Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:20, 20 April 2006

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.

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Evidence presented by Cool Cat (talk · contribs)

User Lacks Civility

1. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Declares some wikipedians (or their actions) Anti-Semitic and cites them as examples of Anti-Semitism.
2. User:Cool Cat/def
   • An exchange of continuing incivil comments.
3. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Indirectly accuses "a lot of users" adding "racist, sometimes anti-Semitic propaganda". Which may be true, but his tone is still incivil.
4. User:Cool Cat/def
   • A variety of comments that can be easily interpreted as personal attacks.

User pushes POV

1. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Suggests several cited and published material "outdated and insignificant".
2. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Generalises and talks behalf of Iranians and dismisses theories "brought by outsiders to iranian scholars". So iranian and outsider pov is false which basicaly is everyone.
3. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Dismisses "Iranian books" and declares them unusable in an article talking about Persians.

• I am not fascinated with the politics behind Persian people, but from what I recall from history persians lived in the same area occupied by modern Iran. I personaly believe the best source of information about any culture, ethnic group, etc. is from the culture, ethnic group, etc. I do not believe Iranian books are to be ignored especialy when Iran is being discussed.

No understanding of certain[REDACTED] policies such as WP:NOR/WP:NPOV

1. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Complains about published material violating WP:NOR which is self conflicting.
2. User:Cool Cat/def
   • Is fast to remove/replace anything disputing factual acuracy with {{npov}} (or remove it all together) in the middle of an ongoing discussion.
   • Aucaman started this article with a pov title (Turkish Kurdistan = Turkish lands owned by kurds). Many other editors, one being Gruntness, agree with me on this.

Good contribution(s)

• User:Cool Cat/def
  • RC patroling here, which is a good thing. Although test2 before test1 is bad, but he fixed that error of his, himself

Evidence presented by Zmmz (talk · contribs)

The evidence being submitted here are an attempt to show that User:Aucaman, regrettably engages in a cyclical pattern that results in a disruptive influence on some articles. The user may be obstinate to the point that even a pending ArbCom case has not resulted in an attempt at a good behaviour: some requests made to him to stay calm, should have served as a temporary remedy, in that the user could have taken full advantage of this opportunity to allow for a cooling-off period to set in, yet instead, his usual activities continue. Example: he was recently blocked for another 3RR violation, but blocked again for a second consecutive day, this time for civility infractions; however, even so, while still blocked the user threatened to file an Rfc against the administrator(s) who blocked him.

• These activities ligature other violations that are the result of, or result in the user`s many disputes.

User engages in Misplaced Pages:edit warring

1. Excessively reverting many articles such as Persian people, Iranian people, Parsi, and Iran: the user disagrees with the use of the word Aryan, and/or Indo-European in many articles

User violates WP:POINT

1. Places numerous dispute tags on articles, namely Persian people, Iranian people, Parsi, Turkish Kurdistan, and Iran: (sometimes simultaneously)

User does not Work toward agreement

1. User Aucaman refuses to properly cooperate/collaborate with others, including third party editors/mediators, e.g. does not accept references, erases comments and warnings from his talk page etc.

User goes against WP:POV

1. Inserts highly inappropriate comments in articles to perhaps illustrate certain points of views, e.g., trying to relate Persia to Nazi Germany

User violates WP:3RR

In most instances the user is very active in articles and just stops short of the 3RR, timing his edits just outside the 24 hour period in order to evade the policy, but at times he has gone over 4 reverts in 24 hours.

1. 27 March 2006

2. 11 March 2006

3. 1 March 2006 (not reported for it) 1st revert: 2st revert: 3nd revert: 4rd revert: 5th revert: 6th revert: 7th revert: 8th revert:

User goes against WP:Etiquette/Civility infractions

The user is also an intelligent, and savvy Wikipedian, and is well connected here, yet one who unfortunately indirectly involves others in what seems like a non-ending loop, in which he refuses to reason in the discussion pages or mediations, reverts articles, then if others revert it back, he reports them to the admins for various reasons (often unmerited); such reasons may include his accusations that others follow him around, he reports others unjustly for 3RR in the hope that they will stop reverting his POV etc. In all the user tries to game the system, e.g. contacting and trying to buy the sympathy of the admins, and in general there is just a certain unwillingness by the user to confluence with various groups of editors; his tone has been consistently immoderate and abrasive.

1. "Now, go and get lost. Death praiser. You illiterate mental. Your Cyrus the Great was nothing but an illiterate and murderer. But still he is long gone and forgotten. What is your excuse for being one.....? Your dad is a mercenary" (note: this comment was translated), . Zmmz 20:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Zereshk

User never assumes good faith

User certainly lacks etiquette. But also fails to assume good faith to warn others first, methodically reporting them for 3RR, sometimes incorrectly:

User manipulates discussion pages

Ive seen this user remove comments and warnings from his talkpage and removing other's comments from discussion pages as well, moving articles entirely such as parsi etc. without discussing anything with anyone.

When confronted, he engages in combative behaviour with other editors such as User:ManiF (which Ive personally seen), instead of trying to resolve things by talk. That's why I rarely engage this user (Aucaman) at all. It disrupts any attempt to make some real contribution. All ones time will be waisted on quarreling with no ending. That's not why I'm here on WP.

It cannot escape the notice of outside observers such as myself that people such as him make optimal use of gaming the system, and that is a bad precedent for WP.

