In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: ~~~~), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 00:27, 1 May 2024 (UTC).
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User:Sarah777 has been acting inappropiately with respect to British and Irish roads. They have appeared to show bias (possibly unintentionally), ignored normal methods of forming consensus and engaged in edit warring especially when it comes to making moves, been disruptive to make a point, has failed to insure her facts are correct both at WP:AN/I has, debatabely, not been WP:CIVIL.
Sarah777 has repeatedly argued that Nxx Irish roads are the primary topic, without giving any reason for primality, despite other Nxx roads existing which even a cursory glance shows have at least a possibility of being at least as notable. In stark contrast they have automatically assumed that British motorways aren't the primary topic and here has argued for all such pages to be disambiguated. Additionally they use the argument that an Irish road should be the primary topic as it has been there a long time (despite this not being support by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) but ignore tis when it comes to British motorways.
Sarah777 has repeatedly moved articles without gaining consensus. In many cases it was obvious that these moves would be controversial given previous moves. Recently she has also directly asked an admin to make a move claiming an Irish road was clearly 'the primary topic' despite there being other roads with the same name and which given previous debates was clearly going to be controversial and so a requested move discussion should have been started.
Sarah777 has engaged in edit warring when it comes to moving pages. Specifically this has normally occured when a editor has reverted one of her moves as non-controversial (as the revert part of the bold, revert, discuss cycle) whereupon she has just made the move again without any attempt to form consensus despite the move obviously being controversial.
A user reverted one of Sarah777 moves to restore the status quo and start a discussion on the issue. That editor then disambiguated all links to the page (they had remained incorrectly disambigauted for some time). Although the timing of this was somewhat suspect disambiguating links can only be a good thing for the encyclopedia as it makes life easier for the reader. Sarah777 then reverted all these changes as 'issue under discussion' thus making life more difficult for the reader. When informed that a user intended to reverse her reverts she shouted at the user not to do so despite giving no good reason.
Sarah777 started a WP:AN/I thread without ensuring her facts were correct. She said a user ( User:Dpmuk was an admin when they were not and also said that user was, she believed, a regular British roads editor, despite already having been informed that this was not the case. It would have been quick and easy to confirm these facts.
Sarah777 regularly accuses users of showing a British bias despite no evidience for this and often for no other reason than being British. Additionally they have unnecessarily sworn and shouted at ither editors.
Sarah777 agrees to
It seems to make more sense just to post a link to Sarah777's talk page, and some article talkpages, as otherwise there'd probably be upwards of 20 diffs - lots of editors have discussed this a lot. A lot of this is also caovered in the "causes of concern" section above. I know this isn't ideal but I'm also trying to finish this RfC quickly as I've already announced on WP:AN/I that I'm starting one. I only had the diffs left to fill in so doing it quickly has in no way affected what I've written.
See above.
Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute.
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Additional users endorsing this cause for concern.
I have decided to add this here rather than above as another editor has already certified based on what I wrote above. When writing the above I concentrated on the conduct that was at issue and did not express my personal views, for example, as to the reasoning for it. Hence I include this below.
I sympatise with Sarah777's view and can understand why this whole situation is annoying for her. I agree that policy on this issue, namely in trying to chose a primary topic, may not be best suited to this situation - personally I agree that when two roads have the same name we should nearly always disambiguate (exceptions would have to overwhelmingly by the primary topic and be overwhelmingly supported) but as, in my opinion, this goes against policy I have not argued for it as I feel policy would need to change first. I can also understand their concerns about British point of view pushing, which in my opinion, has been happening and as pointed out by User:BrownHairedGirl below it is probably easier for British 'editors' to potentially win a discussion to their numerical suppority.
That said that does not in any way condone their actions. In particular I find their de-disambiguating of links to be unacceptable as this made life more difficult for our readers. If they had either not undertaken this course of action or realised that it was unacceptable I would not have felt the need to start this RfC/U as although I feel many of her other actions have been wrong I do not feel they were sufficietly serious to warrant an RfC/U. Given the background to the whole situation and how this could easily wind someone up, I suspect that many of the actions were probably done in the heat of the moment and without properly thinking them through and therefore instead of an RfC/U I'd have been happy dealing with these issues by normal discussion.
