Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sarah777 2

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

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Sarah777 (talk · contribs · logs)

Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute

User:Sarah777 has been acting inappropiately with respect to British and Irish roads. They have appeared to show bias (possibly unintentionally), ignored normal methods of forming consensus and engaged in edit warring especially when it comes to making moves, been disruptive to make a point, has failed to insure her facts are correct both at WP:AN/I has, debatabely, not been WP:CIVIL.

Cause of concern

Showing Bias

Sarah777 has repeatedly argued that Nxx Irish roads are the primary topic, without giving any reason for primality, despite other Nxx roads existing which even a cursory glance shows have at least a possibility of being at least as notable. In stark contrast they have automatically assumed that British motorways aren't the primary topic and here has argued for all such pages to be disambiguated. Additionally they use the argument that an Irish road should be the primary topic as it has been there a long time (despite this not being support by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) but ignore tis when it comes to British motorways.

Irish roads are primary: [1] as well as various moves e.g. road, road and comments made in various move discussions (linked elsewhere).
British motorways are not: M1 motorway, M18 motorway as well as various moves the user made unilaterally e.g. M1 motorway, M2 motorway, M18 motorway and comments made in various move discussions (linked elsewhere).

Ignoring normal methods of forming consensus

Sarah777 has repeatedly moved articles without gaining consensus. In many cases it was obvious that these moves would be controversial given previous moves. Recently she has also directly asked an admin to make a move claiming an Irish road was clearly 'the primary topic' despite there being other roads with the same name and which given previous debates was clearly going to be controversial and so a requested move discussion should have been started.

Such moves are controversial: Lots of comments on Sarah777's talk page as well as page moves being reverted.
Still making such moves: This move was after the ANI thread on Sarah777's talk page - there had been other threads before that one as well.
Asking admin to make controversial move: [2]

Edit warring

Sarah777 has engaged in edit warring when it comes to moving pages. Specifically this has normally occured when a editor has reverted one of her moves as non-controversial (as the revert part of the bold, revert, discuss cycle) whereupon she has just made the move again without any attempt to form consensus despite the move obviously being controversial.

Example cycle: Move, Reverted, Moved again
Example cycle: Move, Reverted, Moved again

Being disruptie to make a point

A user reverted one of Sarah777 moves to restore the status quo and start a discussion on the issue. That editor then disambiguated all links to the page (they had remained incorrectly disambigauted for some time). Although the timing of this was somewhat suspect disambiguating links can only be a good thing for the encyclopedia as it makes life easier for the reader. Sarah777 then reverted all these changes as 'issue under discussion' thus making life more difficult for the reader. When informed that a user intended to reverse her reverts she shouted at the user not to do so despite giving no good reason.

Example original disambiguation (41 in total): [3], [4], [5].
Example Sarah777 reverting: [6], [7], [8].
Being informed that their reverts were going to be undone: [9]
Reply: [10], [11]

Has failed to insure her facts are correct at WP:AN/I

Sarah777 started a WP:AN/I thread without ensuring her facts were correct. She said a user (User:Dpmuk was an admin when they were not and also said that user was, she believed, a regular British roads editor, despite already having been informed that this was not the case. It would have been quick and easy to confirm these facts.

Being informed the user was not a British roads editor: [12]
Starting the AN/I thread: [13]

Being uncivil

Sarah777 regularly accuses users of showing a British bias despite no evidience for this and often for no other reason than being British. Additionally they have unnecessarily sworn and shouted at ither editors.

Unfounded accusation: [14]
Shouting: [15], [16]
Swearing: [17]

Applicable policies and guidelines

Desired outcome

Sarah777 agrees to

Try to consider whether other people would consider her actions biased and act accordingly (normally be seeking consensus) even though they personally may not consider the action to show bias.
Refrain from making any page moves of British or Irish roads (or roads related to this, i.e. roads with the same name as a British or Irish road) without first gaining consensus at a requested moves discussion.
Not edit war over article locations. If their move is reverted they agree they will consider it controversial and not move it back again without discussion.
Consider what's best for the readers and accept that sometimes this means they may have to accept something even though they question why it was done.
Ensure that her statements about other editors are correct.
Refrain from claiming other editors have a British bias and to remain civil even when annoyed.
Remember that primacy isn't decided by how long a particular topic has been at the primary title.

