Wikipedia:Community enforceable mediation/Requests

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WaverlyR (talk · contribs) and Burks88 (talk · contribs)

WaverlyR, sign here: WaverlyR

Burks88, Sign here: Burks88

Discussion

About The Best American Poetry series. We continue to disagree about the editing of this article. We have been through a RFC and 3O (and 4O) and those offering 3O also disagree over NPOV, NOR, and sources and citations. There is also problem with the tone of the talk with one editor speculating (on the RFC and user talk pages) about the identity of the other and characterizing the others motives and behavior.Given the level of animus, there is a need for help from a disinterested party.

I'm not directly a party to this, but a bit of background might be useful. The contributions history of both parties show they're essentially single-purpose accounts, one of which, WaverlyR, very ably and very forcefully defends David Lehman, the editor of The Best American Poetry series (BAP), and the other, Burk88, about as ably and about as forcefully points out certain conflicts of interest on the part of Lehman, the series editor, and the poets he's invited as guest editors of the series. Both WaverlyR and Burk88 appear to be extremely well informed about the series. The series is a very big fish (influential, reputation-making) in the relatively small pond of American poetry. Shortly after I created articles about the series and individual years in it, I found out about the allegations of cronyism against the editors, and I included some of that information. WaverlyR then joined Wikipedia and deleted those allegations, and I came to agree with her that the sourcing on them was not good enough (they all came from blogs and message boards such as sethabramson.com and foetry.com). Burks88 has since joined Wikipedia and has been essentially battling over the same ground with WaverlyR, but he's better informed about contemporary poetry than I am and he's come up with some better sources and some indisputable facts. (It is not disputable, for one thing, that series editors, including Lehman, have been selecting their wives as authors of some of the "best American poetry" of the year.) Burk88 has also been adding information about the inclusion of poems in the series by people who were thanked by Lehman in the acknowledgements sections of other books in the series. The validity of this information is still in question, and WaverlyR, as ever, disputes it. To the extent that this is a content dispute, I suppose I'm now forced to take it to WP:Biographies of living people because the issues are a little knotty. Editors at this forum might find it useful to remind both parties about how to get along. Both parties are intelligent, kowledgeable, articulate and have each improved the BAP series article, but their contentiousness has taken up my time and that of other editors, and they haven't exhibited much of an interest in Wikipedia beyond this dispute. Noroton 18:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

N, that's not an unfair account of things; I guess I'd just note that I came on Wikipedia and worked on articles on Franz Wright and the Neal Stephenson trilogy The Baroque Cycle, and then got side-tracked on this nonsense. WaverlyR has never edited any article on Wikipedia unrelated to the Best American Poetry series--unless you consider editing an entry on the Kellett Fellowship to include the name of the series editor of Best American Poetry an unrelated edit. I also think the history shows that my edits have often been style-related and organizational, and not merely an attempt to insert certain types of information into the entry--for instance, I was the first to agree with WaverlyR that certain allegations were not properly cited, or accurate (specifically, the lack of diversity in the series and the lack of experimental poetry) and remove them. When asked to improve cites I've done so, rather than inserting material obviously unsuited to the article (as I mentioned above, citing the series editor and his wife as valid "critics" of the series). I'm also not just some mud-slinger: I own every single volume of the series ever released (since 1988), and in fact WaverlyR has disputed the implications of some of the data taken from the source material but has never suggested (nor could s/he) that I've falsified even a single bit of information. I've used the source material as my guide, always. I can honestly say that while I feel upset toward this other editor because of his/her militancy on "selling" the series to the public, the most troubling thing is his/her unwillingness to engage on why some of these edits were made. Why are David Lehman and his wife "critics" of the series? Why was a section listing 300 contributing journals never seen as necessary by this editor (for weeks and weeks) until 24 hours after the "critical reception of the series" section was updated to include verifiably-source "negative" criticism of the series? And why did this massive section suddenly warrant being placed ahead of a section ("Critical reception of the series") which has been in place just about since this entry was started on WP? Burks88 19:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The speculation on identity was immediately removed (by me) when another editor pointed out it was inappropriate, which I had not realized, and said so. The mistake was apologized for and has not been repeated since then, and so is (I would have thought) irrelevant to where we are now with this situation, which I agree is intolerable. WaverlyR has consistently edited this entry to remove all content s/he perceives as unfavorable to the subject, replacing it with material which clearly violates neutrality. By way of example, WaverlyR once inserted a glowing review of the subject (a series of anthologies) by its editor into the "Critical reception of the series" section of the article. S/he just today attempted to insert a glowing review of the subject by the wife of the series editor into that same section. Other tactics have included introducing new, cumbersome, and unnecessary sections to the article (like a section listing all 300 literary journals which have contributed poems to the series since 1988) in an effort to push further down the page the "Critical reception of the series" section--which contains content WaverlyR has consistently tried to edit out despite more than one editor disagreeing with her. There's more, of course, but I'll stop there--to the extent I've questioned, and do question, the motives of WaverlyR, it is because I have consistently tried to open a dialogue with this person to understand their perspective and they have consistently refused to converse. When someone refuses to engage other editors and yet is making wholesale changes to an article other editors (more than one) disagree with (including repeatedly simply undoing all their changes), it's a natural reaction, I think, to wonder what the heck is going on. Burks88 18:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A quick review of the Best American Poetry series history page would show that my edits have been to remove information not properly sourced or cited and those relying on OR. Those giving comment or a 30 have pointed out more of the same. I have not attempted to excise negative comments that are properly cited. And I have added material to give balance. Note the number of times that the 30s have prefaced their comments with "I have to agree with WaverlyR" or some variation thereof. Finally, the tone of Burks88 comments, on the article's talk page, on mine, and in his or her edit summaries has been disrespectful at best. While Noroton has done a lot to improve the discussion he or she should avoid assuming my gender, and know that I have not disputed the information about including those thanked by Lehman; I have made the list complete by adding names Burks88 left out and clarified the language to reflect what is in the volumes. I have in mind the interested but uninformed reader and what he or she might infer about BAP after reading the article. I readily admit to being partisan here: the article should be balanced and give verifiable information. WaverlyR 18:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mediator acceptance

