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Why because, I chose civil discussion and the standard WP dispute resolution methods rather than edit warring, am I banned? My feeling is that you believed the word of editors that you maybe knew rather than looking at the facts. [[User:Martin Hogbin|Martin Hogbin]] ([[User talk:Martin Hogbin|talk]]) 15:26, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Why because, I chose civil discussion and the standard WP dispute resolution methods rather than edit warring, am I banned? My feeling is that you believed the word of editors that you maybe knew rather than looking at the facts. [[User:Martin Hogbin|Martin Hogbin]] ([[User talk:Martin Hogbin|talk]]) 15:26, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

====Replies to Sammy1339====
You seem to believe that everything in the article must be supported by your preferred ''academic extreme vegan'' sources. That is not the case, as [[User:Martin_Hogbin/Veganism/evidence#Vegan_bias|these other 12 editors]] have pointed out. If course, vegan sources are useful in defining how vegans see themelves but you have even dismissed mainstream vegan sources, such as national vegan organisations. We also need to include material supported by neautral and anti-vegan sources. [[User:Martin Hogbin|Martin Hogbin]] ([[User talk:Martin Hogbin|talk]]) 15:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)


=== Statement by Viriditas ===
=== Statement by Viriditas ===

Revision as of 15:33, 26 February 2016

Requests for arbitration

Arbitration Committee proceedings
Request name Motions Initiated Votes
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Longstanding POV and behaviour dispute at veganism|Longstanding POV and behaviour dispute at veganism]]   25 February 2016 {{{votes}}}
[edit]
Open cases

Currently, no arbitration cases are open.

[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)
Case name Closed
Historical elections 13 Sep 2024
Request name Motions  Case Posted
Amendment request: Definition of the "area of conflict" Clause 4 (b) Motion none 26 July 2024
Amendment request: Palestine-Israel articles (AE referral) Motion none 17 August 2024
Clarification request: Conduct in deletion-related editing none (orig. case) 8 September 2024

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Longstanding POV and behaviour dispute at veganism

Initiated by Martin Hogbin at 15:53, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Martin Hogbin

Since before I started editing the article in October 2012, two users, Viriditas and SlimVirgin (later joined by Sammy1339) have been dominating the page. Their edits were well sourced but came almost exclusively from extreme vegan or animal rights authors. Back in 2007 it was delisted as a GA because of pro-vegan concerns[7]. These have never been properly addressed since. Anyone who argued against them was treated harshly and told that they are only giving their personal opinion [8] or that their sources are unreliable. SlimVirgin has often asserted that most other editors are pushing their own POV [9]. Throughout the history of the page at least 12 editors have specifically raised the question of pro-vegan bias and the lack of criticism [10], [11] and some have pointed out that dissenting editors were being driven away by the atmosphere on the talk page [12] and that one regular editor was showing signs of page ownership[13].

After I arrived and tried to present a less pro-vegan POV I was greeted with personal attacks [14], threats [15], spurious accusations[16] and finally a claim on ANI [17] that my editing (of the talk page) was disruptive. In fact, the only difference between myself and most other 12 editors who have tried to make the same point as me is that I was more persistent in trying to get the page to present a more mainstream view of the subject. Rather than edit warring I have consistently tried to resolve disputes by civil discussion[18] and by using the standard dispute resolution methods such as an RfC. The result of the ANI was that, on the bizarre basis that 'Martin's edits there [on the talk page] outnumber his edits to the actual article by almost a factor 10', Drmies, acting I suggest somewhat in haste, handed me a year long topic ban.

Recently an editor who presented sources criticising veganism [19] had their sources summarally dismissed [20].


Replies to Drmies

Please tell me what exactly my 'disruption' consisted of. There is no evidence in the ANI page, only people saying that I was disruptive. What exactly have I disrupted? I have tried to stop a small group of editors from using the page to promote a particular extreme brand of veganism, along with these other 12 editors. If that is disruption then I plead guilty.

Why is it OK for the pro-vegans to persistently engage in personal attacks against me and others?

Why is it OK for the page regulars to be able to edit the article page freely and write as much as they want on the talk page? Since I first edited the article in October 2012 I have made a only 21 edits, 4 uncontrovertial and 17 related to this dispute. Of these 10 were immediately reverted.

