless of why so few people read it. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:34, 27 April 2010 (UTC) It does matter. If the reason is that the articles there are of poor quality, you could improve the articles there. If the reason is that their editing philosophy is different than we have here and readers don't like that, then editing articles here using their editing philosophy isn't a wise thing to do. Count Iblis (talk) 00:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC) I don't even know what their editing philosophy is; I've never cared enough to find out. Is this whole section that you've posted in this thread intended as a backhanded accusation that I've been using Conservapedia's philosophy here? If that's what you're trying to say, then quit beating around the bush with multiple comments, and just say it. And while you're at it, you might want to mention what their editing philosophy actually is, so I'll know what it is exactly that you're accusing me of. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Continued tag teaming

The team mentioned at the top of this thread have now apparently decided that the following carefully footnoted historical account by Adrian Wooldridge is biased:

• Wooldridge, Adrian (1995), Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England c.1860-c.1990, Cambridge University Press, pp. 363–379, ISBN 0521395151, The revival of psychometric theory in England and America: 1969-1980

And that this 1998 two-page partisan opinion piece

• Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy#JENSEN, JENSENISM, AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF INTELLIGENCE

by Linda Gottfredson at the end of a nine-page tribute article, without footnotes and possibly unrefereed, is balanced. I would assume that most experienced editors or administrators would be able to classify Gottfredson's personal statement as a primary source and that of Wooldridge, an unbiased writer and historian, as a reliable secondary source. Probably the best way to handle this now is through WP:RSN. Mathsci (talk) 16:27, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

A section was opened at WP:RSN#Jensen_1998_writing_about_Jensen_1969 by DJ. Opinion seems to be that keeping the BLP balanced is more important than using the 'most secondary' sources. mikemikev (talk) 18:06, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

“Opinion seems to be that keeping the BLP balanced is more important than using the 'most secondary' sources.”

The important thing to understand here is that this is also the opinion of every editor involved in the article other than Mathsci. There were six of us who took this position—me, DJ, David.Kane, Mikemikev, 120 Volt Monkey, and Varoon Arya—until Varoon Arya abandoned the article out of disgust and frustration at Mathsci’s behavior, which may soon happen with some of the other editors also. The six of us tried to discuss this with Mathsci for around two weeks, and Mathsci stonewalled the entire time, as I described in more detail in this comment. Since he won’t accept consensus and he won’t engage in meaningful discussion, the only way for us to bring the article into compliance with WP:BLP has been by editing the article over his objections. The reason he now regards us as a “tag team” is because he edit wars against us whenever we try this—I previously reported this here, but the report was rejected because one of Mathsci’s ANI threads about this article was still active—so the only way to bring the article into compliance with BLP has been by having multiple users work together to enforce this policy. As Mathsci drives more and more other editors away from this article, though, complying with BLP becomes more and more difficult.

Any one of the six users whom Mathsci reported here can verify that what I’m saying here is accurate, if the diffs posted in the linked comments aren’t enough to demonstrate this. There’s no end to this problem in sight, and Ludwig’s proposal for a topical ban as a solution obviously wasn’t effective either. Is there anything else that can be done about a user who is repeatedly violating BLP, won’t accept the consensus against this, and edit wars against any effort from other users to comply with this policy? --Captain Occam (talk) 05:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Have you noticed how there has been very little support for your position expressed here? You point out how one editor (Mathsci) is interrupting the diligent work of six other editors, and yet people like me effectively say "good job Mathsci". The fundamental problem is that as well as SPA editors there are SPA researchers, and SPA editors can push their views into articles like these. Johnuniq (talk) 07:39, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

“Have you noticed how there has been very little support for your position expressed here?”

And isn’t it obvious what the reason for that is? Look at Varoon Arya’s comments again. This is at least the sixth time in the past two months that Mathsci has come to AN/I about the fact that nobody on the talk pages for these articles agrees with him, framing his content disputes as a user conduct complaint, and most of the users involved in this article are so sick of this by now that they want nothing to do with it anymore. Varoon Arya had no interest in participating in this thread except to ask that his name not be mentioned here, Mikemikev and David.Kane have barely commented, and DJ has refused to participate in this thread except for a single comment. All of Mathsci’s support in this thread has been coming from people like you, who haven’t been watching his behavior on this article, and are probably just judging Mathsci based only on his past contributions.

In order to effectively judge what’s going on here, you need to either directly observe Mathsci’s behavior on this article, or discuss it with other people who have. Mathsci’s past contributions aren’t relevant here, because at this point he’s developed an obsessive interest in this article and his viewpoint about it that surpass those of anyone else involved in it. If you look at the past week of his contributions, you’ll see that he appears to no longer have any interest in articles that aren’t directly related to race and intelligence. And if you look at the history of either the history of the race and intelligence controversy article or its talk page, you can see that for the past two weeks Mathsci has been as active there as all other users combined. Even if he wasn’t an SPA in the past, at this point he is now more of one than anyone else there.

Let me ask again: given what’s going on currently, including the fact that at this point most other editors no longer have the patience to deal with Mathsci’s continuous stonewalling and AN/I complaints about content disputes, is there anything that can be done to bring this article into compliance with BLP? In this situation, does Mathsci get to put whatever he wants about living researchers into the article, by virtue of the fact that he’s in the process of driving away most of the other users away from it, and he has enough of a history of contributions to Wikipedia that nobody else is willing to examine the problems with his current behavior? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:52, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. After reading this very depressing discussion and the article and talk page that provoked it my conclusion is that the problem arose because Mathsci has been editing outside his area of expertise. Like many amateurs he has become carried away with his enthusiasms and is unable to view the subject with the balanced perspective that an experienced scholar of the field would have developed. It might be helpful to give him another rap over the knuckles to remind him to avoid edit wars, personal attacks and so forth and so forth and so forth. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Everybody on wikipedia, even when editing editing close to their expertise, is an amateur. Suggesting otherwise is contrary to all wikipedia policy. Is she proposing to tag Europe because, with Hemlock Martinis (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), I was on eof the main editors to rejig and source the history section? I wish her the very best of luck! The comment above seems like an attempt to settle a personal grudge connected with fringe science. Not having elicited a reply here, Xxanthippe appears now to be disrupting wikipedia to make a WP:POINT by adding {{expert}} to the article without any justification on the talk page. Several very experienced administrators are discussing sourcing and further addition to the article. At no stage has anybody but Xxanthippe questioned my editing skills. Mathsci (talk) 07:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

UPDATE Slrubenstein has invited several outside editors familiar with wikipedia policies to comment on the talk page of the article. The comments so far have been very helpful. Mathsci (talk) 11:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be mentioned that Mathsci’s antagonistic behavior, as well as his issues with Ludwigs2, are now being discussed at WQA: Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#Ludwigs2.27s_personal_attacks_on_WP:ANI. No progress appears to have been made there thus far, so people who have been following this thread might want to look there also, to see if they can offer any ideas about how to solve this. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Captain Occam in his haste has forgotten to mention that Ludwigs2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked by BozMo (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) for his personal attacks in the archived subthread.

• Captain Occam and his team still seem set on including as many indications as possible on wikipedia that the hereditarian view of race and intelligence - that there is incontrovertible proof that the intelligence of blacks on average is significantly less than that of whites due to inherent genetic features of race. I hope that I am not misreading his statements. Another like-minded member of his team, Distributivejustice, is now claiming that one of the sources - by William H. Tucker, a psychologist and author of a prize-winning book on the history of funding of the hereditarian research - is not a qualified historian and therefore material from his book should be removed from wikipedia. This is fairly typical of the spurious arguments on the talk page from the POV-pushing SPAs. They are attempting slowly to chip away at an article until it can be flooded with commentary from 30 years after the event of Jensen and those close to him, so that the rest of the history becomes swamped and completely unreadable: of course this is against all core wikipedia editing policies. To some extent they have had some success in tiring out neutral editors on Race and intelligence. Many have now abandoned the article. It must be a cause of concern that editors like Captain Occam, Mikemikev and Distributivejustice edit relentlessly only race-related articles and from this very particular point of view, the possible inherent superiority of one population group over another. Mathsci (talk) 07:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• The relationship between what you write and what's actually happening is tenuous to say the least. Here's the diff for my talk page suggestion that Tucker's unattributed POV is an NPOV problem; I explicitly make no suggestions about what to do with it, but my previous attempts at resolution have been to retain Tucker's POV and balance it with the view of the person he is criticizing. The implied attack on my character is offensive and I wish you would retract it. --DJ (talk) 07:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Ahem, isn't this your complete editing record? We have no way of analysing Tucker's point of view on wikipedia: his prize-winning book does satisfy WP:RS and WP:V, is published by University of Illinois Press, is meticulously documented and has been well-reviewed in the academic literature. The book was mostly used for describing William Shockley's role in the controversy and the funding of hereditarian research by the Pioneer Fund. (A recent biography of Shockley says more or less the same thing.) Leaving this aside, am I correct in understanding the point of view of your edits? In Captain Occam's edits he writes about those who "share his POV", so I'm just really wondering whether I have stated it correctly above. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 08:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't stomach your insinuations. Instead of trying to impugn my intentions, why don't you address the concrete content issue I've identified? I realize I have limited experience as an editor, but I know a biased presentation when I see it. --DJ (talk) 09:17, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci wrote: "Another like-minded member of his team, Distributivejustice, is now claiming that one of the sources - by William H. Tucker, a psychologist and author of a prize-winning book on the history of funding of the hereditarian research - is not a qualified historian and therefore material from his book should be removed from wikipedia."

This is a lie. Tucker's writing on Jensen is a severely negative misrepresentation of what Jensen actually wrote. You have used Tucker's words as unattributed fact, and insisted that what Jensen actually said be kept out of the article. Jensen is a living person, we are required represent him fairly. DJ was repeating this point, which you still refuse to accept. He said nothing about removing Tucker, as you know. When he clarified this, you replied with his editing record.

In my opinion some kind of sanctions are necessary while we clean up the article. mikemikev (talk) 12:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

“Captain Occam and his team still seem set on including as many indications as possible on wikipedia that the hereditarian view of race and intelligence - that there is incontrovertible proof that the intelligence of blacks on average is significantly less than that of whites due to inherent genetic features of race.”

Mathsci, in my comment below I posted three diffs of material I added to the race and intelligence article which favor an environmental cause of the IQ gap. In the approximately a year that I have been involved in this article, this is a greater amount of pro-environmental material than you have ever added to it. I, too, would like you redact your comment. It is a rather blatant breach of WP:NPA with its unsupported accusations of policy violations against me and DJ. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

This discussion is about tag-teaming by SPAs on History of the race and intelligence controversy. It's a red herring to bring up Race and intelligence here. Mathsci (talk) 08:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It’s relevant because it disproves your accusation that the purpose of my involvement in these articles is only to push a hereditarian point of view.

Now that I’ve pointed this out, are you going to redact your comment in which you claimed this about me, and stop claiming it in the future? Or do you intend to continue knowingly and willingly perpetuating a false accusation against me? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• This discussion about sources reminds me of a discussion with Log in, log out (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) on WP:ANI in 2008. It continued on my talk page here. There the editor was questioning the reputation of Johanna Nichols, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. The same kind of circular and repetitive arguments are now being applied to William H. Tucker. Mikemikev writes above "while we clean up the article". An interesting use of the word "we" here. It doesn't look very good at all. Mathsci (talk) 14:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Here Mathsci gives a fine example of his stonewalling. Above I wrote:

"This is a lie. Tucker's writing on Jensen is a severely negative misrepresentation of what Jensen actually wrote. You have used Tucker's words as unattributed fact, and insisted that what Jensen actually said be kept out of the article. Jensen is a living person, we are required represent him fairly...In my opinion some kind of sanctions are necessary while we clean up the article."

Did Mathsci address this, the core issue here? No: an irrelevant link to his talk page and some vague insinuations about my use of a word. Note also how I accused him of lying (which I stand by). No problems with that Mathsci? Doesn't look too good does it? mikemikev (talk) 15:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

According to wikipedia editing policy, we find good secondary sources. We then report accurately what is in them. Something I didn't include in the article is the documented evidence that (a) Shockley was instrumental in arranging for Jensen to be funded by the Pioneer Fund and (b) this funding was channelled through a special institute set up with Jensen as president and his wife as vice president. I chose not to include that material. I can't say whether it's negative or positive, but I thought it was WP:UNDUE to go into detail. What is in the article was designed to be neutral, anodyne and inoffensive. The 1969 article of Jensen is described by quotes from the article appearing in the secondary sources, mostly from Wooldridge - there doesn't seem to be any misrepresentation. Some editors have been removing material about contemporary criticisms, without convincing reasons. As I understand it a history article like that should just summarise the events as they are recounted in the sources, without distortion. Nobody comes off particularly well either in the secondary sources or in the article. I could still imagine including some mention of the Head Start Program in the USA, missing at the moment, but mentioned in some sources. I note that it's mentioned in the BLP of Arthur Jensen, a BLP which goes into detail about the aftermath of his 1969 paper - it doesn't read as something very positive, less so than the article currently under discussion. Since creating the history article, I finished the Handel grand concertos article and at present am starting to resume work on Triumphs of Caesar. Mathsci (talk) 23:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for a Topic Ban

I propose that the time has come for a topic ban on the SPA editors who have been plaguing these articles. They stated they were prepared to work elswhere voluntarily, that seems to be untrue and now I think an involuntary ban is reluctantly necessary. The time has come for AN/I to support productive editors who support the core mission statement of NPOV against SPA editors seeking to skew articles in favout of a particluar minority POV. Too often we talk too much but don't take action. Justin talk 21:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to reply with a quote from the Academy Award winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film):

Bromden spots (or he thinks he spots) one of the attendants listening at the door. He wants to warn the others, but doesn't know how.

SEFELT- Maybe he'll [McMurphy] just show Nurse Ratched his big thing an' she'll open the door for him.

Sefelt and Frederickson smile at each other.

Bromden slides along the wall toward the door.

MCMURPHY- Yeah, maybe I will, and then maybe I'll just use that thick skull of yours and knock a hole in the wall Sefelt.

:::Bromden reaches the door and looks out. No one is there.[5][http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/o/one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-script.html] --120 Volt monkey (talk) 05:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't quite understand the meaning of your quote in this context. I certainly hope it's not expressing the opinion that some Wikipedia editor's skull should be used as a battering ram? Please enlighten me, because I'm confused.

Oh, and i should say that I support a topic ban for the SPA editors on the R&I articles, which sounds like a pretty darn good idea. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:28, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I presume the reference to a film about a mental hospital is referring to my mental health problems. I have been diagnosed with PTSD, it wouldn't be the first time my contribution history has been mined for my problems to be brought up as a means to devalue my contributions. Never mind this old tom has a fairly thick skin. Justin talk 10:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

This would include Mathsci also, right? As I pointed out above, even though Mathsci didn’t used to be an SPA, it’s apparent from the past week of his contributions that he no longer has any interest in editing articles that aren’t related to race and intelligence. (His contributions to other articles have been declining for the past month, but it’s for the past week that he’s had literally no involvement in articles outside of this topic.) His interest in this topic is more obsessive than that of any other user involved in the articles at this point: on the R & I history article and its talk page, he now has as many edits as all other users combined. To ban all SPA editors on these articles, but specifically exclude him, would be a kind of obvious double standard. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

If you guys will stop opposing the topic ban in exchange for Mathsci accepting one as well, I urge Mathsci to take the deal. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 09:06, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

mathsci has been editing since 2006, with 15000 edits to a lot of articles, but he is a SPA because in the last week he has only edited one topic? This definition of SPA is not good. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment (edit conflict with Captain Occam, above) We had an ANI incident (linked upthread) a few weeks ago with the same proposal, that got support from some pretty sensible and experienced users for topic banning the SPA's, but got enough opposition to not reach consensus. A negotiated mutual exit by Mathsci and Captain Occam also seemed like a possible hope to escape heavyweight dispute resolution at that time, but it's not looking to be in the cards by now. and maybe it looks like a possibility again? Durova suggested RFCU and Guy has been suggesting arbitration.

  Maybe I'm projecting my personal experiences onto this too much but I think the basic problem is that documenting the misconduct at the level needed for an arb case takes many tedious hours of mining 100's of diffs, an intensely burnout-inducing process about as appealing as wading through chest-deep bio-waste for the same amount of time. So there's a tension between recognizing its necessity and getting started, and staying through the awfulness of actually doing it to the end. And someone wanting to avoid conflict and write neutral articles is at a huge disadvantage when the opponent is someone who actually enjoys and seeks out conflict (WP:BATTLEGROUND) (the userpage User:Captain Occam begins "I’m an artist and writer who likes to debate..." and goes on to name various traditional WP battleground subjects). (When both sides like conflict, we get madness like "Date delinking").

  Based on the above, I think I can understand why Mathsci brings complaints here and then doesn't tend to them that carefully. There's a huge sense of futility in trying to beat back crap like this. It's easy to start the process because it's necessary, but then run out of steam because it's just not worth the headache. I've done the same thing myself more than once. I figure if Mathsci wanted to go through the hassle of RFC or arbitration he'd have initiated it by now; and if not, it's just a hell of a lot to ask from a user in good standing.

  I'm fine with the idea of topic-banning the SPA's and wish good luck to those who think it's worth trying it here a second time. I'm not so hopeful that it will work. If it fails: I propose:

Race and intelligence and related articles including History of the race and intelligence controversy are under discretionary sanctions like those given in the Homeopathy arbitration.

That will decrease the threshold required for admin intervention in future incidents. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 09:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

People have brought up that phrase on my userpage enough times that I should probably say something about it. The reason I enjoy debating about topics I care about is not the same reason why I get involved in these articles. If you read any of the debates I’ve been involved in with creationists such as the one linked to on my userpage, I think it’s apparent there that the reason I enjoy this is because I enjoy educating other people about topics I’m knowledgeable about—and it’s happened a few times that I’ve convinced creationists of evolution as a result of this, which is a very gratifying experience. There’s no hope of anything like that in articles about race-related topics at Wikipedia, because everybody who edits them is so entrenched in their positions that the most I can ever hope for is to allowed to edit them without interference. The reason I tend to gravitate towards these sorts of articles is because they tend to be the ones that tend to have the most obvious problems in terms of bias or poor writing, so they’re the ones that I always think are the most in need of improvement.

I don’t enjoy debating with people like Mathsci at all. The reason I tolerate it is just because I know otherwise there’s no way it would be possible to improve these articles. I guess at some point I should edit the information you’re quoting on my userpage to make this clearer.

I mentioned in Mathsci’s previous thread about this why at this point, I wouldn’t be ready to agree to abandon R & I related articles if Mathsci agreed to do the same: right now we’re still in the process of implementing some of the changes to the race and intelligence article that we agreed on during the mediation for it. However, one thing I’ve been trying to do as a result of the previous AN/I thread is to edit a wider range of articles here, since I hadn’t been aware before that thread of how much this mattered to a lot of people here; this is the reason why most of my content edits over the past few days have been to the (non-controversial) William Beebe article rather than anything race-related. This apparently isn’t enough to change the attitudes of people who think of me as only being here to push my viewpoint about race topics, though. If this situation doesn’t get any better, I guess your suggestion about discretionary sanctions sounds like as good an idea as any. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You're a good writer and I hope you do switch to other subject areas regardless of how that happens. I urge you to pick reasonably uncontentious areas, e.g. not anything to do with creationism, evolution, religion, etc, and try not to get into too many arguments. I'm very glad to hear that you may be willing to accept an exit agreement with Mathsci soon, but it sounds like your compatriots may also have to sign on, and I'm not that optimistic that the stuff holding you up will ever be declared completed. And it's not just the quote on your talk page; I've had enough contact with you by now to recognize that you do like debate and conflict (by what I think of as our standards). That's not a bad thing in itself (we all have a streak of it), but WP isn't a good venue for it, so try to resist the urge when possible. (Actually I think it was me who brought up your user page quote before--I had forgotten. But it was because of a conclusion I'd reached from earlier interaction, not the other way around.) 69.228.170.24 (talk) 10:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I’m not sure if I was clear about this. What I’m saying is that I would not be ready to accept an exit agreement with Mathsci yet, because not all of the changes to race and intelligence that we agreed on during mediation have been implemented yet. I might be willing to agree to something like this after they’re finished being implemented, but that may not be for around another month (or longer, depending on how much conflict we run into while trying to implement these changes).

When and if I’m ready to agree to an exit agreement with Mathsci, I might need for it to also extend to some of the other editors who’ve often involved themselves in this article with behavior and viewpoints similar to Mathsci’s. Most of the people I’m thinking of aren’t involved in the article currently, but I worry what would happen if they were to show up again after all of the currently active contributors have agreed to leave, meaning that these people have basically free reign over the article for as long as we’re staying away from it. Another option would be that if we end up all agreeing to leave the article alone after we’ve finished making the changes we decided on during mediation, we could then lock the article for as long as that agreement is in effect, in order to make sure that these changes don’t get undone during our absence. That’s something else I would approve of, as long as we finish making these changes before it’s locked. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:40, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

OK. I refactored my post a little bit last night without realizing you were in the middle of replying to it, but I think they're consistent with each other now. I think you should be ready to be a bit more flexible if necessary. I'm not a lawyer or anything like that, but I know that's part of the nature of negotiated settlements that both sides usually end up a bit unhappy (i.e. each side thinks the other side got too much), so you should expect that and accept it. Is there a concise list somewhere of the issues that you're working on, that were agreed in the mediation? Maybe there is some streamlined way to deal with it. (Actually, something is already amiss: this current ANI thread is about a dispute in the "history" article, which means you're already working on something that can't have been in the original mediation agreement list, unless I'm confused. What's going on?)

I think the main alternative is arbitration, which has a substantial likelihood of leading to your side getting topic banned while Mathsci could keep editing the articles. The process itself would be quite burnout-inducing for everyone involved, something I don't want to see. Avoiding that level of conflict is why people enter what they see as lousy settlements in the real world, so think of this as a microcosm. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 04:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

No I don't see Mathsci as an SPA, the editors any sanction is to apply to will be determined by community discussion. I suggest that AN/I needs to do something before this ends unhappily at arbcom. Justin talk 10:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Goodness - SPA, Marxist, anti-hereditarian .... I created the history article fairly recently and over a short period while finishing the much more difficult article Handel concerti grossi Op.6 which took 4 months. A topic ban has already been suggested by Ludwigs2: it was almost unanimously voted down. The article is neutral well-sourced and carefully written. There has been some sensible discussion on sources, etc, on the talk page between administrators - Maunus, Slimvirgin and Slrubenstein - which has been very helpful. Other than that, from my long-time experience watching Europe and Ethnic groups of Europe and the periodic disruption that can occur there (usually motivated by nationalism), it is quite apparent that the history article has been besieged by a group of SPAs, whose editing is restricted to race-related articles. In these circumstances the correct remedy is to encourage participation by editors of long-standing with wider editing experience, not the opposite. When that happens, I will be quite relieved to remove the history article from my watch list. So. in summary, (a) increase the number of non-SPA editors and (b) decrease the number of SPA editors. (b) is much easier to achieve than (a). Mathsci (talk) 10:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support I support this proposal. Whether Captain Occam and the other SPAs are acting in good faith or not, it is better for the encyclopedia if a small band of editors, with no other demonstrated interests here, be not allowed to continually edit in the small, but controversial, class of articles of their only interest. Controversial subjects have strong POV advocates and these POV advocates tend to be Single Purpose Accounts. I don't think that a topic ban for mathsci is necessary because he/she is clearly not an SPA. May I also add that the use of the 'we' in Captain Occam's statement above, while I don't want to read too much into it, is concerning. --RegentsPark (talk) 13:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment If ArbCom cannot intervene here because of objects like: "It would take too much time and effort", I would say that ArbCom would need to be redesigned so that it can deal with this sort of problem in an effective way. Why do we have an ArbCom at all if it cannot be used? Count Iblis (talk) 17:07, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Count Iblis, arbcom takes complex cases that the community is unable to resolve at a less formal level (which is what we're trying to do here). We have arbcom because some cases really are that complex and/or polarizing. Your complaint about arbcom being ineffective is a bit misplaced; it's the community that should be more effective at resolving these issues without requiring arbcom involvement. Arbcom has its own problems but that's not what's going on here. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 01:34, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Commment A topic ban is not necessary here, I think, and in any case would require that a case be developed with supporting diffs. A few days ago I added strong evidence for the anti-hereditarian perspective in Nisbett's discussion of intensive education (diff). Yesterday Lowk (talk · contribs) added more supporting information in transracial adoption/genetic studies (diff). The group there has thus far not reverted these additions. The problem here isn't that you have a group with a strong POV who are being completely unreasonable. It's just that the hereditarian editor group is not going to research and add much on the anti-hereditarian perspective or critiques of it, and the smaller editor group that is anti-hereditarian (Mathsci, Slrubenstein) either lack boldness or experience in working with scientific articles, because they don't seem to be adding the relevant data. II | (t - c) 18:04, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
• Comment From what I've been able to gather, there has traditionally been a group in Wikipedia attempting to present the "hereditarian model" as a fringe belief and another group refusing to accept that it is fringe. The fringe advocate group tries to push discussion of the hereditarian model out of articles and also tends to promote the idea that race is only a social construct, an idea the other group also refuses to accept. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 00:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Suggestion. Race and intelligence is a field so renowned for its fraughtness, sensitivities and disputes that many angels fear to tread there. This AN/I debate appears to have developed into a full-scale fight between the classic factions of the issue, both unwilling to concede or compromise. Would it be helpful to create two articles History of the race and intelligence controversy: *** perspectives and History of the race and intelligence controversy: non-*** perspectives where *** stands for "hereditarian" or "Marxist" or some other word that delineates the distinction between the approaches in a way that is acceptable to the contenders? The factions could then edit to their hearts' content and, when finished, the articles could be merged if that were felt to be desirable or possible. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
  • Xxanthippe, you're proposing a WP:POVFORK, and we don't do those. We write neutral articles that present all viewpoints with due weight, or at least we try. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 04:17, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

That is why I was suggesting a subsequent merger. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

Oh, I see. I suspect the mediation process already went further than that, and I'm not sure how anyone could do the merge without a lot more drama, but people who were present through the mediation (maybe that includes you, I'm not sure) would know best. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 04:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Since I was present for the entire duration of the mediation process, I’ll try to summarize its results. I don’t think I can list all of what was resolved during it in a single comment, but there are two resolutions we reached that I think stand out as being especially important.

