Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Workshop

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk) Case clerks: AGK (Talk) & MBK004 (Talk) Drafting arbitrator: Coren (Talk)

Proposals from non-arbitrators

I haven’t been involved in an arbitration case before, so I’d appreciate an explanation of how this part of the process works. Is it necessary for one of the users involved in this case to make a proposal here before the arbitrators can consider it? Or can the arbitrators come up with their own proposed decisions based on the evidence that’s been submitted, if they think there’s an appropriate solution that nobody else has suggested? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

In general, the arbitrators come up with their own proposals, although reasonable suggestions from the parties (and others) are considered. At least, that's the way I remember it being done. If you want something definite, you can ask a specific arbitrator or former arbitrator. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Generally there is a rehash of motherhood and apple pie, an assortment of slaps on the wrist to stiff boots to backsides for individual editors, and life resumes. I have yet to see an arbitration that does otherwise, despite efforts to lobby for specific measures which (IMHO) would take heat out of the system. That's not to say ArbCom might not be open to more unique solutions in this case. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:39, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Essays

Here are a few excerpts from two Wikipedia essays. For the record, I do not refer to any individual as a troll, that would be a personal attack. According to WP:TROLL

Trolling is any deliberate and intentional attempt to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia for its editors, administrators, developers, and other people who work to create content for and help run Wikipedia. Trolling is a violation of the implicit rules of Internet social spaces and is often done to inflame or invite conflict.

A troll deliberately exploits tendencies of human nature or of an online community to upset people.

The basic mindset of a troll is that they are far more interested in how others react to their edits than in the usual concerns of Wikipedians: accuracy, veracity, comprehensiveness, and overall quality.

The idea of defining trolling is in many ways comical at best. The nature of trolls is to slip from any definition intended to constrain their actions and to find new and innovative ways to annoy.

The archetypal example of trolling is the deliberately inflammatory edit or post — saying something controversial specifically to cause a flame war. Inflammatory edits usually come from users who have a minority or controversial opinion and who sincerely believe that this view is inadequately represented by Wikipedia, and therefore will seek reasonable ways to properly represent their views

Often, racist trolls, when confronted, will accuse Wikipedia of Marxism or political correctness.

On creative trolling

The nature of trolling is to be disruptive, and one of the most disruptive things that can be done is to find new ways to cause trouble that are not quite against the rules.

if a user is being continually disruptive, and no amount of politeness, consensus, mediation, or anything else is reining them in, they are trolling. When a user, in a conflict of any sort, insists on the letter of a rule while grossly violating its spirit, this is often a sign of trolling.

The reason I bring up this essay, is because we have the subject of race and intelligence, and a highly controversial hypothesis promoted by a minority of scholars. What we know from everyday life is that attempts to give undue prominence to the hereditarian position will predictably provoke strong reactions from many members of the community. We have some editors who know fully well that giving undue prominence to a minoritarian and controversial hypothesis will indeed provoke a strong reaction, but continue to do so.

According to WP:GREATWRONGS

Wikipedia is a popular site and appears high in the search engine rankings. You might think that it is a great place to set the record straight and Right Great Wrongs, but that’s not the case. We can record the righting of great wrongs, but we can’t ride the crest of the wave because we can only report that which is verifiable from reliable secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion: what matters is not truth but verifiability

So, if you want to spread the word about a theory/hypothesis/belief/cure-all herb that has been unfairly neglected and suppressed by the scholarly community, on Wikipedia, you’ll have to wait until it’s been picked up in mainstream journals

Wikipedia is behind the ball - that is we don't lead, we follow

We can probably all agree that the hereditarian position, as interpreted by Rushton, Jensen and others, does not have mainstream acceptance. So trying to prop up the minority "hereditarian hypothesis" is like swimming against the tide and doing so will invariably result in a lot of friction. The sort of friction that resulted in numerous edit wars, name calling, megabytes of text on talk pages, a number of banned users, two failed mediations and now arbitration. Hypothetically, if the hereditarian hypothesis did have mainstream acceptance from the scholarly community, there would be much less friction, or no friction at all, when trying to give it prominence in the race and intelligence article. My suggestion to adherents of the hereditarian hypothesis is to not turn Wikipedia into a battleground. Let the scientists do all the fighting, instead of us Wikipedians. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:20, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, waponda, this describes the behavior of people on both the genetic and the environmental side - what you have written above is exactly the complaints I have with the behavior of Mathsci, Enric, and Hypocrite. In fact, though Occam et al have the weaker position with respect to content, Mathsci et all indulge in more seriously troll-like behavior. it's just simply neither fair nor accurate to lay he entirety of the blame on either side of this debacle. that's why I keep stressing the need for ArbCom to come down heavily in support of CIV and CONSENSUS: the problem needs to be resolved on that level. --Ludwigs2 13:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I think we can agree to disagree on one thing. Ludwigs, Captain Occam and friends believe that everything was fine until Mathsci came along, and Mathsci is responsible for most or all of the problems dogging the R/I article. OTOH, I believe that Mathsci is not the problem, and that problems with R/I issues go back to before Mathsci's involvement. The current round of hereditarian advocacy probably started in september 2009 with DJ's edits, Captain Occam and DK got involved in October, and later CO invited VA to join in. If Captain Occam et al. had not gotten involved in the R/I article at all, then I think we can assume that Mathsci would not be involved either. Mathsci is not an SPA, and I see no evidence of him advocating any racial theories. So what I see is that Ludwigs, Mathsci and a few other editors have beefs that originated from other controversies, but these beefs have brought to the R/I article. Enric and Hypocrite are not actively editing R/I article, so I fail to see how they can be considered a long term problem in this controversy. It would seem necessary to separate the conflicts you, Mathsci and others have from the underlying problem, and deal with this conflict separately.

I won't dispute that there has been incivility from both sides. However, because there have been deliberate attempts to stir up a hornet's nest by advocating a controversial theory on an already volatile page, incivility should not be unexpected. My point is, trolling is a deliberate attempt to annoy members of the community. The manner in which certain editors have approached this controversial subject is indeed likely to provoke such strong reactions. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

(outdent)

I think that you (like most of the people in this debacle) have misunderstood what I'm trying to say. In point of fact, we have two entirely distinct problems here. Both of them are serious problems, and they need to be disentangled and dealt with separately or there will be no peace here. I'll lay them out here side by side, so that we can all see them properly:

The two problems.
A politically tangled content problem.	A pervasive and destructive behavioral problem.
Problem Unwarranted advocacy and tendentious editing practices. Main culprits Occam and Mikemike (and at the furthest extreme TechnoFaye), though there is advocacy to a lesser extent on all sides. As I see it, this problem has the following components: The strength and significance of research showing a race and intelligence relationship has been overstated The article has been narrowly construed in a way that makes the race and intelligence debate seem more prominent than it is in the literature Editors on the genetic side engage in synthesis to exaggerate the strength of scientific claims about the issue. They consistently present individual-level results about intelligence as though they could be applied non-problematically to groups, which is not established in the scientific literature. They consistently asserted a genetic underpinning to the concept of race which is not established in the scientific literature. Editors on the environmental side, by contrast, tend to 'argue from ethics', treating the genetic perspective as though it must be wrong because its conclusions are offensive. Understandable, but not scientifically valid or supportable in the literature.	Problem Attempts to resolve content disputes through social engineering Main culprits Mathsci, supported by a number of editors (like Hypocrite and Enric), and imitated to a lesser extent by those on the other side. As I see it, this problem has the following components: Content disputes are recast as behavioral problems Sources who discuss the genetic side of the problem are labeled as undesirable under various policies (wp:FRINGE, wp:UNDUE, etc.) Editors who try to discuss the genetic side are labeled as undesirable under various policies (wp:FRINGE again, wp:SPA, wp:CPUSH...) The private lives of editors perceived to be on the genetic side (e.g. David.Kane, BPesta22, I believe Xxanthippe and Ferahgo the Assassin) are exposed, in order to present them as biased, undesirable editors Having recast the content disputes as behavioral problems, administrative sanctions are sought to the exclusion of all other options. Extensive discussions in ANI revolving around blocks and bans, supported by editors (e.g. Enric and Hypocrite) who have made no effective contributions to the content dispute. Consistent talk page incivility, to block productive discussion The creation of the 'History of R&I' POV fork (which allows work on the article without cooperation with 'undesirable' editors, and lays the groundwork for an eventual AfD on the main article)

I fully appreciate the content problem, and I fully recognize that it is something that needs to be dealt with. But the content problem is something that only affects the R&I article, and maybe a small number of related pages, and is something that (I like to think) could eventually be resolved by proper discussion and use of sources. However, the other problem is far more pervasive - you will see this behavior on any contentious page, wherever editors have realized that the easiest way to advocate for their POV is to get everyone who talks about other POVs kicked off the page. Furthermore, the second problem is much more dangerous. The content problem is caused by inexperienced editors, leaving the possibility that those editors can be educated towards better editing practices and better understandings of policy. By contrast, the behavioral problem is caused by experienced editors, who are abusing weaknesses and ambiguities in the Wikipedia political system in order to advance their content positions. They have a sense of entitlement, they understand the system well, and they will not stop this kind of behavior until and unless ArbCom puts a stop to it. If I've been focusing more of my attention on Mathsci, it's only because I see behavior like his as the bigger threat to the project as a whole. Just so we're clear with each other. --Ludwigs2 15:03, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

P.s. I think I may write an essay on social engineering as a Wikipedia problem. could be fun. --Ludwigs2 15:05, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The table Ludwigs2 has prepared makes no sense at all. It's seems uncoherent and nonsensical. It reminds me of the table on the workshop page where he gave his own interpretation of "race and Intelligence" which was completely at odds with every reliable secondary source by Sternberg, Mackintosh, Loehlin, Flynn, Fish, Jencks, Nisbett. Indeed it would appear that these comments on the history of the subject are similarly written based on his own personal opinions rather than any reliable secondary sources, which he totally omits to mention.

