Current requests
[edit]

User:Phr vs. User:Sam_Sloan
[edit]

Involved parties

* User:Phr
* User:Sam_Sloan
* User:Rook_wave

All Parties are aware of this request

I have made a request for mediation in this dispute. User:Phr refused
two days ago.

This dispute has gone on for more than three months since early
December, 2005 and it is obvious that User:Phr and User:Rook_wave have
no interest in settling this dispute.
[edit]

Statement by User:Sam_Sloan

For the past 10 or 15 years, Paul Rubin who posts here as User:Phr has
made thousands of postings to various chess forums, all of which have
said basically the same thing, which is that membership dues of the
United States Chess Federation should be reduced to zero or in any
case to no more than $5, and that Paul Rubin should be allowed to play
USCF rated chess without being required to join the USCF or required
to subscribe to Chess Life magazine.

In general, Paul Rubin has been dismissed as a harmless crank, not to
be taken seriously, and is often the brunt of jokes.

That is until two days ago when it was discovered that Paul Rubin is
the same person as User:Phr who has been going about deleting the
biographies of chess politicians he does not like.

Paul Rubin knows Tom Dorsch personally and now that we know who
User:Phr is, we understand why User:Phr attacked the biography of Tom
Dorsch with such vehemence, because Tom Dorsch was one of the chess
politicians who raised the dues to $40.

When the biography of Tom Dorsch was first posted, User:Rook_wave
vandalized it by deleting all but the first two lines. When this was
reverted, User:Rook_wave then posted a AfD and then voted six times to
delete. He was joined by User:Phr who voted five times to delete. More
than that, every time a user voted to keep, he was attacked by
User:Phr who accused that person of being my sock puppet or my meat
puppet, even though he actually knew these people, having posted ten
thousand times to Usenet, and knew that they were completely
independent of me and not my friends.

As a result of the six votes to delete by User:Rook_wave and the five
votes to delete by User:Phr the biography of Tom Dorsch was deleted,
even though Tom Dorsch is one of the best known chess politicians in
the world. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Dorsch

User:Phr is completely different from User:Rook_wave. User:Rook_wave
is a German who lives in Germany. He does not seem to know anything
about chess. Paul Rubin, a/k/a User:Phr, on the other hand is a very
well known Bay Area chess personality, who has obvious animosity
towards other Bay Area chess personalities. So, even though User:Phr
and User:Rook_wave do not know each other, they team up and attack the
same targets, which is in this case me.

User:Phr has substantially deleted or modified in a negative way the
biographies of the following Bay Area chess personalities: Tom Dorsch,
Batchimeg Tuvshintugs, Eric Schiller, John W. Donaldson and Elena
Donaldson. He also substantially deleted the biography of Edward G.
Winter who is known for his attacks on Eric Schiller whom User:Phr
does not like.

Two days ago, User:Phr posted an AfD for speedy deletion for the
biographies of Bessel Kok, Ali Nihat Yazici, Julio Cesar Ingolotti,
Panupand Vijjuprabha, and Geoffrey Borg only five minutes after these
biographies were first posted. These are all important personalities
in their respective countries: Belgium, Turkey, Paraguay, Thailand and
Malta. He got these biographies deleted by administrators who
obviously did not know who they were, except for the first biography.
When he was unable to get an administrator to delete the biography of
Bessel Kok, he deleted almost all the content himself except for just
a few lines.

In addition, Paul Rubin posted modifications to his own biography,
which is a violation of Wikipedia rules.

This is a major dispute which has already lasted for more than three
months and is not going to end, especially with the World Chess
Olympiad starting in Torino, Italy on May 20. Therefore, the
arbitration committee should consider this dispute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... er:Sam_Sloan

(Sam Sloan) writes:
Paul Rubin knows Tom Dorsch personally and now that we know who
User:Phr is, we understand why User:Phr attacked the biography of Tom
Dorsch with such vehemence, because Tom Dorsch was one of the chess
politicians who raised the dues to $40.

Are you saying I'm buddies with Dorsch, or that I hate him? I can't
figure out which you mean. If I hate him so much, why would I have
supported deleting your attack biography of him?

FWIW, I don't know Dorsch personally unless you count my having seen
him around a few chess events in the early 1990's and spoken to him at
those events for a total of maybe 1 minute, and not about anything
memorable. I did participate in Usenet discussions with him sometime
after that.

User:Phr is completely different from User:Rook_wave. User:Rook_wave
is a German who lives in Germany. He does not seem to know anything
about chess. Paul Rubin, a/k/a User:Phr, on the other hand is a very
well known Bay Area chess personality, who has obvious animosity
towards other Bay Area chess personalities.

I can't think of any Bay Area chess people who I have any animosity
towards, though if by "Bay Area" you include Brooklyn, there's a
certain cab driver there who I have a pretty dim view of right now.

I've never thought of myself as a "well known chess personality" but I
suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. I was a regular player at
the Berkeley Chess Club for a few years and got to some other players
in the area, and I post to rgcp on and off, but that's about it.

He also substantially deleted the biography of Edward G.
Winter who is known for his attacks on Eric Schiller whom User:Phr
does not like.

I do know Eric Schiller slightly in person. My views differ from his
in some areas but I don't dislike him and I like to think I'm on
generally friendly terms with him. My most memorable meeting with him
featured a long and interesting conversation about linguistics.

I felt I should correct these particular errors here on Usenet, though
I expect Sloan is also circulating them on his email list that he used
to spam me with (he finally removed me after repeated requests).

Paul Rubin writes:
suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. I was a regular player at
the Berkeley Chess Club for a few years and got to some other players
in the area, and I post to rgcp on and off, but that's about it.

Typo, "got to some" should say "got to know some".

Would you two lovebirds get a room?

Who's on top?

Sam,

Have you tried to bring your complain to the International Society for
the Prevention of Cruely towards Animals?

Also, what are the "chess politicians" that you constantly talk about?
Is it politiicians who play chess or chess palyers who entered
politics?

And whom do you mean? Garry Kasparov? Kirsan Ilyumzhinov? Slobo
Milosevic? Bobby Fischer?

And thank you and your shrinik for trying to destroy Wikipedia and
Usenet by filling them with garbage.

Sam Sloan wrote:
Current requests
[edit]

User:Phr vs. User:Sam_Sloan
[edit]

Involved parties

* User:Phr
* User:Sam_Sloan
* User:Rook_wave

All Parties are aware of this request

I have made a request for mediation in this dispute. User:Phr refused
two days ago.

