Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/India Against Corruption

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Welcome to mediation

This mediation will work best if we can establish a climate of collaboration. Participants each begin with different points of view. As mediator, my job is to facilitate discussion and assist participants to determine the best course of action to resolve the issues in dispute.

How can that work? If we can develop a framework in which you find ways to present particular aspects of the subject—even though they may not be your particular viewpoint—we are likely to find a resolution. To that end, if we can agree on some guidelines, this could produce a better editing environment and, perhaps even a better article. I will suggest some guidelines for discussion.

These guidelines have been found useful for mediation. They are a subset Wikipedia policies and are based on the talk page guidelines. If you agree to abide by these guidlines, I will start by posing some questions to each of you. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, let me know. Sunray (talk) 06:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC) Would participants please signify agreement by signing below with ~~~~?:

• Be civil
• Focus on content, not the contributor
• Observe content policies, especially WP:NPOV and WP:VER
• Make decisions by consensus.

I agree with, and will follow, the above guidelines to the best of my ability.

• bobrayner (talk) 06:37, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
• DES ^(talk) 09:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
• "I" agree to follow the above guidelines as far as possible. We have some issues with the WP:VER policy which shall need to be clarified during the scope of this mediation. We recognise that the Wikipedia "community" intends to protect the integrity of the project, and say it is in the interests of all parties to this content dispute that the final information published for this article accurately informs the general/lay readers about this topic, while directing more serious researchers to other (wider) sources of information about "IAC". 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 15:09, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment Sitush is possibly in hospital [1] and hasn't been editing much in the past few days. As it is almost certain he'd agree with the guidelines Sunray's suggested, do we proceed with the preliminaries or do we wait for him to resume ? We have no opinion either way and will respect consensus. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 19:40, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

While we are waiting to hear from Sitush, would you be able to tell me more about the issues you have with WP:VER? Also, do you have a name we could call you by? Sunray (talk) 01:59, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi. You can call us IAC or "HRA1924". The central issues for us are as follows:-

We are "insiders" for the IAC movement since 2006 and also participated in the Indian anti-corruption protests from 2010-2012. We are the only persons authorised to use the brand name "India Against Corruption" by the "India Against Corruption" organisation (which unimpeachably - from primary sources - exists since 1973).

For various reasons some persons began misusing the name "India Against Corruption" from Dec 2010 to misrepresent themselves as "India Against Corruption" and ran a high pitched media campaign which also collected huge amounts of unaccounted donations for this WP:HOAX. They roped in some prominent Indians to endorse their campign. Despite that from 6th Feb 2011 these prominent persons stopped using the name "India Against Corruption" some sections of the media continued to describe the subsequent protests by those prominent persons as "India Against Corruption" whereas the more responsible sections chose to call the subsequent protests as Team Anna's Jan Lokpal campaign.

So our problem with WP:VER is that it perpetuates the HOAX based on bogus and secondary sources which don't / won't stand up to scrutiny in the face of primary evidence. IAC's definition and understanding of "reliable" differs from Wikipedia's.

The cause of action for this content dispute is from around 23 Nov 2013 when Sitush "merged" 2 distinct articles [2] and [3] and found a few bogus secondary sources (supposedly scholarly) to make the following disparaging claims about IAC a) That Team Anna is IAC, and Anna is/was leader of IAC etc. b) That IAC/Team Anna is a rightwing communal movement c) That Sarbajit Roy took over IAC in Sept 2013 after Team Anna left d) That IAC came up to demand Lok Pal Bill etc. etc. Each and every one of these claims is false as are the sources cited. Some controversial external links to perpetuate the hoax / canard that IAC is a communal rightwing movement were also added at around this time.

Accordingly we suggest that a good starting point is if this article is restored to Bobrayner's version of 25.Nov and the Team Anna article be restored to Sitush's 23 Nov versions diffed above.2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 04:37, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. One thing that we cannot do in finding a solution is deviate from Wikipedia policies. We will need to take a look at the sources you would propose to use. Since you have summarized the issues from your point of view, I will invite the other participants to also make brief opening statements. Sunray (talk) 16:55, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

While we can certainly wait for Sitush to recover to explain Wikipedia policies, please also appreciate that IAC as an orgaisation / movement is being continually libelled and harmed by the present article which is usually #1 or #2 on search engine results. The present article has emboldened all sorts of people assocated with "Team Anna" to misrepresent themselves as IAC in the media, and it is straining IAC's resources to get the media.stories corrected For instance it has taken 12 days to get this [4] deleted here [5]. A similar rash of stories like this [6] have broken out ever since Team Anna was merged into this article, as Wikipedia is informally used to validate the bogus claim that IAC and Team Anna are/were one and the same. We therefore urge Wikipedia editors to immediately revert to the pre-merge versions indicated above as a courtesy to IAC while the matter is mediated, or alternatively prominently embed a template for our concern that this article is about a HOAX.2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 09:43, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Would either of the other participants be able to comment on IAC's remarks, above? Sunray (talk) 03:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Dear Sunray, Bob, DES etc. You simply cannot appreciate the damage which Wikipedia's present article is doing to our movement ever since Sitush created and merged Team Anna into it. We again request you (ie. Sunray) to please revert to the unmerged articles whose diffs we indicated earlier while we separately resolve these issues via mediation. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 11:38, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi folks, I'm back. Sorry for messing you about but tumours take priority ;) I'll likely be on- and off-Wiki for a while as I recover but I don't see any problem with us attempting to move this forward. - Sitush (talk) 15:21, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

It's good to have you back. I wish you a smooth recovery. This thread will still be here when you're ready. bobrayner (talk) 15:59, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sitush, good to see you back. Would you be able to comment on IAC's statements of 21 & 30 January? You could do that in the form of an opening statement, below if you wish. Would other participants also make opening statements now, please? Sunray (talk) 18:34, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Dear Sunray, We have been every civil and patient throughout this exercise. And yet we get faced by an outrageous comment from Sitush that IAC is a "tuppeny halfpenny pressure group". This is not at all conducive to mediation. IAC would like to inform Sitush that the Parliament of India has acknowledged IAC as IAC when we appeared before it, Parliament did not accord the same recognition to Mr. Anna Hazare [7] 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 12:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Opening statements

Referring to the contributor as "IAC" is likely to cause confusion here, I'm afraid. The difficulty with their protracted claims is primarily one of original research, especially synthesis, and of lack of sources. The IAC organisation to which contributor IAC refers has apparently come, gone, come again etc, using different names at different times, and is tantamount to an "underground" operation in terms of how it projects itself in sources. This makes sourcing the contributor's claims difficult and generally reliant on self-published sources etc. I've not yet seen any policy-compliant support for the IAC contributor's belief and thus even if the organisation was the same at the protest movement that received massive worldwide coverage, there would be a notability issue.

This may well be a situation where the "verifiability, not truth" maxim applies. That might be unfortunate but, obviously, within the scope of Wikipedia nobody knows. - Sitush (talk) 08:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The genesis of this content dispute is when Sitush unilaterally "merged" "Team Anna" into this article around 23rd Nov. 2013 without discussion. The synthesis that Team Anna=IAC was carried out by Sitush. IAC does not claim that it organised the protest movements which received massive media coverage or that we were ever a part of so-called "Team Anna". We are here to get 4 main points corrected a) That IAC and Team Anna are 2 different entities. b) That IAC is not a rightwing communal movement as depicted c) That Sarbajit Roy's team took over IAC campaign in Oct-Nov 2012 from Arvind Kejriwal team d) That IAC does not support / propose Lokpal Bills but opposes it. We also object to statements by Sitush that IAC projects itself in sources. IAC does not project itself. That IAC does not project itself does not mean that IAC is an underground operation. These are all prejudicial statements to distract from the issues.

IAC has asked for the paragraph by Ramchandra Guha to be deleted [8]The paragraph is from an essay by Guha exclusively about Anna Hazare and was orginally published in the Telegraph newspaper on 27.Aug.2011 as an opinion piece "A patriach for the nation" [9]. The original piece does not refer to "India Against Corruption" at all. Yet the way Sitush has synthesised this piece implies that IAC and Anna are one and the same. IAC reiterates that we are not part of Anna Hazare's movement and 3rd party opinions on Anna Hazare should be restricted to Anna Hazare and not applied to us. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 04:59, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

News sources that use the Team Anna and India Against Corruption labels interchangeably include NDTV, The Economic Times, ditto, Hindustan Times, Firstpost, India Today, Tehelka, IBN, Asian Age, Daily Bhaskar and the BBC. I could go on: there are thousands of examples.