BrownHairedGirl has also pointed out to me that this RfC/U could be seen as picking on Sarah777 and I can certainly see how they could see it that way (it was a concern of mine when I started this RfC/U). I would point out that I believe that several users have acted inappropiately in this dispute and, in my opinion, several are close to having an RfC/U opened on them, and would even go so far as to say I'd endorse disputes on many editors (be they "Irish or British") if someone else was to start an RfC/U - I'd even be willing to endorse an RfC/U started by Sarah777 if they are so inclined and it has merit (and I suspect it probably would). As stated above the de-dismabiguating is the action that crossed the line for me and is the only reason I've started an RfC/U on Sarah777 rather than any other users. In my opinion several users have shown bias, ignored normal methods of forming consensus, edit warred and been uncivil. If there was an RfC/Multiple User then I would have started one, unfortunately RfC/Us concerns one user why RfCs aren't really for user conduct.
Given this whole sorry state of affairs I feel a seperate RfC (normal) should be started to discuss the naming of road articles in a far wider sense. Hoepefully by getting a far wider view we would avoid partisan views and arrive at a situation that suits everyone.
Users who endorse this summary:
"Sarah777 has repeatedly argued that Nxx Irish roads are the primary topic, without giving any reason for primality, despite other Nxx roads existing which even a cursory glance shows have at least a possibility of being at least as notable. In stark contrast they have automatically assumed that British motorways aren't the primary topic and here has argued for all such pages to be disambiguated. Additionally they use the argument that an Irish road should be the primary topic as it has been there a long time (despite this not being support by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) but ignore tis when it comes to British motorways."
This opening RfC statement is such a travesty, such an inversion of the facts, such a total ignoring of all the points I've made that I am simply not going to reply to it.
Users who endorse this summary:
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.
Sarah777's conduct has been inappropriate, but it is the product of understandable frustration rather than a desire to disrupt
I initially endorsed this RFC because I believe it raises important issues, and that it is broadly accurate so far as it goes. However, I have withdrawn that endorsement because I am concerned that by problematising only one editor in a wider dispute, it is likely to exacerbate tensions without resolving the wider problem. I would therefore encourage Dpmuk to withdraw this RFC and consider instead a wider RFC on the substantive issue of naming ambiguous road articles, and whether/when there should be a "primary topic".
I agree that Sarah777's conduct has been problematic, and that she has gone about things in the wrong way. However, it's clear from any reading of what has happened that she has lost her temper, and I think it's important to understand why a reasonable person may lose their temper in such circumstances.
The substantive issue is whether articles on ambiguously named roads should disambiguated, or whether one of them should be selected as a primary topic. The community appears not to have reached a wider consensus on the notion of a primary topic, and the result is that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is currently very vague on the criteria to be applied (see permalink to version at time of writing). It includes the sentence "If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)" ... and that's a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation -- it gives some editors the hope that a dispute will default to disambiguation, and other the expectation that the word "may" makes it legitimate to resolve a dispute as a "no consensus" in which a current primary topic remains at that position.
This produces bad outcomes, because it lends itself to a majoritarian (rather than a consensus) form of decision making.
In the case of roads, Sarah777 is concerned that wherever there is any ambiguity relating to the name of Irish roads, British editors insist on disambiguation ... whereas in respect of British roads, the same editors support making a British road the primary topic if they can possibly make a case for doing so. Because of the numerical dominance of British editors over Irish, this can lead to a form of systemic bias in which British roads are much more likely to be primary topics than Irish ones, regardless of the substantive merits of each case.
I agree wholeheartedly with Sarah's analysis of the problem. I do not agree with her prefered solution or with her conduct, but I ask that anyone looking at her conduct in this dispute examine very carefully the substance of her repeated complaints.
Rather than single out Sarah777 for reproach, I believe that it would be far more productive to try to actually resolve the substantive problem here, by taking a co-ordinated approach.
Roads are a particularly contentious case of disambiguation, for two reasons. First, the naming formula of a letter+number combination is used in many countries, and many countries share the same style (N1, A3, M7, etc) -- so this means that ambiguity does not occur with a country, but rather between countries. Secondly, major roads cover a large geographical area, so they end up on the watchlists of a large number of editors, as well as being within the scope of many wikiprojects. This brings a lot of editors into any RM discussion, many of them with a sense of ownership of one of the ambiguous topics, and who may not be familiar with the wider issues around disambiguation.
