Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Vision Thing/Evidence

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
<
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration‎ | Vision Thing

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the Arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-consciousness rants are not helpful.

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. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey, use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&oldid=5584644] [1].

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

Be aware that 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 re-factor 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.

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, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Evidence presented by Full Shunyata

VisionThing seems to be a sockpuppet or is at least engaging in trolling

I’ve been familiar with User:Vision Thing for a while. We go back in a way because he was the user who had me banned for a day during a minor edit conflict on the

collectivism
article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Full_Shunyata#3RR

I’ve seen him in action and I notice that his main tactic of dealing with dissenting opinions from his anarcho-capitalist ideas is to start edit wars to goad the person into breaking the 3rr law so he can have them banned to keep them from interfering with his POV editing. If that doesn’t work, he demands for them to talk to him. If the person feels he is being less than NPOV, he will throw Wikipedia laws in their face such as assuming good faith as if to imply that he will have them banned for supposedly breaking those rules. He did it to my userpage on more than one occasion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Full_Shunyata#Your_recent_edits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Full_Shunyata#Personal_attack

As you can see, he seemed to be trying to catch me doing something, anything outside of Wikipedia by-laws in order to have an excuse to report me to an admin. His remarks even seemed to be trying to goad me into verbally attacking him so he would have an excuse to report me. He even claimed:

” Accusing Intangible of "being intellectually dishonest and having selective memory to push POV" is clear example of personal attack. Accusations of stalking aren't far either.”’’ -- Vision Thing -- 20:30, 1 May 2007

Now since when has suspecting other members of being dishonest been considered a “personal attack”? And as you can see, he seemed to be very privy on my conversations with User:Intangible2.0. If Vision Thing is a seperate editor from Intangible, why does he care so much what I say to him and why was he so knowledgeable of our conversation? Keep in mind that Intangible is another anarcho-capitalist editor who is suspected of being a sockpuppet due to his aggressive and POV-style editing and personal vendetta against social anarchists. Specifically anarcho-communists.

He also has a habit of lending aid to Billy Ego/RJII sockpuppets/meatpuppets who troll Wikipedia editing articles to reflect sharp anarcho-capitalist and right-wing libertarian point of views. He seems to have a particular obsession with the

collectivism, and mutualist anarchism
pages.


Here is one recent incident of him lending aid to a Billy Ego clone (Illegal editor) who was aggressively editing the Benjamin Tucker page to reflect anarcho-capitalist POVs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benjamin_Tucker&action=history

Specifically here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benjamin_Tucker&diff=140789095&oldid=140107022

And here where he is trying to make it appear that Tucker converted to anarcho-capitalism late in life and takes out the quote from Tucker in late life supporting anarchistic socialism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benjamin_Tucker&diff=133853987&oldid=133853823

And he was quite privy to insert this after Billy Ego's clones "Plant a tree", "Level basis" and "Ando Fern" were banned and could no longer keep up the POV edit wars with Etcetc.

And another time on June 19 where he ran in to lend aid to Illegal editor who was making very Original Research edits to the collectivist anarchism article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collectivist_anarchism&diff=139160886&oldid=139137075

Once Ilegal editor was banned, he went to work re-inserting all of Illegal editor’s edits. He also seems to have a particular obsession with trying to “prove” that individualist anarchism is not a form of socialism because the definition of socialism has supposed “changed over time”. He does this even though virtually every other editor has come to a consensus that the meaning of “socialism” has not changed and there has always been more than one definition of socialism and that anti-capitalist individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker define “socialism” the same way as other libertarian socialists. You can see he has been making quite POV edits against Bobfrombrockley, Etctec and myself in the libertarian socialism article, even claiming that libertarian socialism is not a form of anarchism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Libertarian_socialism&action=history

As you can see with the

collectivism
article, he took out several of my edits for no reason other than editing the article to reflect an anarcho-capitalist or individualistic POV perception of horizontal collectivism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collectivism&diff=141602723&oldid=141294027

He has even apparently wiki-stalked me at times. In one period in late April of this year, he went around Wikipedia systematically reverting all my edits for no apparent reason other than to contradict me. He claimed that he wasn’t, but most of his edits were to articles that I had recently edited. This can be seen most clearly in this mysterious random and never explained spurious edit to the coordinatorism article right after I edited it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinatorism&action=history

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinatorism&diff=125611297&oldid=125026876

Infinity0 can also testify similar random edits and reversions made by Vision Thing for no reason other than to contradict. Soon after his wiki-stalking failed to stop me, he went after my user page in early May.

Outside of his edits on the

collectivism and libertarian socialism articles, his most POV edits were on the types of socialism
article where he seemed to have an allergy to any mention of socialism when talking about individualist anarchism. Hardly adhering to NPOV given that it is consensus that Tucker and others like him were libertarian socialists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Types_of_socialism&action=history

Whenever it is mentioned that an indiviudalist anarchist is opposed to capitalism, he seems to feel an overwhelming need to mention that they were also opposed to "collectivism" or "communism". As if being opposed to capitalism automatically makes one a communist or in favor of collective ownership:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benjamin_Tucker&diff=125935182&oldid=125933963

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Types_of_socialism&diff=127507039&oldid=127506886

Other examples can be seen where he attempts to show that individualist anarchists are simply market anarchists or precursors to anarcho-capitalism who are "confused" by the "outdated" Labor Theory of Value.

