User talk:Coren

Personal attacks

Coren, please re-read this edit of yours, slowly if you will. Now that you have (presumably) slept on it, aren't you ashamed of it? Impugning a user's mental health, suggesting they have delusions and need to "go and discuss things with a health professional" is a classic and very nasty personal attack. As an arbitrator you are indeed more likely to get away with it; but that fact actually makes courtesy more, not less, incumbent on you. I would have supposed you'd know that.
Further personal attacks of a similar nature will result in blocks. Bishonen | talk 14:19, 10 November 2010 (UTC).

I had already decided against posting it as unlikely to be as helpful as intended and reverted within the minute. If you examine the history, however, you will note that Giano chose to restore it.

Either way, if you intend to revive this brief, if showy, flashing of rapiers which has long since petered out, you might want to start by assuming good faith and consider the possibility that I am genuinely worried about someone's health. Put another way: there might be better things for you to do right now than beholding the mote that is in thy brother's eye. — Coren ^(talk) 15:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I'm glad to hear it has petered out; then presumably I won't have to see any more such attacks, or make any blocks. (I haven't historically had much luck with arb blocks and similar actions. Strange, that.) But I'm sorry to see you so uninterested in engaging with my point about an arbitrator's responsibility. Genuinely worried about someone's health? Nonsense, Coren. Sorry, but if I were to assume good faith about that, I'd have to think you either fool or knave. For it would be either foolish or wicked to post, in all seriousness, that kind of (extremely private and sensitive) concern on a public page. Wouldn't it? And only after you pressed Save did it occur to you that it was unlikely to be helpful..? Oh, come on! Not sure about the mote in my brother's eye. It might be genuinely helpful if you explained what the beam in my eye is. Whether or not, I'm done here. Bishonen | talk 16:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC).

Whether you chose to believe it or not, I do have serious concerns that he is obsessing over imagined wrongs in a manner that is very unhealthy. I did not reconsider whether what I told him was accurate or borne out of genuine concern, but whether the venue or manner was appropriate to make that point (it wasn't). I chose instead to concentrate on my simile with Qixotte. At any rate (and it is not clear from that talk page), the discussion moved to email where it was considerably more seriously debated. — Coren ^(talk) 16:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Possible COI on articles covered by R&I case

Coren,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you about this. I know that I’m currently topic banned from these articles, but you’ve said in the request for clarification about this case that topic banned editors should still be allowed access to dispute resolution related to the arbitration ruling, and this is an issue that I think really needs attention.

Around two weeks ago, the user WeijiBaikeBianji nominated the article High IQ society for deletion based on a lack of available sources, after having previously removed several of the existing sources from the article. During the course of the AFD, it was determined that WeijiBaikeBianji is affiliated with Mensa, and had previously requested the deletion of several articles about high IQ societies that are Mensa’s rivals. (Examples of articles about Mensa’s rivals that he nominated for deletion are Top One Percent Society, Cerebrals Society, Intertel (group), and International High IQ Society.) Four different editors commenting in the AFD for High IQ society agreed that WeijiBaikeBianji has a conflict of interest on these articles and should not be editing them or nominating them for deletion.

At around the same time, another editor (who wasn’t involved in the AFDs) posted an AE thread about some of WeijiBaikeBianji’s editing behavior on other articles covered by the R&I case. However, the only thing which uninvolved administrators discussed in response to this thread was whether the editor posting the report had permission to do so. When it was eventually decided that she did, the thread was closed as “no action” without any discussion about the behavior which was the thread’s intended topic. During the time since the thread was closed, I and a few other editors involved in the AE thread and AFDs have made attempts to get administrators to examine this issue, but none have been willing to.

WeijiBaikeBianji is currently engaged in low-level edit warring against multiple users on several articles and templates covered by the recent case, particularly High IQ society and Template:Human intelligence. The apparent COI-related problems with his behavior have gradually grown worse over time, as it’s become apparent that administrators don’t seem willing to examine this issue. I think it really needs to be examined, but neither I nor anyone else has been able to get attention from an admin about this. Can you offer any advice on what to do about an editor who appears to have a conflict of interest on these articles, and who’s had this pointed out to him by multiple editors, but is persisting in the behavior that he was advised against? --Captain Occam (talk) 03:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, there are two points to consider here: whether the reason no admin action has been taken might be because they simply disagree that the behavior is problematic, and whether you are the right person to raise the issue. I offer no opinion on the first because I haven't examined the situation in detail, but as for the second: there are certainly other users who have noticed this behavior and who could certify an RfC? — Coren ^(talk) 15:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Every time this behavior has been brought up with admins in the past, there’s always been a very strong impression that the issue was simply too complex for them to be willing to look at it. This attempt to get attention from Georgewilliamherbert was a typical example. The first time the issue was brought up with him he didn’t reply at all, and then when the editor contacting him commented again with a new example of the same problem, he said he was too busy to look at it right away. Then when Ferahgo asked him if he had any suggestions about another admin to discuss this with, he never replied again.

By the way, thanks for getting back to me about this. I was kind of worried that when I brought this up with you, you might brush me off in a similar manner, but I guess I can expect better than that from members of ArbCom.

