Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Vfp15 and Charles Darwin/Evidence

Submitted by User:Vfp15

In addition to the debate on Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln, I would like to submit the evidence below.

1. It passes the Wikipedia:Google test with over 4000 results.

2. Examples of other coincidences mentioned in Wikipedia.

• C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as John F. Kennedy.
• Miguel Cervantes died same date and same year (but not same day) as Shakespeare.

3. The fact first inserted

• The original posting was by User:Brutannica in July 2004.
• The word coincidentally was added in September, by someone else, probably to address concerns of undue prominence.

4. An insult directed against me in another article.

Response to gK's evidence

GK is right, I did delete the section on the 8th December, after User:MgeKelly vandalized the article with an factoid he himself admitted was spurious the Monty Burns factoid. He was possibly trying to get me to lose my temper,and poo ones self and he unfortunately succeeded.

The sequence of events runs this way.

1. gk creates a compromise.
2. Mgekelly vandalizes the article with the Monty Burns factoid.
3. I deleted the whole section and reinserted the factoid in the main body.

Please note that I deleted the section two days after it was created, on the 6th. Note that I was on wikipedia on the 7th, I saw the section then, and did not touch it.

So:I should not have deleted the whole section, I should have deleted only the Monty Burns vandalism, and I apologize for not having recognized and appreciated gK's effort at a compromise. Vincent 03:51, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

submitted by gK ¿?

This is the first time that I've done anything involving a Request for arbitration. I hope that you won't mind that I present both evidence and commentary here.

You can see my opinion on the inclusion of the trivia about the shared birthdate, and a summary of Vincent's behavior's here On adding trivia to the main body of an article such as Charles Darwin (also here RfM). The main point that I want to bring up here is that there was the chance that much of the edit war could have ended before it really began in earnest when, at the beginning of December, a Trivia section was first created as a place to mention the shared birthdate. Instead, Vincent persisted in putting the information back in the "Early life" section near the start of the article. Even though I personally did not want the information in the article at all (and voted as such), I was also the one who offered the Trivia section compromise, and I would have gone out of my way to try to convince other participants in the debate to accept it if I had seen any chance that Vincent would have also accepted it. The opposite was true--Vincent insisted on putting it back into the "Early life" section, and made it very clear in his edit summaries that he would continue to do so, while keeping within the 3 revert rules, and telling everyone else that they should give up. You can see from his edit history [1] that including this factoid in the Charles Darwin article became almost his only participation on the Wikipedia in December. (Here's my recent contributions for comparison [2].)

As for the Google test--let's try an encyclopedia test instead. I own a half-dozen CD-ROM encyclopedias, both American and British. I checked them all, plus a few online encyclopedias (here's Encarta's Charles Darwin article [3]). None of them mention the coincidence between Abraham Lincoln's and Charles Darwin's birthdays. Instead, where do I find the factoid? Besides the usual clones of the Wikipedia, and the "What happened on February 12th" pages, one of the first articles that I found was THE DARWIN PAPERS THE UNTOLD STORY of CHARLES DARWIN. A website that uses rumor, innuendo, selective use of facts, and factoids to present a very unflattering image of Charles Darwin.

That is really what the bit of trivia that Vincent wanted to put in the main body of the Charles Darwin article was--a distraction from the more important facts in Abraham Lincoln's life. But for most of December, Vincent continued to put the information back into the "Early life" section, reinserting it there as late as 23 December. After a brief Christmas hiatus, Vincent is back entering the trivia into the Charles Darwin article (three times since late 7 January), but at least now he is not putting it into the main body of the article. But it is Vincent's own behavior through all of December that has hardened the opinions of everyone else so that it no longer "We don't like it, but we'll put up with it in a Trivia section", to "Never anywhere in the Charles Darwin article". And it just isn't the three people mentioned in this request for arbitration, but at least a dozen different people that have removed the trivia from tha article, while Vincent is the only one who has put it back into the article more than once.

This went through a Wikipedia:Request_for_comments (initiated by User:Fastfission), plus an RfM that went nowhere (I placed my comments there but Vincent never replied to them, and nobody ever contacted me). My personal opinion is that this is not (yet) a case for arbitration, although the lesser options have not worked either. gK ¿? 09:24, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

submitted by User:Curps

It appears that User:GK has (temporarily?) left Wikipedia, according to his user page.

In a recent edit summary, User:Vfp15 wrote: I think it would be proper to refrain from ordering others about. The talk page explains my position, and the three revert rule entitles me as well as limits me to three reverts a day.

I don't believe this is accurate, there is no such "entitlement". It is not the case that "edit war" is merely synonymous with "breaking the 3RR rule". Arbitration should clarify that point, and perhaps Wikipedia:Three revert rule needs to be edited to reflect this. As precedent, note Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Cantus vs. Guanaco and remedies for "sterile and pointless edit wars".

It is sad that User:Vfp15's recent contributions to Wikipedia seem to be limited to three daily reverts of Charles Darwin plus comments on various users' talk pages.

-- Curps 22:24, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The vote at Talk:Charles_Darwin/Lincoln#Vote Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln/LincolnArchive01#Vote is currently 25 to 5 against including User:Vfp15's edit.

-- Curps 22:28, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As I said on the Talk page, I do not recognize that vote. Voting is OK on a matter of style (e.g. British vs. American spelling, Infobox vs. No infobox) but not OK on factual matters. Vincent 10:57, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's not a vote on whether your edit is factual, but whether it is appropriate for inclusion. Such votes are common, in fact see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution (and note that this page is in Category:Wikipedia official policy). One of the steps proposed is "Conduct a survey". So you cannot claim that such surveys are a priori illegitimate.

Wikipedia operates by consensus, and conducting a vote is the most obvious way to gauge what the consensus is. You readily acknowledge that the consensus is very largely against you, but dismiss this as irrelevant. Is this really a sign of a good faith attempt at dispute resolution?

You wrote: Sorry, but at this point, there is no way I will accept the results of a vote. None. Not a snow ball's chance in the magma of our planet. Do you still stand by that statement?

-- Curps 11:45, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Vincent, why can't you see that the inclusion of your bit of trivia is indeed a matter of style? Nobody disputes the factual accuracy of your claim. The problem is that it is of little relevance to the article and therefore its inclusion disrupts the natural flow of ideas. There are countless other details and coincidences about Darwin's life which are historically verifiable, but most of them are simply not important enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia article. The fact that Darwin and Lincoln share a birthday belongs in an essay on the similarity between the two men's lives and views, not in an introductory text on Darwin alone. Psychonaut 19:11, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There's no point discussing stuff here. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rejected requests. Noisy | Talk 19:49, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)