Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-01-24 Surrealism

Wikipedia Mediation Cabal
Article	Surrealism
Status	open
Request date	Unknown
Requesting party	Unknown
Parties involved	User: Classicjupiter2, User: TheEvilPanda, User: TextureSavant
Mediator(s)	Jem
Comment	Awaiting response from parties involved 22:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[[Category:Wikipedia Medcab active cases|Surrealism]][[Category:Wikipedia medcab maintenance|Surrealism]]

Mediation Case: 2007-01-24 Surrealism

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: TheEvilPanda 03:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Where is the issue taking place?

The Surrealism article...

Who's involved?

TheEvilPanda, TextureSavant, Classicjupiter2...

What's going on?

For the past many months (years?) a handful of users, mainly Classicjupiter2, who I suspect are all sock-puppets of one Keith Wigdor, have hijacked the Surrealism article for their own extreme POV purposes. To wit, their basic aim is to promote Keith Wigdor, the obscure but self-proclaimed "leader of the international surrealist movement," and to suppress links or mentions of existing surrealist groups, such as the Chicago Surrealist Group and the Paris Surrealist Group. He has engaged in revert wars with several editors, including Daniel Boyer who seems to have given up months ago. Right now Classicjupiter2 seems to have conceded to allowing mentions of the Chicago group in the article; nevertheless he is continually deleting the links to surrealist groups, and inserting links to Keith Wigdor's website ("Surrealism Now!") and other commercial sites; recently he even inserted a link to an obscure online article about another artist which happened to mention Keith Wigdor in passing, and labeled the article "Keith Wigdor" without even mentioning the artist that it's actually about! TextureSavant and I are almost 100% certain that Classicjupiter2 is Keith Wigdor himself, along with other names that have appeared such as Surreal-One. You can go through the article's talk page archives yourself and see what they have done. ...

What would you like to change about that?

Ideally, Classicjupiter2 and any sock puppets should be banned somehow. If he can be convinced to desist maybe that won't be necessary, but he's been causing havoc to the article for a very long time. ...

Would you prefer we work discreetly? If so, how can we reach you?

The time for discreteness is long gone... Wigdor and his cronies must be CRUSHED. I don't know how to crush people on Wikipedia, but I would like someone to do it really soon. My email is avantibarbari@yahoo.com ...

Compromise offers

This section is for listing and discussing compromise offers.

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.

At the moment, I'm going to try and get all users to feed their points of view and summaries in, so we can reach a better understanding. Until I've had a chance to fully review the links specified, I'm not really in a position to comment on the material. I'd be grateful if any other mediators want to chip in. Jem 21:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I apologize if I'm putting my comments in the wrong area on this page, but....

Basically, I agree with TheEvilPanda's assessment of the situation. Wigdor has been at odds with members of the surrealist movement for at least 7 or 8 years now, and he has essentially been rejected by the international surrealist community. So the feud that is between Wigdor and other surrealists has spilled into the wikipedia domain -- namely, within the article about surrealism. Usually Wigdor's approach has been to suppress evidence/existence of other groups, while at the same time promoting himself as a contemporary spokeman of the movement. Often enough, it seems like his motivations are not only self-aggrandizement, but also just for the sake of provocation. His way of doing all this is by using a few "good behavior" wiki usernames like ClassicJupiter2 and SurrealOne to delete other's links and pages, and then to use temporary or anonymous accounts (with only IP addresses) to do some of his dirtywork, like arguing, taunting, etc. on the surrealism talk page.

Up until recently, there was a "surrealist vandal" page created by a wiki editor called "HappyCamper" which was deleted not too long ago. That page was created because Wigdor had been impersonating about a half dozen contemporary surrealists -- creating user accounts based on their names in order to create mischievious edits and provocations.

It seems hard to deal with Wigdor because as soon as one account is blocked, he'll just create another one and pick up where he left off. Incidentally, Wigdor does this kind of behavior on other websites as well, such as the various Indymedia sites where any anonymous user can post whatever they like. He is a troll as has been doing this kind of stuff for years.

But for the sake of the surrealism article, and about other potential articles that could be written about this or that surrealist group and their histories, Wigdor is an obstacle and a bully. As long as Wigdor is around, you can expect him to disrupt input from contemporary surrealists into the development of the surrealism article. A few years ago, he was trying to create a vanity article about himself which ultimately got deleted for being irrelevant and non-noteworthy. As a result, he went on a campaign to delete the articles of other surrealists and surrealist groups. His is truly a case of sour grapes.

If I can later recall any more info that might be helpful, I'll post it here unless you direct me to post it somewhere else. --TextureSavant 22:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

All the above allegations are completely false. The above user is Eric W.Bragg who is in some kind of "surrealist feud" with Keith Wigdor, who wants no feud, and is in fact, the main leader and focal point of contemporary surrealism today. Also, let the record show that Keith Wigdor has not been using Wikipedia to promote surrealism, its really Eric W.Bragg and his friends who have been trying to add non-notable groups into the article and who have been attacking nearly everyone in the art world that they claim is not surrealist, and they and their friends have created bogus surrealist groups which all of the articles have been VfD off of Wikipedia by a fair voting process by the Wikipedia community. The allegation and statement that, "As long as Wigdor is around, you can expect him to disrupt input from contemporary surrealists into the development of the surrealism article" is not true because Keith Wigdor does not edit in this article. All those surrealist groups are non-notable and even Protector777 agrees with that fact as with the rest of the Wikipedia community. There is a Chicago Surrealist Group that I already agreed to addition into the article, so I don't see what, TextureSavant is getting at, more false allegations. Also the External links section has a SURREALIST ART and RESOURCES section that has been on there for months, and SURREALISM NOW! link was on there. The SURREALISM NOW! website is primarily set up for exactly that purpose, SURREALIST ART and RESOURCES as evident on the site. I really do not see the purpose of arguing Surrealism and who is and who is not surrealist, in the article here on Wikipedia. The main reason why those other groups were removed by Protector777 is because its spam and they are non-notable, case closed. Until they become notable, I will be more than happy to add them. This anti-Wigdor rant and accusations is really nonsense.Classicjupiter2 00:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)