Interesting is that, as far as these edit wars go, the obvious pattern is that Aucaman seems to be obsessed with only Iranian articles. I dont see this user engaging in edit wars anywhere else.--Zereshk 08:14, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Khoikhoi

User:Aucaman

User pushes POV
Recently Aucaman has been POV-pushing on the Ruhollah Khomeini page. He insists on adding a paragraph called "views on non-Muslims", although this is disputed by several other users, who have explained that the Shi'a tradition of ritual purity is not unique to Khomeini, and is common to most, if not all Shi'a theologians. Despite this, he continues to add the paragraph ( ) and revert about it ( )

User removes people's comments

I've caught Aucaman deleting the comments of others on talk pages - specifically at Talk:Iranian peoples. Just because the comments were unsigned, there isn't any justification for this. --Khoikhoi 08:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

User:Heja helweda

WP:NPOV violations

• Kingdom of Kurdistan page - The Kingdom of Kurdistan did not last long, thanks to the British Royal Air Force acting on behalf of a puppet government in Baghdad. The British were not much kinder to the Kurds. It is wrongly preserved that the first regime that used poison gases against Kurds was Saddam Hussein’s government. This is wrong. British were the first regime to gas Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan. (Hardly neutral at all, especially the "gas attack" section summarized above)

WP:3RR

• User reverts 7 times in 24 hours on the Iranian peoples page - never reported.

Bad faith

• User is responsible for a number of articles that violate copyrights. User:Cool Cat has noticed some and marked them as copy vios due to a request by User:FrancisTyers
  • In retaliation he/she 'found' copy vios on a number of articles related to turkey . On one case mislabeled as a copy vio as the page contained information from the cia world factbook, a pd source. (taken from Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Heja helweda)

Evidence presented by SouthernComfort

User lacks civilty

• Referring to me as a "troll" and my edits as "trolling" (was blocked as a result for the last comment ; had been warned beforehand by an admin )
• Referring to me as a "devils advocate" and "racialist-nationalist" among other incivilities and baseless accusations

User violates WP:POINT and WP:V

• Constantly tagged the Iranian peoples (sometimes with deceptive edit summaries) article though sources had long since been provided (was later warned about this behavior by an admin )
• Constantly tagged Persian people (sometimes with deceptive edit summaries) though sources had been provided within the article and issues had been discussed over the course of many weeks on Talk:Persian people

Evidence presented by Zmmz (talk · contribs)

Evidence showing the willingness to compromise

Hi, regarding your proposal here; the aforementioned articles, namely Parsi, Persian people, and Iranian people that show I had engaged in edit-warring in, are actually a few weeks old. At some point, I took the advice of the admins to heart, and did not become frustrated by Aucaman`s offensive edits, rather left those articles. It has been a month and a half since then, and I have taken Wiki even more seriously, moreover, I had made numerous attempts, with some success at compromising with various other editors (in some cases, such as the Persian Gulf article the long edit wars ceased after I intervened). Here are some diffs showing my successful attempts at compromising with various other editors,

.

Support by third party Wiki editors confirming good behaviour by Zmmz

• This diff shows some comments by others

Hello I was asked to add a comment here by Zmmz. I would generally say I have an opposite POV on the articles where I have come into contact with Zmmz, but in the cases where we have had serious conflicts we have been able to compromise. Zmmz definetely has a stong POV, but I think it would be wrong to block him from editing these articles since on the whole I think he makes useful additions. I think it is kinda strange that out of all the Pro-Iranian editors it is Zmmz that has been picked on, since he is easily the most reasonable and not to mention courteus of all of these users.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 23:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

(Copied from above link) Ditto to most everything Moshe just said. In my case, I had a brief conflict with Zmmz a couple months ago when he was brand new on the scene here, and still did not know all the ropes - but we were indeed soon able to reach a compromise that was satisfactory to everyone, by each giving a little... From what I can tell, he seems to have adjusted to becoming a "wikipedian" remarkably swiftly; and since this here is the first time I have ever commented on any arbcom case in any way, it could be said that he is more experienced than I am in certain areas! ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Codex Sinaiticus (talk • contribs)

I must agree with all of user:Moshe's comments above. I was in a pretty good debate with Moshe where Zmmz made strong efforts to mediate, and to maintain an air of civility and a spirit of community. My experiences with Zmmz came on the Talk:Persian Jews page, where he showed great willingness to compromise and find consensus. For those concerned, a quick read (!) of the talk page there should answer lots of questions about the behaviour of all these editors. - black thorn of brethil 00:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the comments above regarding zmmz and his ability and willingness to compromise. I have seen it many times. Also, I think it would be a bad idea to block him since as Moshe said, he makes useful additions. Gol 20:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Never Incivil

I have never been blatantly uncivil to other editors, since I have joined Wiki. Zmmz 18:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this comment as well. I have closely followed many of the discussions he was part of and I don’t ever remember him being uncivil. Gol 20:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:InShaneee

User:Ahwaz

WP:POINT

• Removes a large section of text in a page (that he wrote) to protest the removal of other pieces of text he had wrote.

WP:CIVIL

• "I'm not convinced...that sitting tight and working within the rules actually works...The only solution...is to oppose them and their system"
• "Go on, report me. You'll get some medals and awards for bravery to pin on your user page."
• "You are imposing your POV with the support of your gang."
• "Ahhhh, are you getting tearful, ManiF? Take a few deep breaths, blow your nose and try to get things into perspective. Oh yes, you'll probably run off and tell someone to ban me for being uncivilised. Go ahead!"
• Archive "Who the hell are you? Who invited you?"
  • Note: This diff points to the user's talk archive out of neccesity due to the deletion of this user's talk page. This should not be taken as a sign of the user's 'leaving the project', as a perusal of his contributions shows that he has claimed to have left at least 3 times before.
• "These nationalist Misplaced Pages editors want a holocaust against Arabs."
• "Misplaced Pages is a pile of rubbish and the people that run it are donkeys. The code of conduct is there for powerful gangs to impose their agendas."
• "I did not write any fucking anti-Iranian rant. I wrote about the fucking human rights situation with evidence from human rights organisations, you fuckwit."

