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Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, we have discussed this issue on a talk page, and we reached stalemate in our discussion.

Location of dispute

• Spore (2008 video game) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Users involved

• Example (talk · contribs)
• Example2 (talk · contribs)

Dispute overview

Me and Example2 (talk · contribs) are having a bit of a dispute about Spore (2008 video game). Some of the references in the article support the genre being a god game, others support the genre being a life simulation or a simulation game. I think we need to come with a way to have both listed in the article, as all references seem reliable.

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

I have tried talking about the issue with Example on the article talk page, but I need some extra input on what I can do here to move forward with resolving this dispute, as there are numerous sources supporting the different genres.

How do you think we can help?

Direct me to ways to resolve this dispute, or where I can get assistance in resolving the dispute. We need to come up with a compromise as how to move forward with the article.

--Example (talk)

1.1.1 Opening comments by Example2

Please limit to 2000 characters - longer statements may be deleted in their entirety or asked to be shortened. This is so a volunteer can review the dispute in a timely manner. Thanks.

Statements that this game's genre is simulation are simply untrue. No policy, guideline or essay on Misplaced Pages demand that we spread lies in article just because the misled reliable sources stated so. --Example2 (talk)

1.1.2 Spore (2008 video game) discussion

Please do not use this for discussing the dispute prior to a volunteer opening the thread for comments - continue discussing the issues on the article talk page if necessary.

The dispute at hand seems to be to me that there are multiple possible genres to the article, and many sources backing up the different genres, however the issue of which genre best fits is still an issue. A mediation cabal case might be useful here, the assistance of a third party editor could assist in working out a compromise that works well. Example3 (talk)

List of My Little Pony characters (Round 2)

The best method for resolving disputes in this case is to use reliable sources to determine the list contents, rather than editors' judgements. The books/cartoons/comics can be used as reliable sources with the restrictions listed at WP:PRIMARY. Also refer to WP:V, WP:RS and WP:CITE for guidance. Mr. Stradivarius (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Papal infallibility

• Papal infallibility (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Dispute overview

• Can you give us a quick explanation of what is going on? What is the issue you are bringing here?

Insistent deletion of reliably sourced information; insistent citation of a scholar as supporting a view that he actually disagrees with

In the article Papal infallibility, User:Montalban insistently presents as certain the view that Peter Olivi was the first person to attribute infallibility to the Pope. To do so he has repeatedly

1. deleted reliably sourced information about the contrary opinion of several scholars on this historical question;
2. asserted that one of those scholars who hold a contrary view supports Montalban's own view.

Montalban has done so here, here, here and here

1. Scholars whom Montalban deletes, thus presenting as certain and undisputed the view about 13th-century Olivi that was first proposed in 1972 by Brian Tierney:
   1. Klaus Schatz says that Aquinas and Bonaventure came closer to the defined doctrine than Tierney admits and that the crucial step occurred only in the 15th century; he declares that "it is impossible to fix a single author or era as the starting point" (source).
   2. Ulrich Horst also rejected the Tierney hypothesis (source), and Schatz describes Horst's criticism of Tierney as "the most thorough reworking of the question, and most persuasive in its overall historical perspective".
   3. James Heft "disagrees with Tierney's thesis that the roots of papal infallibility extend only to Olivi" (source, p. 2).
2. Scholar whom Montalban falsely presents as saying that 13th-century Olivi was the first person to attribute infallibility to the Pope:
   1. Mark E. Powell, who on the contrary says "the doctrine of papal infallibility defined at Vatican I had its origins in the fourteenth century and was itself part of a long development of papal claims", referring in particular to 14th-century Bishop Guido Terreni.(source, p. 34).

Users involved

• Who is involved in the dispute?

• Montalban (talk · contribs)
• Esoglou (talk · contribs)

• Have you informed all the editors mentioned above that you have posted this dispute? (If not, once you have informed them come back and replace the text "Not yet" with "Yes".)

Yes.

• N.B. To inform the other users you may place the text {{subst:DRN-notice|thread=Papal infallibility}} --~~~~ on each user's talk page.

Resolving the dispute

• Have you tried to resolve this dispute already? If so, what steps have you taken?

I tried to engage with Montalban on the article's talk page, especially but not solely in this section, and finally warned him that, if he persisted, I would bring the matter before the Misplaced Pages community.

• How do you think we can help?

Montalban should be told not to present, in any part of any article of Misplaced Pages, one view of a subject as the only existent, when reliable sources support one or more other views. He should also be given a general warning (not on this point alone) to desist from deleting on flimsy pretexts sourced information that he dislikes.

— Preceding comment added by Esoglou (talk • contribs) 06:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Papal infallibility discussion

Not about deletion

For my part the papal infallibility article is already divided up appropriately. The majority of the argument presents what might be regarded as the 'positive' case, that is the history and development of papal infallibility largely from a Catholic perspective... including alleged examples of its demonstration through history.

Into that article is a very small section called "Opposition to the doctrine of papal infallibility". One of these examples I wrote was constantly re-edited. The example was a remonstrance by Catholics in England where they declared that they never had believed in papal infallibility. This was before such was defined as dogma. Another editor objected to my use of the word 'remonstrance' saying he did a search and found no document called that. I pointed out I never called the document the "Remonstrance of Catholics..." He then edited in a catechism written 70 years later to (what I can only regard) as an attempt to excuse the remonstrance by saying that 70 years later the English were of a different opinion. They may have changed their opinion. The catechism didn't say that. It just noted a different group at a different time came to a different opinion. In the end it appears to me that the other editor had no reason for inserting this in and it was dropped. This followed an enormous amount of Q&A over adding in information already presented, such as he wished me to say what this remonstrance was about - even though I answered and had it in the article several times (I believe three times).

Another example was a claim that a Franciscan priest Peter Olivi is regarded as being the first to cite an example of Papal Infallibility. It's the beginning of a short segment where a pope, John XXII rejected outright that claim.

Again, I feel, another editor sought to explain away this. I'd cited several historians who noted what I'd stated. This was re-edited and reduced to simply one historian's opinion - Hasler. It's been subsequently re-edited to be just another person's opinion - Tierney. Into this the other editor gave some argument that directly disagrees with Tierney. They may well believe that. However introducing such information in this section would only serve to confuse the article, and also opens the door up for others to re-edit the entire article in similar fashion (where proofs are available).

My reasoning works as this: This segment is about opposition. The whole article is mostly about positive arguments. It seems to me that the other editor is unsatisfied that even a small section of 'opposition' can go without comment that re-affirms his POV.

I have suggested that he could write this information elsewhere into the article OR have it in notes. He has chosen not to discuss this but simply re-edit his argument back in. I offered this as an option in the Talk pages and got no response

I pointed out that if he wishes to introduce this perspective into a section of 'negative' argument then I could re-edit to show 'negative' throughout the entire article.

It would ALL look clumsy following along a line of 'a statement', followed by

but 'x' says this then him adding

but 'y' says this then me adding

but 'z' says this

And would turn the article over to one of debate.

More specifically I mentioned that I could edit the statement Believers of the Catholic doctrine claim that their position is historically traceable... to Although believers of the Catholic doctrine claim that their position is historically traceable... there is no direct evidence that these verses apply to infallibility

and Pope St. Clement of Rome, c. 99, stated in a letter to the Corinthians: "Indeed you will give joy and gladness to us, if having become obedient to what we have written through the Holy Spirit, you will cut out the unlawful application of your zeal according to the exhortation which we have made in this epistle concerning peace and union" (Denziger §41, emphasis added). rendered as

Pope St. Clement of Rome, c. 99, stated in a letter to the Corinthians: "Indeed you will give joy and gladness to us, if having become obedient to what we have written through the Holy Spirit, you will cut out the unlawful application of your zeal according to the exhortation which we have made in this epistle concerning peace and union" (Denziger §41, emphasis added). However 'x' commentator notes that the Epistle is directed to the Corinthians only, who were a colony of Rome (not connected to historical Corinth) and therefore the church in Corinth would look to the Church in Rome

This would provide the same balance as he suggests is needed for one small section, but I'm sure he would not want that. I offered this as an option in the Talk pages and got no response

in Summary I am not about the deletion of his points but in favour of the over-all flow and cohesion of the article. I feel that there is already enough points for without every negative point being further apologized for. Montalban (talk) 07:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

What are you making the article say at the point where you are doing the deletions and the misrepresentation of Powell? Esoglou (talk) 08:53, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I should also point out that Esoglou has the same objections elsewhere in the article. In the Middle Ages section he leads this with

In 1972 Brian Tierney published a book in which he argued that the Franciscan priestPeter Olivi was the first person to attribute infallibility to the Pope

he then gives objections to it there.

later where I have put comments about Peter Olivi in the Opposition to the doctrine of papal infallibility he wishes to again put in counter-argument to it again there. He thus seeks several bites of the cherry

Montalban (talk) 23:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi there Esoglou and Montalban, and thank you for posting at the dispute resolution noticeboard! Now, I am new to this subject, so maybe I am missing something here, but the section in question is "opposition to the doctrine of papal infallibility", but Peter Olivi seems to have been arguing for papal infallibility, so to my untrained eyes it seems like it is in the wrong section. Would you both agree with this?

Regarding what views to include in the article, the relevant policy seems to be that of avoiding undue weight. From the policy: "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint." So we must judge the relative prominence of all the viewpoints involved to find out how much weight to assign to each. My first impression is that Montalban's version is giving too much weight to Tierney's interpretation without including the viewpoints of the other scholars; however, as I said, I am new to the field, so there may be a good reason to assign less weight to the other scholars that I am not aware of. Let me know what you think. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius 02:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Strad breaks it down nicely; the process of building the article back up while in dispute. I have a question myself: do we have the top scholars' opinions in the article already? Who are the top scholars, past and present? I can go to Google books and find people who have written on the topic, but that does not tell me who their peers think are the top thinkers. Once we identify them, we can introduce other ideas as not mainstream. Binksternet (talk) 02:19, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, Britannica says that the first 'infallible' pope was Honorius I in the 7th century, but a subsequent council disputed this. Perhaps we can start from there... Binksternet (talk) 02:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

If I can put an oar in... I've been involved in this dispute even though Esoglou did not list me as one of those involved. IMO, the problem is simply this. Montalban really wants to say "Franciscan priest Peter Olivi proposed the doctrine of papal infallibility but 40 years later Pope John XXII rejected this doctrine as placing improper restrictions on the authority of a pope (i.e. current popes should not be bound by the pronouncements of his predecessors)." However, Montalban insists on asserting that Olivi was the first to propose papal infallibility whereas Esoglou insists that the question of whether Olivi was first is, in fact, the subject of dispute among scholars. IMO, it is not required that Misplaced Pages determine whether Olivi was first because Misplaced Pages is about verifiable reliable sources, not about truth. It is NOT our job to determine what the truth is. We should simply say that Tierney et al believe Olivi was first while Schatz et al believe that it's not possible to determine when and by whom papal infallibility was first proposed. In any event, the question of whether Olivi was first is not critical to the point Montalban is trying to make. Esoglou and I have made recent edits to try and separate the question of "who was first to propose papal infallibility" from the incident that Montalban is trying to relate about a pope rejecting the doctrine of papal infallibility. IMO, all that is required to resolve this dispute is for Montalban to recognize that the issue of Olivi being first is not critical to making the point he wants to make. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 06:50, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I think Pseudo-Richard was not involved in a dispute about this particular point, but rather about others of Montalban's edits in the article. To get across his claim that Pope John XXII denied papal infallibility in condemning an idea that has been attributed to the by then dead Olivi, it would be quite enough for Montalban to say Olivi attributed infallibility to the popes, without saying that Olivi was the first or the second or the thousandth. Binksternet has added yet another source that suggests that Olivi was by no means first. If Montalban would only accept the recommendations and suggestions made to him by Stradivarius, Binksternet and Pseudo-Richard, the problem brought for consideration here would be solved. But so far he is insisting at that point of the article on presenting as undisputed fact his claim that Olivi was the first, and - more than that - he is holding to his illegitimate action of deleting at that point any mention of sources that show that the "fact" is not undisputed, and his still more illegitimate action of presenting as proof of the "fact" a source that actually denies it. Esoglou (talk) 15:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Since Montalban is no longer defending his actions here, am I perhaps authorized to undo them? Esoglou (talk) 16:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point. Looking at the article and the talk page, it seems like this particular dispute has been quiet for about a week. I say yes, try undoing Montalban's edits. That seemed to be the consensus of the other uninvolved editor and I, so it is probably a reasonable step to make. If Montalban contests the edits further, then we can work out an alternative approach. — Mr. Stradivarius 05:34, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Top Gear (U.S. TV series)

Closing as stale, as Roguegeek hasn't edited for two weeks. It seems clear that the edits in question are not copyright violations, but if this becomes a problem again please leave a note on my talk page and I will un-archive this thread. Mr. Stradivarius (talk) 17:33, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Kamala Lopez

The issues seem to have been resolved here. If you have any questions please ask on my talk page. Thanks. Mr. Stradivarius (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Minorities in Greece

• Minorities in Greece (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Dispute overview

• Can you give us a quick explanation of what is going on? What is the issue you are bringing here?