This dispute has gone on for more than three months since early
December, 2005 and it is obvious that User:Phr and User:Rook_wave have
no interest in settling this dispute.
[edit]

Statement by User:Sam_Sloan

For the past 10 or 15 years, Paul Rubin who posts here as User:Phr has
made thousands of postings to various chess forums, all of which have
said basically the same thing, which is that membership dues of the
United States Chess Federation should be reduced to zero or in any
case to no more than $5, and that Paul Rubin should be allowed to play
USCF rated chess without being required to join the USCF or required
to subscribe to Chess Life magazine.

In general, Paul Rubin has been dismissed as a harmless crank, not to
be taken seriously, and is often the brunt of jokes.

That is until two days ago when it was discovered that Paul Rubin is
the same person as User:Phr who has been going about deleting the
biographies of chess politicians he does not like.

Paul Rubin knows Tom Dorsch personally and now that we know who
User:Phr is, we understand why User:Phr attacked the biography of Tom
Dorsch with such vehemence, because Tom Dorsch was one of the chess
politicians who raised the dues to $40.

When the biography of Tom Dorsch was first posted, User:Rook_wave
vandalized it by deleting all but the first two lines. When this was
reverted, User:Rook_wave then posted a AfD and then voted six times to
delete. He was joined by User:Phr who voted five times to delete. More
than that, every time a user voted to keep, he was attacked by
User:Phr who accused that person of being my sock puppet or my meat
puppet, even though he actually knew these people, having posted ten
thousand times to Usenet, and knew that they were completely
independent of me and not my friends.

As a result of the six votes to delete by User:Rook_wave and the five
votes to delete by User:Phr the biography of Tom Dorsch was deleted,
even though Tom Dorsch is one of the best known chess politicians in
the world. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Dorsch

User:Phr is completely different from User:Rook_wave. User:Rook_wave
is a German who lives in Germany. He does not seem to know anything
about chess. Paul Rubin, a/k/a User:Phr, on the other hand is a very
well known Bay Area chess personality, who has obvious animosity
towards other Bay Area chess personalities. So, even though User:Phr
and User:Rook_wave do not know each other, they team up and attack the
same targets, which is in this case me.

User:Phr has substantially deleted or modified in a negative way the
biographies of the following Bay Area chess personalities: Tom Dorsch,
Batchimeg Tuvshintugs, Eric Schiller, John W. Donaldson and Elena
Donaldson. He also substantially deleted the biography of Edward G.
Winter who is known for his attacks on Eric Schiller whom User:Phr
does not like.

Two days ago, User:Phr posted an AfD for speedy deletion for the
biographies of Bessel Kok, Ali Nihat Yazici, Julio Cesar Ingolotti,
Panupand Vijjuprabha, and Geoffrey Borg only five minutes after these
biographies were first posted. These are all important personalities
in their respective countries: Belgium, Turkey, Paraguay, Thailand and
Malta. He got these biographies deleted by administrators who
obviously did not know who they were, except for the first biography.
When he was unable to get an administrator to delete the biography of
Bessel Kok, he deleted almost all the content himself except for just
a few lines.

In addition, Paul Rubin posted modifications to his own biography,
which is a violation of Wikipedia rules.

This is a major dispute which has already lasted for more than three
months and is not going to end, especially with the World Chess
Olympiad starting in Torino, Italy on May 20. Therefore, the
arbitration committee should consider this dispute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... er:Sam_Sloan

Ray Gordon wrote:

Who's on top?

Black on the top. White on the bottom. White to stale mate in two
moves.

