A timeline of what happened:
Roughly before 02:49, 10 January 2008, I noticed Austrian economics was heavily vandalized and I knew ahead of time that attempts to fix it would face opposition by mobs of vandals. To at least give me some protection from this, I put in a request for semi-protection so that I could improve the article without requiring that it be totally locked. On 02:49, 10 January 2008, I made this request. [1]
On 04:51, 10 January 2008, my request was rejected by User:East718 on the basis that there wasn't enough vandalism yet to justify it. [2]
On 02:35, 10 January 2008, I removed POV-pushing from the lead in Austrian economics. [3], stating my justification in the summary.
On 02:45, 10 January 2008, I re-included criticism that had been cut out and reduced to a bulleted list. [4]
On 03:01, 10 January 2008, I tagged Austrian economics with "pseudoscience" [5] just as homeopathy and so on, have been appropriately tagged.
On 07:04, 10 January 2008, there was my first reverter who claimed I can't call "political philosophy" pseudoscience [6]. Precisely why, however, is political philosophy in an article on economics?
On 07:47, 10 January 2008, I sent a message requesting that East718 change his decision, citing the reverter above. [7]
On 07:55, 10 January 2008, I sent this anonymous user an WP:NPOV template, going even further than that, by explaining in detail how they were violating policy. [8] They did not respond, but they continued editing anyway and appears to be an WP:SPA. [9]
On 07:59, 10 January 2008, I reverted reverter1 and in the summary, I linked to his talkpage, where I noted his violation of policy. [10]
I saw no need to specifically contact Big Brother at this point since my statements were clear from the summary: "This is a policy issue. It has nothing to do with my particular political beliefs."
On 08:02, 10 January 2008, reverter 2 User:Big Brother 1984, re-inserted the POV material, making the charge, "Are you suggesting that a mixed economy is the only scientifically valid politcal system?" . [11]
On 08:40, 10 January 2008, I reverted reverter 2 and cited the specific policy violation in my edit summary. [12]
On 08:46, 10 January 2008, I again notified East718 of another editor who had been engaging in edit-warring with me, asking for his help. [13]
On 12:50, 10 January 2008, East718 responded that my claim was a "content dispute" and that protection only applies to "vandalism or biographies which are on the receiving end of persistent violations of WP:BLP and WP:NPOV" [14]
On 13:04, 10 January 2008, I responded to East718's dubious claim that it was a mere "content dispute," citing specific facts and examples as to why. [15] I also posted his own comments there. He later removed his own remarks, making it far more difficult for admins to review his page, should the matter become an issue. Overall, East718's censorship of his own page has made the collection of diffs on this matter more difficult (hence the reason why his comments were added last and why he was initially able to say he was totally uninvolved). For the purposes of proper record-keeping, our entire discussion was archived here be me. Please note: He said he "didn't care" about my threat to go to RFC. Once the wikiquette alert was issued, however, a couple hours later suddenly he became suddenly helpful. Compare that post-alert response with these pre-alert responses: [16] [17] Note the overwhelming change in civility. Given East718's user-page censorship, it may be worthwhile to dig through his edits and see what might be there. I am NOT a wikistalker, although strangely, this author gets the impression of either a Libertarian cabal or mass sockpuppetry, based on how many of the editors above have also gotten involved in Chocolate Thai -- an issue that he never notified any of them about and suggesting (but not proving) the possibility of sockpuppetry or organized cooperation outside of Wikipedia.
To be more specific about the above diffs:
On 13:07 10 January 2008, East718 responded to my charge that the edits to Austrian economics were not vandalism. He said, "I would qualify even egregious violations of WP:FRINGE as disruption and not vandalism." [18] Egregious disruption is not vandalism? That isn't a mountain out of a molehill. His statements blatantly contradict WP:VANDALISM. I pointed this out. [19] On 13:17, 10 January 2008, I made a minor revision and addition to my statement. [20] On 13:20, 10 January 2008 [21] And on 13:22, 10 January 2008 [22]
On 16:13, 10 January 2008, in Austrian economics I changed the POV term "critics" to NPOV term "criticism." [23]
On 16:31, 10 January 2008, reverter 3 was an admin: User:Skomorokh. [24] They included the most ridiculously POV edits that could have been included, followed by saying, "restore consensus version. Fringe is not at issue unless contrdicting non-fringe sources are provided. Attributed claims and tagged statements)" Through his edits, he asserted that the paper by Neoclassical economist Bryan Caplan on George Mason University's website was an unreliable fringe sources, while himself putting sources back in from Austrian economists themselves.
On 17:23, 10 January 2008, I reverted for the third time [25], citing in the policy summary, "Neoclassical economics is mainstream. See mainstream economics. A Neoclassical economist's paper on a university website does not violate WP:FRINGE"
At this point, it became clear, based on the above, that East718 intended on ignoring me because he had edited several articles without responding. As a result, I notified him that I would not accept his attempt at ignoring me and would attempt to achieve consensus through RFC, on 17:37, 10 January 2008. [26]
On 17:50, 10 January 2008 East718 responded, "See, when you start threatening me is when I stop caring." [27] Please note the above diff, however, which clarifies that he cared two hours after the wikiquette alert was made. He also cared enough to remove my comments from his page.
