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Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava Rima restrictions/Evidence

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Evidence presented by Moreschi

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A couple of case studies of Ottava's approach to content disputes will be set out in detail elsewhere, and while Ottava's ignorance of all things Persian is easily demonstrated, for those interested, it is worth seeing his approach to an area where he is supposed to know what he is talking about: I refer to his dispute with Awadewit (talk · contribs), herself an expert in 18th-century literature, and one of our most respected writers. This could be developed into a whole evidence section if someone has the time and space, but here are a few links: [1], [2], 3 (and 1911 Britannica is reliable? huh?)

For my part, I wish to focus on Ottava's wikipoliticking. The most important pattern to note is the holding of grudges, and the disruption and trauma this entails.

N.B: #wikipedia-en logs referred to below have now been collated and forwarded to arbcom-l.

Case 1

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SarekOfVulcan (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) blocked Ottava for disruption and incivility at WP:WQA. The block was thoroughly discussed at ANI: though many supported it, it ultimately failed to find consensus (50/50 split, roughly, as there has been on most Ottava ANI discussions). Given the fairly widespread community support for the block, even if ultimately it failed to find consensus, most users would perhaps stop and think about why so many people endorsed the block. Not Ottava. Instead, he called for Sarek's recall, a petition that was endorsed by just one other user. Malleus's comment at that thread is particularly noteworthy. He also canvassed for support on #wikipedia-en: I will forward the relevant log to arbcom-l.

Case 2

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Chillum (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) - the terrible irony here is that is was Chillum who reversed Gwen Gale's block of Ottava in early September! Chillum, however, later made the mistake of turning down Ottava's unblock request after Sarek's block. Ottava's gratitude was shown as follows as he lit fires willy-nilly: [3], [4] [5] [6], accompanied by extensive forum-shopping on #wikipedia-en.

Case 3

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Bishonen (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) and Geogre (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA). Of Geogre I will say little: I take a dim view of the socking that got him demopped, and most of the material relating to him can be covered under Bishonen. Whatever his errors, however - which should not be allowed to besmirch the reputation of one of our most thoughtful Wikipedians, ever - he did not deserve this disgusting piece of bile: how Ottava was not blocked for that, I don't know.

On this nonsense - the various attacks on Bishonen ([7][8][9]) seem to go back to [10]: Bish explicitly states she had only one prior (civil) interaction with Ottava prior to that thread. Ottava is, unsurprisingly, exceedingly hostile to civil and well-intentioned advice. As this escalated, I blocked Ottava indefinitely, intending to undo the block once Ottava had committed himself to collegial editing, as there was ample evidence of his disruptive behaviours, even back then (Bishonen, we may note, thought this a little excessive even though she had been the one to initially raise concerns! After an enormous quantity of wikilawyering, he calmed down and even stated my actions to have been valid (!), and later apologized on ANI, once I had unblocked. Depressingly, all this turned out to have been for show, because he was back at it again a month later and was blocked 8 days by Nandesuka (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA). Ever since then he has attacked myself, Bishonen and Nandesuka, who I don't know at all without restraint, starting the wholly spurious Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Bishonen 4 as an act of pure vindictiveness, seeing as Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Bishonen 3 covered virtually the same ground. My IAR deletion of this page was overturned on procedural grounds, only for the RFC to be later redeleted as nobody could be found to certify it.

Miscellaneous

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I think you'll see the pattern pretty quickly. Anyone, essentially, who disagrees with Ottava is accused of trying to destroy the 'pedia, and must be urgently topic-banned, blocked, demopped, etc. WP:STICK is key to seeing the problem. The forests of the myriad Ottava complaints are simply too thick: I will link to and briefly summarise as many as I can, but more detailed research will have to be done by those reading this.

Ottava goes to war over page-size...Ottava goes to war over an apostrophe...against Maunus...against Judith...against Scott MacDonald...against rspeer...oh, look, Dbachmann has "destroyed dozens of pages" as well...Ottava goes to war over footnotes in FAs...Ottava against the OED! He's a real linguist!...general battleground stuff...Ottava wages war against copyvio...no, you have to vote my way at arbcom elections...deletion the start of the Geogre feud?...Ottava against Everyking, gets page-banned...if even Judith is taking you to ANI...Excirial thoughtfully goes over Ottava's drama-mongering and threats of sanctions...Jeni, according to Ottava...Your qualifications are lies! Lies!

One pick at random

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This was rather hard: the list of respected editors whom Ottava has abused is almost limitless, from Awadewit to Bishonen to Risker to Antandrus to Akhilleus to Dougweller to...you get the picture. But I have chosen his abuse of Dbachmann (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) as the most egregiously stupid. Dieter is, I need hardly say, one of our most prolific contributors ever, and one of our finest in the continued battle for encyclopedicity and against dreck: in fact, when some learned academic comes to write the history of our early years, I am sure he will find a respected space in his tome for Dieter Bachmann. In the space of one talkpage discussion ([11]), Dieter is accused of "destroying dozens of pages", he is told that is "behavior is disgusting", that "everyone knows that you are here to destroy the place and don't even have a defense", that his "above post is an attempt at an insanity plea", and that he has a "flagrant disregard for Wikipedia". Folantin, incidentally, is told that he should "check yourself into a psychiatric ward because you cannot distinguish between completely separate entities". This was after Ottava had created a ludicrous dispute on Persian Empire, to the immense annoyance of everyone with an ounce of clue - not because he knows anything about Persian history - he's clueless - but due to personal vendetta alone. And then he accuses others of being out to "destroy dozens of pages!

This is, of course, complete fantasy. I merely offer it up not to rebut it - the thread speaks for itself - but as an example of the personal attacks, incivility and abuse that respected editors have to put up with when dealing with Ottava. Moreschi (talk) 21:30, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ottava on IRC

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In the last couple weeks Ottava has abused #wikipedia-en as a forum for attacking his opponents in a venue where they cannot respond. I have sent the relevant logs to arbcom-l, but a few snippets here are permitted, I think. I am an "idiot": "No one likes Moreschi except people who are his pawns", chillum is "one of the most controversial admin who has a long history of problems": in regards to Folantin, "I wish somebody would just ban them" (preceded by a link to another dispute over content), etc. See also SB Johnny (talk · contribs) here and here: apparently the canvassing is not limited to #wikipedia-en.

Evidence presented by Fowler&fowler

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Ottava Rima's edits have caused irreversible damage on Wikipedia

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ArbCom: As a person with a busy family and work life and the emergencies attendant to that life, I had completely forgotten about the incident below. I remembered it out of the blue this morning. Writing about it now, six months later, still makes me seethe with anger. Ottava Rima's pursuit of paranoid grandiosity, whether conscious or unconscious, has caused irreversible damage on Wikipedia. It has made many people very angry. It has wasted inordinate amount of time. No "content" he has created will even remotely make up for that lost time. Please read "The Fishing Trip": Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Fishing Trip:

Ottava Rima counters content criticism at FAC by creating drama

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Ottava Rima has employed some of the same artifices to counter objections to his content contributions as he has to counter those to his incivility. He has run to various forums and made all manner of threats. There might be an impression out there that his actions are all impulsive; however, I have found some planning involved as well, which leaves open the question: to what degree is he being disingenuous? Here is the evidence from one FAC.

The Lucy poems FAC nomination:

The opposes: The FAC review of The Lucy poems in early March 2009 was not going well. In addition to me, two others were opposing.

Reaction of nominators: Ottava Rima's response was dismissive, a contrast to those of his co-nominators.

Escalation of drama: After arguing for a few days that nothing was the matter with the article, Ottava Rima left a mysterious post on the Lucy poems review page seemingly distancing himself from the FAC:

Reaction to the failed Lucy nomination

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC) Updated Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In another instance, no sooner had I posted an "oppose" (with extensive comments) in the "Ode on Indolence" FAC, than Ottava tried (unsuccessfully) to have me banned, claiming that I was stalking him and reviewing only his articles. Here's evidence from that FAC:

The Ode on Indolence FAC nomination:

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ottava Rima usually claims there are no prose issues in his articles

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I am far from the only one who has remarked about Ottava Rima's "prose issues." I might be more blunt about it, but many others have noticed the same, including many collaborators. I had originally titled this subsection, "Ottava Rima writes poor prose," but since, in the past, Ottava Rima has claimed that all the poor prose in his articles (that he cares to acknowledge) has been introduced by others, I am listing only those examples where Ottava was insistent there were no prose issues, but where others disagreed. I have already listed reviewers' remarks from "The Lucy FAC." Here are some others:

Ottava Rima's prose issues:
Samuel Johnson's early life
Ode on Indolence
The Author's Farce

Last updated. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by SarekOfVulcan

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Ottava Rima demonstrates lack of a sense of proportion

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I first ran into Ottava on WP:WikiProject Freemasonry, where he asked the project to assess some articles of his that he believed fell under the Project's scope. When told that the biographical article was not considered within the project's scope, Ottava responded that "there needs to be a real freemasonry wikiproject, because this one doesn't deserve the title" -- as his second edit in the discussion, and the third edit anyone had made in it. He later stated that "Real Masons find the man important", because he had found a couple of sources stating it, clearly implying that those opposed to his view were not really Masons.

In a recent FAC Review, Karanacs did not promote the article because there were outstanding criticisms on the text. When complaining on SandyGeorgia's talk, Ottava stated "That FAC went 13 days without any reviews. That is not my fault, and if she is going to hold that against any FAC then I will ask Raul to revoke her right to review because that is really inappropriate." When SandyGeorgia cautioned Ottava that bringing his issue to Sandy's and Karanacs' talk pages as well as WT:FAC was forum shopping, he responded, "I have taken it to one place - FAC. If you want to say the above is forum shopping, then I have no confidence in your statements and I would prefer no further contact with you. I find your statements completely inappropriate."

Ottava Rima does not recognize his own incivility

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When the Lord Byron discussion was taken to WP:WQA, I attempted to engage Ottava there, indicating that he might be personalizing the debate too much. When he complained I was defending inappropriate remarks, I listed 16 comments of his, including "You've heard of a library before, right?", "You have no legitimate argument and you pushed absurdities", and "Do you even do anything around here worth while". His response was that "Those comments are not incivil and it would take a complete rewrite of WP:CIVIL and a complete bastardization of common English to make a claim to the contrary." At that point, I blocked him for a week, since I believed that he was unable to work within Wikipedia civility norms at that point, and cited that diff. Ottava's initial unblock request was declined by Chillum, but a second one caused Deacon of Pndapetzim to reduce it to time served with a note that "Abrasiveness was mild".

In a very recent discussion with Ceoil, he stated 'If she is offended by language that has no swears or the rest, then she has no right to claim that they are "ugly slurs".'

Evidence presented by Ottava Rima

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I will first be putting for some statements about my own actions that only deal with general allegations and do not involve other parties.

My willingness to forgive

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Examples of my forgiving others:

My willingness to work with others

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I have worked with dozens of editors on expanding pages, fixing pages, editing pages, reviewing their FACs, reviewing their GANs, and other matters.

Response to Kafka Liz

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In Kafka Liz's section, she posted that I claimed it "was smooth and harmonious". No, I only posted that it was a large collaborative effort. There is plenty of evidence to show that at many times Ceoil has erupted at me, which is connected to the end of the mentorship. My "remark" below is an out of context quote, with the beginning of it being Ceoil stating: "Ottava, I have removed you from the nominators list, so obviously and blatently were you trolling the FAC page." He was referring to [17] and [18]. Ceoil then attacks me for my role in dealing with Fowler, who was proven to be harassing and acting inappropriately. Ceoil is a friend of Fowler's and did not take the information too kindly.

