Wikipedia:AMA Requests for Assistance/Archive2

January 2005

User:Eddieuny re anon vandalism on Quixtar

I am not a partisan in favor of the Alticor complex (I am a former distributor, a very long time ago for a very short time.), but there seems to be an edit war going on over the Quixtar article. Perhaps someone more knowledgable than I could take a look and perhaps see if the person who keeps changing Quixtar to Quickscam and Amway to Scamway can be persuaded to move the dispute to discussion; if it keeps up, perhaps editing could be frozen to allow heated passions to cool.

Above posted by User:Eddieuny. Numerous anons from different sources are editing the words in the article to pejorative plays on the names of the companies; clearly vandalism. Not sure what Eddieuny's relation to the article is, unless he is a proxy for User:The Mule. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 23:24, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
- I'm not a proxy for anyone. I was looking at the article and saw that it kept changing all the time, so I thought this was the procedure to let someone more knowledgable know that there might be a problem. I'm a little new to Wikipedia, so forgive me if I violated the conventions. 18:26, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)User:Eddieuny
  - For the record: no, I'm just trying to identify your relation to the problem. Normally advocates deal with inter-user conflicts, and IMO it helps to measure what the conflict is and what your involvement in it is. I'll be on your Talk page. - Keith D. Tyler [flame]
Gave the user appropriate advice, which was well received. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 01:21, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

User:Malbear and VfDs submitted by OneGuy

OMG! Help Help!. Revisionist attack on all articles which describe discrimination by Muslims against people of their own country. New enough to wiki to not know the procedure in this case but after grepping through the dispute res stuff this may be a good place to start. Anyone can help? Going through an entire class of articles and slapping a VFD on every one simply because you dislike the content is probably not what this space is for right?--Malbear 06:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This seems to stem from a large number of articles by User:RK created straight from U.S. government texts with names like "Status of religious freedom in (name of country)", mostly for Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, as well as similar articles named "Discrimination against non-Muslims in (insert Arab or heavily Islamic country here)" (most of which have been moved or merged into articles with names like the previous example).

Note that each of these articles, which are the ones indicated by the complainant, seem to have been settled with a rename and redirect. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 21:51, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, the user says he is "new enough to not know the procedure" -- his WP activity actually predates mine by a few months. I am responding to the user. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 22:39, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
No response from user after 10 days. Closing. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 01:21, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Robert_the_Bruce et al vs. User:Exploding Boy (RFA)

I have a problem with Exploding_Boy in that he is hell bent on pursuing action against me at the highest level, RfC to Ac and then back to AC while refusing mediation. Now simply put I believe that EB has a specific agenda here in that he wants to force his POV on the articles of his choice. Currently JakeW and myself appear to frustrate his aims and as such he intends to attempt to neutralise us. There is currently an AC matter open which is a shocker. I request two levels of support. One, challenging the process of the AC in this particular case and secondly in addressing the situation which exists between myself and EB. Thank you in anticipation. - Robert the Bruce 18:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have responded preliminarily to this user. Wally 20:39, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have accepted this case and am in the process of preliminary research. Wally 01:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

User has asked that advocacy end in favor of self-representation. Wally 04:43, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

December 2004

Ray Foster vs. Dcreemer re Deaf

I'm not sure how to proceed. I'm new to Wikipedia and I'm working hard to read and understand the overall vision, style and intent. But I have come up with a problem. In the "Deaf" article, there were things written there that were terribly inflammatory, patently false, blatently prejudiced and downright sinister and they were represented as the point of view of culturally deaf people. Of dispute right now is "Views of Treatment" to which I contributed a major re-write.

You should understand that I'm a deaf person who takes a cultural view of deafness. Almost all of the the article is terribly offensive to deaf people who share my view, yet the people who originally created the content did decide to address the view of the culturally deaf. The problem is they seemed to have fabricated or fantasized as to what the view of culturally deaf people actually was. Fine. I've posted extensively updates but there is this one section that another contributor posted a NPOV notice on.

I have no problem whatsoever in resolving it, but all I get is utter, profound silence. I posted an offer on the article's talk page to the effect that I was willing to collaberate on creating a page that was a fair representation of the two views, but no one has responded to my suggestion or even expressed any further interest in the page. I told people what I was willing to do, but since I didn't want to wait forever to get feedback I also included a deadline for responding to my offer. I said that if no one responded saying they would like to resolve the issue, I would assume my work was satisfactory and remove the NPOV notice.