Prior to being redirected, the Team Anna article looked like this - basically, a list and one that duplicated much that was already in the India Against Corruption article. Prior to my rewrite, the IAC article looked like this, comprising mostly unreliable sources and looking rather like a political manifesto. It had been subject to a lot of POV edits and sockpuppeting etc. We have articles such as 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement and 2012 Indian anti-corruption movement that have consistently (and copiously) connected Hazare to the movement that is described in the IAC article subsequent to my rewrite. - Sitush (talk) 09:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

This is exactly the sort of sourcing which IAC takes gross objection to. Let us take them up a) NDTV - it refers to Anna's Dec 2011 MMRDA fast in Mumbai and a letter supposedly sent to the PMO in name of IAC. Firstly, the MMRDA meeting was not organised by IAC but by "Janhit Morcha" and there is a division bench judgment of the Mumbai High Court on this. During the court proceedings it was clarified that IAC had nothing to do with that fast meeting [10], [11] which petition was filed by some Jagrut Nagrok Munch which claimed to be affiliated to IAC and after the judgment against them said they would apply through Kejriwal's registered NGO PCRF [The Mumbai ground has been booked in the name of Public Cause Research Foundation. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/article311238.ece?] and the letter was issued from Team Anna. In any case nobody is named in these news items as representing IAC officially. It is only always some unamed "IAC volunteer" who is being quoted. What is the credibility of such anonymous stories ? The next story from Economic Times only contains IAC in the headline - the article is about Anna and Team Anna. The Hindustan Times story again is not about IAC specifically, the court case was not about IAC but about the personal NGOs run by members of Team Anna. The Delhi High Court order does not refer to IAC at all. All these kinds of news stories do not help Wikipedia or Sitush because till Aug 2012 the arrangments between HRA and Team Arvind for usage of IAC name for the anti-corruption campaign were not known to others in the campaign or to the media. Such kind of ill-informed and factually wrong news stories may be a dime-a-dozen. The essentials are when / where did either A) Team Anna formally claim they are "India Against Corruption" or B) "India Against Corruption" formally claim they are Team Anna ? Team Anna certainly didn't claim to be "India Against Corruption" before Parliament when they all appeared before the Standing Committee for Lokpal Bill in 2011 and here is the official report of it. This should be the last word on this topic [12]. The point is not if a hundred wikipedia aricles connect Hazare to IAC, the question is where does Hazare connect himself to IAC, and after he does so - say in Oct-Nov 2012 when he claimed the IAC name, why does he resile and withdraw ? All these things are very clearly explained in IAC's website and Sitush would be well advised to read it - http://indiaagainstcorruption.org.in/ 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 10:30, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

... and this is the point that you are consistently missing. Per WP:V and WP:NPOV, we have to balance our articles in accordance with the verifiable weight of sources. By many thousands, the sources refer to Hazare, Team Anna and the India Against Corruption "movement" over some tuppence-ha'penny pressure group with a seemingly tortuous, mostly self-documented history. It is not necessary for us to determine when X or Y first used a name when the weight of reliable secondary sources so massively favours one usage. As I said above, this may well be a WP:VNT issue but that is just tough luck: Wikipedia has its policies and we must abide by them. - Sitush (talk) 11:33, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

...The secondary sources are bogus. For instance the very first NDTV source you quote. Here is the actual Bombay High Court judgment [13] does it say anything about India Against Corruption. It was filed (as we said) by Jagrut Nagrik Munch and yet all the media stories are about IAC said this, IAC did that , IAC will go to court !!! Whereas the IBNlive story starts off as "Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday told Anna Hazare and India Against Corruption (IAC) that MMRDA cannot be compelled to give venue to them for their three-day protest fast for a strong Lokpal Bill from December 27. The two-judge division bench of justices PB Majmudar and Mridula Bhatkar observed that the court could not come to the conclusion that IAC is the kind of organisation that will be considered by the MMRDA for subsidy" the actual judgment says something entirely different. So what would you have your readers believe - made up secondary stories by anonymous tuppney-hapenny people maligning IAC or authentic primary documents (like judgments and parliamentary reports) from unimpeachable organisations like courts and legislatures. We are not here to see all your bogus sources - focus on the ones in the article - like Ramachandra Guha - we have clearly shown you that Guha's opinion piece did not refer to IAC and yet you came up with 3 OR phrases in that paragraph to say that IAC was Anna - now where did that come from and why is it not OR ? If you insist that Anna = IAC or vice versa, show us an OFFICIAL source which says it and not all these dubious ones. Secondary sources have to be backed up by / based on reliable primary sources. IAC is very clearly informing you that Anna Hazare was never even a primary member of India Against Corruption - and we clearly say so on our website. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 11:57, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

It has been explained to you by several people on the article talk page - eg here - that we should not use legal rulings directly to verify statements. For example, they are primary sources and we are neither qualified to interpret them nor aware whether or not they have been superseded. Even if we allowed this ruling, it would not significantly obviate from the fact that the most common usage by far is that which is currently shown in the article. I have in the past suggested that perhaps the solution is to have a second article, covering the non-Hazare organisation - the snag with that is the lack of decent sourcing (see my link to the pre-merge version of IAC article above) and thus the likelihood that it would fail to comply with our notability guidelines. - Sitush (talk) 12:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

deindent. Dear Sitush, believe us that we truly want to respect and follow Wikipedia's policies. But IAC would equally like you to keep an open mind to appreciate that in this particular case those rules break down because there was one massive misunderstanding / coordinated hoax by a large aggregate of people who truly thought they were IAC without knowing that they weren't. Lets use this NDTV case for Anna's Dec 2011 MMRDA fast. IAC says that this fast had nothing to do with IAC and that no such letter as mentioned in the NDTV story was actually sent. (If you search you will find a version of this letter on Scribd which will expose the whole scam). Yet leading news agencies like PTI, IANS, ExpressIndia and IBNlive etc claim that it was organised by IAC, IAC booked the venue, IAC approached Bombay High Court for the venue etc etc.. IBNLive said "Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday told Anna Hazare and India Against Corruption (IAC) that MMRDA cannot be compelled to give venue to them for their three-day protest fast for a strong Lokpal Bill from December 27. The two-judge division bench of justices PB Majmudar and Mridula Bhatkar observed that the court could not come to the conclusion that IAC is the kind of organisation that will be considered by the MMRDA for subsidy". The actual judgment which is the underlying primary document makes it very clear (no need to interpret anything) that IAC was not at all involved before the Court, that Anna Hazare has no registered organisation at all and that some unknown petitioner Jagrut Nagrik Manch was then claiming in the media to be "affiliated to" IAC. So please tell us how such secondary sources support your theses that "IAC = Anna Hazare" or vice versa, We can certainly carry out similar exercises for all the 1000's of secondary sources you throw at us - but the nett result will be the same. Let me put it to you very directly - why does Anna's own website "annahazare.org" not say anything about IAC ? [14] 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 12:59, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

If the policies "break down" in this case then your options seems to be (a) seek a change in the policies, which is not a matter for mediation; (b) accept them and feel free to say whatever you wish about the legitimacy and so on of your version of IAC elsewhere in print, on the web etc; or (c) try to invoke WP:IAR, which I really doubt will work because the disparity is so great. - Sitush (talk) 13:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a damn good policy for this - WP:HOAX. The media coverage about what was claimed to be IAC was actually a hoax. So the sooner we stop treating those sources as being about IAC and instead treat them as sources about Anna Hazare / Team Anna, the sooner we can get on with editing wikipedia. At a non-official level we certainly agree (substantially) with Ramachandra Guha, we are unhappy that his opinions are being applied to us - and when IAC's own website makes much the same case as Guha does. The disparity is great because Team Anna and IAC are like chalk and cheese. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 13:29, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Its also important to discuss the Meera Nanda book. The core sentences of her book's introduction (ie the foreign edition - seeing as how the Indian one was circulating for years) are sourced from Mehboob Jeelani's article "The Insurgent". And Jeelani has got it right. The only time Team Anna called themselves "IAC" was in Dec 2010 when they (allegedly) sent that letter on LP Bill to the PMO. After that Jeelani himself always uses "Team Anna" in the rest of his article [15] 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 13:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that "we" is the correct pronoun: I'm happy to keep "editing Wikipedia" in others ways while this process continues, no problem, but you seem to be a WP:SPA and so the wider picture is probably of no great significance to you. That's fine, of course, and your concern is touching but perhaps it is a bit disingenuous to claim "we" in such circumstances.