Why because, I chose civil discussion and the standard WP dispute resolution methods rather than edit warring, am I banned? My feeling is that you believed the word of editors that you maybe knew rather than looking at the facts. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:26, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Replies to Sammy1339

You seem to believe that everything in the article must be supported by your preferred academic extreme vegan sources. That is not the case, as these other 12 editors have pointed out. If course, vegan sources are useful in defining how vegans see themelves but you have even dismissed mainstream vegan sources, such as national vegan organisations. We also need to include material supported by neautral and anti-vegan sources. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Viriditas

Statement by SlimVirgin

Statement by Sammy1339

I think Drmies' action was a measured response to the concerns brought up by several editors in this AN thread concerning Martin's behavior on the talk pages of several articles. The ominous prediction made by Viriditas here is also troubling. However, I have previously suggested mediation to resolve the content dispute at Talk:Veganism, and I don't object to opening this case instead. --Sammy1339 (talk) 17:09, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing the comments below which focus on the article's POV, I'd like to modify my statement to say that, if this turns into a content dispute, I would rather have it via WP:M than here. I am responsible for very little of the content of the article, and I would have written it very differently - in fact one of my first suggestions was about restructuring it. However, whether or not the whole article is biased, Martin has never raised concrete suggestions for fixing this, and has instead created a series of distractions on the talk page. (The one exception that proves the rule is this recent edit, which introduces as "criticism of veganism" a source written by a vegan, which says that veganism is morally obligatory for everyone in nearly all actual cases. He later implied he hadn't read it.[21]) I would like to have a discussion based on sources instead of just opinions and feelings. --Sammy1339 (talk) 02:20, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Drmies

Thank you for opening this, Martin.

Let me say first of all that numbers don't mean everything. The metric (termed "bizarre") of Martin Hogbin's talk contributions outweighing his article contributions by a factor ten is only part of the rationale. It's worth noting that Martin Hogbin's total contributions to the article are a low 1100 bytes--if you compare that to the 296 talk page edits (3.71 article bytes per talk page edit), and you compare Viriditas's 7800 bytes to his 275 talk page edits (28 bytes per talk page edit), then Hogbin's productivity is a bit low, to put it mildly.

But this talk of numbers skips over the letters: as Hammersoft correctly points out, below, the metric is mentioned in item c., which is preceded by a. and b. If it hadn't been for a., there would have been no b. or c. That Martin Hogbin's appearance on various talk pages, and Talk:Veganism in particular, is deemed disruptive is amply proven, I think, in the AN thread, and it's on that area that an appeal should focus. Let me add that to the best of my knowledge I was not familiar with Martin Hogbin, and I don't think I've ever edited Veganism or its talk page. Drmies (talk) 18:40, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hammersoft, the evidence is presented in Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive278#Martin_Hogbin. Drmies (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hammersoft, the link is to a discussion about disruption. The consensus of that discussion, as I determined it, was that there was disruption and that something ought to be done about it. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 21:00, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Resolute, plenty of editors agreed that Martin Hogbin's contributions were disruptive--that progression was stymied by endless article talk page filibustering. That discussion zoomed in on the talk page of this particular article. Martin Hogbin made tons of talk page edits, and consensus was that it impeded article progress. Here's three editors, back to back, only one of whom had already commented in the thread, at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive278#Comments_from_Martin_Hogbin. I shouldn't have to point there, let alone cite--read the comments for yourself. (I wonder if everyone read over the entire discussion.) The only thing that gave me pause was the comment by GoodDay, whom I know as a fair and balanced editor, but their comment was rather general and did not seem to point at specific behavior in the areas signaled as problematic. And then look at the comments by Gandydancer and Coretheapple. There is a clear consensus in that thread that Martin Hogbin's edits are disruptive. Drmies (talk) 00:28, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Hammersoft

I find the close of the AN/I thread by Drmies [22] to be curious, especially with regards to point 'c' where he says "Martin's edits there outnumber his edits to the actual article by almost a factor 10". Using any numerical comparison as a basis for applying a talk page restriction is fraught with all sorts of problems. If this be a valid basis on which to apply such a talk page restriction, then one could just as easily say that Viriditas (not singling you out Viriditas, but using you as a case example) should also be under such a restriction; the number of bytes Viriditas has contributed to Talk:Veganism is 12 times as much as they have made to Veganism [23][24]. If one can conclude based on pure numbers that Martin Hogbin is more interested in talk than veganism, then certainly the same conclusion can be reached about other editors as well. Where, wise Solomon, would you like to draw the incision?

