Wikipedia:Requests for comment/138.130.194.229

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In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: {insert UTC timestamp with ~~~~~}), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 10:09, 26 April 2024 (UTC).

This anon has been using a number of different IPs originating with http://www.melbourneit.com.au , in Brisbane, Australia, largely in the range 138.130.xxx , but also including other numbers (see Whois).

Other anons who may have been inadvertently caught up;

Statement of the dispute[edit]

138.130.xxx appears to be a young earth creationist who shares the opinions of the ministry Answers in Genesis. 138.130.xxx is trying to insert his/her creationist POV into science articles, in particular RNA world hypothesis and related articles. 138.130.xxx has also tried to subtley push pov into other articles. In doing so, he/she has been uncivil, violated community consensus on talk pages, engaged in edit wars, has done some borderline vandalism, and broken the NPOV guidelines. User has also inserted copyrighted material into articles and has removed valid information from articles.

Description[edit]

{Add summary here, but you must use the section below to certify or endorse it. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Evidence of disputed behavior[edit]

(provide diffs and links)

  1. RNA world hypothesis history, edit warring.
  2. Origin of life history (to a lesser extent)
  3. Richard Dawkins history -- adding links to Answers in Genesis reviews of Dawkins' books (but since we have articles on each of his books already a single review could go in each of those articles).
  4. Abiogenesis history
  5. Urey Miller Experiment history (to a lesser extent)
  6. William A. Dembski history; edit warring on how to express POV on pseudoscience in lead.
  7. More POV pushing [1]
  8. Vandalism of links in Kent Hovind article [2] [3] (appears to be different anon)
  9. And yet more NPOV violation in "scientific community" [4]

Applicable policies[edit]

{list the policies that apply to the disputed conduct}

  1. Wikipedia:Civility
  2. Wikipedia:Edit war
  3. WP:NPOV, especially WP:NPOV#Pseudoscience
  4. WP:3RR
  5. Copyright violations [5] from [6] (which is also a copyvio)
  6. Reasonless removal of valid information

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute[edit]

(provide diffs and links)

  1. talk:RNA world hypothesis several users trying to reason with said anon. Anon exposes POV and ignores.
  2. User talk:220.244.224.8

Users certifying the basis for this dispute[edit]

  1. Dunc|☺ 16:36, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  2. Deglr6328 18:43, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary[edit]

(sign with ~~~~)

  1. Vsmith 02:11, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Response[edit]

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete.

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

This is becoming silly. No one tried to "reason" at all. Instead, they simply went ahead and reverted, then attacked me for undoing their vandalism. Evidently in the eyes of some evolutionists, including a sysop (who thus has a clear conflict of interest so should step aside from (ab)using his powers), anything from a creationist or ID is "POV", while it is not "POV" to denounce anything from that source or if it is blatantly motivated by atheism (e.g. Dawkins). The sysop concerned called creationists "liars" then squealed about "incivility" when called upon it. So he cannot be trusted about NPOV, since to him, evidently any deviation from materialism is POV, and any who reply to his diatribes are "uncivil" by definition.

It becomes worse when criticisms of the RNA world by an evolutionist, on sound chemical grounds, are rejected. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia, so it seemed fair to show concrete and comprehensive chemical problems with the hypothesis.

I also fail to understand why a link on peptides is retained when it has nothing to do with this topic. Yet when this link was removed from this section, it was added to the origin of life page. 138.130.194.229 03:33, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In the Dembski page, the sysop simply decrees "no, it really is pseudoscience", and evidently everyone else is supposed to take his word for it. This is one more example of why we should have no confidence in Duncharris as sysop -- he simply can't be trusted not to insert his own POV and crush dissent with his sysop powers.138.130.194.229 03:36, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe the following links provide context that may be useful for commenters in this dispute.
Gazpacho 12:59, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) (not endorsing any summary at this time).
Good grief, so Duncharris is even misusing Wiki's own definition of "vandalism". A sysop should surely know the rules, and since he doesn't, that's another reason he should resign. 138.130.193.19 13:01, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Anyone can make a mistake. Gazpacho
True enough, although it's not just one. But OK, if he is prepared to learn from his mistakes ... 138.130.192.82 11:47, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

Outside view[edit]

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.

I was asked by Duncharris to get involved with this dispute. I have worked on a number of articles this user has been involved with, although not on any of the seven listed as evidence of disputed behaviour. Before commenting here I studied the edit histories and talk pages of RNA world hypothesis and William A. Dembski to see the basis of the accusations. In my opinion the fault lies on the side of the anonymous editor's opponents, not with the anon. (My greatest criticism of the anon is that he should get himself a username—but then he's not actually required to do that.)

The anon's first edit on RNA world hypothesis was to insert a link to a paper co-authored by a biologist (Dean Kenyon), which paper disputed the RNA world hypothesis. Deglr6328 reverted that insertion, citing "religious propaganda link" as the reason. As the paper doesn't mention religion, is clearly discussing science, and Kenyon is quite competent to discuss the issue, the claim that it was "religious propaganda" was nothing more than a genetic fallacy, as the anon user (if user 220.244.224.8) really is the same user—see my comments below) pointed out.

Without detailing the rest of the edit war, essentially the same pattern followed, with the anon user re-inserting things deleted by others or inserting new information, and a number of others users reverting his changes simply because they came from a creationist source (the genetic fallacy yet again).