The first is that the hereditarian hypothesis does not meet Wikipedia’s standards of a “fringe” theory. The most important discussion that led to this conclusion can be found here. Note that the two editors who reached a compromise with Varoon Arya about this, Aprock and Slrubenstein, are editors who normally favor a purely environmental explanation for the IQ gap. And in case anyone was thinking of leveling the “POV-pushing SPA” accusation against Varoon Arya, take a look at his contributions; he obviously isn’t one.

And the second important thing we resolved is that rather than structuring the article based on various viewpoints about this topic, we ought to present all of the most-discussed data on this topic, regardless of who collected it or what hypothesis it’s most often considered to favor. (We referred to this as a “data-centric” structure.) This is why nobody has reverted ImperfectlyInformed additions—according to what we resolved in mediation, any data published in a reliable source that favors environmental causes is welcome in this article, as long as it doesn’t violate WP:UNDUE. Something else that nobody has commented on here (I wonder why not?) is that the majority of data in the current article that favors environmental causes was not added by editors like Aprock and Slrubenstein; it was added by me. Three examples of this are here, here, and here.

(Quoted from ImperfectlyInformed's comment): "The problem here isn't that you have a group with a strong POV who are being completely unreasonable. It's just that the hereditarian editor group is not going to research and add much on the anti-hereditarian perspective or critiques of it, and the smaller editor group that is anti-hereditarian (Mathsci, Slrubenstein) either lack boldness or experience in working with scientific articles, because they don't seem to be adding the relevant data."

Slrubenstein has been fairly helpful in making sure pro-environmental data gets added; he was one of the people who favored my three revisions that I just linked to. But as for Mathsci, I think it’s been pointed out already why he isn’t being helpful with this. For the past month, he’s generally been more concerned with his personal conflicts against other users than with improving the article. His conduct during the mediation is one example of this, when he was refusing to offer any suggestions in the mediation itself, and instead repeatedly tried to get the mediation shut down via multiple AN/I threads. More recent examples of the same thing, at WQA, are here and here. The comments on Mathsci’s behavior there from Ncmvocalist, an uninvolved user, seem to be particularly pertinent:

Mathsci, when you made this ANI topic ban proposal, the community did not come to a consensus, and in doing so, gave you feedback that you need to provide diffs to justify your position. Clearly, this has not sunk into your head because since then, you've made another ANI posting about tag-team editing by a set of individuals without providing diffs - and have named Mikemikev (the subject) as one of those individuals. I'm not sure how many times or ways in which you are going to be whacked with the following fact, but here we go again: you are not being receptive to community feedback - please address that issue. […] Let me be unambiguously clear: you chose to bring this complaint here...and you're expected to be receptive to the feedback that you receive here (and you're expected to know this if you're an established contributor) - whether you're a subject or a filing party. JamesBWatson, Dolphin, Gerardw, and I (who have referred to every one of these opinions) have stated in no uncertain terms that your behaviour is not up to par and needs to change. In response to this, you keep battling. Each of those admins you allude to are welcome to review this situation and explain why their comments give you a license to abuse dispute resolution as a means of forumshopping for the feedback that you find most convenient for you.

I think it’s evident from the WQA threads that the current conflict over the article is not because of a lack of balance among the editors involved in it, or because of inflexibility on the part of those whose opinion during the mediation was that more space should be given to the hereditarian position. I think the most significant problem is that we have one editor (Mathsci) who’s actively seeking out conflict with other users, at the expense of dispute resolution or productive editing. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for this helpful synopsis. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

What you seek to portray as "actively seeking out conflict with other users" appears to be, in fact, an active attempt to restore the article to NPOV status, one which is actively, and, I think, disruptively, being fought against by the very SPA editors whom this topic ban is aimed at. In fact, it's the very reason for the topic ban -- since you've shown, quite impressively, that you and your compatriots are unable to work in a NPOV manner, and insist upon distorting these articles to your fringe POVs, then you should be shut-out from them so that other editors can work on the article to bring it back into compliance with our standards. That is clearly never going to happen if the SPAs are allowed continued free reign.Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you going to address any of what I’ve actually said in my comment? Such as the consensus that was reached during mediation, including three editors who opposed the hereditarian hypothesis (Aprock, Slrubenstein and Ludwigs2) that it does not meet Wikipedia’s definition of a fringe theory; or the fact that I have added more information to the race and intelligence article in favor of the environmental viewpoint than in favor of the hereditarian one, and have not interfered with any other editor’s attempts to add content to this article in favor of environmental causes such as the recent additions from ImperfectlyInformed? Just like every one of Mathsci’s other five AN/I complaints in the past month, this one is coming close to filling half of the page at AN/I without approaching any kind of resolution, and one the biggest reasons this keeps happening is because of people like you believing every one of Mathsci’s assertions despite the fact that he provides no diffs or links to support them, while ignoring anyone who provides links or diffs demonstrating the opposite. In this respect, people like you are giving him active encouragement to continue violating Wikipedia’s rule against forum shopping, along with the other policy violations that Ncmvocalist pointed out in the WQA thread. Is this really the effect that you want to be having? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

My criticism of Mathsci's conduct should not be isolated from my comment below. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support topic ban on race-related articles for SPAs like Distributivejustice, Captain Occam and Mikemikev. Too much time is being wasted by them, with no benefit to this encyclopedia. Here is a reminder how I make content edits [6]: Jensen in that case was one of three secondary sources used. A neutral, well-sourced set of edits, neither anti-hereditarian nor Marxist. Mathsci (talk) 08:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support SPA topic ban There have been too many dubious researchers in the field, so it is too easy for SPA editors to inject dubious POV positions into Wikipedia. The enormous energy that the SPA editors are focusing on this issue is not assisting the encyclopedia. Mathsci is not an SPA and should be thanked, not restricted. Johnuniq (talk) 08:30, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose POV warriors hurling anathemas at each other. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:31, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
• Comment Here is a synopsis of what I have observed at History of the race and intelligence controversy. Mathsci wrote a good article but relied too much on Tucker (2002) and without needed attribution of Tucker's POV. Wooldridge seems to be a neutral source, however. I pointed out two NPOV problems here. One has subsequently been fixed (not by me). One remains in part, described here. User:Maunus may intend to address this issue. A number of other ostensibly experienced editors have added suggestions to the talk page. Their continued efforts would probably settle the issue. At race and intelligence it seems that everyone is burnt out. --DJ (talk) 09:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Didn't Mathsci have a topic on this just a couple weeks ago? Why is Wikipedia's rule against forum shopping not being honored here? It's annoying to see this issue constantly taking up so much space here. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 11:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Note that other thread originally was opened by Captain Occam as a somewhat ginned-up civility complaint against SLRubenstein, though it quickly morphed into a topic ban proposal by Mathsci. I agree that Mathsci's approach to DR has not been ideal, but it is what it is. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

section break

• Support topic ban for any accounts at those articles that an uninvolved admin judges to be single-purpose accounts. SPAs have become a huge problem on Wikipedia, and in my view should be removed from the topic they're attempting to influence as soon as they start to cause a problem on it. That can be done without implying that they're acting in bad faith: the issue is the single-minded focus and the lack of all-round experience of WP's culture and policies. It's particularly important to avoid that kind of editing at sensitive articles. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 12:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Is there any precedent for banning editors simply because they edit a narrow range of articles, if they aren’t acting in bad faith or engaging in any other policy violations? I don’t think there is. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• It's common for SPAs who are causing a problem to be topic-banned or banned completely, yes. The issue is not good faith/bad faith. It's that we have a team of editors on the one hand who edit lots of different articles and types of articles, and who come to see how the policies are applied across a broad range of articles. Reading policies is never enough; you have to see how they function within the project. And on the other hand, we have individuals with strong views on one particular issue who arrive to slant one article or set of articles toward their personal point of view. They do this with no knowledge or experience of how to apply the policies, so it's bound to cause problems. As things stand, you've made only 250 edits to articles since 2006, all or most in the same area. If you want to edit there, you might consider editing other articles for the next six or 12 months, then coming back to this one with fresh eyes. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 13:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

So in other words, it sounds like the idea of topic bans for the users that Mathsci reported here is based on the assumption that our edits have been contrary to NPOV. If that’s the case, it certainly hasn’t been demonstrated. Mathsci has not provided any diffs to support his accusation of POV-pushing, and I’ve provided several to demonstrate the opposite, such as that I’ve added more pro-environmental information than pro-hereditarian information to the race and intelligence article. (And certainly more pro-environmental information than Mathsci has added.) Judging by the contributions I’ve actually made to this article, if I’m slanting it in any direction at all, it’s in the direction of the cause of the IQ gap being purely environmental.

Something I think you ought to consider here is why it is that even though there are five different users involved in these articles who clearly favor the 100%-environmental explanation for the IQ gap—Mathsci, Aprock, Ludwigs2, Slrubenstein and Muntuwandi—Mathsci is the only one who keeps complaining about tag-teaming, POV-pushing and so on. (Remember, this is at least his sixth ANI thread about this since late March.) The number of editors involved in these articles who agree with Mathsci in terms of content is about equal to the number who appear to favor the hereditarian hypothesis, and with the exception of Mathsci, these two groups have not have a lot of trouble working over the past few months. Ludwigs2 is an especially good example, because even though he agrees with Mathsci in terms of content, he’s also one of the biggest critics of Mathsci’s behavior. Slrubenstein generally regards my editing as helpful (or to use his own word, “exemplary”) even though his viewpoint about this topic is different from mine. Given that everyone except Mathsci is able to work cooperatively on these articles, despite our disagreements, is it not possible that the problem with these articles is being caused by Mathsci rather than by everyone he’s complaining about?

Everyone here seems to just be assuming that the problem can’t be Mathsci’s fault, because he has a longer history of contributions than most of us. And as a result, they’re not looking at any of the specifics of this conflict, or any of the diffs being posted, and just assuming a priori that Mathsci must be right and that the solution is to ban everyone who he has a problem with. How can you know that’s the right solution, when Mathsci hasn’t provided any diffs to support his accusation that the problem here is with everyone else?

I am confident that if Mathsci were to quit his involvement in these articles, at least 75% of the conflict over them would disappear. This isn’t because the remaining editors there would all be people who favor the hereditarian hypothesis, since Aprock, Ludwigs2, Slrubenstein and Muntuwandi all oppose this hypothesis and would still be involved. The difference between them and Mathsci is that these editors are able to work cooperatively with people who they disagree with, so disagreements between them and other users never escalate into anything like what we’re dealing with in Mathsci’s case. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

While the willingness to discuss is good, the tendency to push through majority decisions is not. Consensus is not the same as majority. Someone with a minority view is even more important to engage and satisfy as without minority views we have lost a major asset in NPOV. You do not have consensus until the minority also agrees. Stephen B Streater (talk) 14:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem we’ve been having with Mathsci (well, one of the problems) is that he generally isn’t willing to engage in discussion about these issues. In the history of the race and intelligence controversy article, when other users have raised NPOV concerns on the article talk page, Mathsci often just hasn’t responded at all. When he has, it’s generally either been with personal attacks that had nothing to do with the content in question, or by repeating his earlier claims in an endless loop, without acknowledging any of what had already been said in response to them. I linked to several examples of this early on in this thread.

We tried to discuss these issues with Mathsci for several weeks, and he engaged in this stonewalling behavior the entire time. After it became clear that he had no interest in engaging in any meaningful discussion with us, we tried just editing the article to fix the problems that everyone but Mathsci was agreed needed fixing, and he responded by edit warring against us. When he was reverted by multiple users, he began complaining here at AN/I about “tag teaming”, which is where we are currently. As I said earlier, the people about whom Mathsci is complaining have made every possible effort to come to an agreement with him, and Mathsci hasn’t cooperated with it. Unless you suggest that we ought to submit to him just because of how much noise he’s been making, or out of fear because of his threats, there’s nothing that the rest of us could have done differently in order to avoid this problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:46, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: MathSci is not a SPA. It is worrying that some SPAs can't see the difference between a busy editor who concentrates on one area for a week, and an editor who has narrow interests here. I again suggest that the SPAs slow down a bit and spend their spare time on seeing how things are done more widely, to put their actions in a wider context. Stephen B Streater (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support topic ban on all editors named by MathSci, including those removed by the Ludwigs2, and on Ludwigs2. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is quite depressing. Almost nobody seems to be bothering to address, or even look at, the diffs that I and a few other people have posted about how Mathsci is misrepresenting this situation. Instead we’ve got comments like this one, assuming that Mathsci must be right, despite the fact that he’s posted no diffs to support his own assertions about this. If the majority of users end up taking Mathsci’s word for this situation (which is all he’s provided to support his claims), and all actual evidence that’s posted about it gets ignored, will that be a consensus?

If it is, and all seven of us (Me, Mikemikev, DJ, 120 Volt Monkey, David.Kane, Varoon Arya and Ludwigs2) get banned for this reason, I can pretty much guarantee that this will be the end of my contributions to Wikipedia, and probably also that of most of the other users who Mathsci’s behavior hasn’t driven off already. (As it has in Varoon Arya’s case.) I have no interest in contributing to a site where a single user’s past history of contributions and rhetoric are sufficient to ban seven other users, and it makes no difference what evidence is brought up to demonstrate that his allegations are inaccurate. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• I think I would be naiive if I threw an unconditional support. It's one thing to allow editors to make the article comply with site standards (by removing the problem); it's another to do so while leaving a ticking timebomb. I believe that Mathsci is advancing the right cause, but recently, has been doing so in the wrong way. That Mathsci's behavior is not staying up to par suggests that all involved editors are burning out; he did not respond well to the criticism of his conduct by strictly uninvolved users at WQA.

• The condition I want to attach to the proposal is an assurance that editors advancing the right cause are going to take a temporary break so that this "burn-out" does not affect interactions with other (uninvolved) editors. I'm not sure why this is being dismissed as if it is the plague, because even after the break, the tendentious problem would've still been removed via the proposed measure so the topic/article can be fixed quite easily. It would also mean that the ticking timebomb (a burnt out contributor) does not remain a hazard.

• If that condition is fulfilled, I will support unconditionally. The alternative unconditional support is for arbitration where all conduct will be looked into and addressed. I think the former is preferrable, and certainly not unreasonable, but that's just my view? Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Hopefully this will be construed as intended: constructive criticism. User:Captain Occam is well intentioned but a little impatient, possibly because his energy level is very high. User:Mathsci is very intelligent but prickly at least in recent interactions. If they could get along, they would complement each other very well and the articles they work on would benefit. --DJ (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Captain Occam asks: Is there any precedent for banning editors simply because they edit a narrow range of articles, if they aren’t acting in bad faith or engaging in any other policy violations? I don’t think there is. Yes there certainly is. See: WP:Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology#Single_purpose_accounts_with_agendas. As implemented in that arbitration, "agenda" didn't mean bad faith, it just meant they editing from a particular point of view in the affected articles. It was used to restrict over a dozen editors. The case was discussed in the last big ANI thread about this R&I dispute. The restriction is not a misconduct sanction and there is no misconduct allegation inherent in the proposal. It just expresses a community finding that the drama and neutrality issues associated with the SPA involvement in the topic is more unhelpful than their contributions in that topic are helpful. Whether there is precedent or not, it is certainly a remedy that the community is entitled to settle on by WP:Consensus in a discussion like this one. In any case, it has been done in the past, and Slim Virgin, a respected veteran of many wiki battles and many shifts in policy and practices toward them, is calling for it to be done more often in general, for reasons that make a lot of sense. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 20:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

“It just expresses a community finding that the drama and neutrality issues associated with the SPA involvement in the topic is more unhelpful than their contributions in that topic are helpful.”

This is the part that I don’t think is applicable. There are around ten users involved in these articles; five who tend to argue in favor of the hereditarian hypothesis and five who argue in favor of the environmental hypothesis. For the most part, we’re all able to get along, and the editors who aren’t SPAs generally find the SPAs’ contributions helpful. As I explained in more detail above, Mathsci is the only user involved in this article who has a serious problem with any of the SPAs. But a lot of people here seem to be assuming from Mathsci’s complaints that all of the people he’s reported here are a problem to the article in general, when in fact we’re only a problem to him.

Is a content dispute between a single user and several others, some of whom are SPAs (and some, like Varoon Arya, who are not) sufficient grounds to ban all SPAs from the article? And if it’s not, shouldn’t the burden of proof be on Mathsci to demonstrate that this is more than just a content dispute that he’s trying to resolve by banning the users that disagree with him? He hasn’t posted any links or diffs to demonstrate that the people he’s reporting here are causing any overall detriment to the article, and I’ve posted several that I think show the real problem here is just that Mathsci hasn’t made enough of an effort at resolving his content disputes before bringing them to AN/I. I would hope that the community would consider the evidence about this before coming to a decision, but some of the recent comments here make me worry that they’re just going to take it on Mathsci’s word that his interpretation of this situation is accurate. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support I think SlimVirgin explains why real well. I think it's time for the editors who only edit these groups of articles go to other articles to see and experience more of the project. Captain Occam, just so you know being banned from this group of articles isn't the end of the world and you actually might enjoy working on a less controversial article(s). Remember there is no dead lines here so after whatever time passes, the article will still be there. Good luck to all of you and hopefully happy editing, --CrohnieGal^Talk 21:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose I see a lot of evidence presented by Captain Occam and the others that they aren’t the ones causing a problem here, and nothing equivalent has been presented by Mathsci at all. I can't tell what the people voting "support" are basing their opinions on, but it does not appear to be based on the specifics of this situation. I don’t have much experience with Wikipedia, but seeing six editors get topic-banned (if that’s what happens) as a result of people literally ignoring the evidence here gives me a pretty bad impression of the site. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:24, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Note, there was an earlier thread where additional evidence was presented, though not enough to reach consensus that time around.[7] IIRC, Ferragho the Assassin didn't participate in that thread, so s/he may have missed it. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 00:13, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• The page you linked to is blank. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Here’s an earlier version of the page, from before it was blanked: [8]

ImperfectlyInformed and Ncmvocalist both pointed out in that thread that Mathsci didn’t provide any diffs that time around either. I can provide quotes or diffs of their comments if anyone wants, but I have a feeling that any evidence I present about this will just get ignored also. Am I right to assume that? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm not ignoring it. I think Mathsci needs to post diffs showing that the problems with these articles are the fault of the people he's trying to get banned, or his accusations shouldn't be taken seriously. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I do have to wonder how Ferahgo the Assassin found his/her way here with 17 total edits. What I think Slim Virgin is getting at is that banning someone from Wikipedia (so they can't edit any of our 3.2 million articles) is a drastic action that requires a lot of evidence, but restricting them to 3.19999 million articles out of the total 3.2 million is much less drastic, so we've been moving towards the idea that if someone is getting into difficulty in a disputed set of articles then we can and should require them to switch to other areas until they're more experienced—regardless of whether they're doing anything wrong or whose "fault" the problems are. In difficult areas it's just not possible to edit by our norms simply by reading the policy documents and trying to follow them. To understand the norms, you have to live in the culture for a while. Mathsci did give some diffs in the earlier thread, though not enough for traditional DR. However, he was backed up by several uninvolved users who had been watching the situation. The suggestion of topic-banning SPA's came from Guy, a very experienced admin who sees through nonsense readily. It was endorsed afterwards by Mathsci but didn't originate with him. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 05:25, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci’s complaints about these articles have been dominating AN/I for the past month. It's hard to ignore it when stuff like this is going on.

Is there actually a policy for topic-banning editors just for lack of experience, even if there’s no evidence of them causing any problems? I thought SlimVirgin was saying this only happened to inexperienced users who were doing more harm than good to articles, or advocating a specific POV. If lack of experience really is enough on its own, I think that’s an absurd policy. It means inexperienced people should never get involved in any articles about controversial topics, because no matter how well they behave, as long as they're inexperienced the same thing could happen to them. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 06:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused. Could you please explain why Captain Occam contacted you on your talk page about your edits to Race and crime when you have never edited that article? Do you have other user names at Wikipedia? Hipocrite (talk) 23:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Whether to restrict someone would be at the judgment of an admin not involved in the dispute. They are mostly pretty sensible about when something needs intervention and when it doesn't. If you do get restricted, don't take it personally. Just edit some uncontroversial articles for a while. If you have to edit something controversial, pick a topic that you don't have a strong view about, so you can edit neutrally. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 06:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

(Responding to your earlier comment): What I remember most of the admins who commented in the other thread saying about the diffs Mathsci posted there was that they didn’t demonstrate anything like what Mathsci was claiming. Here is what ImperfectlyInformed had to say about the evidence Mathsci was posting:

Oppose topic ban This is absurd. No diffs have been presented. You can't be banned for editing a small range of articles. End of story. Bring the evidence before the discussion starts. I will note that I looked through diffs presented by Mathsci, and they all look like this - Occam asking Ludwigs for help. That's it. Otherwise it's all rhetoric, which is really hot air. I will note that I am slightly involved in race and intelligence, but I've only added a ref to a study which found black IQs higher than whites [9].

Also, isn’t Guy the admin who said early on in the previous thread about this that he’d be basing his opinions on the reputations of the users involved, rather than any of the specifics of the situation, and at least five other admins responded that he wasn’t being reasonable? If you don’t remember this, please take a look at the thread again; it’s near the beginning of it. I’m sorry, but if you’re suggesting that Guy is a “neutral party” to be making a suggestion about this, I think his earlier comments about this show that this isn’t the case. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Guy wrote "I'm sorry but in any conflict between the two of you that requires weighing the relative commitment to the goals of the project or judgement of the project's mores, I'll be backing Slrubenstein". That is completely reasonable; Slrubenstein has had wide and deep participation in the project both on the content and the policy side, and has "walked the walk" much more than someone whose total involvement has been to obsessively edited a handful of related contentious articles. Of course there are other factors to consider in dispute resolution besides the participants' knowledge and commitment. However, trust me, before you started that thread I had never noticed you, yet it was obvious from the beginning that you either had poor understanding of how things are done around here, or else were being flat-out tendentious. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

And what about the comments from all of the other admins who said that Guy’s attitude about this was not acceptable? The comments from Equazcion, Epeefleche, Maurreen, Rico and Ohconfucius? I don’t have space to quote all of them, but Epeefleche’s seems to be the most detailed explanation for what’s wrong with Guy’s attitude:

Wow. I have respect for Slrubenstein. But Guy/JzG, I think your comment is way off-base, though you may well have given voice to a misapprehension that plagues other sysops as well. The mop does not by any means entitle Slrubenstein to better treatment than Occam is entitled to. Frankly -- it is precisely the opposite. The admin rules, and the bases upon which actions can be taken against admins, makes it quite clear that sysops have greater, not lesser, obligations than do non-sysop editors. Furthermore, as the oft-quoted "don't bite the newbies" guideline suggests, it is the newer editors -- not the more experienced ones -- whom we should take extra care with. Your "Slrubenstein is an admin ... I'm sorry but in any conflict between the two of you that requires weighing the relative commitment to the goals of the project or judgement [sic] of the project's mores, I'll be backing Slrubenstein" sends a terrible message. I'm hoping that was accidental, and will be redacted. It's IMHO contrary to some very important wiki guidelines, and is precisely what non-sysops say on a regular basis when they see sysops covering each others' backs in questionable circumstances.

Incidentally, Slrubenstein and I aren’t having any problems anymore, so the specifics of our past conflict isn’t relevant here. It’s Guy’s attitude about these types of conflicts that I have a problem with. Do you disagree with what Epeefleche said in her comment, as well as with the other four admins who expressed the same opinion there? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not big on the idea of admins having special authority in consensus discussions, but none of those editors you name (Equazcion, Epeefleche, Maurreen, Rico, Ohconfucius) are admins. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

If the admin who decides this is sensible, I hope that means they'll base their decision about this on the evidence that's been provided here. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 07:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has over 3 million articles, so the fact that some editors have taken interest in only one controversial topic and nothing else for about 7 months is intellectually unhealthy and quite depressing. The typical Wikipedian edits articles because he or she is curious about a certain topic or would like to share his or her knowledge with the rest of the world. OTOH, a small minority of wikipedians edit articles because they want to advocate a certain POV. The topic of race and intelligence is a small part of a number of larger topics. The "race" part of the controversy is a sub-topic of anthropology and sociology, both of which are well established mainstream disciplines. If these SPAs were just curious about the subject of race and intelligence, then I would expect them to be curious about other topics in anthropology and sociology. Unfortunately, based on their editing history, I see little or no interest coming from these SPA in these subjects. They will only take an interest in these areas if it is somehow relevant to the Race and intelligence controversy.

The "intelligence" part of the controversy is also just a small part of the broader study of intelligence. If one were just curious about the R/I controversy, then I would expect them to be curious about other aspects of intelligence. There are subjects such as cognitive science, neurobiology, artificial intelligence or the evolution of human intelligence. One might even have an interest in animal intelligence. All these are fascinating subjects that editors can contribute to and they also have a non-confrontational nature. Unfortunately, our SPAs are not interested in these subjects, they are only interested in those aspects of intelligence that can be used to argue for race differences and nothing else.

The fact that some of these SPAs have zoomed in like a laser beam on the race and intelligence controversy, and shut their eyes to all the other interesting stuff on wikipedia, leads me to believe that they are using Wikipedia as vehicle to advocate certain points of view. Since they are not adding value to other articles and are draining resources by dragging out this controversy, one must question whether some or all of these SPAs are a net plus for the project. I think topic bans would definitely help determine this. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, I have a problem with you saying that I’m only here to advocate the hereditarian point of view. You’re the person who asked me to add more information to the article about environmental influences on IQ, and to change the titles of the sections in order to be less similar to the section headings used by Jensen and Rushton, and I spent quite a while at your request doing both of those things. I’ve made every effort to fix the NPOV concerns you were raising with the article, yet you’ve never acknowledged this at all, and now here you are accusing me of only being interested in advocating the point of view you disagree with. Do the efforts I’ve made to improve the article in the ways you wanted it to be improved mean nothing to you?

