Case Opened on 19:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Case Closed on 09:08, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this request. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators will be working on evidence and suggesting proposed decisions at /Workshop and voting on proposed decisions at /Proposed decision.

Involved parties

Complaining witness

jguk (talk · contribs)

Nominal defendant

Sortan (talk · contribs)

Summary by Jguk

This is a request that ArbCom rules (1) that accounts that are not being used to help improve the encyclopaedia can be banned on request to ArbCom; and (2) that User:Sortan is one such user and should be blocked.

Statement by Jguk

Please limit your statement to 500 words

The biggest cause of major contributors leaving Wikipedia, aside from personal circumstances, is accounts that make very little or no positive contribution to the encyclopaedia, but who are content to argue, harass, harangue and/or make occasional personal attacks. Often they attach themselves to one or two users. This makes it difficult to remove them - they are not clear vandals or widespread trolls (and so do not qualify for automatic bans), however, they are trouble and bring no benefits to the encyclopaedia. They prevent editors with long edit histories that show a long record from making productive edits. They often tend to be litigious, demanding of their “rights” - which itself creates a problem, especially as our writers are here because they wish to write, not because they wish to defend 200+ of their edits in a RfC or ArbCom case. To my mind, it should be clearly stated that where ArbCom finds an account is not here in order to better the encyclopaedia, then it should be blocked.

I invite ArbCom to do this in the case of Sortan (talk · contribs). This account’s contribution history constitutes evidence demonstrating that this user has made no real contributions of note, but has been involved in many disruptive disputes is in the edit history. I think it is so self-evident that if ArbCom members were to open 10 or 12 of this accounts edits at random, and consider the purposes of those edits, they will see what I am referring to. The underlying principle is Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (which, although semi-humorous refers to our fundamental purposes. I urge ArbCom to take this case to determine (1) that accounts that are not being used to help improve the encyclopaedia can be blocked on request to ArbCom; and (2) that User:Sortan is one such user and should be blocked.

Statement by Sortan

Please limit your statement to 500 words

I would agree that the cause of contributors leaving Wikipedia is persistent trolling from POV pushers, who do nothing but edit war to enforce their particular POVs. Such is the case with Jguk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). He has made no significant contributions to history articles, yet has engaged in hundreds of edit wars, and thousands of reversions with editors who do contribute. One only has to look at the histories of such articles such as Sino-Roman relations (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) where jguk has engaged in revert wars spanning months against the article creator PHG over date styles. A similar situation occurs at History of the alphabet (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) where jguk revert wars with article creator Kwamikagami. This pattern is repeated over hundreds of articles where the contributors commit the cardinal sin of disagreeing with jguk over his preferred styles.

Dates are not the only matter with which jguk revert wars over, but other stylistic differences, including U.S. vs US, styles for royalty, and spelling styles (British vs American spelling).

Jguk is apparently claiming that my reverting him here [[1]] (where he changes start of the Common Era to 1 BC, and which is against his arbitration case and for which he received a block (see WP:ANI#Jon_Garrett_removing_references_to_Common_Era)), constitutes "harassment" and "stalking".

I too would urge acceptance so that Jguk's disruptive history of edit warring over styles can receive greater scrutiny.

Addendum:

Jguk's summary is without diffs or links of evidence. He claims I'm litigious, yet I've never started an RFAr (I added myself to Jguk 2, which was started by someone else). Jguk, on the other hand, has been involved in numerous RfArs and RFCs, even when he doesn't edit the subject matter concerned (eg. Instantnood 2). I would please ask for evidence where I've been litigious, or where I've hindered, in any way, Jguk infrequent constructive edits.

Addendum 2:

Perhaps David Gerard could enlighten me how my "trolling" jguk caused him to make these edits: [2], [3]?

Perhaps David Gerard could also enlighten me how he "missed" jguk's edits as an anon during his first arbcom case?

Preliminary decisions

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (6/0/0/0)

Accept, Jguk continues to engage in edit warring over notation, accept to consider further action Fred Bauder 22:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Fred, Sortan's been riding Jguk and trolling the hell out of him. That's what the RFAr is about and it's a problem - David Gerard 22:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- More specifically, reacting as if to justify past wikien-l concerns on the dangers of bringing a troll to arbitration [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] may not be the best idea - David Gerard 14:21, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Your point is coming through Fred Bauder 14:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - Accept to consider all questions raised Fred Bauder 14:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Accept ➥the Epopt 14:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Accept, though I note that jguk's actions are not of concern to me at first blush. James F. (talk) 19:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. Charles Matthews 16:24, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. Dmcdevit·t 00:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary injunction (none)

Final decision

All numbering based on /Proposed decision (vote counts and comments are there as well)

Principles

Banning of obsessive users

1) Users who focus in a disruptive way on an issue or subject may be banned from editing with respect to that issue or subject.