Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Obama articles/Evidence

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Evidence presented by Stevertigo

POV editing, BLP+speedy+subjective characterization = -NPOV, -CIVIL, -BOLD, +NINJA, +ATA

There are some assumptions and misconceptions about policy, process, and person, and those assumptive misconceptions need to be corrected, point by point.

• Barack_Obama/Criticism_of_Barack_Obama - Stevertigo started a working draft subpage of a "criticism of" article, to develop an NPOV article. Was nominiated for AFD (below) which was changed by User:Dank55 to speedy and deleted, closing AFD discussion.
  • Template:Barack_Obama/Criticism_of_Barack_Obama - Stevertigo created this template for transclusion of above draft on Talk:Barack Obama, for community visibility, access, and development.
• WP:AFD/Barack_Obama/Criticism_of_Barack_Obama - AFD discussion interrupted by spe
• WP:DRVL#Barack_Obama.2FCriticism_of_Barack_Obama - a review of the change of an AFD in discussion to "speedy", nullifying the AFD discussion.
• WP:ANI#Stevertigo/Obama topic ban - an attempted topic ban, filed by Sceptre, which failed to find support
• WP:ANI#Talk:Barack Obama/FAQ - Stevertigo, reporting on disputes at the Talk:Barack Obama/FAQ (history) page. Example diff.
• WP:ANI#User:Tarc and User:Grsz11 on Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 15 - Stevertigo reports on the deletion of a comment, first by Tarc (diff), and repeated by others.
• WP:ANI#Moving WP:AN/I section #Talk:Barack Obama/FAQ by User:Grsz11 - Stevertigo files this report on Grsz11's impoper move of the WP:ANI##Talk:Barack Obama/FAQ thread from ANI bottom to near ANI top, including it with WP:ANI#Talk:Barack Obama/FAQ - a much older, unsuccessful, and nearly-closed thread.
  • Note: This thread too was for some reason deleted - can't yet find the diff/who did it was deleted by MiszaBot II. history).
    • This ANI thread is archived here. Adding archive link. Carcharoth (talk) 01:19, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
      • The above link does not point to the right thread. The correct link is here. -Stevertigo 03:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Incidents

Discussion comment deletions and possible wikistalking by Grsz, Sceptre, Wikidemon, and Tarc. Personal attacks characterizing my edits as "POV" "disruptive" and "trolling" are common. Grsz and Sceptre have used more uncivil language.

• WP:ATA - Sceptre, NPA "trolling"
• WP:ATA - characterized as "disruptive"
• WT:IAR - Sceptre, "DNFTT"
• WT:IAR Wikidemon - "close trolling discussion"
  • Note: The WT:IAR deletions removed other user comments. This is not the only case where Wikidemon claims powers to unilaterally "close" a thread.
• UT:Stevertigo - Grsz - "no. this is my comment and you have no right to change it. if you dont want it there, remove it all together but stop fucking with my comments"
  • Note: Grsz has found it perfectly acceptible to "f*** with [Stevertigo's] comments", but decries the renaming of an attack comment on the attacked user's own talk page.
• UT:Stevertigo - Wikidemon restores his unnecessary comment on Stevertigo's talk page.
• Obama-Ayers - Sceptre reverts major edits.
• Obama-Ayers - Stevertigo "moved Bill Ayers presidential election controversy to [[[Obama-Ayers association controversy]]: Ayers had no "presidential election" controversy, as he is was not running for such office. Note "Presidential," would be capitalized as such, but was not...[cutoff]...because such would draw attention to the problem with the (current) name"
• Obama/FAQ - Bobblehead reverted an edit that explained both sides of the site-wide and article debate surrounding the use of "criticism of" sections/articles.
• WP:ANI - Sceptre, archives the discussion early. This after Grsz had already moved the section from a new position to an old position, as part of the older "Stevertigo topic ban" thread (which was failing).

