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

Mon Oct 20 22:40:31 UTC 2003

>From: "James Duffy" <jtdire at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Eric's abuse of his sysop powers
>Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:36:10 +0000
>
>
>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

BTW - this is Eric's latest threat:

I have to say at this point that a ban of Jtdirl is no longer out of the 
question for me.—Eloquence 22:07, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)

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