Again, you are making claims in your latest responses without much in the way of reliable sources. If it is a hoax then find something that says it is; if IAC usually means your organisation then find a preponderance of sources that say so; if Jheelani (who?) said something that was apposite and timely (ie: not before the 2011 surge) then provide a link that actually works or find some other means to convey the information. And please note that the core issue here is not whether Team Anna called themselves IAC but what the sources determine to be IAC. - Sitush (talk) 14:02, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Again you are going round in circles. Let us stick to the sources cited in this article a) Meera Nanda b) Ramchandra Guha c) Rohini Hensman d) Bhanwat Megwanshi. A) Meera Nanda's book has 12 references in its introduction to "Team Anna", Anna Hazare etc. but only 1 to IAC. b) Ramchandra Guha's essay is all about Team Anna and Anna Hazare, the original piece has no reference to IAC- the one cited in the article has 1 reference. c) Rohini Hensmnan has 7 references to "Team Anna" and only 1 to IAC D) Bhanwar Meghanshi also has 7 references to "Team Anna" and only 1 to IAC. So it is clear that all these sources are talking about "Team Anna" and his communal / rightwing / RSS affiliated movement. SO KINDLY TAKE ALL THESE DISPARAGING REFERENCES (WHICH DO NOT DEAL WITH IAC) BACK TO THE "TEAM ANNA" ARTICLE. It is clear as daylight that your sources are about "Team Anna" and not about IAC. Finally, please confirm that you have dragged in the Hensman and Meghwanshi articles (both of which are only published on unreliable websites) because Meera Nanda specifically refers to them at item no. 16 of her introductions index as example of articles which show TEAM ANNA's communal rightwing linkages. IAC therefore now specifically accuses Sitush of POV pushing on this article to defame the IAC organisation by conflating it with Team Anna and dragging in such poor quality references. IAC is not a communal or rightwing organisation. Why are biased sources such as Meghwanshi or Hensman present in this article ? PS: the link to Mehboob Jeelani's article works. If you dont know who he is its your problem - because his article (and 2 from Revathi Lal of Tehelka) is the starting point for anyone wanting to understand how Kejriwal's IAC campaign started. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 14:55, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Please read the very first sentence of the article, which sets out the scope. I'm fed up of repeating myself but I'll try once more: if you have any evidence to suggest that your organisation is notable then your are free to someone can create an article about it, perhaps India Against Corruption (NGO). I'm saying no more here until others who have expressed an interest in the process make comment on what has gone on over the last few hours. - Sitush (talk) 15:13, 12 February 2014 (UTC) Striking and amending to "someon can" because WP:COI is clearly an issue - Sitush (talk) 15:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

"India Against Corruption (IAC) is a term that was used, along with Team Anna, to describe a movement that sought to mobilise the masses in support of their demands for a less corrupt society in India". We are very sorry to say that this statement is incorrect. There is no IAC movement as you describe, the movement you are talking about is the Jan Lokpal Bill movement. Whoever, applied the term India Against Corruption to the Jan Lokpal Bill movement did so out of ignorance or as a hoaxer or hoaxee. Such canards ought to be nipped in the bud and not spread via Wikipedia. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 15:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Where I am, Googling "India against corruption movement" gets 581,000 results while "jan lokpal bill movement" gets 44,100. I know that Google can return different outcomes around the world and without analysing those results there is scope for problems but the disparity at the summary level is massive, is it not? It would certainly suggest that an article for a movement called IAC was more likely to satisfy WP:COMMONNAME than one called Jan Lokpal Bill something-or-another. - Sitush (talk) 21:17, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

COMMONNAME applies when it comes to deciding which of multiple names be used for an article subject. In this case IAC or Team Anna or Lokpal Bill refer to different subjects. There was no such movement as you describe except the one which demanded a Lokpal Bill. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 03:49, 13 February 2014 (UTC).

... You said at 15:26 above that "There is no IAC movement as you describe, the movement you are talking about is the Jan Lokpal Bill movement". Now you are saying that the India Against Corruption movement is not the Jan Lokpal Bill movement even though the stated focus of the IAC movement (per numerous of our articles and hundreds of sources) was achievement of exactly such a bill. - Sitush (talk) 13:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

... "Now" we are saying ? What do you think we have been saying for the last 1 year ? The IAC movement is NOT the Jan Lokpal Bill movement. The IAC movement was against CWG-2010 scams. The only times the term "IAC" was applied to Jan Lokpal movement was on 01.Dec.2010 when the so-called letter to PM was circulated at the National Sports Club Press conference by Kiran Bedi, and on 30.Jan.2011 at the Ram Lila grounds New Delhi - again by Kiran Bedi. After that HRA took it up with Kejriwal very firmly and they never used it for JLP. After Feb 2011 who says the stated focus of IAC was LokPal Bill ? Read The Parliamentary Committee report no. 48 - it was Team Anna who wanted JLP not IAC - there can't be anything more conclusive than the official Parliament report. And we have already said that all the Wikipedia articles and 100's of sources are bogus or ill-informed - and we have given you more than enough proof of this. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 14:15, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

You really are not getting it. You acknowledge that there are hundreds of sources that refer to IAC in connection with the Jan Lokpal bill thing and yet you say that they should all be discounted in favour of one primary source. Wikipedia doesn't work like that, for reasons that I am tired of repeating. - Sitush (talk) 15:26, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:HOAX ".. a hoax may have received sustained media attention, been believed by thousands of people including academics, or been believed for many years. ..". IAC as an organisation and as a movement is formally asking Wikipedia to correct the lies published in the present article about IAC. We are not in the least concerned about those 100's of sources as they have no link to IAC and never contacted us before writing their stories. If Wikipedia choses to rely on such sources to defame IAC then please bring their authors to this discussion so that IAC can cross-examine them. We are not asking for one primary source to be cited - we want to know Wikipedia's primary sources, if any, which claim that IAC stood for LokPal Bill ? IAC has already provided the authentic and ultimate primary source - the official Parliamentary Committee report which says LokPal Bill was a "Team Anna" demand. This single official report trumps all the 100's of secondary sources which say otherwise. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 16:10, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

The height of nonsense

As per Sitush, IAC does not call itself as Team Anna, Team Anna also does not call itself as IAC, but if 1,000 newspapers and scholars publish that Team Anna is IAC and IAC is Team Anna and both of them are "India" then Wikipedia will publish these lies as the "truth". Is this what WP:VER means ? 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 15:07, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

At this point, I wish to make a request regarding process. I will come back to some of the above discussion later. Here's my request: From now on in discussion, when one of the participants makes an assertion, would that participant) be able to support it with an example and a link to the article or to a relevant source?

So for the statements in this section, would IAC please give one or two examples to illustrate what you are saying. IAC is contending that newspapers are reporting false information. That is hypothetical unless IAC can provide examples. So I need examples where Wikipedia has incorporated a false claim made in a newspaper. Sunray (talk) 16:20, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The distortions based on newspaper sources in the current article are of lesser signficance than the other biased sources used by Sitush -specifcally.a) Ramchandra Guha b) Meera Nanda c) Bhanwar Meghwanshi d) Rohini Hensman which have been synthesised to show that IAC is a rightwing communal organisation linked to the RSS etc and is the same as "Team Anna". Now Sitush has brought in some additional newpaper sources to buttress his argmunent that IAC and Team Anna are used interchangeably in the media. We have analysed these new newspaper sources to show that they do not hold up against primary sources. For instance the NDTV source claims IAC wrote an open letter to the PM 2 days before the MMRDA fast in Mumbai. There was no such letter and IAC was not involved in the fast or its preparations. For instance an IANS news report [16] quoted some IAC "volunteer" Piyush Bhatia saying that IAC would go to court against MMRDA's high fees. Another news report [17] actually said the court had passed observations against Anna Hazare and India Against Corruption. IAC provided Sitush the actual court judgment which makes it clear that neither Anna Hazare nor IAC were parties in the matter and there was no observations from the court, but Sitush's response is that Wikipedians are not competent to analyse legal proceedings which may have got overtaken in time. So what kind of system is this where unimpeachable primary court documents cannot be used as evidence about IAC but any kind of trashy reporting by the media is treated as reliable ? At the present time we want to focus on those 4 sources whch Sitush uses to assert that IAC is a rightwing communal organisation linked to the RSS etc and is the same as "Team Anna". We say these 4 sources are bogus to the claim made. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 17:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Regarding sourcing and general article issues, I refer you to this (especially the last two sentences) and this, since Qwyrxian (an uninvolved admin) is responding to that person and that person shared an identical position to that which you hold. Qwyrxian is not active at present, unfortunately.

Regarding your response immediately above, please can you tell me how attempting to synthesise newspaper reports with a court judgement answer (a) the issue of which usage is more common and (b) the veryWP:SYN policy that you keep referring to. You've also misunderstood what I said earlier: I didn't say something like "Wikipedians are not competent to analyse legal proceedings which may have got overtaken in time" but rather itemised the two phrases in that sentence as separate rather than conjoined issues, ie: we are not competent to judge rulings and we don't know if that one was the final word. As so often with these IAC discussion, I'm confused, I really am. - Sitush (talk) 17:46, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

IAC has never suppressed that the editor you call ":ACFI" is a part of IAC's team and was editing this article in her capacity as an IAC internn/volunteer. Under cirumstances which are not clear to her she found herself blocked after making edits to Wikipedia on 23.Nov.2013 on the IAC article Talk page. You had written the following line to her ".. You'll be blocked soon enough because you've already had a major sanctions warning, ..", how you arranged to have her blocked is one of those murky Wikipedia insider things for which Wikipedia is notorious and considering that ACFI had only edited the Talk IAC page after a gap of 5 months to protest against the inserted comment that IAC stands for Lokpal Bill..

We dont understand what you are trying to express about the synthesis of newspaper reports with court judgments. In fact we dont understand how you "prove" that IAC=Team Anna or vice versa.The reason that you and other Wikipedians find it difficult to talk to us is because we are legal professionals trying our very best not to issue "legal threats". 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 19:53, 12 February 2014 (UTC).

Sheesh. Your last first: umpteen sources use the two terms. I've given a few examples; there are more in the article; there are even more at the 2011 and 2012 protest articles that I've linked above. [20:43, 12 February 2014 (UTC) post by Sitush continued in next section].

