Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Asmodeus

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• Asmodeus (talk · contribs · logs)

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Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute

In brief, this user has been on a campaign of what can only be called bullying, for the past few months (since July). User:Byrgenwulf nominated an article on a "fringe theory" for deletion, and User:Asmodeus took exception to that. User:Byrgenwulf has written an account of the ensuing events, which he keeps here. User:Byrgenwulf believes that because he has over 60 references to back up what he wrote, his right to keep these notes falls under this ArbCom finding. Asmodeus, however, feels differently, as evidenced by [1] [2] [3] [4]. In particular, he has been harassing User:Anville, trying to bully them into not linking to the document. It is up to the Wikipedia community, however, and not any single individual, to decide whether Asmodeus' ongoing bullying is something we need to tolerate. Hence this RfC.

Description

The most comprehensive description of Asmodeus' conduct can be found here. However, because that document is rather long, I shall summarise. Asmodeus has been personally attacking myself and others for months, and it needs to stop. Particularly worrying is the manipulative and deceitful manner in which he conducts himself. No doubt this very RfC is going to be rapidly filled with his polysyllabic screeds, attacking and lying about me and anyone who disagrees with him (but in such a way as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth).

In short, there is strong evidence that he and another editor have been using Wikipedia as a soapbox to shill for various things (IQ clubs, fringe theories, etc.). When confronted or challenged about this, they respond by attacking the user who has questioned them, and trying their utmost to discredit that person by means of distortion, deception, misinformation, and sometimes even lies, all wrapped up in sarcasm and passing verbosity. Asmodeus' entire userpage reads like a personal attack on the members of WikiProject Pseudoscience and WikiProject Physics.

Asmodeus' most recent activities have been disrupting the Wikipedia:Fringe theories policy proposal, and using schoolyard bully tactics to try to suppress the record of his activities. This is a final straw, and what has motivated this RfC.

Evidence of disputed behavior

A tiny handful of hostile edits by User:Asmodeus:

• [5]
• [6] (note the edit summary)
• [7] (edit summary, again)
• [8]

And since this RFC started:

• [9] ("official warning" to User:Anville about WP:NPA, unintentionally (?) unsigned)
• [10] (a similar "official warning" to User:Byrgenwulf, similarly unsigned)
• [11] (threat to instigate wikilitigation against User:Anville, well after being informed of this RFC)
• [12] (attaching {{db-attack}} to Byrgenwulf's evidence page)

Asmodeus has been blocked before for incivility, but the block seems to have done nothing to abate his behaviour.

Asmodeus also, as looking at his contributions list reveals, has editing only articles (and AfDs, talkpages, etc.) pertaining to his favourite theory, its inventor, its inventor's IQ clubs, and has caused disruption on the Wikipedia:Fringe theories policy proposal.

Read the document linked to above, and find over 60 references and a description of the full extent of the bad behaviour of this user.

Applicable policies and guidelines

1. WP:NPA
2. WP:HARASS
3. WP:CIVILITY
4. WP:SOAP

and possibly

1. WP:VAIN (read the document)

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

1. [13] by Byrgenwulf (talk · contribs · block log) — a request for civility
2. [14] [15] by Anville (talk · contribs · block log) — an attempt at compromise

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

1. Byrgenwulf 16:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
2. Anville 17:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

Asmodeus

To begin, please note that this RfC was initiated only after I complained about an attack page recently posted by User:Byrgenwulf. Thus, it is clearly designed to cover Byrgenwulf's haunches regarding that attack page, the culmination of a vendetta by User Byrgenwulf against me, DrL, Wikipedia bio subject Christopher Langan, and Langan's theory, the CTMU.

On July 10, 2006, Byrgenwulf, going by the name Stephen O'Grady (as previously provided by Byrgenwulf himself), received a "heads-up" about Wikipedia's CTMU article on the website of the Brights, which is controlled and largely populated by militants of an atheist-materialist philosophical persuasion. After declaring that his interest was "piqued" by reading that "Langan is linked to ID", Byrgenwulf proceeded to make numerous disparaging but incorrect or vapid remarks about the theory, boastfully holding his own technical ability superior to Langan's. Immediately afterward - on that very same day, July 10 - he initiated a focused attack against that article on Wikipedia. In editing the CTMU and Langan articles, Byrgenwulf tarred the CTMU as "pseudoscience" despite the fact that it had always been clearly presented as philosophy [1; note that User:Tim Smith is the author of the CTMU article attacked by Byrgenwulf], and Langan as a "crank" [2], something specifically forbidden by the head of the Wikimedia Foundation. These actions and circumstances show that Byrgenwulf's behavior in this affair is rooted in philosophical bias, personal antipathy, vanity, and braggadocio (something to bear in mind given his deceptive strategy of feigning neutrality and scholarliness, and his habit of pretending to be victimized by those forced to defend themselves from his attacks).

Dubiously presenting himself as an expert in "the philosophy of physics", Byrgenwulf also denounced what he described as "logical errors" in the CTMU. Some of these are dealt with in the protracted CTMU debate that he eventually managed to wheedle out of me on his talk page. Of course, arguments regarding the content or validity of a theory are irrelevant to the criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia; verifiable notability is all that really matters. In fact, the CTMU is inarguably notable by Wikipedia standards, having been seriously described and/or mentioned in various high-circulation mainstream periodicals (Popular Science, the London Times, etc.) and broadcasts (ABC, the BBC, etc.), and now getting between 10 and 20 thousand hits on google (under Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe). By introducing such forbidden content/validity arguments very early in the debate, Byrgenwulf quickly made it even more obvious that he had attacked the article not only because he dislikes its author, but because he disagrees with the theory.

