J1838

Request

I would appreciate it if you would remove the DEEWC material. It really does more harm than good. There is no cabal, unless you want there to be. Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Someone seems to have done it for me. Not sure why, as it conformed to guidlines - and I would have been happy to amend it if anyone had shown that it didn't. Is it normal practise to make deletions without giving any explanation? J1838 19:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, in the interests of transparency, I am also known as John1838. J1838 19:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

You could ask User:CesarB why he deleted it. If you think deletion was inappropriate you can request undeletion at Wikipedia:Deletion review. Tom Harrison ^Talk 19:32, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: Confirmation Requested

According to my history page, you deleted by User Page. User:J1838

I wonder if I might ask you some questions about this.

• First, could you confirm that you did delete my user page. There dosn't seem to be any way for me to distinguish between an administrator doing it and a vandal doing it.
• Second, is it normal to delete user pages without leaving any explanation. It seems a bit of an odd practice. Did I miss something ?
• Third, I can't work out why you might have deleted it. As far as I am aware it did not breach any guidline. Please advise.
• Fourth, I'm keen to contest your action within the rules. Again, please advise what I should do.

Many thanks, J1838 19:17, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

1. Only administrators can delete pages (vandals can only blank them).
2. The deletion was already explained by the admin who originally deleted User:John1838, and can be found on your other user talk page. I only deleted the recreations of the page. I've copied the explanation below:

   I have deleted your user page as there is a section devoted to attack User:SOPHIA and the above user. Do not attack any other user in any way or you will face blocks. Thanks you. Sasquatch t|c 08:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

3. As the other admin explained, you broke Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:User page.
4. The usual way to ask for a page to be unprotected is to list it on the unprotection section of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. See also Wikipedia:Resolving disputes.

--cesarb 21:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Questions for cesarb

Thanks for the response. Happy with the answers to 1 and 4. Could I ask you a bit more about the other two:

I'm not sure it was reasonable to leave it to me to work out the reason for deletion. Especially in the light of the following.

The original deletion of John1838 was explained on the grounds that it was an attack on users KMH3 and SOPHIA. The text on J1838 was was not the same - it waws substantially re-written, specifically to conform to the rules. In particular I removed the reference to KMH3. I cannot therefore have made the connection with the reason given by Sasquatch for the original deletion.

The question of SOPHIA is even more strange. I do not believe that the text can in any way be interpreted as an attack on SOPHIA. It was certainly not intended to be. In fact the whole point was to agree with her and to put the case that she herself had put. I have just reviewed my copy and cannot see how it could be interpreted as being remotely critical of SOPHIA. I wonder if you would take another look. I'm not sure if you can now see it, so here's a copy of the text in question (which I assume it's OK to reproduce here in the circumstances). I have re-read it a dozen times trying to work out how it could be interpreted as less than sympathetic, and just can't see it. Note in particular the last sentence.

• Start Quote ***********

Sophie started contributing to Wikipedia on <> and first edited the Christianity page on <>. Her views (based on her own statements) appear to be those of a moderate humanist. She has never engaged in any controversial edits and always acted like a model newcomer. She never sided overtly with any user subsequently suspected of being a vandal, sockpuppet, or other malcontent, nor took part in any revertion war, nor took part on any voting. She operated from the same IP address as her husband, a user with a completely different edit profile. At the request of (AnnH) Sophia’s husband was investigated on suspicion of being a sockpuppet – an accusation which also appears to have had no foundation. This investigation revealed that Sophia and her husband (username “the Shriek”) used the same IP address. The default assumption, not supported by any further evidence, was that Sophia was a sockpuppet. Consequently, Sophie felt obliged to provide a full explanation of her circumstances. Here are a couple of extracts referring to contributors who have elsewhere been identified as DWEECs

"… By the way - I'm under the sock puppet cloud too for daring to question consensus - seems the only reason for anyone to disagree with the cozy christian mainstream view is if they're out to fiddle the system." SOPHIA 00:43, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

and later …

"Maybe I'm not too chuffed to find out that all the while I was editing in good faith there were suspicions about my integrity for the simple reason that I see things differently to you. I'm afraid I have taken this very personally as I've always tried to be moderate and as NPOV as I can - admitting when I've learned lessons and trying to bridge the gap of the more extreme views. Quite frankly I've got better things to do than waste my time with a load of people who can't be upfront and feel the need to check up behind your back if you differ." SOPHIA 01:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Key phrases here include “the cozy christian mainstream view”, “extreme views”, and “a load of people”. In the context the expression “load of people” can only refer to DWEECs.

As at the time of this entry, Sophia is the latest of long series of ordinary, serious, non-controversial contributors, clearly striving to be NPOV, to have been driven away by the DWEECs.

• End Quote ***********

So, unless I'm missing something, neither of the reasons given by Sasquatch for his deletion applied to your deletion.

Happy to be reasonable about this - and fully retract if the page contained an attack on KMH3 that I was responsible for, or if anyone can show that it's possible to construe the above quote as an attack on SOPHIA.

I have no idea if you can undelete the text in question, but if you can and if you agree with the points made, then I would be grateful if you would restore it. Otherwise I will of course be following whatever appeal procedures are open to me. Also, I can't find any obvious way of complaining about the way I've been treated here. I'd appreciate it if you could let me know my options.

Many thanks, J1838 21:02, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I didn't take a detailed look at the content of the pages; only that they were substantially similar to what had been deleted (the deletion reason, by the way, can be found on the deletion log, which is publicly readable). It's harder to notice the differences, since the diff view doesn't work for deleted pages. They can easily be undeleted; deletion (except for images) is fully reversible. However, the page still reads as personal attacks on some users (not named on the page, but implied); I don't know about attacks on SOPHIA. If you disagree, you can ask for the page to be undeleted on Wikipedia:Deletion review, or unprotected on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. If you want to complain, you can do an informal complaint on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (see the explanation at the page's heading), or a more formal one at Wikipedia:Requests for comment (again, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution). --cesarb 21:52, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for this. Can I do all of these at the same time, or is there a sequential order in which I should approach them ? J1838 22:24, 24 February 2006 (UTC)