Work at FAC

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  • [19] - edited 24 FARs and 210 FACs.

My IRC involvement

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As many can testify, at best there may be 5 or 6 people that agree with me at wikipedia-en and many, many more that do not. As you can see here, many IRC people in that channel went against me - Ncmvocalist, User:J, Until It Sleeps, Jeni, etc. It would be rather hard for me to canvass in a room filled with people who don't like me, don't agree with me, etc. There is a long history with disagreements between myself and others. My RfA nom was opposed by many from the IRC room such as Mitch32, Majorly, Ironholds, ROUX, and Until It Sleeps before it was withdrawn. On other RfAs, I tend to also be in a different view than the "IRC cabal" group: those oppose include Ironholds, PeterSymonds, Tiptoety, Mitch32, Juliancolton, iMatthew, Backslash Forwardslash, ROUX, Majorly, and Shappy in this example. There is a strong difference between "canvassing" and discussing/arguing about issues at IRC that multiple people there are involved in on both sides. As per my "canvassing" at Wikiversity, SB Johnny and myself were rarely on the same side. Instead, we were at odds with each other quite often, and I resigned from adminship at Wikiversity after he called me an idiot.

Folantin and Moreschi's relationship

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  • [20] Folantin and Moreschi share 194 delete votes at AfD. Examples of AfDs with others in WP Deletion: Elaragirl 53 and 11, Panoptical 2 and 0, NeoFreak 8 and 2, Subwayguy 2 and 1, Eusebeus 19 and 12, and DGG 98 and 52

Encounters:

Folantin attacking my Wikiversity contribs: [46], [47], [48]

Moreschi attacks my faith and real life work: [49], [50], [51]

My involvement on Persian related pages dates back to before November 2008. Akhilleus, dougweller, and others defend ChrisO's actions relating to the matter.

Persian related matters not listed elsewhere: [52]

My "Philosophy" page

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[53] Created when I started my voluntary mentorship and kept after it disbanded. The page was created for people to express concerns about me without any fear of response or reprisal. It was intended to allow people to point out where I have failed in specific areas. Folantin mocks and Dbachmann registers the mocking. Politizer and Doug Coldwell both had problems with me and both used the page to the benefit of all parties and our problems were quickly resolved.

Fringe/RS

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Claims by Itsmejudith: "He has no understanding of how higher education in the UK works, hence his dismissal (in the Orlando Furioso/Ludovico Ariosto dispute of the distinguished scholar Barbara Reynolds. He equated her post as a lecturer (equivalent to a professor) at the University of Cambridge with his doing a bit of teaching while studying for a PhD. Nope. The Oscar Wilde example again came down to dismissal of an academic source, and again he invented a subfield of a disipline in order to rule a source out of consideration. And on both occasions these points were made with the utmost incivility and total absence of good faith. He also does not understand - at all - what "fringe" means in our policies. He dismissed Barbara Reynolds' (using "romantic epic" where he preferred "romance epic") as "a fringe view". Re-nope."

Reality: [54] One side used a translator to base an argument. I used Sergio Zatti, David Quint, Tobias Gregory, Andrew Frichter, and others as my references. Each have multiple publications in the Genre of epic. This comes up again here where I add Dennis Looney, Jane Everson, Hans-Erich Keller, and others to the list. Folantin and the rest never produced scholars that specialize in epic. Itsmejudith, as well as Folantin, Moreschi, and everyone else mentioning it, makes the same argument that Barbara Reynolds (translator) is equivalent to people who trained in epic as a genre, published on epic as a genre, and teach about epic as a genre.

In the Oscar Wilde example, the only person cited to claim that Oscar Wilde was a pederast was an individual with no publications on Oscar Wilde and only mentions the claim in one line without any sources to verify it.

Geogre's sockpuppetry

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Please see the now deleted Bishonen 4 RfC for evidence of Bishonen knowing that Geogre had a sock puppet for a very long time, aiding that sock puppetry, hiding that sock puppetry, and not doing anything to stop an admin with a sock puppet in edit wars, ban discussions, deletion of pages, and other forms of harassment. Please also note the intersections of this sock puppetry, including the April 2008 DRV, Moreschi's indef block of my account all listed above, Moreschi deleting the RfC out of process and my being blocked for restoring an RfC which had no AfD or correct CSD which would have made any prohibition of restoring it.

Ottava Rima's interactions with admins

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There is some evidence below scoffing at my interactions and discussions with admin. [55] shows that my user talk page is a very heavily watched page, and I am in constant communication with various admin, pro, neutral, or con. I ask for opinions quite often, and I have had many discussions with all levels of users. I don't ask them to get involved, but I do ask for their opinion. If any Arbitrators would want a list of people I talk to, they can feel free to email.

Folantin and "basta"

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Folantin has a habit of bringing up off-topic old statements in order to harass others and avoid any discussion. As shown before, Folantin has constantly attacked myself for a mistake on Wikiversity which switched Morte D'Arthur (prose) for Alliterative Morte Darthur (poetry). Folantin also attacks me for this, from April 2008.

Fowler SPI investigation

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A check on the CU log would reveal that CUs felt that there was enough evidence to warrant Fowler to be checked and see if he was, indeed, socking on that IP. YellowMonkey later suggested that it could have been another previously blocked user. There are other possible edits by IP in discussions that Fowler was involved in which match his area of interest and suggest the possibility of logging off to make such edits.

Reply to Davemeistermoab

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Claim by Davemeistermoab: "I mention it to show that Ottava has never atoned for his prior conduct, nor apparently even has any regrets."

Following his RfA in which many, many people agreed with me of concerns, I posted:

  • [56] "I honestly want to congratulate you for surviving your RfA experience. I have passed some things to Julian to tell you. I wish you luck and I hope that the project benefits from you as an admin."

The response was:

  • [57] "If you would like to say a few words, you're free to do so on this page. Cheers."
  • With my statement: "It was mostly just some advice and whatever else. Nothing big."

The response was then:

  • [58] "Thanks, but no thanks. Given the caliber of advice given here, here and here I shall seek advice elsewhere. Please remember to be civil, and have a nice day."

Many people felt that the closing Bureaucrat overstepped their bounds here. I did not challenge the closure, nor did I attack Dave for having his RfA pass although there was a large consensus that the way the Bureaucrat decided the matter was inappropriate.

Final evidence

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As Jane Austen once wrote: "You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged."

Evidence presented by Jehochman

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Nothing further to add

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The record regarding my actions is clear enough. I have nothing further to say about them. Ottava and I had have discussed things and it is my intention to lift the civility restriction within a few weeks if there are no further issues. I have stated that the Committee should look into Ottava's allegations and finally settle them one way or the other.

Evidence presented by Folantin

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General comments

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Ottava Rima clearly has a lot of free time on his hands. Some of it he uses to write articles, some to social network on talk pages and IRC, but he spends all too much of it picking fights with other editors, engaging in interminable ad nauseam arguments and generally violating WP:BATTLEFIELD by bearing long-term grudges. He boasts about his own contributions while disparaging those of other editors. Something needs to be done to show he is not above the law and stop him wasting other users' time.

Ottava's grudge against me

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Ottava has had a grudge against me all year because we were involved in an argument on Talk:Ludovico Ariosto in December 2008/January 2009 (and related Fringe Theories Noticeboard Thread [59]). When Ottava began to argue that Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was a work of Renaissance poetry I dismissed him as a time-waster and the argument came to a close.

His failed Request for Adminship (April 2009)

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[60]. Ottava claimed he would not badger opposers [61]. I opposed. Just before the RFA ended he posted attacks on his opponents so they would have no chance of replying (these attacks were reverted by Bureaucrat Rdsmith4, [62] with the following comment [63]).

List of attacks: [64]; [65]; [66]; [67]; [68]; [69]; [70]; [71]; [72].

On me, Akhilleus and Doug Weller (alleged collusion) [73], [74].

Ottava talks about his grudge against me (June 2009)

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Ottava discusses me on a talk page as one of the "people he hates" [75][76] [77] (The last comment is bizarre as Moreschi never voted on his RfA).

Wikistalking, harassment and assumptions of bad faith on Talk:Persian Empire

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August 2009: Ottava stalked me to Talk:Persian Empire. He has made 252 comments there, more than he has made to any other article talk page. His shocking ignorance of the most basic facts of Iranian history (long but non-exhaustive list here) proves he wasn't interested in the content. His very first edit to the talk page shows his true motivation: pursuing a personal vendetta against me. He wants me banned: [78] Ottava poisons what has been a civil discussion with bad faith accusations of edit-warring, POV-pushing and vandalism against those he disagrees with.

Further attacks on me and calls for bans: [79]; [80]; [81]; [82]; [83].

As part of his vendetta, Ottava has filed two ANI complaints [84] [85] and an RFArbitration against me [86].

Ottava can't decide which conspiracy I'm part of

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Since April he has accused me of being part of a cabal at least six times, although the membership of this alleged conspiracy is constantly changing:

  • April: myself, Akhilleus, Dougweller [87], [88].
  • August: myself as part of WikiProject Georgia [89][90]
  • Early September: ("five vandals") myself, Fullstop, Dbachmann, Alefbe, Kurdo777 [91]
  • Late September: (now it's a "group of 9 members") – "Moreschi, Dougweller, Antandrus, Dbachmann, Folantin, Fullstop, Itsmejudith, and others." [92] Plus Paul B [93]
  • Previous ArbCom: myself, Dbachmann, Antandrus, Itsmejudith, Akhilleus, Gwen Gale, Jehochman, Fullstop [94] [95]
  • Latest ArbCom: myself, Akhilleus, Dbachmann, Moreschi [96]

I'm not going to bother refuting these fantasies. I barely know some of the people listed. The WikiProject:Georgia allegation was particularly despicable. Ottava must simply have looked at my user page and seen the project userbox then made up some ad hoc slander that I couldn't edit Iranian articles neutrally (I'm not even from the region). The funny thing is I spent 10 days this April engaged in an argument with an ethnic POV-pusher who wanted Shah Abbas the Great's mother to be Georgian rather than Iranian, in spite of what the most up-to-date sources said [97].

Responses

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So Ottava has proved I’ve worked with Moreschi in the past? That’s not a secret. And "combating nationalism"? What a terrible crime. I know I would have been better off spending all that time and effort on Wikipedia office politics and schmoozing on IRC rather than trying to stop real world politics distort the accuracy of our encyclopaedic content.

The flaws with your conspiracy are: Moreschi never voted in your RFA (5), Moreschi never took part in (6), (7), or Talk:Persian Empire (8) or commented on Oscar Wilde (neither have I) (9), or (11). And you think voting for Itsmejudith was because of you rather than because s/he was an ideal candidate? Interestingly, looking back at that RFA I see you made up some similar ad hoc slander about Itsmejudith and Pascal Tesson being meat puppets. [98] [99] [100]

BTW Here’s a full list of the people who have disagreed with you over Ariosto apart from myself and Moreschi: Dougweller, Itsmejudith, The Hand that Feeds, Dbachmann, Akhilleus, Paul Barlow, Mathsci (see [101]) and – most recently – Ettormo [102] and Drmies [103] (“Sorry Ottava, you’re clutching at straws”). Now either they’re all part of a cabal or it could be there is a flaw in your argument. (I know you canvassed several times on IRC over that discussion but nobody turned up on-Wiki to agree with you). As for "mocking expertise", here you are on Professor John Beer [104].