I guess I should also address your other point, about why I haven’t been editing the other articles you mentioned, although I’ve explained this before. Probably because of their non-controversial nature, there’s very little I can see about any of those articles that needs to be improved. The reason I’ve been attracted to the race and intelligence article, as well as (in the past) to other controversial articles such as Race and crime in the United States, is because these articles had much more blatant problems that I felt like I could improve. In the case of Race and crime in the United States, I don’t think anyone argues with the fact that I've done that—before I and Varoon Arya became involved in this article, it was just a redirect to Anthropological criminology, in contrast to what it is now.--Captain Occam (talk) 11:54, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Wapondaponda's dissatisfaction may be related to this. It should be noted that after presentation his outline was expanded and modified to become more similar to Aryaman's, especially his copying of the 'variables potentially affecting intelligence' organization. If I can be blunt, I find it disgusting that he now has the audacity to claim that the article would have been in a better condition without Aryaman, Ludwig, Occam, DJ, et al, after displaying his inability to cope with the subject. mikemikev (talk) 12:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

My posting is not about any single incident, edit to the article, or any one of the several threads that have been posted to the various talk pages. It is about the fact that a few of you editors have not been editing other articles and the only other articles that you edit are race-related, and your overall point of view in all of them is the same. It is legitimate to question, whether this is all you have to offer for the encyclopedia. What has come along with your editing, has been serial edit warring, incivility and a general hostile atmosphere. If two articles is all you have to show for it, then is it all worth it. Whatever material is present in the current article race and intelligence was at some time present in previous versions. In fact a lot of material is still from the pre-mediation version. So we have spent six months, and we still have a lot of the same old material. It is pretty clear, that some editors would have no problem going on for another six months "mentally masturbating" (to use a phrase I encountered on Wikipedia) over recycled race and intelligence arguments. The community will have to decide whether this time being spent is worthwhile. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Two articles isn’t all I have to show for it; I was just mentioning another one that I thought had benefited an especially large amount. Other articles that this group of editors has improved are Snyderman and Rothman (study) (Improved mostly by Varoon Arya), Race and genetics (Improved mostly by David.Kane), and J. Philippe Rushton, which I discussed with other editors at the BLP noticeboard, eventually resulting other editors removing several pieces of material that were cited to unpublished sources. One other article I’ve improved myself is the one about Rushton’s book Race, Evolution, and Behavior, based on instructions I received from an administrator at the NPOV noticeboard: “The article is a horrible quotefarm of criticism which is non-encyclopedic. Re-write the article to paraphrase the notable claims/sections of the book and then have a relatively short (certainly no longer than the summary section) section of criticism, including only the most notable critiques and maybe one or two quotes of a sentence or two each. The article as it is written looks like the authors found every quote about the book they could and included them all in the article.” As a result of my involvement in the article, I think this problem is fixed now.

There may be other articles related to these topics that we’ve improved also, and I’m just not thinking of them right now.

I know this is a kind of narrow focus, which is why I’ve never really argued with the claim that I’ve been an SPA for most of the past year. (Although I’ve been trying to become less of one in response to Mathsci’s previous AN/I thread, hence my involvement in the William Beebe article.) But the important point about all of this is that by the standards of the rest of the community, these articles are being improved. Several users have pointed out how much more stable the race and intelligence article is now than it has been at any other point since 2006; I don’t think it can seriously be argued that this isn’t a positive change. The improvements to the Race and crime article and the one about Rushton’s book are even more obvious, and have received encouragement from uninvolved users who had a problem with the states these articles were in before we became involved in them, and were glad that someone was finally doing something about the problems that had plagued these articles for months or years. In some cases, this has required disentangling unresolved conflicts that had existed over the articles for a similar amount of time, so some amount of conflict probably couldn’t have been avoided in the process of improving them. But if the overall effect has been to make the articles more encyclopedic, which I think it clearly has, I don’t think it should be difficult to answer the question of whether the time we’ve spent on them was worthwhile. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

The essential content on all these articles is pretty much the same. It is pretty clear that your favorite topics are divisive, so one would ask why an editor only focuses on divisive articles. Being an SPA is not a policy violation, so despite numerous complaints, you can continue being one. Most editors use Wikipedia to learn about stuff they didn't know beforehand and to share their knowledge. While every editor may have a few favorite topics and articles, the ideal editors try to get out of their comfort zone, and read or edit subjects outside of their preferred topics. There is no requirement that all editors fit the ideal model, so SPA editing isn't prohibited. Nonetheless, SPA editing isn't ideal, and more so in this case because you have chosen only to edit polarizing and emotionally charged articles. One could easily interpret this as using wikipedia as a soapbox or as a vehicle for advocacy. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I already told you why I tend to focus on articles that are divisive: it’s because these tend to be the articles that are most in need of improvement. It’s the same reason why I got involved in the William Beebe article—before I became involved in it, it was very poorly-written for an article about such an important naturalist, and it still could benefit from some additional improvement. If I find any other articles about topics I’m knowledgeable about that need a similar amount of improvement, whether they’re controversial or not, I’ll see if I can improve them also.

I think the difference between what I’ve been doing and actual soapboxing / advocacy is that rather than just trying to introduce my personal viewpoint into the articles, I’ve been working to bring them more into compliance with Wikipedia’s standards. And sometimes this involves writing for the opponent, as I did in the race and intelligence article at your request. I think that actual soapboxing and writing for the opponent are more or less polar opposites of one another. You seem to have very little objection to my edits themselves, and only with the selection of articles that I edit, so are you willing to acknowledge that soapboxing / advocacy is not what I’ve been doing on these articles? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Why this matters

I’m getting ready to go offline for a while (not even I can participate in these threads 24/7), but before I do there’s something else I think it’s important to explain. I want to make sure other people understand why I have such a problem with the idea of topic bans for myself and the other users they’ve been suggested for, and have been putting forth so much effort to argue against this idea. The reason isn’t because my involvement in the articles matters for its own sake. It’s because a topic ban for the users being discussed here would eliminate around two-thirds of the editors who were involved in the mediation case for the race and intelligence article. Varoon Arya, Mikemikev, David.Kane, DJ, Ludwigs2 and I were all present for either all of the mediation, or all of the second half (under Ludwig as mediator) when we reached all of our resolutions about the article. If all of these users are banned, the only remaining people currently involved in the article who were there for the mediation would be Aprock, Slrubenstein and Muntuwandi.

One consequence of a topic ban for all of us is that it would probably make it impossible to implement the rest of the changes to the race and intelligence article that were agreed on during mediation, and haven’t made yet. The most significant change we still need to make is one that there was still a fair amount of dispute over when mediation ended, and a topic ban would eliminate all of the people who were trying to resolve this dispute the last time it was discussed (during mediation). That isn’t the most significant problem, though.

The most significant problem is that with most of the mediation’s participants banned, there would be very little to prevent the structure that we resolved during mediation from gradually being undone. New users who become involved in the article are not going to be familiar with what we resolved in mediation, and I don’t think the three mediation participants that would be left would be enough to make sure newcomers respect the mediation’s conclusions. The version of the article produced (or more accurately, being produced) by mediation is something that almost everyone has been able to be satisfied with, regardless of which viewpoint they take about this topic, which is a significant improvement over anything that’s been accomplished with this article in the past three years. I would hope that even those of you who support topic bans can understand why I would consider it a major loss for that accomplishment to be discarded, especially after it took six months for us to reach it, and why I would be trying my utmost to prevent something that’s likely to lead to this result. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this statement itself justifies the topic ban. Captain Occam is correctly pointing out the banning SPAs would mean that POV-pushers and highly inexperienced editors who do not understand our NPOV and NOR policies would no longer be editing the article. Captaqin Occam is right that a SPA ban would leave only a few editors - but this is because the constant POV-puhing, ignorance, and abuse of content policy pushed several other skilled editors away. Once the SPA editors are topic banned, I suspct other editors (you can see some of their names at the mediation page; they participated for a while until the mass of tendentious editing by the SPAs wore them out) will return to ork on the article. And with regards to the ban. Well, as for POV pushers, there is no hope. As for the others, well, as several people have suggested, if they work on other articls they will learn more about how to do the appropriate research for an encyclopedia, and more about how to apply our policies. If they end up demonstrating a serious commitment to the project, the ban would then be lifted and they could return to the article where hopefully they will make positive contributions. That's all we want. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If I understand your comment correctly, you’re saying that the reason why several of the users who were involved in mediation early on left midway through it is because they were “pushed away” by the editors who disagreed with them. Is that what you’re saying? Because if it is, I don’t think there’s any evidence for that. The only pro-environmental editors who were involved in the article before mediation and aren’t anymore are Ramdrake, T34CH, and Alun. Ramdrake said several times that his difficulty participating in Wikipedia as of early this year was due to health issues, so that clearly had nothing to do with other editors. T34CH and Alun haven’t explained the reasons for their absence, but it’s apparent from their contributions that they’ve stopped participating in Wikipedia entirely, rather than just avoiding race-related articles, so I think it’s more likely to be the result of real-life issues in their cases also.

The only editors who have stated specifically that they have been “driven away” are Ludwigs2 and Varoon Arya, both of whom have said that they were driven away by Mathsci’s behavior. Neither of them are SPAs, and both of them have contributed a lot to both these and other articles. So if you’re going to bring up driving away other editors as a justification for topic bans, this argument applies more to Mathsci than it does to anyone else.

I also don’t think anyone has provided any evidence, either in this thread or any of the previous threads, that I and the other editors who were a subject of Mathsci’s complaints are engaging in POV-pushing. Within the past two weeks you’ve referred to my editing as “exemplary”. Are you taking that back now? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

More disruption by Mikemikev

• Mikemikev (talk · contribs)

This editor, a single person account, has now left this threat on my talk page.[10] This is was his 294th edit to wikipedia.Mathsci (talk) 13:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I've been involved with wikipedia since 2004 (when I created the dry distillation article). I hadn't created an account then. I have one account, I've always had one account, and my record is absolutely clean.

I'm involved here because of POV violations I've noticed in this sensitive topic, which you continue to perpetrate. Rather than address this serious issue, you just repeat "SPA!, SPA!", like a mantra, despite this not being a crime in the absence of policy violation. You can't use your editing record as an excuse for POV violations. I am saddened that administrators here seem to disagree.

And it's a warning. Maybe if you had shown me the same courtesy you wouldn't have been laughed off WQA. mikemikev (talk) 14:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It is your current editing patterns that are being looked at [11]. That you edited in 2004 using IPs 139.184.30.19 and 139.184.30.18 is almost meaningless (these are surely public IPs at the University of Sussex, which could be used by any undergraduate there). At this stage, it might be a good idea to read carefully what administrators have been writing rather than giving the appearance of harrassing and bullying an editor like me. Thank you, Mathsci (talk) 15:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Bingo! I was an undergrad at Sussex. I had the pleasure of studying evolutionary genetics under John Maynard Smith, while pursuing my major of AI. Sadly I had to leave the beautiful Sussex countryside for postgrad study at UCL. But isn't tracing my IP and wikiliking to it's origin frowned upon? I personally have no problem with it though. mikemikev (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Tracing your IP? You've been openly advertising it to try to prove that you are not an SPA. You have now started reverting Slimvirgin's edits with strange edit summaries.[12] If you've been editing here since 2004, surely you must realize that this is not a sensible way to proceed. Have you thought of discussing things with Slimvirgin on her talk page or the article talk page, if you disagree with her? Mathsci (talk) 19:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem. Have you ever thought about not being a dick? mikemikev (talk) 21:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

ANI complaints about Mathsci

Thread initiated by now indef blocked user.

--RegentsPark (talk) 09:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC) A lot of the information being discussed in this section was already discussed on this page recently: [13]. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC) I have looked through the ANI archives and found some of the previous complaints about User:Mathsci: [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 18:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC) Just as a matter of information, a checkuser has been asked to check your account against that of Jagz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) or other banned users/sockpuppeteers. Just to let you know, in case you get too carried away with yourself. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 19:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC) Wow! Now that's what I call a questionable edit history. mikemikev (talk) 19:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC) Is it? Going back to 2007. One of those reporting me was blocked for trying to out me. Another has been banned for a year because of a recent ArbCom case. Another was found responsible for wikihounding me and continued to do this under a new account name: he has stopped doing so as a result of the off-wiki intervention of a member of ArbCom. Yet another was blocked as the returning sockpuppet of a banned user. One or two complaints from editors POV-pushing on Ethnic groups of Europe. I'm surprised I haven't been permanently banned. Mathsci (talk) 22:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Topic Ban?

Looking above it would seem my proposal for a topic ban on SPA has received some support. Is now the time to hammer out the details? Justin talk 13:32, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

You could "hammer out some details" (why not a shred of evidence to garnish), or you could wait until next week when Mathsci and his nepotistic buddies embarassingly clog up ANI with this crap again. Did it occur to you that the reason you seem to have 'support' is that all of the respectable admins no'ed this last week? What a clown show! mikemikev (talk) 14:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment I suggest a topic ban on all articles to do with Race. Perhaps Category:Race would cover it. --RegentsPark (talk) 14:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Since there has been no evidence presented that any of Wikipedia's policies are being broken, it's not unreasonable to believe that the topic ban supporters are engaging in POV-pushing. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 14:34, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, it is unreasonable. The mediation was and has been (since about a week in) has been improper, and a proper remedy to that is to revert the article to a stable status before the mediation started. Individual edits should then be discussed. As for MathSci; his conduct has been someone questionable, but the edits of (most of the) hereditarian editors are clear NPOV violations, including the views of an editor who claims to be an expert as an expert in determining which views are mainstream is inappropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

  My comments to that effect on the mediation page were rejected as being an attack on the editor in question. That was also clearly inappropriate; I was attacking the credentials of the expert that the editor was quoting; the fact that they seem to be the same person, according to the "mediator" and the editor in question, is irrelevant.

  However, it is too early to discuss details, as there isn't yet consensus that a topic ban is appropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

As explained here[24], there is a Mediation Cabal and a Mediation Committee. If the mediation that was performed under the Mediation Cabal was insufficient, you might try the Mediation Committee. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Unless I'm completely confused, there was both medcab and formal medcom mediation in the case, and both failed. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 16:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, this process is very confused. There was a lengthy medbab on race and intelligence which we had to run effectively on our own and which stopped an edit war and achieved a new stable state in the article. The current conflict is at History of the race and intelligence controversy, which has had no dispute resolution except this thread, my attempt to get policy clarification from the reliable sources noticeboard [25], and the work of Slrubenstein to bring experienced editors to the talk page. A quick look at the history of the talk pages of each article will [26] [27] give a sense of what's actually going on. --DJ (talk) 17:19, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
• I should add that I'm not the only one who as noticed that if Captain Occam and Mathsci can work together, they make great progress (from talk:race and intelligence): [28] I appreciate Captain Occam's work, and, as he anticipated, mathSci's improvements. I think the current version (with MathSci's improvements) has a better (more inclusive, and also, I think a problem-oriented rather than place-oriented communicates the real issue more clearly) title to the section on comparative data, and I also think his improvement is to provide more context, it really shows the global dimensions and provides more information. With MathSci's improvements to Captain Occam's work, I think we are making real progress. Captain Occam, thanks for inviting people to improve on your work. That is exemplary editing. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC) --DJ (talk) 17:38, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

• DJ, I don't think it makes sense to treat incidents between the same editors in the two closely related articles as being separate disputes. 120 Volt Monkey, "Since there has been no evidence presented that any of Wikipedia's policies are being broken" is both false (some evidence was presented, just nowhere near enough for traditional DR to sanction someone with) and not entirely relevant (a situation can become intractable and require intervention even if no policies are broken). Note that the proposed restriction is from around 0.0001% of the site. While there isn't a mathematical relationship like "restricting someone from 0.0001% of the site requires 0.0001% as much misconduct as it takes to ban them from the entire site", I hope you can understand why the two standards might not be the same. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 06:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• That would be true except the nature of the content disputes, which are temporally separated by months, appear to be quite different. At race and intelligence the issues related to WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE, which aren't a concern at History of the race and intelligence controversy. --DJ (talk) 06:33, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Looking at talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy it looks like exactly those same issues are in dispute, and anyway a lot of this is a personality conflict between editors, which are the same across both articles. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:34, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I guess I am an SPA, as I was asked to come here to provide opinions on the article, since I have done some work in the area. I personally don't feel any of the editors on this article should be banned. I believe this about both camps (the pro IQers and the environmentalists). To date, this is the best article I've seen on a reputable site that deals with the topic (this could be like being the tallest midget though as most articles on this are utter crap).

Both sides are needed or this will quickly devolve into the typical crap article on the topic. If better ground rules could be set on reverting and discussing stuff first, and not posting unless some level of consensus is reached, the article could be completed. Progress made since mediation has been immense and all of the current editors working on this should be thanked rather than banned. Time spent complaining here seems better served editing the article-Bpesta22 (talk) 19:31, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

There are not two camps as you claim. Slimvirgin, Maunus, Slrubenstein and I are not Marxists/environmentalists, even if editors like you claim so. We are simply editors editing according to wikipedia policies. However Captain Occam, Distributivejustice and Mikemikev (and possibly others) are WP:Civil POV pushing WP:SPAs. Their editing is becoming increasingly disruptive (see below). Mathsci (talk) 09:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

1-revert limit

I recommend a 1-revert limit on race-related articles. This will force dispute resolution rather than allowing editors to make a WP:POINT by reverting each other multiple times. If multiple editors are reverting one another, then lock the page. --DJ (talk) 18:55, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I approve of this suggestion. It would bring all of the same benefits that are being hoped for from topic bans, but without the cost of losing most of the editors who participated in mediation, and therefore causing the stability we achieved in mediation to risk being lost. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of there having been any recent history of actual revert warring on any significant scale in these articles, of the sort that 1RR would help with. The conflict has been of a different nature. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 21:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

POV fork created by SPA

• How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?
• Distributivejustice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Captain Occam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)<_

No administrators have so far noted any inapproriate editing or anything that breaks WP editing policy. The two SPAs above did propose a POV-fork solely on Arthur Jensen's article on the talk page of the history (diffs on request):

I suggest creating an article called How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? and refactoring the NPOV problem out of this article. If that doesn't work, I recommend moving as much as possible to Arthur_Jensen#IQ_and_academic_achievement. --DJ (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I think creating an article here about Jensen’s 1969 monograph would be a very good idea. It wouldn’t fix all of the NPOV issues I’ve raised with this article, but his monograph is definitely notable enough to deserve its own article at Wikipedia. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:04, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

In the meantime, and independently of these comments, I added a detailed summary of Jensen's article from a secondary soure while brushing up on my Latin skills on Triumphs of Caesar [29]. But speaking of Latin and papal bulls, that reminds me of something I almost forgot: the Aix-St Louis wiki meetup is due to happen in the next few hours, possibly at lunchtime!! There will be a ceremonial exchange of honorary barnstars, no extra credit for parents present :) Mathsci (talk) 08:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• The POV-fork has now been created as threatened, using only material I wrote myself, summarising the meticulously annotated book of Adrian Wooldridge - without any edit history. This is probably not a bad moment to institute topic bans. Writing a separate article on one of the most controversial articles in the history of 20th century psychology simply to push a point of view is out. The article should probably be speedy deleted by an administrator. No need for these SPAs to spread their disruption elsewhere on wikipedia, which seems to be their aim at present. Please can some administrator step in to stop this disruption? Mathsci (talk) 08:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I have added a speedy delete tag because the article has been created just using material Mathsci (talk · contribs) wrote yesterday and today, copy-pasted without its editing history, by Distibutivejustice. He should probably be blocked at this point. Mathsci (talk) 09:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
    • My understanding it that copy-and-pasting such a large block of material from one article to another on Wikipedia is, in fact, a copyright violation, since the GFDL license requires that the material be properly attributed, and that clearly has not happened in this case. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

<- Now Captain Occam has removed the speedy deletion notice incorrectly. I have restored it. Please could some administrator try to control this editor - he and Distributivejustice are playing havoc on wikipedia at the moment. Oh well. Mathsci (talk) 10:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Article now at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? as recommended by User:Claritas. Mathsci (talk) 11:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

cross posted from the afd page:

• Weak Keep First -- so much for WP:AGF. As far as I'm concerned creating this article was a good faith effort to fix a problem that had tacit approval from multiple editors. Second -- the body of this article was growing into a massive paragraph at History of the race and intelligence controversy. Discussion of its content was overloading the main article. The historical discussion was getting lost while at the same time it wasn't possible to really explain what this paper said. Re: Enric Naval's comment: Race and intelligence would be the most appropriate place for a full discussion of what the contemporary views on this topic are. But I believe this paper is a lot like The Bell Curve, and an article about it could be similar situated. --DJ (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment This clearly shows that it is time for this group of SPAs to be topic banned from articles on race. Regardless of whether they are approaching the subject neutrally or not, there is some admitted off wiki collaboration, a definite point of view that they bring to the table, and they provide the numbers that make it hard for well meaning admins to figure out what the 'consensus' is. --RegentsPark (talk) 19:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed ANI ban for Mathsci