Digression

Regarding your first point, thanks finally for confirming that you are acting at least in a meatpuppet fashion. I actually thought for a while that you were a sockpuppet but it really makes no odds: not only are you failing to understand our policies, despite numerous explanations from numerous people, but you are abusing them to achieve your ends. I'm using "you" both in the personal and collective sense here, since it is obvious that each of the IAC individuals is aware of what the other members are doing and have done here. And AcorruptionfreeIndia was herself blocked for socking. This issue has run for well over six months now & I'm not convinced it will end when this mediation process completes. If you are not willing to guarantee that then I'm going to withdraw from the process. If that causes a stalemate then so be it: I don't need the abuse, the accusations of slander etc. You can act on your prior threats (example) to sue me if you want, I really do not care. - Sitush (talk) 20:43, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Please stop putting words in our mouth. We resent usage of words like sockpuppet and meatpuppet and frankly we don't understand how user ACFI could be blocked. We have made it clear from the very first day of our intervention here that this is a formal complaint from the India Against Corruption movement and that we are not editing the article due to our declared Conflict of Interest. So what you are "discovering" is something we have already declared openly and in advance. We repeat this is not about "individuals" but about IAC movement protesting this article to Wikipedia. We really don't see why you are evading the issues of this article we have listed as false - all of these were added by you a) That IAC=Team Anna or vice versa b) That IAC is a rightwing communal organisation linked to the RSS c) That Sarbajit Roy took over IAC in Sept 2013 d) That IAC supports Lokpal Bill, or not. The fact of the matter is that your cited sources like Guha, Nanda, Meghwanshi and Hensman etc. simply dont stand up because all of them are opinion pieces which you used to advance a thesis. We have already shown Wikipedia using the Mumbai High Court judgment that people who claim before the media to be IAC did not represent the IAC. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 03:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Would participants be able to confine their remarks to content, not the contributor? It doesn't help to accuse someone of behaving thus and so. Sunray (talk) 05:40, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The short answer is probably "no" :( This entire process is flawed because of the meatpuppeting: one person goes away a few months ago and another appears in their place, causing people at Talk:India Against Corruption to rehash old arguments time and again. Since meatpuppetry is against policy, the entire mediation process falls flat on its face because if they miss one "train" then it is no big deal as they can hitch themselves onto another that comes along in a minute. Unless there is some commitment to a binding agreement to abide with the outcome (and that does not form a part of mediation policy, IIRC), this exercise is futile. I'm happy to abide by it, obviously. - Sitush (talk) 06:22, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

As far as IAC is concerned this is a content dispute and nothing but a content dispute.We are not here as editors of Wikipedia but on behalf of the movement. We understand that mediation is the last phase of a content dispute, and we at least are taking it very seriously. We are concerned that IAC and Team Anna are 2 different entities, with different persons, leaders, websites and agendas.We do not understand why 1 or 2 wikipedia editors stubbornly insist that we are one and the same when neither have us have claimed to be the other (except briefly during Oct-Nov 2012 which was resolved between the offices). We fail to see why the old canards are being perpetuated to defame our respective organisations / movements / leaders . We specifically say that the merger of Team Anna into IAC by Sitush which took place on 23.Nov.2013 was flawed and ask for it to be undone. We also say that since 26th Nov 2012 all aspects of the IAC movement and IAC campaigns are under Sarbajit Roy and his team exclusively. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 07:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. As long as this is the end, I'm content. I'd rather you didn't keep saying that my actions on the article have been defamatory, slanderous etc because you've been advised about WP:NLT before. Just sue me, if that's what you want to do - Sitush (talk) 07:52, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I've separated this part of the discussion as it is mostly off-topic. So I'm glad that participants have re-focussed on content. With your cooperation I would now like to introduce some structure. Sunray (talk) 07:13, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Use of sources

To Sitush: Earlier you gave this NDTV link [18] as an example of how the media uses the terms IAC and Team Anna interchangeably. IAC is now giving you the link to the actual news report which was put out by PTI (a news agency) for the same incident and same letter (as published in The Hindu) [19]. The PTI report says nothing about this letter being written by IAC or on behalf of IAC, it is all about Team Anna sending this letter (IAC is not mentioned anywhere). I hope you can begin to appreciate the problems IAC is facing with the media's reporting (or misreporting). 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 13:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

That one news organisation omits a proper noun used by another means nothing much: if it changed a noun, eg: "Team Anna" became "Team Kejriwal", then that might be a different matter.

As Qwryxian said in the link I provided earlier, we're now in a situation where we can in some aspects prefer to use academic books rather than news reports anyway. Any book is likely to be better because it has the benefit of hindisght, but academic books are obviously right at the top of the reliability scale. That is what I was trying to do in the article and I've now also found [20], published by Oxford University Press. It is probably best to read a few pages from around the point that I link but on p. 118 it is absolutely explicit in linking Team Anna to the India Against Corruption movement: "Although Anna was the charismatic embodiment of the movement, his organisation was led by a cluster of activists who comprised the self-denominated "Team Anna". The movement's leadership included [Kejriwal, Bedi etc] ... The protests widened to national and then international proportions ... [A]fter the government tried to delegitimise the movement as foreign-funded, the India Against Corruption campaign carefully refused financial support from any overseas entity." - Sitush (talk) 13:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, this chapter, from p. 65, might be of interest. It refers to the IAC "movement" and the "Team" (author's capitalisation) and contains lots of info regarding Twitter stats, Facebook, email addresses etc that all relate to the version of "India Against Corruption" that you seem to dislike. - Sitush (talk) 14:03, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This kind of discussion is not getting us anywhere. Sources which had no direct connection to IAC or Team Anna and are further and further from the events as they actually took place are being used to hang all sorts of fanciful theories and labels onto IAC. What do we have to do with the authors of those books and in any case why should we believe them ? All we are seeing is that greater distortions take place the further the descriptions are from the events. We saw that in the case of Ramachandra Guha (whose 2011 oped said nothing about IAC). These books are completely unreliable because they are written by foreigners who for the most part were not actually present at the venues. Please show us any photographic or visual evidence that so called Team Anna was calling themselves as "India Against Corruption" in either the April 2011 fast or the August 2011 fast. Were they using IAC's banners or letterheads ? Were they accepting money in name of IAC or issuing receipts in name of IAC ? The plain, simple and undeniable fact is that the top leadership of Team Anna had essentially stopped using the IAC name / banners for their anti-corruption movement after Feb 2011 when it became a major issue between HRA and Team Arvind. The point we are making about the NDTV article is that even when the primary source (in this case PTI) puts out a story, anybody else can use it to write any kind of rubbish about IAC. So we are clearly informing Wikipedia / WMF, if anybody says that IAC is Team Anna or vice-versa in your article, please first give us primary evidence of this fact before showing us all your fanciful arty farty scholarly warmed over crap. Show us who other office bearers of India Against Corruption were/are from unimpeachable sources. We were at the movements at April 2011 and August 2011, and we can definitely say that IAC's banners / name were not being used there - and we have the entire photographic evidence.publicly accessible online where anybody can confirm this. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 15:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

"Sources which had no direct connection to IAC or Team Anna and are further and further from the events as they actually took place are being used to hang all sorts of fanciful theories and labels onto IAC. What do we have to do with the authors of those books and in any case why should we believe them ?" What? Please read WP:RS and note the significance of primary vs secondary sources. - Sitush (talk) 15:29, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Let us be very clear about who is asserting' that IAC = Team Anna or vice versa. This outrageously false statement has been published by Wikipedia / WMF and is authored by Sitush. Is Alison Brysk here making this assertion ? Or is Ramachandra Guha over here making this assertion ? On what basis do they make these false assertions - ie assertions which neither Team Anna or IAC have made themselves. Is it apparent from their books how / why they make such an assertion ? Please read WP:RS yourself - reliable secondary sources analyse and imterpret primary material. What we are asking for is to know / see the primary material (also known as "facts") on which these secondary sources make their claims / analysis. If there are in fact no such primary sources then these so-called secondary sources are fabricated / concocted and cannot be relied on to make any kind of credible assertion. Reliable sources have a reputation for "fact checking". So somebody authentic should have asserted as a fact that IAC=Team Anna to enable it to be checked. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 15:49, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Question from mediator re: sources

I may have missed something, but I have not yet seen a reference to a secondary source that says that IAC and Team Anna are separate entities. On the other hand, I have seen several secondary sources that conflate the two. What sources are available that explain the difference between the two organizations? Sunray (talk) 07:13, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

IAC does not take its concerns or its actions to the media. Both organisations have their respective websites. Team Anna has [21] whereas IAC has [22] and [23]. IAC does not claim to be Team Anna, nor does Team Anna claim to be IAC. Actually if you examine the sources carefully, you will find that there is no such entity as Team Anna and it is a media fiction because Anna Hazare is a professional who can be hired for any cause / event. See [24] and [25] 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 09:20, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

No-one is disputing that there is some sort of non-notable body currently called the IAC & thaty has had various other names over an allegedly prolonged period. This is the organisation that the IP purports to represent. However, there is also an eminently notable body/movement called IAC and that is the one to which all the many hundreds of sources refer. There have been a lot of alleged official websites over the years, as the article talk page indicates in a prolonged dispute that ended in with a WP:3O intervention (referred to above). I don't think it has ever been satisfactorily determined which of those several websites are/were official & there is no doubt that there was a dispute involving various participants in the IAC/Team Anna variant last year, hence the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party and Hazare's alternate vehicle, as described in the article. In any event, it really wouldn't matter what any of those sites say because they are not secondary sources. I'd argue that all the secondary sources that mention the two are conflating in the sense of the protest movement; I doubt you'll find even three or four that distinguish the two.

