Wikinews:Requests for arbitration/Users Cartman02au et al v Mrmiscellanious/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page so long as it is germane to the issues outlined in the original complaint. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

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As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

I will certainly consider your request, however at this time I have no plans to recuse myself. --Cspurrier 15:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by neutralizer

MrM abuses administrative privilege to gain control over articles

These 26 minutes of quite recent edits are just one example of MrM's typical behavior;[1][2]

A new contributor was yelled at by MrM in the article edit summaries;
then MrM accused him of being my sockpuppet on the new user's talk page with no proof at all;
then MrM blocked him for a non-existant 3RR;
22:58, 1 March 2006 Mrmiscellanious blocked "65.1.149.41 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 1 day (Violation of 3RR; IP address used by Neutralizer)
the block MrM so quickly applied was in relation to the same article MrM was aggressively editing and,therefore, was contrary toWhen blocking may not be used.
Then even after BrianMc proved the anon was definitely NOT my sockpuppet (being located 1,000+ miles away from me), and told MrM that, MrM did not offer any apology at all to the new user.

MrM chases away new users with rudeness and abuse of admin privilege

Is it any wonder the new user came to this point? "I am finished here fully and absolutely". This is typical of MrM's rude behaviour and abuse of administrative privilege and the subsequent damage to this project.

These edit comments by Mrmiscellanious directed toward the new user in the incident above are also typical of how he drives new users away; "THIS IS THE LAST TIME I AM REVERTING THIS. KEEP THIS TAG UP, THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS ARTICLE THAT STATES WHAT THE TITLE STATES."and this;(cur) (last) 22:32, 1 March 2006 Mrmiscellanious (Not my job to look at sources.)

MrM accuses contributors of vandalism when they are making good faith edits

[3]

One incident of vandalism accusation was MrM's defence of a 3RR block.

Harrassment,rudeness,bullying & combativeness are MrM.'s usual editing style

"Harassment is defined as a pattern of disruptive behavior that appears to a reasonable and objective observer to have the purpose of causing negative emotions in a targeted person or persons, usually (but not always) for the purpose of intimidating the primary target. The purpose could be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine them, to frighten them, or to encourage them to stop editing entirely."

MrM is frequently accused of editing in a rude, obnoxious, aggressive, and bullying way. Below are some examples of edits that could be considered bullying and also harassment; especially common is the "encourage them to stop editing entirely" type of harassment.

[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

In summary, MrM makes the experience of wikinews much more combative and annoying than it should be,imo. He uses personal attacks,harassment,threats of blocking,page protections[13]and actual blockings to force articles to the tone and/or content that he wants.
Most important of all, MrM is an administrator who has not had the trust of this community for quite some time. His last RfDa had a majority opinion in favour of removal of his adminship[14].

Evidence presented by Cartman02au

MrM does not edit in collaboration with other users

Bush nominates a new ambassador to Australia - removed content which was of value to the article without discussion [15]
USA leaving Abu Ghraib - removed image despite objections from other editors. Did not discuss it on the article's talk page [16] [17]
Polling data on President Bush's approval rating indicates recent decline - MrM added an ambiguous cleanup tag which said As per WN:NOT, "Wikinews articles are not editorials. Articles should restrict themselves to reporting news and not commenting on the news or newsmakers. [18]. Another editor asked on the article's talk page what the specific objections were, there was no reply by MrM. When another editor said there were no actionable objections and that the tagger (MrM) doesn't collaborate all they received was I refuse to "collaborate" here (if you can even call it that) if you continue reverting good-faith edits [19]

MrM interjects his own POV into articles

Bush nominates a new ambassador to Australia - removed content which was of value to the article without discussion [20]
Controversy over Bush reasons for Iraq war - claimed said article was an editorial which it was not. MrM seems to take an interest in articles mentioning GWB and either delays through tagging or claims them as editorials if they are not pro-Bush articles [21]