And here he is linking Socialism with Nazism in the types of socialism article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Types_of_socialism&diff=84479916&oldid=84476808

And let us not forget his unprincipled reversions on the anarchism page such as here where he made it seem as if anarchists are not opposed to authoritarian relationships, hierarchy or centralized organization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anarchism&diff=141597802&oldid=141596250

And here where he removed all mentions of socialism about Tucker’s philosophy even though the material was sourced and from Tucker himself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anarchism&diff=140776653&oldid=140776200

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anarchism&diff=140775632&oldid=140730996

And the anarchism and capitalism page where he reverted many of my edits simply because he didn’t agree with anti-capitalist anarchist views about anarcho-capitalism. Even after I explained to him that the edits were showing ‘’’anti-capitalist anarchist opinions’’’ about anarcho-capitalism, ‘’’not’’’ pretending to be an objective analysis of anarcho-capitalism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anarchism_and_capitalism&action=history

He took out sourced material simply because he didn’t agree with it. Even though it was an anti-capitalist OPINION about anarcho-capitalism, not an objective, scholarly analysis of anarcho-capitalism.

Since his first day here he has not made a single NPOV edit (I have made several edits where I have compromised with anarcho-capitalists and others). He had something of a close editing relationship with banned member “Anarcho-capitalism” and he even took it upon himself to copy and upkeep User:Anarcho-capitalism’s extensive “Anarcho-capitalism for Dummies” project which is a scathing polemic against social anarchists and was subject of much ire for several admins during Anarcho-capitalism’s arbitrartion who viewed it as using Wikipedia like Myspace. Even though he doesn’t share User:A-C’s IP address (which doesn’t mean much because Billy Ego admitted that he uses a flexible proxy address and can change it at will) his opinions, political ideology, editing style and articles of interest line up with RJII’s, Anarcho-capitalism’s and Billy Ego’s to the T.

He is certainly a highly suspicious editor if he is not a sockpuppet. Full Shunyata 00:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by infinity0

Vision Thing ignores consensus to remove biased sources on Anarchism

  • Talk page discussion and reach of consensus by multiple editors from
    WP:3O
  • Reinsertion of biased sources by Vision Thing
    • [2], [3], [4], [5] which is actually a revert, more down the history but it's too much effort to list them all.

Vision Thing likes to play "Who can we get blocked for 3RR first?"

List of VT's 3RR reports. All articles are politics-related, where he has had a history of inserting anarchocapitalist POV. Often, he plays the 3RR game along with other anarchocapitalist editors.

  • [6] - Illegal editor (sock of Billy Ego/RJII) made 4 reverts.
  • [7] - Vision Thing made 1 revert, Billy Ego (sock of Billy Ego/RJII) made 3 reverts.
  • [8] - Vision Thing made 1 revert, Anarcho-capitalism (sock of Billy Ego/RJII) made 1 revert.
  • [9] - Vision Thing made 1 revert.
  • [10] - Vision Thing made 2 reverts.
  • [11] - Vision Thing made 3 reverts, Intangible made 2 reverts.
  • [12] - Vision Thing made 1 revert.
  • [13] - Comments indicate reversions were of Vision Thing's edits
  • [14] - Vision Thing made 1 revert, Intangible made 2 reverts.
  • [15] - Dishonest report; 2 reverts were of banned user WickedWanda (sock of Hogeye)
  • [16] - Vision Thing made 2 reverts
  • [17] - Vision Thing made 3 reverts.

My my, how convenient. This kind of tactic really pisses off other editors who are just trying to improve the article. Allowance of this on wikipedia chases good editors away.

Vision Thing likes to warn editors (with whom he is edit warring at the time) for not following (his interpretation/distortion of) wiki policy

  • [18] - Wow, I don't even have to wade through his contributions to dig them out. Said type of bad-faithed, hypocritical, and provocative comments towards other users are abundant, to say the least. There are probably plenty more on article talk pages, but it's too much effort for me to dig out right now.

A few examples:

POV-pushing

Involves similar pattern of repeated insertion of biased-sources and suppression of balanced sources, removal of anti-capitalist and anti-anarchocapitalist viewpoints, attempts to smear non-anarchocapitalist anarchism, etc. See history and talk of articles for details; below diffs are only examples.

Removals are justified by "this is unsourced", or "the source provided is not good enough / I think it says something else". Regardless, the end effect of these removals is to end up with a heavily biased article.

Anarchism-related

Other

Reinsertion of POV edits made by banned users RJII and Billy Ego=

Evidence presented by mostly uninvolved MastCell

I don't participate on the anarchy-related pages, as I find them, well, somewhat lawless. However, I have had some experience in tracking down sockpuppets of the banned user Billy Ego, who frequents these pages.

