Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-12-05 Naming conventions (television)

Another talk page

I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in repeating myself again and again, especially when everyone involved has already clearly made known their position and thoughts. Forgive me if I'm being rude, but another talk page is not needed now, and I fail to see how it would help at all. -- Ned Scott 06:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I also don't see how informal mediation is going to be helpful, if we weren't able even to file the request for formal mediation without edit warring on the RFM page. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I wonder how that RFM was supposed to work? It seemed like simply taking the TV-NC discussion and moving it over to the RFM page. What was the point? Were we supposed to be waiting for something? It seemed like people were already making decisions and moving in a direction I strongly disagreed with - and a mediator hadn't even shown up yet! —Wknight94 (talk) 22:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that if the mediation had been accepted, a mediator would have taken a look at the situation and tried to find a compromise solution acceptable to all parties. I don't know if such a solution exists, but it would have been good to find out under official sanction. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Statements

Statement by Wknight94

Rather than go into detail about the guideline at WP:TV-NC and WP:D or how Wikiprojects are not to be viewed as splinter groups quietly compromising the standardization of the overall encyclopedia, I'll focus more on the fact that the actual discussion on those subjects has already been done. To my knowledge, the conflict started with a failed move request at Talk:Fire + Water in mid-September. It moved briefly to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lost/Episode guidelines in late October before the now-infamous poll was started at WT:NC-TV (it is currently viewable at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)/Episode title RfC#RfC Episode Article Naming conventions. Ned Scott (talk · contribs) publicized the poll at several spots including two places under WP:RFC, [1] and [2]. The poll started as one question with three choices. It evolved into a two-question poll with the first being support or oppose and the second question being a choice between one option or another. Unfortunately that evolution happened while the poll was ongoing. Was the poll executed well? Not exactly. Was it flawed to the point of being meaningless? Definitely not. The results of the first and more contentious question of the poll are plainly visible - 26 supporting the notion that the naming convention should be the same as the general policy - 7 opposing saying that exceptions should be allowed and written into the TV-NC guideline. The meaning of the oppose votes in particular has come into question but clearly the majority of the people involved saw no reason that television episodes shouldn't follow the same general guidelines as the rest of Wikipedia. What followed was an endless stream of arguments for invalidating the poll. They included sockpuppetry, incivility, intimidation, etc., but no evidence of any of those affecting the poll itself was ever presented. IMHO, the most persuasive argument was the changing of format and wording during the poll. While I encouraged those who felt that way to look for people who might feel their vote was invalidated, that idea was summarily ignored. So I pursued that avenue myself in a section which can now be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)/Episode title RfC 2#Looking for anyone who objects to the last poll. I contacted all 25 of the 26 people (excluding myself of course who supported the first option of the poll and asked them to please respond if they thought they were misrepresented by the original poll. Not a single one of them said they were. To me, that basically ended the discussion. The rest has been repetition and incivility from both sides with side A asking a question, side B seeming to ignore the question, side A becoming irate and uncivil, and finally side B chastising side A for being uncivil. Round and round and round with few variations. That one side is 10 people and the other side essentially two people (with only one attempting real communication) makes the so-called dispute even more ridiculous. That alone should make consensus pretty clear. No matter how it's been sliced, the issue keeps coming up more than 3-to-1 - and yet the 1 keeps on. Any way to kill this thing would be greatly appreciated. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Jay32183

I simply cannot understand why this issue has dragged on so long. The naming convention was perfectly in tune with the general disambiguation guideline except for a mention of Star Trek doing things differently. It was discovered that the original reason for this was that pages for Star Trek episodes that had not yet been written had been linking incorrectly, eg a blue link to a different article rather than a red link. The original proposer of that says that is no longer true since almost all of the pages have been made and additional stated that as long as the redirects were working it wasn't any burden on the Star Trek editors if the pages were moved to follow the standard disambiguation guideline. So it shouldn't be a problem that the staement was removed from the guideline to make it perfectly conform to the disambiguation guideline. A number of new reasons to disambiguate without a naming conflict came up but were demonstrated as insufficient. Consistancy was the first, but when logically extended it would require every article on Wikipedia to be disambiguated. Then came context, which would only serve to replace the functions of the leads and the categories of the articles since the links are all piped in situ anyway. Third was precedent but consensus can change and being the first to do something "wrong" doesn't make it "right", even if it goes unnoticed for a significant time. Then came the "WikiProject consensus" argument, which is based entirely on the idea of closed groups if it is being used as a defense against a larger, more diverse group coming in attempting to change that consensus. When asking for further explanation from those who wanted exceptions, I was usually responded to with one of the previous comments with their flaws already pointed out or a refusal to answer the question with an insistance on talking about how flawed the poll was, even though the poll did not make a binding decision and no one had said that their feelings on the matter had been misinterpreted. It seems to me that the matter should have already been settled, so it has been very difficult not to become frustrated with certain editors. Jay32183 20:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Step backward