On 18:21, 10 January 2008 User:Skomorokh sent me a 3RR warning, although my page explicitly states that people not do that.[28] I therefore removed it, believing it was done in bad faith or at least out of ignorance. I notified Skomorokh pn 18:26, 10 January 2008. [29]
On 18:36, 10 January 2008, User:Skomorokh re-included the citations, which I disputed as dubious. [30] Outright refusing to discuss the matter with me, they moved on.
On 18:38, 10 January 2008 from East718's talkpage censorship, I was forced to put our discussion on my page, so that everybody could see it in full and he couldn't erase it, or just show the community his half. [31]
And thus...
On 19:10, 10 January 2008 the wikiquette alert was issued on East718. [32] and 2 minutes afterwards, I notified East718 himself. [33]
On 19:26, 10 January 2008, I sent User:Skomorokh a message thanking them for their constructive edits, but notifying them of how they were in violation of policy, citing specific facts of how he was wrong. [34] He never responded.
On 19:28 10 January 2008, I reverted their edits (my fourth) and in the policy summary, linked to the discussion page where I attempted to engage User:Skomorokh [35] They never responded and, to this day, have not responded.
On 19:29, 10 January 2008, I actually removed a [citation needed] tag from the article about the influence of Austrian economics, but added the caveat "historical." [36] One has to wonder: Why would a POV-pushing troll who hates Austrian economics argue (the mainstream economic claim) that it was influential historically? I then followed up with a minor copy-edit, to make it more NPOV. [37] If Austrian economics differs from "currently dominant" scientific method, it is by definition pseudoscience.
On 19:48, 10 January 2008 I pointed out to East718 that there was currently edit-warring going on [38] and that, as shown above, I made every good-faith effort I could to avoid it. To simply ignore false, biased information is to ignore WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, and WP:FRINGE. Surely, I though, all of that takes precedence over the guideline that you not revert more than three times?
On 19:51, 10 January 2008 on my wikiquette request, someone said that East718 was right to tell me to go away and find another admin. I pointed out the sheer absurdity of this statement because East718 was the one who rejected the request for protection. If I go to another admin, they'll just tell me to take it up with East718, since they don't want to "go over his head," and possibly lead to wheel-warring. [39]
On 20:17, 10 January 2008 I noted to East718 that yet a third troll had edit-warred with me and did this while refusing to discuss the article. But WP:BRD can't work without the D. Otherwise it's a cycle: Bold-->revert-->Bold-->revert. And where does that lead us? The answer should be obvious -- precisely the reason I sought semi-protect to begin with. [40]
On 20:43, 10 January 2008 noting that East718 might have no experience in economics (which he acknowledged), I put forth solid primary sources that Austrian economics was extremely fringe. The quotes provided in the diff (and shown below) establish the point pretty well to anyone who's not an adherent of this theories. [41]
On 20:48, 10 January 2008 as noted above, East718 later admitted his lack of experience. [42]
On 20:57, 10 January 2008, it occurred to me that the association of banking conspiracy theories with anti-semitism might lead to the folks at WP:Judaism being willing to help. So, I posted there [43], citing a number of reliable primary sources demonstrating the WP:FRINGE and radicalism of the Austrian school. Nobody there seemed willing to help.
On 21:34, 10 January 2008, reverter 4 User:Childhoodsend removed the claim about praxeology being distinct from the current scientific method, claiming that calling Austrian economics "heterodox" is "original research" (but that claim is all over Wikipedia on a number of articles). [44] They then reincluded this assertion in a POV-pushing paragraph. [45]
On 22:47, 10 January 2008, I notified Childhoodsend (who appears to be an WP:SPA) of their violations of policy. [46] I even used a specific example of an article that had been written by on their own POV-pushers, where my point was demonstrated. [47]
On 22:54 10 January 2008, I reverted Childhoodsend's account on the basis that they were an WP:SPA, in blatant violation of policy. [48]
Roughly right after this (not exactly sure when) I was blocked. At some point after this, I was blocked by admin User:AuburnPilot, who has engaged in the same contentious editing of articles on Austrian economics, Libertarianism, and Market anarchism. A few minutes later User:Coccyx Bloccyx sent me a message, asking if I was still blocked. At the time, I assumed this meant he was an admin. Why else would someone suddenly appear out of nowhere to ask me that, as soon as I was blocked?
See User_talk:Zenwhat#Are you still blocked When they first asked me that, I made the false assumption that Coccyx was an admin and I made the false assumption that I had been "temporarily unblocked," (wheel-war'd) because when I was first blocked, I could not see the "edit" button. But when I viewed Coccy'x talkpage, I could see it again. When I clicked it, it didn't work, though. This appears to be just a case of a person thinking a cached page is what's actually on Wikipedia.