It seems clear that there is nothing resembling consensus for an AN/I ban. MastCell Talk 16:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Support - mikemikev (talk) 09:41, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I don't think you get it, my friend, the current is definitely not flowing in that direction. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC) At least this will give me something to talk about with Elonka and her father in a little while :( Mathsci (talk) 10:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Support – For over a month, Mathsci has dominated AN/I with his efforts to win content disputes by seeking bans or blocks for the editors that he disagrees with. I can remember five examples of this, although there may be more than that. The first was started as a thread by Muntuwandi about TehnoFaye on March 23rd, and hijacked by Mathsci on March 25th; Mathsci’s complaints there lasted until March 29th. The second was started by Ludwigs2 on March 28th and hijacked by Mathsci on April 1st; Mathsci’s complaints there lasted until April 2nd. The third was started by Mathsci on April 9th, and his complaints there lasted until April 12th. The fourth was started by me on April 14th about Slrubenstein, and hijacked by Mathsci on April 15th; his complaints there lasted until April 19th. And the fifth, which is the current one, was started by Mathsci on April 26th and is still active. By my calculation, Mathsci has been complaining here about the users he disagrees with in these articles on 24 of the past 40 days. Whenever one of his threads has been closed, he has never waited more than a week before posting or hijacking another, even if his new complaint was about the exact same topic as his previous one. In addition to being a blatant example of forum shopping, this behavior is interfering with the overall functionality of AN/I by filling up space that should be kept for more important complaints. In order to not interfere with other users’ ability to use AN/I, if for no other reason, I think it’s necessary that something be done about this problem. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Seems to me that the last such big discussion was opened by Captain Occam, not by Mathsci,[30], though Mathsci joined in afterwards and asked for a topic ban against Captain Occam (an idea which has gotten a fair amount of uninvolved support and is still being discussed). 69.228.170.24 (talk) 22:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Support - Mathsci has been causing a lot of disruption by relentlessly posting to ANI every time they are unhappy with something. I suggest that they be banned from posting initiating a complaint on ANI for one year and thereafter not be allowed to post initiate a complaint more often than once every six months. They can utilize other methods of resolving disputes as discussed at WP:DR. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 12:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Isn't this team acting a little repetitively at the moment? It must be quite hard to work out whose turn it is. Mikemikev, Distributivejustice, Ludwigs2, 120 Volt Monkey, Captain Occam. So many permutations. Mathsci (talk) 12:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Support I'm tired of seeing Mathsci's nonsense clogging up AN/I. --Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 13:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Not a great idea to identify yourself on your user page as having off-wiki links with Captain Occam (both of you have deviantart links, his points here[31] where you own deviantart account is clearly visible). That's called meatpuppetry. But I shouldn't really have spoilt your fun. Both of you should remove the links on your user pages which reveal your RL identities and close relationship, (announced clearly on Captain Occam's user page). Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 13:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC) You're digging yourself into a deeper hole. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Mathsci, you may be engaging in WP:OUTING here, so I recommend that you be careful what you say. I’ve mentioned before that I know a few users involved in these articles outside of Wikipedia, namely Bpesta22 (whom I invited to participate in Wikipedia via AIM, because he is a cognitive psychologist and the race and intelligence article was tagged as needing attention from an expert), and Ferahgo the Assassin, so for you to say that much is fine. It’s also all that should be relevant here: they know me off-wiki, so it’s reasonable to assume that I occasionally discuss issues like these with them elsewhere, but it isn’t as though I can control what their opinions are about them. Anything you say beyond this will be based on information you’ve gathered from pages at other websites, which is not admissible to bring up here. Incidentally, in light of Dougweller's comment below, I should probably mention that I do not know 120 Volt Monkey at all. The only editors involved in these articles with whom I have interacted outside Wikipedia are Bpesta22, Ferahgo the Assassin, and David.Kane (briefly, when he requested on my user talk page that I e-mail him). I would appreciate it if an administrator could look closely at Mathsci’s comments about this, and make sure that he does not engage in outing, if he isn’t engaging in it already. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Captain Occam, isn't it time you took a little responsibility for own actions? It's not really on to ask a friend to back you up. If there's one, there could be several. Mathsci (talk) 14:34, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Who are these people Ferahgo is tired of seeing Mathsci? Let's see -- Ferahgo first edited in June 2008, a grand total of 5 edits that year, all correctly marked minor. In 2009 6 edits, and for the first time 3 of them involve Race & Intelligence, one to the talk page, two to the NPOV board. In March another dinosaur edit (one of his favorite topics he says), and then 3 days ago he starts editing in this thread. With all due respect, that isn't enough experience to call for a ban of any sort. 120 Volt monkey is clearly a WP:SPA. First post was the 13th of last month. Maybe this is all just a coincidence, but there's clearly some off-Wiki linkage - at what looks like a great site, but that doesn't affect this discussion. Oppose And thus clearly I'm going to oppose the suggestion of an ANI ban, which I think should never have been brought here. Dougweller (talk) 13:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Would you have supported the ban if Ferahgo and I had not commented on it? --120 Volt monkey (talk) 13:54, 3 May 2010 (UTC) As I said "which I think should never have been brought here", of course not. Dougweller (talk) 14:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC) If there’s a serious suspicion of meatpuppetry here (not that I think there should be one, but just in case there is), I think the guidelines in the page Mathsci linked to ought to be kept in mind, particularly the first one: “Consensus in many debates and discussions should ideally not be based upon number of votes, but upon policy-related points made by editors.” The points I’ve made are based on the policy regarding forum shopping, and the fact that Mathsci’s dominance of AN/I over the past month has diminished the availability of this noticeboard for other users. I suspect that the other users who support an AN/I ban have similar reasons for supporting it. If the question of a AN/I ban can be decided based on the validity or non-validity of these points, rather than on the number of users who agree or disagree with them, I would be fine with that. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC) According to your user page if I click on the deviantart link, I find that a close personal friend of yours has all of a sudden started editing in support of you since Saturday. Do you realize just how terrible that looks? Anyway I'm now seated at my local bistro awaiting Elonka and her father for our wiki meetup. If you'll excuse me, I'd far rather rely on her or other administartors for interpreting wikipedia editing policies. Mathsci (talk) 15:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Ugh, I need to remember that including external links on a user page is apparently viewed by some editors as an invitation to engage in WP:OUTING. I learn something new here every day. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I share Dougweller's concern. This is AN/I - how many of the people participating in this discussion are administrators? How many of the people who voted for a ban against MathSci are administrators? Sure, we should week the views of any editors, but isn't this a place for administrators to discuss administrative actions? It seems to me that some non-admins have an agnda of disrupting any discusssion among admins. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Comment - I'm going to stop contributing money to Wikipedia as long as Mathsci's behavior on Wikipedia is allowed to persist. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Do you have any idea how extremely petulant that sounds? My god, keep your piggy bank to yourself then, if you think that the project is obligated to decide issues one way or another depending on donor whim. Tarc (talk) 15:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Your reply has done nothing to change my mind. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Well, that's good, because it was not intended to. The intent was to remark on the ridiculousness of your position, and how it should not have a bit of impact on the discussion at hand. Tarc (talk) 15:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC) You can keep on remarking and I'll keep on not donating. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 15:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I'm planning on not urinating into the Pacific Ocean this morning. Do you think that will affect the water level any? Tarc (talk) 16:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I have taken this into consideration: [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 16:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Monkey, this is the administrators' noticeboard. You are not an administrator. You are adding nothing at all to this discussion. This is not for discussion about fundraising. What we do care about is contributing good content to the encyclopedia. Why don't you leave this page and actually go edit some articles? Or, if Wikipedia really is the joke you seem to think it is, just go away. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Someone left this notice on my talk page[42]. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Oppose - If after several hours no supporters of the motion to ban other than those directly involved in the acrimony have shown up, I think it is a fair assumption that said motion is failing to set AN/I on fire. Airing concerns and defending oneself is not disruption; you need to really get into ChildofMidnight territory to begin discussing AN/I bans. Tarc (talk) 15:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Oppose - For the obvious reasons: SPA accounts should not be suggesting AN/I bans for an editor who brings their SPA activities to light on AN/I. To allow such frippery would be harmful to the project. I suggest that this merely strengthens the case, brought above, for an R&I topic ban for those SPA accounts. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I don't see anything wrong with the ANI ban proposal as long as it was made in good faith. Further, making a good faith proposal or supporting one should not lead to retaliation. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 20:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Comment – Just out of curiosity, if this thread ends up filling the entire AN/I page, will it be possible for other users to post new threads here without them being archived immediately? This thread is already taking up more than half of the page, so it’s not very far from reaching that point. Even if it gets closed before it fills the whole page, I think it’s likely that there will be one that reaches this point sometime within the next month. Mathsci’s AN/I complaint threads have been getting progressively longer and longer, so if he’s going to be allowed to keep making new complaints like this here around once per week, this is a question worth asking. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Long and ongoing topics are usually moved to their own subpage when appropriate. may be a good idea now for this one. Tarc (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Comment - I propose that Mathsci should only be allowed to initiate complaints on ANI if they back the allegations up with evidence such as diffs at the time the complaint is posted. I believe it is disruptive to repeatedly post complaints on ANI without providing evidence such as diffs because editors feel compelled to come to this page to defend themselves against flimsy allegations when they could be working on articles instead. I suggest changing the header of the above discussion to Proposed ANI ban or restrictions for Mathsci. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC) What right do you have to dictate administrative actions? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Good point. I moved my proposal from the thread below and didn't rewrite it properly in the process. I have modified it by adding the words shown in italics. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 21:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Oppose Mathsci is clearly getting support on these threads so there is no reason for him/her to stop bringing the matter up at ANI. Unless a thread is resolved against his/her view, I don't see a problem here. --RegentsPark (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC) So editors should be allowed to repeatedly bring up the same issue on ANI over and over again? Perhaps they can continue to bring the same issue up until those that oppose them get worn down or stop replying. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 20:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Clearly, you recognize your own tactic. Are you assuming you will wear us down? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC) If it was my tactic, then clearly it hasn't been effective. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 22:08, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Your (and Captain Occam's) participation here is reaching the edge of legitimate debate and headed across the line into disruption. You two have both been extended a significant amount of AGF regarding both your behavior and whether your edits are fringe or undue emphasis on minority viewpoints. The "unless proven otherwise" clause in AGF only goes so far. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Please give the diffs for the article edits of mine that are the source of concern for you. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 22:23, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Support a temporary ban. As a non-administrator and interested non-expert observer of the race/intelligence debates I humbly suggest to the administrators who frequent this site that the complaints being made so frequently by Mathsci on this notice board are causing disruption. I am particularly disturbed by attempts at outing. A one-month ban would enable him to cool his head and focus attention of all participants back to the race/intelligence articles. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC). "I am particularly disturbed by attempts at outing." Really? We last met on this AfD. One of the other editors there is now subject to an indefinite editing restriction for pursuing a grudge under an alternative account. Your own edits at the moment seem unhelpful: they do not appear to be in good faith and show no awareness of policies like WP:MEAT and WP:SOCK. Mathsci (talk) 05:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Support Enough with this persistent drama-monger. Ban him from this board and hopefully he'll find something more useful to do with his time instead of wasting ours. Jtrainor (talk) 00:24, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Ahem, with 30% of your time spent on noticeboards and a total of 620 content edits, you might perhaps think of following your own advice. Mathsci (talk) 05:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC) This is precisely the sort of battleground mentality I noted at the WQA - it neither helps your cause, nor does it help Wikipedia. I did hope you would address the problem with your approach in interacting with others (which is putting people off) but it appears you have decided to continue along this path; arbitration appears to be the only solution left to address the conduct of all parties. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC) <- "arbitration appears to be the only solution left to address the conduct of all parties" If you indeed think an arbitration case is needed - presumably to spend six months examining the reply I just wrote to Jtrainor - then why not start one? I can guarantee you that the response will be "meritless request, content dispute". Please stop this kind of needless escalation. At the moment you are at odds with most administrators that have commented. Indeed the proposal at the moment is for a topic ban on 3 SPAs, which needs no intervention from ArbCom. I wonder whether you could please stop bullying me? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 05:59, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Now you are engaging in inflammatory commentary; please stop making frivolous accusations of bullying, Mathsci. You've misstated my position on several fronts so I'll clarify my position; I'm not at odds with any administrator; I'm not interested in spending six months examining one reply that you wrote to Jtrainor; I'm not escalating this anywhere as I am not a party to this matter. Note, although I'm not at odds with anyone commenting here, should you continue to make frivolous accusations, then you'd be at odds with me. My comment quite clearly points out that the conduct of all parties needs to be addressed; in other words, the community is currently not doing anything that remotely resembles that other than blocking puppets (and even that required a private CU request according to you). That there is still no resolution after all this time suggests that arbitration is the only available solution. It's not difficult to see that if there is no arbitration, chances are that you will continue bringing this to ANI, which Jtrainor deems as a waste of time. Arbitration could specifically address the constant bickering between you and other users. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC) WP:MYOB Why not switch your computer off for a bit and have a relaxing cup of tea? Mathsci (talk) 09:46, 5 May 2010 (UTC) The trouble is you stubbornly refuse to resolve your squabbles by yourself which is why you repeatedly bring them here - if you took your own advice more frequently, you might find yourself in fewer squabbles. ;) Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:02, 5 May 2010 (UTC) This is your own personal analysis of the situation: it has little or no merit, with or without a smilie. Your editing now is not very different to your editing about Ryan Postlethwaite here. You were analysis was hopelessly incorrect then and probably the same is true now. OK? Mathsci (talk) 10:50, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Yet another example of you turning Wikipedia into battleground. Ncmvocalist (talk) 11:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Oppose. Mathsci seems correct that all supporters are SPAs. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC) I don't support this ban, nor do I oppose it, but I'm concerned by that statement - how is Jtrainor a SPA? I don't see how he is involved in the matter. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC) A different type of SPA. With a few exceptions, all his edits in the last three months have been at ANI. As I haven't been active in ANI recently, I don't have an opinion if those comments are reasonable, WP:DRAMA, or something else. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:23, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Ahh ok - thank you for clarifying. This is the only one I was familiar with, and it helped focus the discussion on the issue at the time, iirc that is...but I don't recall reading the others. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:38, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Please will Arthur Rubin explain, on the basis of my edit record or otherwise, how I am an SPA? Xxanthippe (talk) 09:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC).

Proposed ANI restrictions for Mathsci

Discussion started by sock of banned user, proposal got no other support.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Proposal: Mathsci should only be allowed to initiate complaints on ANI if they back the allegations up with evidence such as diffs at the time the complaint is posted. Support - --120 Volt monkey (talk) 18:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Oppose and Close - this is bordering on disruptive behavior. Tarc (talk) 18:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I believe it is disruptive to repeatedly post complaints on ANI without providing evidence such as diffs because editors feel compelled to come to this page to defend themselves against flimsy allegations when they could be working on articles instead. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Comment - Even though I've expressed my support for AN/I restrictions for Mathsci in the discussion above, I don't see any point in having two separate simultaneous discussion threads about this. 120, could you please explain why you think this is necessary? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2010 (UTC) I don't believe a permanent ban is a realistic alternative at this point. Perhaps you should change the header of the above discussion to Proposed ANI ban or restrictions for Mathsci. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC) That thread was Mikemikev’s proposal, not mine, so I can’t change the title. You might want to take this up with him. In the meantime, I think a second thread about this is unnecessary. If anyone favors AN/I restrictions for Mathsci but not a ban, they can mention it in the thread above. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Oppose. If an experienced editor has a problem, we should fix the problem. Not prevent the highlighting of the problem. Stephen B Streater (talk) 19:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Moved proposal to previous discussion, please comment above. --120 Volt monkey (talk) 19:34, 3 May 2010 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A possible way forward

It's a pity to court unpopularity just as I was starting to make friends, but of the many ways out of this, I think the most productive includes the following bitter pills:

• a reduction in the pace of fixing these articles, to give editors more balance in their lives;
• a slowing of changes to these articles to (largely) consensus changes to allow more volunteer editors a chance to keep up with the debates;
• Captain Occam and other SPAs to broaden their experience of how policies normally work out here by each choosing a handful of high profile articles in unrelated areas - on WIkipedia, reason is no substitute for experience;
• Captain Occam's new "meatpuppets" move to other areas while this is played out to keep things under control;
• no new articles in this area until the NPOV is established;
• Mathsci to continue to increase his ratio of communication to edits on the articles;
• no bans or blocks for now - working together is delivering progress, and slowing down the process will automatically lead to less angst and a higher ratio of independent third party input;
• Mathsci and Captain Occam to work together with the other more established editors: Captain Occam is willing to engage, and these two definitely do not cancel each other out;
• more experienced editors to take part until consensus is reached - ie all "sides" agree that the article content is reasonable, minimising the chance of unresolved issues blowing up later;
• editors to address their personal complaints to a neutral third party rather than to each other;
• the way Wikipedia works, the onus of proof is on the SPAs.

FWIW, I can see the consequences of continuing as we are would be a SPA topic ban. Wikipedia looks for disinterested editors, not those who are emotionally involved in their topic. Wider experience would increase sensitivity to this issue and maybe allow the SPAs to side step it by behaving less like SPAs. And gaining the perspective may also give them some fun here. Think of it as an investment. Stephen B Streater (talk) 20:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you give a definitive distinction between SPA and expert? mikemikev (talk) 20:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Most experts here are not SPAs - they edit on a wide range of articles. But more importantly, Wikipedia values neutrality above expertise. So on controversial subjects, disinterested editors are preferable to experts. This means that many experts cannot contribute directly on the areas they know most about - their contributions have to be via reliable sources available to neutral editors. Wikipedia is not a primary source or even usually a secondary source so not the natural place for experts to publish. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we understand 'definitive' differently. Basically your saying that if I spend a month editing snickers and kylie, regardless of my actual points at R&I, I'll have more weight? mikemikev (talk) 21:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

If you spend a year editing those articles, and many more, you'll come across all the normal issues and how they are resolved. Then you'll have more weight here. But the person who would benefit the most is Captain Occam, because he is relying too much on reason, when experience is what is missing from his argument. When he understand's Guy's comments, for example, he'll be ready. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Give an example of my inappropriate attempt to resolve an issue. mikemikev (talk) 22:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

“This means that many experts cannot contribute directly on the areas they know most about - their contributions have to be via reliable sources available to neutral editors. Wikipedia is not a primary source or even usually a secondary source so not the natural place for experts to publish.”

I don’t think this is a problem. As far as I know, none of Bpesta22’s published research is being cited in the article, and we certainly wouldn’t be including any of his views that haven’t been published in reliable sources. The reason he’s particularly valuable as an editor is mostly because as someone who consistently reads the academic literature about this topic, he can determine more accurately how prominent various views and ideas are in the source literature about it, and he can also help us find sources for statements in the article that need them. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I approve of almost all of these suggestions, with the reservation that the “no new articles” criteria not apply to existing but recently-created articles such as How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? The one suggestion I don’t really approve of is the one involving my “meatpuppets”. I’m not even sure who fits the criteria of a meatpuppet in this case. Does David.Kane qualify because he’s e-mailed me a few times, even though he and I were both separately involved in these articles for a long time before we had any off-wiki contact with one another? Does Bpesta22 qualify because he became involved here at my suggestion, as a result of me searching for someone who could meet the article’s “attention from an expert” requirement? (And if so, would any expert found by another editor in order to satisfy this criteria be considered a meatpuppet also?) And does Ferahgo the Assassin knowing me outside of Wikipedia preclude them participating here, if I’m completely open about this fact?

I’m afraid that this suspicion of meatpuppetry is going to result in editors who could otherwise make valuable contributions here being prevented from doing so. As a cognitive psychologist who has published peer-reviewed research on the topic of race and intelligence, Bpesta22 probably knows more about this topic than anyone else involved in the article, so for him to be prevented from participating here because I’m who suggested his involvement seems like it would be much larger loss than the reason warrants. I approve of the general trend of your suggestions, but I think it would help if you clarified and refined them a little. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane is not a meatpuppet. Having a single expert in a controversial area is a mixed blessing, particularly when editors defer to him. This is not because of any issue with the competence of the gentleman involved, but as explained above, to do with neutrality and representing his views with due weight. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I guess . . . David.Kane (talk) 21:10, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

If Mathsci is interested in this proposal, I can sort out the details. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

But I might add that it doesn't look like you are in a strong position to negotiate. Your inexperience at Wikipedia practices (indirectly resulting from your SPA activity) is something which you need to address pretty quickly now, I'd say. Stephen B Streater (talk) 07:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Extended content

collapsed as unhelpful. Captain Occam has already said he has off-wiki relationships with one or more editors on these articles and the matter should rest there. --RegentsPark (talk) 09:50, 5 May 2010 (UTC) NOTE: Mathsci is attempting to repeatedly add a WP:OUTING personal attack here. What he's attempting to say here is not appropriate on any talk page at Wikipedia. What can I do to stop this? I don’t want to have to edit war over it. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC) (ec) Sorry, I can't do that. Not while Captain Occam is getting his girlfriend to edit on his behalf. He has revealed the other user is his girlfriend on his user page. If he reverts this once more he should be blocked for edit warring. Mathsci (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Per WP:OUTING, you outed yourself on your talk page - "If an editor has previously posted their own personal information but later redacted it, their wishes should be respected, though reference to self-disclosed information is not outing." The link to your girlfriends online-moniker was placed on your user page by you. It is inappropriate to recruit meatpuppets, like your girlfriend, to support you on wikipedia. Perhaps a good long read at WP:SOCK is in order. Hipocrite (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Yes, Captain Occam is acting like a small child. How many times has he reverted my response? Mathsci (talk) 22:23, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Nowhere on Wikipedia have I said that Ferahgo the Assassin is my girlfriend. I've linked to a DeviantArt community that I said belonged to me and my girlfriend, without saying anything about who my girlfriend was or whether she was a Wikipedia user. Since the information about who my girlfriend is is not anywhere on Wikipedia, determining this requires browsing through multiple DeviantArt pages, and for Mathsci to attempt to look it up and state it here is outing. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Um, I clicked on this link from your user page and instantly knew who your girlfriend was. Hipocrite (talk) 22:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC) Ditto. And there is the link on Ferahgo's page which links to Ferahgo on Deviantart. Mathsci (talk) 22:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC) And, um, how do you know the account at DeviantArt that Ferahgo’s userpage links to belongs to my girlfriend? I haven’t stated her DA username or linked to her account there anywhere on Wikipedia. The only account I’ve linked to other than my personal one is the Domain of Darwin one, which I said my girlfriend was involved in without providing any other identifying information about her. If you think you can figure out for yourselves who she is by snooping around this DA community, then good for you, but if you conclude something from DeviantArt that I haven’t stated explicitly here, then that isn’t something I’ve disclosed. Don’t reply to this. If you aren’t willing to let me remove this information, then I guess we just have to leave this for the admins to deal with. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC) You wrote "Domain of Darwin, My and my girlfriend's DeviantArt evolution community" There are two listed members of the community - you, and Ferahgo. Hipocrite (talk) 00:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC) You apparently aren’t very familiar with how DeviantArt is set up. Domain of Darwin has over 100 members, which are listed here. If all you know is that my girlfriend is a member of this community, she could be any one of those people. As per the rules about how to deal with WP:OUTING I won’t comment as to whether there is evidence in that community of my girlfriend being Ferahgo, but anything you figure out from looking around at DeviantArt is not something I’ve disclosed. Got it? --Captain Occam (talk) 03:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC) I have played a tiny part in this debate. Because accusations of outing are flying around, I wish to deny, just for the record, in case it gets asked, that I am Captain Occam's girlfriend. Nor, for that matter, am I Mathsci's mother-in-law. Either of those persons is, of course, entitled to edit Wikipedia. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:10, 4 May 2010 (UTC). You're evidently not the other user. Occam's user page listed the cofounder of the "Domain od Darwin" as his girlfriend - Domain of Darwin, My and my girlfriend's DeviantArt evolution community [sic] - so I'm not sure what he's trying to argue now. That user Ferahgo the Assassin (talk · contribs) has been acting as a WP:MEATPUPPET, backing Captain Occam's point of view out of the blue in a vote to ban a user on WP:ANI. That is not permitted on wikipedia. As for 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs) and his shenanigans, see below. Mathsci (talk) 07:18, 4 May 2010 (UTC) So Captain Occam has potentially accidentally outed his girlfriend? Irony indeed. Stephen B Streater (talk) 08:06, 4 May 2010 (UTC) I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, but I’ll explain it again: I didn’t say what position my girlfriend held in this group, nor did I say on Wikipedia what her DevianrtArt username was. Anything you’ve concluded about her identity is something you’ve concluded by browsing DeviantArt, and comparing the information on the DeviantArt page linked from Ferahgo’s userpage to the information in the community that used to be linked from mine. This is not the same as an actual disclosure from me. For that matter, whether Ferahgo the Assassin is my girlfriend or not is irrelevant to the discussion here. As soon as this user became involved in the article several months ago, I stated that they knew me well outside of Wikipedia, to make sure that nobody could accuse me of trying to influence consensus in a subversive way. As I said above, there would not have been anything wrong with Mathsci reminding other users of what I’ve said about this, in order to make sure nobody gets an inaccurate idea of the level of consensus for anything that this user and I have both commented on. But for Mathsci to try and dig up the personal details of how this user and I know each other, and then post them publicly, is nothing but a malicious personal attack. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Thank you for clarifying that. People may still think it un-Wikipedian that out of 3 million articles here, your friends have chosen to edit the same controversial article as you. My advice is to listen to the messages here and avoid Arbcom if possible. You are getting a taste of the cards which may be played there. Stephen B Streater (talk) 11:28, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Unfortunately, my friends have many of the same interests and opinions that I do. (This is probably often the case among friends.) I don’t feel that it would be any of my business to stop them from participating in these articles if they want to, any more than it would be my business to demand that they support me in areas where they disagree with me, which is something that I never do either. In any case, I do not want Mathsci’s speculations about my personal life being aired in public, and I think it’s completely within my rights to demand this. Since Mathsci adds this information back when I attempt to remove it, I would like advice about how to have it removed from this thread. Should I be filing a request for oversight? --Captain Occam (talk) 11:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC) That's funny because my friends have different opinions from me. No one has ever tried to out me, and I'm not that familiar with the process. Have a look at some past discussions on the subject in the archives to see what is acceptable and how things are done. Stephen B Streater (talk) 16:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC) See Wikipedia:Wikipedia is in the real world. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: While this is not a bad proposal, it does not adequately address this situation. What we have here is several SPAs, somewhat lead by one, Captain Occam, who has actively recruited other SPAs with a similar bent of mind to join in editing articles on race. This is an untenable situation. Wikipedia thrives on a diversity of opinion and having a band of SPAs dominating a bunch of articles on race is an extremely bad idea. The only real solution is to ban all the SPAs, including Captain Occam, from these articles for a reasonable length of time (I suggest at least one year). --RegentsPark (talk) 01:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to clarify my role here. I guess I am the epitome of SPA, in that I have no interest in editing wiki articles in general. It would be nice to see a reputable site somewhere post a balanced, evidence-based article on this topic. To the extent I can help you do that, I don't mind providing commentary. If my presence violates some fundamental Wiki rule, let me know and I can go back to my ivory tower.

I am not POV pushing the genetics view. It's not a view I hold myself. The ideal article is one that describes the data neutrally and then gets into the evidence for and against each explanation for the data. The problem is, the data show clearly that no *simple* environmental explanation works (despite how popular these simple explanations are for people out of field). So, just accurately describing the data makes it seem like it's pushing a genetics view. That creates issues for many.

My motivation for following this article is to help insure that popular but flawed explanations and dismissals of the data are not featured here. I think the issue is important enough that we need to go beyond Gouldian wisdoms and discuss this stuff with a scholarly / skeptical lens.

The key is defining what's considered mainstream versus fringe. If we accept that Gould is mainstream, we end up with a very different article versus if we accept that regular contributors to the journal, Intelligence are mainstream.

Perhaps agreeing on what is mainstream (one way or the other) would help all editors, not so much in providing a balanced view, but an accurate one. There's much to criticize on the genetics end. Bringing up some dude's racist dissertation in 1912 (e.g.) is not particularly helpful in this regard. -Bpesta22 (talk) 04:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is criticising you or your behaviour here. The question is whether the enthusiastic focus of some editors is skewing the article. As Wikipedia is run by volunteers, it slightly relies on a balance of editors on each topic, and this means no editors should get involved enough to dominate any subject. Stephen B Streater (talk) 06:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with Regents Park that three SPAs should be topic banned for at least a year. All administrators so far seem to favour such a ban, so some method of finalising this should be found. So far threads on WP:ANI tend to get swamped by tangential comments by SPAs, their meatpuppets, their enablers or sockpuppets of banned users: this has the effect of divert attention from any kind of reasoned discussion. I don't know what procedure could be used to formalise the ban. It might be best if such a topic ban could be imposed as some form of ArbCom enforcement, but that does not seem to be possible at the moment.
• Bpesta22 is not a problem at all. As above, he does occasionally make the mistake of trying to argue from a position of authority ("some dude's racist dissertation in 1912") instead of discussing the sources directly as an editor. There also might be a slight conflict of interest because, as he himself has disclosed on wikipedia, he researches into R&I and has unsuccessfully applied for support from the Pioneer Fund. At the moment, however, he does not seem to be acting as an advocate.
• I agree with Stephen B Streater that balance and normal editing behaviour - not the kind of extreme statements that can be read on the talk page, like "foetid sewers" - are what is required. The article does not seem to be the problem at present, just its talk page, where a number of SPAs are attempting to edit outside core wikipedia editing policies to push a point of view by force of numbers. Mathsci (talk) 08:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

"The article does not seem to be the problem at present, just its talk page, where a number of SPAs are attempting to edit outside core wikipedia editing policies to push a point of view by force of numbers."

