Wikipedia:Requests for comment/orthogonal

In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 02:28, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 22:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC).

As the 48-hour deadline from time of page creation approaches, it is not clear whether this RfC is valid. As the defendant in the case, I believe this RfC is not procedurally valid. I believe I have had to wait the required 48 hours to allow evidence to be assembled against me and to allow time for the certification of that evidence. Because of this, I have limited my response to date to procedural questions.

However, I also believe that if I do not have the opportunity to refute this RfC, I will suffer in the court of public opinion for reasons explained below (particularly in the outside views of ambi and DV, and on this RFC's associated talk page: in short, I will be accused of hiding behind procedure, a charge often leveled at so-called "trolls").

While I welcome a determination by proper authority that this RfC is procedurally invalid, I ask that this page not be deleted wholesale; if the page is deleted wholesale, I feel I will not be afforded the chance to defend myself from the allegations made here, and will in many eyes be seen as a pettifogger relying on "mere" procedural remedies. -- orthogonal 02:48, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(orthogonal | talk | contributions)

Statement of the dispute

Since objecting to my request for arbitration regarding User:Avala about a month ago, orthogonal has mounted a harassing campaign against me, attempting to bait me, to needle me without crossing into personal attacks, actively and repeatedly misrepresenting my statements and views, and, most troublingly, spamming other users in an attempt to get at me.

Description

Let me preface this with a note. There is, of course, an innocent enough explanation for most, though, I think, not all, of the behavior depicted below. And one could argue that I should assume good faith. Let me note, however, that orthogonal has, in IRC, accused me of making power grabs, of trying to impose my will on Wikipedia, and has engaged in personal attacks against me for which he was banned from the #wikipedia channel for 24 hours (By me, though this ban was backed by Fennec). Altough IRC behavior is not actionable on Wikipedia itself, and I do not intend to submit it as evidence, orthogonal has made his lack of good faith towards me more than clear there.

Orthogonal's first harassment against me came during my RFA, in which he contacted about a half dozen users who he'd had no previous contact with in an attempt to rally them against my RFA. I found out about this when one of the users in question e-mailed me to let me know this was going on. This style of behavior reoccurred following my ban of him in IRC, when he spammed a bunch of userpages with an identical message asking how he could contest the ban.

At the top of orthogonal's userpage are four links - the first uses the text "Read how Snowspinner feels about votes against him." This links to a message I left on orthogonal's talk page in response to a comment he'd made in IRC about trying to be the "voice of dissent" in votes on Wikipedia. I left the message in good faith, and was rather irritated to see it posted with this inaccurate summary. I left a note on orthogonal's talk page, saying that the note was inaccurate, and pointing out that deliberately and negatively misrepresenting my statements borders on personal attacks. Orthogonal's summary of this was that I believe linking to my own words amounts to a personal attack against me. When it became clear that he was not going to change these misrepresentations on his userpage, I commented on them there. He removed the comments, saying I did not have the right to comment there. I have not pushed this issue, but I find his continual misrepresentation, and his refusal to allow me to offer any sort of rebuttal in direct response to this misrepresentation offensive and childish. Orthogonal has now changed these links - thank you.

His tone is generally hostile and abusive, at times crossing into personal attacks as in [1].

Most currently, in some sort of protest against my working towards developing Wikipedia:Semi-policy, orthogonal created Wikipedia:Proposal not accepted by the community. In its original version, found at [2], it contains a link to one of my comments that makes explicit that this entire policy page is designed as an attack on me. He then proceeded to link to this page following the link to the semi-policy page on all pages I tagged as such. The page, it should be noted, is quite redundant - it could easily have been added to the semi-policy page to make that a richer page that embraces multiple points of view. Instead of rising to the level of debate that might improve Wikipedia, however, orthogonal opted to belittle me.

Recently, orthogonal seems to be extending his crusade against FennecFoxen for backing my ban of him up in IRC - see [3].

Contrary to what orthogonal may think, I don't care if he disagrees with me. I don't care if he criticizes the concept of semi-policy, if he disagrees with my actions as an administrator here or in IRC, or anything else. I do, however, care about his crusade-like mentality, his baiting and belittling, and his insistence on disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate his points instead of debating them civily.

Evidence of disputed behavior

Provided inline above.