Vision Thing as a sockpuppet of Billy Ego

Vision Thing's editing history has led me (and others) to suspect him of being a sockpuppet of Billy Ego. However, at least 2 checkusers (here and here) have come back unrelated. Further, an editor with lots of Billy Ego experience felt their editing styles were different. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Vision Thing is a sockpuppet of Billy Ego.

Vision Thing as a meatpuppet or proxy of Billy Ego

The above suspicions initially arose because Vision Thing shares a well-defined anarcho-capitalist POV, as well as some tendentious editing habits, with Billy Ego's socks. Vision Thing has repeatedly re-introduced material from Billy Ego's socks (see above evidence, e.g. [37]) and defended User:RJII (likely another Billy Ego sock) [38]. Like Billy, he consistently targets User:Infinity0. Vision Thing's activity generally ramps up after an active Billy Ego sock is blocked. He's edited a Billy Ego sock's userpage ([39]), and when User:Anarcho-capitalism was blocked as a Billy Ego sock, Vision Thing immediately moved AC's manifesto into his user space.

Summary

While I plead ignorance of the larger content issues and I think Vision Thing is highly unlikely to be a Billy Ego sockpuppet, I think there's significant some evidence to suggest that Vision Thing is acting as a meatpuppet or a

proxy
for the banned user Billy Ego, to continue tendentious editing and anarcho-capitalist POV pushing on the anarchy-related articles.

Addendum: Response to Vision Thing's Evidence

While the Billy Ego account was not registered until January 2007, other sockpuppets of this account predated Billy Ego (for example, User:Anarcho-capitalism was registered in September 2006). The RJII account was active as far back as 2004 and is pretty clearly linked to Billy Ego et al., so it's clear that arguments based on time frame alone don't exculpate Vision Thing. That said, as I indicate in my summary, the evidence here is circumstantial and not clear-cut. MastCell Talk 23:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by User:Intangible2.0

Re User:Full_Shunyata

I have come across user Full Shunyata on a couple of occassion, but have been generally frustrated by the edits he has made. I'm not sure if this is because of sheer ignorance of Wikipedia policy, or because of something else. Included in this are misrepresenation of sourced material, original research edits based on one's own reading of primary source material, and accusations of supposed "sockpuppetry."

Inserting of original research

User:Full_Shunyata has inserted original research in at least three articles, but probably many more.

Benjamin Tucker (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) Insertion of unsourced original research claims: [40] (and others). I presented evidence contrary to this original research on the talk page [41]. The guideline for talk pages (Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines) explicitely states: "Talk pages are not a forum for editors to argue their own different points of view about controversial issues. They are a forum to discuss how the different points of view obtained from secondary sources should be included in the article, so that the end result is neutral and objective (which may mean including conflicting viewpoints)." User:Full_Shunyata did not present any secondary sources on the talk page, unsatisfied with that, I shrugged off and went editing other pages.[42]

Individualist anarchism (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) Insertion of original research based on editor's own reading of primary source material.[43]

talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views
) Misrepresentation of already properly sourced material and insertion of original research material.[44].

User:Full_Shunyata has also a history of accusing me all kind of things, making it hard to assume good faith on his part. This has included:

Accussing me of "POV pushing" and being "intellectually dishonest" [45] while he himself has never presented secondary source material to the table [46] , "sockpuppetry" (see user Full_Shunyata's statement on this page), "edit stalking" [47]. All of course without presenting any shred of evidence. This has to stop. Intangible2.0 16:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re consensus on Anarchism

There is false claim being made that some kind of consensus was reached on the Anarchism talk page regarding sources.[48] It is false claim, because this consensus would include three sources, one being a website, infoshop.org, one being an internet document, the Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ), and one being the statements made by Noam Chomsky.

  • Let's see what
    WP:V
    says about the use of websites: "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources." and "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so."
  1. Is Chuck Munson, founder of infoshop.org, an established expert on Anarchism? Google test says no.[49], no evidence has been provided to the contrary.[50]
  2. What about the AFAQ? In fact, it is unknown who wrote what, when and where in the AFAQ. Google test show that there a couple of mentions of the AFAQ in reliable sources[51], maybe enough so to warrant an own AFAQ article on Wikipedia, but the tresheld of using the AFAQ in other articles except of its own has not been met. For that, the AFAQ has to regularly show up in academic discussion on anarchism, which until now, has certainly not been case (let it be stated also that it is the responsibility of the person who wants to use this source to provide evidence to the contrary, evidence which has not been presented on the anarchism article talk page).
  3. Last bit is on Noam Chomsky. In general, the material Noam Chomsky produced can and should be used in an article on anarchism. There is no doubt about that, and that is easily verified with a Google test [52]. The problem here is not that of verifiability, but on misrepresentation of what is being said by Noam Chomsky, in combination with sources that are not
    WP:OR, and is not allowed by Wikipedia policy. Intangible2.0 00:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]

Evidence presented by Vision Thing

Evidence against infinity0

During his

blocked for not discussing his reverts, and finally blocked for edit warring. He managed to do all this by making less than 500 edits since the beginning of his revert parole on July 1 2006 [53]
.