Pure Mathsci BS. Notice how he never provides any evidence for POV pushing allegations, just repeats "POV pushing SPA!...POV pushing SPA!", ad nauseam. As has been demonstrated with evidence, Mathsci is pushing a POV. That's why so many editors are opposed to him. It's completely disgusting that after DJ, Occam and others worked so hard for six months to stabilize R&I in the face of incompetent PC POV pushers, that admins are even listening to this poltroon, while he repeats his mantra with zero evidence. Are you taken by him constantly blowing his own trumpet about editing unrelated articles? Does that give him the right to own an article on a sensitive topic? This is ridiculous! Are no admins going to look at the evidence? Most of the people who are suporting him here are in no way involved, just seem to be Mathsci's buddies, and are taking up his chant of "POV pushing SPA". Mathsci may have some scant evidence for the SPA part, but it sets a dangerous precedent if you do not investigate the POV part, which is the only real crime here, a crime we are not guilty of. I recommend topic and AN/I bans for Mathsci, this kind of arrogant disrespect for community editing cannot be allowed. mikemikev (talk) 09:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

@mikemikev: Your comments are not constructive. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:30, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you trying to win a prize for hypocrisy here? mikemikev (talk) 09:43, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Prizes! Geez, no one told me there were prizes! Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:50, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

“All administrators so far seem to favour such a ban”

Around three administrators are currently expressing favor for it. Other administrators have expressed opposition to it earlier in the thread, or in the previous thread about this, but at this point the three administrators who support it are the only admins who are continuing to comment here. Multiple comments from a small handful of admins should not be mistaken for consensus in an AN/I thread, any more than agreement among the six users that Mathsci originally reported here should be. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev: Occam and others worked so hard for six months to stabilize R&I in the face of incompetent PC POV pushers Sounds like you think you have the WP:TRUTH, always a bad sign, especially when the side you're opposing is taking what mediation agreed was the mainstream view. Calling someone a "poltroon" is a personal attack. And your repetition of "evidence! evidence!" is getting pretty tedious too. We seem to be coming around to the idea that this situation needs a remedy even if no policies are being broken. If no misconduct is being alleged, what exactly are you asking for "evidence" of? The issue of Captain Occam has its complexities but Mikemikev doesn't seem to be adding anything useful. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 01:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you mean by the mainstream view (specifically in this case)? mikemikev (talk) 06:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I may have missed a few in either direction (please feel free to supply corrections and additions) , and as mentioned above I don't think admins should get special weight in consensus discussions, but by my count among admins we've got:

*RegentsPark	Support
*SlimVirgin	Support
*Arthur Rubin	Support
*Wehwalt	Oppose
*2over0	Support
*Georgewilliamherbert	Need more evidence
*John	Premature but warrants more admin eyes
*JzG	Support
*Dougweller	Support, notes 3 past blocks and 0RR
*KillerChihuahua	Support

That's 7 support, 1 oppose, 2 reserving judgment. This is counting across both proposals, the first initiated by Mathsci and the second by Justin. It also seems like the sense of the participants is changing more towards support. Maybe it's just me but I felt a shift after SlimVirgin's post. She's usually big on process (hmm, not sure if that's the right description), but she (I think) came out saying we should ban SPA's from contentious articles right off the bat, and that any uninvolved admin should be able to do that without a prior discussion. I took a sharp breath at that. I wasn't squarely in favor of the ban proposal before her post (I was sympathetic to it, but that's different). I still have reservations and would have preferred a voluntary exit agreement of some sort, but Captain Occam refused to enter such an agreement 2 or 3 times (I have no idea whether Mathsci could have been persuaded to accept it either, of course). 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

699.228.170.24, thanks for preparing this. I am continuing to tweak History of the race and intelligence controversy. Disributivejustice and Captain Occam are creating their own article at How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?‎ I think I said soe time back that I am no longer active on the main article Race and intelligence, as was the case prior to April 2010, when my only role was to add sources. At present I am slowly reading Martindale's account of Andrea Mantegna's career prior to his Triumphs of Caesar; in real life I am thinking about Goldstone's conjecture and gradually learning the Orgelbüchlein, which I might significantly expand in the near future. Mathsci (talk) 08:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a helpful summation but it is incomplete; administrators input get no more weight in a sanction discussion than any other uninvolved editor, despite what some editors may wish. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you about that in general, but Captain Occam made claims about admins, so I investigated. Note that Captain Occam himself supported discretionary sanctions on race and intelligence topics[43] which among other things would give any uninvolved admin the ability to sanction users without prior discussion, and 7 uninvolved admins have already called for sanctions. Slrubenstein (an admin) has also apparently supported sanctions, but I didn't count him since 1) he is involved, 2) his support was not completely clear.

I do believe that consensus is not a vote and WP:CLUE of participants and their comments matters in assessing it. Clue is usually (but not always) somewhat correlated with adminship, so looking at the admin comments does tell us something. That observation is much different than saying admins should automatically get extra weight. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 09:46, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't doubt that disc. sanctions are needed, and I've made a comment to that effect which got buried in the noise somewhere. But as a matter of process, even appearing to use admin comments as the means of assessing the community consensus is opening unnecessary issues for the future. The community made it clear that admins do not have discretionary sanctions except for in particular areas and disputes. Accordingly, it becomes relatively important to look at the wide community consensus in deciding whether this dispute/area becomes an exception to the rule. Of course, there's nothing wrong with investigating certain claims made during the course of a discussion, but that's separate. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:21, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

The only problem with a community consensus that doesn't involve admins is that many of us non-admins who would express an opinion are somehow "involved" in the dispute. Since this thread was created with the purpose of receiving opinions from those outside the dispute, admins may be viewed as uninvolved. Furthermore, as there is some meatpuppetry occurring, an in involved editor can simply congregate fellow meatpuppets to skew the community consensus. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:37, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, which is why I said a community consensus includes both admins and non-admins opinions, subject to exceptions of involvement and inexperience. Meatpuppets generally end up blasted out of the water, one way or another. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)::

second section break

I confess to utter confusion at this point. Precisely which "SPA" accounts are we proposing to restrict and what precise restrictions are under consideration? Which users are the "meat puppets" in this context? I don't know how anyone can have a sense of community opinion on this while 3 (at least!) quite different proposals are under consideration. David.Kane (talk) 21:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

There is only one proposal open at this point which has received enough support to be seriously considered, and that is this one:

I propose that the time has come for a topic ban on the SPA editors who have been plaguing these articles. They stated they were prepared to work elsewhere voluntarily, that seems to be untrue and now I think an involuntary ban is reluctantly necessary. The time has come for AN/I to support productive editors who support the core mission statement of NPOV against SPA editors seeking to skew articles in favor of a particular minority POV. Too often we talk too much but don't take action. Justin talk 21:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

All other proposals have received insufficient support to be taken seriously, and most of them have already been closed. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:31, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane - SPA's are accounts whose contrib history has been entirely or almost entirely in one subject area, especially if they seem engaged in advocacy or are excessively invested in one viewpoint (WP:SPA). Meatpuppets are users who appear to have been recruited from off-wiki to participate in a dispute (WP:MEAT). Beyond My Ken: I think it's ok to distill viewpoints expressed across the entire discussion rather than saying we're looking for thumbs up or down on a specific narrowly worded proposal. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 21:52, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

@69.228: I don't disagree, there's been discussion which has the effect of altering original proposal, however it is the basic proposal that's under serious consideration, i.e. a topic ban for SPAs. (As opposed for instance, to topic bans for Mathsci, AN/I for Mathsci, etc.). Perhaps I misinterpreted the intent of David Kane's question.

It would be helpful, I think, if people didn't continue to divert attention away from this proposal, so that we can come to some agreement on the specific terms. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

At the moment consensus amongst administrators or uninvolved users seems to be for a one year topic ban of three SPAs - Captain Occam, Mikemikev and Distributivejustice. If one or two editors continue quibbling about what consensus means, a far more severe alternative, significantly easier to administer than a topic ban, would be three straight one year bans, through blocks. A single uninvolved administrator could make the evaluation himself or herself. This underlines the fact that it is much easier to block for one year than topic ban for one year. The opposite should be the case. Mathsci (talk) 05:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Obviously true, since a straight-forward ban is software-supported while a topic ban can only be policed by community action, which tends to be more scatter-shot.

I would much rather the sanction be a topic ban rather than an full-out ban, as I believe these editors can be productive and beneficial to the project if their efforts were directed elsewhere. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:34, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. My point was about the difficulty of administering topic bans which are not covered by formal ArbCom decisions. It should be easier. Mathsci (talk) 06:18, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I think there are not grounds for an outright ban by the standards I'm used to. [Deleted some text here].

As for enforcement, from what I'm used to, any editor restrictions (whether imposed by consensus, or by delegated discretion) would have to be announced formally by an admin. The restrictions would then get listed at WP:RESTRICT, and after that, any edits by restricted editors could be reverted and additional intervention (if needed) could be requested at ANI. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 08:25, 6 May 2010 (UTC) Added: I'd urge any editors involved principally in any single topic topic to check out other areas of the encyclopedia anyway, even if they aren't restricted. There is a hell of a lot to explore. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 08:49, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Can someone (other than MathSci) please confirm that the precise topic under consideration is topic ban on Captain Occam, Mikemikev and Distributivejustice? Again, it is very hard for me to offer my perspective on the issue unless some uninvolved editors (i.e., not MathSci) can be specific about precisely what is under consideration. I agree with Beyond My Ken that "specific terms" are critical to having a meaningful discussion here. David.Kane (talk) 12:58, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

From where I sit the proposal is to let uninvolved admins topic-ban SPA's at their discretion, which usually means based on user complaints and some sensible amount of investigation (i.e. they don't do it at the drop of a hat, but it would not take full-scale DR). The discretionary part would allow dealing with newly arrived problematic editors without having to label them as sockpuppets of restricted users. It is basically a sanction against the subject matter itself (something like page protection) rather than against any specific user. It says that the topic area is so disruption-prone that it can't withstand our usual practice of allowing unrestricted editing in the absence of massive rulebreaking.

I'd consider Captain Occam and Mikemikev to be obviously problematic. I have only a slight impression of DJ and David.Kane. From my limited contact, both come across to me as generally reasonable people, if that's any consolation to either of them. Mathsci himself has said Bpesta22 is not a problem.

Full discretionary sanctions (also proposed but I guess fizzled) would allow 1-admin restrictions against any user in the topic including non-SPA's. That's traditionally been considered pretty drastic, though it would in principle fix the inequity that Captain Occam took issue with.

Users who are restricted can ask to have their restrictions lifted after a while. Such requests are typically granted if during the restriction, the user has shown the ability to edit productively in other areas of the encyclopedia without getting into excessive conflict. My advice is to try to develop a Zen-like detachment from the articles you are editing and any disagreements you find yourself involved in, and observe other users to figure out what kinds of approaches work and what kinds don't. Both of these take quite a bit of practice, thus the advisability of starting out in areas of lower conflict. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 20:06, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

This IP (and previous posters) show a lot of wisdom, and I'd say a consensus is emerging. This particular topic is maybe one where more experience is necessary to edit in the Wikipedian way. The only question is how to get there. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

break 3

My advice is to try to develop a Zen-like detachment from the articles you are editing and any disagreements you find yourself involved in.

OK, I think I'm ready to be blocked. Can you make it permanent? mikemikev (talk) 21:48, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Mikemikev, nobody has asked for you to be blocked. I'd be happy if you were to just edit other subjects for a while and modify your interaction style (not that hard to do). If you do want to announce a retirement from Wikipedia, you can replace your user page with a {{retired}} template. You can can later remove it if you decide you want to return to editing. If you're sick of Wikipedia, quitting for a while and coming back if and when you feel ready is a normal and healthy thing to do (wp:wikibreak). I've done that many times myself. It has helped me adjust my perspective and made me a better editor. If you want to permanently stop yourself from logging back in, you can scramble your password. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 22:06, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The silencing of differing views of a controversial topic, which is what these proposals will be seen to amount to, will reinforce in the public mind its concerns about the reliability and bias of Wikipedia. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC).

(ec)I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the topic ban. The intent is to allow other views to enter these articles. Currently, because of the number of editors with a single purpose working on these articles, there is a danger that only one type of view may be represented (or one type of view may be over represented). --RegentsPark (talk) 01:09, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

A fundamental policy of wikipedia is that it is edited in a neutral way. Articles are not written by SPAs pushing a minority point of view. Mathsci (talk) 01:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) WP is not a soapbox. Anyone seeking to disseminate a particular view about something should start a blog instead of editing about it here. Anyone who wants to edit a contentious topic is welcome to do so, as long as they also edit a wider range of topics like we'd expect from any encyclopedist, instead of being obsessed with a single subject. And if you edit in a way that neutrally and accurately summarizes the sources, we shouldn't even be able to figure out what your view is, much less attempt to silence it. If we can tell what your view is, you're doing it wrong. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 01:17, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I’ve been offline for a few days, but after looking at this thread, I have a serious problem with the idea that “consensus is emerging” here. Other than Mathsci and the users he was complaining about, the only users continuing to comment here are Xxanthippe, Stephen B Streater, RegentsPark, Beyond my Ken, and the anonymous IP. How can consensus be emerging if the only people commenting are a small selection of the same people who’ve been commenting throughout the thread, expressing the same opinions they’ve expressed throughout the thread, and there’s no input from the rest of the community? Does consensus arise just from the fact that editors with dissenting viewpoints have quit the discussion?

I also think that the chart posted by the anonymous IP about prior opinions is misleading for a few reasons. First, it excludes the opinions of uninvolved non-admins who clearly had an understanding of this issue and opposed topic bans, such as Justin and ImperfectlyInformed. And second, if you read the comments from GWH and John, it’s clear that they aren’t “reserving judgment”—they made it clear that they oppose a topic ban, until and unless more evidence is presented against me.

One other thing I’ll add that there’s only one more significant change that I think still needs to be made to any of these articles in order to bring them into line with what we agreed on during mediation. After that change has been made, as long as the articles remain stable in their current states, I won’t feel the need to focus on them exclusively anymore. I also would be willing to voluntarily end my involvement in them, if Mathsci agrees to the same thing. If I can make the remaining change that needs to be made without any problems, I’ll be ready to either stop being an SPA or voluntarily leave the article along with Mathsci in no more than a week. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Your offer is not necessary. The consensus of experienced editors will prevail, and the SPA editors who have a particular slant they would like expressed in the articles will withdraw, eventually. Johnuniq (talk) 08:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

With regard to what both you and the IP have said, there’s something I’d like to ask: has anyone ever demonstrated, either here or in the previous thread, that inexperienced editors are always more likely to slant the article in a particular direction than experienced ones are? Even though compliance with NPOV policy is probably correlated with experience as an editor, the two aren’t the same. Despite Mathsci’s experience editing articles unrelated to race, I could easily point to several edits from Mathsci on race-related articles that not only make it obvious what his viewpoint about this topic is, but appear to be trying to slant the article in that direction. He probably knows what my viewpoint is also, since I’ve stated it at least once on a talk page, but he’s never provided any specific examples of edits from me that go against NPOV policy, even when he’s been challenged to provide them. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

It's more to do with understanding the processes. Because you lack experience here, your behaviour doesn't fit very well with all the norms. This means that you flex the processes more than an experienced editor such as Mathsci. You even say above you want to fix the article before you leave it, and will restore it if anyone disagrees. Perhaps you should peruse WP:OWN again. The point is about the consensus that the more experienced editors are tending to move the same way. XXanthippe has joined the debate more recently and is more forgiving still. Stephen B Streater (talk) 11:46, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

What is it that I am supposed to be forgiving? Xxanthippe (talk) 12:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC).

"This means that you flex the processes more than an experienced editor such as Mathsci." What does "flex" mean in this context? And please provide specific examples of Occam doing something objectionable. I have had some disputes with both MathSci and Occam on various aspects of these article but, from my experience, each is reasonable enough to work with that I see no need to treat them differently. Throughout this discussion, people have asked those who seek to ban Occam (and people like Occam) for specific examples of bad behavior (in, say, the last 6 months). None have been provided (that I can see). David.Kane (talk) 12:18, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I still don't understand. But let it pass. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2010 (UTC).

A number of editors, including Captain Occam, are saturating the article with their attention. This is an issue, as they don't fully appreciate how their POV is not truth. All aspects of a controversial topic need to be presented - enough information to allow the reader to form an opinion for themselves. Removing Mathsci's material is a symptom of this. Another problem is the insistence on majority rule. That is not how things work here. Another is the lack of understanding of the weakness a SPA has in editing here, particularly on a controversial topic. Captain Occam could edit much more productively with wider experience, but insists on sorting out these articles first, leading to a lot of unnecessary conflict. Stephen B Streater (talk) 08:40, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Captain Occam continues POV-pushing, this time deleting multiply sourced edits without checking the secondary source.[44] Mathsci (talk) 12:13, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

What does (ec) mean? Xxanthippe (talk) 12:18, 7 May 2010 (UTC).

Mathsci continues to violate BLP, using a source judged inappropriate at the RS noticeboard, where this issue belongs. mikemikev (talk) 12:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

David: it might be better for you to ask for examples of bad behavior from me in the past four months, since I was suspended for edit warring once in January. I don’t believe I’ve done anything problematic (either a policy violation or not) during the time since then, though.

Mathsci: interesting that you should bring this up here, because it’s a perfect example of what I’ve been doing that’s resulted in your accusations of POV-pushing throughout this thread. You’ve attempted to edit the article for it to claim that “Jensen came to two main conclusions: an educational one, that racial minorities should be taught by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote, not through conceptual explanation; and a social one, that some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce their numbers.” As I pointed out on the talk page here, it’s obvious from reading Jensen’s paper that he never suggested the number of minorities should be reduced; the only type of eugenics that he said he favored was finding a way to change the fact that in all racial groups, the people with the lowest IQs tend to be those who have the most children. And despite the assertion that this is one of Jensen’s “two main conclusions”, the discussion about eugenics/dysgenics takes up less than 5% of his paper. I’ve explained on the talk page why I don’t think this edit from you is consistent with NPOV, and asked you to justify it there and obtain consensus for it before adding it back, since that’s how WP:BRD works.

Now, let me ask everyone else here: is Mathsci right to call it POV-pushing for me to revert his edit, explain on the talk page why I disagree with it (justifying my concerns via NPOV policy), and ask him to obtain consensus for it before adding it back? Every one of Mathsci’s accusations of POV-pushing has been based on something similar to this. It would be helpful if the people who are considering a topic ban for me based on these accusations could actually look at the details of the situations about which Mathsci is making them, and determine for yourselves whether or not his accusations have any substance to them. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

break 4

I think the time has come to take this issue back to the main ANI page. What is needed is a specific thread or straw poll dedicated to finally determining whether or not topic bans should be issued to the SPAs. There has been extensive discussion about the SPAs, and I don't believe there is anything major that hasn't already been discussed. The time has come for action, or confirmed inaction. The community needs to decide whether the single purpose editing of some users is helpful, harmless or harmful to the encyclopedia. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:50, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't do that yet. I'll try to respond to Captain Occam in a little while. Going back to ANI would probably just be a detour on the way to RFAR anyway. Xanthippe: (ec) means edit conflict, i.e. "I was writing this at the same time the posts immediately previous were being written, so it doesn't take those posts into account, only the ones prior to them." 69.228.170.24 (talk) 17:59, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) and Professor marginalia (talk · contribs) have restored order to the article. If Captain Occam or Mikemikev haven't quite worked out what's what's going on, they should probably ask one of these two directly. Mathsci (talk) 19:17, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with MathSci that Maunus (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) and Professor marginalia (talk · contribs) have been a big help. This suggests (to me) that we do not need any special rules about topic bans for SPAs in these articles. All we needed was some useful input from more experienced editors. David.Kane (talk) 20:53, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Now that Professor marginalia seems to understand my concerns about wording, I also agree that he and Maunus have been helpful. If Mathsci is satisfied now that “order has been restored to the article”, does that mean this issue is resolved? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Maybe! And I might join in too again as I seemed to get on fine with you, Mathsci, David Kane, Slrubenstein and Maunus - and probably some more too. I look forward to the day when you branch out into subjects you are not so involved with, as I think this will help you - and all of us - on this topic too. Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

No, not at all. There is still tag teaming by Mikemikev, Distributivejustice and Captain Occam. David.Kane seems to support them also. What happened here is that my own sourced edits were simply deleted by DJ and CO without justification. In this case a little quiet scholarship revealed that Tucker was citing two articles. Three editors deleted the material (David.Kane even after the second primary source had been added). So these editors, including this time a supporter like David.Kane, seem determined to reject well-sourced content about what is usually described as one of the most notorious and outspoken papers in the history of psychology. I have no idea why, but it seems they might regard this paper as iconic in the scientific study of genetic differences between races (sometimes referred to technically as scientific racism). These editors are persistent: they wait for a moment when nobody is watching (apart perhaps from me), remove sourced material, giving all sorts of different reasons for doing this, arguing by strength of numbers. That behaviour remains unchanged. The presence of those three editors creates impossible editing conditions: their edits do not seem of any benefit to this encyclopedia and we cannot rely on the occasional presence of normal experienced editors like Slimvirgin, Maunus, Professor marginalia, Slrubenstein or me to monitor their deletions or POV-pushing insertions. There are just not enough editors watching the article (according to the history page statistics). Mathsci (talk) 07:39, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

If any of the uninvolved editors want the details, I am happy to provide them. Short version: Your "well-sourced content" included a major mistake which is now, because of work by me and others, fixed. (It would be a wonderful demonstration of good faith if you could at least admit that much.) I think that the material you insist on includes still another major mistake. Over time, I hope to fix that as well. David.Kane (talk) 14:53, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

By all means, share the details. A.Prock (talk) 16:48, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

As you wish. See the full history of History of the race and intelligence controversy for details, but this diff [45] provides a representative starting point. As you can see, I am deleting a section that MathSci (and others) claimed was "well-sourced content" because I doubted the both the sourcing and the content, as I made clear in the note. In particular, I knew that the phrase "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" was not a quote from Jensen (1969) despite MathSci's insistence that it was. MathSci, for all his many skills, is quite quick to assume that he (and only he) and his sources (and only his sources) are correct. He does not like being challenged by someone like me, nor having his additions to the article edited. The debate over that passage had gone on for many days (weeks?) before that edit and still continues now. Eventually, it was discovered (by, I think, MathSci) that I was correct. We now [46] have "By 1968 Jensen's emphasis had shifted. In an article published in Disadvantaged Child he decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks through antipoverty programs and child development programs." I have not removed this sentence because, as best I can tell, it is correct. Summary: MathSci has a tendency to claim that any changes to his edits are malicious when, in fact, they are sometimes simply attempts to correct his mistakes. Is that detailed enough for you Aprock? David.Kane (talk) 17:16, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Did you check the sources, or just make the delete because you doubted them? I'm pretty sure that if you had referred to the source and provided the appropriate quotes as a first step, then this wouldn't have been the kerfuffle it was. If you did indeed delete the quotes before checking, that would certainly qualify as malicious. A.Prock (talk) 17:39, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Of course the sources were checked, it's been the point the whole time, did you read the talk page? A BLP violating misrepresentation gets removed (with an appropriate reason given). Nobody is obligated to tidy it up. mikemikev (talk) 18:05, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

But the funny thing is that Mathsci wasn't annoyed with me when I reverted a suspect edit. He simply fixed it so it answered all my criticisms. I think there is some obligation to communicate with experienced editors; the article needs more of them, not fewer. Stephen B Streater (talk) 20:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this, but I think there’s a reason for what you’re mentioning that you aren’t pointing out: Mathsci reacts differently to edits to this article depending on who’s making them. He’s much less likely to edit war or complain at AN/I in response to an edit from someone like you, whom he apparently approves of, than he is in response to an edit from someone like me and David.Kane, whom he already dislikes—even if the edits themselves are nearly identical. I think a lot of the problems like this could be avoided if he could learn to focus on the content, rather than the contributor. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:34, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Stephen: Well, "obligation" runs both ways, doesn't it? Recall WP:BITE. David.Kane (talk) 21:38, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You think we didn't try to communicate? Every attempt was met with abuse, dismissal, and having our names dragged through the mud at AN/I for nothing, despite the fact that we were right all along. You think we wouldn't have preferred to spend that time tidying up the article? But you still take Mathsci's side because he's "experienced". How ridiculous. mikemikev (talk) 21:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I think Mathsci does respond differently to experienced editors, but I put this down to the difference in the way experienced editors behave to him. My POV on inheritance is much more like Captain Occam's than Mathsci's or Slrubenstein's, but neither have made any complaints about the process I use. As for WP:BITE, if a newcomer ignores advice, I can see why some could be less patient than me. I have criticised Mathsci too in the past, and he has responded by taking my advice. Perhaps our experience helps. Captain Occam has not taken my advice - or that of numerous people here - and insists on continuing as an SPA until after the resolution of the issues caused by him being an SPA. I don't recall coming across Mathsci before, or Slrubenstien, but it is obvious to me, as an experienced editor, that their presence will result in a better article than without them. It seems from these discussions that other experienced editors (including Admins) see this the same way as me. The point is not what you might think logically, but what actually has been shown to work over many years. Mathsci has a better intuitive understanding of the risks involved with SPAs than the SPAs, and this is reflected in the support he has from most of the disinterested observers here. Stephen B Streater (talk) 22:51, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I’m not convinced that it’s accurate to describe these issues as being caused by me being an SPA. Varoon Arya was included among the subjects of Mathsci’s complaint here, even though his level of experience as an editor is similar to yours, and if you look at the talk page for the R & I history article, you’ll see that VA has had all of the same difficulties with Mathsci that the rest of us have. The only reason why Mathsci’s complaints about Varoon Arya haven’t continued throughout this thread is because VA recently quit this article because he was unable to tolerate Mathsci’s behavior. (This isn’t an assumption—VA specifically stated this in one of his early comments here.)