Statement by Phr
_
Sloan goes on at length about Usenet posts and makes mostly-wrong
personal allegations about me that are irrelevant to Wikipedia. I'll
skip
most of the non-Wikipedia stuff for brevity but will state that I don't
know Tom Dorsch in person beyond having met him at chess
tournaments once or twice in the early 1990's and spoken to him for
a total of maybe one minute. I'm familiar with Dorsch's USCF activities
mostly through Usenet. I'll also say that since Sloan posts his
Wikipedia articles to Usenet, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Usenet
readers spot the errors and come to Wikipedia to fix them. Also:
Rook wave is an internationally rated chessplayer of equivalent
strength to a US national master
(http://fide.com/ratings/card.phtml?event=4666313), so the statement
that he knows nothing about chess is absurd.
_
I declined mediation because Sloan's RFM
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...User:Sam_Sloan)
asked for a "cease and desist" order against Rook wave and myself,
and that's outside the scope of what mediators can do. I'd actually
be willing to enter a mediation process that could do that (i.e. one
that could result in an agreement binding on Sloan and me and
enforceable by admins), but Wikipedia does not have such a thing
right now. As for the specific charges:
_
1. Louis Blair (below) linked to the Tom Dorsch DRV
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...oldid=43215421)
which was one of several places where the multiple vote and
sockpuppet issue was explained to Sloan. Sloan's earlier RFAR
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ing_Tom_Dorsch)
may also be of interest.
_
2. Sloan recently took it on himself to campaign for Bessel Kok's
slate of candidates in the upcoming FIDE election
(http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...c509552b9798be).
He put a biography of Panupand Vijjuprabha (one of Kok's team) on
Wikipedia, that was an obvious campaign piece that included stuff
like Vijjuprabha's phone number. I felt this was non-notable so I
made an AfD nomination to get community opinion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...nd_Vijjuprabha).
I then noticed the article was pasted verbatim from Kok's group's
web site
(http://www.rightmove06.org/index.php... z_articles=62)
without attribution, so I noted that (and gave the link) in the AfD.
The bio
was speedied as a copyvio a few minutes later.
_
3. Sloan copied several more bios from the same source over the next
hour. I entered SD requests for these, giving the source links
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...on_of_Articles).
These too were speedied (Ali Nihat Yazici, Julio César Ingolotti, and
Geoffrey Borg). I also briefly put up a SD request for Bessel Kok
(mentioning his higher notability), but I then saw that Kok's bio
contained a mixture of copied and non-copied material, so I took
down my SD request and edited out the copied material. Except for
Kok and Yazici, these people are non-notable (a few hundred
Google hits at most).
_
4. Sloan apparently in retaliation for the above deletions then put
up a stupid attack bio about me (Paul Rubin) full of incorrect
factoids.
I entered an SD request (noting that I was the subject of the article)
and put db-bio and db-attack tags at the top of the article, but I
didn't
modify the article text. I felt at the time that this procedure was ok.
Sloan removed the tags and I didn't restore them. Another editor (at
my request) then looked at the article and put in a db tag, and the
article was speedied a few minutes later.
_
5. My edit to the Eric Schiller article was to briefly explain a term
related to Schiller's academic work
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...did= 41050768).
That Sloan sees this as a substantial negative modification indicates
ownership issues on Sloan's part,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN). I'll add that I like Schiller
just
fine.
_
6. Batchimeg Tuvshintugs is a chess player who placed 27th out of
32 in her section of the recent US championship, but scored several
surprising upset victories over grandmasters in the early rounds,
possibly because she was unknown and they underestimated her
when they sat down to play. She then lost the rest of her games in
the later rounds. Sloan wrote a puff-piece promotional bio ("I see no
harm in trying to bring some publicity to a new player by saying that
her result is 'perhaps' the best result for five games of any woman
player in chess history"
(http://groups.google.com/group/samsl...2?dmode=source),
i.e. Sloan decided he saw no harm in using Wikipedia as an outlet
for public relations propaganda). I and another editor worked on the
article to bring it closer to neutrality.
_
7. John W. Donaldson and Elena Akhmilovskaya were (respectively)
a US and a then-Soviet player, who met at a series of international
chess tournaments in the 1980's and became romantically involved
at those events. In 1988 at the chess Olympiad in Greece, they
eloped and got married, and incident got wide press coverage (the
elopement was necessary because it was hard for Soviets to get
exit visas from the USSR in those days). The newlywed couple was
interviewed many times and consistently denied any political
motivation behind the marriage. But the two Wikipedia articles
described EA's entry to the US as a defection, which has political
overtones. I changed "defected" to "emigrated" in EA's article, a
3-second edit turning a POV term to a neutral one, the kind of easy
incremental improvement that keeps Wikipedia moving towards
reliability, and made a similar type of edit in the JD article. Sloan
rv'd the edits saying (with no documentation) that it really was a
political defection
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...action=history),
a contentious claim that insinuates that the Donaldsons had entered
a marriage of convenience. I felt I had to fix the article because as a
chess buff, I remembered the incident, but not many other Wikipedia
editors were likely to recall such a thing. I then spent 1/2 an hour
digging up an old newspaper article and adding a cite about how the
couple met. This is a good example of Wikipedia's "Sloan problem".
Since Sloan was the one wanting to use a contentious term, he, not
me, should have been the one spending his time that way. Editors
like Sloan discourage the small easy incremental improvements that
Wikipedia depends on, by turning them into instances of "no good
deed goes unpunished".
_
I actually do find Sloan's writing entertaining and sometimes
informative, and I read it with interest (and many grains of salt) on
Usenet and on his web site. Wikipedia is just not the right place for
it, given its lack of sourcing
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V), its reliance on Sloan's personal
knowledge
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR), and its opinionated
approaches
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV). I haven't had serious
problems directly with Sloan til now. This is not an off-wiki dispute
that spilled here; it's more like the other way around.
_
Although Sloan's filing of this RFAR didn't follow normal procedures,
I hope that it's accepted and some measure is taken against Sloan
(whether blocking, mentorship, or whatever), for the reasons I gave
in his RFAR against Rook_wave, below. Louis Blair suggested the
"users who exhaust the community's patience" clause in WP:BLOCK.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BLOCK)
Sloan has announced his intention to post more of his "biographies"
for the upcoming Olympiad and they're likely to be full of his usual
confabulation, each one a potential Seigenthaler incident in its own
right, and I dread this. The situation is quite bad. - Phr (05:41,
21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by Sjakkalle
_
I would recommend to Sam Sloan that he refrain from filing requests
for arbitration for a while. He has made a number of reasonable and
valuable contributions to chess articles, but the fact is that many of
them, especially biographies of living people lack adequate cited
sources and don't comply with a neutral point of view. This is the
reason many of his articles are trimmed down, or deleted outright as