Immediately after I was blocked, I went to the IRC to see if I could try and discuss the matter with some reasonable people to see how they'd understand the issue. At first, they were friendly and inquisitive. When I mentioned what the article was on and who it was about, they were immediately hostile, throwing a zillion accusations and loaded questions at me so that I couldn't even respond to them all. As we argued, someone made a subtle threat. I asked them not to make subtle threats and they said "who said it was subtle." Through attempting to debate civily (caustically -- sure, but uncivil?) I was blocked. Immediately after I was blocked, I was called "stupid." I saved a copy of the IRC conversation as a record and can post it, but it's in ugly HTML that doesn't work well in Wikipedia. If anyone could host it, that would be great.
After this issue was over and done with, User:Brusegadi restored some of my edits: [49] as did User:Gregalton. [50] Gregalton, who has a far more impressive edit history than me, has been considering quitting Wikipedia over the matter as have I.
On 02:02, 11 January 2008, unlike my attempt to follow WP:BRD, Childhoodsend made edits first without discussing them. [51] Two minutes later, Childhoodsend responded to my comments. [52]
Overall, several admins and experienced editors seem to be supportive of what I've done and Gregalton is as well. I know that based on my user page and my edit history, one could easily just assume I'm a troll, but there are several subtle nuances in they're you're missing, like this (I was logged out) and this.
For several hours earlier today (as of the time of writing this post), I discussed policy with User:Kim Bruning for several hours over Skype. Mostly, it was very, very difficult for us to actually find where we disagreed over policy. Zenwhat (talk) 15:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Also, as demonstration of the radicalism of Austrian economics, I cite the views of its founder, Ludwig von Mises, as expressed in Omnipotent Government:
- Ludwig von Mises, which the Wikipedia article names as the "uncontested dean of the Austrian School of economics," says of Fascism in Omnipotent Government (published in 1944, re-published in 1969):
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.
- And of Nazism:
http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/og/chap6.asp
The German people are young and vigorous, while the Western nations are old and degenerate. The Germans are diligent, virtuous, and ready to fight. The French are morally corrupt, the idol of the British is mammon and profit, the Italians are weaklings, the Russians are barbarians.
The Germans are the best warriors. That the French are no match for them has been proved by the battles of Rossbach, Katzbach, Leipzig, Waterloo, St. Privat, and Sedan. The Italians always take to their heels. The military inferiority of Russia was evidenced in the Crimea and in the last war with the Turks. English land power has always been contemptible. Britain rules the waves only because the Germans, politically disunited, have in the past neglected the establishment of sea power. The deeds of the old Hanse clearly proved Germany's maritime genius.
It is therefore obvious that the German nation is predestined for hegemony. God, fate, and history chose the Germans when they endowed them with their great qualities.
Nazism conquered Germany because it never encountered any adequate intellectual resistance. It would have conquered the whole world if, after the fall of France, Great Britain and the United States had not begun to fight it seriously.
...
With regard to these dogmas there is no difference between present-day British liberals and the British labor party on the one hand and the Nazis on the other.
Now, for the fans of Mike Godwin, let's be clear here: I'm not saying "Mises associated with Nazis" or "Mises was like Hitler." The above clearly demonstrates that he was supportive of Nazism and Fascism. About Omnipotent Government, please bear in mind:
- It was originally published in 1944, the year before the Nazis lost and Mises' horrible embarrassment to see the side he supported lose.
- It was re-published in 1969, when it was clearly not acceptable to support the Nazis or Fascists.
- It was again re-published sometime in the late 90's and early millenium, on Mises.org, when it's clearly not acceptable to support Fascism or Nazism.
The violations of policy above appear to be an intentional action on the part of the Mises Institute and its supporters.
Please bear in mind, however: I could've used the above sources, but didn't, because I was only trying to gently nudge the article in the right direction. The only source I used was [this] and the editors above would strangely not allow me to include it, while those on the IRC claimed that because the word "pseudoscience" is not in Caplan's essay, that he's not being dismissive of Austrian economics as a science. My response? The Constitution doesn't contain the word "freedom." That should've been the end of it, but he continued making this argument. He then kept demanding other citations that Austrian economics is pseudoscience and I explained: They're difficult to find because pseudoscience isn't covered in academic journals. But merely one citation is good enough to satisfy WP:V.
Since this matter was put through a request for arbitration:
User:Skomorokh has apologized for not responding to my statements sooner. [53] User:Zenwhat accepts this apology as genuine [54]. Zenwhat (talk) 15:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
On East718's talkpage censorship, he wiped all of these comments clean from his page. [55] Now, he did archive these subjects [56] but why exactly would an admin archive discussions that are still ongoing? It seems to be an opposition to WP:CONSENSUS. After all, when I put forth the notification about the ArbCom, he removed it. [57] What does a good-faith editor have to fear from the community, really? The more open it is and the more people that hear about an issue -- according to Wikipedia principles -- then the better that decision is going to be. By being rude, misquoting basic policy, and attempting to pre-emptively shut down discussion, East718 hasn't necessarily violated policy, but he has demonstrated that he is a horrible admin. Zenwhat (talk) 18:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
A final word, please note: I have revised some of the above statement based on AuburnPilot's criticisms (see my main talkpage). The admins involved, however, have not revised their stories despite the evidence above, although one of them made a good faith effort to apologize. See User talk:Zenwhat.