If your experience is the only reason for the difference between Mathsci’s reactions to you and his reactions to people like me and DJ, I don’t think that can explain why he’s reacted exactly the same way to an experienced editor like Varoon Arya as he has to unexperienced editors. My theory about this is that it’s because even though Varoon Arya has never been an SPA, he’s still been involved in these articles for a few months, and has disagreed with Mathsci several times in the past. On the other hand, you’ve only recently become involved in them, so Mathsci hasn’t had the time to develop an attitude towards you the same way that he has towards the people who have a history of disagreements with him. If you don’t agree with that, what do you think is the reason why Mathsci has reacted to you so differently from how he’s reacted to Varoon Arya, despite you and him having similar amounts of experience? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:28, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Stephen B Streater: Surely we all agree that more experienced editors make for a better article! Indeed, I have gone out of my way to thank (some of) those editors (including MathSci) for their contributions. I hope that they continue to participate! Indeed, I count myself among those who "support" MathSci since I am pleased with many of his contributions to these articles. But you seem to be claiming that "most of the disinterested observers here" support MathSci in his attempts to ban several users from these articles. Is that your claim? I see little evidence of that, mostly because editors like Distributed Justice have done nothing wrong. And, to the extent that you (or others) think that they have, you ought to provide some diffs to demonstrate it. David.Kane (talk) 23:35, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd say most disinterested observers support Mathsci (and others from R&I) in his criticism of SPAs focussing controversial articles like these. A topic ban would be unnecessary if the editors moved on to new areas voluntarily; Captain Occam is clearly intelligent and literate and could easily contribute elsewhere. Evidence of the problem is the amount of time spent on ANI discussing it - frivolous complaints are dealt with in a few lines. Stephen B Streater (talk) 07:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

<- The edit history of the article shows that Mathsci (talk · contribs) added the second source from the footnote of Tucker in addition to a second secondary source.[47][48] This was not a major error: I certainly don't check every quote from a primary source when using a secondary source. As Aprock writes, instead of doing what I did and checking the secondary source (easy enough), they simply deleted a lot of content. David.Kane continues to suggest that the book of Tucker is unreliable - although I haven't found a properly paginated version of Jensen's article, I could check the statements on eugenics and on rote learning vs conceptual learning. David.Kane seems to have been suggesting that Tucker was misrepresenting Jensen's paper: that was a false claim. All this is the same old WP:CPUSH, multiple constantly changing but spurious reasons for rejecting sourced content - it does get a little tiresome after a while. It was slightly more complicated for me to work out that Darius Milhaud, usually referred to as an inhabitant of Aix-en-Provence, was actually delivered in his grandfather's house on rue St Ferreol in Marseille; a similar kind of minor detail, that is not really so important, but is quite confusing on first sight. It is a continual source of wonder that History of the race and intelligence controversy actually exists and is fairly anodyne and readable. Mathsci (talk) 05:19, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

120 Volt monkey

User:120 Volt monkey blocked as a sockpuppet of the banned User:Jagz, as were several other accounts involved in the race and intelligence dispute. Suspicions or concerns about other parties should go through the normal routes. MastCell Talk 16:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
After a private CU request, Nishkid64 has blocked 120 Volt monkey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) as a returning sockpuppet of banned user Jagz (talk · contribs). It is interesting how indistinguishable Jagz's trolling and general disruption was from some other accounts. Mathsci (talk) 06:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC) It was quite obvious he was a sock, but I couldn't put my finger on whose. I;m amazed he was allowed to go this far without being blocked. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC) It was classic Jagz for the connoisseurs amongst us, particularly his little contretemps with Slrubenstein. I'm not usually much good at spotting sockpuppets. In this case I made an off-wiki request to Nishkid64 on Saturday as I stated above. But I already had suspected this for over a week.Mathsci (talk) 08:32, 4 May 2010 (UTC) “It is interesting how indistinguishable Jagz's trolling and general disruption was from some other accounts.” I think I made it clear in this discussion that I found some of 120’s behavior a little off-putting. Please don’t equate him with all the rest of us. If this account is truly a sockpuppet of a blocked user, then as far as I’m concerned blocking it is appropriate. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Don't be wound up by Mathsci. He only had check user on one account, AKAIK, which shows that he could tell the difference in practice. Stephen B Streater (talk) 11:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC) These were not the only sockpuppets of Jagz blocked by Nishkid64. The others were: Cryptofish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Horse wiz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Note these accounts have been active around these articles. Horse wiz was involved in mediation. He even attempted to WP:OUT me by linking to a photograph of me on wikipedia. This led to a discussion on Ludwigs2's talk page.[49] (Ludwigs2 noticed he was a sockpuppet.) Here is my own reaction to Cryptofish on WP:ANI: [50][51] (The second diff is quite amusing in retrospect.) Immediately prior to Cryptofish's first edit on ANI was a complaint by Rhomb (talk · contribs), another blocked sockpuppet that was pestering me on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 14:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC) I have to also wonder about mikemikev. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 22:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC) Interesting contribution history, very similar to what a bad-hand account (used whenever an established editor wants to do some stuff that would be frowned on, without sullying his or her own reputation) might look like: spurts of editings interspaced with long periods of no activity. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Withdrawn. A closer look at the contents of the early edits doesn't really support that supposition. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC) You did well to strike your comments out. Conspiracy theory mongering by anonymous IPs does nothing to reduce the level of hysteria on this page. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC). My strikeout was simply about withdrawing a specific theory about User:mikemikev. His contribution history is still quite odd, and worthy of further investigation. Were I you, I would not hitch my wagons to him. At the very least, it supports the allegation of being an editor with a POV to push. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:56, 5 May 2010 (UTC) Quite odd mikemikev (talk) 15:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Are we done yet?

Isn't it about time that this topic was closed off? As best I call tell (and, again, I am not an experienced editor), Wikipedia has a variety of mechanisms for dealing with problematic editors/edits. All those mechanisms are available for use in race-related articles. Some editors have argued above that we need special, stronger mechanisms for these articles for various reasons. They are contentious. They attract malicious SPAs. They need more oversight. And so we have:

I propose that the time has come for a topic ban on the SPA editors who have been plaguing these articles. They stated they were prepared to work elsewhere voluntarily, that seems to be untrue and now I think an involuntary ban is reluctantly necessary. The time has come for AN/I to support productive editors who support the core mission statement of NPOV against SPA editors seeking to skew articles in favor of a particular minority POV. Too often we talk too much but don't take action. Justin talk 21:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

But, when I asked for clarification as to exactly who was to be defined as an "SPA editor" for the purpose of this topic ban, no uninvolved editor could come up with a list. (Needless to say, I was worried that I might fall into that category.) The only list offered was by MathSci: Captain Occam, Mikemikev and Distributivejustice. I am glad not to be on that list and ready to dive into a detailed discussion about whether or not any of these editors deserve a topic ban, but, unless I am missing something, no one (other than MathSci) seems interested in specifics. Given all that, and in the absence of specific complaints, I would argue that we are done here. David.Kane (talk) 21:50, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't feel it is my job to boss people around, and we are all volunteers. But I'm happy to offer a view. Unless SPAs lighten up and get more experience outside controversial topics, we will have friction until the articles are resolved. Stephen B Streater (talk) 22:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you that we will have friction here. Indeed, I think that some amount of friction is inevitable in an article like Race and Intelligence. But, as I understand, that is not the issue here. Instead, the question was: What if any unique/stronger policies do we need for these article and to whom ought those policies apply? As best I can tell, there is no consensus on that topic. David.Kane (talk) 23:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

David.Kane, I thought I answered your question earlier: the proposed remedy as I see it would be against the subject matter and not against specific editors. Dealing with SPA's would be at admin discretion if the remedy is enacted. Therefore you would not get your wish of receiving a list of SPA's as part of the remedy. If there was a list, then anyone who wasn't on it would not be sanctionable without another big complex discussion if they caused problems afterwards. The purpose of the discretionary authorization is to bypass that complex process. My guess is that Captain Occam and one or two others would receive restrictions almost immediately. I don't know if you'd be included. Really though, being obsessed with one tiny set of articles is not healthy, and the presence of so many highly invested editors in the articles is a problem in its own right. Why is it so important to you to not edit some other subject? Is there anything else you are interested in? Note that this is not a criminal trial, where "no consensus" means "do nothing". No consensus probably means arbitration. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 23:51, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you be more clear on exactly what your proposal is? My understanding is that you want to specify a set of articles (which ones, exactly) for which the normal Wikipedia procedures do not apply. In those article, any admin could for any reason ban (permanently?) any SPA editor (where SPA'ness is in the eyes of that admin) for any length of time. Again, it is tough for me to have an informed opinion on this proposal without being clear on the specifics. David.Kane (talk) 00:18, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not my proposal, it's my interpretation of Guy's and SlimVirgin's (I'm open to it and I see merit to it, but you'll notice I haven't flat-out supported it so far). Your description is basically accurate except the admin would have to be uninvolved (Slrubenstein would count as "involved"). See WP:ARBMAC#Remedies for an example of a past such remedy (that one is not SPA-specific, and was for a far worse dispute than this one). It's not as arbitrary as you make it sound though. Admins are expected to act sensibly and they'd get huge pushback if they went overboard handing out restrictions. And being kept away from editing 0.001% of Wikipedia's articles is a pretty mild restriction to begin with, for anyone who isn't obsessed with that 0.001%. The premise of the proposal is that editors obsessed with single subjects are a problem for the encyclopedia in their own right. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 16:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support closing this thread. Oppose silencing editors who are trying to bring balance to an unbalanced article. Oppose opening further threads of this nature. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC).

• I think this is fairly straightforward. Captain Occam, DistributiveJustice, and Mikemikev should be banned from all articles that are included in the category Race for one year. Based on my understanding of all this, I think David Kane and Aryaman should be included in that ban as well. --RegentsPark (talk) 00:36, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Aryaman isn’t an SPA, so what you’re proposing here apparently isn’t a topic ban for SPA editors. What is it? Is it a topic ban for editors holding certain viewpoints? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Not at all. I see it as a topic ban on editors who have a single minded interest in articles on 'race'. It is time that these editors either moved on to other topics on wikipedia, or just left the project entirely. As I've said many times above, single minded obsession with a certain class of articles is neither a healthy way to contribute to wikipedia and nor is it good for the encyclopedia. --RegentsPark (talk) 02:45, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

You haven't explained how this applies to Aryaman. Other articles he's been involved in recently are Frei-Laubersheim fibula, Pforzen buckle, Butsudan, Kamidana, and Shimenawa. Looking at the past few months of his contributions, it's clear that he has at least as much interest in articles about archaeology and Asian culture as he does in articles about race. If your criteria for topic bans are wide enough to include him also, it seems that "a single minded interest in articles on race" is not the only factor you're considering here. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

• Support topic ban of Captain Occam, Distributivejustice and Mikemikev for one year on all articles related to race (I suppose Category:Race would cover it, but we do not make detailed rules: any topic related to race is included). That includes articles, talk pages, categories, and noticeboards, except if asked to comment on a noticeboard in a matter that relates to them. There have been many dubious researchers in the field of race and in the field of intelligence; that makes it too easy for SPA editors to slant articles by pushing their POV. One or two other editors may need to be similarly topic banned (not Mathsci). Johnuniq (talk) 01:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you provide an example of an edit by Distributivejustice that you think justifies a topic ban? David.Kane (talk) 01:47, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The basic assumption here, for which nobody has (yet) provided any support, is that inexperienced editors like us are causing more harm than good to these articles, even if we aren’t breaking any rules. And this is based mostly on the fact that Mathsci has a problem with us, and he’s considered more likely than us to be right because he’s more experienced. (Editors who support topic bans have described their opinions in a lot more words than this, but I think this is an accurate summary.) The discussion above about Mathsci’s newest accusations demonstrates that this isn’t something that can be assumed, though. In this case the article was incorrectly sourced, you noticed this, and Mathsci complained at AN/I about you “POV pushing” when you tried to fix it. I think this demonstrates that even inexperienced editors like us can notice errors that are overlooked by more experienced editors, as well as that Mathsci having a problem with something we’re doing does not in itself demonstrate that we’re harming the article.

There are other, earlier examples of situations similar to this, but the most current one is probably enough to demonstrate the nature of this situation. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:02, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not just experience vs inexperience--there's the issue of being overinvested in the subject. We're asking to see contributions from you in subjects you're less worked up about. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 05:14, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

At this point, I think it’ll only be another few days before I’m ready for that. (I said “no more than a week” two days ago, so my original estimate still stands.)

I’m worried about whether no longer being an SPA would actually change anything, though. Varoon Arya was never an SPA, but nobody has ever treated him any differently than the rest of us, either on the talk pages for the articles in question or in this thread. For this reason, I don’t want branching out into articles about other topics to be something I just start doing, since I don’t see any reason to expect I would be treated any differently from Varoon Arya in that case. I want it to be something that I’m agreeing to in this thread, in exchange for an agreements from the rest of you to let this issue drop and not have any further AN/I threads about it in the future, so I can know for sure that not being an SPA anymore really will have the effect of resolving this. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:59, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you have understood correctly. It is your editing patterns on race related articles that are causing problems, whether you edit elsewhere or not. Mathsci (talk) 07:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The hope is that not being an SPA would change the way you edit. And who knows how Mathsci would have interacted with Varoon Arya if the SPA issue has not been present. Stephen B Streater (talk) 07:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

As I recollect Varoon Arya and I wrote a neutral lede for race and intelligence together a month ago. Mathsci (talk) 07:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Also this kind if editing recently proposed by Captain Occam [52] is problematic. It is WP:UNDUE to suggest including sections like: The book World on Fire notes the existence in many nations of minorities that have created and control a disproportionate share of the economy, a market-dominant minority. Examples include Chinese in Southeast Asia; Whites, Indians, Lebanese and Igbo people of Western Africa; Whites in Latin America; and Jews in pre-World War II Europe, modern America, and modern Russia. These minorities are often resented and sometimes persecuted by the less successful majority. Examining the over-representation of certain minority groups in high-paying professions in the United States, Nathanial Wehl has concluded that this is a consequence of their above-average IQ. Since the book is not a scholarly book on race and intelligence, its use here seems to be pure WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. He uses a book by Amy Chua to produce a conclusion by another author, Nathaniel Wehl. I couldn't even find a mention of intelligence or IQ in Chua's book World on Fire. These kind of concocted statements are the sort of thing that's fairly common to find on a blog, but not on wikipedia. On wikipedia, I expect sentences that can be checked with several sources and are not cobbled together starting from the speculative theories of an individual person and the previous writings of an author (Wehl) to whom she makes no reference. (It might be worth mentioning that Chua's book has been criticized in reviews, particularly in its analysis of pre-war Germany and of Zimbabwe. I found about five reviews on google scholar, but did not look very long.) Why should any reasonable editor have to spend their time discussing content of this kind? Mathsci (talk) 08:44, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, this is a proposed addition to the article. The reason I’ve proposed it on the talk page, rather than just adding it to the article, is so editors like you who have problems with aspects of this material can point out these problems on the talk page, and help fix them. If you think this section needs to be improved before we add it to the article, why don’t you bring up your suggested changes to it on the article talk page, where everyone else who has criticisms like these is discussing them? --Captain Occam (talk) 09:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not editing the article any more, as already mentioned; and this is about your editing patterms, not mine. Aprock (talk · contribs) has already voiced a similar concern to mine. It is unreasonable for any editor to be expected to spend any time discussing material like this. A similar type of edit would be to juxatapose two phrases like: It is estimated that six million Jews died in concentration camps in Poland and Germany during the second world war. At the same time the United States and Great Britain were responsible for the deaths of around 4 million Germans. That combination of phrases, even if both sources were correct, would be POV-pushing and not permissible on WP. Mathsci (talk) 09:43, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Everyone else: can’t you see what’s going on here? This is obviously a content dispute that Mathsci has, just like his recent content dispute with David.Kane, except that in this case it’s a content dispute over an edit to the article that I haven’t made yet. I’m specifically requesting feedback about this proposed edit on the article talk page, but instead of making any effort to resolve his dispute there, Mathsci is coming straight to AN/I with it. I didn’t even know Mathsci had a problem with this proposed edit before he brought it up here. Is it normal editing procedure for seeking sanctions against another user at AN/I to be someone’s first course of action when they disagree with a proposed edit?

This has been going on for the past month and a half, and it’s the main reason why there have been active complaints from Mathsci here about me or Ludwigs2 for two-thirds of that time. Every one of these complaints could have easily been resolved through normal dispute resolution processes, in most cases just through discussion on the relevant talk pages, but Mathsci never seems to have any interest in that. Is it an appropriate use of AN/I for Mathsci to keep bringing these content disputes here before attempting to resolve them anywhere else? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:14, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam's statements about his own edits or those of other editors don't seem to have very much to do with reality. The next section contains links to my own edit record . The POV-pushing mentioned above has proved problematic to those whom he views as not "on his side" (eg Aprock). I have no particular view since I don't edit Race and intelligence any more, but I can judge whether edits are sourced or not. I've provided links to my article editing patterns in the section below. I have also participated in a few ArbCom cases (Abd & WMC was the most draining). Sometimes it's best to stay clear of cases, e.g. with Ottava Rima, ChildofMidnight, Alastair Haines 2, PHG third review - all these cases were unfortunate, quite sad, but ultimately unavoidable. Mathsci (talk) 16:28, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Each year millions of people are infected with the flu virus. This is because the virus continues to evolve new strains that are resistant to previously used medication, and the new strains are also able to outwit the human immune system. Consequently the virus stays one step ahead of humanity. Wikipedia is also evolving, and even types of editors evolve as well. The single purpose accounts that are currently involved in the R&I controversy have also evolved and are more sophisticated than previous SPAs who tended to be blatantly intolerant, uncivil and unwilling to cooperate. Except for some instances of edit warring, the SPAs have avoided obvious policy violations. I believe that some kind of administrative action is necessary. Even without obvious policy violations, if editors have come to wikipedia with essentially the sole purpose of advocating a certain POV, then it creates a problem for neutrality and balance.

So some of these SPAs have been quite civil, outwardly giving the impression of willing to cooperate and reach compromises. However, despite all this, these editors still have a discernible POV, which they would push through in the absence of attention from the broader community. The sophisticated SPAs are well aware that in order to advocate their POV they need to give the impression that they are collaborating with other editors. So we will frequently hear them state that once upon time they came to an agreement with so and so, and therefore progress is being made. Administrators don't usually take action against article ownership and advocacy because they are much harder to prove. But the fact that R&I articles have been held hostage for 7 months should indicate that there is an actionable problem. One of the issues brought up regards who is eligible for a topic ban. I believe all who are on the list are eligible. There are probably very few pure SPAs, but certain editors are still effectively SPAs if they devote a disproportionate amount of time to one topic. According to Occam Varoon Arya is not an SPA. Indeed Aryaman edits more articles, and some seem to be unrelated to the R&I controversy. Aryaman is not hyperactive like Occam. But Aryaman's choice of subjects is may still be an issue. To start with, on Aryaman's previous user page He has a picture of an "Aryan", and a picture of a pro-segregation poster. No breaches of policy but nonetheless, he is clearly flirting with some divisive ideas. On one occasion diff he has soapboxed certain racial ideas on Occam's talk page. Interestingly, this is the very same argument made by a banned user [53], but this is just to illustrate that birds of a feather.... More recently he was soapboxing about rats [54]. The articles that Aryaman has edited the most are either to do with Race and crime or race and intelligence. Captain Occam states that Aryaman's other area of interest is Asian culture, this is not entirely accurate, rather it seems more like Indo-Aryan history. Might just be a coincidence, but not a very convincing one. All these edits suggest a POV, albeit one that is buried in subtlety. I would therefore list Aryaman right next to Captain Occam. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:46, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I have helped several articles reach GA status, including Ring of Pietroassa, Greece runestones, Tuisto, and others. My most recent addition to the project is the article Frei-Laubersheim fibula, which I wrote from scratch. I am interested in Indian, Germanic and Japanese language, culture and religion, and I edit a wide range of articles dealing with these and related topics. Outside of this issue, I have had nothing but pleasure interacting with the wider Wikipedia community, and have never been accused of 'POV-pushing', 'trolling', or any other such behaviour.

My first serious involvement with a race-related article was with Race and crime in the United States, which was bogged down in exactly the same kinds of petty squabbles and ad hominem attacks as Race and intelligence has been for years. Another user requested that I take a look at it as an objective, uninvolved editor, and I was happy to do the favour. After a month of research, I rewrote the article from scratch based on the best scholarship and official data available. It has remained stable since I concluded my drafting in October of last year. My effort with that article brought a year-long and entirely fruitless "debate" between a large group of editors to an end, and contributed a stable and informative article to the project. And now editors with an obvious vested interest in these issues are trying to get me topic-banned for it? Ridiculous.

I've already said that I do not plan on contributing to these articles any further. But if a topic-ban results from my attempting to help resolve the long-standing conflict over the articles treating the race and intelligence controversy, then I see no point in my continuing to contribute to Wikipedia as a whole. I'm a little disgusted with the politics of the project at the moment, particularly after reading through this and related pages. --Aryaman (talk) 13:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Still, you have not demonstrated that anything I have stated is inaccurate. I had stated "Aryaman edits more articles, and some seem to be unrelated to the R&I controversy". On your userpage, the only commentary that you gave was on race and crime, in which you soapboxed your opinion. The only images you had were race related. You had a pro-segregation picture on your userpage, users can place any images they want on their userpage, but nonetheless what you choose sends a message. You continually post racially tinged messages on Captain Occam's talk page. Whichever way you put it you have still invested more time and effort into race and crime, race and intelligence and other race related articles than any other articles. If some editors have an impression about you, then it is because of your own edits. Most editors, including myself don't enjoy encountering divisive POVs, so I would be much happier if I were convinced that you were just another regular enthusiastic wikipedian. Unfortunately this is not the case. So I believe Wikipedia would benefit from topic banning you because you could then devote more time to non controversial articles such as Ring of Pietroassa, Greece runestones and Tuisto. If you did there would be no "friction" from me, and most likely others. Wapondaponda (talk) 17:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, I'm not going to defend myself from your claims, as I do not feel it is necessary. It's not my fault if someone comes to either my page or the page of another user and fails to understand the humour with which my comments are frequently peppered. If I've personally offended anyone, I apologize. But if people go looking for things to take offense at, that's their problem, not mine. (If you want a response to each of your allegations, take it to my talkpage and I'll be happy to oblige you.)

I've already said numerous times that I have no intent of editing any of these articles any longer. In effect, I've already "banned" myself from the topic - voluntarily. I'm entirely fine with admitting that continuing my involvement with them will not have any positive effect on the outcome - and I have not participated in any of them for several weeks now. However, while I'm fine with voluntarily discontinuing my participation in the discussions, I strongly object to the proposal that I be formally banned - particularly on such flimsy grounds as those you have produced - as a matter of principle. I had been here for something over 2 years and 2000 edits prior to any involvement in race-related articles. You criticise me for my participation at Race and crime in the United States - which is the only mainspace article related to race which I have edited more than a few times - despite the fact that I was able to calm down a raging "debate" and write the article in a way which satisfied both of the involved parties. (I even received a note of explicit approval from one of the former participants.) In the mediation of the Race and intelligence article, the majority of the participants had enough faith in my ability to edit neutrally to suggest me to be the one to edit the mainspace article (thanks must go to David.Kane, however, for actually doing the job). The outline currently being used in the Race and intelligence article is based upon the one I suggested during mediation and which was adopted by the mediator and primary editor as having the most promise of overcoming the long-term dispute. And now you're telling me I'm a threat to these articles - so much so, in fact, that I need to be banned? I'd be shocked if this were coming from anyone other than you, Muntuwandi. As it stands, this appears to me to be little more than an attempt to exact revenge upon multiple users for disregarding the bulk of your comments and/or suggestions during the mediation. --Aryaman (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that Muntuwandi's analysis of the situation is spot on. Careful, and possibly well-meaning, SPAs painstakingly avoid policy violations and are attentive to the attribution. However, the reality is that their aim is generally to skew articles to fit their world view (again, this could be because they believe that their world view is the accurate one) and, over time, this is what will happen. When you see generally non-POV editors repeatedly bringing up SPA issues relating to a group of articles, it is quite reasonable to assume that we have an SPA POV problem in that area. After that it is a question of whether wikipedia is here to serve the interests and rights of individual editors or whether wikipedia is here to present a generally neutral view of the topic at hand. (I believe that all actions should be viewed in the light of this latter purpose of the encyclopedia and that catering to some idea of rights of individual editors is a mistake. This is not a question of this diff or that action, but rather one of an obvious situation where one type of voice is getting more of a say on various articles on race. We should topic ban all the editors in the list at the start of this ANI note from all articles in Category:Race for one year. This should not be viewed as a punitive action but rather as one that would benefit both the encyclopedia (other voices will get a say in these articles) as well as the editors in question (they will get the chance to prove that they can bring their intense focus equally to other areas of wikipedia). --RegentsPark (talk) 21:55, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this is mistaken reasoning. Everyone has a POV and noone can be expected to see the world through a POV that one does not have. That is impossible. Wikipedia exists off editors working in areas in which they have a strong interest and expertise - there is no good definition of SPA that would allow us to distingish between an SPA and an expert editor, so the only kind of SPA that should be prohibited from editing are the disruptive kind i.e. those who do not follow policy - otherwise we may all end up topic banned from the topics that interest us the most. Wikipedia also does not disallow POV pushing, as in practice that is impossible, everyone who cares enough about a topic to write about it has a POV and whether they want to or not they will try to impose that POV on the article: BUT wikipedia has an editing policy that if followed is meant to make articles neutral inspite of the different POVs of the editors editing. This means that an Civil POVpushing SPA is not a danger to wikipedia as long as he or she follows the editing policy - and especially not as long as there are editors with opposite viewpoints working on the same topics (in this case I even observe SPA-class entities on both sides). With wikipedias policies in hand any editor with any viewpoint can make sure that an article does justice to all viewpoints and comes as close to objective neutrality as is possible. In short: stop focusing on other editors and what they are and what they believe. Focus on content and policy. If policy is followed there should be no problem. If there is a problem chances are that policy is not followed - then we know what to do. Restrict comments about other editors to cases in which policy is broken - use the appropriate fora for reporting breaches of policy and supply ample evidence of any misconduct. If policy is not broken then focus on content and policy and consensus building.·Maunus·ƛ· 06:30, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand my point which is that when we find a group of SPAs with a single general POV dominating a string of articles, then we should topic ban that group from that string of articles for a duration for the good of the encyclopedia. If we don't, then, and your reasoning supports this, that single general POV will dominate the articles and neutrality will suffer. In this particular case, the group of SPAs is relatively easy to identify since they barely work outside the area of their focus. The broader point is that policy-minding SPAs are very hard to deal with because they don't break policies but nevertheless end up being detrimental to the neutrality goal of the encyclopedia. Occasional flashpoints can be dealt with, as you seem to have done, but the overall problem stays unaddressed and concerned editors (like mathsci) will just move on because who wants to deal with frustration for ever. With some luck, someone else will take mathsci's place but meanwhile our encyclopedia will have an institutionalized view of the relationship between race and intelligence (or race and crime) that is not neutral and hard to change. --RegentsPark (talk) 13:39, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

We agree on some things, being civil POV pushing, tag teaming SPAs is not a direct policy violation. But if it were that simple, then this thread either wouldn't exist or would have been closed long ago. One reason why this thread has persisted is that some experienced uninvolved administrators have expressed support for topic bans on civil POV pushing, tag teaming SPAs. There is general consensus that such type of editing, though typically not actionable, is not ideal. That is the reason why these essays were created. Editors are not robots who can completely separate the the editor from their edits. Being humans that we are, we also have a strong tendency to see patterns, sometimes real or imagined. If an editor has a pattern of editing that is likely to cause problems in the future, then it might be a good idea to nip it in the bud. Some of the cases that are handled by arbcom deal with editor behavior, and many have had to do with off-wiki behavior that is not directly related to any content dispute. I do agree that we should focus on content and policy and not on other editors and who they are or what they believe, but if an editor's patterns of edits are in some way detrimental to the project, then finding a solution may have to involve looking at the editor. Wapondaponda (talk) 10:33, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment on User:Muntuwandi by User:Mikemikev

Wapondaponda, is this you? mikemikev (talk) 22:22, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

LOL! mikemikev (talk) 22:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

This is priceless, 76 socks! Suddenly being an SPA doesn't seem so bad. mikemikev (talk) 23:51, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

This is not exactly news, the editors involved in this dispute and the community are generally aware of this. But I am not the problem here and I am not the subject of this thread, which is about a few SPAs which include you. I am only reluctantly involved in this dispute and only because there are only a few neutral editors monitoring this article. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, I don't derive any pleasure from this topic, so I would gladly step aside if my involvement is seen as a problem. But since these articles have been besieged by editors with a POV, then some balance is necessary, and if there are only a few editors providing balance, then even I of all people may be of some use. If topic bans were to be given the listed SPAs, I would take it that the broader community has reclaimed the article from the SPAs. My involvement in the dispute would no longer be necessary, and I would move away to other interesting articles. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, it should be clear by now that in the absence of evidence, there is nothing for uninvolved people here to distinguish who has the POV. Either 'side' could be neutral. Nothing personal, but this is just hot air. Your track record of 'afro-centric' editing (is it OK to say that?), dubious tactics (I'm amazed you have the audacity to complain about SPA behaviour after making 76 socks, aren't you still on probation?), and your implication above that the article has been 'taken', may give some indication of what's happening here. It's actually very hard to keep this article neutral and scientific. I wish you could be more helpful. mikemikev (talk) 11:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

That is inaccurate. You only edit one kind of article related to race and with a discernible point of view. Other non-SPA editors make balanced edits and have edited a wide range of articles from a neutral point of view. Constantly repeating fallacious statements will not make them true. Muntuwandi was unblocked a while back, with the knowledge of administrators, and his editing patterns are no longer considered problematic. I was one of the people who regularly pointed out Muntuwandi's sockpuppetry. Mathsci (talk) 21:00, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Resolution

I don't know about anyone else, but having monitored this for a month now its not going to be resolved - looks to me like it should go to Arbcom for resolution. --Snowded ^TALK 10:51, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it normal for Arbcom to accept cases where the problem is that a single user isn’t willing to accept any kind of dispute resolution with several others? That’s what this is.

