Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-10-09 Hinduism

Wikipedia Mediation Cabal
Article	Hinduism
Status	new
Request date	Unknown
Requesting party	Unknown
Parties involved	Apandey, HeBhagawan, Chris

[[Category:Wikipedia Medcab new cases|Hinduism]][[Category:Wikipedia medcab maintenance|Hinduism]]

Mediation Case: 2006-10-09 Hinduism

Please observe Wikipedia:Etiquette and Talk Page Etiquette in disputes. If you submit complaints or insults your edits are likely to be removed by the mediator, any other refactoring of the mediation case by anybody but the mediator is likely to be reverted. If you are not satisfied with the mediation procedure please submit your complaints to Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal.

Request Information

Request made by: Swadhyayee 12:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Where is the issue taking place? Hinduism and discussion page.

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Who's involved? Apandey, HeBhagawan, Chris

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What's going on?Intimidation, Sock Puppetry, falsification to block me, placing distorted facts in the article.

On 2006-10-04, I came across a distorted fact of the article and removed the distorted content leaving message on talk page. There was lot of discussion. I have doubt that the case is of Sock Puppetry. The reasons are User:RamRamji registers himself, places an opinion against me and vanishes. Later, voting was mooted. An annonymus IP request one editor to vote on the issue. When the difference of opinion is amongst three parties including me, who would make a request to an editor who promptly drops in and vote against me. My feeling is voting has been done without considering or probably even reading my reasons. A 3RR warning was placed on my talk page and I have thenafter not done any reverts. Mr.Chris has referred me as a Vandal in sharp words and requested Adm. to look into. I requested Mr.Chris to read the comments placed by me this morning. There is no response, meanwhile A.Pandey has suggested on discussion pg. to fellow editors to block me, falsely projecting that I continue reverting (in spite of 3RR notice). To me it's a clear case of sock puppetry and dispute of content. A.Pandey beginned with intimidating comments. I wrote to him to mind his language, yet in-civil continues.

Dear Admins What is going on? Thank you for taking the time to check into this. Unfortunately, the user Swadhyayee is making it difficult to maintain the quality of the Hinduism page, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The main problem is his refusal to consent to use democratic methods of decision-making, and his insistence in making edits that do not even come close to Wikipedia quality standards. Specific problems include:

1. insistence on incorporating edits that are against the unanimous advice of other editors (see the vote on the Hinduism discussion page)
2. his refusal to use citations at all-- or to even recognize that citations have some value
3. He has repeatedly reverted the article to impose his POV regarding the Raja Yoga controversy despite a vote of other editors which went against him (see Hinduism discussion page), and despite his failure to provide even one citation as evidence for his position.
4. His edits are consistently of poor quality on account of ungrammatical and muddled language (which he denies is muddled or ungrammatical).
5. Even more troublesome, he persistently continues to reword statements of other editors to render them ungrammatical, muddled, and unclear. For example, [[1]]
6. He has engaged in personal attacks
7. He has insisted that his views should dominate on account of his nationality (Swadhyayee stated: "you are westerner, you should allow incorporation done by Indian Hindus like me." See Hinduism discussion page), rather than on account of any community concensus or published authorities.
8. He has vandalized the personal pages of others (including mine). For an example, see [[2]]

As an example of one of his edits, see this one. For additional examples, simply look through his other contributions to the article, including but not limited to [[3]] [[4]], [[5]]

and [[6]]. However, to really understand the difficulties this user has presented to the Hinduism project, I would encourage you to look over his other edits as well, and especially to read the entire conversation involving Swadhyayee on the Hinduism discussion page. (On the discussion page, this discussion begins near the middle of the page with the heading "I have removed Raja Yoga.")

It is really a quality problem. Editors including myself have put a lot of work into improving the quality of the page over the past couple of weeks (feel free to browse through my edits and judge the quality for yourself--especially comparing the article after my edits to the mess it was in a month ago), but we now have to spend a great deal of time trying to convince Swadhyayee not to flood the article with edits which reduce rather than enhance its quality. If you read the Hinduism discussion page, you will see that multiple editors have gone to almost ridiculously great lengths to find ways to include Swadhyayee in the Hinduism project in a manner that is collaborative in nature and that protects the quality of the article. Unfortunately, this user has been unable or unwilling to work democratically and to adhere to the Wikipedia standards of Verifiability and Reliable Sources.

