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< Wikipedia:Arbitration‎ | Requests‎ | Case‎ | Article titles and capitalisation

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Greg L (talk | contribs) at 04:38, 31 January 2012 (→‎Collaborative writing environment undermined by WP:OWN and walls of text: accuracy). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Any editor is entitled to add evidence to this page, irrespective of whether they are involved in the dispute. Create your own section and do not edit another editor's section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum of 500 words and 50 diffs. It is more effective to make succinct, detailed submissions, and submissions of longer than 500 words are usually not as helpful (and may also be removed at any time). Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerk without warning. Focus on the issues that are important to the dispute and on diffs which show the nature of the dispute.

You must use the prescribed format in your evidence. Evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those change over time), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent; see simple diff and link guide.

General discussion of the case will not be accepted on this page, and belongs on the talk page. The Arbitration Committee expects that all rebuttals of other evidence submissions will be included in your own section and will explain how the evidence is incorrect. Please do not refactor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, only an Arbitrator or Clerk may move it.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop, which is open for comment by parties, Arbitrators, and others. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact, or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and Clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by Mike Cline

Current word length: 390; diff count: 0.

This is a pure and simple failure of WP policy

I routinely work on Requested Moves and have been extensively involved with WP:Title for several years (mostly monitoring the discussion but stepping in occassionaly on policy improvement discussions). I recently wrote this Holistic View of WP titles and this My ideal titling policy. Policy ought to be simple to apply and interpret, but over the last few years we've created a policy page that is nothing more than a bunch of conflicting Babel that is poorly interpreted, selectively interpreted, and under constant threat of change when one editor or another needs a bit of policy wording to support their pet ideas. So my first assertion is very clear, our titling policy is dysfunctional. My second assertion here, is that any bad behavior on the part of editors surrounding our titling policy is a direct result of the policy wording and its application. If any answer is the right answer and no answer is wrong and that can be supported by policy, then editors will eventually behave badly when they are trying to defend their little view of the world based on policy. Its complicated by the fact that 6 or 7 editors can agree on something over the objections of 4 or 5 others and claim Community Consensus for a community of 136,000 editors. Our titling policy has put our editors in impossible positions. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My solution reccomendation

The solution to this is simple but will take some work. We can't fix the dysfunctional policy overnight. But we can stem the bleeding. I strongly favor protecting the policy page from any edits for 1 year. I am pretty confident that if WP:Titles did not change one word for the next 365 days, WP would go on, and all the energy devoted to essentially meaningless policy debate, could be diverted to building the encyclopedia. I would also conduct an RFC that might run for many months in a very structured way to completely examine and reformulate our titling policy so that titles can be decided simply and with a holistic view. We will never be able to grow this encyclopedia from 3.9M articles to ~5-10M articles over the next decade if we don't fix the Babel we now call our titling policy. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One day, a disciple asked Confucius: “If a king were to entrust you with a territory which you could govern according to your ideas, what would you do first?” Confucius replied: “My first task would certainly be to rectify the names.” The puzzled disciple asked: “Rectify the names?…Is this a joke?” Confucius replied: “If the names are not correct, if they do not match realities, language has no object. If language is without an object, action becomes impossible - and therefore all human affairs disintegrate and their management becomes pointless and impossible. Hence, the very first task of a true statesman is to rectify the names.”

— The Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use

Our first task is to rectify the policy. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:56, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by JCScaliger

Current word length: 451; diff count: 10.

In a sense, all our policies and guidelines lack meaning; but that is a philosophical position, not necessarily a help to ArbCom. The more practical distinction is between those who use WP:TITLE or WP:MOS as legislation which all must obey, and those who view it as a guideline. If both were indeed to be protected for a year, the first group might get bored and go away, and we could go on without them. [If Mike Cline's suggestion is moved to the workshop, please move these comments with it.]

A series of moves and move requests

Tony, Noetica, and Dicklyon have made a series of moves and recently.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by SMcCandlish

Current word length: 471; diff count: 0.

