Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Shorne and Fred Bauder

Case Closed - subject to reactivation should Shorne return

Please do not edit this page directly if you are not a participant in this case. Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators will be working on a proposed decision at /Proposed decision.

Statement of complaint

User:Shorne engages in edit wars on the articles, Great Purge, Communism, Communist state and People's Republic of China. He claims to be removing POV material and demands documentation, but no matter how minutely referenced, removal continues. Most references are unacceptable in his view including references which are generally accepted in the scholarly community. When negotiation is attempted he pleads lack of time and energy, but continues to have plenty of time and energy for his edit wars with me and other editors. Extensive discussions on article talk pages have been to no avail, see especially Talk:People's Republic of China, for example this edit: [1]. Mediation has been refused, see [2] Fred Bauder 22:09, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Statement by affected party

Indictment of Fred Bauder and the rest of the arbitration committee for corruption

My position on this matter has been discussed elsewhere. User Fred Bauder filed this complaint in response to my own complaint against User VeryVerily. My own complaint has, to date, received only two votes, both quite recent, while subsequent complaints have received prompt attention—votes within seven minutes of posting, for example. Furthermore, neither the mediation committee nor the arbitration committee has yet answered any of my numerous questions about the manifest bias of favouring some complaints over others. I charge both committees with partiality and state categorically that they should be disbanded and created anew.

Bauder, taking advantage of his status as an arbitrator, has pushed ahead with arbitration, disregarding my statements that our own dispute could be resolved quickly once VeryVerily was finally brought under control and that mediation or arbitration of our dispute would have to wait for my prior dispute with VeryVerily to be resolved. Lying Bauder sold this to the committee as my "refusal" of mediation. He's merely trying to get me banned, as his response ("Yes and no") to my question "Is this [request for mediation] just your attempt to satisfy some bureaucratic requirement on the road to getting me expelled?" (see my talk page, Oct 11) suggests. In fact, it is I who have done the majority of the discussing. On talk pages, I have often written multiple paragraphs full of data and references only to see Bauder dismiss the lot with a single sentence characterising it as a minority opinion.

Anyone who really wants to know who has been trying to discuss things and who has been insisting on his own POV will read the talk pages and edit histories of such articles as Communism, Communist state, Joseph Stalin, and Collectivisation in the USSR. Fred Bauder constantly asserts that his POV belongs in the article (communism as guilty of "mass murder", for example) and that it should even predominate because it is supposedly shared by the majority of some unstated population (the US's, presumably). Despite many lectures by me on the subject (obviously delivered to deaf ears), Bauder still does not understand that NPOV means that articles should not reflect any point of view, not that the putative majority gets to assert its opinions as facts so long as an opposing side is mentioned in a couple of sentences, its adherents crassly labelled as "Stalinist apologists". How POV-pushing Bauder ever became an arbitrator I can only guess, but his high rank within the Wikipedia hierarchy bodes ill for the site.

Bauder seldom has anything substantive to say. He cites The Black Book of Communism far and wide, working its claim of "100 million killed" under communism into countless articles despite being fully aware that I and others (including two of the book's co-authors) have refuted that wild claim (with no counterargument from Bauder): see The Black Book of Communism, Talk:Communism, Talk:Communist state, and other articles. Anyone else's sources, however, he dismisses as "Stalinist" "propaganda", calling their authors "revisionists". (He has even done so within the articles themselves.) When challenged, however, about the validity of sources such as The Black Book of Communism, Bauder mysteriously goes quite mute. He moves on to another article and starts preaching his gospel of "100 million" again. He is not concerned about the truth; he only wants to have an anticommunist POV predominate. (As if Wikipedia were not already hopelessly tainted with right-wing bias.)

The preceding is for the benefit of anyone who cares to know the facts. Anyone who does not should proceed to honour Bauder's request to have me banned. I do not recognise the kangaroo court that is framing me here, and I refuse to participate in this show trial. Go ahead and ban me; that's clearly what you want to do. If you were serious about achieving a fair resolution to this dispute, you would have told Bauder to get in line behind me and to try mediation first. The fact that you gave priority to him and bought his lie about my "refusal" of mediation shows your true colours.

I shall say nothing else on this matter. Don't expect me to take part in any discussions of it. This "Statement by affected party" was written to expose the corruption of Bauder and the rest of the committee, not to defend myself or to present my grievances against Bauder in an organised way. Indeed, I shall not even read the discussion here. Anyone who wishes to speak with me may do so via my talk page. Shorne 20:38, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Preliminary decision

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (4/0/1/0)

1. Recuse Fred Bauder 22:09, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
2. Accept. James F. (talk) 16:24, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
3. Accept. The Cunctator 06:04, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC) I'd love to see more evidence...
4. Abstain until more evidence is presented -- Fred, I need more than one diff to tell if there is a pattern of behavior in need of addressing. Jwrosenzweig 19:38, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC) Thanks for the additional evidence -- I hesitantly accept (would have preferred mediation, but Shorne refused). Jwrosenzweig 20:46, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
5. Accept. →Raul654 06:59, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)