I agree that whatever’s going to eventually be done about this issue, I’m not the best person to do it. The reason I decided to ask you about it is because most of the editors who’ve been concerned about this possible COI are editors who weren’t involved in the arbitration case, so none of them seemed to be considering the idea of bringing it up with one of the arbitrators. Since trying to resolve it by discussing it with normal admins hasn’t been productive, the problem was staying unresolved and gradually getting worse, and I didn’t think I should just let this continue indefinitely. Now that you’re willing to offer some advice about this, would you consider it acceptable if I were to contact some of the other editors who’ve been concerned about it and let them know about this discussion, so they can hopefully find out from you how to deal with it? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The conflict of interest in question seems rather underwhelming. As best I can tell from looking at WeijiBaikeBianji's userpage and the AFD in question, WBB is active in working with gifted children, and among many other such activities he "present workshops at National Association for Gifted Children-affiliated state organization meetings, at occasional meetings of Mensa, and at meetings of other nonprofit organizations on the topics of mathematics education, organizing support networks for parents, and IQ testing." That's the smoking gun. I'm not sure there's much there there, and moreover it doesn't seem healthy for ArbCom litigants to continually and closely monitor their adversaries in this fashion (as Coren alluded to in his second point). It seems likely that this issue has been ignored not because of its complexity (it's not especially complex), but because there isn't really a meaningful COI here, and because people may have a bit of fatigue when they hear you litigating against the same people again and again. MastCell ^Talk 17:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Without necessarily being as categorical as Mastcell, I think the best way for you to proceed is to raise the suggestion of an RfC to those other editors and take a step back yourself. It may help air out the issue and fix it, but you need to accept the possibility that you're being oversensitive to the issue and that there is too little going on to justify intervention. — Coren ^(talk) 17:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

MastCell: I’m not sure if I made this clear, but I’m not the only person who’s been trying and failing to get attention from admins about this. For example, the thread I linked to in GWH’s user talk was posted by Ferahgo. (Ferahgo was eventually topic banned from these articles based on the WP:SHARE policy, but there were no active sanctions against her at the time when she was attempting to get GWH’s attention.) The issue she was trying to get attention about also was not the possible conflict of interest, although it was an instance of POV-pushing which might have been a result of a COI. So I think it’s an oversimplification to say that the reason issues involving WeijiBaikeBianji have been ignored by admins is just because the evidence for a COI isn’t convincing, and because people think that I specifically should not be bringing it up.

Anyway, I’ve contacted the other editors who’ve expressed concern about the COI issue. One other thing I think I should mention here is that since the purpose of an RFC/U is to provide an editor with feedback about their editing behavior, and WeijiBaikeBianji has already received a fair amount of that in the AFD (and has chosen to ignore it), I’m kind of pessimistic about whether an RFC would accomplish anything in this case. But either way, I wouldn’t be the person posting the RFC, so it’ll be up to the other editors who’ve been involved in this issue to decide whether that’s the most appropriate solution. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The main issue here, beyond COI is that WeijiBaikeBianji is removing references continuously all over the place on articles that have anything to do with high iq societies. That kills the will to really contribute anything, when you know he will come in and delete any effort you put in. StevanMD (talk) 20:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji is a destructive editor. WeijiBaikeBianji is dishonest and sly. He is possibly ideologically motivated, because he's certainly not logical. I support any sanction given to WBB. (He should be in Shawshank) Woodsrock (talk) 00:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

The posting above of Woodsrock had the edit summary, "Please indict & imprison WBB for crimes against logic". Woodsrock (talk · contribs) is a recently arrived editor [1]. This is the third personal attack [2][3] they have made of this nature on this editor. Mathsci (talk) 04:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Disgraceful! Serious business in wiki-world... Woodsrock (talk) 04:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Please redact the comment of 00:35 above. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 05:00, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

A conflict of interest, too? I guess it doesn't surprise me. I've been trying to clean up some of his messes on these articles, but it's hard to do much when he's been so active. The things I see him edit or revert make little to no sense, at least from my perspective. I don't know much about how dispute resolution works at Wikipedia, so I would appreciate any advice from arbitrators about the long-term solution to this issue. Having people always needing to clean up behind WeijiBaikeBianji doesn't seem like a good permanent plan.-SightWatcher (talk) 05:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

SightWatcher (talk · contribs) is another recently arrived editor [4] who edits almost entirely in the area covered by WP:ARBR&I and appears, like Woodsrock, to be following and reverting the edits of a targeted editor. There have been a number of sockpuppet accounts active since the arbitration case closed, many operated by Mikemikev (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). The appearance of recently arrived users out of the blue with a similar agenda against particular editors somehow does suggest that something like this might be happening now. Mathsci (talk) 06:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

If you think these accounts are sockpuppets, you’re welcome to start an SPI. (I think that’s probably allowed under your topic ban, although I’m not sure.) But in a discussion that’s supposed to be about how to deal with WeijiBaikeBianji’s possible conflict of interest, it isn’t appropriate for a topic-banned editor to be bringing up this accusation of sockpuppetry when the only thing it will accomplish is to distract Coren from giving advice to the editors who are asking for it. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I think this thread has pretty much played out by now, actually. It's a matter that should be examined in an RfC, and not debated by sniping and counter accusation in inappropriate fora.

Besides, regardless of where this is taken, some of the language displayed above isn't acceptable from any editor. — Coren ^(talk) 12:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Mail

Hello, Coren. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.— Sophie ^(Talk) 18:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

You've been mentioned in an arbitration amendment

Courtesy notification: [5] Gigs (talk) 22:51, 13 November 2010 (UTC)