Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:The Behnam/Local news

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep for now. In general, established editors have been granted latitude in the past as to what they may keep on their userpages, as governed by WP:USER. The policy point in question here is WP:USER#What may I not have on my user page?, specifically “Material that can be construed as attacking other editors, including the recording of perceived flaws. An exception is made for evidence compiled within a reasonable time frame to prepare for a dispute resolution process.” As brought below by editors supporting a keep, there is no overt personal attack. There is personal comment by The Benham as to his perception of the comeents addressed against him, which while not always complementary, are not in-and-of-themselves attacking and which are in line with how various dispute resolution requests are made. Further, as brought below, the page is not linked to anywhere by its author other than to his own talk archives. Outside links are by other editors commenting on this process, which supports the perception that The Benham is not engaged in attacking. Nor is this a "record of perceived flaws", but a record of directed comments against The Benham. Furthermore, the page itself is not very old; the oldest edits are less than 30 days old. Preparation for disputes may take longer than that, and the dispute resolution itself often extends for months. Therefore, based on the weight of the arguments from both sides below and the application of the appropriate polices, I am closing this discussion as Keep for now, with the idea that if after a reasonable amount of time dispute resolution is not followed, or better yet, not necessary, then the page may be removed. -- Avi 04:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:The Behnam/Local news

editor watch page which serves no useful purpose and creates discord in the project. Jeffpw 11:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete as nominator. Jeffpw 14:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
  • delete as per precedents discussed repeatedly on WP:AN, and per previous discussion on user's talk page. Sorry, Behnam. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. While I have no doubt that The Behnam means well, the precedent is against this sort of "evidence" being accumulated in userspace. Dwelling on past perceived misdeeds is rarely helpful to better relations in future. I can see little benefit from the keeping of such pages, and the potential for keeping old disputes alive is obvious. Best to move on... WjBscribe 15:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Evidence collected on one user in relation to a planned RfC or Arbcom case is fine. Evidence collected on multiple editors, apparently without any intention to go to RfC, is not. -Amarkov moo! 17:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
    • Question -- Is there any chance someone could provide a link to where these precedents are discussed, so the rest of us could read them?
    • Question -- Has anyone asked Behnam why he is keeping these links? Maybe you missed this, but the very first line of this page says: "Some conduct notes that I will develop over time until the problem stops." -- That sounds close enough to "in relation to a planned RfC" to satisfy my AGF.
    • I write on controversial topics. And I have attracted the attention of some wikistalkers, vandals, and sockpuppets. The big mistake I made with my first wikistalkers was to extend too much benefit of the doubt to them. By the time I gave up on them the task of going back, several months, and finding their initial offensive commentswas daunting. Recording the questionable comments, when they are made, seems to be a good idea to me. If I understand the comments from User:Future Perfect at Sunrise, User:WJBscribe, User:Rocksanddirt, pages that provide links to comments one has questions about are counter to precedent.
    • One sockpuppet User:KI, initiated an RfC against me, when they didn't like the civil questions I posed on their RfA. When that RfC was closed I was offered the option of keeping a copy in my User space. I chose to do so. This upset User:KI. He objected. The closing admin informed him that the policy allowed this. How can precedent disallow Behnam's page, which does not contain any personal attacks, while it allowed me to keep that RfC?
    • I don't think User:Rocksanddirt's suggestion that Behnam post every questionable comment to a forum is (1) practical; (2) going to build accord; (3) make it easier for any of us to find those questionable comments later
      1. Crafting a comment for a comment for a wikipedia fora is a lot more work than simply adding it to a page like Behnam's. More work fro Behnam. And way more work for the readers of those fora if the intent is only to archive the comment for later reference. If we all followed Behnam's advice those fora would be overwhelmed with questionable comments posted solely for archiveal pruposes.
      2. I strongly doubt that this would build accord. I too sometimes record questionable comments. I do so to make it easier for me to find them later.
        • I want to assume good faith. I don't want to escalate things, by posting to public fora -- "...this comment reminds me of the first questionable comment I got from a wikipedian who later went rogue and had to be permanently blocked..." or "...this comment reminds me of the first questionable comment I got from a wikipedian who turned out to be a sockpuppet..." Some of the comments I get from people I have never interacted with before don't turn out to be rogue users, vandals and sockpuppets. Going on record that I suspected someone of being a sockpuppet is not going to build accord. if I come to the conclusion that they aren't. If we post the comment to some kind of fora, we have to say why. When we make a note of it on a page in our user space we aren't obliged to say why we made a note of it.
        • Some of those comments that initially disturbed me, I realized on later reflection, actually held merit. There is no way I would agree that posting those comments to a public fora would be building accord. I think anyone who actually took Rocksanddirt's advice, would soon earn them the reputation of being a prickly wikilawyer. And it absolutely would not be building accord if we all went around recording this kind of concern, even if we set the record straight afterwards.
      3. So, how is this supposed to to make it easier to find the questionable comments later?
        • Bear in mind that the volume of posts to those fora would balloon uncontroallably if everyone took Rocksanddirt's advice.
        • In Behnam's approach the comments are already organized by correspondent. Even if it was technically easy for us to grab all of our comments to these fora we would still need figure out which ones concerned the problematic correspondent we were now ready to initiate that RfC about.
    • In my brief look at Behnam's page it looked like they had merely recorded comments they found questionable -- and had stopped short of any personal attacks.
    • Cheers! Geo Swan 14:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • comment - my advice is to post these to a place such as the wikiquette noticeboard whenever you notice one. Then they are archived for posterity (and the inevitable user Rfc/arbcom hearing) and fairly easy to recover. A user who is incivil enough to warrent an evidence page such as this is likely to get a higher disupute resolution action when the whole of it isn't dumped at once. --Rocksanddirt 22:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
    • So I would have been fine to do the same sort of monitoring, but on the Wikiquette noticeboard? The Behnam 03:29, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Serves useful purpose of creating accord in the project - the monitoring appears to have brought Jeffpw at least in minimal accordance with our conduct policies. He still, of course, has inappropriate parts to his user page, and insults towards well-meaning Wikipedians, etc, all manifestations of his decision exempt himself from AGF, NPA, and other conduct policies and guidelines, to the end that he is disrespectful to other editors. Even WJBscribe seems to acknowledge that Jeffpw regularly treats others disrespectfully - Ah, I see you've been your charming self again ;-). Still - I do hate that sort of collection of "evidence" against other users.