Disagreement in this article concerning some issues of Turkish and muslim minorities in Greece. More precisely, if the Turkish minority is a religious or an ethnic one, if information about discrimination and attacks against them should be present, if information about the problem of a mosque of muslims in Athens should be present in the article.

The dispute stated with this edit and continued first in my talk page then moved to talk page of the article.

Users involved

• Who is involved in the dispute?

• Filanca (talk · contribs)
• Athenean (talk · contribs)

The style of the other user (Athanean) was at times concentrated to me rather than the subject at hand. See this and this and the following in those pages.

• Have you informed all the editors mentioned above that you have posted this dispute? (If not, once you have informed them come back and replace the text "Not yet" with "Yes".)

Yes.

• N.B. To inform the other users you may place the text {{subst:DRN-notice|thread=Minorities in Greece}} --~~~~ on each user's talk page.

Resolving the dispute

• Have you tried to resolve this dispute already? If so, what steps have you taken?

Issue talked in my user and article's talk pages. We were unable to find a solution, mostly because (in my opinion) of the behavior of Athanean. Many of his points are centered on me rather than the encyclopedic content. He has added a reference by indicating a wrong page number (Alexandris, p. 120), as he acknowledges, but does not care to correct it. Some of his arguments are self-referenced or not referenced (see for example ) He deleted well referenced parts of the article repeatedly (, ), without giving sufficient explanation in the talk page. My impression is, there is no progress towards a solution.

I tried to find a compromise by summarizing the attacks to the minority upon his criticism of this list of attacks being too long. I also changed my use of word "atrocity" to "attack" (in the talk page, not in the article) upon his criticism. Neither helped.

There are minor issues, too, like his deleting of Turkish village names given in brackets next to Greek ones (). I see it only natural that Turkish village names be provided as well as the Greek one when speaking about the Turkish minority. I have not dwelled on these, because the main issue seemed to be more important.

• How do you think we can help?

I hope neutral outsiders' comments about not deleting properly referenced information from the article and not denying the obvious fact that "Turk" is not a religion but an ethnic group may work.

Filanca (talk) 16:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Minorities in Greece discussion

Discussion about the issues listed above take place here. Remember to keep discussions calm, brief, and focused on the issues at hand.

Hi Filanca, and thanks for posting here. I'm glad to see that you've chosen to get an outside opinion rather than keep reverting. Hopefully this board will help you to look on the situation refreshed and in a new light. Now I think the Misplaced Pages policy that most impacts your dispute here is that of maintaining a neutral point of view. In that policy, as you probably know, there is a section on avoiding undue weight on certain viewpoints. I'll quote some text from the policy here: "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and neutral, but still be disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic."

Now, if you would humour me for a little while, I would like to hear your opinion. If it's not too much trouble, could you tell me how you would rate the significance of the material you have introduced, relative to the subject of the article as a whole? Please bear in mind that the subject in question here is the broad and general one of all minorities in Greece. This isn't a trick question or anything - I am genuinely interested in your opinion, and I would really appreciate you taking the time to answer. All the best — Mr. Stradivarius 05:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for your reply. Here is my opinion on each issue in the dispute with respect to undue weight:

1) Organization of titles (ie, moving the Turkish minority section one level up to make it on the same level with other ethnic minorities): This may not be relevant in respect of undue weight.

2) Official denial of the Turkish minority: Both minority organizations ( p.1; p. 1 and 7) and independent sources indicate this is an important issue. Hence it would not be undue weight to mention. This information was present in the article before my edits.

3) Discrimination against the Turkish minority: This paragraph was present before my edits, Athanean deleted it after the dispute started. It mentiones important issues for the minority, in terms of property and Turkish identity.

4) Muslims in Athens needing an official mosque: Sources deleted by Athanean (including BBC news) indicate this is important, I do not think it has undue weight.

5) Attacks to Turkish minority: This one may arguably have undue weight in this article. After Athanean's criticism on the this line, I reduced the size of paragraph by summarizing it in one sentence. The attacks took form of arsoning (generally by molotof cocktails) and stoning of mosques, Turkish associations, consulates, private property and desecration of cemeteries. The remaining one sentence may not have undue weight, esp. considering the frequency of attacks.

Filanca (talk) 15:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

1) The reason the Turkish minority is included (together with the Pomaks) under the heading "Muslim minority" rather than among the other ethnic minorities is that because of the Treaty of Lausanne, these minorities enjoy special privileges and status not afforded to other minorities. Also, because as a result the same treaty and its stipulations, most of the literature treats them in similar fashion, i.e. as part of a "Muslim minority" rather than an ethnic Turkish minority. The exception is some Turkish sources, but that is not a reason to re-arrange the headings.

2) Regarding the claims of "Official denial of the Turkish minority", these are wildly distorted and exaggerated, as the Greek government does recognize the Turkish minority, just as part of a larger Muslim minority as stipulated by the Treaty of Lausanne rather than an "ethnic" Turkish minority. This is moreover a rather subtle point, and one I feel is being given undue weight. Regarding sources, www.abttf.org is a self-published advocacy source, with ties to and support from the Turkish government. The source www.usefoundation.org is also self-published and of dubious reliability. I do not think such sources meet the requirements for WP:RS.

3) The paragraph in question was a poorly sourced and implemented cut-and-paste job from another article. I looked into the sources, most are unverifiable, and the one that was verifiable was over 20 years old and contradicted by more recent sources (see , page 124). The situation of the minority has changed markedly for the better since 1990, but Filanca simply refuses to acknowledge this.

4) The Muslims of Athens are mostly recent immigrants, hence they are not a minority. Another instance of Filanca refusing to get the point.

5) This is the point on which I disagree completely. All the "attacks" mentioned are relatively minor (broken windows, amateurish arson attacks). Not a single member of the minority has been harmed, these are all minor attacks against property. Many times the claims are exaggerated and the sources misused in intellectually dishonest fashion, for example in the article talkpage Filanca uses the three different sources for the same attack then claims these are three separate attacks! The phrasing he wants to use is also highly inflammatory. Three minor attacks against property in 2011 is not "frequent attacks". Keeping in mind this is a very broad article about minorities in Greece in general, neither the relatively rare frequency of attacks or their nature warrants mention in the article.

On another note, I find it absolutely galling and hypocritical of Filanca to focus and highlight every broken window of Turkish mosques in Greece while glossing over the plight of minorities in Turkey. Compare this with this for crying out loud. While we must not focus on editors, scrutiny of a user's contributions are important for establishing credibility and assuming good faith. I regret to say that based on this user's contributions, I am having difficulty assuming good faith and intellectual honesty. Athenean (talk) 19:45, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Filanca and Athenean, thank you both very much for your replies. They have given me a much better idea of what this dispute is about. I think we can settle this dispute if we can remember to stick to Misplaced Pages policy and not get distracted by our personal viewpoints and biases. (We all have biases, after all, and yes, that does include me.) In my opinion, the reason for this dispute is a subtle misunderstanding of policy that hopefully, we can clear up without too much trouble. Now Filanca, you said two or three times in your reply that the sources that back up your edits show that the issues are important. I agree that it shows they are important, to be sure. There is no question that these issues very important to Turkish minorities in Greece. The notion of undue weight in Misplaced Pages, however, is a slightly different way of judging what is important. To judge what is important in Misplaced Pages, we use the relative prominence of viewpoints in reliable sources. What this means is that we consider every single reliable source that has been written on the subject, giving special prominence to sources which are considered reliable and comprehensive by the academic community.

Before we go any further, I think we should come to an agreement on what the most reliable sources are. I would like you both to suggest what you think are the the top three most reliable sources on minorities in Greece, as judged by the academic community (not as judged by yourself). Remember, the more comprehensive and the more reliable, the better. Once we have agreed on these sources, I think it will be a lot easier to agree how much weight to give to each aspect of the subject. I've left a space below for you both to reply. If you can't think of three, that's ok - just fill in what you can. Thanks for taking the time to answer. — Mr. Stradivarius 16:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify - if you are not sure which sources are the most respected, it is perfectly fine to have a look at the article or use a Google Books search and make your best guess as to which sources are best. This is not a test of your subject knowledge - it's just a way to get a rough idea of how much weight we should assign to each subtopic in the article. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius 16:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Referring to Athenean's following comments "I find it absolutely galling and hypocritical of Filanca to focus and highlight every broken window of Turkish mosques in Greece while glossing over the plight of minorities in Turkey (...) scrutiny of a user's contributions are important for establishing credibility and assuming good faith". I think these opinions play an important role in this dispute from the beginning, ie, the perception of my bad intentions. I certainly have prejudices of my own. But I think writing a good encyclopedia is paramount here. I am not (or at least trying not to) "glossing over the plight of minorities" of anywhere since this would not be a correct way to develop Misplaced Pages. e.g. I do not refrain from completing missing sources about problems of Greek minority in Turkey . Filanca (talk) 07:09, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Filanca

• The most reliable source: Human Rights Watch,
• The 2nd most reliable source: US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor reports, eg.
• The 3rd most reliable source: Minority Rights Group International

Please note that there are multiple issues in this dispute as mentioned above so I tried to find three resources that cover most.Filanca (talk) 21:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Athenean

• The most reliable source: Crossing the Aegean: an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, Rene Hirschon, Bergahn Books, 2003 . An in-depth, scholarly appraisal of the 1923 Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Each chapter is written by an expert in their field, and the publication focuses on the subject at hand.

• The 2nd most reliable source: Minroties in Greece, Richard Clogg, Hurst & Company, 2002 . Another in-depth scholarly publication focusing on minorities in Greece written by a well-known, neutral expert on modern Greek history.
• The 3rd most reliable source: Mediating the nation: news, audiences and the politics of identity, Mirca Madianou, Psychology Press, 2005 . Another in-depth treatment on the minority in Western Thrace, and also fairly recent.

I see that one of the sources Athanean kept deleting from the article during the dispute is his most reliable source, ie, Hirschon, 2003. Does that mean we now agree to keep that part of the article? Filanca (talk) 21:08, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

First of all, it's "Athenean", not Athanean. Second, I am open to conditionally keeping the sentence sourced to Hirschon, but that is just one sentence. Importantly, none of the six sources above speak of "frequent" attacks, and in fact most of them don't even mention them. Why? Because they are not frequent, and are minor. No one has been hurt or killed. No mosques have been burnt to the ground or destroyed. Broken windows and graffiti is minor vandalism. The other main point is that inflammatory, broad-brush statement "Discrimination of the Turks has been criticized by the US and the European Parliament." is also nowhere to be found. Third the sources Filanca produces are partisan advocacy sources (their job is to advocate on behlaf of minorities, it;s like me relying on Greek government sources, which I don't), and none are scholarly. In addition, he completely ignores that all of them mention positive steps taken by the Greek government, and only focuses on the negatives. Athenean (talk) 21:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

If we agree to keep the sentence sourced to Hirschon 2003, do we agree to remove the "Discrimination of the Turks" and "Frequent attacks" sentences? The first is too broad-brush and unsupported by any of the sources, the second is worded in POV-fashion, not supported by any of the sources listed here, given undue weight, and sourced to a highly partisan self-published advocacy group (www.abttf.org). Athenean (talk) 21:43, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Filanca, It's not just the reliability of the source that's at issue here - there are a number of other factors involved as well. Just because a source is authoritative doesn't mean that everything it contains belongs in the article - there's obviously not enough space for that. At this stage we're just trying to find out what weight we should be assigning to different sections, and what things need to be merged together or removed. We can worry about the specific claims later. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius 09:48, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Hello both of you, and thank you for posting your sources! I'm really appreciative of the time you've taken to find them. Athenean, I agree with you that those sources look very good. I think your source number two will be especially useful to us here, as it covers the entire topic area and is still scholarly and detailed. The other two seem like very good sources, and although they appear to be slightly more specialized, we should certainly take them into account when deciding what weight to assign to different parts of the article.

Filanca, I'm afraid I have to take issue with the sources that you have listed. The article in question is "Minorities in Greece", but all three of the sources you have listed are about minority rights, not just minorities. If the article was called "Minority rights in Greece" then I agree that the sources you list would be excellent ones to use. We could, indeed, use your sources to decide how much relative weight to assign different things inside a "minority rights" section. However, as it stands, I'm afraid your sources are too specific to use to determine the weight to assign to different parts of the article as a whole. Sorry to assign more work to you, but would you mind going back and finding some more sources? The best ones will be about the general topic of "minorities in Greece", rather than anything more specific. (By the way, if you agree with Athenean's choices, it is perfectly fine to list the same books as they have.) Let me know if you have any problems. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius 09:38, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Stradivarius, sorry for my belated reply. Since the dispute was about minority rights (although the article is about minorities in general) I tried to pick up sources that best document the problematic points. As I see, you are looking for general sources about minorities to see how important these issues are. In that case, you would not like a source like Destroying ethnic identity: the Turks of Greece , could you fconfirm that? On the other hand, do you not agree that one of the most important points in this dispute is the organization of titles, and it is not related to weight but to the very nature of the minority? Filanca (talk) 08:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Dan Savage

There seems to be a clear consensus to keep the wording as "gay" rather than "homosexual". If the IP is still unsatisfied with this outcome then an RfC would be the logical next step. Mr. Stradivarius (talk) 17:41, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Journal of Cosmology

• Journal of Cosmology (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Dispute overview

• Can you give us a quick explanation of what is going on? What is the issue you are bringing here?

