EN-WP: Spinning
Contents
Snoog
BLP
- In the course of an editwar with an IP then a registered account, Snooganssnoogans introduced a BLP violation by falsely stating that Kathy Shelton had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. This mistake was reverted but Snoog edit-warred it back in instants later, berating the person who had removed their mistake. I pinged them to inform them I intended to correct the mistake once unblocked if nobody had done so by then, but they chose to resume their editwar on Jill Stein (thirty minutes after being pinged) rather than to fix their BLP violation, which I did on 17 August 2019.
- On 12 Feb 2017 made an edit stating in wikivoice that Tulsi Gabbard opposed the arrest of a consular official for "fraud and perjury". The source does not mention what the consular official was arrested for and instead mentions that Gabbard opposed the way that the official was arrested. Two and a half years later, a new user provided context [1] (not in the source) which Snoogans removed [2]. At first I restored the context, then realized that the source did not include that info so conformed to the source [3], which Snoogans reverted claiming their longstanding text conformed to RS (which it did not as there was no mention of the reason the consular official was manhandled in their source): [4]. Eventually, I spelled out exactly why their contribution which had been sitting in the entry for two and a half years (while I'd been banned for exposing Cirt's astroturfing) was misleading and another contributor came in and removed their text entirely. (Had I done that, I would have ended up at AE.)
- Bill Lee Here SS claims the source says Bill Lee "created" a holiday ex nihilo when in fact the governor has been legally required to declare the holiday every year since the 1970s (as the article says).
- John Solomon (only the 2nd source (an opinion piece) verifies the 1st claim, the other two do not.
- discussion preceding RfC on Snoogans' claim George Galloway supported / favored Trump in the 2016 US election. Note Snoogans incivility towards Kingsindian and the subsequent unanimous condemnation of Snoogans' misleading statement about Galloway.
- Seymour Hersh (This edit is a huge mess.)
- Snoog adds to a paragraph purportedly about Syria: Politico's Jack Shafer described the story as "a messy omelet of a piece that offers little of substance for readers or journalists who may want to verify its many claims."[1][2]
- The only problem with this is that, in fact, Shafer is talking about an article about bin Laden, that has nothing to do with the Syrian civil war. So in the end the first and third sentences of the new paragraph Snoogans created refer to articles about bin Laden, not Syria, while the middle sentence (which Snoog pulled from preexisting text in the article) is the only one in the paragraph that is actually about Syria. I've looked at this pretty carefully and just cannot understand how or why that mistake could have been made. The irony is that in that sentence Bellingcat (see below in misc. for more on Bellingcat) is accusing Hersh of sloppy journalism (perhaps correctly, I have no opinion on that). All I know is that that paragraph's topic sentence is sourced to articles not about what Snoog's text claims they are about, and the "smoking gun" quote they found in Politico to end the paragraph is not referring to Hersh's reporting on Syria either.
- Seth Abramson misattribution of a source (which they were in a hurry to post to their wall of shame, and so left the mainspace article wrongly referenced ...)
Jill Stein
- After not having edited the page for two weeks, Snoog disrupted my editing 6 minutes after I began working on the page on 5 August 2019. In their haste to disrupt, they introduced a new formatting error. The reason for their haste may well have been their desire to bring me to ANEW in order to protect their misleading content. Cf. Snooganssnoogans v. SashiRolls @ ANEW.
- I was blocked by Awilley immediately after starting this compilation for ArbCom (@18:32 10 August 2019). An admin commented at BLP/N and a contributor commented on my talk page that this block seemed out of order.
- Exactly two hours before I returned on 17 August, Snoogans resumed the "slow edit war" to source the claim that Stein was spending money on "her own campaign's legal defense" to an article headline. They have not discussed on the talk page since beginning the edit war by reverting me on 5 August 2019.
- 16:28 17 August 2019 (Revert 1)
- After this revert, clearly timed to coincide with my return to editing, I posted to the talk page and solicited a third opinion concerning the term "legal defense". Snoog responded to my new post agreeing that they were not "wedded" to the term, which they were sourcing only to the headline of their chosen Daily Beast article. They said that they did not like the term "compliance" used 4 times in the source. I did not use the term "compliance" but rather used a different formulation suggested to me by the person I consulted (as I understand it someone quite familiar with law and legal proceedings).
- I created new text from 01:53-03:50 based on careful rereading of Snoog's chosen articles (in my view highly POV pieces) and based on the understanding we had agreed to remove the wording sourced only to the headline.
- After this, Snoog twice reverted en bloc to the text that they had agreed they were not "wedded to" ("legal defense").
- This is covered by point 2 of the explanatory supplement to en.wp policy called gaming the consensus-building process: Bad-faith negotiating – Luring other editors into a compromise by making a concession, only to withhold that concession after the other side has compromised.
- They also said that I had not mentioned that the money came from the recount (which is not true) and that I had not presented the experts more "nuanced" views "as had been explained to me". (The experts views are in fact not nuanced... they say that recount money can be used for campaign-related matters but not for personal expenses.) This is covered by point 4 of the aforementioned "gaming the consensus-building process": Employing gaslighting tactics – such as history re-writing, reality denial, misdirection, baseless contradiction, projection of one's own foibles onto others, repetition, or off-topic rambling – to destabilize a discussion by sowing doubt and discord.
- 3:51 18 August 2019 (Revert 2), 4:06 18 August 2019 (Revert 3)
- Forcing me to 3RR here as on 5 Aug, 21 July is a very typical example of their MO: Gaming of sanctions for disruptive behavior. Cf. ANI, Levivich's testimony (link to add) "Borderlining" – habitually treading the edge of policy breach or engaging in low-grade policy breach, to make it hard to actually prove misconduct.