was the case with Tom Dorsch. For instance, if we look at the initial
revisions of the Bessel Kok article, one which almost looks like a
campaigning piece for his election, we see an attack on the current
FIDE president Ilyumzhinov, accusing him of bribery. Again, the
article lacks sources.
_
That articles don't remain the way we created them, and that some
of the changes are ones we dislike is something all Wikipedia editors
need to live with, indeed the editing screen says in big bold writing:
"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or
redistributed
by others, do not submit it."
_
Sloan has previously filed an RFAr against the very dilligent and fair
administrator Howcheng, and has filed another RFAr further down on
this page very similar to this one. What we have here is a content
dispute, or perhaps a off-wiki dispute which has spilled over to
Wikipedia. If it's a content dispute it should be noted that in very
many cases consensus has not been favorable to Sloan's revisions.
Also, bringing this to arbitration when there is hardly any edits to
the
other parties' user-talkpages
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...00&namespace=3)
is, at the very least, premature. If it's an off-wiki dispute, it
should
remain off-wiki. I do not think that such disputes are the purview of
Wikipedia's arbitration comitee. Therefore, I recommend rejection of
this case as well, if not I think the case would be more about Sloan
than the other parties Sloan has listed. - Sjakkalle (Check!) (11:08,
20 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by an outsider
_
In his request for review of the Tom Dorsch deletion decision, Sam
Sloan made similar claims about multiple votes. In response to such
claims, Howcheng wrote, "recounting the votes on the discussion
page shows only one legitimate keep vote, which is Mgm and seven
valid delete votes: Jareth, Phr, Olorin28, Titoxd, TheRingess, Parallel
or Together, pgk. I did not count any votes by anonymous users, as
well as Andrew Zito (who just had some weird anti-Wikipedia rant)
and Billbrock, who has a history with [Sam Sloan]." (17:00,
6 March 2006 (UTC)) Rook wave wrote, "That I voted six times is of
course ... just plain wrong. I made comments ..., but only voted once,
as can be easily verified." (19:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)) For details,
see:
_
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...oldid=43215421
_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ion/Tom_Dorsch
_
- Louis Blair (March 20, 2006)
_
Comment by Olorin28
I first contacted the article Tom Dorsch after a request for comment
was filed, I believed by Rook Wave. Ater a glance at the article, and
other articles written by Sam Sloan, it became very clear to me that
he was using Wikipedia to express his point of view. The biographies
he wrote about various chess personas consisted 90 percent of
personal attacks, gossips and rants gleaned from what he called
"reliable sources" from usenet. While I do not believe that the similar
cases to that of Siegenthaler will surface here, I believe that the
articles Sam Sloan writes are completely one-sided and expressed
significant biase. Rook Wave, I believe, is correct in removing most
of the attacks and rants from these articles. The request by Sam
Sloan for Rook Wave to stop editing his articles is simply detrimental
to the well-being of Wikipedia. - Olorin28 (03:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by JzG
_
To state the obvious, non-admin users cannot "delete" articles, they
can only edit them or propose their deletion. The fact that Sam
Sloan's contributions are often tendentious is a key contributory
factor in their reversion or deletion, as noted above. It is telling
that
Sloan's response to this ios to raise complaints about the editors,
administrators and processes which oppose his actions, rather than
to adopt a more neutral editing style.
_
Sloan's description of the content and history of the Tom Dorsch
article bears only the most superficial resemblance to the truth.
The article was a blatant attack on a person for whom Sloan clearly
bears considerable animosity. For any non-admins, and to save the
trouble of dredging in the deleted history, here is an example
paragraph:
_
His problem was that, although he usually won, whenever
he won big he would go out and buy a steak dinner at a
fancy restaurant and spend his winnings. If he won even
more, he would go to Tijuana, Mexico, where he would
check out the whorehouses and the strip clubs, with an
eye for the donkey shows. He even got to know some of
the girls who performed in these animal acts on a first
name basis. He would spend all his gambling winnings
and, as a result, when he lost, he would not have any
backup money to get back into the game.
_
And:
_
Therefore, Dorsch tried to hustle the weak games in the
game room at the ASUC Student Union building on the
campus of the University of California at Berkeley. His
problem there was that the impoverished students he
beat at poker often did not pay their gambling debts.
_
Sloan edit-warred over this article, including edit summaries like:
_
"reverted Edits by User:Jareth. She obviously knows
nothing about the subject and has no business
repeatedly vandalizing this article."
_
The deletion of the Dorsch article was partly the result of a lack
of any credible evidence of notability, and partly because
experienced editors apparently felt that the effort of fighting Sam
Sloan's "ownership" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN) was
not worth the effort for this minor character. Even editors who felt
that Dorsch does nose over the line into notability voted to delete
the article and start again later.
_
I commend to Sam Sloan the following:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT#..._not_a_soapbox).
I do not believe I am alone in seeing strong evidence of Sam Sloan
extending to his Wikipedia contributions the strong agenda he has
outside of Wikipedia. The solution is not for those who disagree with
Sloan to stop editing, it's for Sloan to stop adding tendentious
content. And Sam, sometimes when everybody tells you that you
are wrong, it's because you are wrong. - Just zis Guy you know?
(10:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by Thorri
_
Sam Sloan has publicly stated that "I hate Dorsch so I write garbage
about him" and "my job is to smear everyone who doesn't support
Goichberg and Schultz".
(http://www.avlerchess.com/chess-misc...ch_206978.html)
(scroll down) --TonyM ｷﾀ�( °∀° )�ｯ!! (18:18, 21 March
2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by an outsider
_
In fairness to Sam Sloan, it should be mentioned that there DOES
appear to be a person who posts fake Sam Sloan notes from
addresses like " (probably chosen to make
fun of those who claim that Sam Sloan deserves to be considered
a journalist). In general, the source addresses for the notes seem
to hint at there non-authentic nature. On 30 Dec 2005
07:50:03 -0800, " posted a
rec.games.chess.politics note that openly declared, "[No Sloan
postings, and no fake Sloan postings.] That's what you'll get if
Sloan stops posting in 2006." On 30 Dec 2005 08:22:17 -0800,
Taylor Kingston addressed the author of the apparently fake Sam
Sloan notes: "While in general your negative view of Sam Sloan is
quite justified, your practice of filling the newsgroups with childish,
asinine comments is pointless and annoying. The crude,
hopelessly inept attempts at parody tarnish your own image more
than they do his. You may succeed in doing something Sam by
himself could not possibly do -- arouse sympathy for him." The
I-write-garbage quote (mentioned by Thorri) came from
. - Louis Blair (March 21, 2006)
_
I confirm that what Louis Blair said above is true. - Phr (01:49,
22 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/2/0/0)
_
Reject; nothing for the ArbCom here. AfD nominations, speedy
deletions for copyvios, content editing disputes, all proceeding
as usual. Even if Sam Sloan were the authority he takes himself
to be, that would cut no special ice on Wikipedia. Unsourced
gossip being cut is a good thing, as Sam should note well.
- Charles Matthews (18:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Reject. - Dmcdevit·t (02:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC))