Dispute on adding info and references to article, being reverted in order to keep only negative info in the article, talk page discussions on peer review status and info going nowhere.

Users involved

• Who is involved in the dispute?

• Silver seren (talk · contribs)
• 174.252.215.182 (talk · contribs)
• William M. Connolley (talk · contribs)
• Headbomb (talk · contribs)
• A Quest For Knowledge (talk · contribs) FWIW, I only started editing the article after I saw this thread. AFAIK, I never edited this article before this and have never had any interaction with Headbomb prior to this discussion. So far, my experience with Headbomb has been extremely unpleasant. I'll post more later once I figure out what's going on. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
• Agricolae (talk · contribs)
• Count Iblis (talk · contribs)
• Fartherred (talk · contribs)
• Nanobear (talk · contribs)
• Kalidasa 777 (talk · contribs)

I have added most of the users who participated in talk page discussion of the issues I listed below. If you don't regard yourself as involved with this dispute, feel free to remove yourself from the list. — Mr. Stradivarius 13:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I am concerned about the involvement of users WMC and Headbomb, as they seem to be trying to only keep negative information on the Journal in the article. And, on the other hand, 174.252 (who appears to be having IP address changes, so the last two sections may change) is clearly trying to add positive information on the Journal. I've been trying to work in the middle of all of this and just add information in general to the article, but i've run up against WMC and Headbomb's extremely negative opinion about the Journal. I have to work against comments like "the problem is that it publishes ideas which are utter nonsense, and rubbish that would never be found in any respectable journal" and "It's fringe stuff, new age crap, patent nonsense..." and "Well J Cosmology is run by a bunch of kooks". I recently tried to add information that had been heavily covered in the news, but it was constantly removed, leaving the majority of the article just negative information about the Journal. Discussion on the talk page is clearly going no where and i'm not quite sure what to do. Silverseren 18:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Another recent example would be: "And I don't know of anyone who would interpret this as an example anything other than the usual kook rant about persecution", which is speaking about the editor of the Journal responding to criticism. Silverseren 23:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

• Have you informed all the editors mentioned above that you have posted this dispute? (If not, once you have informed them come back and replace the text "Not yet" with "Yes".)

Yes.

• N.B. To inform the other users you may place the text {{subst:DRN-notice|thread=Journal of Cosmology}} --~~~~ on each user's talk page.

Resolving the dispute

• Have you tried to resolve this dispute already? If so, what steps have you taken?

Multiple discussions on the talk page that don't go anywhere.

• How do you think we can help?

Admittedly, i'm not quite sure. I didn't want to escalate this to ANI, so I thought this would be a good first step. Perhaps we can get further opinions about the argument?

Silverseren 18:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Journal of Cosmology discussion

Discussion about the issues listed above take place here. Remember to keep discussions calm, brief, and focused on the issues at hand.

The recent problems were mostly caused by IP 174.xxx.xxx.xxx, a long term persistent sock of User:BookWorm44/User:Chemistryfan (and as you might expect, the old "problems" were also caused by these guys and their socks). Now that they've been blocked, and the article and talkpage semi-protected, it should be fairly easy to resume normal editing practices on that article now that it's are free of disruptions from SPAs. Silver Seren puts the whole thing out of context.

Regarding the "addition of content that's been covered in the news", every journal gets mentioned in the news from time to time, and listing every occurrence is simply WP:ISNOT/WP:CRUFT. Just imagine what it would mean for journals like Physical Review Letters, Nature, Science, The Lancet, BMJ, etc... if we start making explicit mentions of everything that's been covered in the press. That Paul Davies wrote an article supporting Martian exploration is nothing special, and really out of place in this article. That's something best left for the article on the Colonization of Mars. Although since JOC is not a reliable source, it probably shouldn't be mentioned at all, except perhaps on the article about Paul Davies. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:03, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Considering we're dealing with a Journal that has published 16 volumes in 2 years, it would take quite a while to get to Nature levels, but I digress. Not every issue of JoC received coverage and the few that do, such as the Mars one that received extensive major media coverage, it should be included in the article.

Furthermore, if you're going to use that argument, then I could say that the criticism for Hoover's paper doesn't belong in the Journal article, but in Hoover's article. Since it is, of course, minor and in only a single issue. Silverseren 19:26, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

The Hoover controversy is the reason why the journal is considered notable by our standards. Without it, it wouldn't pass WP:NJOURNALS. And no, it's not because some issue received some press coverage that it should be explicitly mentioned in our articles, in exactly the same way that specific The New York Times articles should not be mentioned because the Los Angeles Times mentioned them or had a reply. No other journal or magazine article is written like that, and Journal of Cosmology does not warrant a deviation from this practice. If you want to change this practice, bring it up at WP:JOURNALS and gain consensus for it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:33, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

You mean it doesn't meet the essay, WP:NJOURNALS? There are plenty of sources that discuss the JoC that is outside of the Hoover papers. For example, this. The JoC essentially instigated a revival of discussion by NASA and other groups about an expedition to Mars. Silverseren 19:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikilawyer all you want, WP:NJOURNALS has been trialled by fire for years now and has the endorsement of every editor at WP:JOURNALS. Every deletion discussion about journals relies on WP:NJOURNALS to be its guiding light. Martian exploration is mentioned in the article, but there's zero need to have a detailed breakdown of every issue (see in particular WP:JWG#What not to include). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, according to that, the line about focus in the Scope should actually be a part of the first line of the lede. As for the info I was trying to add, it wasn't a "List of articles published in the journal", so I still don't see where you're going with for the Mars coverage. Not to mention that Nature has a list of articles. Silverseren 19:48, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

SilverSeren and others on the page have tried to improve the NPOV of the page besides just BookWorm/Chemistryfan and myself. I deny being BookWorm and have tried at SPI to have CU level evidence gathered to support my claim but the original blocking (of my IP addresses) administrator DeltaQuad has denied my CU request using my cooperation there as claimed evidence for duck. I can only assume this is because he doesn't wish to have his original error exposed. Regardless of my personal status there are a number of editors that agree the current article is biased and should be fixed. All attempts to remedy the situation have been blocked primarily by HB and Mr. Connolley.

Today I put in a request to have the scope of the article expanded to be consistent with the description provided on the journal's website (which was the existing source of material to support that section prior to my getting involved). For some reason that material had been censored to exclude a number of sub-disciplines from the list included on the journal's about page. Given that HB and Mr. Connolley have been collaborating quite effectively at seeking to disparage this journal one has to wonder why a topic such has climate change has been left out of the scope section. Especially when one considers that (a) 1 of the only 16 volumes published by the journal is dedicated specifically to climate change, (b) that this journal is likely to have published climate change material with which Mr. Connolley disagrees, (c) that Mr. Connolley is topic banned, broadly construed, from editing topics relating to climate change and here he is edit warring to disparage this little known journal, and (d) only days after having starting to edit at this journal he applied to have his topic ban removed. AGF demands that we assume that Mr. Connolley's awareness of this journal's relationship with climate change was unknown to him when he began editing there. But there has been much discussion of that relationship at his request for amendment to his topic ban and so his subsequent edits to this page can and should be viewed as a violation of his ban. Indeed, his comment where he argued against the inclusion of climate change into the journal's scope based on a claim of bad faith suggests that he is fully aware that he is treading on thin ice and yet he persists. Even if you ABF concerning my motives that does not change the facts. The journal has published material on climate change and the absence of this fact from the article should be corrected.

Mr. Connolley labels my request as bad faith. I claim that HB's persistent hounding of me as being some sock when I am trying to cooperate at SPI is equally bad faith. --174.252.215.182 (talk) 19:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Shortly after writing this, the IP was blocked for block evasion. Cardamon (talk) 23:50, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

In addition to what Mr. 174 said above, I found this source by Lawrence Solomon that points out that the JoC does cover climate change. Silverseren 19:59, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

• Do note that Headbomb has forum-shopped this DRN over to Wikiproject Journals with the non-neutral edit summary of "This could use some extra eyes. Amongst other this it is proposed that any journal issue with some form of press coverage should be explicitly mentioned in the article." Silverseren 20:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

You really are something else you know. Can't even drop a notice at the most relevant Wikiproject without being accused of being some canvassing troll. Since you're not interesting in resolving disputes, and more concerned with depicting your opponents as POV warriors, I'm done entertaining you. Hell, WMC can't even ask for advice about whether he should participate in this conversation without being accused of canvassing. Enjoy talking to yourself. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:18, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

You didn't put a neutral edit summary. You specifically worded the notice so that people would have your opinion before even getting to this discussion. If you had worded it neutrally, that would have been fine, but you didn't. Silverseren 20:22, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

As for WMC, that's because he stated "as a couple of editors are doing their best to shift it into CC type territory (spuriously, in my view, and entirely to try to eliminate an opinion they don't want to hear)", which is, again, non-neutral. Silverseren 20:27, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I think this request is quite badly construed. As noted by HB, the problems seem to have come from a malicious banned sock. The immeadiate solution to this, if the sock is IP-hopping, is to semi the page; that way people who aren't the sock can have a reasonable conversation. I don't care for the way SS has been echoing the sock, above. So I'm inclined to think that nothing really needs to be done here, other perhaps than SS calming down a little. There is a discussion on the article talk page: do we really need this report? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Multiple discussions have sprouted up on the talk page, such as here and here with separate users, where Headbomb is reverting and trying to control the article to only have negative information. The issue with the IP (a single comment above) has little to nothing to do with this DR request. Silverseren 23:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Hold on. One of those listed disputes, at least from my perspective, isn't about NPOV and I don't think it is fair to characterize it as 'reverting to only have negative information'. That being said, a blanket reversion of a whole bunch of edits, from grammar changes to issues of sourcing to POV, all in a single edit with the summary "revert bunch of completely innappropriate changes" does seem a little ownery. Agricolae (talk) 15:35, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how to view it otherwise. That part that you removed, properly I believe, is about negative things affiliated with JoC, so Headbomb reverted your removal to keep it in the article. What do you view as the reasoning behind the reversion? Silverseren 16:36, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the inclusion of that material as inherently negative - in fact, I see a significant risk that an uninformed reader may view that paragraph as too positive - take them at their words and view this as evidence of reasonableness by JoC and that Nature and Science are the unreasonable ones. Still, at least my role in the dispute is about one thing and one thing only: that we shouldn't be using any self-published response if it hasn't been commented upon by any WP:RS. As to Hb, I AGFed and took the reversion as an attempt at fairness - letting them have their say, as per Hb's first response. Of course, his more recent response that the material is likely to be viewed as a "usual kook rant about persecution" places this good-faith interpretation into question (it also beggar's the mind to figure out how something meant to be seen as self-immolating is so vital to the article that its deletion is to be viewed as 'inappropriate'), but I am not sure that means the purpose or the reversions is to make them look bad, as opposed to Hb just using this to justify the inclusion of self-published material that is desired in the article for some other reason (e.g. letting them have their say) - that though self-published it isn't unduly self-serving if it makes them look foolish, so its OK to override the normal standards of sourcing to include it. Agricolae (talk) 19:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in getting back to you about this. Per SilverSeren's comment above I will ignore the issue of the sockpuppets and comment only on the disputes between the established users on the page. I have taken a look at the talk page, and it seems that there are a number of things being disputed. In my experience, the best way to get a handle on complex disputes is to make a list of all the different issues being disputed, so that we can concentrate on specific, concrete issues. Here are the ones that I have noticed:

• Whether to call journal "peer-reviewed" and how to qualify the quality of its peer review process
• Whether/how to present PZ Meyers' criticism of the journal, particularly regarding the quote from his blog
• How to characterize the view of the journal by mainstream science
• Whether to present the journal's coverage of climate change in the article
• Whether to include coverage of the volume dealing with the feasibility of a human mission to Mars

Please let me know if you agree with this list. Also, if I have mis-characterized any of these disputes or left anything out, please correct me below. After we have found some agreement on what is under dispute it should give us a clearer idea of how to proceed. All the best — Mr. Stradivarius 12:58, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

All four of the issues you pointed out are correct, though I would like to add one more, which was what prompted me to make this DRN request. I added this information about a specific volume of the Journal that received significant coverage because of the responses it got from people and also how it prompted NASA to start looking into possible Mars missions again. However, that paragraph was removed twice by Headbomb, who stated that we shouldn't be covering individual volumes, making a comparison to the journal Nature and how long it would be if we covered all the individual journals. I responded with both that the JoC only has 16 volumes and also that we should only be providing information on the ones that received significant coverage in the news or elsewhere. In comparison, the criticism of the Hoover paper could be seen the same way and should therefore, under that reasoning, also be removed because it is just commenting on a single Volume of the JoC. This is actually the main crux of my disagreement with Headbomb and how he is not allowing anything to be added to the article that is neutral or even slightly positive. Silverseren 14:05, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction - I'm not sure how I missed that one. I've added it to the list of issues in my original post. — Mr. Stradivarius 14:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I have similar concerns as Silver seren. I don't think the article is neutral; it's main purpose seems to be to "show" that the journal is garbage. Compared to respected scientific journals, it probably is, but still - this is not the right way to write an encyclopedia article. I cannot offer any useful solution (I am especially not aware of any more positive information that could be added into the article for balance), and I don't wish to argue with anyone. Perhaps deleting the article would be a good way to end the dispute? Another solution would be to ask for third-party opinions. Nanobear (talk) 16:09, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I personally feel that deletion is never the proper answer when there is a dispute over article content. Even if it is POV, having something is better than nothing. And I don't believe there is much positive information to add, but I think there's plenty of neutral information that can be added to flesh out the article, like I tried to do before. If such information is added, then I think the article would be more properly balanced with the criticisms section, rather than it is now with mainly just being criticisms. Silverseren 16:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The fact that this journal may occasionally cover climate change is covered within the list of disciplines mentioned in the artcle such as Earth sciences and planetary sciences. I don't think it is necessary to mention every detailed discipline that the journal might have a paper on. So far it has not been desmonstrated that this paper on clmate change has recieved the coverage that the Hoover paper has. The Hoover paper has recieved an extraordinary amount of coverage in the main stream press and science blogs. That is why the Hoover paper is in this article - it has achieved notability. This paper on climate change may have not achieved notability and may instead be considered WP:UNDUE if it is placed in the article.