One of his edits that I found most disturbing was this. Before that series of edits

the article had 59,264 bytes and 59 inline sources, after it had 32,470 bytes and 28 inline sources. He basically deleted half of the article on the controversial subject without even a word of explanation on the talk page. After I asked him for an explanation, this
is the discussion that followed. He basically insisted that he has a right to delete half of the well sourced article because it was added by a user who was afterwards banned for a violation sockpuppet policy, and because he thinks that content in question is biased (failing to explain how it is biased).

He also had other questionable edits like these two:

  • here he adds unsourced statement that "most anarchists today are anti-capitalist";
  • here he deletes 20+ sources as biased together with the claim they supported (that anarcho-capitalism is often considered to be a form of anarchism by scholars). -- Vision Thing -- 23:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I think that infinity0's creation of this page was inappropriate, since it doesn't have anything to do with editing Wikipedia, which is not a soapbox. -- Vision Thing -- 09:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Canvassing meatpuppets

If anybody has violated WP:SOCK policy it is infinity0.

WP:MEAT
says: "Do not recruit meatpuppets. It is considered highly inappropriate to advertise Wikipedia articles to your friends, family members, or communities of people who agree with you, so that they come to Wikipedia and support your side of a debate." However, infinity0 has done this on two occasions (that I know of):
1) here on infoshop's forum:

  • from initial post: "I'm an editor on wikipedia, and as many of you probably know, the wikipedia page on Anarchism is full of crap. But this sort of thing isn't only restricted to anarchism, oh no, a few anarcho-capitalist editors have managed to add tons of anarcho-capitalism crap to the site." (...) " What I'm asking for is if any of you are interested, able, and have enough spare time on your hands, to come and help sort this mess out."
  • example from page 6: "RJII is back and he is trying to fuck up the "An Anarchist FAQ" entry by saying it is biased. Someone calm come and help, please." which is followed by a link to AFAQ page.


2) here on blackend's forum:

  • initial post: "Those of you who are familiar with anarchism on wikipedia might be interested to know that RJII has been indefinitely banned. That's right, this is the day you've all been waiting for. Anyways, could someone (BlackFlag, |Y|, anyone) have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_and_anarcho-capitalism please? It was recently merged with a POV article written mainly by RJII, so now it has quite a lot of crap in. I am not an expert, so could someone please help? Thanks!"
  • on page 3 he also asked for help in editing
    Property is theft
    articles.

Judging by these threads, he managed to recruit at least these persons, BlackFlag (talk · contribs), Jacob Haller (talk · contribs), Nuzzle (talk · contribs) (user tedster on blackened forum - established with the help of his comment "I have struck a couple of lines in each article, but it needs further editing.", he is referring to the articles "What Is Property?" and "Property is theft", on June 29th 2006) and Whynotanarchy (talk · contribs) (user |Y| - established with the help of his comments about his edits in infoshop's thread), to help him in his mission.

Jacob Haller also admitted that he recruited other people. Presence of all those recruited people who have strong anti-capitalist POV makes normal editing of anarchism related pages almost impossible.

Response to infinity0

Claims of consensus

social anarchist constantly try to delete anarcho-capitalist section from Anarchism; even now there are users who are trying to do that: 14:18, 8 July 2007, 15:05, 8 July 2007
.

Above all, no consensus was reached which is visible from the fact that infinity0 is only one who is trying to enforce new "consensus". From 18:43, 12 June 2007 till infinity0's revert on 19:22, 29 June 2007 and then again from 23:40, 30 June 2007 till infinity0's next revert on 19:17, 7 July 2007 no other editor tried to enforce consensus (history). In fact, one other editor made revert of infinity0's introduced changes by noting in his edit summary that no consensus was made.