WP:3RR

• "I will continue to revert as a matter of principle"

Evidence presented by User:Zmmz

These evidence are in regards to user Zora (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who may have a pre-meditated pro or against agenda before she edits an article, which makes it highly inappropriate to edit an encyclopedia. Due to her “anti-nationalist” ideology, it is at plausible to assume, and frankly fair to dismiss some of the multiple disputes put forth by this user in articles relating to Iran, or Persia: she has an obssesion with these articles, indicating there is no such thing as a “Persian culture”, or even “Persian people” per se. When I joined Wiki a few months ago, some users typed in fear of Zora, and tried to steer away from her disputes. She has a strong taste for some sort of a pro-Arab/anti-Persian POV. It is, however, instrumental to indicate that this user may be in fact at the heart of many of these disputes that cause an action-reaction effect, which may explain the defensive behaviour of many editors such as User:Khashayar Karimi, User:Southerncomfort, User:Khoikhoi, User:ManiF, User:Zereshk, and a host of others (although, let it be known, for the record I do not endorse any violations of Wiki policies, not even if it is provoked). I do agree with the proposed decision that tries to put an end to this kerfuffle, and includes myself to be on probation, such that it forces everyone to avoid disrupting these articles. Nevertheless, to be constructive, ultimately user Zora who has been involved in this for over a year, since May/2005, should be included in the equation too, because her tilted, controversial edits and comments, do actually jump start many of these edit-wars.

User:Zora engages in Misplaced Pages:Edit warring

The user engages in edit-warring in all articles related to Islam, Muslims, and Arabs, diverging into articles about Iran/Persia. The following articles include, Islamic conquest of Persia, Aisha, Zakir Naik, Muhammad, Husayn ibn Ali, Salafi, Richard Nelson Frye, Persian people, Iranian people, Khuzestan, Ahvaz, Rumi and perhaps elsewhere. Many times, only one edit or revertion of her is enough to cascade an edit-war, while keeping in mind, many of her disputes are buried in discussion pages. Many times she edits/reverts articles, even though she may have no historical knowledge of the factual content of some of these articles; she may do so due to her sympathy for the minority political groups, as compared to for pure academic reasons see here (e.g. the repeated indications of the possible Turkish origin of a particular scientist, is historically inaccurate, and not found in any academic sources, such that at his time the Turks had not invaded/mixed with Persians in that area; it occured 1000 years later). As the subsequent diffs show, the user’s claims that others push a POV, and that she neutralizes articles in an NPOV fashion are reciprocal in nature .

• Mass deletion of entire sections that may come with valid sources, promoting an atmosphere of biased persuasion, although done in a gentle, and subtle fashion (either not discussing it with others, or leaving a comment, then almost immediately deleting texts, not giving others a chance to respond)

• Other users not related to Iran articles have filed an incident report, as early as yesterday, in regards to Zora`s edit-warring, and other

User violates Misplaced Pages:Verifiability

• User redundantly refuses authoritative sources such as encyclopedias; claiming even recent editions may not be cutting-edge enough; dismissing some scholarly work as hearsay

• “Cogent argument, that :) Ah, a little more googling suggests that the source for all of this is CAIS, Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies, which is apparently a group of Iranian diaspora academics, no longer connected to the University of London, with explicitly nationalist aims”
• She, for example, has discredited one of the foremost renowned scholars in ancient Near East history, namely Sir Richard Nelson Frye Prof. Emeritus of Harvard U---because apparently the user was dismayed by his views, stating, All I heard was “Persians good Arabs bad”. She dismissed his views by indicating, “That's a man who's 79 years old and resting on his laurels. Vast upheavals in academia have escaped his notice”, and indicated he is “anti-Arab”, and “old-fashioned”. She wrote a statement in the discussion page of the Richard Nelson Frye article, yet, within minutes, without giving anyone else a chance to respond, she went ahead and erased practically the entire article, containing the Professor’s quotes that represent his views .

User violates WP:POINT

• User, admittedly has some sort of “anti-nationalist” ideology, which may or may not explain her fascination with notions such as, the fact that she repeatedly claims Iranian peoples are not genetically related, and/or they are not really descendants of Aryan tribes see definition hereetc., etc.“..I'm a heretic anti-nationalist American”
• Trying to erase the Persian ethnicity of Rumi, stating, We should call him a Muslim instead, since he simply traveled from one Muslim principality to another. I thought it was highly inappropriate to do that in an encyclopedia, which is an academic source.
• In an article called Khuzestan, user many times tried to erase the fact that the early Persian settlers there, who eventually formed a nation, actually did not settle there, and rather they were megalomaniac warriors who captured that area by force, which is against all academic sources that I know of
• “The article, however, is using the term "Iranian peoples" for ill-defined contemporary groups who speak a language related to modern Persian. However, no evidence is given that any of them define themselves as "Iranian peoples". So who is applying the label?”
• Despite pleas to her to start sub-articles that support alternative hypothesis/possible original research relating to an article, and allow major articles to marinate in more universally accepted theories, multiple disputes are sprung by her in discussion pages, claiming there may “really” be no such thing as a so called “Persian culture”, or “Persian ethnicity” as one cohesive national unit

User violates Misplaced Pages:Civility

• “The Iranians are just as scary as the Hindutva folk.”
• We have a brand-new user named RedCrescent who believes that he has a direct line to Allah
• Zmmz is one of a posse of Iranian nationalist editors who have been extremely active lately...
• “Just stay calm and give Dariush enough rope to hang himself”.
• Persians like to say, “We are the biggest and the best, huzzah for us!”
• ManiF, removing ALL mention of language in a discussion of effects of the Arab conquest is sweeping something under the rug, isn't it? You may not LIKE to be reminded of your Arab heritage (scolding a user, when she knows he is Persian, and Iranians are not Arabs)
• That leads me to suspect that you can't find any cites because it's NOT there, and you're just trying to muddy the waters -- like a squid squirting ink to cover its escape.
• I don't BELIEVE in ethnic and linguistic nationalism. Abolish the U.S.! Abolish the Islamic Republic of Iran! Abolish Ahwazistan! Abolish everything! I spit on all flags impartially!
• Other incivilities, and warnings by adminsthis

Zmmz 00:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Zora

Evidence presented by User:Zora

Zmmz charges that I have a POV: "she may have a pre-meditated pro or against agenda before she edits an article, which makes it highly inappropriate to edit an encyclopedia."