Assertions

1. People violated WP:NPOV, WP:CIVIL, WP:CONS, and WP:AGF in enforcing a particular interpretation of WP:NPOV and WP:BLP., and employed processes (WP:PROC) to that effect. Philosophical, procedural, and process conflicts between these policies and processes need to be addressed and if possible rectified.
2. Violations of NPOV require correction, as determined by comments indicating a flawed interpretation or application of this policy.
3. Violations of CIVIL require reprimand, determined by diffs indicating WP:NINJA (ie. CIVIL, CONS, AGF) reverts and personal attacks (WP:NPA).
4. A conceptual conflict exists regarding the meaning of "consensus" as either A) a particular article/topic-local concept, wherin people claim to "enforce a consensus" ie a singular concept, (in this case "no criticism of.."), or B) a global Wikipedia concept, based on a philosophical ideal of community and collaboration; those of this view may claim that such above "enforcement" can and often does "nullify discussion andor consensus", and contradicts CONS, CIVIL, AGF).
5. References to non-existent policy, guidelines, or processes need to be corrected, and the underlying issues treated. Several parties referenced a "no criticism sections" essay (WP:NOCRIT), as policy, and claimed that BLP was controlling in all subarticles.
6. A number of users have cited problems with the Talk:Obama page. A number of these issues could be remedied by usage of an organized scheme. I outlined an overview at WP:OBT, and such schemes should be a requirement on heavy-traffic/high-controversy/high-trolling talk pages. IOW, the default wiki talk page format is obtuse in such situations, and we must employ more intelligent and dynamic methods for organizing talk; presorting, topical segregation, subpages+transclusion, etc. We have ample capability to use existing tools to make discussions more organized and therefor powerful.
7. The prohibitions at Wikipedia:Draft (~WP:SUB) are based on technical reasons, not NPOV, BLP, or FORK, as was claimed. It can be clarified that such draft subpages belong underneath the talk page, and their transclusion to the talk page is simple and not violating. Intervening parties should move them there rather than deleting them.

-Stevertigo 03:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Dank55

I don't have anything to add to my initial statement at this time. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 01:21, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Wikidemon

Stability requires article patrol

The article has been stable

The Barack Obama featured article was stable from 12/08 to 2/09 averaging several edits per day and no major changes. Vandalism and other problems decreased after the US Presidential election.

Article probation is enforced

Under article probation there have been approximately 108 notices given and at least 87 accounts blocked or banned for disruption, vandalism, trolling, sockpuppeting, etc. (see Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation#Log of sanctions)

March 9, 2009: WND article causes a melt-down

Editing deteriorated abruptly on the article and talk after a World Net Daily correspondent published an expose purporting censorship, ganging-up, and a pro-Obama bias, all based on a supposedly undercover investigation later found to be of dubious credibility,[1][2]. Edit rates jumped instantly from 8[3] to 90[4] per day, and talk activity from 30[5] to 500,[6].

Within two days there were many multiple threads accusing Wikipedia of bias, censorship, bullying, shame, unfairness, whitewashing, cabal tactics, lack of negative information, and editors acting in bad faith. There were proposals to add criticism links[7][8] and sections,[9] disparagement, and fringe material about Obama on the subject of terrorism,[10] race,[11] and citizenship conspiracy theories.[12][13][14][15] The page describes an edit war over attempts to add a dispute tag to the article,[16][17] and over linking to Bill Ayers and other negative incidents, plus a WP:FAR review nomination shut down as a process fork.[18] There were racist[19] and trolling[20] comments, attempts of vandalism,[21] soapbox-style venting,[22][23] and general tendentiousness,[24].

Page patrol helped

The above is a tiny sample of the problem - there were many dozens of vexatious edits in two days on several Obama-related pages.

The page was clean and tidy before the WND mess:[25] 7 orderly threads, 26,607 bytes (17,386 bytes readable text), everything on topic, no incivility.

Here is at 21:20, 10 March 2009, two days after the WND story - remember that date![26] 31 threads, 319,883 bytes (274,632 readable), and more heated but still orderly.

And here is a reconstruction of what the talk page would have looked like without any article closures, reversions, or consolidations. Deleted material in yellow, collapsed discussions Template:Highlightgreen. 75 threads 381,447, bytes (320,849 readable) and lots of mess. It's bruising, but anyone wanting to know what was going on should read it closely.

The difference reflects the steady effort by many regular editors who came together as they had during the election and other heavy times to revert trolling and vandalism,[27] collapse[28][29] or move[30] discussions unlikely to be productive, give article probation notices, consolidate duplicate discussions,[31] resist attempts to upset consensus,[32] and simply revert bad edits.[33]

Things subsided to 15 main space edits[34] and 60 talk page edits[35] per day as of 20 March 2009.

As of now the article is back to normal.