Let's just think for a brief moment about how '82,000 bytes of content came to be in this article, mostly due to me. The answer is quite simple. Firstly, good secondary sources were located to cover all the historical period (mid-nineteenth century to turn of 21st century). Secondly the history was divided into three natural periods. Thirdly the history was written bit by bit by paraphrasing the sources, adding new reliable secondary and related primary sources as required. More detail was added to fill in gaps in the three periods of history. That's about it. The SPA's objected to all things related to Jensen, for a variety of reasons. Sections blanked by them were replaced with alternative equivalent material from the large supply of other reliable second sources. In general once a major reliable secondary sources has been located, all relevent material from that source is used.

Ludwigs2's conspiracy theories, interesting as they may be, show a fundamental misunderstanding of how wikipedia is edited: in addition he forgets to mention Professor marginalia, who made quite a few edits and seems to use the same method of editing as I do, i.e. according to wikipedia core principles. There is a difference between a normal editor and an agenda driven account. I sent Ludwigs2 a wikipedia email asking him to discuss things privately, but he has not replied. Instead he produced this table. Is this how he thinks things should be done on wikipedia?

Let's take another example of where I edit where periodically there are disruptve editors. The article Europe. Every now and then, nationalist editors arrive at this article and object to some transcontinental country being partially included or not properly included in Europe (Georgia or Turkey for example) or countries which are deemed for historic reasons to be associated with Europe (Armenia, Cyprus, Malta) although geographically separate. These editors are often sockpuppets of banned users- I think TheThankful (talk · contribs) is an example - and can create trouble for a number of days by edit-warring on one sentence. The remedy is (a) to be ultra-careful about ambiguities (b) to source any material about borders meticulously. That is one reason why the Europe#Definition is longer than one might expect. There is not much difference here. Perhaps Ludwigs2 has forgotten about articles like Europe. He would probably make exactly the same critical remarks about me calling the problematic editors on Europe "nationalistic"—social egineering, isn't that the way he put it?—but that's how it is and that's why they make those edits: their editing of wikipedia is driven by an obsession.

Incidentally TheThankful was a sock of Gregory Clegg (talk · contribs) aka Benson Verazzano (talk · contribs) who tried to muck up one AfD's which I started. Jagz tried to WP:OUT me as Horse wiz (talk · contribs) on the mediation pages by posting Charles Matthews' photo of me at my first Cambridge wiki meetup. I must admit that I'm beginning to feel a little old when I can name about 3 or 4 different sets of sockpuppets who follow me around. Mathsci (talk) 18:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry the table doesn't make sense to you. if it did, we probably would be having a far easier time of things here.

I haven't edited or examined Europe, and I might or might not make the same critique of your behavior there. Honestly, you've failed (once again) to distinguish between the content of your edits (which is usually pretty good), and your behavior as an editor (which is often pretty bad). I don't suppose there's anything I can do to get you to see that distinction, and so I'll leave it up to the arbitrators, whom I assume are capable of making that distinction with a proper sense of perspective.

And for the record, thank you for a good laugh. I mean, I assume that accusing me of indulging in conspiracy theories right before you wander off into an extended discussion of your suspicions that sockpuppets follow you around was intended as sardonic, self-deprecating humor, right? Well, let's hope so... --Ludwigs2 18:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Poor behavior which produces good edits is much more acceptable than good behavior which produces bad edits. aprock (talk) 18:49, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

First, I disagree with the need to choose; they are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, an editor who is experienced enough to consistently produce good edits should be experienced enough to consistently engage in good behavior.

Second, I disagree with your assessment. A bad edit can be revised, and an editor who produces them can (maybe) be shown how to do better in the future. Bad behavior disrupts the ability to do work on the page at all, heightens tensions, builds bad feelings, and generally destroys the editing environment, making it impossible to correct bad edits. Bad behavior (in the long run) is far worse for the project. --Ludwigs2 19:15, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I never suggested there was a need to choose. With respect to bad behavior you are correct. In these circumstances, the behavior of SPAs is creating exactly the kind of problems that you mention. aprock (talk) 21:25, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Aprock: granting that there is bad behavior on all sides of this problem, please note that the ANI clusterf%ck is entirely Mathsci's doing. Hell, I wish Mathsci weren't being such a bear - I could work with him. but don't let misguided loyalty blind you to the problem. --Ludwigs2 06:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not loyal to anyone. I've criticized Mathsci's behavior repeatedly, including above. You're the one putting all your energy into your grudge against Mathsci. I've watched what has happened in ANI, and it's perfectly clear that Mathsci is by no stretch of the imagination the only source of drama. aprock (talk) 06:28, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say Mathsci was the only source - I said he was the originator, the causal factor. You think I don't recognize how tendentious Occam can be, and how Occam is mild-mannered compared to mikemike? I don't need to talk about them, though, because they have plenty of people breathing down their necks, and I have no doubts that the arbitrators will find an effective way of bring them back into proper form. I just want to make sure that Mathsci gets some corrective attention as well, because it would be entirely unjust for him to behave the way he has and skate on it. The problem Mathsci represents is more difficult to express and more destructive in the long run than the problem that Occam and Mike represent, and I want to make sure that everyone involved sees both problems equally clearly, and in the correct light. You can call that a grudge if you like; I really don't care - to me it's just ethics.

If you want to focus on Occam, that's your business - Occam may be troublesome now, but in a year he will either have gotten his act together or he will have left the project (he cannot continue in his current mode for that much longer). Mathsci has proven that he can indulge in his behavior long-term and across multiple pages. who do you think is the bigger threat to the project? --Ludwigs2 07:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Who do I think are the bigger threat? The ones who've been POV pushing. aprock (talk) 22:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

You think Mathsci isn't POV-pushing? --Ludwigs2 00:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't. Looking over your evidence section, I don't see any indication that you think he's POV pushing either. aprock (talk) 01:56, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The fact that I agree with his POV doesn't mean I don't think he has one. Mathsci overstates the case against the genetic perspective (and the case against the genetic position is strong enough not to need overstating) and consistently shades things to make the position look 'fringier' than it actually is. That doesn't trouble me in itself, mind you, because he only goes a litle past where I would go with it. what gets me is the overly-dramatic, dogmatic way that he tries to promote it. remember, the problem with 'POV-pushing' is not the 'POV' but the 'pushing'; you can have the most sensible, mainstream POV imaginable, but if you argue for it like you're swinging a sledgehammer you're still POV-pushing. --Ludwigs2 02:19, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I have no clue what your issue is here. If you think Mathsci's pushing a non-neutral point of view, you should address that in evidence. If you're accusing him of pushing a neutral point of view, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how that's a problem. aprock (talk) 03:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

<sigh...> No one had a neutral point of view, because NPOV isn't a POV, it's a way of balancing multiple relevant POVs. Mathsci (like you and I) has a mainstream scientific POV, though I think he takes it a bit beyond what is strictly scientific, and he tends to focus more on the 'history of ideas' of the topic with (like any good historian) a sociological bent that implicitly rebuffs biological determinism. it's not a bad POV at all, but it is a POV. The problem - as I've laid out in me evidence section - is the lengths to which he goes to promote that POV.

as they say, they only thing worse than someone who believes he's right is someone who knows he's right.

The more I discuss the issue, the more fascinated I am with the way Wikipedia editors do not distinguish between content and behavior. From my perspective, if Mathsci would stop with all the abuse and recriminations he lays on other editors, give up all the administrative drama-trauma, and just settle down to cooperative editing, he'd be a wonderful role model. With a whole lot less vinegar and a little bit of sugar Mathsci could easily teach Occam and Mikemike the correct way to edit a wikipedia article - and yes, they would listen to him, because Mathsci excels at crafting articles. The reason they don't listen to him now is that he spends so much effort spreading poison around that they can't help but see him as an enemy. it's a frigging waste.