Indeed, when there is dispute about the content of an article (which appears to be the case here), we strongly encourage editors to take it to the talk page. I'm hard pressed to understand why we should be sanctioning an editor for doing what WP:DR tells them to do. Is there any evidence that Martin Hogbin has been abusing the talk page in any way? Unless there is compelling evidence Martin Hogbin has been disruptive on the talk page, the restriction should be removed. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • If Martin Hogbin's abuse of Talk:Veganism is so rampant as to warrant a year long talk page restriction on that page, then evidence should be trivial to produce. I welcome anyone to produce such. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:51, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Drmies, I've read that. I don't see disruption. I see disagreement. I've reviewed the diffs provided in the AN/I thread you noted, and not a single one appears to be disruptive in any respect. Could you please point to the rampant evidence of disruption? One diff would suffice. Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 20:55, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disruption isn't proven just by people saying it's disruption. Come on. We're placing a restriction on someone without evidence other than people saying it's true? Please tell me that bar is higher than that. Please tell me we don't wantonly apply restrictions to people just because regulars at an article don't like a newcomer to it? Maybe Martin is being disruptive. I don't know. I'm not involved in this (and frankly don't want to be). But, the restriction seems without basis in fact. There should be at least something concrete to point to. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:04, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Consensus isn't a suicide pact anymore than AGF is. Still awaiting proof of any disruption. One diff will do. One. Please? Pretty please? --Hammersoft (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Finnusertop

Additional information: Viriditas has not edited in almost two weeks. His last edit was interaction with me, when he informed me that he cannot finish a Good Article review he had started, because of health issues. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:01, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by onlooker Mangoe

I haven't edited this article at all, but in a very quick skim it comes across as presenting the diet as uncontroversial, and it leans towards advocacy. I think our complainant is right to question that, ignoring other aspects of his behavior.

Comparison of article edits to talk page edits is invalid. There are a bunch of articles where I don't do much article editing, largely due to the time involved, but where I am to some degree involved in talk page discussion. It's often the case that said discussion is in response to others who are making problematic edits. Mangoe (talk) 21:19, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Resolute

I haven't followed this article's history at all, however this RFArb got me curious. I just did a quick read through of the article. The only evidence I can see of any criticisms of veganism as a diet are a pair of brief statements that some people might require supplements for calcium and vitamin D. Under philosophy, there are is a timidly worded criticism of "strict adherence to ethical veganism", based around the arguments of a vegan. Highly conspicuous in its absence is any actual critical commentary on veganism itself. In fact, virtually the entire article exists to either extol the virtues of veganism or offers advice on what sorts of foods can be used to replace non-vegan equivalents. Given the state of the article, it is incredibly reasonable for an editor seeking to discuss the addition of criticisms associated with the topic would have a far greater ratio of talk space edits to main space. I don't even need to go through the talk page to realize that this article is written from a specific POV.

That said, I did go through the last few pages of the talk archives anyway. What I see there is clearly a case of Martin being persistent in his arguments, and a collection of editors growing increasingly frustrated by said persistence. I think some of the complaints were justified - Martin did seem to have a penchant for time sucking RFCs (the one trying to compare the state of the veganism and carnism articles was particularly absurd) - but on the whole, I would characterize the interactions with Martin as being one of persistence vs. condescension. Without going deeper into the archives to get a greater view of the history of this dispute, however, I can't actually say whether that condescension was justified. I am not sure there is a great deal for Arbcom to look at here, though given my admittedly superficial and extremely recent self-education of the topic history, I am not a fan of Drmies' rationale for topic banning Martin. Whether or not the topic restriction is justified, the "he's more interested in talk than veganism" statement is absurd in the extreme. What is the implied argument there? That Martin should have been battling with the cadre of article regulars in the article itself? Resolute 21:24, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies:. Even if I accept completely that Martin needed to be topic restricted - and that may very well have been the case - I still find your stated reasoning to be absurd. I took your rationale as arguing that Martin was disrupting the talk page because he wasn't disrupting the article. Even if you came to the right conclusion, the path you took to get there was problematic. But then, given the current status of the article as an advocacy page rather than neutral encyclopedic article, it would have been very difficult to restrict Martin on the basis of something like civil POV pushing without catching others in the same net. Resolute 15:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Coretheapple

