User:Jdavidb/Johnski

This is a workpage for evidence to be presented in the request for arbitration against Johnski (talk · contribs).

This page is in a state of construction. There may be material here that I decide later not to present. There may be mistaken material here. There may be material here which does not actually reflect my opinion. Please do not take anything on this page to indicate anything that you cannot verify yourself, particularly anything about my own opinion. If and when this list comes to a useful and/or complete state I will add it as my contribution to the evidence in the RFAr.

Standards of presentation of evidence

I will adhere to the following standards for presenting evidence:

1. Evidence will be grouped in sections by charge, ordered chronologically.
2. Charges will be listed in descending order of seriousness, by my own estimation.
3. Each charge will contain a link and a quote to substantiate the relevant Wikipedia policy.
4. Wikipedia policies on personal attacks will be ignored for purposes of this presentation.
5. Charges will not be presented unless the behavior has occurred more than once.
6. Charges will not be presented if the user has retracted the behavior: this may take the form of an apology, an admission of fault, and/or a promise not to commit the behavior again. Such retraction must be followed by not doing it again. Retractions followed by unretracted repeat behavior (or behavior repeated over and over again with insincere retractions) will be presented.
7. In general, only edits to pages in the article space will be considered relevant as primary evidence for charges. Edits to talk pages or user pages will only be considered as secondary evidence to charges or as evidence to work within the system or retract behavior against policy.

Evidence presented by Jdavidb

• Johnski's first edit identifies himself as 67.124.49.20 (talk · contribs): [1] Some diffs in this presentation will be to edits performed from this IP address.

Johnski's goals

• Publicize DOM with references on as many articles as possible.
  • WP:SPAM states "Sometimes, people come to Wikipedia with the intention of spamming -- creating articles which are mere advertisements or self-promotion, or spewing external links to a Web site over many articles. And sometimes, people spam Wikipedia without meaning to. That is, they do things which Wikipedians consider to be spamming, without realizing that their actions are not in line with building an encyclopedia." Johnski's goals have not been to build a good encyclopedia but to get as much positive exposure for DOM as possible. Johnski's edits show that he willing to have DOM publicized under any pretenses: the exact facts he attempts to include as well as his stated reasons for his edits change over time because he wants to try any reason that will work to get his material accepted.
• Legitimize DOM by removing or toning down material detrimental to the POV that DOM is legitimate. (Here [2] Johnski reveals that he is "trying to tone it down.")
  • WP:NPOV states "Articles should be written without bias, representing all majority and significant minority views fairly." It appears that the majority view about the Dominion of Melchizedek is that it exists primarily for the purpose of fraud. Johnski's attempts to "tone this down" have resulted in the deliberate misuse and obfuscation of quotes to misrepresent opinions as being more favorable to DOM.

Revert warring on Dominion of Melchizedek

WP:EW states "Reversion wars between competing individuals are contrary to Wikipedia's core principles, reflect badly on both participants, and often result in blocks being implemented due to violations of the three revert rule." The WP:3RR policy provides standards for discerning when revert warring has gone over the line: "The policy states that an editor must not perform more than three reversions on a single Wikipedia article within 24 hours of their first reversion. ... If you violate the three-revert rule, after your fourth revert in 24 hours, sysops may block you for up to 24 hours." However, the 3RR policy "does not imply that reverting three times or less is acceptable. In excessive cases, people can be blocked for edit warring or disruption even if they do not revert more than three times per day." It states that "Chronic offenders may be subject to rulings by the Arbitration Committee. This can also apply to those that try to "game" the rule on a regular basis, such as by making fourth reversions just outside the 24-hour time period." (emphasis added) Johnski has engaged in revert warring and gaming of the three revert rule, often performing fourth reverts just outside of the 24-hour time period.

It is stated that "Using sockpuppets (multiple accounts) is not a legitimate way to avoid this limit, and the policy specifically does not apply to groups." Groups are specifically exempted from the policy because of situations like this, where a number of Wikipedians have reverted Johnski to send the message that his changes go against consensus. Sockpuppets are not allowed in order to circumvent the policy to prevent situations where a user attempts to generate the appearance of consensus or support for his changes through impersonating non-existent users. In addition, WP:SOCK states "These newly created accounts (or anonymous edits) may be friends of a Wikipedian, or may be related in some way to the subject of an article under discussion. These accounts are not actually sockpuppets, but they are difficult to distinguish from real sockpuppets and are treated similarly. Neither a sockpuppet nor a brand-new, single-purpose account holder is a member of the Wikipedia community. The reason behind this is, for instance, that an article about an online community should not be kept merely because all members of that community show up to vote for it. The Arbitration Committee has ruled that, for the purpose of dispute resolution, when there is uncertainty whether a party is one user with sockpuppets or several users with similar editing habits they may be treated as one user with sockpuppets." In this case, many brand-new, single-purpose account holders have appeared and attempted to follow Johnski's goals of "toning down" the articles about DOM to favor the minority view that DOM is legitimate. Johnski has claimed that these are distinct individuals rather than sockpuppets, and similar assertions have been made from the other accounts. According to this policy, however, these accounts are not legitimate members of the Wikipedia community, have no voice for forming consensus, and may be treated as one user with sockpuppets.