But then I realized that maybe I wasn't supposed to set the rules on removing the NPOV notice. That's why I'm seeking input now. What does one do when no one responds to an appeal to resolve the problem? My intention is to completely rewrite the entire article and give it a true neutrality rather than having an article in which I have to represent the culturally point of view as a reaction to negative assertions the orginal authors believed to be benign and acceptable assumptions that could be embraced by anyone without offense. I'd be happy to discuss this via email. Thank you.

Ray Foster 17:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I know that your situation is very hard and uncomfortable to you and wanted to advice you. As you're new to Wikipedia, surely you don't know anything about our dispute resolution system. We've got four 'resorts' (I like to talk about 'stages') in this system:

Informal discussion (called negotiation or conciliation): discuss this with the other users and try to get consensus.
Request for Comment: You list the page into the Request for Comment page and other users (voluntarily) get into the discussion and try to help.
Request for Mediation: This consists in a mediated discussion between both parties. The mediator (a member of the Mediation Comitee) will only mediate, he/she won't judge.
Request for Arbitration: This should only used for extremely complex cases where anything above has failed. Here, the whole Arbitration Comitee will take a decision about the topic.

About advocates we only represent parties, we can't take any decision, but you can request one when you want. Sadly, I can't help you (I'm in a very hard case now), but by putting the request here, the AMA will put you in contact with another advocate. --Neigel von Teighen 18:05, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll look into this a bit, as I've no current cases (others to which I've enquired have been met with no reply). I'll contact this user as well. Wally 08:04, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have offered to represent User:Dcreemer, the other party in this issue. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 01:05, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

"lugnut" (anon) vs. Francs2000

I need some help from someone. I recived several complaints about me messing up pages or vandelizing (however you spell that) I have never, nor would I ever, mess up someone elses work. I live alone. There is 0% chance of anyone else using this computer. My name is Howard Masterson. [phone number deleted - KDT] My E-Mail is lugnut@ccrtc.com. I would like to become a member of this site, but there are some important problems involving your "administrators"(however you spell that) that need to be addressed first. Thank-you lug.

Above was posted by anon 209.132.175.22. Am replying via email to ask for more information. Anon IP has only one other edit in history, same date as this one, on admin User:Francs2000's talk page (see post: [1], and user's response at [2]). - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 18:23, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
I have made contact with this user. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 05:57, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

I could not uncover any additional information about this issue. I could not convince the anon to register as a user so as to track any future issues. There was some difficulty in receiving responses from the user. I believe this was probably a misinterpretation of comments left for an anon account which the user happened to hold temporarily due to dynamic IP. My SQL request to help track down possible sources of the problem was never answered. Closing. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 18:51, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Spinboy re VfD on Students' Society of McGill University

I created the article Students' Society of McGill University after seeing quite a few listings in the Category:United Kingdom Students' Unions and created other articles myself. Now it's being voted on for deletion. I don't agree with this as there are many other articles, not created by me, on students unions. I'd appreciate some help. Thank you. Spinboy 20:56, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

For the record, this article survived VfD. The advocacy guidelines do not mention article advocacy in VfD. I would argue that this is not an appropriate duty for a member's advocate. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 01:23, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

I think that is a good issue to consider when deciding if advocacy work is appropriate when people list their disputes here. We can help people who have problems understanding the dispute resolution process or who need someone who can help them articulate their position when dealing with other members who may have more experience; so it is important to make sure that within some request for acting as some kind of mediator there is not also a request just to help the individual with understanding the process or what they are trying to acheive, that, IMHO, is within the balliwick of advocacy here. Remember someone is reaching out to our association because they can't figure out how to do it themselves, so even a little informal communication may be very helpful to them without some declaration of full "advocacy" status on their behalf. Your coordinator. — © Alex756 06:08, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

November 2004

DnB re United Nations Children's Fund

I would appreciate some assistance in resolving a dispute - see Talk:United Nations Children's Fund. I have tried hard to engage in a discussion and to reach agreement on removal of a section of the article which is unfair and inappropriate, in my view. It appears that someone is holding this article hostage in relation to a broader argument. They refuse to agree to the deletion even though they appear to agree that it is inappropriate, unless other similar pieces are removed from other articles. This does not seem reasonable. Unable to persuade I deleted the offending section, which was immediately reverted. I don't want, and don't have time, to get into a revert war. i have posted a reference on the disputes resolution page, but would appreciate any expert advice and assistance. thank you. --DnB 23:54, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This user was never responded to until three months after the fact when I stumbled on this. Regardless, by then the conflict was resolved; the user against whom he had a complaint is currently under enforced year-and-a-half ban.