Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Michaelm

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• (Michaelm | talk | contributions)

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Statement of the dispute

User:Michaelm has continually edited articles on Canadian politicians and social democracy to go against consensus. He usually refuses to discuss the contents of his edits with other users. He created List of Social Democrats as a fork after it had been removed from the article social democracy.

Description

User:Michaelm's edits are focused mainly on Canadian politics and Canadian politicians. Since his arrival, his edits have been mainly about labelling person or political party X as social democratic. Particularly in regard to Belinda Stronach a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, this description is often disputed by other users since it doesn't necessarily bear any resemblance to established reality.

Users such as Kevintoronto have spent "an amazing amount of time" [1] trying to reason with Michaelm and get him to follow consensus in his editing. But he still practices behaviour such as repeatedly removing descriptions of Stronach as a Conservative from other articles [2] [3] [4] (on the basis of editing patterns and speech style, there is a strong likelihood that User:24.222.32.133 is Michaelm [5]). Other users have made many attempts to alert Michaelm to the problems of editing without consensus, making edits not backed up by evidence, and not using edit summaries [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]. Michaelm's response in most cases has been minimal, limited to a one-line response, and even where he desists with the article in question, he will go on to edit another article in the same fashion.

On the article social democracy, Michaelm, editing anonymously, continued his contentious behaviour by again adding Belinda Stronach and other non-social democrats to the list of social democrats, being reverted several times [15] [16] [17]. I had signified my intention on the talk page to remove the list, because it contained such an enormous variety of politicians from all ideological hues that it could no longer be said to be informative or meaningful [18]. I removed the list with no objections from other editors but Michaelm reinstated it without discussion six times: [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24]. Finally, after an approach that did not address my objections (dividing the list by countries), instead of answering my repeated requests for dialogue he created the separate article List of Social Democrats and linked to it on the social democracy page [25].

Michaelm's quirky spelling and general incommunicativeness have led me to suspect that he may not be a native English speaker or he may have some sort of communicative impairment. Nevertheless, the countless attempts by editors to change his behaviour have met with little success, while his penchant to edit anonymously once confronted indicates that he's well aware that what he's doing is unacceptable. Nothing seems to be able to make him listen.

Lacrimosus 23:19, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Evidence of disputed behavior

See diffs provided above. See also

1. Edit history of social democracy
2. Edit history of Belinda Stronach
3. Edit history of New Democratic Party

Applicable policies

{list the policies that apply to the disputed conduct}

1. Wikipedia:Consensus
2. Wikipedia:Cite sources
3. Wikipedia:Edit summaries

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

See diffs above, and:

1. [26]
2. [27]
3. [28]
4. [29]
5. [30]

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

(sign with ~~~~)

1. I regret that it has come to this. As Lacrimosus notes, Michaelm appears to be a non-native English-speaker, or have a communicative problem, so I have tried to be extra patient. Michaelm has, howver, kept making the same mistakes no matter how many times we explain to him that his behaviour is not acceptable. Kevintoronto 13:52, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
2. As a further demonstration of Michaelm's refusal to communicate, and his refusal to change his behaviour over time, he has just deleted several paragraphs of statements made by Kevintoronto and myself from his talk page [31]. The statements are about Michaelm's difficulties with English. As I noted in his talk pages, his edits which do not require a revert very often do need an edit by another Wikipedian to correct his faulty spelling or grammar. This is not an insurmountable problem, as Kevintoronto and I requested in the deleted statements he could use a spell check before posting. Michaelm's decision to not respond and to remove the statements of others from his talk page demonstrates greatly how willing he is to change his unacceptable behaviour. Kurieeto 14:05, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Michaelm Kevintoronto 17:41, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

(sign with ~~~~)

1. Markaci 2005-03-16 T 00:17 Z
2. SimonP 01:32, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
3. I also noticed recently that Michaelm had similarly added Belinda Stronach to the paragraph at populism listing examples of populist politicians. It's almost unnecessary to say that this is no more an accurate description of Stronach's politics than social democrat would be. (He also removed several other previously-added Canadian examples at the same time.) Bearcat 19:06, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
4. CJCurrie 20:00, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
5. AndyL 22:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Response

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Outside view

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Discussion

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