Of course I have a POV. Multiple POVs. Everyone does. That's why I believe in NPOV. I give the best case for my POV (if it's notable), other editors give their best cases, and the reader decides. When people do that, it usually settles WP disputes -- if not the real life ones underlying the WP disputes.

He says: "she has an obssesion with these articles, indicating there is no such thing as a “Persian culture”, or even “Persian people” per se. "

I have said, over and over, that I do not believe in cultures as "bounded entities", as per structuralism, or structural-functionalism. It's not just me: read the WP articles on Nationalism and Ethnicity. Zmmz seems to think that cultures are "facts" or "objects", as concrete as a chair. I, and others, are saying that who belongs and who doesn't, who gets to say what is included in "Persian culture" and what isn't, is a matter for negotiation, and constant renegotiation, and that people have various motives for taking the stands that they do. This is not "original research". This is a respectable academic stance. It is espoused by authors such as Anthony Smith, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Prasenjit Duara, Benedict Anderson, James Clifford, Dan Sperber. Academics hold conferences on the subject, such as this one that just finished at the University of North Carolina,

Zmmz tells me that an encyclopedia should only include the mainstream view and exclude new or radical views. Usually, WP editors take pride in how up-to-date WP is.

Zmmz blames me for causing controversy. Controversy is wrong? I thought we -- and all intellectual endeavor- -- thrived on it. As long as views are notable, none should be excluded from WP just to keep things pleasant. If editors are willing to set aside a section for the minority or opposing views, there's no problem; it's only when other views are forcibly suppressed that dispute arises.

Zmmz accuses me of "frivolous edit-warring in all articles related to Islam, Muslims, and Arabs, diverging into articles about Iran/Persia.” Frivolous? I'm iconoclastic, at times, but not frivolous. I think if you asked most of the editors in the non-Iranian subjects to which I contribute, they'd say that I argued hard, admitted error when I made a mistake, tried to compromise, and contributed lots of good articles and material. Look at my user page. Look at my edit count. I don't keep a boast list of articles I've started, but I've created quite a few. I have made enemies (look at my user page!) but I think I've made more friends than enemies. If you actually look at the edits that Zmmz says are evidence of "warring", you'll see me saying things like, "No, you can't put PBUH after Muhammad, this is a secular encyclopedia", or "How about this? will this work for you?" I looked over his long list of "proofs" that I'm a bad editor, and I don't see one of which I'm ashamed.

Zmmz believes that I violate verifiability by refusing to accept the Encyclopedia Britannica as the final word on a subject. Yes, I dismiss general interest encyclopedias as sources. A peer-reviewed scholarly article or a recent book from an academic press has much more weight than the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

He accuses me of discrediting Frye. I haven't discredited Frye -- I couldn't. I have doubted, publicly, that an 86 year old scholar is keeping up with the latest research. He republished his 1975 The Golden Age of Persia in 1999, and added a forward saying that he saw no need to revise his work in any way, since "no new discoveries or revision of our period of history have appeared". To a scholar, the claim that nothing new has appeared in the last 25 years is ... mindboggling. It is perfectly OK to doubt and question -- particularly when it's on a talk page. I didn't put any of that in the article. In fact, I emailed Frye and asked him to check out the article for accuracy. Would I have done that if I had masterminded a hatchet job on him?

Zmmz claims that I'm violating WP:POINT because I don't fall in line with his views of things. He accuses me of "trying to erase the Persian ethnicity of Rumi". Hmm, that's assuming that he's right and I'm wrong, which is not a given. It's not "disrupting WP to make a point" to argue with Zmmz.

Zmmz accuses me of being uncivil and then gives a list of quotes. I really can't see that any of them are personal attacks. If you look at his diffs, and the context of my remarks, what you’ll see is me discussing my political opinions on a personal talk page, asking an angry editor to calm down, arguing vigorously – but no personal attacks. What I call a personal attack is something like this . I have taken such assaults in silence rather than running to admins. I hope that anyone reading this can see the difference between a real personal attack and argument, or between attacking someone to his or her face, and making a political comment on a friend's talk page.

If someone comes to me and says, "You're hurting my feelings, please don't say X," I'll listen. I don't want to gratuitously hurt someone's feelings. But I do not like being stalked for "evidence" that I'm a bad person, or accused of incivility if I argue vigorously.

This is a second version of my defense; I didn’t see the warning to keep it under 1000 words, so I’ve been cutting drastically. He has slung a great many accusations at me, and I don’t really have space to discuss them all. If he’s going to attack me, I wish he’d do it in a separate Request for Arbitration, so that I’d have room to defend myself. Zora 18:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Comments by AMbroodEY on evidence presented by Zora

All i can say is that Zora cant claim not to have a POV. I've noticed while editing India articles she relies heavily on scholars adhereing to a particular ideology and isists on allowing only HER version of article and completely disregarding other's POV. She dismisses he detractors or people whose POV doesnt agree with her's as mere insane nationalists, extremists and zealots. Whenever something is amiss in Indian she automatically blames everything on Hindutva , . Her failure to see that people being individuals have an opinion and are not always part of some monolithic nationalist conspiracy tends to get irritating. File:England flag large.png अमेय आर्यन DaBroodey 18:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by LukasPietsch

Section removed, superceded by revised version submitted by Aucaman below. Lukas 05:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Zora has NOT been edit-warring

How does one prove a negative? The following four pages have been named as examples where Zora engaged in disruptive edit-warring:

• Islamic conquest of Persia: Checked the last few months of page history: Normal active editing; a few reverts in between, but all of them clearly argued for; no repeated reverts of the same material, no edit-warring. Legitimate editing behaviour, good co-operative discussion behaviour on talk page even during a heated debate last summer.
• Aisha: Yes, quite a high percentage of Zora's edits are reverts here, but they are good tidy-up edits, well argued, none of them repetitive edit-warring. This is just good tidying-up work in a religiously sensitive article that was being filled with clearly POV and OR material by many other contributors.
• Persian people: A total of 3(!) edits within the span of one month (12 March, 13 March, 8 April), all re-instating a {disputed} tag. No edits during the preceding months at all.
• Khuzestan Province: Just 4(!) edits since last August (!). All reverts, but clearly argued for; no repeated revert-warring.