I think Mathsci’s difficulty getting along with other editors is already receiving a lot more attention than it deserves. If arbitration is what everyone else wants, though, I guess I’ll accept whatever the consensus is. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

That is not the issue here. Difficulties in willing to cooperate and accomodate are found in probably equal measure in many of the involved editors. If the problem here were a single editor then there wouldn't be a problem at all. Fact is we have a set of articles that has been a battleground for years with next to no progress - I don't think ArbCom would deny taking the case. I am not convinced that it is necessary at this time, but unless everyone starts to focus on content and building consensus instead of commenting on other editors and widening differences between the editors who have to cooperate then it clearly will be necessary.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:55, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I have no difficulty - on large scale articles like Europe, I am one of the main contributors [55] and there have not been any problems (except with disruptive editors like TheThankful (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - nobody could cooperate with this returning sockpuppet of a banned user). That Captain Occam chooses to misrepresent me and my edits at every possible opportunity is not untypical behaviour for a WP:Civil POV pushing WP:single purpose account. A ploy to divert attention from his own editing patterns. A summary of how I edit namespace articles can be seen here [56]. I have so far created 37 articles from scratch [57] as well as various image and audio files [58]. Mathsci (talk) 15:48, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus: the problem I have with thinking I share an equal part of the blame for this issue is that nobody has ever told me specifically what I could be doing differently on these articles in order to avoid the problems I’ve been having with Mathsci. The only concrete suggestion anyone has made about my participation in them is to stop being an SPA, which I don’t think will be possible for me as long as the issues with these articles are so demanding that they suck up all the time I’m able to devote to Wikipedia. Other than that, it’s all been nebulous accusations of things like “POV-pushing” and “advocacy”, and whenever anyone asks for specific diffs of what I’ve been doing wrong, nobody provides any. Even if it’s the case that my behavior is contributing to this problem, I don’t see how I can be expected to remedy it if nobody can tell me what specific things on these articles I ought to be doing differently.

This isn’t the case with Mathsci, though. Plenty of users have offered advice about what specific things he ought to be doing differently to avoid these conflicts, such as attempting other types of dispute resolution before coming to AN/I, or not reverting edits if he’s unwilling to engage in any discussion about why he disagrees with them. He’s never been willing to follow any of these suggestions. Perhaps a more significant example is that it’s happened twice in this thread that an uninvolved user suggested a compromise between Mathsci and everyone else, and most users (myself included) were willing to agree to it, but Mathsci refused it. The point here isn’t that there’s more to criticize about Mathsci’s behavior than there is about mine—that might be true also, but it isn’t the point I’m making—so much as that I’m willing to put forth effort towards resolving this dispute, whereas Mathsci seems unwilling to accept any resolution other than topic bans.

I also think the situation with these articles is vastly better than it was before mediation started. The way it was prior to mediation was that there were two warring factions over these articles: me, Varoon Arya, DJ, and David.Kane who thought the article devoted too little space to the hereditarian viewpoint, versus Slrubenstein, Ramdrake, Aprock, and Muntuwandi who thought it devoted too much space to this viewpoint already. There was no consensus over the article’s current content or structure, and the only reason it remained in the same state was because it was also impossible to obtain a consensus for changing anything. But as a result of the mediation, we came up with an article outline that virtually all of these users were able to agree on, and the only remaining disagreement (over the main R & I article, at least) is how the sections of that outline should translate to sections of the article itself.

Anyway, if nobody wants to take this case to Arbcom but it’s impossible to reach a consensus about anything at AN/I, what does that mean in terms of what happens next? Do Mathsci’s AN/I threads about the users he disagrees with on these articles just continue indefinitely from this point forward? --Captain Occam (talk) 16:46, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam: as the issues with these articles are so demanding that they suck up all the time I’m able to devote to Wikipedia illustrates the problem right there. If you think the issues are so demanding that you can't switch to something else, you are overinvested in the topic. Maybe you think the articles will suck without your involvement, and let's even assume you're right. So what? WP has millions of articles, almost all of which suck. It's great to have dedicated editors wanting to fix sucky articles, but why is it so desperately important that you work on this one? Every minute you spend fixing Race and Intelligence is a minute that other sucky articles languish without your attention. We have a saying "there is no deadline". It is ok if this article keeps sucking for a while. If you're here to fix general suckage, that's great, there's plenty to choose from. If you're here to obsessively edit one article, that already answers your question of what you should do differently. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 19:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, when I refer to “the issues with these articles”, I’m referring more to this AN/I thread than anything else. I imagine that if I were to abandon this thread, and let Mathsci say whatever he wants about me here without responding to any of it, the odds of my being topic-banned would increase. (And there was a bit of a trend in this direction when I went offline for around three days between May fourth and May seventh, which reinforces my concern.) Regardless of how much or little I care about this topic, I think it’s reasonable for me to care about not being topic-banned—I don’t think anyone ever wants something like that for themselves. During the approximately a week between Mathsci’s last complaint about me and the current one, I was trying to gradually become less of an SPA, starting with the William Beebe article. But the discussion here is far too demanding for me to be able to spend time on something like that while it’s still in progress.

I know this is kind of a catch-22: the main suggestion for me being made in this thread is to stop being an SPA, and this thread itself is what’s making that impossible for me right now. But that’s the way it is—this thread is already single-handedly causing me to spend much more time at Wikipedia than I’d like to, and the idea of taking on additional tasks while it’s still underway seems like it would cut far too much into the time I’d like to be spending on other things. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:23, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

• I came to a similar conclusion (to that of Snowded) about a month ago too - but none of the parties appear interested in actually filing the request. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:15, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I can't see any support for moving this to ArbCom. It would only be appropriate for editors or administrators with a little more awareness of what is going on, particularly with regard to content issues, to suggest such a case. What is happening at the moment, and no administrators have so far disagreed, is that a small group of users is trying to push a non neutral point of view into race related articles. That is particularly easy to see with the currently neutral and meticulously sourced article History of the race and intelligence controversy. No editors except the three SPAs and their supporters have found any problems with the article: all other editors have been editing normally and commenting in the standard way on wikipedia. Neither Snowded nor Ncmvocalist have made any comments on the underlying content issue, which both have chosen to ignore. But unfortunately that is the underlying issue. That is why users like Aprock are finding difficulties on the talk page of race and intelligence with SPAs like Captain Occam. I'm no longer an editor of that article as was the case just over a month ago, except for very occasional addition of a source, exactly the same as on Ethnic groups of Europe, which I also watch. Mathsci (talk) 15:48, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
    • For a response to Mathsci's sweeping assumption that Snowded and I are merely choosing to ignore the content dispute, see Snowded's comment below (which effectively summarises both our positions on the matter). Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:38, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
  • That nobody wants arbitration is as it should be. Arbitration is a hellish process to be avoided if possible (it is much worse than the merely heckish process we've been engaging in here). If this case does go to arbitration, I'd hope it would not just be to resolve the dispute immediately at hand, but to lay down principles that would help dispose of future such disputes with a lot less hassle than we've already experienced. I do think the views of the admins who have weighed in on this discussion (listed in my chart further up) are indicative of the likely outcome of arbitration. Not because they have the sysop bit but because they deal with more DR than most of us and will tend to have a good sense of current wider practices because of that. It also seems to me (pure personal impression, maybe completely wrong) that the currently sitting arbcom has been handing down some of the most brutal decisions I've ever seen from that normally wimpy entity. This is the first arbcom to have been elected partly by secret ballot rather than open discussion (a change I opposed for various reasons if anyone cares). I have been wondering if that has anything to do with it. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 15:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
    • I agree arbcom is to be avoided. Fixing the article is much less work. If Captain Occam had wider experience, he would know not to go to Arbcom over this issue. More outisde editors (or less attention from SPAs) is the answer to get the article resolved. Stephen B Streater (talk) 18:47, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
    • : Huh? Occam has never proposed going "to Arbcom over this issue." As best I can tell, he (like I) thinks that would be a huge waste of time. (But, as always, if that is what consensus is, then away we go.) Although I have not been keeping precise track, this is the 5th (?) time that MathSci has sought to have editors he disagrees with sanctioned, banned or otherwise punished. It has been an amusing process to watch! MathSci's description of the problem as "a small group of users is trying to push a non neutral point of view" is, in my view, absurd. I will repeat the same comment that I have made half a dozen times before. If MathSci (or anyone) thinks that, say, DistributiveJustice has violated the letter or the spirit of any Wikipedia policy, then please provide a diff proving your case. Failure to do so, while still insisting on going to ArbCom will, I suspect, not be looked on kindly. David.Kane (talk) 20:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
      • This diff and this diff. Their sheer length excludes most experienced editors (see comment below from Snowded). Stephen B Streater (talk) 22:12, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

These are diffs between versions of the talk pages that are around a month apart, and which both contain over a hundred individual edits from multiple users. Isn’t it possible to provide a specific edit or group of edits from any of us that shows a problematic pattern of behavior, rather than just saying we’ve engaged in problematic behavior on talk pages sometime in the past month, and expect other people to search through a month’s worth of edits to find the problem for themselves? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

<- This discussion is about a topic ban for SPAs. Their editing patterns are problematic - the recent POV fork, the tagging sof the history article without any coherent justification so far, the charges of Marxist POVs, the obsessive pro-Jensen editing, the removal of sourced content from WP:RS, etc. You mention an ArbCom case above - are you possibly confusing me with Ncmvocalist? Mathsci (talk) 21:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Its pretty obvious to me that this is not one editor in isolation, but a small group of editors asserting a strong position against one other. The overall pattern of editing is disturbing and its difficult to get involved. The sheer volume of material would exhaust any other editor who wants to get involved - I've looked at it several times and backed off. I think that at this stage it needs ARBCOM or similar to look at the editing behaviour of those involved and set down some rulings. --Snowded ^TALK 21:44, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

One reason for suggesting that the SPAs broaden their interests is to reduce the rate of new material in these articles to make it easier for other editors to get involved. Captain Occam has rejected this idea. Stephen B Streater (talk) 22:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

See my response to the IP above. I’m willing to be more flexible about this than you’re giving me credit for, but I also have some inherent limitations, and the most basic one is the amount of time per day I’m willing to devote to Wikipedia. The majority of that time is currently being taken up by this AN/I thread. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There are issues that have arisen during these debates that go to the heart of Wikipedia's integrity. The matter should go to Arbcom. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:17, 10 May 2010 (UTC).

• Arbcom is unlikely to take this case. They will say "content dispute, not our problem" because any resolution would require judgment regarding the material being inserted by each side. I advocate topic banning the SPA POV editors because I know how laughable it is to reach the conclusion that blacks are dumber than whites based on the vast scientific ignorance of exactly what is measured by an IQ test (did anyone research the lifetime nutritional intake of the test candidates and their mothers? or their motivation or social pressures? or their sleep patterns in the prior month? or what domestic pressures they were living under? or any of 100 other factors that may influence results in IQ test?). However, arbcom only deals with evidence, and the fact is that most reputable scientists do not bother taking six months of their lives to properly research and publish results regarding what they believe are flaws in methods of the various researchers in race and intelligence. It is standard for a consensus of editors, each using their judgment, to topic ban troublesome editors (those who do not assist the encyclopedia), whereas arbcom must deal only with cold facts. The problem in this case is exactly what Muntuwandi wrote above: a new breed of POV pushers has arrived and they are using WP:CPUSH to take over the R&I articles. Johnuniq (talk) 02:08, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

• I don't know enough about ArbCom to comment, but I am happy to defer to Johnuniq and believe that they are unlikely to take this case. Given that, what are you proposing? That I (among others) be banned from these articles? If so, could you please give some examples of my edits that you find objectionable. I spent a huge amount of time on Rubin Causal Model. Is that why you seek to ban me? David.Kane (talk) 02:33, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

  • I think arbcom would take the case if asked, but given the amount of work involved, it's beyond the call of duty for anyone to file one and flog it through the process if they're not willing, thus the general avoidance. The main goal of a case in my opinion would be to develop better general tools for dealing with CPUSH. The content dispute immediately at hand (Mathsci vs Captain Occam et al) is small potatoes within that framework. If someone does file a case I can probably assist a little bit. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 03:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the problem arises from a content dispute between two factions. However, it becomes a behavior issue when one of the factions attempts to get its way by silencing the other faction by administrative means. This is contrary to the ethos of Wikipedia and makes the matter one that is appropriate for Arbcom. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC).

“I advocate topic banning the SPA POV editors because I know how laughable it is to reach the conclusion that blacks are dumber than whites based on the vast scientific ignorance of exactly what is measured by an IQ test”

This quote, I think, shows better than anything else what’s wrong with the attitude that several of the people here are taking towards Mathsci’s complaint. It apparently doesn’t matter whether or not anyone can demonstrate that DJ, David.Kane, Varoon Arya or I have been violating any policies, or even whether we’ve been harming the article in a way that doesn’t violate them. The only thing that matters is that some users disagree with the changes that have been made to the article during the time that we’ve been involved in it. This is obviously a content dispute, but they also aren’t interested in discussing on the talk page whether or not the current state of the article is or isn’t consistent with NPOV, or whether we’d be willing to change the article to address any NPOV complaints that get brought up there. (As we’ve done when users have raised complaints there in the past.) When people like Mathsci and Johnuniq have content disputes over the article, the immediate answer is just to suggest topic bans for the users they disagree with.

Isn’t there anyone here who sees the problem with this? The way this is supposed to go is that when editors have NPOV complaints about the article, they bring them up on the article talk page, and if certain editors are tendentiously refusing to listen to the NPOV complaints, then sanctions against those editors are considered. In this case, the editors who are advocating topic bans are trying to short-circuit the entire dispute resolution process by advocating bans over content disputes that they’ve never tried to resolve at all. And for that reason, it hasn’t even been established whether the current article violates NPOV or not—the only concrete evidence either way is that it’s much more stable than it was before the mediation. This attitude seems completely antithetic to the spirit of Wikipeda, which I suspect is of the main reasons why topic bans have never gotten consensus no matter how many times they’ve been suggested. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) Yes they might take the case to sort out CPUSH on a range of race-related articles. That would have the advantage that administrators could topic ban teams of SPAs using arbitration enforcement pages, rather than having to go through this kind of discussion (endlessly prolonged by the SPAs and their would-be enablers). But I assume that ArbCom would rather not take on such a case - all editing round race and intelligence and similar articles would have to be discussed. In the past, problematic editors - usually pushing a race-related agenda - have been banned from editing wikipedia by the community. The tag teaming compounds the problem, when it's many trying to impose undue content by force of numbers. Perhaps as a result of this thread, a number of non-POV editors, some of them administrators, have been editing the history article - Slimvirgin, Slrubenstein, Maunus and Professor marginalia. They have not agreed with the SPAs. From my experience with wikipedia articles, the history article is now reasonably well written and properly sourced. There are still some things missing (use of IQ tests by immigration authorities).

This discussion of ArbCom is yet another red herring introduced to divert the discussion of topic bans, which ideally, once a policy has been decided, should be at the discretion of uninvolved administrators, as I think Slimvirgin suggested. Mathsci (talk) 04:46, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I think its pretty obvious from the comments above that this is a behavioral issue and its needs resolution now. If we have a group of uninvolved admins prepared to institute a topic ban then fine but I don't see any sign of it. As it is the attitude of editors is preventing other editors from engagement. --Snowded ^TALK 06:49, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Snowded, did you look at the list I compiled (see edit at 07:17, 5 May 2010)? There are 7 uninvolved admins supporting such a ban. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes I saw it, as I've seen the whole flow of this affair. What I haven't seen is any move to action or sufficient consensus to take that action. It needs a proper review as the debate has implications for other issues relating to the treatment of race and its a sensitive issue. --Snowded ^TALK 10:37, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

POV fork deleted

The article How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?, copy pasted from History of the race and intelligence controversy with POV material later added by Captain Occam from an article by Helmuth Nyborg, has now been deleted. The whole tag team voted to keep it, but their arguments were not found to be convincing. David.Kane (talk · contribs) even claimed on the talk page of the closing administrator that no comments had made about Captain Occam's changes, which was inaccurate. Please can something be done about this group of POV-pushers? They are wasting time on wikipedia. To be clear they are now supporting the point of view of J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn. These are scientists who run and are financed by the Pioneer Fund and have links with the organisations and journals, American Renaissance, The Occidental Quarterly, Mankind Quarterly and DARE, which promote scientific racism. Mainstream academics have written about this topic and its history dispassionately and with meticulous care. The tag team has attempted to remove any material which they view as not favouring the current day cause of Rushton and Lynn and the small number of academics (many retired) who support them. They have sanitized two articles Mainstream Science on Intelligence and Snyderman and Rothman (study) to remove all criticism. Again these promote their cause. At the moment, because the mediation was allowed to establish editing rules on race and intelligence favourable to WP:CPUSH and WP:FRINGE, the SPAs, partiuclarly Captain Occam, are writing material which is now becoming overtly racialist, under the guise of scientific objectivity. Caotain Occam is now writing this material himself, as WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. When other users (Aprock and Slrubenstein) have pointed this out, Captain Occam has just persisted. He is currently developing it in user space User:Captain Occam/significance. Perhaps it's worth remembering what Fourdee (talk · contribs) wrote on ANI shortly before he was banned in perpetuity by Jimbo Wales.[59]

Editors having an opinion is of course allowed, and I am commenting on the content of the articles or responding to openly expressed opinions offered by other people. There's nothing saying a person who is racist or a nazi-sympathizer cannot edit and with appropriate civility share his views on articles, any more than a person who is a marxist, or a terrorist, or a pedophile, or any sort of belief, cannot with due civility share his views on the biases contained in articles and the problems with sources or paradigms used. People on wikipedia, including many admins, express very extreme and potentially offensive political views all the time - in the course of editing and discussing edits.

The first edit cited is a response to the opinion expressed by the previous poster that the media is being "manipulated" to give more coverage of missing white women. What I am saying is that the article and its editors are pushing a really offensive, vicious POV - the point is to discuss the article and genuinely not to air my views. This is by no means outside the tone I have often had directed at me and I view these incessant complaints as nothing more than a campaign to silence editors who have opposing points of view on the content of articles.

Wikipedia does not have approved points of view for editors to work under and I don't see how my behavior is anything but the mirror image of that of many other editors. Censorship would severely hinder Wikipedia and also weaken some important legal defenses it has in terms of not controlling the content. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 19:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

This user was an extreme case, but he did not operate in a tag team. After the time wasted on the POV fork, it's now time to impose topic bans on Captain Occam, Mikemikev and Distributivejustice (even if he has announced his retirement). The three of them are creating too much useless disruption and are not adding any useful content to this encyclopedia. Enough is enough. Mathsci (talk) 06:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Please provide a diff of me voting to keep it. You won't be able to because I didn't (although I certainly think it should be kept): you're lying. It's getting a bit rich that you accuse those who support a balanced presentation of all views of this subject of being a tag team. Surely a tag team would display coordinated behaviour, ignorance of the subject matter, and voting as a block in all areas. Looking through the race and intelligence talk page archives for the last few years, we see this kind of behaviour from you, Slrubenstein, and several others. It's seems to me that you're coming from a strong Environmentalist POV. Probably this is why the article had been such a mess, prior to Occam's involvement. I would also note several univolved editors who seem to join in on Mathsci/Slrubenstein's side in ANI complaints, usually without giving a reason. This has been going on for years. I believe Arbcom is needed here. mikemikev (talk) 07:56, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for that error: everybody except you voted keep. Sorry. I have no point of view on this topic at all. I am not a Marxist. I do have a point of view on how wikipedia articles should be sourced and edited. I have benefited from variants of intelligence tests in RL - I'm told that I did quite well in the eleven plus, partially devised by Cyril Burt. I also remember having fun doing the exercises "Limbering up for intellectual giants" in Hans Eysenck's book "Check your own IQ" probably just after the time Jensen's paper was written (I must have been 12 or 13). As an academic I do believe that in a university environment students can learn to think, a different form of intelligence. I was also happy that Caroline Lucas got elected recently in Brighton, if that makes me any more of an environmentalist. :) Mathsci (talk) 14:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Serious charge

The claim by Mathsci that Captain Occam has had in real life extreme views that extend to forms of holocaust denial is extremely disturbing and, if proven, would make me reconsider the part I have taken in the current debate. The claim seems incongruous though, as Captain Occam identifies himself as being of Jewish ancestry. Please will Mathsci support his charges with evidence. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC).

I assume he's referring to this. A.Prock (talk) 08:01, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks for that info. I expect Mathsci will respond if it is not what he meant. An odd blog.The author doesn't seem to be denying the holocaust committed by the Nazis, just saying, on the basis of a book reviewed by the Daily Telegraph newspaper, that the victorious allies committed their own atrocities as well. I don't think this reaches holocaust denial. Also, it's not clear that the blog was written by Occam. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:15, 11 May 2010 (UTC).

This is another attempt at WP:OUTING from Mathsci, and in this case it's both blatantly false and unsupported by anything that I or anyone else has linked to. I would like it if someone could please do something about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:15, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, in addition to not supporting Mathsci's accusation, that blog post is not something I've ever linked to on Wikipedia. Nobody should be digging through things they think I've written at other websites in order to bring them up in discussions here about what I believe. Aprock, that includes you. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:44, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Believe me, I have no interest in reading your writings. A.Prock (talk) 13:58, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam identified this account on his user page [60] with the link "my art and writing" which linked to an off-wiki account. Evidently Captain Occam was inviting other users to click on the link and read what he had written there. Mathsci (talk) 14:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

If the old blog post that Aprock linked to is what you’re referring to, that post is more than a year old. I don’t think you can make much of a case that the link on my userpage was an invitation to dig through all of the old blog posts from before I even was active at Wikipedia.

Are you going to address any of what’s been said about how not even this post supports your accusations of hololcaust denial? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the only person trying "out" Captain Occam is Captain Occam. This is not the first time, Captain Occam previously claimed that I was personally attacking him when I suggested that what he wrote on his blog, was what he actually meant. On his blog, Captain Occam states about this image he uploaded to commons and attached to the article race and genetics

This image can be considered a visual representation of my argument against the claim that there’s no biological basis for the concept of race, which is a popular belief among sociologists.

I pointed out that if Captain Occam stated on his blog that he believes this image proves that there is a biological basis for race, then the reason he placed it in the race and genetics article was to advocate his own POV. From what I could tell Captain Occam had not made any major edits to the article race and genetics, apart from inserting this image. I learned of this particular blog, from Captain Occam himself [61]. Wikipedia is a public place states "If you don't want them to read what you're saying, you shouldn't post it here". Captain Occam and Varoon subsequently tag teamed me out of article race and genetics

I think this whole issue is getting more disturbing each day. I am beginning to think that topic bans do not go far enough if indeed we are dealing with editors whose views deviate radically from the mainstream. As previously mentioned, these SPAs are too sophisticated to cross the line, there are always near it, flirting with controversial viewpoints, but never openly expressing support. These editors do not appear to be interested in improving the encyclopedia, only in advancing their own POVs. At some stage a thread will need to be opened on the main ANI page to get some fresh input. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:40, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

As far as I’m concerned, this thread has descended into nothing but harassment. At first it was about accusations of policy violations, and then a little later people were claiming that I and the rest of the “tag team” were harming the articles in subtle ways even though we aren’t actually violating any polices. Now, it’s entirely just about my motives and what I believe, based on what some of you are digging up that I’ve written outside Wikipedia, and some of which I’ve never linked to here and which is being misrepresented.

