In which WeijiBaikeBianji reports me at AE

[Captain Occam]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... tain_Occam

The odd thing about this report is that I've been indefinitely site-banned since May 2012, and have had no talk page access since March 2013. At this stage, what additional sanctions does he think I could be under?

The background here is that for around a year, newbies who generally don't know what they're doing have been showing up in the race and intelligence topic, and I've somehow acquired a reputation as someone who can give them valuable advice. In some cases I can't figure out how these people know anything about me: one typical example of that was here. But in any case, when they ask me for advice I generally don't turn them down. A lot of the advice I give them is pretty banal stuff, such as not edit warring or how NPOV policy works.

By the beginning of this month, I'd given essentially the same advice to so many different people that I decided to write up some of it in a blog post. The important point here is that all of these newbies would be participating in race and intelligence articles no matter what. As long as they're doing that, I think it's better for them to be educated about how not to be disruptive.

WeijiBaikeBianji seems to be upset that in the comments to that post, several of the newbies identified him as one of the worse examples of POV-pushers on these articles. This wasn't something I encouraged, but it's still probably accurate. If he didn't want them doing that, maybe he should have tried harder to edit these articles in a neutral manner.

[Stierlitz]

God, what a control-freak that guy is!

[Ming]

Ming often does not get along with Collect, but this response is classic: "You are not being prevented from doing anything there as far as I can tell. More to the point, what actual acts do you wish the committee to exert over off-wiki sites? King Canute is not currently serving on the committee that I am aware of."

[Captain Occam]

How much do the people here know about WeijiBaikeBianji in general? There doesn't seem to have been any significant discussion about him here. I can give some examples of his history of biased editing, if anyone wants that.

Edited to add: Maybe now is an especially opportune time to bring this up. I suspect that if the admins responding to his AE report were aware of his editing history, there would be a good chance of him getting hit with a WP:BOOMERANG (T-H-L).

[Stierlitz]

How much do the people here know about WeijiBaikeBianji in general? There doesn't seem to have been any significant discussion about him here. I can give some examples of his history of biased editing, if anyone wants that.

From Wikitionary:

User:WeijiBaikeBianji
About Me
Wiktionary:Babel
en This user is a native speaker of English.

IPA-2 This user has an intermediate understanding of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Search user languages or scripts

I am an active editor on Wikipedia and Wikiversity, and a native speaker of English with translation and interpreting experience to and from Chinese, and reading knowledge of German, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, and other languages. I own many dictionaries in several languages.

Forgets to mention he is a douchebag.

[Cla68]

How much do the people here know about WeijiBaikeBianji in general? There doesn't seem to have been any significant discussion about him here. I can give some examples of his history of biased editing, if anyone wants that.

Edited to add: Maybe now is an especially opportune time to bring this up. I suspect that if the admins responding to his AE report were aware of his editing history, there would be a good chance of him getting hit with a WP:BOOMERANG (T-H-L).

You probably should go ahead an post a data sheet of his nefarious editing history right here in this thread. You never know, someone here might go post it at the AE thread since you have done all the leg work on it. Or, an admin there who reads WPO and isn't afraid to admit it might see it and take action.

[Captain Occam]

You probably should go ahead an post a data sheet of his nefarious editing history right here in this thread. You never know, someone here might go post it at the AE thread since you have done all the leg work on it. Or, an admin there who reads WPO and isn't afraid to admit it might see it and take action.

All right, here's my summary.

There have been a lot of POV-pushers on race and intelligence articles over the years, from both points of view about the topic, but what stands out about WeijiBaikeBianji is how long he's been doing it. You can look at his editing from four years ago, and see most of the same behavioral problems that exist in his edits from the past few months. It's probably impossible to provide a complete summary of it in a forum post, but here are some of the highlights.

Example 1: In late 2010 and early 2011, WeijiBaikeBianji was adding unsourced accusations of white supremacism against living people in several articles. Two examples of that are here and here. These edits were objected to in his user talk by Dezidor and Will Beback.

He also attempted to convey the same idea in a more subtle way. In fall of 2010, he added the books The Funding of Scientific Racism and Defending the Master Race to the "further reading" sections of thirty-seven articles, many of which were articles that had barely any relation to these books. SightWatcher attempted to provide a list of the articles where Weiji did this here. In this case, three of the articles where Weiji did this were BLPs (1, 2, 3), even though they were people barely mentioned in the books.

When he did this, at least three editors objected to it: CliffC, Maunus, and VsevolodKrolikov (also here). However, even though there was a consensus that his doing this was a problem, nobody fixed it. The additions to the BLP articles were finally reverted by Maunus in May 2012 (1, 2, 3) when Ferahgo pointed out shortly before her site-ban that these apparent BLP violations were still there a year and a half later.

