Appeal
On 01/09/2016, Tryptofish asked for Arbitration Enforcement against me because 1) I deleted an article that he claimed supported his contention that Jill Stein had made statements that were "contrary to science". The article, in fact, does not support the claim that Jill Stein had made statements "contrary to science", but noted that Jordan Weissmann (a business and economics editor) author of "an opinion piece at Slate dismissed Green Party candidate Jill Stein as “a Harvard-trained physician who panders to pseudoscience” concerning genetically modified organisms, pesticides, “quack medicine,” and vaccine efficacy." This is the only sentence in the article pertaining to JS, and so -- in my view -- should not be added as a separate indictment of Jill Stein since the text (quoted in full above) is hardly a recommendation of the article by Mr. Weissmann and takes no explicit position on Jill Stein's positions (though the language suggests the author does not concur with Weissmann. Farther down in his complaint, Tryptofish accuses me of inserting a "disparaging remark" about Jordan Weissmann in the Wikipedia article, referencing the text: "Weissmann subsequently wrote a retraction of one part of his article related to the effects of pesticides on honeybee populations."[1] I do not see how this could be disparaging, as both the title and the content of the article indicate that Weissmann (a business and economics editor) is making a retraction of a significant error about science in his original article.
Next, I was called out for 2) changing the name of a reference from :03 to WaPoArticleCitedSixteenTimes and waiting for a bot to come correct the other 15 references to the article. An editor quickly objected to this change so I changed all sixteen references to avoid links being unavailable. Waiting for the bot was a regrettable technical mistake, as was the polemical name I chose for the overcited reference. The legitimate point on the oversourcing of the article to half-quotes from the Washington Post interview the day after it appeared (a move which was criticized here, here, here, here, and here) got lost in the process.
The error I made was made shortly after I had to revert Tryptofish's non-constructive edit diff in the science section, an attempt to discredit her peer-reviewed published views on science in the preceding sentence. I admit that my view of legitimate editing behavior was influenced by my accuser's (Tryptofish's) addition of this (in my view unhelpful) citation for the section "science":
Stein has said: "For science geeks, you can show yourself if you have any doubt that I too am a science geek."[2]
Nevertheless, my error was an error, despite the fact that it was motivated by frustration with the inappropriate behavior of two other users. Three wrongs don't make a right, I concede! Since my topic ban, Tryptofish has deleted the reference to her long-standing views of science, without discussion.
Finally, Tryptofish accused me of 3) slow edit-warring, adducing as evidence two reversions (which are reversions of reversions made by Snooganssnoogans) on a subject that AndrewOne suggested (correctly in my view) needed urgent correction and contextualization here and here (which contradicted Snooganssnoogans' non-neutral POV edit). Since Snooganssnoogans continued to ignore the sensible call for balancing perspective, I read all of the source material provided by AndrewOne, found another article from a source that Snooganssnoogans had previously argued was an RS in an effort to address the neutrality problems in this section (cf. non-neutral POV tag added to the section on 31 Aug (diff)).
The editor objects to information being added from Forbes, the Atlantic, the Roosevelt Institute, and Yes! magazine here to provide context concerning the economic argument about quantitative easing, and has used the Arbitration Enforcement discussion (concerned primarily with Tryptofish's distracting actions in the article) to delete this balancing information suggested by AndrewOne, but which only I was "bold" enough to add (here), given the polemical atmosphere that has been created by Snooganssnoogans's 30+ reverts in the last two months.
In this same vein, it is important to note that Snooganssnoogans has been engaged in significant personal attacks, some of which I have stricken (here and here), and others which I have not stricken (here, here, here, here (edit summary calling me dishonest, when I will show in fact that his own edit was the deceptive one below, and here Other editors have stated that the editor's comments are "haughty and counterproductive" here. It is likewise important to note that Snooganssnoogans consistently makes deceptive edits and/or edits against consensus. First, with regard to the discussion on third party chances on Stein's BLP, a number of editors noted that it was unwarranted: starting here. JayJasper noted that the information assembled under a section heading "On Third Party Chances" did not belong in the article, saying "Bottom line: the entire section was about an electoral analysis, not about about Jill Stein, the actual subject of the article". In this edit, Snooganssnoogans claimed to be executing the consensus view that the section and its content should be removed, but was instead hiding the contested material in the previous paragraph (as noted above, s/he called me dishonest for pointing this deceptive edit out). Later, I removed content the same editor added content which failed a basic fact-check here. After acknowledging that the article was unreliable on the talk page (diff), s/he added it back to the article anyway (diff), adding links to unrelated tweets in an effort to buttress an unfounded claim.
Continuing with the problem of deceptive behaviour, one editor noted that "You [ndlr: page editors] put an old quote about wifi under the education section. I have no problem with that, but it doesn't need its own section later in the article." here After I was topic banned, Snooganssnoogans took the opportunity to remove this fuller context from education here, leaving the section about "wi-fi", despite the clear suggestion that the opposite procedure (removing the redundant wifi section) would have been more warranted. Another neutral editor, reacting to Snooganssnoogans's reversion of four edits in one (here) noted that "mechanically, WP editing process will go smoother if the Media Access edits are done separate from Chomsky edits" here, but again, this sensible suggestion (which only mentions 2 of the 4 reversions) was not heeded. Finally, another neutral editor has observed here that "For the record, although I see above where you acknowledged the Chait line was inappropriate, it looks to me like you never actually removed it and neither has anyone else since it was added on August 4th. That seems like evidence of systemic bias to me. Again, from my perspective, I saw something like that Chait line in every position-related section I happened to look at. But you may be right that I have just been unlucky in the few subsections I've chosen to examine."
With this context, the editor's personal attacks against me in his/her statement at the AE should be reappraised, along with the disruptive editing I've shown above (including the WP:Bludgeoning which is clear in archive 1, archive 2, and on the current talk page. I am hereby calling for appropriate sanctions to be taken against Snooganssnoogans: (an indefinite ban from post-1932 US politics).
Regarding the accusation that I have been accused of "casting aspersions", this may not be entirely inaccurate if reporting facts is casting aspersions. I have cited a RS concerning the role of a Wikipedia administrator in editing the Kaine page prior to his nomination. (This was a citation of a verifiable fact.) I have also been troubled by the fact that this same administrator has redirected two Green candidate political positions pages without any discussion on the 31st of August and the 4th of September (see his edits diff for Ralph Nader and here for Cynthia McKinney), perhaps to establish grounds for deleting the political positions of Jill Stein, for which he initiated an AfD here and in which his recent deletions are adduced as an argument against Jill Stein having a political positions page here like the 3 other major candidates. This is surely not "neutral" administration.