Stevertigo disrupted the encyclopedia

March 10: Criticism section proposal

Remember the date, 21:20, 10 March 2009? That is when, after no significant Obama participation for two years, Stevertigo jumped into the fray with a proposal to add a criticism/controversy section to the now-protected page.[[36]] In making his case he accused longtime editors (he called them "Obamaites") of whitewashing and "violating the spirit of Wikipedia" by "deleting, censoring, erasing...any controversial concepts", and being of "little substance".[37] The provocative post immediately incited a "me too" editor to complain of "an active corps of editors who are deft with POV edits that cast the president in a positive light"[38] then spun into a long discussion that did not find consensus for a criticism section(See here).

March 13: JUSTDONTLIKEIT

Days later Stevertigo announced that a criticism article was "inevitable"[39] even though people "WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT" - a new essay he created as a WP:FORK of WP:IDONTLIKEIT to complain that Obama page editors operated out of "bias, personal opinion, political motiviation, or otherwise irrational or unwiki concepts" and had "an unwillingness to be reasonable, and find consensus with other people".[40] The essay was nominated for deletion.[41] but was rescued by other editors.[42]

March 13: "Working version"

Soon, Stevertigo added a "working version" of a new "Criticism of Barack Obama" article into the Obama talk page,[43] and encouraged people to work on it there. An editor summarily closed the section.[44] Stevertigo reverted two days later, claiming the closure was "biased".[45] He then created a template "Criticism of Barack Obama" to hold the criticism, which he moved and redirected to a new Barack Obama sub-article,[46] then transcluded the template onto the talk page.[47]. I asked why he was using the talk page as a sandbox, and changed the transclusion to a simple reference to avoid messing up the talk page.[48] Stevertigo reverted, took umbrage to my calling his outline article a "skeleton", used his new essay to accuse me of editing out of bias, complained about "whitewashing", and announced that he was using the talk page as a sandbox because he "wants" it there.[49]

With that, I knew we had a problem to deal with under article probation - the same old thing as a few hundred in the past several months: snippy, abusive, insistent, ready to edit war against perceived bias / cabal, thinks other editors are out to get them. I changed the transclusion back to a link reference [50] gave him a WP:3RR / WP:CIVIL warning, and told him I would nominate the sub-page for speedy deletion unless he explained why a talk page and article sub page were the right place to create a sandbox article.[51]

Stevertigo did not respond so I nominated it for deletion[52] (I used WP:AfD rather than speedy because it had been speedied five times already; perhaps a thoughtful discussion might settle the issue). Hours later an admin speedied as an "attack page"[53] (debate here). When a non-admin attempted to close the AfD to note the speedy resolution[54] Stevertigo reverted,[55] in the process accusing the administrator of acting "on his own" and the closing editor of POV, partisanship, and censorship. An admin subsequently re-closed the AfD.[56]

March 15:DRV

A couple hours after deletion Ism schism (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) filed a WP:DRV for the criticism sub-page [57] (discussion here). During the discussion Stevertigo got a revert war with several other editors over "Uncle Stevertigo's argument matrix", an oddly formatted section Stevertigo was attempting to insert to denigrate the arguments of other editors.[58][59][60] I !voted that the deletion was proper as a technical matter because the page was in the wrong place, but that we should not prevent people from creating a neutral one in their sandbox or prejudge the suitability of their efforts.[61] I suggested that to Stevertigo in the first place, and that is the outcome of the DRV.

March 15-17: Notices

Stevertigo received a number of notices from March 15-17, and was the subject of two March 16 AN/I reports (discussed in below sections). If Stevertigo was previously unaware of Wikipedia's rules, or that his behavior was under scrutiny, he was now on notice. My 17:03, 15 March 2009 warnings (see above) alerted Stevertigo to article probation and Civil. Sceptre left a formal Obama article probation notice on Stevertigo's talk page at 18:46 15 March 2009,[62]. Several other editors also left warnings, and attempted to engage him in conversation, on March 17. Particularly telling are these attempted to counsel calm.[63][64][65]. Stevertigo reacted petulantly, edit warring on his own talk page,[66][67] and deleting my comment to give me a "taste of my own medicine".[68]