Statement by Phr
_
Sloan goes on at length about Usenet posts and makes mostly-wrong
personal allegations about me that are irrelevant to Wikipedia. I'll
skip most of the non-Wikipedia stuff for brevity but will state that I
don't know Tom Dorsch in person beyond having met him at chess
tournaments once or twice in the early 1990's and spoken to him for
a total of maybe one minute. I'm familiar with Dorsch's USCF activities
mostly through Usenet. I'll also say that since Sloan posts his
Wikipedia articles to Usenet, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Usenet
readers spot the errors and come to Wikipedia to fix them. Also:
Rook wave is an internationally rated chessplayer of equivalent
strength to a US national master
(http://fide.com/ratings/card.phtml?event=3D4666313), so the statement
that he knows nothing about chess is absurd.
_
I declined mediation because Sloan's RFM
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...er:Sam_Slo an)
asked for a "cease and desist" order against Rook wave and myself,
and that's outside the scope of what mediators can do. I'd actually
be willing to enter a mediation process that could do that (i.e. one
that could result in an agreement binding on Sloan and me and
enforceable by admins), but Wikipedia does not have such a thing
right now. As for the specific charges:
_
1. Louis Blair (below) linked to the Tom Dorsch DRV
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...did=3D43215421)
which was one of several places where the multiple vote and
sockpuppet issue was explained to Sloan. Sloan's earlier RFAR
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ng_Tom_Do=rsch)
may also be of interest.
_
2. Sloan recently took it on himself to campaign for Bessel Kok's
slate of candidates in the upcoming FIDE election
(http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...509552b9798=be).
He put a biography of Panupand Vijjuprabha (one of Kok's team) on
Wikipedia, that was an obvious campaign piece that included stuff
like Vijjuprabha's phone number. I felt this was non-notable so I
made an AfD nomination to get community opinion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...d_Vijj=uprabha).
I then noticed the article was pasted verbatim from Kok's group's
web site
(http://www.rightmove06.org/index.php..._articles=3D62)
without attribution, so I noted that (and gave the link) in the AfD.
The bio
was speedied as a copyvio a few minutes later.
_
3. Sloan copied several more bios from the same source over the next
hour. I entered SD requests for these, giving the source links
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...on_of_Articles).
These too were speedied (Ali Nihat Yazici, Julio C=C3=A9sar Ingolotti,
and
Geoffrey Borg). I also briefly put up a SD request for Bessel Kok
(mentioning his higher notability), but I then saw that Kok's bio
contained a mixture of copied and non-copied material, so I took
down my SD request and edited out the copied material. Except for
Kok and Yazici, these people are non-notable (a few hundred
Google hits at most).
_
4. Sloan apparently in retaliation for the above deletions then put
up a stupid attack bio about me (Paul Rubin) full of incorrect
factoids. I entered an SD request (noting that I was the subject
of the article) and put db-bio and db-attack tags at the top of the
article, but I didn't modify the article text. I felt at the time that
this procedure was ok. Sloan removed the tags and I didn't
restore them. Another editor (at my request) then looked at the
article and put in a db tag, and the article was speedied a few
minutes later.
_
5. My edit to the Eric Schiller article was to briefly explain a term
related to Schiller's academic work
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...did=3D41050768).
That Sloan sees this as a substantial negative modification indicates
ownership issues on Sloan's part,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN). I'll add that I like Schiller
just fine.
_
6. Batchimeg Tuvshintugs is a chess player who placed 27th out of
32 in her section of the recent US championship, but scored several
surprising upset victories over grandmasters in the early rounds,
possibly because she was unknown and they underestimated her
when they sat down to play. She then lost the rest of her games in
the later rounds. Sloan wrote a puff-piece promotional bio ("I see no
harm in trying to bring some publicity to a new player by saying that
her result is 'perhaps' the best result for five games of any woman
player in chess history"
(http://groups.google.com/group/samsl...mode=3Dsourc=e),
i.e. Sloan decided he saw no harm in using Wikipedia as an outlet
for public relations propaganda). I and another editor worked on the
article to bring it closer to neutrality.
_
7. John W. Donaldson and Elena Akhmilovskaya were (respectively)
a US and a then-Soviet player, who met at a series of international
chess tournaments in the 1980's and became romantically involved
at those events. In 1988 at the chess Olympiad in Greece, they
eloped and got married, and incident got wide press coverage (the
elopement was necessary because it was hard for Soviets to get
exit visas from the USSR in those days). The newlywed couple was
interviewed many times and consistently denied any political
motivation behind the marriage. But the two Wikipedia articles
described EA's entry to the US as a defection, which has political
overtones. I changed "defected" to "emigrated" in EA's article, a
3-second edit turning a POV term to a neutral one, the kind of easy
incremental improvement that keeps Wikipedia moving towards
reliability, and made a similar type of edit in the JD article. Sloan
rv'd the edits saying (with no documentation) that it really was a
political defection
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...n=3Dhisto=r y),
a contentious claim that insinuates that the Donaldsons had entered
a marriage of convenience. I felt I had to fix the article because as a
chess buff, I remembered the incident, but not many other Wikipedia
editors were likely to recall such a thing. I then spent 1/2 an hour
digging up an old newspaper article and adding a cite about how the
couple met. This is a good example of Wikipedia's "Sloan problem".
Since Sloan was the one wanting to use a contentious term, he, not
me, should have been the one spending his time that way. Editors
like Sloan discourage the small easy incremental improvements that
Wikipedia depends on, by turning them into instances of "no good
deed goes unpunished".
_
I actually do find Sloan's writing entertaining and sometimes
informative, and I read it with interest (and many grains of salt) on
Usenet and on his web site. Wikipedia is just not the right place for
it, given its lack of sourcing
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V), its reliance on Sloan's personal
knowledge
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR), and its opinionated
approaches
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV). I haven't had serious
problems directly with Sloan til now. This is not an off-wiki dispute
that spilled here; it's more like the other way around.
_
Although Sloan's filing of this RFAR didn't follow normal procedures,
I hope that it's accepted and some measure is taken against Sloan
(whether blocking, mentorship, or whatever), for the reasons I gave
in his RFAR against Rook_wave, below. Louis Blair suggested the
"users who exhaust the community's patience" clause in WP:BLOCK.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BLOCK)
Sloan has announced his intention to post more of his "biographies"
for the upcoming Olympiad and they're likely to be full of his usual
confabulation, each one a potential Seigenthaler incident in its own
right, and I dread this. The situation is quite bad. - Phr (05:41,
21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by Sjakkalle
_
I would recommend to Sam Sloan that he refrain from filing requests
for arbitration for a while. He has made a number of reasonable and
valuable contributions to chess articles, but the fact is that many of
them, especially biographies of living people lack adequate cited
sources and don't comply with a neutral point of view. This is the
reason many of his articles are trimmed down, or deleted outright as