Unfortunately, I have to doubt the anonymous IP's good intentions in bringing up the cliamte change issue , , . It seemed to me that they brought this up on the talk page to neutralize the further contributions of an editor in good standing to this article. Although an editor has shown there is one secondary source coverage of JOC's paper on climate change , it appears that the conclusions are oversimplified and does not agree with the mainstream view.

I don't have anything against adding some content about the one-way mission to mars. That may have recieved enough coverage to be notable. However, again, I think it must be asked if this is real science or is it some fringe view? Also, again, compared to the Hoover paper, how much coverage in the press has this recieved? ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 18:02, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Examples:

To Boldly Go: What Made 400 People Volunteer for a One-Way Mission to Mars? - Fox News

Life On Mars: One-Way Ticket To Red Planet - Sky News

Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars - MSNBC

Out of the spaceship – and into a sandpit - The Independent

Those were the ones I was using in the section when I added it. Other sources covering it would be The Washington Post, Press Online, and Berliner Morgenpost. I could probably find a lot more if I looked harder. Silverseren 19:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I remember this being in the news! This is the same organization? Wow, I didn't even realize that. Yes, I think this belongs in the article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:12, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Both the Hoover and Mars papers received significant coverage by secondary reliable sources. For everyone's convenience, here are links to Google News Archive Searches for both:

• "Journal of Cosmology" Richard Hoover
• "Journal of Cosmology" Mars

A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Lest there be any doubt that mainstream climate scientists have paid attention to climate change artcles published in the journal of cosmology see here. Google "Journal of Cosmology" + realclimate to find more references and coverage of the realclimate discussion. --174.252.199.217 (talk) 21:02, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

• • I have been in communication with the actual owners of the Journal of Cosmology website, and I think it's best that the article entry for the Journal of Cosmology is deleted from wikipedia, they agreed, infact they even see the article on wiki as an attack against them and an ongoing problem, theres arguements on there everyday on the article for JOC on wiki, it aint neutral, and it really is just copping up problem after problem, it isnt a mainstream journal, and to be honest doesnt have many references. I suggest we all have a vote and nominate it for deletion. Would be best that way. 212.219.63.252 (talk) 21:06, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
    • There are plenty of references, as shown above, that are about it. Article content issues are not reason for deletion, the Journal is perfectly notable. Silverseren 22:28, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

212.219.63.252, when you say "it aint neutral", are you referring to the JOC itself or the WP page about it? The journal itself may not be neutral, but is notable, so I do not see deletion is a serious option. The WP article should try to be neutral, and therefore should not focus only on the JOC article that has been most criticized. For instance, the JOC's contribution to discussion about missions to Mars should be covered, as something that has been picked up by major media. Kalidasa 777 (talk) 00:18, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

• I checked out A Quest For Knowledge's link to the google search pertaining to the one way trip to Mars, and I have to agree that there is plenty of press coverage. It appears to be sufficiently notable. The next question to ask might be how to cover this in the article? I noticed on the JOC talk page that this is probably popular science coverage rather than actual research. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 05:49, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

First, I want to clarify my level of involvement in this dispute. IIRC I have never edited the article until this past week. My only prior involvement with this topic was way back in March 2011 when this journal's reliability came up at the reliable sources noticeboard where I said that this doesn't appear to be a reliable journal:

• Concur with others that this doesn't appear to be a reliable journal.

I only started this editing this article because references to it (such as the one at DRN) kept showing up on my watchlist and I decided to check it out. So, I've only edited the article for about a week. That's my current level of involvement from a topic perspective.

From an editor perspective, I am not familiar with Headbomb. I don't recall any prior interaction with them. I do recognize Silver seren's name and I'm sure that I've interacted with them at some point. Probably several points. But I don't remember anything specific. If I had to guess, our interactions were probably positive.

I worked on this article for about a week and this was my experience:

I made a series of changes to the article all of which were clueful and were explained in the edit summaries. Another editor also made a change with a clear explanation in the edit summary. Headbomb reverted all of these changes with an edit summary of "revert bunch of completely inappropriate changes". Such an edit summary is entirely inadequate. It gives me no indication of what they didn't like or why. Both me and the other editor started discussions on the talk page. Between the two of us, Headbomb was asked 7 times why he reverted our changes before he gave anything but a vague, meaningless response. In fact, he tried to shift the burden to me to explain why I objected to his reverts. It took a lot of time, but most (but not all) of the changes have since been added back into the article by Headbomb (which suggests that he didn't really examine what he reverted) but it was a difficult, painful process.

At the same time I added (what could be considered) positive information about this topic:

• Although the journal features an editorial staff that includes one of the world's leading cosmological experts, Oxford University astrophysicist Roger Penrose

I also added (what could be considered) negative information about this topic:

• NASA distanced itself from Hoover's findings.
• In a statement issued by NASA, chief scientist Paul Hertz said that the paper had been previously submitted in 2007 to the more established International Journal of Astrobiology where it failed to be published.

The 'negative' information was eventually allowed back in the information. The 'positive' information was not. The other editor's contribution was also eventually allowed back in the article but again it was 'negative' information:

• The quality of the peer review at the journal has been criticised.

At the same time, another editor added 'negative' information and that was allowed into the article.

Regarding the proposed addition of their Mars exploration, I remember reading about this in the news, but had no idea that this was the same group. I didn't make the connection until I read the above discussion. I think some mention belongs in the article.

The entire discussion can be found here: Mass revert of improvements. (Note that there was some confusion over the difference between peer-review and reputation which we didn't quite work out. At first I didn't understand what they were saying, but when I did, I explained I was really referring to the publication's reputation.)

I'm going to conclude this statement by basically repeating what I said at the end of that thread:

There's was an awful lot of discussion to get relatively few changes in the article, even a change to fix a run-on sentence was originally rejected and required multiple posts on the talk page to get into the article. There are several accusations of WP:OWN and after being there for a few days, but I am reaching a similar conclusion. We all have to work together. The sky is not going to fall if we add a paragraph about Mars or add a phrase about Penrose/Wickramasinghe or whoever to the article. I suggest the reigns be relaxed and other editors be allowed to work on the article.

Take from this what you will. I have no real interest in this topic (beyond the Mars bit) and I have no wish to get any more involved in this dispute. I am removing the article from my watchlist. I'm not familiar with how DRN works, but I hope that this was helpful. Good luck to all. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: Now that I think about it, parts of the article (namely the Reliability and Hoover paper controversy sections) descends into dangerously WP:ATTACK-ish territory, as if it was written to make the subject look bad. I'm not saying that was anyone's intention, but it is what ended up happening. The Reliability section, fortunately, does not mention any living people whose reputations could be hurt, but the Hoover section obviously does, and living people are mentioned in other parts of the article. Now that I think about it, it might even be a candidate for speedy deletion per G10, I'm not sure. But the topic's obviously notable. You might want to notify the editors of WP:BLPN who might know better how to handle these sort of things. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your further comments, everyone. I think that this dispute is too big and too complex for us to resolve here, and that it is probably time to look at some higher-level dispute resolution mechanisms. I suggest drafting an RfC that addresses the questions of whether to include the Mars mission coverage and how to portray the Hoover paper controversy; I think this would be a good next step to make towards resolving the issues here. We should also list the RfC at the appropriate WikiProjects to get their input, as WikiProject norms (particularly of WikiProject Journals) seem to play a big part in this dispute. Does this sound like a reasonable course of action to everyone? — Mr. Stradivarius 05:50, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Sri Lanka

• Sri Lanka (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Dispute overview

• Can you give us a quick explanation of what is going on? What is the issue you are bringing here?

Sri Lanka article has been subjected to editwarring over the inclusion of Sri Lankan civil war as a separate section. I, as an involved editor, maintained that a separate section on the civil war is unnecessary (for the reasons mentioned below). Arun1paladin and HudsonBreeze have maintained that a separate section is necessary. HudsonBreeze has mentioned in the article talkpage that he would prefer DRN mediation to resolve the issue.

Users involved

• Who is involved in the dispute?

• Astronomyinertia (talk · contribs)
• Arun1paladin (talk · contribs)
• Cossde (talk · contribs)
• Obi2canibe (talk · contribs)
• Adamrce (talk · contribs)
• HudsonBreeze (talk · contribs)
• Blackknight12 (talk · contribs)
• Snowolfd4 (talk · contribs)
• Hillcountries (talk · contribs)
• Intoronto1125 (talk · contribs)

Myself, Cossde, Obi2canibe and Blackknight12 have stated that a separate section on civil war is unnecessary. Arun1paladin and HudsonBreeze states otherwise.

• Have you informed all the editors mentioned above that you have posted this dispute? (If not, once you have informed them come back and replace the text "Not yet" with "Yes".)

Yes

• N.B. To inform the other users you may place the text {{subst:DRN-notice|thread=Sri Lanka}} --~~~~ in a new section on each user's talk page.

Resolving the dispute

• Have you tried to resolve this dispute already? If so, what steps have you taken?

I was involved in a lengthy discussion in the article talk page to reach a consensus to resolve the problem.

• How do you think we can help?

By providing third party opinion on whether a separate section is necessary, given that all the necessary information is available elsewhere in the article.

Astronomyinertia (talk) 17:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Sri Lanka discussion

Discussion about the issues listed above take place here. Remember to keep discussions calm, brief, and focused on the issues at hand.

I have maintained that a separate section on Sri Lankan Civil War is unnecessary in the article for the following reasons. The war spanned 26 years from 1983 to 2009. Looking at the way the history section has been organized, it is evident that there is no way you can take this 26 year period separately and present it in a separate section. Any country's history is divided into a number of eras which have clear-cut differences from each other. Let's consider how this theory is applicable to the Sri Lankan history.

• Pre-history of Sri Lanka: Pre-history of Sri Lanka refers to the era before the landing of Vijaya, a semi-legendary king in 543 BC.
• Ancient Sri Lanka: Ancient period of Sri Lanka refers to the period between 543 BC and 993 AD, when the ancient kingdom of Anuradhapura collapsed.
• Medieval Sri Lanka: Medieval period of the country refers to the period between 993 and 1505 AD, when Portugese arrived in Sri lanka.
• Early modern Sri Lanka: This is the period under the influence of Portugese, Dutch and British colonists, prior to the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms in 1833.
• Modern Sri Lanka: Historians agree that the modern period of Sri Lanka begins in 1833, with the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms (pp. 405–406, Economic policy in Sri Lanka: Issues and debates). This period can be further divided into pre and post indedependence Sri Lanka, as the country was governed under totally different policies before and after its independence in 1948.

All these info in the article are properly referenced and undisputed by historical records. The conflict between Sinhalese and (Sri Lankan) Tamil political leardership (two major nationalities in the country, representing approximately 74% and 13% of total population) first surfaced in early 1920s. That is well before the country gained independence. This was purely a political conflict until the early 1970s, with tensions developing into riots on a couple of occassions. A Tamil youth militancy emerged in 1970s with hit-and-run attacks on Police and government officials. The tensions exploded in 1983, with ethnic rioting and initiating an on-and-off civil war. War ended in 2009, resulting in the defeat of the militants. As anyone can see, the war did not give birth to an entirely new era of the country, like those changes that redefined the country's political and geographical landscape in 543 BC, 993, 1505, 1833 and 1948 AD. Moreover, on a historical perspective, civil war or the ethnic conflict cannot be separated from the modern Sri Lankan history. Any attempt to do so will result in a distortion of the timeline of Sri Lankan history. The section that Arun1paladin and HudsonBreeze are trying to bring into the article containes almost the same information available elsewhere. Therefore their accusation that editors who are agianst the addition of a separate section, are trying to conceal the civil war from the article can be considered a blatant lie. 16 of the 41 sentences in this section are obvious repititions of the sentences in the Post independence Sri Lanka section. 6 sentences are direct copy pastes from Burning of Jaffna library. 11 sentences are the same as they appear in the Black July article. But those editors who are arguing against the removal of the section are not ready to accept that these details belong to the sub-articles they originally came from. The main country article should only provide brief details about such incidents, in the mean time providing links to the respective sub pages. That is exactly what the Modern Sri Lanka section has done. What those disagreeing editors are trying to do is to give an undue weight to the civil war, and particular incidents like burning of Jaffna library and Black July. By analysing other country articles, we can establish a rule of thumb on how these sort of issues have been handled in there. In countries where wars have arised due to foreign interventions or where civil disobedience has overthrown a ruling regieme, their articles have described those issues in a separate section. Examples:

• American Civil War in United States article: Most of the country was under civil war. Slavery was abolished. A new era began.
• Afghan civil war in Afghanistan: Series of foreign interventions. Series of governments formed and collapsed.
• Iraq War in Iraq: Invasion and occupation of Iraq. Governing regieme overthrown.
• 2011 Libyan civil war in Libya: Ruling regieme overthrown. Foreign intervention.

