Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Esimal

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the page.

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Esimal (talk · contribs · logs)

Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute

Esimal is a user who has been around since last November. The user, who appears to believe in good faith that his edits are neutral, has routinely engaged in personal attacks, edit warring, and point-of-view pushing on behalf of his agenda, which is mostly pro-Neopagan and anti-Christian. The user's has edited exclusively in this arena, and (with the notable exception of creating a large number of redirects) he has scarcely an edit that does not in some way deal with one of issues mentioned below.

Desired outcome

Esimal stops engaging in personal attacks, including calling good faith edits "vandalism" and calling those who disagree with him "fundamentalists", etc.
Esimal heeds the point of view of the community.
Esimal stops edit warring.
Esimal stays mindful of WP:NPOV in all its forms, including the use of reliable sources (not cherry-picked ones), including ramming through material about neopaganism in violation of WP:UNDUE.
Esimal stops canvassing other editors.
As an addendum: Esimal makes use of the preview-button.

Description

See #Statement of the dispute

Evidence of disputed behavior

(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

Referring to good faith edits as vandalism (check edit summaries): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Referring to editors who disagree with him as fundamentalist, fanatical, etc.: ES [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
Other generally uncivil statements: ES ES ES [18] ES [19] [20]
Canvassing: [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]
Failing to assume good faith: [44]
POV pushing:
- Nazism is directly inspired by Christianity ("represented one of the pillars") ,[45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] but not occulism [56]
- Academics now hate Christianity: [57]
- Massively inflated Paganism numbers in the US: [58] Talk:Religion_in_the_United_States#Revamp_of_the_article (and subsequent 5 sections), none of which helped, as can be seen with Talk:Religion_in_the_United_States#Neopaganism.
- Undue weight issues with Neo-Paganism: [59] [60] [61]
- Edits always always favoring/placing mystic religions in a more positive light, while Christianity in a more negative light: [62] [63] [64], pretty much every other edit on Wikipedia.
General edit warring: Religion in the United States, Nazism. Of ~1250 edits by this user: [65] [66] (many of which are minor): 40 edit summaries starting containing "rv", "revert", "rollback", or "re-add". You will note that on at least two occasions, the user has violated 3RR but has not been blocked due to page-protection (I always find this to be a travesty when this happens).

Applicable policies and guidelines

{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

I tried to resolve the issues at Religion in the United States some time ago. It has died down over there, but he's clearly using the same tactics on other pages.[67][68][69][70]--Cúchullain ^t/c 03:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links to demonstrate that the disputed behavior continued after trying to resolve the dispute)

Most of the diffs provided above are from after the evidence section immediately below it.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

The Evil Spartan (talk)
Cúchullain ^t/c
Zara1709 (talk) 06:08, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other users who endorse this summary

Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Users who endorse this summary:

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

I can only comment on the latest issues, that is the edit war yesterday at Nazism and to a lesser degree Religion in the European Union. It is indeed correct that Esimal seems to have been conducting all the policy and guideline violations listed above. On the other hand, looking at article histories, some other users may have been conducting themselves similarly. While this does not excuse Esimal's conduct, particularly as he was alerted to his violation of policies and guidelines, I think the conduct of all editors in this dispute who violated policies and guidelines should be analysed. In this respect I'd like to note Gennarous' behaviour in the conflict but I unfortunately have no time to open a separate RFC for him, or rather to search through user contributions and article histories.

My involvement as far as I'm concerned is noticing the edit war and reverting the Nazism article to what I then in good faith assumed to be an appropriately sourced version. In my edit summary I made mention of the apparent 3RR violation by Esimal, but at that time I had not noticed Gennarous might have done likewise. Esimal promptly reverted again and I did the same, noting that I would post a note on the administrator's board about the issue. As I was writing up my report I noticed the article had been locked and instead of completing my report I left a note at the locking admin's talk page asking whether I should complete my report anyhow. Unfortunatelly I never got a reply and decided this was unnecessary. By that time I had also become aware of at least three unreliable sources apparently introduced into the Nazism article by Gennarous. But it was too late in the day for me to do more than remark on these facts. Despite this I consider myself not directly involved in the dispute as my only interest is reliable information, I in part agree with both parties (I have only directly identified two editors and have to assume good faith on others), but I absolutely disagree with the edit waring, lack of reliable sources, POV pushing etc. by both parties.

Users who endorse this summary:

--Caranorn (talk) 12:05, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response by The Evil Spartan

Caranorn is of course correct; Gennarous has edit warred along with Esimal, which is unacceptable (even if he is correct). However, this RFC is not about Gennarous; I filed the RFC precisely because the behavior had existed at other pages beforehand. The Evil Spartan (talk) 20:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.

Summary

User retired on 19 June 2008.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.