The many, many people describing your behaviour in the same negative way at this Arb case, the previous RFAR and numerous ANI threads could all be part of a plot against you or it could be that they are offering objective commentary on your actions.

Response to Sizzle Flambé

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I don't think you have grasped the argument over Ludovico Ariosto at all. Contrary to what Ottava argued, it is not "fringe" to call Ariosto's Orlando furioso a "romantic epic". In fact, it's remarkably common. Britannica does so, for instance, as does The Cambridge History of Italian Literature and the most widely known translation (Penguin Classics). This is why everybody on Fringe Theories Noticeboard rejected Ottava's claim that "romantic epic" was fringe. A fuller account of the quarrel with Ottava Rima over the matter is available on my user sub-page here [105]. It's important because it formed the basis of Ottava's later grudge against the alleged "Fringe Theories cabal" (Itsmejudith, Akhilleus, Dbachmann et al.), even though Akhilleus and Dbachmann had offered compromise solutions to Ottava. In fact, Dbachmann even invited Ottava to change "romantic epic" to "romance epic" if it bothered him that much (You were wrong all along in claiming that use of "romantic epic" is wrong. So there. If it makes you happy, we can use "romance epic" (which I grant is less ambiguous) and move on). But Ottava refused, insisting that I make the change [106] [107] [108]. Ottava also began to defend his description of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as "Renaissance poetry". At which point people finally lost patience [109]. This is an editor here to treat Wikipedia as a Monty Pythonesque argument clinic.

Response to Ottava

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"Folantin has a habit of bringing up off-topic old statements in order to harass others". That's really quite funny, given you've dredged up evidence from 2007, i.e. before you even joined Wikipedia, as part of this case. Pointing out you are less of an expert than the academics you smear is not "harassment", Ottava. Harassment would be making up ridiculous conspiracy theories, stalking users as part of a personal vendetta and posting absolute nonsense on Talk:Persian Empire while accusing others of being vandals intent on "destroying Wikipedia" etc. etc. etc.

Evidence presented by Elen of the Roads

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Said my piece

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I have said my piece [110] and won't take up space repeating it. I know others wish to focus on wikipoliticking, and Ottava wishes to focus on his block log, but I would like consideration to be given to also looking at interaction with other editors of the kind who don't have AN/I on their watchlist, and suggesting remedies which would encourage civil exchanges.

Ottava cannot deal with having errors pointed out to him

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OK, so I haven't finished. In fact, I've started to notice a pattern, which may be helpful in moving forward in this. I believe that if you analyse a number of these flashpoints situations, the start point is where Ottava has misapprehended something, or made a simple mistake of fact, and the escalation arises because he has no suitable tactic acceptable to himself, for backing out of the situation or letting it drop. This does not necessarily mean that Ottava makes more errors than anyone else, nor I believe is it indicative of anything that just has to be lived with. I would think it would be possible to learn not to fall into the trap.

Hillary Rodham Clinton. This is the first big article dust up I can find (Ottava attempting to rewrite a line in WP:NLT and being blocked for edit warring was earlier). First post, Ottava suggests the article is too long, which would be fine except he says This article is 15k above the recommended limit for text in an article which at 65k it's not. He says the guideline clearly says 50k is the upper most and please do not misstate the guideline, it clearly says that text over 50k should probably be divided up also which shows that he hasn't read WP:SIZE right to the end (or has, and hasn't remembered it).In fact, MOS never sets any fixed limit for splitting. Four editors all try to point out his error. If he's gone back to look at that section of MOS, he knows by now that he's wrong, but he carries on, and starts making it personal You are the only one who is unwilling to understand this concept, and that is troubling. You can say whatever you want, but MoS is clear and the more you are speaking like this, the more you are showing the community that you are WP:OWNing this article.


Drapiers Letters. This comes shortly afterwards and ended up at ANI [111] when Durova advised Awadewit to take it there. Awadewit has been copy editing the article prior to FAC review, and has posted a series of questions [112][113][114]. Ottava is the one responding [115] [116] Awadewit then asks a question on sources I'm curious why none of the modern literary criticism on the Drapier's Letters has been included here. I saw several promising articles and books in the MLA database. Ottava responds, argues with some of what Awadewit has said, and makes a mistake What modern criticism? What you have in the document is the whole of the criticism. Awadewit's response I hope this is a joke because I cited a book in my comment that is not used in this article And, here we go, Awadewit's credibility is called into question You talk about looking for credible books and you put forth quite a lot that isn't really credible. Also, you probably ran into many foreign language documents, which aren't really acceptable. If you want to make a separate section dealing with such a thing, go ahead. However, it will be mostly off topic and inappropriate. are you even saying that you are unwilling to follow standard Wikipedia procedures to ask for a consensus on a reliable source at the notice board? You ask questions, and if you are unsatisfied with the answers, why did you ask? Many of your statements haven't been accurate, but are quite misleading

The Derrida incident. The thing to remember here is that by his own account, Ottava Rima's expertise is based in the humanities, in literature and literary criticism. I believe that when he started the discussion he was unaware that there is a science of linguistics that is a discipline all of its own, separate from the humanities based linguistic literary criticism of which Derrida was a great innovator. Ottava joins the discussion here with a neutral tone statement "Actually Derrida (not necessarily Foucault) was influential in Linguistics based literary criticism." This statement is correct in itself, but he then makes a misstep ...Since Literary criticism is the primary field of Linguistics application... This is his second comment to the discussion (his third post, as he refactored his own comment). Several people express disagreement [117] [118] and Rjanag explains where Ottava has gone wrong.[119]. Ottava starts to get cross your analogy is patently absurd I honestly can't believe that you ever had anything close to graduate studies. As he types that last answer, he possibly beginning to realise where he's made his error, but he has no way out because Taivo has his professors posting Ph.D. of Linguistics *and* Philosophy here (MIT, 1995), currently an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. I've just quoted one, but there's half a dozen, all confirming what Ottava didn't know up till a couple of posts ago The linguists are still open to discussion [120] but I believe Ottava now knows he was incorrect and so cannot "win". Instead of accepting the insight or leaving the discussion, this is where the tone turns nasty intellectually insulting to everyone. Without an argument, Ottava has to fall back to arguing like a schoolboy "I am willing to but my multiple graduate degrees up for comparison against anyone else here. Yes, I am an expert in the field. Yes, multiple people, including those at WMF, ArbCom, and the rest have my personal information and can verify that." (or, 'my conker's bigger than yours)

The Christopher Smart incident. What is important is that he hasn't stopped to read the terms of reference of the Wiki Project on Freemasonry. At the start, Ottava believes he has something that the Freemasonry project would be interested in [121]. The answer is entirely clear Sorry but that is not within the scope of this Project. And that ought to have been that, but of course Ottava has been a bit squashed, so the tone instantly turns nasty there needs to be a real freemasonry wikiproject, because this one doesn't deserve the title. All the ensuing nastiness is because Ottava doesn't know how to back away from his error.

The signature business. Ottava's statement to Rspeer Furthermore, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:U#Non-English_usernames this makes it clear that users with non-Latin based characters in their name should be recommended not to use such names on English wiki, as many people have computers that cannot read them] is a simple misreading of contributors are welcome to use usernames that are not spelled using the Latin alphabet, but should bear in mind that scripts of non-Latin languages are illegible to most contributors to the English Wikipedia.. Dank rephrases the policy in his post immediately following Ottava's WP:U says, "To avoid confusion and aid navigation, users with such usernames are encouraged to use Latin characters in their signature." I.e., we recommend against it, but it's not blockable.. At this point, Ottava knows he's made a mistake, so the nastiness starts That is so unbelievably wrong.... If you are unwilling to even glance at them, maybe you should find a new place to work in. Rspeer, I have no confidence in your ability as an admin, let alone work in UAA.

Theban Pederasty. Note Ottava claims he was forced to edit war on this article - see [122] Response to Carcharoth....The only way I was able to keep from being blocked from Nandesuka's block is because two members of that group had me edit war against Haiduc on various pages dealing with Pederasty. (sorry, can't post proper diff. Manning Bartlett cut and pasted the page content, and I'm not clever enough to figure where he c&P'd it from). I assume Ottava's conflation of pederasty and paedophilia was deliberate, and prompted by Nandesuka, but he make a mistake here. Probably a slip - Plutarch was of course Greek, and wrote in Greek - anyone studying him in Latin is looking at a translation. When this is pointed out, his response immediately goes on the offensive Same thing where you are completely wrong, and same excuses for you trying to not have to accept it.

Ludovico Ariosto is a romantic at heart. I thought initially this was a scholarly dispute conducted in a bad tempered way, but it's not. The original lede described Orlando Furioso as an epic poem. Ottava thought Christian epic poem was a better description, Folantin preferred romantic epic poem. That isn't what it turned out to be about at all. It's another mistake. Ottava (surprisingly perhaps Do you honestly think I chose the name "Ottava Rima" because I don't have a clue about Ariosto?) doesn't realise that the term 'romantic' can be used for Ariosto's work Romance, not "romantic". There is a major difference. It is part Romance, but you cannot say something is a romantic epic, unless it was something similar to what Keats wrote in Hyperion . Folantin offers a scholarly explanation "Romantic epic" is the critical term used to describe Boiardo and Ariosto's Orlando poems as well as Spenser's Faerie Queene. And, following the pattern, the response from Ottava is personal and offensive Lets look at the scholarship (because it is obvious that you didn't). For some reason this became hugely significant to Ottava. He took it to Fringe, he took it to content (see Folantin's evidence above). I do not know why, but note that others have pointed out that the translation currently considered to be definitive describes the poem as 'romantic' on the flyleaf [123]. Whether the implication can be drawn that Ottava had never read this work, I will leave to others. (In fairness to Ottava, I should point out that there are comments to this on the talk page, and he does claim to have encountered Reynolds.)

Sorry, out of time, but I'll bet Ottava errors lie at the heart of a great number of disputes. He gets it wrong probably no more or less times than the average, but the problem is that he can't be wrong. The problem arises not when someone disagrees with him per se, but more specifically when someone causes him to realise that he was wrong to start with.

Evidence presented by RegentsPark

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The Byron move request

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The one episode I'd like to bring to your attention is the Byron move request. I spend a bit of time at the requested moves pages, closing moves, correcting requests, stuff like that, and came across a request to move George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron to Lord Byron. It so happens that I like the common name policy and, concluding that the request had merit, I first included some statistics from jstor in a comment [124], [125], then asked a question [126] and then, a day later, explicitly supported the move request [127]. All conducted, I can confidently state, in a spirit of inquiry, well supported by explanations and references to policy, and with the utmost politeness. Ottava responded with this starting with the phrase "this is completely bogus" and then accusing me of (a) lying and (b) 'playing games'. I was taken aback by that response. But, I politely asked Ottava if his 'rant' was really called for [128], and tried to explain further [129]. His response [130] includes straightforwardly proved that you were spreading blatant falsehoods. It was downhill from there.

Frankly, though the entire episode was off-putting and an unnecessary aggravation, I can live with it (although I must admit that I do not come to wikipedia in search of gratuitous unpleasantness). However, his repeated claims that it was I who was being uncivil and should be banned appeared either delusional or deliberate. Much later, I discovered that not only had he been temporarily blocked for this lack of civility, but the matter had also been discussed on WP:WQA and User talk:Ottava Rima. In these discussions, his repeated assertions that he had never violated AGF was equally delusional or deliberate (see 'playing games' and 'blatant falsehoods' above) We all get angry and say things that we later regret but it is this complete inability to introspect about his own behavior and to see that need for regret that bothers me about this incident. Unpleasantness, especially of the gratuitous sort, works directly against the objective of making this an inviting place, a place where editing should be a pleasure and not a drag.

