Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Neelix/Evidence

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Prolegomena

Neelix has shown a considerable lack of judgment in the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of redirects that are inappropriate twice over, 1. being blatantly sexist and fetishistic, and 2. serving no encyclopedic purpose. In addition, article creation and article edits betray a clear POV and, worse, a COI, which would be bad enough in its own right but on occasion Neelix appears to have used The Tool to further his own interests in article space. Though it is not directly relevant here, his categorizations at Commons indicate an obsession with certain sexual fetishes, proving that the categories on en-wiki were no fluke. This is conduct unbecoming of an administrator, seriously unbecoming, and I propose that Neelix be desysopped.

Redirects

My log speaks for itself. (I don't know how to link cleverly to the relevant sections of my log.) I began deleting some of the most offensive redirects at 23:09 on 5 November: Multiple titty syndrome, a redirect to Accessory breast (even typing these redirects fills me with some disgust). That was the first of a long list of just incredibly sexist and derogatory terms; my log looks like some sort of collection of strings that Google would block in SafeSearch mode. And from then on it's just one offensive, low-brow word for breasts after another, in incredibly unlikely search phrases. No one who uses the word "titty" would combine that with "supernumerary". Or look at the gap in diction between "atrophy" and "tit" for a slew of redirects for Breast atrophy. The plenitude of these terms (hundreds of them) is indicative of obsession, their very presence is disruptive and insulting to all women and to allies of women--that is, people like me, people with wives and mothers and daughters. So you'll forgive me for not listing a larger selection of terms: I am still perplexed that we let this go on for so long.

COI editing, abuse of tools

It is clear to me that Neelix has made edits in an area in which he is so involved that he cannot be trusted to edit in an objective manner. This includes the building of walled gardens pertaining to sexual trafficking, in general articles as well as BLPs and articles on organizations, many of which have marginal or no notability--and many of which are at AfD. I agree with the statements made by Epicgenius, Ivanvector, and Ritchie333 and see no need to repeat what they already said: Neelix was advocating a number of issues here and used his tool on occasion to further his goals. Like Ritchie I am baffled by the claim that he had never heard of INVOLVED before, which is really unforgivable for an admin: even common sense ought to be enough.

Abuse of Page Protection tool & Launching SPis

The last place he used Page Protection [1] was to stop legitimate efforts to trim on a seriously bloated article he created and where 91%+ of the edits to date (and almost 100% of the additions) are his. See [around Jan 4]. See comments on Talk. He launched an SPi to protect his article from trimming. [2] and see other Admin's concerns in this thread [3] and the broader problems caused by Admins that helped him [4]

Obsessive editing

Obsessive editing at Tara Teng. See a more recent version with lots of photos and version at over 100,000 bytes together with a universe of articles about every person Teng met or cause she supported. One really bad example - when someone trimed he wholesale restored info he wrote about her dating life [5]. how she enjoys "Pacific Ocean sunsets", and her extensive opinions on a host of topics. (Is Wikipedia a dating profile?). On this and other articles he demonstrates very poor judgement for BLPs and the guidelines that an Admin is trusted to be enforcing. Opinions as to the real world seriousness of this multi-year effort vary but I note the target is a living young female (granted one who seeks attention to for herself and her causes), but if someone did this to my daughter...

"Crazy" Redirect Spam

Lack of judgement extends to

To manage the large number (hundreds now) deletion templates, other editors User_talk:Neelix#Deletion_templates have had to create a separate page User_talk:Neelix/deletions off his user page, with it's own Archive User_talk:Neelix/deletions/Archive_1 Many of the deletion templates actually cover dozens or even hundreds of redirects. Many other redirects are being deleted by the hundreds without notice or discussion. No effort shown by Neelix to help clean up or even manage his own talk page. What a burden on RfD, TfD, AfD and the editors that are trying to manage the review and delete process.

Invention of new words now spread around the web

The editor created hundreds impressive looking but completely fake words like Abstractionistically and Figurelessness that have been copied from the redirects by online dictionaries and word lists over the last several years so that his fake words now could easily be mistaken as real words by the average person. This is a disservice to humanity.

Ownership

Neelix has shown unacceptable levels of ownership to articles he created. In addition to the misuse of admin tools to protect his articles, he has shown himself to be uncivil to those who edited "his" articles.