My hope for this arbitration (aside from the obvious limits and restrictions that are going to get placed on numerous people on all sides) is that Mathsci realizes that (a) the way he behaves does a disservice to both himself and the project, and (b) that there are some tremendous potentials implicit in trying a different, more civil approach. It's high time he beat his sword into a plowshare, and with a little luck ArbCom will give him some pointed encouragement in that direction. --Ludwigs2 04:38, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you've done a good job of losing me. Again, if you think Mathsci is POV pushing in any remarkable fashion you should include it in your evidence. Otherwise, it sounds like you're making a mountain out of a mole hill. aprock (talk) 05:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

LOL - well, ok, it's obvious you've never had to deal with a mole (I never saw a mountain that could destroy a garden). but let's let it slide for now. --Ludwigs2 05:14, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) A more plausible explanation is that in fact Ludwigs2 has not examined carefully any content I have added to wikipedia and all these statements about my edits are made off the top of hss head as unjustified personal attacks. Let's just for a moment compare two passages, the first by David.Kane and the second my WP:NPOV rewrite and expansion. It removes all the inaccuracies and BLP violations of David.Kane.

Comparison of passages
Debate assumptions (David.Kane)	Current debate (Mathsci)
In a review of the field, Hunt and Carlson while arguing that "research on group differences in intelligence is scientifically valid and socially important" identify four contemporary positions on the topic of racial differences in intelligence: "There are differences in intelligence between races that are due in substantial part to genetically determined differences in brain structure and/or function (Rushton, 1995; Rushton &Jensen, 2005a)." "Differences in cognitive competencies between races exist and are of social origin (Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 2005)." "Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups (Ogbu, 2002)." "There is no such thing as race; it is a term motivated by social concerns and not a scientific concept (Fish, 2004; Smedley & Smedley, 2005; Cooper, 2005; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005)." Some scientists argue that the history of eugenics makes this field of research difficult to reconcile with current ethical standards for science. Other scientists insist that, independent of ethical concerns, research into race and intelligence makes little sense because intelligence is poorly measured and because race is a social construction. According to this view, intelligence is ill-defined and multi-dimensional, or has definitions that vary between cultures. This would make contrasting the intelligence of groups of people, especially groups that came from different cultures, dependent mainly on which culture’s definition of intelligence is being used. Moreover, this view asserts that even if intelligence were as simple to measure as height, racial differences in intelligence would still be meaningless since race exists only as a social construct, with no basis in biology. Unsurprisingly, almost all scientists actively engaged in research in race and intelligence disagree with these criticisms. For example, psychologist Richard Nisbett writes that: Some laypeople I know — and some scientists as well — believe that it is a priori impossible for a genetic difference in intelligence to exist between the races. But such a conviction is entirely unfounded. There are a hundred ways that a genetic difference in intelligence could have arisen — either in favor of whites or in favor of blacks. The question is an empirical one, not answerable by a priori convictions about the essential equality of groups. Researchers fall into two groups: hereditarians and environmentalists. Both argue that, although race and intelligence are fuzzy concepts, they can be operationalized enough to draw conclusions about the connections, if any, between the two. Hereditarians argue that genetics explain a significant portion (approximately 50%) of the differences in measured intelligence among human races. Leading scholars of this view include Arthur Jensen, Philippe Rushton, Richard Herrnstein, Linda Gottfredson, Charles Murray and Richard Lynn. Environmentalists argue that the hereditarians are wrong, and that genetic differences are not an important cause of differences in measured intelligence among human races. Leading scholars of this view include Richard Lewontin, Stephen J. Gould, James Flynn, Richard Nisbett and Stephen Ceci. Other scientists, although accepting the basic assumptions of the debate, believe that there is currently not enough evidence to determine what part, if any, genetics plays in racial differences. According to Rushton and Jensen, the debate has remained unresolved for so long because of "the difficulty of the subject matter, the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse, and the different meta-theoretical perspectives of the experimental and correlational methodologies". Contrasting these methodologies, they write that: Hereditarian heuristics include constructing better tests, developing better techniques for measuring mental abilities, and discovering biological correlates (e.g., heritability, inbreeding depression and heterosis, brain size, brain metabolic rate, brain evoked potentials, brain imaging) of these tests. The process then involves examining the similarities of the scores among people whose varying degrees of genetic resemblance can be predicted from Mendelian theory (Fisher, 1918). [Environmentalist] heuristics include searching for the environmental factors that cause differences in intellectual performance and discovering the bias in existing tests. If two groups differ in mean IQ, [environmentalist] theorists conjecture either that the lower scoring group has been exposed to one or more deleterious experience or been deprived of some beneficial environmental stimuli or that the tests are not valid measures of their true ability. Compensatory training might be initiated and the hypothesis confirmed if the groups then obtain more nearly equal scores, or if less biased tests are developed on which the group differences are reduced but still predict outside criteria. Of course, these two programs overlap to some degree, and a given experiment might well combine elements of the heuristics of each.	After the publication of The Bell Curve, various books appeared discussing its findings critically, notably The Bell Curve Debate (1995), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996) and a second edition of The Mismeasure of Man (1996) by Steven J. Gould. There were also three books written from the hereditarian point of view: Why race matters: race differences and what they mean (1997) by Michael Levin; The g Factor: The science of mental ability (1998) by Jensen; and Intelligence; a new look by Hans Eysenck. Various other books of collected contributions appeared at the same time, including The black-white test gap (1998) edited by Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, Intelligence, heredity and environment (1997) edited by Robert Sternberg and Elena Grigorenko. A section in IQ and human intelligence (1998) by Nicholas Mackintosh discussed ethnic groups and Race and intelligence: separating science from myth(2002) edited by Jefferson Fish presented further commentary on The Bell Curve by anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, biologists and statisticians. In 2005 the debate gathered pace again with the publication, in the journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law of the American Psychological Association (APA), of a long lead article by Rushton and Jensen, reviewing 30 years of research on race differences in intelligence. They concluded that the implication for public policy is that the discrimination model (i.e., Black-White differences in socially valued outcomes will be equal barring discrimination) must be tempered by a distributional model (i.e., Black-White differences reflect underlying group characteristics). Although the distributional model does not rule out affirmative action or compensation-type initiatives, it does reduce the impact of arguments in their favor based on an exclusive adherence to the discrimination model. The article was followed by a series of responses, some in support, some critical. Richard Nisbett, another psychologist who had also commented at the time, later included an amplified version of his commentary as part of the book Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2010). Nisbett summarises the findings of Rushton and Jensen as follows: Since heritability of intelligence is high in the white population, the probability is high that a large portion of the black-white racial IQ gap is genetic in origin The gap is not caused by cultural differences, because culture-fair tests only increase the gap The average IQ of 70 for sub-Saharan Africans is lower than that of African Americans because 20% of the latters' gene pool is European Blacks score comparitively lower on questions with high general intelligence loadings, which are more affected by genetics Questions distinguishing "imbreeding depression" - low scores due to closely related parents - also distinguish the black-white racial gap Brain size is correlated to IQ and blacks have smaller brains than whites Speed of reaction is faster for those with higher IQs and whites have a higher speed of reaction to blacks The IQs of children of black parents with a high IQ regress to a lower mean than children of white parents with the same IQ, supporting a genetic explanation Interracial adoption studies support a genetic rather than an environmental explanation During this period, the debate was tinged with controversy when two public figures repeated in interviews the claim of Lynn and Rushton that one of the main causes for poverty in Africa is the low average intelligence among sub-Saharan Africans. Following an interview in the monthly magazine of Helsingin Sanomat, Lynn's coauthor Tatu Vanhanen, a political scientist and father of the Prime Minister of Finland Matti Vanhanen, was investigated by the Finnish police between 2002 and 2004. In 2007 James D. Watson, Nobel laureate in biology, gave a controversial interview to the Sunday Times Magazine during a book tour in the United Kingdom. This resulted in the cancellation of a Royal Society lecture, along with other public engagements, and his suspension from his administrative position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He subsequently cancelled the tour and resigned from his position. Subsequently Nature, which had commented during the Watson controversy, invited two editorials on the ethics of research in race and intelligence by Steven Rose (against) and Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams (for). In the subsequent letters to Nature, the psychologist James Flynn pointed out that had there been a ban on research on possibly poorly conceived ideas much valuable research on intelligence testing (including his own discovery of the Flynn effect) would not have occurred. Already in the 1996 report of the APA there had made comments on the ethics of research on race and intelligence. Two further articles in 2004 by Gray and Thompson and in 2007 by Hunt and Carlson discussed different possible ethical guidelines. Hunt and Carlson also identified four of the contemporary positions on the topic of racial differences in intelligence: "There are differences in intelligence between races that are due in substantial part to genetically determined differences in brain structure and/or function (Rushton, 1995; Rushton &Jensen, 2005a)." "Differences in cognitive competencies between races exist and are of social origin (Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 2005)." "Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups (Ogbu, 2002)." "There is no such thing as race; it is a term motivated by social concerns and not a scientific concept (Fish, 2004; Smedley & Smedley, 2005; Cooper, 2005; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005)." Commentators have also pointed out that hereditarian psychologists have tacitly adopted folk definitions of race and heredity. Other common criticisms have centered on the problems that intelligence is poorly measured and that race is a social construct, not a biologically defined attribute. According to this view, intelligence is ill-defined and multi-dimensional, or has definitions that vary between cultures. This would make contrasting the intelligence of groups of people, especially groups that came from different cultures, dependent mainly on which culture’s definition of intelligence is being used. Moreover, this view asserts that even if intelligence were as simple to measure as height, racial differences in intelligence would still be meaningless since race exists only as a social construct, with no basis in biology. According to Rushton and Jensen, the debate has remained unresolved for so long because of "the difficulty of the subject matter, the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse, and the different meta-theoretical perspectives of the experimental and correlational methodologies". Contrasting these methodologies, they write that: Hereditarian heuristics include constructing better tests, developing better techniques for measuring mental abilities, and discovering biological correlates (e.g., heritability, inbreeding depression and heterosis, brain size, brain metabolic rate, brain evoked potentials, brain imaging) of these tests. The process then involves examining the similarities of the scores among people whose varying degrees of genetic resemblance can be predicted from Mendelian theory (Fisher, 1918). [Environmentalist] heuristics include searching for the environmental factors that cause differences in intellectual performance and discovering the bias in existing tests. If two groups differ in mean IQ, [environmentalist] theorists conjecture either that the lower scoring group has been exposed to one or more deleterious experience or been deprived of some beneficial environmental stimuli or that the tests are not valid measures of their true ability. Compensatory training might be initiated and the hypothesis confirmed if the groups then obtain more nearly equal scores, or if less biased tests are developed on which the group differences are reduced but still predict outside criteria. Of course, these two programs overlap to some degree, and a given experiment might well combine elements of the heuristics of each.