Applicable policies

{list the policies that apply to the disputed conduct}

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

User talk:Orthogonal, particularly the sections "Effective dissent" and "Your userpage"

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

(sign with ~~~~)

Snowspinner 02:28, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
~~Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 02:43, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)~~
- Orthogonal objects to the above certification. I hereby withdraw it, and offer a new one: The process of attempting to resolve whether the initial certification was valid has, in fact, created a new dispute which is accurately described in Snowspinner's initial Statement. - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 00:59, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

(sign with ~~~~)

Response by orthogonal

Procedural:

Standing:

From the RfC page itself (emphasis mine): "at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes."

Fennec, who certifies this RfC, has not indicated any dispute with me.

Snowspinner, in his description, indicates this diff [4], describing it as "Recently, orthogonal seems to be extending his crusade against FennecFoxen for backing my ban of him up in IRC".

(In fact, this actually shows Snowspinner's notification to me of the RfC, some three hours after the RfC was written. This is odd, apparently having to do with either a database error or Snowspinner's using a url with an oldid of 0.)

But a bad url doesn't much matter: when I initially looked at the RfC, it referred to this diff: [5]. In fact, that diff is there because of an edititng error I made (using the browser back button) that resulted in a duplicate section on my talk page. The actual section of my talk page it refers to is reproduced in full below; the original can be found here: User_talk:Orthogonal#FennecFoxenFoe.

FennecFoxenFoe

Got some email from Slashdot today:

FooAtWFU (699187) has made you their foe.

http://slashdot.org/~FooAtWFU/

Hmm. Seems that FooAtWFU's homepage is fennec.homedns.org. Now where have I seen that before? I seem to recall a webcomic or something.

Oh! It's Fennec! Now that's what I call internet synergy!

User:Fennec has made me a "foe" on his Slashdot account!

I guess I'll be seeing some down mods next time Fennec gets Slashdot mod points.

Lemme see. At this point 33 Slashdot accounts have declared me a foe. But 428 call themselves my fans (one of them is Raul654; he's a fan of Fennec too, I hope that's not a social faux pas now that Fennec has named me his foe!). I guess it's time for Fennec to make some Slashdot Sockpuppets!

(For the record, I've declared no one a foe on Slashdot. Different people have different opinions, but I've never seen that an excuse for to call someone a "foe".) -- orthogonal 00:47, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So, rather than it being "orthogonal... extending his crusade against FennecFoxen", it records my receipt of an automatic email indicating that a Slashdot user who coincidently lists as his homepage the same homepage that IRC Fennec has several times called attention to (he has a web comic there), and is "atWFU" (User:Fennec goes to Wake Forest University) has listed me as his "foe" on Slashdot. (Slashdot allows designating a relationship with other users, one of these is "foe".)

But while I know, from that, that Fennec doesn't like me, as indicated by his declaring me a "foe" on Slashdot, Fennec has made no complaints about it on my user page. (And why should he complain? It was he who declared me a foe, not I him.)

Fennec's only other communication on my Talk page was a message indicating he had unbanned in the #wikipedia IRC channel. Fennec didn't ban me; as the comment shows, he in fact removed Snowspinner's ban. And I thanked Fennec for doing so. That was the only message he's ever left on my talk page.

I made a (lengthy) response to him, on what I see as the need for principles of free speech to be upheld even in IRC, but my dispute was not with him, and my response was not in the nature of a dispute. As I generally do as a courtesy, so users are not "surprised" by or unaware that I've responded to them, I copied his message and my response to his talk page.

Fennec's comment on my talk page, and my response can be found here: User_talk:Orthogonal#Unbanned_on_IRC.

Even had my response been in the nature of a dispute, Fennec has to date made no response to it. So Fennec has not "tried to resolve a dispute" with me over this, therefore his attempt has not failed, and indeed, there is no dispute with Fennec. And the dispute with Snowspinner in no way involves Fennec.

Therefore, on this face of it, this RfC is invalid, as only one user, Snowspinner, has a dispute with the respondent, according to the RfC definition of dispute, and only that single user is a party to that dispute or can even claim to have made any attempt to resolve it.

Applicable policies:

The complaintant, under "Applicable policies" references both 1. Wikipedia:No personal attacks and 2. Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

"Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point" is a proposal, not a policy, as the first line of that page states: "This is a proposed policy. It is not an official guideline of Wikipedia. The hope is to obtain consensus and add it to the guidelines."

As it is not a policy, it can't be an "applicable policy"; allowing non-policy polices to be actionable is simply extra-legal "moving the goalposts" by holding users responsible for acts that are not officially objectionable.

