New subject: e-mails to wikien-l being dropped

30 Jun 2005


      I accidentally deleted this from the moderation queue, so am forwarding it
by hand as wikien-l is an official conduit for complaints about blocking.
This is not meant to imply that I attribute any substance to this complaint
whatsoever, and personally I would say "cheers to Bishonen, keep up the
good work." But anyway.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Nathan J. Yoder" njyoder@gummibears.nu
To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 04:09:43 -0400
Subject: bishonen exercises abuse of admin power
I was just recently given a temporary block for all of wikipedia by
bishonen for comments here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_transgendered_people
Of course, that block was based on an injunction in an RfA that she
was a party to (as a person filing a complaint, not an arbitrator).
It's a conflict of interest and she definitely over stepped bounds
there. This reeks of personal vendetta and given her personal history
of irrational behavior and personal dislike for me it's not
surprising
Not only that, her block was based on non-existant "personal attacks."
Calling someone a hypocrite or a liar has already been determined to
not constitute a personal attack, however she has decided to override
already existing Wikipedia policy and invent her own.
Another issue I'd like to address is regarding my RfA (since I can't
comment in it due to being blocked).
1.  The admins invented a new Wikipedia policy on the spot, that IRC
logs can't be used.  Their reference is a meta article which is not
part of Wikipedia policy.
Not just that, but they violate their newly
invented policy by using evidence from IRC against me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Njyoder/Prop...
2.  Just for emphasis, there is not wikipedia policy against posting
IRC logs, so that can't be used against me.  Not just that, but it's
totally and utterly irrelevent to the reason the RfA was created--for
my actions on the gender articles.  The whole thing involving Bishonen
existed over about 2 days and ended over 3 weeks before the RfA, but
it was drug up again for the sole purpose of using it as "evidence"
against me.  I pointed this out in the RfA, but the arbs ignored it
completely because it didn't support the conclusion that they wanted
to reach.
3.  There are "findings of fact" that include disagreement over my
edits on pages.  A disagreement is not grounds for an RfA at all.
4.  I wasn't ever using personal attacks.  The arbitrators
deliberately refused to define  personal attacks since they knew that
if they did try to define them in a way that made me a violator,
they'd end up being guilty themselves.  If I'm going to be accused of
using personal attacks, they better damn well define them, because the
policy page on it and other disinterested third parties don't consider
accusing someone of lying to be a personal attack.
5.  I was said to not have cited sources in the "findings of fact,"
and yet there was _no_ evidence of this.  You'd think they'd at least
provide a link to something I didn't cite a source for.  I didn't
insert new information into the gender article.
I removed information because some of it was wrong (which I did cite
sources for), some of it was _obviously_ POV, some of it was totally
incoherent and some of it I was asking for a source for. The only
thing I removed for reasons of factual accuracy was the etmology, for
which I did quote an external source regarding the etymology of it.
So it's a lie to say that  I didn't cite anything.
To say it's a "finding of fact" that I didn't cite sources for things
I removed makes no sense.  That's not how wikipedia works.  According
to them, if I remove or add anything I have to cite a source, but if
AlexR and Axon add or remove anything, they don't need any citations
at all.
That's completely backwards, if something in an article is contested
and no source is provided, it is standard wikipedia procedure to
remove it until a source can be provided.
This makes even less sense because neither Axon nor AlexR (the main
parties to the dispute) never accused me of violating the rules to no
cite sources.  That was something added in by an arbitrator on a whim
for no reason.
I don't even understand their complaints, I removed a lot of very bad,
non-encyclopedic garbage from it and as a result now two people are
working on completely new versions of the article.
6.  "2.5) Njyoder seems to lack insight into the complexities involved
in crafting an adequate article regarding gender; his editing style
could be fairly characterized as ham-handed [38] and [39]."
Some of these bullet points shouldn't even exist.  Personal opinion of
my understanding and editing style aren't even relevent and yet 3
aribtrators voted on this.  If these arbs weren't biased, it should
have received _zero_ votes.  I'll note that most of these points were
added by one arb, even though most of them, even from the standpoint
of the complaintants, weren't actually relevent.  It's trully sad, he
could have completely fabricated numerous accusations, like saying I
was making racist remarks and inserted it as a bullet point and none
of the other arbitrators would have bothered to check if it was true
and would have just voted "support."
7.  They are disputing my arguing style in quite a few bullet points
and are arguing that I should be banned on the basis that they
basically disagree with my viewpoint.  It makes no sense to reprimand
me for persisting with my argument when those arguing against me were
persisting with theirs just as much.  It's also not against any
wikipedia policies to stand firm in your views, if it were, there
would be a lot of problems.