In countries where insurgencies have not resulted in such radical changes, main country article has avoided inclusion of a separate section on that. Examples:

• India (FA): India, easily the most comparable country to Sri Lanka, is undergoing 3 insurgencies at the same time. They are, the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency (an ongoing secessionist insurgency which was there since 1967), Insurgency in Northeast India (another secessionist campaign ongoing since 1964) and Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir (ongoing since 1989). But none of them appear in the main article as separate sections. In comparison, Sri Lankan Civil War too was a secessionist campaign largely confined to 2 of the 9 districts in Sri Lanka.
• War in North-West Pakistan in Pakistan: Another comaparble regional nation.
• Turkey – Kurdistan Workers' Party conflict in Turkey article (FA).
• Colombian armed conflict in Colombia.
• Shia Insurgency in Yemen in Yemen article.
• Mexican Drug War in Mexico.
• Internal conflict in Burma in Burma.
• Insurgency in the Philippines in Philippines.
• Papua conflict in Indonesia.
• Insurgency in Laos in Laos.
• Rwandan Civil War in Rwanda.

The list is not exhaustive. However, it should be apparant by the comparison, that the way to treat an internal conflict on a country article is not by providing all miniature details in the main article itself. Astronomyinertia (talk) 17:47, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok, a couple of points

1. Brevity. Right now Astronomyinertia, your statement is so long that most people are going to skip over it with the summary TL;DR
2. WP:CONSENSUS. We work on a consensus model. If most people think that it makes sense to have a section regarding the civil war, then it might be a hint that the consensus is on their side.
3. WP:Subarticle. At some point subsections grow enough for it to make sense that they be split into their own articles covering in depth for more interested readers.
4. It is not necessary to refute every opposing viewpoint with what appears to be the same content over and over again.

Now if we can move forward on these basic Premises we can start trying to pull this dispute apart. Hasteur (talk) 19:24, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with all points you have mentioned. But there are a few things to add.

1. I agree that my statement is too long. But what I wanted to do here is to summarize what I have mentioned in the lengthy and wayward talkpage discussion. If the mediators attempt to read that discussion, they would realize why a summary of this kind is necessary. Plus, an opposing editor, HudsonBreeze asked me to provide the comparison in a DRN thread, and that's why the examples are given.
2. I'm fine with the consensus model. But it should also be mentioned that few involved editors here have a history of disruptive editing (as their talkpages indicate), and a few sockpuppets have also been blocked during the edit war that spanned months, for trying to exaggerate the number of involved editors.
3. Almost all the necessary subarticles are already available. The question here is, what is the necessity to bring details available in those subarticles, into the main article now. Astronomyinertia (talk) 16:09, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Note:

I have included Non-Involved Editor User:Adamrce under * Who is involved in the dispute? as he/she tried to resolve the Dispute previously and notified him. I have added back his/her involved last version of the Civil War Section to the Sri Lanka page.We can move from there.HudsonBreeze (talk) 08:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

User:Adamrce's addition was without a consensus in the talk page and as resulted in several questions and disputes. Therefore it is not the a place to start from. Cossde (talk) 12:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Only you and User:Astronomyinertia were disagree with him/her always. And User:Astronomyinertia is a "Possible" sock of yours. Please see the evidence:Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Cossde/Archive. Don't try to influence too much on the issue unduly.HudsonBreeze (talk) 13:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

No actually Cossde is correct in saying there was no consensus for Adamrce's additions. And it wasn't only Cossde and Astronomyinertia who disagreed but User:Snowolfd4 and I did too. Therefore I think it is safe we can not start there and those additions are not supported. By the way Snowolfd4 was involved in this dispute as well, I shall invite him here too.--Blackknight12 (talk) 15:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Sockpuppet investigations which have failed to find a direct relationship between the suspected accounts are not worth mentioning all the time as I see. Plus the editor who filed the case has also agreed that me and Cossde "really vary in some things". His sole point was the "common opinion that there should not be a civil war section in that article", among the editors. CheckUser has found both editors use same the ISP because SLT is the largest Internet Sevice Provider in Sri Lanka, and that is the ISP used by both editors. Other than that, the CheckUser has found the editors use different computers and their IP ranges do not overlap. No other behavioral evidence can support the case as well. Astronomyinertia (talk) 16:09, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

1.The insurgencies in India are not wide spread and they are insurgencies and not civil wars or ethnic conflicts.There are no allegations on the Indian state about grave warcrimes and crimes against Humanity from a body like UNHRC as in the case of Sri Lanka .Sri Lanka was a colonial administrative formed by the British by capturing and uniting 1 Tamil and 2 Sinhala kingdoms for their administrative conveniece.

2. Sri Lanka is a state that was formed in 1948.Sri Lanka is spending 60+ years in an unsolved ethnic conflict and it has spent its days in civil war since 1983 to 2009.Since ethnic conflict,civil war had occupied most of the time of history of Democratic Socialistic Republic of Sri Lanka ,I think the there need to be a separate section called 'Ethnic Conflict & Civil war'

If you look at the article of Germany,The Third Reich is not sandwiched or hidden under the tag called Modern Germany.So I think that the same has to be followed in Sri Lanka's case

Astronomyinertia.As you said SL hasn't 9 districts but 25 districts..Morevoer for 10 years Sri Lanka had no sovereignty over defacto state of Tamil Eelam and LTTE was running a parallel state in 90% area of the Tamil Eelam

I am not talking about the allegations of war crimes alone. Those allegations are already included in the article. My point is, that Sri Lankan civil war was not a particularly distinguishable era of Sri Lankan history, with respect to pre-historic, ancient, medieval, early modern and modern periods of Sri Lanka. Events scattered througout the modern period has contributed towards the ethnic conflict and they have already been covered in the present Modern Sri Lanka section. Fighting during the civil war was largely confined to 2 out of the 9 provinces (not districts), with occassional bombings in other areas. What is your opinon on the fact that, information contained in the section that you are tying to bring into the article is already available elsewhere in the article?

You say that the insurgencies in India are not wide spread. However their respective articles suggest that Jammu-Kashmir conflict has resulted in upto 100,000 civillian deaths, Naxalite-Maoist insurgency, 10,000+ civillians deaths and insurgency in Northeast India, 25,000+ civillian deaths. Moreover, thousands have been killed, a number of massacres have happened and millions have migrated due to religious and caste-related violence. All of these conflicts have been described in one sentence in the whole India article. It is because you cannot define an era due to existence of a conflict.

Nazi Germany or the Third Reich was an easily distinguishable era, not only in the German history, but also in the world history as well. There is no point of comapring Nazi Germany with the Sri Lankan civil war. I'm not going to waste time on that. At its peak, the LTTE, a proscribed terrorist organization controlled approximately 15% of the landmass of the country. In the ancient and medieval periods also, the country had been occupied by foreign invaders for decades. But LTTE occupation of a certain landmass did not hamper the functioning of the majority of the country. So that fact is not adequaate to define a distinguishable era of the country's history. Astronomyinertia (talk) 16:39, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

It all started with demand for removal of alleged war crimes section in Sri Lanka by .Finally convinced administrator Adam and the people who wanted to have that section & got that section removed.Then he started issues about the content in the CIVIL war section then.Then Adam created a new civil war section with neutral point of view.Then Astronomyinertia landed from nowhere and removed the civil war section and merged things from that section to post -independence section of Sri Lanka page.I see a pattern of white washing things in that page.(Arun1paladin (talk) 07:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC))

Your accusation that there is an attempt to whitewash the civil war is baseless. If you properly read the article, you would find that everything you are trying to include, including war crime allegations, are already available in it. Other than brief explanations, as correctly pointed out by Obi2canibe, it is not possible to have entire sections on individual incidents/events because scope of this article and much broader than that. Sri Lankan Civil War article and its spin offs are for that purpose. Astronomyinertia (talk) 14:23, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I never said that all incidents of the civil war must be listed out.What I say is that a separate section is needed for the civil war.The content that have to be included in that section is a different issue.If you want some detailed notes about what LTTE did then ,I have no problem with it.After all LTTE never claimed that it represents all the people in Sri Lanka unlike the Sri Lankan state which is predominantly Sinhalese and claims sovereignty both over Sinhalese,Tamils.I don't know if you are of the opinion that Sri Lankan state represents the Sinhalese and LTTE represents the Tamils!.Your comparison of Sri Lankan civil war with insurgencies lack logic.Sri Lanka had declared the state of emergency in the even in the 7 Sinhala provinces+ 2 Tamil provinces though you claim that the Civil war was restricted only to the 2 Tamil provinces.Sri Lanka declared victory in 2009 but the emergency was lifted only months ago.Still controversial laws like Prevention of Terrorism Act is implemented through out the island.The actions of the Sri Lankan state proves that the Civil war in Sri Lanka was not limited to any specific region of the island.In India the Kashmir issue doesn't involve any full fledged conventional military activity in Kashmir as in the case of LTTE in Tamil Eelam issue.(Arun1paladin (talk) 15:03, 14 October 2011 (UTC))

Well, you still have not established why you keep insisting that a separate section on civil war is necessary. If you believe details related to civil war have got lost, that's not the case here because a simple comparison between the present version and version before the edit war shows you that present version has got more details on the conflict than what it was there before. On the other hand, I have provide a clear rationale for the present structure of the history section, which no editor has been able to refute up to now. I don't want to add any "detailed notes about what LTTE did" because those details don't belong here, but in the Sri Lankan Civil War and the LTTE articles. Just like that, most of the details you have tried to add during the past few months belongs to the Sri Lankan Civil War, Burning of Jaffna library, Black July, Sri Lankan IDP camps and Alleged war crimes during the Sri Lankan Civil War articles. All the details from the above mentioned articles, which belongs here have been given due weight in the Modern Sri Lanka section. Emergency law and PTA are not relevant to the discussion here. Existence of such laws doesn't mean fighting happened in the other 7 provinces. You keep inquiring my views on questions you made up, like whether Sri Lankan state represents both Sinhalese or Tamils etc. I believe all this mistrust and hostility is due to the fact that I have declared Sinhala as my native language in the userpage. Please don't judge an editor based on their ethnicity, but contributions. That's a core policy in Misplaced Pages. You have stated that Kashmir issue doesn't involve any full fledged conventional military activity. But the number of casualties and organizations involved, like Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba etc, doesn't suggest so. No one has tried to create separate sections for each conflict that India undergoes, in India article, because existence of conflicts doesn't portary a country's profile, but a combination of social, cultural, historical and economic factors. Astronomyinertia (talk) 17:16, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

As Hasteur said this is getting out of hand and off topic, STOP arguing and diverting from the actual discussion, which is "what should be included, and how much of it is necessary in the Sri Lanka article relating to the Sri Lankan Civil War?" Arun1paladin stop blaming others and get past your hatred of Sri Lanka and start discussing logically and non biasedly. Astronomyinertia has given his reason but all you have done is state past discussions and quote history. Please give your rationale as to what you want and why. HudsonBreeze you keep saying you want an "Ethnic Conflict, Civil War & War Crime" section in the article, why when there are already huge separate articles on those topics? (Origins of the Sri Lankan civil war, Sri Lankan Civil War and Alleged war crimes during the Sri Lankan Civil War). The Sri Lanka article is a summary of the country, not every little single thing needs to be included. The civil war has been mentioned and linked in the Sri Lanka article and from there you can go to over 100 different sub articles on the topic, what more do you want?--Blackknight12 (talk) 02:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Astronomyinertia,FYI all the Kashmiri militant organisation that you mentioned ,never run a defacto state in India.If you want a civil war section in India then you have to go to the India page and discuss with the editor.

Blackknight.I have no prejudice over Sri Lanka.I just want the civil war section to exist.The reasons for my stand are

1.Ethnic conflict is NOT over in SL sinceno political solution has been to given to Tamil by Sri Lanka that got formed in 1948.

2.The country's one of the most influential person Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said that political solution to Tamils is irrelevant since the LTTE has been defeated.

3.All this history that you call has history of Sri Lanka is the history of that tiny island and not the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka.The Country Sri Lanka was formed in 1948 just as India was formed in 1947.

Sri Lanka is facing ethnic conflict since 1948 and it has not ended till date.Sri Lanka has spent around 3 decades in civil war.

I wonder why some editors who even want to mention which Sinhala king had how many wives and among them who was Tamil and who was Sinhala,have problems in the EXISTENCE of a Civil war section.The contents of the section or it's neutrality has to been a different issue.

