[Wikipedia-l] Eric's abuse of his sysop powers

Mon Oct 20 19:36:10 UTC 2003

Eloquence is normally a reasonable contributor (except in the area of 
religion, where he mounts POV campaigns that RK would be proud of). But his 
behaviour on [[Mother Theresa]] amount to an abuse of his powers as a sysop. 
He has now removed a protection on a page that had been placed to stop an 
edit war he had been a participant of, all to preserve a large segment he 
added to the article that breaches NPOV standards in terminology, structure 
(it dominates a biographical article in a way that would not be tolerated in 
any other encyclopædia), headlines, use of agenda-laiden captions, and 
elementary biographical standards. Any attempt to remedy the many NPOV 
deficits in the article (which involves correcting the 'she was the greatest 
human being in existence' glorification tone in other parts of the article, 
the 'she was the devil incarnate' tone in his add-in, which covers nearly 
70% of the text and is based on a book called ''Hell's Angel'' ) are 
attacked as 'pro-catholic bias' and a simple move of the large accusationary 
text to a linked article and replacing it with a smaller summary that allows 
for a more readable and less polemic text, leads to screams of censorship.

As an example of the supposed 'censorship' compare my one draft opening 
paragraph Eloquence kept reverting

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, best known as Mother Teresa (27 August 1910 - 5 
September 1997), was a Roman Catholic nun, missionary, peace advocate and 
anti-abortion activist who set up a world-wide network called the 
Missionaries of Charity. This network engages in Christian missionary 
activity and to some extent in local charity. Mother Teresa is most famous 
for her work with the poor in Calcutta. Critics however questioned the 
standard of medical care received by those she cared for and questioned her 
association with some right wing dictators.

with what preceded it in the earlier version

'''Blessed Teresa of [[Calcutta]]''', best known as '''Mother Teresa''' 
([[August 27]], [[1910]] - [[September 5]], [[1997]]), was a revered 
[[Christian]] [[nun]], missionary, peace advocate and anti-abortion activist 
who set up a world-wide network called the ''Missionaries of Charity''. This 
network engages in Christian missionary activity and to some extent in local 
charity. Mother Teresa is most famous for her work with the poor in 
Calcutta.

Yet Eloquence's defence of a version that included the above POV stuff, and 
his own writing based on a 'neutral' commentator who called MT a 'presumed 
virgin', is to say, when efforts to do a professional editing job are made

You can play up your oh-so-critical "lapsed Catholic" attitude as much as 
you want, that does not change the fact that you are trying to stow away 
very substantial and very important criticisms of this soon-to-be "saint".

Eric has a very bizarre comprehension of censorship and 'stowing away' 
criticisms if he thinks that mentioning them in the very opening paragraph 
and later in the article, and creating a linked article where all the detail 
can be published in a way that it cannot in a biographical entry without 
turning the article into a polemic, is hiding criticism. Apart from 
copyright questions about quoting large paragraphs of books (most publishers 
tolerate a line or two, but large paragraphs are seen in many jurisdictions 
as crossing the line into breaching copyright), it is a gross abuse of sysop 
powers for a sysop involved in an edit war to choose to remove protection 
from a page. Promising that you wouldn't edit it for an hour or two is no 
defence.

The result is that that the article is an utter mess, veering from 
glorification of MT in some bits to demonising MT in others. It is 
amateurish, POV and reads like the sort of polemic that wouldn't last twenty 
seconds in front of an editor in any other encyclopædia. But attempts to fix 
the article and provide a proper NPOV article  runs into a brick wall of 
Eric's agenda, including abusing his powers as a sysop to get what he wants.

JT

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