It is probably pertinent to point out that even before the Team Anna/IAC article merge, people purporting to represent the non-notable organisation were unhappy with the article content, hence so much scrapping over so long by various socks, SPAs etc. Indeed, the purporters were unhappy with the article prior to my involvement, IIRC. In other words, just splitting the articles is not going to satisfy them: they want the IAC article to look as it did in the diff that I presented earlier and that, of course, was a hopelessly unencycloplaedic entry: little more than a puff piece, badly written and terribly sourced. To a certain extent, I think that the concentration on the Team Anna/IAC terminology by the purporters is a red herring designed to achieve a completely inappropriate restoration. - Sitush (talk) 16:39, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both for clear and succinct statements in response to my question. The picture I now have is that there is a movement referred to as "India Against Corruption" and also an organization that refers to itself as "India Against Corruption." The former would include Team Anna, the latter would not. Is this an accurate summary as far as it goes?

@IAC: The sources you gave above were helpful in filling in the picture for me. I'm wondering how IAC is constituted? For example, are you incorporated as a non-profit society? If so, do you have an incorporation document? That kind of primary source could be very helpful. Sunray (talk) 17:58, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

@Sunray. We would like to clarify your picture. A) There were a series of protests from 2010 onwards against corruption in India. Not all the protests / protestors were on the same platform or had the same objectives. B) There is a duly registered body, affiliated to the HRA, which since 1973 is known as "India Against Corruption" and which body filed one of the earliest court petitions (as IAC) which ultimately resulted in India's State of "Emergency". The body is presently incorporated as a Trust and the documents are with the IAC organisation. C) In 2007 some of the leading RTI (FOI) activists of India came together informally to file RTI requests pertaining to scams in the forthcoming Commonwealth Games 2010, These requests, from 2008 onwards, were generally filed in the name of "India Against Corruption (RTI Cell)" and several thousands of pages of data were received up until the time the Games ended in Oct 2010. At this time the IAC RTI activities were being co-coordinated by Sarbajit Roy and Veeresh Malik from Delhi and Pune respectively. D) By Oct 20 2010 IAC got the Government to set up a Committee to inquire into the data which IAC had gathered - this was announced as the "Shunglu Committee" on 24 Oct 2010. E) The vested interests behind the CWG scams then immediately got certain persons to set up a fake India Against Corruption, who on 14th Nov 2010 filed what purported to be India Against Corruption's complaint at the Parliament Street Police Station and issued fake press releases about the so-called Police FIR which IAC had filed. These persons later also made a demand for the Shunglu Committee to be wound up and the investigation handed over to CBI. F) On 17.Nov.2010 these persons registered the fake website "http://indiaagainstcorruption.org" and on 01.Dec.2010 called a press conference where Mr. Anna Hazare anounced that the name IAC would be used for a campaign for a LokPal (Ombudman) law G) Between 10 Dec 2010 and 6 Feb 2011 there were high level discussions between the HRA and the sponsors of Mr. Hazare over the misuse of the IAC brand-name (including the 30 Jan 2011 rally at Delhi where the name was prominently misused - and which caused many sections of the media to "tag" this movement thereafter as "India Against Corruption") H) On 6 Feb 2011 it was agreed in no uncertain terms that the name "IAC" would not be used henceforth for Lok Pal Bill movement but only used for the CWG scams anti-corruption movement which Mr. Roy and Mr. Malik were actively pursuing before the Shunglu Committee. So it would not be appropriate to say that there was any movement which included Mr. Anna Hazare known as India Against Corruption movement. The IAC movement since 2007 has throughout been with M/s Roy and Malik who used the name exclusively for CWG scams and Mr. Hazare was never a part of that movement. I) For the sake of convenience in these discussions, the 2011 LokPal Bill movement of Team Anna was wrongly referred as an India Against Corruption campaign (albeit an unsanctioned one) in several sections of the media despite that the participants there were calling themselves then as Team Anna or "Final War Against Corruption". The word andolan used by Team Anna can be interpreted as either 'movement' or 'campaign'. On 26 Nov 2012 when all non-financial assets of IAC were returned to HRA, IAC immediately extinguished the unsanctioned IAC andolan. It is also not correct to say that IAC refers to itself as "India Against Corruption", many independent 3rd parties acknowledge that the present IAC team is in charge/control of all aspects of the IAC movement [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37]. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 17:30, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

IAC, while I'm not entirely sure what benefit Sunray's request might have in resolving the dispute, you seem to have ignored it entirely and just come up with an awful lot of unsubstantiated statements again. All those links merely go to support what the article already says and, indeed, some are already used in it. For example, this is one of your links and it says, inter alia, "But after both Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal split from the anti-corruption group, the IAC seems to have abandoned the Lokpal or Janlokpal bill issue. After the split, there were several claimants for the campaign. While Kejriwal and others went on to form the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Hazare, Kiran Bedi, another prominent IAC leader and few others, distanced themselves from politics. Later, Bedi broke away from Hazare, who formed the Jantantra Morcha." - Sitush (talk) 19:43, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

IAC, as a matter of policy, does not approach the media. The link cited was not inserted into the article by IAC or anyone on behalf of IAC and we say the article misrepresents the text of the source. The link mentions that there was an "anti-corruption body / group" from which both Hazare and Kejriwal split from. We don't see how this goes against IAC's stand considering that the present IAC and Hazare and Kejriwal were all part of a common anti-corruption "front" from Dec 2010 till March 2012 where IAC was fighting against CWG scams, Team Anna was fighting for a Lokpal and Team Arvind were fighting for a political option. Where the article is incorrect is when (like the media in general) it treats IAC as being the name / title of the entire anti-corruption group / movement, IAC does not dispute that Anna Hazare greatly popularised its name and made it a household name. The article correctly recognises that there was an IAC campaign which Anna, Kiran Bedi etc. claimed to be leaders of and after the "split" these persons claimed this IAC campaign for themselves (IAC has fully detailed all this on its own website). The article then goes on to confirm that the present IAC team took over the IAC campaign immediately after the split (which formally took place on 26.Nov.2012) as the claimed owners of IAC brand name. The article also confirms what IAC consistently says - that after 26.Nov.2012 the IAC has officially abandoned the IAC campaign for Lokpal issue. Manish Sisodia's statement in this article also confirms that it was Anna's Lokpal Bill which they (erstwhile Team Anna) were agitating for. This article has to be read in connection with [38] where Team Anna dropped all claims to IAC brand name. The last word on this subject is [39] which sets out the time line and which all relevant parties to the IAC campaign have agreed to. For example [40] had clarified the referred article above as far back as Dec 2012 itself. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 06:25, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

@Sunray. Mr. Sitush is repeatedly saying our IAC is a "not notable"group and that we (IP) are not the official IAC. We think that the sources we have cited make it clear that IAC meets the minimum requirement for WP:GNG. In so far as not being the official IAC, the Firstpost.com link we gave above makes it clear that we are the official IAC and it is our website which is the official IAC website. We also cite [41] from the same Hindustan Times which Sitush relies on. Please note it says that "ash.ashwati2012@gmail.com" is the official email ID of IAC from which all press releases will be sent. We request you to kindly send an email with any alphanumeric "verification code" to this email ID and we will publish it back for you here so that you can confirm our bonafides. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 06:55, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

You've still not answered Sunray's query - the usual obfuscatioon. And nowhere have I claimed any group is "official" - all I am doing is following Wikipedia policies regarding verifiability, sourcing, notability, neutrality etc. Furthermore, I am not responsible for the actions of any version of IAC nor for how sources portray things. If your IAC wants to maintain some sort of underground persona with policies that limit its exposure to reliable sources then there is not a great deal Wikipedia can do. - Sitush (talk) 07:22, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

IAC: I'm having some difficulty following your response to my question. One thing that would make life easier for me would be if you could spell out the full names of the various entities the first time you refer to them. My understanding of your answer is that there are various entities laying claim to the name "India Against Corruption." If I've got that right, I don't see any way to avoid taking what secondary sources say. Would you be able to list some reliable and verifiable sources that describe the legal form of IAC? Sunray (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

It suits Sitush to go round in circles. At the present time nobody (except Sitush) claims that "India Against Corruption" is anybody other than us or that there is any website registered in India under the official ".IN" policy like IAC's websites are. For the n'th time, no other entity lays claim to the name "India Against Corruption". However, from time to time various random / unknown people claim to be IAC "volunteers" (or former IAC volunteers) and get some media publicity for themselves. Invariably these persons later turn out to be mischief makers affliated to some anti-AAP political party. We fail to understand what you mean by legal form of IAC. Everything can be verified on application from the Registry of the Allahabad High Court for the date we have stated on IAC's website. We are preparing a list of dates and entities in the IAC campaign which shall make it clear to you. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 08:46, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Let me ask the question another way. What is IAC? Is it a registered non-profit, a partnership (or a non-registered partnership), a corporation or a cooperative? Sunray (talk) 16:01, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

What is IAC?

