Uživatel:Dan Polansky/User Theknightwho

Introduction

I was wondering whether I should post it here. Ideally, it should be posted to my talk page in the English Wiktionary, but I have access removed there, which is denying me the right to defense and the right to pursue a corrective action against systematic misbehavior toward me. User Theknightwho interacted with my edits and myself in stress-causing way for several months in what appeared to be pattern of targetting, and, as far as I can tell, he is the chief cause of my troubles. I started to behave irrationally, saying problematic things I would not have said otherwise. It seems only appropriate that I should have the right to defend myself and build an evidence-based case against that person in a wiki of the foundation.

Currently, some evidence was posted to en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho, ongoing. The grim picture revealed there is how, by implication, so many editors support his problematic behaviors. The civility policy-draft en:Wiktionary:Civility is being ignored.

Incidents

Incidents of problematic behavior, against me but also against others, incomplete due to memory constraints:

1) Calling me "full of shit", "an utter thickwit", and "a complete pseud", per en:Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2022-10/User:Theknightwho for admin. Since hardly anyone commented on that in the vote, this added salt to wound. It is hard to tell how such an implied collective approval of vulgar abuse impacts one's psyche and long-term self-control.

2) My attempt to explain to him on his talk page that discussions should be about substance and not about the discussion participants on his talk page (no ad hominem) resulted in him creating an excuse, and invoking Wikipedia's non-policy BLUDGEON against me, then deleting the whole conversation. Source: this revision. Among other problematic things, he made a personal attack in "I'm asking you to read it again because your response to it amounted to lying about what was in it."

3) "You aren't as smart as you think you are, Dan." per en:User talk:Dan Polansky/2022#RFD tallies AKA vote counting in RFD and language of votes in RFD.

4) "Funny how you only say that when you realise your bullshit won’t fly" per en:User talk:Dan Polansky/2022#Please rollback your new categories.

5) Challenged an expansion of en:Wiktionary:Idioms that survived RFD with information about the lemmings principle and requested a Beer parlour discussion, but when the discussion was created, posted no productive opposing arguments and effectively obstructed the update due to lack of interest, per en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/September#Changes to WT:LEMMING. I wrote "Can you please indicate which parts of the proposal you disagree with or if there are any parts that you are ok with?" but got no response. I did not have this kind of experience in the English Wiktionary before.

6) In discussion where another claimed that consensus is decided by 50% majority, instead of opposing that untruth, he posted "As far as I can tell, there is no consensus here for your view on consensus", per en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/September § Whether Reddit and Twitter are to be regarded as durably archived sources. When a vote was created to resolve the issue in which my option 3 passed, did not participate, per en:Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-09/Meaning of consensus for discussions other than formal votes created at Wiktionary:Votes.

7) Argued ad hominem (about the disputant, not the subject) and using unproductive argument-free or substance-free phrases in a discussion about how much to restrict external links, in en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/September#Further reading only for dictionaries and encyclopedias: "Stop trying to play amateur lawyer", "It just gives the impression that you’re ignoring the logical solution because you don’t like the result", "You’re tying yourself in knots", "You just have a chronic inability to accept when you’re wrong", "It’s just dishonest", "It’s also dishonest to call things personal attacks just because you don’t like being wrong. Grow up."

8) Referred to another person as "arsehole", even if not in the direct predicative form of "X is an arsehole", per en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho.

9) Told another person this: "you were being deceptive", "you're just a crybully", "I also know you're lying." No pretense to assume good faith, which would otherwise help bring the emotional temperature down. Per en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho.

10) Used non-specific block description against me, failing to properly characterize the allegged misconduct: "Continued engaging in exactly the same behaviour, despite previous bans." A non-specific description is not falsifiable (Popper); it cannot be productively examined for accuracy since there is nothing specific one may try to analyze or refute.

11) Has a pattern of interminable unproductive high-frequency discussion, unfit for an administrator. In discussions with me, it was also my fault: it takes two to tango. However, the problem goes beyond me, as per his interactions in en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho and en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/April#Admin shenanigans; he posts many responses within a single day.

12) Related to the above, seems to need to have the last word at any and all costs, leading to low-value posts just to ensure that, e.g. "You already admitted it in the last comment." in en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho. That naturally contributes to making discussions interminable.