What was David.Kane's reaction? A week or two after the rewriting by me, which had been accepted, David.Kane reinserted his original passage again before the "Current debate" with a changed title. His passage is a combination WP:OR and WP:SYNTH without any proper source. It represents David.Kane's personal opinion and his take on the matter. The sort of writing that is more appropriate on a blog, not on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 07:19, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I prefer David's version here, if only because the language is less pretentious, which is more appropriate to a scientific article. mikemikev (talk) 16:03, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

This is confused. First, the first version is not by "David.Kane". Please retract that claim. I wrote, at most, 1/2 of it. See the edit history for details. Second, conciseness is a virtue. We follow the guidelines of WP:SIZE. The only way to do so is to cut much of the cruft that verbose editors add to this article, either completely or (my preference) by moving it to sub-articles. Third, you are comparing apples and oranges. There is nothing wrong with, for example, including a reference to the Watson affair in the article, but the "Debate assumptions" section should, you know, focus on debate assumptions, not current events. David.Kane (talk) 11:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

We can go carefully though the history, starting from here [1]. That will take a little while. Mathsci (talk) 12:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Most of the content above was created by David.Kane in this single edit.[2] In that diff David.Kane concocted the phrase, "Researchers fall into two groups: hereditarians and environmentalists" and the following material. He reinserted the above material here.[3] There had previously been a discussion here [4], approving of my neutralisaiton and expansion. David.Kane commented there. He then apparently ignored that discussion after waiting five days,[5] when he reinserted his preferred version. Mathsci (talk) 15:03, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: You inability to ever admit a mistake makes working with you a pleasure. Yes, I wrote about 1/2 of this, including the "two groups" line. But I did not write the other half, including the extensive quotes from Hunt/Carlson/Nisbett/Rushton/Jensen. (At various times, I have may reverted removal of these sections in order to preserve consensus and/or encourage discussion, but I did not write it. Why can't you just admit a mistake and allow us to move on? David.Kane (talk) 15:25, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

No mistake, David. You wrote the problematic material yourself as the diff shows. That material breaks WP:BLP, WP:NPOV, WP:OR an WP:SYNTH. Mathsci (talk) 15:31, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

We can do the same with the lede and the history section.

Comparison of passages
Lede (David.Kane)	Lede (Mathsci-Varoon Arya with consensus on talk page)
Race and intelligence research investigates differences in the distributions of cognitive skills among human races. IQ tests have consistently demonstrated a significant degree of variation among the major racial groups, with a rough average rank ordering of East Asians > Whites > Amerindians > Blacks. At the same time, there is considerable overlap among individual scores, and members of each racial group can be found at all points on the IQ spectrum. Many factors that could potentially influence the development of intelligence have been advanced as possible causes of the racial IQ gap which, though subject to variation over time, has remained relatively stable since IQ testing began. Environmental and cultural factors affect individual IQ scores and, therefore, racial group averages. Hereditarians argue that genetics explain a significant portion (approximately 50%) of the differences in measured intelligence among human races. Leading scholars of this view include Arthur Jensen, Philippe Rushton, Richard Herrnstein, Linda Gottfredson, Charles Murray and Richard Lynn. Proponents of the environmental interpretation argue that genetics explain none of the differences in measured intelligence among human races. Leading scholars of this view include Richard Lewontin, Stephen J. Gould, James Flynn, Richard Nisbett and Stephen Ceci. The American Psychological Association has concluded that the racial IQ gap is not the result of bias in the content or administration of tests, but that no adequate explanation of it has so far been given.	The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and the media since the inception of intelligence testing in the early twentieth century, particularly in the United States, where the results of such testing have been used to shape public policy. Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests performed in the US have consistently demonstrated a significant degree of variation between different racial groups, with the average score of the African American population being significantly lower - and that of the Asian American population being significantly higher - than that of the White American population. At the same time, there is considerable overlap between these group scores, and members of each racial group can be found at all points on the IQ spectrum. Similar findings have been reported for related populations around the world, most notably in Africa, though these are generally considered far less reliable due to the relative paucity of test data and the difficulties inherent in the cross-cultural comparison of intelligence test scores. There are no universally accepted definitions of either race or intelligence in academia, and the discussion of their connection involves the results of multiple disciplines, including biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Many factors that could potentially influence the development of intelligence have been advanced as possible causes of the racial IQ gap which, though subject to variation over time, has remained relatively stable since IQ testing began. It is generally agreed that environmental and/or cultural factors affect individual IQ scores, and it is widely assumed that most or all of the racial IQ gap is attributable to such factors, though none are conclusively supported by direct empirical evidence. Far more controversial is the claim advanced by several psychologists, including Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn, that a significant portion of the racial IQ gap is not explained by appeals to any known environmental factors, and that this portion has an ultimately genetic origin. This claim has not been accepted by the wider academic community and has been met with widespread disapproval in the popular media. Official statements by academic bodies such as the American Psychological Association indicate that the cause of the racial IQ gap is currently unknown.