aeroblue (talk · contribs) and npsguy (talk · contribs)

aeroblue, sign here:

npsguy, Sign here:'npsguy 12:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)'[reply]

Discussion

aircraft noise

NPSGuy's position

If I have offended Aeroblue in anyway I apologize. The question here is: "is the placement of Readington Township's elementary school a subject relating to Aircraft noise?" I believe it is not for I know of no noise issue regarding the school and aircraft noise coming from Solberg airport. If there were any issues whatsoever, they would be very small compared to other places. As I explained in the discussion page for ‘Airport noise’, there are a number of schools in New Jersey that have recently been sound proofed or in the process of being sound proofed from the much larger and noisier Teterboro Jetport. Solberg is a very small general aviation airport in a rural area. It almost exclusively flies small private propeller aircraft. As I showed using a Google satellite map on the 'Aircraft Noise' discussion page, the runway that Aeroblue talks about is a grass runway, it is not even paved. Using the Readington school as an issue relating to 'Aircraft noise' is a exceptionally bad example.

Please forgive me for saying this but I am concerned that Aeroblue's post is an attempt at using Wikipedia as a political tool and his choice of Readington schools is not objective as a Wikipedia contributor should be. There are three reasons why I say this:

First, Readington is currently in a long running legal and political battle with Solberg Airport. The Gannett owned newspaper ‘The Courier News’ has a very recent article here ([1]) about the current legal proceedings. One of the criticisms that the Solberg Airport affiliated group ‘Partners at Solberg’ has used in the past has been the placement of the elementary school. Anyone from Readington (like me) and seeing the same criticism here makes one worry about the neutrality of Wikipedia.

Second, Aeroblue is a PAC/lobbyist for the aviation industry and one of his legislative goals is to push laws to remove schools from surrounding airports. On his website www.aeroblue.org at [2] is a handout sent to NJ legislators that accuse NJ municipalities of putting schools next to airports to stop the airports from expanding. Aeroblue proposes closing these schools down as shown here:

Update Airport Safety Zoning Act of 1983: Updates MLUC and Requires NJDOE to prevent construction or expansion of schools located near airports and runway end zones based on NJDOT classification of airport. Requires NJ Office of State Planning to require compliance with Airport Safety Zoning Act during Municipal Master Plan Review. Schools located in these zones delineated at existing airports in 2006 should be divested by December 31st, 2031 to improve school safety unless approved by both legislative bodies.

Readington is the first township named in his list and I fear this Wikipedia article is being used to give his legislative push some form of credibility. I do not believe anyone at Wikipedia would want this.

Third, the Aeroblue.org PAC founder is also the director of the Solberg airport affiliated ‘Partners at Solberg’. As you can see here [3] and here [4] His affiliation with the Solberg airport is why I believe he chose Readington in this article. It seems to have less to do with 'Aircraft noise' and more to do with using it as a political tool for his various affiliations.

Now there are a number of schools in this country and even the state of New Jersey that have issues with aircraft noise. If Aeroblue wishes to address those schools that have been recently sound proofed that would ok with me. The Readington elementary school that Aeroblue uses as an example is a very "bad" example of the issue of 'Aircraft noise'.

npsguy 00:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um... Mediators,

I am a little confused about this process. I signed the mediation agreement above and I posted why I removed what Aeroblue said in the article.

Instead of commenting here Aeroblue posted back on the talk page instead. I thought that the purpose of this mediation page was to come to an agreement?

If I am breaking the vandalism rule that Aeroblue claims I am on the other page I am sorry. I can only say that I removed something I thought was irrelevant to a topic and that I thought Aeroblue was using for his organization's political end.

npsguy 03:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User continutes to violate Wiki rules on deleting posts, reverting, and posting false, personal and defamitory information unrelated to the topic.

The topic is worthy of discussion, and AeroBlue feels that while Aircraft Noise is controversial, there are worthy and beneficial solutions available. NPSguy continues to delete this information.

I would like to suggest a mediator to monitor this section in general, and this user in particular.

AeroBlue 15:50, 16 September 2007 (UTC)aeroblue[reply]

Mediator acceptance

Not accepting this yet, hoping the editors understand what this venue is. I don't arbitrate anything. You have the option to impose enforceable remedies on yourselves here, but you have to do the hard work of choosing them and you both have to agree to them. This could be something like a one revert rule. We're not out to determine who's right or wrong so much as agree to disagree and contain the damage. Is that what you want? Durova^Charge! 04:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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