MrM engages in Harassing and Combative behaviour

Claims that I am a corrupt administrator without proof [22]
MrM's recent objection to my administratorship [23] also demonstrated to me that he will bully users where possible to get what he wants. In his objection he claimed that "Quite disturbing comments have been made on his account about administrators in general". When asked if his comments were in regards to my opposition to the 3RR block against StrangerInParadise and a question I posed on the misc water cooler page [24][25] he told me that those were the main reason for his opposition.[26].
Comments like this which are directed at other users would be considered a violation of the harassment policy on our sister site - If that's the case, than I have no problem with telling you to join Indymedia, and get the hell out of here - you are no longer welcome. --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 23:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC) [27] these are inappropriate (especially for an Administrator) and counter-productive. It seems to be as soon as MrM doesn't get his own way he becomes aggresive towards other users which is most certainly not in the spirit of wiki.
Makes comments which are combative [28], [29]

Does not wish to follow practices setup by the community

MrM's refusal to participate in dispute resolution when so many users have disputes with him that can not be resolved in other ways is a slap in the face to the community which has developed these practices. [30]
MrM's blatant disregard for the WN:ARBCOM is also offensive to the community and it's estabished practices. MrM has openly admitted that he will not paricipate in the ArbCom process and will not accept any remedies imposed by the ArbCom.
MrM will block a user under one provision of the WN:BP, extend the block to suit himself and when questioned, say he blocked for another reason (despite this reason not being communicated to the user he blocked). An example of this is with StrangerInParadise, MrM applied a 4 day block for what he at the time claimed to be a 3RR violation [31]. According to WN:3RR the maximum block for a 3RR policy violation is 24 hours. When questioned about this MrM claimed that he had the right to block for longer as it was a repeat violation [32]. Unfortunately, the 3RR policy affords administrators no such allowances. When challenged about the block later, MrM claimed that he made the block in accordance with disruption conditions of WN:BP. Frankly, he can not have it both ways.
The recent incident where MrMiscellanious was blocked for breaching 3RR also gained my attention. MrMiscellanious repeatedly reverted Full extent of Abu Ghraib detainee abuse revealed in obvious violation of 3RR. The amount of effort MrMiscellanious put into having his block listed was ridiculous given such a simple policy violation.
MrM threatens to carry out more revert wars if users continue to ignore him [33]

Evidence presented by User:vonbergm

POV-pushing / Agressive edits while uninformed

He agressively inserted his POV into articles, sometimes to the point of introducing factual errors to fit his point of view.

[34] (Note edit summary: "Remove image, does not enhance article, messes with layout, is not even a "new" photo, AFAICT." and subsequent comment on talk page: [35]). This is an exceptionally agressive edit. The question of whether or not the picture should be included was ongoing on the talk page. Despite this MrM seems comfortable to make a "bold" edit, altough he only has weak reasons ("not enhance", "layout", picture takes up "bandwidth") and throws in the uninformed statement (easily contradicted by the sources) that the picture is not "new". The "AFAICT" in the edit summary and the "I believe" in the comments on the talk page indicate that he himself is not very sure on this, putting further questions why he would make such an agressive edit based on so little information.

This block of edits [36] ignored concerns raised on the talk page and changed the character of the story in a way not founded in the sources. In particular, moving a key paragraph sceptical of some information to the bottom and inserting the word "earlier" is a deliberate attempt to go against the information in the sources (which imply the opposite temporal relationship) to push a POV. At the time I did not feel like imitating MrM's agressive editing behaviour and simply complained about this on the talk pages [37]. The article remains with information that is contradicting the sources.

Changed the title 4 times ([38], [39], [40], [41]) in less than a day (to exactly the same title!) while refusing to take part in discussions about the title [42] for a good portion of the time. The fact that the title he proposed "Report: Bush authorized NSA surveillance of international conversations" misses the main point (that US citisens are targeted while they are in the US) makes this quite concerning. His insistence on the "Report:" exemplifies his obsession to relativise statements challenging his POV. (Other examples to this point below. In this case the information was verified independently by two sources cited in the article early on.)

Changed title 3 times ([43], [44], [45]) to same title "Spain issues arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers accused of killing two journalists in 2003", adding the "accused of"-phrase. This is are his only edits of the article. He makes one edit [46] to the talk page explaining his reasons for insisiting on the "accused of" formulation despite the fact no parties question that the soldiers killed the journalists and ignores the further discussion. He prevails with his unilateral approach of repeatadly changing the title and ignoring discussions on the talk page. A good example of the type of behaviour that practically forces escalation if other people are not willing to simply give up their oncerns.