My version is much better. David.Kane (talk) 11:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Oops, it was your first version. I've now put the second lede you rewrote, removing the version by consensus during mediation. This is where you did it.[6] (only your edits, 100 or so?) Then my restoration of the consensus lede.[7] The restoration of your lede,[8] with a bizarre claim of breaking 3RR (nobody except you had been editing the article for two days). Restoration of consensus lede by Ludwigs2. [9] Sorry about the confusion about which of your ledes I meant, David. Mathsci (talk) 13:29, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Comparison of passages
History (David.Kane)	History (Mathsci, first copy-pasted by David.Kane from History of the race and intelligence controversy)
The idea that there are differences in the brain structures/sizes of different racial groups, and that these differences explain varying rates of intelligence, was widely held and studied during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Francis Galton spurred interest in the study of mental abilities, particularly as they relate to heredity and eugenics. Beginning in the 1930s, race difference research and hereditarianism—the belief that genetics are an important cause of differences in intelligence among human groups—began to fall out of favor in psychology and anthropology after major internal debates. A controversial article by Arthur Jensen promoting the hereditarian point of view triggered the modern debate in 1969. Many authors disputed Jensen's conclusions, most prominently Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man, first published in 1981. William Shockley, Nobel laureate in physics, became one of Jensen's most vocal supporters. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote in The Bell Curve: "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved. The universality of the contrast in nonverbal and verbal skills between East Asians and European whites suggests, without quite proving, genetic roots." The American Anthropological Association argues that "differentiating species into biologically defined "races" has proven meaningless and unscientific as a way of explaining variation (whether in intelligence or other traits)." The American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs in 1995 established a task force which produced a report, "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" The psychology association report authors wrote that IQ scores have high predictive validity for individual differences in school achievement, for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled, and they said individual differences in intelligence are substantially influenced by genetics (75% in adults). The APA report confirmed the existence of racial IQ differences, while remaining agnostic about their underlying causes: The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of blacks and whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.	The history of the race and intelligence controversy concerns the historical development of a debate, primarily in the United States, concerning possible explanations of group differences in scores on intelligence tests. Although it has never been disputed that there are systematic differences between average scores in IQ tests of different population groups, sometimes called "racial IQ gaps", there has been no agreement on whether this is mainly due to environmental and cultural factors, or whether some inherent hereditarian factor is at play, related to genetics. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, group differences in intelligence were assumed to be due to race and, apart from intelligence tests, research relied on measurements such as brain size or reaction times. By the mid-1930s most psychologists had adopted the view that environmental and cultural factors played a dominant role. In 1969 the Harvard Educational Review published a 125-page invited article by the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen reviving the hereditarian point of view, postulating: "The preponderance of the evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis, which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interaction with genetic factors". Jensen's work, publicized by the Nobel laureate William Shockley, sparked controversy amongst the academic community and even led to student unrest. A similar debate amongst academics followed publication in 1994 of The Bell Curve, a book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray that argued in favor of the hereditarian viewpoint. It not only provoked the publication of several interdisciplinary books on the environmental point of view, some in popular science, but also led to a public statement from the American Psychological Association acknowledging a gap between average IQ scores of whites and blacks as well as the absence of any adequate explanation of it, either environmental or genetic. The hereditarian line of research continues to be pursued by a group of researchers, mostly psychologists, some of whom are supported by the Pioneer Fund; these include Richard Lynn (global racial IQ gaps) and J. Philippe Rushton (brain size and racial IQ gaps), whose research had already been used in The Bell Curve.

Mathsci (talk) 07:50, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I wrote almost none of the words in this History section. Please retract your claim above that this is "my" section. I agree that your version is much better. Indeed, I gave it a close reading as your were working on it and made many copy-edits and small suggestions. It is possible for editors of diverse views to work together to improve the article and this is one example of us doing so. David.Kane (talk) 11:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

That's not what the diffs say [10] You were the only person editing. Did somebody else write it for you? Mathsci (talk) 13:29, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

You are not reading the diffs correctly. One of the main things I did was to reorganize the material that was already in the article and had been for years. Almost all of this material existed in the article long before I arrived on the scene. Again, why can't you simply correct a factually false statement? I did not write these words. David.Kane (talk) 15:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Am I not? You selected or created thos material. This is what the history looked like when mediation started.[11] Mathsci (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

MathSci: I can't decide whether you honestly believe what you are writing (and are simply confused) or if you cynically expect that no one will check the endless stream of diffs that you provide. Let me, for now, assume good faith and correct your confusion. My claims is that half the material in the history section that you attribute to me existed at the article before I made by first edit. You deny this and then produce a link which proves my point! Look at the material quoted from the APA report. That was in the article before. Look at the quote from the Bell Curve. That was in the article before. The sentence about the AAA is (almost) identical to what the article had before. And so on. Now, needless to say, this is a very minor point. But your refusal to make clear that I did not write this entire section, that it is not "History (David.Kane)" is indicative of your inability to ever admit error. Again, I ask you to correct this claim. David.Kane (talk) 20:29, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, David, I don't feel confused: so please don't put words in my mouth. If you were juggling sentences about, and removing those that you didn't like about Shockley or Cavalli-Sforza, you were not editing wikipedia properly in line with WP:NPOV. If you were writing the history, you should have looked for reliable secondary sources and checked your proposed material against them meticulously. By removing those sentences, you were simply POV-pushing. I'm not sure what value there is in presenting a series of wikilawyering excuses to "justify" a set of problematic POV-pushing edits.

But the quality of your edits is not really what was at issue here. The point I was making to Ludwigs2 concerned my own edits, on the right hand side of the 3 tables. As far as I am aware, these edits seem to be of the same quality, with the same level of sourcing and neutrality, as all my other content edits to this encyclopedia. You have tried unsuccessfully to turn the discussion away from that. In his "analysis", Ludwigs2 claimed that my edits were POV-pushing. That assertion of Ludwigs2 seems to be without any basis whatsoever. Mathsci (talk) 22:36, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci, please give David.Kane his due here - he began editing the article specifically to organize the material that was present into the structure that was being worked out in the mediation. This was no intention of writing or rewriting the article; he was just reorganizing. If in fact you had been contributing to the discussion before or during his efforts, he would have incorporated your material as well. The well-established fact that you did not deign to contribute is not DK's fault.

This is also why I assert that you are POV-pushing. While other editors were at least trying to cooperate in the mediation, you were raging away in ANI with little to no productive contributions to the article or discussion (because what was coming out of the mediation disagreed with your POV). When your ANI rage failed to close the mediation, you still refused to cooperate, but started rewriting whole sections from scratch and insisting they be used without modification, even to the point of creating a POV-fork article where you could present your viewpoint without it being sullied by others' opinions. frankly, if you were representing a fringe POV while behaving this way you'd be indef-blocked already. The fact that you are advocating for a mainstream POV goes a long way in your favor, but it doesn't excuse your behavior. as I've said elsewhere, POV-pushing isn't really about the POV, it's about the pushing, and boy do you push. --Ludwigs2 23:15, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Two things. 1) Mathsci needs to be applauded for having identified so many secondary sources that seem to constitute the recent relevant literature. This is exactly what we should be doing: to cut out all the blather and trolling by concentrating on finding good sources and writing articles that reflect them accurately. 2) Ludwigs2 is right in that some people editing from a "scientific point of view" (SPOV) position get tempted into troll-like behaviour. 90% of the time SPOV is fine. It helps us clear out unsourced cruft, obvious pseudoscience and crankery. But it doesn't do so well in areas like psychology that sit across the natural and social sciences. Or in history of science, or in news about science. Instead of scientific point of view, I'd like to propose that we work from the "scholarly point of view". (Including using news sources for news articles, book reviews for literature articles etc.) Right sources for each kind of article. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:20, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

@ Itsmejudith: as far as I am aware, I have made no edits on any bit of "science" in race and intelligence (if that is what it is). Other editors, including Maunus, Aprock, Slrubenstein have discussed the edits of Captain Occam, David.Kane. Mikemikv, et al. at length. I have occasionally been asked to join those discussions, since the beginning of April, but have refused. As I have made clear, I would not touch that kind of "scientific" material/synthesis with a barge pole. I am, however, quite happy paraphrasing content from the reliable secondary sources that I've mentioned. I also see no point in discussing the academic credentials of Richard Nisbett, Nicholas Mackintosh or Robert Steinberg, which has also occurred fairly frequently. My editing was confined to the final stages of mediation (the lede and history section) and the WP:NPOV rewrite of David.Kane's "Debate assumptions" (as "Current debate"). It's also worth noting that Aprock, Maunus, Slrubenstein, Ramdrake and Muntuwandi have rarely explicitly suggested any substantial new content, which probably is why they have never come under attack as I have, since I started suggesting explicit content in early April. I don't know how to deal with tag team editing, where a whole group converges en masse on an article (e.g. on June 1). I'm not sure whether ArbCom has dealt with a phenonemon like this before in a race-related area. But it's similar to advocacy in fringe science, or cold fusion, or ethnic or nationalist related editing, which occurs all over the place. Certainly I've never seen anything quite like this ever before, because I generally avoid editing in fringey or contentious areas. Creating a separate article on the History was Slrubenstein's suggestion. Apart from occasional abruptness on wikipedia, apparently the content I suggest is high quality and very well sourced (the lede, the history summary, the current debate in race and intelligence; the history article; the neutralisation and expansion of Mainstream Science on Intelligence and Snyderman and Rothman (study)). I probably don't have very much patience with poor editing, and I'm sorry about that. Mathsci (talk) 11:58, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment I'm glad to hear that there are no nationalist users editing wikipedia, as that will simplify ArbCom enforcement immensely. Does Ludwigs2 have any other helpful suggestions to make? Should we perhaps start an MfD on WP:SPA and WP:CPUSH? I know that he helped edit WP:Tag team,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. so presumably he has a vague awareness of that concept. That essay came about partly as a consequence of the editing of Jagz and Zero g (talk · contribs) on Race and intelligence; in fact Jagz kindly helped edit the essay through his sockpuppet account Fat Cigar (talk · contribs). Ludwigs2 has made clear his special status on wikipedia: "there are few people on wikipedia who understand science in general better than I do." [31] Ludwigs2 has provided no diffs to back up his comments about my editing related to content.Mathsci (talk) 23:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking back, that essay was where Ludwigs2 came into conflict with many regular watchers of Race and intelligence, in editing and on the talk page. Risker made a short version of the article which seems to apply quite well to this case;

A Tag team is a group of editors who work in a co-ordinated and planned way toward a particular editorial objective in a manner that is harmful to the development of an article or group of articles. The harm is due to the group consistently editing outside of the bounds of core content policies (neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research) while also violating behavioural norms by edit warring, attempting to own articles, and/or derailing consensus-seeking efforts. Members of the tag team may also exhibit a wide range of other negative behaviours or editing practices, either individually or as a group

A lot of the debate on Wikipedia talk:Tag team and archives is relevant here (some things have obviously changed after 2 years). Mathsci (talk) 00:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC).