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

It seems to make more sense just to post a link to Sarah777's talk page, and some article talkpages, as otherwise there'd probably be upwards of 20 diffs - lots of editors have discussed this a lot. A lot of this is also caovered in the "causes of concern" section above. I know this isn't ideal but I'm also trying to finish this RfC quickly as I've already announced on WP:AN/I that I'm starting one. I only had the diffs left to fill in so doing it quickly has in no way affected what I've written.

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

See above.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute.

Dpmuk (talk) 12:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I'm not going to strike my certification as many of my concerns are still valid. However it would appear that I may have been mistaken in accusing Sarah777 of bias although in my defence this error was largely due to Sarah777 not being able to explain her reasoning satsifactory to me. With their very recent explanation at AN/I I see that my intpretation of them unintentionally showing bias was nearly definitely incorrect and rather they were simply mistaken in thinking that given the recent consensus moving the Irish roads articles was OK. I still think they made an error of judgement in assuming these moves would be uncontreversial but this is not showing bias (either intentionally or unintentionally) and so I believe that section is no longer relevant to this RfC/U. I only wish Sarah777 had sucessfully explained her actions earlier as a lot of this may have been avoided. Dpmuk (talk) 23:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)~~[reply]
Thryduulf (talk) 13:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC) (although my attempts have been far more limited than others)[reply]

---

Additional users endorsing this cause for concern.

Called her up on this, but don't really think that amounts to "trying and failing". 81.110.104.91 (talk) 17:26, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additional view by certifying editor Dpmuk

I have decided to add this here rather than above as another editor has already certified based on what I wrote above. When writing the above I concentrated on the conduct that was at issue and did not express my personal views, for example, as to the reasoning for it. Hence I include this below.

I sympatise with Sarah777's view and can understand why this whole situation is annoying for her. I agree that policy on this issue, namely in trying to chose a primary topic, may not be best suited to this situation - personally I agree that when two roads have the same name we should nearly always disambiguate (exceptions would have to overwhelmingly by the primary topic and be overwhelmingly supported) but as, in my opinion, this goes against policy I have not argued for it as I feel policy would need to change first. I can also understand their concerns about British point of view pushing, which in my opinion, has been happening and as pointed out by User:BrownHairedGirl below it is probably easier for British 'editors' to potentially win a discussion to their numerical suppority.

That said that does not in any way condone their actions. In particular I find their de-disambiguating of links to be unacceptable as this made life more difficult for our readers. If they had either not undertaken this course of action or realised that it was unacceptable I would not have felt the need to start this RfC/U as although I feel many of her other actions have been wrong I do not feel they were sufficietly serious to warrant an RfC/U. Given the background to the whole situation and how this could easily wind someone up, I suspect that many of the actions were probably done in the heat of the moment and without properly thinking them through and therefore instead of an RfC/U I'd have been happy dealing with these issues by normal discussion.

BrownHairedGirl has also pointed out to me that this RfC/U could be seen as picking on Sarah777 and I can certainly see how they could see it that way (it was a concern of mine when I started this RfC/U). I would point out that I believe that several users have acted inappropiately in this dispute and, in my opinion, several are close to having an RfC/U opened on them, and would even go so far as to say I'd endorse disputes on many editors (be they "Irish or British") if someone else was to start an RfC/U - I'd even be willing to endorse an RfC/U started by Sarah777 if they are so inclined and it has merit (and I suspect it probably would). As stated above the de-dismabiguating is the action that crossed the line for me and is the only reason I've started an RfC/U on Sarah777 rather than any other users. In my opinion several users have shown bias, ignored normal methods of forming consensus, edit warred and been uncivil. If there was an RfC/Multiple User then I would have started one, unfortunately RfC/Us concerns one user why RfCs aren't really for user conduct.

Given this whole sorry state of affairs I feel a seperate RfC (normal) should be started to discuss the naming of road articles in a far wider sense. Hoepefully by getting a far wider view we would avoid partisan views and arrive at a situation that suits everyone.

Users who endorse this summary:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpmuk (talk • contribs)

Response

"Sarah777 has repeatedly argued that Nxx Irish roads are the primary topic, without giving any reason for primality, despite other Nxx roads existing which even a cursory glance shows have at least a possibility of being at least as notable. In stark contrast they have automatically assumed that British motorways aren't the primary topic and here has argued for all such pages to be disambiguated. Additionally they use the argument that an Irish road should be the primary topic as it has been there a long time (despite this not being support by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) but ignore tis when it comes to British motorways."