We had already answered on 17th Feb at 17:30 UTC that IAC is incorporated as a "Trust". FYI in India "trusts" are primarily regulated by the Indian Trusts Act 1882. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 08:17, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Would you be able to tell me something more about the Trust. What is the intention of the trust? Sunray (talk) 14:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

We really don't see how this is relevant to this discussion, but as a limited exception for the parties here to better understand the issues we can disclose the following. A) It is a "private" trust B) Formation of private trusts in India is a cut-and-dried affair with a series of standard boilerplate objectives / aims running over several pages C) An existing trust was renamed for HRA to file (in 1973) certain documents in what is known as Raj Narain's "Blue Book" case in Election Petition no. 5 of 1971 which was ultimately decided in 1975 in the Supreme Court of India (where incidentally Mr. Shanti Bhushan was lead counsel). The name "India Against Corruption" was chosen because the main Petition was against "corrupt electoral practices" of Ms. Indira Gandhi under section 86(5) of the Representation of People's Act. D) The Judgement(s) of the Allahabad High Court and then the Supreme Court in this case constituted the very first judicial pronouncement of "Right to Information" (RTI / FoI) in India. E) After IAC filed its documents containing extracts from the Blue Book and unofficial copies of circulars of security arrangements of Ms. Indira Gandhi, HRA leader Raj Narain filed an application in June 1973 asking for official copies of those same documents to be produced under judicial process. F) RTI has always been an important area in which HRA/IAC works and transparency and good governance are mentioned as objectives in the trust deed. G) HRA has always been against the Congress Party as a body of colonialism. I) IAC/HRA sponsors many RTI initiatives and activists as anti-corruption / anti-Congress measures. These persons have included Mr. Hazare and and Mr. Kejriwal etc. in the past J) IAC's activists still follow up the Blue Book matter eg. [42]. K) We would like Wikipedians to appreciate that the top circles of the 3 movements ie. IAC/HRA, Team Anna (now Jan Tantra Morcha) and Team Arvind (now Aam Aam Party) are not strangers to each other, and the transition which took place in Oct+ 2012 could be done relatively smoothly under the circumstances because of the common basic ideologies of their respective leaders. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 17:15, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Regarding relevance: The parties to this mediation are referring to a group referred to as "India Against Corruption." I am trying to determine the form of organization of the entity being referred to, i.e., what is it? You said IAC was a trust. There are different kinds of trusts. I was hoping to learn more about how you are organized. Sunray (talk) 20:56, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Nevertheless, IAC is affiliated to a revolutionary body (HRA) which was banned by the Govt. of India in 1925, and which had to undergo a series of name changes since then without any substantive changes to its objectives. At the present time HRA has no legal existence except through a large number of bodies which share a common ideology and family/caste connections. IAC is only one of many such HRA organisations / platforms and due to the nature of its objectives, which are openly stated to be against practices and policies of India's present ruling Congress Party, the IAC organisation does not publicly disclose its strategies or internal arrangements, including its membership, which are, however, acccessible in the public domain through the competent authority. The relevant issue for this article is the "India Against Corruption" andolan. The Hindustani word "andolan" can be variously translated as "movement", "agitation", "campaign" etc. In 1974 the IAC andolan was briefly used by HRA for an anti-corruption agitation in the State of Uttar Pradesh. From late 1974 onwards this term was deprecated as the agitation became a nation-wide movement known as the JP movement or "Total Revolution" (Sampoorna Kranti) movement. In 2007 Sarbajit Roy and Veeresh Malik revived the IAC name for an RTI movement against the Congress Party's Commonwealth Games scams, after taking permission from HRA. In the very initial stages of this IAC RTI movement Arvind Kejriwal, who was then unemployed, was also briefly a volunteer but dropped out. The IAC andolan is organised as described at [43]. There was also an unsanctioned IAC "campaign" in 2011 whereby M/s Hazare and Kejriwal (so-called Team Anna) supposedly made IAC a household name in India. That campaign, which misused IAC's brand name, has been dissolved / wound down by the IAC-HQ (HRA) as being completely incompatible with IAC's objectives. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 00:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

HRA was banned by the government of the British Raj, to be specific, but much is known about it and one of its commanders-in-chief even based his autobiography on it (Yashpal). And that statement is of no more use than yours, IAC, when it comes to determining what should be said in the India Against Corruption article. Why? Because, despite the numerous secondary sources that do refer to the HRA history etc, I've never been able to find one that mentions the it historically using the India Against Corruption name. You can't even prove a common origin, given the various alleged name changes, revivals etc. This is all smoke and mirrors, as far as I am concerned, perhaps with a smidgin of romanticism and myths of origin thrown in - not uncommon among fringe revolutionary groups. The HRA-related information ain't going to appear in a Wikipedia article because there is nothing to support it. Nothing. Nada, Zilch. On the other hand, there is no "supposedly" about the name being associated with Hazare, Kejriwal and the mass popular movement of recent years that involved millions of people worldwide. - Sitush (talk) 01:17, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

HRA was banned by the Government of India (and not by the British Raj). You are probably unaware that the Government of India since 1858 was under a series of Laws which are ratified and saved by India's present Constitution (which in turn is subsrtantially based on those same Government of India Acts). Insofar as what HRA was and what IAC stands for, the IAC website has a detailed article on it [44] adapted from Bipin Chandra's history "India's struggle for Independence". The reason you will not find references to HRA using the term IAC is because HRA was banned in 1925 and the IAC name was only used in 1974 for about 5 months, There were certainly a series of popular anti-corruption movements in 2011-12, however, you have been unable to provide any primary sources proving that Hazare or Kejriwal used the IAC name for any of their protests which took place in April 2011, August 2011, Dec 2011 or July 2012 which your sources (Guha, Hensman, Nanda, Meghwanshi) refer to. Accordingly we say all your so-called "scholarly" secondary sources are bogus. IAC has already given (on its website) primary evidence of the names actually used by Team Anna during those events. We can also demonstrate, if required, how Wikipedia articles use faked / cropped photographs to defame IAC. We have also already demonstrated that the authentic and unimpeachable primary sources cited by us contradict/trash the following claims in various secondary sources cited by you - a) That IAC had anything to do with the Dec. 2011 Anna MMRDA fast b) That IAC represented to Parliament for the (Jan) LokPal Bill. This "proof" should in itself be grounds for Wikipedia to discard / review its flawed so-called WP:RS policy which you rely on to justify your libels. We would also suggest you read Santosh Hegde on Team Anna [45] - you will note that he has not used the term IAC anywhere. There are similarly 1000s of articles on Team Anna which do not refer to IAC at all. You are also evading the core issues - a) that "we" are the only IAC in town, b) the persons you claim in your article are/were IAC also do not dispute that "we" are IAC. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 02:08, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. Let us return to the core issues. I will start a new section for that discussion below. Sunray (talk) 03:56, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Primary issues

Returning to the primary issues, the first one listed was the following: Is the information in the article accurate? Could we start by identifying information that is not considered accurate? Please list examples as bullet points. Let's keep posts brief (say 200 words) so we can deal with issues as effectively as possible? Sunray (talk) 03:56, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Broadly the inaccuracies in the article as we see it are:-

• That IAC ("India Against Corruption") and "Team Anna" are synonmous / interchangeable terms referring to the same entity.
• All POVs (and sources) which imply or claim that IAC (as distinguished from Team Anna) is a right-wing / communal organization / movement.
• That Sarbajit Roy only took over the IAC 'andolan in Sep 2013 after Kejriwal and Hazare had left.
• That IAC supports (or has supported) the demand / campaign for an overarching ombudsman (ie. the (Jan) Lokpal Bill). 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 06:08, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm pulling out of this. It is a pointless exercise and we're going round in circles, mainly because of WP:CIR. - Sitush (talk) 10:53, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

This is truly an unfortunate development. All the edits/inaccuracies in question were added in by User:Sitush. These are essentially based on 2 "scholarly sources" - Ramachandra Guha [46] and Merra Nanda [47]. IAC has shown that Ramchandra Guha had not referred anywhere to IAC (but only to Team Anna) in his original op-ed [48]. Meera Nanda in turn had cited 2 sources "Rohini Hensman" and "Bhanwar Megwanshi" as the basis for her statements. It is also useful to note that Nanda's claims were not in the actual text of her book (which book long predates IAC movement) but only in the introduction to a new edition meant for a US audience. The 2 sources Hensman [49] and Megwanshi [50] are clearly unreliable / biased sources published on social websites and IAC has objected that these are highlighted prominently as "Suggested Reading" in the article. We suggest/request that irrespective of Sitush's position - which we sincerely hope he reconsiders, the 2 other editors to this dispute (whose edits Sitush had also reverted) state their views on these 4 sources and the content which Sitush added when he unilaterally "merged" "Team Anna" with "IAC" without discussion and rewrote this article essentially using these 4 sources. We are concerned that Mediation is apparently the final stage for content disputes in Wikipedia, and it is a matter of concern if the contributing editor circles away from discussing his controversial sources by questioning the competence of the other side(s).

