User:Alastair Haines/a fair bit of evidence

The first RfAr made three findings of fact against Alastair: edit-warring (6 diffs offered as evidence), incivility (6 diffs offered as evidence), and "inappropriate removal of comments" (2 diffs offered as evidence).

The first four diffs, alleged to constitute edit-warring, are part of a series of edits from 3 and 4 of August 2008. The sequence can be scrutinised by starting with the following diff, where editor "L" made changes that were essentially reordering, but also removed verifiable content of a simplistic grammatical nature.[1] Talk page commentary from all parties continues throughout the main page edit sequence.[2] It includes explicit 1RR, 2RR and 3RR warnings from Alastair to "L". After 3 reverts, there was a fourth from "L", which Alastair did not revert a fourth time himself. SkyWriter reverted, however. "L" went on to 4RR, 5RR and even a 6th RR. Returning to the page, Alastair did not revert, but reported "L"s reversions to the edit-war noticeboard: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive77#User:LisaLiel reported by User:Alastair Haines (Result: 24 hours). The result of the notification was a 24 hour block on "L", and no actions against or warnings to Alastair or SkyWriter. Since the text was still lacking the content removed by "L", Alastair eventually restored it. "L" followed up with an edit that made modifications without again unilaterally removing the verifiable simple grammatical content that had been defended by two other editors. Neither Alastair nor SkyWriter reverted "L"s new edit, which they agreed was fair and helpful.

It needs to be clearly noted that the edit sequence was not a matter of Alastair insisting on introducing text, however valuable it may or may not have been, rather it was a matter of restoring almost trivially verifiable grammatical information, for which no attempt at consensus for removal had been made. Alastair simply acted to uphold policy, acted within it, asked for assistance, and was supported both by another editor and by uninvolved administrators. In short, the first four diffs offered as evidence of Alastair edit warring at Gender of God do not demonstrate any such thing.

This incident is particularly important, since it was on the basis of a question raised at ANI regarding possible collusion between Alastair and Skywriter, that a previously involved adminstrator decided to escalate conflict resolution at Gender of God to an RfAr. Yet, the RfAr clearly made no finding that SkyWriter had either colluded or edit warred. Clearly, Alastair could not be colluding either. In other words, the grounds for the RfAr as some kind of incremental process against Alastair were dismissed. However, it is bizarre both that Alastair's edits, which had passed scrutiny at the 3RR noticeboard, and actually demonstrated restraint, were presented as evidence of edit warring.

At the time of the RfAr, Alastair had made more than 12,000 mainspace edits, including several thousand in articles on controversial topics. In two years of editing he had never been identified as an editor who edit-wars. Yet the arbitrators deemed it worth restricting him to a single revert per week, as though there were some pattern of breaching Wikipedia editing principles.