This opening RfC statement is such a travesty, such an inversion of the facts, such a total ignoring of all the points I've made that I am simply not going to reply to it.

Users who endorse this summary:

Sarah777 (talk) 23:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Involved view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.

View by BrownHairedGirl

Sarah777's conduct has been inappropriate, but it is the product of understandable frustration rather than a desire to disrupt

I initially endorsed this RFC because I believe it raises important issues, and that it is broadly accurate so far as it goes. However, I have withdrawn that endorsement because I am concerned that by problematising only one editor in a wider dispute, it is likely to exacerbate tensions without resolving the wider problem. I would therefore encourage Dpmuk to withdraw this RFC and consider instead a wider RFC on the substantive issue of naming ambiguous road articles, and whether/when there should be a "primary topic".

I agree that Sarah777's conduct has been problematic, and that she has gone about things in the wrong way. However, it's clear from any reading of what has happened that she has lost her temper, and I think it's important to understand why a reasonable person may lose their temper in such circumstances.

The substantive issue is whether articles on ambiguously named roads should disambiguated, or whether one of them should be selected as a primary topic. The community appears not to have reached a wider consensus on the notion of a primary topic, and the result is that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is currently very vague on the criteria to be applied (see permalink to version at time of writing). It includes the sentence "If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)" ... and that's a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation -- it gives some editors the hope that a dispute will default to disambiguation, and other the expectation that the word "may" makes it legitimate to resolve a dispute as a "no consensus" in which a current primary topic remains at that position.

This produces bad outcomes, because it lends itself to a majoritarian (rather than a consensus) form of decision making.

In the case of roads, Sarah777 is concerned that wherever there is any ambiguity relating to the name of Irish roads, British editors insist on disambiguation ... whereas in respect of British roads, the same editors support making a British road the primary topic if they can possibly make a case for doing so. Because of the numerical dominance of British editors over Irish, this can lead to a form of systemic bias in which British roads are much more likely to be primary topics than Irish ones, regardless of the substantive merits of each case.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sarah's analysis of the problem. I do not agree with her prefered solution or with her conduct, but I ask that anyone looking at her conduct in this dispute examine very carefully the substance of her repeated complaints.

Rather than single out Sarah777 for reproach, I believe that it would be far more productive to try to actually resolve the substantive problem here, by taking a co-ordinated approach.

Roads are a particularly contentious case of disambiguation, for two reasons. First, the naming formula of a letter+number combination is used in many countries, and many countries share the same style (N1, A3, M7, etc) -- so this means that ambiguity does not occur with a country, but rather between countries. Secondly, major roads cover a large geographical area, so they end up on the watchlists of a large number of editors, as well as being within the scope of many wikiprojects. This brings a lot of editors into any RM discussion, many of them with a sense of ownership of one of the ambiguous topics, and who may not be familiar with the wider issues around disambiguation.

When those structural problems are thrown into the arena of British-Irish disputes (with an 800-year history of conflict), the result is a perfect storm such as we have just seen.

Unless we have a clearer framework for resolving these disputes, then I believe that the conflicts will continue, and that merely sanctioning Sarah777 (or any other individual) will do nothing to settle this issue. It may actually make things worse, because we have already had a problem of involved British admins using their admin tools (or threatening to use them) in ways which favour only one side of these disputes, and singling out one individual will just repeat that problem.

My preferred solution to this is simply to make a general rule that where two roads in different countries share the same name, the primary topic should be a disambiguation page. Any other approach leads to all sorts of value judgements being applied, because the suggested evidence at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is far too open to selective interpretation. Google hits vary massively depending on how the search is constructed, and counting the number of internal links tells us nothing about the actual significance of a topic -- its measures the extent to which Wikipedia editors have linked to a subject, and that is a perfect example of the problems addressed by WP:CSB.

Alternatively, if that suggestion is a step too far, then we could at least improve on the current vagueness by clarifying that a primary topic is one "where there is unambiguous evidence from multiple sources that one topic is significantly more important to readers than all other topics with which it is ambiguous". By explicitly setting a very high threshold for choosing a primary topic, we could avoid a lot of these disputes.

AFAICS, The Oxford DNB disambiguates all ambiguous names, and does not use present the reader with a "primary topic" where the name is ambiguous. If that works for a respected publication like the DNB, why can't we use a similar solution in a contentious area?