March 16:Edit warring the Obama FAQ

Even after others' warned him of their objection, and despite active AN/I reports, Stevertigo continued his campaign against perceived Wikipedia censorship. His next step was to alter Obama talk paage FAQ#6, which explained why the article did not have a criticism section. The FAQs arose to deal with perennial proposals and edit warring, as a way of indicating long-term stable consensus on a number of issues, e.g. how to spell Obama's name, whether he is Muslim, calling him Black versus biracial, the article length, his birthplace, etc. One key issue, spelled out over several sections, is that the editors had decided to follow WP:CRIT and WP:CSECTION by integrating any relevant information of due weight and proper sourcing into the article rather than highlighting disparagement, criticisms, and controversy, in a dedicated section. The comment about criticism sections was inserted at the very creation of the FAQ on 26 March 2008[69] and has stood with only incremental change since. It is widely accepted and useful in explaining things to newly-arrived editors.

Stevertigo gamed FAQ#6 in two ways to support his proposed criticism article, then under DRV. First, he rewrote it so that instead of explaining that the community had decided against a criticism section, it now read that a criticism section was "under consideration".[70] Second, he made it apply to separate criticism articles like his,[[71]] not just the Obama page.

After another editor reverted to the consensus version,[72] Stevertigo revert warred,[73] claiming POV issues. Another editor reverted again,[74] then JustGettingItRight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) jumped in on Stevertigo's side of the revert war,[75][76][77][78] then Stevertigo rejoined the edit war,[79][80][81] eventually resorting to tit-for-tat insults to call Scepter a "crazy POV teenage lunatic wikistalker".[82] The revert war Stevertigo initiated continued[83][84][85] until the FAQ page was edit protected.[86]

March 16-17:Two AN/I reports

At 03:19 16 March 2009 Scepter proposed a topic ban for Stevertigo on WP:AN/I[87] The immediate issue was edit warring on the DRV page. I considered a ban premature, and thought Stevertigo should be given warnings, counseling, discussion, and maybe a cup of tea... so long as he was responsive and was willing to engage rather than simply disrupt. At 00:10 17 March 2009 Stevertigo filed his own report of edit warring on the Obama FAQ,[88] although he did not stop edit warring while the AN/I report was pending. Stevertigo edit warred on AN/I over attempts to consolidate the two discussions. With that I changed my mind and declared that a ban was appropriate. Edit warring despite AN/I, on AN/I, can only be taken as deliberate incorrigible disruption.

March 17:SHOULDNOTEXIST

To support his edit warring at the DRV, Stevertigo added a new section to WP:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions expressing his displeasure with editors who opposed his criticism article.[89] He linked to the new section in later versions of the "Uncle Stevertigo" matrix he was edit warring on in the DRV. Scepter reverted the essay changes as "trolling"[90], Stevertigo reverted again,[91]. I restored the essay to its prior state, as I indicated, to quell "disruption".[92]

March 17: Doing away with IAR

Stevertigo's next proposed to deprecate WP:IAR to historical status.[93] Some got the joke but others did not. No reasonable editor could seriously think consensus could arise from a simple post to demolish a 5 pillar. Although the exact meaning of his joke is unclear, he seemed to be repeating the World Net Daily gripe again that Wikipedia rules and rule-gaming by the cabal triumph over neutrality and common sense, resulting in not enough criticism of Obama.

Not everyone got the joke - one man's WP:POINT-y essay or policy joke is another man's trolling. It was not really a joke. Stevertigo was acting out across many articles, insulting other editors, and burning other people's energy, time, and goodwill in the process. He raised points about article probation, bias, etc., using his own deliberate provocation as a case in point when he could have just talked about it. There are plenty of forums here, but he chose to escalate it at every step, while simultaneously edit warring.

We cannot, and do not, afford editors however longstanding the luxury of disrupting the encyclopedia or vexing others when they do not get what they want. That is what Obama article probation is all about. We have means to resolve differences civilly, in a mature collaborative fashion that preserves the stability, quality, and pleasant environment of the encyclopedia. However fancy we get in the presentation of this case, Steve's days long effort is an unpleasant but not terribly extreme form of disruption and could easily have been dealt with at an administrative level. He was no worse than most of the 80+ accounts that were blocked or hundreds more that received warnings and then stopped causing trouble.