There's a concerted effort to impose ungrammatical capitalization in WP because the style is favored by some specialist publications

There's lots of evidence. Editors of all backgrounds and interest criticize the illiterate-looking capitalization of random nouns like bird species vernacular names, and the same dozen or so editors for seven years have recycled the same bankrupt rationalizations for it. When it's all boiled down it's simply an insistence of WP:ILIKEIT as more important than basic grammar and Wikipedia's credibility. So, here it is so far:

I've only gathered some of the evidence of this; there is much, much more to be found in the WT:BIRDS archives, and I haven't even started looking outside biology projects. The short version is that specialists often like to capitalize Things They Think Are Important, like that, in specialist publications. Ornithology journals mostly capitalize the recognized common names of birds. Almost all other biology journals don't capitalize common names, of anything. Legal concepts are often capitalized in legal writing ("The Party of the First Part", etc.) Legislators/parliamentarians love to capitalize things like "National Security" and "the Defen[s|c]e of the Nation" and so on. Computer geeks sometimes capitalize stuff too, in manuals ("Serial Port", etc.). Devotees of particular schools of thought tend to capitalize them in their insider writing ("Method Acting", etc.). None of this matters on Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is not a specialist publication. Any attempt by some special interest editor or pack of editors to alter the naming conventions or the Manual of Style to call for such capitalization does not represent consensus, just an editwarring, viciously tendentious minority. It's a violation of policy at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, and my evidence also includes proof of blatant gaming of the system, namely near ownership of naming conventions like WP:FAUNA to subvert the clear wording of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and to explicitly disagree with WP:MOS so that projects that want to ignore MOS feel they can do so with impunity and hide under the skirt of WP:FAUNA. Someone actually said this at WT:BIRDS - ignore MOS, we have WP:FAUNA and it protects us. It's a form of wikilawyering called "asking the other parent". It's nonsense and it has to stop. No other encyclopedia, dictionary, newspaper, etc., etc., etc., supports capitalization of random nouns. Only insider geek specialist publications like bird field guides and ornithology journals do it, and they even get criticized for it by insiders in their fields. Enough is enough. No more filibustering of MOS and the naming conventions by WikiProjects. The ArbCom has already spoken on this before, against both fait accompli behavior by projects, and projects going "renegade" and making up their own rules and ignoring the broader consensuses behind our policies and guidelines. In short, the ArbCom is barking up the wrong tree. MOS/NC isn't being WP:OWNed by anyone; it's being protected from weird special interest alterations often being pushed by intractable WikiProjects who do not believe they have to play be the same rules as other editors. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 02:32, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Jojalozzo

Current word length: 229; diff count: 0.

Policy and MOS harmed by Bold

Three related problems I have experienced that might be relevant for this case are

  1. non-trivial changes to policy and the MOS made without proper consensus development,
  2. modification of policy/MOS by those involved in disputes they consider flawed by unclear, conflicting or incorrect wording of policy/MOS and
  3. thrashing in policy/MOS pages where disputed content is modified and reverted so frequently that the policy or guidelines is unusable.

Evidence can be found in the last two months' history at WP:TITLE and WP:MOSCAPS. A large proportion of the activity in that period has been disputed and should not have occurred (including contributions by me at MOSCAPS). I expect others are compiling lists of diffs so I will not duplicate their efforts but let me know if you need me to provide them.

To those whose main contributions are content, a general understanding of policy and style guidelines is sufficient but for those whose efforts emphasize correcting the results of misunderstandings and ignorance of policy/MOS, stability in those areas is critical and bold changes can quickly escalate into edit wars, time suck, and mangled policy and MOS content. While we could achieve temporary stability and gain time to consolidate and restructure by freezing the most problematic pages, I propose we consider permanent meta-policy that all non-trivial changes to policy and MOS pages be made via formal RfC process (no bold edits). Jojalozzo 17:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by SarekOfVulcan

Current word length: 240; diff count: 5.

