User talk:Martinp

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-- Cirt (talk) 19:33, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Did I, Geo Swan, comply with, or diverge from, BLP...

At en:Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Geo_Swan/Andrea_Werhun you wrote: "And I am inclined to err on the side of deleting here since Geo Swan tended to diverge from the community's opinion on what types of BLPs were sufficiently notable..."

Excuse me? Where did you get the idea I "tended to diverge from the community's opinion on what types of BLPs were sufficiently notable"?

If that were true wouldn't there be a long list of articles you could point to, that I had started, that were subsequently deleted, on notability grounds?

Please don't claim that a list of deleted articles on individuals who had been captives at Guantanamo would constitute that list. I started those articles almost 20 years ago. More particularly, I started them when the wikipedia's standards on inclusion, and the wikipedia's standards on what constituted a reliable source, were considerably different.

Yes, starting in March 2005, and for several years thereafter, I put multiple thousands of hours into creating wikipedia articles on individuals held at Guantanamo. Yes, it is true I did that. But, show me the respect of acknowledging that those articles measured up to the looser standards at that time.

I started the article on en:Murat Kurnaz in March 2005. If you look at that diff the article is unreferenced, or "referenced" only by external links, and it reads like it was created by a newbie.

1. No articles used references, in 2005, and the technical support for referencing did not yet exist. Rather than being backwards, as you suggest, I was an early adopter of referencing, when it became possible.
2. It read like it was created by a newbie, as I was a newbie, with less than 1000 edits.

Over the next several years en:OARDEC was forced to publish thousands of pages of internal documents, due to FIOA requests. I started reading those documents. I did rely heavily on them, in the 2005-2007 period. I did write some articles on individuals held at Guantanamo that relied almost exclusively on those documents.

I strongly dispute that, in doing so, I was diverging from the wikipedia community. Those OARDEC documents (ultimately 25,000 pages were published, and I read every one of them) were largely accepted, at the time I used them.

The wikipedia has undergone many significant changes since 2005. And, contrary to your assertion, I think my record shows I was right on board with the changes to more professionalism in referencing.

Around 15 years ago User:Fences and windows initiated a broad discussion on the use of those OARDEC documents. He or she suggested that they should not be considered PRIMARY references. In hindsight, this was part of the process of the tightening wikipedia's standards. In that discussion I argued for continuing to rely on them. But...

...But, when the result of the discussion was that they should not be relied on, I (1) stopped relying on them; (2) searched for, and found, alternate references, non-governmental references, to replace them. Frankly, this was a lot of work. So, I am sure you can understand why I am unhappy to read your characterization that I was flouting community decisions.

More recently, about six months before I was blocked, en:Derek Chauvin (police officer) slowly choked en:George Floyd to death, right in front of an outraged crowd of bystanders. en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Derek Chauvin (police officer) was an extremely fishy AFD - closed as a speedy delete after less than a day and a half.

I was not aware of the creation of en:Derek Chauvin (police officer) when I was an early contributor to en:Derek Chauvin. Multiple administrators warned me that my work on Derek Chauvin lapsed from BLP, and advised me, paraphrasing from memory, that I could be blocked, if I continued to work on it, because I should regard the speedy delete outcome of en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Derek Chauvin (police officer) as tantamount to a en:WP:SALT decision.

Around that time another controversy brewed up, connected to officer Chauvin - should there be any coverage of Chauvin's wife?

Chauvin's wife filed for divorce, shortly after her arrest. Her divorce lawyer told reporters she was applying to legally change her name - because she had been receiving death threats. Some contributors, sympathetic to her, argued that the wikipedia should have zero coverage of her because she was a classic case of a BLP1E. Other contributors pointed to a different section of BLP, intended to protect the identity of individuals where a court was trying to impose a publication ban. Forgive me for not looking it up.

My position was that, the wikipedia could decide contributors were prohibited from mentioning her, at all, but we needed to discuss why. IMO, neither BLP1E or that other provision, were really relevant. User:DGG, one of my mentors, made the point that the community could and sometime did make decisions to go beyond our actual policies. I thought a decision to prohibit mentioning Chauvin's wife would be an instance of that.