• There was an editor attempting to make improvements to his Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant. Neelix reverted his edits with no explanation[7],[8] and editor asked why on Neelix's talk page. Neelix reverted his message to delete it from his talk page and did not respond! Editor asked AGAIN on Talk:Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant and was accused of being a vandal and a sockpuppet.[9] Neelix' accusation that editor was also an IP who vandalized the page seem implausible when you consider the very intricate, professional editing this editor was spending hours doing, leaving detailed descriptions with an academic rationale behind each.
• An editor from the Guild of Copyeditors worked on the same article. Neelix was extremely defensive about edits and reacted excessively and other editor becomes clearly frustrated.

Walled garden/AfDs

• Many (including myself) believe there is reason to suspect Neelix created walled gardens for his certain favorite topic (Tara Teng and activism against human trafficking) with extremely obscure articles being created for the sole purpose of linking to each other. He padded articles with sources that were mere mentions, and sources used to reference other facts in the article that were unnecessary. One such is for Roger Cram, which, incidentally, was screencapped before it was deleted. It appears the entire point of this BLP was to link the associated names as the bottom.
• Neelix participated in AfDs on his own articles and showed a complete ignorance/disregard for the rules of notability, one of the tenets of Wikipedia, in order to keep these articles. Over and over he flat out stated his articles easily met GNG. Neelix argued notability based on multiple references, reliable sources, info not primary/PR etc, none of which are acceptable if the subject had no in-depth/persistent coverage. Examples:
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roger Cram (screencapped article above). The man was so obscure a hoax was suspected.
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cari Russell
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/118th Avenue massage parlour

The following three were pointed out as a walled garden during the AfD process:

• • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian Life Assembly (Article Rescue Squad appeal)
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Five Stones Church
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heritage Grill
• Neelix used sources which were not available without a subscription. When Roger Cram was AfDd, Neelix went to Article Rescue Squad asking for help locating these sources. This is extremely suspicious - if Neelix himself wrote the article and used those sources, shouldn't they be ones he somehow has access to? He doesn't offer to take a few screenshots/PDFs etc for confirmation, and he offers no explanation why he no longer has access to these articles. He tells people in the AfD to go to their library to find the articles, but even though he works at a university, he somehow could not do the same? This makes me wonder if he ever had full access to these articles.

Redirect spam

• His excessive redirects were designed to boost his edit count and status as one of "Wikipedia's Top Editors" which earned him news coverage from the CBC etc. He gamed the system by making minor changes in the redirects such as adding or omitting articles, hyphens, apostrophes, plurals etc that are not even considered a Google derivation. These are already done by search engines - these are all the same search term:
  • Shrinkages of the tit
  • Shrinkage of the tit
  • Shrinkages of tits
  • Shrinkage of tits

None of the behavior displayed is acceptable for either a Wikipedia Admin or Ambassador.

Sexual "fetish" categorization at Commons

• In 2015, Neelix created nearly 2,000 categories on Commons,[10] the majority involving nudity, and many of which have been described as fetishistic. He was alerted to this and insisted his categories were helpful.[11] While Commons is not Wikipedia, it shows a disturbing pattern, reflects poorly on the project and demonstrates a complete lack of judgement.

Some of his categories were perfectly normal while others are a completely unnecessary level of categorization as there are not that many images. It will be labor intensive for all his categories to be evaluated and deleted.

I hope the arbitration committee will consider a sexuality/nudity topic ban for Neelix because he has failed to show the necessary acumen and maturity to edit in this area.

[Anti-]prostitution advocacy

Neelix clearly took an interest in prostitution and human trafficking on Wikipedia. It's not clear (to me, yet) whether his edits reflect a bias; from what I have seen, Neelix edits from both sides of this issue. Take for example Template:Prostitution in Canada. Neelix was the only contributor to the template by July 2013, at which time it looked like this; he wrote many of the linked articles. As he left it, the template gave equal prominence to many differing viewpoints: for workers' rights, against legalization, shelters and aid groups, and criminal organizations. If Neelix is advocating a position, it's difficult to see what it is. On Neelix's inclusion of North Preston's Finest, a Canadian gang of pimps, Wikipediocracy alleges: "[t]his was a deliberate, considered attempt to malign organizations who believe prostitution should be legalized". True, Neelix included the gang under the heading of "pro-prostitution" groups, but should a criminal organization known for its role in the illegal sex trade be listed under "anti-prostitution"? A subsequent discussion (which Neelix did not participate in) supported NPF's inclusion. That discussion did suggest removing the "pro-" and "anti-" terminology but only because participants found it confusing; that's an editorial correction, not a POV one.