13) In October 2022 in en:schwarzes Loch, stated the clear untruth "Obviously a compound. Stop being obtuse." In the discussion that followed, yielded nothing, proving intransigent; en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/October#Removing spaced phrases from German compounds: no open compounds in German. Suggests unwillingness to learn and properly consider reliable sources. As a result, I created the tightly-referenced en:Appendix:Compounds.

14) Challenged my RFD closures in a problematic way: 1) en:Talk:neutroclusion; 2) en:Category_talk:en:Named_roads; 3) en:Talk:Metroid-like; 4) en:Talk:shocked Pikachu.

15) Invoked Wikipedia's WP:BLUDGEON essay ("but you are BLUDGEONing") and "Edit warring" policy ("If we're using Wikipedia's edit warring policy (as we seem to be)") as if they were Wiktionary policies, which they are not. It is an established practice that Wikipedia policies do not apply to the English Wiktionary; an essay is not even a policy. Source: en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/April#Admin shenanigans.

16) At the same time, when asked to provide arguments in a discussion in support of the strength-of-the-argument-augmented consensus process, said that Wiktionary is not Wikipedia, per en:Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2023/January#Restoring_Wiktionary:Thesaurus/Benefits. Contradicts the ease which which he allegged in the above item that Wikipedia applies.

17) Created en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/November#Let's deprecate the Thesaurus namespace at the time in which I was editing the thesaurus a lot. It felt to me the same way as another person, who said: "You're clearly wanting to deprecate it because User:Dan Polansky is editing tirelessly in that. Not cool. Quit trolling." He intended to move the thesaurus data to modules, raising the contribution bar; then, people like him who like to edit modules would get an upper hand over those who don't.

18) Moved an explanatory page en:Wiktionary:Thesaurus/Benefits that I wrote for the project to en: User:Dan Polansky/Thesaurus Benefits without RFDO or RFM process. While I did create the page without a previous discussion, the page has no policy force and could not mislead the reader about accepted thesaurus practices. I took the courage to create the page based on me being one of only two larger contributors to the thesaurus. I even added "This page reflects reasoning not necessarily shared by all editors" to the page to prevent any false impression.

19) Disrupted my adding collocations, per e.g. en:Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2022/November#Replacing_bare_lists_of_adjectives_&_nouns_in_usage_notes. Admittedly, I was not keeping the new voted-on format but rather the traditional format I used for years, and as far as I can tell, it was me who started entering collocations into Wiktionary years ago, and I am the author of the bulk of English collocations in the English Wiktionary. Claimed that the format I am using is worthless, obviously untrue when one compares what other collocation dictionaries are doing. "In my opinion, these are extremely low-effort and of little-to-no use to a reader, [...]": they are low-skill, but the effort is far from low and they are rather valuable.

20) Had my template en:Template talk:less common spelling of deleted. The arguments made by him in the discussion were untrue: he said the template was covered by the templates for rare and uncommon form of (clearly untrue, to me anyway), and yet, the template ended up often being replaced by him with "alternative form of", leading to information loss. Also evidence that he does not understand the difference between a frequency of a form related to the whole corpus vs. frequency of a form related to the frequency of one particular alternative variant of the form. Despite his claim of the equivalence or redundancy, he then claimed the following: 'Not all of these can be replaced with rare spelling of, because Dan used an obtuse method of determining what counted as "less common"' in en:Template talk:less common spelling of.

21) He complained in en:User talk:Dan Polansky/2022#Hypocrisy that I should not refer to him indirectly using his name when responding to him: "Replying to someone while talking about them in the third person is an extremely rude thing to do." Yet he wrote "both of the bulletpointed issues have been explained to Huhu9001 numerous times now" directly under a post of "Huhu9001" in en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho. Contradiction.

22) His idea of ceased interaction (temporary interaction ban) is that he is going to respond or reply in any way he wants but he will forbid the other party from responding to him: "I will make whatever comments I like, and there is nothing you can do to prevent that. I also told you in no uncertain terms not to interact with me directly, but you seem to be incapable of respecting basic boundaries due to your obsessive need to get the last word. I called your behaviour egotistical bullying from the start, and you couldn’t have proved me more correct." It is him as well who needs to get the last word. Source: en:Wiktionary talk:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho.

23) Edits someone else's comments in en:Special:Diff/72728065. Then, in en:Wiktionary talk:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho, is aggressive, using the language "I have explicitly told you to stop harassing me. Leave me alone. It's bad enough that your ego is so fragile that you started this shit over being asked not to edit war. It's some of the most toxic behaviour I've ever had the misfortune to come across". Pretends that it is him who is being harassed rather than the other way around, in an Orwellian inversion. I don't see what gives him the right to edit someone else's comments.