I absolutely fail to see how this editing pattern could be described as edit-warring. Lukas 16:35, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how these RfArs work, but I think I can add my two cents in here. This seems like the most appropriate topic for me to add in my view. The only person involved in this RfAr that I have worked with in the past is Zora, and the only article from the above list that I have edited and watch is Aisha. For the former, I have had minimal problems with Zora. She is usually fair in her editing and reverting. She doesn't, atleast from my watch, edit war. I feel confident enough in her editing that often times I don't need to check the diff links on certain pages, simply because she was the last one to edit the page. The Aisha page is a page of much controversy at times. Many anti-Islam editors will approach that article to disparage Islam as much as possible by calling Muhammad a pedophile and other such hate filled comments. As far as I've seen, Zora has maintained the integrity of the article, and by extension, the integrity of Misplaced Pages as a whole. Pepsidrinka 02:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Aside

Before everything I apologize if this comment is completely irrelevant. I have not read the discussion here but I was surprised to see that Zora is accused of doing edit-warring!!! I have found her too knowledgeable, quite mild, and logical. I may not agree with her on some issues but all of us have the right to have our own opinion. I will never ever believe she joins a revert war. No way! Even if it happens, there should be a good reason for that. I don't know what her charges exactly are, but I am Persian and her edits has never bothered me. Were she anti-Persian, I should have felt it. My POV is that if an editor like Zora encounters any penalties, this should be mentioned in the "criticism of wikipedia" article. I am sorry if this was not the place to add this comment. Feel free to remove this comment if it is not relevant. --Aminz 02:29, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Response to evidence presented by LukasPietsch

"Zmmz is part of an organized Iranian POV-warring faction"

1. Mostly through the work of Zereshk, the "Iranian Watchdog" takes shape in the "Iranian noticeboard", including a list of articles "under attack" as well as a blacklist of allegedly hostile editors - among them Aucaman, Zora and Ahwaz (). This page is also used to advertise polls for vote-stacking, e.g. this AfD ().

Wrong, the notice baord was created by another user, totally uninvolved in these conflicts, months before the "watchdog" messages.

1. Zmmz, Kash and ManiF acted together in bringing a user-conduct RfC against Aucaman. ()

Actually, not quite. Zmmz asked me for help as the situation at the Persian people page was not improving. That was when I suggested that he create an RfC, they did not "act together".

1. The language of the noticeboard was cleaned up after it was heavily criticized at the Aucaman RfC and at WP:AN (here). However, its function remains, and comments by Zereshk () show that the changes are intended to be only cosmetic. See highly inflammatory tone of some later contributions on the board ().

From the comment you provided, Zereshk said "We can mention which pages are under "attack" without actually naming any specific users." I don't know how you read it, but it looks like he agrees that the notice board should not personally attack users. There are many other country notice boards which list articles that have POV problems. See Romanian Wikipedians' notice board#Problem articles and Misplaced Pages:Notice board for Israel-related topics for example. As for 69.196.139.250 (talk · contribs)/Manik666 (talk · contribs), he isn't even part of this arbitration, so I'm not sure why you pointed to the user's (currently blocked for 1 week) edits.

"The "Iranian Watchdog" has the goal of silencing opposing POVs"

1. The "Iranian Watchdog" editors commonly refer to editors who hold opposing views as "attackers", "vandals", "haters of Iran", "malicious falsifiers" etc. Examples on the noticeboard, and here:
   1. "actively trying to misrepresent Iran." (Zmmz on 27 February, 22:56 )

This is the exact same reason why ManiF removed all of these attacks. If you look at the current state of the notice board it looks fine.

1. They commonly describe their own role as that of "protecting the integrity of articles", implying that their POV is the only possible truth

I can understand why they would say this, after a user wants the word Aryan removed from all Iran-related articles, another user goes on a rampage labeling historical figures with disputed ancestry as Arab., and another makes claims that Ruhollah Khomeini molested boys based on an extremely questionable source. Of course users should not have been labeled, which is the exact reason why Mani removed them.

1. 1. Zereshk about his own role: "a massive portion of my time has been spent on protecting the Persian/Iranian pages from attacks by the likes of Heja, Diyako, Zora, and other Iran antagonists" (Zereshk, 4 March )

If you take a look at Diyako's contributions, for example, you will understand what he's talking about. On one instance he added a {{prod}} tag to the Iranian peoples article numerous times, saying "it does not exist". The user has also made claims (and implemented them) that the Kurdish celebration of the Iranian new year is completely different from Norouz, although there are sources such as the BBC that claim otherwise.

1. 1. ManiF about his own role: "here to protect the accuracy, integrity and security of Iran-related articles." (). "Integrity" in fact means nothing else than complete monopolization of articles by their POV.

(See my above response)

"Aucaman wasn't editing against consensus"

There were several editors who expressed at least partial support for his views regarding the term "Aryan", among them User:Dbachmann, one of the most competent Wikipedians in the field (, ).

Ok, that's one user that agrees with him, although there is no proof that he also believes that "Aryan" should be removed from all Iran-related articles. Furthermore, the great majority of Wikipedians disagree with him.

