User:Drilnoth/Drafts/RFCU re. Gavin.collins

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Gavin.collins (talk · contribs · logs)

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Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who are concerned by this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

Desired outcome

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That Gavin.collins would learn to work in a positive manner with those editors with whom he disagrees, which includes assuming good faith, engaging in calm discussion, not being dismissive of the opinions of people with whom he disagrees, and learning to understand why people feel they way they do about the issues they may have with his opinions and conduct. If he desires to continue reviewing the appropriateness of Dungeons & Dragons, role-playing game, and other related articles and criticizing their structure and support, as is welcome by Wikipedia principle, it would help if he took the time to understand the material and why some people regard it as important and worthwhile. Gavin would work better with others if he were to understand the spirit of editing Wikipedia through collaboration, rather than through the narrow focus of observing the strict interpretation of its most restrictive policies and guidelines. He should learn that Wikipedia works through consensus at every level, regardless of how "local" the consensus is, or whether he agrees with any consensus that has been reached.

Description

Gavin's aggressiveness and combativeness, judgmental and sarcastic tone, edit warring over cleanup templates, accusations of vandalism and conflict of interest based on circumstantial evidence, and general assumptions of bad faith regarding other users' motivations amounts to disruptive editing, creating a long-lasting unfriendly environment which is bad for the entire Wikipedia project and the Dungeons & Dragons WikiProject in particular. He ignores consensus when it goes against him, argues that every tag he places is valid unless it can be proven that the tag is clearly not applicable, dodges direct questions about his tagging or statements when he cannot conveniently quote a Wikipedia policy or guideline to defend his position (examples: [1], [2], [3]), and has even recently characterized other users' comments as doublethinking. He often appears to misuse certain policies and guidelines to defend his point of view, and ignore those policies and guidelines that prove inconvenient to him. He appears to thrive on the conflict that results from his actions.

On 23 August 2007, Gavin.collins began editing role-playing game articles by proposing dozens of GURPS articles for deletion through WP:PROD and WP:AFD. On 28 August he began adding other cleanup templates to articles regarding various RPGs in addition to deletion proposals. By 4 October 2007, a group of editors disputing the high volume of his deletion nominations filed his first Request for Comment, primarily focusing on the deletion aspect of his activities, especially when the deletion nominations were seen as retaliation for disagreements. The challenging editors also mentioned his use of cleanup templates for which they disputed the appropriateness, his accusations of conflict of interest against other editors (suggesting that the editors were employees of the game companies), and accused him of ignoring consensus, using Wikipedia functions to try to prove a point, and other forms of incivility.

Gavin's nominations for deletions slowed down significantly after his first RFC, but the other behavioral issues and questions over the appropriateness of tags remained. In time, Gavin narrowed his focus from role-playing game articles in general to mainly Dungeons & Dragons articles. In addition to many deletion nominations, Gavin would apply multiple cleanup tags to numerous articles almost daily, often adding the same set of tags to each article. He has been challenged numerous times about the appropriateness of certain tags, including challenges that he does not follow the correct guidelines and policies regarding when certain templates should be used; he has rarely changed his mind about a tag's appropriateness after discussion. It has been speculated that the repetitive tag placement and the amount of articles affected in a small amount of time indicates that Gavin does not actually read the articles or check them for notability before tagging them, but he responds that he simply reads several articles over time and then tags them all at once. The vast majority of Gavin's mainspace edits involve the above-described activities on D&D and RPG-themed articles. Generally, Gavin does not help to fix any of the issues for which he tags these articles, leaving the harder cleanup work up to others. There have only ever been a few active members of the Dungeons & Dragons WikiProject at any time, and the sheer volume of Gavin's tagging places an excessive burden on these few editors, who cannot hope to fix these articles at that same speed with which he tags them. Gavin admits that he has little knowledge of role-playing games (which he blames on the "bad quality" of Wikipedia RPG articles [4]), so the reason for his focusing on them remains unclear; some editors have speculated that he has a strong bias against the genre although he denies this. Many D&D article talk pages, Gavin's talk page archives, and the D&D Wikiproject talk page archives are filled with largely unproductive discussions on whether given sources are reliable secondary sources, and whether uncited content is original research or simply unsourced; these discussions often result in no conclusion, compromise, or consensus, as Gavin seems to be resistant to any view but his own.

After several months of this activity with tags placed on hundreds of RPG articles, and many increasingly unfriendly exchanges, members of the Dungeons & Dragons WikiProject agreed almost unanimously to enter into mediation with Gavin, to attempt to settle conduct disputes which had content disputes at their heart. The Request for Mediation was filed 25 April 2008, focusing primarily on perceived issues with the Kender article (per lengthy discussion on the talk page), as a test for D&D articles in general. During this time, at Gavin's request, the involved parties agreed not to place or remove templates on D&D articles. Gavin did honor this, and made few if any edits at all to D&D articles, and had little or no interaction with D&D project members outside of the RFM. Instead, aside from his involvement in the RFM, Gavin became heavily involved in working on the Notability guidelines, particularly Notability (fiction), as well as some involvement in other policies and guidelines. His work and discussion on these guidelines seems to center on changing them to fit his viewpoint on notability and inclusion. Much work was done on the Kender article initially as part of the RFM, although eventually the mediation case was closed as stale on 7 November 2008 after all involved parties had ceased active involvement in the mediation. With the RFM closed, Gavin immediately began to return to his previous activities on D&D and RPG-related articles, beginning with Dan Willis on 8 November 2008, bringing the same old disputes back to life.

Evidence of disputed behavior

(Provide diffs. Links to entire articles aren't helpful unless the editor created the entire article. Edit histories also aren't helpful as they change as new edits are performed.)

Accusations and suggestions of Conflicts of Interest: [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]
Hostile tone in repetitive message left on the talk pages of editors removing the notability template in good faith: [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22]
Disparaging remarks about other editors: [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31]
Edit warring over tags and templates: ([32] and [33] and [34]), ([35] and [36]), ([37] and [38] and [39]), ([40] and [41] and [42])
Incorrect accusation of Vandalism: [43], [44]
Rather offensive naming of articles as fancruft: [45], [46]
Ignoring or discounting consensus: [47], [48], [49],
Misinterpretation of how to use certain templates, policies, and guidelines: [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55]
Uses "obscurity" or a similar term to indicate that a topic lacks notability: [56], [57]
Awarded a barnstar sarcastically: [58] with additional rudeness in the AFD: [59]
Misplaced tags:

Adding {{notability}} to an article which already has {{importance}}: [60], [61], [62].
Adding {{notability}} and/or {{unreferenced}} to articles that already contain Reliable Secondary Sources: [63], [64], [65], [66]
Adding both {{plot}} and {{in-universe}} to the same article: [67]

Applicable policies and guidelines

{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}

Applicable essays

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Gavin.collins [68]
Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-10-11 Requests for comment/Gavin.collins [69] (closed because it wasn't a content dispute).
Discussion on Gavin's talk page over the accuracy of templates: [70], [71]
Article Requests for Comment: [72], [73]
Wikipedia:Third opinion [74]
Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Kender [75]
Attempts on Gavin's talk page to resolve dispute: [76], [77], [78], [79], [80]
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents [81] (Closed with no administrator response)

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links to demonstrate that the disputed behavior continued after trying to resolve the dispute)

Failure to resolve dispute after posting on talk page:[82], [83], [84], [85], [86]

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

Other users who endorse this summary

Response

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Outside view

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Discussion

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