Evidence presented by Chillum

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Many warnings by many people

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In the past 6 months Ottava has received 29 warnings regarding his behavior from 25 different Wikipedia users on his talk page. This pattern goes back much further, but I decided to draw the line at 6 months as it is enough to demonstrate the pattern.

  1. 01:38, 9 June 2009 - Warned by Roux Regarding false accusations, asking for evidence of accusations
  2. 19:17, 28 June 2009 - Warned by Chillum Regarding issuing warnings not based in policy
  3. 01:10, 1 July 2009 - Warned by Caspian blue Regarding false accusations
  4. 06:05, 11 July 2009 - Warned by Philcha Asking Ottava to calm down
  5. 16:42, 14 July 2009 - Warned by Auntie E Asking for evidence of accusations
  6. 00:08, 15 July 2009 - Warned by SB_Johnny Regarding false accusations
  7. 17:11, 16 July 2009 - Warned by Ksempac Asking Ottava to "slow down a bit on the name-calling"
  8. 21:35, 1 August 2009 - Warned by Mattbuck Asking Ottava to "calm the fuck down (irony intentional)" and "stop insulting everyone who disagrees with you"
  9. 04:57, 3 August 2009 - Warned by Wikidemon Regarding a WP:WQA report filed against Ottava
  10. 16:18, 10 August 2009 - Warned by Alan16 Regarding "empty threats"
  11. 18:57, 24 August 2009 - Warned by Lar about threatening to phone a Wikipedian's school over a content dispute. "What university do you claim to study at, because I would really like to make some phone calls about you." (Note: OR reverted this comment on his own accord before being talked to about this)
  12. 04:32, 4 September 2009 - Warned by Jeni Regarding an ANI post about incivility by Ottava[131].
  13. 19:30, 4 September 2009 - Warned by Antandrus Requesting that Ottava view Wikipedia as a collaborative environment, rather than a confrontational one
  14. 21:15, 5 September 2009 - Blocked by Gwen Gale Community consensus later determined that the block was not needed, though numerous editors expressed the behavior was not appropraite. Unblocked by Chillum
  15. 22:43, 5 September 2009 - Warned by Chillum As a condition of the unblock Ottava was urged not to continue with disruptive behavior
  16. 01:40, 11 September 2009 - Warned by Akhilleus Regarding feeling intimidated by Ottava
  17. 18:14, 16 September 2009 - Warned by Cirt Regarding the use of a harsh tone
  18. 21:27, 19 September - Warned by Rspeer Regarding comments made by Ottava to Rspeer
  19. 10:15, 22 September - Warned by Itsmejudith Complaining about a harsh tone and incivility
  20. 00:54, 24 September 2009 - Warned by Antandrus Regarding a "threat by e-mail to have my desysopped", bullying, and empty threats.
  21. 14:57, 24 September 2009 - Warned by Pedro Asking Ottava to stop "flogging a dead horse"
  22. 13:20, 25 September 2009 - Warned by Jehochman A warning about Ottava's ongoing pattern of incivility and notification of a community sanction[132](The one being discussed in this case I believe).
  23. 13:31, 9 October 2009 - Blocked by Sjakkalle For "disruptive behavior"
  24. 20:18, 10 October 2009 - Warned by UnitAnode Regarding harassment of User:Bishonen
  25. 01:00, 11 October 2009 - Warned by Uncle G Final warning for disrupting noticeboards
  26. 14:16, 13 October 2009 - Warned by Akhilleus Regarding false accusations
  27. 04:05, 27 October 2009 - Blocked by SarekOfVulcan For numerous violations of civility
  28. 07:23, 2 November 2009 - Warned by Jehochman Final warning for personal attacks
  29. 05:52, 4 November 2009 - Warned by Georgewilliamherbert Concerns that Ottava's "behavior at ANI is becoming disruptive and exhausting the community patience" and urging him to "take some time and take a step back"

Evidence presented by Wikidemon

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I don't regularly interact with Ottava Rima or edit in his article space, nor have I followed the drama surrounding this editor to date. I look back on the following as an unpleasant chance encounter.

Ottava Rima disrupted his own deletion discussion

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In July OR nominated[133] the 29 minute-old[134] National Portrait Gallery copyright conflicts for deletion. He and others considered the subject non-notable news or WP:NAVEL-gazing. OR single-handedly argued with, abused, and provoked nearly every editor who posted a "keep" vote. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Portrait Gallery copyright conflicts OR rails at editors' "faulty" understanding, "generalized ignorance", "complete disconnect from reality", "utter abuse of the human language", "you have already lost any respect", statements "far beyond absurd", "crazy ideas", "ignorance of our guidelines" from people who "do no understand the word 'ignorant'". Beyond garden variety insults there is process gaming: announcements rejecting each keep vote as invalid, accusations of not reading the policy pages or article under discussion, calling for an editor who accused him of incivility to be blocked for "false allegations". The nomination received an early administrative "keep" close,[135], which OR reverted.[136] The article was re-closed, OR filed a DR, and it was relisted (see here).

I was unaware of the bear in the room when I first introduced myself with a WP:SNOW keep vote. OR responded that I do not know how AfD works, and that my vote "is discounted" because I was wrong about the reliability of sources.[137] User:Nathan pointed out, as other editors had elsewhere, that it was not OR's call to disallow votes, that OR should be more "gentle" in his responses, and that he should not offer negative assessments of other editors.[138] I ignored the mild personal attack, explained what I meant by "SNOW", and said in more detail why I thought the sources established the subject as notable.[139] OR responded that I was admitting I hadn't read the page or AfD discussion, that my vote was unacceptable, and that I "haven't a clue what you are even talking about".[140]

The repetitive nonsensical accusations and legalistic pronouncements seemed to fit a dysfunctional pattern I had seen elsewhere. Insulting someone who disagrees with your AfD nomination is a losing argument and turns everyone off. Sometimes it works to sternly tell editors who do this to pipe down -- they obey not because you ask but because they realize they are alone out on a limb and further argument will be fruitless. So I admonished OR on the talk page, gave him a civility warning, and told him that it was my last notice before reporting him on an appropriate board. OR responded with more abuse.[141] I did not want to continue a flame war on the deletion page, and WP:WQA seemed like the least inflammatory, most constructive place, so without further ado I filed there.[142]

OR sank my WQA report on his behavior by misbehaving

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The WQA report is also interesting: Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts/archive68#Ottava Rima on AfD. OR called for me to be blocked perhaps a dozen times, and played a strange game by declaring that because he had phrased things just right (by his reasoning, which I cannot figure out) he had not actually insulted anyone or broken civility guidelines. That last tactic seemed to be one of those classic grade school "I didn't say you were retarded, I just said you act retarded" insults. My stern, no-nonsense tone there is deliberate because I hoped that would get through to him, and I was not going to get sidetracked into defending myself from tit-for-tat attacks on me or far-fetched arguments that he had not been uncivil.

OR did not offer the slightest admission or recognition that his behavior upset others, or any attempt to listen, despite the near unanimity (everyone but MF, below) of the community in condemning his behavior. He was completely incorrigible. The WQA was going nowhere and it was clear OR would not be warned officially to stop insulting other editors, so I withdrew.

A couple interesting points that may bear some review. First, OR claimed at WQA to have the support of several Arbcom members with whom he had spoken about the WQA case. If so they should recuse and disclose their involvement, but it seems doubtful that it happened. Second, Malleus Fatuorum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) showed up as OR's only defender, with a series of over-the-top (and completely off-topic) insults and accusations. MF seems based on comments elsewhere to share OR's conceptual disdain for civility policy, and he has had a number of civility run-ins involving a style of attack remarkably similar to OR's. I wonder if this bears treatment in the same case here as OR.

I chalked this up to the unfortunate game some have learned that by behaving belligerently enough, they make themselves so unpleasant to deal with that nobody will oppose them. I certainly won't. This is not my issue. Better let people like this waste a minute of my time than try to do something and have them goad you into wasting an hour.

Hope this helps. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Rschen7754

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Preface

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This is what I understand the case to be about: whether Ottava Rima should have editing restrictions placed on him. I have some concerns which I will present to help the ArbCom address this question. If I have misunderstood the case, please forgive me.

Ottava has brought up some irrelevant issues to influence a RFA to fail

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I'll keep this brief. I point out the RFA of Davemeistermoab: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Davemeistermoab and Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Davemeistermoab. In it, Ottava Rima and Peter Damien make accusations against Dave of original research, poor grammar, plagiarism, and canvassing. This borders on libel, and I think the ArbCom should be made aware of this. --Rschen7754 (T C) 07:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Arcayne's comment in the same section for the concerns about plagiarism and why I mention that here. --Rschen7754 (T C) 17:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Antandrus

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Ottava Rima's bullying and abusive behavior

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Ottava Rima bullies other editors until he either gets his way or wears them out and pushes them out of his way. I will show several cases where he has done this, with different results. Sometimes people give up in exasperation; sometimes they push back; sometimes they lose their temper; sometimes an admin steps in and tries to stop Ottava Rima's bullying. It never works. I became involved in this when I stepped in and tried to stop it [143], [144]. You can see how well that went: he completely fails to assume good faith, going instead straight to ad hominem argument. The following evidence will show that Ottava Rima's behavior is bullying and abusive, and in spite of his abundant wikilawyering to the contrary, completely out of compliance with Wikipedia policy. In a collaborative environment such as Wikipedia, such behavior is poisonous, and those behaving that way must be removed from the project. If they stay on, they must acknowledge their behavior, resolve to change, and operate under strict sanction guarding against recidivism. But I must note that we already tried this, with obvious results.

One further note: Ottava Rima's conduct should be the only issue we address here. He has a habit of trying to divert attention from his conduct to his contributions to the encyclopedia, which are a completely separate issue and irrelevant to this case. According to Wikipedia policy, it does not matter whether an author writes fine articles or merely makes minor edits; we grant no exemption to any editor from compliance with our basic civility, no-personal-attacks, and assume-good-faith policies. If I am mistaken, and some editors do get special treatment and more lenient application of policies based on what they contribute, then we need to codify that in the policies themselves.

Bullying of Maunus. Maunus had disagreed with Ottava on ANI, to which Ottava responded on Maunus's talk page: "This is 100% absurd. ... Constant edit warring it into a redirect is classic blanking vandalism.... Your comments are so unbelievably absurd that they surely must be a mistake. ... I will be calling for your desysopping when this goes to RfAr ... allowing you to have any access to any buttons is clearly dangerous. ... you are not here for the betterment of the encyclopedia ... your comments are destructive to the encyclopedia. There was a clear consensus against this vandalistic action ... You fail to recognize it in a very dangerous manner ... And empty threat? I've been involved in many people being desysopped for less than what your actions are. Your actions are completely destructive and show not only a lack of understanding of the subject but a complete denial of some of our easy to understand policies."

Here his bullying campaign versus Alan16 begins – for, get this – supposed incorrect use of an apostrophe. Keats' or Keats's? Get it right, or you are trolling! Here is the full thread, which includes Ottava saying "You are verifiably incorrect and WP:FRINGE at the very least ... You are acting as if you are some kind of expert with mystical truth supporting you ... you are here trolling and the last post is a trolling post. ...You are here because your mother told you something and it turned out to be wrong. ... I get into these situations - standing up against people who want to push their own strange claims in defiance of what Wikipedia stands for, and that is why I have always prevailed while such people were removed from power and pushed out."