Sceptre deleted Stevertigo's IAR proposal as trolling,[94] an unhappy but correct term. Stevertigo reverted[95] and I removed the proposal again as disruptive trolling.[96]

Stevertigo and Sceptre continued to edit war meta-pages while this case is pending

Stevertigo was on a wide-ranging effort to change Wikipedia's rules in a way that would justify the actions that are the subject of this case, and edit warring against those who opposed his changes. Sceptre, to a lesser degree, did the same.

• {{Policy list}}[97][98][99][100][101] - edit warring this widely used template to add a link to WP:PROC, a proposal Stevertigo wrote (and self-cites in this case) to claim that "Processes are subordinate and deferential to our policies". If accepted the proposal would support his application of IAR to edit war the Obama articles and meta-pages in the name of NPOV.
• Wikipedia:Workpages[102][103][104] (relates to the attempt to sandbox an Obama criticism article on the Obama talk page)
• Wikipedia:Criticism[105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113] - Stevertigo edit warring to ad link to a proposal he drafted that (by presenting both sides equally) seems to justify criticism sections, attempted WP:3O fork.[114] Sceptre also involved; dispute predates this case.
• Wikipedia:Subpages[115][116][117][118][119][120]
• WP:Content Forking[121] (Sceptre and other editors edit war to the point of article protection)
• Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view[122][123][124][125] (Sceptre edit wars with another editor over closing a discussion about criticism sections; ends up creating RfC)
• WP:AN/I Filed 3 AN/I reports in one day over same series of issues[126][127][128] when there was already an active AN/I report on the general matter. Reverts attempt to consolidate two related AN/I reports[129][130], files a fork AN/I thread on the moving of the AN/I thread,[131][132] undoes archiving/closure of the discussion four times apparently[133][134][135][136] Five days later, files an AN/I report[137] over an issue already raised in this case as the subject of a possible injunction,[138] then changes the title of his AN/I report to be a personal attack and reverts a closure of the discussion.[139]

Unopposed changes or BRD:

• Wikipedia:Deletion process[140] - Stevertigo links to his new WP:PROC proposal that would put "process" under "policy".
• Wikipedia:Criticism sections (essay)[141][142] (Sceptre adds Godwin quote, Stevertigo links to his new proposal and to a section he is edit warring)
• Wikipedia:Controversial articles[143] - links to his new proposal, attempts to use this guideline to justify criticism sections (the guideline is in fact not about criticism)
• WP:Summary style[144][145] (seems to relate to splitting off criticism sections)
• Stevertigo has created several new process-related essays, proposals, and templates, some that would favor his position in this case. New pages include {{article creation}}, {{processes}}, WP:Requesting dispute resolution, WP:Processes, WP:I just don't like it, Wikipedia:Criticism sections and articles,

Evidence presented by Grsz11

I presented some evidence in original statement and have nothing further to add at this time. If the Committee could define the scope of this case per the request at the Workshop, I may have more to add at that time. Grsz¹¹ 12:39, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Steve made controversial, disruptive edits to Wikipedia:Subpages. Upon his edits being reverted, he immediately filed an ANI report rather than discuss the issue on the talk page. This coincides with the disruption Steve caused earlier. He knows how to deal with issues here, and yet he chooses to be disruptive anyway. Grsz¹¹ 23:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Bobblehead

Stevertigo has unnecessarily fanned the flames

Stevertigo has unnecessarily fanned the flames of dispute on Obama related articles by escalating content disputes by repeatedly "running to the parents" on WP:AN/I without making any attempts to discuss the attempts on relevant discussion pages.

• This event is covered in Wikidemon's evidence above, but I'm repeating it here because it actually is a pretty good example of the "running to the parents" tendencies Stevertigo developed when he wasn't getting his way. After Stevertigo modified the answer to why a criticism section is not used in the Obama article,[146] my reversion,[147] his re-adding,[148] then PhGustaf's reversion,[149] he immediately went to AN/I without any attempt to discuss.[150]
• After Grz11 refactored Stevertigo's complaint about the edit sequence on the FAQ into an existing section related to Obama's article,[151] Stevertigo created a new AN/I section to complain about the refactoring without attempting to request Grz11 move the section back to its prior location either on Grz11's talk page, or the new location of the section,[152] except to claim the refactoring was done for POV purposes in an edit summary.[153]
• Following Stevertigo's addition of an "Uncle Stevertigo's argument matrix" to the Criticism of Barack Obama DRV[154] and several re-additions[155][156] after the section was removed by Tarc[157] and Grz11,[158] Stevertigo created a section on AN/I about the content dispute without even attempting to discuss the matter with Tarc and Grz11 on the DRV discussion page.[159]

