User talk:Phoenix and Winslow/Xenophrenic

Note: This evidence only covers a period of 79 days of Xenophrenic's editing at Wikipedia (March 9 to May 27). It is presented as a representative sample of Xenophrenic's editing at Wikipedia, dating back four years to 2009, when I first encountered him at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and at articles related to Ward Churchill. This particular 79-day period came at a time when Xenophrenic already knew he was under scrutiny due to a conduct-based thread at WP:ANI, as well as the ArbCom investigation regarding the Tea Party movement article. One would think that with both community-based and ArbCom-based spotlights shining on him, Xenophrenic would be on his best behavior during this 79-day period. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

General overview

Following is an updated version of the evidence on Xenophrenic, presented by another editor at ArbCom.

• Xenophrenic is the 2nd most active editor on the article with 397 edits [1], 595 in talk [2], and 144 on the moderated discussion page (MDP) [3]

• Xenophrenic's main contribution to Tea Party movement is as a "revert-only" account. Many edits are labeled as "Undo", scores more are full or partial reverts. There are a few minor content contributions, exclusively material critical of the Tea Party.

• Xenophrenic has been blocked several times for edit warring: [4]

• Per Wikichecker ... Xenophrenic's top pages, presented by another editor on the RfC/U Talk page:

1. Talk:Tea Party movement[WP] (586)
2. Tea Party movement[WP] (397)
3. Tea Party protests[WP] (309)
4. Bill Maher[WP] (308)
5. Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now[WP] (181)
6. Stop Online Piracy Act[WP] (169)Susan Roesgen[WP] (162)Coffee Party USA[WP] (140)
7. Talk:Winter Soldier Investigation[WP] (138)
8. Winter Soldier Investigation[WP] (124)
9. Chuck E. Cheese's[WP] (117)
10. Talk:Tea Party protests[WP] (116)
11. Karrine Steffans[WP] (115)
12. Pat Tillman[WP] (105)
13. ATF gunwalking scandal[WP] (103)
14. Talk:Coffee Party USA[WP] (103)

• Out of 8550 edits in mainspace, more than 25% are to a relative handful of articles, primarily political in nature. Although such edits as adding a group of naturists on a nude beach definitely show a non-political POV there. But even some of his edits there are appreciably political in nature (reverting removal of an Abu Ghreib image, etc.) His (or her) edits tend to run in clumps, with a number of big clumps being decidedly aimed at particular political interests. I trust this clears up any confusion as to numbers of edits in any area. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Attempting to get the RfC/U deleted

• Editwarring on the UserList page at WP:RfC/U, trying to move his own RfC/U from "Certified" to "Candidates": [5] [6] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Repeated efforts to get this RfC/U deleted by others, because it allegedly does not state a case against him with sufficient evidence: [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

POV-pushing on Tea Party movement and related pages

I note that Casprings has cited an ANI thread in which "there was no community support [for a topic ban] or much problem seen with Xenophrenic's editing." That ANI thread was limited to Tea Party movement and was dated February 26, 2013. Also, Casprings has claimed that Xenophrenic is a party to the ArbCom proceeding. That is a false statement, since Xenophrenic is not listed among the named parties. [18] I will focus on Xenophrenic's efforts on Tea Party movement (a conservative political organization) and related pages since February 26, 2013 as well as his efforts on unrelated articles under the U.S. politics umbrella. The latter inquiry may go back a lot farther than February 26, 2013 since those articles were beyond the scope of the ANI thread. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Xenophrenic was editwarring in a derogatory comment on the Talk:Tea Party movement page, above my pre-existing post. [19] [20] [21] [22] (In the first of these four diffs, he also interleaved a false accusation against me, claiming that I was "misinterpreting" policy.) This comment was posted in boldface, in an effort to "prove" that the section of WP:RS he was quoting was more important than the one I was quoting. This behavior violated WP:TALK policy and was disruptive. I moved his comment to the bottom of the thread per WP:TALK and asked him politely, on his User Talk page, to add any remarks at the bottom of the thread or immediately below the post he was responding to, and cited the WP:TALK policy. He removed the request, and restored the derogatory comments at the top of the thread. [23] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• In late March and early April, two questions dominated discussion on the Talk page: whether the section describing the Tea Party's agenda should contain the phrase "opposed to illegal immigration" rather than the word "anti-immigration," and whether the lede sentence should include the word "grass-roots" as a descriptive term regarding the Tea Party. In my opinion, there was a consensus of editors supporting both changes, but consensus wasn't overwhelming. Around the second week of April, the article was locked due to an editwar about a different proposed edit, and discussion moved to a moderated discussion subpage. Xenophrenic refused for several days to participate in the moderated discussion, instead choosing to argue persistently and tenaciously against consensus in what amounted to an empty room: the original Talk page. Arguing against consensus is disruptive. Evidence of this behavior can be found in one of the Talk page's archives. [24] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Xenophrenic went so far as to editwar in a sandbox-type subpage of the moderated discussion page, then entitled, "Allegations of bigotry in the Tea Party." Here we see three identical reverts within 10 hours and 10 minutes: [25] [26] [27] Collect and I felt that we had consensus for a rearrangement of the article based on WP:WEIGHT, placing anecdotal evidence at the bottom of the article, and professional analysis from neutral secondary sources (regarding media coverage of those incidents) at the top of the article. Xenophrenic attempted to restore the original arrangement with anecdotal evidence at the top. Xenophrenic was also trying to editwar in a much longer quote from the Washington Post ombudsman, and other negative content, to put a more negative spin on three of the incidents. [28] [29] [30] Xenophrenic was later identified by SilkTork (an ArbCom member) as one of four editors who were editwarring on that page, but he was not blocked for it. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Just a few days later, SilkTork placed a warning in red print below one of Xenophrenic's posts on the moderated discussion page, warning him that his comments were straying into editors' conduct rather than suggested article content. [31] This came a few days after SilkTork had admonished everyone on the page that comments had to focus on suggested article content, and avoid any discussion of editors' conduct; violators of this new rule would be warned, then blocked. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