Bullying of Itsmejudith. She has disagreed with Ottava on the RS Noticeboard. "... I will start up a section asking for you to be topic banned because your understanding is so flawed it is disruptive ... clearly inappropriate ... you wont stop." Read the whole thread; it's not long, and contains numerous examples of his threats, conspiracy allegations, and behind-the-scenes well-poisoning. He says to me, " Antandrus, you have already gone way too far and ArbCom has more than enough information to verify that your behavior is completely unacceptable", which I happily leave to your judgement.

Bullying of Rspeer. Ottava builds strawman arguments, with a side helping of threats of recall, desysop, RFC, and so forth. Rspeer several times attempts to de-escalate, and in doing so shows admirable restraint.

Bullying of Paul Barlow and Jezhotwells on the RS Noticeboard, with characteristic self-aggrandizing bombast: "You guys go to push this forward and I will ask AN for blocks for pushing such nonsense." "My record in the articles on the field verifies my knowledge. I even have an FA on a biography of a Victorian individual ..."

When the topic is Bishonen or Geogre, the abuse machine goes on full blast. If this personal attack – on one of our most valued long-term contributors – is not shocking enough, look at what he says about Geogre. "...I don't mean it in jest. You spend your life harming others and you need to be put down." Do we need people like Ottava Rima editing our encyclopedia? Is Ottava's interaction style in any way compatible with a collaborative environment? Is this person not treating Wikipedia as a gigantic battlefield?

If you are not yet sufficiently horrified, here is what he said about John Kenney. When asked to redact, he does so, but instead of apologizing or letting it go, he promptly goes to Malleus's talk page to boast about having found "a great new Essjay candidate", complete with a link to the unredacted version. Clearly he thinks he did nothing wrong here either!

Arbitrators, please do the right thing here. We cannot allow abusive users to carry on in this way; the community has shown itself unable to stop the abuse; Ottava's behavior drives away good editors, contributes to the deterioriation of our standards of discourse, wastes a massive amount of the time of our volunteers, and he has never shown any hint that he knows he is doing anything wrong. Antandrus (talk) 19:43, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence by Bishonen

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Attacks

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Plenty of evidence has already been posted on this page exemplifying Ottava Rima's conspiracy theories, grudge-hugging, and assumption of almost comically bad faith. I won't join in providing many such examples here, since my statement at Ottava's previous call for arbitration some six weeks ago is just as relevant today as it was then, and has lots of diffs and ANI threads. A link to it will serve the purpose.

To bring my evidence up to date, I'll just add an ANI thread from October plus an incident from October which involved Ottava (largely) and myself (in a supporting role). I made a small copyedit to the Drapier's Letters, an article about a work by Jonathan Swift which I'd come across on the "FACs needing feedback" list on SandyGeorgia's's page. The 18th century is my academic specialty, and I looked at the article with interest, and improved (as I thought) the rhetorical balance of the intro by removing six words of less than relevant information.[145]. (In my opinion. YMMV.) Carelessly, I failed to realise it was Ottava's baby—didn't check the History—or I wouldn't have touched it, as it was hardly an important edit. I explained my reasoning on the talkpage and invited other editors to revert and discuss if they disagreed.[146] Or that's what I thought I did... but perhaps, in reality, I inappropriately removed things while making patently absurd comments in an area where I had a long history of damaging articles and attacking them in order to harass Ottava Rima? That was Ottava's take on my edit, and he waged instant war against my harassment: [147] [148], [149]

In fact, my comments and other people's comments on Ottava's 25 Sept request remain so relevant that it's a mystery to me why a majority of arbs rejected that request six weeks ago, leaving the victims of Ottava's hailstorm of rotten tomatoes [150] to cope as best they can — while they have now embraced this request with something like enthusiasm. Anyway... enough evidence will surely be provided, without further input from me, of Ottava's attack mode.

Untruths

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Ottava's invective is in focus on this page, but something else is apparent as a minor motif in many statements, namely that Ottava invents "facts" at random. When Sjakkalle, who blocked Ottava over his RFC/Bishonen [151]—and who I've never had speech with in my wiki-life — becomes on Ottava's talkpage "one of Bishonen's friends Sjakkalle"... and when Gwen Gale, who I know very slightly indeed, also becomes my Ottava-friend ("Gwen Gale has a long relationship with both Bishonen and Antandrus, making friendly comments on both of their talk page for a very long time" [152] ... oh, and when I've been persistently "harassing" editors who are total strangers to me, then something is wrong. The point of these inventions appears to be that my new friends have been blocking Ottava at my secret behest and vengefully harassing him on my behalf. I don't know JTrainor, but I see that in Ottava's "Bishonen's imaginary friends" fantasy, JTrainor will do anything for me! (/me giggles shyly. )

Remember Ottava's many claims in his 25 September request for arbitration about who is a "meatpuppet" of who? [153] "[Gwen Gale] is close friends with Antandrus" ... ItsmeJudith's "close relationship with Moreschi"... "I did not realize that Antandrus and Folantin were close friends"... "Jehochman has worked closely with Akhilleus... shows clear evidence of meatpuppetry"...Remember the users who protested against that unexpected expansion of their wiki-social life: summarized on this page by Folantin's terse section Ottava can't decide which conspiracy I'm part of?

No matter what sanctions, short of banning, that the ArbCom decides on in this case, I urge the committee to include some remedy which restrains Ottava from posting downright falsehoods. Something like Ottava is not permitted to fabricate facts on wiki, you know? Or Ottava is placed on "truth restriction", or Ottava is not to claim users have a "long history" of some abuse without being prepared to offer at least one diff from that long history. [154] Completely unfounded claims pulled out of a hat, the way Ottava does, are quite unusual on Wikipedia, is my impression. The consequence of that may be that, before Ottava's victims know where they are, outsiders could be believing the claims and noting them down for future reference. "Aha, Sjakkalle, a friend of Bishonen, that's useful to know"— because this is a place where one tends to believe that which is confidently stated as truth. Of course I don't consider it a slur to say I'm friends with Sjakkalle or JTrainor — I'd be delighted to be — but it's a different matter to have falsehoods about it put forth as people's secret reason for "harassing" Ottava Rima.

It Was Not a Coincidence

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And finally, the quality, the worthwhileness, of the entire encyclopedia is compromised by my presence, haha! [155] By me! Memememememememememe! Clickclickclickclick on the linklink! [/me cackles dementedly, dons tinfoil hat. ] Bishonen | talk 16:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC).[reply]

A propos of Ottava Rima's evidence

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"Please see the now deleted Bishonen 4 RfC for evidence". Unfortunately only admins can access deleted pages, but in case any non-admin is interested in Requests for comment/Bishonen 4, just let me know and I'll mail you a copy. Bishonen | talk 22:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Evidence presented by User:Jtrainor

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[156]. Ottava basically rushed to WP:WQA [157] as fast as he could in an attempt to intimidate me and Unitanode. There's also his conduct with regards to Chillum, but that's better documented by those involved. Jtrainor (talk) 00:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Taivo

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Insults and Incivility Directed at Experts in Field

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I wrote this at Talk:Linguistics. Ottava responded with this insult not just to me, but to the university where I received my doctorate. My comment was backed up with this, this, this, and this from other professional linguists. Even after being insulted by Ottava, my own response remained civil. After all the linguists supported my position, Ottava then responded again with this further remarkable insult to the collective professional linguistic opinion, claiming to have more educational expertise in the field than anyone else speaking (most of whom are professors of Linguistics at major US universities, with the remainder being PhD candidates in the field) (here he admits that his expertise is not really linguistics, but philology, and the vast majority of his edits are in literary criticism which have nothing to do with linguistics). And even with that, the linguists' responses to Ottava's insults remained civil and respectable. Despite the linguists' continued civility, Ottava continued to hurl insults here and here at our credentials and academic integrity. This discussion at Talk:Linguistics continued on, but the actual linguists in the discussion began ignoring Ottava and he continued throwing insults despite the linguists' continuing civility as here and here. Towards the end of Ottava's contribution, s/he became less insulting, but there was a stretch cited above where his/her behavior was insulting and definitely uncivil. (Taivo (talk) 00:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Evidence presented by LtPowers

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My interactions with Ottava are more or less entirely restricted to the Lord Byron incident, which was meticulously laid out by Elen of the Roads in his/her opening statement here. I also started the related WQA thread, although I opined on his talk page that I thought the block (by SarekOfVulcan) was unnecessary and not the intended result of the Wikiquette Alert.

That said, I wanted to elaborate a little bit on a few of the points laid out by Elen of the Roads.

Ottava Rima tries to suppress dissent from very early in a discussion

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The very first comment after I proposed moving George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron to Lord Byron was from Ottava. [158] Right from the get-go, we see a simple negation of my claim that "Lord Byron" is the common name; although he cites his collections as evidence, I can hardly verify that myself. He then caps it with the simple claim that I am wrong -- and not just wrong, but "blatantly wrong", as if I should have known better than to even bring up the suggestion. That, in my very first-ever interaction with Ottava Riva.

The implication that the discussion should have ended with that initial pronouncement from Ottava is made explicit later on. [159] ("There is no debate. If you want to continue wasting your own time, you can feel free. But there is no justification that can be used and that was made clear from the beginning." In other words, Ottava is right and I am wrong -- so wrong that I can't even justify my position.)

We then know from Elen of the Roads' evidence that Ottava considered my and others' continued disagreement in the face of his (believed) clearly superior evidence to be intentionally disruptive and worthy of blocks. [160] Needless to say, I found this disturbing; it had a chilling effect on my future contributions.

Ottava Rima uses his expertise as leverage in a discussion, and does so in an aggressive manner

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There's nothing wrong with explaining one's credentials in a discussion; I'm under no illusions that non-experts have just as much grasp of an issue as experts do. However, utilizing one's credentials in an attempt to suppress debate, as Ottava did [161] is excessive and comes across as both self-importance and belittling the opinions of others.

Ottava repeatedly claims that people who persist in disagreeing with him are intentionally disrupting Wikipedia

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Mounds of evidence of this are found above, but I believe this diff [162] encapsulates the whole thing as well as any single diff could. Denial of incivility? Check. Accusations of incivility in return? Check. Claims of tendentiousness? Check. Tenuous claims of personal attacks? Check. Accusations of trolling because the editor wasn't persuaded by Ottava's arguments? Requests to stop the discussion because Ottava is right? Statements that other editors have no basis on which to make their arguments? Claims that other editors ought to be banned/blocked? Musings about another editors value to the encyclopedia? Accusations of contempt for Wikipedia's standards because of disagreement with Ottava's interpretation of those standards? Implication that one should leave Wikipedia due to that supposed contempt? All check, and all right there in that one short paragraph.

Ottava Rima makes disingenuous statements

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The following exchange between him and me illustrates this. Ottava had just finished saying "It seems like a block would be the only way to protect the encyclopedia" from me and a few others. I replied [163] with an invitation to begin the process, feeling like it would be a good idea to get some more experienced eyes on the rapidly devolving situation (and confident that I had done nothing to warrant a block). At the same time, I hoped it would nip Ottava's threats of a block in the bud. Ottava responded with one of the most disingenuous comments I have ever read on Wikipedia. [164] I responded as if Ottava was serious, explaining why I invited the scrutiny. [165] He responded with another statement that I can only interpret as disingenuous [166] (as interpreting it as ignorant would be an insult to Ottava's obvious intelligence).