Born2cycle edits tendentiously

Born2cycle has repeatedly claimed (most recently here) that WP:BRD stated that the person reverting was required to provide an explanation, when it actually says that if you are bold and your change is reverted, you are required to start the discussion if you still think your edit would be an improvement to the encyclopedia. I pointed this out to him here, to which his reply was "What's not fine is reverting with edit summary "discuss first" (or something similar)" -- showing an extreme case of WP:IDHT. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:48, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

B2C has pointed out on my talk that he actually said "(presuming the bold editor seeks discussion/explanation of the edit and revert)" in the diff I quote above, which makes my claim misleading. However, the sheer number of words that he throws at discussions makes it easy to miss nuances like this, which may be another indication of tendentious editing. It's hard to tell when he's making different arguments than he made last time... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On January 24, Elen of the Roads protected WP:AT at the current version and told B2C on her talkpage that Born2cycle, that means that more people than you need to speak of their own volition, so you need to temper your immediate desire to respond at length to anyone who says anything different to you. I think you've said your piece sufficiently for the moment. 4 hours later, B2C responded there with a 14K, 2-and-a-half page demand that Elen immediately implement the consensus that he saw.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WT:AT

The history of WP:AT between 12/20 and 1/30 -- 1100 edits -- shows why I brought this to Arbcom. How is anyone supposed to track all that? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:54, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Greg L

Collaborative writing environment undermined by WP:OWN and walls of text

The problem is due to a mix of experienced editors who specialize in this area digging in their heels to get their way, an editor (B2C) who recognized that there was no consensus for driving that direction, B2C creating walls of impenetrable text that made it difficult for anyone to parse his message point, personal enmity building between Dicklyon and B2C, still more walls of text being generated by a small cabal of combatants, and too few outside editors willing to step into a saloon while chairs are flying out the door.

The result was a total breakdown of a collaborative writing environment due to a combination of WP:OWN, WP:Tendentious editing, and WP:TLDR. This lead to WP:DGAF by outsiders, made it impossible to discern the community consensus, deprived the combatants the pressure-relief valve of moderate outside voices, and resulted in editwarring via edits to WP:Article titles and tit-for-tat reversions.

Unfortunately, there is no way to conveniently provide links demonstrating WP:Tendentious editing and WP:TLDR other than to just give a single link to the totality of the venue. This perma‑link to Wikipedia Talk:Article titles shows the venue shortly after WP:AT was locked down and the poll was closed. The totality speaks for itself.

This link of ≤January 2012 / 500 edits of WP:AT shows the edits and reversions to the guideline page itself when its associated talk page is no longer functioning to establish what the community consensus truly is. The evidence speaks for itself regarding who was doing what sort of editing and the edit summaries being left for others.

My enumeration of how many talk-page posts various editors created at one point is here. That is merely the number of posts, not the total word count. Nor does it speak to how many posts were near-worthless personal attacks or were evasive and didn’t speak to the nugget of the disagreement.

An important point here, since there is no doubt that B2C adds more than his fair share of words to talk pages, is that based on the poll results, he had correctly assessed that what a few others were trying to do was against consensus. Unfortunately, the manner in which he made his point put off not only the opposing camp, but also put off others. So, while I agree with SarekOfVulcan’s point, I consider it half the full story; it takes at least two parties (or two camps) to have an editwar. And let there be no allusions; editwarring was occurring and that’s why WP:AT had to be locked down.

As will often happen in ArbCom actions like this, editors will try to argue that the solution to the problem is to give them what they want insofar as the atomic-level details of the dispute and all will be well. Clearly, there are differences of opinion on Wikipedia that have occurred in the past, are occurring now, and will always occur in the future. The problem here is not that Wikipedia has a guideline to provide editors with advise on how to create article titles; such a guideline is clearly a necessary thing. Nor is the problem that the guideline says “this” or “that” and evolves and displeases either this editor or that editor at any given time. The problem is that certain editors can come to our guideline pages with certain desires and if walls of vitriol are created, everyone else is driven away, and this makes it utterly impossible to discern the community consensus, which is essential to the proper functioning of any collaborative writing environment. Greg L (talk) 04:19, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

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