POV-pushing on other articles related to U.S. politics

Xenophrenic has been editwarring and POV-pushing in favor of a progressive POV on a broad range of articles related to U.S. politics, beyond his involvement in Tea Party movement and related articles. This involved removing negative content and terminology about progressive organizations and public figures, while adding negative content and terminology about conservative organizations and public figures:

• Alan Grayson — Editwarred out [32] [33] a "however" statement in article mainspace by HangingCurve, explaining the circumstances of the return to Congress of Grayson, a Democrat. The appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag. Portions of such statements can be very easily sourced, for example in the very Democrat-friendly Huffington Post [34] as well as local Florida TV stations. [35] All other elements of the "however" statement would have been easily sourced at Politico and in the decision by the editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel to endorse neither candidate in that race. [36] [37] All of this was one Google search away. Clearly such observations were made by notable media sources that were either neutral and reliable, or friendly to Grayson. Simply editwarring the observation out twice tends to support the argument that Xenophrenic is pushing a POV. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Anthony Weiner and Anthony Weiner sexting scandal — removing sourced material from articles about a former Democratic congressman who resigned in disgrace. He removed a reliably sourced quotation of Weiner's own explanation of his behavior: [38] [39] If Xenophrenic had an issue with these quotes, the appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag. At the RS, the quotation is fragmentary but it's there. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy, James O'Keefe and Talk:James O'Keefe — editwarring to restore the unsourced word "deceptively," or "deceptive," in multiple mainspace locations as a descriptive term to describe the video productions of a living person. [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] This living person posted videos on the Internet that apparently showed volunteers for a progressive organization telling a pimp and a prostitute how to conceal prostitution activities and avoid paying taxes. These videos triggered a cutoff of federal funding for ACORN and a sharp decrease in private donations, eventually leading to its bankruptcy. The word "deceptively," to the best of my knowledge is completely unsourced with regard to the ACORN videos. That word was used only in an opinion column by Michael Gerson of The Washington Post, and in an article on a small website called "The Blaze," discussing a completely unrelated undercover video by O'Keefe, involving Ron Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation. Xenophrenic, in the article mainspace, characterized ALL of O'Keefe's videos as "deceptive" without citing any sources, and claimed on the article Talk page that this "deceptive" nature was a "proven fact" rather than just what two sources (one an opinion column, the other a small website) had said about one video. [47] In this large, detailed edit to the James O'Keefe mainspace, Xenophrenic sought to minimize the huge impact O'Keefe's videos have had on ACORN, NPR and other subjects of his undercover investigations, removing a huge amount of very well-sourced material, [48] as well as removing a "citation needed" tag after the word "deceptive" (see above). [49] In this edit, Xenophrenic carefully removed an indication of the ideologies and political affiliations of O'Keefe's detractors. [50] In this edit, Xenophrenic redundantly identified the videos as "selectively edited." [51] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• ATF gunwalking scandal — in one of the biggest scandals of the Obama Administration, Xenophrenic slow-motion editwarred the description of ATF "gunwalking" operations from "2009 to 2011," making the time frame "2006 to 2011" to include three years under the previous Republican President [52] [53], without any explanatory information. This is in the lede sentence of the article. Under Bush, the ATF tried three very small, limited operations with several safeguards in place, such as placing RF transmitters (radio tracking devices) inside the guns. One of these three operations did not actually involve gunwalking per se but instead used more conventional law enforcement methods. When things started going wrong, the ATF wisely shut down all three of these operations despite the fact that they had resulted in some arrests; one of the three operations lasted just two weeks. Under Obama, the decision was made to start a new, and enormously larger gunwalking operation without those safeguards. The operations during the Bush years were questionable. During the Obama years, resurrecting the idea of gunwalking from its well-deserved grave, enlarging it exponentially and taking away the safeguards — after all that had gone wrong previously — was a lot worse than questionable. It was reckless, and notable, neutral commentators have said so. The result was that three times as many automatic and semi-automatic weapons were acquired by criminal cartels under the Obama Administration than under the Bush Administration. Furthermore, the weapons acquired by the cartels during the Obama years tended to be a lot more deadly, including .50-caliber sniper rifles. Xenophrenic's edit effectively concealed these important distinctions. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• David Stannard — Editwarred out some negative material about an author whose principal work, American Holocaust, accuses the U.S. government of committing genocide against Native Americans. The same revert three times in 8 hours, 17 minutes. [54] [55] [56] [57] Xenophrenic claims it's unsourced, but another editor on the Talk page, TheTimesAreAChanging, arguing in favor of its inclusion, provided some fairly convincing proof: [58] Here's Xenophrenic, being tendentious with said editor on the article's Talk page: [59] Said editor's response: "You are a POV-pushing vandal." [60] [61] It's entirely academic because the whole passage was removed shortly thereafter as a WP:SYNTH violation, but it highlights the Xenophrenic philosophy. Rather than revert the whole mess as a SYNTH violation, he kept the positive SYNTH, and removed the negative SYNTH. — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• D. L. Hughley — Editwarring to remove information [62] [63] about a stand-up comic, who frequently relies on social and political commentary from a left-wing perspective as part of his comedy routine. The information was that Hughley was eliminated in Week 5 of Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 16), and the excuse used in the edit summary was that it was unsourced. (Is this really negative information? Wouldn't a "citation needed" tag have been sufficient?) — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting — Extended, slow-motion editwarring in the article lede sentence to ensure FAIR is self-described as "progressive," rather than using the less complimentary term "left-leaning" applied by an outside reliable source, or even the more neutral "liberal." [64] [65] [66] [67] Doing the same thing earlier, and removing the citation of that reliable source. [68] Generally being tendentious on the Talk page with User:Arzel [69] [70] and User:Papajohnin. [71] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Farenheit 9/11 and Fahrenheit 9/11 controversy — Removing a source citation to an article that criticized an anti-war documentary, and slow-motion editwarring the article content to first identify "Bush supporters" or "Bush defenders" as sources of the criticism: [72] [73] [74] Also reducing "many disputes" about the accuracy of the film to "a dispute": [75] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• John Kerry — Putting some positive spin, and removing sourced negative content, in the biography of the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee and current secretary of state. [76] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Organizing for Action — Another example of removing negative information about a progressive organization. The article cited Politico.com to link OFA, the progressive organization arising from Barack Obama's re-election campaign, to big-money Obama donors such as George Soros and several multi-billion-dollar corporations. This link belies OFA's claim to being a grass-roots movement. However, Politico only said "linked to"; the Wikipedia article said "donations from" ... the appropriate solution would have been a "citation needed" tag, or simply editing those two little words to correctly reflect exactly what the source says. Instead, Xenophrenic deleted the entire sentence as well as the source citation. [77] In this diff, Xenophrenic removed negative, perfectly well-sourced information about OFA and replaced it with information that had a more positive spin, by cherry-picking which portion of the source (a government watchdog group called Sunlight Foundation) would be used. [78] And in this diff, Xenophrenic toned down an accusation by Republican Mitch McConnell (well sourced in another government watchdog group, Public Integrity), and inserted a lengthy positive-spin quote by OFA chairman Jim Messina in front of the McConnell material, sourcing it to an op-ed column by Messina on the CNN website. [79] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Tom Smith (Pennsylvania politician) — Editwarring with an IP editor, 96.245.12.5, to ensure that the neutral term "then clarified" was replaced by the more negative "attempted to walk back," [80] in the biography about a pro-life Democratic politician who switched to the Republican Party. The "attempted to walk back" terminology was only used by one source: a left-leaning, local Pennsylvania website called "Politics PA." — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Zero Dark Thirty — altered content to state that "some Republicans charged that the filmmakers were given access to classified materials[.]" Original content was "other critics charged ..." [81] A far more accurate representation of what the source said would be just one Republican (Rep. Peter King), after a very similar charge that was first being made by a non-partisan military man of towering stature: "Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said earlier this year that it was 'time to stop talking' after remarkably accurate accounts appeared in US newspapers in the days immediately following the operation. 'We have gotten to a point where we are close to jeopardising the precision capability that we have,' he warned." [82] Xenophrenic's version cherry-picked what the source said, to make it sound like a politically-motivated attack that had no foundation in facts. Also, Xeno removed source citations for opinion columns by notable writers, such as Naomi Wolf and Glenn Greenwald, who were critical of the film. [83] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Evidence offered at ArbCom re: Tea Party movement

