Talk:R v Elliott

Article full protected for three days

Following article edit history disruption, the article was fully-protected from editing for three days.

Reason given by administrator AlexiusHoratius: "Protected "R v Elliott": Edit warring / content dispute".

The protection will expire 12:32, 25 March 2016.

Perhaps it would be best in the interim for the various editors involved in the "Edit warring / content dispute" -- to discuss the issues involved in the dispute -- here on the talk page ?

Maybe an editor or two could start -- summarizing the main issues involved in the recent dispute ?

— Cirt (talk) 13:29, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Cirt and AlexiusHoratius, I'll be happy to summarize. BertSten is a tendentious editor who has been warring to insert the Gamergate movement's preferred POV that this trial was a deliberate attempt by the plaintiffs to harass Elliott through the legal system, a view which is not supported by reliable sources. The material he keeps reinserting is an excerpt from the trial records ([2], [3], [4], [5], [6]) either by citing the trial itself (violating WP:BLPPRIMARY) or variously citing two inappropriate sources. One of those sources is Christie Blatchford, an editorialist noted by reliable sources as hostile to the plaintiffs: for example this edit in which BertSten misrepresented a column commenting on Blatchford's opinion of the case as factual statements by Guthrie. The second is "everyjoe.com", a blog calling itself a "men's lifestyle" website: in this edit BertSten cites a post by a writer clearly sympathetic to Elliott and not writing neutrally. As this material clearly violates our various policies protecting BLPs, the edits have been reverted by five different editors, although BertSten finds another flimsy reason to restore the transcript each time.

I'll also note that one of the five editors has already warned BertSten about the WP:ARBGG discretionary sanctions which apply to this article: [7]. The sanctions apply here (remedy 1.1(i): "... authorized for all edits about ... any gender-related dispute or controversy") despite BertSten's assertion that they do not. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 14:43, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this astute summary, Ivanvector, I've been reviewing the article edit history and talk page discussion process. I agree with you that especially for this case, the article should rely on reliable secondary sources. Those sources you mentioned above are indeed quite problematic. Hopefully the temporary-full-protection will encourage all editors involved to more actively engage in civil discussion here on the talk page. — Cirt (talk) 14:48, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

The editor's argument is firstly an ad hominem. Then the editor Attacks various secondary sources as being "hostile" towards the complainant whom the editor has admitted to being in personal contact with. The editor doesn't prove hostile how. The editor keeps ignoring the BLP rule about augmentation being accepted. --BertSten (talk) 16:37, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

There is no BLP issue. The quote specifies that there was a false claim. WP:BLPPRIMARY states that the augmentation of something with court material is accepted. Exactly what I tried. As in I'm following the book, the opposers aren't. There are 5+ different sources which describe the false pedophile association and the fact that it was defended by Guthrie in court. It's well-sourced. And for some reason a hostile "gamergate" warning was plastered to my personal talk page. I researched the matter and found out that ALL the opposers of the quote are frequent "gamergaters". One of the opposers and heavy editors of this article has admitted a personal connection to all three complainants: 1. I'd very much plaster this article with the "editor is associated" tag as if she's/he's in unison with the others then they all must be in some way connected to the complainants if not being the complainants themselves. If the complainant's friend is editing this article then why wouldn't the complainants themselves be?

The specific opposers have removed well-sourced material from this article in the past, especially citations: 1 (except the sources do support it), 2 (notice how there are many secondary sources besides the court document, and court documents are allowed to augment secondary sources), 3 (this isn't the only citation removed because of the reason "opinion piece" yet other sources in the article are opinion pieces but since they apparently support the "gamergaters" they aren't removed; for example the New Statesman one is a /blogs/ post and yet it's used as a source for the term "harassment" in place of "criticism"), 4 (LinkedIn of the person herself apprently isn't a credible source about the person?), 5 (cherry-picking a secondary source's text over a case where primary would overrule secondary and again, court material is allowed to augment) and 6 (pushing an article about the prosecutor's opinion to the lead which mentions nothing about the internet ban; with the preceding National Post actually verifying the internet ban).