Also, they engage in a strawman by quite literally, out of my entire
argument, just quoting a part of a single sentence.  they got my
"basic argument" entirely wrong and I'm betting you the arbitrators
didn't even bother reading through it, they just took the summary
given by Axon and AlexR even though I actually gave a summary myself.
8. "Extensive attempts by other editors to explain that the talk page
was not an appropriate venue for extended discussion of the "truth" of
a particular reference were ineffective."
and "The establishment of truth is not one of the purposes of
Wikipedia which merely attributes the knowledge it contains to
published sources."
These are just plain ridiculous points.  Talk pages most certainly
exist to discuss the validity of things included in an article.
Wikipedia does not exist to simply parrot any arbitrary source that
someone decided to  pick.  Of course, it appears the arbitrators voted
to suggest that you should just blindly take any information from any
source and it's perfectly ok as long as you cite it.
Not just that, but that's not what was even being contested on the
talk pages.  Most people arguing against me weren't arguing that it
shouldn't be discussed on the talk pages, they were arguing that the
source was actually valid and thusly should be included.
You'll also note that this is another example of inventing a policy on
the spot.  Why don't the arbitrators put up a vote for this as a
policy and see how well it goes over?  I guarantee you that it will be
shot down quickly, because it's absurd.
Following their logic, you can include any information from any source
in a Wikipedia article.  As long as it's a published source, nothing
else matters.
This wasn't a quotation of popular opinion either, this was a matter
of statistical fact as stated by the Wikipedia article.  It stated
something from the Kinsey Report as fact, even though it was factually
incorrect.  In what strange bizzarro wikipedia is incorrect
information allowed to be included simply because it's from a popular
published source?  I guess this means now I can start taking
statistics from random popular websites that were clearly pulled out
of thin air.
----
Anyway, as you can see the arbitrators are inventing new policies,
refusing to address my concerns, not reading what happened and are
fabricating things which never happened.
They're proposing a ban on all gender/sexuality related articles. I've
only made two significant edits on any gender/sexuality articles
(gender and bisexuality).  If you include talk pages, I've edited a
total of 3 pages for which there is dispute: gender, bisexuality and
third gender.
This doesn't make any sense to me, I'm basically being banned from all
sexuality articles for removing a single paragraph (with strong
evidence backing my reason doing so--I cited NUMEROUS expert sources
and a primary source) from a single sexuality article.
I'm also being banned for removing POV, incoherent sentences and bad
information from a single gender related article.
How the heck does a year long ban make sense here?  This is a bad case
of the arbs trying to enforce their own opinions.  Heck, at least one
of the arbs on the case (ambi) is part of the LGBT Wikipedia notice
board that tries to regulate articles, so it's pretty obvious she
wants to keep those articles as-is.
THE FOLLOWING IS JUST A RANT AND IS NOT DIRECTLY RELEVENT, NO NEED TO
READ.
I don't really care so much for editing the article so much as I care
about the absolutely astounding level of intellectual dishonesty going
on here.  They don't like someone challenging obvious POV and
extremist LGBT propaganda (yes, I can provide direct links, if
necessary, to the parties trying to defend obvious POV).
They are trying desperately to make as large a number possible of
Wikipedia articles on every tiny little subject concerning LGBT things
and the articles themselves read as if they are taken straight out of
a LGBT book for a queer studies course, except a lot more poorly
written.  I imagine a couple years from now they'll have an article
for everything, even things like
Gay_rights_and_the_views_of_third_baptist_church_in_podunk,Utah.
I just am so surprised how sheltered some of these sub-cliques are,
because you know damn well their the types are college undergrads
(with mommy and daddy paying their way), they just discovered they had
a large group of people they can whine to and have validate heir
feelings and biases.
I think a few years down the road, when they start meeting those of
the gobbleteequa type outside of school, they'll realize what pansies
they are and that most gobbleteequa aren't whiny academic PC cowards
who have no understanding of the real world.  Yes, that's right,
you're not actually representative of the group, you're representative
of just the extremists.  You're theoreticians and idealists.  And you
know the irony of it all?  It's almost always the most privileged who
are whining about being underprivileged.  The ones who actually ARE
underprivileged get pissed off at these types for that very reason and
as a result become more distanced from movements (they scared the less
privileged ones off).
The one example that I always like to think of is how the rich white
female feminists always try to speak for all women and then have they
audacity to privilege check middle and lower class black women when
said black women call the rich white ones on their BS. This is
paralleled in all of the gobbleteequa groups as well and is truly sad.
:-(
----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder
http://www.gummibears.nu/
http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key
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(fwd) bishonen exercises abuse of admin power