Version 1

In this version, DOM is described as an "Ecclesiastical government." Instead of being created in 1986, it was "discovered by Evan David Pedley and Ben David Pedley"

• 2005-09-28 06:30:47 [3]
• 2005-09-28 07:09:38 [4]
• 2005-09-29 02:27:25 [5]
• 2005-09-29 02:46:17 [6]
• 2005-09-29 02:55:12 [7] (fourth revert in a 24-hour time period!)

POV pushing

Johnski removes wording that properly contextualizes a POV in this attempt to obfuscate wording to imply legitimacy for the alleged recognition by CAR:

• 2005-09-29 06:27:17 [8]

Version 2

Now DOM is an "entity." Also, rather than operating fraudulent banks, DOM just happens to "have a history of licensing banks that turned out to be fraudulent." He's given up claiming that it was a discovery; now he's working on implicitly asserting that there was an ancient history phase and a modern history phase. As well he wants to assert that the modern history phase goes back to the 1950's rather than the creation date of 1986.

• 2005-09-29 07:11:11 [9]
• 2005-09-29 23:08:16 [10] (Note attempt to use the damning quote, ""The Dominion of Melchizidek has a website promoting itself as a sovereign entity, recognized by certain governments," to imply that DOM is a sovereign entity, when the intent of the quote is nothing of the sort. Standard modus operandi for Johnski. Note also removal of quoted material from Quatloos: "Claims that the DoM has received recognition from any major government are purely lies" as well as links to that site.)
• 2005-09-29 23:27:02 [11]
• 2005-10-14 05:03:42 [12] (qualification: this is in response to baiting vandalism. He characterizes this as "reverting from vadalism to alternate version." In other words, a vandal struck so he took the opportunity to slip his version in again. Here is a diff between the last previous version from a registered user and this version by Johnski, clarifying that he has indeed made the same wholesale changes to the article: [13])
• 2005-10-15 21:01:44 [14] (Now he tries to imply that since the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency refers to Melchizedek as a "non-recognized sovereignty" that it is a sovereignty as opposed to unrecognized. While each prior revert in this section has added additional material, later reverts to version 2 are basically the same as this one.)
• 2005-10-17 07:38:47 [15]
• 2005-10-17 08:07:42 [16]
• 2005-10-17 21:30:29 [17]

Version 3

Finally conceded DOM is a micronation

• 2005-10-19 00:21:34 [18]

Trying to assert POV problems

Now he's trying to insert disclaimers on the article indicating it may be biased because it includes material detrimental to the DOM POV.

• 2005-10-26 07:47:15 [19]
• 2005-10-26 23:03:23 [20]
• 2005-10-26 23:14:14 [21]
• 2005-10-27 06:04:47 [22]

The first diff in the section is not the same as the other three. However, given that the intent is the same this constitutes a violation of the three revert rule, or at least an abuse of its intent.

Version 4

Now Melchizedek's area is the "entire earth," and it was founded in 1991 when its constitution was signed, though still "conceived" in the 1950s.

• 2005-11-13 05:04:32 [23]
• 2005-11-13 05:49:10 [24]
• 2005-11-13 06:12:06 [25]

Last stab

A quote from the Washington Post stated that the country which allegedly recognized DOM diplomatically would "recognize the State of Denial if it had a letterhead." This is put into the article as

An article in the Washington Post reported that DoM was "diplomatically recognized" by the Central African Republic, in 1993, but commented that that nation would probably "recognize the State of Denial if it had a letterhead."

Johnski wants it to say

An article in the Washington Post reported that DoM was "diplomatically recognized" by the Central African Republic, in 1993, but commented "you get the feeling" that nation would "recognize the State of Denial if it had a letterhead."

While this is a fuller quote, the distinction between these two versions is essentially negligible ... except that Johnski feels that the "you get the feeling" comment is somehow more favorable to the DOM claim. Johnski only attempts this twice before giving up:

• 2005-11-15 08:24:02 [26]
• 2005-11-15 19:03:02 [27]

Revert warring on Bokak Atoll

Inserting the same paragraph over and over and over again, despite removal by many others.