Upon getting the worst of it in the technical discussions that he initiated on the CTMU article's discussion page, Byrgenwulf quickly nominated every article having to do with Christopher Langan (except Langan's bio itself) for deletion. The ensuing AfD/DR debate regarding the CTMU was particularly contentious. Because Byrgenwulf misrepresented the CTMU as "pseudoscience" in order to recruit support for his deletional initiatives at WikiProject Pseudoscience and Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics, the keeps were numerically overwhelmed by the deletes. Most of the votes for deletion came from people who knew nothing about the CTMU except that a paper about it had been published in the journal of an organization (ISCID) friendly to Intelligent Design, a set of ideas which many of them despise as "anti-evolution" (ironic, given that the CTMU explicitly acknowledges the reality of evolution). (Here is User:Arthur Rubin's frank admission that he judged the CTMU "guilty by association" with ID, following Byrgenwulf's deceptive lead.)

I admit that at several points during the CTMU AfD/DR, I became impatient and even angry, and it showed. However, I was given plenty of provocation. For example, those opposed to the article falsely accused those in favor of presenting "forged archives", using big red letters to trumpet their allegation [3]. They also made numerous false accusations of sockpuppetry [e.g., 4] - ironic, given that they greatly outnumbered the keeps - and incivility, depite numerous examples of incivility on their own parts. They accused me of being Langan, intimating that I had authored the CTMU article and my own biography (I authored neither article). They even accused me and DrL of commercial "shilling", apparently for (1) daring to remove slurs and correct falsehoods in two Wikipedia articles (Christopher Langan, CTMU) in full compliance with WP, and (2) writing a couple of stubs regarding a nonprofit charitable-purpose foundation and one of its projects, with which we may or may not be affiliated. Obviously, this cannot be legitimately described as "shilling", and neither DrL nor I owes anyone an apology.

Even after Byrgenwulf had succeeded in deleting all of the Langan-related articles, he continued to complain that although he had invited me to engage him in a content-oriented debate regarding the CTMU, I had avoided doing so. Therefore, I went to his talk page and gave him the debate he desired. In the course of this debate, Byrgenwulf - self-described expert in the philosophy of physics - was caught in 70 errors, some of them fundamental in nature. (Of course, he claims not to have made even one of them, but this is unsurprising given his narrow mindset and the low level of logico-philosophical expertise he actually succeeded in demonstrating.) In all probability, his ongoing attack is at least partially a reflection of his resentment over having bungled this debate.

After Byrgenwulf stopped arguing and archived the debate, things died down. Gratefully, I turned to other (off-wiki) pursuits. But just when everything seemed to have returned to normal, Byrgenwulf suddenly attempted to renew the conflagration by publishing his attack page, prompting one of his confederates in the CTMU AfD/DR debacle (User:Anville) to link it to the talk pages of people more or less involved in certain related negotiations. My recent contributions to this site consist almost exclusively of trying to get him to remove it, and his confederate to remove his/her links, in compliance with WP:CIV and other core elements of WP. The timing of this RfC strongly indicates that it was designed and initiated to ward off these attempts.

The problems with Byrgenwulf's self-justificative attack screed include the following:

(1) The page contains numerous examples of blatant incivility and character assassination. DrL and I are called "nasty", "liars", etc. (largely because we dared to call attention to Byrgenwulf's own numerous departures from WP).

(2) The page contains rank speculation on the motives and mental states of DrL and me at various junctures. All of these speculations are counterfactual and transparently designed to slant things against us. These pejorative speculations violate NPOV and fail to reflect the assumption of good faith.

(3) The page contains numerous misrepresentations of other kinds. For example, it labels a certain nonprofit publishing house, which does not accept unsolicited manuscripts and does not charge to publish, a "vanity press". This highlights the author's generally disparaging intent.

(4) Many of the references are given in a misleading way, without sufficient attention to the falsehoods and/or provocations which preceeded them.

(5) Commenting on an unattributed quotation about Langan, Byrgenwulf frankly admits that he is incapable of assuming good faith on my own part (not only a non sequitur, but another blatant violation of Wikipedia guidelines).

(6) The page contains remarks which threaten to disrupt certain negotiations now in progress. Similarly, the page contains certain remarks regarding other personal interactions which do not involve Byrgenwulf himself, and these too could easily turn disruptive. Disruptive behavior is against Wikipedia Policy.

(Et cetera)

I have no interest in engaging in a point-by-point refutation of Byrgenwulf's offensive screed, which he posted under the pretext of creating a "record" of his own terminally confused but pathologically aggressive initiatives and their various sequelae. That would be a time sink; since all of the administrative intervention regarding Byrgenwulf's activities has thus far seemed to favor Byrgenwulf and his comrades-in-arms, I am no longer willing to bank large amounts of time and effort on the prospects for administrative understanding and fair treatment here at Wikipedia (with all due respect, of course). I now regard Wikipedia as seriously "broken" in this respect, the victim of systemic bias, collective naivete, and random purgative frenzies of an intensity sometimes approaching mob psychosis. However, that does not mean that I will sit quietly by and countenance the serial abuse of this highly public site by people who insist on using it to prosecute their defamatory vendettas and absurdly bloated claims of "expertise". In this respect, User Byrgenwulf is a viable contender for worst-of-breed, and the less interaction I am forced to suffer with such people, the happier I will be.

I'll come back and add links and further information as time permits. Thank you, Asmodeus 18:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:

1. --DrL 17:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

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Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page. has ongoing problems with incivility and bullying 16:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)