24) He regularly uses imperative when talking to other people, bossing them around. This is not usual in the English Wiktionary.

25) Made a bad proposal at en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/February#Disallowing mass closures, complaining that another user, Ioaxxere, followed the actual process as specified. It is perfectly fine for editors to do mass closures once the discussion period expired, and the closer has no duty to try to do citations. If, on the other hand, editors consider one month to be too short, the solution is to change process, whether via a Beer parlour discussion or a vote, not to harass editors trying to advance the project.

26) Indicated the person who created his desysopping vote (WordyAndNerdy, WAN) deserved an indefinite block since the vote was allegedly "clear case of harassment". WordyAndNerdy was never blocked before and is a highly valuable long-term contributor (over many years) doing plenty of the laborious work of providing attesting quotations. WordyAndNerdy is an asset of rare value to the Wiktionary project. If WordyAndNerdy did in fact misstep after being called vulgar names--a questionable premise by any sober analysis--a one month block of WordyAndNerdy would have been more than enough. Real contributors of real lexicography like WAN deserve a great respect. Passage by TKW: "I didn't overstep anything here, no matter how many times you say it. Your behaviour then was block-worthy, and your attempt to manipulate the community like this is - in all honesty - indef block-worthy. It is a gross breach of the Universal Code of Conduct, as it's a clear case of harassment in pusuit of a personal agenda, and you seem to have no comprehension of just how disruptive your original behaviour was either." Source: en:Wiktionary:Votes/2023-04/Second vote to desysop Theknightwho.

27) Indicated a person criticising him was lying and deserved an indefinite block: "Huhu9001 is lying here"; "@Huhu9001 Repeatedly lying and then trying to get me sanctioned for breaching policy when I point out what you're doing is some of the worst behaviour I have ever seen on Wiktionary. You should be indefinitely blocked. Theknightwho (talk) 02:04, 8 June 2023 (UTC)". Source: en:Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2023/June#User:Theknightwho is now messing up another Japanese module. Disputants hardly ever talk like that in the English Wiktionary disputes (accuse others of lying; call for indefinite block), based on my over decade-long memory. If Huhu9001 is in fact problematic, much milder interventions are available. TKW's "ever seen on Wiktionary" carries not much weight given his first edit is from 28 November 2021. The linked thread contains more language from TKW that, to my mind, is unacceptable for a non-administrator, let alone administrator, and for brevity is not quoted here.

28) Made personal attacks in en:User talk:Koavf#WF, July 2023, e.g. "Koavf is being outright dishonest there: here is the thread which explains that it was actually because he has a long-term habit of battleground behaviour, refusing to back down, and generally behaving like a bully towards other editors." And: "What do you think bad faith false analogies are going to achieve here?" follows by "Do what you like, but crybullying is unlikely to get you anywhere."

29) Invoked the rhetorical device of the word "sealioning": "I warned you that I would block you if you continued to be disruptive, and you decided to be disruptive anyway, which went over the line when you decided to derail the discussion by accusing @Vininn126 of personal attacks. He was absolutely correct that you'd changed the subject away from your misbehaviour as an admin, which you conveniently ignored, and it came off as textbook evasion. Given your relentless habit of sealioning in every discussion, I don't think there's much point in me trying to convince you it was justified. I will not be responding further". The word "sealioning" can be used to prevent people from asking meaningful questions, request evidence and proof and conduct other key steps pertaining to a rationalist and transparentist epistemology; the word appears to be an ultimate anti-Socratic argumentation stratagem. (One remedy would be to ban the word "sealioning" from discussions.) Source: en:User talk:Theknightwho#What diff do you have to justify banning me?, August 2023.

30) When requested to provide diffs of the behavior for which he is blocking, evaded the request. Admin-unworthy. Source: en:User talk:Theknightwho#What diff do you have to justify banning me?, August 2023.

31) Threatened administrator and long-term contributor DCDuring with a block over an editing dispute, per diff, Nov 2023. When DCDuring accused him of "bullying and stalking", TKW blocked DCDuring for an alleged breach of WT:CIVIL. The conflict that ensued lead DCDuring to state this: "I am reasonably confident that were Wiktionary not desperate for technical skills such as you may have, your abrasiveness would have led to your not being voted an admin, to the removal of your adminship once elected, and your ultimate indefinite blocking", per diff. Whether these actions were justified in part is perhaps not so clear, but this kind of tone toward a long-term editor and administrator, followed by a block, is something I don't recall seeing in the English Wiktionary.