"Zmmz neglected the mediation, never showing interest in a substantial compromise or consenus"

1. On 2 March, Zmmz, Kash and ManiF together started a Cabal Mediation procedure with Aucaman under User:Fasten as mediator () - just a day before they brought the user-conduct RfC against him.

Wrong. I first entered the dispute by adding a proposed compromise here. Zmmz clearly agreed to it as well. I quote, "OK let`s write Indo-European, and in a parenthesis next to it write the term is technically not used anymore". Kash and ManiF agreed to my proposal as well, but it was Aucaman who was not being flexible. After hours of further discussion, with new proposals being suggested, Aucaman still wouldn't compromise. (See Talk:Persian people/Archive 2) That was when I filed a Request for Meditation.

1. Unlike Aucaman, who responded positively to suggestions by the mediator (), Zmmz et al. hardly engaged in constructive discussions of compromise proposals, but filled the mediation with personal accusations instead.

This was all after the long discussion with Aucaman, after everyone got mad at him for his attitude on the subject.

1. The mediator later declared the mediation failed, more or less openly laying the blame for the failure on Zmmz et al (, ).

This was because it wasn't getting anywhere, I don't even recall the mediator putting that much effort into the mediation in the first place. There was a majority of editors who agreed on keeping the paragraph as it was, and there was one user who wanted (wants) to change it.

"Most of Aucaman's recent "edit-warring" was just about a "disputed" tag"

While Aucaman's edits at Persian people have been clearly controversial, he has not been revert-warring to any excessive extent, except with respect to the {disputed} tag he wanted to have included. This was an understandable attempt to reach at least a symbolic acknowledgment from his opponents that his views were part of a legitimate dispute and not simply disruption. Justified in the matter, though misguided in the means. Aucaman's contributions to the content were mostly constructive, reasonably well referenced and properly argued.

Wrong, the recent edit waring at Persian people for example was about his inclusion a bogus paragraph (i.e. the Aryans of Iran being "Nordic"), not the dispute tag. His edit waring at Persian Gulf was about the bolding of the term "Arabian Gulf", and his edit waring at Ruhollah Khomeini was about the inclusion of a section.

"Zmmz' allegations against Aucaman's personal behaviour were largely groundless."

1. Aucaman has admittedly been angry, and has incurred blocks during the last days (). The latest one, for personal attacks, was a rather strict sanction for calling somebody else a "troll" in the context of a heated debate, on 27 March. ().
2. Earlier, there was one other instance where Aucaman lost his temper under provocation, answered an ethnic slur with another, then retracted ()
3. The later incident was then blown out of proportion by his opponents, who even days later flooded talk pages (, , , , , ), and his own user page (, ) with complaints, until they were themselves warned or blocked () for disruption and "wikistalking".

Blown out of proportion? This is understandable. The anon called Acuaman, "the Jew freed from the chain" and Aucaman went off on him calling him a "death-worshiper", "illiterate mental", and called Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire an "illiterate murderer".

—Khoikhoi 06:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Zmmz

I think it may be inappropriate, that even in the ArbCom case, User:LukasPietsch is attempting to marginalize other’s grievances. His tone is certainly catchy, and I salute Lukas`s efforts, but what I hear is just a lot ambivalence, nothing substantive. What he indicates is slander.

User:LukasPietsch further flames Misplaced Pages as Misplaced Pages is not a battleground

From the start, when Lukas began to get involve, and represent Aucaman as an advocate in the Rfc I set-up for him, in which not surprisingly Aucaman showed almost no interest in, Lukas has engaged in grossly inappropriate inflammatory exchanges with other users involved on the opposite side. I have yet to see any evidence of his willingness to compromise. As an `Advocate`, instead of displaying a certain amount of magnanimity, and good spirit towards other Wikpedia members, to demonstrate an spirit of community and cooperation, he has harassed, and intimidated other users. He has indicated, in more than one instance that, “...this has to stop, and right now I feel inclined to do whatever it takes to make it stop.”, and right from the start, to this day, assuming, “This is an institutionalisation of this nationalist factionalising....which is a deeper-seated problem....involving poltical nationalists”.

• Lukas spamming and taunting the talk pages of some involved users, such as myself (e.g. “Notice to Robert McClenon: responding to an explicit request by Ed Poor to "cue him in"; and it was you who had previously brought up my name in that discussion (), so you can't complain I joined it. (By the way, I like your typo there, "his first order of bossinessbusiness" - that's a good one. Just noticed it now. ;-)”.....etc.)
• Using unusually excessive writing on my talk page, even after, with concert with my advocate, I tried to extend an olive branch to him
• Further insulting a user’s character and intimidating him to retract from a then pending Rfc, and eventually coming to ArbCom, pointing to all the negative aspects on presenting the Rfc, instead, of trying to get both parties to perhaps remedy the situation, stating for example, “...it was your doing. It's called a "Request for comments" for a reason, you know.”
• After another user who had started yet a different Rfc against Aucaman, namely user Coolcat, had pleaded with him to help him format his Rfc correctly, because Lukas is more experienced, Lukas completely disregarding Coolcat`s concerns, , indicating, “Hmm, sorry, no offense, but ... rather than assisting, I'm probably going to shoot it down.”
• Spamming the talk page of user Southerncomfort; and basically indicating, he thought of Southerncomfort as being better than user Zmmz, Khashayar Karimi, and......etc...etc.
• Spamming and lobbying in the talk page of admin, VoiceofAll
• Warning Zmmz: You'll find yourselves in a lot of trouble there (ArbCom), though, and may very likely get banned yourselves.
• Spamming and lobbying in the talk page of admin, William Connoley, trying to turn admin against a bunch of other editors, promoting an atmosphere of biased persuation
• Instead of encouraging a user, to cooperate and welcoming him to Misplaced Pages, Lukas insulted/provoked him. Within a few days this brand new user, namely,User:MysticRum stopped contributing to Wiki and left in dissapointed. Originally, user MysticRum had been been outraged by one of Aucaman`s ethnically vulgar personal attacks, and inquired about a message left on Lukas`s talk page, simply leaving a polite question there, since Lukas was acting as Aucaman`s advocate

1. Khashayar Karimi`s, followed by user MysticRum`s well-intentioned inquiry to Lukas, indicating, does as an advocate Lukas allow this behaviour by Aucaman?

