User:John Carter/WikiProject Conservatism

Statement by John Carter

I would request that the ArbCom review the history of this project, its relevant pages, and presumably the history of edits of its members, to determine if there has been any serious violation of WP:POV or any other conduct or content guidelines or policies regarding it and/or its members.

The project is almost two years old, and has, as can be seen in the history of its talk page, had reservations about it and its goals expressed pretty much since its foundation. Starting with [of the comments regarding the project from its very first archived talk page], there have been concerns expressed regarding the rather bombastic, Rush Limbaugh-like self-promotion of the group by certain of its founders and earliest members. Also, as per some of the more recent discussions regarding the project, other members have made statements such as [this one] which seem to me, and I believe others, to perhaps indicate that there are reasons other than developing an encyclopedic group of articles relating to the content which may be perhaps more important to certain members than they should be.

I, and I believe others, have come to believe that there are unsurmountable difficulties in having a project such as this one function in the way it has. However, several of the comments of the editors most actively involved in this particular topic have been such that they lead me to believe that it is unlikely that the more active members of the project and the greater wikipedia community will ever be likely to be able to agree about the scope of the project, the possibility of it being used for POV promotion purposes, and such. Therefore, I request that the Arbitration Committee review the matter, see if there have been any significant violations of policies or guidelines, including conduct guidelines, by the active members of the project or the others who have commented on it, and perhaps help us all achieve a way to proceed regarding content related to this topic and its related material. John Carter (talk) 19:58, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by RGloucester

I have been a frequent of observer of WikiProject Conservatism for roughly a year now. From the start, I was concerned with the way in which the project has conducted itself. Having noticed that the members of the project were largely American, it became clear that “conservatism” as most project members viewed it was essentially modern American conservatism. This is problematic, because conservatism is not a coherent entity. It varies greatly across the world, and positions that could be considered “conservative” in one country could be considered radically “liberal” in another. As such, I started a move request about a year ago, which started a long discussion. This can be found here and continues here.

During that discussion, I learned a lot about the project. While I attempted to work congenially to try and narrow the scope of the project, even coming up with a decent proposal, I only ever received fire. The “us vs. them” attitude that is so prevalent at this project makes it impossible to work with. And it soon became worryingly apparent that many members had joined the project to “counter liberal bias”. Simply look at the roster of members. While I do believe it is noble to counter NPOV violations, this is not what happens with this project. Many members assume that Wikipedia has a “confirmed liberal bias”, which must be fixed. The project’s founder, and the driving force behind this, User:Lionelt, even wrote an essay on the subject. Even though the content of the essay is mostly sound, it targets “liberal bias”, ignoring all other kinds of bias. Reading the talk page archives, one realizes that this problem has existed since the founding of the project. Recently, the problem once again surfaced, and resulted in a long discussion on the WikiProject’s talk page. It was there that I lost all hope for any solution outside of arbitration.

Because this project has consistently resisted community interaction and concern (move attempts, de facto RfCs, &c.), I think there is no other way to solve this very dangerous problem but to go through the arbitration process. I therefore request that the Committee review this project, and help provide a route forward. RGloucester (talk) 05:14, 1 November 2012 (UTC)