At one point Paisley Rae's connection to the investigating officer Jeff Bangild as reported 1 and easily verifiable from the numerous Twitter conversations they've had among which 2 was also removed, even though it's obviously crucial to why this was even listed in the first place.

They have also removed the sourced information that the women testified that a meeting between them in 2012 about Elliott is said to have taken place, likely concerning the possibility of police action. Also very crucial to the case.

Simply put, these actions of theirs simply constitute as disruption of this article. That is the worst breach of Wikipedia policy, as I have just read. I myself tried to insert a single, short quote which clarifies the sentence preceding it, as perfectly per Wikipedia policy about use of court material. --BertSten (talk) 16:31, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Initially the problem was sourcing quality - first a transcript only, then transcript with secondary commentary by Blatchford, who is regarded as biased. If we're up to the transcript (verifying accuracy) and three different columnists (verifying that its a "significant view" regardless of whether its biased), then I think that's sufficient to warrant a sentence mentioning Elliott was falsely accused of pedophelia. Devoting the space to quoting the transcript seems like undue weight. These sources should also not be used to dive deeper into the accusers' motivations. Rhoark (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't believe that's quite true. This particular exchange lifted from the court transcript has only appeared in sources of the "everyjoe.com" sort: blogs which affiliate themselves with men's rights and free speech activism, hardly unbiased sources for this (one such post is filed under the blog's "PC Police" category, for example). Reliable sources have mentioned Elliott's lawyer's cross-examination of Guthrie and suggestion that she may have had a motive other than fear for her own safety, but none (even the notably biased Blatchford) have repeated the suggestion that Elliott was [falsely] accused of pedophilia. It's a stretch well beyond reasonable augmentation for Wikipedia to make that suggestion; it is an exceptional claim and requires exceptional sources. Based on the sources available, at best we could briefly mention the lawyer's suggestion of ulterior motive, although we need to consider how to best present that so as not to misrepresent the sources. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:48, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

After looking through this it appears that Ivanvector is right on the money. BertSten's actions are disruptive.

I also don't see that the sources we've seen so far justify any mention of the false pedophilia claim in this encyclopedia article, it has BLP implications for all sides and so should only be included if there's very strong sourcing.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:17, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

If there's no trusted source for the transcript, none of it is useable. Rhoark (talk) 19:24, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Reliable sources have mentioned ... but none (even the notably biased Blatchford) have repeated the suggestion that Elliott was [falsely] accused of pedophilia. - this is demonstrably untrue. My cursory search finds four sources: Tech Dirt, Reason, The Federalist, The National Post.

"Exceptional sources" are required for exceptional claims - these claims are backed up by official court transcripts and the judge's ruling - the opposite of "exceptional." What's relevant then is weight and given the sources, a sentence (as Rhoark suggests) is not undue. I don't see any indication of bias in Blatchford. And I think this talk of "bias" and conspiracy is unconstructive. The charge itself may violate BLP. D.Creish (talk) 19:49, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

EDIT: Judge's ruling, to save everyone the search: [8]. Here's the relevant quote:

As Ms. Guthrie testified, there is no such thing as a perfect victim. But Ms. Reilly’s retweeting of forceful, insulting, unconfirmed and ultimately inaccurate attacks suggesting pedophilia – combined with her tentative, hypothetical concerns that he could possibly move from online to offline harassment, and her knowledge that he never came to the Cadillac Lounge and never again referred to her whereabouts – raises doubt in my mind to whether she was afraid of Mr. Elliott.

That's not to say we should include this quote. We should include the false accusation because it's mentioned in RS. I provided the quote to demonstrate the claim of a false accusation is not exceptional. D.Creish (talk) 19:59, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

@D.Creish: I hope you don't mind I moved your text down to the bottom of the thread, I thought it was oddly placed. One of your sources is Blatchford and two others are simply quoting her and providing supplementary opinion, but I admit I don't see anything apparently wrong with the Reason Foundation source. That still doesn't support pulling quotes from court transcripts out of context, and it's not necessary since Reason has already done the necessary analysis, but it does support Rhoark's suggestion above that we should note the false accusation and its impact on the judge's ruling, as Reason notes. Again, we need to be careful with wording: the allegation originated with an account noted as being unknown to the complainants, not with the complainants themselves.