One of the problems here is that many editors seem to be unaware of the ways in which a disambiguation page at the primary topic location helps both readers and editors. For readers, it presents them with a short and simple menu of options, from which it's straightforward to select the right one ... but readers are also massively assisted by the way in which full disambiguation assists editors. Internal links to disambiguation pages are identified by bots and listed as a problem needing attention, and at they can then be easily fixed by any editor using navigation popups. The process of identifying misplaced links is massively more difficult when the dab page is not at the primary topic, and each one is much harder to fix. Most of this dispute could be avoided if editors placed a higher priority on fixing those ambiguities than on trying to defend the importance of "their" road.

Users who endorse this summary:

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Jmorrison230582 (talk) 14:15, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 15:36, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Other than the bit about my behaviour being problematic (after all I started this by highlighting what I believe is BHG's problematic beheaviour) I obviously agree with this. Sarah777 (talk) 23:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fmph (talk) 15:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse - the wider issue needs to be settled rather than singling out any individual editor. Mjroots (talk) 16:27, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.

Outside view by GoodDay

The primacy stuff should be thrown out the window. All the Irish motorways article titles should have (Ireland) next to them & all the England motorways article titles should have (England) next to them [seeing as there's Scotland motorways using (Scotland)].

Users who endorse this summary:

GoodDay (talk) 14:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. The unusual case of the M4 (England & Wales) can be accommodated; all roads should be dabbed; but if primacy applies for one country it should apply to all. Sarah777 (talk) 23:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view by MickMacNee

In this roads dispute, which she kicked off way back when on 7 September with this edit, Sarah had a choice. Either:

recognise that the prior Irish moves to NX (Ireland) made a long time ago that she then started to defend her actions on M roads with, had nothing to do with 'the British cabal' or the current editors who were now opposing her, recognise that there was no Wiki wide road naming guideline meaning that PRIMARY TOPIC and CONSENSUS were the only relevant polices for settling the dispute over M roads, and recognise that the only way to fix that if she thinks it is a problem is to work with civility, co-operation, and using consensus, to create a new guideline

or

throw a hissy fit and move war over the M roads, in the mean time accusing others of being in a British cabal (which is of course why they are not agreeing to a non-existent site wide consensus about road dabbing), and then going on a disruptive pointy edit spree 'correcting' the totally unrelated Irish N roads because of being opposed on the M1 which she now pointily declares as the new 'site wide consenus', having in the mean time done less than nothing to actually establish a site wide consensus (isn't there like, a Highways project around here somewhere?), because of course in her mind such a guideline could never be neutral because Wiki is infested with British hoardes

Sarah's behavioural problems are ingrained, and have never been sufficiently corrected, which is why she is always going to choose option two instead of option one. I fear this Rfc will be a waste of time, given its voluntary nature and reliance on Sarah realising she could be wrong. Infact, its way off base because it starts with the assumption that she doesn't know half the time that how she conducts herself is wrong, and just does it anyway. I mean, seriously, we're assuming she doesn't know CIVIL / 3RR / POINT by now?.

Users who endorse this summary:

Outside view by 81.110.104.91

Good contribution does not excuse bad behaviour. Applying principles you do not agree with in a provocative manner is anywhere between unhelpful and disruptive.

I mark this as "outside", since I seem less involved than BHG, and approximately as involved or less so than the two outside views immediately above.

The recent activity on the roads was summed up in this diff. This can be most easily read as:

I had an opinion, some people agreed with it.
Some other people, much more in fact, did not agree with it, and thus a result was achieved which I did not like.
Rather than accept that I had not prevailed in this instance, I then proceeded to apply this result, which I did not like, to other articles in such a way that other people would also not like.

At best, this is a serious misapprehension that Wikipedia is bound to uphold its precedents. At worst, it's escalating from merely stating a disagreement to illustrating it colorfully.

It's clear from Sarah777's history that she would rather ignore or confront than discuss (as evidenced by moving pages after having been reverted, even moving pages after other users had been reverted). It's clear that she blames some "British majoritarian POV" for her not getting her way (I understood the majority to be American and German). It's disheartening to see real-world conflict being played out on Wikipedia, even more so to see it introduced needlessly. It's downright sickening to see it brought up as an excuse for disruptive behaviour. Being frustrated is not carte blanche. We expect good contributions and good behaviour. Sarah777 has a long history of solid article contributions, but this does not excuse their behaviour of late.

Users who endorse this summary:

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