QUOTE
Questions on your on-wiki handling of the Marsden case
Jimbo,
I am sorry that you are having what must be a difficult week for yourself and your family. You will emerge from this, I think, a better leader of our community. However, I need to ask you some tough questions. I apologize in advance if these come across as curt; I have had a long day. I am posting this because I still believe in Wikipedia. I love this community and I believe there is an real and needed opportunity for healing to take place.
[edit] 1) Your interventions in 2006
Rachel Marsden first approached me via email two years ago with complaints about her bio. We had never met. I subsequently reviewed her bio and I found it not to be up to our standards. My involvement in cases like this is completely routine, and I am proud of it."[1]
Jimbo, I have a lot of questions about your review of her bio and your involvement in this case. My experience is that it was, by far, the most horrible and inept handling of a case I have ever seen on Wikipedia. See my summary here.
1a) When you reviewed her bio and found it not up to our standards, to what extent did you review the reliable sources on the subject? There are hundreds of top-quality sources, originating in at least eight of the past ten years. Your actions in your personal life, while none of my business in and of themselves, make me wonder if you read the sources. Did you read them?
1b) What exactly was your "involvement" in this case? Did you, for example, advise the Arbitration Commitee on their ruling in 2006?
[edit] 2) Your edit on January 20 to Talk:Rachel Marsden
Regarding your edit here beginning with "I have concerns about WP:UNDUE in this article..."
2a) This came just three weeks before your one-time meeting with Marsden, on the same date that one of Marsden's friends said that you and Marsden were close friends.[2] Did you have a COI that you should have declared when making this post?
Your post came when the article looked like this, some hours after Rainmaker2005 (talk · contribs), whom I suspect is Mardsen, had attempted to remove sourced material that was unflattering to her.
2b) Regarding your post itself: By what process are editors supposed to determine due weight for this article? By looking at what facts are most emphasized by reliable third-party sources? Or by reference to... what?
[edit] 3) Banned user
Beginning in late December 2007, there was a resurgence of activity from community-banned user Arthur Ellis, who is a friend of Rachel Marsden. I had never had any difficulty getting his sockpuppets blocked in the past, however on Dec 30 I had to beg on AN/I for over two days to have his IP blocked, during which time Moreschi and Thatcher made several posts about Arthur Ellis's good work on the Rachel Marsden article. [3] I e-mailed FloNight and asked why Arthur Ellis was seemingly not being treated like an ordinary banned user. I emphasized that I believed Arthur Ellis's sockpuppets were responsible for posting obscene vandalism to my userspace and that I wanted us to send an unequivocal message to this creep that he is not welcome here. FloNight she said she would look into it. We exchanged some messages and she asked me if she could forward my messages to the Arbitration Committee mailing list, which of course you belong to. I agreed on January 5. I never heard back from any of you.
Over the next few weeks Arthur Ellis's IPs and socks kept up their presence here,[4] voting in Rachel Marsden-related deletion discussions, editing the Simon Fraser University 1997 harassment controversy article, creating hoax articles,[5] stalking User:Victoriagirl and undoing her edits,[6] vandalizing Victoriagirl's userpage, vandalizing my userpage, and following me to the Sea otter article I was working on and vandalizing our article on sea otters.
I imagined that someone from the Arbitration Commitee might post a note on one of the admin noticeboards to the effect of, "In case anyone's wondering, yes Arthur Ellis is hardbanned," but I didn't see any of that. What I did see is Arthur Ellis saying on January 1 that "I know Jimbo is taking a personal interest in this."[7] and saying on January 20 that "I"m also talking to Jimbo via Facebook. Apparently he and Marsden are close friends."[8]
Jimbo, have you had off-wiki discussions with Rachel Marsden's friend Arthur Ellis, and if yes, what was the nature of those discussions? Have you ever given anything that could be construed as a signal that edits from this community-banned troll might be tolerated?
