Hi, Conan. I'm concerned about your editing at Free Speech Union. On 8 December, an IP changed the text without sufficient care, leaving bad syntax, but I should have thought their intention was extremely clear. Did you see their edit summary "Revert WP:OR, not in sources"? Indeed, it wasn't in the sources. The neutral thing to do, if you wanted to help, would have been to fix the syntax. Not to revert on the pretext "not sure the intent of the edit". That's tendentious editing. Then you edit warred with User:Bilorv and User:Doug Weller, apparently because in your opinion, it was "dubious" that FSU has a right-wing agenda. We don't go by editors' opinions but by reliable sources, of which The Guardian is definitely one. You then added a clause about the FSU being "acclaimed by others", sourced to Spiked-Online, a website I'm not familiar with (it's not mentioned at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources) but it kind of shouts "extreme" and "not reliable" in the very article on FSU that you reference. I quote:『This wouldn’t be the first time that PayPal has silenced those deemed to have controversial views. In 2018, it banned Tommy Robinson, the Proud Boys and some Antifa chapters for allegedly promoting ‘violence’ and ‘hate’.』Aha. So a website that equates FSU with those "allegedly" hate-promoting entities is your source for the "acclaim"? If you persist in this kind of skewed editing, you are likely to be page-banned from the article. Bishonen | tålk 14:35, 19 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]
Indeed, these edits have not improved the article.
Spiked is an interesting source; I've come across it a few times but, if memory serves me right, in each case discussion has led it to be classified as unreliable. It's certainly an extreme source, yes, but whether it is extremely right-wing or left-wing is a confused matter. It has positions like pro-Brexit, anti-COVID-safety-measures and anti-"identity politics" that are shared by some communists and right-libertarians. — Bilorv (talk) 16:59, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WRT my alleged edit-warring with the other two editors, as your own wording concedes, it takes two, yet I notice a suspicious lack of equivalent warnings on their pages, which pretty clearly indicates you've taken sides. That conclusion is borne out by your rather emotional "Aha." comment and the lack of transparency on how you stumbled on to these edits in the first place, which raises suspicions of comms between editors who know each other, and an inappropriate attachment to a point of view in a case you intend to judge. Tendentious administration, perhaps?
On the specific accusations: I didn't revert the latter revert by User:Doug Weller because I considered his point about the section being a summary a fair one, while still seeing the leftist slant of the two articles which I think would be clear to anybody not enmeshed in an ideological view (perhaps you have your own "skew" you are unaware of?). Your warning therefore was misjudged, as I had accepted the change.
Finally, you say the Guardian is "definitely" a reliable source, and yet even Wikipedia's own entry on it acknowledges a questionable reliability on political topics and opinion pieces. So your basic reasoning seems to be flawed as well.
In short, your trigger-happy block was completely unjustified, without warning (I made no changes since you first issued it) and - in the context of my reasoning above - frankly strengthens the case of those who consider this website a very problematic place with regards to neutrality on political topics.Conan The Librarian (talk) 21:48, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I've said, you can request unblock from an uninvolved administrator by placing {{unblock|your reason here}} on this page. Better not state in any such request that you made no changes after I issued the warning above, though, since you're mistaken about that. You made this revert about 23 hours after my warning. Bishonen | tålk 22:09, 20 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]
On that last point then, my apologies. I only saw the warning today and misread the date. Conan The Librarian (talk) 22:26, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia volunteers can watchlist pages so that they see all edits that are made. I certainly did not communicate privately with Bishonen. Edit warring is not symmetric, and my single revert of an edit with an edit summary is not the same as three reverts of two different people.
Per WP:RSP, The Guardian is generally reliable, which is the highest status given as no source is always reliable for every fact. It's unclear what you mean by "questionable reliability on political topics and opinion pieces": an opinion piece from any publication has uses and limitations; and a political provenance (which all sources have) is not the same as unreliability. — Bilorv (talk) 17:41, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the reply; whatever the rights/wrongs (and where I'm wrong, my apologies), I'll take the block as a useful check on my own engagement here and opportunity to improve it.Conan The Librarian (talk) 01:20, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Page block
You have been blocked from Free Speech Union for 3 months for persistent edit warring and tendentious editing. See my warning above. Note that you can still edit the article's talkpage. You can request unblock from an uninvolved administrator by placing {{unblock|your reason here}} on this page. Bishonen | tålk 20:10, 20 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]