I was pinged on the ANI mentioned by Martin, and commented on it briefly based upon my experiences at BP. Martin is apparently upset because of the restrictions that were correctly placed upon him as a result of that ANI, which found that he had behaved disruptively. Other than that, he appeared to be involved in a content dispute at the Vegan article in which he is in the minority. Being a content dispute, I don't see any role for arbcom here, but I guess I could be wrong. Perhaps there is some subtlety that escapes me. The topic ban was not arbitrarily imposed. Coretheapple (talk) 00:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Softlavender

I've never edited on Veganism or any related article, so I'm not a party here. My concern is related, however. In the past 6 to 8 months there has been a proliferation of POV articles related to "veganism": Carnism; Psychology of eating meat; Commodity status of animals. (There may be others that I haven't noticed.) Most started and/or substantially contributed to by the named parties in this Arb request. All of them appear to me to be highly POV, agenda-pushing, coatracky, and disturbingly inaccurate and/or cherry-picked in terms of encyclopedic information, sourcing, and footnotes. I share the OP's concern in that I feel Veganism is being highly politicized here on Wikipedia, and highly agenda-ized. Wikipedia is in effect being used as a platform to endorse and advance vegan "politics" -- when in fact veganism per se is not political or a philosophy, but simply a dietary choice like vegetarianism or raw foodism or paleolithic diet. I don't like to see such misinformation and such POV-pushing on Wikipedia, especially for a dietary choice which is very much an extremely fringe choice worldwide in terms of percentages. I'd also like to point out that the Veganism article itself falsely politicizes and characterizes the dietary choice, right in the opening sentence, and extremely so (note one related RfC). (By the way I say all of the above as someone who has been a vegan for at least a decade [but not anymore].) I'm not going to comment further or answer questions, because I think the problem is too widespread and too entrenched on Wikipedia to spend my Wikipedia time on, but I did want to make this statement/observation. Softlavender (talk) 08:00, 26 February 2016 (UTC); edited 08:12, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Only in Death

This is two issues being sandwiched together. The first is a content dispute at Veganism in which Martin Hogbin changes did not gain traction in the face of fairly rigid opposition. ARBCOM (in)famously does not make rulings on content disputes. Except when they do. The second is regarding if his subsequent ANI ban was improper - attempts to resolve this (which have not been tried) prior to ARBCOM would be appealing this at AN as it was the result of a community discussion which led to the closing by Drmies. Given the evidence of civil POV-pushing (not limited to Veganism) that was provided by the supporters there, there was enough support for some sanction. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:09, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved Ncmvocalist

The matter concerning Martin Hogbin's talk page participation has been raised on this very page, just about a year ago.

The first issue was relating to a different dispute - being over 2 words in an article's infobox, which managed to incite a 17-revert edit-war between several editors including Hogbin, a 27,000 word discussion on the article talk page primarily by Hogbin and another editor, and multiple threats by Hogbin to take the matter to ArbCom. He carried out his threat and a request was made to last year's ArbCom, which was declined as seen here. At that request, my comment here covers any evidence which is needed to verify whether or not the conduct I've described (as a whole):

  1. was a proportionate response to the 2 words in issue; and
  2. has the effect of driving away editors from participating in editing the article in question or any RfC.

Personally, I think the community wanted him restricted across Wikipedia article talk pages, not just on the topic which is the subject of this second issue. That said, any assistance by uninvolved administrators like Drmies is better than the lack thereof provided by others within the community to-date on this particular matter. The type of problematic editing conduct which the community wants curtailed is remarkably exhausting. If this appeal is going to be entertained, I think the restriction and rationale ought to be widened; otherwise the appeal should just be rejected to avoid further resources being unnecessarily expended.

That said, I have not reviewed the conduct of other editors referred to in the second issue so do not comment on that aspect. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {Non-party}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the case request or provide additional information.

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Longstanding POV and behaviour dispute at veganism: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <1/0/1/4>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

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