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(a)gummibears.nu> To: wikien-l(a)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/Pro… 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 ----------------------------------------------