@Ludwigs2. I am sorry if I am seen by others to be on the genetic side of this debate. My intent is to be on the side of even-handedness. My views on the Race/Intelligence issue are here.[32] In a nutshell I think that the Race/Intelligence issue is so undetermined that any article needs to reflect this uncertainty. Nonetheless, I am privileged to be one of a handful of persons to have an attack page directed exclusively at them.[33] The page is full of fantastic allegations and rambling discursiveness; I cannot understand what relevance people like the Queen Mother (the late mother of the current Queen of England) and Ann Widdicombe (a retired British politician) or Dieterich Buxtehude have to this Arbcom case. There even are factual inaccuracies like the claim that Philip Snow is the son of C.P. Snow. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC).

@ Xxanthippe: My intent is to be on the side of even-handedness as well. Unfortunately, the politics of this situation make that difficult. Mathsci has adopted an entrenched "Those who are not with me are against me" attitude that makes reasoned communication all but impossible. It doesn't really affect me - I deal with Mathsci as a friend where he makes friendly overtures and as an enemy where he attacks me, and I don't have any cognitive dissonance about it at all - but I know that's harder for most people. All I can tell you is to be self-assured: What Mathsci is doing (whether he knows it or not) is consistently trying to warp the perception of the situation so that he appears to be a heroic victim (i.e. the dedicated wikipedia editor who normally does mild-mannerd content editing, but always finds himself beset by villainous SPAs and POV-pushers). it's a self-rationalization that he spins for personal reasons, and all you need to do is recognize it as a self-serving illusion, and keep your eye clearly set on the truth of the matter, which is that you are trying to find some kind of center and he is pushing the extremes. don't even bother trying to correct him on it (unless you can do so with an even keel) - it won't work, and the less you push back at him the more obvious his pushing will be to everyone else.

@ Mathsci: so let me get this straight. You get offended when you think I've dug into your past - as you say in link 67 at User:Mathsci/subpage7#Recent_request. Yet you feel perfectly justified digging deep into mine? as I said above - self-serving self-rationalization.

Interestingly, however, as I recall my involvement in the wp:Tag team page came about because I was disgusted by the way you and a number of other editors tried a massed character assassination on user:Elonka (trying to get her blocked/banned/desysopped) all because she stood up to a bunch of SPOV editors who were tendentiously trying to disrupt a fringe-theory page (I forget which one - orgone? remote viewing? - if it's important I'll go look it up). In other words, you've been using the same political tactics that you're using here since at least august of 2008. If you want, I'll start digging through your past edits in earnest, looking for all the editors that you've driven off wikipedia or gotten into protracted political battles of this sort. I doubt you've made it over the 1000 range, but I'd be willing to bet it's into several hundreds. If I discover you really have been turning wikipedia into a battleground for a matter of years, then do you think it might be time to consider removing you from the project entirely? Or would you want an editor on the project who has caused years of sheer misery for others?

yes, I know, you won't answer that question - you never answer questions that call for honest self-reflection. why is that? --Ludwigs2 06:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, you might be a psychotherapist in real life (I have no idea), but please don't put words into my mouth. You are spending far too much time trying to second guess people's motivation for editing wikipedia. You have made multiple claims like this and starting sections on these ArbCom pages with scare titles, which I'm afraid are very little more than dramamongering. Shortly after you started editing wikipedia in 2008 you engaged in the debate on the writing of WP:TAG TEAM and came into conflict with most of the old time editors/watchers of Race and intelligence. Amongst other things at that time you replaced "fringe views" with "particular views". Editing on that article was one of the things that prompted Elonka to write her essay, except it was the old timers that had constantly been called a tag team. Elonka and other editors have put those thing behind them: hence the Aix-St Louis mini wiki-meetup between Elonka and me on May 6 2010. I have written you an email about four days ago requesting an off-wiki chat. You did not reply, on-wiki or off-wiki. Instead you have continued grandstanding (the extradordinary table) in what appears to be a WP:BATTLEGROUND spirit. I think the bast way forward at the moment is for you please to reply to my email, on or off wiki. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 08:10, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

As I mentioned where you made the request [34], I tried responding to your email and got caught in some spam-checker. my next attempt will be to try a throw-off email account (something that is unlikely to trigger a spam bounce), but I wanted to see if you'd gotten the message at all, or if it was a server bounce.

That being said, I could care less what you're motivations are for editing (I'll AGF that your motivations are good, but will observe - once more - that it is actually you, not me, who has consistently tried to draw editors off-wiki lives into debates). The only thing I really give a damn about is civil interactions, which - despite your pretense of being an 'old timer' - is something you apparently have no grasp of at all. you seem to have no capacity for self-reflection. I mean, come on - you haven't even figured out after all this time that I am mostly just mirroring your own behavior and attitudes right back at you (I say mostly because sometimes I lose my cool and give you a piece of my own mind, and certain things you do I refuse to do under any circumstances). You get irritated at me because I do to you precisely what you do to other people, and yet you make claims about my incivility without recognizing that it's just your own behavior, mimicked.

You want to bust me on wp:POINT, then guilty as charged. don't care.

I know precisely what I want from you, Mathsci. I'll even tell you what I want if you like, but I suspect that I will not get it in any case, not unless ArbCom comes down on you and demands that you give it. That is unfortunate, but one has to deal with people as they are, not as they should be (which applies to both of us...). I do not know what you want from me, and I don't think you know either. I honestly don't think you actually see me - I suspect that to you I am just a problem to be labeled and disposed of, and your main frustration in this debacle is that you can't make seem to make any useable label stick.

And I could be wrong. nothing would make me happier than to have you prove me wrong.

It's always your choice Mathsci - always has been, always is, always will be. so what will it take for you to choose correctly? --Ludwigs2 09:06, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, to correspond by email, please just use the wikipedia email tool on my wikipedia user page. It works fine from wikipedia. Did you get the email I sent from WP on June 23? It gave my name and various other personal details. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 12:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah - the problem with that is that you have a history of exposing people's personal information on-project and using it to attack their credibility. Again, I can point to cases involving David.Kane, Captain Occam, BPesta22, DistributiveJustice, Ferahgo the Assassin, and maybe one or two others I've forgotten about, just from this arbitration. Plus, there is at least one case (noted above at link 67 on your User:Mathsci/subpage7#Recent_request) that shows you doing that to editors as far back as 2006. I will leave it up to others to decide what to make of that, but I have absolutely no intention of giving you any personal information, because you seem to take any personal overtures as justification for full-scale outing. Don't get me wrong - I'm just a low-grade academic social scientist of no note whatsoever, and I doubt there's much you could make of my few publications, the courses I teach, or etc, that would cause me headaches. But I am not interested in opening the door for you.

So, either we head towards IRC (as I suggested before - it's private, but protects anonymity much better than email) or we find some other private means of communication, or we discuss the matter here in public, on-wiki. which do you want to do? --Ludwigs2 15:47, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

<=== Ludwigs2, please can you simply email me on my wikipedia account? I don't want to use IRC, because of time zones (9 hours difference) and my linux OS. Here is the email I sent you, with names erased. just so that everybody is clear what you were sent:

Hello Ludiwgs2.

I saw that you suggested IRC, which I'm too old and grizzly to use.

However, since I feel just a little bit of me is Californian (I spend about 6 weeks there every year), I think it might be a good thing to discuss misunderstandings and find common ground by talking by email.

As a sign of good faith, I'm disclosing below who I am. You should not feel under the slightest obligation to do likewise, if it makes you feel in the slightest bit uneasy.

The person who first suggested I write or contribute to articles on WP was ************ (******), who is one quite a number of people I know who does know a lot about science. He and his family are some of my closest friends and also colleagues. Others in Berkeley include *********** (I was at his daughter's marriage in ******* in the fall) and *************.

I hope that we can become friends by discussing things in this way. We already have a common wikifriend Hans Adler. Although I don't probably believe the scientific explanations for homeopathy, I understand that it works for him and that it is important for him and his personal health and well-being, which in real life is all that matters.