Ottava Rima continues to make unwarranted accusations of disruption

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Even during this very arbitration case, on this evidence page's talk page, Ottava still can't stop himself from accusing other editors of collaborating against him. [167] Note also the threat of bringing the other editor up for sanctions, another common theme upon which Ottava rarely, if ever, follows up.

Evidence presented by Abecedare

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Ottava often hints that his actions have the imprimatur/silent support of Arbcom members et al

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Ottava Rima has often suggested that he is in backchannel communications with Arbcom, influential bodies, or "other" admins/members of the community, and hinted that his actions are being undertaken with their knowledge and/or (silent) support. As far as I have seen, these claims are never backed up by any on-wiki diffs, and none (?) of the threatened RFC/U or Arbcom cases have been initiated; hence the claims only serve to intimidate the (perceived) opponent in the discussion. This evidence of Ottava citing "invisible support for his side" should be read in conjunction with other assertions and evidence presented on this page (particularly this, this, this, this, evidence about conspiracy claims, and the conduct demonstrated at the Workshop page) since they together represent Ottava's (disruptive) discussion strategy when facts and/or consensus is against him.

  • Supporting diffs
Note:I particularly urge the arbitrators to read the diffs marked with (*) in full, since they evidence other problematic conduct that has been mentioned on this page.
  1. At WT:FAC: I've already had multiple Arbitrators ask me to put forth evidence and make a proposal about Fowler so they could effectively topic ban him from FAC.
  2. To User:Taivo: Yes, I am an expert in the field. Yes, multiple people, including those at WMF, ArbCom, and the rest have my personal information and can verify that. (*)
  3. To User:Antandrus: Antandrus, I sent diffs to Arbcom of over 11 different pages... I've been constantly sending emails about the situation over the past month. (*)
  4. To User:Akhilleus: I have been in constant communication with Arbitrators and the problematic actions have still not ceased.
  5. To User:Rspeer: I've talked to everyone at UAA and most have told me that they disagree with you and mostly ignore you in general.
  6. To User:Ceoil: And lets be honest here - you deserve -no- credit for The Lucy poems. ... Yes, I talked to people today and they suggested that I should remove you and the rest as nominators for the page as I was the only one who actually bothered to put any real effort into the page ... (*)
  7. To User:Hans Adler: ArbCom and WMF have my personal information and credentials.
  8. To User:Akhilleus: Akhilleus, I have already talked to many admin. ... I have received many emails.
  9. To User:David D.: Then there are also the angry people who emailed me because of Everyking's and Rootology's attacks on the Catholic Church and calling it hate speech.
  10. To User:David D.: I've gotten a lot of angry emails from people involved in the RCC page that see this as just the condoning of the same action.
  11. To User:Georgewilliamherbert: If any Arbitrators want access to some of the emails I've received on the matter from people who are upset, I will ask permission to forward.
  12. To User:LessHeard vanU: And if you want to know where people talk, why not show up to events, go to IRC, hang out at message boards, or just watch talk pages? You should know that you have a reputation as you almost admit it in some of the above.
  13. To User:Ceoil: Who do I talk to in private? Well, I have emailed or contacted over IRC you, Sandy, Moni3, Karanacs, Malleus, most of the Arbitrators, Jimbo, Cary, Prodego, JulianColton, ResFirestarter, Ed17, Garden, X!, Durova, Awadewit, PeterSymonds, Jennavecia, Backslashforwardslash, NuclearWarfare, and on and on and on. I've probably contacted directly almost everyone who has ever dropped a message on this talk page.
  14. To User:Ceoil: Do you want me to forward you emails of those who messaged me to tell me that they feel the same exact way and feel that people are trying to push things that are just not right?
  15. At Talk:Persian Empire: I think all of the people above proved that they are here not to discuss merits but merely want to ignore the request at ArbCom to stop the nonsense for a few days.
  16. To User:John Kenney: That is proof that you don't have an advance degree in European History. ArbCom knows my degrees and knows that one of them is a Masters in Classical Literature. (*)
  17. To User:SandyGeorgia: And Sandy, there are a lot of people that accuse her of being "close happy".
  18. To User:Bwilkins: Multiple Arbs watched the page and I talked to them. As did many of our most respected users. They knew exactly what I was saying and they knew that I didn't come close to breaching civility.
  19. To User:Newyorkbrad at Workshop: ...because I have asked others and they do not see your interpretation.
  20. At Workshop: Citing discussion with and support of "Steward handling it" (i.e User:Lar) in response to alleged harassment of User:John Kenney and dispute at Persian Empire respectively. Lar's reading of Ottava's interpretation: "It's not the most accurate representation of what was going on there. I wasn't acting as a Steward, merely a concerned editor. I was treading gently because my previous attempts to give Ottava guidance or advice or admonishment went poorly."
    Follow up: Instead of correcting his possibly good-faith error in light of Lar's comments, Ottava digs in further insisting to Lar that Lar was acting as a steward and thus, "I stand by my describing you as a Steward, who are used to handle oversight matters."
  21. To User:Akhilleus: I have received emails from over 30 admin during ANI all reflecting that they acknowledge that your actions, along with the others, are highly inappropriate and have been for a very long time. ... You just crossed the line, and this is your only chance I will be willing to give you to go back. (*)


Several users have asked Ottava to stop citing anonymous supporters to back up an argument:

  1. User:Ceoil: the old Rima tactic of "I have had hundreds of emails today which confirm my position".
  2. User:Xeno: I think you really need to reevaluate your tendency to argue using non-transparent offsite evidence (IRC conversation, "emails you've received from supporters", etc.), as backing for your arguments.
  3. User:Ceoil: You constantly appeal in private correspondance to a wider audience that never reveals itself, except on mass when blindly forming 'conceus'. "I have like, five or six / seven or eight admins" talking to me now on IRC who back everyword I say". No? Have you not said that or not, several times, to me?
  4. User:Wikidemon: Are you claiming that you have discussed this report with multiple Arbcom members, and they have opined that your behavior is okay? I find that hard to swallow - if so, please ask them to weigh in here.

I'll add diffs over the next week, as and when I find them. I am no Rima-tologist, so any help with finding diffs is appreciated. You can post them here. Abecedare (talk) 21:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC) [reply]

Evidence presented by Kafka Liz

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Ottava's misleading claims of collegiality

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I was - and to a large degree still am - very hesitant about getting involved here. I have watched Ottava's abuse of editors for a long time. I never felt I could afford to get involved: my voice here is small, and after watching Ottava's ugly slurs and insinuations about far more established editors go unchecked, I believed any opposition I raised would "reap the whirlwind". I was angered when I saw my name included [168] among those Ottava has worked with, with the unspoken implication that our collaboration (on The Lucy poems) was smooth and harmonious. This was far from the case. In fairness, I did not address Ottava himself on this score, but kept my head down until our collaboration was at an end. I thought preserving the peace was for the greater good. I believed - erroneously, it seems - that he and I had come through the episode with no serious or overt friction.

Now I come across remarks concerning our collaboration like [169] (Yes, I talked to people today and they suggested that I should remove you Ceoil (talk · contribs) and the rest as nominators for the page as I was the only one who actually bothered to put any real effort into the page); [170] "And you can remove my name [addressed to Ceoil], but you deserve -no- credit nor does anyone else on that list." I think these remarks are pretty accurate representations of the way Ottava "works well with others" - and I believe my case is a fairly mild one.

I restrict myself here strictly to my experience with Ottava. I refrain from comment on his treatment of others (which is relevant here) and from the quality of his contributions in general (which is not). Whatever the cost, though, I do not believe I can remain silent any longer.

Evidence presented by Hans Adler

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Ottava and the false consensus effect

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The "imprimatur" evidence collected by Abecedare seems to result from the combination of two independent traits: False consensus effect and appeal to authority. Let's focus on the false consensus effect.

Example from the workshop page: [171]. I don't want to speculate explicitly whether the call for draconian sanctions against a large number of editors is in itself an indirect demonstration of this effect. He supports most of his proposals with only a vague "per evidence". However, two come with "per evidence and consensus", plus a link that is supposed to demonstrate that consensus.

  • Alleged consensus for desysopping SarekOfVulcan: [172]
  • Alleged consensus for blocking Jack Merridew for one year: [173] (same link as above)

The same contribution by Ottava also demonstrates that he does not accept consensus against himself as valid:

  • He accuses Moreschi of "consistently using sysop powers while relying on others to falsify consensus" [174]
  • He accuses RegentsPark of "misrepresenting the consensus discussion along with not allowing the consensus discussion to run for a period longer than 12 hours" [175]

For most people the feedback loop make mistake → get negative feedback → learn is somewhat broken. In Ottava's case it appears to be completely non-functional even when he is running against a brick wall, with the false consensus effect being an important factor. The committee needs to take this into account when deciding what to do about Ottava. (Perhaps also when considering admonishments against other parties specifically or in general, which might be misread by Ottava). It leads to disruptive behavioural problems and makes it significantly harder to help Ottava correct his behaviour. Hans Adler 10:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ottava has no effective face-saving techniques

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Disproportionate fear to lose face and lack of strategies to deal with the situation – this seems to be the root cause for most of Ottava's conflicts. Complementing Elen of the Roads' overview over multiple independent cases, I will focus on a single, exceptionally clear example for which we can thank Dbachmann.

Ottava misunderstands Dbachmann [176], blames Dbachmann's grammar for it [177], and then claims three of Dbachmann's four examples of Ottava's own poor grammar are grammatical [178]. (This is changing the goal post from poor grammar to wrong grammar. Two of the three examples in question are poor but correct grammar, one is ungrammatical.) Dbachmann analyses Ottava's problem ("I have known people in real life who couldn't back down when they were wrong") and points out that contrary to Ottava's hasty assertion "because of he is your friend" is ungrammatical.

Now the story gets surreal, especially taking into account how close we are to Ottava's professional qualification. Less than 6 hours after Dbachmann's explanation of the problem, Ottava explicitly claims that "because of he is your friend" is a hypercorrection, and that "of" is formally required here although often dropped. [179] This being questioned by Dbachmann, he reaffirms that "when using a 'because' phrase, it is always followed by some sort of noun or pronoun to be proper. Next time, remember that so you don't look as foolish."

It appears that the line between the kind of mistakes that Ottava can accept as having made and the kind that he denies to the point of absurdity runs between the forgotten plural marker in "destroyed dozen of pages" ("Oh no, a missed plural.") and the inadvertent extra word in "because of people like Folantin are your friends" ("hypercorrection", "always followed by some sort of noun or pronoun to be proper"). The bizarrely high standard that Ottava is setting for himself explains the ubiquity of his conflicts.

Ottava can be a very nice person when he feels in control, and especially when other people make mistakes. The examples above, like many others collected on this page, show that when Ottava is faced with an even minor mistake of his own he loses control over himself and resorts to invalid techniques such as appeal to his own qualifications, appeal to an imagined consensus of others, personal attacks, and even chains of increasingly bizarre counterfactual statements. This case is useless unless its outcome is based on a strategy to address this problem. Some possibilities:

  • Empowering Ottava with additional face-saving strategies such as dropping out of the discussion. (But how?)
  • Monitoring Ottava's activities to support editors who disagree with Ottava. We must prevent that they feel victimised and we should prevent that article space is compromised.
  • Giving exceptionally clear feedback (presumably including a temporary site ban) to Ottava, telling him what needs changing in his behaviour. If we succeed in overcoming his immunisation strategies he might be strong enough to change. Or he might decide to leave the project.
  • Banning Ottava.