I did respond to discussion made on my talk page, but nobody replied. I'll place it here as well:

So what exactly is the problem with it? A "negative atmosphere" - meaning that the misbehaving user doesn't like that his misbehavior is being noted? A "feeling that those listed are under scrutiny in some way" - well, "scrutiny" is accurate, but such scrutiny cannot possibly be bad. If it encourages the user to stop misbehaving, then the problem is solved by the page - in this sense the page is beneficial to the project. ... there is no just reason to delete this page. In fact, to do so encourages exhausting/time-consuming formal processes because the user in question does not realize that violations are being noted, and thus thinks that he can get away with them. Why not softly encourage the user to shape up? If the evidence on such a page is bogus, then it shouldn't bother the other user anyway, because such evidence could never hope to succeed in a formal event. So, this page is better viewed as positive than negative. Of course, you say that a consensus has been established against my position already, so I will seek this and challenge it unless something comes up that makes me change my mind.

Of course, I never really got around to that last part, but I see that I should have. Well, there was a little bit of ANI exploration of this predicament I'm in - violations that should not be ignored but are not yet able to be moved to a higher level because of bureaucrap - but that wasn't much.

Honestly, with Jeffpw claiming to be so stressed out by my "harassment" (as he called my uninvolved attempt to encourage compliance with conduct policy), I didn't think he'd bother restarting conflict. No matter - I'm ready to discuss this issue.