I am just talking about the CIVIL WAR section/subsection that existed until Astronomyinertia removed it for the first time and merged parts of it under modern history section .

I am not good with wiki's features.I don't think that Astronomyinertia who raised this issue in this dispute resolution board has informed user Intoronto,Obi... and others about raising this issue here.Astronomyinertia didn't post any message in my talk page about raising this issue here.I don't know if he had informed in the Sri Lanka page(Arun1paladin (talk) 04:08, 15 October 2011 (UTC))

When there is a war going on in a country, people and organizations issue statements regarding the incidents and actions of involved parties<<<

Jayewardene said in Daily Telegraph, 11th July 1983," Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.".He was the President of Sri Lanka at that time.

Sarath Fonseka,the Commander of the Army (Sri Lanka) i.e the Head of th Sri lankan army told a Canadian newspaper that he "strongly believed that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese, but there are minority communities... they can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things".This was during the war and he was in charge of the post of Commander of the Army (Sri Lanka) during the war from 6 December 2005 – 15 July 2009.Though Sri Lanka is a multi-racial land he was NOT sacked for this kind RACIST comment

In 2011years after the end of the war,in an interview to Headlines Today, television channel from India Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Defense Secretary of Sri Lanka & brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa trashed "the political solution talk", asserting, among other things, that it was "simply irrelevant" because 'we have ended this terrorism'in Sri Lanka.

[citation1

These are just examples for other to judge what is the Sri Lankan state is all about and whether the civil war section deserves to exit ot not.The people whom I mentioned are not peasants or labourers or unemploed people from Sri Lanka but people who held/hold key positions in the Sri Lankan state and had/have influence in the state's policies.I also wish to mention the fact that all these 3 persons who held/hold prominent position in the Sri Lankan state are Sinhalese and their comments are racist against the Tamils.I never heard any racist comment from any person of the INDIAN STATE against the Kashmiris or N.East Indians as A PEOPLE.Sri Lankan state speaking against the ] is different from the act of the country's President of Sri Lanka,Commander of the Army (Sri Lanka),Defense Secretary of Sri Lanka making RACIST comments against Tamils who are distinct ethnicity from the Sinhalese .(Arun1paladin (talk) 05:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC))

Did you even bother reading what I said? In your whole reply all that was necessary were your three points you had given. The rest again does not even apply to the issue. You have to stay on topic! Sure there may have been some comments that some people with high positions made during the war, in what war are there not?? And furthermore these "quotes" are not something that do not belong on an article representing the summary of a country.

• 1. I dont think you can say that just a political solution will end an ethnic conflict things like this would need time as well. However you have not provided any credible sources to support you claim.
• 2. So what, he does not run the country, the government as a whole does, and we can not base information or articles on what one man says.
• 3. The island is Sri Lanka and Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka is just the latest entity that was formed in 1948. If you look at France they are within their Fifth Republic, they have also had provisional governments, empires and kingdoms yet I urge you to read the the history section in the France article and tell me what you see?

Do these points you have stated really bring the need for a new section? I think not.

And by the way look at the last thing on your talk page!--Blackknight12 (talk) 08:11, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

You compare France,a nation state with a colonial creation like Sri Lanka or India!!.Oh I don't think there is point in discussing with you.I am writing here NOT for you but for the THIRD parties who are not involved in this edit wars.Let them read all these and provide some solution.

So what, he does not run the country, the government as a whole does, and we can not base information or articles on what one man says<<

Going by this ,the Tamils sat with the Sinhalese and decided the constitution of Sri Lanka,they together carved the state policy of discriminating Tamils,finally they decided that 40,000 Tamils must be killed by the exclusively Sinhala army of Sri Lanka under the command of Sinhala president,Sinhala defence minister and Sinhala Commander of the army.

This page is going worse than that of a chat forum.I request the Third parties to suggest their views(Arun1paladin (talk) 15:21, 15 October 2011 (UTC))

Observation

Following Countries have Sub Sections on "Civil War", "Genocide" or "War" under "History" Section;

• United States

3.3 Civil War and industrialization

• Afghanistan

3.3.4 Foreign interference and civil war

• Iraq

2.8.1 Al-Anfal: Kurdish genocide

2.8.2 Gulf War

• Libya

2.9 2011 civil war and interim government

• Laos

2.3 Kingdom of Laos and war 1954–75

Why Sri Lanka can't have a separate section on "Civil War"?HudsonBreeze (talk) 15:34, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I have discussed in my first comment, why a separate section on US, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libyan civil wars are necessary in their respective articles. Laotian Civil War is worth mentioning in the article because it resulted in the communist victory and the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic or the modern Laos. Also the fighting involved number of international troops like Military Assistance Command. But non of these factors are applicable to Sri Lankan civil war. Astronomyinertia (talk) 16:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Observation

• United States - suggestions to model the Sri Lankan civil war section on that of the United States was rejected and/or ignored by HudsonBreeze, Arun1paladin and Adamrce.

• Iraq - Kurdish genocide as no relevance to this article. To compare the significance of 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars to the Sri Lankan civil war on a global scale... well I will let others decide that one.

• Libya - Once again global/regional impact and media attention is beyond that of Sri Lankan civil war unfortunately.

• Afghanistan - An invasion, occupation and multiple government changers in the entire country (at least in 90% of it) all in the spotlight of the world media. Is that similar to the Sri Lankan civil war.

• Laos - Once again an invasion, occupation and multiple government changers in the entire country (at least in 90% of it) all in the spotlight of the world media. Is that similar to the Sri Lankan civil war.

Cossde (talk) 16:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion

I suggest for a separate section in the Sri Lanka page under "History" titled Ethnic Conflict, Civil War & War Crime.

The reasons are as below;

• User:Astronomyinertia's comparison with Laotian Civil War is meaningless.

• • User:Astronomyinertia mentions, "Laotian Civil War is worth mentioning in the article because it resulted in the communist victory and the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic or the modern Laos. Also the fighting involved number of international troops like Military Assistance Command. But non of these factors are applicable to Sri Lankan civil war."

• • It is not always the creation of the new state validates the inclusion of the "Civil War" section or not on Misplaced Pages. Then the inclusion of the "Civil War and industrialization" in the United States article is not worthy, because that only prompted the "Industrialization" and not a separate state for Southerners in the US and for which only the "Civil War" started originally and not for Industrialization.

• • What that differentiates a fighting involved with number of international troops like Military Assistance Command in the Laotian Civil War and a fighting involved with foreign military assisatance on weapons, ammunnitions and expertise like that of in the 2011 Libyan civil war in Libya and Sri Lankan Civil War and Alleged war crimes during the Sri Lankan Civil War in Sri Lanka?

• User:Cossde's comparison with various countries also vague.

• • How I or others ignored his suggestion on United States to model the Sri Lankan civil war section is a baseless accusation. Any way we can't model one country's situation into other as it is, always it will be a combination of others or an unique one from others.

• • Kurdish genocide might be no relevance to this article, but a google search brings number of sites on Genocide in Sri Lanka.

• • More Massacres happened than the 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars in the last phase of the war in Sri Lanka where Sri Lankan Government sent out UN Agencies and International NGOs and denied world media to access the War Zone and waged a "War Without Witnesses".

• • The people killed in the last phase of the war in Sri Lanka is much higher than in Libya, Afghanistan and Laos - Again it was a "War Without Witnesses"

• • Multiple Government Changers can't be a sole or an important factor to determine a "Civil War", there are other factors too; because of the Sri Lankan Civil War, a large number of Sri Lankan Tamils left their home lane in number of other countries in the Post-1983 (The Scattering).

• In the last phase of the "Civil War" in Sri Lanka, A recently released WikiLeaks cable revealed that when Ban Ki-Moon visited the country in 2009 he witnessed "complete destruction" when he flew over the former "no-fire zone". He described the conditions of Manik Farm refugee camp as worse than anything he had ever seen before.

• In the last phase of the "Civil War" in Sri Lanka, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, Foreign Ministers of Two Countries which have Veto Wielding Powers in the UN Security Council visited the war zone and made their comment in The New York Times (June 20, 2011) as below;

In April 2009, we travelled together as foreign ministers to Sri Lanka, as 25 years of fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers neared its end.

The remaining fighters were trapped in the northern most part of the country — along with large numbers of civilians. U.N. estimates put the numbers of civilians there in the last few months of the war at over 300,000.

We visited refugee camps that had been created to house Tamil refugees from Jaffna. Their stories were brutal and shocking. Random shelling in areas of fighting — including after the government had announced an end to fighting. Men and boys taken away from refugee camps — and now out of contact. Tamil life treated as fourth or fifth class. If foreign policy is about anything, it should be about stopping this kind of inhumanity.............Restrictions on journalism meant that there was a war without witness in Sri Lanka.............It seems to us essential that this process is taken forward. As the report says, accountability is a duty under domestic and international law, and those responsible, including Sri Lanka Army commanders and senior government officials, would bear criminal liability for international crimes.............Kofi Annan has said that the international community cannot be selective in its approach to upholding the rule of law. We therefore call on our governments to set a deadline, soon, for satisfactory response from the Sri Lankan government, and if it is not forthcoming to initiate the international arrangements recommended by the report.............Reports like the one compiled for the secretary general must not stand on the shelf. They must be the basis of action. Or the law becomes an ass."

• About the last phase of the "Civil War" in Sri Lanka, The Guardian and The Hindu made their Editorials as below;

The Guardian

In the editorial titled Sri Lanka: Evidence that won't be buried (June 15, 2011), The Guardian raised the observation:

"The targeting of civilians is a war crime. If proved, these charges go right up the chain of command of Sri Lanka's military and government. If Iran stands condemned for killing hundreds in the wake of the June 2009 election, if Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic now face justice in The Hague, if Bashar al-Assad faces UN sanctions for an assault that has killed 1,300 Syrians, how it is that President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, the defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, escape all censure, after over 40,000 civilians were killed?

That the LTTE assassinated presidents and invented the suicide belt, that the Tigers used civilians as human shields, is no defence from the charge that Sri Lankan soldiers summarily executed prisoners in their custody. Sri Lanka is trying to pretend these events are history, as the economy and tourism pick up. They are not. This evidence has to be faced."

The Hindu

In the editorial titled A brother out of control (August 16, 2011), The Hindu raised the observation:

"President Rajapaksa would be well advised to distance himself swiftly from his brother's stream-of-consciousness on sensitive issues that are not his business. This includes an outrageous comment that because a Tamil woman, an “LTTE cadre” who was a British national, interviewed in the Channel 4 documentary was “so attractive” but had been neither raped nor killed by Sri Lankan soldiers, the allegation of sexual assault by soldiers could not be true. For this statement alone, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa must be taken to task."

• About the last phase of the "Civil War" in Sri Lanka, a documentary called Sri Lanka's Killing Fields was produced by the Channel 4 and it was screened at European Parliament in Brussels by the three leading NGOs on human right issues in the world International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch jointly.

• All above factors make for a clear cut suggestion that the world has given enough notice to the Sri Lankan "Civil War" and it is eligible for the inclusion in the "History" section as "Ethnic Conflict, Civil War & War Crime".HudsonBreeze (talk) 07:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Reasons for the validity of the inclusion of American civil war in the United States article, I discussed in my first comment. Laotian civil war too is worth mentioning because it resulted in the establishment of modern Laos. However, Sri Lankan civil war has none of the characteristics of those wars. And it is not different from the number of separatist conflicts in India and other conflicts in Turkey, Pakistan, Colombia, Yemen etc, which have not deserved a sepate section in their respective articles.

All those huge quotations you have inserted in the discussion are statements by individuls or organizations. When there is a war going on in a country, people and organizations issue statements regarding the incidents and actions of involved parties. Sri Lankan civil war too had been monitored by international organizations. But that's not relevant to what we are talking about, in this DRN discussion. Astronomyinertia (talk) 17:04, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Clerk Notice: Again we're getting the talking past each other and not trying to resolve this. Ceace speculation on the motives of editors and concentrate on the content. Hasteur (talk) 18:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• I(Adamrce ~AdvertAdam)'ve been busy lately so I won't be as active, but I see the importance of this conflict to be resolved. I've been involved to solve multiple Sri Lankan-related edit-wars with some of the involved editors, as some discussions relied mostly on personal knowledge and COI-like arguments instead of policies.
  

The history of this page is becoming like a chat-line when you read the summaries. The previous discussions were all related to the content of the "civil war" section, and not its existence. Adding single-sided content to the previous section doesn't help resolving this issue. Avoiding to call it a civil war doesn't help improve the article.

The "civil war" is a notable topic and we should, IMHO, include a brief and link it to its main article: Sri Lanka civil war. I tried to make a summary, back in August, in order to focus the discussion on particular objects at-a-time, but most of what I got back is picky arguments that don't directly relate to the content. The last edit war was on a lengthy section that needs to be summarized, to avoid WP:DUE.