Example 2: WeijiBaikeBianji has stated several times that he's not happy with the condition of the Race and intelligence (T-H-L) article, which is a common sentiment. However, instead of trying to improve this article, what he's generally done is try to reduce the number of people who will see it by removing links to it from other articles, or templates that includes links to it. This was the focus of an RFC/U about Weiji in 2010, which included twenty-eight examples of him doing this, while seven different editors were reverting him. These removals were discussed here, where it was obvious that consensus opposed him about it, but he continued with the removals even after that discussion.

After the RFC/U, Weiji suggested in his comment here that he was going to start listening to other editors who objected to him doing things like this. However, around the end of last year he resumed the removals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). This was discussed in his user talk here. The justification he gave in that discussion was dishonest--he said he was removing the template from these articles because it got in the way of large changes he was about to make, but this discussion occurred in December, and he's made no substantive changes to any of the articles in the time since then.

The actual reason he resumed doing this appears to have been because SightWatcher, the editor who had started the RFC/U about him, had been topic banned in 2012. Weiji implied that in his comment here. Notice the date of his comment, and the date of the comment to which he was replying--he was replying to a comment that was more than three years old.

Example 3: This edit on the Race and health (T-H-L) article, about three months ago. The problem with this edit isn't as easy to see as it is for the first two examples, but what he did here is remove all of the sources from this section taking the perspective that race can be useful as a proxy for biogeographic ancestry in a medical context. For several of the remaining sources, he added cherry-picked quotes arguing that the sources disagree with race being useful in this context, some of which distort the meaning of the sources by quoting them out of context. Keep in mind this was in a "further reading" section, which doesn't normally include quotes.

As in the first example, this was eventually reverted by Maunus, who explained the reason for his revert here.

Something it's important to be aware of about Maunus is that his personal opinions about race are more similar to WeijiBaikeBianji's than they are to mine. The reason he reverted these edits is just because he cares more about the articles complying with policy than about them conforming to his (and Weiji's) viewpoint. In general, when your edits are being reverted by someone whose overall perspective is similar to yours, I think that's a sign there's something wrong with your editing.

Normally, an editor who's been reported at AE is allowed to provide a statement in the report, even if they're blocked. I guess I consider this to be my statement, if anyone wants to quote it or link to it there.

[Poetlister]

The background here is that for around a year, newbies who generally don't know what they're doing have been showing up in the race and intelligence topic, and I've somehow acquired a reputation as someone who can give them valuable advice. In some cases I can't figure out how these people know anything about me

Because half of them aren't really newbies?

[Captain Occam]

Because half of them aren't really newbies?

Well, they sure act like newbies. Usually when someone is socking, even if they're pretending to be a newbie, they still make some amount of effort to get their way in disputes. But in the case of these people, they seem completely unaware of how to make a difference. They haven't figured this out for upwards of six months, and it's hard for me to imagine any sockmaster having that kind of patience.

[Volunteer Marek]

The background here is that for around a year, newbies who generally don't know what they're doing have been showing up in the race and intelligence topic, and I've somehow acquired a reputation as someone who can give them valuable advice. In some cases I can't figure out how these people know anything about me

Because half of them aren't really newbies?

That's right.

That AE report's stupid but WBB has done a good job of keeping all kinds of crazy nutzoids out of that article, half of them most likely Captain and Co's meat puppets.

Which is why the Captain's whining about it.

Or in other words, who cares.

[enwikibadscience]

The background here is that for around a year, newbies who generally don't know what they're doing have been showing up in the race and intelligence topic, and I've somehow acquired a reputation as someone who can give them valuable advice. In some cases I can't figure out how these people know anything about me

Because half of them aren't really newbies?

Only half?

[enwikibadscience]

The background here is that for around a year, newbies who generally don't know what they're doing have been showing up in the race and intelligence topic, and I've somehow acquired a reputation as someone who can give them valuable advice. In some cases I can't figure out how these people know anything about me

Because half of them aren't really newbies?

That's right.

That AE report's stupid but WBB has done a good job of keeping all kinds of crazy nutzoids out of that article, half of them most likely Captain and Co's meat puppets.

Which is why the Captain's whining about it.

Or in other words, who cares.

Oh, that's why only half.

[Captain Occam]

That's right.

That AE report's stupid but WBB has done a good job of keeping all kinds of crazy nutzoids out of that article, half of them most likely Captain and Co's meat puppets.

Which is why the Captain's whining about it.

Or in other words, who cares.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =618563604

Also at this point I should disclose that I have consulted with Occam about my recent edits to the Race and Intelligence article. This is a necessity because there are no editors currently on wiki with interest and expertise in the hereditarian view which needs to be represented in the article.