Why didn't BLP1E apply? A few years before the killing she won the Mrs Minnesota beauty pageant. Only winning a major pageant, like Miss America, would have made her notable enough for a standalone article, all by itself. But winning a lesser pageant does confer some notability, making her at least a BLP2E. Plus BLP1E merely makes recommendations on who merits a standalone article. It explicitly states that individuals who are not notable enough for a standalone article may, nevertheless, merit some coverage in a related article -- like the Derek Chauvin article.

With regard to her being someone who was trying to keep their name unpublished. Her married name was so widely known any prohibition on the wikipedia using it was completely pointless, and, IMO, exposed the wikipedia to ridicule. At the time a web search for " 'Derek Chauvin' wife's name " gave, IIRC 30,000 ghits. Even an 8-year-old child could find her married name, in less than 15 seconds. The name I would have supported protecting was the new alternate name she chose. The old aphorism about closing the barn door being pointless, after the horse has escaped, is relevant here.

I found that my attempts to have a discussion over whether we should or should not prohibit all mentions of her were being disrupted. Administrators were rev-deling my attempts to discuss this issue, in talk space, on the grounds that the raw-urls I used included her name in the URL's titles. No, I am not making this up.

Not only were my attempts to discuss this issue being disrupted, I received warnings I could be blocked for even trying to discuss whether her name could be covered, even if I didn't actually use her name.

If you were to ask any of the hot-headed admins if I was out of compliance with BLP, at that time, they would have told you I was.

As an administrator I would strongly discourage you from taking other people's opinions as to whether someone was out of compliance with BLP at face value. Other people, even other administrators, can offer you worthless opinions.

What was really going on with the threats I received over working on the Derek Chauvin article?

I think some administrators, who read the initial reports of Chauvin's killing of Floyd anticipated a storm of interest, a storm of newcomers, and anticipated edit-warring, vandalism, POV-pushing. I think they decided that administrators should take steps to prepare.

So far, so good. I like the ideas administrators decided to take steps to confront edit-warring, POV-pushing and vandalism early.

However, I think that the appropriate response would have been to make a schedule, to make sure at least one of them was "on duty", looking at the article, 24x7, for the next couple of days.

What I think the record suggests is that a group of administrators went deep into off-wiki collusion, decided that the en:Derek Chauvin (police officer) article had to go, making the actual indefensible en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Derek Chauvin (police officer) AFD a cruel pro-forma charade. With the rare exception of OFFICE actions, wikipedia decision-making is supposed to take place on talk pages, or in other public on-wiki fora. Wikipedia decision-making is not supposed to take place on off-wiki administrator IRC channels. There should be no AFD that are really pointless charades to rubber stamp decisions a group of administrators made, off-wiki.

After I told the non-administrator who place the G4 speedy on the en:Derek Chauvin article that, since he had never seen the original article he had no idea whether it was merely a recreation of en:Derek Chauvin (police officer), one of those administrators told me that, since I had never seen it, I could not say it wasn't simply a recreation

What happened with coverage of Derek Chauvin's wife?

There is a wikidocument at en:Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#Righting_great_wrongs, aka RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Early in my wikipedia career one of the Guys recommended I review it. I am glad I did. It contains excellent advice. My personal theory as to why administrators were twisting the wikipedia's rules like a pretzel is they had not read RIGHTGREATWRONGS, and were trying to prohibit mentioning her out of highly misplaced solidarity.

I think they assumed that, since Officer Chauvin was a killer, he must also have been an abusive spouse, and that his wife must really hate him, and that his arrest was her chance to get away from a man she hates.

I think they wanted the wikipedia to take the symbolic step of prohibiting all mention of her out of misplaced solidarity.

The judge approving their divorce sent them back to the drawing board. She rejected their first divorce settlement. She used legal wording legal reporters had to explain to their readers. Paraphrasing from memory - the legal reporter's interpretation was that judge had accused Chauvin and his wife of agreeing to a disproportionate split of the martiral assets, that she considered fraudulent. When OJ Simpson was acquitted one of his victim's surviving family sued him, in a wrongful death suit. Simpson lost. Goldman's family was awarded millions, on paper, at least.