What would be totally counterproductive:

  • A civility restriction or similar measure that will lead to discussions where Ottava can imagine support for his actions.
  • A long series of temporary blocks/unblocks as in the case of Giano. Hans Adler 10:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An 18-months-long dispute about the meaning of "basta!"

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Prologue at Ottava's Drapier's Letters FAC (11/12 April 2008) [180]
  • 23:26–23:50: Jbmurray makes a series of copy edits to the article [181], then leaves detailed comments in the FAC, beginning with: "This article isn't ready yet, in my view."
  • 23:53–23:57: Ottava partially reverts Jbmurray's changes [182] and starts a section "Mistakes in correcting" on Jbmurray's talk page. [183]
  • 00:01–00:09: Escalation about grammar [184] leads to Jbmurray !voting: "Actually, I see that my attempts to copy-edit the article are simply being reverted, and the editor in question has decided to be uncivil on my talk page. So I'll simply !vote oppose."
Ottava's misunderstanding (12 April 2008)
  • 00:21: Jbmurray expands his detailed FAC comment, ending with: "Again, I tried to copy-edit this sentence, only to get reverted and to have abuse on my talk page for my trouble. Basta!" [185]
  • 00:30–00:54: Ottava continues the debates that are going on on Jbmurray's talk page [186] and at FAC [187] [188]. Language in the last diff suggests that he is getting a little agitated towards the end.
  • 01:01: Ottava makes grammar changes at the featured article candidate which Jbmurray had copy-edited previously. [189]
  • 01:16: Ottava: "No, its not proper for you to say things like 'basta' and make incendiary comments as you have." [190]
  • 01:43: Ottava makes a weird complaint against Jbmurray on Wassupwestcoast's talk page, ending with: "Neither are feature article discussion pages there to say such things as 'basta' about other people here." [191]
  • 01:50–01:51: Wrad starts a section "What basta means" on Ottava's talk page, explaining: "It's not a swear. [192]". Redundantly, he then explains on Wassupwestcoast's talk page: "Basta doesn't mean what you think it means... [193]".
  • 02:06: Jbmurray: "I am sorry if you feel that "Basta!" (which, as you are aware judging from your own user page, simply means "Enough!") is insulting. [...] I am happy to withdraw that wording, but not the sentiment--which is that I feel it would be more productive if I were to walk away; my sense it that you have that same feeling, too." [194]
Ottava defends his error as correct (12/13 April 2008) [195]
  • 01:54: Ottava: "its a derivative of "bastard" in English".
  • 02:01: Wrad: "He wasn't cussing at all. The word doesn't even exist in English."
  • 02:51: Ottava: "Doesn't exist? The word Bastard and Basta exist in the English language." "Basta is slang for Bastard."
  • 09:08 (13 April): Folantin: "Ottava Rima's user page says "I work with literature of all types, and I can read Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish". So he or she really ought to know what "Basta!", one of the commonest Italian phrases means."
  • 13:29: Ottava: "1. Basta is not literary. 2. This is the English Wikipedia. 3. Commonest? No, and the user made no acknowledgment as if he was Italian. 4. Claiming its another language does not excuse an English definition. That has already been pointed out."
Ottava's past comes back to haunt him... (31 December 2008) [196]
  • 19:03: Ottava: "Also, I would love to point out that your dear Barbara is only a famous translator because the poem's length has discouraged other translators. If you compared her work with others, you would see the inferiority. She kept tune instead of meaning. The Italian is superior in all forms and always will be."
  • 19:13: Folantin: "Reynolds was a lecturer in Italian at Cambridge University, whereas (IIRC) you didn't know what the word basta meant."
  • 19:30: Ottava: "And the word "basta" doesn't exist."
  • 19:45: Folantin: "'And the word 'basta' doesn't exist'. Basta il valor che con la spada mostri. [A quotation from the work under discussion.] 'Anyone can be a lecturer at Cambridge...' I'm sorry, this is getting too weird for me - something seems to be lost round here. Maybe someone should organise a search party on the moon. Ciao!"
  • 19:46: Ottava: "Do you not understand the difference between 'English' and "non-English" by chance?"
  • 19:56: Folantin: "Now please explain the non-existence of the word 'basta'."
  • 20:43: Ottava: "And for your other point, 'basta' is Italian. Its not English. Therefore, its not a word. This is en.wikipedia. This is not Italian Wikipedia."
...and haunt him... (1 November 2009)
  • 16:52–16:53: Folantin: "Excuse me if I don't bow down to your authority as then I'd have to believe that: basta is the Italian for 'bastard' [...] You know, you'd do a lot better if you just dropped the belief that you are infallible and admitted you are wrong every now and then." [197]
...and haunt him (23/24 November 2009) [198]
  • 17:39: Folantin: "But Ottava thinks he [...] can dictate who is competent to talk about Ariosto, even though he doesn't know basic Italian (he thinks basta means bastard) and seems never to have read Orlando."
  • 19:22: Ottava: "By the way, Basta is used in English as something different than modern Italian slang."
  • 21:46: Folantin: "'Basta!' means 'Enough!' or 'Stop it!' It's not slang. The verb bastare is basic Italian and you won't get very far reading a book in that language if you don't know it."
  • 04:13: Ottava: "The word 'crap' exists in English and can be used in a standard term. However, it is still slang."
Conclusion

Ottava claims to be an expert on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. He is himself unable to read the original, but disparages a Cambridge scholar and expert on the work as someone who merely got the job of translating it because others were discouraged by its length. (No evidence for this assertion.) His lack of familiarity with an Italian word that is common both in classical Italian literature and in English film and literature (whenever a character is to be painted as an Italian) was exposed 18 months ago, no doubt causing him considerable stress. Yet to this day the first sentence on his user page still claims: "[...] and I can read Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish." Unless he means "decipher using a dictionary" that is obviously wrong for Italian and Spanish (where "basta" has the same meaning).

If he can't even tone down his boastful user page a bit and admit that "basta!" means what it means, then I don't have much hope that he will cooperate in any useful way to reduce his drama production. His past misdeeds will continue to haunt him as long as he continues with this combination of boasting and attacks against other editors and scholars. Hans Adler 11:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Epilogue (24 November)
  • 14:45: Discussion of the "basta" question begins on the evidence talk page. There is a new emphasis on Spanish. [199]
  • 15:19: Ottava: "I don't understand why a mistake from April 2008 that was resolved then still comes up? Oh wait, I know why."
  • 15:27: Akhilleus explains it's because Ottava never before admitted it was a mistake. In the same minute, Ottava implicitly admits again that it was a mistake, in his plea for a block of Folantin. [200]

Evidence presented by Itsmejudith

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Most of the arguments and diffs I would want to present have already been mentioned, so I'll be brief. My first run-in with OR was in relation to a post on WP:FTN, when my first action was to say that the argument could not go on any longer on that board (it had gone on much too long and a compromise had already been reached). He was very incivil. Then OR opposed my RfA, which of course was entirely his prerogative, but I am not happy with the fact that he accused me of collaboration with User:Pascal.Tesson after he had searched to see if that user and I had edited the same pages. That indicated OR's belief that everyone is conspiring against him. He then brought up on further occasions the fact that my RfA had failed, saying that his opposition had been instrumental in getting it failed. I don't actually think that was the case, but if it had been then it would be grossly out of order, as he has presented NO evidence whatsoever of any conspiratorial behaviour on my part. See his final response to the ANI alert I brought. I am looking up the diffs - there are a lot of them. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is one thing I would like ArbCom to consider carefully. here is Ottava's response to the ANI that I brought, when a massive storm broke out on my talk page. I need to go through it line by line to show what is problematic in every sentence.

This quote (i.e. mine, IMJ) is dissimulation - "There is a difference about the interpretation of a sentence. But it has blown up way beyond that." This individual is attempting to claim that an individual who has no scholarly publications about an author is capable of making a claim that the author is a -pederast- without having any evidence or any sources for such a claim.

I wasn't trying to claim anything. I was responding to a query about a source on RSN. I have not edited, and have no intention to edit, the Oscar Wilde page. This is indeed Ottava blowing things up needlessly, failing to assume any good faith at all, and misunderstanding the purpose of the boards. He goes on...

This is directly against WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:FRINGE. It is hard to believe that they are pushing such a claim for any reason besides disruption, especially with her history, her close relationship to the group,

So, in an ANI discussion, asserting, with no evidence at all that there is a group pushing for something, that just by responding to a question on RSN I am part of that group and that I have "a history" that he does not and cannot spell out.

and the fact she failed her RfA because I revealed evidence verifying that she works too closely with this group in a disruptive manner here.

So here, Ottava is boasting (as he has done elsewhere) that he was instrumental in derailing my RfA. Actually, my RfA was noticeably pear-shaped before Ottava intervened, but let us remember that his intervention consisted of an assertion that I was involved in some kind of canvassing/meatpuppetry/friendship alongside User:Pascal.Tesson. I would like ArbCom to consider the ethics involved in making this groundless accusation and then continuing to assert that my RfA failed because of it.

If someone is curious as to how long this disruption and tag teaming has dated back against just me, see this. I am not the only one to have this happen. More is on Talk:Ludovico Ariosto.

Nothing from me there. Please see instead my contribution to the discussion on FTN.

Antandrus, who is close friends with Itsmejudith,

"Friends with" is a regular Ottava trope, in this case just nonsense. "Friends with" User:Moreschi if you like, since he nommed my RfA, but that's out in the open and anyway is just normal collegiate editing.

was also involved in later problems here. They refused to stop the attacks from Folantin or speak out against him. I have emails on the matter from Antandrus. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that all of them talk to each other, and their constant support of each others positions, constantly verifying each other, backing each other up, refusing to correct or chastise each other, and disrespect for our policies during this is only further evidence that this is severely disruptive meat puppetry.

Here, please just note the tone and the serious accusation with no diffs at all.

More can be found on Talk:Persian Empire, and in where Antandrus, Akhilleus, and others stepped in to defend Dbachmann, Folantin, and Fullstop even though those three meat puppet edit warred with a large consensus against them.

Ottava is obviously very concerned about the Persian Empire dispute and trying to link this with me somehow. I had absolutely nothing to do with that dispute. I wouldn't claim to understand what it is about.

These same people defended Itsmejudith

Yes, some people arrived on my talk page to encourage me.

even though she is pushing for a claim that Oscar Wilde is a pederast without a legitimate source to claim such. It can be seen here.

Not only did I not push for any claim at all, have never edited the Oscar Wilde page, simply responded to a question on RSN about an academic source, I also expressly stated that the source did not support a claim that "Oscar Wilde was a pederast". In fact it was Ottava who insisted that the source did say that.

Link to the Persian Empire ANI thread. Antandrus's attacks on my talk page. Antandrus, who is friends with Gwen Gale, encouraging a block that ...