was the case with Tom Dorsch. For instance, if we look at the initial
revisions of the Bessel Kok article, one which almost looks like a
campaigning piece for his election, we see an attack on the current
FIDE president Ilyumzhinov, accusing him of bribery. Again, the
article lacks sources.
_
That articles don't remain the way we created them, and that some
of the changes are ones we dislike is something all Wikipedia editors
need to live with, indeed the editing screen says in big bold writing:
"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or
redistributed by others, do not submit it."
_
Sloan has previously filed an RFAr against the very dilligent and fair
administrator Howcheng, and has filed another RFAr further down on
this page very similar to this one. What we have here is a content
dispute, or perhaps a off-wiki dispute which has spilled over to
Wikipedia. If it's a content dispute it should be noted that in very
many cases consensus has not been favorable to Sloan's revisions.
Also, bringing this to arbitration when there is hardly any edits to
the other parties' user-talkpages
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...&namespace=3D3)
is, at the very least, premature. If it's an off-wiki dispute, it
should remain off-wiki. I do not think that such disputes are the
purview of Wikipedia's arbitration comitee. Therefore, I recommend
rejection of this case as well, if not I think the case would be more
about Sloan than the other parties Sloan has listed. - Sjakkalle
(Check!) (11:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by an outsider
_
In his request for review of the Tom Dorsch deletion decision, Sam
Sloan made similar claims about multiple votes. In response to such
claims, Howcheng wrote, "recounting the votes on the discussion
page shows only one legitimate keep vote, which is Mgm and seven
valid delete votes: Jareth, Phr, Olorin28, Titoxd, TheRingess, Parallel
or Together, pgk. I did not count any votes by anonymous users, as
well as Andrew Zito (who just had some weird anti-Wikipedia rant)
and Billbrock, who has a history with [Sam Sloan]." (17:00,
6 March 2006 (UTC)) Rook wave wrote, "That I voted six times is of
course ... just plain wrong. I made comments ..., but only voted once,
as can be easily verified." (19:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)) For details,
see:
_
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...did=3D43215421
_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ion/Tom_Dorsch
_
- Louis Blair (March 20, 2006)
_
Comment by Olorin28
I first contacted the article Tom Dorsch after a request for comment
was filed, I believed by Rook Wave. Ater a glance at the article, and
other articles written by Sam Sloan, it became very clear to me that
he was using Wikipedia to express his point of view. The biographies
he wrote about various chess personas consisted 90 percent of
personal attacks, gossips and rants gleaned from what he called
"reliable sources" from usenet. While I do not believe that the similar
cases to that of Siegenthaler will surface here, I believe that the
articles Sam Sloan writes are completely one-sided and expressed
significant biase. Rook Wave, I believe, is correct in removing most
of the attacks and rants from these articles. The request by Sam
Sloan for Rook Wave to stop editing his articles is simply detrimental
to the well-being of Wikipedia. - Olorin28 (03:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by JzG
_
To state the obvious, non-admin users cannot "delete" articles, they
can only edit them or propose their deletion. The fact that Sam
Sloan's contributions are often tendentious is a key contributory
factor in their reversion or deletion, as noted above. It is telling
that Sloan's response to this ios to raise complaints about the
editors, administrators and processes which oppose his actions,
rather than to adopt a more neutral editing style.
_
Sloan's description of the content and history of the Tom Dorsch
article bears only the most superficial resemblance to the truth.
The article was a blatant attack on a person for whom Sloan clearly
bears considerable animosity. For any non-admins, and to save the
trouble of dredging in the deleted history, here is an example
paragraph:
_
His problem was that, although he usually won, whenever
he won big he would go out and buy a steak dinner at a
fancy restaurant and spend his winnings. If he won even
more, he would go to Tijuana, Mexico, where he would
check out the whorehouses and the strip clubs, with an
eye for the donkey shows. He even got to know some of
the girls who performed in these animal acts on a first
name basis. He would spend all his gambling winnings
and, as a result, when he lost, he would not have any
backup money to get back into the game.
_
And:
_
Therefore, Dorsch tried to hustle the weak games in the
game room at the ASUC Student Union building on the
campus of the University of California at Berkeley. His
problem there was that the impoverished students he
beat at poker often did not pay their gambling debts.
_
Sloan edit-warred over this article, including edit summaries like:
_
"reverted Edits by User:Jareth. She obviously knows
nothing about the subject and has no business
repeatedly vandalizing this article."
_
The deletion of the Dorsch article was partly the result of a lack
of any credible evidence of notability, and partly because
experienced editors apparently felt that the effort of fighting Sam
Sloan's "ownership" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN) was
not worth the effort for this minor character. Even editors who felt
that Dorsch does nose over the line into notability voted to delete
the article and start again later.
_
I commend to Sam Sloan the following:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT#..._not_a_soapbox).
I do not believe I am alone in seeing strong evidence of Sam Sloan
extending to his Wikipedia contributions the strong agenda he has
outside of Wikipedia. The solution is not for those who disagree with
Sloan to stop editing, it's for Sloan to stop adding tendentious
content. And Sam, sometimes when everybody tells you that you
are wrong, it's because you are wrong. - Just zis Guy you know?
(10:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by Thorri
_
Sam Sloan has publicly stated that "I hate Dorsch so I write garbage
about him" and "my job is to smear everyone who doesn't support
Goichberg and Schultz".
(http://www.avlerchess.com/chess-misc...h_206=978.html)
(scroll down) --TonyM (18:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by an outsider
_
In fairness to Sam Sloan, it should be mentioned that there DOES
appear to be a person who posts fake Sam Sloan notes from
addresses like " (probably chosen to make
fun of those who claim that Sam Sloan deserves to be considered
a journalist). In general, the source addresses for the notes seem
to hint at their non-authentic nature. On 30 Dec 2005
07:50:03 -0800, " posted a
rec.games.chess.politics note that openly declared, "[No Sloan
postings, and no fake Sloan postings.] That's what you'll get if
Sloan stops posting in 2006." On 30 Dec 2005 08:22:17 -0800,
Taylor Kingston addressed the author of the apparently fake Sam
Sloan notes: "While in general your negative view of Sam Sloan is
quite justified, your practice of filling the newsgroups with childish,
asinine comments is pointless and annoying. The crude,
hopelessly inept attempts at parody tarnish your own image more
than they do his. You may succeed in doing something Sam by
himself could not possibly do -- arouse sympathy for him." The
I-write-garbage quote (mentioned by Thorri) came from
. - Louis Blair (March 21, 2006)
_
I confirm that what Louis Blair said above is true. - Phr (01:49,
22 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/2/0/0)
_
Reject; nothing for the ArbCom here. AfD nominations, speedy
deletions for copyvios, content editing disputes, all proceeding
as usual. Even if Sam Sloan were the authority he takes himself
to be, that would cut no special ice on Wikipedia. Unsourced
gossip being cut is a good thing, as Sam should note well.
- Charles Matthews (18:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Reject. - Dmcdevit=C2=B7t (02:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC))