[Update: Snowspinner has himself now removed the opening line of Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point that indicated it was only a proposal. As he notes, that line was replaced by Mirv only a few hours before I first saw this RfC. It should also be noted however, that that line was in place until only three days ago, when Snowspinner first removed it. So either this became a policy three days ago by Snowspinner's action, or it isn't a policy. As it happens, I can't find any date for when voting was to close on this policy (although it may be there; I haven't greped through the entire history), so for all I know the vote is still ongoing. In any case, the total votes on the proposal to date are 17, 14 for and 3 against.

While I don't want to halt the activity of wikipedia over this RfC, I must question the usefulness of a party to this RfC is altering the documents he purports justify the RfC, while the RfC is ongoing. At minimum, this makes judging the facts all the more difficult for anyone else. It also makes it appear that my objection to it as an applicable policy, above, is disingenuous and tends to undermine my case: anyone reading this and then looking at Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point would on the face of it think I'd simply made up the above or just can't read. -- orthogonal 16:31, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)]

Therefore, the only actual policy alleged to have been contravened is "Wikipedia:No personal attacks".

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute:

As Snowspinner opened the RfC at 02:28, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)) and notified me of its existence at 05:30, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC), three hours later, I must assume that any more or more specific evidence is not forthcoming.

The complaintant, under "Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute" gives my entire user page: "User talk:Orthogonal, particularly the sections "Effective dissent" and "Your user page".

Calling out "particularly" certain sections implies that other sections are also actionable, but since what these might be and what might be objectionable about is not specified, I can't effectively respond. This then becomes mere hand-waving and innuendo: "orthogonal did something bad, somewhere in that page, I bet we can find something, if we look hard enough."

I suspect it may be designed to bring in an invitation from Lir to join the "Red Faction", on the theory that association with Lir might be damning in the eyes of some users. As it happens, I declined the invitation, explaining that "I'm not a supporter of any faction. I'm a supporter of Wikipedia." Regardless, nothing about that is actionable nor should be, and as it's not specifically called out, I can't effectively respond to it or be expected to try.

Therefore, the only sections of my talk page that can be looked to for evidence of an attempt at dispute resolution by the complaintant are the sections "Effective dissent" and "Your user page".

Substantive:

As the RfC is invalid on its face for having only one legitimate complaintant, as explained above, I think I need give no answer to the substantive claims made.

However, in the interest of comity, I will attempt to respond to Snowspinner's claims in the near future.

-- orthogonal 08:04, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

-- orthogonal 08:04, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Plato 06:00, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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.

I dunno, he can be somewhat obstentatious at times, but I don't think he really does things in bad faith. I wish he would follow policy more, and not be on the sides of trolls so often, but I don't really think he's a bad user. blankfaze | (беседа!) 02:47, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

blankfaze | (беседа!) 02:47, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
—No-One Jones 04:20, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC) Perhaps if Snowspinner were to try and listen and deal with the concerns that have been so unsubtly raised, rather than trying to prove what a terrible person Orthogonal is and just generally acting the martinet, something good and useful might come of it.
Dysprosia 06:19, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC) (plus Geogre's summary below)
[[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 16:42, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can't certify this, though I'd like to be able to. Orthogonal isn't necessarily a bad user, but this RfC is well deserved, and in this case, he's stepped far over the line.

I'm pretty concerned about the way he's gone after Snowspinner - which is, in my eyes, a sustained, bad-faith effort to drive a contributor away. This sort of harrassment is thankfully something we've seen only a couple of times before, but in most of the cases I can remember, it unfortunately had the intended effect. Hopefully, the same won't happen this time.

Snowspinner is not an angel himself - he's done his fair share of things I disagree with. But I can't see anything he's done that deserves the sort of harrassment he's received from Orthogonal, who's been far from conciliatory in his attitudes. It also concerns me that his response to this complaint has been to try and argue that it is procedurally invalid, rather than addressing any of the concerns raised.

Regardless of what you may think of the users concerned, sustained bullying of a personal nature is unacceptable - from anyone.

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

Ambi 08:33, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Andris 16:33, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

I hope both orthogonal and Snowspinner will quickly resolve this matter, as there are better things to spend time on. (I for one would like to get back to editing the Video Poker article :)

However, I sympathize with the plight that orthogonal and Snowspinner find themselves in, so please allow me to comment on these proceedings.

First of all, it's not clear who's doing the bullying and who's pushing back.

Secondly, it's not clear who's relying on procedural issues and who is not.