So, should the anti-evidence page claims be challenged here? I've yet to see anything substantial in opposition to the evidence page, so please, go ahead. Is not a page such as this at least a treatment, and sometimes a cure? The Behnam 19:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Keep I see nothing wrong with this page. I think it should be acceptable to keep a list of personal attacks you recieved while editing on wikipedia; I have noticed many people have such lists. As long as it stays in the userspace, I do not see why it is a problem. Many userspace pages really aren't exactly useful to the project. They should be a bit more free in terms of policy and violations. Yahel Guhan 04:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep (1) I created a similar page while I accumulated evidence to support my suspicion that another editor was a sockpuppet. As Geo Swan noted, it's much easier to keep a log of potential problems than to try to find them later. It's a lesson I learned the hard way. (2) The only pages that link to User:The Behnam/Local news are User Talk pages discussing its deletion. User:The Behnam User page doesn't link to it. There's little reason to believe that this page "creates discord in the project" because unless somebody has been told of its existence, there is no way she/he might find it; its innocuous name is unlikely to attract attention among Recent changes. — Malik Shabazz (Talk | contribs) 00:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Comment - On that note, I must agree that it is very difficult to find evidence later, which is one of the reasons I started this page. I found that I'd remember some sort of misconduct passing with a certain user earlier, but since my memory of the specifics wasn't so good, I couldn't bring it up when I needed to. These instances of misconduct largely passed unaccounted for. For Zereshk and Mehrshad123, I actually did all this painful archive digging all at once to find the previous problems (with the intention of logging any further problems as they happen), but for Jeffpw it was logging in the true sense - I logged as the problem unfolded.
Also, I intentionally did not link to the page anywhere, since I felt it would be inappropriate to 'advertise' the problems to uninvolved editors before taking any action, as I prefer that the case be clear - not petty - and that it also be clear that the editor in question does not wish to amend his behavior through plain discussion and compensating action, before asking a superior to do something about it. Obviously, it can be found in my contributions, but so far nothing bad has come of this. It seems that Jeffpw noticed and consequently improved content policy compliance (whereas before he was digging in his heels), so in that respect I again assert that the somewhat public nature of the page actually helped deal with the problem of misconduct. The page helped the project, and I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary, despite my questions and those of some others on this MFD page. The Behnam 02:13, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep -- Those who justified deletion based on precedent aren't offering those precedents for the rest of us to read. So I am going to weigh in with a keep. Cheers! Geo Swan 19:39, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - I held off on deciding 'keep' or 'delete' so as to give time for those who oppose the page to make a strong defense of their position, but this defense has not materialized. Right now, a number of concrete arguments in favor of this page have been provided by myself and others here, but nothing more than the unsupported assertion that this page is somehow "negative" has been provided in support of deletion. So I'm settling on 'keep' for now. The Behnam 00:22, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Optional keep. The user should remove the section titles, and be careful with his comments. At this current state, it might be violating WP:NPA (making claims of failure of wiki-policies by listing under the section titles, and also with the additional comments) and WP:STALK (eg. section jeffpw (nom)). I especially don't like that striked out "No attacks on me (yet)", it should definitely be removed. That page is on wikipedia, and should not break any wiki rules, not now, not in the future. Behnam can just copy these to some text file in his computer, no need to display. If he feels it is necessary, he can just mention somewhere that he keeps such a file, and use it, or let others use it, whenever necessary (eg. to report misconducts). I am not against a list of diffs with no comments and no subsections. DenizTC 00:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that if I remove the notes, the page loses one of its main purposes - to index specific violations in a dispute, and to explain them with context. Essentially this format would allow me to neatly apply the page to a DR process without having to re-figure out and re-explain how everything fit together. As for NPA, I've tried to be careful and stick to discussing the edits themselves, and the violations of policy, though there may be a few generalizations that are made based upon the evidence.
It is somewhat unreasonable to not describe something for what it is in this log - X edit by User:Example is a violation of WP:WHATEVER - and the division of such violations into distinct categories is simply the organization of these observations. After all, I wouldn't be noting anything unless I am willing to argue that it was a violation. Further, to note that the user in question did the violation(s) is hardly a "personal attack" - I don't call User:Example a "bad user" or something like that, but try to rest remarks plainly upon the evidence cited.
If I removed the sections & commentary on the grounds that it is a "personal attack," how could I ever justify including the same information when and if the issue moves to higher ground? Yet we regularly divide evidence in this way in DR processes - consider ArbCom Evidence pages for example. How is organizing evidence a "personal attack?" Is describing a violation as a violation a personal attack?
While WP:NPA says that an unjustified accusation of violation is a personal attack, I happen to provide the justification for the description, so the organization of violations doesn't violate WP:NPA. I am not required to avoid describing personal attacks as personal attacks, and AGF violations and AGF violations, out of some concern that this somehow attacks the user.
So can you please clarify what you meant by NPA? If there is something grievous, I can remove it, but so far as I can tell, my conclusions may not be positive information about the editor's editing but they are certainly honest/realistic descriptions based upon the evidence I logged. Also, what specifically is so bad about the strikeout comment?
As for WP:STALK and Jeffpw, I certainly don't aim to harass or disrupt with this page - quite the opposite in fact. And looking at WP:STALK we have:
        • "Wikistalking refers to the act of following an editor to another article to continue disruption." - No, I wasn't continuing disruption or anything of the sort.
        • "The term "wiki-stalking" has been coined to describe following a contributor around the wiki, editing the same articles as the target, with the intent of causing annoyance or distress to another contributor." - No, my behavior wasn't like that either - this didn't even involve any 'articles' but I simply noticed some unfair personal attacks on another user and investigated.
        • "This does not include checking up on an editor to fix errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, nor does it mean reading a user's contribution log; those logs are public for good reason" - Yes, I was trying to clear up some violations of WP:NPA.
        • "The important part is the disruption - disruption is considered harmful. Wikistalking is the act of following another user around in order to harass them" - No again, as I did not seek to harass the user but simply sought conduct policy compliance from him.
I'm going to guess that you just threw WP:STALK out there casually, as it clearly doesn't apply here. Please do explain how it does if it does. Thank you for your time, The Behnam 01:40, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep on condition that non-acute material be moved offline. From discussion here, it appears that just the presence of the material has its uses. However, once (specific) material on the page has had the desired effect, that (no longer acute) material should not be kept hanging around like a sword of Damocles.
    I think that my Keep on condition takes into account both the concerns presented by WjBscribe, as well as The Behnam's rationale to keep notes "until the[now presumably meaning "each individual"] problem stops".
    -- Fullstop 19:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  • This sort of stuff can be kept perfectly well in a text file on a local computer. Unless the user is actually in the process of starting dispute resolution with all these people, soon, then a local text file is the right place for it, and this page should be deleted. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:45, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete It's perilously close to an attack page -- Samir 03:41, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
    • But it isn't one... The Behnam 03:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.