Statement by Phr
_
Sloan goes on at length about Usenet posts and makes mostly-wrong
personal allegations about me that are irrelevant to Wikipedia. I'll
skip most of the non-Wikipedia stuff for brevity but will state that I
don't know Tom Dorsch in person beyond having met him at chess
tournaments once or twice in the early 1990's and spoken to him for
a total of maybe one minute. I'm familiar with Dorsch's USCF activities
mostly through Usenet. I'll also say that since Sloan posts his
Wikipedia articles to Usenet, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Usenet
readers spot the errors and come to Wikipedia to fix them. Also:
Rook wave is an internationally rated chessplayer of equivalent
strength to a US national master
(http://fide.com/ratings/card.phtml?event=4666313), so the statement
that he knows nothing about chess is absurd.
_
I declined mediation because Sloan's RFM
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...User:Sam_Sloan)
asked for a "cease and desist" order against Rook wave and myself,
and that's outside the scope of what mediators can do. I'd actually
be willing to enter a mediation process that could do that (i.e. one
that could result in an agreement binding on Sloan and me and
enforceable by admins), but Wikipedia does not have such a thing
right now. As for the specific charges:
_
1. Louis Blair (below) linked to the Tom Dorsch DRV
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...oldid=43215421)
which was one of several places where the multiple vote and
sockpuppet issue was explained to Sloan. Sloan's earlier RFAR
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ing_Tom_Dorsch)
may also be of interest.
_
2. Sloan recently took it on himself to campaign for Bessel Kok's
slate of candidates in the upcoming FIDE election
(http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...c509552b9798be).
He put a biography of Panupand Vijjuprabha (one of Kok's team) on
Wikipedia, that was an obvious campaign piece that included stuff
like Vijjuprabha's phone number. I felt this was non-notable so I
made an AfD nomination to get community opinion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...nd_Vijjuprabha).
I then noticed the article was pasted verbatim from Kok's group's
web site
(http://www.rightmove06.org/index.php... z_articles=62)
without attribution, so I noted that (and gave the link) in the AfD.
The bio was speedied as a copyvio a few minutes later.
_
3. Sloan copied several more bios from the same source over the next
hour. I entered SD requests for these, giving the source links
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...on_of_Articles).
These too were speedied (Ali Nihat Yazici, Julio C=C3=A9sar Ingolotti,
and
Geoffrey Borg). I also briefly put up a SD request for Bessel Kok
(mentioning his higher notability), but I then saw that Kok's bio
contained a mixture of copied and non-copied material, so I took
down my SD request and edited out the copied material. Except for
Kok and Yazici, these people are non-notable (a few hundred
Google hits at most).
_
4. Sloan apparently in retaliation for the above deletions then put
up a stupid attack bio about me (Paul Rubin) full of incorrect
factoids. I entered an SD request (noting that I was the subject
of the article) and put db-bio and db-attack tags at the top of the
article, but I didn't modify the article text. I felt at the time that
this procedure was ok. Sloan removed the tags and I didn't
restore them. Another editor (at my request) then looked at the
article and put in a db tag, and the article was speedied a few
minutes later.
_
5. My edit to the Eric Schiller article was to briefly explain a term
related to Schiller's academic work
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...did= 41050768).
That Sloan sees this as a substantial negative modification indicates
ownership issues on Sloan's part,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN). I'll add that I like Schiller
just fine.
_
6. Batchimeg Tuvshintugs is a chess player who placed 27th out of
32 in her section of the recent US championship, but scored several
surprising upset victories over grandmasters in the early rounds,
possibly because she was unknown and they underestimated her
when they sat down to play. She then lost the rest of her games in
the later rounds. Sloan wrote a puff-piece promotional bio ("I see no
harm in trying to bring some publicity to a new player by saying that
her result is 'perhaps' the best result for five games of any woman
player in chess history"
(http://groups.google.com/group/samsl...2?dmode=source),
i.e. Sloan decided he saw no harm in using Wikipedia as an outlet
for public relations propaganda). I and another editor worked on the
article to bring it closer to neutrality.
_
7. John W. Donaldson and Elena Akhmilovskaya were (respectively)
a US and a then-Soviet player, who met at a series of international
chess tournaments in the 1980's and became romantically involved
at those events. In 1988 at the chess Olympiad in Greece, they
eloped and got married, and incident got wide press coverage (the
elopement was necessary because it was hard for Soviets to get
exit visas from the USSR in those days). The newlywed couple was
interviewed many times and consistently denied any political
motivation behind the marriage. But the two Wikipedia articles
described EA's entry to the US as a defection, which has political
overtones. I changed "defected" to "emigrated" in EA's article, a
3-second edit turning a POV term to a neutral one, the kind of easy
incremental improvement that keeps Wikipedia moving towards
reliability, and made a similar type of edit in the JD article. Sloan
rv'd the edits saying (with no documentation) that it really was a
political defection
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...action=history),
a contentious claim that insinuates that the Donaldsons had entered
a marriage of convenience. I felt I had to fix the article because as a
chess buff, I remembered the incident, but not many other Wikipedia
editors were likely to recall such a thing. I then spent 1/2 an hour
digging up an old newspaper article and adding a cite about how the
couple met. This is a good example of Wikipedia's "Sloan problem".
Since Sloan was the one wanting to use a contentious term, he, not
me, should have been the one spending his time that way. Editors
like Sloan discourage the small easy incremental improvements that
Wikipedia depends on, by turning them into instances of "no good
deed goes unpunished".
_
I actually do find Sloan's writing entertaining and sometimes
informative, and I read it with interest (and many grains of salt) on
Usenet and on his web site. Wikipedia is just not the right place for
it, given its lack of sourcing
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V), its reliance on Sloan's personal
knowledge
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR), and its opinionated
approaches
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV). I haven't had serious
problems directly with Sloan til now. This is not an off-wiki dispute
that spilled here; it's more like the other way around.
_
Although Sloan's filing of this RFAR didn't follow normal procedures,
I hope that it's accepted and some measure is taken against Sloan
(whether blocking, mentorship, or whatever), for the reasons I gave
in his RFAR against Rook_wave, below. Louis Blair suggested the
"users who exhaust the community's patience" clause in WP:BLOCK.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BLOCK)
Sloan has announced his intention to post more of his "biographies"
for the upcoming Olympiad and they're likely to be full of his usual
confabulation, each one a potential Seigenthaler incident in its own
right, and I dread this. The situation is quite bad. - Phr (05:41,
21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by Sjakkalle
_
I would recommend to Sam Sloan that he refrain from filing requests
for arbitration for a while. He has made a number of reasonable and
valuable contributions to chess articles, but the fact is that many of
them, especially biographies of living people lack adequate cited
sources and don't comply with a neutral point of view. This is the
reason many of his articles are trimmed down, or deleted outright as
was the case with Tom Dorsch. For instance, if we look at the initial
revisions of the Bessel Kok article, one which almost looks like a
campaigning piece for his election, we see an attack on the current