Regarding Blatchford, the suggestion of bias comes from her past coverage of gender issues, which the parents of Rehtaeh Parsons have spoken out against ([9], [10]), and which Blatchford herself recognizes and has responded to. None of this supports a conclusion that Blatchford is definitely non-neutral in this topic area, but we need to acknowledge that controversy exists regarding her coverage of this, and as such, using her as a source for any information here should be considered controversial, especially if it cannot be supported by any other reliable source. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:39, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

It sounds like we're on the same page re: the accusation - great. Anyone disagree? Re: Blatchford, that some have suggested she isn't feminist enough and she acknowledges these criticisms exist is not evidence of bias. Blatchford is a well-respected, veteran journalist. Unless we have high quality sources suggesting particular bias in this instance I think it's best we not pursue that argument in deference to BLP policy. D.Creish (talk) 21:03, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I think we're on the same page regarding the content. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 14:58, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

The next question is where does it belong in the article? We don't want to give it undue weight, but it has been noted in at least a couple of sources. Here's a suggestion:

The case hinged on whether the women reasonably feared for their safety.[11][12] Elliott's laywer, Chris Murphy, suggested that the women had an ulterior motive for reporting Elliott to the police.[13] Guthrie defended her continued tweeting about Elliott after having blocked him, including creating hashtags to mock him[14] and repeating allegations of pedophilia made by another account which were later shown to be false,[15] as being a means of fighting back against Elliott's harassment.[16]

I'm going to make a few other edit suggestions below, which I think are uncontroversial, but please comment if you think otherwise. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 14:58, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

COI tag

The neutrality of this article is a joke. Apparently a source can be discredited because it's from a "men's rightist", and Blatchford's neutrality is questioned because she isn't feminist enough? Are all the sources except the ones you like biased? Ivanvector has self-admitted to being in personal contact with ALL THREE complainants of the court case. Judging from how in unison he/she is with the other main editors of this article with them editing all the same kind of articles even outside this one, the editors of this article all have blatant COI. I'll add both COI and POV tag later on.

And now for some bizarre reason Ivanvector is accepting the Reason version of the pedophile accusation which is just presenting the accusation as it, as in as an actual BLP violation but towards the defendant and not the complainant. As in seemingly Ivanvector's only goal here is to defend the complainant and abuse the rules the best he/she can to that purpose. Meanwhile, again, I only came here to add one quote from the complainant which illustrates the sentence preceding it. One, illustrating quote. BertSten (talk) 00:12, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

So, in other words, you've come just to right one great wrong? Dumuzid (talk) 00:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh we have a tool for that! The Editor Interaction Utility can only do three accounts at a time, but this comparison is representative, or this one, or try your own. With the other editors who have reverted you, I have intersects on this article, and on Gamergate controversy as a result of a single copyedit I made there. We are hardly "editing all the same kind of articles even outside this one".

I'm not sure what you mean to accomplish with that unfounded accusation anyway. It looks like you're trying to say that since I have a disclosed COI here, that must mean everyone who edits the page has the same COI, and that because everyone except you has a conflict of interest, then it must be fine that we include a naked excerpt from the defendant's court submission without also adding any analysis of it whatsoever. Oh, and it just so happens that it's the same excerpt showing up in every "men's rightists" (your words) blog, out of context, to villify one of the living subjects of this article. But when another editor tracks down a source for the accusation published by a credible organization, you're opposed to using it. Someone who's here to build an encyclopedia wouldn't make this sort of tendentious argument. In fact that article is written by someone who has participated in live fundraising events for Elliott's defense fund, hardly an unbiased source, but it lends credence to the idea that this is a significant view and should be presented, appropriately weighted, in the article. Which is where the discussion above is going.