Reporters explained the divorce judge was implying that racist Derek Chauvin wanted to transfer the bulk of the marital assets to his ex-wife, so that when George Floyd's family sued him, he could say he was broke.

If your assertion that I was a big violator of BLP is based on the opinions expressed by these administrators, you trusted the wrong people. The Derek Chauvin article has been read over 9 million times. Those administrators who claimed I was violating policy by writing about him were clearly wrong. Similarly, those administrators who claimed I was violating policy by wanting to discuss whether Chauvin'resps wife? I think they were clearly wrong too. Her name is mentioned in the Derek Chauvin article now. Reason has prevailed. There was never a good policy based justification to prohibit all coverage of her.

Now, Martinp, if you had a serious concern, years ago, based on your own observation, that I was showing a pattern of diverging from community consensus on BLP, do you think that you, Martinp, should have voiced this concern, on User talk:Geo Swan, at that time? Geo Swan (talk) 16:30, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Geo Swan, I was surprised to see this show up on Meta rather than en:Wiki, and over 6 months after that discussion. I do not recall the details of that discussion, but note you are community banned on en:Wiki in part for concerns about your BLP editing. Accordingly, I don't think it is fruitful to continue this discussion here. Martinp (talk) 22:04, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

• Okay, you don't want to continue, here? Then I'll be brief.

1. Of course I couldn't leave you a note on en.wiki, as you noted I am blocked there.
2. Yes, my note comes 6 months after that discussion. Did nominator User:Geschichte have a good faith obligation to leave a heads-up on en:User talk:Geo Swan, to inform me of en:Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Geo Swan/Andrea Werhun?

   He or she neglected to leave that heads up. I learned of the deletion through this note, which was left for me on July 29th. So, that is why I am responding to your comment today, not six months ago.

3. Paragraphs 4-14, above, address concerns about my BLP editing. You are a volunteer. All WMF contributors are volunteers. You don't have to read those paragraphs. But, if you aren't going to read them then I would really appreciate it if you stopped repeating claims other people made to you, that you did not check for yourself. Geo Swan (talk) 03:57, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

• A final note. I believe what you saw at WPANI was not a true community consensus. I believe what you saw was someone rallying a platoon of meat-puppets. Wasn't the real accusation against me, at WPANI, that I created an attack page, to get even with someone against whom I had a real world grudge? As I noted above, none of the contributors who endorsed blocking me, for that reason, seem to have been prepared to take even 30 seconds to look at the Dan Trotta article themselves. The few people who said they did look at it all said it was not an attack page and was not a valid justification for a block. Geo Swan (talk) 07:51, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

  Geo Swan, I recognize being ejected from the wp:en community must be frustrating, since you were a long-time contributor. That said, you need to let go. The treatment of pages you started there, in any name space, is no longer your concern.

  The decision to ban you was not taken lightly, and included a range of participants and viewpoints. I have not followed the details, nor do I plan to. I trust the consensus of the community. You have started many articles, but many of those (over 700) were subsequently deleted, the majority of those BLPs. Your ban was over conduct, but at its genesis had something to do with a BLP on which you did not accept consensus from others. Therefore, prima facie, your approach to BLP is not (potentially - has not developed - I don't have an opinion on that) reliably in step with the community's. Therefore, it would be imprudent for wp:en to keep floating around an article draft, in your userspace, without oversight from others, that is a BLP. Nothing personal about it, just risk management for en:wp.

  I am writing this in spite of my better judgment since I see a fellow human being and long-time editor who clearly feels hard done by, and that makes me sad. I'm hoping this helps you understand why I wrote what I did, and stand by it. That said, it seems one of the challenges you have had on wikipedia is letting go when things don't go your way, and extending that into cross-wiki discussions. Please recognize that decisions on en:wp are no longer your concern. Please also do not contact me about this specific issue again. Martinp (talk) 10:12, 3 August 2024 (UTC)