Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Curps

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Curps has banned and blocked me multiple times on Wikipedia without warnings. I have made multiple sandbox edits in the wrong place when I was a newbie and he blocked me anyway. It made me very sad I could no contribute to the best encyclopedia online and I almosted cried. I would like someone to punish him or take away his power. Thanks. 128.54.124.203 15:43, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement of the dispute

Violations of protection policy on the The Matrix. Violation of the 3 revert rule.

Description

Curps unprotected The Matrix on April 25 [1] despite the fact that he had been involved in an edit war on that page with Mista-X earlier that day.

In all, on April 25, he reverted that same page on four occasions within a 24 hour period in violation of the Three Revert Rule.

1st revert: 01:47, 2005 Apr 25
2nd revert: 02:17, 2005 Apr 25
3rd revert: 20:29, 2005 Apr 25
4th revert: 23:11, 2005 Apr 25

Powers misused

Protection (log]):

The Matrix

Applicable policies

Protection policy

Do not edit or revert a temporarily protected page except to add a protected page notice, a link to Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute or Wikipedia:NPOV dispute, or a similar disclaimer about the current state of an article, unless there is widespread agreement that the page was protected in violation of these policies.
Do not protect a page you are involved in an edit dispute over.

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

(provide diffs and links)

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

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AndyL 03:27, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Mista-X 05:23, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this statement

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There is a minor valid point here. Curps should avoid using any admin powers in articles which he is involved in an edit dispute on. That includes unprotection and "rollback]". -- Netoholic @ 14:13, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Response

This is a summary written by the sysop whose actions are disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the sysop's actions did not violate policy. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.

First of all, there was no violation of protection policy by me (however, there was one by AndyL, which is the subject of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AndyL).

The protection policy states: "Do not protect a page you are involved in an edit dispute over.". I did not protect such a page, I unprotected it. This is no mere technicality: a protected page represents a temporary and undesirable situation, a necessary evil. Protecting a page also represents a use (or abuse) of power, for instance it can be abused to impose a particular version of a page in an editing dispute (I believe this is precisely what AndyL did, see the RfC against him). By contrast, an unprotected page is simply a Wikipedia page in its normal state: anyone can edit it, and admins and non-admins are on an equal footing in any editing dispute. Unprotecting a page is thus far less likely to represent an abuse of admin power; rather, it restores a page to a more "democratic" state, to its natural condition.

You can disagree with the above reasoning if you like, but the plain fact is, you have incorrectly cited protection policy. There is no policy against unprotecting a page that you have been involved in an editing dispute over, and it is quite debatable whether there should be. Thus your first point can be dismissed entirely. In passing, this is part of a disturbing tendency by AndyL to invent policies when it suits him... this is discussed at greater length in the RfC against him.

The rest of this RfC consists of a mere three-revert complaint. Normally, this would be taken to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR, and would be far too trivial to include here. In fact, I see that AndyL has indeed redundantly taken it both to /3RR and here.

It was no coincidence that he waited four long days before taking this to /3RR: to do so would be to expose his own actions to scrutiny. Anyone clicking on the "3rd revert" above [2] can very plainly see the edit summary, directed to AndyL: "It was not appropriate for you to revert the article to your preferred version after you protected it." In contrast to the incorrect accusation against me, AndyL's violation of protection policy was absolutely clearcut. For more details and evidence of this, see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AndyL.

At that point he should have acknowledged his error and backed off; instead he persisted in once again trying to impose the result of his illegal protect-and-revert, necessitating a further action to undo it.

In passing, it should be noted that had I first tried a different alternative: unprotecting the article, but leaving AndyL's revert intact (this unprotect is presumably the subject of the incorrect accusation of violating protection policy). AndyL rejected this by re-protecting the article.

It should also be noted that the version I reverted to was AndyL's OWN version of 17:01. This must be the first time someone is complaining about a revert back to his own version of a page!

I believe my actions were entirely justified: there are exceptions to 3RR when it is necessary to undo a wrongful action. Reverting vandalism is one such case, and I assert that undoing AndyL's violation of protection policy ("Do not edit or revert a temporarily protected page", which is precisely what he did) was another such case. I emphasize that AndyL's violation of protection policy is not a matter of subjective interpretation; it was plain and evident and beyond dispute, and it was very clearly pointed out to him in the edit summary. His persistence in repeating his wrongful action again was what necessitated the fourth "revert". It would hardly be fair to penalize me for AndyL's misconduct. He himself would deserve somewhat longer than a 24-hour block in this case.

PS, The first two reverts were to edits by User:Mista-X. Up until AndyL's partisan intervention, this was a simple editing dispute involving Mista-X against three other users (including two admins), or more broadly, Mista-X against seven other users (including three admins) across 14 separate articles where he was trying to make his edit.

User:Philwelch appended the following comment:

This is clearly retribution for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AndyL.

-- Curps 02:32, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

Curps 19:40, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
— Phil Welch 20:07, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
— The Grza 21:16, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Outside view

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Discussion

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