Also, since you seem to be stumbling over it, my gender is disclosed on my user page and in my personal settings. You can use templates like {{he or she}} to fill in the appropriate pronoun based on a user's settings (they take the account name as a parameter, so for example "{{he or she|BertSten}}" returns "he or she", and "{{he or she|Ivanvector}}" returns "he". Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 06:28, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

So after all that rhetoric you half-admit that you are only opposed to that source because it's from a "men's rightist". Like I already wrote, the Reason source only presents the accusation as is. So you want that like I wrote and you're not denying it? After all the rhetoric that's clear as well. And if you were here to build an encyclopedia you wouldn't have began this talk with a massive, unnecessary ad hominem. You wouldn't oppose a small, sourced quote. You wouldn't edit an article concerning your friends. BertSten (talk) 15:41, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I've removed the COI tag. Ivanvector has not been a major contributor. Even if he was his "close" connection to the subject is laughably tenuous (i.e. he's been in the same room with them and shared some tweets, wow, smoking gun.) I think the POV tag should go as well, I'm not seeing any specific issue that is fixable by a policy based edit. — Strongjam (talk) 15:48, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

He has, as most visible from this talk. He has admitted to being in personal contact with all three. And now you're refusing a claim of Elliott returning to Twitter even though it's visible from his account: https://twitter.com/greg_a_elliott. Your insistence on secondary sources above primary in cases where primary clearly works is against the inherent spirit of sourcing. You are abusing the rules. BertSten (talk) 16:02, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

BertSten, with all due respect, have a look at WP:PRIMARY. Using secondary sources is kinda the name of the game around here. I would agree that sourcing this to his Twitter account is too much like original research. Thanks. Dumuzid (talk) 16:06, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

BertSten, assume good faith. I wasn't aware of his Twitter handle, I don't use Twitter. Instead the source you cited said the exact opposite of what you sourced it for. It said he had not returned to Twitter, but that he hadn't ruled it out. Also we need to be sure that account is him, since people have impersonated him on Twitter before. If it turns out that the account is another impersonation it could cause real harm to him. — Strongjam (talk) 16:10, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Again, you are purposefully misinterpreting the rules. They state multiple times that in certain cases primary sources even overrule secondary. I will give you time to return the stable version's internet ban bit with its source and either a link to his Twitter or a web archive of it, as a primary source. If it isn't returned, I'll return it myself. BertSten (talk) 16:13, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

And I assumed good faith until an ad hominem attack towards me was launched by the COI editor you work in unison with here. BertSten (talk) 16:13, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

You didn't have the primary source until after I removed it. There is no misinterpretation of rules, unless I'm expected to know the future. As I said earlier we need to be 100% certain that is his account. I don't want to claim that his is account and have it turn out to be another imposter. Is there any secondary source that links to it? — Strongjam (talk) 16:18, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I went back along his timeline to find the return tweet, which happened on January 22 after having been gone for 3 years. Using the quote in that tweet as a search key I were able to find news reports about it: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/22/canada-man-twitter-harassment-not-guilty-gregory-alan-elliot and http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/01/22/verdict-expected-today-in-twitter-harassment-trial_n_9047716.html. Add both as sources. BertSten (talk) 16:24, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Those are certainly perfectly valid sources for his first tweet back. Just to stick to the sources, I wouldn't say "returned to Twitter" (since that sounds like analysis), but if you wanted to say posted to twitter after the trial for the first time in three years, or some such, I would support that. Dumuzid (talk) 16:42, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I found a peculiar statement above. Strongjam stated that Ivanvector has been in the same room as the three complainants. Nowhere was something like that stated. Does Strongjam know something we don't? Was Strongjam in that room as well? BertSten (talk) 16:58, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

(withdrawn) Dumuzid (talk) 17:01, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

The legal defamation accusation from above is kept as a diff here. It was first removed by Strongjam here. BertSten (talk) 17:26, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

If you'd like me to, BertSten, I will self report at the Administrator's Noticeboard. Your call. Dumuzid (talk) 17:36, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

See Here for Ivanvectors statement on the extant of his COI. —Strongjam (talk) 17:11, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