Claims of POV-pushing
Anarchism
  • Benjamin Tucker – here I removed piece of original research added by Full Shunyata ([54] [55]) which is incorrect - Tucker envisaged a society where people would be free to choose between work for employer and self-employment.
  • Anarchism and capitalism – this was a series of edits; in short I deleted unsourced false claims about anarcho-capitalism (anarcho-capitalists don't contend that private property need state to enforce it) and unsourced claims about what most anarchists believe – per
    WP:RS#Claims_of_consensus
    which states that Claims of consensus must be sourced. The claim that all or most scientists, scholars, or ministers hold a certain view requires a reliable source. Without it, opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources.
  • Anarcho-capitalism – one source that I checked failed verification (source didn't supported claim that was made), and since all other sources were added by the same user I hid them until they can be verified by quotes. After I was reverted by user who added them, but who still refused to provide quotes, I simply added verification tags. [56]
  • Anarchism in the United States – I removed sources that came from unreliable publishers per this discussion (user who originally added them agreed that they can't be considered reliable – publishers were in do it yourself category)
  • Libertarian socialism – here I deleted unsourced claim that anarchism is libertarian socialist philosophy (at best it was violation of NPOV – see current version to get neutral picture [57]); I also deleted Proudhon paragraph for which other editors also thought that misrepresents Proudhon 's views (see here).
  • Individualist anarchism – see above under Anarcho-capitalism and Anarchism in the United States, those are the sources I had removed. Also, I repeated same edit latter [58] but this time keeping sources that still needed verification, and removing only unreliable sources. Additionally, in that edit I replaced those unreliable sources by reliable sources by Roger Eatwell and Albert Meltzer (they espouse point of view opposite to mine). However, I was immediately mass reverted by Full Shunyata who provided no explanation for his revert. That was my last edit to that article.
Other
  • Capitalism – first change was removal of Karl Marx and Max Weber from introduction since they were only theorist mentioned there, and there are others who are not mentioned although they had influenced capitalism more (like Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman). Mentioning only Marx and Weber gives them undue weight while mentioning all of them would needlessly clutter introduction. Second change was removal of claim that Venezuela is distinctively democratic regimes. That statement was unsourced, it contained weasel wording, it gave undue weight to minority held POV (general article about capitalism is not a place for mentioning such views), and it added nothing to the article.
  • Anti-capitalism - claiming that view that fascism is opposed to laissez-faire capitalism belongs only to "some writers, most of whom are right-wing libertarians" is badly done original research and POV-pushing. {Evidence redacted 12:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC) by
    mediation policy}. Btw, infinity0 tried to delete whole fascism section from the article [59] and was reverted by other user [60]. -- Vision Thing -- 23:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Dispute of consensus

All those reverts came before my last compromise version 18:43, 12 June 2007 in which, after discussion with other editors on talk, I had added AFAQ as a source and removed two sources that were disputed. In my view, AFAQ is not reliable as a source (for reasons that Intangible2.0 listed), but, as a reasonable compromise, I agreed with its use for claim that social anarchist don’t think that anarcho-capitalism is a form of anarchism. Since then, this version of anarcho-capitalism and capitalism sections hadn't gone through any major changes until infinity0's reverts on June 29th.

Now, after infinity0's edits, Anarcho-capitalism section has a POV tag, and Capitalism section in Issues is totally disputed. Note that I haven't been editing article since this arbitration case started.

General spiel about abuse of attribution policies

First of all, anarcho-capitalist users like Twobitsprite (talk · contribs) have also quit because of constant attacks on anarcho-capitalism, which at his time even included attempt to strip FA status from Anarcho-capitalism (btw, that is only article on anarchism related topics that has FA status – strange because most of the work on that article was done by "good for nothing" users RJII and Anarcho-capitalism whose edits infinity0 is so eager to sent to oblivion). (tool I used for checking number of edits).

Infinity0 is implying that five users quit Wikipedia because of me (off course, without any evidence). Luckily one of them User:AaronS left a message on my talk page after he decided to leave Wikipedia: Thanks, Vision Thing. It has been a pleasure to work with someone as cool-headed as yourself in such a vitriolic part of the encyclopaedia. It's unfortunate that cheaters have to mar all sides of the debate, but such is life. Best wishes. [61] -- Vision Thing -- 18:40, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence against Full Shunyata

Full Shunyata constantly engages in original research and when I try to remove OR parts from his edits he engages in reverting.

Examples:

  • Benjamin Tucker - 1) here he stated that Tucker supported Anarchist Socialism with "no evidence of him ever supporting capitalism in late life." despite Tucker's own writing that contradicts that claim at the beginning of the paragraph and dispite Victor Yarros saying that Tucker opposed all forms of socialism (quoute).
2) here he added claim that Tucker was "a memorable figure in socialism history" and sourced it to three different sources of which none talks about Tucker as a memorable figure in socialism. As a source he even added Tucker's entry in Encyclopedia of Marxism, ignoring the fact that they also have entries on people like Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. In this edit he also added paragraph in which he "noted" that "Tucker never considered himself a non-socialist or a capitalist" (unsourced) and he sourced claim that Tucker "viewed state socialism as a false form of socialism" to one Tucker's quote which says nothing like that. He reverted to version with "memorable figure in socialism history"

[62], [63], [64], [65], [66], [67] number of times.

  • He added the same paragraph in two different articles 1 2 only replacing "Mutualist anarchist ideas" with "Non-capitalist individualist anarchist ideas" (mutualism and individualist anarchism are two different schools of anarchism). Web page he added as a source at the end of the paragraph doesn't talk about neither.
  • Collectivism – here he claimed that fascist societies practiced vertical individualism but the book he named as a source doesn't even mention that phrase. [68]
    .

Above I've selected only several examples of OR and misuse of sources. If needed, I can list more of them.

Other editors also expressed concern about his edits and on his talk page I warned him twice about

WP:OR 1 2. Second time I even directed him to some administrators who share his political views, but he failed to contact them. During this conversation he made clear he is not assuming good faith and all my attempts to discuss things with him proved totally ineffective. Even when I warned him about 3RR
he just ignored it and proceeded to with his reverts.

