Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Zivinbudas

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(Zivinbudas | talk | contributions)

Statement of the dispute

Zivinbudas has a habit of removing, without consensus, content he disagrees with, and then persistently reverting anyone who attempts to restore the content he removed, usually making a personal attack in the process (his favorite edit summary seems to be "stop stupidity"). When confronted he continues the personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with him, again frequently using the word "stupid". He has twice been blocked for 3RR violations, although the second time was technically a block against his /22 10-bit range because he wasn't logged in at the time of his second batch of 3RR violations.

Description

Zivinbudas has very strong Baltic nationalist feelings which he has been aggressively airing at Indo-European languages. On that page there is a list of the branches of the IE family, listed chronologically by date of first attestation. The general view among linguists is that Baltic was first attested in the 14th century, but Zivinbudas claimed on the basis of a single word in Tacitus that Baltic was first attested in the 1st century AD, and moved it accordingly. This resulted in a revert war between him and AJD, who stopped after three reverts. Zivinbudas didn't, and got blocked for 12 hours by Geni starting 10:31, 15 May 2005 (UTC). Within an hour he was back at it, anonymously making seven reverts in less than 20 hours (his IP addresses include 85.206.193.46, 85.206.194.120, 85.206.193.52, and 85.206.193.9).[reply]

He finally conceded the point about the age of Baltic's first attestation, but continues to refuse any mention of the Balto-Slavic theory, widely held by Indo-Europeanists, according to which the Baltic and Slavic language groups descend from a common ancestor, called Proto-Balto-Slavic, later than Proto-Indo-European. Although most Indo-Europeanists believe in this theory, not all do. (On Talk:Indo-European languages Zivinbudas calls the Balto-Slavic theory "stupid soviet propaganda which in stupid West still is in force".) Wiglaf reverted his deletion of the reference to Balto-Slavic languages, he reverted Wiglaf's reversion, and Wiglaf reverted twice more and then stopped. Zivinbudas then logged out but continued to revert anonymously (thirteen times in the next 29 hours) when dab, Pjacobi, User:Jayjg picked up where Wiglaf had left off, and when Wiglaf came back 24 hours later, and when Angr joined in. Finally dab blocked his /22 10-bit range for 24 hours for violating 3RR, starting 12:07, 17 May 2005 (UTC). When he came back he reverted again, but just once, and allowed Angr's reversion of his revert to stand. Nevertheless a comment he made on Talk:Indo-European languages suggests he's not done: I feel I have right to change false statement in this article, which I will do in future (today my limit finished). (He had made three edits, but only one of them was a revert.)[reply]

His edit summaries and comments on the talk page do not shy away from personal attacks. The majority of his reverts were made with the edit summary "stop stupidity". He called dab "stupid" on Talk:Indo-European languages, and also called him a Slav (which considering Zivinbudas's views of Slavs was probably also intended as an insult). Although he allowed Angr's latest version to stand (for the time being at least), he started a new discussion on the talk page with the title "Stupidity", in which he said Angr's "stupidity is without borders (limits)." (After that he and Angr had a long discussion which was at least free of personal attacks, but still showed no willingness to concede to the majority view.)

Evidence of disputed behavior

Violations of 3RR

In the 24 hours starting 06:42 UTC, 14 May 2005

In the 24 hours starting 11:23 UTC, 15 May 2005 (mostly from IP addresses) (shortly after being blocked for the first time for violating 3RR above)

In the 24 hours starting 11:34 UTC, 16 May 2005 (mostly from IP addresses)

After two more reverts ([23], [24]) there was a /22 10-bit range block against him for 24 hours, after which he made only three edits to the page of which only one was a revert.

The user does not care about being either blocked or warned. New set of reverts in the 24 hours starting 12:52 UTC, 18 May 2005

Personal attacks

Vandalism

He has now vandalized this RfC (having logged out but the MO and IP address are recognizable as his)
...and blanked out the notice about this vandalization Wikibofh 16:26, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
He forces many pages to be protected. An example: I unprotected Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after almost 3 weeks of protection from Zvinbudas and had to protect it again less then 2 days later. In essence, this single user has made several pages completly unworkable, and seems to show no regret or boredom... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 21:10, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Applicable policies

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

AJD asks Zivinbudas to justify his claims on the Talk page instead of prolonging the revert war, before either party has reached three reverts
Zivinbudas reverts again without commenting on the Talk page, and when he eventually does go to Talk, just before his third revert, he defends his edits only in vague and non-explanatory terms
Angr explains that mentioning the Balto-Slavic theory on the page without endorsing it is NPOV
Zivinbudas replies with an attack against the theory and those who believe it
Angr reiterates that it is NPOV to mention the existence of the theory and the fact that some people disagree with it
Z continues to argue against the theory
Talk:Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Talk:Vilnius and its archives, Talk:Confederation, Talk:Grand Duchy of Lithuania and many others - while many people try to discuss the issue and reach a compromise, Zvinbudas shows little effort for discussion other then 'I am right and you are wrong' if he replies and all, and half of his comments are personal attacks on others

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

(sign with ~~~~)

Angr/_comhrá 22:30, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
AJD 23:24, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wiglaf 05:51, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
just another single-topic pov pusher refusing to stop and listen. We should have a way of speedying such clear cases. dab (ᛏ) 07:58, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Halibu tt 10:57, May 19, 2005 (UTC) - the same problem and same behaviour in many other Poland and Lithuania-related articles; insults included
Intractable POV pusher. Jayjg ^(talk) 12:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Decius 08:11, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 09:04, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Odysseas 06:11, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
nixie 08:40, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Balcer 08:03, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Other users who endorse this summary

(sign with ~~~~)

Djnjwd 21:40, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Response

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.