Best regards, ****** ***********

Mathsci (talk) 22:31, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand, Mathsci: I don't want to give you my email account information, which I would be required to do if I used wikipedia email. Give me an option where I can use a throwaway email account or some other reasonably anonymous form of communication (i.e., send me an email account at my wikipedia email where I can contact you without getting spam-blocked, or commit to some other form of messaging). Otherwise we are constrained to discussing things on-wiki. --Ludwigs2 00:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Usually it's possible to open an alternative email account with your ISP or with gmail. Mathsci (talk) 01:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know, but when I tried to email directly from such an account to the address you supplied, I hit a spam-blocker. I will look into the matter further, however. --Ludwigs2 02:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

If an on-wiki discussion would be of any use, feel free to use my talk page as a neutral space. I realise that I haven't replied to Mathsci's comment above to me about scientific POV. My comment was an attempt to go beyond the personality things here to raise a wider issue. I wasn't accusing you of sticking to natural-sciences stuff here, Mathsci - the sources you're proposing indicate the contrary. The difference between disciplinary traditions could underlie some of the communication problems. No time to discuss this further at the moment unfortunately. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

That is a kind suggestion, but let's wait to see if Ludwigs2 succeeds in creating a properly anonymized email account. You're right about interdisciplinarity as far as Race and intelligence is concerned: the book Race and intelligence edited by Jefferson Fish has contributions by authors from many disciplines (history, sociology, biology, anthropology, psychoogy, statistics, political science, etc). For the history article, the set of reliable secondary sources was mostly from the history of psychology and, as I've said, didn't involve very much science. Thanks again for your contributions here. Mathsci (talk) 08:10, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed with Itsmejudith that one of the editing problems for this article is that it draws on research from multiple disciplines, which sometimes don't communicate with one another well. At a minimum, a well sourced article on this topic needs reliable sources from psychology (for the intelligence testing aspects), sociology (for the definition of "race" and environmental influences aspects), and genetics (for the genetic influences aspects). As the article now stands, it is poorly sourced to the genetics literature, which is why my last two visits my state's flagship university library were to gather up-to-date sources on genetics, which will soon be added to the Intelligence Citations list I share with all Wikipedia editors. One of the best ("best" = published in the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, with most acclaim from other researchers, including from those with whom he disagrees) researchers on this issue is, sure enough, a researcher who has crossed disciplinary lines. James R. Flynn received his formal academic training as a sociologist, but is mostly published in psychology journals, and has had a major research finding (the "Flynn effect") named after him by Charles Murray, another sociologist-writing-on-the-issue. It takes a lot of reading in a lot of sources to correctly represent the state of research on this contentious issue. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:16, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The molecular genetics literature has very little to say on this subject, other than "we don't know yet". As for behavioural genetics, as far as I know, Rushton and Jensen are the authorities in this area. mikemikev (talk) 16:08, 28 June 2010 (UTC) To clarify, that's the behavioural genetics of race and intelligence, not the whole field of behavioural genetics. mikemikev (talk) 16:14, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Certainly Flynn is a good source, cf his conclusions from Where have all the liberals gone that I reproduced on the evidence yalk page. Other reviews of the debate have been published recently, e.g. there is an analysis by Mike Andersen in an Oxford University Press book, Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. His chapter is entitled "Biology and intelligence—the race/IQ controversy". Mathsci (talk) 10:23, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

It should also be noted that Rushton spends much of his time writing rebuttals. The 87 year old Jensen often appears as second author. Here is a recent example in an exitorial in Intelligence. [35] Mathsci (talk) 06

23, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Request Mathsci amends 'exitorial' to 'editorial' so that people will not misinterpret it as some kind of sick joke about Jensen's prospective death. mikemikev (talk) 08:40, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I, too, would like for Mathsci to fix this about his comment. Under other circumstances I would assume this was only an innocent typo, but that seems less likely in a comment where Mathsci is referring specifically to Jensen’s age, when there’s no other reason for his age to be relevant here. It’s also been over 24 hours since Mikemikev pointed this misspelling out to Mathsci, and Mathsci has edited other arbitration pages during that time, but still has not changed the word “exitorial” in this comment. If Mathsci’s use of this wording really was just a mistake, why would he be unwilling to change this after being asked to correct it? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:58, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Let's just assume it's a typo, it's just easier that way. I've asked Mathsci to strike certain unwarranted comments and he has refused—the concerns of others are not a priority. We can leave it to ArbCom to decide whether (given the mention of age and Jensen being portrayed as a hanger-on) or not "exitorial" is a snide remark. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 13:40, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm coming off a break here and I have to say, the fact that there was actually serious discussion of the nefarious intentions behind missing the d and hitting x (which are right next to each other folks) says a lot about participants in this case and their inability to see the forest for the trees. Shell ^babelfish 14:11, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Uh, have you had a chance to read much of MathSci's work? He has made numerous comments about Jensen's age. I would offer you 10-1 odds that he meant exitorial. And, whatever else you may think about MathSci, he is an extremely careful reader and not hesitant to correct mistaken claims. The fact that he has not claimed (or corrected) the exitorial line should be more than enough to confirm it. But, just in case you are still wondering, I have left a message on his Talk page. That will allow MathSci to correct the record, should he want to. David.Kane (talk) 19:46, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Uh, since you raised the matter "whatever else you may think about Mathsci, he is an extremely careful reader and not hesitant to correct mistaken claims....", I raise a quibble. In the attack page [36] that Mathsci constructed about me he makes the claim that Philip Snow is the son of C. P. Snow. A check of the links shows that they are, in fact, brothers. The error has remained uncorrected even though I have pointed it out. The issue is very trivial but belies the claim that Mathsci "is an extremely careful reader and not hesitant to correct mistaken claims". Finally, I confess complete bafflement as to why Mathsci should think that either Philip Snow or C. P. Snow should be of relevance to this Arbcom debate. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:12, 12 July 2010 (UTC).

Mathsci (for reasons I could, but won't, speculate on) generally refuses to make changes that are requested by people he perceives as opponents. It doesn't matter how reasonable or unreasonable the change, if the request comes from an opponent it doesn't happen. I do believe Mathsci pays careful attention to detail in any non-conflictual situation, but he has an absolutist approach to conflict which gets in the way of common sense. Normally what would happen here (based on my experiences with Mathsci on other pages) is that someone Mathsci views as an ally would duplicate the suggestion for the change, and then Mathsci would graciously comply with it, acting as thouh the opponent had never asked. however, the only people in this arbitration Mathsci views as allies are not commenting much in this thread, and so that option isn't presenting itself. C'est la vie. --Ludwigs2 03:25, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I did not ask for the error to be corrected as it is such a trifling matter. I am happy to let it stand as a symbol of the shoddiness of the article that contains it. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:41, 12 July 2010 (UTC).

Uh, yes...frequently in fact. Perhaps, rather than assume an Arbiter is speaking out their ass, you could consider that several editors here (yourself included apparently) are far too worked up about this case and the subject matter in general. Shell ^babelfish 01:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Don't mean to be snippy, but is this directed at me? I am not assuming that you are speaking out of your "ass" and apologies if you interpreted it that way. MathSci has made many comments about Jensen's age. Are you aware of those comments? Should I provide diffs? The "exitorial" line, and his refusal to correct it, is consistent with those previous comments. And, just curious, how are you able to tell how "worked up" I am "about this case and the subject matter in general?" I don't think we have ever met . . . David.Kane (talk) 13:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, since you asked whether or not I even knew Mathsci with the implication that my uninvolved view must be incorrect. I'm well aware of Mathsci's comments and also well aware that he very rarely changes a comment after he's made it, even if others disagree with him. Thus, his refusal to correct it doesn't really mean much of anything and given the scope of things, is probably not worth bothering about. The fact that several people felt it necessary to review this, in depth, even after I pointed out how silly it is causes me to draw the conclusion that someone either has far too much time to nitpick inconsequential things or has let this dispute seriously affect the way they handle things on Wikipedia.

