User:TimidGuy/COIN

TM COI/N reports

Adding information to MuZemike’s evidence and timeline, which is presented here:[1]

Summary

In these eight TM-related COIN reports, no solid or convincing evidence was ever provided showing problematic edits or patterns on the part of the accused "TM Editors", and this glaring lack of evidence apparently continues to this very ArbCom.[2] . Virtually all the accusations were based on the self-admitted connections between the accused editors and TM orgs, but COI is not violated by merely being employed or associated with the subject of the article.

In order:

January 2007 COI/N

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 2 [3]

No evidence presented showing problematic edits.
"Conclusion: Consensus building by several active editors (who include the user named in the report) has addressed the COI issues appropriately. This is no longer an active issue on this noticeboard. — Athænara ✉ 00:58, 26 February 2007 (UTC)" [4]

April 2007 COIN

April 2007: Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 5 and Events regarding the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi discussion, [5][6]

Again, no evidence presented showing problematic edits, case described in header as “content dispute.”
Dseer posted 6,000 words but neither he nor anyone else posted any mainspace diffs. During the proceeding Durova did comment and advise me not to edit, and to defer to neutral editors. But I pointed out to her that there were no neutral editors present.
EdJohnston, the person on COIN who investigated this particular case, told Dseer: "The general WP practice is to leave each article in the hands of those working and responding on the particular talk page, unless there is gross abuse, which didn't seem to be in evidence. If you had asked for a very specific remedy, it might have been considered, but it seemed like there was no short answer to any question from any of the participants. Note that a serious page like WP:ANI expects short postings, with diffs, and very concentrated evidence, none of which was presented on the COI noticeboard. A complaint like 'Go investigate those guys, they are being unfair' is hard to get much traction on. A ban on editing by college employees, if it were applied to every college in the world, seems too severe." [7]
Another EdJohnston comment: "Although the Talk pages mentioned here are voluminous, I looked at a few of the comments by User:TimidGuy and they seemed quite fair. In a sense, one is tempted to keep tongue firmly in cheek when reading any lengthy articles about Transcendental Meditation, and unless someone can show an extremely blatant conflict of interest, it's hard to get too worked up about this stuff. (It's not as though we were discussing alleged medical remedies that might not work). Most of the WP readers who take a look at one of these articles will realize they are in the domain of colorful speculation (yogic flying, etc.), and are presumably ready to discount any very specific claims that may be made. The one article I looked through in detail was balanced in terms of criticism of the approach. You could unfortunately go blind reading all the way through the Talk pages, so unless the COI nominator has a smoking gun to offer, I'm tempted to suggest we archive this issue. EdJohnston 23:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)" [8]

User:Dseer concedes that TG is a valuable contributor, stating that he does “not assert the article was better off without him, to the contrary “
Comment on this by neutral party: "If User:Dseer feels that the current Maharishi article represents an unbalanced view, I invite him to create a 'corrective' paragraph that might restore neutrality to the article, and have us critique it here. EdJohnston 17:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)" [9]
Dseer is asked several times to provide evidence, but fails to do so.

May 2007 COIN

May 2007: Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 11 [10]

Yet again, no evidence of problematic diffs is presented, and the conclusion is:

"I've got a strong sense of deja vu. Unless you have something new to present, I'm closing this. MER-C 10:51, 23 May 2007 (UTC)"
"Second that déjà vu. Evidence in Archive 5. — Athaenara ✉ 04:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)"
"Almost everyone who ever works on those articles has some previous awareness of or connection to TM, possibly as a former meditator or as an enthusiast for some related school of self-improvement. We did not come up with any well-defined misbehavior last time we looked at those articles. You'll find some people critical of TM who also edit there. If you have something very specific you want to raise, I suggest you offer it at Talk:Transcendental Meditation for discussion. EdJohnston 05:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)"

November 2007 COIN

Yet another case with no evidence. [11]

Checkpoint

Thus far all claims that I violated COI and WP policies have been based solely on my admission that I worked for MUM, which is not a bar to editing the articles. No evidence provided to show problematic editing.

February 2009 COIN

Feb 2009 [12]

While there are diffs presented, there is no compelling or solid evidence that any wrongdoing has been done by TG , Olive or other so-called “TM editors”

Diffs like this are presented: [13], which do not seem problematic or evidence of POV pushing or promotion, just standard edits per policy.

The diffs presented show a standard content dispute, with editing actually per WP:WEASEL and WP:V, [14] - but, the follow up diff is not presented: [15]
Another diff presented with a complaint that it was moved to the history section, [16] (It is hard to follow why that’s a problem..after all, it does appear to be ‘history’)

The supposedly COI editors are actually credited by the complaintants: “To give credit where it is eventually due, this last deletion of a direct quote from the court opinion, with the Edit Summary comment by olive "What a beauty", was subsequently undone by olive, and TimidGuy did acknowledge on my talk page that he had misread the concurring opinion when he wrote the original summary of the case”

August 2009 COIN

August 2009 COIN [17]
Again, no evidence of problematic edits provided.