Disparate application of policy / Disruptive behaviour

Some of the discrepancies in MrM's statements are so big they reach into the grotesque. For example he has been an animate advocate on the question on "reliable sources". He has insisted that sources like LA Times, Washington Post or NY Times are not "credible" ([47], [48]) and made clear he will only accept on "government documents" as sources (when the reporting is critical of the government). While this insistance in itself is already absurd (especially applied in this particular instance, see this [49] for the discussion on the talk page), it appears malicious when compared his defense [50] of a (right-wing) blog [51] as a "credible" source.

I have not been directly affected by some of the problems of MrM's dealings with policy, but have witnessed some of them as they developed on the talk pages of articles I was involved in. Thus I do not want to discuss these in detail but just point out three mayor issues that disturb me regarding this. The first is the disparate application of policy, employing aberrant interpretations of policy when convenient [52], and neglecting policy in other cases [53], which makes it difficult not to suspect that a siginificant portion of his motivation to enforce policy is derived from POV and personal grudges. The second point is MrM's inability to recognize his own mistakes as exemplified here [54] . I firmly believe that the open recognition of ones mistakes and taking responsibility for them is a prerequisite for improvement (at least when this statement is interpreted in a culture-sensitive way). The third is the "John Wayne Syndrome" exhibited here [55] where it becomes evident that MrM sees himself as the lone guardian of the wiki, the last fortress, and if he faulters the whole wiki will slide into chaos. This is an extremely harmful attitude (and very un-wiki) and needs to be straightened out.

Evidence presented by User:Amgine

MrMiscellanious is an active editor

4799 edits, the largest number in the main namespace. 560 edits in March. [56], [57]
Audio Wikinews and WNN are areas of particular interest for Mrmiscellanious. He has 163 edits to Audio Wikinews pages, and among the WNN pages, and media files created and uploaded on Wikinews and Commons another 281 edits. He has created a surprising number of podcasts of Wikinews audio content.
Remote Filing: MrMiscellanious has contributed every story which was filed using the hotline phone-in, including live scores from a hockey tournament.

MrMiscellanious is an active admin

499 deletions (and 16 restorations), 168 blocks (and 23, 14%, unblocks), 263 page protections (and 5 unprotects) [58]
RC patrol is one area which is owned by MrMiscellanious; very few admins are able maintain watch for as many hours. He is one of the quickest responses to vandalism, consistently.

Evidence presented by StrangerInParadise

Watch this space.

Evidence presented by Edbrown05

This user, elliot_k, has ceased to participate at Wikinews after MrMiscellanious called the contributor "lazy". The link to the article discussion section is here, or the entire article discussion page can be viewed here, where the "lazy" allegation is found under the topic heading "Title issue again". There are tools to check elliot_k 'contribs', but to my knowledge, this excellent reporter hasn't published a story in days or more than a week, when prior to the lazy allegation by MrMiscellanious, elliot_k published almost a story per day here at Wikinews.

Contrary to the generally genial demeanor of elliot_k, he took offense to the "lazy" allegation by MrMiscellanious and asked for an apology. The response by MrMiscellanious was here.

MrMiscellanious asserted that elliot_k held the position that achieving a total Neutral-Point-of-View (NPOV) within article reporting was difficult, if not impossible, a topic that elliot_k did raise to excuse disagreements within the communty over the semantics of a story headline. Then MrMiscellanious used Wikinews policy to defend the assertion that elliot_k was "lazy", and pressed elliot_k to make an apology to the community for having opened up a topic for honest discourse.

MrMiscellanious never did apologize for that behavior.

elliot-k did begin to participate in 'Dispute resolution' with MrMiscellanious, but MrMiscellanious refused to participate in that. After the dispute moved here, elliot_k seems to have given up.

MrMiscellanious participation in this ArbCom forum has been in a manner to disrespect it.

Evidence presented by {your user name}

First assertion

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion, for example, your first assertion might be "Jimmy Wales engages in edit warring". Here you would list specific edits to specific articles which show Jimmy Wales engaging in edit warring

Second assertion

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion, for example, your second assertion might be "Jimmy Wales makes personal attacks". Here you would list specific edits where Jimmy Wales made personal attacks.