This is common of Neelix's editing: a singular but fairly neutral focus on a particular topic area (not counting Tara Teng; see others' evidence). His activity has resulted in some articles on sensitive topics becoming overly detailed, but he is not the first editor and will not be the last to get carried away with excessive trivia. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:38, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mass creation of marginally useful redirects

In many instances, Neelix created dozens or hundreds of redirects to a single article. At the moment I count 18 instances (1,549 redirects) currently being discussed at

In fact he did know better. In 2010, he was blocked for rapid page creations, and was told in the block notice and the subsequent ANI discussion that these mass-creations are unwelcome, especially of implausible synonyms and modifications for profane topics. He even acknowledged this incident in his own RfA. Yet he continued to create redirects against this advice, many profane, and many which

Neelix in the press

I won't use Neelix's real name here, but it is at the top of his userpage, along with his photo,[15] so there's really no doubt this is the same person.

1. Truro Daily News, 2013 - identifies self as anti-trafficking "advocate, researcher, and well-respected Wikipedia writer". link
2. Maclean's, 2012 - interview claiming 4,500 articles created and 130k edits. link
3. CBC Television, 2012 - another interview highlighting his edit/article creation count. link

Neelix had interest in sex-related topics at Commons

I'm only including this because some have said that the redirects with sexual/puerile/offensive content were only an inadvertent subset of an innocent attempt to help search results. Anyone who likes can delve into more detail, but Neelix's work at Commons was largely centered around photos with prurient content. As a example, here is a list of his Commons category creations. My CTRL-F says "nude" appears here 1438 times. Granted, some are double hits (i.e. on "nude or partially nude women") but this doesn't include many, many categories like "Handbra, with one's own hands", "Imitated cunnilingus", "Women licking other women's breasts", etc etc. I haven't counted the number of these category types created (who would want to?) but it seems to be the large majority. Keep in mind these are only new categories created by Neelix and this does not count his edits to thousands of files to sort them into these categories and others.

Neelix topic-banned

On 11 November 2015, Neelix was topic-banned from redirect creation by the community for a period of one year[16] and so informed.[17] Kelly ^hi! 19:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neelix's evasion of accountability

Neelix has demonstrated a pattern of stopping editing when his actions are called into question. On 7 January 2015, Neelix was questioned by Carrite regarding his administrative actions surrounding She Has a Name, an article that he created.[18] Neelix's response was to "retire".[19][20] He apparently contact John Carter off-wiki, telling him the retirement was "somewhat permanent".[21] Neelix returned to editing on 4 March 2015.[22]

After his redirect creation was brought to light in November 2015, Neelix promised to delete his inappropriate redirects.[23] (He did delete approximately 150 of them before giving up.[24]) He then posted on his Commons talk page that it was too "emotionally difficult" for him to be involved with Wikipedia.[25]

I have had positive interactions with Neelix in the past, so I apologize if I show bias in the following. However, I will try my best to be as neutral and factual as possible here.

I am only involved in this incident because I have watched Neelix's page for some time now due to prior interactions at the Tara Teng articles (January 2015) and Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant (August-September 2015).

Unnecessary redirects

Neelix has created over 80,000 pages,[26] most of them redirects.[27] This was raised at WP:ANI by an anonymous user on November 5, 2015. It was discovered that he had created thousands of redirects to articles about female body parts, as mentioned by Drmies, Ivanvector, Legacypac, and Wikimandia above. Many of them were juvenile redirects; a random sampling of some of these redirects showed exceptionally low viewership; and the most recent group of redirects has either been speedily deleted (by him or other admins) or brought to discussion on November 9, 10, and 11.

On November 11, 2015, Neelix was topic-banned from redirect creation for one year by Harrias.[28] Neelix has been informed of this.[29]

Admin tools misuse

On April 26, 2014, Neelix blocked

On January 4, 2015, Neelix blocked User:Dicklickerish,[37] a user with a single edit—to a page Neelix significantly edited.[38]

On the same day, Neelix protected

On November 12, 2015, Neelix resigned his administrator rights, recognizing that it was under a cloud.[42]

Based on these incidents, I believe that at least an admonishment is needed. epic genius (talk) 21:11, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest

I find it incredible that an administrator of nearly four years' standing would say "Thank you for letting me know about WP:INVOLVED; I had not encountered it before." I'm normally okay about people not memorizing every policy and guideline we have, but

Neelix has requested voluntary desysop

[44], and it has been done.[45] — Ched :  ?  19:31, 12 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neelix desysopped

See Ched's diffs above.

Neelix topic banned from creating redirects

See here.

Issue dealt with by community

See above two sections.

ArbCom's purpose

ArbCom's primary purpose is dealing with disputes the community cannot handle.

It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve

This case is redundant

See above

Arbcom should close by motion

Only sensible thing to do.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:57, 13 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

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