Do you consider Maunus one of my meatpuppets?

You can treat this sort of thing as scandalous if you like, but it's been public knowledge for about a year. Around half of the editors who've participated in race and intelligence articles for the past two years have consulted with me at some point, including some editors who were registered at Wikipedia a long time before I was. In the blog post linked to in the OP, I mentioned that in Maunus's case this included me photographing several book chapters for him to use as sources.

During the time since I was site-banned, I would estimate that around half of the times vandalism or BLP violations have been reverted on these articles, it's been because I asked someone to do it. The reason I do this is because if I don't, the violations routinely sit there for years. And part of the reason for that is because, as I mentioned in the blog post, people like you typically only revert vandalism or BLP violations on these articles if the violations are opposed to your own viewpoint.

If you're going to make a big deal about the fact that I do this, I'd like you to seriously consider whether you think the alternative would be better. I described above how some of the BLP violations that WeijiBaikeBianji introduced in 2010 stayed there for a year and a half, and the only reason they were eventually removed is because I pointed them out to Ferahgo, and she asked Maunus to remove them. If she and I hadn't done that, they'd still be in the articles. Would you like it better if we let these violations stay there for good?

[Captain Occam]

It looks like the list of diffs I posted above has ended up being useful to someone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... aikeBianji

However, they didn't mention the WP:BOOKSPAM (T-H-L) issue, which in my opinion is one of the worse issues that he caused originally. If anyone else here cares about the outcome of this report, I'd appreciate that being mentioned there also.

[Konveyor Belt]

It looks like the list of diffs I posted above has ended up being useful to someone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... aikeBianji

However, they didn't mention the WP:BOOKSPAM (T-H-L) issue, which in my opinion is one of the worse issues that he caused originally. If anyone else here cares about the outcome of this report, I'd appreciate that being mentioned there also.

Everyone's favorite judge, jury, and executioner Sandstein was quick on hand to decline any sanctions.

[Captain Occam]

It seems like it's always difficult to report someone for a pattern of non-neutral editing spanning multiple years. How do you balance the fact that old diffs are typically regarded as "stale" against the need to show how long the behavior has been going on?

[thekohser]

I'll just leave this fresh one right here.

[Captain Occam]

It's probably useful for us to continue posting diffs here, because the person who reported him at AE evidently had looked at this thread, so having current diffs here might be useful if he ends up being reported again. Here's one from yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =628845205

On the talk page he's claimed that summary of the book must be written in the past tense because "the book was published more than a decade ago [...] so it is now a voice from the past." Note that On the Origin of Species (T-H-L) was published in 1859 (and is a featured article), but the summary of that book is written in the present tense. Have there been any other cases equivalent to someone changing the summary of a book to past tense, on the basis of the book being from 1998?

[Poetlister]

It's probably useful for us to continue posting diffs here, because the person who reported him at AE evidently had looked at this thread, so having current diffs here might be useful if he ends up being reported again. Here's one from yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =628845205

On the talk page he's claimed that summary of the book must be written in the past tense because "the book was published more than a decade ago [...] so it is now a voice from the past." Note that On the Origin of Species (T-H-L) was published in 1859 (and is a featured article), but the summary of that book is written in the present tense. Have there been any other cases equivalent to someone changing the summary of a book to past tense, on the basis of the book being from 1998?

Any book, once published, is something from the past. Yesterday is the past. Should there be a rule that all summaries are in the past tense?

[Zoloft]

It's probably useful for us to continue posting diffs here, because the person who reported him at AE evidently had looked at this thread, so having current diffs here might be useful if he ends up being reported again. Here's one from yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =628845205

On the talk page he's claimed that summary of the book must be written in the past tense because "the book was published more than a decade ago [...] so it is now a voice from the past." Note that On the Origin of Species (T-H-L) was published in 1859 (and is a featured article), but the summary of that book is written in the present tense. Have there been any other cases equivalent to someone changing the summary of a book to past tense, on the basis of the book being from 1998?

Any book, once published, is something from the past. Yesterday is the past. Should there be a rule that all summaries are in the past tense?

Back in the day, Poetlister's post was evocative and on point. Ah, those simpler times.

[Captain Occam]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk: ... telligence

To this I say: it's about time. Contrary to Pudeo's comments there, a three-month topic ban seems awfully lenient when you consider he's been making edits like these for the past four years. For example, compare this edit from yesterday (one of those which led to the topic ban) to this edit from January 2011.

The real mystery is why admins are only now wising up to the fact that edits like these are a problem. He's been reported about stuff like this at least twice before, but when they finally give him a topic ban it's in response to a report that's primarily about a different editor.