Edit warring on Collectivism: his starting version; reverts: [69],[70], [71],[72],[73], [74],[75],[76].

Response to Full Shunyata

I will respond only to non-vague accusation with proper diffs:

  • Collectivism – [77] edit is nothing more than what my edit summary says – rearrangement of sections so that all content sourced to Triandis is in one place. I didn't took out anything.
  • Anarchism – Full Shunyata accuses me that I want to make it seem as if anarchists are not opposed to authoritarian relationships, hierarchy or centralized organization by doing this edit. However, several days after he made edit in which he removed mention of authoritarian relationships, hierarchy and centralized organization with explanation that that is biased wording.
  • Anarchism and Tucker – in evidence against section I explained that this paragraph was OR and unsupported by source. Concerning this edit in the Issue section it was mentioned that Tucker called himself socialist and that meaning of "socialism" has been contested but infinity0 took that part out [78] latter. As for talk about Tucker's talk about "each man reaping the fruits…", that is already mentioned in this section (also added there by Full Shunyata [79]).

Response to accusations of reinserting edits that were made by banned users

Although in the Wikipedia's banning policy is said that Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating any edits made by banned users such behavior is not demanded, and it is said that users who reinstate edits of banned user take responsibility for their content by so doing. In all edits of banned users that I reinstated I took responsibility for their content, strongly believing that edits I decided to reinstate were improving quality of the articles.

Few examples provided by Full Shunyata and infinity0 of edits I have reinstated:

  • 1 – here Full Shunyata was engaging in original research by interpreting primary source;
  • 2 – infinity0 accuses me of reinserting biased sources, but I don't know by which standard those sources are biased;
  • 3 – Rothbard's statement was properly attributed and sourced to a published essay. In fact, Rothbard's essay was only source linking Zhuangzi to anarchism; infinty0 took out the source while leaving the claim and quotations from essay in, unsourced.

Response to MastCell

According to Wikipedia's definition of

proxy
" for a Billy Ego should mean.

As for placing "Anarcho-capitalism for dummies" in my user space, I did that because on anarchism related pages same kind of questions regularly turn up and it is useful to have work like this to which people can be directed to. Example:1 -- Vision Thing -- 23:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An Anarchist FAQ as a source

Intangible2.0 already provided some arguments for not using AFAQ as a source. Those are good arguments but I think that this post by user BlackFlag provides maybe the best reason why AFAQ shouldn't be used as a source. He says: "Secondly, some of what I have written here has been cut and pasted into “An Anarchist FAQ”. While it may have been better if that had not happened, at least my work has been utilised in a fruitful manner in an anarchist project." So anti-capitalist editors can write something on Wikipeida, "publish" it in the AFAQ and then use it as a source for what they wrote in Wikipedia. That opens a way for countless manipulations and I think that because of that AFAQ should be considered highly unreliable source for purposes of Wikipedia. -- Vision Thing -- 09:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence presented by infinity0

Response to Vision Thing

Dispute of consensus

  • Consensus was reached by many editors from
    WP:3O
    , I again point to talk page discussion.
  • I was not the only "enforcer", eg attempt by Etcetc attempt by Blockader attempt by Libertatia. Several users, including outside ones, have disagreed with Vision Thing's refusal to accept the consensus, eg. User:Zero1328 here, and User:Vassyana seemed to think that I was acting in good faith [80].
  • The user who made this edit which Vision Thing cites as other people disagreeing with the consensus has no prior history of discussion on the talk page (with regards to this issue; I haven't checked any further).
  • I do hope Vision Thing is joking when he calls this edit a compromise (relevant part on line 212/213). He removed all the new sources bar one (the AFAQ one), and re-inserted all the old 30-odd pro-anarchocapitalist sources which was the main issue of talk.
  • As for Vision Thing's argument [nobody reverted me so they agree with me], he actually made the exact opposite argument here. Might I point Vision Thing to his own argument, and also the fact that omg nobody has reverted ME either for the past like 3 weeks, therefore I win by time, lolz. :|

General spiel about abuse of attribution policies

I am concerned with the way in which the wikipedia attribution policies such as

WP:NPOV
, which is frankly, more important. Vision Thing removes the vast majority of anti-capitalist and anti-anarchocapitalist viewpoints he comes across, using these excuses. These actions do not improve wikipedia in any way at all; rather, it causes the article to be extremely biased towards his own viewpoints, whose sources he hardly ever disputes, or even bothers checking.

I very much doubt Vision Thing has verified all the pro-anarchocapitalist sources he has come across in articles in such a scrutinising fashion as he has done with the anti-anarchocapitalist ones; never has he impulsively complained about pro-ancap sources like he does with the anti-ancap ones.

Even in the minority of cases where a statement he removes is actually unsourced, the good-faithed way in dealing with this, is to try to look for sources yourself and incorporate them into the article along with the statement, not remove them in such an aggressive and selective way so as to extremely unbalance the article.