- à suivre... so far they've reverted to the same text 11 times (rather dogmatically one might say) (11:30 5 Aug, 3:03 5 Aug, 2:45 5 Aug, 0:41 23 July, 18:39 21 July, 18:23 21 July, 18:09 21 July, 16:13 17 July)
- the next step was for one of their regular collaborators (source) to make a first appearance on the page for a fourth revert. I narrowly avoided making a fatal mistake by trying to work forward from their text, but the rules had been changed to 1RR overnight (& it was pointless anyway since the "new" text was basically a 12th verbatim repetition of Snoog's already contested text)
- Copyright violation of Yashir Ali's Daily Beast piece on Jill Stein's retirement / life insurance the day it was published. This was only fixed on 2 November 2016, by Green Means Go, fitting with the general pattern of Snoog refusing to fix their own mistakes (cf. discussion).
- Harambe: misrepresentation of a poll. original addition 31 July 2016, initial rejection 31 July 2016
- VictoriaGrayson and Neutrality expressed support for keeping the polling data in. The user who deleted it never even tried to justify it on the talk page. Polling data is standard on Trump's and Clinton's pages. The fact that you don't like what the polls show isn't an argument for removing it. (Snooganssnoogans 15:01, 19 August 2016 UTC)
- final rejection with demonstration that the poll was fundamentally misrepresented. (Neutrality mistakenly restored it later, but did not not edit-war to keep it in.)
- another example of not doing due diligence: You're correct to remove the first part of the first sentence. I assumed Pink News had gotten its dates correct without checking. source
Tag-teaming
Snoog (see 11 reverts to their preferred version mentioned above) -- Aquillion 13:57 18 August 2019
Snoog -- Aquillion 14:17 18 August 2019 (verif à faire)
Snoog 18:12 26 Feb 2020 -- SPECIFICO 18:38 26 Feb 2020
Snoog (unpinged) 02:20 5 Jan 2020 - 01:58-14:15 5 Jan 2020 MrX (pinged)
- Calton on Jill Stein, WP:HERE, Bernie Sanders
Not BLP
- National Review: problems: gets dates wrong (2013, not 2009), adds detail about 17 year old not mentioned in the article, mentions National Review in isolation, does not mention the other 3 papers mentioned in the article (unfaithful representation of the article)
Tulsi Gabbard
Jan. 27, 2020: "There was a consensus to include this a long time ago." (When requested to provide evidence of that consensus, radio silence. There was no such consensus as shown here.)
Feb. 14, 2017: Logan Act
Misc.
Creates 10K post on "general reliability" of Bellingcat on 4 Aug 2019, without mentioning that he really wants approval to include an article on a specific subject (Tulsi Gabbard) because of a negative article released the same day. The in-depth nature of the 10K post suggests that there may have been some prior work done to coincide with the publication of this article. Compare the above notes about Yashar Ali's story (added to en.wp the same day it was published), the Pink News story, etc. ... (more evidence of Snoog publishing obscure articles as soon as they are published would be helpful)
It has been suggested that Snoog's userpage should be proposed for deletion at MfD. userpage
Previous sanctions
14 Nov 2016: sanctioned for personal attacks and harassments (calling me "batshit insane" & a "sociopath")
24 May 2017: banned from mass-editing in AP-1932 due to biased mass edits
Previous noticeboard appearances
AN/I: 24 Sept 2016: Never responded to any of the comments concerning edit-warring (5RR in 2 days). The content was added in October 2016 and remains to this day.
A/E:3 July 2017: Warned to use more care after breaking urls and titles in refs in their haste to disrupt an editor fixing mistakes.
ANEW: 5 Aug 2019: prosecutor: edit-warring at Jill Stein, not closed. Later used by Awilley as a justification for a 1-week block without any discussion of the merits. (i.e. ignoring that 3RR was not violated, & that Snoog was the aggressor, the block was made while this page was being started on-wiki)
X
- RSN:
- Calton on Jill Stein
Post-TB
Xenagoras had already mentioned that MrX was basing a claim on a mistake in a Vox article by Jack Beauchamp. MrX didn't care... he just restored it, many times. So Xenagoras took it to RS/N, where he was rebuked for not discussing on the entry talk page. MrX cuts back his original comment (showing too much of his (dirty) hand) to a terse "This didn't need to come to this noticeboard. Just reword it". Hours earlier his buddy ContentEditman had just reverted Humanengr saying "you also did not just reorganize, but changed the language as well without consensus" [5]. Guess where this is headed...
Not counting dramaboards, more than 19% of "contenteditman"'s edits are to the same pages that MrX has contributed. Cf. screencap of pdf (courtesy of "editor interaction analyser")
This moved on to AE, where Levivich added some details:
Feb 21–23:
- Feb 21 MrX makes a series of edits
- Feb 22 02:39 Xenagoras reverts
- Feb 22 03:02 ContentEditman restores
- Feb 22 03:46 another editor re-reverts
- Feb 22 22:01 MrX re-restores
- Feb 23 16:51 Xenagoras re-re-reverts
- Feb 23 17:56 ContentEditman re-re-restores
Same article Jan 31–Feb 2:
- Jan 31 MrX makes a series of edits to the lead
- Feb 1 02:08 Xenagoras reverts
- Feb 1 21:16 ContentEditman restores
- Feb 2 13:44 Xenagoras re-reverts
- Feb 2 14:21 MrX re-restores
ContentEditman was later banned as a sockpuppet. Cf. WPO.