I encourage involved editors to goto the talkpage to discuss controversial changes. It's not the end-of-the-world if you don't get your preferred version. Cheers... ~ AdvertAdam 19:23, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I think AdvertAdam has correctly pointed out the key aspect editors need to concentrate on, the CONTENT! Without adding entire sections on individual events that could induce WP:DUE problems, this dispute can be resolved by sticking to reliably sourced, neutral content that should be acceptable to everyone. I believe that I have provided enough evidence and rationale on why the history section should be sub-sectioned as pre-historic, ancient, medieval, early modern and modern Sri Lanka, and why these details related to civil war should be covered in the modern Sri Lanka section. If you think there should be any additional details coming in, please go ahead and add those stuff. Ethnic conflict and civil war has received much weight in the modern Sri Lanka section, that it is not necessary to add another section covering the same details. I request you to remain in the conversation, so that it will be easy for the disagreeing parties to reach a consensus. Astronomyinertia (talk) 15:45, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

You've been doing some great contribution on the article, and I honestly don't review after you. The arguments are slightly different in each previous edit-wars, but it's all based on taking certain things personal and assuming political intentions, IMO. We need to specifically discuss whether the civil war will be mentioned in the "modern Sri Lanka" section or a section called "civil war" under the "modern Sri Lanka" section, and not the existence of civil war in particular.

I see the mistake here, as you've merged the content but others think that it needs more detail and they're repeating it in a separate section. Let's first discuss its location on the talkpage, if you'd like. If I see more edits/revert out-of the discussion, I'll try to request a temporarily WP:1RR for the article. I'll try to stick around, as I've been giving priority to this problem more that the articles I continually edit for over a year.

Btw, I never claimed consensus on my September revert, but it was a clean-up after an edit-war mess. I even kept a POV-tag, just for info. ~ AdvertAdam 03:19, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for remaining with the discussion. It will not be possible to reach a consensus without continuous, third party input because some of the involved editors seem to have strong emotions regarding the issue, and are not ready to compromise on what would be the best for the article.

My entire argument is based on the historical perspective. I think you would appreciate the fact that almost all the necessary information that deserves to be mentioned in the article regarding civil war is already there. If anyone thinks some information is missing, there is no restraint to add it under the present structure. But the issue here is whether a separate section is necessary to deal with the info. In my above comments, I have cleary pointed out why I think the war needs to be mentioned in the Modern Sri Lanka section, based on the historical perspective. In the case of Sri Lanka, there is only one such conflict. But there are countries with multiple ethnic and other conflicts ongoing, and have prevailed in the recent past. There is no point of reserving one section or sub-section for each conflict, because that gives undue weight to those conflicts, whereas there are more areas that needs to be covered in a country article. Astronomyinertia (talk) 10:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone, and thanks for your posts so far. To me, this question of whether or not to have a specific section about the civil war looks like a good candidate for an RfC. Has there been an RfC on this topic recently? All the best — Mr. Stradivarius 13:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the section should be included it was an important part of the history of the island. It last 30 years! However, the section that other editors keep on adding back needs to be shortened. Intoronto1125TalkContributions 13:42, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Since the causes and start of the war can be traced to the political and socioeconomic structure of the country as far back as the time of British rule, as well as two other insurregencies and an attempted coup; having a separate section would give undo wight and take the it out of context. As wikipedia only report and not editorialize having a sequence of events based on the five periods a Sri Lankan history that span over thousands of years may seem to be the best option we have. Cossde (talk) 17:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi again. I think people are being confused about the nature of this noticeboard - we don't have the power to set content issues in stone, especially when it is a large, complex dispute such as this one. The opinions of clerks at this noticeboard can help contribute to consensus, but that's about all we can do. If anyone in this thread is commenting in the hope that a clerk will judge that the article should be written in this way or that, then I'm afraid they are mistaken. All a clerk can do is add their opinion to the opinions of the editors already involved.

The process usually used to gauge consensus among the wider community on a particular issue is a request for comments, which is why I recommended it above. I can appreciate that editors want to get the content issues sorted out, and so I can understand the detailed comments on the issues above. As consensus cannot realistically be decided on this noticeboard, however, I think editors' time would be better spent arguing those points in an RfC on the article's talk page. In this case, I think a highly structured RfC would be best; see this one for an example of what I am talking about. Would that be acceptable to all the editors here? Regards — Mr. Stradivarius 17:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, which is why I was also trying to avoid giving my views on the matter. This issue was never even discussed on the article's talkpage, but only slight comments berried in other disputes. The only straight-forward comments are at the edit-summaries. I'm working on forming a neutral RfC, and hoping editors can focus on improving the article from an encyclopedic-only POV. ~ AdvertAdam 20:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The separate section issue is a red herring - the dispute is really about what content should and should not be included in the article. Until this is resolved the dispute will go on in one form or another as it has been doing so for the last four months.--obi2canibe 20:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes. We all need to work together to stabilize the article, but I'm having a hard time gathering editors when each group wants to edit a separate part of the article. We definitely can't have two sections talking about the civil war :p. ~ AdvertAdam 20:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, undue weight is something that has to be considered with a few points in mind, the impact it had, how long it lasted, how significant an event it was in the subjects history. Duration of time is not the only deciding factor, however. The fact that the civil war lasted only 30 years should not be the sole deciding factor. I think jn this situation either a requests for comment or a request at the mediation cabal would be the next step from here. Steven Zhang 07:51, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with User:Steven Zhang's comment, "The fact that the civil war lasted only 30 years should not be the sole deciding factor."

When some one refers the following;

• • The Silence of Sri Lanka

• • Sri Lanka: Evidence that won't be buried

• • War crimes: The world has seen the evidence. Now we must act

• • A resolution was passed unanimously by the US Senate and called on the international community and the UN to establish such a mechanism to look into reports of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other human rights violations committed by both sides during and after the war in Sri Lanka.”

• • Australia Senate unanimously adopts a resolution calling for investigation of war crimes by SriLanka and LTTE.

• • Sri Lanka's justice ministry has received a summons issued by a US federal court for President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The summons is linked to three civil cases filed under the Hague Convention by relatives of Tamil victims of alleged extra-judicial killings. The alleged killings took place during the Sri Lankan civil war.

• • The Swiss Federal Attorney General had said that there is enough evidence to open an investigation against Major General Dias if he returnes to Switzerland. The former Commander of the 57th Division, has been accused of intensive shelling of civilians, hospitals and religious sites during the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

I too support for a requests for comment or a request at the mediation cabal.HudsonBreeze (talk) 12:20, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Big Brother 2011 (UK), List of Big Brother 2011 housemates (UK)

• Big Brother 2011 (UK) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• List of Big Brother 2011 housemates (UK) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Dispute overview

• Can you give us a quick explanation of what is going on? What is the issue you are bringing here?

Anon user is making aggressive edits, fails to assume good faith when dealing with other users and has consistently show facets of ownership of the articles. Problems include accusations of vandalism, orders to not edit content and a continuing disregard for discussing changes in a calm and considered manner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Big_Brother_2011_%28UK%29&diff=prev&oldid=455242928 http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:86.176.153.183&diff=prev&oldid=455247720 http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Big_Brother_2011_%28UK%29&diff=prev&oldid=454192041

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk%3ABig_Brother_2011_%28UK%29&action=historysubmit&diff=454874411&oldid=454873972

Users involved

• Who is involved in the dispute?

• 86.176.153.183 (talk · contribs)
• Carl Sixsmith (talk · contribs)
• Leaky caldron (talk · contribs)
• Deterence (talk · contribs)
• Dr Marcus Hill (talk · contribs)

Deterence isn't really doing anything except encouraging IP to ignore various guidelines such as WP:RS, WP:NOTNEWSPAPER ect.

• Have you informed all the editors mentioned above that you have posted this dispute? (If not, once you have informed them come back and replace the text "Not yet" with "Yes".)

Yes

• N.B. To inform the other users you may place the text {{subst:DRN-notice|thread=Big Brother 2011 (UK), List of Big Brother 2011 housemates (UK)}} --~~~~ in a new section on each user's talk page.

Resolving the dispute

• Have you tried to resolve this dispute already? If so, what steps have you taken?

Discussion has been going on the talk pages for nearly a month.

• How do you think we can help?

Some calm external, non-interested guidance. Previous attempt at RFC resulted in IP removing content from page, accusing users of harassment and claiming copyright over the work.

Carl Sixsmith (talk) 19:22, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Big Brother 2011 (UK), List of Big Brother 2011 housemates (UK) discussion

Discussion about the issues listed above take place here. Remember to keep discussions calm, brief, and focused on the issues at hand.

Involved user User:Leaky caldron

IP86 has made countless edits to edit summary and article talk pages which amount to a clear pattern of WP:DISRUPTive editing. They are highly tendentious in that they continue editing in pursuit of a non-policy, fancruft style despite consensus opposition from other editors. They do not engage in consensus building and have rejected appeals for moderation, continuing to edit in pursuit of a certain direction despite an opposing consensus. Examples of assuming bad faith include incorrect accusations of vandalism, ownership, edit warring, of removing "their" content and issuing warnings not to remove "their" content and statements that "their" content is copyright to them.

No, I have since made every effort to edit within the agree guidelines, see my record.86.176.153.183 (talk) 21:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

At least one productive contributors has thrown the towel in as a result of IP86 failing to follow policies and guidelines. They appear to refuse to get the point.

No, they claimed to have left of their own accord, nothing to do with others' edits.86.176.153.183 (talk) 21:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

IP86 has been blocked for WP:3RR and Admin. warned about incivility but their behaviour, while somewhat modified, is still beyond acceptable community norms. They still do not get it, as this latest example today clearly shows. First they accuse a perfectly good faith editor of vandalism , then further accusing them of bad faith in the resulting discussion. They can, evidentally, "detect" a looming edit war from a single, non-contentious edit.

As can be seen from article talk pages and his own user page, considerable guidance has been provided relating to the relevant policies but with limited impact on IP86’s editing style.

IMO, this DR request does not need to consider User:Deterence’s actions. They appear to be acting as some sort of pseudo McKenzie friend for IP86. Det. is not an article contributor and has I think, failed to assist IP86 (a) by supporting his non-policy content inclusion and (b) in failing to direct IP86 to appropriate content & behavioural policy. Instead they have accused article editors of bullying IP86 and perhaps in doing so, emboldened IP86 into the misapprehension that they can continue unabated. This is an aside, IMO.

I would like IP86 to agree to mentoring or some other suitable action to achieve the goal, before Big Brother finishes its run in 4 week time, of working within content and behavioural policies and guidelines. Leaky Caldron 20:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I have included User:Deterence as he seems to be an interested party with an opposite view point to my own, hopefully arguments from both sides can result in a resolution Carl Sixsmith (talk) 20:43, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

The above had claimed to have opted out of editing the offending article but now seems intent on opening more disputes over minor edits and making other unjustified claims. I have aimed to keep to the consensus and kept edits civil and am dismayed to see a new pattern of dispute-seeking creeping in. My recent record shows a series of constructive edits, no deletions and no evidence of any of the above allegations beyond one fix to a code removed by a poster which reverted a good faith edit. I wonder why the above two are starting up this all over again when one had claimed to be stepping aside from this article? They seem determined to pounce on every minor edit, revert it and dispute it. This is not productive, I hae done all I can to cooperate.86.176.153.183 (talk) 21:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Clerk's note: As noted in the guidelines, this noticeboard is for the resolution of content disputes, not conduct disputes, WQA, ANI, RFC/U, and of course ArbCom are for conduct. I note that ANI has been tried without much success, so it might be time to move on to a RFC/U or ArbCom. We'd be willing to help here if you want to specify some particular content disputes, but this looks far more like a conduct dispute. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 21:50, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Disclaimer: I'm not sure how I became involved in this, but, a note was left on my talk page, (by Carl Sixsmith), so here I am. For what it is worth, I am impartial with regards 86.176.153.183, Carl Sixsmith, Leaky caldron and Dr Marcus Hill. To my memory, I have had no contact with any of them until about a week and a half ago, in the Talk:Big Brother 2011 (UK). Although, I have noticed Leaky caldron commenting alongside myself in WP:ITN/C recently.
• I'm not sure how I can comment on the allegations of Carl Sixsmith when no examples of the allegedly disruptive editing by 86.176.153.183 have been provided. In the talk page, various allegations have been thrown at 86.176.153.183's edits but they seldom amount to more than "not encyclopedic". At one point, they were arguing that 86.176.153.183's edits were contrary to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Big Brother. It was at that point that I stepped in to show that the main thrust of 86.176.153.183 edits (the inclusion of social anecdotes) were indeed consistent with the guidelines in WikiProject Big Brother.
• 86.176.153.183 has responded with a claim that, "They seem determined to pounce on every minor edit, revert it and dispute it." I could not agree with this claim more. Every edit that 86.176.153.183 makes is immediately challenged and wikilawyered into oblivion. At this stage, I fully expect 86.176.153.183's next edit to be immediately reverted, with some patronising remark, even if he is just correcting spelling mistake on the main page. My Assumption of Good Faith is being sorely tested as I get the distinct impression that they are trying to exhaust him with constant WP:BULLYing in an effort to persuade him to throw-up his hands and disappear in frustration. I don't agree with every edit that 86.176.153.183 makes (disagreements come with the territory in Misplaced Pages) but some editors are barely pausing long enough to read his edits before looking for some rationale to obstruct his every contribution. It is unreasonable to expect 86.176.153.183 to jump through an endless supply of wikilawyering hoops every time he attempts to contribute to the article.
• I believe there is a reasonable compromise to be made between the two "sides" (for want of a better term) to this dispute regarding editorial style. Of course, compromise only works if both sides are willing to compromise... Deterence 22:51, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• It's a shame you didn't support your claims with evidence. If I see edit summaries such as IP86's it doesn't takes long to evaluate the hostile approach of the editor and, despite advice from numerous sources, including being blocked for edit warring and warned about civility, they still persist. Why don't you take a look at the number of editors he has attacked and suggest to him that he needs to reign in his enthusiasm? Just a sample, and that's just edit summaries, much more on the talk pages. It is a disgrace that an experienced editor condones such aggressive editing. ]