"Little Olive Oil is correct, actually. I see that you've warned them that they are not following "COI rules", when in reality there aren't any. WP:COI is a guideline meant to suggest ways for an editor with a COI to contribute to Wikipedia without disruption. They aren't preventative in any way. An editor is only expressly forbidden from editing a page where a COI applies if a topic ban has been placed on them. Such bans do come from ArbCom, but I believe that the community can decide a topic ban (just as they can declare a more general ban against an editor). I've seen such proposals on the WP:ANI board. I recommend that you try WP:RFC/U if you truly believe that Little Olive Oil needs such a sanction. Just keep in mind the Plaxico Effect; if you want to escalate the dispute that far you might bring scrutiny on yourself as well. If you're not confident enough for that, I suggest keeping the discussion either at the TM talk page, or going through the usual dispute resolution channels for article content. -- Atamachat 17:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)"

"I suppose a community-sanctioned ban could happen anywhere, I just don't think this board gets enough attention for that. I haven't seen anything like that before. If you know of one I'd be interested to see. It's not that I don't believe you, I just don't want to go through all the archives searching and it sounds like you have an idea of where to look."
"I see that from the old discussion you linked, the only decision that Will Beback made was that Little Olive Oil wasn't bound by WP:COI not to edit. I don't see anything saying they weren't allowed to edit TM articles. -- Atamachat 18:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)"

To Fladrif: "Since Will is participating in this discussion I'll leave it up to him to say what he meant, and to give any further judgement on the matter. But what you said above is false. Nowhere in any of the information that you quoted did Will state that Olive was not allowed to edit those articles any longer. Will said that he was going to suggest that they refrain from doing so, but that's it. In any case, Will cannot topic-ban Olive. It's not in his authority to. See WP:BAN, he can certainly block her for misbehavior but only Arbcom or a community consensus can declare a ban. You seem to be working under the false assumption that Will somehow unilaterally banned her already. -- Atamachat 19:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)"[18]

"What you linked says that an administrator can enforce sanctions listed at Wikipedia:General sanctions, and that's it. Do you see Transcendental Meditation in that list? -- Atamachat 20:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)"

Why would this be (bolding added):

"I've made few edits to Transcendental Meditation, most fairly trivial, and my involvement in that topic is largely an outgrowth of getting involved in the previous discussion here. Since the user has redacted information from her talk page about the nature of her involvement with the topic, it would be difficult to do a fresh evaluation of the matter without compromising the editor's wishes. I think the discussion held in February is still relevant, and I don't believe any of the facts have changed. Will Beback talk 17:43, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

August 2009 part II

August COIN report [19]
Again, no diffs or evidnce of problematic editing.
The only concern here was an anon ip, and suggestion to SPI/CU:

"Per this and this, User:Bigweeboy is also in Fairfield and is a very similar IP (76.76.232.130 and 76.76.228.104). They might even be the same person. That's why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff is unsettling. Maybe WP:SPI is in order. -- Atamachat 22:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

And the conclusion once again is that it is a content dispute:

"I think that what's needed here is dispute resolution. I haven't seen evidence on the article's talk page that this has occurred. I don't see any blatant conduct problems aside from some ill-will between editors with different points of view on the article. At the heart of this conflict is a content dispute, and COI complaints have been lobbied against a few people with a pro-TM POV, and not without some justification in my eyes. But Olive and Will have both stated that simply having a COI doesn't necessarily post a problem as long as an editor's contributions are proper.
I think that if dispute resolution is carried out, then uninvolved editors can evaluate the neutrality of the article and how appropriate the sources are. I have some concerns about MUM, for example, being sourced in an article where people who might be associated with the organization are editing. This might qualify as promotion and is one of the reasons why Wikipedia does pay attention to conflicts of interest. I also worry that someone may take such a pretext as an excuse to remove reliably sourced materials that expand the article."
Again, I see this as mostly a content dispute, and I think that if the article were given an independent evaluation most problems would be resolved. I've always felt that it is actually healthy for people with opposing POVs to work on an article, as long as they are willing to collaborate constructively. -- Atamachat 16:03, 12 August 2009 (UTC)"

"That's good to know, clearly I missed that mediation was happening on the talk page. If the informal mediation goes nowhere, I think you're left with formal mediation and then if that fails, arbitration. Assuming that ArbCom takes the case, the results of that would be binding and could result in topic bans or blocks for people involved in the dispute. Somebody would be unhappy if that happened so it would be best if it was avoided, but if nothing else will settle the dispute, so be it. -- Atamachat 22:45, 12 August 2009 (UTC)"

January 2010 COIN

The final COIN before ARBCOM, [20]
Again, no evidence of problematic editing by the accused is provided.

"It does not appear that this is a conflict of interest, per se, but rather someone who is passionate about the subject matter, and perhaps a fan. It does not appear to be a WP:SPA but they are editing in a non-neutral way, with bias/pov. And it appears that you have been in an edit war with the editor, including violating 3R yourself. I don't believe that WP:COIN is the best place to have this resolved. Try to continue to work it out on the talk page, or take a wikibreak from the page, and come back after a month of not even looking at the article. If edit warring continues, request page protection to help encourage an open discussion on the talk page. Failing that, please checkout WP:Dispute and then open a request over at WP:DRR. Good luck. Tiggerjay (talk) 22:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)"

"I do not clearly see any COI, but rather a dispute which has lead to uncivil behavior. I highly recommend you open this at dispute resolution request, or Arbcom. Tiggerjay (talk) 01:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

"If you are looking for administrative action, instead of community assistance, you should post over at WP:ANI, but there is so much accusation of unstated or undefined edits, that you are really making resolution harder. It appears that the desire by both sides is for sanctions or disciple against the other party, instead of working to have the best article. Tiggerjay (talk) 02:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC)"

"I'm late in replying here, a combination of "tl;dr" and being busy elsewhere. I believe that the last time we went down this road, I had opined that I didn't see evidence of disruption, and that people being in the same town and sharing interests weren't necessarily a problem if disruption wasn't occurring. But I had also suggested back then that a sockpuppet investigation might be helpful in sorting out some of the accusations being made (particularly by Fladrif). I am glad to see that such an investigation is now taking place, and hope that it either settles the problem one way or the other, or allows matters to proceed to another venue where a resolution can be found (such as an RFC or ArbCom). By the way, my administrator status shouldn't change the weight of my opinion, I'm the same person I was 6 months ago and being given a few tools doesn't give me any more actual authority than before. -- Atama頭 19:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)"