2. Lukas`s response to MysticRum`s grievances: “Yawn. This incident has been discussed to death, I've commented on it earlier myself, he's himself done all the explaining it needed.....Now stop it”.

3. Lukas`s response to MysticRum, after MysticRum expressed shocked that as a newcomer (see the second diff), such things occur in Wiki: “Please re-read every single word of what I said above, try to take it in, and then go away”.

User:LukasPietsch violates Misplaced Pages:Civility

He is promoting a hostile environment. He has failed yet, to assume good faith about others involved; there has not been instance that comes to mind in which User:LukasPietsch has been whole-heartedly courteous to what he refers to as, the “Iranian nationalists”, “Iranian factionalizes ”, “the masterminds behind all this”, and “Nationalist mudsling”, whose some contributions to a noticeboard may be a “...a disgrace to Misplaced Pages ”.

Such behaviour is a bad precedent to set in Wiki, and it is as such toxic to the health of an encyclopedia. I will not operate in fear of retribution by user Lukas; rather, I fear the ramification of the clash of ideologies in an academic source that is, an encyclopedia of all places. I do hope that the committee will not look kindly upon such behaviour. No one is above the policies here, not even someone as intelligent, saavy, and well-connected as Lukas.

• Defaming other editors, constantly labeling them as, those “Iranian nationalists”, who are involved in “mudsling”, “whining ”, “rambling ”,the "Iranian Camp", whose some contributions to a noticeboard may be a “a disgrace to Misplaced Pages”.
• See example of Lukas lobbying that incivilities by him and Zora may be acceptable, since they are, according to user Lukas “..calling an ace, an ace”
• Even after I apologised to Lukas on the advice of my advocate, Robert McClenon, for simply not assuming good faith on Lukas, he still stated I may have no “decency” for quoting him wrong (I used ramblers, instead of, his actual quote, “rambling”, i.e. noun vs. verb)
• Further incivility by Lukas: “If you all could just refrain from stoning me to death for a little while” (making a reference to archaic stoning of women, taking place in Iran )
• In multiple messages left on the talk page of Zmmz, and despite requests to not do so, Lukas using uncivil language, indicating: “Which is absolutely none of your business.”, and “..then you butted in” etc., etc.
• “I suppose MysticRum is an adult who is responsible for how he behaves himself, so he gets from me what he deserves”.

Zmmz 07:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Aucaman (talk · contribs) (Part I)

Note: The following were prepared in close cooperation with User:LukasPietsch, but User:Aucaman is responsible for the accuracy of the evidence. The first part focuses on the general behavior of these users, whereas the second part focuses on the specific behaviors.

Zmmz is part of an organized POV-warring faction

This group, which has been acting in close concert, includes:

• ManiF (talk · contribs)
• Khashayar Karimi (talk · contribs) (also known as "Kash")
• Zmmz (talk · contribs)
• SouthernComfort (talk · contribs)

Other users in the background:

• Zereshk (talk · contribs) (This user does not actively edit the disputed articles, but he sometimes drops by to give his approval of some of the personal attacks and to undermine any sort of compromise.)

Other users:

• 69.196.139.250 (talk · contribs) - responsible for many personal attacks
• Khoikhoi (talk · contribs) - helps out in edit wars
• Shervink (talk · contribs) - responsible for personal attacks and undermining compromises
• Various socks/anons. (These have been regularly used to make personal attacks or to dodge WP:3RR - I'll provide evidence once I get the chance.)

Details

1. In late February, Kash, ManiF and Zereshk organized the "Iranian Watchdog" here, a POV-pushing team against people who "vandaliz the Iran-related topics propagating false information, maliciously editing/disputing/deleting ", in order to "guard the integrity and quality of all the Misplaced Pages articles" and to "keep Iranian pages free of such wrongful accusations". Quote: "we are at a war!"
2. Until mid-March, the "Iranian Watchdog" takes shape in the "Iranian noticeboard", including a list of articles "under attack" as well as a black list of hostile editors - among them Zora and Ahwaz. (). This page is also used to advertise polls for vote-stacking, e.g. this AfD ().
3. User:Zmmz spammed other editors' (often newcomers) talkpages with factionalizing welcome messages advertising the notice board, and requesting them to take part in coordinated POV pushing on WP:AN or WP:RFC and similar fora.. Note especially the part where he advertises an AN/I discussion containing complaints against the alleged anti-Iranians (), presenting it as an opportunity to "vote for limiting the editing privileges of these users".
4. The language of the noticeboard was cleaned up after it was heavily criticized at the Aucaman RfC and at here on WP:AN. However, its function remains, and comments by Zereshk () show that the changes are intended to be only cosmetic. See highly inflammatory tone of some later contributions on the board ().
5. On 2 March, Zmmz, Kash and ManiF together start a Cabal Mediation procedure with Aucaman ().
6. Only a day later, Zmmz, Kash and ManiF together bring a user-conduct RfC against Aucaman.()
7. The advertising of the case by the "Watchdog" lead to a massive amount of inflammatory, partisan comments on the RfC and elsewhere, often by clueless newcomers (here, here, here, here).