This method of edit-warring is underhanded and intensely hypocritical. I know of at least 5 users who have left wikipedia because of this (in general, not all due to Vision Thing personally). This sort of bullshit must be stopped (I know of no other english word to describe it) if wikipedia is to continue to improve, because at the moment high-quality editors are leaving because of it.

Note to Vision Thing, look up above, see what I am writing. I said these are "not all due to [you] personally", I wasn't accusing you of all of them. I was pointing out a general problem on wikipedia.

Arguments about bias

Vision Thing's comments about bias ("I don't know by which standard those sources are biased") above have been answered on Talk:Anarchism in the discussion by WP:3O editors which he has ignored.

Vision Thing completely ignores

WP:NPOV#Undue weight
("Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all."), another, as-important-if-not-more-important policy.

Vision Thing's point about AFAQ being used unscrupulously[82] is not an argument to remove it from wikipedia altogether. Such attempts are easily detected and removed on wikipedia, and no such uses of AFAQ currently exist on wikipedia as far AFAIK. The usefulness AFAQ brings to wikipedia far outweights this unlikely scenario VT presents.

Meatpuppetry

Vision Thing began editing wikipedia by launching straight into an anarcho-capitalism-related discussion on the same topic I had been having with RJII. Also, on that same page of contributions, he reverted four times an extremely obscure article (Economics of fascism) created by RJII. This suggests that he was connected at some level with RJII, who me and many others suspect to be directly related to User:Billy Ego.

As many many other editors have noticed, and I would like to re-inforce the point here, the set {Articles which both Vision Thing and RJII/BillyEgo have edited} is much bigger than the set {Articles which only one out of {Vision Thing, RJII/BillyEgo} have edited}.

I think meatpuppetry ("users who are recruited to push a certain agenda") is likely, or perhaps he has just been stalking these sockpuppets' contribs and supporting their edits.

Responses to me "recruiting meatpuppets"

I encourage whoever may be looking at the evidence to read those threads, in full, for yourself. Also, I would like to remind you that this episode happened over a year ago; therefore I strongly question Vision Thing's motives as to why he is bringing these things to light now.

I asked anarchists to come and help edit articles related to anarchism. I did not ask anyone to support any of my own personal debates, nor to even have direct contact with myself. Also, it is extremely clear from the other people's responses that they were already aware of the POV problem on wikipedia. As such, my actions can hardly be classified as recruiting meatpuppets. I believe the other forum users' responses say much more than I can about the general state of the anarchism entries on wikipedia, and those anarchocapitalist editors who try oh so hard to push their POVs upon it.

As for the specific people Vision Thing mentioned, they came of their own free choice. I did not pressurise them in any way, nor have I been working together with them. You can browse through their contributions for yourself. Feel free to question them about this.

  • User:Jacob Haller - he's on flag, but I hardly talk to him. I can't remember any specific conversations I've had with him.
  • User:BlackFlag - again, I hardly talk to him. He has edited AFAQ and various articles extensively but I have not collaborated with him in any way whatsoever. Also, he's not edited wikipedia for the past few months.
  • User:Nuzzle - I've seen the nickname "tedster" on flag before, but I've never talked to him directly. How does Vision Thing know this wikipedia user is tedster? I don't even know. Regardless, he's made around 4 edits to wikipedia; hardly meatpuppetry.

Right now I am not collaborating with anyone. The only person I have ever collaborated with was |Y|, more than a year ago, and only for a very short while on a single article, AFAQ. Even in this case we were only working together when we were the only editors; in no cases have I recruited people to give weight to my arguments. I am a 18-yr-old soon-to-be maths student, and I have better things to do with my life than watch wikipedia. I have made around only 500 edits to wikipedia in the past year. I hope you all appreciate that I have been pre-occupied with other things, such as school exams.

Additional claims by Vision Thing

Vision Thing claims "Presence of all those recruited people who have strong anti-capitalist POV makes normal editing of anarchism related pages almost impossible." [83]

Vision Thing's comment is wrong in several ways:

  • Firstly, he implies that "people who have anti-capitalist POV" makes "normal editing of anarchism related pages almost impossible".
    • This is firstly extremely bad faith. I have done nothing except make good faithed attempts to ask editors with good knowledge of a subject to improve bad articles on wikipedia, and there have been absolutely NO COMPLAINTS (apart from Vision Thing making these now, in order to detract attention from his POV-pushing) about the conduct of any of these people.
  • Secondly, he implies that "anti-capitalist POV" is somehow unsuitable for anarchism-related pages. The vast majority of anarchism is heavily and radically anti-capitalist, and so it is appropriate that these pages contain these ideas.
  • Thirdly, he implies that he is trying to do "normal editing of anarchism related pages". From his contributions, his edits are far from normal. They repeatedly push the same fringe, extremist anarchocapitalist views onto unrelated anarchist pages, and around half of his edits have been reverts, rather than content edits. (see evidence provided above)

Response to Intangible2.0

(Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Intangible - previous arbitration case link here as suggested by User:Cbrown1023.)