More mixing of the completely irrelevant Persian Empire stuff, and completely unsupported notions about who is "friends" with whom. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You see the sort of thing. Underlying this is the following. Ottava has indeed studied literature (not sure of which country or period) at postgraduate level, probably taught it in higher education a bit as well. His English is "near-native", good enough for contribution to the encyclopedia but not quite up to the style required in FAs. He has no understanding of how higher education in the UK works, hence his dismissal (in the Orlando Furioso/Ludovico Ariosto dispute of the distinguished scholar Barbara Reynolds. He equated her post as a lecturer (equivalent to a professor) at the University of Cambridge with his doing a bit of teaching while studying for a PhD. Nope. The Oscar Wilde example again came down to dismissal of an academic source, and again he invented a subfield of a disipline in order to rule a source out of consideration. And on both occasions these points were made with the utmost incivility and total absence of good faith. He also does not understand - at all - what "fringe" means in our policies. He dismissed Barbara Reynolds' (using "romantic epic" where he preferred "romance epic") as "a fringe view". Re-nope. There are some similarities with his run-in with User:Taivo. Ottava highlighted Derrida's critique of structural linguistics. In continental philosophy this critique may be regarded as significant. But it has had zero recognition in Anglo-Saxon linguistics, so it is understandable that Taivo and others were reluctant to see it mentioned in the linguistics article. Now, this could have led to an interesting and productive discussion about potential systemic bias towards English-language rather than French-language scholarship. But when insults and conspiracy theories are so readily thrown around, how can any sensible discussion take place?
I'm sad to see so many examples here of Ottava's failure to edit collaboratively. He's said before that he can change - and he hasn't. Nevertheless, everyone can learn if they want to. The ball is now in Ottava's court to say if he really wants to try and work with the rest of us. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Sjakkalle

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Just for full disclosure on a few points made by User:Bishonen:

  • I did support her RFA in 2005[201].
  • I supported the semi-humorous "cupcake" proposal on a 2006 RFC. [202]
  • Bishonen defended me on the Danny RFA in 2007 [203].

Even so, I feel her points about the purported "friendship" are valid. I have at times disagreed with Bishonen on various RFA discussions, and I was never too amused with the Bishzilla account (even though it is mostly harmless). Civil discourse between two editors does not equate to friendship which would make someone "involved". Support on an RFA indicates belief that a person is competent, not that you are a friend. (And Bishonen never bothered to support my RFA...)

Regarding my one-week block of Ottava Rima, it came due to two factors, which together appeared to be disruptive harrassment:

  • Creation of a poorly constructed RFC where the "evidence of failing to resolve the dispute" was "Bishonen is still an admin", and then recreating it after it was deleted by Moreschi.
  • Attempting to get even by proposing Moreschi's desysopping.

The block was not a unilateral decision, but one proposed by JzG, and supported by Elen of the Roads, Jeni, Folantin, and TreasuryTag prior to the block. In the subsequent discussion, about half of those who chimed in supported the block, while the other half opposed. The ANI page for the October 9, 2009 incident is on a separate subpage.

Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{Write your assertion here}

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Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by SandyGeorgia

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Ottava Rima has made significant contributions to Wiki

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Ottava Rima has been the principal author of 9 FAs and a helpful reviewer at FAC on numerous others. In several cases, he was the only reviewer to identify key issues (for example, at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mario Vargas Llosa, he correctly identified a WP:V policy-based issue with non-English sources in a BLP, but then backed down and struck his oppose when other supporters disagreed. Although Ottava struck his oppose, I could not promote the article until policy was met). As stated in the Mattisse arb, I am opposed to FAC bans, as any and all input is helpful there, and disruption can be sorted by the delegates.

Fowler&fowler and Ottava Rima

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Similar to his focus on Featured articles by User:Dineshkannambadi (principal author of 13 FAs), User:Fowler&fowler often complained on my talk page about Ottava's FACs. He recently provided an example of the gratuitous unnecessary provocation and personal attacks that Ottava Rima deals with, interrupting a conversation several editors were trying to have with Ottava, to convince him to take some time off to think over the pending arb case. Fowler says that, although he doesn't "frequent this page", "someone emailed" him about the conversation and that he has "no appetite for Mr. Rima's endless grandiosity". When I inquired if his comments were necessary, he replied with, "Please don't blame me for Ottava Rima's indelicacies. Here is someone who can barely write English at the high-school level ..." SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Sizzle Flambé

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[refactored per clerical request]

Ottava Rima has been called uncivil for stating and restating facts as he understood them, and taunted in the same debates where he is accused of taunting others — but the Arbiters have been urged to consider only his own conduct, and not the conduct of others toward him. But behavior occurs in a context, and I urge ArbCom not to ignore that context.

Please also consider the factual issues underlying quarrels discussed above. If Ottava Rima is charged with being "unwilling to admit his own errors", or overwilling to accuse others of errors, then where the errors actually occurred must be relevant. And if a great many people have repeatedly charged him with errors on the same points, then some temper on his part might be even more understandable if these were not his errors.

Some conduct issues impacted by factual issues:

Take for instance LtPowers's complaint that Ottava Rima tried to "suppress dissent":

Right from the get-go, we see a simple negation of my claim that "Lord Byron" is the common name.... He then caps it with the simple claim that I am wrong -- and not just wrong, but "blatantly wrong", as if I should have known better than to even bring up the suggestion. ... In other words, Ottava is right and I am wrong -- so wrong that I can't even justify my position.

But if in fact, Ottava was right and LtPowers was wrong, then Ottava Rima has merely corrected a factual error, like 2+2=5. It is not ArbCom's place to protect errors from correction. A claim that Ottava Rima "suppresses dissent" implies he's keeping valid views from being expressed in order to impose his own invalid views — not only uncivil but dictatorial conduct! When in fact all that happened was getting flatly contradicted. Quite a difference in conduct, when you look at it that way. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 00:26, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Folantin
«In fact, Dbachmann even invited Ottava to change "romantic epic" to "romance epic" if it bothered him that much - but Ottava refused [204].» — That diff is not refusing any such invitation, it is not even following any such invitation. In the preceding paragraph, dab merely denounces as OR and SYN the idea that Orlando Furioso is a "Christian epic", and proclaims "romance epic" and "romantic epic" synonymous (but see romance/romantic again). — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 20:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by SB_Johnny

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Ottava Rima takes a "with me or against me" approach, and assumes those "against him" are either misguided or actively malicious

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Most of my experience with the matters at hand actually have to do with rather unpleasant experiences with Ottava Rima on IRC, and I don't keep logs so it's really just what I remember of the conversations. The only diffs I could find are:

  1. this one, which was after I made a !vote he disapproved of (I only read the darn thing because he was persistently sending me PMs until I finally agreed to look at it). He then tried to convince me that I was in a cabal/tag-team/etc. with Killerchihuahua (which I'm not, but apparently one can "prove" that I am using some toolserver gizmo). He has since claimed that he was concerned because I was "mistreating" a contributor, but actually it was just an oppose vote in an RfB.
  2. this one (on Wikiversity) asking me to look at an article talk discussion (he had been PMing me on IRC about that as well, but I logged off without responding).

I've tried to make it clear to him that I didn't want to be involved in this sort of thing, to no avail (in fact I rarely use IRC any more, in large part due to feeling a bit pestered). There have been a few other occasions between the two incidents, the only one I remember is the Persian Empire one, where he also accused me of defending someone (someone I had never even heard of that time, and I don't recall who it was), but I don't think there's any diffs for that one.

In summary, I can confirm both that Ottava has engaged in canvassing, and that he seems to confound disagreement with enmity (or at least that those who disagree with him must be friends of his enemies).

Ottava Rima approaches his battles strategically, and is unlikely to stick to any voluntary restrictions

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Ottava also seems to be employing "anything goes" strategies to win these battles.

Others have commented on his "Philosophy" subpage, but it's also worth pointing out in the evidence section that he made quite a show of leaving Wikipedia when it became all too clear both that this case would actually be accepted and that it would very much be focusing on his own behavior. He returned only after the acceptance count made the case inevitable even without his involvement.

I have seen this pattern from him elsewhere, but in particular something he has repeated both on this very page and elsewhere has confused me a bit: namely his assertion that he has "resigned from Wikiversity", apparently because of something I said to him. The confusing thing is that he has not, in fact, made any "statement of resignation" on Wikiversity (or even on our IRC channel, as far as I've heard), much less made a request at meta (I asked about that here (diffs to wv linked in that post if anyone's interested), but he didn't respond. In fact, he used his tools a few days ago (an "admin oversight" of the diffs that outed him, which is not at all problematic since he is as far as we're concerned an admin in good standing there). While of course Ottava's status on Wikiversity has nothing to do with his status on Wikipedia, I'm having a hard time understanding why he keeps saying (on Wikipedia) that he has resigned on Wikiversity, while at the same time using sysop tools on Wikiversity to take care of a problem related to an issue on Wikipedia.

In summary, Ottava does not seem willing to stick to a commitment to "back down", but will only back down if doing so seems to serve his strategic goals in the battles he has been waging here.

Evidence presented by Akhilleus

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Insulting scholars

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In this diff, Ottava Rima calls Barbara Reynolds, a distinguished scholar, a "hack writer." This is arguably a BLP violation--small beer by Wikipedia standards, but still. In this diff from the same discussion, Ottava further insults Reynolds' scholarly accomplishments, and then claims that "hack writer" is not a pejorative term. (Not a BLP violation at all, then! My bad!) Is Ottava's understanding of "hack writer" defective, or is he being disingenuous? No idea.

Claims of meatpuppetry/tag-teaming/inappropriate collaboration

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Ottava likes to claim that I'm the meatpuppet of Folantin, Moreschi, or whoever else heads the enemies list at the moment, but has never provided any real evidence of meatpuppetry, tag-teaming, or other inappropriate collusion. And as he's said himself, "alleging meatpuppetry without evidence is incivil."

  • of Antandrus, Dbachmann, Folantin, Fullstop, and Itsmejudith: [216]
  • of "Jehochman, Moreschi, Folantin, Akhilleus, Antandrus, Bishonen, etc...": [220]

Other meatpuppets and plots to destroy the wiki

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Evidence presented by Art LaPella

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Did you know

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In his defense, Ottava cites "over 400 edits to Wikipedia talk:Did you know". He didn't mention that his edits to that talk page include some (though not always, and not recently) of the same kind of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT confrontations described on the rest of this page. This donnybrook is an example. Art LaPella (talk) 23:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Davemeistermoab

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My sincere apologies. I have known about this Arbcom case for some time. However, real life concerns have severely restricted my free time.

Unprovoked incivility

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My first encounter with Ottava was at my rfa. Ottava did find some instances where I had made sloppy mistakes in citing sources. I am grateful that he found them and I have gone back and fixed the big ones. However, most of his charges were nothing more than libel. The most bizarre was his re-definition of the word plagiarism, after several people challenged his accusations. He rebutted by saying he had the authority to accuse others of anything he wanted because of the credentials given him by the "legendary people I studied under". (Note: this is referring to graduate advisers, which was being discussed at the time)

That was our first encounter, we've had several since. For the record, I've received many requests to investigate civility incidents and issue a block. I have responded to most with something like, "while I agree his conduct is terrible, I'm not convinced this rises to the level of a block. Keep me posted if the conduct gets worse."

My most recent encounter was at my last nomination for FA. I can summarize it as follows:

  • Ottava - this article is terrible, you haven't fixed a thing since I reviewed it last time
  • Dave - You've never reviewed this article, you must have it confused with another one
  • Ottava - It has serious problems, you state X that isn't in the source cited. Just like last time.
  • Dave - I was summarizing paragraph X of section Y of the source, it's there.
  • Ottava - Oh. Say this isn't bad....

I am grateful for Ottava's review, once we got past the above dialog there was good that came out of it. I mention it to show that Ottava has never atoned for his prior conduct, nor apparently even has any regrets.

Hope this helps, I do not envy the position of the Arbcom members on this case, it is a tough call. Dave (talk) 17:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by {You}

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before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

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Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

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