When those structural problems are thrown into the arena of British-Irish disputes (with an 800-year history of conflict), the result is a perfect storm such as we have just seen.
Unless we have a clearer framework for resolving these disputes, then I believe that the conflicts will continue, and that merely sanctioning Sarah777 (or any other individual) will do nothing to settle this issue. It may actually make things worse, because we have already had a problem of involved British admins using their admin tools (or threatening to use them) in ways which favour only one side of these disputes, and singling out one individual will just repeat that problem.
My preferred solution to this is simply to make a general rule that where two roads in different countries share the same name, the primary topic should be a disambiguation page. Any other approach leads to all sorts of value judgements being applied, because the suggested evidence at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is far too open to selective interpretation. Google hits vary massively depending on how the search is constructed, and counting the number of internal links tells us nothing about the actual significance of a topic -- its measures the extent to which Wikipedia editors have linked to a subject, and that is a perfect example of the problems addressed by WP:CSB.
Alternatively, if that suggestion is a step too far, then we could at least improve on the current vagueness by clarifying that a primary topic is one "where there is unambiguous evidence from multiple sources that one topic is significantly more important to readers than all other topics with which it is ambiguous". By explicitly setting a very high threshold for choosing a primary topic, we could avoid a lot of these disputes.
AFAICS, The Oxford DNB disambiguates all ambiguous names, and does not use present the reader with a "primary topic" where the name is ambiguous. If that works for a respected publication like the DNB, why can't we use a similar solution in a contentious area?
One of the problems here is that many editors seem to be unaware of the ways in which a disambiguation page at the primary topic location helps both readers and editors. For readers, it presents them with a short and simple menu of options, from which it's straightforward to select the right one ... but readers are also massively assisted by the way in which full disambiguation assists editors. Internal links to disambiguation pages are identified by bots and listed as a problem needing attention, and at they can then be easily fixed by any editor using navigation popups. The process of identifying misplaced links is massively more difficult when the dab page is not at the primary topic, and each one is much harder to fix. Most of this dispute could be avoided if editors placed a higher priority on fixing those ambiguities than on trying to defend the importance of "their" road.
Users who endorse this summary:
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.
The primacy stuff should be thrown out the window. All the Irish motorways article titles should have (Ireland) next to them & all the England motorways article titles should have (England) next to them [seeing as there's Scotland motorways using (Scotland)].
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In this roads dispute, which she kicked off way back when on 7 September with this edit, Sarah had a choice. Either:
or
Sarah's behavioural problems are ingrained, and have never been sufficiently corrected, which is why she is always going to choose option two instead of option one. I fear this Rfc will be a waste of time, given its voluntary nature and reliance on Sarah realising she could be wrong. Infact, its way off base because it starts with the assumption that she doesn't know half the time that how she conducts herself is wrong, and just does it anyway. I mean, seriously, we're assuming she doesn't know CIVIL / 3RR / POINT by now?.
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Good contribution does not excuse bad behaviour. Applying principles you do not agree with in a provocative manner is anywhere between unhelpful and disruptive.
I mark this as "outside", since I seem less involved than BHG, and approximately as involved or less so than the two outside views immediately above.
The recent activity on the roads was summed up in this diff. This can be most easily read as:
At best, this is a serious misapprehension that Wikipedia is bound to uphold its precedents. At worst, it's escalating from merely stating a disagreement to illustrating it colorfully.
It's clear from Sarah777's history that she would rather ignore or confront than discuss (as evidenced by moving pages after having been reverted, even moving pages after other users had been reverted). It's clear that she blames some "British majoritarian POV" for her not getting her way (I understood the majority to be American and German). It's disheartening to see real-world conflict being played out on Wikipedia, even more so to see it introduced needlessly. It's downright sickening to see it brought up as an excuse for disruptive behaviour. Being frustrated is not carte blanche. We expect good contributions and good behaviour. Sarah777 has a long history of solid article contributions, but this does not excuse their behaviour of late.
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