As for your final statement, you are aware of what happens during an Arb case? I may not know anyone here personally, but part of my job is to wade through evidence, talk page discussions and other interactions regarding this dispute and offer suggestions, comments, finding and remedies geared toward resolving the dispute. If you don't believe you've lost your point of view on this dispute, you're welcome to ignore my advice but I hope you'll consider that trying to help folks deescalate a dispute is part of what we do here. 23:22, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, whether it's a typo or deliberate I find it offensive and I believe a decent minded person would have changed it. Anyway, it's not a big issue. mikemikev (talk) 11:29, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci and cohorts tend to toss out nice long essays with a good collection of "minor" offenses—casual insinuation and personal attacks, misrepresentations, inconsistencies, etc. (This thread started with the "any contribution of genetics is fringe" position that gets introduced and then denied in a regular pattern.) Rising to any of these pieces of bait looks petty, and at this point one can only assume that's the plan: needle the opposition until they react and it reflects badly on them. The correct response to just about everything on this talk page is just not to feed the trolls. I am disappointed that the only arbitrator response seems to be to condemn to reaction and not the trolling, but in the end I expect they will see through it. Rvcx (talk) 13:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Advance notice of questions

I've just returned from a wikibreak and have been reading through the evidence and workshop proposals for this case (and the other open case). I intend to comment on the evidence talk page, and on the workshop page for this case this week, and I also intend to pose some questions for some parties and others in the 'Questions to the parties' section, so I'm posting a notice here so that: (a) this is not totally unexpected; (b) so people can note here whether they will be around this week (there is a holiday weekend coming up in the US); and (c) so that people can discuss how such questions should be handled (this section of cases is rarely used, but I would like to use it in this case). If I ask anyone a direct question (as opposed to a general question directed at anyone who wants to answer) I'll drop a note on their talk page, though it will still be a day or two until I get to that stage. Carcharoth (talk) 02:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello. I will be around. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 09:34, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm available off and on this week. Ideally I'd prefer if the questions didn't turn into more lengthy back-and-forth threads and wall-of-text argument by exhaustion, but of course I expect these are larger concerns for arbitrators than for me. Rvcx (talk) 10:09, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I should be around. --Ludwigs2 14:02, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Like Rvcx, I’ll probably be available on and off this week. If any of the arbitrators have questions for me, I should be able to answer them within no more than a few days. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:48, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to those who have responded so far. It may be a few more days until I have the questions ready. Carcharoth (talk) 07:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition to reading through the evidence page and workshop proposals, I think it would be helpful if you (and the other arbitrators) could read through the discussions on this page and the evidence talk page. These discussions contains several examples of the same behavior that’s the subject of this case, which I think ought to also be considered in determining this case’s outcome. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:40, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I will remember to look at that as well. I'm currently going to be commenting on the workshop proposals. Carcharoth (talk) 07:33, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay

Please accept my apologies for the unplanned delay in writing the decision up. As I was preparing to head to a month-long vacation from work, my employer found dozens of things that "urgently need to be done before you leave" and drained any semblance of free time I might have had for the past two weeks.

I'm taking a plane to Europe tomorrow, and I'll be using the long travel time to finish reviewing evidence and late discussion on the workshop, and should have a proposed decision ready to post when I arrive in Gdańsk for Wikimania on July 8. — Coren ^(talk) 14:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

When you say that you’ll have a decision ready to post when you arrive in Gdańsk for Wikimania on July 8, what does that mean in terms of when you’ll be ready to post the decision itself? Your user talk says that you’ll be on vacation until July 14th. Does that mean July 14th is when you’d be ready to post the decision, or will it be before or after that point?

I know I seem impatient about this, and the reason for that is because the lack of resolution in this case is negatively affecting some of the users involved in it. I mentioned on your userpage around two weeks ago that Rvcx has stopped participating in this case because he’s unable to keep up with the amount of content that’s resulting from the ongoing arguments here. And now, Xxanthippe has said here that Mathsci’s behavior during this case (which she’s been trying to get immediate attention about from arbitrators) has begun interfering with her ability to participate in articles about completely unrelated topics. This case’s seeming lack of attention from arbitrators bothers me when it’s having these effects on some of us. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:50, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

The decision has been written up, but it seemed eminently unfair to post it while I was unable to respond to comments. I'm back home, now, and I'll be posting it during the evening. — Coren ^(talk) 23:14, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Subpages for this ArbCom case

These are collections of diffs to examine the editing patterns of parties in this case: in this case many users have been involved. Calling the pages attack pages is incorrect. Mathsci (talk) 14:49, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Rvcx's rapid escalation of dispute resolution to an ArbCom case

Rvcx's initial RfAr shows that he does not acknowledge any problem with single purpose accounts pushing a minority point of view on race-related artciles, in fact quite the contrary. His analysis does not seem related in any way to long term editing on the article, i.e. beyond a period of one week. His RfaR request, precipitated within a matter of 5 or 6 days by a user whose small amount of content editing has been mainly on Larry Sanger, Carly Fiorina and Microsoft Kin, was phrased in very personal terms. Whatever grievances he had, Rvcx did not follow normal dispute resolution procedures. Instead, in a series of hasty and impetuous edits, he rapidly escalated matters to an ArbCom case, in an unprecedented way. He was given an apology twice by me here, because things happened so fast when David.Kane and others started alleging BLP violations. He chose not to accept it. Here is the route by which he came to request this case:

• WP:BLPN,[37][38][39][40] (commenting too fast to have checked any secondary sources carefully)
• WP:WQA an hour later,[41]
• WP:ANI a day later, [42]
• WP:RfAr four days later, [43]

Mathsci (talk) 14:49, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I think everyone is aware that the article was the subject of dispute in other venues before Rvcx became aware of it. Reading through those diffs (and also diffs before and after the diffs to which you specifically linked) and bearing in mind Wikipedia policies, I can't say that Rvcx acted too hastily. There is an editor conduct issue here, but it is not solely on Rvcx's part. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

1RR

Hi. Could an arbiter or clerk clarify whether or not this 1RR restriction is considered to be in effect? There was a request for a block based on this restriction at AN3 and though in this particular case, blocking the user does not seem to be an appropriate decision even if the 1RR restriction is enforceable, it would be nice to know how to handle future requests. I don't see a previous arbcom case authorizing discretionary sanctions. There is nothing at Wikipedia:General sanctions that I can see which applies here. If it is to be enforced, could an arbiter or clerk add a notice to Talk:Race and intelligence indicating as much? Something similar to {{Community article probation}} would be appropriate. I offer no opinion on whether or not the sanction is appropriate and should be enforced, but if it is the will of the arbitration committee, clerks, and community that it be enforced, there needs to be more notice than just a section on the talk page that was archived a month ago. Thank you. --B (talk) 16:01, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing that up. I think many of us remember the notice here (that is, on this arbitration case workshop page) but it does appear that new editors could surf by the actual article without noticing from the article page itself or its currently posted talk page that there are any reversion restrictions on the article. It is helpful to do as Peters did and draw attention to article edits on the article talk page. That conduct has resulted in some fruitful discussions of content improvement, from the keyboards of various editors who perhaps have differing points of view on the issues related to article content. Plenty of notice and discussion and use of the article talk page will help maintain a collegial, constructive atmosphere. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:15, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I should clarify - my main question here is not necessarily "is the 1RR restriction a good idea", but rather is "is it considered an actual enforceable restriction". I can't say I am thrilled with the idea that any admin can sua sponte unilaterally impose an editing restriction apart from arbcom or a community decision. But whether or not the 1RR restriction is a good idea, the question of "should admins enforce it at AN3" needs to be answered, preferably by an arbiter or clerk. --B (talk) 17:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about the 1RR motion in the motions section by GWH. The only arb to even comment is Carc, so this in no way is a motion passed by arbcom. If enough arbs vote on it, then it would be. So now the question is, is this supportable by community policy/standard practices? Off the top of my head, I can't think of 1RR standing without an arbcom ruling. Maybe it is, but I can't recall just now. Since I think this is a motion, I've voting to support it and bringing it to the drafting arb's attention, Coren. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:06, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. If it does pass, can you let me know and I'll post a template on the article talk page or can you get a clerk to add it. --B (talk) 20:56, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Sure, FYI, I also emailed arb-l to bring attention to this. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

There is an example of such a "community" general sanction. The Troubles 1RR sanction. SirFozzie (talk) 01:12, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

While I don't question that this restriction is a good idea and don't question that the community has the authority to impose such restrictions, I strenuously object to the idea that a single admin can unilaterally impose one. This places entirely too much authority with a single admin and places us in a situation of a consensus being needed to overturn a so-called "community sanction" which may never have had community support in the first place. --B (talk) 13:31, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I must agree with B (including 1RR as a valid restriction). My unfortunate experience has been that "lone" admins, believing themselves to be "neutral" with regard to some conflict, can take actions which are effectively (even if strictly intended as neutral) even more partisan—with content-damaging and conflict-escalating results—than the actions of the parties they are attempting to address. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 14:32, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I want to clarify that my issue here is NOT Georgewilliamherbert's neutrality or the issue of any hypothetical admin's neutrality. My issue is that the carte blanche authority for administrators to impose control over any article - whether they are neutral or not - is a bad idea. Discretionary sanctions imposed by a single admin should be on a limited basis in areas that have been identified as problems, where there are plenty of eyes on them to cause inappropriate measures to be brought to light quickly. If you establish unlimited authority for admins to dictate editing restrictions anywhere in the project, then this is not the encyclopedia anyone can edit - it's the encyclopedia anyone that hasn't ticked off the wrong admin can edit. Allowing an admin to pick an article out of a hat, declare it their fiefdom, and start laying down restrictions, is a very bad method of governance. --B (talk) 16:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)