Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Jguk/Evidence

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I am unsure if this qualifies as evidence, but I do believe it is important, in the style of amicus curiae I believe the NPOV policy votes1 shows the massive lack of consensus, with excellent arguments on a near 50/50 split

This lack of consensus shows that no party was in fact, objectivly, acting on the advice of the consensus.

My point in saying this is that I urge the Arbitration Commitee to stick with a conservative interpretation of their mandate, and ignore the question of content from his case, but to focus on the behavior of the wikipedians involved.

--Tznkai 00:45, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom: Is it too late to present evidence in this matter? The revert war has ended at the Persian pages and I have come to some conclusions about the role of Jguk in this war. Sunray 16:27, 2005 May 27 (UTC)

I'm not from the ArbCom, but I can answer: they are still on the evidence stage. Go on and add your evidence. --cesarb 00:23, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gene Nygaard's charge that Zora is misrepresenting facts

In my initial statement, I said that Jguk had changed BCE/CE to BC/AD in various articles that I'd done, AND that he'd changed something I'd just written, a couple of hours after I put up an extensively revised article (something I'd promised a bunch of other editors to do, as a condition of deleted an overly-detailed section of the Islam page).

I can certainly see why that could be interpreted as saying that he'd changed a CE to an AD. In fact, when Gene accused me of inaccuracy (or was it mendacity?) I apologized. However, upon later looking over the article in question (Islam and other religions), I realized that the change Jguk had made was a deletion only, AND that I'd just said that he "changed" it -- which doesn't imply that he changed from CE to AD, only that he meddled with the dating scheme I'd chosen for my text. I usually put CE after a few dates, not all, just to orient the reader.

I'm sorry if my original statement was unintentionally misleading. However, I'm somewhat dismayed to find this whole matter being treated with the same kind of aggressiveness and rules-lawyering that one usually sees only in TV courtroom dramas. I wouldn't think that ambiguous wording in an initial statement would matter that much, especially if the "case" is to be decided on the basis of the evidence, the diffs and timestamps, which don't admit of any fiddling or pleading at all.

Oh well ... it's all an interesting new experience, innit? Zora 16:55, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Except your entire evidence section, with basically the exception of Khuzestan, is like that (by the way, several of the diffs are wrong: they point to the last edit, not jguk's). That's pretty weak support for the idea that jguk is "changing BCE/CE to BC/AD," which is the subject of this arbcom case. In the case of Khuzestan, jguk was reverting to a previous version: SouthernComfort had changed from BC/AD to BCE/CE "as agreed," yet I didn't find evidence of any such agreement on the talk page, and we know that the wikiwide proposal to standardize on BCE/CE failed to gain consensus. What does that leave to demonstrate wrongdoing on jguk's part? Demi ^T/_C 07:21, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

Y'know, I said at the start of my evidence that I was new to this process and was doing my best -- if my diffs are wrong, tell me which ones are and how to fix them. Don't just sneer at me for not doing it right and hint that it vitiates my evidence.

I was the original author on several Islam-related articles where I used CE in numerous places to orient readers. Jguk is not only changing BCE to BC, he's erasing all occurences of CE on the grounds that it's unnecessary. I don't think that this arbitration only concerns BCE/BC issues, it concerns anti-CE edits. I feel that the reader should NOT be expected to know that all dates without a CE/AD are CE/AD, especially when it comes to areas and eras that might be unfamiliar. It may not be necessary to put CE after "X was first published in 1980", but it helps when you're dealing with the date of Muhammad's death (632 CE). It especially helps when you're dealing with historical timelines that span BCE and CE. Jguk should allow other editors to use CE if they feel it's useful.

The Khuzestan/Ahvaz articles are somewhat of a special case, in that Southern Comfort and I were at loggerheads before Jguk ever arrived on the scene. Given that Southern Comfort is reverting my changes on sight, I think that it's notable that he and I agree on this one issue. BCE/CE make sense in writing articles about Iran and the Mesopotamian valley. It's not only that the area has been non-Christian for most of its history, it's that historical timelines usually extend way back into BCE dates. Distinguishing between BCE and CE dates is crucial. And then of course there's the fact that the current academic sources for the area all use the BCE/CE convention.

If Jguk wants to argue about dating schemes in articles where he's otherwise actively engaged as an editor, that's fine. But he's conducting a crusade to erase BCE/CE from Wikipedia, in thousands of articles where he has otherwise contributed nothing. He's trying to impose his own standard on everyone else, and that's just plain wrong. It's as irritating and pointless as one editor's recent crusade to change everything in Wikipedia to British spelling. Zora 19:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• It wasn't my intention to sneer, and I'm sorry if it sounded like that... I was just pointing it out in case you wanted to change it. Demi ^T/_C 22:14, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

Actually, Jguk may not have been on quite as much of a crusade about it, but he also makes gratuitous changes to British spelling in articles that otherwise use American spelling. And I myself first encountered him in his crusade to unilaterally add styles (e.g. "His Holiness") to the pope article. Jguk's abusive editing pattern extends to everything he touches. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:41, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

P.S. I have the impression that Jguk and his supporters are trying to cast the anti-BCE/CE campaign as a valiant defense against the machinations of slrubenstein. I've been involved with Wikipedia for ... what, is it over a year now? ... and I've made a conscious effort, ever since I started editing, to use BCE/CE. This had nothing to do with slrubenstein. I'd never run into him. Jguk has deleted CE, or changed BCE to BC, on articles that I was editing long before slrubenstein made his controversial proposal. This is not about slrubenstein ... this is about allowing diversity. Zora 20:20, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)