FIDE president Ilyumzhinov, accusing him of bribery. Again, the
article lacks sources.
_
That articles don't remain the way we created them, and that some
of the changes are ones we dislike is something all Wikipedia editors
need to live with, indeed the editing screen says in big bold writing:
"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or
redistributed by others, do not submit it."
_
Sloan has previously filed an RFAr against the very dilligent and fair
administrator Howcheng, and has filed another RFAr further down on
this page very similar to this one. What we have here is a content
dispute, or perhaps a off-wiki dispute which has spilled over to
Wikipedia. If it's a content dispute it should be noted that in very
many cases consensus has not been favorable to Sloan's revisions.
Also, bringing this to arbitration when there is hardly any edits to
the other parties' user-talkpages
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...00&namespace=3)
is, at the very least, premature. If it's an off-wiki dispute, it
should remain off-wiki. I do not think that such disputes are the
purview of Wikipedia's arbitration comitee. Therefore, I recommend
rejection of this case as well, if not I think the case would be more
about Sloan than the other parties Sloan has listed. - Sjakkalle
(Check!) (11:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by an outsider
_
In his request for review of the Tom Dorsch deletion decision, Sam
Sloan made similar claims about multiple votes. In response to such
claims, Howcheng wrote, "recounting the votes on the discussion
page shows only one legitimate keep vote, which is Mgm and seven
valid delete votes: Jareth, Phr, Olorin28, Titoxd, TheRingess, Parallel
or Together, pgk. I did not count any votes by anonymous users, as
well as Andrew Zito (who just had some weird anti-Wikipedia rant)
and Billbrock, who has a history with [Sam Sloan]." (17:00,
6 March 2006 (UTC)) Rook wave wrote, "That I voted six times is of
course ... just plain wrong. I made comments ..., but only voted once,
as can be easily verified." (19:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)) For details,
see:
_
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...oldid=43215421
_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ion/Tom_Dorsch
_
- Louis Blair (March 20, 2006)
_
Comment by Olorin28
I first contacted the article Tom Dorsch after a request for comment
was filed, I believed by Rook Wave. Ater a glance at the article, and
other articles written by Sam Sloan, it became very clear to me that
he was using Wikipedia to express his point of view. The biographies
he wrote about various chess personas consisted 90 percent of
personal attacks, gossips and rants gleaned from what he called
"reliable sources" from usenet. While I do not believe that the similar
cases to that of Siegenthaler will surface here, I believe that the
articles Sam Sloan writes are completely one-sided and expressed
significant biase. Rook Wave, I believe, is correct in removing most
of the attacks and rants from these articles. The request by Sam
Sloan for Rook Wave to stop editing his articles is simply detrimental
to the well-being of Wikipedia. - Olorin28 (03:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
_
Comment by JzG
_
To state the obvious, non-admin users cannot "delete" articles, they
can only edit them or propose their deletion. The fact that Sam
Sloan's contributions are often tendentious is a key contributory
factor in their reversion or deletion, as noted above. It is telling
that Sloan's response to this ios to raise complaints about the
editors, administrators and processes which oppose his actions,
rather than to adopt a more neutral editing style.
_
Sloan's description of the content and history of the Tom Dorsch
article bears only the most superficial resemblance to the truth.
The article was a blatant attack on a person for whom Sloan clearly
bears considerable animosity. For any non-admins, and to save the
trouble of dredging in the deleted history, here is an example
paragraph:
_
His problem was that, although he usually won, whenever
he won big he would go out and buy a steak dinner at a
fancy restaurant and spend his winnings. If he won even
more, he would go to Tijuana, Mexico, where he would
check out the whorehouses and the strip clubs, with an
eye for the donkey shows. He even got to know some of
the girls who performed in these animal acts on a first
name basis. He would spend all his gambling winnings
and, as a result, when he lost, he would not have any
backup money to get back into the game.
_
And:
_
Therefore, Dorsch tried to hustle the weak games in the
game room at the ASUC Student Union building on the
campus of the University of California at Berkeley. His
problem there was that the impoverished students he
beat at poker often did not pay their gambling debts.
_
Sloan edit-warred over this article, including edit summaries like:
_
"reverted Edits by User:Jareth. She obviously knows
nothing about the subject and has no business
repeatedly vandalizing this article."
_
The deletion of the Dorsch article was partly the result of a lack
of any credible evidence of notability, and partly because
experienced editors apparently felt that the effort of fighting Sam
Sloan's "ownership" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN) was
not worth the effort for this minor character. Even editors who felt
that Dorsch does nose over the line into notability voted to delete
the article and start again later.
_
I commend to Sam Sloan the following:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT#..._not_a_soapbox).
I do not believe I am alone in seeing strong evidence of Sam Sloan
extending to his Wikipedia contributions the strong agenda he has
outside of Wikipedia. The solution is not for those who disagree with
Sloan to stop editing, it's for Sloan to stop adding tendentious
content. And Sam, sometimes when everybody tells you that you
are wrong, it's because you are wrong. - Just zis Guy you know?
(10:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
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Comment by Thorri
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Sam Sloan has publicly stated that "I hate Dorsch so I write garbage
about him" and "my job is to smear everyone who doesn't support
Goichberg and Schultz".
(http://www.avlerchess.com/chess-misc...ch_206978.html)
(scroll down) --TonyM (18:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
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Comment by an outsider
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In fairness to Sam Sloan, it should be mentioned that there DOES
appear to be a person who posts fake Sam Sloan notes from
addresses like " (probably chosen to make
fun of those who claim that Sam Sloan deserves to be considered
a journalist). In general, the source addresses for the notes seem
to hint at their non-authentic nature. On 30 Dec 2005
07:50:03 -0800, " posted a
rec.games.chess.politics note that openly declared, "[No Sloan
postings, and no fake Sloan postings.] That's what you'll get if
Sloan stops posting in 2006." On 30 Dec 2005 08:22:17 -0800,
Taylor Kingston addressed the author of the apparently fake Sam
Sloan notes: "While in general your negative view of Sam Sloan is
quite justified, your practice of filling the newsgroups with childish,
asinine comments is pointless and annoying. The crude,
hopelessly inept attempts at parody tarnish your own image more
than they do his. You may succeed in doing something Sam by
himself could not possibly do -- arouse sympathy for him." The
I-write-garbage quote (mentioned by Thorri) came from
. - Louis Blair (March 21, 2006)
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I confirm that what Louis Blair said above is true. - Phr (01:49,
22 March 2006 (UTC))
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Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/2/0/0)
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Reject; nothing for the ArbCom here. AfD nominations, speedy
deletions for copyvios, content editing disputes, all proceeding
as usual. Even if Sam Sloan were the authority he takes himself
to be, that would cut no special ice on Wikipedia. Unsourced
gossip being cut is a good thing, as Sam should note well.
- Charles Matthews (18:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC))
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Reject. - Dmcdevit=C2=B7t (02:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC))