Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images/Evidence

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Case clerk: TBD Drafting arbitrator: TBD

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Overarguing

If continually making the same point over and over is to be considered problematic by itself then there are plenty more people guilty (probably including myself) than just Ludwigs. Does the committee feel that such behaviour is generally problematic? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:10, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I have already put my view forward on the workshop, but I will reiterate. Unless an aspect of the issues is raised that was not previously covered, or a party's position on one of the issues is misrepresented, extended repetition of the dispute in this case is of limited value. AGK [•] 13:30, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that makes IDHT behavior win-win. All an editor (editors) has (have) to do is refuse to acknowledge anything that the other side is saying: if the other side doesn't give up they can be accused of tendentiousness, and the editors with their fingers in their ears get what they want no matter how idiotic it is. I get that there are editors who want to turn articles like Muhammad into huge King of the Hill games where they fight their way to the top and then put all their energy into repelling invaders, but that is not how a collaborative encyclopedia should work. --Ludwigs2 13:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Not really, no. A proposal was made to remove more images, but the proposal did not gain consensus with the editors who have been involved in the discussions. Just because your proposal was not agreed to does not mean that it was not heard, IDHT doesn't have the slightest bit of applicability to those who disagreed with you. That is the heart of this case; your behavior when it was clear that the proposal was not going to be accepted. Tarc (talk) 14:02, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, I am suggesting that you all stop debating the issue in the context of workshop discussion and related processes. I'm not very interested in whether certain workshop or evidence submissions constitute what you frame as "IDHT behaviour", but rather that the committee has a chance to evaluate the dispute without wading through unhelpful peripheral debate. Such debate is of little value not because it rebuts the workshop proposal, but because the nature of the submissions mean that any replies must be a rehash of the NOTCENSORED dispute. AGK [•] 15:10, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

AGK: I totally agree with that statement, I just don't think it's feasible. I mean, look at Tarc's post immediately above: So long as he continues to insist that he has an unquestionable consensus, Jayen, Eraser and I are obliged to remind him him that does not. It's one thing for an editor to offer a perspective on a dispute (that can be left to stand or fall on its merits), but quite another for an editor to deny that there is a dispute because anyone who disagrees with him is wrong by definition.

If you'd like to offer some decent guidelines for argumentation, that would be cool (I can do it for you if like - I know a lot about that topic), but the problem on this article all along has been that one side has been trying to dictate their perspective as indisputable fact, and there's no more reason to do allow them to do that here than there was on the article itself. --Ludwigs2 15:43, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

@AGK, thanks. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment on Eraserhead1's evidence

In his evidence, Eraserhead claims that there is "clearly not a strong consensus in favor of the status quo." This is not how Wikipedia works. When there is an ongoing discussion about making a change to an article, consensus is determined regarding the change, not the status quo. There is no need to develop a strong consensus in favor of the status quo; instead, there would need to be a reasonably strong, policy-based consensus in favor of the change to implement it. In this situation, a no-consensus situation will result in the status quo remaining. rdfox 76 (talk) 00:36, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not that simple. part of the argument here is that the status quo is actually against policy and the founding principles of the project. No one in favor of the status quo wants to hear that, obviously, but if true then the status quo should be vacated with prejudice. --Ludwigs2 01:53, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

You keep repeating this claim as if doing so will magically make it true. Resolute 17:16, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

No, I keep repeating it as if doing so will magically make you understand. The truth of it isn't really in question. --Ludwigs2 17:59, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anyone acting in good faith can seriously believe that a point which has generated half a million words of discussion has a strong consensus behind it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:14, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

<span title="Content was removed for the following reason: Ah, yeah, well...

"One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide that fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid."

Not that any of that applies here, obviously, but the difficulty remains. Don't Panic! --Ludwigs2 21:24, 23 December 2011 (UTC)">(Redacted)

Again, discussions of this nature are not very helpful. Please ensure the only suggestion you make that a party has misconducted him or herself in this dispute is in an evidence submission or workshop proposal. If you need to rebut an allegation, then fine, but do so briefly and without extensive commentary. To be clear, if a party rebuts such an allegation, it would be inappropriate for a threaded discussion to emerge, and there should be very limited further replies; when a dispute reaches arbitration, the only people to be judging the merits of these allegations should be the arbitrators. I would remind the parties that the time of members of the committee is limited, and it is our policy to respond to useless, extensive bickering with bans from the case pages (with enforcement blocks by the clerks) - not to repeatedly ask for calm. Thank you in anticipation of your understanding and compliance. AGK [•] 22:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

That was really just joking around, but I've struck it regardless. --Ludwigs2 23:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the archives of Talk:Barack Obama, there are nearly 40 archived discussions that mention "birthplace". The amount of words tenacious (or tendentious) editor(s) choose to spend on a topic is not necessarily evidence that consensus is lacking. In this specific case however, I would agree that the number of words spent and the number of forums shopped has shown without a shadow of a doubt that there is no consensus for the change that some editors want. Resolute 00:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

What you would do in the case of Obama is to produce a list of sources like this one showing how reliable sources describe Obama's birth and you would almost certainly find that any objections to him being born in the US turned out to be WP:FRINGE. Then ultimately you would be able to start to block users who disagree on WP:IDHT grounds. If you produced a similar such list for Muhamamd you would actually find the a decent number of reliable sources fail to include depictions of Muhammad as has been found so far, so the cases aren't directly comparable. Even given those points of strength it would still be dishonest to describe the position around Obama as a "strong consensus" as there is significant disagreement about it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:59, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Is there going to be an RfC?

Is there going to be an RfC? Or will the entire case be handled through arbcom? Jsolinsky (talk) 01:15, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we're in a position to say quite yet. The case is still in the evidence phrase, and will be for one or two more weeks: the target timetable was extended by a week at each phase to accommodate the arrival of this year's new arbitrators. AGK [•] 03:58, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Article history

Looking at Eraserhead's evidence, one striking (if unsurprising) aspect of the article's development is that the number of Muhammad images increased sharply after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. On the day the cartoons were published, there was one (veiled) image in the article. As the controversy played out, and feelings about the controversy ran high, so increased the number of images, and the number of editors (on both sides) who only edited the article to either remove or add/restore images. --JN466 02:46, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

IIRC I was not involved in either article at the time, but I'd say the Jyllands issue called attention to a rather bland, boring, and ugly article. Our articles progress and evolve other time as we attract and retain editors with skills in prose and image placement/style. If you are suggesting that the article as it is now is worse than the 2006 version, I'd say that claim is directly contradicted by it meeting the "Good Article" threshold on 5 July 2008. Tarc (talk) 16:08, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

And yet since the article met the good article threshold the number of images per word of content has increased by 25% and the number of unveiled images has increased by 67%. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

True, but there's still a green plus in a circle at the top-right of Muhammad the addition of images has not affected its GA standing. Tarc (talk) 23:56, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

That could well be sheer inertia. The point at where it was reviewed by an uninvolved individual was in July 2008. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Could you explain why you believe "images per word of content" is a useful metric by which to measure this article? Further, could you explain why you believe that the change over time actually constitutes evidence of a problem. Do you not think it possible there might have been too few such depictions in previous versions? (Also, point of order: my original proposal would have had five depictions, three of which were not defaced, but given an overall reduction in images would have been roughly proportionate to the current balance.) Resolute 00:31, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I too do not understand this metric. If the principle is that depictions of Muhammad are wrong to use per se then it really doesn't matter whether it's one image or twenty because any is too many. If, on the other hand, depictions of Muhammad are ok to use, then it doesn't matter, per se, whether it's one or twenty because using the images isn't a problem . Whether there are too many images in general is a completely separate issue from this debate. Indeed, if the entire issue, from the beginning, was that there were too many images in this article, then it likely would have been a small talk page discussion on removing a certain few. The problem arose when the main arguments for removal were based around their offensiveness (and not, for instance, the aesthetics of the article). N^oformation ^Talk 00:45, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

The point of the evidence (and the latest addition on comparisons to some featured historical biographies since your comments) is to counter the point significant amounts of compromise has already been undertaken. While there isn't necessarily a conduct issue around that per say it is rather surprising, given the length of the dispute, that some sort of compromise, such as the one Resolute proposed, wasn't undertaken long ago.

While you may have a bunch of people complaining and saying all the images should be removed, they may well in reality be prepared to accept a compromise on it, and the very strong disclaimer boxes will probably persuade all but the most extreme not to comment on the matter.

The reason I have compared the depictions per 1000 words is because as the article size increases you would perfectly reasonably expect the absolute number of depictions to increase. While comparing simply the absolute number of images might make my point better, and paint the other side as being more unreasonable it wouldn't be statistically sound, and I'm not prepared to do that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Pointless side discussion

Actually NoFo, that's not true - from the very beginning I wanted to discuss the relative merits of the images (which explicitly implies the possibility that useful ones would remain), and was met with as many as seven editors telling me in no uncertain terms that no images would ever be removed. The problem here was not that anyone on my side of the debate wants to remove all the images, but rather than several editors on your side considered even one removal too much. do you need diffs of this, or will you accept it for the purpose of this discussion? --Ludwigs2 00:58, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I saw things differently my friend, but I suppose that's why we're all here now isn't it? What ever the "truth" is, hopefully arbcom will figure it out in the end. May I recommend though that those diffs be put in your evidence section? N^oformation ^Talk 01:01, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

hopefully so. and I may include those diffs, yes (but only as explication; I'm really not interested in climbing on the ad hominem bandwagon) --Ludwigs2 01:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Dude, your own statement at the very start of this shows you are lying. Your arguments never "explicitly impli[ed] the possibility that useful ones would remain". They were, in fact, very clearly, and very obviously of the viewpoint that "Muslims are offended, Islam prohibits them, we need to remove all depictions": [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], etc., etc., etc. Resolute 02:05, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Dude, this is the story you've been spinning all along to try to make me look bad, but it's complete tripe. Anyone who bothers to read the diffs you've presented will see me asking that the images be evaluated on their worth. Yes, it is true that I personally think the images are more or less valueless (and that comes through in what I wrote), but I am not asking to have them all removed, simply that they be looked at and discussed. Look at the last diff you present in which I say "If they have value, please specify what that value is. simple enough, yah? I'll be waiting for a response." That was an honest question even then, and in fact I am still waiting for you to give a decent response to it.

I do understand: you need to cast me as unreasonable, because getting me in trouble administratively is the only tool you have that can possibly win this debate. In a straight, simple, rational discussion you'd have lost the game a month and a half ago and we wouldn't be here. But instead you just keep spewing out this baseless innuendo as though it matters, or as though anyone actually cares. That kind of behavior is simply and thoroughly reprehensible, so stop it before I lose what little respect I have left for you. Clear?

It was a sarcastic question made by one who had already ignored statements by others on value. The truth is, there will never be an answer that you consider a "decent response", because every answer anyone has given is somehow never good enough. That is why I call bullshit on your claim that you always intended to evaluate images on their worth. Your own statements make it patently clear that you consider the images as having no worth because they are offensive to some adherents of one religion. And the truth is, I don't need to cast you as unreasonable. You accomplished that by yourself, as noted by several parties to this case and more than one arbitrator in the case request page. It is cute that you are trying to change your story in an effort to fool people into thinking you are actually a reasonable party here, but all you are managing in the end is to make even more obvious your essential dishonesty that is the central cause of this ridiculous drama. Resolute 03:02, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, well, all I can say is that if you were considering quitting your day job to become a professional mind-reader, don't. You're lousy at it. My behavior here and many places elsewhere shows that I am more than willing to discuss and compromise (I even supported your compromise proposal, if you remember).

But I'll prove my point the easy way, with a bet. We both make the following promise - to sit down and discuss the issue together without anything remotely resembling an ad hominem or personal attack (as judged by the arbiters). First one who breaks that rule voluntarily leaves this arbitration and leaves all Muhammad-related articles permanently. let's see how we each fare when we have nothing except reasoned discussion to work with. Are you up for it? --Ludwigs2 03:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Mitt, is that you? Srsly guys, rehashing he last months' debate isn't helping matters here any. Spike your eggnog and chillax for a few days. Tarc (talk) 03:42, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

True enough. I suspect I need only to wait this one out. Resolute 03:55, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

lol - that's what I figured your response would be. So, go on back to your efforts at character assassination. The offer will remain open if you ever want to take me up on it, but I trust that I have proven my point. --Ludwigs2 04:21, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Truthfully, I'm still waiting on the presentation of your evidence so that we might see what the likelihood of "reasoned discussion" really is. Resolute 05:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

So, you're waiting for my evidence not for its content, but primarily so you have ammunition to make assertions about my psychology? --Ludwigs2 12:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)