Stophidingbehind

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Hello, Stophidingbehind, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! PATH SLOPU 12:19, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

May 2019

Please do not add commentary, your own point of view, or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles, as you did to Barrett Watten. Doing so violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and breaches the formal tone expected in an encyclopedia. Thank you. Jeb³_{Talk at me here} 14:21, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Hello, I'm RickinBaltimore. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Barrett Watten, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Barrett Watten, you may be blocked from editing. Jeb³_{Talk at me here} 14:28, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Rick and Jebcubed, I've responded to your concerns on your talk pages. The edits made were done so with a neutral point of view and the only referenced citation was to the official website of a relevant party to this biography. Please write further if you have further concerns.

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Barrett Watten; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Points to note:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made;
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Jeb³_{Talk at me here} 15:13, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. When you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion (but never when editing articles), such as at User talk:Jebcubed, please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either:

1. Add four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment, or
2. With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button located above the edit window.

This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when.

Thank you. General Ization ^Talk 15:37, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Stophidingbehind reported by User:General Ization (Result: ). Thank you. General Ization ^Talk 15:43, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Dear General Ization, I apologize for the "edit warring." After reading your suggestions, I have reached out to Oksar and "History" to seek consensus.

One other note: is there a best-way to contact users (such as Jebcubed and Rick) without editing their talk pages? I did not mean to "ping" and step on anyone's toes. Thanks! --Stophidingbehind (talk) 16:00, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't mind if you reach out to me on my page to discuss this, though if I can recommend the BEST place to discuss these citations is on the talk page of the article itself. RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:05, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions

Hi Stophidingbehind, before you make any further edits to articles about living persons, please read WP:BLP, which is our policy on writing about living persons, and the following "discretionary sanctions" alert. Many thanks, SarahSV ^(talk) 21:05, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Notice that you are now subject to an arbitration enforcement sanction

The following sanction now applies to you:

You are topic banned from editing about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages.

You have been sanctioned for disruptive editing and serious violations of the BLP policy. It appears that you're editing as part of a campaign against a particular person.

This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Editing of Biographies of Living Persons#Final decision and, if applicable, the procedure described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.

You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:26, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

• Please re-read the above message before you edit Talk:Barrett Watten again. —C.Fred (talk) 18:07, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

C.Fred Thank you for the reminder. I remain confused as to why I've been banned; the last edit I made on that page followed every suggestion by you and other admins and I do not believe you could say anything I added violates any Wikipedia policy. I am very frustrated by this censorship, especially considering I am not the only editor who has added the same information and googling IP addresses tells me those other editors are from all across North America. I have read and understand the "do no harm" policy, but at this point I believe there's something much closer to consensus in adding the information than keeping it off Wikipedia, and the information isn't contentious, but simply a reporting of relevant information to a biography. --Stophidingbehind (talk) 18:14, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

The policy in play is WP:BLP. As the header on Talk:Barrett Watten states, biographies of living people have been a longstanding area of conflict and contentious editing on Wikipedia, so administrators are given more latitude to deal with editors that run afoul of guidelines. The twofold problem is that you were adding material that was not backed up with sources that could be readily verified, and that you kept re-adding the material when it was challenged, rather than working toward a consensus at the talk page. (There was a secondary issue of undue weight: the material was not significant enough to go in the intro of the article.)

You note the number of IPs that have edited the article. I also point out that one of the sources cited in an edit (possibly not your edit) was a blog where grad students posted their stories, and one of the editors that has been involved on the page is BelieveGradStudents. Another user indicated that the situation is being announced on Twitter. Frankly, there are some admins who would look at that, plus the usernames that suggest an agenda, and determine that this is a concerned effort by one or more editors to slant the article—and block every user or IP who attempted to add the allegations. I think that's a heavy-handed course of action, but I also have concerns that some of these new arrivals are not as neutral as they hold out to be.

If you were not topic-banned, I'd suggest putting out a call for an uninvolved, experienced editor who has access to the Chronicle and could verify the claims in the source. That would add another voice to the situation—and one that is aware of Wikipedia policies and knows how to work within them. However, because of your topic ban, your best (and frankly, only) course of action is to stay well away from the article for the time being. Find a set of articles that don't involve living people and work to improve them. Ask for help before you edit if you're worried about running afoul of your topic ban or some other policy. That will give us a track record that you do get the policies so we can, at some undetermined point in the future, review and (hopefully) remove your ban. —C.Fred (talk) 18:38, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

C.Fred thanks for that detailed explanation. I guess my one point of contention is that the information is readily verifiable and that I made a specific effort to give less undue weight to the allegations. I do hope someone is willing to be this experienced editor willing to un-censor this (the Chronicle article is easily found on social media if you look for it), even if that editor is not you, because hiding factual information is a far more contentious act that expressing it.--Stophidingbehind (talk) 18:47, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

One other important note. I feel that this conversation on your talk page is useful to your understanding of your ban and its limits, so I do not feel that anything here violates your ban. However, soliciting other editors to edit on your behalf does violate it. I strongly suggest you withdraw this comment. —C.Fred (talk) 19:07, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Final warning

The only reason I'm not blocking you indefinitely is that you reverted your request that someone else make the edit, and that C.Fred seems supportive of the idea that you be allowed to develop a track record in other areas. This is therefore a final warning that any further breach of the topic ban will result in an indefinite block and the removal of talk-page access. This means you must not write about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, and that includes here on your talk page. Please read Wikipedia:Topic ban.

Wikipedia should not be used to wage campaigns against individuals. If you had a biography on Wikipedia, you would not want people—especially a new account, perhaps someone you'd been in dispute with in real life—making these kinds of edits about you.

You are allowed to appeal this ban at the arbitration-enforcement noticeboard or administrators' noticeboard. If you do appeal, be careful not to repeat the allegations or link to blog posts; if you do, you're likely to be blocked. Anyone responding there will be able to read the page history for themselves. Many thanks, SarahSV ^(talk) 00:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)