I don't see any reason for this to succeed when formal mediation is likely to fail. I will not be participating. –  Anþony  talk  05:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

General disgust

I'm not going to go on and on about my reasons, but I just wanted to say that this long, bitter, very personal and abusive debate has soured me completely on Wikipedia, and I am drastically reducing my editing as a result. The whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, on a trivial issue, yet I see people behaving as if it were a debate on abortion or something. Admin behavior in particular has been scandalously bad, even expanding into very personal issue-unrelated side attacks that are clearly meant vindictively (just one example, here). Throughout this conflict, I didn't even state my position (which I hadn't decided yet), yet I got lumped into one side, and comments were directed at me as well (e.g., here). Bullying. Shame on Wikipedia and shame on the participating admins for not defusing this situation and (in at least one case) for escalating it repeatedly. -- PKtm 16:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

One (hopefully last) follow-on remark to this. I was promptly (as I expected, frankly, given the history on this) attacked for the above post by one of the key participating admins in the ongoing dispute, here, who called the above "unsolicited hit-and-run allegations". Case in point. I'm outta here. -- PKtm 19:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Your generalities and quotes out of context are not helpful in the least. You leave a message like the one above and then, rather than discuss the policy issues I raised or discuss the options to have someone else address them in my place (points that I raised in my first response to you which you managed to not include here), you respond by essentially telling me to leave everyone alone and then "I have nothing further to say to you on this matter". I don't know if this little exchange was meant to be some session of cathartic venting but I call it attempted hit-and-run. —[[User:wknight94|Wknight94]] (talk) 20:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Please remember we are here to solve a dispute not deal with personal issues. WikieZach| talk 23:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Elonka

The core issue of this dispute, though seemingly about how to name television episode articles, is actually about control. One side feels that the guideline at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) should be enforced as "policy", and they're sweeping through Wikipedia, forcing thousands of pages to new names. The other side in this debate feels that a guideline is a recommendation, and that actual naming conventions for a particular set of articles, should be decided by the editors that are involved with that series (such as with a WikiProject).

The dispute has been further escalated by the fact that some of the editors in the "enforce it as policy" group are posting multiple times per day, and have organized a "voting block" to overwhelm other editors in their path. Bad faith tactics include incivility, personal attacks, stalking, and harassment.

The actual naming issue is about how to name episode articles, specifically about when they can and can't use a suffix such as "(<seriesname> episode)". One side says Disambiguate only when necessary. The other side says, It depends, let each WikiProject decide what makes sense for their articles. For example, Star Trek has been using their own system for a long time (see Category:Star Trek episodes). However, the "voting block" group of editors is disruptively setting up rapid kangaroo court re-debates, and then using their claimed "consensus" to disrupt those categories.

Who the players are

• An "NC Gang" of editors who are adamantly against any kind of compromise, against mediation, and against running a new poll. They refuse to acknowledge that there is good faith opposition, and in some cases have been escalating the matter with unethical tactics:

Wknight94, Ned Scott, Ace Class Shadow, Yaksha, Milo H Minderbinder, Serge Issakov, Jay32183, BlueSquadronRaven

• The "WP:DAB" crowd. They feel strongly that disambiguation guidelines should be followed. They're not (as) militant about it, but, through either unawareness of the unethical tactics by the above group, or quiet acceptance of it, they seem to be allied:

Anþony, Brian Olsen, Josiah Rowe, Chuq, Radiant!, Nohat, Shannernanner, Wikipedical

• The "Let the WikiProjects decide" group:

Elonka, MatthewFenton, Riverbend, Argash, EnsRedShirt, PeregrineFisher, Huntster, TobyRush, JeffStickney, Tango, Cburnett, plus a couple other editors at the Village Pump, who haven't specifically participated in the NC debate because it's too much of a mess.

Elonka's recommendation of how to proceed

1. An immediate moratorium on moves and move requests, by either side in this debate, to reduce the sense of urgency that's just escalating tension.
2. Good faith civil communication via a mediator, to come up with consensus wording for the guideline
3. Running a survey. When I talk to outside parties, one of the most common complaints I hear back is that the situation is "Too complex." A clearly-worded survey would help clarify exactly what's being discussed, so that interested parties could indicate their opinions in a structured environment.

--Elonka 20:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)