Thirdly, petty procedural objections should be ignored, but after perusing this page, the first thing Snowspinner has done is to contaminate the "jury pool" by introducing selected details about an unflattering (to orthogonal) but unrelated incident concerning something called "IRC" (whatever "IRC" is), while simultaneously and conveniently claiming that the "IRC" incident will not be introduced as "evidence".

Introducing unrelated and prejudicial evidence, even simply mentioning its existence without fully describing it, is an unacceptable tactic, and whenever the use of this tactic is recognized, its usage can be judged to be a serious enough violation of ethical procedure to justify dismissing the entire matter.

So, I can't concur with Ambi's remarks that orthogonal needs to address the concerns raised by these proceedings before this rather serious procedural issue is addressed, as it makes the entire proceeding unfair to orthogonal right out of the starting gates.

Although this forum is not a court of law, contamination of the "jury pool" overshadows any other valid argument that Snowspinner might make, and I hope the record of these proceedings will be revised to strike any mention of non-Wikipedia incidents before further consideration is made of the merits.

If orthogonal is to be found guilty of doing something wrong on Wikipedia, please only consider Wikipedia-related issues.

Lastly, I find the entire notion of "censuring" somebody to be rather odious. We are all grownups, and if orthogonal "steps over the line" he just makes himself look bad, and most grownups will see that.

Looking at the two user pages and history of orthogonal and Snowspinner's edits, it's pretty clear that they come from very different points of view. Nevertheless, I hope the members of Wikipedia will decide that it is more important that we can all read contributions from both Snowspinner and othogonal, and judge for ourselves the merits of their efforts.

To end with a constructive solution, is it not possible on pages where orthogonal and Snowspinner come into conflict, to establish two separate sections, to keep them out of each other's way?

To summarize, orthogonal and Snowspinner are both passionate about certain issues in a way that the other finds offensive. They will have to agree to disagree.

But the answer to offensive speech is always more speech.

--DV 09:15, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To follow up, it is unclear how the IRC portion of this dispute can proceed.

an arbitration committee member by the name of "James F" has stated that IRC is "beyond the scope of the Arbitration Committee".
The SysOp named "Angela" has stated flatout on her own user talk page that an IRC dispute is "...a dispute that has nothing to do with Wikipedia (Wikipedia is not IRC)".

Therefore, given that user Fennec is the second person to certify this Request for Comments, and given that Fennec's basis for this certification is the IRC issue, the certification of this Request for Comments is now in dispute.

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

DV 20:40, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have been on the outside of this, but watching, since its earliest days. What I have seen is bad and bad behavior on both sides. Snowspinner has harassed and threatened Orthogonal. I encourage people to see the post-RfA comment that started this, where Snowspinner did indeed task Orthogonal for voting outside of the mainstream and imply that this was not done. Further, after a lengthy comment to Orthogonal, Snowspinner did indeed delete orthogonal's response, mislabel it as "minor edit," and then archive his page. The point being that Snowspinner's behavior was not appropriate and about as far from conciliatory as I can imagine.

That should have been that. However, Orthogonal has felt aggrieved and continued to try to provoke Snowspinner. Indeed, there has been no conciliation there, either.

However, I looked at the "personal attacks," and, frankly, I don't see them. I see opinions. Orthogonal believes that Snowspinner is attempting to lay in far too much power for himself, or for a group of Admins. This is a legitimate matter of policy that needs discussion and not a "personal attack." The community is the referee here. If the community agrees that proposing instant bans for "personal attacks" and a new group of administrators who act as police is too great a concentration of power, then the community should vote. Since both of these proposals come from the same user, it is within the rights of any other user to say that it looks like a power grab, forcing will on the project, etc. That's just opinion, not personal attack.

There is also an extraordinary bit of circular logic, here. Snowspinner created the IRC ban and then seems to offer it as proof of Orthogonal's bad behavior. You can't do that, it seems to me, and call it evidence. It is evidence that Snowspinner disliked Orthogonal's conversation, and it might be evidence that he abused IRC powers, but it isn't, by itself, evidence that there was or is any substantive misbehavior. It testifies to high passions, not high crimes.

As for whether Orthogonal's characterization of Snowspinner's responses is accurate or not, that's for the reader to determine. By itself, it's not a personal attack. Anyone competent of reading can assess its aptness, and it could look bad for Orthogonal or Snowspinner.