• 2005-10-18 07:21:01 [28]
• 2005-10-18 19:36:31 [29]
• 2005-10-27 08:31:23 [30]
• 2005-10-27 17:53:17 [31]
• 2005-10-28 07:41:30 [32]
• 2005-10-28 15:57:49 [33] (7 hours, 26 minutes short of being a 3RR violation)
• 2005-10-29 06:17:14 [34]
• 2005-10-31 05:34:30 [35]
• 2005-10-31 08:04:51 [36]
• 2005-10-31 18:51:50 [37]
• 2005-11-01 07:21:16 [38] (1 hour, 47 minutes short of being a 3RR violation)
• 2005-11-01 08:32:16 [39] (28 minutes short of being a 3RR violation)
• 2005-11-02 07:51:25 [40]
• 2005-11-02 08:39:19 [41] (1 hour, 18 minutes short of being a 3RR violation)

(This is a POV spun version of the original paragraph by the original author, inserted here: [42])

Revert warring on Solkope

Repeated insertion of identical or very similar material:

• [43]
• [44]
• 2005-11-13 07:22:48 [45]
• 2005-11-13 07:33:50 [46]
• 2005-11-13 07:59:17 [47]
• 2005-11-15 08:48:58 [48]

(Again, takes a break to avoid violating 3RR, but comes right back and violates the intent.)

Revert warring and POV pushing on Micronation

Attempts to assert unequivocally that DOM is legally recognized. This is long after he has been made aware that nobody here except his sockpuppets accepts this "recognition" as valid.

• [49]
• [50]
• [51]

Revert warring on Fictional country

Johnski attempts to subtly imply that DOM is not a fictional country by removing it from a list. The reason changes as Johnski learns he will be opposed on his original criteria.

As 67.124.49.20

All identical diffs:

• reason given is the POV claim that DOM is "recognized" [52]
• [53]
• asserts consensus from a debate which is not in evidence on the article talk page. [54]

As Johnski

• New justification, claiming that it should not be in the list because it is mentioned earlier in the article, but the list includes other fictional countries mentioned earlier in the article, such as Poyais. [55]
• again asserts nonexistent consensus [56]
• finally claims consensus is from other article; has yet to mention on this article's talk page [57]

Disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point

Wikipedia:Avoid self-references states "Avoid self-references within Wikipedia articles to the Wikipedia project ... Such self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages or in the Wikipedia namespace, but they are inappropriate in articles. ... Wikipedia can, of course, write about Wikipedia, but context is important." Wikipedia does not exist to write about itself, at least in the article namespace. WP:NOR states "What is excluded from articles? A Wikipedia entry (including any part of an article) counts as original research if it proposes ideas; that is: ... it introduces original ideas ... it defines new terms." As other Wikipedians engaged in the entirely appropriate behavior of restraining Johnski, he grew angry and decided that what they were doing was inappropriate, undesirable, and worthy of negative attention. He violated both the no original research policy and the avoid self-references style guideline by inventing the term "Wikilante" and writing an article about it. WP:CSD indicates that a page may be speedily deleted if it is "Recreation of deleted material. A substantially identical copy, by any title, of a page that was deleted according to the deletion policy," indicating that such recreation is forbidden. After SlimVirgin deleted the article once, Johnski immediately recreated it.

WP:POINT states "Do not interrupt the normal functioning of Wikipedia in order to make a point. ... State your point; don't prove it experimentally." Knowing that his material had been deleted, Johnski willingly recreated it in order to attempt to gain attention and make his point by disrupting Wikipedia.

• Wikilante deletion history: [58]
• Johnski admits that the disruptive article was an attempt to force his point and force communication [59]
• More admission that the disruption came after communication stopped (characterized as the other side being unwilling to compromise): [60]

Spamming on Bible

As mentioned earlier, Johnsky's activities have shown the singular goal of gaining exposure for DOM by including it in as many articles as possible.

• Attempt to spam "Bible translation" info: [61]
• Claim of consensus from receiving no response [62]

Spamming on Rotuma

• [63]

Spamming on DOM

• Attempts to create a new acronym wholesale: [64]

Spamming on Ecclesiastical state, etc.

• Creation of Ecclesiastical state: [65] (extensive revert warring also occurred on this article, which I have declined to document)
• Creates Ecclesiastical government after to failing to get what he wants on the Ecclesiastical state article: [66]
• Revert wars when he is caught: [67]
• Attempt to redirect the EState article, where he has lost the battle, to EGovernment (also removing an AFD tag in the process): [68]
• More revert warring on EState [69]
• That didn't work, so he adds a category: [70]