View of DeirYassin

Nobody is perfect. Nobody knows Wikipedia rules from their first edit. User Zivinbudas, although he made mistakes, is improving with time, there are way less insults than there used to be, no longer there are reverts of useful things (such as when the article is reverted to a very old version and all newer useful additions are being deleted). His opinions are supported primarily by facts now rather than insults. What is also important, is that he knows quite much about Lithuanian history, most likely more than other people at English Wikipedia as he studied history; there are not many Lithuanians in English Wikipedia in general. Because of this reason, it is true that many articles tends to be written out of not Lithuanian POVs and aren't NPOV. Double standarts exists for e.g. usage of Lithuanian and Polish langauges; most of Lithuanian cities, such as Siauliai or Panevežys, which doesn't had nor ever had Polish minorities and never belonged to Poland has for some reason Polish language names written in brackets, but trying to add Lithuanian names to some Polish cities where Lithuanian names differs from Polish names (such as Sandomierz), meets fierce resistance. This is only an example, there are other such examples, such as writting names of clearly Lithuanian people in Polish, dubious historical claims, based on both Soviet and other propagandas, such legitimate articles about real events as Occupied territories of Baltic States are VFDed because they are against the opinion held in those countries; and as there are just a few Lithuanian editors and seemingly no active Latvian or Estonian editors, such actions works. Sometimes it might be hard for a user to actually NPOV an article instead of making it another POV. Also, consensus idea in such cases does not always works, because if the opinion represented in article is very radical, and most of it is not factual, it might need a larger change than original writters of it would agree. DeirYassin 13:52, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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

Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to a vote or endorsement, should be directed to this page's discussion page.

It's not just the 3RR violations. Z had to be beaten into respecting the 3RR with a blunt stick, after his first two blocks, he simply redialled after every third revert. We then had to apply range blocks to his service provider, and after a lot of ado, he has now reached the stage where he is just "using up his daily limit" of reverts. Clearly not an editor with much hope of ever understanding the idea behind Wikipedia. And I believe that the experienced editors should not be expected to second as social workers or psychiatrists, tenderly leading another sheep into the fold of NPOV and Wikilove. dab (ᛏ) 08:19, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Čiulpk bibį, valkata 85.206.194.13 15:39, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The above piece of vanadalism by Zivinbudas is Lithuanian for "Suck my dick, you bum" and is kept here as evidence.

Correct translation: "Suck dick (not my), you bum". 85.206.194.137 06:45, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment there are at least six pages that have been protected because of his aggressive revert wars a couple of weeks ago:

Lithuania
Partitions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ← this is a redirect to Partitions of Poland; Zivinbudas edited this page to change the title to the one he prefers, and add two more pages to this list. But he still chooses not to respond. --Angr/_comhrá 14:36, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Vilnius
Demographics of Lithuania
Confederation

But I suppose these don't count as "part of the same dispute". --Angr/_comhrá 11:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

He's violated 3RR at Vilnius University as well, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR --Angr/_comhrá 11:58, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

re DeirYassin, yes! English Wikipedia badly needs Lithuanian expertise, i.e. intelligent, friendly, calm editors with special knowledge on Lithuanian topics. That doesn't mean we have any use for choleric Lithuanian trolls revert-warring and refusing to cite sources. Lack of good editors does not mean we need more bad ones, and is no excuse for them. We didn't bite Z as a newcomer. He is the all too frequent type of the biting newcomer. Sometimes they get the knack of Wikipedia and morph into valuable editors. Z is still welcome to try and undergo such a transformation. But those "biting newcomers" who are incapable of, or unwilling to, learn from their mistakes have very little prospect of becoming an 'editor in good standing'. dab (ᛏ) 07:49, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Also, the fact that he refuses to respond to this RfC, but instead chooses to vandalize this page, shows that he's not interested in cooperating with others. --Angr/_comhrá 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the admin that has blocked most of the pages that Zivinbudas is edit warring on. He has made no attempt to be a constructive editor, when a page he is rvenrt warring on get blocked he makes personal attacks on the talk page and the moves on to another related topic. Most of his edits introduce incorrect information into pages. I was reluctant to place a long range block since it is a dyanmic IP for the Lithuanian Telecom. I have also protected Vilnius University and Vilnius region.--nixie 08:49, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just a correction - he does not adds incorrect information; the problem which is mentioned here arises from the fact that he makes articles to seem to represent only Lithuanian POV, however, he does not add things which are wrong or incorrect. DeirYassin 09:03, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think that removing information that you don't like is the same as providing incorrect information. It is stating that the information you have removed does not exist.--Wiglaf 11:25, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

He has changed verifiable statisitcs and made edits about language that I have been relaibly informed are false, so I stand by my statement--nixie 23:57, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, calling people "Slavic monkeys", "Slaves" or suggesting they should be "sent to gas chambers" is not the best way to make friends or to make anyone defend his views. Halibu tt 19:07, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Could you provide links to his edits where he did that under the "personal attacks" rubric above? --Angr/_comhrá 20:18, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, the Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#User:Zivinbudas was started. Feel free to join. Halibu tt 08:36, May 31, 2005 (UTC)