To show the relative undue "weightage" of the views expressed in the article about Team Anna, we are citing certain Google searches - all terms in lower case and within quotes. A) "team anna" gives 1.63 million "ghits" B) "india against corruption" gives 44.9 million ghits. C) "team anna" without "india against corruption" gives 1.41 million ghits D) "india against corruption" without "team anna" gives 43 million ghits. (NB: without is achieved by using the "-" operator immediately before the excluded search phrase). We think this shows ex-facie that a) Team Anna is irrelevant in the context of IAC and/or b) that the two entities are loosely correlated. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

It is pointless because we are going round in circles. and we are going round in circles because you do not seem to understand the most basic of Wikipedia policies, eg: WP:V, WP:RS (especially the difference between primary and secondary sources) and WP:GNG. It's a classic case of tendentious editing in the WP:IDHT vein, especially since you also acknowledge that your organisation keeps a low public profile and because the very sources you provide often seem to make the connections that you are denying exist. Your primary areas of concern listed above are the same as they were at the outset, so nothing is moving & we seem doomed forever to repeat ourselves. Numerous experienced contributors have tried to explain the policy issues to you and your meats, including Qwyrxian (talk · contribs), MatthewVanitas (talk · contribs) and TheRedPenOfDoom (talk · contribs). Meanwhile, Sunray is well-intentioned but the legal status of your organisation seems really to have no bearing on the focus of the article - if I am wrong about that then I'd appreciate clarification. I think you had better also review the four edits made by Bobrayner (talk · contribs) (one of the other two parties joined in this case) because I'd appreciate a diff if you think that I've reverted any of them. Me? I'm not the most diplomatic person around, so I'll say it straight: I've got much better things to do with my time on Wikipedia than continue this charade. I'm taking this page off my watchlist: ping me if anything interesting develops. - Sitush (talk) 17:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

We hope you will honestly acknowledge that in several cases certain primary sources we have provided flatly contradict the additional secondary sources you have cited. It is certainly a matter of concern if the sources being cited by you are actually bogus, violate WP:NPOV or are "opinions being passed off as facts", which don't agree with unimpeachable authentic primary sources. By its very definition the term "secondary" sources presupposes the existence of primary source(s) - which you have thus far not provided / cited for essentials. There are 2 (or is it 3 ?) admins on this mediation page who have kindly consented to spare their time to examine IAC's concerns and had waited for your cooperation and good health You have consistently refused to accept that we are IAC and/or additionally that we are the only IAC there is, solely to push some arcane "wikicult" agenda based on wikipedia policies like WP:V and WP:RS meant for ordinary editors. We have partcipated genuinely and tried to answer every query put to us by Sunray about the incorporation of IAC - which is a legally incorporated and "registered" body - unlike the so-called Team Anna/Team Arvind version which couldn't even open a bank account because they were admittedly unregistered and unincorporated [51]. We also resent your repeated accusations of meat-puppetry despite the objections we conveyed to you that we are here formally with a COI. What is clear to us is that you violated fundamental Wikipedia policies between 23.Nov.2013 and 25.Nov.2013 to merge the 2 articles without discussion and committed a series of BRD reverts by bullying ACFI and somehow getting her blocked as a sockpuppet for her edits that day.Your own words were "It was not my finest hour here." [52]. Insofar as User:Bobrayner is concerned, between you and "Qwyrxian" (as a tag-team) his edit [53] was reverted to your previous one. We really don't see why you constantly evade discussing those 4 sources and their authenticity. In so far as your additional issue goes, IAC meets WP:GNG for this article to be about us. It will certainly be better sourced than unsourced pieces of crap like this which have been on Wikipedia for over 2 years A's Den. Finally, the present article has serious BLP issues for Anna Hazare, Sarbajit Roy, Baba Ramdev and many other named persons which need to be immediately corrected. For instance there is no source to link IAC National Convenor Sarbajit Roy to the RSS. Similarly Team Anna has served notices for defamation on Bhagwan Megwanshi [54] , [55]. Baba Ramdev has also denied he is linked to RSS [56]. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 20:23, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Accusations of tag-teaming are not helpful. If multiple people revert your edits, conspiracy is rarely the best explanation. bobrayner (talk) 20:52, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. And we apologise. The prior discussions between the 2 editors before the revert of your edit is recorded in Wikipedia at the link we have given, and we now make no comment on it. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 05:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

My intent on re-focussing on primary issues was to begin discussing them one at a time. The reason for that approach is to identify what issues can be dealt with here and move on. I've found that the discussion has tended to swirl around and issues are continually rehashed. My thought was to proceed thus:

• Issue 1 - a) evidence (based on reliable sources), b) discussion, c) action (if any)
• Issue 2 - a) evidence...
• Issue n - & etc.

If participants wish to try this, I would suggest that we go issue by issue. IAC could start, present an issue and support their perspective with sources. Sitush could then comment and support any rebuttal with sources. I would facilitate discussion by asking questions. Sunray (talk) 21:52, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

OK. A procedural query. Is the burden of proof in the first instance for an assertion on the person who makes/made the assertion or is it on the person who disagrees with the assertion 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 06:04, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Both. Wikipedia editors must be able to support what they are saying. The policies are there to guide us. Sunray (talk) 17:48, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Issue no.1

IAC disputes deletion (without consensus) of the following sourced text from this version of the article of Bobrayner [57] in view of WP:ELOFFICIAL and the continued refusal thereafter to reinsert this "Official" information under the guideline, whereas all kinds of unreliable external links like Hensman [58] and Megwanshi [59] which violate WP:NPOV were instead inserted to disparage IAC as "Further Reading".

• URL indiaagainstcorruption.net.in as IAC's official website
• Names of Veeresh Malik and other IAC office bearers 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 07:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Issue no.2

Sitush The article has completely distorted Ramchandra Guha to set up a false thesis that IAC is a Hindu led movement opposed to/by.Dalits and "OBCs" (who are thereby presumably not Hindus). Here is what Guha wrote (about Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement) "Dalits and backward castes see this as a reprise of the anti-Mandal agitation, led and directed by suvarna activists." and here is Sitush's Wikipedia's version " ... socially oppressed communities, such as the dalits and Other Backward Classes, were worried that the Hindu-led movement would undermine the gains they have made through legislative reforms, such as those resulting from the Mandal Commission.". Such anti-Hindu distortions are completely unacceptable to IAC under the BLP and Defamation policies of Wikipedia, and need prompt correction by the Wikipedia community. Independent real time media reports on the Dalit protests 24 Aug. 2011 [60], 17 Dec 2011 [61] confirm Dalit anger is targeted at Team Anna and their flawed Jan Lokpal Bill. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Issue no.3

Sitush has deliberately selected The article selectively projects sources which falsely conflate IAC and Team Anna so as to "merge" the articles to thereby tarnish IAC's name as being a right-wing / communal / "Manuwadi" (retrograde) movement. Wikipedia's understanding of "Team Anna" as being limited to the 2011-12 agitations is flawed - see Hardikar [62] who has documented Anna Hazare's "teams" since the 1980's. IAC would like to know why equally reliable sources which say exactly the same thing about Anna Hazare (and Anna Hazare's so-called anti-corruption agitation / movement) as the present sources but without conflating IAC and Team Anna are ignored. For eg. Ranjit Hoskote [63], Gail Omvedt [64], Abhijit Ghosh [65], Mukul Sharma [66] etc. Real time media sources like IBN [67] on Team Anna's political actions allegedly at behest of the RSS and that the MMRDA meeting being "Team Anna's" and Indian Express [68] on Team Anna's RSS links and their own statement (in Oct 2011) that Team Anna is/was a political movement from their very beginning, are ignored. Such POV-SYNTHESIS (conflation) is clearly done "Unduly" to defame IAC if we consider the Google search analysis we offered on "weightage" of IAC versus Team Anna. There is also the article by Rohini Hensman [69] (and see also [70]) which details how Anna supporters (whom Hensman claims were affiliated to BJP) were physically assaulting senior Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan on National Television at the height of the Anna Hazare campaign for Bhushan's remarks which Anna didn't agree with. Another important source is S.Gurumurthy [71] which gives his expert perspective on the transition from what started as IAC (till Jan 2011) as an apolitical anti-corruption "collective" with many founders and how/why it morphed only into "Team Anna's" (gang of four) demand for JLB in "non-stop 24x7 screams of the media" - and which independently significantly corroborates our stand and timeline. Then Anna and Ramdev's statements that Team Anna's campaign and Baba Ramdev's campaign are "parallel movements .. which were never one .. and support each other" [72], which confirms that IAC (till 6 Feb 2011) was (mis)used as a common name/platform for various campaigns with different objectives, and after that the participants in the "collective" all used their own names for their own campaigns. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 20:38, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Issue no.4

The JanLokPal Bill campaign was "Team Anna"s campaign and IAC was never part of it or endorsed it. Content to the effect that IAC was put up for JLPB is incorrect and "undue" and this article has thus been converted into an "attack page" against IAC's core policies.

• Sources to say that JLPB was Team Anna's campaign :

1. [73] Timeline of Team Anna's JLPB movement
2. [74] Official Report of India's Parliament on "Team Anna"'s submissions to Parliament on LPB - no mention of IAC.
3. [75], [76], [77], [78], [79], [80], [81]

2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 17:13, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Issue no.5

Bogus and unreliable 2ndary source "Meera Nanda" who misquotes her sources to malign IAC.