Malke 2010: "Arguments over petty, silly 'news' items such as an incident in Maryland where a man claimed his outdoor barbecue grill was sabotaged by tea party members because he was an Obama supporter. Xenophrenic fought like crazy for that and anytime it got deleted, he put it right back. ... Goethean's and Xenophrenic's arguments and edit wars today are the same ones they had back in 2010. Goethean violates WP:PA and exhibits tendency towards WP:OWN. Xenophrenic violates WP:TE. The same sections, the same edits. Over and over. In the meantime, the article has not improved ..."

North8000: "The inevitable proximate finding will be that Xenophrenic primarily and Geothean secondarilyy have dominated the article via TE and prevented its Wikification. ... In each case the end result was that [disputed content] stayed in, and the result was determined by not by a decision but by whichever editor or set of editors was most relentless. And two editors (Xenophrenic and Goethean) have been controlling the result of the above and many other areas in the article via this method. ... Xenophrenic's large number of edits (#2 on the list) with a high proportion of those being reversals in disputes, they have more than anyone determined what is or isn't in the article. ... a look at the disputes and how they have ended up clearly shows that the dominant editing force in determining the article content on these has been Xenophrenic, backed up by Goethean at key moments."

North8000's ANI thread regarding Xenophrenic's tendentious editing: [84]

Darkstar1st:

• Xenophrenic is the 2nd most active editor on the article with 388 edits [85] and 449 in talk [86]
• Xenophrenic's primary contribution to the Tea Party movement article is as a "revert-only" account. many edits are labeled as "Undo", scores more are full or partial reverts. There are a few minor content contributions, exclusively material critical of the Tea Party.
• Xenophrenic has been blocked several times for edit warring:[87]

Evidence of tendentious editing, edit-warring, and disruption

Generally speaking, Xenophrenic completely disregards policy directives at WP:TALK regarding the placement of his posts on article Talk pages. Sometimes he places his post at the top of a thread, rather than at the bottom. Other times, he places his post smack in the middle of another editor's post, immediately after the sentence to which he has chosen to respond. This is highly disruptive.

Xenophrenic is attempting to insert "anti-immigration" into the Tea Party movement article as well as the term "nativism." Part of that discussion then lead to the following exchange:

North8000 comments on Xenophrenic’s use of “anti-immigration” instead of the relevant “anti-illegal immigration.” [88]

Malke responds here: [89] and here: [90]

Xenophrenic replies: [91]

Malke responds: [92]

Xenophrenic replies: [93]

Malke responds: [94] Xeno [95]

Malke responds and corrects part of her edit [96]

Xenophrenic misinterprets Malke’s correction [97]

Malke explains [98]

Xenophrenic insists [99]

Arthur Rubin then commented that the exchange was an example of Xenophrenic’s tendentious editing: [100] “. . . I should add that now there is strong evidence toward Xenophrenic's tendentious editing in intentionally disregarding the obvious meaning of Malke's comments (in the "anti-immigration" section) in favor of an absurd interpretation. . .Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Xenophrenic then edit warred in response:[101] and again [102] and again [103]. [104]

Xenophrenic then went to Arthur Rubin’s talk page: [105] Not satisfied, he went to ANI: [106] — Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)