Granted, the argument could be made that the other participants in the disputes could have used the discussion pages, but when one's edits are being reverted by multiple users it is generally a good indicator that there may be an issue with your addition and you should discuss the changes, per WP:BRD. It is certainly not acceptable to BRRRuntotheparents and complain that "Johnny is being mean to me". --Bobblehead ^(rants) 21:57, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

{Write your assertion here}

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

Evidence presented by JustGettingItRight

Stevertigo did not edit Grsz11's comment, just edited the header left on his own talkpage

I'll leave it to the ArbCom to determine if this is or is not germane.

Diff

Evidence presented by Ali'i

Article probation has failed (to address the underlying issues)

The article probation outlined at Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation has failed to stop the problems surrounding articles relating to Barack Obama. Although dozens of editors have been warned, blocked, or banned, the same problems keep coming up and the editing environment surrounding these articles remains hostile and unmanagable. The issues exist with editors across the entire political spectrum. Directly related articles such as Barack Obama (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Public image of Barack Obama (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), tangential articles such as Weatherman (organization) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and discussions such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barack Obama/Criticism of Barack Obama, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Teleprompter usage by Barack Obama, Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 15#Barack Obama/Criticism of Barack Obama, and all of the too-numerous-to-list Administrators' noticeboard threads routinely devolve into incivil, shouting matching, often accompanied by name-calling, all in violation of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a battleground and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox.

It is too damn hard to go through and pull out all of the diffs, because this issue is too wide and deep to make any sense of it. However, I think using common sense, it is obvious to anyone who looks at these articles and their talk pages that something isn't right and needs to be fixed.

Two quotes to highlight the issue: Stevertigo: "I understand how my opponents seriously hate my point-by-points though. I make them look stupid, and sometimes take some enjoyment in it." Tarc: "Grundle, you lost the AfD discussion, and by quite a margin at that." "My opponents"? "Lost" an articles for deletion discussion? Battlelines have been drawn. And these sweet nothings are just the tip of the iceberg. Obama related articles and discussions = clusterfuck.

Do. Something. Please.

--Ali'i 15:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

• Tweaked per consideration on the workshop page. --Ali'i 16:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

[Reserved by Ali'i]

TBD

Evidence presented by MastCell

The editing environment on Obama-related pages deserves a few paragraphs of explanation.

Editing environment: Sockpuppetry

Numerous sockpuppets of BryanFromPalatine (talk · contribs) have been identified on Obama-related pages. Most notably, the following accounts were identified and ultimately blocked ([160]):

• WorkerBee74 (talk · contribs)
• Kossack4Truth (talk · contribs)
• Curious bystander (talk · contribs)
• 300wackerdrive (talk · contribs)
• Marx0728 (talk · contribs)

While the pattern seems obvious in retrospect, these accounts created hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of circular, disruptive talk-page argumentation and edit-warring on Obama-related articles before being blocked. (I'm as responsible as any admin for not acting sooner). Human nature dictates that such events are a drain on goodwill and the ability to assume good faith of the next dozen agenda-driven accounts that show up.

Editing environment: "Investigative journalism"

In a well-publicized incident, a journalist recently wrote on WorldNetDaily that Obama articles were inappropriately "scrubbed" of various allegations ([161]). As supporting evidence, he presented the travails of a specific Wikipedia editor whose efforts to insert negative material into the Obama article were reverted. This story was rather eagerly picked up by several national news outlets.

The denouement is no doubt familiar to everyone; the editor victimized by censorship was in fact a colleague of the journalist who wrote the article. The journalist collaborated with his colleague to make the provocative edits, and then wrote a piece castigating the editors and admins who responded to the provocation.

I will refrain from any commentary on the appropriateness of these actions, or on the diligence of the national news outlets which picked up the story (see here for one gloss on the issue). I bring this incident up to further illustrate the atmosphere in which volunteer Wikipedia editors are expected to assume good faith, avoid biting newbies, and remain unfailingly civil while defending the verifiability and neutrality of the article and respecting the site's biographical policy. MastCell ^Talk 18:43, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {User name}

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

{Write your assertion here}

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

{Write your assertion here}

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