] ] ] ] ] ] Leaky Caldron 23:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Leaky_caldron. I responded to the all the examples of "aggressive editing" that you provided. You provided no examples of aggressive editing. Further more, you might want to change your terminology. "Aggressive editing" is not an accurate description of 86.176.153.183's posts. At worst, they could be characterised as "bold".
• As for supporting my claims, everyone is free to see the sort of bullying and harassment I am referring to. Just look at the threads on the talk page. Deterence 23:35, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Not sure where you responded. Until my post immediately above, I had not placed any diffs. Not for the first time I suspect you have mistaken someone else's contribution for mine - you did the same thing 3 times on the talk page. But to follow your point, you believe that calling innocent editors a vandal and threatening to report them if they change IP86's edits is "bold"? Can you highlight the policy for that - for everyone to share? Leaky Caldron 23:54, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oh for goodness sake. I didn't respond because you failed to give any diffs for me to respond to. Yet, that hasn't stopped you from saying "It is a disgrace that an experienced editor condones such aggressive editing" despite your absense of any diffs illustrating such "aggressive editing". This discussion has already become utterly absurd. Deterence 00:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• This latest comment is verging on WP:PN. First you say that you have responded to diffs., but at that point I had not posted any diffs. When I do post some examples of inappropriate behaviour you say you didn't respond because I had failed to give any diffs to respond to. Which is it? If you want to participate effectively please ensure that you know who's postings you are actually responding to, rather than conflating material from multiple editors. Leaky Caldron 10:43, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

You have been aware of the issues we have with IP's edits for a while. Your only response has been to claim that we are bullying the ip and that WP:RS, WP:NOTNEWSPAPER and other such guidelines should be ignored, and that the IP telling us not to edit his work is perfectly acceptable. WP:BULLY is quite a charge to throw out there, especially if you are saying you haven't even looked into the IP edits and conduct. Examples have been provided in this DR, please feel free to look at them and comment on them Carl Sixsmith (talk) 05:32, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• Carl Sixsmith, that is the precisely sort of misrepresentation and exaggeration that leads me to question the allegations you are making against 86.176.153.183. I have not said that "haven't even looked into the IP edits and conduct". I have said that no evidence was put forward as evidence in this dispute resolution. I am not about to troll through the entire history of edits and comments that you have all exchanged in the hope that I stumble upon evidence of 86.176.153.183's misconduct. If you have specific example, put it before us so that we may address that example.
• And clearly, 86.176.153.183 was not "telling us not to edit his work". He started a section in the talk page where he said:

"I propose to add an overnight figures column to the ratings table which is way out of date and needs to reflect the estimated figures published on DS which were taken down by a previous poster. I will be doing this shortly and will expect the data to not be deleted as it will take a lot of work to recover these data with refs from the material wiped by that poster."

In other words, he noted in the talk page that a section of the article was out of date and asked for some patience and understanding while he updated the material. As a result, you (and another editor) have jumped down his throat with some absurdly exaggerated accusation that he is violating WP:OWN simply because he consulted with his fellow editors.

• As for your allegation that I claim that WP:RS and WP:NOTNEWSPAPER should be ignored, that is nonsense. I have suggested that many of the sources that 86.176.153.183 is using are consistent with WP:RS and WP:NOTNEWSPAPER. In contrast, you appear to want to ban every sources that isn't as reputable as the BBC. I found it especially bemusing that you think announcements (such as who is up for eviction) in Big Brother's Bit On the Side were not sufficiently reliable.
• It's bad enough that you jump on 86.176.153.183 every time he says or does anything related to the Big brother article, but you have failed to provide any evidence of his misconduct and you are grossly misrepresenting what I have said in his defence. Deterence 06:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

The diffs are a the top of this DR, there for anyone to read you are just ignoring them. And you are deliberatley misinterapting the argument over Big Brothers bit on the side, the argument wasn't WP:RS it was WP:NOTE. As was put on the talk page, Big Brother, Big Brother's Bit on the Side and OK Magazine are all part of the same franchise, therefore WP:PRIMARY applies and additional sources should be included to establish notability. Just because something happens doesn't mean it requires entry in wikipedia, WP:NOTNEWSPAPER clearly applies in this case. This was pointed out to you in the talk thread but you again decided to ignore it, claiming stating If I see WP:NOTNEWSPAPER linked one more time, my head will explode. . I also fail to see, in conjuction with the diffs provided above, how you can take I will be doing this shortly and will expect the data to not be deleted as it will take a lot of work to recover these data in good faith and yet accuse editors such as myself and Leaky Cauldron of WP:BULLY. Carl Sixsmith (talk) 07:24, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone, and thanks for filing the dispute resolution request. I think this dispute is a tricky one, and that although on the surface it looks like a dispute about the conduct of the IP, if we dig a little deeper I see a dispute over content which we might be able to solve here. First of all, I agree with Carl Sixsmith that these edits () are unacceptable - we can't just go around and accuse well-meaning contributors of vandalism. I think another careful look at WP:VANDAL would be useful for the IP here. About the content - I see that you were disputing the level of detail to use in the article, but is this still a problem? And are there any other things being disputed? Once we have clearly defined the content that is disputed we can start to work towards a resolution. All the best — Mr. Stradivarius 09:15, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Mr. Stradivarius. Basically for me (others will have a differing view) the articles are over long and over detailed. The IP seems to think every occurrence in the house is worthy of mention in an encyclopaedia, including 'who kissed who' romances, minutia details of the tasks in the house and other details more befitting a fan page or blog site. Any attempt to trim this data is met with aggressive hostility and accusations of bullying and vandalism. I may be confusing the two issues here, possibly this report should be split into a content dispute and a behavioural dispute. Carl Sixsmith (talk) 09:24, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with CS regarding the content. There is no content policy for much of what IP86 wishes to include. Although the article is, by its nature, an unencyclopaedic, celebrity style subject, which link rot is likely to make useless in a few months, it cannot be allowed to exceed content policy, especially around WP:BLP where minor sexual innuendo is recorded without sourcing in a wholly unacceptable and potentially defamatory manner. I really would expect full community support for this - the policy and guidelines are unambiguous. All but 1 of a dozen or so regular or occasional contributors have commented on the article talk page about the undue level of content. In case CS, myself and others are acussed of attacking a new editor per WP:NEWBIES, that would be unfair. I have commended some of IP86s work even if I disagree with some of it and have even jokingly suggested that he might be due a barnstar for his efforts! Considerable effort has been expended in helping him, even to the extent of explaining how to find the ~ key so that they could sign. Relevant policy and guidelines have been repeatedly highlighted AND explained with examples. IP86 has improved (they have added, virtually without amendment, the weekly summary section and, as far as the article merits it, the content is not too bad). IP86's reactionary and possessive style to the removal of "his content" is however without justification. The handful of diffs. above should be sufficient to highlight this - there are many more on talk pages. Having been blocked for 3RR and received a final Admin. warning about incivility, I would not expect continued railing against fellow editors. All I want is for IP to agree to abide by content and behavioural policies and an admin. or impartial editor might be able to help with that. Regrettably User:Deterence could easily have helped with this but they have chosen instead to categorise diligent and policy-abiding editors as bullies. Until I read Mr. S. this morning I had intended to go to WP:WQA again. Leaky Caldron 10:07, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

If the incivility becomes a problem again, then I agree that taking it to WP:WQA would probably be best. I think that if we can sort some of the content issues out here, though, then that will mean a lot less friction and could avoid any further WQA trips. Normally, my suggestion would have been to have an RfC asking what level of detail should be included in the article. However, I see that you have already done that, and that unfortunately you haven't got any outside responses. Reading the RfC, it seems a little bit vague, and there is no specific voting section or discussion section. Maybe we could try a new RfC with some more specific wording? I can help you draft it here if you want. — Mr. Stradivarius 15:51, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

p.s. Here is an example of the kind of thing I mean. Of course the subjects are quite different so doing something like that would be no guarantee of getting more responses, but I think it's worth a try. — Mr. Stradivarius 15:55, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Given the relative stability of the article, which I believe was arrived with consensus, the onus needs to be on IP86 to justify a departure from the current, largely policy based version. The following editors have all previously expressed concern on the talk page about the extensive, non-encyclopaedic content additions prior to the major trimming exercise a couple of weeks ago carried out per WP:BOLD. Whether they can still be regarded as consensus supporters is, of course, entirely up to them. I make no presumptions. User:Carl Sixsmith, User:LadyofShalott, User: Dr Marcus Hill, User:Leaky caldron, User:Jandal3c, User:Msalmon, User:drmies. IP86 and User:Deterence take an opposing view. 7 v 2 would be a reasonable consensus but if IP brings their argument for non-notable, unsourced, trivia, blp-vio and fancruft here, I hope the consensus would be reinforced. Personally, I think the Admin. failure to follow-up this warning which anon has ignored, has emboldened IP86. He accepts advice from co-editors very badly and attacks other contributors mainly via edit summaries. An Admin. with an even hand might get through to them. Advice rather than sanctions with commitment from IP, although his behaviour is really poor considering the amount of advice they have received.Leaky Caldron 17:17, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll await the RfC. Please keep everyone informed when such a RfC is created. Deterence 02:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Touhou_Project

• Talk:Touhou Project (edit | subject | history | links | watch | logs)

Dispute overview

• Can you give us a quick explanation of what is going on? What is the issue you are bringing here?

Use of Touhou vs. Tōhō: Japanese romanization (subsection: “touhou/tōhō?”). I argue that while “Touhou” is generally used by the fandom everywhere, “Tōhō” is more appropriate due to Misplaced Pages's romanization guidelines. “Touhou” is being claimed for common name and official name, which I do not think is correct in this case. I do not see how it is possible to come to a resolution without a neutral opinion, preferably by someone not involved with the Touhou fandom, but proficient in Japanese and Misplaced Pages editing.

Users involved

• Who is involved in the dispute?

• _dk (talk · contribs)
• Robinchm (talk · contribs)

Also involved: IP addresses, including me

While I can certainly see why “Touhou” is preferable as I am also part of its fandom, I just don't see the reasons to use “Touhou” on Misplaced Pages as justifiable, given the reasons discussed. The article name was also changed from “Tōhō” long ago, but I don't agree with the reasons given there either, as those were blatantly wrong as I pointed out in this new discussion. The gist of the issue is that *everyone* writes Touhou, but I am under the impression that macrons are generally not used on computers for availability reasons, but it is still part of the Misplaced Pages standard. In other words, the Touhou fandom and I don't agree with the Misplaced Pages romanization standard, but we can't just ignore it on special occasions like these unless satisfactory justified. I'd argue that everything written on the internet these days will avoid use of ō, unless ō is specifically requested in a formal context, such as Misplaced Pages's system.

Also, while it is said that ZUN (creator) uses Touhou, I believe this merely to mean that he condones its use. He is Japanese and not exactly a linguist, and I don't see why he should care for non-Japanese semantics. Basically, there's no reason why he should have a strong opinion about the use of ō and he has yet to release a game outside of Japan.

• Have you informed all the editors mentioned above that you have posted this dispute? (If not, once you have informed them come back and replace the text "Not yet" with "Yes".)

Yes.

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Resolving the dispute

• Have you tried to resolve this dispute already? If so, what steps have you taken?

Discussed on talk page. Tried to rationalize with official Misplaced Pages guidelines, but still conflicting.

• How do you think we can help?

Neutral points of view on a low traffic article/article that attracts its own fandom.

158.37.73.31 (talk) 18:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Touhou_Project discussion

Discussion about the issues listed above take place here. Remember to keep discussions calm, brief, and focused on the issues at hand.

Hi there! Thanks for posting this dispute. There are some clear guidelines on Japanese romanization over at WP:MOS-JA. The basic gist of them is that we should use Hepburn romanization (i.e. Tōhō) except when there is a common usage in reliable sources that is different. Now it doesn't seem that there is an official romanization from the project website - correct me if I'm wrong here. Also, the sources in the article generally use "Touhou", but I also managed to find a book mention that uses Tōhō (it looks like the only relevant book on Google Books that is not a circular reference to Misplaced Pages, by the way). Also, the romanization on this official-looking website uses "toho" in the url. I can't see a clear case of one romanization being widely used, and because of this I think we should stick to using Hepburn here. Let me know what your thoughts are. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius 06:27, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

1. "The Silence of Sri Lanka". The New York Times. 20 June 2011. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
2. "Sri Lanka: Evidence that won't be buried". The Guardian. 15 June 2011. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
3. "A brother out of control". The Hindu. 16 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.

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