It is not that we want to exclude him as a person or that the substance of his contributions is always bad, but we do wish him to help us maintain quality standards. As evidence of my good faith efforts, on several occasions I have reworded his edits to make them grammatical and have provided citations for his statements, since he never does so himself.

I do not know what the solution to this problem is . I have little desire to ban Swadhyayee from editing the Hinduism page, becasue I think he is acting mostly in good faith, but he has difficulties accepting his language limitations and does not know how to work democratically with others. I I would not complain of his low-quality edits if he did not make them so frequently, but they are so frequent that it is very difficult for editors like me to do substantive work on the article becasue they are kept busy cleaning up after him and trying to reason with him. The only way I know of to ensure quality is (1) to make editing decisions democratically and (2) to cite reliable authorities. When an editor refuses to abide by these touchstones, as Swadhyayee has, the quality and reputation of Wikipedia suffers.

I would suggest giving Swadhyayee one more chance to rise to the Wikipedia standards of reliable authority and collaborative efforts. But I sincerely hope he will not continue to take so much time away from actually improving articles in order to bring up controversy after controversy in which he is the only one on his side. It wastes everyone's time. HeBhagawan 05:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I have read above comments. I am happy that Kylu has rightly understood and commented that "truth" should not be kept aside to resolve dispute. The facts are twisted and chronological orders changed. There is practically no contribution of A.Pandey or any other editor in making the article. Only HeBhagawan is showing interest in making the article. I did not edit the controversial "Raj Yog" matter after 3RR notice. My earlier edits are falsely claimed to be having done after voting. I have strong feelings that it's not only a case of sock puppetry but is suspected to advertise particular school of thougts or books of particular organisation. Sock puppetry need not mean contribution by one editor in different names, even the voting by friends could be a case of sock puppetry. Who from the voters have contributed in making the article? Hinduism is a vast subject with number of facets. No particular school of thought should be promoted while excluding other views not suitable to an editor. My today's comments on discussion page may also be read.Swadhyayee 17:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Compromise offers

This section is for listing and discussing compromise offers.

The user seems to have good intentions to add quality content to Hinduism article, but does not know, how to do that in the true spirut of wikipedia. He should be allowed to make additions to the article by probably first discussing the issue on the talk page, and then being open for discussion and feedback. Most importantly if the user assumes good faith, all the other problems will vanish automagically.

My compromise offer is for all users to agree to accept and offer criticism in good faith, to cite reliable authorities when making edits (especially if other users challenge the veracity of a particular claim), to seek the advice of native-level English speakers when editing English Wikipedia, and to generally just maintain high quality standards. This may mean consenting to something we don't like if the majority of other editors disagree with us. If the quality standards are not going to be high, then this will no longer be an encyclopedia; it will be somebody's personal website.HeBhagawan 05:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

While using the talk page of the article in question to solve a dispute is encouraged to involve a larger audience, feel free to discuss the case below if that is not possible. Other mediators are also encouraged to join in on the discussion as Wikipedia is based on consensus.

This is unfortunate that the article such as Hinduism is brought to such controversy. I have not been a part of any such mediation before, so I do not know where all I am supposed to add my comments. But if I am making comments at wrong locations, please let me know at my talk page.

I have only one thing to say here. Whosoever is going to mediate, must have to go through the edit history of Hinduism and its associated talk page from around 8th October. Specially starting this section on the talk page. If one really goes through it, they will find how this user got engaged in incivility and pushing of his POVs which are full of ignorance of even about the basic facts of Hindusim. He also kept on threatening people, making allegations about sock pupetry and bringing general disgrace to other editors and IMO to the article itself. He failed to take any input given to him positively and kept on making personal attacks. His edits were at many times of poor quality or of unneeded contents, never had citations and references, and many times had grammatical mistakes. When brought to attention, he took those comments in a negative way. The user never assumed good faith. IMHO, the user is new to wikipedia, and never tried to go through the basics of how wikipedia works, before making controversial edits and does not know how to deal with them. --Apandey 05:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Please also note that during the course of personal attacks, the user has alleged me for not having knowledge just because I am a software engineer and younger to him. Please see this [7]. Going through the edit history on the related pages, there are at least three occasions were he talked about himself being older and thus more experienced etc. If his thoughts are to be believed, many of the wikipedia admins who are in their teens, will be useless, just because they are young. It was ridiculous. --Apandey 05:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Swadhyayee 12:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)