Suboptimalities

Not incidents of misbehavior toward others but suboptimal aspects of editing:

Uses almost no edit summaries when editing, unfortunately a standard in the English Wiktionary.
Performs trivial bot-like edits in volume using his main account rather than a dedicated bot account, far from ideal, especially from an administrator, with no edit summary. He could use a bot or at least AWB; for a batch of edits, he would fill the edit summary once in AWB.
In a rhyme page discussion, dismissed the redlink problem argument although it is simple to understand and entirely conclusive: rhyme pages can list great many items that are redlinks, and these items cannot be covered by categories. For Czech, the problem is grave since the plentiful rhyme pages I created for it often consist almost only of redlinks. The redlink argument was explained multiple times before. It was explained again by Mahagaja: "Red and orange links are good because if someone is looking for a word that rhymes with another word, there's no reason their search should be limited to words that already have Wiktionary entries." And yet, we hear from Theknightwho: "I also don’t really see why redlinks are important for rhymes in a way that doesn’t apply to anything else we use categorisation for: what you propose requires manually adding everything, which has led to many rhyme pages being neglected. what you suggest massively increases workload - which means in many cases it just won’t happen." The talent for dismissing a valid concern with a most peculiar sequence of words seems remarkable. Source: en:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/May#Retiring the Rhymes namespace.
Created en:Act of Parliament classified as part of "constitutional law", most peculiar.

Why civility matters

When there is a systematic pattern of uncivility in discussions, emotional temperature increases overall, people start to lose control, their animal nature starts to dominate the uniquely human features such as self-composure, temperance, self-censorship, restraint and calm verbal deliberation. People start to behave irrationally, in ways that they are sorry for later. The people being vulgarly attacked all too often get dramatic, and get into trouble. Edit wars develop. Avoidance of vulgar name-calling is a very minimum requirement as for civility, and civility should go far beyond that.

Personal hatred or grudge

I cannot know this for sure but the actions of Theknightwho toward me appear to be motivated by personal hatred rather than the advancement of the project. The list of various initiatives and good things I have done for the project is considerable, including a number of policy votes, a systematic creation of reference templates for a considerable list of languages, and making an initial placement into the mainspace, and greatly cleaning up, advancing, expanding and consolidating the thesaurus in 2008-2010 or thereabouts. I am far from perfect, often not having the composure of an ideal administrator, but a professionally behaved administrator, acting in the Christian spirit, having the good for the project in mind, would create a pattern of explanatory posts on my talk page, pointing out specific things that ought to be avoided, and blocks would not even be needed. The superficial impression of the actions by that administrator is that he tried to cause maximum emotional distress rather than productively solve problems. After a pattern of abuse and unnecessarily unfriendly interference, he finally succeeded in his probable ultimate objective, bringing me into a state irrational enough to bring my demise upon myself. Well done?

References

Highlighted itemized references (a more complete list is implied in Incidents above):

Closing words

User Theknightwho is, as far as bad aggressive behavior toward multiple users, some of the worst I have seen in my over a decade long wikilife by far, if not the worst. However, that is far from easy to conclusively substantiate; the above gives a limited picture, and is probably tedious to examine. In any case, his editing in his second desysopping vote alone contains sufficient evidence of admin-unworthy discussion and interaction pattern.

Universal Code of Conduct

The foundation is in the process of introducing universal code of conduct:

Meta:Universal Code of Conduct

Possibly applicable items, for others to judge:

"Insults: This includes name calling, using slurs or stereotypes, and any attacks based on personal characteristics. Insults may refer to perceived characteristics like intelligence, appearance, ethnicity, race, religion (or lack thereof), culture, caste, sexual orientation, gender, sex, disability, age, nationality, political affiliation, or other characteristics. In some cases, repeated mockery, sarcasm, or aggression constitute insults collectively, even if individual statements would not."
"Hounding: following a person across the project(s) and repeatedly critiquing their work mainly with the intent to upset or discourage them. If problems are continuing after efforts to communicate and educate, communities may need to address them through established community processes."
"Abuse of office by functionaries, officials and staff: use of authority, knowledge, or resources at the disposal of designated functionaries, as well as officials and staff of the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia affiliates, to intimidate or threaten others."