Yours respectfully, Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 08:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Jimbo,
I am sorry that you are having what must be a difficult week for yourself and your family. You will emerge from this, I think, a better leader of our community. However, I need to ask you some tough questions. I apologize in advance if these come across as curt; I have had a long day. I am posting this because I still believe in Wikipedia. I love this community and I believe there is an real and needed opportunity for healing to take place.
[edit] 1) Your interventions in 2006
Rachel Marsden first approached me via email two years ago with complaints about her bio. We had never met. I subsequently reviewed her bio and I found it not to be up to our standards. My involvement in cases like this is completely routine, and I am proud of it."[1]
Jimbo, I have a lot of questions about your review of her bio and your involvement in this case. My experience is that it was, by far, the most horrible and inept handling of a case I have ever seen on Wikipedia. See my summary here.
1a) When you reviewed her bio and found it not up to our standards, to what extent did you review the reliable sources on the subject? There are hundreds of top-quality sources, originating in at least eight of the past ten years. Your actions in your personal life, while none of my business in and of themselves, make me wonder if you read the sources. Did you read them?
1b) What exactly was your "involvement" in this case? Did you, for example, advise the Arbitration Commitee on their ruling in 2006?
[edit] 2) Your edit on January 20 to Talk:Rachel Marsden
Regarding your edit here beginning with "I have concerns about WP:UNDUE in this article..."
2a) This came just three weeks before your one-time meeting with Marsden, on the same date that one of Marsden's friends said that you and Marsden were close friends.[2] Did you have a COI that you should have declared when making this post?
Your post came when the article looked like this, some hours after Rainmaker2005 (talk · contribs), whom I suspect is Mardsen, had attempted to remove sourced material that was unflattering to her.
2b) Regarding your post itself: By what process are editors supposed to determine due weight for this article? By looking at what facts are most emphasized by reliable third-party sources? Or by reference to... what?
[edit] 3) Banned user
Beginning in late December 2007, there was a resurgence of activity from community-banned user Arthur Ellis, who is a friend of Rachel Marsden. I had never had any difficulty getting his sockpuppets blocked in the past, however on Dec 30 I had to beg on AN/I for over two days to have his IP blocked, during which time Moreschi and Thatcher made several posts about Arthur Ellis's good work on the Rachel Marsden article. [3] I e-mailed FloNight and asked why Arthur Ellis was seemingly not being treated like an ordinary banned user. I emphasized that I believed Arthur Ellis's sockpuppets were responsible for posting obscene vandalism to my userspace and that I wanted us to send an unequivocal message to this creep that he is not welcome here. FloNight she said she would look into it. We exchanged some messages and she asked me if she could forward my messages to the Arbitration Committee mailing list, which of course you belong to. I agreed on January 5. I never heard back from any of you.
Over the next few weeks Arthur Ellis's IPs and socks kept up their presence here,[4] voting in Rachel Marsden-related deletion discussions, editing the Simon Fraser University 1997 harassment controversy article, creating hoax articles,[5] stalking User:Victoriagirl and undoing her edits,[6] vandalizing Victoriagirl's userpage, vandalizing my userpage, and following me to the Sea otter article I was working on and vandalizing our article on sea otters.
I imagined that someone from the Arbitration Commitee might post a note on one of the admin noticeboards to the effect of, "In case anyone's wondering, yes Arthur Ellis is hardbanned," but I didn't see any of that. What I did see is Arthur Ellis saying on January 1 that "I know Jimbo is taking a personal interest in this."[7] and saying on January 20 that "I"m also talking to Jimbo via Facebook. Apparently he and Marsden are close friends."[8]
Jimbo, have you had off-wiki discussions with Rachel Marsden's friend Arthur Ellis, and if yes, what was the nature of those discussions? Have you ever given anything that could be construed as a signal that edits from this community-banned troll might be tolerated?
Yours respectfully, Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 08:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