The "Iranian Watchdog" editors have a pattern of strong POV pushing

1. They commonly refer to editors who hold opposing views as "attackers", "vandals", "anti-Iranian", often accusing them of having "agendas" or disseminating "propoganda" etc.
2. They commonly describe their own role as that of "protecting the integrity of articles", implying that their POV is the only possible truth. "Integrity" in fact means nothing else than complete monopolization of articles by their POV.
3. In reality, they're on a POV campaign: systematically emphasizing the continuity of Iranian culture and history at the expense of the historical contribution of other neighbouring peoples. They consistently and persistently try to label various ethnic groups, individuals, and geographical areas Persian/Iranian/Aryan, often crushing any alternative points of view/sources/theories. This has been happening across some 35+ articles, of which I've been directly involved in only 5 (Kurds, Persian people, Persian Jews, Iranian peoples, and Persian Gulf). To understand how broad and widespread this campaign has been take a look at various other complaints against these users, coming from totally different corners of Misplaced Pages.
4. On the discussion pages, the large volume of articles involved and the lack of English sources supporting these users' claims has led to the their abandonment and dismissal of any civil discussions, often cluttering discussion pages with out-of-context comments designed to derail any ongoing talks/consensus-building/compromise. They consistently make edits/claims that directly violate WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:RS - often asking people if they have the necessary background to be editing such articles. These have led to the disruption of these talk pages, often creating environments in which newcomers feel out-of-place and discouraged to participate.
5. On the article level, these users systematically revert any edit coming from outside their POV circle. The edit summaries often ask people to read the (by-now-incomprehensible) discussion pages. (For examples of Zmmz doing this, see this.) Dispute tags are removed in order to prevent any unwanted attention and repel outside users from commenting on the disputes. Individuals are then personally harassed and offended until they respond back, in which case they're reported to admins to be blocked. After they're unblocked they're constantly harassed again - this time for responding to personal attacks and having been blocked. This cycle continues until the users either gives up editing articles or their blocks are extended. (User:Mesopotamia, User:Diyako, User:Mansour, and User:Ahwaz have been virtually eliminated due to these tactics. User:Ahwaz even went back and retracted many of his edits as a sign protest for all the personal attacks and harassment.)

The "Iranian Watchdog" editors have harassed and tried to intimidate Aucaman

I'll provide more evidence for this in the second set of evidence I'm about to submit, but there's enough evidence in I the materials I've submitted already.

Aucaman wasn't editing against unanimous consensus

There were several editors who expressed at least partial support for his views regarding the term "Aryan", among them User:Tombseye, User:Zora, User:LukasPietsch, User:Dbachmann, User:Ed Poor.

Zmmz et al. neglected the mediation, never showing interest in a substantial compromise or consenus

1. Zmmz et al. brought the RfC against Aucaman only a day after they began the mediation.
2. Unlike Aucaman, who responded positively to suggestions by the mediator, Zmmz did not even bother responding to the compromise proposal, instead filling the page with various accusations which later turned out to be false and irrelevant.
3. The filing of the Mediation was simply for cosmetic purposes. Zmmz et al. had already declared Aucaman "illogical" and were actively looking to "ban" him so that "these arguments will not rise again." Most of this had been happening early on into the dispute. In fact, the dispute was declared to be over before the filing for Cabal Mediation, and Zmmz had attested "there will be zero compromise with ".
4. On the same day the Mediation was filed (and the subsequent days), Zmmz et. were busy spamming various places looking to "ban" User:Aucaman and others.
5. After being told that individual users cannot ban anyone from Misplaced Pages over a content dispute (), Zmmz et al. filed the RfC against Aucaman. They then spammed some 20+ users (most of them newcomers or people Aucaman had never worked with) presenting the RfC as a chance to "combat anti-Iranianism", claiming Aucaman was doing "sneaky vandalism" for "political and Zionist reasons", asking them to help out in banning him.
6. In the RfC, Zmmz et al. claimed to have assumed "months" of good faith even though the RfC was submitted less than a month from when Aucaman first started editing the Persian people article. Also note the inaccurate nature of most of the "evidence" provided there - something I'll expand upon below.)
7. It took more than a week for the mediator (User:Fasten) to get the other side's attention. The response was a vague rejection of the compromise offer. Further attempts by User:Fasten to get Zmmz et al. to elaborate on their position were left ignored and remain unanswered as of right now.
8. Even though the dispute was clearly not over, the dispute tag was removed a day after the page was unprotected, and Zmmz expanded the disputed language to the first line of the article without even bothering with an edit summary. Subsequent attempts to reinsert the dispute tag were reverted within minutes. (Note how Zmmz knows "the matter is being mediated" but uses that as a justification for removing the dispute tag.)
9. After the mediator explained that Aucaman was right in demanding a dispute tag in the middle of dispute (and Aucaman further explained his use of dispute tags here), Zmmz et al. did not even bother to explain the need to remove the dispute and have not done so until today. (The section that begins with "Please explain the demand ")
10. After another compromise proposal was rejected and turned into a campaign to personalize the conflict, User:Fasten declared the mediation over.

Zmmz' allegations against Aucaman's personal behaviour were largely groundless

1. Aucaman has admittedly been angry, and has incurred blocks during the last days (). The latest one, for personal attacks, was a rather strict sanction for calling somebody else a "troll" in the context of a heated debate, on 27 March.().
2. Earlier, there was one other instance where Aucaman lost his temper under provocation and replied to an ethnic slur, then retracted ()
3. This incident occurred after Zmmz et al. had brought the RfC against Aucaman; the original list of alleged incivility infractions by him contained nothing substantial whatsoever. Aucaman is only now showing nerves after an intense campaign of harassment and intimidation against him.
4. The alleged evidence of incivil behaviour brought originally against him in the RfC () contained nothing substantial, and should be seen as vexatious litigation.
5. The later incident was then blown out of proportion by his opponents, who even days later flooded talk pages (, , , , , ) and his own user page (, ) with complaints, until they were themselves warned (,) or blocked (,) for harassment and wikistalking.
6. It is characteristic of the low quality of Zmmz' evidence that he let Robert reproduce a blatantly false allegation of previous 3RR blocks against Aucaman here at Arbcom, even when the error had been pointed out and Zmmz had been forced to apologize over it previously.