So, it was actually found out to be a COI by others as well? He was recommended not to edit the article, but he has kept editing? BertSten (talk) 17:19, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I apologize for my unfunny joke above. Sorry, what can I say? It's Friday. Dumuzid (talk) 17:19, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

The Quote, Paisley Rae's connections and The Meeting

In what form would you accept mentions of these abovementioned things in the article? BertSten (talk) 16:36, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

How would you suggest adding them, and with which sources? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:30, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

The quote I'd like to add as it was presented. For now I'll just add the sources since they are sources for the earlier sentence itself, which was flimsily sourced by the two and not really at all by the other and I wonder why that ref is even there.

We can talk and argue about the form you'd accept the quote in.

Here's a bit about the meeting. In fact since there's no opposition to it I'll just add it now.

Guthrie and Reilly convened a meeting of friends at this time to discuss Elliott.

References

I also noticed that the fact that Elliott lost his job right after wasn't mentioned for some reason so I'll add that as well. BertSten (talk) 12:27, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

For what my opinion is worth, I think the way you added this is fine. I made what I think is a slight copyedit, please feel free to review. I also moved the refs into the list-defined section and populated the two new ones, and I renamed the one that was called "blatchford" just because in this article it's somewhat vague. All of this just for consistency. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:17, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

What about the quote? Would you mind if I just placed it in the { {court} } ref as a { {court|quote=} } which only shows up in the ref as text and not in the article text? BertSten (talk) 04:58, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I still just don't think it needs to be on the page at all. I generally don't like the quote because it's taken out of context from court excerpts. I could just as easily go into the court excerpts myself and cherrypick some quote out of context that I think backs up my POV. That's what WP:BLPPRIMARY tells us not to do, and with good reason. We should be going by independent analysis of the whole case by experts, not picking out one or two bits that sound good to us but are only a part of the overall legal decision. I generally don't like the court document or Elliott's submission being used as a reference at all, and at the moment it's only being used as a citation for a section that already has four other sources. It's not adding anything there: it's completely unnecessary. What I'm saying I guess is I think that your solution for including the quote is a reasonable compromise, but at the same time I think that the ref should be removed, and then the quote would go with it, thus those two positions are contradictory.

Up above I made a suggestion as to how to include the conspiracy and pedophilia allegations in the article, based on third-party sources, but that conversation died out. I'll repeat my suggestion here:

The case hinged on whether the women reasonably feared for their safety.[17][18] Elliott's laywer, Chris Murphy, suggested that the women had an ulterior motive for reporting Elliott to the police.[19] Guthrie defended her continued tweeting about Elliott after having blocked him, including creating hashtags to mock him[20] and repeating allegations of pedophilia made by another account which were later shown to be false,[21] as being a means of fighting back against Elliott's harassment.[22]

If we take this edit, maybe it makes sense to add the court ref to the end as supplementary info, and then the quote could appear within the ref. I do think that adding it that way is a (maybe borderline) BLPPRIMARY violation, though, but we're both kind of entrenched here. Would you agree to putting that question to an RfC? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 17:05, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Harassment?

Using the term “harassment” for what is essentially verbal behaviour implicitly begs the issue of free speech in favour of its antagonists. The term has a clear primary meaning of physical interference. Online or even in-person criticism per se does not interfere with a person in any physical way. If it did, then even political heckling would constitute harassment and thus be indictable. The writer is thus, possibly owing to an unconscious bias, conflating harassment with mockery. But that is exactly the unfounded conflation which the courts ultimately rejected. Orthotox (talk) 23:44, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

We follow the wording of reliable sources. As to this "But that is exactly the unfounded conflation which the courts ultimately rejected." That's not exactly accurate. The judge found Elliot not guilty of criminal harassment, but wrote in his ruling "There is no doubt that Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly were harassed by Gregory Alan Elliott over several months in 2012, either due to the volume or content of his tweets, but that alone does not meet the legal threshold for a conviction" Source. — Strongjam (talk) 04:05, 2 December 2017 (UTC)