Consensus on Anarchism

I would like to point out again the EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION on the talk page by perhaps 10 NEUTRAL people acknowledging the spam of sources should go. Those who wish it to stay are in a very small minority.

Verifiability

  1. Int2's point 1 is invalid because Chunk Munson did not write the FAQ. Nor is he the only person that hosts the FAQ. AFAQ is mirrored on hundreds of major anarchist websites.
  2. Int2's point 2 is invalid because the FAQ is a collaborative effort and this is recognised widely by many anarchists. His own argument "the AFAQ has to regularly show up in academic discussion on anarchism" is not an argument to delete the source and the statements entirely (the alternative is to find better sources), and also it is hypocritical in that he does not apply these rigorous standards to sources which support the anarchocapitalist POV.
    • I would like to point out this is one of the examples of said abuses of the attribution policies.
  3. Int3's point 3 is invalid because he is interpreting the quote in the way that he wants. The primary quote is given, and supports the claim he makes. Also, he is not applying the same logic to sources which support his own view.
    • I would like to point out this is another one of the examples of said abuses of the attribution policies.

Evidence presented by whynotanarchy

Infinity0 was kind enough to let me know he'd mentioned me in an arbitration dispute (I have no idea what's going on here but I felt I had to comment). He'd only mentioned wikipedia, and we only collaborated sporidically. I am not even sure if I actually did editing, I was more interested in discussing things in the discussion area of wikipedia (because I think that's where reasoned positions are won, not in editing in and of itself). That said any of my edits were minimal at best. I tried to get in to the whole editing thing but I just didn't have the time for it. So there you go, that's my story. :) whynotanarchy 21:16, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Just one more clarification, my involvement was mainly because it was apparent that many edits were incoherent and plain out wrong, being somewhat of a scholar of anarchist text over the years. But because I never had time to participate in the editing process I never got in to it. You could see some of the editors at that time doing very subtle, yet very changing edits, and the arguments in the discussion area was pretty nasty. It's no surprise that it's really back again, imo. But I won't make any speculation or anything. Anyway thanks for whoever fixed my edit, like I said I'm new at this. Hope everything works out here, and one day I would like to have the time to contribute. (Infinity0 I wish we were able to collaborate more effectively back in those days, too.) whynotanarchy 13:53, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Jacob Haller

I was already editing Wikipedia (see Vision Thing & Infinity0)

Infinity's comments date to 22-II-06 on Infoshop and 26-VI-06 on Flag. My first anarchism-related comments date to 9-VI-05. Bill Orton, aka Hogeye, had requested people's input on ASC, and Chuck Munson later commented about this on Infoshop News.

Note that I use my pen name on Wikipedia, Flag, and ASC, among other fora. I use my real name in the Infoshop Fora, and only started visiting the Infoshop Fora in September 2006. Were I responding to this request, I would have started after, not before, seeing the request. Jacob Haller 23:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requests for assistance

I've made two off-Wikipedia and a few on-Wikipedia requests for assistance as well. If more people come onto Wikipedia, they improve more articles. If people are frustrated by edit disputes when they make these requests, then they may use somewhat inappropriate language. I've done that. In addition, A glance at my edit history will reveal an interest in several other topics besides anarchism. I suspect most editors have equally varied interests.

On the whole, I believe that these requests should be interpreted in the best possible light, partly for its own sake, and partly because, even if people are "meatpuppets" on one article, they may well improve other articles. Assume good faith. Jacob Haller 23:24, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vision Thing states:

Jacob Haller also admitted that he recruited other people. Presence of all those recruited people who have strong anti-capitalist POV makes normal editing of anarchism related pages almost impossible.

I made one on-wikipedia request for help on the Socialism page on Talk:Anarchism because of continual and still unresolved POV-pushing from the Marxists. Call that edit warring if you like. I made another request for help with Gothic and Vandal warfare (for expansion, not due to edit disputes). The other on-wikipedia requests note issues with one minor page on an associated "major" talk page.

I made one off-wikipedia comment noting that many articles label people "heretics" in violation of

agorism. I wanted expert advice on that controversy, or better yet, expert editors. Jacob Haller 09:34, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply
]


Evidence presented by EtcEtc

VT is a meatpuppet of now banned user RJII

I no longer edit wikipedia due to my frustrations at VTs belligerent and aggressive behavior. However, I feel that my previous efforts to gather evidence about his connection to now banned user RJII might be relevant to this arbitration. That evidence can be found here. I would like to note that this evidence was gathered soon after VT appeared on wikipedia and since then much more evidence has come to light of his edit warring and reinsertion of RJII edits. This tendency has been noted by many editors besides myself. Etcetc 07:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum - for those confused about my attribution of a seemingly random user (RJII) as a meatpuppet of VT I should note that RJII is now banned as a sockpuppet of the user Billy Ego mentioned earlier on this page by another user. Etcetc 07:54, 23 July 2007 (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.


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Vision_Thing/Evidence&oldid=431112430"