Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sortan/Evidence

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Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.

As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anomalous_phenomenon&diff=5587219&oldid=5584644] [1].

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Evidence presented by {{user}}[edit]

First assertion[edit]

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion, for example, your first assertion might be "Jimmy Wales engages in edit warring". Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show Jimmy Wales engaging in edit warring

Second assertion[edit]

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion, for example, your second assertion might be "Jimmy Wales makes personal attacks". Here you would show specific edits where Jimmy Wales made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by jguk[edit]

The biggest cause of major contributors leaving Wikipedia, aside from personal circumstances, is accounts that make very little or no positive contribution to the encyclopaedia, but who are content to argue, harass, harangue and/or make occasional personal attacks. Often they attach themselves to one or two users. This makes it difficult to remove them - they are not clear vandals or widespread trolls (and so do not qualify for automatic bans), however, they are trouble and bring no benefits to the encyclopaedia. They prevent editors with long edit histories that show a long record from making productive edits. They often tend to be litigious, demanding of their “rights” - which itself creates a problem, especially as our writers are here because they wish to write, not because they wish to defend 200+ of their edits in a RfC or ArbCom case. To my mind, it should be clearly stated that where ArbCom finds an account is not here in order to better the encyclopaedia, then it should be blocked.

I invite ArbCom to do this in the case of Sortan (talk · contribs). This account’s contribution history constitutes evidence demonstrating that this user has made no real contributions of note, but has been involved in many disruptive disputes is in the edit history. I think it is so self-evident that if ArbCom members were to open 10 or 12 of this accounts edits at random, and consider the purposes of those edits, they will see what I am referring to. The underlying principle is Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (which, although semi-humorous refers to our fundamental purposes. I urge ArbCom to take this case to determine (1) that accounts that are not being used to help improve the encyclopaedia can be blocked on request to ArbCom; and (2) that User:Sortan is one such user and should be blocked.

Details[edit]

Summary[edit]

In essence, all of Sortan's user contributions are submitted as evidence that he is not here to help the encyclopaedia. See: Sortan's user contributions. Since arriving here Sortan has made 662 edits [2]. Except as noted below, these edits are not substantive. Many have been reverts (mostly of myself, but of other readers too).

Uncanny habit of editing same articles as me[edit]

  • Elam – a page I was already editing – Sortan’s first contributions (on talk page) – 7 July
  • Johannesburg – after jguk edits at 6.40pm 25 July - Sortan’s first contribution is at 7.18pm (and with misleading edit summary) [3]
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) – jguk edits at 12.03pm on 18 July (having edited the page many times before) - Sortan’s first edit is at 4.19pm on 19 July [4]
  • Modena – jguk edits at 6.42pm on 25 July – Sortan’s first edit is at 8.25pm on 25 July [5]
  • Pre-Socratic philosophy – Sortan’s first edit at 8.30pm on 25 July is to revert jguk’s edit of 6.42pm on the same day [6]
  • Civilizations in human history – Sortan’s first edit at 5.36pm on 26 July was to revert a jguk edit [7]
  • Fu Hsi – Sortan appears on a talk page for an article he has not edited, but jguk has [8]
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard – Sortan raises a complaint against jguk 25 minutes after jguk posts a message asking to Admin’s to watch out for Sortan being a possible sockpuppet of CDThieme [9]
  • Proto-Canaanite alphabet – Sortan’s first edit is to revert jguk [10]
  • Year zero – jguk first edited this page on 6.19pm on 24 July – Sortan’s first edit was at 5.22am on 17 July [11]
  • Sunga Empire – Sortan’s first edit is the day after jguk’s edit [12]
  • Josephus – jguk edits for the first time on 24 July, Sortan appears on the talk page on 27 July [13]
  • Sino-Roman relations – jguk edits in March and April, Sortan follows in July [14]
  • Wikipedia:Readers First – Sortan edits a discussion page jguk has set up [15]
  • 2004 – Sortan makes his first edit of the page directly after jguk [16]
  • Common Era – Sortan makes his first edit of a page regularly edited by jguk less than an hour after jguk makes an edit on 12 August [17]
  • Zoroastrianism – an appearance from Sortan on 21 August [18]
  • Yuezhi – and also on 21 August [19]
  • A. E. J. Collins – Sortan spots a bit of vandalism on a cricket-related featured article that’s on the main page on 23 August. Jguk had often edited this article, and had done so earlier that day. [20]
  • Talk:Bill O'Reilly (commentator) – Sortan, having previously not edited the talk page or article, comments on a discussion on 26 August 10 and a half hours after jguk [21]
  • Cheese – on 16 September, Sortan edits this article for the first time [22], 5 days after jguk last edits it.
  • Achaemenid dynasty – on 20 September Sortan’s first edit is to revert jguk [23]
  • Talk:Julius Caesar – Sortan appears on a talk page of an article jguk had edited numerous time, but this time 20 minutes after jguk had made a comment (and accusing jguk of vandalism as his edit had inadvertently cropped off a comment from another user) (20 September) [24]
  • January 1/1 January – on 26 September, jguk makes a little test (clearly labelled), Sortan’s the one to revert [25], [26], [27]
  • Kingdom of Judah - on 1 October, Sortan edits for the first time, less than one hour after jguk [28]
  • Kingdom of Israel - as per above [29]
  • 52 BC - Sortan edits for the first time on 3 October, again to revert jguk [30]. Ultimately Sortan’s edits on this page lead to User:MarkGallagher making the following edit summary - [31]
  • 19 BC as per above [32]
  • 140s BC as per above [33]
  • Stone age - jguk first edits on 30 September, Sortan follows on 3 October [34]
  • 1690s - jguk first edits on 2 October, Sortan follows on 3 October [35]
  • Khazars - 9 minutes after jguk first edits the article (on 10 October), Sortan does [36]
  • Maya calendar - jguk first edits article at 5.59am on 14 October, Sortan follows later that day [37]
  • Pontius Pilate - Sortan makes his first edit on 17 October, just after jguk edits the page [38]
  • Hebrew calendar - Sortan comments on Talk:Hebrew calendar on 17 October, his only interest in the article. Jguk had previously been discussing items on the talk page [39]
  • Names of the Greeks - jguk first edits on 27 October, Sortan soon follows [40]
  • Portal:Archaeology/Archaeology news - jguk first edits on 29 October, soon followed by Sortan [41]
  • Mandan - jguk first edits on 30 October, soon followed by Sortan [42]