• Example no.1 : Nanda's timeline is false. What prevents Meera Nanda from (a) giving the exact date on which Baba Ramdev's protest first used the term "India Against Corruption" or (b) the exact date Baba Ramdev (whose Bharat Swabhiman Trust had almost entirely financed the "India Against Corruption" protest till that date) was "soon" / "quickly" replaced by Anna Hazare ? And why does Meera Nanda not give the actual reason for Baba Ramdev and IAC publicly disassociating themselves from Anna's Lokpal Bill campaign ? Was that not the date on which Team Anna was formed and IAC jettisoned ? Whose revolutionary slogan / banner is Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna which was put up by Baba Ramdev which the RSS boys Arvind Kejriwal and Kumar Vishwaas publicly insulted on that date by ordering it to be pulled down from Anna's fast venue along with other banners of "India Against Corruption" HQ ? Was that not the same date / incident which caused IAC-HQ to complain to the Delhi Police about the anti-national and seditious activities of Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi [82] and initiate steps to get Arvind Kejriwal fined for violating his conditions of employment ? Was that also not the day Team Anna's colonial movement became "Gandhian" ?

• Example No. 2 : Please see the scholarly mistake committed by Meera Nanda when she leaves out the crucial word "India Against Corruption" campaign used by Arundhati Roy [83] who actually wrote ". Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes.". Should such an author (Nanda) be extensively cited as a source for this article, especially when it is not clear from where Nanda obtains the other "facts" which are cited to her book for the article (false in one is false in all) ?

2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 06:02, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

My first reaction to the above is with respect to process and I want to deal with it before proceeding to content. I would like us to try for neutral and respectful language if we are to proceed. The groundrules for this mediation are at the top of the page and participants have signified their agreement. One is: "Focus on content, not the contributor." This means avoiding statements such as the following: "Sitush has completely distorted ..." or "Sitush has deliberately selected biased sources ..."

In the first of these examples, a more respectful approach would be to say simply: "Sitush said X." The second example (beginning of Issue no. 3) is unacceptable. The words "deliberately ... biased," are not in keeping with WP:AGF. IAC: Would you please modify that language so that we may proceed? Sunray (talk) 23:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. We have done so. We welcome reciprocity on similar comments that IAC is a "tuppeny halfpenny pressure group", on Meat-Puppetry, on lack of Competence etc. Sitush had requested to be "pinged" if there were any new developments. 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) 03:50, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I've left a message for Sitush on his talk page. Sunray (talk) 20:14, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Closing mediation

Anon IP 2001:4DD0:FF00:8A8B:0:0:0:5747 (talk) (aka "IAC") has been blocked. Therefore, I am closing this mediation. Sunray (talk) 18:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

This is IAC: Please note that our old IP had expired. It was over 60 days since we had booked it. We had taken up this matter on Talk [84] and are in discussions with Administrator EdJohnston who has blocked us again by suggesting we use Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects and email Wikipedia - all of which we have done. Please believe us that it is very frustrating for us to get our BLP and DEFAMATION issue resolved by Wikipedia Community which turns every issue into a BATTLEGROUND over Wikpedia's Community self-written policies but which lacks a robust Centralised process to deal with complicated issues with LEGAL IMPLICATIONS like ours which are actually for the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikipedia Community also has competence and cultural issues with dealing with non-Anglocentric editors, such as from the Indian sub-continent, to discourage them from editing the English language Wikipedia. In simple language - we were blocked because our IP expired - and because Wikipedia has an institutional policy to DELAY resolution of cases like ours. PS: we use online privacy protection routinely as we are monitored by our Government, this has nothing to do with the quality of our editing. 78.46.206.3 (talk) 20:43, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Mediator's comment

Whether or not IAC has a valid concern is difficult to ascertain from the above. IAC has not provided clear evidence (accompanied by diffs) to document a case. Sitush, the other main protagonist, has left the mediation with the comment that the discussion was "going round in circles." Considerable bandwidth has been expended, on the article talk page and here, attempting to understand and respond to IAC's concerns. In the future, unless IAC is able to present diffs and refer to WP policies, I believe that there would be little to be gained from mediation or other dispute resolution process. Sunray (talk) 18:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

We have given 2 HUGE diffs. We disagree with almost everything Sitush did when he merged 2 articles on 23 Nov 2013 and rewrote this article till 25th Nov. We have clearly indicated those 2 "restore" points. If Sitush has backed out without explaining his edits or opposing the large number of contrarian reliable sources (to his) we have now provided, it is clearly a behavioral issue for which he should be blocked under the mediation policy. Nobody has responded to our reliable sources at all once we provided them as numbered issues once the "opening statements" were out of the way. IAC's grievance is not with Sitush, it is with the Wikipedia Community as a whole, and there are still 2 highly experienced editors left who should represent the community consensus on the edits made to our article by essentially a single editor who flaunts his behaviorial excesses. The Wikipedia policies we cite for this article are clear - BLP and DEFAMATION/LIBEL, whereas Wikipedia community cites WP:V, RS and NPOV. 78.46.206.3 (talk) 20:43, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Are you sure you know what a diff is? I didn't come across any above. Please show me the diffs you mean and your arguments as to how they suggest a concern related to WP policies or guidelines. Sunray (talk) 21:29, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

[85] Merge/redirect hastily done under WP:IAR without consensus or any notice / template / discussion purely as a result of an WP:EW between Sitush and ACFI on the IAC article. (NB: No IAC editor has ever edited the Team Anna article). [86] by ACFI and after that (since the diffs are too many) see all the subsequent edits for 23rd.Nov.2013 between Sitush and ACFI, with the edit summaries and talk page discussions which resulted in Sitush merging the 2 articles and "bullying" ACFI. Sitush then reverted all his edits but got Qwxrian to restore them after nobody from the India notice board supported Sitush. The WP policies violated are BLP and Defamation/Libel as the article's text and sources are provably false and libelous- IAC wants those texts to be deleted under the policy. Sitush wants to retain it citing WP:V, WP:RS etc. So it now becomes a sourcing problem, with "high quality" sources for each claim and the weightage to be given if IAC and Team Anna are different entities (as they indeed are) or if the article was to be unmerged. There are also competence issues, because such articles need neutral Indian expert editor(s) to understand the issues and personalities - and unfortunately the "cabal"(s) drive(s) them all away. 78.46.206.3 (talk) 22:31, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

You say that the merge was completed without consensus and that there are BLP violations and defamation. I have reviewed the talk page once more. I note that a request for Third Opinion, a Request for Comment, and a complaint to Wikimedia Foundation were initiated by you or your colleagues. Several editors, including Sitush, TransporterMan, Black Kite, Qwyrxian, DES, Joshua Jonathan and TRPoD have all explained the requirement for reliable sources. Many other editors have reviewed your claims. In addition, you were told by Writ Keeper not to use legal threats. You have now come to the end of the road for dispute resolution for content disputes. I see nothing more to be done with your claims. Sunray (talk) 01:36, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

The editor AFCI was an intern (volunteer) editing at Wikipedia in her private capacity and was not representing IAC - as we are - neither does she have access to internal records which IAC core committee members do. In fact reviewing the talk page ourselves we see several incorrect statements made by ACFI. The complaint to Wikimedia foundation was handled by the email/OTRS volunteers who suggested the article talk page or WPs dispute resolution process, and we have never yet made a complaint under WP:OFFICE or to the General Counsel. The 3rd Opinion was about content which is already removed from the article and is inapplicable to this present dispute. The RfC was about the official website, but it got overtaken and was inconclusive because the Wikipedia projects and notice boards failed to produce editors/opinions for the technical aspects of the domain name which resolves to a secure sub-directory on "riseup.net". The present complaint is about the new material added by Sitush on 23 Nov. 2013 onwards and the merge between IAC and Team Anna. The issue of "Team Anna" being IAC has never been examined. It is only our official intervention where we are now showing that the sources in the present article are false and incorrect and providing counter sources - which was never done earlier in the June disputes between AFCI and an Aam Aadmi Party troll Thinking Youth @TY. Nobody disputes that there should be reliable sources for anything Wikipedia publishes - in the present dispute formally initiated by IAC movement around 16 Dec. 2013 we are on the same wavelength as WP - namely that there are serious undiscussed and unresolved BLP and Defamation/Libel issues about living persons with the text added in from 23.Nov 2013 onwards. We are equally saying that high quality sources must be used on articles referring to living persons. We have shown sufficiently that sources used by Sitush are not up-to-the "high" mark for BLP, and that is why Sitush is running away from addressing our concerns / challenge about his present sources and his edits which were introduced after 23.Nov.2013. IAC as an organisation/movement is concerned with Wikipedia community ostrich policy and unwillingness to resolve this formally after IAC has intervened directly. Our present grievances with the article post 23 Nov.2013 have never been reviewed. Defamations like that IAC is a right-wing / communal movement affiliated to RSS etc. have never been discussed. Finally, we have not issued any legal threats - it would be pointless to do so to the community which has already expressed or recorded their incompetence/unwillingness to address or comprehend legal issues and judgments - especially those of India's law courts. 78.46.206.3 (talk) 02:59, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.