Who cares what my motives are for being involved here, or what my personal point of view is about whether race has a biological component, if this is having no detectable effect on my contributions? Whatever happened to assuming good faith, or focusing on the content rather than the contributor? Muntuwandi, your refusal to do this in the race and genetics article (involving the exact same claims that you’re making currently) is what caused you to get placed under a 0RR restriction on that article for a month. If these sorts of personal attacks are the only thing that you and Mathsci have left to offer here anymore, there’s no point in my continuing to reply.

I’d like an admin to please close this thread. As Snowded pointed out, there’s no consensus for topic bans, and the thread obviously isn’t going anywhere productive at this point. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

In his edit of 06:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC) Mathsci wrote "the SPAs, partiuclarly(sic) Captain Occam, are writing material which is now becoming overtly racialist". I have looked through the edits in the area and I cannot see any that seem to be "overtly racialist". Which edits is Mathsci referring to as being overly racialist? Does Mathsci include me among those who are making racialist edits? If he is, I deny it emphatically and take the greatest objection. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:20, 11 May 2010 (UTC).

He was specifically referring to: User:Captain Occam/significance A.Prock (talk) 23:25, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

As a quick observation, this is a wiki so a user who links to their off-wiki website or blog cannot really cry "outing" if someone else later follows that link, reads their views, and has a concern. However the issue here is we don't import external issues to the project. Whatever views editors may hold off-site and privately, whether they state them or not, they are expected to edit collaboratively and in a reasonably balanced manner while they are here. Personal interest or thoughts about the Holocaust and its reporting stay off-site; quotes from old blogs stay off-site. Articles are written by reasonable pople collaborating across all viewpoints; if they are unreasonable and won't collaborate this usually shows up in their edits and no external evidence is needed to prove it. Occam's private views won't much interest the project (much less a personal post some years back), the sole question is whether his edits are neutral and reasonable. Likewise if his edits are not reasonable and fair then those will speak for themselves. In some cases external evidence is useful, but usually it's not needed, the editing speaks for itself. I have not examined this in depth but this thread about an old blog post some years back seems unlikely to help. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:44, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Amen to the comment above of FT2. However, to reply on the one above that from A Proc, Mathsci refers not only to Captain Occam but also to unspecified others as making overtly racialist edits. This is a very serious charge to make on Wikipedia, and if proven against any editor would be likely to result in a permanent ban. Conversely, the unfounded making of such a charge is an equally serious matter. Again, where are these overtly racialist edits? Xxanthippe (talk) 00:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC).

I pointed you to the content. If you're interested in reading more, then I suggest going to the talk pages of the relevant articles. A.Prock (talk) 00:28, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Aprock: No you did not. Provide a diff or we have no way of evaluating the accusation. David.Kane (talk) 00:33, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Xxanthippe asked for a link to what Mathsci was referring to. I provided one. If you want to question Mathsci further about his accusation, then I suggest you ask him. A.Prock (talk) 00:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I cannot see any sign of overt racialism at the link given by A.Prock to a half-finished article in Captain Occam's sandbox. Although I am grateful for the help of A.Prock it is Mathsci who I am asking to substantiate his charges. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:20, 12 May 2010 (UTC).

<- The problems with these proposed edits have been pointed out on the talk page of race and intelligence by Maunus, Slrubenstein and Aprock. I mentioned them separately here.[62] Note that this is a wikilink to something already on this page. It is clearly WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. The edits concerned a topic which is not mentioned at all in the main source cited: effectively this was a personal point of view being proved by combining two unrelated sources. I'm not absolutely sure what the correct words are to describe an edit like that, but we don't have to be so careful in the adjectives applied to edits, do we? The manner in which Race and intelligence is being edited - gather the data and let the reader decide for themselves - is not normal and this particular segment, now in user space but discussed at length on the talk page [63], shows exactly what kind of problems can arise. Edits do have to properly sourced: here is an unsourced edit containing original research [64] and here are some sourced edits.[65] Mathsci (talk) 02:58, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

We are not talking about problems of interpretation here. We are talking about one of the most odious charges than can be made against a Wikipedia editor: that they "are writing material which is now becoming overtly racialist", to quote the exact words of Mathsci. These charges have been made against a number of editors, possibly including myself. I have looked at the article pages and talk pages of the relevant articles and the links that I have been directed to. I can find no "overtly racialist" material and Mathsci has not been able to produce any. As he has failed to substantiate his obnoxious allegations he should withdraw them and apologise to the editors who have been their targets. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:17, 12 May 2010 (UTC).

I used the word "racialist" not "racist" to describe the edits, so I haven't a clue what you're talking about. (Please look up that word to see what it means.) The point of view that intelligence is somehow biologically linked to race is probably "racialist", since it assumes that race is a biologically determined characteristic: usually academics (eg Christopher Jencks) describe race as a social construct. Mathsci (talk) 05:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

The word racialism has had a variety of meanings, as described in its WP article. Given your assurance that you were using the least offensive meaning of the word I withdraw my complaint. However, your assertion that Captain Occam has held views that extend to forms of holocaust denial remains unacceptable. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC).

You certainly are persistent, aren't you? The WP article starts with Racialism is the basic epistemological position that not only do races exist, but also that there are significant differences between them. This is to be contrasted with racism, which also assumes that some races are superior to others; or, in an altered meaning, refers to discrimination based on the concept of race. At present you are continuing to discuss a sentence redacted three days ago. Why not listen to Buxtehude's chorale prelude In dulci jubilo BuxWV 197 for organ?[66] It's very calming. Mathsci (talk) 04:10, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Should what happens off-wiki stay off-wiki? Ideally yes, but I don't think it is that simple. Some Arbcom cases have had a lot to do with off-wiki activities including youtube videos. If a link to an external site is posted on wikipedia, then that site in some way becomes an extension of wikipedia. Since wiki is a popular site, a webpage can increase its hit count if a link is placed on wikipedia. Given our human nature, if someone makes statements off-wiki, we cannot be expected to completely disregard or pretend that those statements were not made, especially if a user's edits are completely consistent with their off-wiki statements. If you overhear someone saying they are going to rob a bank, next you see them buying a gun and a mask, you could mind your own business, after all they might just be going to a fancy dress party, or you could alert the cops, which is probably how most tips are received. According to the duck test and WP:SPADE, "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck" Wapondaponda (talk) 03:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

ARBCOM

OK lets test the water - can we have a quick poll of those who think this (for whatever reason) needs to simply stop and go to Arbcom to look at the behaviour of all the active editors. One liners please --Snowded ^TALK 05:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree

• --Snowded ^TALK 05:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
• This an ongoing issue which should be resolved. --mikemikev (talk) 10:34, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
• Yes. ANI, despite best of apparent intentions, is only succeeding in perpetuating the insanity. At least worth a shot. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 00:35, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
• Though we prefer to do something short of ArbCom, this thread is perpetuating into a separate battleground without serving a useful purpose. If problems still exist or continue, this needs to move forward, not back here. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
• Just going round and round. --AJRG (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Disagree

• The arguments over this issue have already taken up way more time and space than they deserve. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:49, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments

The Gibraltar Arbcom case has just finished. Here is a summary of its conclusions. Stephen B Streater (talk) 05:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

• Each year there are problems with race-related articles. Each year there is some kind of POV-pushing on the article, be it by Fourdee, Jeeny, MoritzB, KarenAER, Jagz, etc. Currently no administrator has yet hinted that an ArbCom case should start. RegentsPark has mentioned that the problem is with single purpose users and WP:CPUSH.Although I only became aware of this very recently, there seems to be a lot of parallel discussion of race and intelligence on the web, on various blogs. It's impossible to say this whether has contributed to the increase in the number of SPAs editing these articles. In a way that is completely irrelevant on wikipedia, although Captain Occam has made a statement here.[67] Underlying all of this is a content dispute (how much WP:UNDUE material can be put on wikipedia to push a point of view), I can't quite see how ArbCom could help with that. The Gibraltar case is not really comparable as it was a nationalistic dispute. An ArbCom case that might be more comparable would be Fringe Science. Although he is very well meaning, I would discourage Snowded from starting votes on whether there should be an ArbCom case. The people that vote on whether there should be a case are after all the members of ArbCom; and I've never seen this kind of poll on a subpage of a noticeboard before. Mathsci (talk) 06:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
  • POV pushing is as much a conduct issue as it is a content issue, as is the battleground behaviour that FT2 alludes to. This dispute has been running on ANI for months; if it's been resolved, there should be no objection to closing all the related threads as such and moving on so that everyone involved can use their on-wiki time more productively. If this is still unresolved though, continuing this thread in the same fashion would be unproductive, and the chances of resolution are small (and would take an unreasonably long time). If this is deemed unresolved by the parties involved, I can clearly see why we need to consider other means of resolving this. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Clearly, this is the Achilles heel of wikipedia. Single purpose editors who stay within the boundaries and are persistent both in terms of time as well as numbers have the upper hand. I see this here and I'm seeing this in other areas as well. Hunting down obscure text references to judge their accuracy and to see if they are properly contextualized (or accurately quoted for that matter) is not something that most editors can do since that single purpose does not rule our lives to the extent that it does for the SPAs. Well meaning wikipedians who are unable to see the damage that these SPAs are doing to the neutrality of the encyclopedia (all they see is well referenced articles and frustrated editors who are unable to properly explicate their concerns in terms of policy violations), end up shooting the messengers. The end is quite easy to see. The messengers will move on (this is not our life after all). The SPAs will stay and continue to tilt articles in the direction of their POVs (this is their life after all). --RegentsPark (talk) 10:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Based on this comment, even though we all prefer to do something short of ArbCom, I'm seeing more reason to push this to ArbCom than to continue infinitely dragging this thread without resolution. The end that you see is one that I see too; they will continue to come back unless a scheme is in place. However, I don't see that scheme happening in the near future unless ArbCom step in. These are the two questions I'm left with; if a scheme could happen through ANI in this particular dispute, why isn't this remotely resolved, and how long is it going to take to be resolved through this ANI? If there's no more certainly in answering these questions than there was a few weeks ago, I think the course of action that needs to be taken seems clear. If there is certainty, and it isn't going to take unreasonably long, then great, let's resolve it and close this up. Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:33, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, I think this is more of a community thing than an arbcom thing. However, I agree that it is unlikely that this particular thread is going to resolve the issue so if that's the only alternative at hand, then so be it. --RegentsPark (talk) 20:38, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest waiting another two or three weeks before anyone contemplates requesting an ArbCom case. This ANI thread started because of a new article on which the tag team descended to assert their POV with only one other editor to counter them. With the participation of new editors, largely as a result of this thread, a POV fork has been deleted and the article is now in a fairly stable state. That has never been the case on Race and intelligence, except when it was locked by Moonriddengirl (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA). It's worth watching that article for a little while to see how things progress. The length of this thread can hardly be used as a justification for an ArbCom case. There is an empty in-tray for ArbCom requests - again that is even less justification. As RegentsParks rightly says, this is a community thing, it should be retuned to later. It could indeed be that the team editing reported here has abated as a result of this discussion: that can only be determined by waiting and watching for two or three weeks. There are no deadlines on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 03:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Wait one cotton picking second. My only concern was the BLP violating material on Jensen, specifically the line from A History of Scientific Racism, where Jensen is misrepresented as "wanting to reduce the numbers of racial minorities", which has now been changed. Can you at least admit that I was right all along and you have dragged my name through the mud here for nothing? mikemikev (talk) 18:27, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

As I feared Ncmvocalist is itching for another ArbCom case [68]; but probably his impatience, possibly even his analyis, is something that might be best ignored since it is not reflected in the editing of articles. Sigh... Mathsci (talk) 08:02, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

You are misrepresenting what NCMvocalist says in that diff - he says that the way things are going ArbCom looks like the final destination of this circus. There is something you and other editors can do to avoid this but most are busy escalating the conflict instead. If you want to avoid ArbCom colaborate, build consensus and stop contributing to making race related articles a battleground. (this means: play nice, go for the ball, don't sling mud). Otherwise there is no other option as nobody is going to swoop out of the sky and block or topic ban half of the involved editors. ·Maunus·ƛ· 09:16, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on this. After reading the mediation link provided by Captain Occam above, it is clearer than ever that this dispute needs a community resolution. One in which the community decides that SPAs be topic banned for a while from the topics of their interest for the good of the encyclopedia. My suggestion is that this thread be archived as unresolved and the possibility of bringing it back to ANI left open. Whoever brings it back, should start with a summary of opinions from this thread which, the general feeling of irresolution notwithstanding, are in favor of topic banning the SPAs and are generally supportive of Mathsci's stance. I understand your frustration with length and duration of this but, where you and Ncmvocalist see a battleground, I only see a blitzkrieg. One in which wikipedia is the side that is losing. --RegentsPark (talk) 11:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

RegentsPark, hang on...so because Mathsci thinks it should be handled by the community and you agree with him, are you casting a blind eye towards the problem with his conduct (misrepresenting others comments) here? What Mathsci said was neither innocuous nor an isolated incident; it was no different to someone saying "As I feared, Mathsci is itching to keep the drama levels high on this noticeboard by keeping it unresolved. But probably his frustration, possibly even his analyis, is something that might be best ignored since it is reflected in fear of further sanctions by the ArbCom that admonished him. Sigh...." That he is a very fine (but frustrated) content editor is one thing, and I've made allowances in recognition of this and the cause he is advancing. That said, you're leading me to think I've been far too quiet about this problem as a clear pattern is emerging with his conduct. We are all volunteers, and in good faith, we trying to bring about resolution through the most effective means, but no amount of frustration or disagreement with the situation justifies the sorts of commentary he keeps engaging in. I'm appalled that your comment omitted any mention of how unacceptable this was, or this was; that sort of commentary might've happened between parties, but these comments were made as a response to disagreement with uninvolved (and experienced/established) editors. As an admin, you should've intervened too - instead, you're reaffirming why uninvolved editors are being persuaded that ArbCom is the only step that will move this matter forward on all fronts. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

RegentsPark said it should be left with the community, not me. I wonder, Ncmvocalist, whether you might stop stirring the pot for a little while? You're giving diffs for edits that were reverted immediately and for that matter explained by email.[69] Mathsci (talk) 15:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The second edit was just an example of the pattern of behavior you are engaging in - what you did afterwards in that particular example was more of a mitigating excuse than a justification; in this situation though, you haven't even done that. I can post more examples to clarify, but others should be able to see the actual problem (and who really keeps stirring the pot) from those 2 edits. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:18, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, what is important is a peaceful editing environment which is not confrontational. In editing History of the race and intelligence controversy, ignoring the background noise, I do listen to constructive suggestions, such as those of Varoon Arya concerning political aspects (the Sociobiology Study Group). I have just added that content: for me at least, it has been the hardest content to write about neutrally and accurately without BLP violations. I wrote a first approximation of this content over a week ago on the talk page, but nobody seemed particularly interested then. The main problem in the interim was to locate a suitably short source, which I found by chance and perseverance. Being able to edit like this is what I'm used to. Articles should be neutral and anodyne, particularly if they treat controversial topics (Dbachmann cleverly solved a similar problem when European people was rewritten as Ethnic groups of Europe). As RegentsPark writes, the main goal is to produce well written and well sourced neutral articles. I have done my best. Finding the FBI poster for Students for a Democratic Society was also somewhat serendipitous, considering the copyright rules on wikipedia. :) Mathsci (talk) 12:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci I don't disagree with that, you are doing excellent work, probably the best anyone is doing in this field. But you do also contribute to escalating disputes by making accusations and starting ANIthreads against the editors you should collaborate peacefully with everytime they make a false move. Editors like Slr, Aprock and myself are in this as well and I am sure that we are capable of arguing towards neutrality without having to call for topic bans or make ANI threads every time there is a disagreement over behaviour or content. We can work with them, all we need to do is try to tone down the tension levels and take a large dose of tea and good faith.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks and I agree on restoring usual editing conditions. One against many was a problem in this case, which put me in an impossible situation as an editor and left very few options. As far as I remember this is the only thread I've started on ANI recently. My content editing and motives have been questioned repeatedly with very few looking at what was actually being produced (with quite a lot of hard work). My feeling is that almost everybody has learnt a lesson from the discussions here (and I include myself) and things have calmed down after all the AfD hullaballoo. Perhaps a friendly admin like MastCell could archive this whole page. Mathsci (talk) 13:07, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

In the meantime, you've failed to strike or refactor your comment where you were attacking me and misrepresenting my position; please do so. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:05, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you please stop this, Ncmvocalist? It's not an attack. I am giving my view of how I see your position. Now go and have a cup of tea. Thanks, Mathsci (talk)

You misrepresented my comment and position, and it was so patently obvious that another administrator pulled you up on it before I saw the baseless comment myself. Unless you are inviting me to make your comment appear truthful, I suggest you consider this as your final warning to change your approach of interacting with users you disagree with. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Ncmvocalist, your diffs don't match up unfortunately. You seem to be spending an inordinate amount of your time on wikipedia making baseless personal attacks on a valued editor in good standing. You appear to be set on destroying my reputation as an editor. So far no administrator has agreed with you. Why not try adding some content to wikipedia for a change? You haven't done so for at least a week. Just a thought. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 21:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, please stop misrepresenting the situation everytime you are criticised for appalling conduct and everytime you disagree. You've already been warned: "dont misrepresent ncmvocalists statements, and realise that unless you and other editors start working constructively there is no other destination than arbcom" by Maunus, an administrator. But you already knew this fact that administrators also agree with me, yet you are hell bent on pretending otherwise. When you are not editing content, this form of interacting with others is a remarkable problem, and if your reputation is indeed being destroyed, you are responsible for it. I've refrained from responding to your inflammatory commentary in the way it deserves, purely out of sympathy for the SPAs and tendentious editing you are encountering, but now you've made it clear that this approach of yours has no correlation with SPA CPUSH; those are mere excuses. Everyone is aware of where this will go if you or any other editor continues to engage in misconduct. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Ncmvocalist, it takes two to tango - its the same for making an article or an ANI thread into a battlefield. Demanding apologies isn't generally a step that de-escalates a conflict. How about a cuppa tea everyone?·Maunus·ƛ· 07:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I've never asked or demanded for an apology; if anything, I'm demanding that the pattern of misrepresentations, importing unrelated issues/conflicts, etc. stops now, especially when it is directed at editors who are not involved in the content dispute. He chose not to refactor or strike his comments which is one thing, but it's another to repeatedly continue along that path - no amount of tea is going to de-escalate anything in such circumstances. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:38, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

It's certainly clear that the usual DR process, which has occurred over a period of a year, aren't moving any closer to resolving the dispute. If ArbCom can resolve it, then I am all for moving in that direction. A.Prock (talk) 21:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Didn’t you approve of the outcome of mediation? When Ludwigs2 posted his proposed outline for the article towards the end of the mediation case, you were one of the people who expressed approval of it; the comments about this (including yours) are here. You hadn’t been able to agree with the rest of us about most aspects of the article before the mediation, so the mediation definitely enabled us to reach a level of consensus that hadn’t been possible before it, and it’s also made the article a lot more stable. Given all of what the mediation accomplished, and your approval of its outcome, I would like to know by what standard you think it didn’t bring us any closer to resolving the disputes over this article. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:46, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

• It is preferable if this dispute were resolved without having to go to ARBCOM. We are not even sure whether Arbcom would take it on. But some firm resolution of this dispute is required because it has taken up too much time and effort. If nothing other than Arbcom can bring closure, then Arbcom it will be. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC

Ncmvocalist, I see from your comment linked above that you think this thread is turning into a separate battleground with no useful purpose. I agree with this comment, but I also need to ask: in your opinion, is there anyone other than Mathsci who’s battling here? Originally he was battling against the six users who were the subject of his original complaint in this thread, but most of them have now dropped out of this thread, and at the advice of an admin I’m trying to become less involved in it also. So at this point, Mathsci is instead battling against the users who showed up in this thread to comment on the discussion here: you, Xxanthippe, and (to the extent that he’s commented) FT2. These users have no involvement in any of the articles in question; Mathsci’s battleground attitude against these users is just over the fact that they’re criticizing him.

Is it appropriate to start an arbcom case over the trouble that’s being stirred up by the belligerent attitude a single user? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

You will find there are plenty of uninvolved editors like myself who value Mathsci's work and who have a good understanding of the SPA CPUSH problem that has been well explained above. Each time a complaint about Mathsci has been brought to ANI, after an initial flurry of tut-tutting, people realized what was at the core and switched from talking about Mathsci to talking about the SPA CPUSH problem. Johnuniq (talk) 23:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

RfC/U would be more appropriate. mikemikev (talk) 05:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Certainly for Mikemikev and Captain Occam that might be a good thing. Then they would find out why thir combined single purpose editing and WP:CPUSH are problematic.

Note that Captain Occam has now written an essay on the significance of the IQ gap: Talk:Race and intelligence#Significance and policy relevance (revised). Not everybody appears to like the essay, but apparently content of exactly this kind was agreed during mediation. Two of the sources that are cited directly are by Nathaniel Weyl. Weyl was an economist funded by the Pioneer Fund who wrote in support of the segregation of blacks in the 1960s. His books include "The Jew in American Politics" and "The Negro in American civilization". In this case one of the citations is from the journal Mankind Quarterly, which many wikipedians, even those with access to university databases, will not be able to read. The wikipedia article on Mankind Quarterly records that it was described in the New York Review of Books as "a notorious journal of 'racial history' founded, and funded, by men who believe in the genetic superiority of the white race". The two citations and the content about Weyl in the essay seem to come from an article by Richard Lynn here, also from Mankind Quarterly.

And yet I still have a nagging doubt that most of this material might fail WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NPOV and the concatenation of sentences from individual articles might be WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Also more than half the material seems to be based on the assumption that the "racial IQ gap" is genetic in origin. Might that not be WP:UNDUE?

Aprock, Ramdrake, Slrubenstein and Maunus have pointed out problems in the essay (violations of wikipedia policies, misrepresentation of sources and too much space given to a non-mainstream view). Mikemikev thinks that Captain Occam has done a good job.

By contrast History of the race and intelligence controversy has been written by strictly adhering to wikipedia core policies. It doesn't have sentences or paragraphs that contradict each other. Mathsci (talk) 05:36, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Could Mathsci give his response to this. mikemikev (talk) 05:46, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I Don't really see how the question "can you at least admit that I have been right all along" can expect an answer, seems like a rhetorical question. It doesn't advance the debate anyway.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Maunus: Please re-read the original complaint at the top of this page. mikemikev (talk) 07:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

And? You can't seriously expect that an editor with whom you have been in a prolonged editing dispute all of a sudden decides to admit that you were right all along? Part of de-escalating a dispute entails being reasonable in ones expectations of others. Most people find it very hard to apologize, apologies are a rarity and we cannot reasonably expect one for every offense committed against us. But nobody is going to simply bend over and take a whooping. Often times the best we can expect from another editor is that they simply leave the issue alone, and if they do we are often best served by doing the same.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, I’ve told you once already: if you want to suggest changes to this section, you need to participate in the discussion on the talk page for this article. You’ll notice that I’ve listened to all of the critiques I received there from Maunus and Slrubenstein, and modified my proposal in order to follow their suggestions. I’ll also be willing to do the same thing in response to you, Aprock or Ramdrake, if any of you can suggest specific changes the same way that Maunus and Slrubenstein have. But if you want this, you’ll need to be specific about what things you think need to be changed, and it also needs to be on the article talk page—AN/I is not the appropriate place to be discussing proposed revisions to an article. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The essay Captain Occam has written is unbalanced original research and gives undue weight to the views of a small group of researchers like Rushton, Lynn and Gottfredson, who follow directly in the tradition of Henry E. Garrett. Even in modified form, it would be unsuitable for wikipedia. I have made a conscious decision not to edit Race and intelligence or its talk page, because I don't think it would be time well spent and because now the editing environment has become so unstable (eg interactions between Captain Occam and Aprock). In my four or so years watching the article it was also the case that I hardly edited apart from adding sources. This was interrupted only in the last stages of mediation for one week or more last month when I helped to edit the lede and history section of a draft copy in mainspace. Currently the HR&IC article is almost 51,000 bytes long; I'm not sure sure why Mikemikev wants to quibble about small changes in how a secondary source is summarised, since that happens all the time in ordinary wikipedia articles. They evolve. Mathsci (talk) 09:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

So you're refusing to admit that you made a false complaint about me here at ANI? mikemikev (talk) 10:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

If you have a complaint, please pursue appropriate action somewhere. This page is to discuss the inappropriate POV CPUSH SPA editing, and whether or not Mathsci made an inappropriate remark is not relevant to that issue made a remark that you consider to be inappropriate is not relevant to that issue – an issue which concerns the encyclopedic integrity of the race and intelligence articles. Johnuniq (talk) 10:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, changing "eugenic intervention was needed to reduce their numbers" to "eugenic intervention was needed to reduce the birthrate" doesn't seem like a very big deal to me, as paraphrases go. Wasn't Maunus providing free cup cakes here as well? Mathsci (talk) 11:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I see that my wording might suggest I am claiming the remark was inappropriate. Sorry, that was not my intention; what I meant to say is that this is not the place to examine whether or not a remark was appropriate. I have edited my comment above. Johnuniq (talk) 02:27, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, the point as you know, was not how the intervention was to be carried out, but who the intervention should be targeted at: people with low IQ's, as we now have, not racial minorities, as you wrote. mikemikev (talk) 08:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

This just looks like trolling. Please stop wasting my time, Mikemikev. Mathsci (talk) 19:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah, time for the mindless insults. I think we're done here. mikemikev (talk) 06:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

You're not even talking about the current article, now 64,000 bytes long. It must have been this edit you made [70] 9 days ago, where you evidently didn't check the secondary or primary sources. If you had done so, you could have simply substituted "blacks" for "racial minorities", again not a big deal. Instead you simply deleted the sentence (created by me and Slimvirgin). It did match both sources, contrary to your edit summary, and now appears in a mildly modified form. Mathsci (talk) 11:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, obviously I checked the primary source, that's why I removed it. Substituting "blacks" would have still been a BLP violation, as you know. Why do you knowingly talk so much crap? I think RfC/U is needed here.mikemikev (talk) 12:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that probably an RFC/U is a good idea. Even with bucket loads of tea and good faith it is beginnign to become hard for me to see your contributions in this area (mike) as anything other than trolling and disruption.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.