I endorse the anon user's response to accusations of incivility. Duncharris accused creationists of "a nasty habit of bending the truth", and the anon editor of "spouting nonsense" then accuses the anon editor of being offensive and of incivility!

From the other user bringing this complaint, Deglr6328, we've had the following just on the RNA world hypothesis talk page:

  • A particular "creationist" (actually ID) website is "infamous"
  • He referred to the anon user's insertions as "religiously influenced nonsense" and "bilge"
  • He referred to Dean Kenyon's "sordid academic career" (Kenyon was a respected biologist until—and because—he started questioning naturalism)
  • He referred to user 220.244.224.8 as "a rabidly rambling nutter".

Now what was that about the pot calling the kettle black?

As for the charge of copyright violation, nobody has attempted to claim that it doesn't fall under the 'fair use' criteria.

As an aside, I'm not totally convinced that user 220.244.224.8 is the same as user 138.xxx.xxx.xxx. I note that the IP addresses for the latter resolve to Brisbane, Australia, whilst the IP address for the former resolves to Melbourne, Australia (which is where I am—but no, it's not me). For those ignoramuses that don't know, those two places are nearly 1,400 kilometres apart. Now I don't know enough about how these things work to know whether someone in Brisbane could use a Melbourne IP address or vice versa, and it is possible that the anon editor has flown between the two cities and made edits from both, but ....

Philip J. Rayment 11:00, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

P.S. If the editors reverting anon's edits hadn't displayed so much religious bigotry (rejecting his edits because they came from a "religious" source), you may have found him more willing to work with you instead of fighting you. Philip J. Rayment 11:09, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)


  1. Endorse. One further point: Deglr6328 called for a vote (on the Talk page) with the words: “Can we please take a vote here on who wants this bilge included in a perfectly good scientific article? Obviously everyone here knows I think it needs to go. (furthermore, I can't believe we're wasting our time arguing with an IP address. someone who cares so little for wikipedia he hasn't even bothered to take the 2 minutes to get a username.)” While the voting was continuing, Duncharris persisted in removing the link under discussion. I've no sympathy with intelligent design, which I consider to be religiously promoted pseudoscience, but this isn't about opinions, it's about behaviour, and 138.xxx.xxx.xxx's behaviour was at worst no worse than that of his or her accusers. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:21, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  2. Endorse. It seems like Philip J. Rayment is spot on in his assesment. I see the fault as lying with the opponents as well. Philip makes the case rather nicely. Why is it that in every single article pertaining to a creationists or creationism, evolutionists links get to be posted on the external links section, but in evolutionist or evolution articles, a creationist link is intolerable? It seems amazingly hypocritical. Why fight tooth and nail to keep an external link to book review which holds a different viewpoint? Infocat 12:32, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  3. Endorse for all of the above reasons. our newfound anon has provided some very valuable resources and perspectives for furthering npov on a number of pages. his frustration is, in my opinion, entirely justified when one considers some of the tactics he has encountered. Ungtss 16:36, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  4. Endorse. Though I firmly fall in the "evolutionist" camp and I in general despise anonymous editors, I have to agree that the editor in question has made good faith edits to the article, has attempted reasoned discussion, and has been met with pig-headedness and an unwillingness to respond to his queries and arguments, been unfairly labeled a "vandal", etc. Nothing I have read leads me to believe s/he is interested only in advancing a POV with no interest in dialogue with other editors. S/he should still get a login, though. Graft 18:00, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  5. Endorse albeit with strong reservations. The objections to Dean Kenyon are completely valid, albeit uneccessary ad hominem attacks do seem to have occured on both sides. A) Kenyon is not a biologist or a biochemist and has no real has no qualifications to talk about abiogenesis, and is the author of the creationist text book Of Pandas and People. Objecting to including an article by him is completely reasonable. However this does not in any way excuse making unproductive ad hominem attacks. JoshuaZ 03:50, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Later additions to summary, and resulting discussion[edit]

Since writing my summary above, further IP addresses have been added to this page as allegedly belonging to the same user. I used Geobytes' IP Address Locator Tool to determine the geographical location of all the listed IP addresses.
  • 138.130.* all resolve to Brisbane, Australia.
  • 220.244.224.8 resolves to Melbourne, Australia
  • 217.42.* resolves to London, England
  • 66.81.128.86 resolves to Sacramento, U.S.A.
Quite a jet-setter, our anon! Or perhaps they are not all the same person? I see no reason whatsoever to think that the last two (the non-Australian ones) are the same person as 133.130.*. Yet the eighth article listed as evidence is based on 217.42.* being the same user.
Philip J. Rayment 14:33, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Ah, okay. Perhaps they're not the same chap. I found them all resolving to the same place through whois, though perhaps that's a problem with them or me?. Dunc|☺ 15:17, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Right, so Duncharris has been bullying other users on other web pages. Same pattern -- reverting additions that don't agree with his atheistic religion, then squawking "vandalism" when the user restores some of the information summarily deleted. The only vandal around here is Duncharris, and it's time for him to step down from sysop or be pushed.
And when is he going to unblock the page so we can get rid of the partisan "religiously motivated links" heading a perfectly scientific article? For his information, it was scientific difficulties in chemical evolution that caused Kenyon to abandon the theory.138.130.193.19 12:57, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Discussion[edit]

All signed comments and talk not related to a vote or endorsement, should be directed to this page's discussion page.

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