I was away on business and then on holiday for most of November and the beginning part of December. Sortan’s edits become much fewer in this period.

Following Chooserr[edit]

In my absence, in early December, Sortan latched onto a new user, User:Chooserr instead:

  • Euripides - 3 December - Sortan edits just after Chooserr - [52]
  • Mathura - 3 December - ditto [53]. Then having gamed the new user to encourage him to break the 3RR, Sortan immediately reports the breach [54]
  • Tocharians - 3 December - Sortan follows Chooserr here too [55]
  • Neolithic Europe - 3 December - and here [56]
  • War on Christmas - 4 December - Chooserr started this article on 30 November. Sortan pops by later [57]
  • Merry Christmas - 4 December - Sortan visits to revert Chooserr’s edit of 29 November [58]

Incivility, not assuming good faith[edit]

[80], [81], [82], [83]

  • Litigiousness

[84], (note that none of the editors Sortan contacts here were involved in the relate dispute - indeed, this seems to have been somewhat indiscriminate as some of these users supported me): [85], [86], [87], [88], [89], [90], [91], [92], [93], [94], [95]

  • Unnecessarily referring to my real name

[96], [97]

  • General insults (most of which are from December)

[98], [99], [100], [101], [102] (which attacks User:David Gerard), [103], [104], [105] (which attacks User:Squell)

Substantive edits[edit]

I believe this to be a complete list of non-minor, substantive edits made by Sortan. This is out of a total edit count of 662:

  1. This one's difficult as it's difficult to work out how substantive a re-drafting it is (but giving the benefit of the doubt); [106]
  2. Creates the stub article South Asian cuisine [107]
  3. A rewrite of a one paragraph long article [108]
  4. Adds a picture of a curry tree [109], [110]
  5. Adding a reference on the Elazig article
  6. Adding a couple of references to the Anno Domini article

Evidence of disruptive sockpuppetry[edit]

On 9 December, User:David Gerard, who has CheckUser access, revealed that the following accounts as sock puppets who had been voting multiply on RfA and AfD: CDThieme (talk · contribs), No Account (talk · contribs), Tree&Leaf (talk · contribs), Longboat (talk · contribs), Uncarved Block (talk · contribs), Quintusdecimus (talk · contribs), Via Egnatia (talk · contribs), Jguk. (talk · contribs) (note the dot at the end of this one, which appeared just after I'd asked for my old account to be renamed to that account (those edits have now gone to Jguk 2) puppetry

I believe that there is evidence that shows beyond reasonable doubt, that Sortan and the above users are one and the same. I have notified CDThieme of this part of my evidence and the comments on the workshop here: [111].This evidence is below:

Evidence pointing to the Sortan account not being the user's sole account[edit]
  • On 7 July, Sortan turned his userpage into a blue link by a "null edit" [112]
  • On 4 October, David Gerard performs a CheckUser on Sortan, which showed Sortan had at least one unused sock puppet account in the wings [113]
Comments by others on Sortan[edit]
Evidence pointing to the Sortan account being operated by the same user as the above-mentioned accounts[edit]
Editing the same articles

CDThieme edits

Using jguk’s real name
  • Using my real name - only Sortan [131] and CDThieme have sought to use my real name
Disappearing at the same time

CDThieme and Sortan are both accounts used on a very regular basis. Yet on Cheese it took Sortan 5 days to revert a jguk edit on Cheese, from 11 September to 16 September an unusually long time for Sortan to revert where he was going to do so. During this time, CDThieme made one edit on 12 September – the other sock puppets also failed to edit on 14 and 15 September. The list is as follows:

Not marking minor edits as minor

CDThieme and his known sock puppets, like Sortan, rarely mark their edits as minor, even though they almost always invariably are.

Very occasional substantive edit

Some of CDThieme’s sock puppets also very, very occasional make a rare substantive edit. For example, User:Tree&Leaf created the stub article Rasmus B. Anderson.

Interest in Jewish issues

Interest in Jewish issues - see, for example, Sortan’s edits of 17 July. CDThieme’s talk page previously revealed himself to be Jewish

Accusations of vandalism

Free accusations of vandalism - both CDThieme and Sortan display this trait. See their talk pages and edit histories for further evidence.

Evidence presented by {your user name}[edit]

First assertion[edit]

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion, for example, your first assertion might be "Jimmy Wales engages in edit warring". Here you would list specific edits to specific articles which show Jimmy Wales engaging in edit warring

Second assertion[edit]

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion, for example, your second assertion might be "Jimmy Wales makes personal attacks". Here you would list specific edits where Jimmy Wales made personal attacks.


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