If Orthogonal calls up people to get them to comment on the procedings, that's called Wikipedia. I do not understand how it differs from Snowspinner doing the same for his policies. How is it different if I call upon people to debate a policy with me? How is that incorrect? How is it "spam" (which is an extraordinarily vitriolic characterization that reveals much more passion than reason)? We're a community. We call on each other.

IRC comments are not and must not be confused with Wikipedia activity. Don't go on IRC, if someone there bothers you. When I see the Freenode surfers trying to pick political fights, I ignore them. Can't Snowspinner and Orthogonal do the same with each other? Is it such that they need to invoke RfC over it?! Please, people, let's not get to that. I can go to IRC and say, "I'd like to blow up Dartmouth College," but I don't expect anyone to think that my votes on Dartmouth Articles are prejudiced (or call the Dartmouth fire department). People do vent there, after all. In the whole time that this tempest has brewed in a teapot, I've seen Orthogonal continue to edit, continue to contribute articles that are beyond reproach, so what Wikipedia offense is being called into question here?

Had Snowspinner ever extended the olive branch, or asked a third party to mediate, I think none of this would have happened. Had Orthogonal dropped his attempts to get Snowspinner to confess to some imputed dark design, perhaps this would not have happened. The fact is that neither has been pleasant to the other, and I'm not convinced that either has really sought peace.

In sum, I think this is two people who really dislike each other. There is, in my opinion, no grounds for action here at all, because, if action were to be taken, it would be on both parties. The grounds for the RfC as stated are, in my opinion, completely fallacious. The grounds for the RfC as unstated are not. The truth is that Orthogonal has been monomaniacal about Snowspinner's attempts at increasing power through policy, and Snowspinner has been monomaniacal about silencing Orthogonal. An RfC could as easily have been launched against Snowspinner for malicious banning, in my opinion, as against Orthogonal for "personal attacks."

These are two people who don't like each other, and Wikipedia is not suffering from it. I say there are no grounds here. Geogre 14:36, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

Mike H 16:35, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
DV 20:40, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ambi 01:40, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC) I'm endorsing this as well, as I think it's conclusions are pretty fair, and probably the most accurate of all of these outside views. That said, however, I want to make clear that I disagree with two of Geogre's points - I believe that orthogonal's statements have gone far behind one of of policy (which Geogre seems to characterise it as). I think Snowspinner just did a good job of explaining why on this talk page. Secondly, I believe that this does harm Wikipedia.
Zocky 02:29, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC) I fully endorse Geogre's view. I would just observe that orthogonal is involved in personal disputes much more rarely than Snowspinner.
Dysprosia 06:19, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC) (plus blankfaze's summary above)
Paul August 15:57, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)
Sam [Spade] 22:34, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I will not make my answer too long. Snowspinner is as usual very overreacting with the evidence. Orthogonal was in the best faith trying to solve the problem and to point out to snowspinner what mistakes he keeps making. Snospinner just got angry and started another RfC. I don`t think that it was a wise idea to promote such an agressive user to admin but I think it is just one of "child sickness"(we call it that way in Serbian , if it is offencive in English sorry) of Wikipedia. I will just keep hoping that Snowspinner will start to accept compromises and to cooperate.

Snowspinner started his attacks on orthogonal because he stood on my side when I was attacked by strange evidences. Some of them include : not voting for snowspinner, putting articles which Snowspinner on FAC. Some of them became featured but Snowspinner argued even about that. His attitude is very arogant and he is not willing to listen to other users. That is what we can see in his IRC powers missuse where he is banning everyone who dissagree. I really don`t understand how can Wikipedia have such admins who are acting in totalitarist way.

Snowspinner uses very infamous way of dealing with people who don`t think like he. He is writting on IRC the worst things about such users. This made orthogonal at first think that I am idiotical throll but now he found out what kind of lies were pushed by snowspinner.

I was warned that my comments here will be used as evidence against me. Obviously I don`t have right for oppinion while Snowspinner can curse my name as much as he can.

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~): [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 20:33, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think Avala is correct, doing some investigation of my own I found that Snowy was gathering odd evidence against Avala here and that blaming Orthogonal for defending him. I'm interested is Snowy advotcating a system like the old soviet union where if someone defends another they are thown into jail also?--Plato 05:57, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to a vote or endorsement, should be directed to this page's discussion page.

Avala, when you say "one of "child sickness"(we call it that way in Serbian , if it is offencive in English sorry)," I think the word you're looking for in English is "growing pains." It's not insulting in English. Geogre 12:06, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)